Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  WE LEFT AT first light, before the village woke. I was still in sombre mood and we said little. There had been a hard frost, turning the road and trees white, but mercifully there was still no snow as we made our way out of the village, back into the narrow lane between the high tree-lined banks.

  We rode all morning and into the early afternoon, until at last the woodland thinned and we came to a country of tilled fields with, a little way ahead, the slope of the South Downs. We followed a pathway up the hillside, where stringy looking sheep grazed. At the top we saw, below us, the sea, rolling in slow grey waves. To our right a tidal river cut through the low hills, reaching the sea through a great swathe of marshland. Bordering the marsh was a small town, and a mile off stood a great complex of buildings in ancient yellow stone, dominated by a great Norman church almost as large as a cathedral and surrounded by a high enclosing wall.

  ‘The monastery of Scarnsea,’ I said.

  ‘ “The Lord has brought us safe through our tribulations,” ’ Mark quoted.

  ‘I think we have more of those ahead,’ I replied. We led the tired horses down the hill, just as a light snow began to blow in from the sea.

  Chapter Four

  WE GUIDED THE HORSES carefully down the hill to where a road led into the town. They were nervous, shying away from the snowflakes brushing their faces. Happily, the snow stopped as we arrived.

  ‘Shall we call on the Justice?’ Mark asked.

  ‘No, we must reach the monastery today; if the snow starts again we could have to stay the night here.’

  We made our way down Scarnsea’s cobbled main street, where the top storeys of ancient houses overhung the road, keeping to one side to avoid the emptying of pisspots. We noticed that the plaster and timbers of many houses were decayed, and the shops seemed poor places. The few people about gave us incurious glances.

  We reached the town square. On three sides more dilapidated-looking houses stood, but the fourth consisted of a wide stone wharf. Once no doubt it had fronted the sea, but now it faced the mud and reeds of the marsh, sullen and desolate under the grey sky and giving off a mingled smell of salt and rot. A canal, large enough only for a small boat, had been cut through the mud and stretched in a long ribbon to the sea, a steely band a mile off. Out on the marsh we saw a train of donkeys roped together while a group of men shored up the canal bank with stones from panniers on the animals’ backs.

  There had evidently been recent entertainment, for on the far side of the square a little knot of women stood conversing by the town stocks, round which lay a mess of rotten fruit and vegetables. Sitting on a stool with her feet clamped in the stocks was a plump middle-aged woman of the poorer sort, her clothing a mess of burst eggs and pears. She wore a triangular cap with ‘S’ for ‘scold’ daubed on it. She looked cheerful enough now, as she took a cup of ale from one of the women, but her face was bruised and swollen and her blackened eyes half-shut. Seeing us, she raised her tankard and essayed a grin. A little group of giggling children ran into the square, carrying old rotten cabbages, but one of the women waved them off.

  ‘Go away,’ she called in an accent as thick and guttural as the villagers’ had been. ‘Goodwife Thomas has learnt her lesson and will give her husband peace. She’ll be let out in an hour. Enough!’

  The children retreated, calling insults from a safe distance.

  ‘They have mild enough ways down here, it seems,’ Mark observed. I nodded. In the London stocks it is common enough for sharp stones to be thrown, taking out teeth and eyes.

  We rode out of town towards the monastery. The road ran alongside the reeds and stagnant pools of the marsh. I marvelled that there were pathways through such a foul mire, but there must be or the men and animals we had seen could not have found their way.

  ‘Scarnsea was once a prosperous seaport,’ I observed. ‘That marshland has built up from silt and sand in a hundred years or so. No wonder the town is poor now; that canal would barely take a fishing boat.’

  ‘How do they live?’

  ‘Fishing and farming. Smuggling too, I daresay, from France. They’ll still have to pay their rents and dues to the monastery to keep those lazy drones of monks. Scarnsea port was given as a prize to one of William the Conqueror’s knights, who granted land to the Benedictines and had the monastery built. Paid for with English taxes, of course.’

  A peal of bells sounded from the direction of the monastery, loud in the still air.

  ‘They’ve seen us coming,’ Mark said with a laugh.

  ‘They’d need good eyes. Unless it’s one of their miracles. God’s wounds, those bells are loud.’

  The tolling continued as we approached the walls, the noise reverberating through my skull. I was tired and my back had pained me increasingly as the day wore on, so that now I rode slumped over Chancery’s broad back. I pulled myself upright; I needed to establish a presence at the monastery from the start. Only now did I appreciate the full extent of the place. The walls, faced with flints set in plaster, were twelve feet high. The enclosure reached back from the road to the very edge of the marsh. A little way along there was a large Norman gatehouse, and as we watched a cart laden with barrels and led by two big shire horses rattled out onto the road. We reined in our horses, and it rumbled past us towards the town, the driver touching his cap to us.

  ‘Beer,’ I noted.

  ‘Empty barrels?’ Mark asked.

  ‘No, full ones. The monastery brewhouse has a monopoly in supplying the town’s beer. They can set the price. It’s in the founding charter.’

  ‘So if anyone gets drunk, it’s on holy beer?’

  ‘It’s common enough. The Norman founders kept the monks comfortable in return for prayers for their souls in perpetuity. Everyone was happy, except those who paid for it all. Thank God, those bells have stopped.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Now, come. Don’t say anything, take your lead from me.’

  We rode up to the gatehouse, a solid affair faced with carvings of heraldic beasts. The gates were closed. Looking up, I glimpsed a face peering down from the window of the gatekeeper’s house on the first floor, quickly withdrawn. I dismounted and banged on a small side gate set in the wall. After a few moments it opened to reveal a tall, burly man with a head as bald as an egg, wearing a greasy leather apron. He glared at us.

  ‘Wod’ya want?’

  ‘I am the king’s commissioner. Kindly take us to the abbot.’ I spoke coldly.

  He looked at us suspiciously. ‘We’re expecting nobody. This is an enclosed monastery. You got papers?’

  I reached into my robe and thrust my papers at him. ‘The Monastery of St Donatus the Ascendant of Scarnsea is a Benedictine house. It is not an enclosed order, people may come and go at the abbot’s pleasure. Or perhaps we are at the wrong monastery,’ I added sarcastically. The churl gave me a sharp look as he glanced at the papers - it was clear he could not read - before handing them back.

  ‘You’ve made them richer by a couple of smears, fellow. What’s your name?’

  ‘Bugge,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll have ye taken to Master Abbot, sirs.’ He stood aside and we led the horses through, finding ourselves in a broad space under the pillars supporting the gatehouse.

  ‘Please wait.’

  I nodded, and he stomped off and left us.

  I passed under the pillars and looked into the courtyard. Ahead stood the great monastery church, solidly built of white stone now yellow with age. Like all the other buildings it was of French limestone, built in the Norman way with wide windows, quite unlike the contemporary style of high narrow windows and arches reaching to the heavens. Big as it was, three hundred feet long and with twin towers a hundred feet high, the church gave an impression of squat power, rooted to the earth.

  To the left, against the far wall, stood the usual outbuildings - stables, mason’s workshop, brewery. The courtyard was full of the sort of activity familiar to me from Lichfield: tradesmen and servants bustling to and fro and talking business with monks in th
e shaved heads and black habits of the Benedictines; habits of fine wool, I noticed, with good leather shoes showing underneath. The ground was packed earth, littered with straw. Big lurcher dogs ran everywhere barking and pissing against the walls. As with all those places, the atmosphere of the outer court was of a business rather than an enclosed refuge from the world.

  To the right of the church the inner wall separated off the claustral buildings, where the monks lived and prayed. Against the far wall stood a separate, one-storey building with a fine herb garden before it, plants staked out and carefully labelled. That, I guessed, would be the infirmary.

  ‘Well, Mark,’ I asked quietly, ‘what do you think of a monastic house?’

  He kicked out at one of the big dogs, which had approached us with raised hackles. It backed off a little, to stand barking angrily. ‘I had not expected anything so large. It looks as if it could support two hundred men in a siege.’

  ‘Well done. It was built to provide for a hundred monks and a hundred servants. Now everything - buildings, lands, local monopolies - supports just thirty monks and sixty servants, according to the Comperta, on the fat of the land.’

  ‘They’ve noticed us, sir,’ he murmured, and indeed the cur’s continued barking had drawn eyes from all over the courtyard - unwelcoming eyes, quickly averted as people whispered to each other. A tall, thin monk, leaning on a crutch by the church wall, was staring fixedly at us. His white habit with its long scapular in front contrasted with the plain black of the Benedictines.

  ‘A Carthusian, unless I’m mistaken,’ I said.

  ‘I thought the Carthusian houses were all closed, with half the monks executed for treason.’

  ‘They were. What’s he doing here?’

  There was a cough at my elbow. The gatekeeper had returned with a stocky monk of around forty. The fringe round his tonsure was brown streaked with grey and he had a hard, strong-featured, ruddy face, whose lines were softened with the sags and pouches of good living. A badge of office showing a key was sewn onto the breast of his habit. Behind him stood a nervous-looking red-haired boy in a novice’s grey robe.

  ‘All right, Bugge,’ the newcomer said in the harsh clear accent of the Scots, ‘back to your duties.’ The gatekeeper reluctantly turned away.

  ‘I am the prior, Brother Mortimus of Kelso.’

  ‘Where is the abbot?’

  ‘I fear he is out just now. I am his second in command, responsible for the daily administration of St Donatus.” He gave us a keen stare. ‘You have come in response to Dr Goodhaps’s message? We have had no messenger to tell us you were coming, I fear there are no rooms ready.’ I took a step back, for a ripe odour came from him. I knew from my own education by the monks how rigidly they clung to the old notion that washing was unhealthy, bathing only half a dozen times a year.

  ‘Lord Cromwell sent us at once. I am Master Matthew Shardlake, appointed commissioner to investigate the events reported in Dr Goodhaps’s letter.’

  He bowed. ‘I welcome ye to St Donatus Monastery. I apologize for our gatekeeper’s manners, but the injunctions require us to keep as separate as possible from the world.’

  ‘Our business is urgent, sir,’ I said sharply. ‘Kindly tell us, is Robin Singleton truly dead?’

  The prior’s face set and he crossed himself. ‘He is. Struck down most foully by an unknown assailant. A terrible thing.’

  ‘Then we must see the abbot at once.’

  ‘I will take ye to his house. He should be back shortly. I pray ye may cast light on what has happened here. Bloodshed on consecrated ground, and worse.’ He shook his head and then, with a complete change of manner, turned and snapped at the boy, who was staring at us with wide eyes. ‘Whelplay, the horses! Stable them!’

  He seemed scarcely more than a child, thin and frail-looking, looking more like sixteen than the eighteen necessary to qualify for the novitiate. I removed the pannier containing my papers, handing it to Mark, and the boy led the animals away. After a few paces he turned and looked back at us, and in so doing he slipped in a mess of dog turds and went over backwards, landing on the earth with a crash. The horses stirred anxiously and there was a ripple of laughter round the courtyard. Prior Mortimus’s face reddened with anger. He crossed to the boy, who was pulling himself to his feet, and pushed him over to land again in the dog mess, bringing more laughter.

  ‘God’s wounds, Whelplay, you are an oaf,’ the prior shouted. ‘Would ye have the king’s commissioner’s horses running loose in the courtyard?’

  ‘No, Master Prior,’ the boy replied in a trembling voice. ‘I beg pardon.’

  I stepped forward, taking Chancery’s reins with one hand and offering my other arm to help the boy up, avoiding the dog shit on his robe.

  ‘The horses will panic with all this disturbance,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Do not distress yourself, lad; such accidents happen to everyone.’ I handed him the reins and with a glance at the prior’s face, which had gone red with anger, he led the animals away. I turned back to the prior. ‘Now, sir, if you would lead the way.’

  The Scotsman glared at me. His face was puce now. ‘With respect, sir, I am responsible for discipline in this house. The king has ordered many changes in our life here, and our younger brethren especially need to be taught obedience.’

  ‘You have problems in getting the brethren to obey Lord Cromwell’s new injunctions?’

  ‘No, sir, I do not. So long as I am allowed to use discipline.’

  ‘For slipping in a dog’s mess?’ I said mildly. ‘Would it not be better to discipline those dogs, keep them out of the yard?’

  The prior looked ready to argue, then suddenly let out a harsh bark of laughter.

  ‘You’re right, sir, but the abbot won’t have the dogs shut up. He likes them kept fit for when he goes hunting.’ As he spoke I watched the colour of his face fading from purple to its previous red. I reflected that he must be a man of unusually high choler.

  ‘Hunting. I wonder what St Benedict would have said to that?’

  ‘The abbot has his own rules,’ the prior said meaningfully.

  He led us past the row of outbuildings. Ahead I saw a fine two-storey house set in a rose garden, a well-built gentleman’s residence which would not have looked out of place in Chancery Lane. We passed the stables and through the open doors I saw the boy leading Chancery into a stall. He turned, giving me a strange, intent look. We passed the brewery and the forge, whose red glow looked inviting in the cold. Next to it was a large outhouse with blocks of stone, carved and ornamented, visible through the open doors. Outside a trestle table was drawn up, on which plans had been laid out, and a grey-bearded man in a mason’s apron stood with arms folded beside two monks who were arguing intently.

  ‘It c-cannot be done, Brother,’ the older monk said firmly. He was a short, plump man of around forty, with a fringe of curly black hair beneath his tonsure, a round pale face and hard little dark eyes. Fat little fingers waved over the plans. ‘If we use Caen stone it w-will exhaust your entire annual budget for the next three years.’

  ‘It can’t be done cheaper,’ the mason said. ‘Not if it’s done properly.’

  ‘It must be done properly,’ the other monk said emphatically in a deep, rich voice. ‘Otherwise the whole symmetry of the church is destroyed, the eye would immediately be led to the different facing. If you can’t agree, Master Bursar, I must take it to the abbot.’

  ‘Take it then, it’ll do you no good.’ He broke off as he saw us, looked at us sharply with his black button eyes, then bent his face to the plans. The other monk studied us. He was tall and strongly built, in early middle age and with a deeply lined, handsome face and untidy yellow hair sticking out beneath his tonsure like a twist of straw. His eyes were large, a clear pale blue. He cast a lingering look at Mark, who returned his gaze coldly, then bowed to the prior as we passed, receiving a curt nod in return.

  ‘Interesting,’ I murmured to Mark. ‘You’d think there was no t
hreat hanging over this place. They’re talking of renovating the church as though it would all go on for ever.’

  ‘Did you see the look that tall monk gave me?’

  ‘Yes. That was interesting too.’

  We were passing the far wall of the church, nearly at the house, when a white-robed figure stepped from behind a buttress into our path. It was the Carthusian we had seen in the courtyard. The prior stepped quickly in front of him.

  ‘Brother Jerome,’ he called harshly, ‘no trouble now! Back to your prayers!’