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.

I expected him to question me about my faith, but he only raised a pudgy hand dismissively.

'Boy,' he said, 'you can never be a priest. Do you not realize that? You should not be taking up my time with this.' His white eyebrows creased together in annoyance. He had not shaved; white stubble stood out like frost on his fat red chaps.

'I don't understand, Brother. Why not?'

He sighed, filling my face with his alcoholic breath. 'Master Shardlake, you know from the Book of Genesis that God made us in his own image, do you not?'

'Of course, Brother.'

'To serve his Church you must conform to that image. Anyone with a visible affliction, even a withered limb, let alone a great crooked humpback like yours, can never be a priest. How could you show yourself as an intercessor between ordinary sinful humanity and the majesty of God, when your form is so much less than theirs?'

I felt as though suddenly encased in ice. 'That cannot be right. That is cruel.'

Brother Andrew's face went puce. 'Boy,' he shouted, 'do you question the teachings of Holy Church, time out of mind? You that come here asking to be ordained as a priest! What sort of priest, a Lollard heretic?'

I looked at him sitting in his dirty food-stained robe, his stubbly face red and frowning. 'So I should look like you should I?' I burst out before I had time to think.

With a roar he got up, landing me a great clout on the ear. 'You little crookback churl, get out!'

I ran from the room, my head singing. He was too fat to pursue (he died of a great seizure the next year) and I fled from the cathedral and limped home through the darkening lanes, bereft. In sight of home I sat on a stile, watching a spring sunset whose green fecundity seemed to mock me. I felt that if the Church would not have me I had nowhere to go, I was alone.

And then, as I sat there in the dusk, Christ spoke to me. That is what happened, so there is no other way to put it. I heard a voice inside my head, it came from inside me but was not mine. 'You are not alone,' it said and suddenly a great warmth, a sense of love and peace, infused my being. I do not know how long I sat there, breathing deeply, but that moment transformed my life. Christ himself had comforted me against the words of the Church that was supposed to be his. I had never heard that voice before, and though I hoped, as I knelt praying that night and in later weeks and years, that I would hear it again, I never have. But perhaps once in a lifetime is all we are given. Many are not given even that.

We left at first light, before the village woke. I was still in sombre mood and we said little. There had been a hard frost, turning the road and trees white, but mercifully there was still no snow as we made our way out of the village, back into the narrow lane between the high tree-lined banks.

We rode all morning and into the early afternoon, until at last the woodland thinned and we came to a country of tilled fields with, a little way ahead, the slope of the South Downs. We followed a pathway up the hillside, where stringy looking sheep grazed. At the top we saw, below us, the sea, rolling in slow grey waves. To our right a tidal river cut through the low hills, reaching the sea through a great swathe of marshland. Bordering the marsh was a small town, and a mile off stood a great complex of buildings in ancient yellow stone, dominated by a great Norman church almost as large as a cathedral and surrounded by a high enclosing wall.

'The monastery of Scarnsea,' I said.

'"The Lord has brought us safe through our tribulations,"' Mark quoted.

'I think we have more of those ahead,' I replied. We led the tired horses down the hill, just as a light snow began to blow in from the sea.

We guided the horses carefully down the hill to where a road led into the town. They were nervous, shying away from the snowflakes brushing their faces. Happily, the snow stopped as we arrived.

'Shall we call on the Justice?' Mark asked.

'No, we must reach the monastery today; if the snow starts again we could have to stay the night here.'

We made our way down Scarnsea's cobbled main street, where the top storeys of ancient houses overhung the road, keeping to one side to avoid the emptying of pisspots. We noticed that the plaster and timbers of many houses were decayed, and the shops seemed poor places. The few people about gave us incurious glances.

We reached the town square. On three sides more dilapidated-looking houses stood, but the fourth consisted of a wide stone wharf. Once no doubt it had fronted the sea, but now it faced the mud and reeds of the marsh, sullen and desolate under the grey sky and giving off a mingled smell of salt and rot. A canal, large enough only for a small boat, had been cut through the mud and stretched in a long ribbon to the sea, a steely band a mile off. Out on the marsh we saw a train of donkeys roped together while a group of men shored up the canal bank with stones from panniers on the animals' backs.

There had evidently been recent entertainment, for on the far side of the square a little knot of women stood conversing by the town stocks, round which lay a mess of rotten fruit and vegetables. Sitting on a stool with her feet clamped in the stocks was a plump middle-aged woman of the poorer sort, her clothing a mess of burst eggs and pears. She wore a triangular cap with 'S' for 'scold' daubed on it. She looked cheerful enough now, as she took a cup of ale from one of the women, but her face was bruised and swollen and her blackened eyes half-shut. Seeing us, she raised her tankard and essayed a grin. A little group of giggling children ran into the square, carrying old rotten cabbages, but one of the women waved them off.

'Go away,' she called in an accent as thick and guttural as the villagers' had been. 'Goodwife Thomas has learnt her lesson and will give her husband peace. She'll be let out in an hour. Enough!'

The children retreated, calling insults from a safe distance.

'They have mild enough ways down here, it seems,' Mark observed. I nodded. In the London stocks it is common enough for sharp stones to be thrown, taking out teeth and eyes.

We rode out of town towards the monastery. The road ran alongside the reeds and stagnant pools of the marsh. I marvelled that there were pathways through such a foul mire, but there must be or the men and animals we had seen could not have found their way.

'Scarnsea was once a prosperous seaport,' I observed. 'That marshland has built up from silt and sand in a hundred years or so. No wonder the town is poor now; that canal would barely take a fishing boat.'

'How do they live?'

'Fishing and farming. Smuggling too, I daresay, from France. They'll still have to pay their rents and dues to the monastery to keep those lazy drones of monks. Scarnsea port was given as a prize to one of William the Conqueror's knights, who granted land to the Benedictines and had the monastery built. Paid for with English taxes, of course.'