Dissolution

The cathedral would be brightly lit, candles flickering before the altar, the statues and the gloriously painted rood screen. I preferred those days when I did not serve the priest but sat with the congregation. Beyond the screen the priest would intone Mass in the Latin I was coming to understand, his words echoing as the congregation made their responses.

Now that the old Mass is long gone it is hard to convey the sense of mystery it communicated: the incense, the rising Latin cadences, then the ringing of the censing bell as the bread and wine were elevated and, everyone believed, transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the priest's mouth.

In the last year my head had become increasingly filled with godly fervour. Watching the faces of the congregation, quiet and respectful, I had come to see the Church as a great community binding the living and the dead, transforming people if only for a few hours into the obedient flock of the Great Shepherd. I felt called to serve this flock; and as a priest I could be a guide to my fellows, earn their respect.

Brother Andrew soon disabused me of that when, trembling with the import of what I had to say, I sought an interview with him in his little office behind the schoolroom. It was the end of the day and he was red-eyed as he studied a parchment on his desk, his black habit stained with ink and food. Haltingly I told him I believed I had a vocation and I wished to be considered as a trainee for ordination.

I expected him to question me about my faith, but he only raised a pudgy hand dismissively.

'Boy,' he said, 'you can never be a priest. Do you not realize that? You should not be taking up my time with this.' His white eyebrows creased together in annoyance. He had not shaved; white stubble stood out like frost on his fat red chaps.

'I don't understand, Brother. Why not?'

He sighed, filling my face with his alcoholic breath. 'Master Shardlake, you know from the Book of Genesis that God made us in his own image, do you not?'

'Of course, Brother.'

'To serve his Church you must conform to that image. Anyone with a visible affliction, even a withered limb, let alone a great crooked humpback like yours, can never be a priest. How could you show yourself as an intercessor between ordinary sinful humanity and the majesty of God, when your form is so much less than theirs?'

I felt as though suddenly encased in ice. 'That cannot be right. That is cruel.'

Brother Andrew's face went puce. 'Boy,' he shouted, 'do you question the teachings of Holy Church, time out of mind? You that come here asking to be ordained as a priest! What sort of priest, a Lollard heretic?'

I looked at him sitting in his dirty food-stained robe, his stubbly face red and frowning. 'So I should look like you should I?' I burst out before I had time to think.

With a roar he got up, landing me a great clout on the ear. 'You little crookback churl, get out!'

I ran from the room, my head singing. He was too fat to pursue (he died of a great seizure the next year) and I fled from the cathedral and limped home through the darkening lanes, bereft. In sight of home I sat on a stile, watching a spring sunset whose green fecundity seemed to mock me. I felt that if the Church would not have me I had nowhere to go, I was alone.

And then, as I sat there in the dusk, Christ spoke to me. That is what happened, so there is no other way to put it. I heard a voice inside my head, it came from inside me but was not mine. 'You are not alone,' it said and suddenly a great warmth, a sense of love and peace, infused my being. I do not know how long I sat there, breathing deeply, but that moment transformed my life. Christ himself had comforted me against the words of the Church that was supposed to be his. I had never heard that voice before, and though I hoped, as I knelt praying that night and in later weeks and years, that I would hear it again, I never have. But perhaps once in a lifetime is all we are given. Many are not given even that.

***

We left at first light, before the village woke. I was still in sombre mood and we said little. There had been a hard frost, turning the road and trees white, but mercifully there was still no snow as we made our way out of the village, back into the narrow lane between the high tree-lined banks.

We rode all morning and into the early afternoon, until at last the woodland thinned and we came to a country of tilled fields with, a little way ahead, the slope of the South Downs. We followed a pathway up the hillside, where stringy looking sheep grazed. At the top we saw, below us, the sea, rolling in slow grey waves. To our right a tidal river cut through the low hills, reaching the sea through a great swathe of marshland. Bordering the marsh was a small town, and a mile off stood a great complex of buildings in ancient yellow stone, dominated by a great Norman church almost as large as a cathedral and surrounded by a high enclosing wall.

'The monastery of Scarnsea,' I said.