Mark and Brother Guy carefully lifted Simon's body out of the bath and carried it back into the infirmary hall. Brother Guy took the shoulders, and a pale-faced Mark the bare white feet. I followed behind with Alice, who after her brief outburst of sobbing had regained her usual composed demeanour.
'What is happening?' The blind monk was on his feet, waving his hands before him, his face piteous with fear. 'Brother Guy? Alice?'
'It is all right, Brother,' Alice said soothingly. 'There has been an accident, but all is safe now.' I wondered again at her control.
The body was laid in Brother Guy's infirmary, under the Spanish crucifix. He covered it with a sheet, his face set hard.
I took a deep breath. My mind was still reeling, and not just with shock at the novice's death. What had passed just before had shaken me to my bones. The echoes of childhood torments have great power, even when not brought to mind in such an inexplicable and horrifying way.
'Brother Guy,' I said, 'I never met that boy before yesterday, yet when he saw me he appeared to — to mock me, imitating my bent posture and — certain gestures I sometimes make in court, waving my hands. It seemed to me l-like something devilish.' I cursed myself, I was stammering like the bursar.
He gave me a long, searching look. 'I can think of a reason for that. I hope I am wrong.'
'What do you mean? Speak plainly.' I heard myself snap peevishly.
'I need to consider,' he replied as sharply. 'But first, Commissioner, Abbot Fabian should be told.'
'Very well.' I grasped the corner of his table; my legs had begun to shake uncontrollably. 'We will wait in your kitchen.'
Alice led Mark and me back to the little room where we had breakfasted.
'Are you all right, sir?' Mark asked anxiously. 'You are trembling.'
'Yes, yes.'
'I have an infusion of herbs that eases the body at times of shock,' Alice said. 'Valerian and aconite. I could heat some if you wish.'
'Thank you.' She remained composed, but there was a strange, almost bruised-looking sheen on her cheeks. I forced a smile. 'The scene affected you too, I saw. It was understandable. One feared the Devil himself was present in that poor creature.'
I was surprised by the anger that flashed into her face. 'I fear no devils, sir, unless it be such human monsters as tormented that poor boy. His life was destroyed before it began, and for such we should always weep.' She paused, realizing she had gone too far for a servant. 'I will fetch the infusion,' she said quickly, and hurried out.
I raised my eyebrows at Mark. 'Outspoken.'
'She has a hard life.'
I fingered my mourning ring. 'So have many in this vale of tears.' I glanced at him. He's smitten, I thought.
'I spoke with her as you asked.'
'Tell me,' I said encouragingly. I needed a distraction from the memory of what had just passed.
'She has been here eighteen months. She comes from Scarnsea, her father died young and she was brought up by her mother, who was a wise woman, a dispenser of herbs.'
'So that's where she gets her knowledge.'
'She was to be married, but her swain died in an accident felling trees. There's little work in the town, but she found a place as assistant to an apothecary in Esher, someone her mother knew.'
'So she's travelled. I thought she was no village mouse.'
'She knows the country round here well. I was talking to her about that marsh. She says there are paths through if you know where to find them. I asked her if she would show us and she said she might.'
'That could be useful.' I told him what Brother Gabriel had said about the smugglers, of my own visit there and my accident. I displayed my muddy leg. 'If there are paths, any guide had better be careful. God's wounds, this is a day of shocks.' My hand lying on the table was trembling; I seemed unable to stop it. Mark, too, was still pale. There was silence for a moment, a silence I was suddenly desperate to fill.