The Sinner's Mark by S. W. Perry

Author:S. W. Perry
Format: epub

It is night, and the Steelyard is as dark as the river that runs beside it. In Aksel Leezen’s house, Petrus Eusebius Schenk sits alone on the floor of the upstairs living chamber, the only light the glow from the tallow stub in the horn lantern Bianca gave him.

He has resisted temptation for several hours. He has done so partly because he knows that reunion is a joy worth waiting for, but mostly because he senses this is the moment after which retreat becomes impossible. His only break from the waiting has been to go downstairs to the storeroom and stand awhile over the trapdoor, in case he might hear the boy’s ghost calling to him. But all he’d caught was the sound of the river breaking against the mouth of the culvert.

Now, he has decided, is the time to unfurl the banners, raise the trumpet to the lips, sound the call to battle. From tonight there can be no going back, only advance.

He reaches out and pulls his pack close to his knees. He unlaces it and lets the dead souls come to him.

When they are free, he rummages inside until he finds the keys that he brought with him from Zurich. He lays them beside the ones Bianca had given him earlier in the day: two pairs with solid iron shanks and bits like the stubs of tightly pruned branches. He smiles. She thinks she’s so clever, that one. So scharfsinnig. He imagines the look on her face were she to learn where he’d got them.

He takes up the one he had used when he sought to gain access to this very house, that rainy evening when he returned to the Steelyard for the first time in a year and a half. He lays it beside the matching one Bianca has provided. He then takes her second key, the one that opens the lock that the Lord Mayor’s men had installed when they expelled the Hansa merchants. He makes a mental note of the bit before laying it down.

That leaves his second key, which matches none of the others.

Rising to his feet, the horn lantern in his left hand, the key in his right, Petrus advances on the locked door to the second bedroom. He can hear Bianca’s voice in his head: You won’t need the key... It’s a bit of a mess in there, so I keep it locked…

And as Petrus slips the key into the lock, he recites out loud a verse from the Book of Revelation: I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

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