The Secret Dead by S. J. Parris Read Free Book Online

have our father
wake and find us both gone. I would swear she did not leave. Unless there is
another entrance. But then, why did she not come home?”
    I felt my palms grow slick with sweat at her mention of
another entrance. I should have let her go then, but I had to be sure of how
much she knew. “Why do you think he meant her harm, if they were … involved?”
    “Because she—–” Her face darkened and she turned away. “Her
situation had changed. She was going to ask him for something he could not
give.”
    “Money?”
    The slap came out of nowhere; she moved so fast I barely
had time to register that she had raised her hand. Rubbing my burning cheek, I reflected
that at least she had not used the hand that held the knife. I stretched my jaw
to assess the damage, but she was already stalking away around the corner.
    “Wait!” I ran after her, into another, narrower alley. She
turned, eyes blazing out of the darkness.
    “My sister was no whore, whatever he says.” She paused, and
I saw that she was fighting back tears. “She believed herself in love with him.”
She swiped at her eyes with her knuckles. “What is any of this to you? Why are
you following me?”
    “If your sister was inside the walls of San Domenico last
night, someone must know something.” I was surprised at how level my voice
sounded, how carefully I controlled my expression. Only a few months since my
vows, and already I had acquired the Dominican talent for dissembling. Though
it was a skill that was to serve me well in later years, in that moment I
despised myself to the core. “What is your name?”
    “Maria.” Most of the women in this city were called Maria,
but she hesitated just long enough for me to wonder if she was lying “Yours?”
    “Bruno.”
    “Well then, Bruno. You know where I can be found. But I
will not hold my breath — I know your kind always stick together. Whatever has
happened to my sister, he will not face justice for it. Not in this city. A
family like mine, against a man of his name?”
    I wondered what she meant by that, and recalled the quiet,
deliberate cruelty of Donato’s last insult to her. “Why did he call you — that?”
I asked.
    Her expression closed up immediately. “I expect it was the
worst abuse he could think of.”
    We looked at one another in silence for a moment, her eyes
daring me to question further.
    “What about the locket?”
    Her mouth dropped open, the fury in her eyes displaced by
fear.
    “What do you know of that?”
    “Nothing. Only that I heard you accuse Fra Donato of taking
it.”
    Her hand strayed to her throat; an involuntary gesture, I
supposed, as she thought of her sister wearing the locket. I could think only of
the bruises around the dead girl’s neck.
    “If he has taken it …” She faltered. I sensed that she was
weighing up how much to say. “It has little value for its own sake. But it
belonged to our mother. I must have it back.” The note of desperation in
her voice told me she was withholding something. She feared that locket’s
falling into the wrong hands — but why?
    I stood foolishly staring at her, wishing I could offer
some consolation, cursing the weight of what I knew — the truth she would spend
the rest of her life raking over and not knowing. Or so I had to hope.
    “You know where to find me if you hear anything,” she said
again, with a shrug. I was about to reply when, silent as a cat, she turned and
disappeared into the blackness between the buildings.
    *
* *
    I crashed through the door of the infirmary, careless of
the hour, careless of the noise I made. Fra Gennaro was bent over the bed of
old Fra Francesco by the light of a candle, applying a poultice to his sunken
chest to ease the fluid on his lungs. Gennaro started at the sound of the door,
but as soon as he realized it was me, his expression told me he had been
expecting this.
    I glanced along the length of the infirmary, my ribs
heaving with the effort of running through