8. THE BISHOP HAS HIS SAY

Before the villagers get their captured Priest to the burning field the Bishop turns up, filled with fury.

There might have been a burning that night, but someone told the Bishop, and he was not pleased. In fact, it would be to put it mildly that he was most displeased, and he showed that displeasure by jamming his best mitre on his head and wearing his purple robes (those that looked most authoritarian when he was draped in them) and booking a carriage to take him to Amblesole, and get there before nightfall when all the best burning took place. He had already suffered the indignity of learning that one of his priests had been actually strung up by a raging lynch-mob on account of his having an unnatural fondness for choirboys and actually taking it all a great deal too far for his own good, and he was not going to have a second member of his clergy burned for being a witch.

I mean burned, he shouted inside his own head, and for being a witch of all things!

Anyway, witch or not, he rather liked Father Boniface. The man was a good Christian, the sort that never doubted a single word in the good book, and his holy heart was aflame with a desire to spread the word as far and as wide as he could. So he was creating little story books for the boys of the village. So what? They told the same stories as were found in the Holy Scriptures, only they were in the mother tongue of a country that was so far from Rome that it didn’t matter. Did it? And he drew little pictures for those who struggled to read, which was just about everyone.

Therefore it was with purple pomp and wearing a huge mitre whilst carrying an ornate staff that he arrived in Amblesole, his carriage preceded by two knights in armour and brandishing shiny swords as though they were constantly on the lookout for necks that needed cleaving. Behind his carriage trotted an urchin collecting droppings that the horses pulling the carriage may drop as they struggled along unmade roads. And yes, the horses were in the plural. Two horses and only one Bishop might seem somewhat ostentatious, but that has always been the way of the church. Elaborately show the faith to one and all, and one and all may not see the vacuum beneath the show.

He arrived not a minute too soon because a handful of scruffy villages had his favourite Priest in a firm and unnecessarily cruel grip and were actually pushing and poking at him as they drove him towards what the Bishop knew to be the Burning Field., but it was just as well that he had his finest regalia on because the moment they spotted him they released their prisoner (who was in chains, so he couldn’t go far anyway) and prostrated themselves before him in a fine display of obsequious worship.

“Who are you?” asked a young woman, and when he looked at her he sighed. He knew who she was all right. She was already well known throughout the dstrict. Though short of thirteen years old she had already gained quite a reputation in the diocese and it was even rumoured that the Holy Mother of the Convent of Saint Augustine had formed an unholy and unnatural fondness for her, though he personally didn’t believe it because he knew quite a lot about the personal habits of that good Holy Mother, knew and secretly enjoyed.

“I am your Bishop, and you may kiss the hem of my cloak,” he boomed back at her.

“What? Put my innocent mouth against the mud you’ve picked up on your robes where they scraped in the s**t? I should coco!” she replied, almost offensively.

“My garb is pristine!” he shouted back at her.

“Then what’s that?” she indicated with a spiky female finger.

He didn’t reply because it was a disgusting clump and in order to escape the vigilance of an evil child he hurried his horses on, eager to get out of her way as quickly as possible.

“Unhand that Priest!” he ordered, “and unchain him! He is a good man of God and if there is any to judge him then it must be his Saviour himself!”

That, he told himself, was always a good line because there were no clues anywhere as to where the Saviour may be lest it be in Heaven, a place one arrived at after death and where one has apparently left all one’s earthly woes and troubles so far behind they no longer matter.

“But he’s a witch!” protested one of the prostrate and scruffy guards, “and it was he himself who taught us that we must never let a witch live, for witches are Satan’s servants and only do very naughty things.”

“He’s no witch, fool!” snapped the Bishop, “he’s a Priest!”

“But he distributed pamphlets and sheets of learning to our ignorant sons,” said a second of the guards, wringing his hands and far from sure as to what to do for the best.

“To give them a way of learning the Truth if they are prevented from going to church by such interferences as harvests and ploughing,” intoned the Bishop. “He wrote out those sheets in his time and own using expensive ink paid for by his own honest toil,” he added.

“You mean, paid for by the tithes we give him every sodding week,” muttered a third, but he made sure it was so quiet the Bishop wouldn’t hear him over the hubbub that was forming around the scene.

“You are godless creatures,” declamed the Bishop, “and if you are so intent on having a burning and condemning one of your number to what can’t be the most pleasant of deaths, I suggest you choose one who has truly sinned rather than a good man who has only tried to help and educate your sons.”

“We would, sir, but don’t know who is more evil than a priest who gives papers to innocent youths,” piped up a lad of no more than fourteen.

“Then we will see,” boomed the Bishop, feeling that he was slowly getting onto safer ground, “tell me, whose idea was it to condemn your poor priest? Who spoke up first? Whose idea was it?”

There was a silence as they struggled to remember, and Janie Cobweb started sloping away before anyone spotted her and thought she might actually be the one. And she knew that although she adopted many of the airs and graces of a cunning adult, she was, in fact, too young to be called one (though she was expected to labour in the fields in season from dawn to dusk). And, in addition it also crossed her mind that it had been she who had mooted that the Priest could be burned at the stake without them actually consulting the Witchfinder. She had thought it a clever touch at the time, but was beginning to doubt her own wisdom.

“It was the girl!” exclaimed one of the crowd. Yes, by now a whole crowd had gathered to see what was going on, and as crowds go it showed promise of getting both noisy and demanding.

“It was the Cobweb girl,” shouted another, remembering.

“She’s a little tyke is that one,” nodded a third. “She’s up to all manner of mischief, and that’s a fact””

“And she put a spell on my turnips,” groaned a fourth, who had suffered a particularly rotten harvest and needed someone to blame.

“Where is she!” demanded the Bishop.

But when the villagers looked around there was nobody anywhere near who could possibly be mistaken for a Janie Cobweb. She had been there, they all remembered seeing her, but now…?

Janie was gone.

In her wisdom she had decided that the first part of her life must surely be over. And she knew that she wasn’t strong enough yet to combat the forces of what was questionably powerful in the shape of a rotund and belching Bishop dressed in an absurd mitre and expensive purple robes.

So she had gone.

© Peter Rogerson 15.11.17