The Historical Nights Entertainment | Page 4

hands. "What choice have I?" he asked, on a quavering note.
"I raised you from the dust." Thunder was rumbling in the prince's voice. "Myself I placed the episcopal ring upon your finger."
"My lord, my lord! Could I forget? All that I have I owe to you-- save only my soul, which I owe to God; my faith, which I owe to Christ; and my obedience, which I owe to our Holy Father the Pope."
The prince considered him in silence, mastering his passionate, impetuous nature. "Go," he growled at last.
The prelate bowed his head, his eyes not daring to meet his prince's.
"God keep you, lord," he almost sobbed, and so went out.
But though stirred by his affection for the prince to whom he owed so much, though knowing in his inmost heart that Affonso Henriques was in the right, the Bishop of Coimbra did not swerve from his duty to Rome, which was as plain as it was unpalatable. Betimes next morning word was brought to Affonso Henriques in the Alcazar of Coimbra that a parchment was nailed to the door of the Cathedral, setting forth his excommunication, and that the Bishop--either out of fear or out of sorrow--had left the city, journeying northward towards Oporto.
Affonso Henriques passed swiftly from incredulity to anger; then almost as swiftly came to a resolve, which was as mad and harebrained as could have been expected from a lad in his eighteenth year who held the reins of power. Yet by its very directness and its superb ignoring of all obstacles, legal and canonical, it was invested with a certain wild sanity.
In full armour, a white cloak simply embroidered in gold at the edge and knotted at the shoulder, he rode to the Cathedral, attended by his half-brother Pedro Affonso, and two of his knights, Emigio Moniz and Sancho Nunes. There on the great iron-studded doors he found, as he had been warned, the Roman parchment pronouncing him accursed, its sonorous Latin periods set forth in a fine round clerkly hand.
He swung down from his great horse and clanked up the Cathedral steps, his attendants following. He had for witnesses no more than a few loiterers, who had paused at sight of their prince.
The interdict had so far attracted no attention, for in the twelfth century the art of letters was a mystery to which there were few initiates.
Affonso Henriques tore the sheepskin from its nails, and crumpled it in his hand; then he passed into the Cathedral, and thence came out presently into the cloisters. Overhead a bell was clanging by his orders, summoning the chapter.
To the Infante, waiting there in the sun-drenched close, came presently the canons, austere, aloof, majestic in their unhurried progress through the fretted cloisters, with flowing garments and hands tucked into their wide sleeves before them. In a semi- circle they arrayed themselves before him, and waited impassively to learn his will. Overhead the bell had ceased.
Affonso Henriques wasted no words.
"I have summoned you," he announced, "to command that you proceed to the election of a bishop."
A rustle stirred through the priestly throng. The canons looked askance at the prince and at one another. Then one of them spoke.
"Habemus episcopum," he said gravely, and several instantly made chorus: "We have a bishop."
The eyes of the young sovereign kindled. "You are wrong," he told them. "You had a bishop, but he is here no longer. He has deserted his see, after publishing this shameful thing" And he held aloft the crumpled interdict. "As I am a God-fearing, Christian knight, I will not live under this ban. Since the bishop who excommunicated me is gone, you will at once elect another in his place who shall absolve me."
They stood before him, silent and impassive, in their priestly dignity, and in their assurance that the law was on their side.
"Well?" the boy growled at them.
"Habemus episcopum," droned a voice again.
"Amen," boomed in chorus through the cloisters.
"I tell you that your bishop is gone," he insisted, his voice quivering now with anger, "and I tell you that he shall not return, that he shall never set foot again within my city of Coimbra. Proceed you therefore at once to the election of his successor."
"Lord," he was answered coldly by one of them, "no such election is possible or lawful."
"Do you dare stand before my face, and tell me this?" he roared, infuriated by their cold resistance. He flung out an arm in a gesture of terrible dismissal. "Out of my sight, you proud and evil men! Back to your cells, to await my pleasure. Since in your arrogant, stiff-necked pride you refuse to do my will, you shall receive the bishop I shall myself select."
He was so terrific in his rage that they dared not tell him that he had no power, prince