As the four of us closed on him he made a sudden lurch to the side and disappeared through a half-open door.

'He's in the bath house!' Brother Guy called. 'There's no way out of there. Be careful, the floor is slippery.' He ran in, Alice just after him. Mark and I stared at each other then followed him inside.

The bath house was dim, only a faint milky light coming through a high window half-choked with snow. It was a small, square room with a tiled floor and a sunken bath in the middle, perhaps four feet deep. Brushes and scraping knives stood in one corner, and there was a pervasive musty smell of unwashed skin. I heard running water and looking down saw that the stream actually ran through a culvert in the bottom of the bath. Simon Whelplay stood in the far corner, still crouched over, trembling in his white nightshift. I stood by the door while Brother Guy approached him from one side, Mark and Alice from the other. Alice stretched out an arm to him.

'Come, Simon, it's Alice. We won't harm you.' I had to admire her dauntlessness; not many women would have approached such a frightful apparition so calmly.

The novice turned, his face twisted into an agonized expression, almost unrecognizable. He stared at her unseeingly for a moment, then his eyes turned to Mark beside her. He pointed a skinny finger and shouted in a cracked, hoarse voice quite unlike his own, 'Keep away! You are the Devil's man in your bright raiment! I see them now, the devils swarming through the air as thick as motes, they are everywhere, even here!' He covered his eyes with his hands, then staggered and suddenly fell forward into the bath. I heard his arm break with a crack as it hit the tiles. He lay still, his body sprawled across the culvert. Freezing water washed around him.

Brother Guy lowered himself into the bath. We stood on the edge as he turned the novice face up. His eyes had rolled back into his head, making a ghastly contrast with his still livid face. The infirmarian felt his neck and then let out a sigh. He looked up at us. 'He is dead.'

He rose and crossed himself. Alice let out a wail, then collapsed against Mark's chest, bursting into a frenzy of choking sobs.

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.

'You seem to have had a long talk. How does Alice come to be here?'

'The apothecary died, he was an old man. After that she came back to Scarnsea, but her mother died too shortly after. Her cottage was on a copyhold and the landowner took it back. She was left alone. She didn't know what to do, then someone said the infirmarian was looking for a lay assistant. No one in the town wanted to work for him – they call him the black goblin – but she had no choice.'

'I have the impression she does not much admire our holy brethren.'

'She said some of them are lascivious men, forever sidling up and trying to touch her. She is the only young woman in the place. The prior himself has been a problem apparently.'

I raised an eyebrow. 'God's wounds, she did speak freely.'

'She is angry, sir. The prior made a nuisance of himself when she first came.'

'Yes, I noticed she disliked him. Fie, the man's a hypocrite, punishing other people's sins and chasing the women servants himself. Does the abbot know?'

'She told Brother Guy and he made the prior stop. The abbot seldom intervenes; he supports the prior's strong discipline and leaves him to do much as he will. Apparently all the monks are terrified of him, and those who were guilty of sodomy before are too terrified of him to follow their base hearts.'

'And we've seen the results of that discipline.'

Mark passed a hand over his brow. 'Yes, we have,' he agreed sombrely.

I thought a moment. 'Disloyal of Mistress Alice, to speak so to the commissioner's assistant. Is she of reformist persuasion?'