Heresy

I turned my attention from the windows to offer him a smile.

‘In fact, I was just about to excuse myself for that very purpose,’ I said.

Sidney’s face fell.

‘Oh – will you not sit up and play cards with us a while?’ he asked, a note of alarm in his voice at the prospect of being left alone with the palatine for the evening.

‘I’m afraid I must lose myself in my books tonight,’ I said, pushing my chair back, ‘or this great disputation, as you call it, will not be worth hearing.’

‘I’ve sat through few that were,’ remarked the palatine. ‘Never mind, Sir Philip, you and I shall make a long night of it. Perhaps we may read to one another? I shall call for more wine.’

Sidney threw me the imploring look of a drowning man as I passed him, but I only winked and closed the door behind me. He was the professional diplomat here, he had been bred to deal with people like this. A great crack of thunder echoed around the roof as I made my way up an ornately painted staircase to my room.

For a long while I did not consult my papers or try to put my thoughts in order, but only lay on my bed, my mind as unsettled as the turbulent sky, which had turned a lurid shade of green as the thunder and lightning grew nearer and more frequent. The rain hammered against the glass and on the tiles of the roof and I wondered at the sense of unease that had edged out the morning’s thrill of anticipation. My future in England, to say nothing of the future of my work, depended greatly on the outcome of this journey to Oxford, yet I was filled with a strange foreboding; in all these rootless years of belonging nowhere, depending on no one but my own instinct for survival, I had learned to listen to the prickling of my moods. When I had intimations of danger, events had usually proved me right. But perhaps it was only that, once again, I was preparing to take on another shape, to become someone I was not.

I had been in London less than a week, staying as a guest of the French ambassador at the request of my patron, King Henri, who had reluctantly agreed to my plea to leave Paris indefinitely, when I received a summons from Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary of State. It was not the kind of invitation one declined, yet the manner of its arrival gave me no clue as to how a statesman of such importance knew of my arrival or what he wanted of me. I rode out the next day to his grand house on the prosperous street of Seething Lane, close by the Tower in the east of the City of London, and was shown through the house by a harried-looking steward into a neat garden, where box trees in geometric patterns gave way to an expanse of wilder grass. Beyond this I saw a cluster of low fruit trees in the full swell of their blossom, a magnificent canopy of white and pink, and among them, gazing up into their twisted branches, stood a tall figure dressed all in black.

At the steward’s nod, I stepped towards the man under the trees, who had turned to face me – or so I believed, for the late afternoon sun was slanting down directly behind him, leaving him silhouetted, a lean black shape against the golden light. I could not gauge his expression, so I paused a few feet away from him and bowed deeply in a manner I hoped was fitting.

‘Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your honour’s service.’

‘Buonasera, Signor Bruno, e benvenuto, benvenuto,’ he said warmly, and strode forward, holding out his right hand to clasp mine in the English style. His Italian was only faintly coloured by the clipped tones of his native tongue, and as he approached I could see his face clearly for the first time. It was a long face, made the more severe by the close-fitting black cap he wore over receding hair. I guessed him to be about fifty years of age, and his eyes were lit with a sharp intelligence that seemed to make plain without words that he would not suffer fools. Yet his face also bore the traces of great weariness; he looked like a man who carried a heavy burden and slept little.

‘A fortnight past, Doctor Bruno, I received a letter from our ambassador in Paris informing me of your arrival in London,’ he began, without preamble. ‘You are well known at the French court. Our ambassador says he cannot commend your religion. What do you think he could mean by that?’

‘Perhaps he refers to the fact that I was once in holy orders, or the fact that I am no longer,’ I said, evenly.

‘Or perhaps he means something else altogether,’ Walsingham said, looking at me carefully. ‘But we will come to that. First tell me – what do you know of me, Filippo Bruno?’

I snapped my head round to stare at him then, wrong-footed – as he had intended I should be. I had abandoned my baptismal name when I entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore and taken my monastic name of Giordano, though I had reclaimed it briefly while I was on the run. For Walsingham to address me by it now was clearly a little trick to show me the reach of his knowledge, and he was evidently pleased with its effect. But I recovered myself, and said,

‘I know enough to see that only a fool would attempt to hide anything from a man who has never met me, yet calls me by the name my parents gave me, a name I have not used these twenty years.’

Walsingham smiled.

‘Then you know all that matters at present. And I know that you are no fool. Reckless, perhaps, but not a fool. Now, shall I tell you what else I know about you, Doctor Giordano Bruno of Nola?’

‘Please – as long as I may be permitted to separate for your honour the ignominious truth from the merely scurrilous rumour.’

‘Very well, then.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘You were born in Nola, near Naples, the son of a soldier, and you entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in your teens. You abandoned the order some thirteen years later, and fled through Italy for three years, pursued by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. You later taught in Geneva, and in France, before attracting the patronage of King Henri III in Paris. You teach the art of memory, which many consider to be a kind of magic, and you are a passionate supporter of Copernicus’s theory that the Earth rotates around the Sun, though the idea has been declared heretical by Rome and by the Lutherans alike.’

He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, bemused.

‘Your honour knows much.’

He smiled.

‘There is no mystery here, Bruno – when you stopped briefly in Padua, you became friends with an English courtier named Philip Sidney, did you not? Well – he is shortly to marry my daughter, Frances.’

‘Your honour could not have found a worthier son-in-law, I am sure. I shall look forward to seeing him,’ I said, and meant it.

Walsingham nodded.

‘As a matter of curiosity – why did you abandon the monastery?’

‘I was caught reading Erasmus in the privy.’

He stared at me for a moment, then threw back his head and guffawed; a deep, rich sound, such as a bear might make if it could laugh.

‘And I had other volumes on the Forbidden Index of the Holy Office. They would have sent me before the Inquisitor, but I escaped. This is why I was excommunicated.’ I folded my hands behind my back as I walked, thinking how strange it seemed to be reliving those days in this green English garden.

He regarded me with an inscrutable expression and then shook his head as if puzzled.

‘You intrigue me greatly, Bruno. You fled Italy pursued by the Roman Inquisition for your suspected heresy, and yet you were also arrested and tried by the Calvinists in Geneva for your beliefs, is it not so?’

I tilted my head, half-assenting.

‘There was something of a misunderstanding in Geneva. I found the Calvinists had only swapped one set of blind dogma for another.’

Again he looked at me with something approaching admiration, and laughed, shaking his head.

‘I have never met another man who has managed to get himself accused of heresy by both the pope and the Calvinists. This is a singular achievement, Doctor Bruno! It makes me ask myself – what is your religion?’

There was an expectant pause while he looked at me encouragingly.

‘Your honour knows that I am no friend of Rome. I assure you that in everything my allegiance is to Her Majesty and I would be glad to offer her any service I may while I remain under her sovereignty.’

‘Yes, yes, Bruno – I thank you, but that is not an answer to my question. I asked what is your religion? In your heart, are you papist or Protestant?’

I hesitated.

‘Your honour has already pointed out that both sides have found me wanting.’

‘Are you saying that you are neither? Are you an atheist, then?’

‘Before I answer that, may I know what the consequences of my answer might be?’

He smiled then. ‘This is not an interrogation, Bruno. I only wish to understand your philosophy. Speak frankly with me, and I will speak frankly with you. This is why we are walking here among the trees, where we will not be overheard.’

‘Then I assure your honour that I am not what is usually meant by the word “atheist”,’ I said, fervently hoping that I was not condemning myself. ‘In France, and here in her embassy, I call myself a Catholic because it is simpler not to make trouble. But in truth, I do not think of myself as Catholic or Protestant – these terms are too narrow. I believe in a greater truth.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘A greater truth than the Christian faith?’

‘An ancient truth, of which the Christian faith is one later interpretation. A truth which, if it could be properly understood in our clouded age, might enlighten men instead of perpetuating these bloody divisions.’

A pregnant silence fell. The sun was low in the sky now, and in the shade of the trees the air was growing cool. Birdsong became more insistent with the gathering dusk, and Walsingham continued to pace through the grass, the shoulders of his black doublet flecked with white petals of blossom that fluttered from the branches overhead.