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at one of them. She could feel his body heat. “Do you think the artist was drawing from life?” He pointed to the picture of the three men strapped to a hurdle. “The attribution says the original is in the motherhouse in France. Maybe this drawing has nothing to do with the Charterhouse here in London.”
    Annie shook her head. “Drawings like this were made on the spot by itinerant artists. They were the newspaper shots of their day. My bet is someone in the crowd sympathized with the monks and got one of the drawings to them. They preserved it and passed it on.”
    “They all have beards,” Geoff said. He waved his hand at the assortment of drawings. “None of the other monks do.”
    “That also feels accurate,” Annie said. “In 1535 Henry was still cautious. The population mostly supported the monks and the pope. This is a picture of the Carthusian prior, the Venerable Father as they called him, and two of his fellow monks. They were the first victims, and they were imprisoned for months—probably without shaving gear—because no jury would convict them, until Thomas Cromwell said the jurors would die traitors’ deaths unless they did. After that the trials became pro forma and very quick. From the Tower to Tyburn in a few days.” She started to say that was barely enough time to grow designer stubble. Like his. But Geoff’s grim expression put her off.
    “‘To be hung by the neck,’” he quoted, “‘cut down whilst yet alive, sliced open and gutted, and cut into four pieces.’”
    “That’s what the judge said,” Annie agreed.
    “Jesus God Almighty, we were a bloodthirsty lot. And all because Anne Boleyn was hot stuff and Henry wanted a new wife.”
    “And there was no such thing as divorce, meaning Henry had to get the pope to annul his marriage to Catherine. The pope wouldn’t do it.”
    “So Henry declared himself head of the Church in England.”
    “Exactly. The pope became simply the bishop of Rome, and the king made the rules for every Christian in England. The monks wouldn’t swear to that being legit, so they were condemned.”
    Geoff was still bent over the picture of the monks on the hurdle. “I have interviewed a fair percentage of the most important people around. I can’t think of one of them who would likely endure that for a principle. Religious or otherwise.”
    “You’re a cynic. Besides, these guys were Carthusian monks. They ate nothing but bread and water two days a week, no meat ever, and they wore hair shirts beneath their habits and almost never spoke. Religious principle is what they were about. Are about.”
    “You’re joking. They’re still around?”
    “Absolutely. Priest-monks—they call them Dom-somebody, not father—who live in solitude, and brothers who do the daily work. I looked them up a couple of days ago.”
    “Online? Hair shirts, but also Web sites?”
    “Yup. Turns out there are at this moment eighteen charterhouses in a dozen countries. Including one in Vermont and one here in England. Someplace called Parkminster.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Well, I don’t think they’d claim . . .”
    He laughed. “Parkminster is in Buckinghamshire, in Milton Keynes. There is no place less exotic on God’s green earth.”
    “They don’t think of themselves as exotics. Only a minority option.”
    “I interviewed a Trappist once. He’d been a Labour backbencher. After he became a monk, he wrote a book of poetry that was sixty-six weeks on the best-seller lists. He was fat and jolly. Didn’t look as if he lived on bread and water. Though he did tell me they ate no meat.”
    “The Trappists are thought to be one of the strictest orders in the church, but compared with the Carthusians, they’re playboys. A charterhouse is a collection of small houses, each occupied by one hermit monk who mostly does all his praying on his own and even grows much of his own food in a small garden. They only leave the monastery once a week. Every Thursday the