Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘God’s blood, what’s happening?’ I called out to Mark.

  ‘He’s gone stark mad, sir!’

  ‘Spread out! Catch him!’ Brother Guy shouted. His face was grim as he nodded to Alice, who moved to one side, spreading her arms. Mark and Brother Guy followed her example and they closed in on the novice, who had come to a halt and stood staring wildly around. The blind monk had woken and sat twisting his head anxiously around, his mouth agape. ‘What is it?’ he asked tremulously. ‘Brother Guy?’

  Then a dreadful thing happened. It seemed to me that Whelplay caught sight of me and at once bent his trunk forward in imitation of my twisted gait. Not only that, but he stretched forth his arms and began waving them to and fro, seeming to waggle his fingers mockingly. It is a mannerism I have when I am excited, so those who have seen me in court have told me. But how could Whelplay know such a thing? I was taken back again to those schooldays I had been reflecting on, when cruel children would imitate my movements, and I confess that as I watched the novice staggering about, bent and gesticulating, the hair rose on my neck.

  I was brought to my senses by a shout from Mark. ‘Help us! Catch him, sir, for pity’s sake, or he’ll get out!’ My heart thumping, I too spread my arms and approached the novice. I looked into his eyes as I came closer and they were terrible to see, the pupils twice the normal size, staring wildly, without recognition even as he performed his mocking stagger. Brother Gabriel’s talk of satanic forces came back to me and I thought with a jolt of sudden terror that the boy was possessed.

  As the four of us closed on him he made a sudden lurch to the side and disappeared through a half-open door.

  ‘He’s in the bath house!’ Brother Guy called. ‘There’s no way out of there. Be careful, the floor is slippery.’ He ran in, Alice just after him. Mark and I stared at each other then followed him inside.

  The bath house was dim, only a faint milky light coming through a high window half-choked with snow. It was a small, square room with a tiled floor and a sunken bath in the middle, perhaps four feet deep. Brushes and scraping knives stood in one corner, and there was a pervasive musty smell of unwashed skin. I heard running water and looking down saw that the stream actually ran through a culvert in the bottom of the bath. Simon Whelplay stood in the far corner, still crouched over, trembling in his white nightshift. I stood by the door while Brother Guy approached him from one side, Mark and Alice from the other. Alice stretched out an arm to him.

  ‘Come, Simon, it’s Alice. We won’t harm you.’ I had to admire her dauntlessness; not many women would have approached such a frightful apparition so calmly.

  The novice turned, his face twisted into an agonized expression, almost unrecognizable. He stared at her unseeingly for a moment, then his eyes turned to Mark beside her. He pointed a skinny finger and shouted in a cracked, hoarse voice quite unlike his own, ‘Keep away! You are the Devil’s man in your bright raiment! I see them now, the devils swarming through the air as thick as motes, they are everywhere, even here!’ He covered his eyes with his hands, then staggered and suddenly fell forward into the bath. I heard his arm break with a crack as it hit the tiles. He lay still, his body sprawled across the culvert. Freezing water washed around him.

  Brother Guy lowered himself into the bath. We stood on the edge as he turned the novice face up. His eyes had rolled back into his head, making a ghastly contrast with his still livid face. The infirmarian felt his neck and then let out a sigh. He looked up at us. ‘He is dead.’

  He rose and crossed himself. Alice let out a wail, then collapsed against Mark’s chest, bursting into a frenzy of choking sobs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MARK AND BROTHER GUY carefully lifted Simon’s body out of the bath and carried it back into the infirmary hall. Brother Guy took the shoulders, and a pale-faced Mark the bare white feet. I followed behind with Alice, who after her brief outburst of sobbing had regained her usual composed demeanour.

  ‘What is happening?’ The blind monk was on his feet, waving his hands before him, his face piteous with fear. ‘Brother Guy? Alice?’

  ‘It is all right, Brother,’ Alice said soothingly. ‘There has been an accident, but all is safe now.’ I wondered again at her control.

  The body was laid in Brother Guy’s infirmary, under the Spanish crucifix. He covered it with a sheet, his face set hard.

  I took a deep breath. My mind was still reeling, and not just with shock at the novice’s death. What had passed just before had shaken me to my bones. The echoes of childhood torments have great power, even when not brought to mind in such an inexplicable and horrifying way.

  ‘Brother Guy,’ I said, ‘I never met that boy before yesterday, yet when he saw me he appeared to - to mock me, imitating my bent posture and - certain gestures I sometimes make in court, waving my hands. It seemed to me l-like something devilish.’ I cursed myself, I was stammering like the bursar.

  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 state by excess of discipline.’

  The prior looked at me boldly. ‘Sir, the vicar general wants order brought back to the monasteries. He is right, the former laxity placed souls in peril. If I failed with Simon Whelplay it is because I was not severe enough; or perhaps his heart was already too cankered. But I say with Lord Cromwell, only by stern discipline shall the orders be reformed. I do not regret what I did.’

  ‘What do you say, my lord Abbot?’

  ‘It is possible your severity went too far in this case, Mortimus. Brother Guy, you and I and Prior Mortimus will meet to consider matters further. A committee of investigation. Yes, a committee.’ The word seemed to reassure him.

  Brother Guy sighed deeply. ‘First I should examine his poor remains.’

  ‘Yes,’ the abbot said. ‘Do that.’ His confidence seemed to be returning as he turned back to me. ‘Master Shardlake, I must tell you that Brother Gabriel has been to see me. He remembers seeing lights out on the marsh in the days before Commissioner Singleton was killed. It seems to me our local smugglers may have been responsible for the murder. They are godless people: if you break the law’s commandments, it is but a further step to breaking those of God.’

  ‘Yes, I have been out to look at the marsh. It is something I shall raise with the Justice tomorrow; it is one line of enquiry.’

  ‘I think it is the answer.’

  I made no reply. The abbot went on. ‘For the moment, it might be best simply to tell the brethren that Simon died as a result of his illness. If you agree, Commissioner.’

  I thought a moment. I did not wish to spread more panic abroad. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I will have to write to his family. I will tell them the same—’

  ‘Yes, better than to tell them the prior is sure their son is roasting in hell,’ I snapped, suddenly disgusted by them both. Prior Mortimus opened his mouth to argue further, but the abbot interjected.

  ‘Come, Mortimus, we must go. We must arrange for another grave to be dug.’ He bowed and took his leave, the prior following with a last challenging stare at me.

  ‘Brother Guy,’ Mark said, ‘what do you think killed that boy?’

  ‘I am going to find out. I will have to open him.’ He shook his head. ‘It is never an easy thing to do with one you have known. But it must be done now, while he is fresh.’ He bowed his head and closed his eyes a moment in prayer, then took a deep breath. ‘If you will excuse me.’

  I nodded, and the infirmarian left, his footsteps padding slowly towards the dispensary. Mark and I sat in silence for a few moments. The colour was starting to return to his cheeks, but he was still paler than I had ever seen him. I still felt as though stunned, although at least my shaking had stopped. Alice appeared, bearing a cup o
f steaming liquid.

  ‘I have prepared your infusion, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And the two clerks from the counting house are in the hall, with a great pile of books.’

  ‘What? Ah, yes. Mark, would you see they are taken to our room?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ As he opened the door I heard a sound of sawing from the direction of the dispensary. He shut it again, and I closed my eyes with relief. I took a sip of the liquid Alice had brought. It had a heavy, musky taste.