“Great your strength, if great your need.”
Henry Kirke White.
In the evening of the same day, the council sent a physician to report on the prisoner’s health. Not gentle Master Simon, but a stern, iron-handed, iron-hearted man, from whom Margery and Alice shrank instinctively. The physician reported that the Lady Marnell had undoubtedly been very ill, but was now better, and ailed nothing but weakness; he accordingly recommended that the examination should take place, but that the prisoner, in consideration of her extreme debility, should be indulged with a seat. Master Simon tried hard to obtain a little further postponement; but this time the powerful Abbot was against him, and he gained nothing by his motion. So, on the morning of the 17th, Margery rose from her sick-bed to appear before the council. Lord Marnell, who had lately shown her extraordinary kindness, as though with the view of undoing, so far as lay in his power, the evil which his rash, though well-meant conduct had originally created, assisted his wife into her litter, and rode beside it during the short journey. On arriving at the door, where they found a steep flight of steps to mount, Lord Marnell would not allow Margery to try her strength, but carried her up in his arms. He knew, and so did she, that she would need all the strength she could muster for the trial which was to come. The council-chamber was hung with red cloth, and the benches appropriated to spectators were filled to overflowing. For one moment Margery shrank back at the sight of so many strange faces; and a faint tinge of colour mounted to her pale cheek as Lord Marnell led her forward to her chair. In the president’s seat was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on his left hand Abbot Bilson. Several abbots, priors, and other legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries, made up the remainder of the council.
For eight weary hours, with very short intervals for refreshment, they kept that fragile prisoner before them, and all the time she never quailed, nor evaded any of their questions. Twice Master Simon interfered, and begged that wine might be given her, or he would not answer for her further recovery; and once she herself asked for a glass of water, and for a few minutes seemed about to faint.
Abbot Bilson came out in his true colours at this examination. He was no longer the mild, persuasive teacher; he now showed himself the unforgiving revenger. The Archbishop pressed the prisoner hard with questions, many of them irrevelant to the indictment; and most of the other members of the Council put queries to her.
They inquired, amongst other things, if she believed that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the bread and wine became the very body and blood of Christ.
“Nay, certes,” was Margery’s answer. “For if Christ, being in life, could hold His own body, and give the same unto His disciples, then were it no true human body, for a natural and true body cannot be in two several places at the self-same moment of time. Moreover, if the bread of the host be verily the body of Christ, then did He eat His own body, and that is contrary to very reason.”
“The mysteries of the faith be above reason,” said Arundel.
“Of a truth, and farther above it, maybe, than we wit; but in no wise contrary thereunto.”
“Believe you in Purgatory?”
“The Church teacheth the same, and I say not that it may not be true; but I find it not in the book.”