We passed Singleton's grave, still stark brown against the whiteness. Alice was as distant and uncommunicative as Mark had been. It made me angry to be confronted with this silent insolence again, and I wondered whether it was a tactic they had agreed between them, or whether it came to each naturally. But then the ways of expressing discontent to those in power are limited.
As we ploughed through the orchard, where today a flock of starveling crows sat cawing in the trees, I tried to make conversation. I asked how she had come to pass her childhood playing around the marsh.
'Two little boys lived in the cottage next to ours. Brothers, Noel and James. We used to play together. Their family had been fishermen for generations; they knew all the paths through the marsh, all the landmarks that keep you on firm ground. Their father was a smuggler as well as a fisherman. They're all dead now, their ship was lost in a great storm five years ago.'
'I am sorry.'
'It's what fishermen have to expect.' She turned to me, a spark of animation entering her voice. 'If folk do take treated cloth to France and bring back wine, it's only because they're poor.'
'I have no interest in prosecuting anybody, Alice. I merely wonder whether some moneys that may be unaccounted for, and perhaps the lost relic, could be taken out that way.'
We arrived opposite the fish pond. A little way off some servants, supervised by a monk, were working by a little lock gate in the stream, and I saw the water level in the pond had already fallen.
'Brother Guy told me about that poor girl,' Alice said, wrapping her coat around her more tightly. 'He said she did my work before I came.'
'Yes, she did. But the poor creature had no friends apart from Simon Whelplay. You have people who will guard you.' I saw anxiety in her eyes and smiled reassuringly. 'Come, there is the gate. I have a key.'
We went through, and again I stood looking over the white expanse of the marsh, the river in the distance and the little knoll with the ruined buildings halfway between.
'I nearly fell in the first time I came out here,' I observed. 'Are you sure there is a safe way? I don't see how you can descry landmarks when everything is covered in snow.'
She pointed. 'See those banks of tall reeds? It's a question of finding the right ones, and keeping them at the right distance from you. It's not all marsh, there are firmer patches, and the patterns of the reeds are their signposts.' She stepped from the path and tested the ground. 'There will be a frozen crust in places; you have to take care not to step through.'
'I know. That is what I did last time.' I hesitated on the bank and smiled nervously. 'You have the life of a king's commissioner in your hands.'
'I will take care, sir.' She walked back and forth along the path a few times, judging where we should cross and then, bidding me walk exactly in her footprints, stepped down onto the marsh.
===OO=OOO=OO===
She led the way slowly and steadily, pausing often to take bearings. I admit my heart pounded at first; I looked back, conscious of our growing distance from the monastery wall, the impossibility of help if one fell in. But Alice seemed confident. Sometimes when I stepped in her tracks the ground was firm, at others oily black water seeped in to fill the depressions. Our progress seemed slow and I was surprised when, looking up, I saw we were almost at the knoll, the ruins of tumbled stone only fifty yards away. Alice stopped.
'We need to go up on the knoll, then another path leads down to the river. It is more dangerous on that side, though.'
'Well, let us get to the knoll at least.'
A few moments later we stepped up onto firm ground. The knoll was only a few feet above the level of the bog, but from there I had a clear view both back to the monastery and down to the river, still and grey. The sea was visible in the distance and a cutting breeze gave the air a salty tang.