The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  “Have you ever actually attended such an execution?”

  “Never!”

  “I have.” The Bishop rose. He walked slowly to the large bronze crucifix hanging against the far wall. There he paused for a moment, then turned and walked back to stand in front of his visitor, his hands clasped in front of him.

  For a moment, Alyce glimpsed Richard de Ledrede as a young boy—a beautiful, somber child, all large eyes and hurt—and the image blurred disturbingly in her mind with Will’s face.

  He stared at his hands and spoke quietly, intimately.

  “You look on me with horror and contempt, Madam. Well, so be it, so you may—though I think that is a sluggish intellectual conclusion. But I do at least insist you acknowledge that I have not come to where I stand easily. I am no simpleton. I can tell you personally that the theologians and the poets need not imagine the Inferno. An execution is Hell. Livid, in life, now. Conceivable. Actionable. Unspeakable.… Although it becomes more … endurable with familiarity. Like any other hell, I warrant.” He suddenly lifted his head and muttered fiercely, “I vowed to be an instrument of the Lord’s peace. I vowed to serve people, to bring comfort, to end suffering. I stood ready to sacrifice my life for the Church.… That was naive. What was required was my soul. The Church was honest, admitting all along it craved my soul. But I did not yet comprehend how demanding the Church could be, how ensuring its survival outweighs all other concerns—for who else can be trusted to bring salvation to the world? No matter the sacrifice, the cost, the horror. No matter the terror I read in others’ eyes or the sorrow I wear carrying out my work. The Church is more important than my discomfort. Or yours, Madam. If in seeking out fiends to slay them, I become a fiend, so be it. Your denunciations are not new to me, I made them once myself. If I could care about anything but the Church, I still would not care that you judge me monstrous. But sweet Jesu, woman! At least use your mind! You also are not a simpleton! Do you think I enjoy being trapped in such a—grotesquerie?”

  There was silence as Alyce sought her answer.

  “No. Yes.… I know not. I know only that there is no rationale on or off this earth that can justify such inhumanity. I hear your confession. But seek not absolution from me. Morality! How dare you claim you have faith in anything sacred, including in any god?”

  “I have faith in the Church. God … God is an argument. I believe in what I can see. Satan too is an argument—except that Satan’s works are everywhere visible around us. Sometimes such evidence must be simplified, in order to educate man’s boundless stupidity—but you can certainly see it … I believe in what I can see. I believe in the honour and purpose of the Church.” He seemed to have found his old voice again. “This is the most efficient structure man has devised to establish order and peace, to address the yearning for a universal family beyond one’s tribe or nation. Miraculously, it has endured. Kings and conquerors come and go. But the Church lasts—a living record of the finest qualities of humanity. It must last, for another thousand years and more.”

  “If the Church is living evidence, as you claim, of humanity’s finest qualities, it is also evidence of humanity’s capacity for acting with greed, corruption, violence—”

  “—all of which are stages along the path to civilization. I do not claim the Church is a perfect structure. Divine Plan may have established it, but fallible man sustains it. Still, it is the best humanity can do.”

  “The best! You truly believe we cannot do better?”

  “I believe we can. But not yet. I believe this is the best we can manage so far. We need centuries to alchemize such a vision. Which is why I would do anything—anything—to protect the Church.”

  “I am trying to understand you, my lord Bishop. Can you in turn understand: so do I feel about protecting my people?”

  “Your people! Your people are doomed! By you, Madam, and by your superstitious traditions. You and your people will vanish, while the Church will prosper and conquer the world, including those lands where now only infidels roam.” He stiffened with pride. “Impugn my integrity no longer. Take your bribes—of support and of trinkets—” he strode to where the ring and the pearls lay, picked them up and flung them into her lap, along with the scroll “—and take your threats as well. Return to your fiefdom. But not, I assure you, for long.”

  “Then there is no way that we can—”

  “There is no way. The Church does not bargain.”

  “The Church bargains all the time, my lord—even with your own god.”

  “Not with heretics, apostates, or infidels.”

  She rose and looked him in the eye.

  “I have tried. You know that from here there is no turning back.”

  “There is no turning back from anywhere. Iacta alia est. It means—”

  “ ‘—The die is cast.’ I know what it means. Immo, domine. Vale.”

  “Vere. Vale, domina.” He bowed.

  She wheeled and swept out, the rustle of her train whispering in her wake.

  Alone, Richard de Ledrede sank into a chair, breathing heavily. Only after some minutes did he straighten up to sit, staring, unseeing, at the crucifix. He was frightened of her next move. Yet he was also strangely excited, as if filled with the energy of his devout youth or the energy of battle—what he imagined warriors felt, preparing for attack. He had defended the Church. If martyrdom of his reputation was the cost, so be it.

  This resolve helped buffer the blow when, the following afternoon, he learned that Lady Alyce Kyteler was formally reviving the charge.

  The process did not take long. She dipped generously into her purse to hire a few well-connected legal advocates and numerous ink-stained clerks who scurried about, filing the proper writs. She did not even have to appear at the lawcourts.

  Two days later, Richard de Ledrede—the Papal Emissary to Ireland commissioned with the task of rooting out heretics—found himself a prisoner in Kilkenny Castle. In full regalia, wearing his gold mitre and carrying his jeweled shepherd’s crook, he had stared straight ahead as he was escorted from the Cathedral and borne through gaping crowds to the rooms set aside for his confinement. At least power still respected power somewhat: he was not to be lodged in the dungeons with common thieves. But the civil authorities refused to permit his cook to attend on him—punishment in itself, considering the fare. Nonetheless, he would continue to carry himself as a martyr ought, with dignity.

  Meanwhile, leaving matters in the hands of her newly hired lawyers, Alyce Kyteler returned home and changed back into comfortable clothes.

  In her tower chamber, surrounded by piles of crushed and abandoned finery littering the floor, she savored her physical freedom. Yet she felt tired—too weary to plunge into all the manor work that awaited her attention.

  She slumped down onto the low wooden chest at the foot of her bed. There she sat, legs dangling, eyes closed.

  “What we call victory,” she sighed, and shook her head.

  XI

  FAMILY CONNECTIONS

  ONCE CONFINED with the time to think about it, the Bishop discovered that he was, after all, not a man to welcome martyrdom, not even of his reputation. Reputation was ultimately a matter of history, and history was written by those who survived. So better to fight back—and better still to win. Nor was Richard de Ledrede a man to languish in jail, and he was nothing if not resourceful. Even from behind bars, he struck back.

  Although imprisoned, he could not be denied visits from his priests and monks, to consult on bishopric matters. Alyce had miscalculated in overestimating the independence of Irish priests by basing her model on Father Brendan. The rabid Father Donnan was not alone in his zealotry; there were other priests closer to his temperament than to Brendan’s, and there were abbots and friars quite willing to use and be used by the powerful prelate from abroad. Consequently, de Ledrede—employing a repertoire of indulgences literal, figurative, and spiritual—had over two years built himself a loyal clerical following.

  Thro
ugh these intermediaries, and still wielding his diocesan seal and the signet of his bishop’s ring, he placed the entire diocese of Ossary under religious interdict. Every inhabitant was now in danger of excommunication and no one was allowed the full services and ministries of the Church.

  To the heath-people this mattered little. But to the townsfolk it was cause for considerable unease. They had long grown accustomed to observing a combination of the old rites and the new, and now were confused and frightened by the open schism. Like most people, they disliked anything unfamiliar, disliked being trapped in the middle of a fight between powerful adversaries, and disliked having to choose sides. They found the situation particularly upsetting because Church affairs were intricately bound up with financial matters, tied to customers, favors, jobs, and land holdings. Consequently, the markets and taverns of Kilkenny and environs were loud with argument. Some people blamed the Bishop for this misfortune, some blamed Lady Alyce, and some began to blame the Wiccans. But whomever they chose to denounce, everyone felt cut adrift—as if a storm were about to break, with themselves shelterless in the open sea.

  Meanwhile, Lady Alyce remained calm. She kept watch from a distance to ensure that her lawyers in town pressed the lawsuit through the courts, but she stayed at Kyteler Castle and threw herself into estate matters.

  The late summer shearing had come and gone, with its attendant sorting and baling of different wools by crimp, lustre, and colour. The goats had suffered a temporary outbreak of foot-rot, due to soggy paddocks caused by summer rains, so Alyce spent hours pulverizing zinc to a powder for mixing into a foot-bath solution that was poured into low troughs of her designing. But then came the real challenge: cajoling, pushing, and bribing (with apple cores) the goats to enter the trough and stand for a few moments in the solution. Since goats, like cats, are serenely disinterested in not going where they ought and equally intent on going where they oughtn’t, the foot-bath procedure alone produced quite a few exhausted heathens. Then tupping time had filled the paddocks with randy goats and sheep—the does and ewes tripping along, glancing backward over their shoulders bemusedly at the bucks and rams who raced after them, nostrils flared, sniffing, snorting, and “Having at it,” as Maeve Payn archly observed, “with even more braying then certain lads I could name, if I chose.”

  One of those lads, the young lord of the manor, found himself lately engaged in frequent heated argument with his mother, about precisely such behavior.

  “No, Will. I am not saying you cannot be a friend to Maeve,” Alyce repeated, her irritation rising as she and her son sat at the large kitchen table with the manor account ledgers spread before them. “But then you must act like a friend. You must be honest with Meave. You must not mislead her.”

  “Mislead her where, into what?”

  “You know into what. Into thinking that marriage lies in the future. Which it does not.”

  “Because? Merely because—”

  “William. You know why. Maeve is a good-hearted lass, smart, fair to look on. Will Payne and his family have lived on Kyteler lands since they arrived from Boly, oh, decades ago—well before she was born. But Maeve and you … Will, you are not merely an Outlawe heir; you are sole heir to the Kyteler estates, here and elsewhere in Eire. Never forget: you are not free to follow any road you choose. It needs be, lad, that you wed someone of your station. Nor would Maeve, a musician’s daughter, be happy with … she would feel like a fish in the air, like a wren underwater. You know this. You have known all this since you were five summers old.”

  “It seemed … so far off then,” the young man muttered glumly.

  “Time runs more swiftly each hour we use it. That, my son, is called growing up. Later, t’is called growing old.”

  “But I cannot see why … why should some girl I have never seen become lady of Kyteler Castle someday? Why should a stranger—”

  “I have sworn to you I will do my best to ease the arrangements in your case, Will. I promise you will be allowed to become acquainted—even friends—with your future wife before you are betrothed. For her sake as well as yours.”

  “You have already gone and chosen her then, have you?”

  “No, dearest, I have not. But you should know that there are many who look at me askance for not having done so by now. A goodly number of young lords are wedded fathers by your age, you know. Oh, Will. Perhaps I overindulged you. But I wanted you to enjoy your youth in ways I had not been permitted to enjoy mine …” She rubbed her forehead. “And t’is not as if I have been idle, you know. I have been somewhat preoccupied with other matters.”

  “Aye, and there’s the real reason. You are always preoccupied with other matters, Mum.”

  “William.”

  “Truly. I think I fall near the bottom of your thoughts—after the land, the healing, the Craft, the estate children, the serfs’ welfare. And now declaring war on the Church.”

  “William. You know you are my most cherished concern.”

  “I know I was when I was little. But that was before you started the healing studies, and the teaching and all.”

  “My love, I know we have quarreled on and off of late. These are difficult times for all of us. And I admit I am weary. Then, when I find you are not doing your share of work on the estate, Will, I—oh my dear, life is not all jousting with Robert, nor flirtation with maidens. You are not a child any longer, nor are you a peasant lad without responsibilities. Look at these accounts, Will. You swore to me you would keep them up to date. Yet now I discover—”

  “Mum, you already manage everything. You did in secret even when all the stepfathers were around, but now everybody sees it. You and I both know you do it better than I ever could. So why should I pretend to try? You command here. There’s naught left for me to do.” He shoved his stool back from the table in a sulk, and made as if to rise. His mother put out a restraining hand.

  “William, wait. You know that I cannot give you authority until you prove worthy of it. Our people’s livelihoods, their very lives, depend on decisions made by me—and someday by you. I cannot bear to think of you acting callously and greedily, as do most lords. I cannot bear the thought that—”

  “So you do not trust my judgment, then. Is that not what you really mean?”

  “No, my dear, no!”

  “How pleased you are when one of your maidservants, or the Galrussyn men, or the Fabers, come to you, asking to be heard. Even visitors from afar. You listen to them. But not to your own son. Anybody can just—”

  “You are not anybody. You are in a special position. And I do listen to you. But Will … look around us. We have begun something different here on Kyteler lands. Our serfs know it. Everyone knows it. The preserving of what we have managed to accomplish so far requires great care. You are young, Will, still somewhat of a gangling, awkward—”

  “Lad? Though others my age are already husbands and sires? Robert is thinking of joining whatever remains of The Bruce’s Scots troops off in the Fermanagh mountains with the Ulster chiefs—regrouping, people say, to rise against the English. I might go with him, then. There is no need for me here, a useless wee boy acting like a daughter, clinging to his mum’s skirts.”

  Exasperated, Alyce sprang to her feet and slammed the table with her fist.

  “You will not go off on some doomed adventure to get yourself heroically, witlessly slain. Damn Robert de Bristol and Robert of Scotland—who, let me remind you, sold out his own people and the Irish, which is why those fools will still be hiding in the mountains when your grandchildren walk on Kyteler land! You will remain here. You will work at your studies with your tutors, and you will work at learning how to run the estate with me. Enough of this foolishness!”

  He sprang up, too, looming taller than his mother, glowering down at her.

  “And just wait? Wait for you to choose my wife? Wait for you to die before I come into my full title? You are already old. What if you live for years?”

  Alyce winced, and her son bit
his lip with instant regret. But he was too firmly held in the grasp of resentment to stop.

  “And meanwhile I cannot even have a bit of fun with Maeve? Her father is thinking of wedding her to Robert! You think I will stand by and let that happen? Well, I will not. I will claim my rights. I will claim droit du seigneur!”

  “Never,” Alyce spat at him. “No son of mine will rape a maid on the night of her wedding to another man, no matter what right is yours!” Standing on tiptoe, she reached up and boxed his ears.

  Head ringing, William spun and ran out through the kitchen door. His mother started after him, crying after his receding shape, “William! Come back at once! I never meant to … William?”

  There, standing at the door peering into the empty air, was where Annota Lange found Alyce some moments later. She curtsied, then bustled about in silence. She could not pretend ignorance of a quarrel whose shouts had been audible throughout the courtyard, nor could she dare proffer advice to her mistress. But noninterference was unthinkable to Annota, so she settled on abstract observation, pointed in its transparency.

  “Ach, Your Ladyship,” she cooed soothingly, “I was pondering the other day … getting old, t’is hard. But t’is not so difficult as being young. Especially for the lads, eh? All temper and ears. Girls grow more swift and smooth, dinna ye think?”

  But her mistress did not answer. Instead, she returned to the table and buried herself in the account books without a word.

  As days passed with no sign of the Bishop’s interdict being lifted, nervousness already rife among the townsfolk began to be shared by some of the heathen, chiefly Petronilla de Meath, who now acted like a bird poised to take flight. She remained at Kyteler Castle, but all her former anxieties reasserted themselves. No longer the young woman shyly testing her confidence at the Lugnasad Sabbat, she now clung to every sympathetic listener, pouring out her fears and interrogating others about what they thought might happen. When some of the heath-folk finally grew vexed with her babbling, she drew back into herself, saying little, but reviving her old habit of unconscious fidgeting, her tic of ceaselessly twisting and untwisting those silverblonde braids.