We ordered supper and were served a greasy mutton stew with heavy ale. The sheep, Mark grumbled, was long dead. In the course of the meal a group of villagers arrived, in their best clothes, the Hallowtide services apparently over. They sat together, talking in sombre voices. Occasionally they glanced over at us, and we had more nosy looks and hostile faces.
I noticed that three men in a far corner also seemed to be ignored by the villagers. They were rough looking, with ragged clothes and unkempt beards. I saw them examining us; not staring openly like the villagers but with sidelong looks.
'See that tall fellow?' Mark whispered. 'I'd swear that's the rags of a monk's robe.'
The largest man, an ugly giant with a broken nose, wore a ragged shift of thick black wool and I saw that indeed it had a Benedictine cowl at the back. The innkeeper, who alone had been civil to us, appeared to refill our glasses.
'Tell me,' I asked quietly, 'who are those three?'
He grunted. 'Abbey-lubbers from the priory dissolved last year. You know how it is, sir. The king says the little houses of prayer must go, and the monks are given places elsewhere, but the servants are put out on the road. Those fellows have been begging about here this last twelvemonth – there's no labour for them. See that skinny fellow, he's had his ears cropped already. Be careful of them.'
I glanced round and saw that one of them, a tall thin fellow with wild yellow hair, had no ears, only holes with scar tissue around, the penalty for forgery. Doubtless he had been involved in some local enterprise of clipping coins and using the gold to make poor fakes.
'You allow them here,' I said.
He grunted. 'It's not their fault they were thrown out. Them and hundreds more.' Then, feeling perhaps he had said too much, the innkeeper hurried away.
'I think this might be a good time to retire,' I said, taking a candle from the table. Mark nodded, and we downed the last of our ale and headed for the stairs. As we passed the abbey servants my coat accidentally brushed the big man's robe.
'You'll have bad luck now, Edwin,' one of the others said loudly. 'You'll need to touch a dwarf to bring your luck back.'
They cackled with laughter. I felt Mark turn and laid my arm on his.
'No,' I whispered. 'No trouble here. Go up!' I half-pushed him up a rickety wooden staircase to where our bags were set out on truckle beds in a room under the thatch, whose population of rats could be heard scurrying away as we entered. We sat down and pulled off our boots.
Mark was angry. 'Why should we suffer the insults of these hinds?'
'We are in hostile country. The Weald people are still papists, the priest in that church probably tells them to pray for the death of the king and the pope's return every Sunday.'
'I thought you hadn't been in these parts before.' Mark stretched out his feet to the broad iron chimney pipe, which ran up through the centre of the room to the roof, providing the only warmth.
'Careful of chilblains. I haven't, but Lord Cromwell's intelligencers send back reports from every shire since the rebellion. I have copies in my bag.'
He turned to me. 'Do you not find it wearying sometimes? Always having to think when one talks to a stranger, lest something slips an enemy could turn to treason. It did not used to be like this.'
'This is the worst time. Things will improve.'
'When the monasteries are down?'
'Yes. Because Reform will finally be safe. And because then Lord Cromwell will have enough money to make the realm secure from invasion and do much for the people. He has great plans.'
'By the time the Augmentations men have had their cut, will there be enough left even to buy those churls downstairs new cloaks?'
'There will, Mark.' I spoke earnestly. 'The large monasteries have untold wealth. And what do they give to the poor, despite their duty of charity? I used to see the destitute crowding round the gates on dole days at Lichfield, children in rags pushing and kicking for the few farthings handed through the bars in the gate. I felt ashamed going into school on those days. Such a school as it was. Well, now there'll be proper schools in every parish, paid for by the king's Exchequer.'
He said nothing, only raised his eyebrows quizzically.
'God's death, Mark,' I snapped, suddenly irritated by his scepticism. 'Take your feet away from that chimney. They stink worse than that sheep.'
He clambered into bed and lay looking up at the thatched vault of the roof. 'I pray you are right, sir. But Augmentations has made me doubt men's charity.'
'There is godly leaven in the unregenerate lump. It works its way, slowly. And Lord Cromwell is part of it, for all his hardness. Have faith,' I added gently. Yet even as I spoke I remembered Lord Cromwell's grim pleasure as he talked of burning a priest with his own images, saw him again shaking the casket containing the child's skull.
'Faith will move mountains?' Mark said after a moment.
'God's nails,' I snapped, 'in my day it was the young who were idealistic and the old cynical. I'm too tired to argue further. Goodnight.' I began to undress; hesitantly, for I do not like people to see my disability. But Mark, sensitively, turned his back as we took off our clothes and donned our nightshifts. Wearily, I climbed into my sagging bed and pinched out the candle.
I said my prayers. But for a long time I lay awake in the darkness, listening to Mark's even breathing and the renewed scrabblings of the rats in the thatch as they crept back to the centre of the room, near the chimney where it was warmest.
I had made light of it, as I always did, but the looks the villagers gave my hump, and the abbey-lubber's remark, had sent a familiar stab of pain through me. It had settled miserably in my guts, crushing my earlier enthusiasm. All my life I had tried to shrug off such insults, though when I was younger I often felt like raging and screaming. I had seen enough cripples whose minds had been made as twisted as their bodies by the weight of insult and mockery they suffered; glowering at the world from beneath knitted brows and turning to swear foul abuse at the children who called after them in the streets. It was better to try and ignore it, get on with such life as God allowed.
I remembered one occasion, though, when that had been impossible. It was a moment that had defined my life. I was fifteen, a pupil at the cathedral school in Lichfield. As a senior scholar it was my duty to attend and sometimes serve at Sunday Mass. That seemed a wonderful thing after a long week at my books, struggling with the Greek and Latin poorly taught by Brother Andrew, a fat cathedral monk with a fondness for the bottle.
The cathedral would be brightly lit, candles flickering before the altar, the statues and the gloriously painted rood screen. I preferred those days when I did not serve the priest but sat with the congregation. Beyond the screen the priest would intone Mass in the Latin I was coming to understand, his words echoing as the congregation made their responses.
Now that the old Mass is long gone it is hard to convey the sense of mystery it communicated: the incense, the rising Latin cadences, then the ringing of the censing bell as the bread and wine were elevated and, everyone believed, transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the priest's mouth.
In the last year my head had become increasingly filled with godly fervour. Watching the faces of the congregation, quiet and respectful, I had come to see the Church as a great community binding the living and the dead, transforming people if only for a few hours into the obedient flock of the Great Shepherd. I felt called to serve this flock; and as a priest I could be a guide to my fellows, earn their respect.
Brother Andrew soon disabused me of that when, trembling with the import of what I had to say, I sought an interview with him in his little office behind the schoolroom. It was the end of the day and he was red-eyed as he studied a parchment on his desk, his black habit stained with ink and food. Haltingly I told him I believed I had a vocation and I wished to be considered as a trainee for ordination.