'No Christian would desecrate a church in such a way, papist or reformer.'
'No. The whole thing is an abomination.' I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling my face sag with tiredness. I could think no more today. I opened them again to find Mark looking at me keenly.
'You said Commissioner Singleton's body reminded you of Queen Anne Boleyn's beheading.'
I nodded. 'That memory still sickens me.'
'Everyone was surprised how suddenly she fell last year. Though she was much disliked.'
'Yes. The Midnight Crow.'
'They say the head tried to speak after it was cut off.'
I held up a hand. 'I can't talk about it, Mark. I was there as an official of state. Come, you are right. We should sleep.'
He looked disappointed, but said nothing more, banking up the fire with logs. We clambered into bed. From where I lay I could see through the window that the snow still fell, the flakes outlined against a lit window some way off. Some of the monks were up late, but then the days when the brethren retired before dark in winter, to be up for prayer again at midnight, were long gone.
Despite my tiredness I tossed and turned, my mind still active. I thought especially of the girl Alice. Everyone was potentially in danger in this place, but a woman alone was always more at risk than most. I liked the spark of character I had seen in her. It reminded me of Kate.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Despite my will to sleep, I found my tired mind going back three years. Kate Wyndham was the daughter of a London cloth merchant accused of false accounting by his partner, in a case brought in the Church court on the basis that a contract was equivalent to an oath before God. In fact his partner was related to an archdeacon who had influence with the judge, and I managed to get the case transferred to King's Bench, where it was thrown out. The grateful merchant, a widower, invited me to dinner and there I met his only daughter.
Kate was lucky; her father believed in educating women beyond what they needed for the kitchen accounts, and she had a lively mind. She had a sweet, heart-shaped face, too, and rich brown hair falling round her shoulders. She was the first woman I had ever met with whom I could talk as an equal. She liked nothing better than to discuss the doings of the law, the court, even the Church — for her father's experience had turned them both into ardent reformers. Those evenings talking with her and her father at their house, and later the afternoons with Kate alone when she accompanied me on long walks into the countryside, were the best times of my life.
I knew she saw me as only a friend — it became a joke between us that I conversed with her as freely as with another man — yet I began to wonder if it might not blossom into something more. I had been in love before but always held from pressing my suit, fearing my twisted form could only bring rejection and I would be better waiting till I had built a fortune that I could offer as a compensating attraction. But I could give Kate other things she would value: good conversation, companionship, a circle of congenial friends.
I wonder to this day what might have happened had I shown my real feelings earlier, but I left it too late. One evening I called at her house unannounced and found her sitting with Piers Stackville, the son of a business associate of her father's. I was unworried at first, for although handsome as Satan, Stackville was a young man of few accomplishments beyond a laboriously mannered chivalrousness. But I saw her blush and simper at his crass remarks; my Kate transformed into a silly girl. From then on she could talk of nothing but what Piers had said or done, with sighs and smiles that cut me to the heart.
In the end I told her of my feelings. It was clumsily and stupidly done, I fumbled and faltered at my words. The worst thing was her utter surprise.
'Matthew, I thought you wanted only to befriend me, I have never heard one word of love from you. You appear to have kept much hidden.'
I asked her if it was too late.