Dissolution

I have asked Mark to write this for me as his lettering is better than mine. I send it by a man of the town who comes sometimes to France, it is better you know not who.

I pray you to forgive me for writing to you. Mark and I are safe in France, I will not say where. I do not know how we came through the mire that night, once Mark fell in and I had to haul him out, but we reached the boat.

We were married last month. Mark knows some French and improves so fast, we hope he may obtain a clerkly post in this little town. We are happy, and I begin to feel a peace I have not known since my cousin died, though whether the world will allow us rest in these times I do not know.

There is no reason, sir, why you should care for any of this, but I wished you to know it was a bitter thing for me to have to deceive you, who protected me and taught me so much. I regret it, though I do not regret I killed that man; he deserved to die if ever a man did. I do not know where you will go in the world, but I beg Our Lord, Jesus Christ to watch over and protect you, sir. Alice Poer. The twenty-fifth day of January, 1538

I folded the letter and stood looking out over the estuary.

'They do not mention me at all.'

'It was from her to me. They were not to know I would see you again.'

'So they are alive and safe, pox on them. Perhaps now my dreams will stop. May I tell Mark's father? He was sore grieved. Just that I have secret word he is alive?'

'Of course.'

'She is right, there is nowhere safe in the world now, no thing certain. Sometimes I think of Brother Edwig and his madness, how he thought he could buy God's forgiveness for those murders with two panniers of stolen gold. Perhaps we are all a little mad. The Bible says God made man in his image but I think we make and remake him, in whatever image happens to suit our shifting needs. I wonder if he knows or cares. All is dissolving, Brother Guy, all is dissolution.'

We stood silent, watching the seabirds bobbing on the river, while behind us echoed the distant sound of crashing lead.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The dissolution of the English monasteries in 1536-40 was masterminded throughout by Thomas Cromwell as vice regent and vicar general. After conducting a survey of the monasteries, during which much damaging material was collected, Cromwell introduced an Act of Parliament dissolving the smaller monasteries in 1536. However, when his agents began carrying it into effect the result was 'The Pilgrimage of Grace', a massive armed rebellion in the north of England. Henry VIII and Cromwell put it down by tricking the leaders into negotiations until they had time to build up an army to destroy them.

The assault on the larger monasteries came a year later with pressure, as described in the story, being placed on vulnerable larger houses to surrender voluntarily. The intimidation into surrender of Lewes Priory in November 1537 was crucial and over the next three years, one by one, all the monasteries surrendered to the king. By 1540 there were none left; the buildings were left to decay, the lead stripped from the roof by the Augmentations men. The monks were pensioned off. If they resisted, as a few did, they were dealt with savagely. The average abbot and monastery official was undoubtedly more frightened of the commissioners, who were indeed brutal men, than the monks of Scarnsea are of Shardlake. But then Scarnsea is not an average monastery, and nor is Shardlake an average commissioner.

It is generally accepted that the accusations of multiple adultery against Queen Anne Boleyn were fabricated by Cromwell for Henry VIII, who had tired of her. Mark Smeaton was the only one of her alleged lovers to confess, probably on the rack. His father was a carpenter; I have invented his previous occupation as a swordsmith.