Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘But you paint, sir.’

  ‘If ever I find time I do. But I try in my poor way to show people directly and clearly, like Master Holbein. Art should resolve the mysteries of our being, not occlude them further.’

  ‘Did you not wear such conceits in your youth?’

  ‘There was not such a fashion for it. Once or twice perhaps.’ A phrase from the Bible came to me. I quoted it a little sadly. ‘ “When I was a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put aside childish things.” Well, I must go up, I have much reading to do.’ I rose stiffly and he came round to help me up.

  ‘I can manage,’ I said irritably, wincing as a spasm of pain went through my back. ‘Wake me at first light. Get Joan to have a good breakfast ready.’

  I took a candle and mounted the stairs. Puzzles more complex than designs on buttons lay ahead, and any help that study of the honest English printed word could give, I needed.

  Chapter Three

  WE LEFT AT DAYBREAK the following morning; the second of November, All Souls’ Day. After an evening’s reading I had slept well and felt in a better mood; I began to feel a sense of excitement. Once I had been a pupil of the monks; then I had become the enemy of all they stood for. Now I was in a position to delve into the heart of their mysteries and corruption.

  I chivvied and cajoled a sleepy Mark through his breakfast and out into the open air. Overnight the weather had changed; a dry, bitterly cold wind from the east had set in, freezing the muddy ruts in the road. It brought tears to our eyes as we set out, swathed in our warmest furs, thick gloves on our hands and the hoods of our riding coats drawn tight round our faces. From my belt hung my dagger, usually worn only for ornamentation but sharpened this morning on the kitchen whetstone. Mark wore his sword, a two-foot blade of London steel with a razor’s edge bought with his own savings for his swordsmanship classes.

  He made a cradle of his hands to help me mount Chancery, for I find it hard to swing myself into the saddle. He mounted Redshanks, his sturdy roan, and we set off, the horses laden with heavy panniers containing clothes and my papers. Mark still looked half-asleep. He pushed back his hood and scratched at his unkempt hair, wincing at the wind that ruffled it.

  ‘By God’s son, it’s cold.’

  ‘You’ve had too much soft living in warm offices,’ I said. ‘Your blood needs thickening.’

  ‘Do you think it will snow, sir?’

  ‘I hope not. Snow could hold us up for days.’

  We rode through a London that was just awakening and onto London Bridge. Glancing downriver past the fierce bulk of the Tower, I saw a great ocean-going carrack moored by the Isle of Dogs, its heavy prow and high masts a misty shape where grey river met grey sky. I pointed it out to Mark.

  ‘I wonder where that has come from.’

  ‘Men voyage nowadays to lands our fathers never dreamt of.’

  ‘And bring back wonders.’ I thought of the strange bird. ‘New wonders and maybe new deceits.’ We rode on across the bridge. At the far end a smashed skull lay by the piers. Picked clean by the birds, it had fallen from its pole and the pieces would lie there till souvenir hunters, or witches looking for charms, fetched them away. The St Barbaras in Cromwell’s chamber, and now this relic of earthly justice. I thought uneasily on omens, then chided myself for superstition.

  FOR SOME WAY south of London the road was good enough, passing through the fields that fed the capital, now brown and bare. The sky had settled to a still milky white and the weather held. At noon we stopped for dinner near Eltham, then shortly afterwards we crested the North Downs and saw laid out before us the ancient forest of the Weald, bare treetops dotted with the occasional evergreen stretching to the misty horizon.

  The road became narrower, set beneath steep wooded banks half-choked with fallen leaves, little trackways leading off to remote hamlets. Only the occasional carter passed us. By late afternoon we reached the little market town of Tonbridge and turned south. We kept a sharp lookout for robbers, but all we saw was a herd of deer foraging in a lane; as we rounded a corner the silly creatures clambered up the bank and disappeared into the forest.

  Dusk was falling when we heard the tolling of a church bell through the trees. Turning another bend, we found ourselves in the single street of a hamlet, a poor place of thatched wattle houses but with a fine Norman church and, next to it, an inn. All the windows of the church were filled with candles, a rich glow filtering through the stained glass. The bell tolled, on and on.

  ‘The All Souls’ service,’ Mark observed.

  ‘Yes, the whole village will be in church praying for the relief of their dead in purgatory.’

  We rode slowly down the street, little blond children peeping suspiciously from doorways. Few adults were about. The sound of Mass being chanted reached us from the open doors of the church.

  In those days All Souls’ Day was one of the greatest events in the calendar. In every church parishioners met to hear Masses and say prayers to help the passage through purgatory of kin and friends. Already the ceremony was stripped of royal authority, and soon it would be forbidden. Some said it was cruel to deprive people of comfort and remembrance. But it is surely a gentler thing to know that one’s kin are, according to God’s will, either in heaven or hell, than to believe they are in purgatory, a place of torment and pain they must endure perhaps for centuries.

  We dismounted stiffly at the inn, tying our horses to the rail. The building was a larger version of the others; mud and wattle with the plaster falling away in places and a high thatched roof reaching down to the first-floor windows.

  Inside a fire burned in a circular grate in the middle of the floor in the old manner, as much smoke filling the room as escaped through the round chimney above. Through the gloom a few bearded ancients peered curiously at us from their dice. A fat man in an apron approached, keen eyes taking in our expensive furs. I asked for a room and a meal, which he offered us for sixpence. Struggling to follow his thick, guttural accent, I beat him down to a groat. Having confirmed the way to Scarnsea and ordered warm ale, I took a seat by the fire while Mark went out to supervise the stabling of the horses.

  I was glad when he rejoined me, for I was tired of being stared at by the clutch of old men. I had nodded to them but they turned their heads away.

  ‘They’re a hard-eyed bunch,’ Mark whispered.

  ‘They won’t see many travellers. And no doubt they believe hunchbacks bring bad luck. Oh come, it’s what most people think. I’ve seen men cross themselves at my approach often enough, for all my fine clothes.’

  We ordered supper and were served a greasy mutton stew with heavy ale. The sheep, Mark grumbled, was long dead. In the course of the meal a group of villagers arrived, in their best clothes, the Hallowtide services apparently over. They sat together, talking in sombre voices. Occasionally they glanced over at us, and we had more nosy looks and hostile faces.

  I noticed that three men in a far corner also seemed to be ignored by the villagers. They were rough looking, with ragged clothes and unkempt beards. I saw them examining us; not staring openly like the villagers but with sidelong looks.

  ‘See that tall fellow?’ Mark whispered. ‘I’d swear that’s the rags of a monk’s robe.’

  The largest man, an ugly giant with a broken nose, wore a ragged shift of thick black wool and I saw that indeed it had a Benedictine cowl at the back. The innkeeper, who alone had been civil to us, appeared to refill our glasses.

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked quietly, ‘who are those three?’

  He grunted. ‘Abbey-lubbers from the priory dissolved last year. You know how it is, sir. The king says the little houses of prayer must go, and the monks are given places elsewhere, but the servants are put out on the road. Those fellows have been begging about here this last twelvemonth - there’s no labour for them. See that skinny fellow, he’s had his ears cropped already. Be careful of them.’

  I glanced round and saw that one of them, a tall thin fellow wi
th wild yellow hair, had no ears, only holes with scar tissue around, the penalty for forgery. Doubtless he had been involved in some local enterprise of clipping coins and using the gold to make poor fakes.

  ‘You allow them here,’ I said.

  He grunted. ‘It’s not their fault they were thrown out. Them and hundreds more.’ Then, feeling perhaps he had said too much, the innkeeper hurried away.

  ‘I think this might be a good time to retire,’ I said, taking a candle from the table. Mark nodded, and we downed the last of our ale and headed for the stairs. As we passed the abbey servants my coat accidentally brushed the big man’s robe.

  ‘You’ll have bad luck now, Edwin,’ one of the others said loudly. ‘You’ll need to touch a dwarf to bring your luck back.’

  They cackled with laughter. I felt Mark turn and laid my arm on his.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No trouble here. Go up!’ I half-pushed him up a rickety wooden staircase to where our bags were set out on truckle beds in a room under the thatch, whose population of rats could be heard scurrying away as we entered. We sat down and pulled off our boots.

  Mark was angry. ‘Why should we suffer the insults of these hinds?’

  ‘We are in hostile country. The Weald people are still papists, the priest in that church probably tells them to pray for the death of the king and the pope’s return every Sunday.’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t been in these parts before.’ Mark stretched out his feet to the broad iron chimney pipe, which ran up through the centre of the room to the roof, providing the only warmth.

  ‘Careful of chilblains. I haven’t, but Lord Cromwell’s intelligencers send back reports from every shire since the rebellion. I have copies in my bag.’

  He turned to me. ‘Do you not find it wearying sometimes? Always having to think when one talks to a stranger, lest something slips an enemy could turn to treason. It did not used to be like this.’

  ‘This is the worst time. Things will improve.’

  ‘When the monasteries are down?’

  ‘Yes. Because Reform will finally be safe. And because then Lord Cromwell will have enough money to make the realm secure from invasion and do much for the people. He has great plans.’

  ‘By the time the Augmentations men have had their cut, will there be enough left even to buy those churls downstairs new cloaks?’

  ‘There will, Mark.’ I spoke earnestly. ‘The large monasteries have untold wealth. And what do they give to the poor, despite their duty of charity? I used to see the destitute crowding round the gates on dole days at Lichfield, children in rags pushing and kicking for the few farthings handed through the bars in the gate. I felt ashamed going into school on those days. Such a school as it was. Well, now there’ll be proper schools in every parish, paid for by the king’s Exchequer.’

  He said nothing, only raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  ‘God’s death, Mark,’ I snapped, suddenly irritated by his scepticism. ‘Take your feet away from that chimney. They stink worse than that sheep.’

  He clambered into bed and lay looking up at the thatched vault of the roof. ‘I pray you are right, sir. But Augmentations has made me doubt men’s charity.’

  ‘There is godly leaven in the unregenerate lump. It works its way, slowly. And Lord Cromwell is part of it, for all his hardness. Have faith,’ I added gently. Yet even as I spoke I remembered Lord Cromwell’s grim pleasure as he talked of burning a priest with his own images, saw him again shaking the casket containing the child’s skull.

  ‘Faith will move mountains?’ Mark said after a moment.

  ‘God’s nails,’ I snapped, ‘in my day it was the young who were idealistic and the old cynical. I’m too tired to argue further. Goodnight. ’ I began to undress; hesitantly, for I do not like people to see my disability. But Mark, sensitively, turned his back as we took off our clothes and donned our nightshifts. Wearily, I climbed into my sagging bed and pinched out the candle.

  I said my prayers. But for a long time I lay awake in the darkness, listening to Mark’s even breathing and the renewed scrabblings of the rats in the thatch as they crept back to the centre of the room, near the chimney where it was warmest.

  I HAD MADE light of it, as I always did, but the looks the villagers gave my hump, and the abbey-lubber’s remark, had sent a familiar stab of pain through me. It had settled miserably in my guts, crushing my earlier enthusiasm. All my life I had tried to shrug off such insults, though when I was younger I often felt like raging and screaming. I had seen enough cripples whose minds had been made as twisted as their bodies by the weight of insult and mockery they suffered; glowering at the world from beneath knitted brows and turning to swear foul abuse at the children who called after them in the streets. It was better to try and ignore it, get on with such life as God allowed.

  I remembered one occasion, though, when that had been impossible. It was a moment that had defined my life. I was fifteen, a pupil at the cathedral school in Lichfield. As a senior scholar it was my duty to attend and sometimes serve at Sunday Mass. That seemed a wonderful thing after a long week at my books, struggling with the Greek and Latin poorly taught by Brother Andrew, a fat cathedral monk with a fondness for the bottle.

  The cathedral would be brightly lit, candles flickering before the altar, the statues and the gloriously painted rood screen. I preferred those days when I did not serve the priest but sat with the congregation. Beyond the screen the priest would intone Mass in the Latin I was coming to understand, his words echoing as the congregation made their responses.

  Now that the old Mass is long gone it is hard to convey the sense of mystery it communicated: the incense, the rising Latin cadences, then the ringing of the censing bell as the bread and wine were elevated and, everyone believed, transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the priest’s mouth.

  In the last year my head had become increasingly filled with godly fervour. Watching the faces of the congregation, quiet and respectful, I had come to see the Church as a great community binding the living and the dead, transforming people if only for a few hours into the obedient flock of the Great Shepherd. I felt called to serve this flock; and as a priest I could be a guide to my fellows, earn their respect.

  Brother Andrew soon disabused me of that when, trembling with the import of what I had to say, I sought an interview with him in his little office behind the schoolroom. It was the end of the day and he was red-eyed as he studied a parchment on his desk, his black habit stained with ink and food. Haltingly I told him I believed I had a vocation and I wished to be considered as a trainee for ordination.

  I expected him to question me about my faith, but he only raised a pudgy hand dismissively.

  ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you can never be a priest. Do you not realize that? You should not be taking up my time with this.’ His white eyebrows creased together in annoyance. He had not shaved; white stubble stood out like frost on his fat red chaps.

  ‘I don’t understand, Brother. Why not?’

  He sighed, filling my face with his alcoholic breath. ‘Master Shardlake, you know from the Book of Genesis that God made us in his own image, do you not?’

  ‘Of course, Brother.’

  ‘To serve his Church you must conform to that image. Anyone with a visible affliction, even a withered limb, let alone a great crooked humpback like yours, can never be a priest. How could you show yourself as an intercessor between ordinary sinful humanity and the majesty of God, when your form is so much less than theirs?’

  I felt as though suddenly encased in ice. ‘That cannot be right. That is cruel.’

  Brother Andrew’s face went puce. ‘Boy,’ he shouted, ‘do you question the teachings of Holy Church, time out of mind? You that come here asking to be ordained as a priest! What sort of priest, a Lollard heretic?’

  I looked at him sitting in his dirty food-stained robe, his stubbly face red and frowning. ‘So I should look like you, should I?’ I burst out before I had time to
think.

  With a roar he got up, landing me a great clout on the ear. ‘You little crookback churl, get out!’

  I ran from the room, my head singing. He was too fat to pursue (he died of a great seizure the next year) and I fled from the cathedral and limped home through the darkening lanes, bereft. In sight of home I sat on a stile, watching a spring sunset whose green fecundity seemed to mock me. I felt that if the Church would not have me I had nowhere to go, I was alone.

  And then, as I sat there in the dusk, Christ spoke to me. That is what happened, so there is no other way to put it. I heard a voice inside my head, it came from inside me but was not mine. ‘You are not alone,’ it said and suddenly a great warmth, a sense of love and peace, infused my being. I do not know how long I sat there, breathing deeply, but that moment transformed my life. Christ himself had comforted me against the words of the Church that was supposed to be his. I had never heard that voice before, and though I hoped, as I knelt praying that night and in later weeks and years, that I would hear it again, I never have. But perhaps once in a lifetime is all we are given. Many are not given even that.