Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘Certainly. The body is in a place I think you will agree is both safe and fitting, in the custody of the infirmarian. I will arrange for you to be escorted to him. Please let me state clearly that I will do all I can to help you, though I fear you have a hopeless task.’

  ‘I am grateful.’

  ‘And, now, I have a guest room prepared for you upstairs.’

  ‘Thank you, but I think I would prefer to be nearer the locus of the deed. You have guest rooms in your infirmary?’

  ‘Well, yes - but surely the king’s representative should lodge with the abbot?’

  ‘The infirmary would be better,’ I said firmly. ‘And I will need a complete set of keys to all the buildings within the precincts.’

  He smiled in disbelief. ‘But - have you any idea how many keys there are here, how many doors?’

  ‘Oh, many, I should think. Surely there must be complete sets.’

  ‘I have one. And the prior and the gatekeeper. But they are all in constant use.’

  ‘I shall need a set, my lord. Please arrange it.’ I stood up, trying not to exclaim at a spasm from my back. Mark followed. Abbot Fabian looked thoroughly discomfited as he too rose, smoothing down his robe. ‘I will see you are taken to the infirmarian.’

  We followed him into the hall, where he bowed and bustled away. I blew out my cheeks.

  ‘Will he give you the keys?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Oh, I think so. He’s afraid of Cromwell. God’s death, he knows his law. If he’s of lowly origin as Goodhaps said, being abbot of a this great place must mean everything to him.’

  ‘His accent was that of a man of breeding.’

  ‘Accents can be adopted. Many put a great deal of effort into it. Lord Cromwell’s voice has little of Putney left in it. Yours has little of the farm, come to that.’

  ‘He wasn’t pleased we are not staying here.’

  ‘No, and old Goodhaps will be disappointed. But I can’t help that; I don’t want to be isolated here under the abbot’s eye, I need to be near the heart of the place.’

  AFTER A FEW MINUTES Prior Mortimus appeared, bearing an enormous bunch of keys on a ring. There were over thirty, some huge ornamented affairs, centuries old. He handed them to me with a tight smile.

  ‘I beg you not to lose them, sir. They are the only spare set the house possesses.’

  I passed them to Mark. ‘Carry these, would you? So there is a spare set?’

  He avoided replying. ‘I have been asked to take you to the infirmary. Brother Guy is expecting you.’

  He led us out of the house and back past the workshops, closed and shuttered for it was now dark. The night was moonless and colder than ever. In my tired state the chill seemed to penetrate my bones. We passed the church, from which chanting could be heard. It was a beautiful, elaborate polyphony, accompanied by organ music; quite unlike the off-key warbling I knew from Lichfield.

  ‘Who is your precentor?’ I asked.

  ‘Brother Gabriel, our sacrist, is master of music as well. He is a man of many talents.’ I caught a sardonic note in the prior’s voice.

  ‘Is it not a little late for Vespers?’

  ‘Only a little. Yesterday was All Souls, the monks were standing in church all day.’

  I shook my head. ‘Everywhere the monasteries follow their own timetable, an easier one than that St Benedict set.’

  He nodded seriously. ‘And Lord Cromwell is right to say the monks should be kept up to the mark. So far as is in my power, I see that they are.’

  We followed the cloister wall separating off the monks’ quarters and entered the big herb garden I had seen earlier. Close to, the infirmary was bigger than I had thought. The prior turned the iron ring in the stout door, and we followed him in.

  The long infirmary hall stretched before us, its rows of beds on each side widely spaced and mostly empty. It reminded me how shrunken in numbers the Benedictines had become; only at the height of their numbers before the Great Pestilence would the community have needed so large an infirmary. Only three beds were occupied, all by old men in nightshifts. In the first a fat, red-cheeked monk sat up eating dried fruits; he peered at us curiously. The man in the next bed did not look towards us and I saw he was blind, his eyes milky white with cataracts. In the third bed a very old man, his thin face a mass of wrinkles, lay muttering, half-conscious. A figure in a white coif and blue servant’s robe stood leaning over him, gently wiping his brow with a cloth. I saw to my surprise that it was a woman.

  At a table at the far end, by the little altar, half a dozen monks sat playing cards, their arms bandaged after being bled. They looked up at us with wary eyes. The woman turned and I saw that she was young, in her early twenties. She was tall, with a fine, full figure and a strong square face with high cheekbones. She was not beautiful, but striking. She came across, studying us with intelligent dark-blue eyes before dropping her gaze submissively at the last moment.

  ‘The king’s new commissioner, for Brother Guy,’ the prior said peremptorily. ‘They’re to lodge here, they’ll need a room prepared.’ For an instant, a look of dislike passed between him and the girl. Then she nodded and curtsied. ‘Yes, Brother.’

  She walked away, disappearing through a door by the altar. She had a poised and confident bearing, quite unlike a young maidservant’s normal scuttle.

  ‘A woman within the precincts,’ I said. ‘That is against the injunctions.’

  ‘We have a dispensation, like many houses, to employ women assistants in the infirmary. The gentle hand of a woman skilled in medicine - though I don’t think ye’d get much gentleness from the hands of that malapert. She has manners above her station, the infirmarian’s too soft with her.’

  ‘Brother Guy?’

  ‘Brother Guy of Malton - of Malton but not from Malton, as ye’ll see.’

  The girl returned. ‘I will take you to the dispensary, sirs.’ She spoke with the local accent; her voice was soft and husky.

  ‘I’ll leave ye, then.’ The prior bowed and left.

  The girl was appraising Mark’s costume; he had decked himself out in his finest for the journey and under his fur-trimmed coat he wore a blue jacket over a yellow tunic from which, at the bottom, his codpiece poked out. Her eyes moved to his face; many women looked at Mark, but this one’s expression was different: I caught an unexpected sadness in her eyes. Mark gave her a winning smile, and she reddened.

  I waved my hand. ‘Please lead the way.’

  We followed her into a dark, narrow passage with doors leading off. One stood open and glancing in I saw another old monk, sitting up in bed.

  ‘Alice, is that you?’ he asked querulously as we passed.

  ‘Yes, Brother Paul,’ she said gently. ‘I will be with you in a moment.’

  ‘The shaking came again.’

  ‘I will bring you some warm wine.’

  He smiled, reassured, and the girl led us on, halting before another door. ‘This is Brother Guy’s dispensary, sirs.’

  My hose brushed against a stone pitcher outside the door. To my surprise it felt warm, and I bent for a closer look. The pitchers were filled with a thick, dark liquid. I sniffed, then jumped up quickly and gave the girl a shocked stare.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Blood, sir. Only blood. The infirmarian is giving the monks their winter bleeding. We keep the blood, it helps the herbs grow.’

  ‘I never heard of such a thing. I thought monks were forbidden from shedding blood in any way, even infirmarians. Does not a barber-surgeon come to bleed people?’

  ‘Brother Guy is exempt as a qualified physician, sir. He says keeping the blood is a common enough practice where he comes from. He asks would you wait a few minutes, he has just begun to bleed Brother Timothy and must supervise the process.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you. Your name is Alice?’

  ‘Alice Fewterer, sir.’

  ‘Then tell your master we will wait, Alice. We would not have his patient bleed to death.’

&n
bsp; She bowed and went off, wooden heels clacking on the stone flags.

  ‘A well-made girl,’ Mark observed.

  ‘So she is. A strange job for a woman, this. I think your codpiece amused her, as well it might.’

  ‘I don’t like bleeding,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘The only time I had it done it left me weak as a kitten for days. But they say it balances the humours.’

  ‘Well, God made me of a melancholy humour and I don’t believe bleeding will change that. Now, let’s see what we have here.’ I unclipped the great bunch of keys from my belt, peering at them in the dim light of a wall lantern until I came to one marked ‘Inf.’ I tried it and the door swung open.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait, sir?’ Mark asked.

  ‘We have no time for niceties.’ I took the lantern from the wall. ‘It’s a chance to learn something about the man who found the body.’

  The room was small, whitewashed and very neat, full of a rich spicy odour. A lying couch for the patients was covered with a clean white cloth. Bundles of herbs hung from hooks alongside surgeons’ knives. There was a complex astrological chart on one wall, while opposite was a large cross in the Spanish style, dark wood with blood dripping from the five wounds of an alabaster-white Christ. Under a high window, on the infirmarian’s desk, papers were neatly ordered in little piles and weighted down with pretty stones. I glanced at notes of prescriptions and diagnoses written in English and Latin.

  I made my way along the shelves looking at the jars and bottles, all carefully labelled in Latin script. I lifted the lid from a large bowl to find his leeches, the black slimy creatures wriggling in the unexpected light. It was all as one would expect to find: dried marigolds for fever, vinegar for deep cuts, powdered mice for earache.

  At the end of the top shelf were three books. One was a printed volume of Galen, another Paracelsus, both in French. The third, with a beautifully decorated leather cover, was handwritten in a strange language of spiky curls.

  ‘Look at this, Mark.’

  He peered over my shoulder at the book. ‘Some medical code?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I had had an ear open for footsteps, but had heard nothing and jumped at the sound of a polite cough behind us.

  ‘Please do not drop that book, sir,’ a strangely accented voice said.

  ‘It is of great value to me if no-one else. It is an Arabic medical book, it is not on the king’s forbidden list.’

  We spun round. A tall monk of about fifty, with a thin, austere face, was looking at us calmly from deep-set eyes. To my surprise, his face was brown as an oak plank. I had seen brown men occasionally in London, by the docks, but had never found such a being staring me in the eye.

  ‘I would be most thankful if you could give me the book,’ he said in his soft, lisping voice, respectfully but firmly. ‘It was given to my father by the last emir of Granada.’

  I handed it to him and he bowed gracefully.

  ‘You are Master Shardlake and Master Poer?’

  ‘Indeed. Brother Guy of Malton?’

  ‘I am. You have a key to my room? Normally only my assistant Alice comes in here unless I am present, lest someone mess with the herbs and potions. The wrong dose of some of these powders could kill, you see.’ His eyes flickered over the shelves. I found myself reddening.

  ‘I have been careful to touch nothing, sir.’

  He bowed. ‘Quite so. And how may I assist His Majesty’s representative?’

  ‘We wish to take accommodation here. You have guest rooms?’

  ‘Certainly. Alice is preparing a room now. But most of this corridor is taken up with aged monks. They often require attention in the night and you may find yourself disturbed. Most guests prefer the abbot’s house.’

  ‘We would rather stay here.’

  ‘As you wish. And may I help in any other way?’ His tone was perfectly respectful, but somehow his questions made me feel like a foolish patient asked to check off symptoms. However strange his appearance, this was a man of presence.

  ‘I gather you have charge of the body of the late commissioner?’

  ‘I have. It is in a crypt in the lay cemetery.’

  ‘We would like to view it.’

  ‘Most certainly. In the meantime perhaps you may wish to wash and rest after your long journey. Will you be dining with the abbot later?’

  ‘No, we will eat with the monks in the refectory, I think. But first I think we will take an hour’s rest. That book,’ I added, ‘you are a Moor by birth?’

  ‘I am from Málaga, now in Castile but when I was born part of the emirate of Granada. When Granada fell to Spain in 1492 my parents converted to Christianity, but life was not easy. In due course we made our way to France; we found life easier at Louvain, it is an international town. Arabic was, of course, their language.’ He smiled gently, but his coal-black eyes stayed sharp.

  ‘You studied medicine at Louvain?’ I was astonished, for it was the most prestigious school in Europe. ‘Surely you should be serving at the court of a noble or a king, not in a remote monastery.’

  ‘Indeed so; but as a Spanish Moor I have certain disadvantages. Over the years I have bounced from post to post in France and England, like one of your King Henry’s tennis balls.’ He smiled again. ‘I was at Malton in Yorkshire five years; I kept the name when I came here two years ago. And if rumour speaks true, I may be on the move again soon.’

  I remembered he was one of the officials who knew of Singleton’s purpose. He nodded reflectively at my silence.

  ‘So. I will take you to your room, and I will return in an hour so you can inspect Commissioner Singleton’s body. The poor man should be given Christian burial.’ He crossed himself, sighing. ‘It will be hard enough for the soul of a murdered man to find rest, unconfessed and without the last sacrament at his end. Pray God none of us should ever meet such a fate.’

  Chapter Seven

  OUR ROOM IN THE INFIRMARY was small but comfortable, wood-panelled and with new, sweet-scented rushes on the floor. It was warmed by a fire, before which chairs had been set. The girl Alice was there when Brother Guy showed us in, laying towels beside a pitcher of warm water. Her face and bare arms had a healthy flush from the fire.

  ‘I thought you might like to wash, sirs,’ she said deferentially.

  I smiled at her. ‘That is most kind.’

  ‘I need something to get me warm,’ Mark said, giving her a grin. She lowered her head and Brother Guy gave Mark a stern look.

  ‘Thank you, Alice,’ he said. ‘That will be enough.’ The girl bowed and left.

  ‘I hope the room is comfortable. I have sent word to the abbot you will be dining in the refectory.’

  ‘This room will do very well. Thank you for your trouble.’

  ‘If you have any needs, Alice will attend to them.’ He gave Mark another sharp look. ‘But please bear in mind that she has many duties with the aged and sick monks. And that she is a woman alone here, apart from some old kitchen maids. She is under my protection, such as it is.’

  Mark coloured. I bowed to the infirmarian. ‘We will remember that, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Master Shardlake. Then I will leave you.’

  ‘Black old moldwarp,’ Mark grumbled when the door closed. ‘It was only a look - and she was pleased to get it.’

  ‘He is responsible for her welfare,’ I said shortly.

  Mark looked at the bed. It was one of those with a high bed for the master and a narrow space underneath where a servant’s wooden bunk slid in and out on wheels. He pulled out the lower tier and looked gloomily at the hard board covered with a thin straw mattress, before removing his coat and sitting down.

  I went over to the ewer and splashed some warm water on my face, letting it drip down my neck. I felt exhausted; my head was spinning with the kaleidoscope of faces and impressions of the last few hours. I groaned. ‘Thank God we’re alone at last.’ I sat down in the chair. ‘Christ’s wounds, I’m sore.’

 
; Mark looked up at me with concern. ‘Does your back pain you?’

  I sighed. ‘It will be better after a night’s rest.’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’ He hesitated. ‘There are cloths there, we could make a hot poultice . . . I could apply it for you.’

  ‘No!’ I snapped. ‘Will you be told, I’ll be all right!’ I hated anyone looking at my deformed back; only my physician was allowed to do that and then only when it was especially painful. My skin crawled at the thought of Mark’s eyes on it, his pity and perhaps disgust, for why should someone formed as he was not feel disgust? I pulled myself to my feet and went over to the window, looking out over the dark, empty quadrangle. After a few moments I turned round; Mark was looking up at me, resentfulness mixed with anxiety in his face. I raised a hand apologetically.