Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries) (23 page)
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Authors: C J Sansom
BOOK: Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)
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‘But that was a mistake, sir, not a sin. And if one finds it hard to learn, all the more reason to give a firm lesson, surely. And that boy is weakly, he could have taken an ague in any case.’ His tone was stern.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You appear to view the world in black and white, Brother.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Of course, sir. Black and white. Sin and virtue. God and the Devil. The rules are laid down and we must follow them.’
‘Now the rules are laid down by the king, not the pope.’
He looked at me seriously. ‘Yes, sir, and we must follow those.’
I reflected that that was not what Brother Athelstan had reported him and the others as saying. ‘I understand, Brother Bursar, that you were away on the night Commissioner Singleton was killed?’
‘Y-yes. We have some estates over at W-Winchelsea. I was not happy with the steward’s accounts, I rode over to make a spot check. I was away three nights.’
‘What did you uncover?’
‘I thought he’d b-been cheating us. But it was just a matter of errors. I’ve sacked him, though. If people can’t keep proper ac-c-counts they’re no good to me.’
‘Did you go alone?’
‘I took one of my assistants, old Brother William, whom you saw in the counting house.’ He looked at me shrewdly. ‘And I was at the steward’s house the night Commissioner S-Singleton was killed. G-GOD rest him,’ he added piously.
‘You have many duties then,’ I said. ‘But at least you have assistants to help you. The old man and the boy.’
He gave me a sharp look. ‘Yes, though the boy’s more trouble than he’s worth.’
‘Is he?’
‘No head for figures, n-none at all. I have s-set him to looking out the books you requested, they should b-be with you soon.’ He almost slipped, and I caught his arm.
‘Thank you, sir. By Our Lady, this snow!’
FOR THE REST of the journey he concentrated on where he was putting his feet, and we said little more till we reached the monastery precinct. We parted in the courtyard; Brother Edwig returned to his counting house and I turned my steps back towards the infirmary. I needed some dinner. I thought about the bursar; a jack-in-office, obsessed with his financial responsibilities probably to the exclusion of all else. But devoted to the monastery too. Would he be prepared to countenance dishonesty to protect it, or would that mean crossing the line between white and black? He was an unsympathetic man, but as I had said to Mark the night before, that did not make him a murderer any more than the sympathy I felt for Brother Gabriel made him innocent. I sighed. It was hard to be objective among these people.
As I opened the infirmary door, all seemed quiet. The hall was deserted. The sick old man lay quietly in his bed, the blind monk was asleep in his chair and the fat monk’s bed was empty; perhaps Brother Guy had persuaded him it was time to leave. A fire crackled welcomingly in the grate and I went to warm myself for a moment.
As I stood watching steam rise from my wet hose, I heard sounds from within; confused, fractured noises, cries and shouts and the crash of pottery breaking. The sounds came closer. I stared in astonishment as the door to the sick rooms burst open and a tangle of struggling figures fell into the hall: Alice, Mark, Brother Guy, and at the centre a thin figure in a white nightshift, who as I watched threw the others off and staggered away. I recognized Simon Whelplay, but he was a very different figure now from the half-dead wraith I had seen the night before. His face was puce, his eyes wide and staring and there was a froth of spittle at the corner of his mouth. He seemed to be trying to speak but could only gasp and retch.
‘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.’
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