Chapter 1 - The Founding 


The tide crept along Southampton Water with the slowness of deliberate thought, brushing the reeds and mudflats as if testing the patience of the earth itself. A low mist rose from the Solent, coiling across the half-cleared fields where Netley Abbey would take form, shrouding the labourers in a silence deeper than that of the morning. Dawn broke hesitantly, pale as bleached parchment, revealing men wielding hammers and saws, the cadence of their work mingling with gull cries that sliced the mist like shrill, accusing fingers. The land seemed new, fragile, as though creation itself paused to witness the beginnings of something sacred yet precarious. 


Bishop Peter des Roches stood on top of a rise, his fur-lined cloak snapping in the wind. Age had bent him, stiffened his spine, but it had not diminished the fire in his sharp grey eyes. Netley Abbey would be his last offering, a sanctuary raised to God from the salt-marsh and clay, a monument to piety and power. Yet even as he blessed the ground, a tremor of unease stirred in him. He had seen enough of men to know that holiness was seldom untainted by ambition. 


“May the stones endure longer than I, Father Prior,” he murmured. 


“They shall, my lord,” replied the Prior of Beaulieu, bowing low. His calm obedience belied a shadow of apprehension. “God willing, they shall outlast us all.” 


Des Roches’ lips curved faintly. “God’s will is one thing. The king’s is another.” 


He thought of King Henry’s temper, fickle, unpredictable, consuming,-  dangerous, and felt again that brittle tension between devotion and politics. His gaze drifted to the mist-shrouded masons, carving pale sandstone, each block a testament to human diligence and pride. The stones would speak long after his voice had faded. 


By mid-morning, the mist thinned, revealing Hugh of Amesbury, master mason, moving among the labourers with commanding authority. His hands, scarred from old campaigns in Poitou, bore witness to a life of endurance. At his side worked Osric, a young apprentice, whose dark hair fell into his eyes as he laboured to please. Behind them, Brother Aelfric, responsible for the records and sanctity of the work, murmured prayers under his breath, wary of the tide, the mist, and the hearts of men. 


Minor quarrels flared, as they often did in places where sweat met sanctity. A hammer vanished, then reappeared. A gull lay dead among the reeds, pale as a spectre. Osric’s temper burned bright beneath Hugh’s stern correction. 


“You have strength, boy, but no patience,” said Hugh, steadying a block. 


“I do all I can,” Osric muttered. “And still it is never enough.” 


Brother Aelfric intervened softly. “The land listens, lads. Treat it with respect, lest it remember your anger.” 


The Bishop moved among the foundations, sprinkling holy water and murmuring blessings. Silence fell in the shadow of the sacred, but unease lingered. The mist curled like an unseen observer. The tide whispered warnings. The air carried a note of menace. 


That evening, as dusk gathered and the first owls began their cries, Osric lingered near the tree line, humiliated and furious. Hugh called after him, but the boy’s figure dissolved into fog, as if the mist itself had swallowed him whole. 


That night, the tide whispered. The wind shifted. The Abbey seemed to hold its breath. 


A distant, muffled cry echoed through the reeds. A shadow moved unseen and somewhere, across the Solent, a bell tolled softly- a note of sorrow that would linger for centuries. 


By dawn, Osric’s body lay face down near the foundations of the scriptorium, throat cruelly cut, tools beside him. The ground bore no marks of struggle. Hugh found him, pale and trembling, and stumbled to the Prior’s tent. 


“I… I do not know,” he whispered. “He was gone when I sought him. The mist hid everything.” 


The Prior ordered a quick burial, and Bishop des Roches, weakened by fever, sprinkled holy water with a faltering hand. “Let no man question the will of God,” he said, but his voice trembled. “Let the work continue.” 


Yet as the first stones rose from the marsh, the earth remembered.