A Hanging Offense, Chapters 32-33

Bits of redemption, then an ending.

Chapter 32

    

     Richard Plantagenet, by the grace of God King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, paraded in through the great gate. But before him had come hundreds of outriders, armed men on horseback, to insure his safety. They were good at their job, which was to stifle all dissent, all opposition, by a ruthless show of force. By the time the King arrived in the middle his army, Saint Alban’s was thoroughly cowed.

     Thomas stood at the abbot’s side as young Richard rode his white charger through the abbey gateway, accompanied by an endless train of armored men. He could almost hear the thoughts of Father Abbot. How would the saint feed so many men? Where would they sleep and stable their horses?

     But Thomas’ thoughts flew to the prisoner locked within that very gate house. Cob was still inside, although no window in his cell would let him see the royal personage, and he must hear the arrival of such a large host. Horns blared, horses neighed, stomped their hooves, armor clattered, and men shouted orders.

     The monks arranged themselves on the steps of the abbey church, before the western door, a flock of crow-like men, arrayed in black-clothed ranks. Although he was one of those crow-men, Thomas stood outside himself as well, a trick of the historian in him, to see what he took part in as if he did not. It confused him to think about, but not to do.

     The monks waited in relative silence. Young Richard Plantagenet, the fourteen-year-old wonder who had stilled the mob twice in London, pulled his mount to a halt before them. He was a slightly built youth, fair of skin and hair, what could be seen of him beneath his royal armor. He controlled his steed like a master horseman. The charger stood rock still while the army grew around him. More and more men trooped in through the gate and formed into semicircular ranks behind the monarch.

     But between the king and his soldiers another group of men took pride of place. They rode not chargers, but coursers, horses bred for speed and endurance, rather than strength. They wore not armor, but the robes of travelers, rich clothes, brocaded and furred. This was Richard’s court of judgment.

     A figure dressed in black detached itself from the men of the court and rode his courser lazily to the King’s side.

     Thomas knew him, and his heart thudded in his chest. In Hertford, Cob had already faced Trysilian, the serpens prudentiae, the king’s justiciar, who had quickly and early declared himself in favor of death for all rebels.

     The abbot stepped forward, limping from the western porch of the church down to the bare ground before the king. He looked small marching out alone to greet their liege.

     The abbot stopped halfway to his king and looked back at Thomas. They had agreed that certain things were to be outside the historian’s ken. A king, after all, might need a certain latitude for his actions, particularly a young king, who might reign for decades to come. Thomas pretended not to understand. Well enough, Father Abbot might lean on a friendly arm while meeting with the boy-king, but it was better that no one hear what passed between the two. Thomas waited, with what he hoped was a look of innocent openness on his face, and eventually the abbot turned toward the king.

     Whatever passed between them took little time. Father Abbot himself conducted Richard to his own residence. Thomas was forgotten in the great crowd.

     But there were things to organize, people to house, accommodations to be seen to. Saint Alban’s was a house of the Black Monks, and hospitality was a duty owed the traveler.

     No monastery, no matter how large, could accommodate the thousands of men and horses. The highest ranked—namely the king and his intimate party—would stay within the walls of the abbey, where there was some physical security. The higher nobles would go to the inns that clustered near the walls, ready to hand if the king should need their counsel. The rankers, the ordinary troops, would spread out through the town, as the wavelets caused by a dropped stone spread across the surface of a pond. Each household would have its soldiers to feed and house. If it made for hardship, the rebels should have thought of that before.

     Since Father Prior was still hiding somewhere in the north country, it fell to Thomas to sort out the arrangements. He found Dickon, Richard of Wallingford, and explained the need to him.

     “This is a chance to prove your worth, son.” Thomas found Dickon kneeling at the shrine of the saint, where none of the multitude had thought to go. Outside the great church, men shouted and horses nickered, steel clanked and clattered, to destroy the peace of the abbey precinct.

     The merchant barely glanced at the monk. His lips moved in rapid, silent prayers. He kept his eyes on the ornate pedestal that housed what remained of Alban. Red and gold glittered on the shrine, which was kept behind the great altar, in its own chapel.

     “I need your help,” Thomas went on. It was like talking to God—he had the sense that someone was there, but no answer came. “We all need your help.”

     Nothing.

     Thomas shook Dickon’s shoulder. The merchant whirled, still on his knees. “I’m trying to pray.”

     “Your prayers are holy in God’s eyes, but I need you now,” Thomas insisted.

     Dickon pushed his hand away, but Thomas was in no mood to be trifled with.

     “Don’t!” he warned. “The bloody King of England is less than a hundred yards away and expects his soldiers to be fed and housed. It falls to me, and thus to you, to organize it. You are still an influential man in the town. People will listen to you. Or would you rather that Richard’s troops simply drive the people out of their homes?”

     Dickon stared up at him for a long moment, turned back to the shrine, crossed himself, then slowly got to his feet. “You have a way with words, Father Thomas.” The look on his face could have soured mother’s milk, but he turned from Thomas and strode from the shrine toward the western door. “I’ll talk first to the officer in charge.”

     Thomas sagged against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. Dickon would do better with some task to occupy his mind. If he found himself useful, he would not wallow in guilt over deserting his friends. He might yet be saved.

     What else to do? There were a thousand tasks to accomplish to take care of the monks’ obligation to hospitality. And there was Cob’s soul to be saved, as well.

    

*

    

     Cob slumped against the cold flint wall. When he had been here years before, he had had a hope of getting out. Humiliation had bought his freedom.

     This time, the only escape would be from life itself. He sniffed the air. The smell of dampness in still air, the muffled, softened sounds, betokened fog, the kind that would last until midday. Were he home, he would wrap his writing implements up to keep the moisture from the vellum and paper. It was better not to put ink to paper in the heavy damp. Ink would not dry well, and the wetness in the paper would make the ink wick too far into the fibers. The text would be fuzzy, like the down on his wife’s cheek.

     No matter what, his thoughts returned to Joan—the clear darkness of her eyes, the dark clarity of her thoughts, the fierce loyalty that drove her. His cock stirred at the thought of her, and he turned his mind as he would turn a horse from a danger in the road. Not for any thing would he dishonor her in this prison.

     Ned would need a father. A woman like Joan could find another husband in a trice, should she so desire. A widow would have a difficult life. He hoped she would remarry, once he was gone.

     Once he was gone. The thought had slipped into him like a dagger through a joint in armor, almost without his noticing. He trembled a little—it must have been the damp—and wondered what awaited him.

     They would hang him, certainly. He had seen men hanged. Some executioners botched the job on purpose, to give the crowd a thrill. Others, more compassionate, made it quick. But in the case of traitors, so he had heard, the rope would slowly strangle you, and then, just before you lost your awareness, they would cut you down, chop through your skin and ribs, cut out your beating heart, and show you it before you realized you were dead. It was done in an instant. Rumor was that it took a man with expertise and experience to manage the trick before his victim died.

     Domine Jesu, it must hurt.

     Through his high, single window, a gray light fell against the stone wall opposite—not true light, precisely, more of a glow. No one had come, all the long night, to help him to a place of freedom. Where could he go? Flee, like the prior, to the north? But he had no priory, no safe haven. With the king’s armies scouring the realm, no stranger could be safe. People would be quick to prove their fealty by betraying him.

     Like Dickon. Cob spat into the rotten straw to rid his mouth of the taste of betrayal. A judas, his onetime comrade. Fearful for his skin. Death came when it would, no matter what a man wanted. That was the whole point of death. Everything else, a man might try to control—his behavior, his family, his station in life, his work. But no matter who you might be, no matter how vigorous, no matter how high-born, no matter how much you prayed that it would not, death would come. Dickon thought he could evade it, the fool. Better to welcome its coming like the arrival of a brother.

     “Pssst!” a voice whispered. “Cob! Wake up!”

     It came from the window. The voice was Henry’s.

     Cob felt slow and stupid. What was Henry doing in the gaol? He belonged in London.

     “Cob!” The voice grew urgent. “I know you’re there.”

     Henry was the elder brother, the one who’d made good, not the one to be hanged. Cob answered without stirring from his spot.

     “What is it?”

     “Not so loud,” Henry hissed. “The guards’ll wake up and catch me.”

     That didn’t matter as much to Cob as to Henry. “So?”

     “Some people want to break you out of gaol.”

     “No.”

     “I told them that’s what you’d say.”

     “You were right.” Where could he go? It would only endanger others.

     “We’ll remember you, then—name a street after you or something, later on, once things calm down.” Henry’s voice caught in his throat.

     “I’m not dead yet, brother.”

     “No, of course not.”

     Then came one of those silences, wherein people who care for each other are afraid to say what’s in their thoughts. The night still smelled of damp. The waiting fog sucked all the sounds into its maw and held them close and still.

     “Look out for Joan and Ned.” The words tore from Cob’s throat and scraped his tongue raw. A pang of envy shot through him, a belly-twisting spear of pain, at the thought of them with someone other than himself, but he had to ask it.

     Ned laughed softly, damn him. “Joan won’t have anyone looking after her but you, lad. You know that.”

     There was a certain truth in that. Joan had more independence that most men. How could he not remember?

     Cob wasn’t thinking clearly. His fear came from deep within, deeper than he had known he was. He glanced toward the high window. It was noticeably brighter. “Henry,” he whispered. “Do me a favor.”

     “Anything.”

     “Get the old man—Thomas. I want to see him.”

     Cob could nearly see through the flint walls and watch Henry turn this over in his mind. After a long moment, the sound of Henry’s limping gait receded into the enveloping silence of the fog.

     He waited, imprisoned in darkness, for both the dawn and the monk. His world had grown so small now, a single room, four stone walls, a pile of straw, and a brother who would do him this last service. Joan and Ned, somehow, already seemed to have gone away. Cob doubted he would be let to see them. He was in other hands, and they meant to take him where he did not want to go.

     Cob might have slept. If it was truly dawn, or near to it, the monk must have been at prayer in the great church. The convent would make a show of piety with the king and court present. All those in the council would be reassured to see the monastery functioning properly. Prayers would be raised for their souls and the success of their work in rooting out the rebels. God would be pummeled with petitions.

     The door crashed open, oak nearly splintering from its impact on the flint. Cob snapped awake and cowered, in spite of himself. “What?” he shouted.

     “The door sticks sometimes, in the damp,” the guard said. “Sorry.” He was one of the abbey’s men, one of the six sent out with Croyser weeks before, into the town square, to try to stop the rebellion at its beginning.

     “Didn’t mean to give you a fright.” The guard held out a small loaf of bread from the abbey’s kitchen. “I thought you might be hungry.”

     Cob was now a man of parts. His hand reached for the steaming loaf before his mind gave the order. Hunger overrode pride. His mouth closed on the crust still soft, still hot from the ovens.

     “The king’ll be eating the same bread, Master Grindcob.”

     Cob chewed. The hot bread tasted sweet and delicate, stuff befitting a royal table. He’d never eaten such bread before.

     “Why do you bring this to me?” he asked around between swallows. The bread was so moist and delicate that it did not cause him to thirst. And the notion that one of his captors had such kindness in his soul confused him. It blurred the lines between rebel and soldier.

     “The judge, S-s-sir Robert Tres-s-s-ilian, brought it to me himself. A sign, says he, lisping like a whore, that he recognizes our good service.”

     Cob’s mouth stopped working. Trysilian’s bread tasted of blood—Cob’s blood.

     “Oh, go on—it’s just bread! You may be condemned in days to come, but until then you have to live.” The guard turned away, muttering. “Ingratitude, that’s what it is—you do a man a kindness who can do himself none, and what does he do but nearly puke it back in your face. . . .”

     “Wait!” Cob swallowed the lump of dough. “It was a kind thought; what prompted it?”

     The guard turned back in the narrow hall outside the cell. What little light found them within the stone walls was at his back. His face was unreadable. “You could have let them have us, back on that first night. Instead, you took me by the hand and plucked me from the crowd, me and my mates. I shan’t forget. I was in London, and saw things there—“

     “Thank you.” Cob held up the remains of the loaf. “Thank you. I was hungrier than I knew.”

     “I have to lock up again,” the guard said. “That crash—“

     “They’ll check,” Cob said.

     “Aye—no more easy days for a while, until—“ He stopped talking in mid-phrase and reddened.

     “Until I’m gone, you mean.”

     “There’s a vast army here, Master Grindcob. I don’t think you were as wrong as the king does, between you and me. If I’d been of another trade than soldiering, I might have been with you. But it’s all one now, isn’t it?”

     He shut the door, with an effort to keep it quiet. Dawn amidst the king’s army demanded a certain adherence to duty.

     Cob gnawed the bread. It had gone cold during the talk, but its sweetness was unchanged.

                

Chapter 33

    

     “They won’t have anyone knows how to hang us,” Cob argued. “We haven’t had a hanging here in I don’t know how long.”

     Thomas shook his head. He seldom heard confession from condemned men. Cob was right in part—the abbey’s court shied from hanging. It was unseemly for the church to shed blood, and Saint Alban’s was small and self-contained. Few needed the gallows to make them mend their ways. But—

     “It won’t be your neighbors to do it, son,” Thomas answered, as gently as he could say such a thing. “The king’s brought many a man ready to turn you off, and Trysilian already has you down for death. The juries are now at work on it.”

     Cob snatched at any straw for distraction. “Juries? Meaning what—how many has he made?”

     “Three,” Thomas answered.  “He says he’ll have no man say that you were unlawfully killed.” It pained him to tell Cob these things, but his hopes in earthly help must be destroyed. “Your friend, Dickon, helps him.”

     Cob spat into the rotting straw. “That for Dickon.”

     Thomas understood how Cob must feel—betrayed by the man with whom he had hoped to overturn all things. But Cob must release all earthly attachment. What good to take hatred of Dickon with him to the judgment seat?

     “Will you go before God with such anger in your heart?”

     “I will go before God with an open heart, one he can look into. I will not pretend for any man, nor for God himself.” Cob’s words were defiant, but color drained from his face, as if someone had opened a vein and taken out all the blood in him.

     “Sit, my son. Be easy.” Thomas took Cob’s arm.

     Cob muttered an oath. Thomas easily forgave the obscenity.

     “You could let me go,” Cob whispered. “I could escape—go to London—“

     Thomas’s task was half achieved when Cob admitted his fear of death.

     “Shh.” Thomas eased Cob to the straw-covered floor. “Sit.” With the town occupied by thousands of royal troops, with the country alerted against the rebels, escape would only bring death the quicker. Cob knew it as well as Thomas.

     The rebel picked at the straws on the floor, the action of a man recognizing the end of hope. Thomas knew much about the end of expectancy. Like a woman who feels the child within go still, Thomas had lost Cob years before, and long lived without the hope of recovering him for Christ, had feared his almost-son lost to him and to God forever. Now, providence had seen fit to deliver the grown man into his hands again.

     But there were other pressures. The judge and the king—one and the same mind, though two bodies—were strong for death. Father Abbot would argue for mercy where he could, but he had no strength. The wheel of fortune had turned full circle now. The rebels were ground under its sharp edge, the king and nobles triumphant atop the curve.

     The boy-king could only do, finally, what his role required. Nobles and king agreed: the rebellion must be destroyed, the rebel leaders killed as soon as possible. The application of force must be overwhelming, but legal. Law and precedent were for the status quo ante.

     Cob sat amid the rotten straw, staring up at him. Thomas still held his arm.

     “God requires a good confession, William.”

     “God already knows every thing I have done, every thought I have had—is it not so?”

     “But do you?” Thomas had not done this often, but he was wise to the trickery of the frightened soul. He had one of his own. “This is not meant to be easy, son. Your life stands under judgment, and your answer will be required soon.”

     “When?”

     It was a distraction from the main task, but there had never been a time when Thomas could deny this man. “John Ball has been captured. They are bringing him here for execution. It will take a few days, I suppose.”

     “What of Jack Straw?” Cob’s face glowed with color and with passion again. The fear had vanished.

     “No one knows.”

     “He’ll not be found.”

     Found or not found, it did not matter. Already, Thomas heard rumors that there was no Jack Straw, that he was just a name to conjure with, to frighten children. No matter that he had seen him, along with thousands of others, and that he lived up to his name, a scarecrow figure, tall and yellow in color. The next generation, or further, might take heart from such a man’s existence. It would be important to cast doubt into the minds of the commons. Doubt and fear would work their purposes, and make future revolt less likely. Kill all the leaders, save those that changed sides.

     Cob turned away, certain that Straw would never be taken. It was the only certainty left for William Grindcob, save the certainty of coming death. All men died, and what did the time matter? Yet Cob was not fitted for judgment, not yet. Thomas could not let him go to the gallows unshriven, yet could not shrive him without repentance.

     “Cob—”

     “What?”

     “You must confess—”

     “So my confession can be used against others? I’ll not give you the satisfaction.”

     Cob’s anger had returned. Thomas knew better than to argue a man into sanctity. He stood, preparing to leave. Perhaps the building of the gallows might change Cob’s mind, or a day and night of solitude.

     “It doesn’t matter what the others think, now,” Thomas offered. “None know but you and I what’s said between us.”

     “Who else has been arrested?” Cob asked. His voice was as sharp as a knife’s edge.

     Thomas only knew some of them. “Byker, Cadyndon, Barber, Eccleshall, Dene—”

     “Not Dickon, then.”

     “No,” Thomas said, “not Dickon.”

     “Nor Joan.” Cob’s voice cracked.

     “Nor Joan.”

     Though it cost him a great effort, Thomas turned and left Cob alone in the cell. Better that he suffer a little now than greatly for ever after.

    

*

    

     Dickon kept his appointment with the judge, Trysilian. The trials were ended, the sentences passed. Dickon was himself to pass a time incarcerated.

     Incarceration would be the better alternative to being torn limb from limb. Were he free during the time of executions, the people might vent their anger on him. Dickon had known it, and Trysilian had pointed it out.

     The purpose of this last meeting between judge and witness mystified Dickon. The deal had been struck, the bargain agreed on both sides. Dickon was to remain within the abbey walls for two years as penance for his part in the revolt.

     Trysilian met him in the abbot’s parlor. The judge sat perched on the abbot’s throne.

     “While you perform your obligation, Master Wallingford, I have three tasks for you to accomplish.” Trysilian raised a long, slender index finger of his right hand. “One: repair this floor. Your own hands shall do the task, and none other.”

     Rough planks had been laid over the ruin of the abbot’s floor. The mill stones were all gone now, broken up and the pieces handed over to the people, impossible to recover.

     Dickon nodded his understanding. Penance required compensation, when possible.

     “Two.” Trysilian raised another finger. “Tell everything to the monk Thomas. Search your memory and give him every detail. Spare no one. I shall receive a copy of what he learns from you, and I shall know.”

     Dickon nodded again. Penance required confession.

     “Three.” No fingers showed now. Trysilian beckoned him closer. “The charter—the people still hold the charter from the abbot. I would not have it become, like others, a cause for the commons to rally in later days.

     “The charter.”

     Trysilian hissed in fury. “Any decision I’ve made can be changed, sir. You will obey.”

     But the charter had vanished with the coming of the king. The abbey had copies, but the originals disappeared like noontime mist. Dickon chose not to tell Trysilian the difficulty.

     “Do you understand these terms?”

     Dickon nodded, his mind racing. Who knew where the new documents had gone? Who among the commons would even talk to him?

     “Master Wallingford,” Trysilian said, “if you do not fulfill all three of these conditions, I shall return to Saint Alban’s, and I promise that you will not enjoy my coming. You have your two years for the first two tasks. You have a week for the third.”

     Trysilian stared at Dickon. His cold, reptilian eyes looked into him without pity, without sympathy. No human feeling could come from those eyes, only relentless purpose.

     Dickon turned to leave, and stumbled on the uneven floor.

     “Get out, Master Wallingford,” Trysilian said. “Get out and do my bidding.”

     It was unfair, but Dickon obeyed without argument. He had gained nothing by betrayal but the obligation to continue in treachery. Trysilian had used his fear to edge ever deeper into the mesh of relationships that made up the rebellion.

     He had no one to turn to. Should he go to the commons for the charters, he might never escape.

     Dickon found himself in the nave. With all the king’s army and all the king’s men filling abbey and town, the church itself was crowded with courtiers, guards, soldiers, clerks, and hangers-on. He might have prayed, but the press of gawkers blocked the way to the shrine. Everyone from a faraway place wanted to pray at Alban’s reliquary, beg a favor from the saint they had come to rescue.

     They all knew him as one who had betrayed his friends. No matter that he had saved them a bloody fight. Sir Walter atte Lee had found, to his dismay, how many armed men Saint Alban’s could raise if need be. Dickon’s help had turned resistance to grudging cooperation, and the king’s men ought to own their gratitude to him. They did not. They reviled him as a traitor twice over—to his lord the abbot and to his fellow rebels. When he appeared from the abbot’s parlor, a hush fell over those into whose midst he was ejected. They shrank from contact with him.

     Someone hawked and spat. Mixed spit and snot sprayed him. He stiffened. Revulsion twisted his gut. Someone else laughed, which was worse than spit. He pushed his way toward the west door. By the time he traveled the forty or fifty feet, they drenched him. Their laughter rocked the very stones of the ancient church. A pair of archers held the doors open for him, bowed him through, and kicked him in the arse as if they had rehearsed. Dickon flew from the steps face first into mud churned up by thousands of feet.

     The laughter echoed around the yard and brought half a dozen monks running from all directions. Among them was Thomas, the old man.

     He alone had the courage to lift Dickon from the muck and take him, fouled as he was, away from the mocking crowd.

     ”What am I to do?” Dickon complained after Thomas had cleaned him up and given him clothing—an old, bedraggled monk’s robe. “They would never give up the charter to me. They hate me.”

     Dickon was right about that. Thomas considered. He had taken the traitor from the muck and led him down to the mill house, away from all the others. There, in the race, he’d gone back for some dry clothing while Dickon washed himself in the lee of the water wheel. When he returned, Dickon stood, naked and shivering, knee-deep in the cold flume. Thomas had had to take him by the hand, pull him from the water, and perform most of the work of dressing him again in the nearly worn-out habit of a monk.

     Dickon babbled and let himself be dressed, as if he were a child. His limbs obeyed Thomas’s commands, but listlessly.

     “All my pains shall go to nothing, Brother Thomas,” Dickon said. “No matter how I do, Trysilian wants another corpse hanging from the gallows.” Tears slipped unregarded from his eyes, but no sobs wracked his body. Perhaps it was from the shock of the cold water. Thomas pitied the man. “He will have the charter, no matter that the commons will not return them.”

     “What do they say?” Thomas asked. He had not heard this newest information.

     “Trysilian wants all memory of the rebel time erased. He thinks if he gets back the abbot’s charter, the people will have nothing to rally them in the future.”

     “Does he think they will forget?”

     “Who can know what that man thinks?” Dickon complained. “He holds life and death in his hands. No one can see past them.”

     “Where is the charter?”

     Dickon shrugged. The new garb nearly fell from his shoulders. “I last saw it on display in the Moot Hall. No one knows where it might be now—or no one will say, which is the same thing.”

     “Not even to save your life?”

     Dickon gave a bitter laugh. “Especially not to save my life. I betrayed their darling Cob.”

     A thought struck Thomas like a hammer blow. Could both men be saved? They had begun together; they could finish together. Cob could save Dickon’s skin, and Dickon Cob’s soul. He wondered: was this how a matchmaker felt?

     Thomas adjusted the fall of the monk’s habit, tied the strings at the neck, and pulled the cowl up over Dickon’s head.

     “Put your head down—look at the ground where your feet will step next.”

     Dickon tilted his head, and his face became invisible to any observer.

     “Now, barely let your feet rise above the ground, as if you are trying to walk without noise.”

     Dickon looked up, a question in his eyes.

     “Head down,” Thomas ordered. “Obey.”

     Dickon shuffled a few steps.

     “Now, come with me.” Thomas peered out from the mill house. No one was near. He stepped out into the open. Up the hill, the abbey and its building loomed. He glanced back. Dickon shuffled awkwardly a few paces behind. He didn’t look precisely monk-like, but it would have to do. “Follow close behind.”

     Thomas led the way up the slope toward the gate house, where Cob was imprisoned.

     Outside the door, Richard Perers stopped them. “Where do you think you’re going?”

     “To see the prisoner,” Thomas answered. “What else would we be doing here?”

     “Who’s this?” the squire demanded, pointing at Dickon.

     “You have your sword again.” Thomas gestured to Perer’s left hip.

     “Huh?” Perers shook his head, as a dog will, to clear it. “Yes, the rebel bastard was quick enough to give up its location when I mentioned his wife.”

     Thomas had to hide his wince. As much anger as he bore toward Joan, she didn’t deserve the attentions of Perers.

     “It looks good on you,” Thomas fawned. “As if it belongs there.”

     Perers simpered with pride. “What do you want with the prisoner?”

     “I am to urge from him his confession, on orders from Sir Robert Trysilian.”

     “Go on, then.” Perers stood aside.

     Thomas still hid his feelings. He walked from sunlight into shadow with Dickon just behind him. A trooper unbolted the door to Cob’s cell. The two men entered. Cob looked up from a pile of straw the same color as his hair.

     “Two of you, now.”

     The door slammed shut behind them. Thomas put a finger to his lips. Cob raised an eyebrow, questioning, then shrugged.

     Thomas turned toward the muffled Dickon and threw back his concealing cowl.

     “By Christ!” Cob shouted. “You’ve got your nerve.”

     “Sssh!”

     “Why shush?” Cob demanded. “What purpose in quieting me, when you bring this Judas into my presence?”

     Thomas stepped across the intervening space and slapped Cob hard across the face. For a terrible instant, he feared that the man would hit him back by sheer reflex, and it nearly happened, but Cob was a thinker now. Before the reflex could take hold, Thomas saw, his mind engaged the question. Cob used his already-upraised hand to rub his jaw where he’d been struck.

     “I’m sorry,” Thomas said. His face flushed with embarrassment.

     “It hurts,” Cob answered. “You should be sorry. At least you have the good grace to be shamed.”

     “I do.”

     Cob let himself slide down the wall to sit again on his pile of old straw. He stared up at Dickon. “What do you want?” His voice was weary, the voice of a man who’d lost his wager with fate.

     Dickon seemed unable to speak for himself. Thomas explained his dilemma.

     “And what do you want from me?” Cob said. “I once knew where the charter was, but by now, it will have been moved. And why should I help this limp sausage of a man?”

     Cob provided the opening himself. Thomas pushed through it with as much force as he could muster.

     “You will be hanged soon. If you help Dickon, the good deed will stand with you at the judgment seat.”

     Cob spat.

     Thomas lifted his hand.

     “What, will you slap me into humility, Father Thomas? Beat me into salvation?”

     “If I thought it would work, yes, a thousand times,” Thomas answered. Fury fought with despair. Cob was so stubborn, so sure of himself, even with death closing in on him. All of the man’s life, Thomas had tried to hold him for God, for salvation, and he spent all of his life refusing grace. And yet, Thomas could not turn his back on Will Grindcob.

     ”No.” Thomas amended. “I was wrong.” He swallowed his shame, a hard lump in his throat. “Do you remember how we used to wander the past, you and I, explorers like Irish monks traveling the sea of history?” Thomas, for the moment, was back in the sunstruck library, an aging manuscript before him, teaching young Will Grindcob the careful, intricate, slightly crabbed letters of the Saint Alban’s hand.

     Cob nodded. “I remember. King This did thus-and-so to Bishop That, and it all seemed silly from the perspective of a half a thousand years. I must have cut two hundred quills, I’m sure, before I produced one that satisfied you.”

     “It was only fifty-two,” Thomas said. “I kept track.”

     Cob leaned back against the stone of wall and splayed his feet in the straw. “We were heedless of the future then. I look back and I see this thoughtless boy and an equally thoughtless monk from so great a distance of time, and wonder how we came to this place.” He lifted his hand to take in the cramped and stinking cell. “You might not have taught me so well had you seen where your knowledge would end up.”

     “How could I not teach one so hungry for learning?”

     Cob looked up at Dickon. “I still know a thing or two. Bring me pen and ink and vellum from your own scriptorium. I’ll write a charter for this merchant that the abbot himself will swear he signed, with his own name upon it. And bring the abbey’s seal, and the green wax we used on it. Dickon will have his saving charter, and go free.”

     “Can you reproduce it?” Thomas asked. He himself would recognize the original, but doubted he could make it anew.

     “Reproduce it?” Cob asked. “I wrote it over and over again for years before I needed the knowledge. I remember every mark, every drop of ink on that piece of sheepskin. It’s worth my life.” He grinned that grin, and Thomas loved him all over again. “And his,” he said, pointing at sweating Dickon by the wall. “I can do it.”

     ”Guard!” Thomas made to go in obedience to Cob’s will. The trooper opened the heavy door. This was what Thomas had come for, a chance for Cob to make some restitution, a chance for Dickon to live, but he stopped at the doorway and turned back.

     “Leave him with me,” Cob said.

     “You’ll not harm him.”

     “We have things to talk over.”

     “Dickon?” Thomas asked.

     His eyes wide, the merchant looked from Cob to Thomas. What choice did he have?

     “I’ll be back shortly.”

     He stepped smartly from the cell. The door slammed shut behind him. Dickon had been so frightened to be left there, but it was far and away the best place for him until matters were settled. Out of sight, out of mind.

     Thomas hurried to the scriptorium. His obvious purpose kept others from stopping him. He was gathering the things he needed—vellum, ink black and red, a handful of quills, a writer’s knife, a blotting cloth, a stick of green wax and the abbey’s seal—when a bottle of ink the color of the sky and a few small sheets of gold leaf caught his eye. He placed them all in a sack just as Archdeacon Roger appeared in the scriptorium. Thomas’s heart sank like a stone into water.

     “Brother, what are you doing?”

     Had Roger seen the gold leaf? Thomas wracked his brain for an excuse. He should have thought all this through beforehand.

     “Not your concern, is it?” Thomas answered. He had learned something, it seemed, in the last weeks. He closed his bag and left the scriptorium before Roger could say more. A hurried glance over his shoulder showed the archdeacon watching him from the doorway, but at least he wasn’t following.

     Thomas picked his way through the crowds of men camped everywhere on the abbey’s grounds. Only the king’s troops would dare to occupy this green space among the abbey’s buildings, and then only as an emergency measure. It kept the abbey safe from the rebels’ retaliation, but it was a damnable nuisance. The soldiers lacked employment in their trade, so they made entertainment as they could. One group diced. Another traded tales as they cleaned and honed their weapons. Some played a game of ball. Bawdy songs lifted where only the sacred should be heard; one of the troops had a stunningly beautiful tenor that stopped Thomas in his tracks, until he noticed the words. He blushed and walked on.

     Dickon had not moved from his place at the wall. At least he was untouched. Cob lazed on the straw. Whatever had passed between the two who had once been allies had left no marks. Thomas waited until the guard had locked him in and moved back out of hearing.

     “Here are your materials.” One by one, he took the things Cob would need from the sack. It was as if he were young again, about to give his protégé a lesson. He cleared straw away and placed the inks securely on the earth itself, so they might not tip over.

     Cob lifted a pen, eyed it critically, and discarded it in favor of another. He held out his hand, which puzzled Thomas for a moment before he realized that Cob wanted a pen knife. The guards had taken anything which might be used as a weapon. Thomas handed over his own.

     Cob sliced the tip from the goose quill with a single, economical motion. Thomas found himself approving, as if he were still the teacher, Cob the student.

     “Watch, now, Dickon,” Cob said. “My words are about to save your life.”

     Dickon made no reply. He seemed to be in a kind of trance, as if any movement he made might upset the arrangement that would ensure his continued existence.

     “The trick,” Cob said, writing, “is not to care too much.” The letters flowed onto the sheepskin like ripples of wind across a lake, quick, light, and certain. Cob knew the very words, as if by heart. He was not only a maker of letters, a scribe, but a maker of ideas, as well. This latter talent brought him to his present state, Thomas thought. Our best skills lead us to our ends.

     Cob cared more than he would admit. He wiped his eyes to prevent tears from spotting his work. The tip of his tongue poked from the corner of his mouth. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, but his hand never strayed. Letters grew into words that ranked themselves across the page with military precision. The capitals were the knights and commanders, the miniscules the foot soldiers. Cob cared that it be perfect, or as near so as a man could make.

     Finally, he set it the new charter aside. It lay atop the straw, and Thomas read without touching it, to allow the ink to dry.

     “To the sons of the Universal Mother Church……”

     Without an original for comparison, Thomas thought it remarkably close to what had been written before.

     “It is identical, Thomas.” Cob wiped the sweat from his face and smiled up at him. “Word for word, line for line, blot for blot. It lacks only the convent’s seal.”

     Thomas took in the signature on the bottom of the sheet. The abbot himself would swear he had signed this document. Cob had dashed off the forgery without effort, merely by desiring to.

     “It’s rather good, I think.” Cob selected another quill, cut it, and opened the bottle of blue ink.

     “King Offa’s next,” he said. “Somewhat more difficult, as the hand-writing is above five hundred years old.”

     So was the parchment it had been written on, Thomas recalled. Age had made it brittle and dark. If Prior John had any sense, he had let it fall to pieces on his flight north. At least, if Cob made an error, there would be no evidence to prove it.

     But the scribe’s hands danced like a sorcerer’s. Before Thomas’s eyes, the old charter of King Offa, from the seven hundred ninety-third year of our Lord, came to life. Cob had the azure in the initial capital the very shade of a clear June sky. The smaller letters grew as if Cob were become an old monk of Offa’s kingdom, Mercia, before the time of the Norsemen. “To care, and not to care,” Cob muttered. He became something other than himself while writing out the old guarantees of freedom for those who had built the first abbey.

     He finished the writing and reached for the thin sheets of gold leaf. The stuff, brushed on, stuck to the ink and flaked away from the parchment itself to litter the straw with flecks of sunshine. Finished, Cob held out the document. “Let things set, then we’ll dirty it up to match the one Prior John took with him.”

     They waited, the three men, while the ink dried. Thomas thought to thank Cob for helping Dickon, but that was the merchant’s to do, and he stood silent. Cob had done that which would see Dickon safely through the machinations of courtly justice. Dickon would live.

     And Cob, too, might live, at least in spiritual terms. Nothing could stop his execution. He was as doomed as Harold Bluefield had been. He was the leader, the man who had called the old ways into question. Trysilian saw clearly enough that peace would never return to Saint Alban’s unless Cob were removed. He would always question, always prick tradition like a thorn. Tradition must destroy him.

     And yet—Thomas studied his protégé. There was a liveliness about him that few others had. He walked with more energy, thought with more speed, than other men. He saw clearly, if wrongly, into the nature of things. Thomas had taught him that unknowingly.

     The ink had dried while Thomas woolgathered. Cob cleared a small patch of ground next to the flint wall, built a tiny pile of straw, and struck the pen knife against the flint. A spark fell spot on to the tinder and caught. Cob heated the green wax and let a series of drops fall at the foot of the charter. He pressed it with the seal of the convent and held it up to cool.

     The small fire burned out. Cob dusted its ashes across the parchments, smudged them here and there, rubbed in a bit of sweat, and laid them down before Thomas.

     The monk bent forward and gathered up the two forgeries, stuffed them into his habit.

     “Dickon,” he ordered, “take the tools.”

     Wallingford obeyed. He moved as if made of clay, without apparent feeling.

     Thomas stood. Cob remained on the straw, surrounded by flecks of gold.

     “I’ll come back,” Thomas said.

     “I’ll be here.” Cob grinned, but behind the smile, fear threatened to break free.

     He was so much closer now to the hour of his death. Thomas, burdened by the documents, knelt awkwardly, untied his rosary and pressed it into Cob’s unresisting hands.

     “Pray constantly, my son.”

     “That’s what you said to Bluefield,” Cob said.

     “Do it anyway.” Thomas closed Cob’s hands over the beads. “I shall return.”

     But he didn’t. When next he tried to gain entry, Richard Perers barred his way with drawn sword.

     “Orders,” Perers said, as if that explained cruelty.

     “I go to give him shrift.”

     “Short shrift it must be, for you may not see him, nor may any man.”

     Perers would not be moved. Thomas went to Trysilian himself, and was refused entry. He went to the abbot, who shook his head. “There is nothing I can do.”

     The gallows were built. The trials were finished. The king was anxious to be off hunting. He had had enough of serious work; after all, he was only fourteen.

     The whole town turned out to Romeland for John Ball’s hanging. Cob listened, unable to see. None came near his window. He was quite cut off. Neither Henry, nor Joan, nor Thomas came to see him.

     Romeland filled with people. They sounded as they did for any gathering, and he heard too the rattle and clank of armed men near to Cob’s window. Someone—Joan?—shouted his name in the distance, then grunted in pain and fell silent. In her silence, Cob listened to the crowd. Food sellers hawked pies and sausages. It was like a fair, a Wednesday market. People wanted to go back to the familiar. He didn’t blame them.

     The rosary gave him some comfort, something to do with his hands, to occupy him while waiting. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Waiting was harder, he thought, than the dying would be. Then he grinned at himself for a fool. He would know soon enough which was worse. Stupid to compare the two when he had only felt the one.

     The crowd hushed their noises. Marching men trod past the gate house and out into the open. John Ball’s turn. Cob hoped the hedge-priest would die well.

     If Ball said anything at the end, Cob did not hear, could not see. Trysilian himself read out the sentence. The people said nothing, did nothing.

     The trap dropped. The rope sang. The people groaned. Ball made no sound that reached Cob, until he was taken down and cut open. Then, a great shuddering breath and a final scream shook Cob even at a distance. The disembowelment killed the priest.

     It was almost a mercy.

     Soon, the crowd made noises again. The stench of Ball’s entrails drifted into the cell. The sellers of meat pies took up their cries. Children played a game of tag. Under it all, the people murmured in helpless surrender.

     Cob waited, his fingers playing on the beads.

        

THE END

A Hanging Offense by Alan David Justice is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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