I nodded, biting a fingernail. 'He must be guarded closely from now on. This letter is a serious matter. It should be reported to Lord Cromwell at once.'
He gave me a calculating look. 'Would ye perhaps tell Lord Cromwell that a monk loyal to the king stopped the letter going?'
'We'll see.' I looked at him coldly. 'There was another matter I wanted to discuss with you. Orphan Stonegarden.'
He nodded slowly. 'Aye, I'd heard questions were being asked.'
'Well? Your name has been mentioned.'
He shrugged. 'Even old celibates get lusty. She was a fine-looking girl. I tried to get her to romp with me, I'll not deny it.'
'You who are charged with keeping discipline in this house, and told me yesterday that discipline is all that keeps the world from chaos?'
He stirred uneasily in his chair. 'A tumble with a warm girl's a different matter from unnatural passions that rot the relations monks should have with each other,' he said sharply. 'I'm not perfect, nobody is except the saints and not all of them.'
'Some would say, Prior Mortimus, those words make you a hypocrite.'
'Oh come, Commissioner, aren't all men hypocrites? I wished the girl no harm. She rejected me quickly enough, and that old pederast Alexander reported me to the abbot. I felt sorry for her afterwards,' he added in a quieter voice, 'drifting about the place like a wraith. I never talked to her again, though.'
'Did anyone take her by force, that you know of? Goodwife Stumpe believes someone did.'
'No.' His face darkened. 'I wouldn't have stood for that.' He let out a long breath. 'It was bad, seeing her yesterday. I knew her at once.'
'So did Goodwife Stumpe.' I folded my arms. 'Brother Prior, your fine feelings amaze me. I can hardly believe this is the same man I saw kick a cripple not half an hour ago.'
'A man's place in the world is hard, a monk's most of all. He has obligations set by God, and fierce temptations to resist. Women – they're different, they deserve a peaceful life if they behave. Orphan was a good girl, not like that malapert Guy has working for him now.'
'She too had an approach from you, I hear.'
He was silent a moment. 'I wasn't fierce with her, y'know. Orphan. When she turned me away I didn't press her.'
'But others did. Brother Luke.' I paused. 'Brother Edwig.'
'Aye. Brother Alexander reported them too – though his own greater sins were to find him out,' he added maliciously. 'The abbot dealt with Brother Luke and told Brother Edwig to leave her be. And me as well. He doesn't often give me orders but he did then.'
'They tell me, you know, that you and Brother Edwig run this place.'
'Someone has to, Abbot Fabian's always been more interested in hunting with the local gentry. We see to the dull things that keep the monastery going.
I wondered whether to mention the monastery's financial affairs, or land sales in general, to see how he reacted. But no, I should not warn any of them till I had evidence to hand.
'I never believed she'd stolen those cups and run away, you know,' he said quietly.
'You told Goodwife Stumpe she had.'
'It was how it looked, and it was the line Abbot Fabian told us to take – he bestirred himself over that. I hope ye find who put her in there,' he added grimly. 'When ye do I wouldn't mind five minutes alone with them myself.'
I stared at his face, full of righteous anger. 'I imagine you would enjoy that,' I said coldly. 'And now you must excuse me, I am late for an appointment.'
Alice was waiting in the infirmary kitchen, a pair of stout overshoes on her feet and an old wool coat beside her. 'You need something warmer than that,' I said. 'It will be cold out there.'
'It will suffice,' she said, wrapping it round her. 'It was my mother's and it warmed her for thirty winters.'
We set out for the gate in the rear wall, following the path Mark and I had taken the day before. I was disconcerted to realize she was a good inch taller than me. Most men are, because of my bent back, but usually I can look women in the eye. I pondered on what it was that had attracted both Mark and me to Alice, for she was no conventional beauty, demure and pale. But simpering blonde maids had never attracted me; it was the spark of one strong spirit meeting another I had always yearned for. My heart lurched anew at the realization.
We passed Singleton's grave, still stark brown against the whiteness. Alice was as distant and uncommunicative as Mark had been. It made me angry to be confronted with this silent insolence again, and I wondered whether it was a tactic they had agreed between them, or whether it came to each naturally. But then the ways of expressing discontent to those in power are limited.
As we ploughed through the orchard, where today a flock of starveling crows sat cawing in the trees, I tried to make conversation. I asked how she had come to pass her childhood playing around the marsh.
'Two little boys lived in the cottage next to ours. Brothers, Noel and James. We used to play together. Their family had been fishermen for generations; they knew all the paths through the marsh, all the landmarks that keep you on firm ground. Their father was a smuggler as well as a fisherman. They're all dead now, their ship was lost in a great storm five years ago.'
'I am sorry.'
'It's what fishermen have to expect.' She turned to me, a spark of animation entering her voice. 'If folk do take treated cloth to France and bring back wine, it's only because they're poor.'
'I have no interest in prosecuting anybody, Alice. I merely wonder whether some moneys that may be unaccounted for, and perhaps the lost relic, could be taken out that way.'
We arrived opposite the fish pond. A little way off some servants, supervised by a monk, were working by a little lock gate in the stream, and I saw the water level in the pond had already fallen.
'Brother Guy told me about that poor girl,' Alice said, wrapping her coat around her more tightly. 'He said she did my work before I came.'
'Yes, she did. But the poor creature had no friends apart from Simon Whelplay. You have people who will guard you.' I saw anxiety in her eyes and smiled reassuringly. 'Come, there is the gate. I have a key.'
We went through, and again I stood looking over the white expanse of the marsh, the river in the distance and the little knoll with the ruined buildings halfway between.
'I nearly fell in the first time I came out here,' I observed. 'Are you sure there is a safe way? I don't see how you can descry landmarks when everything is covered in snow.'
She pointed. 'See those banks of tall reeds? It's a question of finding the right ones, and keeping them at the right distance from you. It's not all marsh, there are firmer patches, and the patterns of the reeds are their signposts.' She stepped from the path and tested the ground. 'There will be a frozen crust in places; you have to take care not to step through.'
'I know. That is what I did last time.' I hesitated on the bank and smiled nervously. 'You have the life of a king's commissioner in your hands.'
'I will take care, sir.' She walked back and forth along the path a few times, judging where we should cross and then, bidding me walk exactly in her footprints, stepped down onto the marsh.
She led the way slowly and steadily, pausing often to take bearings. I admit my heart pounded at first; I looked back, conscious of our growing distance from the monastery wall, the impossibility of help if one fell in. But Alice seemed confident. Sometimes when I stepped in her tracks the ground was firm, at others oily black water seeped in to fill the depressions. Our progress seemed slow and I was surprised when, looking up, I saw we were almost at the knoll, the ruins of tumbled stone only fifty yards away. Alice stopped.
'We need to go up on the knoll, then another path leads down to the river. It is more dangerous on that side,
