Dissolution

The magistrate shrugged. 'There wasn't. And if the monks had sworn out a warrant against her, that would have been one up for them against the town.'

'What do you think happened to the girl, Mistress Stumpe?'

She looked me in the eye. 'I don't know, sir, but I dread to think.'

I nodded slowly. 'But Justice Copynger is quite right, he could do nothing without evidence.'

'I know that, but I knew Orphan well. It wasn't in her to steal and run away.'

'But if she was desperate…'

'Then she'd have come to me rather than risk the rope for stealing. But nothing's been seen or heard of her these eighteen months. Nothing.'

'Very well. Thank you, Goodwife, for your time.' I sighed. Everywhere I turned suspicions remained suspicions; there was nothing I could grasp hold of and tie to Singleton's murder.

She led us back to the hall, where the children picking rags looked up with pale, wizened faces from their tasks. The sickly stench of the old clothes carried clear across the room.

'What are your charges doing?' I asked her.

'Looking through the rags people give for something to wear tomorrow. It's dole day at the monastery. It'll be a hard walk in this weather.'

I nodded. 'Yes, it will. Thank you, Mistress Stumpe.' I turned in the doorway as we left; she was already back with the children, helping them pick through the festering piles.

***

Justice Copynger offered us dinner at his house, but I said we must return to the monastery. We set off, our boots crunching through the snow.

'We will have missed dinner,' Mark said after a while.

'Yes. Let's find an inn.'

We found a respectable enough coaching house behind the square. The landlord ushered us to a table looking out on the wharf and I watched the boat we had seen earlier, laden with bales, being oared carefully through the channel towards the waiting ship.

'God's wounds,' Mark said, 'I'm hungry.'

'Yes, so am I. But we'll keep clear of the beer. Did you know, under the original rule of St Benedict the monks only had one meal a day in the winter – dinner? He made the rule for the Italian climate, but they kept it in England as well to begin with. Imagine standing in prayer for hours a day, in winter, on one meal a day! But of course, as the years passed and the monasteries got wealthier, it became two meals a day, then three, with meat, with wine…'

'At least they still pray, I suppose.'

'Yes. And believe their prayers intercede with God for the dead.' I thought of Brother Gabriel and his anguished intensity. 'But they are wrong.'

'I confess it sends my head to spinning, sir, all this theology.'

'It shouldn't, Mark. God gave you a brain. Use it.'

'How is your back today?' he asked, changing the subject. I reflected it was becoming a talent of his.

'Bearable. Better than it was first thing.'

The innkeeper brought us dishes of rabbit pie, and we ate silently for a while.

'What do you think became of that girl?' Mark asked at length.

I shook my head. 'Jesu knows. There are so many threads of enquiry, they merely multiply. I had hoped for more from Copynger. Well, now we know women have been molested at the monastery. By whom? Prior Mortimus, who troubled Alice? Others? As for the girl Orphan, Copynger's right. There's no evidence she didn't just run away, and the old woman's fondness for her could be colouring her judgement. There's nothing to lay hold of.' I clenched a fist on the empty air.

'What did you think of Justice Copynger?'

'He's a reformer. He will help us where he can.'

'He talks of true religion and how the monks oppress the poor, yet he lives richly while turning people off their land.'

'I don't like him either. But you should not have asked him about Alice's mother. It's not your place. He's our only reliable source of information and I don't want him crossed. We've little enough help. I'd hoped for more information on the land sales, to connect with the bursar's books.'

'It seemed to me the Justice knew more about the smugglers than he said.'

'Of course he did. He's taking bribes. But that's not why we're here. I'm with him on one thing: the murderer comes from within the monastery, not from Scarnsea. The five senior obedentiaries.' I ticked them off on my fingers. 'Abbot Fabian, Prior Mortimus, Edwig, Gabriel and Guy. Any of them is tall and strong enough to have despatched Singleton – except Brother Edwig, who was away. And any of them could have killed the novice. That is, of course, if what Brother Guy told us about deadly nightshade is true.'

'Why would he lie?'

Again I saw in my mind's eye the dead face of Simon Whelplay as we lifted him from the bath. The thought of him being poisoned because I might talk to him kept recurring, turning in my guts like a torsion.