Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8) (7 page)

Carew’s face was intent. “We need a plan.”

“We bloody well do need a plan!” I said. “Any suggestions?”

“We can’t stop it, not with only thirty of us and no weapons beyond our belt knives.” Justin’s red hair was plastered to his head, which was why my Welsh archers had nicknamed him
Goch
.

“I’m not sure weapons would help if it meant killing civilians,” I said.

“We have to stop it. Come, sire, out of the rain while we regroup.” Carew took the steps back up to the palace two at a time, passing Romeyn, who still stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed in thought.

Cursing Acquasparta and his stupidity, I gestured for my men to follow Carew. “Get everyone inside. We have maybe a minute to figure out how to stop this.”

Justin gave a piercing whistle, and ten seconds later, my men had retreated inside the anteroom of the palace. Callum returned, looking grave, but I didn’t ask him how Peckham was. We had no time, and the knowledge of the Archbishop’s health wasn’t going to save the young man out there.

“Someone said that this is Acquasparta’s doing?” Callum said.

“It seems so, but he can’t help,” Romeyn said. “The guards arrested the heretic on his orders, but he either didn’t count on the crowd or he underestimated it.”

Callum nodded, accepting for now what he couldn’t change. What was important was saving the young man. While that was a given to Callum, I saw hesitation in the eyes of several of my men. I didn’t have time to dispel it, but perhaps I didn’t have time
not
to either.

“For what purpose did God give man a mind if not to use it?” When it became clear that I was going to have a major confrontation with the Church over heresy, my mother and Callum had given me a primer on Luther, Milton, and freedom of religion. I was about to see if I could actually articulate what they’d asserted. “When did thinking become a crime in England?” As I spoke, I looked in particular at one man whose name was Thomas. His size made him a formidable fighter, but when he wasn’t soldiering, he tended towards quiet and thoughtful.

Thomas answered immediately. “It could never be a crime, sire.” And then he quoted from the Bible: “You then, why do you judge your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.”

That was from Romans, and as soon as we were out of here, Thomas was going to get a promotion. But he was talking about the behavior of the crowd, which was reprehensible, and for which they could be condemned. The issue at hand, however, was heresy. I didn’t know what this heretic believed, and I didn’t care. If I was going to save him and all the others I’d welcomed into England, I needed to uproot the very idea that a man could be condemned for his beliefs.

I wasn’t good at this, really, but Callum had carefully written out what to say if the occasion ever arose, so I parroted it: “Does not Exodus say, ‘Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” I tried not to look at Romeyn. This was his jurisdiction, not mine, but he’d taken a step back from my circle of men, not interfering with my speech with them, and his face gave nothing away.

The men gathered around me to listen, and several nodded, though I saw puzzlement on others’ faces. Most people in the Middle Ages didn’t spend any time thinking about issues of theology. They were lectured at by priests, but services were in Latin, which few understood. It was the ritual that was important, which made the peoples’ hatred of heretics all the more strange to me, since most people couldn’t even tell you what the difference was between what they believed and what heretics believed and why it was important.

Acquasparta had known that, of course. Every rabble rouser since the beginning of time knew that people were easily led and once aroused would go where a charismatic man pointed.

“I say to you that each of us understands God’s message according to his ability and God’s grace. My England will not infringe on any man’s right to come to his own understandings,” I said, and then quoted Milton: “‘Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.’’

Except for my voice, the silence in the corridor was absolute. I had thirty faces staring at me. I didn’t know that I’d ever had such an audience or such a need for eloquence. I made a fist and brandished it. “Whether you knew it or not, you have always had that right, no matter what your king or your priest said. That right is innate in all of you. And just as each one of you has the right to speak your mind in your own home or among your companions, so this man has that right. I will not take it from you. I will not allow that crowd to take it from him.”

Romeyn licked his lips. “We could set fire to the stables.”

I stared at him, astonished and within inches of laughing that such a suggestion had come from him. “Thank you. That might have worked if everything wasn’t already soaked and the crowd had remained within the palace.” I shook myself. “I have an idea: everybody strip off your livery.”

Justin didn’t hesitate to obey, and as he disrobed, the rest of my guard followed. In turn, I tightened my black cloak around myself, making sure I was completely covered. My breeches and boots were that of a nobleman, which couldn’t be helped, but I wanted to hide that I was the king of England, up until the moment I revealed it.

“Callum and Carew are going to get me to the heretic,” I said. “The rest of you must disperse through the crowd. When I reach wherever they intend to hang this man, I’m going to throw off my cloak and raise my hands above my head. That is your cue to shout, ‘the king, the king’ until the crowd listens. I will start to speak, and at the end of every sentence, you need to cheer me on.”

“Of course, sire,” Justin said, and there were nods all around.

Callum looked darkly at them. “Regardless of what he says.”

I hoped Callum’s words weren’t necessary, but faith was a funny thing, and while everyone in my guard was an excellent fighter, not all were thinkers or leaders. Fortunately to them, I, not Acquasparta, was the highest authority after God. They would obey.

“Let’s go.” I headed back to the front door and down the steps. While we’d been inside, the sounds of the crowd had diminished, which had me a bit worried we’d be too late. Once outside again, however, I could hear them farther down the street.

“They’re by the cathedral,” Carew said.

“They’re probably looking for a tree,” Callum added.

We sprinted through the gate, which the guards had left open, and across the road towards the cathedral grounds. Bounding through that open gate, we entered the graveyard on the south side of the cathedral.

The crowd had grown since it had left the palace courtyard. What had started out as a hundred people had become more like two or three hundred, with people streaming towards the commotion from all directions, though all had to fit a few at a time through the gateway. Canterbury was a Benedictine monastery, and a few of the monks were just realizing that something was amiss and starting to appear too.

The ringleaders had found a tree near the east end of the graveyard past the well. One of the ringleaders had thrown one end of the rope over a branch of a great oak tree that overhung the monastery wall. The other end was looped around the young man’s neck.

I hung back for a moment while my guard dispersed into the crowd ahead of me, and then I loped forward, Carew and Callum on either side of me. Taking a page from Justin’s book, Carew put his fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle that was so loud it might have scorched the leaves on the tree. My ears rang, and I had to restrain myself from putting my hands over my ears.

“Sorry, sire,” Carew said, with a glance at me.

“No apologies,” I said.

Carew’s whistle had managed what Acquasparta’s feeble protestations could not. The jeers and shouts among the crowd didn’t exactly stop, but a good third were now paying attention to us rather than to the imminent hanging. The hangman stopped too, which was the most important thing, and there was a second of silence in which Callum inserted, “Make way for the king!” as he began to shove his way through the crowd.

I threw off my mantle—a little earlier than I’d intended since I was still stuck in the middle of everyone—but the people needed to see that I was, in fact, the king.

My guard had slipped in among the crowd such that I couldn’t distinguish more than a handful of their faces anymore. At Callum’s shout, they took up the call as I’d asked. “The king!” “It’s the king! “Make way for the king!”

“Kneel before the king!”

I knew that voice. It belonged to a Welshman in my guard named Rhys, whose barrel chest was more than broad enough to produce the sound, though he himself was hardly taller than five and half feet.

The shocking bark worked. Those closest to me went down on one knee, and like a wave at a football stadium, those behind bent down in response to the actions of those in front. The several executioners remained, pumped up on adrenaline, the color in their faces high and their eyes wild with hatred. The one who’d thrown the rope over the branch had caught the end and held it, though thankfully he hadn’t yet hauled the prisoner into the air. It would take a bit of work to do so, but as the heretic’s hands were tied behind his back, it was also possible that a single jerk on the rope could snap his neck.

The executioners gazed out over their suddenly silent crowd, shocked into stillness themselves, and then the ringleader’s eyes went to mine as I made my steady way towards him. He stared at me for a second, as if not sure what he was seeing, and then his eyes widened. In a swift movement, he dropped to one knee and bent his head. Callum reached him a second before I did, took the rope from his hand, and tossed it back over the branch so that it fell in a tangle at his feet.

I turned to the crowd. Heads came up, but I didn’t lift my hand to allow them to rise. I had several choices before me: I could shame them; I could chastise them; I could appeal to their better natures, if they had them; or I could deflect them. I didn’t know if there was a right way to go about this. I’d never saved a man from a hanging before, but I wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again, not in Canterbury. Though at some point I was going to have to address the fact that if it was happening here, towns up and down England might be facing a similar riot if the underlying tinder of prejudice was lit.

“I hear this man is a heretic.” I don’t know what they expected me to say, but that clearly wasn’t it. A murmur of conversation filled the square, and I lifted both hands and dropped them to lower the volume. “Can any one of you tell me what that means?”

Dead silence. And then, “He defies God!” That came from the back of the crowd.

“Could be.” I looked down at the heretic, who’d fallen to his knees too, the noose still around his neck, and scrapped in an instant the speech I’d been prepared to make. These people wouldn’t understand it, and it wouldn’t get to the heart of the matter for them—which wasn’t heresy. They really didn’t know what that meant. I put a hand under the prisoner’s chin and brought up his face so I could see into it. “Where are you from?”

“G-g-gascony, sire,” he said with a thick accent.

Some of the men in the front rows murmured—something about foreigners, I suspected. I brought my own head up, knowing now that I had my key to them. “How many of you knew this man came from France?”

Nobody moved.

“Come on. I want a show of hands.” I raised my own, and a dozen or so near me followed suit, perhaps too afraid not to.

“So the rest of you thought he was an Englishman?” I exaggeratedly shook my head. “If you admit to that, you’d have to admit to murdering a fellow citizen in cold blood. Last I heard, that was against the law. I’m sure you don’t want that.”

Now they were confused, worried that they were damned whether or not they raised their hands, but most of them did anyway.

“That’s better.” I rubbed my chin as I looked at them: three hundred English folk. Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, they went about their daily business without a hitch, but like the heretic, they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been caught up in Acquasparta’s schemes. At one time or another, many had probably spoken to the man they’d been about to kill. My own men remained on their knees among them. I could have had them rise and posted them at the edges of the crowd, a silent threat, but I didn’t want the people afraid of anything but what they’d done.

I looked down at the heretic again and then to the men behind him. “Remove that noose.”

The ringleader hobbled forward, still on his knees, hastening to obey. When I held out my hand for the rope, he gave it to me. I held it up to the crowd. “I invited this man to England because France wouldn’t have him. Personally, I like thumbing my nose at France.”

That actually got a bit of a laugh. They were beginning to wonder where this was going and if maybe they were going to come out of it alive.

“But when I opened our doors to people who believe differently from you and me, that made him my guest, and every one of you has just made a mockery of my invitation.” I paused, and then overrode the shuffling and mumbling that followed that statement, “The truth is, I don’t care what this man believes. I don’t care what you believe. I intend to create an England where every man, regardless of where he was born or who his parents are, has the right to believe what he likes.”

“As long as he pays his taxes.” That was Rhys again.

A dozen people gasped. I felt the air leave my own chest in a
huh
at my guard’s audacity, but I recovered quickly, pointing to him and grinning. “Even so. You do your job, and I will do mine. But this—” I held up the rope again. “This is not for you. Your job is to welcome foreigners,
particularly
Frenchmen who wish to give us their allegiance.” I tossed the rope to the ground. As before in the anteroom at the palace when I’d spoken to my men, the silence was absolute. I gazed out at my people’s bowed heads.

“Stand up.” I gestured with both hands. “Up! Up!”

“King David! God save King David!”