Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

"God wot, what strange hocus-pocus planted me in Ball's shoes. The devil himself could not have made a stranger misfit."

"How canst say so?" exclaimed Meryl, indignantly. "Have I not heard it said that not even John Ball himself can sway men to his will as Robert Annys can? Do not men wait for thy coming from Norfolk to Sussex?"

"Ay! well enough can I sway them to my will when it does not go contrary to theirs," he murmured. And then he smiled to think that he should be trying to explain to these simple friends all the intricate workings of his heart. And yet there was something soothing in their ready sympathy, there was something calming in voicing his innermost dread, so that he continued more in soliloquy than conversation.

"Ah! it is not that I do not have great power over the men; rather is it that I have so much power, and fear to use it ill. 'Twould be easier far to fail than to succeed with a question ever eating into one's vitals. It is a curse for a leader of men to be possessed of imagination. It is to see the furthermost end to which our own words and deeds take us. No sage could endure to see the effect of his own teachings. Either his heart would break or his reason be unseated. What would have been the agony of St. Francis could he have looked into the future and seen the powerful Franciscan monasteries actually condemned for their great properties. Could Christ have seen the Church of His disciples straying farther from His teachings than ever had the Church of the Jews, then well might He have cried,—

"'Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani?' 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'"

Matilda had sunk to the floor during this impassioned speech, and looked up into the poor priest's noble, sensitive face with a rapt gaze in which Meryl read the confirmation of his suspicions. His own face grew sombre and gloomy as Annys continued.

"Ah, such agonies, my friends, have I endured, passing among men and trying to plant the seed of good-fellowship among them, and seeing but the weeds of envy and hatred spring up in their stead; trying to awaken in their hearts pity for the sufferings of their brethren, and stirring up only vengeance against the rich. What have I not suffered in trying to arouse self-sacrifice and self-control and a steadfastness to noble ideals, and finding only bitterness of spirit and rapaciousness and self-seeking!"

He pushed his low stool away from the table, and paced about the room rapidly, sometimes his hands striking one another in fierce energy, and again at times stretched out appealingly to heaven, while his auditors sat in silence, full of their own thoughts. "Oh, how I have poured forth love and sympathy upon you, my brethren! How have I dreamed, awake and asleep, of the Great Uprising! How have I pictured the orderly, majestic march of hundreds of thousands of men, the wonderful gathering together of men from all parts of the realm, the coming before the King with their just grievances, ever orderly and self-respecting, and upheld by the consciousness of right-doing. And then how I have wept tears of joy to think that the King could not but give heed, and that he would make of them all free men, free, no longer serfs and villeins, but free as good God created them.

"And what do I see?" he cried wildly, as he cast himself down on a settle and bowed his face in his hands. "What do I see? I see England swept from north to south, from Lincoln to Kent, by the flames of infuriated incendiaries. I see castles sacked, abbeys ruined. I see the people, my people, God's people, drunk with power, blind with rage, going madly into the trap the nobles have set for them. My eyes are blinded night and day by the glare of the conflagration, my ears are deafened by the shrieks of the victims, there is blood upon everything. There is blood upon this settle, there is blood upon this table, there is blood upon this goblet. Sometimes I fear that I shall go mad. I see decapitated heads on the gates of the town, they glare at me and make grimaces at me, and cry out, 'This is thy work, thine, O minister of Hell!' Fatherless babes and widowed mothers curse me and cry out against me. O my God, they say 'This is all thy work—thine!'" For an instant he sat brooding over his thoughts in silence.

Then with a sudden, swift transformation which was characteristic of the man, his mood changed, and, springing up, he threw one arm affectionately about Meryl and smiled brightly.