Dissolution

by C. J. Sansom

  He smiled sadly. ‘In a way I am.’

  I approached and sat down, motioning him to join me. ‘I am glad to see you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to thank you for my pension, Master Shardlake. I imagine it was you who saw I was given an increased allowance.’

  ‘You were elected abbot, after all, when Abbot Fabian was declared incapable. You are entitled to a larger allowance, even if you only held the post a few weeks.’

  ‘Prior Mortimus was not pleased when the brethren elected me over him. He has gone back to schoolmastering, you know, in Devon.’

  ‘May God have mercy on his charges.’

  ‘I wondered whether it was right to take the larger sum, when the brethren have to live on five pounds a year. But they would have been given no more had I refused. And with my face I will not have an easy time of it in the world. I think I will keep my monastic name of Guy of Malton rather than revert to my worldly surname of Elakbar - I am allowed to do that, even if “Brother” is forbidden?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do not look shamefaced, my friend - you are my friend, I think?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I am. Believe me, being sent back here now is no pleasure to me, I have no more wish to be a commissioner.’ I shivered. ‘It is cold.’

  Guy nodded. ‘Yes. I have sat here too long. I have been thinking of the monks who sat in these stalls every day for four hundred years, chanting and praying. The venal, the lazy, the devoted, those who were all those things. But -’ he pointed up at the clanging, clattering roof - ‘it is hard to concentrate.’

  As we looked upwards there came a loud hammer blow and a shower of dust. Lumps of plaster fell to the floor with a crash and suddenly daylight streamed in from a hole, a shaft of sunlight spearing to the floor. ‘We’re through, bullies,’ a voice echoed from above. ‘Careful there!’

  Guy made a strange sound, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. I touched his arm. ‘We should go. More plaster will be coming down.’

  Outside in the courtyard his face was bleak but composed. Copynger nodded coldly to him as we began walking away towards the abbot’s house.

  ‘When the monks left at the end of November Sir Gilbert asked me to stay on,’ Guy told me. ‘He’d been put in charge of minding the place till Portinari could get here and he asked me to help. The fish pond flooded badly in January, you know; I was able to help him drain it.’

  ‘It must have been hard, living alone here with everyone gone.’

  ‘Not really, not until the Augmentations men came this week and started clearing the place. Somehow it felt, over the winter, as though the house was only waiting for the monks to come back.’ He winced as a great chunk of lead crashed to the ground behind us.

  ‘You hoped for a reprieve?’

  He shrugged. ‘One always hopes. Besides, I had nowhere to go. I have been waiting all this time to hear if I am to be allowed a permit to leave for France.’

  ‘I might be able to help with that, if there is delay.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I heard a week ago. I have been refused. There is talk of a new alliance between France and Spain against England, I believe. I had better see if I can exchange this habit for a doublet and hose. It will be strange after all these years. And grow my hair!’ He lowered his hood and ran his hand over his bald crown. I saw the fringe of black hair was tinged with white now.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I want to leave in the next few days. I could not bear to be here when they demolish the buildings. The whole town is coming; they are making a fair of it. How they must have hated us.’ He sighed. ‘I may go to London, where exotic faces are not so rare.’

  ‘You could perhaps become a physician there? You have a degree from Louvain, after all.’

  ‘But would the College of Physicians let me in? Or even the Guild of Apothecaries? A mud-coloured ex-monk?’ He raised an eyebrow and smiled sadly.

  ‘I have a client who is a physician. I could plead your cause.’

  He hesitated, then smiled. ‘Thank you. I would be grateful.’

  ‘And I could help you find accommodation. I will give you my address before you leave. Call on me. Will you?’

  ‘Might not associating with me be risky?’

  ‘I will not work for Cromwell again. I will go back to private practice, live quietly, perhaps paint.’

  ‘Be careful, Matthew.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I am not sure it is wise even for you to be seen having an amicable talk with me, under Sir Gilbert’s eyes.’

  ‘Rot Copynger. I know enough never to do anything that breaks the law. And though I may not be the reformer I was, I am not turned papist either.’

  ‘That does not protect people in these days.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But if no one is safe, which indeed they are not, at least I can be unsafe minding my own business at home.’

  We reached the abbot’s house, now Copynger’s. A gardener was carefully tending the roses, spreading horse dung round the bushes.

  ‘Has Copynger rented much land?’ I asked.

  ‘A lot, yes, and at a low rent.’

  ‘He has been lucky.’

  ‘And you have no reward?’

  ‘No. I got Cromwell his murderer, and his stolen gold, and this place surrendered; but not quickly enough.’ I paused, remembering those who had died. ‘No indeed, not quickly enough.’

  ‘You did all any man could.’

  ‘Perhaps. You know, I often think I might have seen to the depths of what Edwig was had I not disliked him so much, and therefore tried doubly hard to be fair, and certain. Even now I find it hard to realize that that man, so precise and orderly, was so wild and deranged underneath. I wonder if he used that order, that obsession with figures and money, as a way to keep himself under control. I wonder if he feared his dreams of blood.’

  ‘I pray so.’

  ‘But that obsession with figures only fed his madness in the end.’ I sighed. ‘Uncovering complicated truths is never easy.’

  Guy nodded. ‘It takes patience, courage, effort. If the truth is what you wish to find.’

  ‘You know Jerome is dead?’

  ‘No. I have had no news since he was taken away last November.’

  ‘Cromwell had him put in Newgate gaol. Where his brethren were starved to death. He died soon after.’

  ‘May God rest his tortured soul.’ Brother Guy paused, looking at me hesitantly. ‘Do you know what became of the hand of the Penitent Thief? They took it at the same time as Jerome.’

  ‘No. I imagine the precious stones were taken out and the reliquary melted down. The hand itself will probably have been burned by now.’

  ‘It was the Thief’s hand, you know. The evidence is very strong.’

  ‘Do you still think it could work miracles?’

  He did not answer and we walked on in silence for a moment, into the monks’ cemetery, where the men were lifting the stones. I saw that in the lay churchyard the family vaults had been broken up into piles of rubble.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said at length. ‘What has become of Abbot Fabian? I know he was not allowed an abbot’s pension as he did not sign the surrender.’

  Guy shook his head sadly. ‘His sister has taken him in. She is a seamstress in the town. He is no better. Some days he talks of going hunting or visiting with the local landowners and she has to prevent him setting off in the poor clothes that are all he has now, on their old nag. I have prescribed him some medicines, but they do no good. His wits are gone.’

  ‘ “How are the mighty fallen”,’ I quoted.

  I realized that unconsciously I had been leading us towards the orchard; the rear wall of the monastery was visible ahead. I paused, a churning feeling in my stomach.

  ‘Shall we go back?’ Guy asked gently.

  ‘No. Let us go on.’

  We walked to the gate that led to the marsh. I had a set of keys and opened it. We passed through and stood looking out over the bleak landscape. The November flood had long since dr
ained away and the marsh lay brown and silent, clumps of reeds waving quietly in the breeze, their image reflected in stagnant pools. The river was at full tide; seabirds bobbed on the waters, feathers ruffled by the wind from the sea.

  I spoke quietly. ‘They come to me in dreams, Mark and Alice. I see them struggling in the water, sinking down, crying for help. I wake up screaming sometimes.’ My voice broke. ‘In different ways I loved them both.’

  Brother Guy looked at me for a long moment, then reached into his habit. He passed me a folded paper, much creased.

  ‘I have thought hard about whether to show this to you. I wondered if it might hurt you less not to see.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It appeared on the desk in my dispensary a month ago. I came in from my duties and there it was. I think a smuggler bribed one of Copynger’s men to leave it for me. It is from her, but written by him.’

  I opened the letter and read, in Mark Poer’s clear round hand:

  Brother Guy,

  I have asked Mark to write this for me as his lettering is better than mine. I send it by a man of the town who comes sometimes to France, it is better you know not who.

  I pray you to forgive me for writing to you. Mark and I are safe in France, I will not say where. I do not know how we came through the mire that night, once Mark fell in and I had to haul him out, but we reached the boat.

  We were married last month. Mark knows some French and improves so fast, we hope he may obtain a clerkly post in this little town. We are happy, and I begin to feel a peace I have not known since my cousin died, though whether the world will allow us rest in these times I do not know.

  There is no reason, sir, why you should care for any of this, but I wished you to know it was a bitter thing for me to have to deceive you, who protected me and taught me so much. I regret it, though I do not regret I killed that man; he deserved to die if ever a man did. I do not know where you will go in the world, but I beg Our Lord, Jesus Christ to watch over and protect you, sir.

  Alice Poer.

  The twenty-fifth day of January, 1538

  I folded the letter and stood looking out over the estuary.

  ‘They do not mention me at all.’

  ‘It was from her to me. They were not to know I would see you again.’

  ‘So they are alive and safe, pox on them. Perhaps now my dreams will stop. May I tell Mark’s father? He was sore grieved. Just that I have secret word he is alive?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She is right, there is nowhere safe in the world now, no thing certain. Sometimes I think of Brother Edwig and his madness, how he thought he could buy God’s forgiveness for those murders with two panniers of stolen gold. Perhaps we are all a little mad. The Bible says God made man in his image but I think we make and remake him, in whatever image happens to suit our shifting needs. I wonder if he knows or cares. All is dissolving, Brother Guy, all is dissolution.’

  We stood silent, watching the seabirds bobbing on the river, while behind us echoed the distant sound of crashing lead.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The dissolution of the English monasteries in 1536-40 was masterminded throughout by Thomas Cromwell as vice regent and vicar general. After conducting a survey of the monasteries, during which much damaging material was collected, Cromwell introduced an Act of Parliament dissolving the smaller monasteries in 1536. However, when his agents began carrying it into effect the result was ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace’, a massive armed rebellion in the north of England. Henry VIII and Cromwell put it down by tricking the leaders into negotiations until they had time to build up an army to destroy them.

  The assault on the larger monasteries came a year later with pressure, as described in the story, being placed on vulnerable larger houses to surrender voluntarily. The intimidation into surrender of Lewes Priory in November 1537 was crucial and over the next three years, one by one, all the monasteries surrendered to the king. By 1540 there were none left; the buildings were left to decay, the lead stripped from the roof by the Augmentations men. The monks were pensioned off. If they resisted, as a few did, they were dealt with savagely. The average abbot and monastery official was undoubtedly more frightened of the commissioners, who were indeed brutal men, than the monks of Scarnsea are of Shardlake. But then Scarnsea is not an average monastery, and nor is Shardlake an average commissioner.

  It is generally accepted that the accusations of multiple adultery against Queen Anne Boleyn were fabricated by Cromwell for Henry VIII, who had tired of her. Mark Smeaton was the only one of her alleged lovers to confess, probably on the rack. His father was a carpenter; I have invented his previous occupation as a swordsmith.

  The English Reformation remains controversial. The view of older historians, that the Catholic Church was so decayed that some sort of radical reformation was necessary if not inevitable, has recently been challenged by a number of writers, notably C. Haigh, English Reformations (Oxford University Press, 1993), and E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale University Press, 1992), who paint a picture of a thriving, popular Church. I think Duffy especially over-romanticizes medieval Catholic life; it is interesting that these scholars hardly mention the Dissolution, the last major study of which was by David Knowles in the 1950s, The Religious Orders in England: The Tudor Age (Cambridge University Press, 1959). In this exceptional work Professor Knowles, who was himself a Catholic monk, acknowledges that the easy living prevailing in most of the larger monasteries was a scandal. While deploring their forcible extinction, Professor Knowles considers that they had become so remote from their founding ideals that they did not deserve to survive in their existing form.

  Nobody really knows what the English people as a whole thought of the Reformation. There was a strong Protestant movement in London and parts of the south-east; the north and the West Country remained strongly Catholic. But the country in between, where most people lived, is still largely terra incognita. My own view is that the bulk of the common people probably saw the successive changes imposed from above in the same way as Mark and Alice; just that, changes ordered from above by the ruling classes, who told them what to do and how to think, as they always had. There were so many changes - first to an increasingly radical Protestantism, then back to Catholicism under Mary Tudor and back again to Protestantism under Elizabeth I - that people can hardly have failed to become cynical. They kept quiet, for of course nobody was interested in what they thought, and while Elizabeth may not have wished to make windows into men’s souls, her predecessors did, with fire and axe.

  Those who benefited most from the Reformation were the ‘new men’, the emerging capitalist and bureaucratic classes, men of property without birth. I think there were many Copyngers in mid-Tudor England; the Reformation was about a changing class structure as much as anything. That is an unfashionable view nowadays; it is naughty to mention class when discussing history. But fashions have changed, and will again.