Act of Faith (14 page)

The next morning, Master de Aquila was gone.

Willem went to wake him — I heard him calling, slamming doors and thumping about with his great lumpy feet all over the house.

‘What do you want for breakfast?’ I shouted.

There was no reply.

Willem found his way to the kitchen at last. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘Seen who?’ I asked. I’m never at my brightest before my morning cup of
caffè
.

‘The Lord Redeemer — who do you think?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He must have gone out early.’

‘Can’t have,’ said Willem. ‘His outside shoes are still in the hallway. He never goes anywhere in his slippers. But his hat and coat are gone.’

I blinked. ‘He was in a bad state last night.’

Willem stared around helplessly. ‘I don’t like this.’

He liked it even less when I told him about the letter from Paul. The workshop was his home, too, and his future, and now it was gone.

‘Who would do such a thing?’ he said, incredulous.

‘Master de Aquila thinks it was the Inquisition.’

Willem snorted. ‘Rubbish. Why would they be in Amsterdam? And why on earth would they burn down our shop?’

‘He’s a Jew who prints Bibles,’ I said. ‘They don’t approve of that sort of thing.’

‘But that’s stupid. Reading the Bible in your own language brings you closer to God.’

‘Then nobody will need priests,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s why they hate it. Who knows?’ I stood up, as worried now as Willem. ‘Perhaps he has run away.’

‘Not him.’

No, not him. Then where was he?

We searched all day: through all the lanes and twisting canals, our master’s favourite coffee houses and every printer’s workshop in the city. Signora Contarini had not seen him, but she was worried enough to send out some of her own men to seek information.

‘Do not fear,’ she said. ‘I will help you. Together we will find him.’

We scoured the city until dusk. As we drew near the Ghetto, Willem paused at the end of a dark alley, where he said I was not welcome.

‘What’s down there?’ I asked, peering over his shoulder.

‘None of your business.’ He was blushing. ‘Just a place the master brought me one evening.’

‘A woman’s house?’ I pestered. ‘A courtesan?’

‘Never you mind,’ he said sharply. ‘Wait here.’

The sound of my giggle followed him down the alleyway, but he was back soon enough, still blushing. ‘No sign of him there.’

After sunset, we returned to the house, hoping faintly that Master de Aquila might be waiting for us there. His outside shoes still sat in the hallway.

‘Master?’ I called.

A woman’s voice answered from my room.

Signora Contarini was crouched over the fire, blowing into the embers. She straightened up as Willem and I entered.

‘I have news,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s not much, but at least we know he is unharmed. Master de Aquila left the city early this morning. The guards questioned them and let them pass.’

‘Them?’

‘He was with four priests. On horseback.’

For a moment, I feared I’d never breathe again. Then, slowly, the air came, in noisy gulps, almost sobs.

Willem spoke first. ‘What order of priests were they?’

I knew what the
signora
was going to say, but I still could not believe that I was hearing it.

‘They wore black cassocks — Spaniards, the guards say.’ Her face was grim. ‘Sent by the Holy Inquisition.’

Willem and I sat in silence for half an hour after the
signora
had left.

‘We have to go after him,’ I said at last.

‘I’ll write to Simon,’ said Willem. ‘He’ll know what to do. Or Fra Clement. Yes, that would be better.’

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘No.’

‘We’ll need disguises.’

‘I’ll write now — this very minute.’

‘Fresh horses.’

‘We’ll have an answer in a matter of weeks.’

‘By then he could be dead.’

‘Fra Clement will write to Rome.’

‘Or in prison.’

‘Perhaps to the Pope himself.’

‘Shut up!’ I screamed. ‘There’s no time for letters and popes and politeness. We have to go after him — now — tonight.’

‘But —’

‘We have to rescue Master de Aquila before they get to Rome, or wherever they are taking him. Otherwise he is lost. Forever.’

Willem’s eyes glistened with sudden tears. ‘What harm has that old man ever done to anybody?’ he said, wiping his face hurriedly. He sniffed. ‘He’s a great man. A precious soul.’

‘Good. That’s decided. You organise the horses. And loan me your dagger. I’ll do the rest.’

It didn’t take long. I packed a saddlebag for each of us, and arranged with the landlord to store the rest of our gear safely until we returned.

‘How long will you be gone?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea. But we will return, I promise you.’

He clasped my hands. ‘Travel well.’

I also bought from him two sets of clothes, left behind by
his sons who had joined the navy. Willem could no longer wear his floppy Dutch breeches — it would do us no good to be so obviously Protestant in Catholic Italy. And I … I could no longer be Mistress Isabella Hawkins.

By the time the moon rose, I was back in my bedchamber.

I remembered the evenings at home when I was small, when Nanny and I would sit by the fire, and she’d murmur to me softly and brush my hair. ‘What a beauty you’ll be, Isabella,’ she’d say in her sing-song voice. ‘Quite as pretty as your mother, God rest her soul.’

‘I’ll never be as beautiful as her,’ I’d say, wriggling on the footstool.

‘Not if you don’t let me brush properly,’ Nanny would pretend to scold, and would tug at my hair so I sat still. ‘There, now. Tamed for another day. Your mother would be proud.’

Well, I thought now, staring at my face in the looking glass, this hair will be tamed for good after tonight. I took one of my long braids in my left hand and held Willem’s dagger in my right. ‘Forgive me, Mama,’ I whispered, and started cutting.

Willem was sitting impatiently in the hallway. He glanced briefly at me when I opened the door, looked again, more carefully this time, and then jumped to his feet.

‘Hell’s teeth!’

‘How do I look?’ I asked.

‘Ugly.’

‘Thank you. That’s the idea.’

‘What have you done to yourself?’

‘A girl and a boy can’t travel alone through the countryside. So now we look like two boys, both apprentices, both ugly.’

‘Watch out who you insult,’ he said. ‘If you dress like a boy, you’ll be treated like one, and I don’t mind thumping your ear for starters.’

‘You’d have to catch me first,’ I said, and raced past him into my master’s empty room.

There, in the reflected light of the window, I could see my new identity properly for the first time. The breeches and vest were perhaps a little too long, and the stockings sagged untidily around my ankles. My hair hung in ragged clumps around my collar. I looked, somehow, like half of myself — a twin brother, or perhaps a part of me I’d never known was there. I saw again, for the first time in over a year, the Isabella who had vanished into the sea somewhere near Amsterdam.

I was still staring at my reflection when Willem came into the room, his arms full of bundled bedding. He threw it all on the bench.

‘Admiring your fine, manly legs?’

‘At least they’re better than yours.’

He looked at me hard, searchingly. I tried to avoid his eyes. ‘Do you really think this will work?’ he said.

‘We have to try,’ I said. ‘We have no choice.’

‘I just don’t know how we’ll find him — one old man somewhere in Europe.’

‘But it’s not just one man. We’re looking for four priests and an old man. They can’t have gone far. They have to rest somewhere. They have to eat. Someone must have seen them — an innkeeper, perhaps, or an ostler. A few coins in someone’s palm and we’ll trace them fast enough.’

‘We don’t have too many ready coins, not enough for food for ourselves or the horses, let alone bribing innkeepers.’

‘We must ask Signora Contarini.’

‘A woman,’ said Willem. ‘What can she do?’

‘You might be surprised.’

‘I can’t take money from a woman,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem right.’

‘Then we’ll starve, if we have to,’ I said. ‘In the name of God! That old man has given you a home and a trade. You can’t abandon him now.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m not. It’s just …’

‘What?’

‘Aren’t you nervous at all?’

I grabbed my master’s cloak and threw it around my shoulders. ‘I’m terrified,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m not going to let that stop me.’

‘Come on, then,’ Willem said, picking up the bundles. ‘Stop dawdling.’

Signora Contarini was not yet asleep, although the servant who reluctantly opened the door had obviously been woken by my knock. She ushered me in, grumbling, led me upstairs and pushed open the door to the
signora
’s library.

‘There’s a boy here to see you. He has a parcel to deliver.’

I chuckled quietly to myself. I had passed the first test.

I stood in the lamplight, gazing around me. The room was rich with soft red curtains, Turkish rugs on the floor and divans, and glittering glass lamps in the swirling colours of the lagoon. Signora Contarini rose from her desk, staring at me. She wasn’t fooled for a second.

‘Do you like my outfit?’ I asked, twirling a little.

‘My dear, I think you are quite mad.’

‘I must admit,’ I said, ‘I could get used to wearing breeches. It makes walking upstairs and riding horses a great deal easier.’

She came close, clutching at my arm. ‘Isabella, this is not a joke. Women have burned at the stake for less.’

‘Of course it’s not a joke — it’s a disguise.’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Willem and I are going after them.’

‘If you need help, you have only to ask,’ said Signora Contarini with a sigh. ‘You can work for me, both of you. Or I will give you money to return to Amsterdam.’

‘We have to find our master,’ I said.

‘Nonsense. What can two youngsters achieve against the power of the Inquisition?’

‘We will do whatever we can — or, at least, I will.’

‘But what happens when you find them?’

‘I haven’t quite worked that bit out yet.’ I sat down in a chair opposite her. ‘But I’ll get him out of their clutches somehow.’

‘Are you insane?’

‘Perhaps,’ I admitted. ‘I know it’s a little risky —’

‘Risky?’ she shouted. ‘It’s more than that. It’s impossible. You cannot do it.’

‘I must,
signora
.’ I stood up and tugged at my boots. ‘If I don’t help Master de Aquila — if nobody helps him — he will burn at the stake, for the crime of printing books.’

‘You don’t know what crimes he’s committed. Blasphemy, heresy — it could be anything.’

‘Whatever the charges, you know they are unjust.’

She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes with one hand. ‘He’s a good man, with a kind heart and a great mind. I don’t understand what he has done to deserve this.’

‘Perhaps he has been taken for the crime of being Jewish.’

‘I cannot believe that God would wish him ill,’ she said. ‘Not
my God, nor his. Perhaps those men in cassocks are not priests at all; perhaps he has been abducted for a ransom, or revenge.’

‘Even more reason to find them as soon as I can,’ I said firmly. ‘You said you would help us.’

‘Yes, but this adventure of yours wasn’t what I had in mind. Surely there is some other way?’

‘I have no choice. Please excuse me,
signora
. We must be out of the city the moment the gates open. Will you take care of this for us? It’s my master’s most precious possession.’ I placed the wooden chest and its tightly wrapped contents,
The Sum of All Knowledge
, in her arms. ‘Keep it safe and hidden until we bring him back.’

‘What is it?’

‘Just a book,’ I said. ‘But I suspect that my master went willingly with the men from the Inquisition so they didn’t get their hands on this.’

‘It must be quite a book.’

‘It is the greatest book in the world,’ I said. ‘Or at least it will be, one day. There are others, too, precious manuscripts.’

‘I will take good care of them all.’ She stroked the wooden lid softly with her fingertips.

‘Wait,’ she said, and put the chest down carefully on a chair, ran to her desk and tugged open a drawer. She muttered to herself in Latin — the kind of words I would never have thought in a million years any respectable lady of Venice would know. At last she looked up at me. ‘Very well, then, you insolent wretch. If you will not take any advice, then at least take these.’

She placed a thin, pearl-handled dagger and a soft leather purse in my hands, then held my gaze. ‘You will need lodgings on the road. Promise me you will stay in inns and hostels, and always lock the door behind you before you go to sleep.’

‘Whoever abducted Master de Aquila is well ahead of us on the road,’ I said. ‘I have no fear of them.’

‘That is not who I’m worried about,’ she said sharply. ‘The world is filled with dangers. You tell that apprentice, if he doesn’t see you safely there and back again, I shall pin him up by the ears to the cathedral door.’

I grinned. I could just imagine her doing it, too.

She smiled back at me. ‘If you need anything — money, hired assassins, horses — write to me. Send a messenger.’

‘You are very kind,
signora
.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Do you actually know any hired assassins?’

Her smile grew even wider. ‘I am Venetian. I would find one somewhere, if you needed such a man.’

‘That’s encouraging,’ I said. ‘I think.’

‘If you cannot find your master, do not linger,’ she said softly. ‘Come back. I will keep his manuscript safe until you return.’

I didn’t want to go. If I hadn’t made so much fuss, cut my hair and donned my boy’s clothes, I might have gone back to the Ghetto, climbed up the stairs to my little room and gone to sleep. Every rational part of me was shouting that I should do just that. But, instead, I hooked my cloak over one arm, nodded to Signora Contarini, and swept out the door as theatrically as I could.

I tripped over my boots twice as I clambered down the narrow stairs. Nobody saw me.

Willem was standing outside with the new horses, a bridle in each hand. He handed me the reins.

‘Hello, Innocent,’ I said. ‘You’re a lovely thing.’

‘I thought the last horse was Innocent?’

‘They all are,’ I said. ‘It’s easier to remember.’

Willem and Innocent both snorted.

‘Hurry up,’ Willem grumbled. ‘They’ll be in the New World by now.’

I glanced up. Signora Contarini stood with her forehead pressed against the windowpane, one hand flat against the thick glass in farewell.

‘Changed your mind?’ asked Willem.

‘Of course not,’ I said, threw myself into the saddle and headed the horse along the alleyway, over a tiny stone bridge, and towards the city gates.

Outside the walls, Willem slapped at his horse’s flanks like a coachman. He surged ahead, vanishing into the darkness. All he left behind was a shout: ‘Come on, Isabella. We’ll catch them by breakfast time.’

But we didn’t. Not that day or the next, nor the many days that followed, though, Heaven knows, we rode like avenging angels through the nights or the cool of the mornings. In the afternoons, we rested wherever we could — though we both claimed it was the horses that needed a break: in the shade of a forest, or the blessed indulgence of a village inn; even an old stable when we could find no other shelter.

There were times when I couldn’t ride another mile and yet we did, and days when Willem’s cheeks grew even more pale and hollow than usual. No matter how tired we were, how our muscles ached and joints creaked, every evening we pushed on. We had to. For Master de Aquila and his captors were always a few leagues ahead of us, riding — no doubt — as hard and as long as we rode.

After the first day, and the first village, I stopped worrying about being spotted as a girl. When we dismounted, I hung back, with the hood of my cloak drawn over my head, and left all the talking to Willem. I was leaning against a wall when a tall man in a black hat and cape pushed past me impatiently. ‘Get out of my way, you scamp.’

‘Hey!’ I squeaked.

He turned to stare at me with cold blue eyes. ‘If you’ve nothing better to do,’ he snapped, ‘look after my horse.’

He removed a black leather riding glove to reveal fine, pale fingers, searched in a pouch, then flipped a copper coin at me. I only just caught it.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and did as I was told.

It was dark the next morning when we rode off again, sure that today we would catch them. By tonight, we would be escorting Master de Aquila back to Venice.

But we never caught up.

Willem asked at every inn or stable: ‘Have you seen an old man and four priests?’

The answers seemed to depend on whim more than truth. The innkeepers or blacksmiths or ostlers would look at us, and I could feel the questions in their minds:
What do two ragamuffin boys want with a party of priests? Are they thieves or heretics or messengers? How much will they pay for an answer — any answer?

They told us anything. It made no difference. We just rode on, across the countryside. We had no choice but to follow the faintest of trails. All the time, there was a sick feeling in my belly. I had no idea whether we were riding in the right direction, whether the old man was even still alive. How, if they were riding as hard as we were, could he possibly survive it?

We assumed at first that they were headed for Rome, but at a crossroads near Padua a farmer told us he had seen them riding west instead of south. Two days later, a village girl remembered a group of priests paying her mother a miserly amount for water and a loaf of bread. Her mother had shouted a curse after them, not sure if they were priests or demons. We were on the right road.

‘What on earth are they up to?’ said Willem that night, for the hundredth time, as we huddled over a tiny fire for a few hours’ rest. ‘There’s nothing west of here. Or maybe there’s a monastery in the mountains?’

‘Perhaps. They could be taking him to a cardinal or bishop or something.’

‘We should ask someone tomorrow.’

‘They may yet veer south to Rome — or north to Milan.’

We went over and over the possibilities. It never became any clearer. We simply had no idea where they were taking Master de Aquila, or why.

Unless …

‘They’re heading to the coast,’ I said, and knew I was right. ‘To the port at Genoa.’

‘Lord in Heaven.’

‘From there they could get to Rome easily.’

‘Of course!’

‘Or take him back to Amsterdam.’

‘Unlikely — priests are far from welcome there.’

‘Or …’

I didn’t like to utter the idea that filled my mind.

But Willem said it. ‘They’re taking him back to Spain.’

We sat silently, staring at the flames. If they were truly Spanish priests, if they had been sent by the Inquisition our master had feared for so long, then he was riding to a sentence of death.

Without another word, we climbed into our saddles and rode westwards.