A Column of Fire (26 page)

Suddenly the crowd’s attention turned to the nave of the church.

Following the direction in which they were looking, Ned saw Osmund Carter approaching, in his leather helmet and laced knee boots. He was with another member of the watch, and they were carrying between them a wooden chair that had on it some kind of bundle. Looking more closely, Ned saw that the bundle was Philbert Cobley.

Philbert was stocky, an imposing figure in spite of being short. Or he had been. Now his legs hung loose over the edge of the chair and his arms dangled limply at his sides. He groaned in pain constantly, his eyes closed. Ned heard Mrs Cobley scream at the sight.

The watchmen put the chair down in front of Bishop Julius and stood back.

The chair had arms that prevented Philbert from falling sideways, but he could not hold himself upright, and he began to slip down in the chair.

His family rushed to him. Dan took him under the arms and lifted him back: Philbert screamed in agony. Ruth pushed at Philbert’s hips to keep him in a sitting position. Mrs Cobley moaned: ‘Oh, Phil, my Phil, what have they done to you?’

Ned realized what had happened: Philbert had been tortured on the rack. His wrists had been attached to two posts, then his ankles had been tied with ropes that were wrapped around a geared wheel. As the gears were turned, the wheel tightened the rope and the victim’s body was stretched agonizingly. This form of torment had been devised because priests were forbidden to shed blood.

Philbert had obviously resisted, and refused to recant his beliefs, despite the pain, so the torture had continued until the shoulder and hip joints had been completely dislocated. He was now a helpless cripple.

Bishop Julius said: ‘Philbert Cobley has admitted to leading gullible fools into heresy.’

Canon Lincoln brandished a document. ‘Here is his signed confession.’

Dan Cobley approached the judges’ table. ‘Show me,’ he said.

Lincoln hesitated and looked at Julius. The court was under no obligation to the son of the accused man. But Julius probably did not want to provoke further protests from the crowd. He shrugged, and Lincoln gave the papers to Dan.

Dan looked at the last page and said: ‘This is not my father’s signature.’ He showed it to the men nearest him. ‘Any one of you knows my father’s hand. This is not it.’

Several of them nodded agreement.

Julius said irritably: ‘He was not able to sign unassisted, obviously.’

Dan said: ‘So you stretched him until—’ He choked, tears rolling down his face, but he forced himself to go on. ‘You stretched him until he was unable to write – and yet you pretend that he signed this.’

‘Pretend? Are you accusing a bishop of lying?’

‘I’m saying my father never admitted to heresy.’

‘How could you possibly know—’

‘He did not believe himself to be a heretic, and the only reason he would have said the opposite was torture.’

‘He was prayerfully persuaded of the error of his ways.’

Dan pointed dramatically to his father’s hideous form. ‘Is this what happens to a man when the bishop of Kingsbridge prays for him?’

‘The court will not hear any more of this insolence!’

Ned Willard spoke up. ‘Where is the rack?’

The three priests looked at him in silence.

‘Philbert has been racked, that’s obvious – but where?’ Ned said. ‘Here in the cathedral? In the bishop’s palace? Underneath the courthouse? Where is the rack kept? I think the citizens of Kingsbridge are entitled to know. Torture is a crime in England, except when licensed by the Privy Council. Who has been given permission to carry out torture in Kingsbridge?’

After a long pause, Stephen Lincoln said: ‘There is no rack in Kingsbridge.’

Ned digested this fact. ‘So Philbert was tortured elsewhere. Do you imagine that makes it all right?’ He pointed a finger at Bishop Julius. ‘It doesn’t matter if he was tortured in Egypt – if you sent him there, you are the torturer.’

‘Be silent!’

Ned decided he had made his point. He turned his back and stepped away.

At that point Dean Luke stood up. He was a tall, stooped man of forty with a mild manner and thinnish greying hair. ‘My lord bishop, I urge you to be merciful,’ he said. ‘Philbert is undoubtedly a heretic and a fool, but he is also a Christian, and in his misguided way he seeks to worship God. No man should be executed for that.’ He sat down.

There was a collective sound of agreement from the watching citizens. They were mostly Catholics, but they had been Protestants under the two previous monarchs, and none of them felt entirely safe.

Bishop Julius gave the dean a look of withering contempt, but did not reply to his plea. He said: ‘Philbert Cobley is guilty, not just of heresy but of spreading heresy. As is usual in such cases, he is sentenced to be excommunicated and then burned to death. The execution will be carried out by the secular authorities tomorrow at dawn.’

There were several different methods of execution. Noblemen normally benefited from the quickest, having their heads chopped off, which was instant if the executioner was skilled, and took only a minute if he was clumsy and needed several blows with the axe before the neck was fully severed. Traitors were hung, disembowelled while still living, then hacked into pieces. Anyone who robbed the Church was flayed, his skin cut off him with a very sharp knife while he was still alive: an expert could take off the skin in one piece. Heretics were burned alive.

The townspeople were not completely taken by surprise, but all the same they greeted the sentence with a horrified silence. No one had yet been burned in Kingsbridge. Ned thought that a ghastly line was being crossed, and he sensed that his neighbours felt the same.

Suddenly Philbert’s voice was heard, loud and surprisingly strong: he must have been saving his remaining energy for this. ‘I thank God that my agony has almost ended, Julius – but yours has yet to begin, you blaspheming devil.’ There was a gasp of shock at this insult, and Julius leaped to his feet, outraged; but a condemned man was traditionally allowed his say. ‘Soon you will go to hell, where you belong, Julius, and your torment will
never
end. And may God damn your eternal soul.’

The curse of a dying man was especially potent, and though Julius would have scorned such superstition, nevertheless he was trembling with rage and fear. ‘Take him away!’ he shouted. ‘And clear the church – this court is closed!’ He turned and stormed out through the south door.

Ned and his mother went home in a grim silence. The Fitzgeralds had won. They had killed the man who cheated them; they had stolen the Willards’ fortune; and they had kept their daughter from marrying Ned. It was total defeat.

Janet Fife served them a desultory supper of cold ham. Alice drank several glasses of sherry wine. ‘Will you go to Hatfield?’ she asked him as Janet cleared away.

‘I still haven’t decided. Margery isn’t married yet.’

‘But even if Bart were to drop dead tomorrow, they still wouldn’t let her marry you.’

‘She turned sixteen last week. In five years’ time, she’ll be able to marry whoever she likes.’

‘But you can’t stand still, like a ship becalmed, for so long. Don’t let this blight your life.’

She was right, he knew.

He went to bed early and lay awake. Today’s dreadful proceedings made him more inclined to go to Hatfield, but still he could not make up his mind. It would be giving up hope.

He drifted off to sleep in the small hours, and was awakened by sounds outside. Looking out of his bedroom window he saw men in the market square, their movements illuminated by half a dozen flaming torches. They were bringing dry sticks for the execution. Sheriff Matthewson was there, a big man wearing a sword, supervising the preparations: a priest could condemn a man to death, but could not carry out the sentence himself.

Ned put on a coat over his nightshirt and went outside. The morning air smelled of wood smoke.

The Cobley family were there, and most of the other Protestants arrived shortly afterwards. The crowd swelled within minutes. By first light, as the torch flames seemed to fade, there were at least a thousand people in the square in front of the cathedral. The men of the watch forced the spectators to keep their distance.

The crowd was noisy, but they fell silent when Osmund Carter appeared from the direction of the Guild Hall, with another watchman, the two men again carrying Philbert between them on a wooden chair. They had to force their way through the crowd, who made way reluctantly, as if they would have liked to obstruct the progress of the chair but did not quite have the courage.

The women of the Cobley family wailed piteously as the helpless man was tied upright to a wooden stake in the ground. He kept slipping down on his useless legs, and Osmund had to bind him tightly to keep him in place.

The watchmen piled firewood around him while Bishop Julius intoned a prayer in Latin.

Osmund picked up one of the torches that had lit their night-time labours. He stood in front of Philbert and looked at Sheriff Matthewson, who held up a hand indicating that Osmund should wait. Matthewson then looked at Julius.

In the pause, Mrs Cobley started screaming, and her family had to hold her.

Julius nodded, Matthewson dropped his arm, and Osmund put the torch to the firewood around Philbert’s legs.

The dry wood caught quickly and the flames crackled with hellish merriment. Philbert cried out feebly at the heat. Wood smoke choked the nearest watchers, who backed away.

Soon there was another smell, one that was at once familiar and sickening, the smell of roasting meat. Philbert began to scream in pain. In between screams he yelled: ‘Take me, Jesus! Take me, Lord! Now, please, now!’ But Jesus did not take him yet.

Ned had heard that merciful judges sometimes allowed the family to hang a bag of gunpowder around the neck of the condemned man so that his end would be quick. But Julius evidently had not permitted that kindness. The lower half of Philbert’s body burned while he remained alive. The noise he made in his agony was unbearable to hear, more like the squealing of a terrified animal than the sound of a man.

At last Philbert fell silent. Perhaps his heart gave out; perhaps the smoke suffocated him; perhaps the heat boiled his brain. The fire continued to burn, and the dead body of Philbert turned into a blackened ruin. The smell was disgusting, but at least the noise had stopped. Ned thanked God it was over at last.

*

In my short life I had never seen anything so dreadful. I did not know how men could do such things, and I did not understand why God would let them.

My mother said something that I have remembered all the subsequent years: ‘When a man is certain that he knows God’s will, and is resolved to do it regardless of the cost, he is the most dangerous person in the world.’

When the spectators began to drift away from the marketplace I remained. The sun rose, though it did not shine on the smouldering remains, which were in the cold shadow of the cathedral. I was thinking about Sir William Cecil, and our conversation about Elizabeth on the Twelfth Day of Christmas. He had said, ‘She has told me many times that if she should become queen, it is her dearest wish that no Englishman should lose his life for the sake of his beliefs. I think that’s an ideal worthy of a man’s faith.’

At the time it had struck me as a pious hope. But after what I had just seen, I thought again. Was it even possible that Elizabeth would get rid of dogmatic bishops such as Julius and end scenes such as the one I had just witnessed? Might there come a time when people of different faiths did not kill one another?

But would Elizabeth become queen when Mary Tudor died? That would depend, I supposed, on what kind of help she got. She had the formidable William Cecil, but one man was not enough. She needed an army of supporters.

And I could be one.

The prospect lifted my heart. I stared at the ashes of Philbert Cobley. I felt sure it did not have to be like this. There were people in England who wanted to stop this happening.

And I wanted to be with them. I wanted to fight for Elizabeth’s tolerant ideals.

No more burnings.

I decided to go to Hatfield.

8

Ned walked from Kingsbridge to Hatfield, a journey of a hundred miles, not knowing whether he would be welcomed and given employment, or sent ignominiously home.

For the first two days he was with a group of students going to Oxford. Everyone travelled in groups: a man on his own was in danger of being robbed; a woman on her own was more vulnerable to worse dangers.

As he had been taught by his mother, Ned talked to everyone he met, acquiring information that might or might not be useful: prices of wool, leather, iron ore, and gunpowder; news of plagues and storms and floods; bankruptcies and riots; aristocratic weddings and funerals.

Each night he stayed in taverns, often sharing beds, an unpleasant experience for a boy from the merchant class used to his own room. However, the students were lively companions on the road, switching from coarse jokes to theological arguments and back again effortlessly. The July weather was warm, but at least it did not rain.

During pauses in the conversation, Ned worried about what awaited him at Hatfield Palace. He hoped to be greeted as just the young assistant they were looking for. But Cecil might say: ‘Ned who?’ If he was rejected, he did not know quite what he would do next. It would be humiliating to return to Kingsbridge with his tail between his legs. Perhaps he would go to London, and try his luck in the big city.

In Oxford he stayed at Kingsbridge College. Established by the great Prior Philip as an outpost of Kingsbridge Priory, it had become independent of the monastery, but it still provided accommodation for students from Kingsbridge, and hospitality to Kingsbridge citizens.

It was more difficult to find travelling companions for the journey from Oxford to Hatfield. Most people were going to London, which was out of Ned’s way. While waiting he fell under the spell of the university. He liked the lively discussions about all kinds of topics, from where the Garden of Eden was to how the Earth could be round without people falling off it. Most students would become priests, a few lawyers or doctors; Ned’s mother had told him he would learn nothing at a university that could be of use to a merchant. Now he wondered if she had been right. She was wise, but not omniscient.