their eyes swivel as I unpicked some edifice of lies. But to harry unsavoury sins from a man like Brother Gabriel, who had a certain fragile dignity it was all too easy to undermine, that was no thing to enjoy. After all, I knew only too well what it was like to be a despised outsider.
I remembered how sometimes the taunts of the other children when I could not play their games had led me to plead with my father to take me away from the cathedral school and educate me at home. He had replied that if I was allowed to retreat from the world I would never rejoin it. He was a stern man, not given to sympathy and less so after my mother died when I was ten. Perhaps he was right, yet that morning I wondered whether I was better off if worldly success had led me to such a place as this. It seemed to do nothing but bring back bad memories.
I passed a row of dovecotes, beyond which a large pond surrounded by reeds could be seen. It was a stewpond, dug out for the keeping and breeding of fish. The little stream flowed into it before running through a small culvert under the rear wall a little way off. There was a heavy wooden gate nearby. Monasteries, I recalled, were always built by a stream to carry away waste. The early monks were clever plumbers; there was probably some arrangement to divert the waste to prevent it befouling the fish pond. I stood looking out over the scene, leaning on my staff, chiding myself for my gloomy thoughts. I was here to investigate a murder, not mewl over past sorrows.
I had made some progress, though not much. It seemed unlikely to me that this crime had been committed by an outsider. But although the five senior officials all had knowledge of Singleton's purpose, I could not see any of them becoming so overcome with wild hatred that they would kill him and place St Donatus's future in even greater danger. Yet they were all hard men to read, and about Gabriel at least there was something tormented and desperate.
I turned over the idea that Singleton had been killed because he had found something out about one of the monks. That seemed more likely, yet I could not square it with the dramatic manner of his murder. I sighed. I wondered if I would end by having to interview every monk and servant in the monastery, and my heart sank at the thought of how long that might take. The sooner I was away from this wretched pile and its dangers the happier I would be; and Lord Cromwell needed a solution. But as Mark had said, I could only do what was possible. I must plod on, as lawyers do. And next I must check whether outsiders could gain access from this marsh. 'All the circumstances,' I muttered as I ploughed on through the snow.
I reached the pond and looked in. It was covered with a thin skin of ice, but the sun was almost overhead now and I made out the dim shapes of large carp flickering through the reedy water.
As I straightened up something else caught my eye, a faint yellowish glint at the bottom. Puzzled, I leaned forward again. At first I could not locate what I had seen among the reeds and wondered whether it had been a trick of the light, but then I saw it again. I knelt down, my hands smarting at the touch of the snow, and peered in. There was something, a patch of yellow at the bottom. The casket was gold, and many expensive swords have gilt handles. It was worth investigating. I shivered. I did not fancy confronting those icy depths now, but I would come back later with Mark. I rose, brushed the snow from my clothes, then gathered my coat around me and headed for the gate.
I saw that in a couple of places the wall had crumbled and been patched up, crudely and unevenly. Unhooking the bunch of keys from my belt, I found one that fitted the heavy, ancient lock. The gate creaked open and I stepped out onto a narrow path. It ran alongside the wall, the land dropping away at the edge a final few inches to the marsh. I had not realized it came so close. In places the path was broken where the mire had advanced right up to the wall, undermining it so it had had to be rebuilt. It was even more crudely patched outside. In places an agile man could climb that uneven surface. 'Damn it to hell,' I muttered, for now I could not eliminate even that possibility.
I looked out over the marsh. Covered with snow, broken by thick clusters of reeds and frozen stagnant pools, it stretched for half a mile to the broad band of the river, the blue sky reflected in its unfrozen waters. Beyond the river the ground rose slowly again to a woodland horizon. Everything was still, a pair of seabirds on the river the only sign of life. As I watched they rose into the air, calling their sad cries to the cold heavens.
Halfway between the river and where I stood was a large knoll, an island in the marsh. It was topped with a jumble of low ruins. That must be the place Brother Gabriel had mentioned, where the monks had first settled. Curious, and holding my staff carefully, I set one foot down from the path. To my surprise, the ground under the snow was firm. I let down my other leg and took a step forward. Again I felt firm ground. But it was only a skin of frozen, matted grass, and suddenly my foot crunched through, squelching into miry softness. I let out a cry, dropping my staff. My leg was being sucked slowly into what felt like thick mud; I felt slime and icy water come over the top of my overshoe and trickle down my shin.
I flailed my arms wildly to keep my balance; I had a horror of tipping over and landing face down in the mud. My left leg was still on firm ground and I pulled back with all my strength, terrified that leg too would crunch through a skin of solid ground into some nameless depth. But the ground there held and, sweating with exertion and fear, I was able, painfully slowly, to pull out the other leg, black with mud. A sucking, gurgling sound and a cesspit odour came from the mire. I stepped back and sat with a thump on the path, my heart pounding. My staff lay where it had fallen on the marsh, but I did not think of trying to rescue it. Looking down at my leg encased in stinking mud, I cursed myself for a fool. Lord Cromwell's face would have been worth seeing had he learned that his carefully chosen commissioner had braved the mysteries and dangers of Scarnsea only to fall in a bog and drown.
'You are a noddle,' I said aloud.
I heard a sound behind me, and turned sharply. The gate in the wall was open and Brother Edwig was standing there, a warm coat over his habit, staring at me in amazement.
'Master Sh-Shardlake, are you all right?' He gazed around the bare landscape, and I realized he had heard me talking to myself.
'Yes, Brother Edwig.' I climbed to my feet, realizing I did not cut an impressive figure, bespattered with mud as I was. 'I have had a slight accident. I nearly fell in.'
He shook his head. 'You should not go in there, sir. It is very dangerous.'
'So I see. But what are you doing out here, Brother? Is there no work in the counting house?'
'I have been v-v-visiting the sick novice with the abbot. I wanted to c-clear my head. Sometimes I come out here for a walk.'
I looked at him curiously. He was not someone I could easily imagine tramping through snowy orchards for exercise.
'I like to come out here and l-look out towards the r-r-river. It is c-calming.'
'So long as one minds one's footing?'
'Er – yes. C-can I help you back, sir? You are c-covered with mud.'
I was starting to shiver. 'I can manage. But yes, I should go back.'
We returned through the gate and plodded back to the monastery. I went as fast as I could, my sodden leg like a block of ice.
'How is the novice?'
He shook his head. 'He appears to be r-recovering, but one can never tell with these chesty agues. I had one m-myself last winter; it kept me out of the c-counting house two weeks.' He shook his head.
'And what is your opinion of Simon Whelplay's treatment by the prior?'
He shook his head again, impatiently. 'It is d-difficult. We must have discipline.'
'But should one not temper the wind to the shorn lamb?'
'P-people need certainty, they n-need to know that if they do wrong they will be p-punished.' He looked at me. 'Do you not th-think so, sir?'
'Some people find it harder to learn than others. I was told not to go in that bog, but I did.'
'But that was a mistake, sir, not a sin. And if one finds it hard to learn, all the more reason to give a firm lesson, surely. And that boy is weakly, he could have taken an ague in any case.' His tone was stern.
I raised my eyebrows. 'You appear to view the world in black and white, Brother.'
He looked puzzled. 'Of course, sir. Black and white. Sin and virtue. God and the Devil. The rules are laid down and we must follow them.'
'Now the rules are laid down by the king, not the pope.'
He looked at me seriously. 'Yes, sir, and we must follow those.'
