Unholy Innocence Read Online Free Page B

thought. That’s what comes of too many eight course lunches. It probably also explains his bad temper, nothing to do with me at all in fact.
    Samson stood gazing out across the Great Court at the tents and fires of the King’s followers billeted below him. ‘These are dangerous times, Walter. Plots and intrigues everywhere. We have a duty to do what we can to hold society together.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘You are too young to remember King Stephen and the Empress. I wasn’t much more than a child myself but I saw the fear, the lawlessness. We cannot go back to all that.’
    ‘But surely, father,’ I said gently, ‘we have a duty also to tell the truth.’
    He guffawed. ‘The truth? The truth is God’s Word as written in Holy Scripture and interpreted by us, His representatives on earth. The truth! Most men cannot read their own names so how can they possibly know what the truth is? Why do you think they come to church week after week? It’s not because they know what’s written in the Bible. They come out of habit; they come for comfort and because we fine them if they do not. That is what the clergy is for, to intercede, to guide man’s innocence as the good shepherd guides his lambs and ensures they do not stray into danger. The truth! If we all went around deciding for ourselves what is truth and what is untruth there would be a different truth for every man on earth, and then where would we be? Anarchy again. There is only one truth and that is the truth that we decide here in this place - with God’s guidance, of course,’ he added as an afterthought.
      Phew! That little speech fair took my breath away. I thought for a moment and then said slowly, ‘In that case, why did God give us free will if not indeed to decide for ourselves?’
    ‘Adam and Eve had free will and it got them expelled from the Garden of Eden,’ he sniffed.
    ‘Oh, but surely the expulsion from the Garden of Eden was due to temptation by the Prince of Darkness whom our free will permits us to accept or reject.’
    Samson sighed heavily. ‘Walter, why do you have to take such a skewed view of things all the time? Why can you not accept plain facts?’ He looked at me with disappointment. ‘Well, I am not going to debate theology with you, I have spent enough time on this. Mankind may have free will but as a member of this community you do not. You will therefore honour the vows you made to me when you entered our order, in particular the third one, and obey .’ He leaned forward across the desk and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Which means that if I say Edmund’s body was incorrupt, then incorrupt it was.’
    I winced. ‘But in addition to being a monk, Father, I am also a physician. Every day I have to ask questions: How did this fever start? What caused that injury? Where may I find a cure for that man’s belly ache or this woman’s boils? How am I to do that without having an enquiring mind?’
    ‘Maybe you can’t,’ he said wearily. ‘Maybe you will have to choose between your Hippocratic Oath and your oath to God.’
    I, too, would have liked to debate the point further but just at that moment the door to the study burst open and one of the novices rushed in, his arms waving wildly in the air, his eyes wild with fear.
    ‘Murder!’ he yelled. ‘Murder!’
    ‘What?’ said Samson rising quickly to his feet. ‘Who?’
    ‘The King!’ blurted the boy breathlessly. ‘He is poisoned!’

Chapter 4
    CONSPIRACY
    W e both rushed out of Samson’s office and along the passage into the annexe where the King had taken up residence. Being half Samson’s age and considerably fitter, I arrived at the door to the King’s bedchamber ahead of him. Two beefy guards wearing chain hauberks and iron helmets and looking extremely nervous crossed their lances in my face as I tried to enter, nearly slicing off my nose in the process.
    ‘I’m a doctor,’ I remonstrated with them. ‘I can help.’
    But they were not