Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘I am sorry, I should not have shouted.’

  ‘I meant no ill.’

  ‘I know. I am tired and worried, that is all.’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Lord Cromwell wants a result quickly and I wonder if I will be able to get one. I had hoped for - I don’t know, some fanatic among the monks who had already been locked up, at least some clear pointer to the culprit. Goodhaps is no help; he’s so scared he’d leap at his own shadow. And these monkish officials do not seem likely to be easily overawed. On top of that we seem to have a mad Carthusian stirring up trouble, and talk of a break-in by practitioners of dark arts from the town. Jesu, it’s a tangle. And that abbot knew his law, I can see why Singleton found him difficult.’

  ‘You can only do what it is in your power to do, sir.’

  ‘Lord Cromwell would not see things that way.’ I lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Usually when I began grappling with a new case I would enjoy a sense of pleasurable excitement, but here I could see no thread to guide me through what seemed an enormous labyrinth.

  ‘This is a gloomy place,’ Mark said. ‘All those dark stone corridors, all those arches. Each one could hide an assassin.’

  ‘Yes, I remember when I was at school how endless and frightening all the echoing corridors seemed if one was sent on an errand. All the doors one was not allowed to open.’ I tried to be encouraging: ‘But now I have a commission affording me every access. It’s a place like every other, and we’ll soon find our way around.’ There was no reply and the sound of deep breathing told me Mark had fallen asleep. I smiled wryly, closed my eyes for a moment, and the next thing I knew there was a loud knock on the door and an exclamation from Mark as he was jolted awake. I got to my feet, surprisingly refreshed by my unintended sleep, my mind alert once more. I opened the door. Brother Guy stood outside, his candle casting the strangest shadows across his dark troubled face, his eyes serious.

  ‘Are you ready to view the body, sir?’

  ‘Ay, as ready as we’ll ever be.’ I reached for my coat.

  IN THE INFIRMARY hall the girl brought a lamp for Brother Guy. He donned a thick robe over his habit and led us along a dim, high-ceilinged corridor with vaulted ceilings.

  ‘It is quickest to cross the cloister yard,’ he said, opening a door into the cold air.

  The yard, enclosed on three sides by the buildings where the monks lived and on the fourth by the church, made an unexpectedly pretty picture. Lights flickered at the many windows.

  Surrounding the yard was the cloister walk, a covered area supported by elaborate arches. Long ago that would have been where the monks studied, in carrels lining the walk and open to cold and wind; but in these softer times it was a place for walking and talking. Against one pillar stood the lavatorium, an elaborate stone bowl used for washing hands, where a little fountain made a gentle tinkling sound. The soft glow from the stained-glass windows of the church made coloured patterns on the ground. I noticed strange little motes dancing in the light, and was puzzled for a moment before realizing it had started to snow again. The flags of the cloister yard were already speckled with white. Brother Guy led us across.

  ‘You found the body, I believe?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Alice and I were up tending Brother August, who had a fever and was in much distress. I wanted to give him some warm milk and went to the kitchen to fetch some.’

  ‘And that door is normally kept locked.’

  ‘Of course. Otherwise the servants, and I regret also the monks, would help themselves to food whenever they wanted. I have a key because I often need things urgently.’

  ‘This was at five o’clock?’

  ‘The clock had struck a little before.’

  ‘Had Matins begun?’

  ‘No, Matins is sung late here. Usually towards six.’

  ‘St Benedict’s rule prescribes midnight.’

  He smiled gently. ‘St Benedict wrote his rule for Italians, sir, not people who have to live through English winters. The office is sung and God hears it. We cut through the chapter house now.’

  He opened another door and we found ourselves in a large chamber, its walls richly painted with biblical scenes. Stools and cushioned chairs were dotted around, and there was a long table before a roaring fire. The room was warm and musty with body odour. About twenty monks sat around; some were talking, some reading, and half a dozen were playing cards at a table. Each monk had a pretty little crystal glass by his elbow, filled with green liquid from a large bottle of French liqueur that stood on the card-players’ table. I looked round for the Carthusian, but there was no white habit among the black; the straggle-haired sodomite Brother Gabriel and Mortimus the sharp-eyed bursar were also absent.

  A thin-faced young monk with a wispy beard had just lost a game, judging by his annoyed expression.

  ‘That’s a shilling you owe us, Brother,’ a tall, cadaverous monk said cheerfully.

  ‘You’ll have to wait. I will need an advance from the chamberlain.’

  ‘No more advances, Brother Athelstan!’ A plump old brother sitting nearby, his face disfigured by a warty growth on one cheek, wagged a finger at him. ‘Brother Edwig says you’ve had so many advances you’re getting your wages before you’ve earned them—’ He broke off, and the monks hastily rose to their feet and bowed to me. One, a young fellow so obese even his shaven head was lined and puckered with fat, knocked his glass to the floor.

  ‘Septimus, you dolt!’ His neighbour prodded him sharply with his elbow, and he stared round with the vague glance of the simple-minded. The monk with the disfigured face stepped forward, bowing again obsequiously.

  ‘I am Brother Jude, sir, the pittancer.’

  ‘Master Matthew Shardlake, the king’s commissioner. I see you are enjoying a convivial evening.’

  ‘A little relaxation before Vespers. Would you care for some of this fine liqueur, Commissioner? It is from one of our French sister houses.’

  I shook my head. ‘I still have work to do,’ I said severely. ‘In the earlier days of your order, the day’s end would have been taken up with the Great Silence.’

  Brother Jude hesitated. ‘That was long ago, sir, in the days before the Great Pestilence. Since then the world has fallen further towards its end.’

  ‘I think the English world does very well under King Henry.’

  ‘No, no—’ he said hastily. ‘I did not mean—’

  The tall thin monk from the card table joined us. ‘Forgive Brother Jude, sir, he speaks without thinking. I am Brother Hugh, the chamberlain. We know we need correction, Commissioner, and we welcome it.’ He glared at his colleague.

  ‘Good. That will make my work easier. Come, Brother Guy. We have a corpse to inspect.’

  The fat young monk stepped forward hesitantly. ‘Forgive me slipping, good sire. My leg pains me, I have an ulcer.’ He gave us a woebegone look. Brother Guy put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘If you would follow my diet, Septimus, your poor legs would not have to bear such weight. No wonder they protest.’

  ‘I am weak flesh, Brother, I need my meat.’

  ‘Sometimes I think it a pity the Lateran Council ever lifted the prohibition on meat. Now excuse us, Septimus, we are on our way to the crypt. You will be pleased to hear Commissioner Singleton may be laid to rest soon.’

  ‘Thanks be to God. I am afraid to go near the cemetery. An unburied body, an unshriven man—’

  ‘Yes, yes. Go now, it is almost time for Vespers.’ Brother Guy gently moved him aside and led us through another door, out into the night again. An expanse of flat ground lay ahead, dotted with headstones. Ghostly white shapes stood out here and there, which I recognized as family crypts. Brother Guy raised the hood of his habit against the snow, which was coming down thickly now.

  ‘You must forgive Brother Septimus,’ he said. ‘He is a poor silly creature.’

  ‘No wonder his leg gives trouble,’ Mark observed. ‘Carrying all that weight.’

&nbs
p; ‘The monks stand for hours at a time in a cold church every day, Master Mark, a good covering of fat is not unhealthy. But the standing brings on varicose ulcers. It is not so easy a life. And poor Septimus has not the wit to cease from gorging.’

  I shivered. ‘This is not the weather to stand talking.’

  Holding his lamp high, Brother Guy led us between the headstones. I asked him whether, when he came to the kitchen that morning, the door had been locked.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I went in through the door from the cloister yard, which is always locked at night, then up the short passage leading to the kitchen. The kitchen itself is not locked because the only way is via the passage. I opened the door and at once I slipped in something and almost went over. I put my lamp down, then saw that headless body.’

  ‘Dr Goodhaps said he slipped too. So the blood was liquid?’

  The infirmarian considered. ‘Yes, it had not started to congeal.’

  ‘So the deed had not been done long?’

  ‘No, it cannot have been.’

  ‘And you saw no one on your way to the kitchen?’

  ‘No.’

  I was pleased to find my brain working again, my mind racing along. ‘Whoever killed Singleton would himself have been covered in blood. He would have had bloody clothes, left bloody footsteps.’

  ‘I saw none. But I confess it was not in my mind to look, I was shocked. Later, of course, when the house was roused, there were bloody footprints everywhere from those who had entered the kitchen.’

  I thought a moment. ‘And the killer may then have gone to the church, desecrated the altar and stolen the relic. Did you, did anyone, notice any traces of blood on the way across the cloister to the church, or inside the church?’

  Brother Guy gave me a sombre look. ‘There was blood spilt about the church. We assumed it came from that sacrificed cock. As for the cloister, it started to rain before dawn and went on all day. It would have washed away any traces.’

  ‘And after you found the body, what did you do?’

  ‘I went straight to the abbot, of course. Now, here we are.’

  He had led us to the largest of the crypts, a one-storey building in the ubiquitous yellow limestone, set on a little rise. It had a stout wooden door, wide enough for a coffin to be carried in.

  I blinked a snowflake from my eyelashes. ‘Well, let us get this over with.’ He produced a key and I took a deep breath, breathing a silent prayer that God might strengthen my weak stomach.

  WE HAD TO STOOP to enter the low, whitewashed chamber. The ossuary was bitterly cold, the wind slicing in through a small barred window. The air held the faint, sickly tang all tombs possess. In the dim light of Brother Guy’s lamp I saw the walls were lined with stone sarcophagi, figures representing the dead carved atop the lids, hands clasped in poses of supplication. Most of the men wore the full armour of past centuries.

  Brother Guy put his lamp down and folded his arms, tucking his hands inside the long sleeves of his habit for warmth. ‘The Fitzhugh crypt,’ he said. ‘The family were the original founders of the monastery and were buried here till the last of them died in the civil wars of the last century.’

  The silence was suddenly broken by a jangling metallic crash. I jumped involuntarily and so did Brother Guy, his eyes wide in his dark face. I turned to see Mark bent over, picking the abbot’s bunch of keys from the flagstones.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he muttered. ‘I thought they were securely tied.’

  ‘God’s death!’ I snapped. ‘Oaf!’ My legs were shaking.

  There was a large metal sconce filled with fat candles in the centre of the room. Brother Guy lit them from his lamp and a yellow glow filled the chamber as he led us across to a sarcophagus with a bare stone lid, without inscription.

  ‘ “This tomb is the only one without a permanent occupant and will never have one now. The last male heir perished at Bosworth with King Richard III.” ’ He smiled sadly. ‘ “Sic transit gloria mundi.” ’

  ‘And Singleton is laid there?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘He’s been there four days, but the cold should have kept him fresh.’

  I took another deep breath. ‘Then let us have the lid off. Mark, help him.’

  Mark and Brother Guy strained to slide the heavy stone lid onto the neighbouring tomb. It resisted their efforts at first, then slid off in a rush. At once the chamber was filled with a sickening smell. Mark stepped back a pace, his nose wrinkling with distaste. ‘Not so fresh,’ he murmured.

  Brother Guy peered in, crossing himself. I stepped forward, gripping the edge of the sarcophagus.

  The body was wrapped in a white woollen cloth; only the calves and feet were visible, alabaster white, the toenails long and yellow. At the other end of the blanket a little watery blood had run out from the neck, and there was a pool of darker blood under the head, which had been set upright beside the body. I looked into the face of Robin Singleton, whom once I had outstared across the courtroom.

  He had been a thin man in his thirties, with black hair and a long nose. I saw there was a dark stubble on the white cheeks and felt my stomach turn at the sight of this head set upon a bloody piece of stone instead of a neck. The mouth was almost closed, the tips of the teeth showing under the lips. The dark-blue eyes were wide open, filmy in death. I saw a tiny black insect walk from under one eyelid across the orb and under the opposite lid. Swallowing, I turned and stepped over to the little barred window, taking a deep breath of cold night air. As I fought down bile, I forced another part of my mind to order what I had seen. I heard Mark come to my side.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Of course.’ Turning, I saw Brother Guy standing with arms folded, quite composed, looking at me thoughtfully. Mark himself was a little pale, but crossed back to look again at that dreadful head.

  ‘Well, Mark, what would you say about the manner of that man’s death?’ I called.

  He shook his head. ‘It is as we knew, his head was struck from his shoulders.’

  ‘I didn’t think he died from an ague. But can we tell anything more from what is there? I would take a guess that the assailant was of at least medium height, to start with.’

  Brother Guy looked at me curiously. ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘Well, firstly, Singleton was quite a tall man.’

  ‘It’s hard to tell without a head,’ Mark said.

  ‘I met him in court. I remember I had the disadvantage of having to twist my neck to look up at him.’ I made myself go over and look at the head again. ‘And see how the neck is cut straight across. It sits perfectly upright on the stone. If he and his attacker were both standing when he was attacked, which seems most likely, a shorter man would have had to strike upwards at an angle, and the neck would not have been cut straight through.’

  Brother Guy nodded. ‘That is true. By Our Lady, sir, you have the eye of a physician.’

  ‘Thank you. Though I would not wish to spend my days looking on such sights. But I have seen a head severed before. I remember the -’ I sought a word - ‘the mechanics.’ I met the infirmarian’s curious gaze, digging my fingernails into my palms as I remembered a day I wished dearly to forget. ‘And, talking of such matters, observe how clean the blow is, the head sheared off with one strike. That is difficult to achieve even if someone is lying down with his neck on a block.’

  Mark looked again at the head lying on its side, and nodded once more. ‘Aye. Axes are difficult to handle. I was told they had to hack away at Thomas More’s neck. But what if he was bending down? To pick something up from the floor? Or perhaps he was made to bend down?’

  I thought a moment. ‘Yes. Good point. But if he was bent over as he died the body would have been bent when it was found. Brother Guy will remember.’ I looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘He lay straight,’ the infirmarian said thoughtfully. ‘The difficulty of striking off someone’s head like that has been in all our minds. You couldn’t do it with a kitchen impl
ement, even the biggest knife. That is why some of the brothers fear witchcraft.’

  ‘But what weapon could slice the head off a man standing upright?’ I asked. ‘I’d guess not an axe, the blade is too thick. You’d need a very sharp cutting edge, like a sword. In fact I can’t think of anything that would do it but a sword. What do you say, Mark? You’re the swordsman here.’

  ‘I think you are right.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Only royalty and the nobility have the right to be executed with a sword.’