Heresy by Parris S. J

Author:Parris, S. J. [Parris, S. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780767932523
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2010-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The rain’s steady rhythm against my windowpanes woke me early on Monday morning even before the chapel bell had summoned the men of Lincoln to Matins. A thick cover of cloud had returned in the night and the sky was the colour of slate, the quadrangle slick with puddles. Again I had been too preoccupied to sleep well. Sidney and I had sat up late into the night exchanging theories, but we had only a cat’s cradle of speculation and nothing conclusive to untangle one thread from another. I needed to find a means of speaking to Sophia Underhill before the day was much older; either she had taken Roger’s almanac and my notes from my desk, or someone had seen her leave my room and taken his chance, surmising that the door would be unlocked.

As I swung my legs over the side of the bed, I glimpsed something white on the floor beneath it and reached down to retrieve a piece of paper. Turning it over, I saw that the writing on it was my own; it was the copy I had made of the strange code at the back of Roger’s calendar, and my efforts to write some basic sentences using it, a task I had set myself before falling asleep the night before last. The paper must have slipped under the bed and escaped the attention of whoever—and I was still reluctant to believe it could have been Sophia—had taken all the other notes from my desk while I was out with Florio the night before. At least, then, I still had a copy of the code—but I was no closer to tracking down any letters Roger Mercer might have written or received using it. I was now certain that the person who searched Roger’s room before me, and perhaps Slythurst after me, had been looking for just such letters or documents. What I still did not know was whether either searcher had found them.

Sidney was still burdened with the entertainment of the palatine, but had promised to look into Gabriel Norris’s connection with the Napper family and see what he could discover about William Napper’s hunting party when the dog went missing. My task was to visit Jenkes’s shop in Catte Street on the pretext of purchasing some books, to see what I could learn about his illicit business there, and then to brace myself for another meal at the Catherine Wheel in the hope of further conversation with Humphrey Pritchard. I confess to a slight twinge of conscience at the thought of manipulating the trust of a simple-minded potboy—but I had a job to do, and I tried to concentrate on the long view, as Walsingham had instructed. Unlike my employer, however, I was not a natural politician, and the idea of sacrificing individuals to the hazy concept of the greater good did not sit easily with me. Before I could turn my attention to any of this, however, I needed to find a way to speak to Sophia.

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