"Thy strength against mine," the poor priest murmured, as he lingered yet an instant.
"Thy strength against mine."
II
The following morning Thomas Goldynge, Bishop of Ely, lay in bed awaiting those to whom he had promised audience. It was with considerable curiosity that he awaited the young poor priest whom he had summoned. He sighed with relief as he realized that the hard fight which he had waged against Rome was ended. It was a contest over the best method of suppressing the poor priests, and it had taken many secret embassies to Rome, and many letters in cipher sent to trusted friends at the Papal Court. Indeed, it had looked at one time as if the Bishop himself, aged as he was, would have to undertake the long and tedious journey to the Holy City, for the Bishop looked upon this matter as one of vital importance to the Church. He agreed with the Papal Legate that the incendiary preaching of the poor priests must be stamped out, but he had some theories of his own as to this stamping-out process, and persecution bore no part in them. He, more than any other Churchman, realized that the English people needed careful handling. How was the Italian Legate to understand anything of the rage and indignation that were growing up in the hearts of the English against foreign subjection, against a Church that gave the best sees in the land to Italians who scarce deigned to make acquaintance with the very outsides of their churches? The substance of the people was being wrung from them to help the cause of their bitter enemies. The King of England had little or nothing left for his needs because the Church refused to give up one tittle of its moneys for the good of the realm. Goldynge was an Englishman, and he had struggled all his life to place Englishmen in English churches. He was against the new spirit of Nationalism, however, when it asserted itself against the most sacred prerogatives of the Church, for he could look far ahead and see that this spirit might become powerful enough to wreck the Church Universal and give birth in England to a Church that would forswear all allegiance to Rome. He was for doing all in his power to redress the wrongs of the people and keep the breach from widening, for Holy Church had about all the schisms it could well take care of for some time to come.
When Robert Annys was ushered in with head flung well back and every line in the lithe young body eloquent of a proud defiance, the Bishop raised himself on the pillow and looked long and eagerly into his face. Therein he read all that he had counted to find. In the deep-set eyes, the high, narrow brow, the sensitive mouth, the delicately chiselled chin, there were revealed to the shrewd old prelate the enthusiastic temperament of a reformer, the idealism of a poet, the puissant desire to work, to change, to remake. And also, and therein lay his secret satisfaction, he read the fine acumen of a critic. A dangerous quality that, which was certain to make war upon the other qualities that struggled in his breast. Here was before him no blunt fanatic like John Ball, flying as unswervingly to his goal as the arrow shot from the bow, but one with the discerning mind that weighs, discriminates, and looks far enough ahead to see its own heart-break at the end.
"You sent for me?" although the tone was defiant, it was less so than Annys had intended it. Somehow he found it hard to be arrogant to this gentle old man whose flowing locks looked whiter than ever against the deep red of the bed-curtains. Only a beautiful old man upon his couch, looking at him with dim kindly eyes and a mouth that smiled. Far rather would he have faced a haughty prelate in rustling robes—that would have roused him and strengthened him in his hatred of all for which a Bishop stood.
"Yes," replied the old man, very gently, "I have sent for thee, for I have heard much of this russet priest who sways great bodies of men as they hearken to him, even as row upon row of corn is swayed by the wind that blows across the fields. I wished to see him and hold converse with him."
"Why should I come here before you that you may look upon me? I owe no allegiance to the Bishop of Ely. I serve him not, I serve only my master, John Wyclif."