Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  The prior looked aghast. ‘But sir, he said nothing against the king’s supremacy.’

  Mark leaned across urgently. ‘Surely, sir, those words weren’t treason?’

  ‘Do as I command.’ I stared at Abbot Fabian.

  ‘Do it, Mortimus, for mercy’s sake.’

  The prior set his lips, but rose from the table and marched out. I sat a moment bowed in thought, aware of every eye in the place upon me, then rose to follow, gesturing Mark to stay behind. I reached the refectory doorway in time to see the prior leading a group of torch-bearing servants out of the kitchen, towards the counting house.

  A hand was suddenly laid on my arm. I whirled round; it was Bugge, his face intent.

  ‘Sir, the messenger has come.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rider from London, he’s here. I’ve never seen a man so covered in mud.’

  I stood a moment, watching as Prior Mortimus banged on the counting-house door. I could not decide whether to follow him in or go to the messenger. I felt my head swim, saw little motes dancing in front of my eyes. I took a deep breath, and turned to Bugge, who was eyeing me curiously.

  ‘Come,’ I said, and led the way back to the gatehouse.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  THE MESSENGER SAT hugging the fire in Bugge’s lodge. Despite the mud that caked him from head to foot I recognized a young man I had seen delivering letters at Cromwell’s office. The vicar general would already know what the gaoler had said.

  He stood up, a little shakily for I could see he was exhausted, and bowed.

  ‘Master Shardlake?’

  I nodded, too tense to speak.

  ‘I am to hand this to you personally.’ He handed me a paper bearing the Tower seal. I turned my back to him and Bugge, broke the seal and read the three lines within. It was as I had thought. I forced my features into composure as I turned to face Bugge, who was staring at me intently. The messenger had slumped back beside the fire.

  ‘Master gatekeeper,’ I said, ‘this man has ridden far. See he has a room with a good fire for the night and victuals if he wants them.’ I turned to the messenger. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Hanfold, sir.’

  ‘There may be a message to take back tomorrow morning. Goodnight. You have done well to ride so fast.’

  I left the gatehouse, crumpling the paper in my pocket, and walked rapidly back across the outer court. I knew what I had to do now and my heart had never been heavier.

  I stopped. Something. A shadow of movement in the corner of my vision. I turned so quickly I almost overbalanced in the slush. It had been by the blacksmith’s lean-to, I was sure, but I could see nothing now.

  ‘Who is there?’ I called out sharply.

  There was no reply, no sound but the steady drip of water as the snow melted from the roofs. The mist was growing thicker. It curled around the buildings, blurring their outlines and making haloes round the dim yellow glow from the windows. My ears alert for any sound, I went on to the infirmary.

  Brother Paul’s bed lay stripped, the blind monk sitting in his chair beside it with bowed head. The fat monk lay asleep. There was nobody else in the hall. Brother Guy’s dispensary was empty too; all the monks must still be at the refectory. Edwig’s arrest would have caused a mighty stir.

  I WENT DOWN the corridor, past my old room, to where I knew Alice’s room was located. There was a strip of candlelight under her door. I knocked and opened it.

  She sat on a truckle bed in the little windowless room, stuffing clothes into a big leather pannier. When she looked up at me there was fear in those large blue eyes. Her strong square face seemed to sag with it. I felt a desperate sorrow.

  ‘You are going on a journey?’ I was surprised at how normal my voice sounded, I had half-expected a croak.

  She said nothing, just sat there with her hands on the straps of the pannier.

  ‘Well, Alice?’ Now my voice did tremble. ‘Alice Fewterer, whose mother’s maiden name was Smeaton?’

  Her face flushed, but still she did not speak.

  ‘Oh Alice, I would give my right hand for this not to be true.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Alice Fewterer, I must arrest you in the king’s name for the foul murder of his commissioner, Robin Singleton.’

  Then she spoke, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘No murder. I did him justice. Justice.’

  ‘To you it must seem so. I am right then, Mark Smeaton was your cousin?’

  She looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed, as though she was calculating something. Then she spoke in clear tones of quiet ferocity such as I hope never to hear again from the mouth of a woman.

  ‘More than my cousin. We were lovers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His father, my mother’s brother, left to seek his fortune in London when he was a boy. My mother never forgave him for leaving the family, but when the man I was to marry died I went to London to claim kin, for all she tried to stop me. There was no work here.’

  ‘And they took you in?’

  ‘John Smeaton and his wife were good people. Good people. They welcomed me into their house and helped me to a position with a London apothecary. That was four years ago, Mark was already a court musician then. Thank God my aunt died from the sweating sickness, at least she was spared what happened.’ Tears appeared in her eyes, but she wiped them away and raised her eyes to my face. Again there was something calculating in them, something I could not fathom.

  ‘But you must know all this, Commissioner -’ I have never heard such contempt put into a single word - ‘or why are you here?’

  ‘I knew nothing for certain till half an hour ago. The sword led me to John Smeaton - no wonder you pleaded with me not to go to London that day by the fish pond - but for a while I could go no further. I was puzzled when the records said John Smeaton left no male relatives, and his estate went to an old woman - your mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have turned over the name of everyone in this house, wondering who could have had the skill and strength to behead a man, and in London I was no further forward. Then I thought, what if John Smeaton had another female relative? All this time I had assumed a man committed the crime, but then I saw there was no reason why a strong young woman could not have done it. And that led me to you,’ I concluded sadly. ‘The message I have just had confirmed that a young woman visited Mark Smeaton in his cell the night before he died, and the description is of you.’ I looked at her and shook my head. ‘It was a grievous sin for a woman to do such a thing.’

  Again her voice was level, though dripping with bitterness. ‘Was it? Was it worse than what he did?’ I marvelled at her control, her steeliness.

  ‘I know what was done to Mark Smeaton,’ I said. ‘Jerome told me some, the rest I learned in London.’

  ‘Jerome? What has he to do with it?’

  ‘Jerome was in the cell next to your cousin the night you visited him. When he came here he must have recognized you. Singleton as well; that was why he called him liar and perjurer. And, of course, when he swore to me he knew of no man here who could have done such a thing, it was a piece of his twisted mockery. He guessed it was you.’

  ‘He said nothing to me.’ She shook her head. ‘He should have done, so few know what truly happened. The evil of what you people did.’

  ‘I did not know the truth about Mark Smeaton, Alice, nor the queen, when I came here. You are right. It was a wicked, cruel thing.’

  Hope appeared in her eyes. ‘Then let me go, sir. All the time you have been here you have puzzled me, you are not a brute like Singleton and Cromwell’s other men. I have only done justice. Please, let me go.’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t. What you did was still murder. I have to take you into custody.’

  She looked at me pleadingly. ‘Sir, if you knew it all. Please listen to me.’

  I should have guessed she wanted to keep me there, but I did not interrupt. This was the explanation of Singleton’s death I had been seeking for so
long.

  ‘Mark Smeaton came to visit his parents as often as he could. He had gone from Cardinal Wolsey’s choir to Anne Boleyn’s household, become her musician. Poor Mark, he was ashamed of his origins, but he still visited his parents. If his head was turned by the splendour of the court that was no wonder. It seduced him as you would have it seduce Mark Poer.’

  ‘That will never happen. You must know that by now.’

  ‘Mark took me to see the outside of the great palaces, Greenwich and Whitehall, but he would never let me in, even after we became lovers. He said we could only meet in secret. I was content. And then one day I came home from my work at the apothecary’s to find Robin Singleton at my widowed uncle’s home with a troop of soldiers, shouting at him, trying to make him say his son had spoken of lying with the queen. When I understood what had happened I ran at Singleton and struck him and the soldiers had to haul me off.’ She frowned. ‘That was when I first knew what anger lay within me. They cast me out, and I do not think John Smeaton told them of my relationship with Mark, or that I was his cousin, or they would have come after me too, to bully me into silence.

  ‘My poor uncle died two days after Mark. I attended the trial, I could see how the jury looked afraid - there was never any doubt about the verdict. I tried to visit Mark in the Tower, but they would not let me see him until a gaoler took pity on me the night before he died. He lay in chains in that awful place, in the rags of his fine clothes.’

  ‘I know. Jerome told me.’

  ‘When Mark was arrested Singleton said if he confessed to sleeping with the queen he would be reprieved by the king’s mercy. He told me that when he was first arrested he had a crazy notion that as he had done no wrong the law would protect him!’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘England’s law is a rack in a cellar! They racked him till his whole world was nothing but a scream. So he confessed, and they gave him two weeks’ life as a cripple while he was tried, then they cut his head off. I saw it, I was in the crowd. I promised him my face would be the last thing he saw.’ She shook her head. ‘There was so much blood. A stream of it shooting through the air. Always there is so much blood.’

  ‘Yes. There is.’ I remembered Jerome saying Smeaton had confessed to lying with many women: Alice’s picture of him was idealized, but I could not tell her that.

  ‘And then Singleton appeared here,’ I said.

  ‘Can you imagine now how I felt that day when I came across the monastery courtyard and saw him arguing with the bursar’s assistant? I had heard there was a commissioner come to visit the abbot, but I had not known it would be him—’

  ‘And you decided to kill him?’

  ‘I had dreamed of killing that evil man so many times. I simply knew it was what I must do. There had to be justice.’

  ‘Often in this world there is not.’

  Her face became cold and set. ‘This time there was.’

  ‘He hadn’t recognized you?’

  She laughed. ‘No. He saw a servant girl carrying a sack, if he noticed me at all. I had been here over a year then, helping Brother Guy. The London apothecary had dismissed me because I was a relative of the Smeatons. I came back to my mother’s. She had a lawyer’s letter and went to London to fetch my uncle’s poor possessions. And then she died - she had a seizure like my uncle - and Copynger evicted me. So I came here.’

  ‘Didn’t the townspeople know of your connection to the Smeatons?’

  ‘It was thirty years since my uncle left and my mother’s name changed when she married. The name was forgotten, and I was not likely to remind anyone. I said I had been away working in Esher for an apothecary who died.’

  ‘You kept the sword.’

  ‘For sentiment. Of a winter’s evening my uncle used to show us some of the moves swordsmen make. I learned a little about balance, steps, angles of force. When I saw Singleton I knew I would use it.’

  ‘By God, madam, you have a fearsome courage.’

  ‘It was easy. I had no keys to the kitchen, but I remembered the story of that old passage.’

  ‘And found it.’

  ‘By looking through all the rooms, yes. Then I wrote an anonymous note to Singleton saying I was an informer, and would meet him in the kitchen in the small hours. I told him I was someone who had a great secret to reveal to him.’ She smiled then, a smile that made me shiver.

  ‘And he would have thought it was from a monk.’

  The smile faded. ‘I knew there would be blood, so I went to the laundry and stole a habit. I had found a key to the laundry in the table drawer in my room when I came here.’

  ‘The key Brother Luke dropped when he was grappling with Orphan Stonegarden. She must have kept it.’

  ‘That poor girl. Better you should look for her killer than Singleton’s.’ She stared at me fixedly. ‘I put on the habit, took the sword, and went through the passage to the kitchen. Brother Guy and I were tending one of the old monks; I said I needed to rest for an hour. It was so easy. I stood behind the cupboard in the kitchen and the moment he stepped past me I struck him.’ She smiled, a smile of terrible fulfilment. ‘I had sharpened the sword, and his head was off with a stroke.’

  ‘Just like Queen Anne Boleyn’s.’

  ‘Just like Mark’s.’ Her expression changed, she frowned. ‘So much blood. I hoped his blood would wash away my anger, but it has not. I still see my cousin’s face in dreams.’

  Then her eyes lit up and she gave a great sigh of relief as a hand grasped my wrist from behind and pulled my arm behind my back, sending my dagger clattering to the floor. Another wrapped itself round my neck. Looking down I saw a knife held to my throat.

  ‘Jerome?’ I croaked.

  ‘No, sir,’ Mark’s voice answered. ‘Do not cry out.’ The knife pressed into my flesh. ‘Go and sit on that bed. Move slowly.’

  I tottered across the room and crumpled upon the truckle bed. Alice stood up and went to Mark’s side, putting her arm round him.

  ‘I thought you would never come. I have kept him talking.’

  Mark closed the door, and then stood balanced on the balls of his feet, his dagger a foot from my throat; in a moment he could pitch forward and slit my gizzard. His face was not cold now, but full of determination. I looked at him. ‘It was you in the courtyard just now? You followed me?’

  ‘Yes. Who else knows, sir?’ Still he called me sir. I almost laughed.

  ‘The messenger was one of Lord Cromwell’s servants. Cromwell will know its contents by now. So, you know what she has done?’

  ‘She told me when we first lay together the day you left for London. I told her you were clever, I saw you drawing closer and we made preparations to leave tonight. If you had arrived a few hours later you would have found us escaped. I wish you had.’

  ‘There is no escape now. Not in England.’

  ‘We shall not be in England. A boat is waiting out on the river to take us to France.’

  ‘The smugglers?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alice said in matter-of-fact tones. ‘I lied to you. My childhood friends never drowned and they remain my friends. There is a French ship waiting out at sea, it is picking up a cargo from the monastery tomorrow night, but they are sending a boat in to collect us tonight.’

  I started. ‘From the monastery? Do you know from whom, or what it is?’

  ‘I do not care. We will wait on the ship till tomorrow, then sail for France.’

  ‘Mark, do you know what this cargo is?’

  ‘No.’ He bit his lip. ‘I am sorry, sir, only Alice and our escape matter to me now.’

  ‘They have no love of English reformers in France.’

  He looked at me with pity. ‘I am no reformer. I never have been. Least of all after what I have learned of how Cromwell works.’

  ‘You are a traitor,’ I told him. ‘False to your king and false to me who treated you as a son.’

  He looked at me pityingly. ‘I am no son to you, sir. I have never agreed with your religion. You would have realized that if you
had ever really listened to what I said instead of treating me as a sounding board for your own opinions.’

  I groaned. ‘I have not deserved this of you. Nor you, Alice.’

  ‘Who knows what anyone deserves?’ Mark said with sudden wildness. ‘There is no justice or order in this world, as you would see if you were not so blind. After what Alice has told me, I know that for certain. I go with Alice, I decided that four days ago.’ And yet as he spoke I saw his face waver, I saw shame and that the affection he had had for me was not quite gone.

  ‘Have you become a papist, then? I am not as blind as you think, Mark, I sometimes wondered what you truly believed. What then do you think of this woman’s desecration of a church? That was you, Alice, wasn’t it? You laid that slain cock on the altar after you had killed Singleton, to confuse the trail?’