Dissolution

He gave me a long, searching look. 'I can think of a reason for that. I hope I am wrong.'

'What do you mean? Speak plainly.' I heard myself snap peevishly.

'I need to consider,' he replied as sharply. 'But first, Commissioner, Abbot Fabian should be told.'

'Very well.' I grasped the corner of his table; my legs had begun to shake uncontrollably. 'We will wait in your kitchen.'

Alice led Mark and me back to the little room where we had breakfasted.

'Are you all right, sir?' Mark asked anxiously. 'You are trembling.'

'Yes, yes.'

'I have an infusion of herbs that eases the body at times of shock,' Alice said. 'Valerian and aconite. I could heat some if you wish.'

'Thank you.' She remained composed, but there was a strange, almost bruised-looking sheen on her cheeks. I forced a smile. 'The scene affected you too, I saw. It was understandable. One feared the Devil himself was present in that poor creature.'

I was surprised by the anger that flashed into her face. 'I fear no devils, sir, unless it be such human monsters as tormented that poor boy. His life was destroyed before it began, and for such we should always weep.' She paused, realizing she had gone too far for a servant. 'I will fetch the infusion,' she said quickly, and hurried out.

I raised my eyebrows at Mark. 'Outspoken.'

'She has a hard life.'

I fingered my mourning ring. 'So have many in this vale of tears.' I glanced at him. He's smitten, I thought.

'I spoke with her as you asked.'

'Tell me,' I said encouragingly. I needed a distraction from the memory of what had just passed.

'She has been here eighteen months. She comes from Scarnsea, her father died young and she was brought up by her mother, who was a wise woman, a dispenser of herbs.'

'So that's where she gets her knowledge.'

'She was to be married, but her swain died in an accident felling trees. There's little work in the town, but she found a place as assistant to an apothecary in Esher, someone her mother knew.'

'So she's travelled. I thought she was no village mouse.'

'She knows the country round here well. I was talking to her about that marsh. She says there are paths through if you know where to find them. I asked her if she would show us and she said she might.'

'That could be useful.' I told him what Brother Gabriel had said about the smugglers, of my own visit there and my accident. I displayed my muddy leg. 'If there are paths, any guide had better be careful. God's wounds, this is a day of shocks.' My hand lying on the table was trembling; I seemed unable to stop it. Mark, too, was still pale. There was silence for a moment, a silence I was suddenly desperate to fill.

'You seem to have had a long talk. How does Alice come to be here?'

'The apothecary died, he was an old man. After that she came back to Scarnsea, but her mother died too shortly after. Her cottage was on a copyhold and the landowner took it back. She was left alone. She didn't know what to do, then someone said the infirmarian was looking for a lay assistant. No one in the town wanted to work for him – they call him the black goblin – but she had no choice.'

'I have the impression she does not much admire our holy brethren.'

'She said some of them are lascivious men, forever sidling up and trying to touch her. She is the only young woman in the place. The prior himself has been a problem apparently.'

I raised an eyebrow. 'God's wounds, she did speak freely.'

'She is angry, sir. The prior made a nuisance of himself when she first came.'

'Yes, I noticed she disliked him. Fie, the man's a hypocrite, punishing other people's sins and chasing the women servants himself. Does the abbot know?'

'She told Brother Guy and he made the prior stop. The abbot seldom intervenes; he supports the prior's strong discipline and leaves him to do much as he will. Apparently all the monks are terrified of him, and those who were guilty of sodomy before are too terrified of him to follow their base hearts.'

'And we've seen the results of that discipline.'

Mark passed a hand over his brow. 'Yes, we have,' he agreed sombrely.

I thought a moment. 'Disloyal of Mistress Alice, to speak so to the commissioner's assistant. Is she of reformist persuasion?'

'I don't think so. But she does not see why she should keep the secrets of those who have pestered her. She has strong feelings, sir, but fine ones. She is no malapert. She spoke warmly of Brother Guy. He has taught her much and protected her from those who trouble her. And she is fond of the harmless old men she looks after.'

I looked at him thoughtfully. 'Don't form too much of an attachment to the girl,' I said quietly. 'Lord Cromwell wants the surrender of this monastery, and we may end up putting her out of house and home again.'

He frowned. 'That would be cruel. And she's not a girl, she's twenty-two, a woman. Could not something be done for her?'

'I could try.' I mused a moment. 'So the infirmarian protects her. I wonder whether she would protect him in turn.'

'You mean Brother Guy may have secrets?'

'I don't know.' I stood up and walked to the window. 'My head spins.'

'You said the novice appeared to be imitating you,' Mark said hesitantly.

'Did it not seem like that to you?'

'I don't see how he could have known-'

I gulped. 'How I wave my arms around when speaking in court? No, neither do I.' I stood looking out of the window, biting my thumbnail, until I saw Brother Guy reappear, striding along with the abbot and prior beside him. The three figures passed quickly by the window, kicking up little clouds of snow. A few moments later we heard voices from the room where the body lay. There were more footsteps, and the three monks entered the little kitchen. I sat studying each in turn. Brother Guy's brown features were expressionless. Prior Mortimus's face was red, filled with anger but I saw fear too. The abbot seemed to have shrunk into himself; the big man looked somehow smaller, greyer.

'Commissioner,' he said quietly, 'I am sorry you had to witness such a terrible scene.'

I took a deep breath. I felt more like curling up in a corner somewhere than trying to exercise authority over these wretched people, but I had no choice.

'Yes,' I said. 'I come to the infirmary looking for peace and quiet while I carry out my investigations, and I am confronted with a novice frozen and starved till first he catches a fever that almost kills him, then goes stark mad and falls to his death.'

'He was possessed!' The prior spoke in hard, clipped tones, the sarcasm gone. 'He allowed his mind to become so polluted that the Devil possessed it in his hour of weakness. I confessed him, I put him to penance to mortify him, but I was too late. See the Devil's power.' He set his lips and glared at me. 'It is everywhere, and all arguments between Christians distract us from it!'

'The boy spoke of seeing devils in the air as thick as motes,' I said. 'Do you think he saw true?'

'Come, sir, even the most ardent reformers do not dispute the world is filled with the Devil's agents. Is it not said Luther himself once threw a bible at a demon in his room?'

'But sometimes such visions can come from brain fever.' I looked at Brother Guy, who nodded.

'Indeed they can,' the abbot agreed. 'The Church has known that for hundreds of years. We must have a full investigation.'

'Ah, there's nothing to investigate,' the prior burst out angrily. 'Simon Whelplay opened his soul to the Devil, a demon took him and made him throw himself into that bath, kill himself like the Gadarene swine going over the cliff. His soul's in hell now, for all I tried to save it.'

'I do not think the fall killed him,' Brother Guy said.

Everyone looked at him in surprise. 'How can ye tell that?' the prior asked contemptuously.

'Because he did not strike his head,' the infirmarian replied quietly.

'Then how-'

'I do not know yet.'

'In any event,' I said sharply, looking at the prior, 'he appears to have been driven into a seriously weakened