Dissolution

Then I did the most desperate thing I have ever done in my life. I only made the attempt because I knew the alternative was certain death. In a single movement I let my hands fall apart, twisted in the air and used my foot against the plaque as leverage to hurl myself outwards, towards the rail, commending my soul to God in what I knew was probably my final thought on earth.

I hit the rail with my midriff, knocking the breath from my body. It shook with the impact as my frantic hands grasped the inner side and I hauled myself over, how I do not know. Then I was lying on the floor in a heap, my back and arms an agony, as across the room Edwig knelt clutching a handful of coins, staring at me in angry bafflement as the clangour of the bells rang and sang in our ears, the vibration now shaking the very floorboards.

He was up in an instant, grabbing for his panniers and running for the door. I threw myself at him, clutching for his eyes. He thrust me off, but was thrown off balance by the weight of the bags. He staggered and came up against the rail as I had done a minute before. As he did so he dropped his leather bags. They fell over the edge, and with a cry he leaned over and snatched at the rope holding them together. He caught hold, but the movement overbalanced him. For a moment he lay spreadeagled across the rails and I believe that if he had let go the gold he might have saved himself, but he held on. The bags' weight tipped him forward and he fell over head first, bouncing off the side of a bell and disappearing from view with a scream of terrified anger, as though in his last moment he knew he faced his Maker before he had made his great gift. I ran to the parapet and saw him still falling, his habit billowing out around him as he spun to earth in the middle of a great shower of coins from the panniers. The crowd fled in panic as he hit the ground in an explosion of blood and gold.

I leaned over the rail, panting and sweating, watching as the crowd slowly crept in again. Some looked down at the bursar's remains, others peered up to where I stood. To my disgust I saw monks and servants get down on hands and knees and begin scrabbling on the floor, grabbing up handfuls of coins.

EPILOGUE

FEBRUARY 1538, THREE MONTHS LATER

As I entered the monastery courtyard I saw the great bells had been taken from the church tower and now sat waiting to be melted down. They were in pieces, huge shards of ornamented metal piled in a heap. They would have been cut from the rings holding them to the roof and left to drop to the floor of the church. That would have made a mighty noise.

A little way off, next to a large mound of charcoal, a brick furnace had been erected. It was swallowing lead; a gang of men on the church roof were throwing down chunks and strips of it. More of the auditors' men, waiting below, fetched the lead and fed it into the fire.

Cromwell had been right; the crop of surrenders he had obtained early in the winter had persuaded the other monastic houses that resistance was hopeless and every day now came news of another monastery dissolved. Soon none would be left. All over England abbots were retiring on fat pensions, while the brethren went to take up secular parishes or retire on their own, thinner, stipends. There were tales of much chaos; at the inn in Scarnsea, where I was staying, I heard that when the monks left the monastery three months before, half a dozen who were too old or sick to move any further had taken rooms there and refused to leave when their money ran out; the constable and his men had had to put them on the road. They had included the fat monk with the ulcerated leg, and poor, stupid Septimus.

When King Henry learned of the events at St Donatus he had ordered that it be razed to the ground. Portinari, Cromwell's Italian engineer, who even now was demolishing Lewes Priory, was coming on to Scarnsea afterwards to take down the buildings. I had heard he was very skilled; at Lewes he had managed to undermine the foundations so the whole church came tumbling down at one go in great clouds of dust; they said in Scarnsea it had been a wonderful and terrible sight, and looked forward to seeing the spectacle repeated.

It had been a hard winter, and Portinari had been unable to get his men and equipment down to the Channel coast before spring came. They would be at Scarnsea in a week, but first the Augmentations officers had arrived to take away everything of value, down to the lead from the roof and the brass from the bells. It was an Augmentations man who met me at the gatehouse and checked my commission; Bugge and the other servants were long gone.