by Tarr, Judith
There was a silence. Thea seemed at last to have understood what she had confessed. A tremor ran through her body; she drew back a step, shying as her guard raised his knife. She stopped and stood very still. “Brother Alfred is not a sorcerer. If anyone is to die, it must be I, though life on this earth is very sweet, and since they tell me I have no soul, Heaven is barred to me.”
“Hell will take you gladly,” Reynaud muttered.
She hissed at him. “The Dark Lord is my bitter enemy, as he is of all my people. We’ve thwarted him too often and too thoroughly. But you he would welcome with open arms.”
She turned to the Bishop. “This is not a trial. This is a gathering of the King’s enemies to destroy the one thing he cares for. That one”—she indicated Adam with a toss of her head- “believes in what he does, which is all the worse for him. But the rest of you would kneel to a crucifix, and then spit on it.” Through gasps of horror and cries to seize her and cast her down, she laughed without mirth. “Ah, you mortal men! The truth sears you like cold iron. Shall I strike you again? You’ll burn the little Brother. The stake is ready; you have only to tie him to it and light the fire. And then the King will come. What then, Lord Bishop? While you kept to the abbey and plotted in secret, he suffered you. But now you declare open enmity.”
“He will not touch a man of God,” Adam said. “He dares not.”
Again she laughed, freely now, almost joyously. “Don’t be a fool. He’ll tear down this abbey stone by stone and drive you Hounds into the sea, and rend yon puppet of a Bishop limb from limb and cast him to the dogs.”
“Interdict—anathema—”
“You’re babbling, pious Brother. Ask Bishop Aylmer if Anglia or its King will suffer for vengeance taken upon traitors.”
“Silence!” Bishop Foulques was on his feet, quivering with passion. “The trial will resume. And I will hear no further word from you, witch; or as God is my witness, I will cast you out.”
“My lord Bishop,” Adam said soothingly, “she will not speak again. We, for our part, have presented our case. We contend that the prisoner is guilty as charged, and we submit him to your judgment.”
For a long while, Bishop Foulques did not respond. He had mastered himself; his face had returned from livid wrath to its former pallor. He seemed deep in thought, frowning, shooting swift glances at Alf, at Thea, at Aylmer: glances compounded of hatred and cold terror. Slowly, repeatedly, his thumb traced the intricate carving of his crozier.
When at last he spoke, it was to no one and to everyone, in a firm voice. “I have heard both attack and defense. I have reached a conclusion.”
He paused. Jehan found that he could not breathe. Alf was absolutely still, death-pale; Thea had turned toward him, holding him fast with her burning gaze.
The Bishop resumed. “No one has denied that witchcraft has been practiced in and about this city and the King. The doubt seems to lie in the identity of its practitioner. Either it is a woman of unknown origins and overweening arrogance and a flagrant disregard of the dignity of the Church, its court, and its Scriptures; or it is a monk in the habit of the holy Order of St. Jerome, an ordained priest and an acknowledged favorite of His Majesty the King.” Again he paused. Most of those there listened in puzzlement. But Adam’s face had paled and Reynaud’s gone livid. “The charges are grave. The penalty, as Brother Adam has informed us, is death.”
Alf tore his gaze from Thea’s and turned toward the Bishop.
Foulques raised his voice slightly. “It is my belief that both the accused and the woman are guilty of witchcraft, of sorcery, and of black enchantment. Yet in view of the evidence, it is also my belief that the guilt is not evenly apportioned. The prisoner has not confessed to his crimes, but has denied them; the woman...” He steadied himself with a visible effort. “The woman has admitted her guilt freely, insolently, and most unrepentantly. She also denies that the other shares that guilt; of this I am not convinced. In my judgment, she was the instigator, he the accomplice; she the cause, he the sharer of their sorceries.
“Therefore,” Foulques proclaimed, “I sentence them both. You,” he said to Alf, avoiding the pale stare, “as a priest of God, have sinned most grievously. Yet you are young, of an age when the beauty of a woman may overcome the strength of your vows; the passion of your blood has tempted you to do what is most direly forbidden. You have not fallen wholly, as this woman has testified; yet for your transgressions you must pay the due and proper penalty. Here before the court of Holy Church, by her authority vested in me, I suspend you from your sacred vows. You shall not go up to the altar of God, nor perform the functions of a priest, nor admit yourself into the company of priests or of monks, until such time as you may have proven by the purity of your life and actions that you have atoned fully for your sin. Furthermore, to remind you that you are but dust and ashes in the face of the Lord, I command that you submit to the punishment of twenty lashes upon your bare back; and that with each stroke, you cry to Him for His mercy.”
Alf stood rigid. His face was terrible, wholly inhuman. The Bishop turned to Thea, his eyes glittering. “And you,” he said. “You have cast your mockery in the face of Holy Church. You have given voice to lies born of the Devil your sire. And yet, in coming to this place, in crying your defiance, you have submitted yourself to our power. That power I invoke to its fullest extent. Woman of the hills, nameless one, corrupter of priests, you shall die by sacred and cleansing fire, and your bones shall be cast into a pit, and the curse of God’s wrath shall lie upon them.”
Alone of all those who listened, she seemed unmoved. Alf broke away from his guards. “No!” he shouted. “No! Let her live. I lied; I deceived you all. It is I who am the sorcerer. I worked the spells; I pretended innocence to confound you. I should go to the fire. Let me die in her place!”
“So completely has she corrupted him,” the Bishop said, half in pity, half in satisfaction, "that he will defend her unto death. It grieves me to see such virtue turned to evil.” He raised his hand. “I have spoken. So be it. Fiat. Fiat. Fiat.”
22
Early in the morning of the Feast of St. Nicholas, the townsfolk of Carlisle began to gather near the east gate. In the space before St. Benedict’s Abbey, a new growth had appeared in the night, a tall stake hung with chains. Heaps of brushwood stood beside it.
By full day, a sizable crowd had taken shape. A newcomer, ignorant of the cause, might have thought that they kept festival under the rare cloudless sky and despite the winter chill. They laughed and jested; among them moved peddlers and pickpockets, a traveling singer and a troupe of jugglers. On the fringes a huddled circle, a chorus of shouts and jeers, proclaimed a cockfight.
Only the space about the stake remained clear. Pauline monks guarded it, interspersed with men-at-arms who wore the blazon of the Bishop of Carlisle.
Beyond the throng in the lee of the abbey’s wall, workmen had erected a canopied platform. Figures began to take their places there as the hour approached terce: Benedictines, Paulines, a layman or two. Earl Hugo appeared with his lady and half a dozen attendants, settling on the right of the vacant high seat. Not long after, Bishop Foulques swept in to take the chair of honor, escorted by the Abbot of St. Benedict’s. Servants saw them settled and wrapped in warm robes against the cold.
The crowd boiled. Bishop Aylmer strode through it on foot and simply dressed, with a troop of monks at his back.
Eyes widened and grew wise. Not one of the escort was armed or armored, and none wore spurs on his sandaled feet, but the smallest overtopped the burly Bishop by half a head.
Aylmer bowed curtly to the dignitaries on the dais, and paused a moment. The high ones exchanged glances; one or two half rose as if to make room for him. The King’s Chancellor turned on his heel and took his place close to the stake, with his monks in a half-circle behind him.
o0o
At the stroke of terce, the great gate of the abbey swung open. A hush fell; eyes stared, necks craned, fathers swung children onto their sh
oulders.
It was a small procession for so great a matter. A tall thin Pauline monk carrying a book and a scroll; a pair of novices, thurifer and crucifer; monks chanting a psalm. And behind, guarded by mailed men with drawn swords, the prisoners.
The first stood taller than his guards, a familiar pale face ravaged now with fasting and with sleeplessness, and beneath it a thin white tunic which afforded little protection from the biting wind. Chains bound his wrists, but he walked with his head up, seeing nothing and no one.
But the second made the crowd jostle and crane, straining to see. She was harder to catch a glimpse of, tall but not as tall as the other, her long tangled hair half-hiding her face. Her tunic was much like his, but her chains were far heavier, of black iron, weighing down her slender body.
A growl rumbled in a hundred throats, swelling swiftly to a roar. A stone arced over her head; others followed it. Men-at-arms surged forward, striking with fists and flattened blades.
Thea paid them no heed. Nor did she heed Alf, who continued his nightlong mental barrage. For each shield he had battered down, she had erected another; he could not reach her mind. Thea! he cried. Thea, for the love of God, answer me!
Her shield held fast. And he had nearly exhausted his mind’s strength. A last desperate shaft struck not at her mind but at her chains.
It rebounded to pierce his own bruised brain. He staggered; a hard hand held him up.
Out of madness and frustration and sheer perversity, Alf let fall the illusion that shielded his eyes. The guard gasped and crossed himself.
With a small tight smile, Alf walked on. He had not restored the seeming. If enough people saw soon enough, he would go to the stake with Thea.
It loomed before him now, half again his own height, a great lopped tree-trunk. Beside it stood a hooded man, in his hand a long whip.
He wore lay garb, but Reynaud’s mind laughed within the hood. Adam had not let him touch the precious prisoners, but Bishop Foulques had been more amenable, had let him take the executioner’s place. In that much, he would have his revenge on them all.
The procession arrayed itself around the empty circle. Adam performed obeisance to the high ones, and at Bishop Foulques’s nod, mounted the dais. In a clear voice he began to read the charges.
Alf did not listen. The stake held his gaze and his mind.
They were economical, these people. He would be flogged first at that stake, and afterward they would bind Thea to it, heaping high the fuel. And then—
They were dragging him forward. Adam had come down from the dais; he met the monk’s eyes. The mind behind them mingled regret, compassion, a touch of genuine liking; and a fire of zeal for his calling, that leaped high as the truth struck his consciousness.
Denounce me, Alf willed him. Make them burn me. Make them!
Adam’s deep eyes hooded. He stood aside as the men-at-arms chained Alf to the stake, back to the air, face to the rough bark. It was sweet-scented, seasoned pine; it would burn well and swiftly.
Hands tore at his tunic, baring his back. Vulgar jests rang in his ears. He pressed his cheek to the wood, aware of Morwin’s cross caught between breast and stake. Adam had let him keep it. Gentle, cruel Brother Adam.
There was no gentleness in Reynaud. The whip whistled as he whirled it about, teasing, taunting him with the anticipation of pain that never came.
Pain. A trail of fire across his shoulders.
Remember the discipline. Remember. Pie Jesu, miserere mei: sunlight on apple boughs, chanting in the choir, a child bathing in both up in the oldest tree, the Lady Tree, that had once been sacred. Remember sweet scent, sweet singing, sweet freedom from pain. Ride on scent, song, light, up and up to Light.
Lux. Fiat lux, and light was made; and He looked upon it and saw that it was good.
Far below in the dark place, a small soft thing clung to a stake. Red weals marred its back. A black ant labored, striking and striking and striking again. Voices cried out to him: to stop, to slow, to go on, to beat, to strike, to kill. He laughed.
Men ran forward, small robed shapes, to seize the hand as it swung upward yet again, to wrest the whip from it, to hurl the madman laughing and struggling to the ground.
Alf plummeted. Agony—agony—
He gasped and gagged. Blood lay heavy on his tongue. He had bitten it through.
They loosed his hands. His knees held him. Control, yes.
It took control. He turned. The faces nearest him held horror.
“Fifty lashes,” someone said. “I counted fifty.”
“Sixty,” another insisted.
“More. It was more.”
He dared not breathe, nor move hastily. He shook off the hands that reached to aid him, walked slowly forward. Reynaud was gone, his laughter silenced.
He stopped where his guards bade him stop. Dimly he was aware that they did not wear mail or the Bishop’s blazon but dark robes; they were tall, as tall as he or more. One face he knew, but he could put no name to it. A strong bony face, a great Norman arch of a nose, a tousle of straw-colored hair.
It blurred. Beyond it men heaped faggots about the stake, taking their time, letting the crowd work itself to a frenzy. The words and rituals of the Church sank into that uproar and vanished.
Thea stood in the center of it, very pale, very still. Tall though she was, as tall as most men, she seemed terribly frail. She tossed back her hair and turned her face to the sky; upon it, a look almost of ecstasy. When Adam made the sign of the Cross over her, she smiled. Her lips moved. “Lord of Light,” she said, “Christos Apollo, chaire, Kyrie... ”
It seemed an incantation. But Alf understood. She prayed in her own Greek tongue, entrusting her soul to the Light.
Her soul.
She believed that. He tried to spring forward.
She bound him with power, bonds he did not know how to break.
They chained her to the stake—face outward, she, so that all could watch her die. She was smiling still; and she changed her speech to Latin. In sudden silence, her voice rang silver-pure. “Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine—God from God, light from light... ”
Alf’s hand sought the silver cross. With a swift movement, he broke its chain and hurled it flashing and glittering across the wide space.
Bound though she was, she caught it. Kissed it for all to see—all those who thought her the Devil’s kin. One of her guards thrust a torch deep into the fuel at her feet. Drenched with oil, it blazed up.
The flames coiled about her, caressing her with a terrible tenderness. She stretched out her hands to them. Her face was rapt, serene, untouched by pain or fear.
A howl welled from the center of Alf’s being. He tensed to break free of the hands that gripped him. And cried aloud; but not with the beast-roar that had been born in him. For the fire had enfolded her; she had melted like mist in the sun.
Out of the pyre rose a white bird with a cross in its bill. It soared up and up into the vault of the sky, winging for heaven. The fire licked hungrily at an empty stake.
23
Alf lay on his face. His body rested in blessed comfort, but his back was a fiery agony.
He had a dim memory of fire and shouting, swift-moving shadows, the call of a trumpet, a thunder of hooves. And Jehan’s face, drained of all color, with eyes that held death.
No, he had tried to tell him. No vengeance, Jehan. For your soul’s sake, no vengeance!
But his voice would not obey him; darkness closed in.
For yet a while longer he rested. There was someone with him, and someone fretting at some little distance; he did not extend his inner senses more than that. It was too pleasant simply to lie still and know that he was well, and more, far more, that Thea lived.
He opened his eyes. The King stared back, surprise turning to relief so sharp it was like pain. “Alfred?” he asked, trying to soften his voice. “Brother?”
Alf smiled. “Good—day? Sire.”
“It’s night.”
“Is it?” Alf raised himself on his hands. He was clean, naked but for trews of fine linen, his back salved and bandaged. As he sat up, the King reached for him in protest but shrank from touching his hurts.
He drew a breath, carefully. Movement had awakened new pain, the price of his folly. He set his teeth against it and looked about. “Sire! This is your own bed. How did I come here?”
“I brought you,” Richard answered. “You shouldn’t be moving about.”
“I’m healthy enough. What’s a stripe or two to a born eremite?”
The King’s eyes glittered. “It was a lot more than two. And a lot more than twenty.”
“Sire,” Alf said, “don’t harm anyone for my sake.”
“They were eager enough to harm you for mine.”
“I started it, Sire. I sought it out.”
Richard fixed him with a steady amber stare. “I know you did. I should hang you up by the thumbs. Do you have any conception of what it did to me to be chasing wild geese all over Cumbria, and to find out too late that you were right under my nose? If you weren’t half-flayed already, I’d have your hide for that.”
Alf’s head drooped; his eyes lowered, shamed. “I’m sorry, Sire. Most sorry.”
“You ought to be. While I was out hunting will-o’-the-wisps like the scatterbrained fool I am, half my knights decided they'd rather spend Yule at home by the fire than fight in the snow on the Marches. It’s paltry satisfaction that I smoked out a nest of rebels and got an excuse to hamstring those cursed Hounds.”
“Sire!” Alf cried. "What did you do to them?”
“Little. Yet. They and their traitor Bishop are locked up safe and sound in the abbey. Tomorrow Aylmer and I will give them a somewhat fairer trial than they gave you.”
Alf staggered to his feet, heedless of pain and of gathering darkness. “My lord. I beg you. Don’t punish them.”
The King swept him up with ease. Yet even when he had been set in bed again, he would not be quenched. “You must not!”
“Boy,” Richard said, half in affection, half in exasperation, “I seem to spend a great deal of precious time fighting off your Christian charity. But this time you won’t extort a surrender. His two-faced Excellency is going to discover that he didn't divert me by burning the wrong prisoner; and the Hounds have had this coming to them for a long, long while. It was their mistake to let Foulques talk them into going after you.”
