“I can answer that,” I said. “For it’s plain he isn’t going to.”
Romayne’s head swivelled towards me, his expression baleful. I felt my stomach stir with anger, but my mind was racing as bits and pieces learned and overheard fell into place. I took a step forward and looked down on him from Will’s side.
“The Archbishop is wealthy, as you might expect,” I said. “And that is fortunate for him, because were it not for the depths of his own pockets he would be in prison now, locked up in London Tower.”
I sensed rather than saw Will’s frown. “What are you saying? In prison, an archbishop?”
“Aye, an archbishop who dared, less than a year ago, to excommunicate King Edward’s most loyal friend and servant, Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham.” I let the words hang there, knowing they would bring a gasp of disbelief from all who heard them. “Bishop Bek, it seems, committed an indiscretion: he permitted the civil arrest of two miscreant priests of his diocese in Durham. That was unprecedented, for only the Church may arrest and imprison a priest. No civil body has ever had the right to challenge that. And therefore the Archbishop, as was his right in canon law, deemed Bishop Bek’s actions to be both detrimental and threatening to that law’s validity. The King himself intervened in Bishop Bek’s favour, though, and the case went before parliament for judgment.”
“And parliament found in favour of the King,” Will said.
“It did. It decided that Antony Bek, in calling for the arrests, had acted in his vice-regal capacity as earl palatine, not as Bishop of Durham. Parliament called for the imprisonment of Archbishop le Romayne on charges of impiety and lèse majesté in challenging the King’s earl palatine. As it transpired, though, in return for a princely fine of four thousand marks of silver from Master le Romayne’s own purse, the prison term was set in abeyance and the Archbishop was returned to his duties, though not to royal favour.”
The watching crowd began muttering as the translators caught up with what I had said. Men turned to each other with questions and comments, and the noise grew quickly until Will raised an arm to quell it.
“Enough!” he shouted in Scots, and the crowd fell silent. “Stand quiet now. There’s mair here than meets the eye and it could be important. Haud your noise, then, till we find out what it a’ means.” He looked back at me and lowered his voice. “What does it mean?”
“It means that the Archbishop badly wants to be back in the King’s high regard.” I could taste the truth of what was in my mind. “He wants it badly enough to ignore all the rules of episcopal conduct and to prostitute himself and his sacred office in trade for the King’s good graces. Few bishops would condone what he has done here, and none, I dare say, would stoop to it themselves. This foul man has suborned and betrayed the Church to win the mortal favours of a King, undoing the work of centuries with the betrayal of a sacred trust. Think about it, Will—about what’s involved here. This … this betrayal represents an awful, unsuspected sin. A sin, perhaps, such as has never been before.” I was speaking quietly, for Will’s ears alone, but I knew that Father Constantine could hear what I was saying, and now Will glanced across at him.
“Do you agree, Father?”
The priest nodded immediately. “I do. Completely. This frightens me with its power to change things forever … to destroy the Church’s trust. I am afraid to think on what might happen now.”
“Don’t be,” Will said, “because it’s already done. You cannot change it now.” He turned back to the watching crowd and held up his hands, commanding and receiving instant silence.
“All of you,” he said in Latin, looking from face to face and speaking slowly enough for the interpreters in the crowd to translate what he was saying. “Listen closely to me, because I am going to tell you what all this means—this treachery we have discovered. And make no mistake, any of you. It is treachery.” He glanced around him, catching eyes here and there in the throng that faced him. “Father Constantine has just told me that he fears what has happened here may have the power to destroy men’s trust in Holy Church, and I believe it will do just that, because much has changed today. And even if most of us seeing it cannot clearly understand it, it is there in plain view of anyone with the eyes to look.
“You wonder what I am talking about, what I mean. I see it in your faces. Well, I mean this: from this day forward, because of what we have discovered here today, no priest of any rank, anywhere in this realm or any other, can ever again claim the right to travel unquestioned. All may now be stopped and searched at any time, their goods and stores inspected in the search for contraband, for on this day this Archbishop that you see in front of you has been taken in perfidy and has destroyed the faith all men have always had in priests and in their Church. He has destroyed the universal faith that all priests are trustworthy by their very rank, that they can be relied upon, without question, to put the welfare of each living soul above all else, and to value God’s holy will and wishes for mankind ahead of all worldly considerations.