“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 though he might be, to make such an election, bowed to him, ever impassively, and with their hands still folded, unhurried as they had come, they now turned and filed past him in departure.
He watched them with scowling brows and tightened lips, Moniz and Nunes silent behind him. Suddenly those dark, watchful eyes of his were held by the last figure of all in that austere procession—a tall, gaunt young man, whose copper-coloured skin and hawk-featured face proclaimed his Moorish blood. Instantly, maliciously, it flashed through the prince’s boyish mind how he might make of this man an instrument to humble the pride of that insolent clergy. He raised his hand, and beckoned the cleric to him.
“What is your name?” he asked him.
“I am called Zuleyman, lord,” he was answered, and the name confirmed—where, indeed, no confirmation was necessary—the fellow’s Moorish origin.
Affonso Henriques laughed. It would be an excellent jest to thrust upon these arrogant priests, who refused to appoint a bishop of their choice, a bishop who was little better than a blackamoor.
“Don Zuleyman,” said the prince, “I name you Bishop of Coimbra in the room of the rebel who has fled. You will prepare to celebrate High Mass this morning, and to pronounce my absolution.”