I spoke quietly. 'They come to me in dreams, Mark and Alice. I see them struggling in the water, sinking down, crying for help. I wake up screaming sometimes.' My voice broke. 'In different ways I loved them both.'
Brother Guy looked at me for a long moment, then reached into his habit. He passed me a folded paper, much creased.
'I have thought hard about whether to show this to you. I wondered if it might hurt you less not to see.
'What is it?'
'It appeared on the desk in my dispensary a month ago. I came in from my duties and there it was. I think a smuggler bribed one of Copynger's men to leave it for me. It is from her, but written by him.'
I opened the letter and read, in Mark Poer's clear round hand:
Brother Guy,
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.