Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  I went through the infirmary hall again and out into the yard. It was enclosed on three sides and I saw a little stream had been culverted, running under a small bath house attached to the infirmary and on under the reredorter, so it could drain both. I had to admire the ingenuity of the monastic builders. Few houses, even in London, had such arrangements and I sometimes thought with foreboding of what would happen when the twenty-foot cesspit in my garden eventually filled up.

  Chickens ran squawking round the yard, from which most of the snow had already been swept. A couple of pigs peered over the walls of a makeshift sty. Alice was feeding them, pouring a bucket of slops over the wall into their trough. I went over to her. My bodily need could wait a little.

  ‘You have many duties, I see. Pigs as well as patients.’

  She smiled dutifully. ‘Yes, sir. A maid’s work is never done.’

  I looked over the sty, wondering whether something could be concealed among the straw and mud, but of course the brown hairy creatures would have rooted anything out. They might eat a bloody robe, but not a sword or a relic. I looked out over the yard. ‘I see only hens. Have you no cockerel?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sir. Poor Jonas is gone. It was he who was killed at the altar. He was a fine bird, his strutting antics used to make me laugh.’

  ‘Yes, they are comical creatures. Like little kings marching and preening among their subjects.’

  She smiled. ‘That is how he was. His wicked little eyes would look at me with challenge as I approached. He would flap his wings angrily and shriek, but it was all for show. A step too close and he would turn and run.’ To my surprise her large blue eyes filled with tears and she bowed her head. Evidently she had a warm heart as well as a stout one.

  ‘That desecration was a wicked thing altogether,’ I said.

  ‘Poor Jonas.’ She shook herself and took a deep breath.

  ‘Tell me, Alice, when did you notice him gone?’

  ‘The morning the murder was discovered.’

  I glanced round the yard. ‘There’s no way in here, is there, save from the infirmary or the reredorter?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  I nodded. Another indication the killer had come from inside the monastery and knew the layout. A griping in my guts warned me not to tarry. Reluctantly, I excused myself and hurried off to the reredorter.

  I HAD NEVER been in a monks’ privy. At school in Lichfield there were many jokes about what the monks got up to in there, but the privy at Scarnsea was ordinary enough. The stone walls of the long chamber were undecorated and the room was dim, for the only windows were high up. Along one wall lay a long bench with a row of circular holes, and at the far end there were three private cubicles for the obedentiaries’ use. I made my way towards them, passing a couple of monks seated on the communal row. The young monk from the counting house was there. The monk next to him stood up and bowed to me awkwardly as he adjusted his habit before turning to his neighbour.

  ‘Are you going to be there all morning, Athelstan?’

  ‘Leave me be. I have the colic.’

  I went into a cubicle, bolted the door and took a seat with relief. When I had finished I sat listening to the stream tinkling far below. I thought again of Alice. If the monastery closed she would be without a place. I wondered what I might do for her; perhaps I could help her find something in the town. It saddened me that such a woman had ended up in a place like this, but likely as not her family were poor. How sad she had been at the loss of a bird. I had been tempted to take her arm and comfort her. I shook my head at my weakness. And after what I had told Mark, too.

  Something snapped me out of my reflections, made me jerk my head upright and still my breathing. Someone was outside the cubicle, moving quietly, but I had heard the soft footfall, leather on stone. My heart pounded, and I was glad now of the sense of danger that had kept me away from the doorways. I tied up my hose and rose soundlessly, reaching for my dagger. I leaned over and put my ear against the door. I could hear breathing on the other side; someone was standing right against the door.

  I bit my lip. That young monk would probably be gone by now; I could be alone in the reredorter save for the man outside. I confess the thought that Singleton’s assassin might be waiting for me as he had waited for him unnerved me.

  The cubicle door opened outwards. With infinite care I slid back the bolt, then stepped back and kicked it open with all the force I could muster. There was a startled yell from outside as the door flew open to reveal Brother Athelstan. He had jumped back and stood waving his arms in the air to keep his balance. With a wash of relief, I saw his hands were empty. As I advanced on him with my dagger held high, his eyes widened like saucers.

  ‘What were you doing?’ I snapped. ‘I heard you outside!’

  He gulped, his prominent Adam’s apple jerking up and down.

  ‘I meant no harm, sir! I was about to knock, I swear!’

  He was as white as a sheet. I lowered my weapon. ‘Why? What do you want?’

  He glanced anxiously towards the door to the dormitory. ‘I needed to talk to you secretly, sir. When I saw you come in I waited till we were alone.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Not here, please,’ he said urgently. ‘Someone may disturb us. Please, sir, can you meet me at the brewhouse shortly? It is next to the stables. There is no one there this morning.’

  I studied him. He looked on the point of collapse.

  ‘Very well. But I shall bring my assistant.’

  ‘Yes, sir, of course—’ Brother Athelstan broke off as the tall thin form of Brother Jude appeared from the dormitory. He scurried away. The pittancer, doubtless taking a break from calculating what rich meals the monks should have, gave me an odd look. He bowed and entered a cubicle, and I heard the bolt slide home with a bang. As I stood there, I realized I had started to tremble. I was shaking like an aspen leaf from head to foot.

  Chapter Eleven

  I PULLED MYSELF TOGETHER with some deep breaths and hurried back to the infirmary. Mark was in the breakfast room; Alice had returned and was washing dishes, talking to him as he sat at the table. Her manner seemed cheerful and relaxed, without the reserve she had shown with me, and I felt a pang of jealousy.

  ‘Are you allowed time off?’ he was asking her.

  ‘Half a day a week. If we are quiet, sometimes Brother Guy lets me take a whole day.’

  They looked round as I bustled in. ‘Mark, I must speak with you.’

  He followed me to our room, and I told him how Brother Athelstan had waylaid me.

  ‘Come with me now. Bring your sword. He doesn’t look dangerous, he’s a weaselly fellow, but we cannot be too careful.’

  We returned to the main courtyard, where Bugge and his assistant still laboured in the snow, and passed the stables. I glanced through the open door; a stablehand was piling up hay, watched by the horses, their breath steaming thickly in the freezing air. It was no work for a sickly boy like Whelplay.

  I pushed open the brewhouse door. Here it was warm. Through a door to one side a slow fire burned; a stairway led to the drying house above. The main chamber, full of barrels and vats, was empty. I jumped as something fluttered above me and, looking up, saw hens roosting among the rafters.

  ‘Brother Athelstan,’ I called in a loud whisper. There was a thud somewhere behind us and Mark’s hand went to his sword as the monk’s skinny form appeared from behind a barrel. He bowed.

  ‘Commissioner. Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I hope it was something important for you to disturb me in the privy. Are we alone here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The brewer is away, waiting for the hops to dry.’

  ‘Don’t those hens spoil the beer? Their mess is everywhere.’

  He smiled uneasily, fingering his little beard. ‘The brewer says it adds bite to the flavour.’

  ‘I doubt the townsfolk think so,’ Mark observed.

  Brother Athelstan came closer, looking at me keenly. ‘Sir,
you know the part in Lord Cromwell’s injunctions that says any monk with a complaint may go directly to the vicar general’s officials, rather than his abbot?’

  ‘I do. Have you a complaint?’

  ‘Information, rather.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I know Lord Cromwell seeks information on ill-doings in the religious houses. I have heard, sir, his informants are rewarded.’

  ‘If their information is valuable.’ I studied him. In my work I had to deal often with informers, and there were never more of that noisome breed abroad than in those years. Could it have been Athelstan whom Singleton was going to meet that night? But this young man, I guessed, had never played the role before. He was keen for reward, but afraid.

  ‘I thought - I thought any information about ill-doings here must help you find Commissioner Singleton’s killer.’

  ‘What have you to tell me?’

  ‘The senior monks, sir, the obedentiaries. They do not like Lord Cromwell’s new injunctions. The sermons in English, the stricter rules of life. I have heard them talking together, sir, in the chapter house. Sitting muttering together before meetings of the community.’

  ‘And what have you heard?’

  ‘I have heard them say the injunctions are an imposition by people who do not know or care for the life. The abbot, Brother Guy, Brother Gabriel and my master Brother Edwig, they all think the same.’

  ‘And Prior Mortimus.’

  Athelstan shrugged. ‘He swims with the tide.’

  ‘He is not the only one. Brother Athelstan, have you heard any of the obedentiaries say that the pope should be brought back, or speaking against the royal divorce or Lord Cromwell?’

  He hesitated. ‘No. But I - I could say I had, sir, if it would help you.’

  I laughed. ‘And people would believe you, as you shuffle your feet and cast down your eyes. I do not think so.’

  He fingered his beard again. ‘If there is any other way I can be of use to you, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘or to Lord Cromwell, I would be happy to be his man.’

  ‘Why is that, Brother Athelstan? Are you discontented here?’

  His face darkened. It was a weak face and an unhappy one.

  ‘I work in the counting house for Brother Edwig. He is a hard master.’

  ‘Why? What does he do?’

  ‘He works you like a dog. If so much as a penny is out, he makes your life a misery, makes you audit all your accounts over again. I committed a small offence and now he keeps me in the counting house night and day. He has gone out for a while, otherwise I would never have dared spend so long away.’

  ‘And so,’ I said, ‘because your master punishes your mistakes, you would put Brother Gabriel and others in trouble with Lord Cromwell in the hope he will make your life easier?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘But does not he wish monks to inform, sir? I seek only to help him.’

  I sighed. ‘I am here to investigate Commissioner Singleton’s death, Brother. If you have any information relevant to that, I would hear from you. Otherwise you are wasting my time.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You may leave us.’ He seemed about to say something more, then thought better of it and hastily left the shed. I kicked one of the barrels, then laughed angrily.

  ‘God, what a creature! Well, that takes us nowhere.’

  ‘Informers. More trouble than they’re worth.’ Mark jumped aside with an oath as one of the chickens above dropped its mess on his tunic.

  ‘Yes, they’re like those hens, they don’t care where their shit lands.’ I paced up and down the brewhouse. ‘Jesu, that knave scared me when I heard him outside my cubicle door. I thought it was the assassin come after me.’

  He looked at me seriously. ‘I confess I do not like being alone here. One jumps at every shadow. Perhaps we should stay together, sir.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, there’s too much to do. Go back to the infirmary. You seem to be getting on well with Alice.’

  He gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘She is telling me all about her life.’

  ‘Very well. I am off to visit Brother Gabriel. Perhaps he may tell me about his. I don’t suppose you’ve had time yet to explore the place?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, see you do. Get some overshoes from Brother Guy.’ I gave him a serious look. ‘But take care.’

  I PAUSED OUTSIDE the church. Watching one of the kitchen servants plod wearily though the snow, his cheap woollen hose soaking wet, I was grateful for Brother Guy’s overshoes. No overshoes for servants, though. That would be expensive; Brother Edwig would have a seizure.

  I studied the church front. Around the great wooden doors, twenty feet high, the stonework was richly carved with gargoyles and monsters to frighten off evil spirits, their faces worn after four centuries but still vivid. The monastery church, like the great cathedrals, was there to impress the laity: a magnificent simulacrum of heaven. A promise of prayers for a loved one in purgatory, or a miraculous cure from a relic, would carry a hundred times more weight in that setting. I hauled open the door and squeezed inside, into echoing space.

  All around, the great vaulted arches of the nave rose nearly a hundred feet, supported by pillars brightly painted in red and black. Blue and yellow tiles covered the floor. The eye was led to the high stone rood screen halfway down the nave, richly painted with figures of the saints. On top of the screen, lit by candles, stood the statues of John the Baptist, the Virgin and Our Lord. A great window at the far end of the church, built to catch the morning light from the east, was painted in geometric designs of yellow and orange. It flooded the nave with a gentle umber light, peaceful and numinous, softening the kaleidoscope of colours. The builders knew how to create atmosphere, no doubt of that.

  I walked slowly up the nave. The walls were lined with painted statues of saints and little reliquaries, where strange objects peeped out from beds of satin, candles burning before them. A servant moved slowly around, replacing those that had burned down. I paused to glance into the side chapels, each with its own statues and little candlelit altar. It occurred to me that these side chapels, filled with railed-off altars, statues and biers, might be good places to hide things.

  In several of the side chapels monks stood intoning private Masses. Local people of wealth, terrified of the pains of purgatory awaiting them, would have left great portions of their assets away from wives and children to the monks, for Masses to be said until the Last Judgement came. How many days’ remission from purgatory was a Mass here worth, I wondered; sometimes a hundred were promised, sometimes a thousand. While those without means were left to suffer for however long God appointed, of course. Pick-penny purgatory, we reformers called it. The Latin chanting stirred an impatient anger in me.

  At the rood screen I stopped and looked up. My breath, still a fog, for the church was scarcely warmer than outside, dissipated into the yellow-tinted air. On either side a flight of stairs set into the wall gave access to the top of the screen. At that level, I saw, a narrow railed parapet ran the length of the church. Above the parapet the walls arched gradually inward to the great vault of the roof. To the left I noticed a great crack, stained round with damp, running from the roof almost to ground level. I remembered that Norman churches and cathedrals were not in fact the solid edifices they appeared; the walls might be twenty feet thick, but between the expensive stone blocks making up the interior and exterior walls there was usually an infill of rubble.

  Where the abscission ran down the wall the stone blocks, and the plaster between them, were discoloured and there was a little heap of powdery plaster on the floor beneath. I saw that above the parapet a series of statues were set in niches at intervals; they showed the same figure of St Donatus leaning over the dead man that was on the monastery seal.

  Where the crack ran through one of the niches the statue had been removed and lay, discoloured-looking, on the parapet. An extraordinary cat’s cradle of pulleys and ropes had been set up there; the ropes were secured to the wall beh
ind the parapet and ran out over the void, before disappearing upward into the darkness of the bell tower, where presumably they were secured at their other end.

  Dangling from the ropes was a wooden basket, big enough to hold two men. Presumably the cat’s cradle allowed the basket to be moved inwards and outwards and had allowed the removal of the statue. It was an ingenious arrangement but a dangerous one; scaffolding was surely needed to effect proper repairs. But the bursar was right to say a full repair programme would be enormously expensive. Otherwise, though, as frost and water did their work, the crack could only widen, eventually threatening the whole structure. The imagination reeled at the thought of the great building falling on one’s head.