Act of Faith (8 page)

‘Does Fra Clement know?’ I asked.

‘Clement is a broad-minded man — but not that broad. I would not ask him to choose between his friends and his faith. He knows we print English Bibles. He doesn’t mind that, because it annoys the English, and Clement hates Cromwell almost as much as you do. He turns a blind eye to the printing of Jewish books. He thinks that’s all there is to it.’

‘Simon?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You are observant. Yes, Simon knows. There are others. It is a fellowship, if you like, of men who see the world through similar eyes. The world is changing, Isabella. Our books, our ideas, are making it anew. Great men like your father, who wrote the words that people long to hear. Humble men like me, who spread those words across Europe. Who would have thought it possible? Not I.’

‘But it’s dangerous,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Not here. But if the Pope or Cromwell were to find out, I’m not sure Amsterdam would protect us.’

‘How would they ever know?’

‘There are spies, Isabella, here as everywhere. Some are good
people of faith who believe we are doing wrong. Some are scum, paid to report on — well, anything.’

‘Report to whom?’

‘To those who would render us silent. To the Inquisition.’

The Holy Inquisition — the Pope’s guard dogs. They crawled over Europe like black-cloaked spiders, hunting out dissent and heresy.

‘In Italy or Spain, perhaps,’ I said. ‘But surely not here in Amsterdam.’

‘Believe what I say, child. There is a need for secrecy, so those who carry messages for me or deliver copies of these books must be my most dependable people. Nobody can know what message you bear or to whom you bear it.’ He stared at me, as if checking my soul. ‘It is great work that we do. Your father would approve.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He would.’

My father, like Master de Aquila, had wanted everyone to read, to understand and debate ideas — even girls. But he could never have foreseen that one day his daughter would be asked to trudge the streets of a foreign city like a messenger boy. I wasn’t sure he’d quite approve of that.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

‘Bless you, child.’

‘When do I start?’

He smiled. ‘There is nothing to be done at present, but do not fear, I will call on you soon.’

So began my career as a courier for an underground movement fighting to change the world — one book at a time.

At first, my clandestine adventures were disappointingly mundane — no different, in fact, to delivering the odd letter or book order to Simon. Master de Aquila didn’t tell me whether the package I carried was a birthday gift or a book that could get me into trouble in every Catholic city in Europe. Perhaps he was testing me. I’ll never know for certain. But after a while, his instructions changed, the tasks became more complex and more obviously part of a well-planned scheme.

‘You will go to Simon’s house at midday,’ he’d say. ‘Collect a small parcel from him. Only from him, you understand, nobody else.’

I nodded.

‘Take the parcel to the address he gives you. Speak to no one.’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘At the place where you deliver the parcel, they will give you another. It must look exactly the same as the first. Check them. Make sure nobody can see that the parcels are different.’

‘Yes, Master. Then what?’

‘Then come home, foolish child. What else?’

So I went. I always went, even though sometimes it felt more silly than mysterious.

‘You understand why I — we — must do this work?’ he asked me more than once.

‘I understand.’

I did. Sometimes, as I walked along the canals and alleyways of Amsterdam, I wondered if the package I carried contained copies of my father’s pamphlets. But the simple act of wondering wearied me and brought me to silent tears. I hadn’t really ceased to believe in my father’s ideals but, somehow, belief had blended with grief and I couldn’t tell the two apart.

‘Sorrow needs time,’ Master de Aquila said. ‘Nothing heals it, nothing consoles, but the years bring a little distance.’

I could never work out whether or not that thought was comforting. But at least it was true.

The secret work made me feel closer to my master, and even to Willem. They both relished the intrigue. Our master, in particular, seemed to find it all thrilling, but then he wasn’t the one lugging reams of paper back and forth across the city.

By the time spring touched Amsterdam, I was a veteran secret-carrier, and the parcels I delivered might have destroyed the power of the Church in the New World or created peace in Europe for all I knew.

My master, though, had other matters on his mind.

‘I have decided to embark on a journey,’ he said one evening after supper. ‘Before I grow too old to travel.’

Willem was so shocked he stopped eating, his mouth half-crammed with bread, although, as usual, that didn’t prevent him from speaking. ‘Where?’

‘Everywhere,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘I intend to visit the great printing houses of Europe.’

‘All of them?’ I asked.

‘Well, perhaps not every single one, but many. I have colleagues in Germany and the Italian States whom I’ve never met, although we speak every month through letters. It is time to greet them in person.’

Willem swallowed his mouthful in one noisy gulp and jumped to his feet. ‘When do we leave?’ He hesitated. ‘Can I come?’

‘You’re my apprentice. You have no choice. Unless, of course, your mother forbids it.’

‘I’ll go ask her. Straightaway.’

I could hear him laughing with excitement as he ran off into the alleyway, leaving Master de Aquila and me facing each other across the long table.

My master chuckled. ‘I remember how it felt to travel when I was a boy myself, when I came to Amsterdam. It will be good for him to see the rest of Europe. He may begin to understand how small his own world truly is.’

‘I doubt that,’ I said.

‘Willem is not a traveller, like you and I. He will see beyond his familiar horizons.’

‘Travelling is greatly overestimated. There are bedbugs. Uncomfortable carriages. And it always rains.’

‘But at the end of the travail will be Venice,’ he said. ‘The city in the sea. How I’ve longed to see it.’

I snorted. ‘Nonsense. Such things exist only in dreams — or books.’

‘It’s true enough,’ he said. ‘Instead of streets, there are canals.’

‘We have canals right here,’ I said. ‘Who needs to travel across the whole world to smell more rancid water?’

He wasn’t listening. ‘It has the finest cathedral in Europe. San Marco, the golden crown of the Republic …’

‘Master, you’re Jewish.’

‘… a great square where all the world meets …’

‘Nobody I know will be there.’

‘… beautiful women, brilliant men, the most powerful navy, the richest merchants …
La Serenissima …
’

He had a look about his eyes that told me he was already halfway there.

‘I will see the finest printers and bookbinders in the world.’

‘They can’t make finer books than you, Master.’

‘Sadly, they can, and they do,’ he said. ‘But once I have seen how they work — if I can speak with them, learn their ways — then perhaps I will be their equal. Is that not worth the journey, child?’

‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘Besides, it is time we spread our wings. I would like to take some of our more controversial publications with us, to distribute them in places further afield.’

‘You mean smuggling?’

‘I prefer to call it distribution,’ he said. ‘Although we may not wish to alert any border guards to the contents of our baggage.’

I felt an urgent fear slamming about in my chest. ‘Travelling is dangerous enough. There may be wolves. Or bandits.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Or shipwrecks.’

Master de Aquila stayed silent for a moment. I knew he was looking at me, but I kept my eyes fixed on the dark orange coals in the grate.

‘I see how it is,’ he said at last. ‘You fear I will perish, like your father.’

‘I fear we will all perish,’ I admitted.

He chortled. ‘You are in no danger. You will be safe here in Amsterdam.’

I looked up at him in amazement. ‘You wouldn’t leave me here?’

‘Think of all the dangers that lie ahead on the journey,’ he said. ‘How could I ask you to risk your life simply to visit a few fusty old Italian printers?’

‘But what would I do here without you?’ I asked. ‘Without Willem?’

‘Travelling would be very dull for you, anyway,’ he went on, as if he had not heard me. ‘Day after day in the saddle. Strange food. Hours spent in dusty monastery libraries, or wandering about the ruins of Roman temples. There will be mountains to climb, rivers to ford, great cities filled with people of many languages. Think of the bedbugs. No, you would not like it at all.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘The Lord only knows what might happen without me there to look after you. As if I’d let you go by yourself.’

And that is how my master tricked me into travelling all the way across Europe with him.

We set off the very next week, with Willem to act as bodyguard and porter, and two stout ponies to carry all our baggage. There seemed to be many more bags and boxes than three people could possibly need, and I knew that tucked in amongst them were dozens of Master de Aquila’s illegal books, including one by Descartes that was now banned in Amsterdam as well as Catholic Europe. I felt sure the very first border guard would arrest us on the spot.

‘Don’t worry,’ Master de Aquila said. ‘I’ll get rid of them all at the first opportunity. Anyway, I have excess stock. I must dispose of it somehow.’

Master de Aquila had packed several crates of books he hoped to sell on his travels — legal books, that is — and insisted he would find buyers for these volumes along the way. Willem and I knew very well that we would return with many more books than we had set out with, for our master could never refuse a book that begged to be bought. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to find that we came back to Amsterdam with four mules laden with books, having spent all our food money or sold our horses to pay for a few last volumes that absolutely had to be rescued from a mouldering library or a passing peddler. Books are like that.

‘What have you got there?’ Willem pointed to a fine wooden chest our master had tucked under one arm. ‘We don’t have room for much more.’

‘Never mind,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘I will carry this with me.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Willem wandered over to the ponies and started pulling expertly on a few ropes. ‘Are you sure we really need all this stuff?’ he asked for the tenth time.

‘You will thank me, further along the road, for packing a few essentials of life,’ our master replied. ‘You have no idea how tedious or uncomfortable a long journey can be.’

Simon and Fra Clement walked with us to the city gates, and stood waving until we could no longer see them through the dust kicked up by our horses’ hooves. After we lost sight of our friends, I didn’t look back towards the city.

I wish I had, but I didn’t know that it would be my last glimpse of my new home, and that this journey to Venice was only the first of many, much more dangerous, travels.

It was many years since I’d ridden a horse. They say you never forget. Don’t believe a word of it. After an hour’s riding, I’d have given anything to exchange that saddle for the carriage to London I’d once cursed. After a day of it, I thought I might never walk again. But then again, perhaps I couldn’t sit down, either.

Luckily, Master de Aquila felt even worse, so we spent the second day of our great adventure resting in an inn just a few miles from Amsterdam’s city gates. The next day we made it only as far as Utrecht, and rested again while Master de Aquila visited friends and the inevitable booksellers. He returned after a few hours, with a bag full of books.

So, the pattern of our journey took shape: a few days’ riding with another few days spent exploring the cities and towns of the Low Countries. We visited holy places of all kinds, and if there were any printers resident in the city, Master de Aquila sought them out. Booksellers, too.

‘You’ve doubled our luggage already,’ Willem complained. ‘We’ll never get anywhere at this rate.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘But we will never be short of something to read.’

Finally we came to the banks of the River Rhine, and paused at the water’s edge.

‘How do we cross it?’ I asked.

‘We don’t,’ my master said. ‘We follow it, all the way to Basel.’

‘Surely not,’ said Willem. ‘That would take forever.’

‘On horseback, perhaps.’

I looked around us: at the men unloading timber from an old barge; at the wharf where great stacks of crates and baskets sat waiting to be hoisted into a waiting ship.

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘No, no, no.’

‘Don’t be silly, Isabella.’

‘You promised there would be no ships,’ I said. ‘You swore it.’

‘It is not a ship, as such,’ my master argued. ‘Think of it as a river craft.’

‘She’s a
kromsteven
,’ said Willem. ‘It’s the sturdiest ship — I mean, boat — afloat. You will barely feel her moving.’

‘You see?’ Master de Aquila slipped gracefully out of his saddle with a relieved grunt. ‘Won’t it be wonderful to sit and do nothing but watch the world float by? Much better than being on horseback all day.’

‘I’d rather take my chances with the horses, thanks.’

‘But look,’ said Master de Aquila, ‘here you have the best of both worlds.’ He pointed.

A team of enormous horses strained against long ropes as they struggled along a path beside the river. They towed not a carriage but a shallow boat, dragging it against the current, against nature, upstream. I’d seen such horses at work on the lowland canals, but here, against the might of the greatest river in Europe, it seemed somehow perverse.

‘The trip home, downriver, will be a great deal faster,’ said Master de Aquila, ‘but going up is rather more difficult. But between man, beast and sh–sorry, boat — we will make it into the
Alps themselves. It is a system as old as the Romans.’ He took the reins from my hands and motioned for me to dismount. ‘It’s the Rhine, not a treacherous ocean, Isabella. I promise you, no harm will come to us.’

‘A person can drown just as easily in a river,’ I said, refusing to budge from my saddle. ‘It’s just as wet as the ocean.’

‘So are bathtubs,’ said Willem. He slid from his horse and landed on the ground with a thump. ‘See you in Basel, then.’ He waved, and led his horse and the ponies off towards the wharf.

I stayed put. Master de Aquila sighed with impatience.

‘Isabella, just look at it.’

The water drifted idly by, the only discernible movement lazy eddies around the wharf piles. A thick layer of scum leadened the surface. It didn’t look like a very fearsome river, I had to admit.

‘We don’t sail quite so far as Basel in this, don’t worry,’ said Master de Aquila. ‘Once the river becomes shallow, we take to smaller boats. It will be quite safe.’

‘Are you coming aboard sometime today?’ Willem shouted from the pier. He shouldered a bag and marched up the gangplank and onto the boat.

‘In a moment,’ my master called. ‘Come, Isabella.’

He held out his hand to me.

Willem was seasick all the way to Cologne.

‘Sturdy ship, isn’t she?’ I said when he came on deck for air. ‘Just as you said. I can barely feel the movement — can you?’ He ran to the rails, groaning.

We reached the city at dusk, so we could barely make out its shape in the gloaming.

‘At last,’ I said. ‘I’m never setting foot on another ship.’

Willem and Master de Aquila glanced at each other.

‘Ever,’ I said.

We took rooms at an inn overlooking the river, and set out early the next morning to explore the town. We walked all around, gazing at the old churches, the unfinished cathedral, and its forecourt, where three men sat with their necks, hands and feet clamped tightly in stocks. One of them appeared to have died during the night.

Willem was beside himself; this was his first truly foreign city and he spent a great deal of time exclaiming at the most ordinary things.

‘Listen!’ He stopped still in the middle of the road so that people and horses had to walk around him. ‘Those people — they’re speaking — what is it?’

‘German, I believe,’ said Master de Aquila.

‘Not surprising, really, since they are German,’ I said.

‘But the way they speak it, it sounds different to your German.’