work with God’s authority! The Church is crippled and useless! Listen only to God’s authority, Thomas, not the useless babbling of priests!
“Saint Michael—”
You are God’s Beloved, Thomas. You need no other authority than that to work what you must. Already you have allowed Prior Bertrand to deflect you from God’s purpose. Do not allow him to do so again.
Thomas began to speak, the questions bubbling to his lips, but the archangel had gone, and Thomas was once more alone in the corridor.
The door opened and there was the sound of a footstep. “Brother Thomas?”
Prior Bertrand.
Thomas unclasped his hands, then slowly rose from his knees and turned to face the prior.
As on the other times Thomas had come to his cell, Bertrand indicated that Thomas should sit on the stool. The prior stood before him, his arms folded and his hands slipped deep into his sleeves.
“Well, Thomas, have you learned humility?”
Thomas, who had been sitting with his own hands folded in his lap and his eyes cast down, now lifted his face.
“I have learned, Prior Bertrand, that I have a greater calling than that which places me under your discipline.”
“What?” Truly shocked, Bertrand actually forgot himself enough to rock slightly on his feet.
Thomas held the prior’s gaze. “I am Wynkyn de Worde’s successor in God’s and the angels’ eternal fight against evil.”
The prior’s face completely whitened. “By whose authority?” he whispered.
“By God’s authority, and by the authority of the blessed Saint Michael who has blessed me with his presence on several occasions.”
Bertrand jerked his eyes away from Thomas, backing up a step or two. He muttered a prayer under his breath, then shook his head frantically as Thomas rose to his feet.
“Tell me what you know of Wynkyn de Worde!” Thomas said.
Bertrand shook his head more vigorously. “No. De Worde is dead. Gone. I do not have to think of him any more.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“Brother Thomas! You overstep your place! I will not—”
“You will tell me,” Thomas said in a low voice that was, nevertheless, laced with such venom that Bertrand quivered in fear.
Thomas reached out and seized one of Bertrand’s sleeves. The prior flinched, thinking he would be struck, but Thomas only pulled him about and pushed him down on the stool.
“I speak with the archangel Saint Michael’s voice,” Thomas said. “Tell me what you know of Wynkyn de Worde!”
Bertrand, staring up at Thomas, recognised the power and anger that flooded the man’s face. So Wynkyn had also looked when Bertrand had summoned him to an accounting when the prior had first taken his office.
And, as Bertrand had capitulated then, so he capitulated now.
After all, was not St Angelo’s dedicated to the archangel St Michael?
Bertrand suddenly understood that he wanted Thomas out of this friary and out of Rome as soon as possible. He was an old, old man, and he’d had enough.
The prior dropped his eyes, and sighed. St Michael’s will be done. His face was grey now, rather than pale, and the age-wrinkles in his skin had deepened until they resembled wounds.
“I came to this friary as a young man,” Bertrand began, “perhaps thirty or thirty-two—not much older than you are now—in 1345. I assumed the position of prior, although many, Brother Wynkyn among them, thought me too young for such duties.”
Thomas folded his hands and stood straight, regarding Bertrand silently.
Bertrand’s mouth twisted, remembering. “Within weeks of my arrival I realised that Brother Wynkyn was…different. As you have realised, he came and went without asking permission, and he hardly took any part in the life of the friary apart from attending prayers and meals. When he was in the friary he kept to his cell, studying an ancient book he had there.”
“Of what was it concerned?”
“I do not know.”
“But—”
“Listen, damn you, and keep your questions until I am done!”
Thomas bowed his head.
“Some three weeks after my arrival I summoned Brother Wynkyn to my cell. He sat on this stool and I stood before him. I asked him by what right he ignored his duties within the friary, and by what right he came and went as he pleased.
“He smiled, not a pleasant expression, and he drew a letter from one of his sleeves. ‘By this right,’ he said, and handed the letter to me.”
Bertrand stopped, and he crossed himself with a trembling hand. Thomas remained silent, and waited for Bertrand to continue.
“It was a letter from the holy Boniface of blessed memory—”
Thomas nodded. Boniface had been a great pope until his untimely death in 1303.
“—and it directed the reader to give Brother Wynkyn de Worde every assistance and freedom. It said…it said that Wynkyn de Worde was the hand of the archangel Saint Michael on earth, and that he worked the will of the angels. It said further that de Worde knew the face of evil, and if de Worde were not allowed his freedom then evil would roam unfettered.”
“You did not doubt it.”
“No. I could not. All know of Boniface’s piety, and of his judgement. He was a great pope, and I believed his words implicitly.”
Again Thomas understood, although he did not nod this time. Boniface had been dead some thirty years when Wynkyn had shown Bertrand the pope’s letter, but it would have carried the same degree of authority then as it had when it had been newly penned. After Boniface’s death, the French King Philip, whom many accused of Boniface’s murder (the king had tried an unsuccessful kidnap of the pope, which had prompted a fatal heart attack), had seized control of the papacy via his puppet, Pope Clement, and the popes had retired to Avignon to lead lives of corruption and sin.
Boniface had been the last of the true popes as far as much of Christendom was concerned. If Wynkyn had pulled out a letter from one of the Avignon popes, Bertrand would have been likely to throw it in the fire and laugh in the brother’s face.
“And that is all the letter said?” Thomas prompted softly.
“Yes. That was all the letter said. But, combined with the same light in Brother Wynkyn’s face that I now see shining from yours, it was enough.”
Bertrand heaved himself to his feet and paced slowly back and forth in the confined space between his bed and the door.
