'So if anyone gets drunk, it's on holy beer?'
'It's common enough. The Norman founders kept the monks comfortable in return for prayers for their souls in perpetuity. Everyone was happy, except those who paid for it all. Thank God, those bells have stopped.' I took a deep breath. 'Now, come. Don't say anything, take your lead from me.'
We rode up to the gatehouse, a solid affair faced with carvings of heraldic beasts. The gates were closed. Looking up, I glimpsed a face peering down from the window of the gatekeeper's house on the first floor, quickly withdrawn. I dismounted and banged on a small side gate set in the wall. After a few moments it opened to reveal a tall, burly man with a head as bald as an egg, wearing a greasy leather apron. He glared at us.
'Wod'ya want?'
'I am the king's commissioner. Kindly take us to the abbot.' I spoke coldly.
He looked at us suspiciously. 'We're expecting nobody. This is an enclosed monastery. You got papers?'
I reached into my robe and thrust my papers at him. 'The Monastery of St Donatus the Ascendant of Scarnsea is a Benedictine house. It is not an enclosed order, people may come and go at the abbot's pleasure. Or perhaps we are at the wrong monastery,' I added sarcastically. The churl gave me a sharp look as he glanced at the papers — it was clear he could not read — before handing them back.
'You've made them richer by a couple of smears, fellow. What's your name?'
'Bugge,' he muttered. 'I'll have ye taken to Master Abbot, sirs.' He stood aside and we led the horses through, finding ourselves in a broad space under the pillars supporting the gatehouse.
'Please wait.'
I nodded, and he stomped off and left us.
I passed under the pillars and looked into the courtyard. Ahead stood the great monastery church, solidly built of white stone now yellow with age. Like all the other buildings it was of French limestone, built in the Norman way with wide windows, quite unlike the contemporary style of high narrow windows and arches reaching to the heavens. Big as it was, three hundred feet long and with twin towers a hundred feet high, the church gave an impression of squat power, rooted to the earth.
To the left, against the far wall, stood the usual outbuildings — stables, mason's workshop, brewery. The courtyard was full of the sort of activity familiar to me from Lichfield: tradesmen and servants bustling to and fro and talking business with monks in the shaved heads and black habits of the Benedictines; habits of fine wool, I noticed, with good leather shoes showing underneath. The ground was packed earth, littered with straw. Big lurcher dogs ran everywhere barking and pissing against the walls. As with all those places, the atmosphere of the outer court was of a business rather than an enclosed refuge from the world.
To the right of the church the inner wall separated off the claustral buildings, where the monks lived and prayed. Against the far wall stood a separate, one-storey building with a fine herb garden before it, plants staked out and carefully labelled. That, I guessed, would be the infirmary.
'Well, Mark,' I asked quietly, 'what do you think of a monastic house?'
He kicked out at one of the big dogs, which had approached us with raised hackles. It backed off a little, to stand barking angrily. 'I had not expected anything so large. It looks as if it could support two hundred men in a siege.'
'Well done. It was built to provide for a hundred monks and a hundred servants. Now everything — buildings, lands, local monopolies — supports just thirty monks and sixty servants, according to the Comperta, on the fat of the land.'
'They've noticed us, sir,' he murmured, and indeed the cur's continued barking had drawn eyes from all over the courtyard — unwelcoming eyes, quickly averted as people whispered to each other. A tall, thin monk, leaning on a crutch by the church wall, was staring fixedly at us. His white habit with its long scapular in front contrasted with the plain black of the Benedictines.