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Authors: C J Sansom

BOOK: Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)
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‘This could be dangerous,’ I warned him. ‘We have no idea what is happening down there; we must be prepared for anything.’
 
‘You seem worried, sir.’
 
‘It’s a heavy responsibility. And, frankly, just now I would rather stay here than travel down to Sussex. It is desolate down there beyond the Weald.’ I sighed. ‘But like Isaiah we must go down and fight for Zion.’
 
‘If you succeed Lord Cromwell will reward you well.’
 
‘Yes. And it would keep me in favour.’
 
He looked up in surprise at my words, and I decided it would be wise to change the subject. ‘You have never been to a monastery, have you?’
 
‘No.’
 
‘You went to the grammar school, you didn’t have the doubtful privilege of the cathedral school. The monks scarcely knew enough Latin to follow the ancient tomes they taught from. It’s as well for me I had some native wit, or I would be as illiterate as Joan.’
 
‘Are the monasteries truly as corrupt as it is said?’ Mark asked.
 
‘You’ve seen the Black Book, the extracts from the visitations, which is being hawked around.’
 
‘So has most of London.’
 
‘Yes, people love tales of naughty monks.’ I broke off as Joan came in with a custard.
 
‘But yes, they are corrupt,’ I continued once she had gone. ‘The rule of St Benedict - which I have read - prescribes a life devoted to prayer and work, separate from the world and with only the barest essentials of life. Yet mostly these monks live in great buildings attended by servants, living off fat revenues from their lands, scabbed with every sort of vice.’
 
‘They say the Carthusian monks lived austerely and sang joyful hymns when they were taken to be disembowelled at Tyburn.’
 
‘Oh, a few orders live straitly. But don’t forget the Carthusians died because they refused to recognize the king as head of the Church. They all want the pope back. And now it seems one of them has turned to murder.’ I sighed. ‘I am sorry you must be involved in this.’
 
‘Men of honour should not be afraid of danger.’
 
‘One should always be afraid of danger. Are you still attending those swordsmanship classes?’
 
‘Yes. Master Green says I progress very well.’
 
‘Good. There are sturdy beggars everywhere on the quieter roads.’
 
He was silent a moment, looking at me thoughtfully. ‘Sir, I am grateful I may get my post back at Augmentations, but I wish it were not such a sewer. Half the lands go to Richard Rich and his cronies.’
 
‘You exaggerate. It is a new institution; you must expect those in charge to benefit those who have given them loyalty. It is how good lordship works. Mark, you dream of ideal worlds. And you should be careful what you say. Have you been reading More’s
Utopia
again? Cromwell quoted that at me today.’
 
‘
Utopia
gives you hope for man’s condition. The Italian makes you despair.’
 
I pointed at his jerkin. ‘Well, if you want to be like the Utopians, you should exchange those fine clothes for a plain shift of sackcloth. What is the design on those buttons, by the way?’
 
He removed his jerkin and passed it across. Each button had a tiny engraving of a man with a sword, his arm round a woman, a stag beside them. It was finely done.
 
‘I picked them up cheaply in St Martin’s market. The agate is fake.’
 
‘So I see. But what does it signify? Oh, I know, fidelity, because of the stag.’ I passed the jerkin back. ‘This fashion for symbolic designs that people have to puzzle out, it tires me. There are enough real mysteries in the world.’
 
‘But you paint, sir.’
 
‘If ever I find time I do. But I try in my poor way to show people directly and clearly, like Master Holbein. Art should resolve the mysteries of our being, not occlude them further.’
 
‘Did you not wear such conceits in your youth?’
 
‘There was not such a fashion for it. Once or twice perhaps.’ A phrase from the Bible came to me. I quoted it a little sadly. ‘ “When I was a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put aside childish things.” Well, I must go up, I have much reading to do.’ I rose stiffly and he came round to help me up.
 
‘I can manage,’ I said irritably, wincing as a spasm of pain went through my back. ‘Wake me at first light. Get Joan to have a good breakfast ready.’
 
I took a candle and mounted the stairs. Puzzles more complex than designs on buttons lay ahead, and any help that study of the honest English printed word could give, I needed.
 
Chapter Three
 
WE LEFT AT DAYBREAK the following morning; the second of November, All Souls’ Day. After an evening’s reading I had slept well and felt in a better mood; I began to feel a sense of excitement. Once I had been a pupil of the monks; then I had become the enemy of all they stood for. Now I was in a position to delve into the heart of their mysteries and corruption.
 
I chivvied and cajoled a sleepy Mark through his breakfast and out into the open air. Overnight the weather had changed; a dry, bitterly cold wind from the east had set in, freezing the muddy ruts in the road. It brought tears to our eyes as we set out, swathed in our warmest furs, thick gloves on our hands and the hoods of our riding coats drawn tight round our faces. From my belt hung my dagger, usually worn only for ornamentation but sharpened this morning on the kitchen whetstone. Mark wore his sword, a two-foot blade of London steel with a razor’s edge bought with his own savings for his swordsmanship classes.
 
He made a cradle of his hands to help me mount Chancery, for I find it hard to swing myself into the saddle. He mounted Redshanks, his sturdy roan, and we set off, the horses laden with heavy panniers containing clothes and my papers. Mark still looked half-asleep. He pushed back his hood and scratched at his unkempt hair, wincing at the wind that ruffled it.
 
‘By God’s son, it’s cold.’
 
‘You’ve had too much soft living in warm offices,’ I said. ‘Your blood needs thickening.’
 
‘Do you think it will snow, sir?’
 
‘I hope not. Snow could hold us up for days.’
 
We rode through a London that was just awakening and onto London Bridge. Glancing downriver past the fierce bulk of the Tower, I saw a great ocean-going carrack moored by the Isle of Dogs, its heavy prow and high masts a misty shape where grey river met grey sky. I pointed it out to Mark.
 
‘I wonder where that has come from.’
 
‘Men voyage nowadays to lands our fathers never dreamt of.’
 
‘And bring back wonders.’ I thought of the strange bird. ‘New wonders and maybe new deceits.’ We rode on across the bridge. At the far end a smashed skull lay by the piers. Picked clean by the birds, it had fallen from its pole and the pieces would lie there till souvenir hunters, or witches looking for charms, fetched them away. The St Barbaras in Cromwell’s chamber, and now this relic of earthly justice. I thought uneasily on omens, then chided myself for superstition.
 
 
FOR SOME WAY south of London the road was good enough, passing through the fields that fed the capital, now brown and bare. The sky had settled to a still milky white and the weather held. At noon we stopped for dinner near Eltham, then shortly afterwards we crested the North Downs and saw laid out before us the ancient forest of the Weald, bare treetops dotted with the occasional evergreen stretching to the misty horizon.
 
The road became narrower, set beneath steep wooded banks half-choked with fallen leaves, little trackways leading off to remote hamlets. Only the occasional carter passed us. By late afternoon we reached the little market town of Tonbridge and turned south. We kept a sharp lookout for robbers, but all we saw was a herd of deer foraging in a lane; as we rounded a corner the silly creatures clambered up the bank and disappeared into the forest.
 
Dusk was falling when we heard the tolling of a church bell through the trees. Turning another bend, we found ourselves in the single street of a hamlet, a poor place of thatched wattle houses but with a fine Norman church and, next to it, an inn. All the windows of the church were filled with candles, a rich glow filtering through the stained glass. The bell tolled, on and on.
 
‘The All Souls’ service,’ Mark observed.
 
‘Yes, the whole village will be in church praying for the relief of their dead in purgatory.’
 
We rode slowly down the street, little blond children peeping suspiciously from doorways. Few adults were about. The sound of Mass being chanted reached us from the open doors of the church.
 
In those days All Souls’ Day was one of the greatest events in the calendar. In every church parishioners met to hear Masses and say prayers to help the passage through purgatory of kin and friends. Already the ceremony was stripped of royal authority, and soon it would be forbidden. Some said it was cruel to deprive people of comfort and remembrance. But it is surely a gentler thing to know that one’s kin are, according to God’s will, either in heaven or hell, than to believe they are in purgatory, a place of torment and pain they must endure perhaps for centuries.
 
We dismounted stiffly at the inn, tying our horses to the rail. The building was a larger version of the others; mud and wattle with the plaster falling away in places and a high thatched roof reaching down to the first-floor windows.
 
Inside a fire burned in a circular grate in the middle of the floor in the old manner, as much smoke filling the room as escaped through the round chimney above. Through the gloom a few bearded ancients peered curiously at us from their dice. A fat man in an apron approached, keen eyes taking in our expensive furs. I asked for a room and a meal, which he offered us for sixpence. Struggling to follow his thick, guttural accent, I beat him down to a groat. Having confirmed the way to Scarnsea and ordered warm ale, I took a seat by the fire while Mark went out to supervise the stabling of the horses.
 
I was glad when he rejoined me, for I was tired of being stared at by the clutch of old men. I had nodded to them but they turned their heads away.
 
‘They’re a hard-eyed bunch,’ Mark whispered.
 
‘They won’t see many travellers. And no doubt they believe hunchbacks bring bad luck. Oh come, it’s what most people think. I’ve seen men cross themselves at my approach often enough, for all my fine clothes.’
 
We ordered supper and were served a greasy mutton stew with heavy ale. The sheep, Mark grumbled, was long dead. In the course of the meal a group of villagers arrived, in their best clothes, the Hallowtide services apparently over. They sat together, talking in sombre voices. Occasionally they glanced over at us, and we had more nosy looks and hostile faces.
 
I noticed that three men in a far corner also seemed to be ignored by the villagers. They were rough looking, with ragged clothes and unkempt beards. I saw them examining us; not staring openly like the villagers but with sidelong looks.
 
‘See that tall fellow?’ Mark whispered. ‘I’d swear that’s the rags of a monk’s robe.’
 
The largest man, an ugly giant with a broken nose, wore a ragged shift of thick black wool and I saw that indeed it had a Benedictine cowl at the back. The innkeeper, who alone had been civil to us, appeared to refill our glasses.
 
‘Tell me,’ I asked quietly, ‘who are those three?’
 
He grunted. ‘Abbey-lubbers from the priory dissolved last year. You know how it is, sir. The king says the little houses of prayer must go, and the monks are given places elsewhere, but the servants are put out on the road. Those fellows have been begging about here this last twelvemonth - there’s no labour for them. See that skinny fellow, he’s had his ears cropped already. Be careful of them.’
 
I glanced round and saw that one of them, a tall thin fellow with wild yellow hair, had no ears, only holes with scar tissue around, the penalty for forgery. Doubtless he had been involved in some local enterprise of clipping coins and using the gold to make poor fakes.
 
‘You allow them here,’ I said.
 
He grunted. ‘It’s not their fault they were thrown out. Them and hundreds more.’ Then, feeling perhaps he had said too much, the innkeeper hurried away.
 
‘I think this might be a good time to retire,’ I said, taking a candle from the table. Mark nodded, and we downed the last of our ale and headed for the stairs. As we passed the abbey servants my coat accidentally brushed the big man’s robe.

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