by C. J. Sansom
I nodded. ‘And Brother Gabriel helped too. He threatened the prior with the abbot. I can’t imagine Abbot Fabian being over-concerned with the novices’ welfare, but if the prior’s taste for brutality sometimes goes too far, he would have to keep it in check to avoid scandal. Well, we’ve met them all now; the five who knew why Singleton was here. Abbot Fabian, Prior Mortimus, Brother Gabriel, Brother Guy. And the bursar, of course—’
‘B-b-brother Edwig.’ Mark imitated his stutter.
I smiled. ‘He’s a man of power here for all he trips at his words.’
‘He seemed a slimy toad to me.’
‘Yes, I took a dislike to him, I must say. But one must not be deceived by impressions. The greatest fraudster I ever met had the most chivalrous demeanour a man could possess. And the bursar was away the night Singleton was killed.’
‘But why would any of them kill Singleton? Surely it gives Lord Cromwell stronger grounds for closure?’
‘What if the motive was more personal? What if Singleton had found something out? He had been here several days. What if he was about to expose someone for some serious crime?’
‘Dr Goodhaps said he was investigating the accounts books the day he was killed.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s why I want to see them. But I come back to the manner of his death. If someone wanted to silence him, a knife in the ribs would have been so much easier. And why desecrate the church?’
Mark shook his head. ‘I wonder where the murderer hid the sword, if it was a sword. And the relic. And his clothes, they would have been bloody.’
‘There must be a thousand hiding places in this great warren.’ I thought a moment. ‘On the other hand, most of the buildings are in constant use.’
‘The outhouses we saw? The stonemason’s and brewery and so on?’
‘Them most of all. We must keep our eyes open as we get to know this place, look out for likely spots.’
Mark sighed. ‘The killer might have buried his clothes and the sword. But we won’t be able to go looking for mounds of fresh earth if this snow lasts.’
‘No. Well, I shall start tomorrow by questioning the sacrist and the bursar, those two brotherly foes. And I would like you to talk to the girl Alice.’
‘Brother Guy warned me from her.’
‘I said talk to her. Do no more than talk, I don’t want trouble with Brother Guy. You’ve a way with the women. She seems intelligent and probably knows as many secrets about this place as anybody.’
He stirred uneasily. ‘I would not wish her to think I – liked her – if it was only to wring information from her.’
‘Getting information is our duty here. There’s no need to give her wrong ideas. If she reveals anything that helps us I’ll see she’s rewarded. She should be found another place. A woman like that shouldn’t be mouldering away among these monks.’
Mark smiled at me. ‘I think you like her too, sir. Did you note her bright eyes?’
‘She is out of the common run of women,’ I said non-committally.
‘It still seems a shame to be cozening information from her.’
‘You must get used to cozening things from people, Mark, if you are to work in the service of the law or the State.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘It’s just – I would not like to place her in any danger.’
‘Nor would I. But we could all be in danger.’
He was silent a moment. ‘Could the abbot be right about witchcraft? That would fit with the desecration of the church.’
I shook my head. ‘The more I consider it, the more I think this killing was planned. The desecration may even have been carried out to throw enquirers off the scent. The abbot, of course, would much prefer for it to have been done by an outsider.’
‘No Christian would desecrate a church in such a way, papist or reformer.’
‘No. The whole thing is an abomination.’ I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling my face sag with tiredness. I could think no more today. I opened them again to find Mark looking at me keenly.
‘You said Commissioner Singleton’s body reminded you of Queen Anne Boleyn’s beheading.’
I nodded. ‘That memory still sickens me.’
‘Everyone was surprised how suddenly she fell last year. Though she was much disliked.’
‘Yes. The Midnight Crow.’
‘They say the head tried to speak after it was cut off.’
I held up a hand. ‘I can’t talk about it, Mark. I was there as an official of state. Come, you are right. We should sleep.’
He looked disappointed, but said nothing more, banking up the fire with logs. We clambered into bed. From where I lay I could see through the window that the snow still fell, the flakes outlined against a lit window some way off. Some of the monks were up late, but then the days when the brethren retired before dark in winter, to be up for prayer again at midnight, were long gone.
Despite my tiredness I tossed and turned, my mind still active. I thought especially of the girl Alice. Everyone was potentially in danger in this place, but a woman alone was always more at risk than most. I liked the spark of character I had seen in her. It reminded me of Kate.
DESPITE MY WILL to sleep, I found my tired mind going back three years. Kate Wyndham was the daughter of a London cloth merchant accused of false accounting by his partner, in a case brought in the Church court on the basis that a contract was equivalent to an oath before God. In fact his partner was related to an archdeacon who had influence with the judge, and I managed to get the case transferred to King’s Bench, where it was thrown out. The grateful merchant, a widower, invited me to dinner and there I met his only daughter.
Kate was lucky; her father believed in educating women beyond what they needed for the kitchen accounts, and she had a lively mind. She had a sweet, heart-shaped face, too, and rich brown hair falling round her shoulders. She was the first woman I had ever met with whom I could talk as an equal. She liked nothing better than to discuss the doings of the law, the court, even the Church – for her father’s experience had turned them both into ardent reformers. Those evenings talking with her and her father at their house, and later the afternoons with Kate alone when she accompanied me on long walks into the countryside, were the best times of my life.
I knew she saw me as only a friend – it became a joke between us that I conversed with her as freely as with another man – yet I began to wonder if it might not blossom into something more. I had been in love before but always held from pressing my suit, fearing my twisted form could only bring rejection and I would be better waiting till I had built a fortune that I could offer as a compensating attraction. But I could give Kate other things she would value: good conversation, companionship, a circle of congenial friends.
I wonder to this day what might have happened had I shown my real feelings earlier, but I left it too late. One evening I called at her house unannounced and found her sitting with Piers Stackville, the son of a business associate of her father’s. I was unworried at first, for although handsome as Satan, Stackville was a young man of few accomplishments beyond a laboriously mannered chivalrousness. But I saw her blush and simper at his crass remarks; my Kate transformed into a silly girl. From then on she could talk of nothing but what Piers had said or done, with sighs and smiles that cut me to the heart.
In the end I told her of my feelings. It was clumsily and stupidly done, I fumbled and faltered at my words. The worst thing was her utter surprise.
‘Matthew, I thought you wanted only to befriend me, I have never heard one word of love from you. You appear to have kept much hidden.’
I asked her if it was too late.
‘If you had asked me even six months before – perhaps,’ she said sadly.
‘I know my form is not such as to stir passion.’
‘You do yourself disservice!’ she said with unexpected heat. ‘You have a fine manly face and good courtesy, you make too much of your bent back, as though you were the only
man that had one. You have too much self-pity, Matthew, too much pride.’
‘Then—’
She shook her head, tears in her eyes. ‘It is too late. I love Piers. He is to ask Father for my hand.’
I said roughly that he was not good enough, she would pine away from boredom, but she replied hotly that soon she would have children and a good house to look after and was that not a woman’s proper role, appointed by God? I was crushed and took my leave.
I never saw her again. A week later the sweating sickness hit the City like a hurricane. Hundreds began shivering and sweating, took to their beds and died within two days. It struck high and low and it took both Kate and her father. I remember their funeral, which I had arranged as the old man’s executor, the wooden boxes slowly lowered into the earth. Looking at Piers Stackville over the coffin, his ravaged face told me he had loved Kate no less than I. He nodded to me in silent acknowledgement and I nodded back with a small, sad smile. I thanked God that at least I had released myself from the false doctrine of purgatory, which would have had Kate enduring its pains. I knew that her pure soul must be saved, at rest with Christ.
Tears come to my eyes as I write these words. They came to me that first night at Scarnsea, too. I let them fall silently, keeping myself from sobbing lest I waken Mark to an embarrassing scene. They cleansed me, and I slept.
BUT THE NIGHTMARE returned that night. I had not dreamed of Queen Anne’s killing for months, but seeing Singleton’s body brought all back. Again I stood on Tower Green on a bright spring morning, one of the huge crowd standing round the straw-covered scaffold. I was at the front of the crowd; Lord Cromwell had ordered all those under his patronage to attend and identify themselves with the queen’s fall. He himself stood nearby, at the front of the crowd. He had risen as one of Anne Boleyn’s party; now he had prepared the indictment for adultery that brought her down. He stood frowning sternly, the embodiment of angry justice.
Straw was laid thickly around the block, and the executioner brought from France stood in his sinister black hood, arms folded. I looked for the sword he had brought to ensure a merciful end, at the queen’s own request, but could not see it. I stood with my head deferentially lowered, for some of the greatest men in the land were there: Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Richard Rich, the Earl of Suffolk.
We stood like statues, no one talking at the front, though there was a buzz of conversation from the crowd behind. There is an apple tree on Tower Green. It was in full blossom and a blackbird sat singing on a high branch, careless of the crowd. I watched it, envying the creature its freedom.
There was a stirring, and the queen appeared. She was flanked by ladies-in-waiting, a surpliced chaplain and the red-coated guards. She looked thin and haggard, bony shoulders hunched inside her white cloak, her hair tied up in a coif. As she approached the block she kept looking back, as though a messenger might arrive with a reprieve from the king. After nine years at the heart of the court she should have known better; this great orchestrated spectacle would not be stopped. As she came close, huge brown eyes surrounded by dark rings darted wildly round the scaffold and I think, like me, she was looking for the sword.
In my dream there are none of the long preliminaries; no long prayers, no speech from the scaffold by Queen Anne beseeching all to pray for the life of the king. In my dream she kneels down at once, facing the crowd, and starts to pray. I hear again her thin harsh cries, over and over, ‘Jesu, receive my soul! Lord God, have pity on my soul!’ Then the executioner bends and produces the great sword from where it had lain hidden in the straw. ‘So that’s where it was,’ I think, then flinch and cry out as it swings through the air faster than the eye can follow and the queen’s head flies up and outwards in a great spray of blood. Again I feel a rush of nausea and close my eyes as a great murmur comes from the crowd, broken by the odd ‘hurrah’. I open them again at the prescribed words, ‘So perish all the king’s enemies,’ barely intelligible in the executioner’s French accent. The straw and his clothes are drenched with the blood that still pumps from the corpse, and he holds up the queen’s dripping head.
The papists say that at that moment the candles in Dover church lit spontaneously, and there were other such silly legends around the country, but I can attest for myself that the eyes in the queen’s severed head did move, roving madly round the crowd, the lips working as though trying to speak. Someone shrieked in the crowd behind me and I heard a susurration as the crowd, all in their best puffed-sleeved clothing, crossed themselves. In truth it was less than thirty seconds, not the half an hour people said later, before the movement stopped. But in my nightmare I relived each of those seconds, praying for those ghastly eyes to be still. Then the executioner tossed the head into an arrow box, which served as coffin, and as it landed with a thud I woke with a cry to the sound of someone knocking at the door.
I lay breathing heavily, my sweat congealing in the bitter cold. The knocking came again, then Alice’s voice called urgently, ‘Master Shardlake! Commissioner!’
It was dead of night, the fire burned low and the room was icy. Mark groaned and stirred in his pallet.
‘What is it?’ I called, my heart still pounding after the nightmare, my voice shaky.
‘Brother Guy asks you to come, sir.’
‘Wait a moment!’ I heaved myself out of bed and lit a candle from the embers of the fire. Mark rose too, blinking and tousle-haired.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know. Stay here.’ I threw on my hose and opened the door. The girl stood outside, a white apron over her dress.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but Simon Whelplay is very sick and must speak to you. Brother Guy said I should wake you.’
‘Very well.’ I followed her down the freezing corridor. A little way along a door stood open. I heard voices: Brother Guy’s and another that whimpered in distress. Looking in, I saw the novice lying on a truckle bed. His face shone with sweat and he muttered feverishly, his breath wheezing and rasping. Brother Guy sat by the bed, mopping his brow with a cloth that he dipped in a bowl.
‘What ails him?’ I could not keep the nervousness from my voice, for the sweating sickness made people writhe and gasp so.
The infirmarian looked at me, his face serious. ‘It is a congestion of the lungs. No wonder, standing about in the cold with no food. He has a dangerous temperature. But he keeps asking to speak with you. He will not rest till he has done so.’
I approached the bed, reluctant to go too close lest he breathe the humours of his fever on me. The boy fixed red-rimmed eyes on me. ‘Commissioner, sir,’ he croaked. ‘You are sent here to do justice?’
‘Yes, I am here to investigate Commissioner Singleton’s death.’
‘He is not the first to be killed,’ he gasped. ‘Not the first. I know.’
‘What do you mean? Who else has died?’
A series of racking coughs shook his thin frame, phlegm gurgling in his chest. He lay back, exhausted. His eyes fell on Alice.
‘Poor, good girl. I warned her of the danger here . . .’ He began to cry, retching sobs turning into another fit of coughing that looked ready to shake his thin frame apart. I turned to Alice.
‘What does he mean?’ I asked sharply. ‘What has he warned you of?’
Her face was clouded with puzzlement. ‘I don’t understand, sir. He has never warned me of anything. I have barely spoken to him before today.’
I looked at Brother Guy. He seemed equally puzzled. He studied the boy anxiously.
‘He is very ill, Commissioner. He should be left to rest now.’
‘No, Brother, I must question him some more. Have you any idea what he meant there?’
‘No, sir. I know no more than Alice.’
I moved closer to the bed and bent over the boy.
‘Master Whelplay, tell me what you mean. Alice says you have given her no warning—’
‘Alice is good,’ he croaked. ‘Dulce and gentle. She must be warned—’ He began coug
hing again, and Brother Guy stepped firmly between us.
‘I must ask you to leave him now, Commissioner. I thought talking to you might ease him, but he is delirious. I must give him a potion to make him sleep.’
‘Please, sir,’ Alice added, ‘for charity. You can see how ill he is.’
I drew away from the boy, who seemed to have collapsed into an exhausted stupor. ‘How ill is he?’ I asked.
The infirmarian set his lips. ‘Either the fever will break soon, or it will kill him. He should not have been treated so,’ he added angrily. ‘I have made a complaint to the abbot; he will be coming to see the lad in the morning. Prior Mortimus has gone too far this time.’
‘I must find out what he meant. I will come again tomorrow and I want to be told at once if his condition worsens.’
‘Of course. Now pray excuse me, sir, I must prepare some herbs—’
I nodded, and he left. I smiled at Alice, trying to seem reassuring.
‘A strange business,’ I said. ‘You have no idea what he meant? First he said he had warned you, then that he must do so.’
‘He has said nothing to me, sir. When we brought him in he slept a little, then as his fever rose he started asking for you.’
‘What could he mean by saying Singleton was not the first?’
‘On my oath, sir, I do not know.’ There was anxiety in her voice. I turned to her and spoke gently.
‘Do you feel you could be in danger from any source, Alice?’
‘No, sir.’ Her face reddened and I was surprised at the degree of anger and contempt that came into her face. ‘I have had approaches from certain monks from time to time, but I deal with them with the aid of Brother Guy’s protection and my own wits. That is a nuisance, not a danger.’
I nodded, struck once more by the strength of her personality.
‘You are unhappy here?’ I asked quietly.
She shrugged. ‘It is a post. And I have a good master.’
‘Alice, if I can help you or there is anything you want to tell me, please come to me. I would not like to think of you in danger.’