Dissolution

I could sense Glench's impatience to be back at work. 'I will leave you,' I said. 'Make sure not to forget anything,' I added, taking a moment's pleasure in his affronted stare.

I crossed the cloister to the church, keeping a careful eye on the men scrambling over the roof; already fallen tiles lay dotted round the cloister square. Inside the church, light still streamed through the ornate stained-glass windows, still created a kaleidoscope of warm colours on the floor of the nave. But the walls and side chapels were bare now. The sound of hammering and voices echoed down from the roof. At the head of the nave the floor was broken, a mass of shattered tiles. It was the spot where Edwig had fallen and also where the bells would have landed when they had been cut from the roof. I looked up into the yawning empty space of the bell tower, remembering.

Going round the rood screen, I saw the lecterns and even the great organ had been removed. I shook my head and turned to leave.

Then I saw a cowled figure sitting in a corner of the choir stall, facing away from me. For a moment I felt a thrill of superstitious dread as I imagined Gabriel returned to mourn the ruin of his life's work. The figure turned and I almost cried out, for at first I could see no face under the hood, but then I made out the gaunt brown features of Brother Guy. He rose and bowed.

'Brother infirmarian,' I said, 'for a moment I thought you were a ghost.'

He smiled sadly. 'In a way I am.'

I approached and sat down, motioning him to join me. 'I am glad to see you,' he said. 'I wanted to thank you for my pension, Master Shardlake. I imagine it was you who saw I was given an increased allowance.'

'You were elected abbot, after all, when Abbot Fabian was declared incapable. You are entitled to a larger allowance, even if you only held the post a few weeks.'

'Prior Mortimus was not pleased when the brethren elected me over him. He has gone back to schoolmastering, you know, in Devon.'

'May God have mercy on his charges.'

'I wondered whether it was right to take the larger sum, when the brethren have to live on five pounds a year. But they would have been given no more had I refused. And with my face I will not have an easy time of it in the world. I think I will keep my monastic name of Guy of Malton rather than revert to my worldly surname of Elakbar – I am allowed to do that, even if "Brother" is forbidden?'

'Of course.'

'Do not look shamefaced, my friend – you are my friend, I think?'

I nodded. 'Yes, I am. Believe me, being sent back here now is no pleasure to me, I have no more wish to be a commissioner.' I shivered. 'It is cold.'

Guy nodded. 'Yes. I have sat here too long. I have been thinking of the monks who sat in these stalls every day for four hundred years, chanting and praying. The venal, the lazy, the devoted, those who were all those things. But-' he pointed up at the clanging, clattering roof – 'it is hard to concentrate.'

As we looked upwards there came a loud hammer blow and a shower of dust. Lumps of plaster fell to the floor with a crash and suddenly daylight streamed in from a hole, a shaft of sunlight spearing to the floor. 'We're through, bullies,' a voice echoed from above. 'Careful there!'

Guy made a strange sound, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. I touched his arm. 'We should go. More plaster will be coming down.'

Outside in the courtyard his face was bleak but composed. Copynger nodded coldly to him as we began walking away towards the abbot's house.

'When the monks left at the end of November Sir Gilbert asked me to stay on,' Guy told me. 'He'd been put in charge of minding the place till Portinari could get here and he asked me to help. The fish pond flooded badly in January, you know; I was able to help him drain it.'

'It must have been hard, living alone here with everyone gone.'

'Not really, not until the Augmentations men came this week and started clearing the place. Somehow it felt, over the winter, as though the house was only waiting for the monks to come back.' He winced as a great chunk of lead crashed to the ground behind us.

'You hoped for a reprieve?'

He shrugged. 'One always hopes. Besides, I had nowhere to go. I have been waiting all this time to hear if I am to be allowed a permit to leave for France.'

'I might be able to help with that, if there is delay.'

He shook his head. 'No. I heard a week ago. I have been refused. There is talk of a new alliance between France and Spain against England, I believe. I had better see if I can exchange this habit for a doublet and hose. It will be strange after all these years. And grow my hair!' He lowered his hood and ran his hand over his bald crown. I saw the fringe of black hair was tinged with white now.

'What will you do?'

'I want to leave in the next few days. I could not bear to be here when they demolish the buildings. The whole town is coming; they are making a fair of it. How they must have hated us.' He sighed. 'I may go to London, where exotic faces are not so rare.'