Stapledon gave a heavy sigh as Baldwin finished his story.
Ralph leaned forward, barely controlling his excitement. “But I’d never heard of this! Was he telling the truth?”
Baldwin gave a crooked smile. “Ah, now that is the question. How could the Bishop tell?”
“I couldn’t. I wanted to believe-of course I did!-but I am too old to take a peasant’s word as Gospel truth when he swears to a miracle like that.”
“What did you do?”
“I had Orey and his wife questioned. They both deposed that on the Thursday before Easter he had gone to bed perfectly well, and had awoken blind. Orey came from Keynesham, he was the local fuller, and we sent to hear from his neighbors. There were plenty prepared to support his story.”
“So the Bishop was left with little choice,” Baldwin said.
“No,” said Stapledon. “I had to accept their word, especially since all swore on the Gospels. If there had been a shred of doubt I would have had Orey in jail for deception, but as it was, everyone supported his story-even the local priest, although he was hardly better educated than Orey himself and spent most of his spare time investigating the mysteries held inside ale barrels rather than those in the Bible. No, I had to order the bells to be rung, and held a thanksgiving service for God’s mercy in manifesting the illness on Orey, and for giving him his cure.”
“And this man Orey is now known as John of Irelaunde?” asked Ralph with confusion.
“No!” laughed Baldwin. “Orey was the man who persuaded John the trickster to come here.”
“Orey returned to his business the next January,” Stapledon noted drily, glaring at the knight. “It so happened that on his way he met this tranter, John of Irelaunde, and told him of his miraculous cure. Orey was determined to praise God after what he was sure was a miracle, and wherever he went he told people what had happened to him. His wife, I understand, was a most willing witness. But this tranter, this John, then changed his direction and came to Crediton. He covered his eyes like a blind man, walked with a stick, and asked everyone he met whether they could lead him to the church. He said he had suddenly been struck blind, but had been sent a dream from God which showed him that he could be cured if he would only come to Crediton and attend a mass.”
“He was so transparent,” Peter Clifford chortled. “Turning up like that, just a short time after Orey had gone, and all alone on his cart-as if he could have travelled so many miles blind and without a guide! I suppose he never considered how suspicious he would look.”
“But why would he bother?” Ralph asked.
Stapledon threw him a patronizing glance. “Ralph, when you have lived as long as I have, you’ll realize how gullible people can be. The populace here had showered Orey with money, hoping that by their charity a little of his good fortune would redound to them. No doubt he mentioned this to John. The people wanted to associate themselves with Orey, for after all, God had marked him out as favored. What Irelaunde intended was to visit the church, demonstrate his own marvellous recovery, and be similarly favored by the good burgesses of the town.”
“But how can you be certain he wasn’t truly blind?”
“In the first place because he could bring forward no witnesses; in the second because his story was too unlikely. God doesn’t send miraculous cures by the gross or even the pair; He provides them occasionally as proof of His kindness and power. And then, of course, the fool was seen lifting the bandage from his eyes.”
“Our constable has good eyes himself,” Baldwin laughed, giving up all attempts to restrain his mirth, “and a deeply suspicious soul. When he sees an apparently blind man lifting one edge of the cloth binding his eyes in order to survey his path before making his way straight to the inn at which, upon arriving, he gives every sign of being quite incapable of seeing anything-the good constable begins to wonder what kind of ocular incapacity he is witness to. The constable kept his own eyes on John, and the next day when John made his entrance in the church, the constable was able to offer some words to the Bishop.”
“I doubted the man from the first,” Stapledon muttered. “It was too much having a second man with a sudden blindness turn up; miracles aren’t that common. No, I had Irelaunde put in the jail, and when he couldn’t produce a single witness to support his defense, I said he should be held until he could be tried in court.”
“There was no point, my Lord,” said Clifford. “He was too obvious. I asked the burgesses what they would do, and relayed your suggestion, but they all seemed to think he was a joke, and only made him spend a morning in the stocks.”
“A morning? A whole morning? My God, what cruelty!” the Bishop said witheringly.
Baldwin laughed. “Don’t be too hard on the town for such generosity. You can imagine how the burgesses would have looked at it: on the one hand they had a fabulous proof of the holiness of their church, an event that had been witnessed by the Bishop himself, and something that would be bound to bring in pilgrims from all over the country-and on the other a simple crook, someone who might, if his case came to be known, ruin the town’s reputation. If one man was proven to be a fraud, wouldn’t that automatically reflect upon the first miracle? If John of Irelaunde was false, people would wonder whether Orey was as well.”
“It hardly demonstrates the correct desire to punish a wrongdoer.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Bishop. Surely it is better to punish one man leniently than potentially the whole town unfairly,” Baldwin said teasingly. “Especially since it might demean a genuine miracle: that of Orey.”
Stapledon snorted. “So what has he been up to since? I assume you must be well acquainted with him for you to be able to call him to mind so easily, especially since, as you point out, you didn’t even live here when all this took place.”
The knight sipped at his juice. “It is true that I have seen something of him.” He decided that the most recent rumors he had heard should be withheld. Peter Clifford might know something of them, but there was no need to inform the Bishop when it could only serve to irritate the prelate. “He has been brought before me in my capacity as Keeper of the King’s Peace, but never over anything serious: selling underweight loaves of bread, that kind of thing.”
“That’s bad enough!” exclaimed Ralph. Many poor people depended on their bread for their daily sustenance, and those who short-changed their customers were guilty of trying to starve them, in his view.
“True, but it’s not something a man should be hanged for,” Baldwin stated easily. He knew how hard some found it to make any kind of a living, and didn’t believe in excessive severity against those who only committed offenses to prevent their own starvation.
“So he’s hardly a model citizen,” the Bishop commented.
“No-but he adds a certain color to the town’s life,” Baldwin suggested. “He has a bold nerve. I believe he could sell sulfur to the devil-and profit from the exchange!”
“Hardly the sort of comment to endear him to me,” Stapledon snapped coldly, but even as Ralph gave a sharp intake of breath at his irreverence, Baldwin could see that Stapledon was concealing his own amusement.
“But it’s true enough,” Clifford said, with a kind of weary resignation. “Irelaunde has some kind of natural gift with language. Only last week he persuaded me to take some of his cloth. I know what he’s like, and although I’m quite certain there’s no malice in him, I should’ve known better than to buy from him.”
“If there’s no malice…” Ralph interrupted, confused.
“There doesn’t have to be evil intent,” Baldwin explained. “John only thinks of the next minute or two, and what he can make. If there’s an opportunity for profit, he’ll take it. He will trade in anything. It usually won’t be something that could hurt-but it wouldn’t necessarily match the high expectation the customer had.”