A Hanging Offense, Chapters 9-12

In which the rebels return home from London.

Chapter 10

    

     “Slow down, for the love of God.” Old Benedict sat nearly in Cob’s lap astride the horse.

     “We must reach home before dark,” Cob answered, for what must have been the twentieth time. He didn’t like the old man’s bony arse bouncing against his legs any better than Benedict himself. Benedict had had his own mount, but couldn’t keep up the pace that Cob set.

     “Be quiet, old man,” Cadyndon ordered. The three rode back from London well ahead of the others, who remained behind under Dickon’s and Barber’s leadership. Cob was uneasy with what might happen in Saint Albans in his absence. It would take time for the King’s scribes to write out the charters granted that morning, charters that gave legitimacy to the rebellion, that Cob would use against the abbey. A scribe himself, Cob knew that the work, if rushed, would lead to errors, and each parchment had to be scrutinized and sealed with the King’s own seal to prove its legitimacy. The King, for all the love borne him by the commons, might prove deceitful. He was still surrounded by the advisors who had sustained him thus far, save for those whom the mob had executed.

     And he missed Joan. He wanted to see her, hold her and his boy safe within his arms. She was a kind of hostage to the monks, if the thought came to them. Cob only prayed that they might not realize her worth to him, and that her own hot temper might not make her take a risk in his absence.

     Vapor rose from the fields and from the road itself under a broiling sun. The rain of the previous day left the ground soaked. The sun’s heat made rivulets of sweat run down his body. Where old Benedict touched him, it made a kind of glue. The air was thick with moisture, which the crops loved, but it made for a miserable journey.

     “Run through the story,” Cob told Benedict. “I must have it letter-perfect to argue with the monks.”

     Years and years ago—Benedict’s tale went—before the Conquest of William the Bastard Duke of Normandy, before old King Canute, before the Confessor-King Edward, before even the coming of the Norsemen to this place, there ruled a King of Mercia, a powerful king, Offa by name.

     He was in his age, not unlike me, Benedict explained, but a great sinner, very unlike me. To secure his kingdom, he had committed many mortal sins, not the least of which was the murder of the rightful king, of the West Saxons, Ethelbert. He was in his age, and conscience weighed down his soul, so that he feared it would not fly to heaven, as he wished, but sink instead into the pit of hell.

     As the tale goes, he realized the need for others to pray for his soul’s peace, but there were none in the kingdom, which ran from the Welsh border eastward, and as far south as near to London, none, I say, who would pray for him, such were his sins. At the time, it became the fashion for men of power to endow a monastery; in return for their living, the monks would contract to pray for the patron after his death.

     Offa first thought to raise a house in honor of Saint Peter, chief of the apostles, but some other one had already done so, both in York to the north and London to the south. Then it came to him to honor Saint Paul, but here he was also too late. If he chose either, it would look like an imitation, a counterfeit, and Offa was not known for humility. Poor king, he had no saint worthy of the name.

     Offa traveled the countryside, having no single abode where he remained, but staying for a time at one of his many homes. At the manor of Winslow, he prevailed upon his two chief ecclesiastical counselors, Humbert, Bishop of Litchfield and Unwona, of Leicester, to pray with him in the chapel. They begged God for help.

     Light from heaven filled the chapel. With the advice of his bishops, Offa resolved to give the manor of Winslow to the support of the abbey, when it should be founded. But the question remained: to which saint should it be given, that Offa might escape the pains of hell?

     Offa’s travels about his kingdom continued, while he feared what should become of him at his death. He had earned either a sudden trip into the depths of hell or at least a long stay in purgatory, for, when he murdered King Ethelbert, it was under the cover of hospitality. Offa had had a daughter, whose name is now lost due to the forgetfulness of his followers. This girl he offered to Ethelbert. Offa’s queen, Drida, helped him in the plot. While Ethelbert was with Offa’s court, giving court of his own to the daughter, Drida and Offa had him slain and tossed his corpse into a well. Offa then reigned over the kingdom of the East Angles as well as his own. Years later, Drida proved herself as treasonous to Offa as together she and he had been to Ethelbert, and the king punished her as they did the young king.

     No wonder, then, that he had to expunge his guilts.

     While at Bath, taking the waters in aid of his aged joints, old King Offa had a vision. An angel appeared to him in the waters. Offa must needs have a saint as strong in the land as the others already used. It was a wet vision, but a true one, and the angel promised to ease his passage through purgatory if he would build the monastery in the name of Alban, the first Christian of Britain.

     Long neglected, since the time of the coming of the Saxons to Britain, Alban moldered in his grave. A shrine had been used at the old Roman town of Verulamium, but the Saxons, being pagans and hating town life, destroyed it. Now, though, their descendants ruled the land, and made towns of their own. People remembered the time of Alban’s veneration.

     The king’s bishops encouraged him in his resolve to make a foundation in the name of Alban. Some say that they did so for their own advantage, since Unwona was later to be abbot of the new house, but others say the bishops were true men of God, and gave the guilty king honest advice for the saving of his soul. Whatever the case may have been, Offa went to Verulamium, as Saint Albans was known at the time.

     There, Benedict continued, you know the story—how they searched for the lost grave without success, until a light from heaven shone down on the place where the martyr was buried. How they opened the wooden coffin and found Alban, how the king crowned the martyr’s naked skull with a circlet of gold.

     But what most don’t know is that after, when the first monastery was a-building, the craftsmen and laborers had to live somewhere. There was an older vill, called Kingsbury, down the hill from the abbey, but the inhabitants there wouldn’t give the monks and their workers the backs of their hands for fear it might be of some help. And Verulamium, the old Roman town, was dangerous to the faithful. Thieves and worse lived there, in and amongst the pagans’ things, and gave no worship to God.

     There was nothing for it but that the builders lived hard by the abbey, craving, like their guilty king, the protection of the saint.

     Offa knew these things. For all his sins—and they were many—he was no man’s fool. He gave his workers a charter, so that all men would know they were under his protection and not offer them harm. He promised that they should be free men, once the building of the abbey was done. And so they were.

     The charter he gave, so pleased was he that the building of the abbey was finally underway, was of great worth, written by the finest scribe of his court. The first capital letter was written in gold leaf, the second in a blue as clear as that of the sky above. Azure, men say now.

     The laborers and their families put the charter into the muniment room of the abbey for safekeeping. All their houses were of wood, and the charter was too precious to them, being the document of their freedom, to risk its destruction by fire. Forever, according to King Offa, the people of Saint Albans ought to be free, to govern their own affairs under God and the king. It was sealed with the king’s own seal, by his own hand.

     “‘Teste meipso,’” it said at the bottom. “‘Declared by me.’”

     But good King Offa died. Even his body was lost, which was to have been buried in the monastery he had built.

     “No man of the town has seen the charter he gave us,” Benedict said, “for many and many a year now. But if the old stories are true, it is still there.”

     But Cob had seen it. He had held it in his hands, seen the blue and the gold that from time out of mind had been the armorial colors of Saint Alban. His teacher Thomas had not let him hold it, for a human touch might have caused the ancient sheepskin to fall to dust.

     “The monks may not believe it,” Benedict said. “They are modern men. Because they have wealth and position, they hold that whatever they believe is right. But they have no memory. Only the things written down in their chronicles are true, they say, and that what they do not find there did not happen.”

     When the old man finished speaking, Holywell Hill filled their vision. Home rose before them.

     Benedict lived in Saint Michael’s parish, down near the old Roman town of Verulamium. It would mean a turn to the left, a mile or two in the wrong direction.

     “Who wants to go home?” The old man must have guessed Cob’s thoughts. “Things happen around you. What do I have to look forward to except the complaints of an old woman who won’t even spread her legs any more? Keep going.”

     Cob urged their tired horse up the hill. Cadyndon followed. The three men had been awake since dawn of the preceding day. Cob would have to sleep soon, willing or not. Every muscle cried out for him to lie down. His eyes were pits filled with sand. His nether end ached from long riding on horseback, and Benedict’s sharp bones dug into his thighs. But on the left as they climbed Holywell Hill into Saint Albans was his home, and within it Joan.

     He swung down from the horse. It took a moment to regain his balance after hours in the saddle.

     “Joan,” he called.

     No reply. Market days were Wednesday and Saturday. This was Friday.

     “Joan!” he cried, louder this time.

     Where was everyone? Holywell Hill was empty, but for the odd head of livestock and the three men. Cob glanced at Cadyndon, who, still atop his horse, shrugged.

     Cob pushed the door aside and went in, quietly, in case the boy was sleeping. Joan could be a terror if she woke suddenly. So it was with a certain caution Cob went through the front room, where he worked and sold his skills to the public, to the living quarters. No one was within. Nothing was out of place. They had not been pillaged. Nothing was missing, save his family.

     He touched Ned’s bed. The smell of boy floated up and filled his nose—part sweat, part sleep, part a hint of piss still clinging to the cloth from bedwettings long ago. No matter how Joan scrubbed, a memory of the acrid odor still hung about the bed.

     Cob pushed out the back way, into the garden Joan and he kept. The green space might have cooled him, but he pushed ahead. A trail of destruction passed through a patch of squash and through the cucumbers growing against the old abbey wall. He knelt. It was hard to be certain in the dim shadow of the trellis, but smears of red stained the opening he had cut in the flint and brick wall some years before.

     He ran back to the street. The old man nodded atop his horse. Cadyndon slouched on his. Fatigue showed on both their faces.

     “Joan and Ned aren’t here.”

     “No one’s here, Cob.” Cadyndon said. “They must be up at the Cross, in the square.”

     Cob took heart, but the traces of blood on the wall begged for explanation. He mounted his horse. Benedict grumbled in half-sleep. Cob reached around him for the reins and kicked the beast’s flanks. The horse merely huffed. Cob kicked again, but the best he could get out of the animal was a slow walk up the hill of Holywell.

     Cob dismounted, his heart racing with worry. “Bring Benedict as quick as you may,” he ordered Cadyndon. He set off at a quick jog up the road. The muscles of his thighs ached with fatigue. His thoughts hurtled. Joan and Ned might be up at the square. Or the prior, in his fears, might have taken them hostage, proving what a brave man of God he was. He’d been a fool to leave them here, unprotected.

     It was the distance of a few hundred yards up the steep hill to the center of Saint Alban’s. Cob arrived staggering, breathless, at the foot of the stone cross that marked the town square. There, Joan herself harangued the crowd, with Ned, blesséd Ned, on her hip. Cob stopped and took in the scene. He had been worried about her, but she had taken it to herself to talk to them, hold them together until his return.

     No one had seen him yet. He listened. Few women would do such a thing as Joan did now.

     “Keep your hearts up!” she shouted from atop the makeshift stage put up the night before. “It is a day’s journey each way to London, and they had work to do there. One of the monks—for I saw him with these eyes—rode breakneck from there to bring warning to his fellows, and even now some of the rats within those walls are filled with fear, and mean to run northward.” She brushed a strand of dark hair from her face in a gesture that always made Cob feel weak, the back of her hand pushing the wayward curl from her eyes.

     This crowd was made up of the weak and undefiant. The bold ones had gone to London; these feared the wrath of church and crown more than the rebellious. If they wavered, though, matters would not turn out well for those who came behind Cob. These weak-willed ones could turn in the abbey’s favor.

     “Will you stand up for your rights as creatures of God, or would you rather crawl on your knees, like vermin, ever under the rule of your masters?”

     Joan had found words Cob had barely dreamed of—he, a purveyor of words the way Richard of Wallingford was a purveyor of goods. He smiled in awe, his exhaustion washing away in pride at her ability, her courage. It should not have surprised him. They were a matched pair; everyone said so.

     Joan continued, and Cob listened in the shadows. She told them how the monk Thomas had come, not like a man, but sneaking in through their garden; how the prior and his coterie of grubbing assistants had already fled for the safety of the far north.

     It gave Cob strength. She paused for breath. Ned lifted his hands to her skirts and tugged. She bent to raise him.

     Cob went to her. The stay-behinds pressed close, grabbing at him, each of their mouths overflowing with did-you-see-the-King, what-said-the-King, is-it-true-about-the-rebels, did-you-burn-the-Tower, until Cob had to silence them all and speak to them all at once.

     “Give me an instant with my wife,” he shouted. But it was intoxicating the way they needed to touch him, as if he had been made into someone else by confronting the King. Something of the King’s Touch clung to him, and he could almost feel it himself.

     Nevertheless, he took Joan and Ned both in his arms. “Are you well?”

     “We are now,” Joan answered. He drank in the smell of her and ruffled Ned’s spiky hair.

     “I saw blood—”

     “Not mine,” she reassured him. “The monk you’re so enamored of dug his way into the abbey through our garden.”

     “Thomas? I’d not thought him so bold. He must have ridden ahead.”

     She bid to answer, to tell what had befallen, but it had to wait. Cadyndon caught up to him just as a cheer rose from the assembly.

     “Take a look, Cob.”

     From the alley beyond the High Street the King’s arms emerged a painted panel with the white hart. It was large enough to block the westering sun’s light and dropped a shadow a long way into the town square. The crowd’s attention turned. A roar of approval rose in their common voice.

     John Dene, the painter himself, carried the sign through the mass of people to the platform.

     “I could not go to London,” Dene said. “My wife was near to giving birth. I could not leave her, and I needed something to occupy my waiting, so I made this.”

     Cob helped him place it so that it formed a backdrop, like that of the players who sometimes came to town.

     Just as they finished, the main body of the London pilgrims burst into the square, limping John Barber in the lead. Their arrival flooded the small open space. The newcomers, proven by their journey, mixed in with the stay-at-homes. Cob could only let things happen as the news spread from newly arrived lips to townbound ears. He held Joan against him while he waited.

     How many of the assembly could Cob depend on? He had to read the hearts of all of them; many would throw their support to whoever seemed to be winning, and not give their true selves until the entire event was no longer in doubt. Nor did the journey to London separate the sheep from the goats. In such a crowd, many would have gone just to see how things fell out. It was early days yet, no matter how tired he was.

     Barber made his way to Cob and Cadyndon.

     “What of the monks and their guards?”

     “They stay within the walls,” Joan answered. “They fear us.”

     “As they should,” Barber said. Satisfaction glowed on his face. “The men of Barnet came with us, enough to double our numbers, but they’re restive. Hell, so am I, Cob. We got what we went for—let’s put it to use. On the way back, they asked me to put the question to you. What’s next?”

     Next, indeed. Twilight darkened the streets of Saint Albans. Cob looked out over the multitude, again feeling the aching intoxication of leading them. He was not born to this, but something must be done.

     “Let the innkeepers and alewives prepare a feast.” He did not know how many people made up the crowd. The town square was small, but jammed with folk. It would take most of the resources of Saint Alban’s to feed them. “Bread, meat, and ale for everyone!”

     A cheer greeted his suggestion.

     “What—are we like Jesus, who fed the five thousand with a few loaves and fishes?” The single voice belonged to Matthew Osier, the keeper of the Fleur-de-Lis. Cob turned to face the florid, fat-faced man. Osier leaned from a window on the upper floor of his inn, looking down on the assembly. “There is not enough food in the whole town to feed these villeins. It would take a miracle.”

     “I’ll wager there’s ale enough in your cellars,” Joan shouted up at him.

     “Can’t you silence your wife, Grindcob?”

     “And why would I want to,” Cob called back, “since she speaks good sense?” Warmth rose in him with the banter. The supporting cries of the crowd fed him as surely as any food. “Bring out your ale—these people have had a thirsty journey, and have more work to do.”

     Another approving shout from the mass of people, louder this time, made the very earth tremble with its force. Osier must have felt it, too, for he disappeared from the window and could be heard, in the aftermath, issuing orders to the few servants remaining in his inn.

     But no inn would have sufficient to feed this multitude. In truth, they needed a miracle. Where was there enough of any provision for them all? If they took it into their heads, they could raze the town for food. Better for them to raze something else.

     The sheepfolds. The abbey kept several in close proximity to the built-up section of the demesne. Fawntone Wood a mile or so to the east held a flock within its gated forest, as did Eyewood, to the south. Many’s the time he had gone there as a child, in the company of one of the lesser abbey workers, to help with the shearing of the sheep and the slaughter of the lambs. It was fitting that the monastery itself should feed the flock of rebel sheep who had so long been sheared themselves for the abbey’s benefit. They might find venison, as well.

     Cob called out to his flock. He explained his plan. “Lift up the gates of Father Abbot’s sheepfolds, that the commons may come in. Then meet in an hour, at Romeland, to roast the monks’ holy sheep before their gates. Don’t take more than is needed, but take all we need.”

     He dispatched Cadyndon with half the crowd to Fawnton, Barber to the nearer Eyewood for the sake of his hurt foot. Both men, he thought, might be trusted with this task, but he found himself wishing for the presence of Dickon, still waiting in London for the written charters promised by the King.

     The doors of all the inns within sight popped open as the multitude departed in search of their supper, as if the innkeepers had signaled to each other. Cob put stragglers from the crowd to work rolling casks of ale down toward Fishpool Street. He pulled Joan along, running down the hill.

     The house of the Subcellarer, three floors in height, stood just in the spot near Romeland where the hill steepened. One of the casks escaped its tender and barreled down the dirt path. Fishpool Street took a turn just at the Subcellarer’s house, but the flying barrel careened straight at the front door.

     The cask burst to flinders against the stout oak. Ale foamed in all directions and left white spatters on the bushes and walls that quickly transmogrified into pale brown stains. The Subcellarer himself burst from the house, mewling in complaint.

     The office of subcellarer was one of the most lucrative for the abbey. This officer, dressed in a blue and silver houppeland, stood openmouthed and contemplated the stink of ale and the wreckage of the cask on his threshold.

     Cob called to him. “Sorry, my lord Subcellarer—that one got away from us.”

     His apology inflamed the blue and silver monk even more.

     “How dare you?” he complained.

     “I’ll tell you how I dare!” A new voice intruded. Cob turned to find John Byker at his heels, the man who’d wanted to burn the abbey the night before. “I dare because you’re a liar, a cheat, and a thief, who never knew an honest account in his life. A man who shelters behind God like a traitor snatching at the sanctuary of the altar.”

     Byker went on at length. Here, then, was the enemy for the hotheaded trader. The Subcellarer handled local dealing for foodstuffs and supplies for the abbey. Much of the monastery’s food came from the production of its own lands, worked by its own serfs and tenant farmers. What the monks could not raise they bought. The Subcellarer was a dealer, a middle man. His location on Fishpool Street, where the fish market was, told all about him. He bought and sold fish for the abbey, which had its own fish pools. Monks devoured an enormous number of fish, all kinds of fish, all the time, but especially in Lent and on fast days. Fresh fish—pike and bream and carp. Dried cod and haddock from the sea, carried overland and traded in Fishpool Street, hard by the house of the Subcellarer himself.

     John Byker was one of those traders, and had many a fish bone to pick with the sharp monk, as did the merchants of grain, barley, oats and wheat.

     Byker had no torch ready to hand, for which Cob gave thanks. He wanted no firing in this crowded part of town, where houses of wood shouldered each other wall to wall. Byker held too high an opinion of himself to go with the others to bring meat from the folds. He had stayed behind for this very purpose, and had a company of others who felt the same. They appeared out of alleys and doorways, young men, and women too, with their blood up to take a measure of revenge upon the monks. The Subcellarer, paunchy with flesh and arrogant with the power of the Church, made a target too tempting to refuse.

     “John Byker!” the cleric cried. “I should have known.” He was out in the street now, the hem of his houppeland dragging in the mud left by the day’s rains.

     “Brother Harry—” Cob tried to intervene. From the corner of his eye, he saw Joan take Ned out of harm’s way, giving him a free hand.

     “And you!” Brother Harry pointed a finger at Cob. His whole fat body trembled with rage. “You set them on to this—you will pay, when things are set aright again.”

     Subcellarer Harry’s eyes burned with hatred. They glowed in the twilight like blue flames.

     “I spit on you and your rebels. I fart on your freedom. I shit on your hope. You are a traitor to God and King alike.”

     Cob had no appetite to be cursed at. He turned to Byker, who was as filled with fury as the shaking monk.

     “No fires, John, but if you tear down his house and give his goods to all of these folk, I will help you.”

     “About time you saw the light, Cob.”

     Hammers, axes, and saws wielded by a spare two dozen of the rebels made short work of the Subcellarer’s house. They started at the top and piece by piece they shaved it down to the ground. When the commons finished with the fish trader’s place, the ground was so bare that not even the stink eels remained.

     Throughout, the Subcellarer stood, arms enfolded in his blue and silver gown, as if memorizing who took what part in the destruction.

     “Mark my name down in your mind, Brother Harry.” Cob stood sweating with effort and grinning with the unique pleasure of a rebel working at his trade.

     The sounds of destruction ceased. Men and women carried the last bit of lumber into the open ground of Romeland for the bonfire. Brother Harry’s black robe—all that he should own as a monk—was folded carefully in the center of the spot where his house had been. His account books, his furniture, his other fine robes went atop the pyre, ready for the flame—especially his account books, for he was a sharp and dishonest trader.

     Cob still feared a runaway fire, but bonfires were tradition. In Romeland, at least, the flames could rise inside the town without being near the buildings. The abbey itself was stone, and the nearest house hundreds of feet away. It was safe enough. Cob gave John Byker the honor of holding a burning brand to the base of the pile. He had such a love of fire that it only seemed fitting.

     The flames danced in the darkness now grown deep. They served as a beacon for the other rebels, returning from Fawntone Wood and Eyewood. Cadyndon led the first group, a stag’s carcass across his shoulders. Barber, his limp more pronounced for fatigue, let another carry a ewe for him, but a wide grin spread across his face.

     “We broke the folds and smashed the gates. It’s free land again, Cob.” He wiped a smear of sweat from his forehead. “The sheep are too stupid to move, but they have no fence around them now.”

     “Let the butchers have it,” Cob shouted. “Ale for all.”

     The crowd surrounded the fire. The butchers skinned and gutted the animals and threw their bones into the flames, making a true bonefire. Someone started a song. A lute joined in, then a drum settled the beat. Joan sang the high part. A dozen women’s voices joined in, balanced in a moment by the darker sounds of the men. The smell of roasting venison and mutton rose over Romeland. Singing, Joan placed a mug of ale in Cob’s hands. The song, the drink, the exhilaration of a night’s and day’s struggle caught up to him, and he slept.

             

    

    

    

    

Chapter 11

    

     The few hours of sleep left Cob gritty in his eyes and unsatisfied in his mind, but worry about the morrow woke him in the still darkness of the summer night. Joan and Ned slept at his side. Others from the commons sprawled around him.

     Not wanting to wake them yet, he slipped from Joan’s touch and silently moved among the sleepers. No light showed from the abbey walls, though he doubted the monks slept tonight. They would be thinking, plotting, with the men at arms still within. The grooms and workers would be awake as well, deciding with which group to throw their lot.

     He had to stir his people. Time was short. He walked among the sleeping army of villeins searching for his captains.

     Dickon should return today. He missed Wallingford. Never the best of friends, the merchant could, if he chose, add an air of legality to the revolt.

     It was no small thing to contemplate the overthrow of everything he had ever known, the turning upside down of the world. No one knew, least of all himself, where it might lead. He picked his way through the bodies, satisfying himself that they all breathed. It was like a vision—sleepers, on the eve of their waking, and he awakened only moments before, to think his way through lifetime upon lifetime of the darkness of tradition.

     He found himself praying for guidance, not sure to Whom he addressed himself, but certain that he was not able to find his way alone. News of the rising in the east had come almost without warning; until now, he had improvised, snatched at opportunity. Everything was, to this moment, unplanned, but it could not go on that way. His opponents were many, as caught as he by surprise. They would regroup.

     But he had the advantage of numbers, for the time being. They must continue in the headlong rush for justice. Their best hope lay in fait accompli.

     The sleepers must have victory upon victory. They had had a few—the destruction of the Subcellarer’s house, the opening of the enclosed woods. Best to start them, then, where they had left off, and carry on to what mattered most—an admission by the abbot that they were entitled to their rights. Dawn was yet to come, and he meant to be ready.

     He woke Barber and Cadyndon and discussed the problem with them.

     “What about the watch?”

     Cob felt like an idiot, like one of town’s beggars too stupid to move out of the frequent rain.

     Cadyndon volunteered to raise the watch, but Cob wanted more. “I want to keep an eye on everything.” He knew how much of his own life was lived outside the vision of the authorities, and had a sudden understanding of why the powers wanted to know so much. Even the revolt itself could not have begun in sight or hearing of the aristocracy. It required secrecy to start, and now it required openness to continue. “We need to know what the monks are doing. Put men we can trust at the gates of the monastery, along the river, and on each of the highways leading out of town. Armed men. If someone tries to escape, stop him.”

     “Including—?” Cadyndon asked.

     “Just stop him.”

     Cadyndon nodded his understanding. Barber went off to help him, limping, still. They were loyal men, utterly devoted to shaking off the yoke of the monks. Not, Cob thought, loyal to him personally. He wouldn’t expect them to be. He was no war leader, no old Saxon eorl, whose men would fight on after his death so that they could die on the same field with him. Those days were gone, and long before the Conquest. Good riddance. Nor was he the abbot of a monastery, to whom the monks owed unquestioned obedience. He was just a man trying to find his way through a complicated, changing world.

     The people still in Romeland were waking up, stretching, groaning their heads into daytime. Some few men pissed against the wall; steam rose from the stones. Cob grinned. He wished it were so easy to take care of the abbey. Nothing bulked so large in these people’s lives—not King or crown or aristocracy. It was a boulder fallen in the road, an obstacle so huge that moving it seemed almost—almost—incomprehensible, were it not for the strength of desire.

     Today it might be done. Tomorrow, perhaps. Next week, not at all. Today was the chance.

     He found himself following the wall, to the west of the stables, out of sight now of the slowly waking crowd of folk in Romeland. He needed a piss himself.

    

*

    

     Thomas of Walsingham had been awake for hours. The monk appointed had gone through the dorter, the monks’ dormitory, waking the brothers with his cry of Surgite, fratres muffled for fear of the commons. Thomas, like the others, had answered with a fear-softened Benedicite.

     The offices of matins and lauds had been travesties. None of the monks had kept the great silence. Prior John, the enforcer, was fled, along with his assistants. Everyone wanted to hear the tale of the murders in London. Finally, the abbot himself had appeared, given Thomas leave to tell all, and led a truncated worship. Thomas escaped his brothers by pleading fatigue, and the abbot helped by ordering preparations to repulse any attack on the abbey. His task was to inspect the walls for evidence that the commons might be planning an invasion.

     Thomas walked away from the hubbub of gossip. Even with all the grooms and knights and other servants of the abbey, the commons vastly outnumbered the inmates. Despair warred against determination.

     More than any other, Thomas knew their position hopeless if the commons took it in mind to attack. There was no help outside the walls. The foul deaths of Sudbury and the others filled his mind. The crown itself was helpless before the common wrath. His hopelessness would poison the monastery. He must keep it to himself.

     He made his way alone down the hill, through the orchards south of the buildings. The trees already bore small, unripe fruit. Apple, quince, and pear, small, green balls of life. Thomas’s belly ached for a moment in hunger, but the fruit was unready and he passed it by. It might never ripen.

     He found himself following the inner wall, built of earth only a pair of years before to protect the monastery from the incursions of the tenants whose houses abutted the outer stone wall. The building of the wall by the king’s master mason, Henry Yeveley, was the event which first brought William Grindcob into conflict with the abbey. Now, the man to whom the monks, and especially Thomas himself, had given everything, was their worst adversary.

     The intervening two years had not been kind to the murus luteus. Rain ate it away from crown to the base. Gullies small and large wandered down its sides. When one grew too deep, its sides caved in, and left a weakness in the earthen wall. The servants of the abbey were not as diligent in maintaining it as they might have been. A few hours a month of packing the rivulets with fresh soil might have made all the difference.

     Even the stone wall, the luteus lapis, was full of minor gaps. Thomas smiled. A wall filled with gaps was no wall at all. Few could admit a man, but all admitted weakness. And, truth to tell, the gaps there were ran both ways, allowing a prisoner out as well as an attacker in. He had not needed to violate the garden of Joan and William Grindcob, after all. All his attention, previous to that moment, had been on his writings, none for the fabric of the monastery.

     He paid attention now, for it might mean the lives of those within. He had been helpless in the face of Sudbury’s killers. He had not known the depth of anger abroad in the land. The yoked demons of ignorance and helplessness held no appeal.

     He had reached the old mill. A sound caught at him, not of his making, on the other side of the door that divided abbey ground from common. He pressed his ear against the old wood. The clinks and clicks of hands trying locks, all metal and wood, came faint through the oak.

     The latch jumped once, twice, in Thomas’ sight, and gave way. Who would know the trick of it?

     The door creaked open in the dimness. A man-shape filled the opening.

     “Thomas?”

     “Cob?”

     They met as estranged lovers might, familiar sights to each other, but now on different sides in a fight gone out of control. Thomas took a half-step toward Cob, then a half-step back, and ended in the same place he’d begun. He didn’t know whether to run or fight. He did neither.

     The shadows of the mill-house helped and hindered. Cob could not see Thomas any more clearly than the converse. Each was frozen in surprise, taken aback at seeing his adversary.

     “What are you doing?” Thomas asked as gently as he had once questioned Cob about his lessons.

     “Remembering, mostly.” Cob shrugged. Thomas made out the movement in the shadows. “I used to play in the water here, when I was very young. The wheel would turn quickly after a rain, fast enough to make a breeze, and I would stay upstream of it, far enough away to be safe, and drop all sorts of things into the race to see them either sink or be carried off. Stones, twigs, bugs, grains of wheat, bits of paper or vellum. The speed fascinated me, you see. Then I would run around to the far side, and see what had made it through. It was like knowing two states of things at once, without knowing the passage between them. Rather like the fix we’re in now, with each other.”

     The boy, now man, had learned his lessons better even than Thomas had thought, and he had thought Cob bright enough. “That was quite the metaphor, but you could not have expected to find me here. I will not credit you with being more than you are.” Anger slid into his throat, riding on the last few words. He coughed to clear it away.

     Cob laughed at him. It hurt more than he thought it could.

     “I know that cough. You’ve allowed your true feeling to be heard, and you’re shamed by it.”

     “So we use our knowledge of each other to gain advantage, is that the way of it?” Thomas asked. “Where does it end?”

     “You disappeared from us in London.”

     “I saw such things—” The vision of Sudbury’s butchered neck rose before Thomas’s eyes. He squeezed them shut and shoved the heels of his hands into the sockets to crush the image. “If you had seen what I saw, you would have run, too.”

     “The archbishop. We heard, but we were no part of it.”

     The vision of Sudbury’s wounds faded under the pressure of Thomas’ hands. He opened his eyes again, and saw merely Cob. It was a relief. “Why such cruelty, William?”

     “He was a traitor.” Cob’s eyes grew cold and stony.

     “To whom?” Thomas demanded. “He always gave loyal service to the King.”

     “To us. He and Hales and the rest of them.”

     “You don’t believe that.”

     Cob’s nostrils flared. His golden eyes glowed in the shadows of the mill house. “I do. Men’s actions have consequences. For many and many a year, we of the town have obeyed you of the abbey, just as the people of the land have obeyed their lords. I have read the old books that you taught me. When the Danes came, the lords were needed to give us fighters. Thus the Normans as well, and they became the lords in turn.”

     Cob was always one for long speeches and explanations.

     “Since 1066 has been three hundred and fifteen years; we still fight in France—which is why the Crown has no money—not the French here. No one threatens our shores, but still we must obey the lords, and pay our customs and fines. We will have it no more. If the Archbishop of Canterbury had to die for his sins, he was shrived and gone to a better place than this, but at the least he will no longer plague us.”

     Thomas shivered, despite the morning heat. “And so to anyone who offends you.”

     “It was not our offense, but his offenses, that brought him to his death.” Cob turned away. He squatted on the ground, picked up a piece of chaff, and tossed it into the mill race. But the water was still, the barrier closed, and the outer husk of the wheat merely floated in a small, closed circle.

     “You could kill us all.”

     “Not you.” Cob looked up at him. The golden eyes shone moist in a shaft of sunlight that penetrated through the boards of the wall.

     Thomas recognized the boy who had loved him. He took a stern approach.

     “Give it up, and I will see what the abbot may say.”

     “We can’t give it up. The old way is finished, the new way unknown.” Cob stood and faced his old teacher. His eyes shone now not with tears, but passion. “We are not things, to be used as you like, not tools for the making of wealth. We are men, as you taught me, made in the image of God.”

     “As are we, William.” Thomas searched Cob’s face and found reason for hope. “You may have some of the right of it; there have been many abused in the name of order. But your abusers too are made in God’s image. Even Archbishop Sudbury. Had you heard his cries on Tower Hill, you would have stopped the butchery.”

     “Would I?” Cob asked. “I hope it never comes to me to see such a thing.”

     “What of the prisoners in the abbot’s gaol?”

     “What of them,” Cob asked.

     “Will you free them? In London they did.”

     The rebel nodded.

     “There is one—” Thomas hesitated. Surely, he was condemning the prisoner more than any jury. “He was found with a boy. I can discern no soul in him, God forgive me. If he is freed, it will be as if you turned the devil himself loose in the world. Others will suffer. I will testify myself to his evil. You must not free him.”

     Thomas himself had come upon them, caught him in the act of buggering one of the boys of the town. It had been nothing heroic on Thomas’ part. He was with others, and there was no question what had been done and by whom. The act was undeniable, the actor unrepentant. Thomas had begged him to confess, for the sake of his immortal soul, but the man held fast against his pleas. Instead, the buggerer claimed benefit of clergy, and recited his neck-verse almost before the book was placed in front of him.

     Therefore, he could not be handed over to the secular authority, but it did not matter in Saint Albans. All authority there was in the hands of the abbot. A benefit for the criminal was that the church could not, by its own laws, put a man to death. Many was the felon in Saint Alban’s who had cheated the hangman because there was no secular authority to give him over to.

     “I will come from the abbey to testify against him,” Thomas offered. “Send for me, at the time. No child should suffer what I saw.”

     Cob nodded in understanding. Then he gave something in return.

     “We have ringed the abbey with guards. All the ways out of town are watched. Stay within the walls. The blood of the people is up, and, as you say, there is no knowing what will come.”

     It was Thomas’ turn to nod.

     “That’s it, then.” Cob rose to his feet. “The others—they will be looking for me. Bar this door after I go.” He stood in the doorway. A shaft of morning sun caught his hair, which glowed like the glory ’round a saint’s head in the stained glass of the church.

     Then he was gone.

     Thomas waited until Cob had climbed half the distance up the hill, then did as he had been told.

            

Chapter 12

    

     “We can’t trust them all,” John Barber argued.

     “We can’t leave them here. They will reinforce the monks, and our task will be the harder,” Cob shot back. “The breaking of the folds is accomplished. Let them see for themselves what only a few of us have done.”

     Barber’s sore foot was only a little better. “You stay here, with the watch.”

     Cob wanted every person of the town—no matter his sympathies—to hear and see what had been done thus far. The innkeepers especially, since they were likeliest to side with the abbey. All those who took their trade from the pilgrims were in question.

     The monastery was an outpost of God in the world, a visible sign of His presence. To rebel against it made even Cob feel a bit like Lucifer. He must give his followers courage to keep up the struggle. By now, word of the killings in London had spread through the whole people. Doubt would swell in their hearts like leaven in dough.

     Cob sent his scariest follower, John Byker, he who would burn the abbey and town and all, to every house with a company of sure rebels. Every man and woman was to come with whatever arms they could manage—hoes and sickles, if not swords and bows—and witness the destruction of the folds in Fawnton Wood.

     It took less time than Cob had expected. John Byker was persuasive. The procession from the stone cross at the town square formed up quickly. The most certain rebels all carried their yew bows and a quiver of arrows, and lined the way to Fawnton. The procession passed through them, not a few in it eyeing the un-nocked weapons with uncertainty. I am come to set neighbor against neighbor.

     But most treated the interruption in their lives as a holiday. Some brought loaves of bread and jugs of ale. Cob understood. He, too, had a family to look after.

     Earlier, he had sent trusted men to the outlying villages in the hundred of Cashio, that part of Hertfordshire most closely tied to Saint Albans. He needed all the backers he could find to hold the abbot at bay. Tring, Barnet, Rickmeresworth, Watford, Redbourne—a score of nearby vills belonging to the monastery—were all ready to rebel. If the revolt was a conflagration, the tinder had been ready for generations, lacking only a spark. The Saint Alban’s version of the revolt would mirror the upheaval in the whole land. As he had led a delegation to London, so people in the county would come to Saint Alban’s, to learn what they might dare to do.

     At Fawnton he first bade the crowd look to the gates built before living men could remember, gates into the abbot’s forest, where sheep and deer and all manner of game could not be taken by ordinary men.

     Cob, with Cadyndon and Barber and Byker flanking him, climbed up on the ruined remains of the gates. They were built of osier, strands of willow woven together into a tough wicker-work to make fences. The crowd spread out before him. Some looked up at him with open, cheerful faces, glad for the break in the aching routine of work. Others cast fearful eyes, on the lookout for the abbey’s bailiff or the men-at-arms that Cob knew to be locked within the monastery walls. Men, women and children had been brought out into Fawnton field to hear his speech. He swallowed hard at this audacity of his, but it was begun, and there would be no stopping short of success or defeat. The morning sun threw shadows across the people. He swallowed again, and began.

     “Last night, while you slept—or tried to—your neighbors set you free!”

     He received a mix of cheers and grumbles. Not everyone was with him. He pushed on.

     “We have seen the King himself. Young Richard knows what you face. He understands now, if he did not before, that the poll tax is wrong. He has canceled it.”

     A cheer rose at that, as he had hoped.

     “This day, the King himself will send us a charter of liberty. And not to us alone, but to all the commons who went to see him in London.”

     Some of the waverers’ faces opened to him. The course he wanted to lead them on was as dangerous as lightning, as unpredictable as war. He admitted as much.

     “What we saw in London gives us hope,” Cob continued, “and courage. Common men, on our own account, tens of thousands of us, frightened the nobility of England into submission. As a single man, I could never stand against them. As a single village, Barnet could never stand. Even all of Saint Alban’s demesne could never stand against the might of armies.

     “But when we stand together, men from Essex and Kent, London and Saint Alban’s, the men-at-arms of England can only tremble at our might.

     “Any single village can be subdued. Any dozen towns can be reduced one at a time. But when all the commons of England come together, nothing can stand in our way. And I have seen it done!”

     He raised his right arm. “This hand has touched the King’s hand.” He touched his ear. “These ears have heard the King’s pledge to an end of servitude, to enforced labor on the abbey’s demesne lands, and end to tolls and fines, an end to death-taxes, to all the customary laws that have made one man the servant of another.”

     That last brought a cheer, but as the hurrahs ended, a voice cried out.

     “Then what, Cob? Are we to be ruled by the likes of you?”

     Cob had heard the voice before, but didn’t know it.

     “Who’s asking?” he shouted. The crowd turned to look at itself, for the dissenter. Within moments, it had opened a space around one man, finely dressed in the livery of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like many here, he was armed, but his sword had a golden hilt and figured scabbard.

     “I’m asking.” Richard Perers stood straight and tall, arms akimbo. His hair and eyes were as dark as earth, his features sharp and regular. Across his face, spoiling its beauty, were scattered a handful of deep pockmarks, the residue of a battle with the pox, a battle Perers had clearly won. Over a tunic of scarlet he wore a hauberk, a shirt of chain mail that covered him down to the knees. He walked toward the willow structure Cob stood on, and seemed to grow in stature as he approached. People parted to let him pass, as if he were a ship splitting the ocean.

     “I ask,” Perers said, “because of what I have seen of your new age of freedom. This golden time you herald began with the murder of the Archbishop.”

     Richard Perers was the scion of local gentry, one of the people who saw the commons as rungs on a ladder that might lift him out of obscurity into the upper reaches of power.

     “How did you escape the killing yourself, Master Richard?” Cob demanded. “Perhaps they didn’t know who you were.” Cob turned to his ready, but suddenly doubtful audience. “Or perhaps Master Perers hid in the queen’s wardrobe?”

     John Barber laughed aloud. Cadyndon and Byker picked it up; the guffaws spread through the nearer part of the crowd, then outward until it reached the edges. Cob was one of theirs; Perers was an alien in Saint Alban’s. He and his father both had been sued by the abbot over land and money, the usual causes.

     Perers’ dark face reddened. Cob hoped humiliation would work against the man, for fear would never move him.

     Byker spat at Perers’ feet. “You don’t belong here.”

     The knight’s hand slid to the golden hilt of his sword.

     “Do you think to kill me for a gob of snot?” Byker aimed his words, heavy with scorn, straight at Perers. The hand stopped on the hilt.

     “Master Perers, go to your friends.” Cob shouted the words; he wanted no blood spilled now, at the beginning of the great change. Byker and many of the others would fight on any excuse, but Cob wanted something greater—legitimacy for the rebellion. The killing of an opponent by a mob, no matter how justified, would only be grounds for their enemies to overthrow the change.

     It was Joan who saved the morning, Joan who emerged from the press of people while Perers faced Byker, and Joan who slid the knight’s sword from its scabbard. Weaponless, save for a lonely dagger, Perers had no choice. Cob jumped down from his perch and took the heavy sword from his wife’s hands.

     “My thanks to you, my lady.” He bowed to Joan, and she to him. He turned back to the squire.

     “Master Perers, I give you a choice,” Cob said. “Go now from this place and receive your sword back into your hands, or stay, and I shall have every man here spit on you, and the women, too.” He was making it up as he went along, the sword pointed at Perers’ unprotected throat, pushing forward, forcing the knight to back up.

     “Make way,” Cob cried. “Allow him to pass. We will do no murder here, no matter the provocation.”

     A path opened behind Perers, a narrow passage that gave him scarce room enough to be expelled like a turd from the body of the commons. Cob urged him at swordpoint down the channel, to the road that would take the young knight-to-be back to the abbey. Cob stayed within the protective embrace of his people. Perers would as lief kill him as look at him.

     The squire stopped as he reached the road and held out his hand. “My sword.”

     Cob lowered the point to the ground, gauging Perers’ intent. “I think not.”

     Richard Perers’ eyes measured the angles and the odds. He nodded once, then turned from the gathering of the commons and strode down the center of the path. His departure, without even a word of threat, left Cob feeling unsatisfied, surprised and disappointed, without knowing why. It left him, too, with a great sword and no scabbard.

     Cob turned from the empty road, back to his people. The channel to the ruined forest gate was still open. He ran back, jumped up on his perch, and told them his plan. All the while he held the great sword.

    

*

    

     Thomas of Walsingham had reported to Father Abbot on his conversation with Cob. Now, the monks gathered in the Chapter House.

     Chapter normally began with a reading from the Rule of Saint Benedict, the founder of the order. Father Abbot dispensed with the reading.

     “Today we face dangers such as never before,” the abbot said.

     Thomas had been again to the wall. The town was silent and still, more threatening in its emptiness than a mob would have been. No one knew where the people had gone.

     “You have all seen what I have seen. Brother Thomas’ news from London bodes ill. Even our Prior has left, and I encouraged him to do so, for fear of the rebels.”

     Father Abbot spoke from his seat in the Chapter House. The monks ringed the room, each seated in his particular spot on a wooden bench that ran round the perimeter.

     The abbot rose from his throne.

     “Bless me, brothers, for I have sinned.”

     He walked, limping, to the center of the room across the flat stones that paved the floor. Beneath the stones lay the bodies of earlier abbots, buried in the place of honor. A spasm of pain distorted his face. He turned away from Thomas, who sat opposite the abbatial throne, but there was no place he could turn where he was unnoticed.

     Haltingly, Father Abbot knelt on the stones that covered his predecessors. He bowed his head.

     “I have failed you, brothers, as your abbot. On my head be the sin.

     “We are left without defense, save the grace of God and the protection of our Saint. Our men-at-arms are few, and many of our servants gone over to the rebels. Should they decide to kill us, as they killed the Archbishop, the Chancellor, and others in London, there is no earthly power to save us.

     “For these, and for my other sins, I crave your pardon.” He bowed his head.

     A shroud of silence fell over the monks. Thomas muted even his breath, afraid of this unprecedented act of humiliation. An abbot ruled. He did not beg. He did not ask forgiveness, but gave it, when it suited his purposes.

     The others were frozen, open-mouthed in shock as deep as his. A few glances darted back and forth, but no one spoke, no one moved.

     Thomas stood and gathered his habit around him. It was, he noticed, filthy, stained with the mud and blood it had accumulated over the last day. His legs trembled, but he walked as steadily as he could manage to face the kneeling prelate.

     Father Abbot lifted his eyes. Sorrow floated in his unshed tears.

     Thomas traced the sign of the cross on Father Abbot’s forehead. The skin was flaccid, creased with wrinkles of worry and fear. “Ego te absolvo peccatorum tuorum, in nomine domini, et filii, et spiriti sancti. Now, Father, rise, take your proper place, and guide us through this crisis, as you have guided us for so many years.”

     He took the abbot’s hands in his and lifted the old man to his feet.

     The abbot looked around the assembled monks, his face a mask of confusion. Thomas worried, but no one else had the authority, the history of leadership. The prior had fled, and with him any chance of removing the burden from the Father Abbot. Thomas de la Mare had been abbot since the time of the pestilence. Everyone, in town and country alike, owed him obedience. He must rule, else no one could.

     “Shall I do as our brother demands?” The abbot slowly turned from Thomas. He stepped, limping, from one of the seated monks to the next. Thomas knew that they had no choice. Already the abbey and town were ringed with rebels. More were coming all the time from the outlying villages. The time for flight had itself flown.

     “If we are to die, brothers, let us die in the act of preserving that patrimony which we hold from our Lord Christ,” Thomas said, while the abbot moved from man to man. “The rebels have the town, and all the roads. The London mob proved that there is no place of safety outside the walls. Better the devils we know.”

     Father Abbot finished his perambulation of the chapter. Some of the monks wept for fear; others cursed the townfolk. All agreed to stay. The abbot seemed stronger; he stood more straightly upon his legs. Penance agreed with him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the door of the chapter burst open and crashed against the stone wall.

     Richard Perers careened into the chapter house. Sweat streaked his face. His mail surcoat was askew.

     “The rebels are at Fawnton Wood,” he panted.

     “You have interrupted Chapter, Master Perers.” The abbot wasted no love on the Perers’ family. A long history of litigation and complaint stained the relationship between the Perers and the monastery, yet young Richard Perers was bound to the abbey by long-standing oaths of fealty.

     “You have lost your sword,” Thomas noted. Perers was inordinately proud of the weapon. It had been presented to him by the boy-king’s own hands.

     But Thomas was surprised that Cob had led his followers so far out of the town. Had they entered the abbey at any time this morning, they would have found the monks dispirited and confused. If they but waited a little longer, he could perhaps encourage the brothers and the Father Abbot to stand. If the King survived, then help was possible, if not likely.

     Father Abbot interrupted Thomas’ thoughts. The old man had recovered himself. The assurance of forgiveness from his children the monks had taken hold. The appearance of the old enemy’s son had put the same thought in his head as was beginning to form in Thomas.

     “Master Perers, you failed to protect the man in whose service I placed you.” Father Abbot spoke of the murdered Archbishop Sudbury. “Return to London, and let the king and council know the danger we stand in. If you serve us well during this disruption, we will forgive you your family’s sins against us, as we have been forgiven.”

     The improvisation emboldened Father Abbot. Perers bowed his obeisance and turned on his heel. Thomas felt that he would, indeed, head straight for London, as fast as horse would carry him. He pitied the rebel who stood in the squire’s way.

     As soon as Perers had disappeared, Father Abbot again acted the man.

     “The first danger will be fire. If they break down our doors and burst in, there is little we can do. But flame may overmount the walls, and I’ll have none of it. Father Cellarer,” he ordered, now in full command of himself, “you will organize a watch. Pay especial attention to the roofs of the buildings closest to the walls. You will need a dozen—no, two dozen—brothers and servants to help you. Water everything within bowshot of the walls.”

     He turned to the Kitchener. “We must still eat, mustn’t we, danger or no?” He clapped his hands. “Hurry-hurry! Food before battle!”

     Cellarer and Kitchener traded glances. Neither was accustomed to being the victim of such peremptory commands. No one had clapped at Father Kitchener since he was a novice.

     “Go!” Father Abbot ordered. “Are you waiting for the rebels to relieve you of your duties?”

     Thomas was not the only brother to smile at the indignity foisted on the two monks. But Father Abbot caught him.

     “For your levity, Brother Precentor, a dozen rosaries. And you are writing, as we spoke of?”

     Thomas let his humor show. “Aye, my lord.”

     “Let it be thorough,” the abbot said, “yet show some propriety, as well, for the sake of Christ’s patrimony. I shall review it, before all this is finished.”

     In other words, Thomas must shape the literal truth in his chronicle. Raw facts, uncooked by reflection, made poor food for thought. Strange that Father Abbot felt a need to remind him.

     The abbot, however, was making up for lost time, his indecision banished as if by divine intervention. One brother was sent to survey the people remaining within the abbey precincts. Another to check the stores. Several were put on watch, mainly to the west, to sound the alarm for the return of the rebels from Fawnton. Father Abbot had become a fighter, deploying what forces were available to him with the demeanor of his cousin, the admiral.

     To his remaining monks, those who were not fled and who had not been given a specific duty, Father Abbot ordered, “Pray, brothers, as you have never prayed before. If we turn this revolt away, we will not manage with force of arms—we have none worth the name. Sir William Croyser and his fellows would only be sacrificed to no good use.” He circled round the chapter house, passing the remaining monks in turn.

     “We must fight as Christ would fight. I give thanks that we have no weapons, for I know I would succumb to the temptation to use them, as would you. Our adversaries are our children, the people. Let us try such weapons as make it possible, when this is ended, to live with them.

     “If need be, we will die as Christ died.”

     Thomas saw Father Abbot with new respect. He was once again their father in God.

A Hanging Offense by Alan David Justice is licensed under a 

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