Stewart’s hand shot up in the air like a whale kept below the water too long. In his hand was a red book labelled The Communist Manifesto: English Translation. Below it there were pictures of Marx and Engels. And although Marx’s face looked innocent enough, there wasn’t a man or woman in the room who hadn’t been taught from their earliest days to recognize it as Judas, the Anti-Christ, and the Devil all wrapped into one demonic package. Oh God no, Stewart, don’t do it, Joseph thought, but it was too late. Stewart yelled so that everyone in the nave could hear him. “I found this with his papers of state yesterday,” Stewart shouted, pointing at Joseph. “He’s a heretic, he’s been corrupted by the devil. Please do not hurt him; his head knows not what his tongue says.”

            Boucher, standing adjacent to Joseph began growling with contempt. He started marching over to where Stewart had made his accusation and was grumbling to himself, “why you little, bastard you. When I catch your lying hunk of meat I’ll-.” Stewart stumbled back from Anneke’s delegation in fear, but soon his look of fear was replaced by satisfaction. An arrow, faster than any man’s eyes could possibly have seen, soared through the air and impaled Boucher straight through the throat. He gagged and his hands gripped at the hole in his neck, desperately trying to subdue the tide of blood and pain. His hands clutched his neck with all his undeniable might but it all totalled too much for the poor Premaie and with a last horrid gasp, he fell to the cold, hard marble floor, as frigid and dead as the ground itself. The crossbowman on the balcony reloaded his device, drawing back his heavy string by winding a two handed windlass at the butt. The remaining crossbowmen held their weapons perpendicular to their bodies, ready to fire out on any resistant members of the crowd. Pikemen and men-at-arms started pouring into the cathedral from all sides. The noblemen and ministers cowered away and made room for the soldiers, looking nothing like the lords and masters of men that they were. To the law of the Church, of their unwavering ideals, they had become completely submissive.

            Joseph, the solitary rebel, the one man who had ended the silence that had perpetuated such madness to enslave his society, had no one left to turn to. The once packed cluster of people that had seemed to be crushing in one him from all fronts had retreated. He was an island in the choir room. Not a soul dared get closer to him than was absolutely necessary; it was almost as if Joseph had been struck with the characteristic swollen lymph glands on his neck. But the truth was he had a plague far more deadly and transmutable than had ever been seen, and that was why the Pontiff was hurrying to have him cured. By fire.    

A wave of soldiers rammed into him and tackled him to the ground. “Shackle him,” cried the Pontiff. “Bind him in chains, rip open his robes and tatter his silk. Take his gold and disgrace his armour. Prejudice his ways and contempt his soul. Drag him, dethroned and disdained to be put to the torch, not a king, not a man, but a heretic. Go, be brought justice by the flame Joseph of Irving, for I declare thee excommunicate and blasphemer. Go, get thee soul to Hell!” The Pontiff screamed the last line and snapped orders to his minions.

Joseph was dragged on his feet across the marble floor. His fine gown and ornamental armour now rags rung about his body. The lords found their courage and began spitting and throwing paraphernalia in his face. In the background Joseph heard a Congrae and twelve priests utter the rites of excommunication. “We separate Joseph of Irving, together with his accomplices and abettors, from the precious body and blood of the Lord and from the society of all Christians. We exclude him from our Holy Mother, the Church in Heaven, and on earth. We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We judge him damned, with the Devil and his angels and all the reprobate, to eternal fire until he shall recover himself from the toils of the devil and return to amendment and to penitence.” Just before Joseph was hauled out of the basilica, his face bleeding and legs scathed, he heard the priests scream “So be it” and a bell toll in the distance, a toll to certify his life’s end. He had to imagine what the Congrae was doing now, for his face was too covered in blood to see much of anything. He could see him in his mind’s eye snuffing out the candle that was to represent Joseph and smashing it on the hard, unforgiving floor and although it seemed insignificant enough, Joseph knew that he was the candle and his flame was to be extinguished.

A pile of wood was already being assembled in the front of the church. There was to be no trial. To criticize the Pontiff was to die, guilt was assured and damnation was the only penance. The men and women that could be gathered from the markets and workplaces surrounding the island had already been hustled into the square outside the church. Joseph saw through the thick, syrupy blood in his eyes that they were clothed much like him, though they had grown accustomed to it. Their faces were gaunt, their cheeks hollow. Their eyes bulged from their sockets and red lines streaked them, just as the red blood crossed Joseph’s own eyes. Their bellies were empty and their mouths craving, but this was nothing new to them. Their backs were plastered with scars old and new from the cruel master’s whip, but it had been so for generations and would be so for generations. They all were hunks of meat, hardly a pulse to betray their still beating hearts, not that anyone cared. To call them humans would be an incorrect statement, something that needed rectification. For so thoroughly had the aristocrats like Joseph stolen their humanity from them they couldn’t even be labeled as such anymore.

Joseph hung his head in shame and disgust as his body was tied to a stake. His feet scratched against the wood under him and he thought to himself, it truly is amazing how fast a bonfire can be built under pressure. He looked out across the people anxiously watching him, the flow of blood now stopped. Noblemen and women were lining the streets now. Priests and Congrae, holy men all that would return to their churches and teach love and humility watched onwards. Soldiers who had been beaten and starved all their lives to fight wars they didn’t understand and turned out to be meaningless watched onwards. Peasants and farmers, those so cruelly taught the injustices of the world from pitiful birth to lonely death watched onwards. Merchants, lords, generals, and cardinals all watched on, without a single bit of guilt in their hearts for all the lives they had ruined and people they had crushed under the weight of their ambitions. Finally, Joseph’s brother Stewart, the one man who knew better, watched a priest read the charges against his Ceo, his king, and stood solemnly beside Anneke, who did just the same.

Joseph thought of his wife and children. They would suffer greatly under the brutal justice of the Church, though somehow Joseph doubted it would be worse than any policy Stewart would enact on them after he assumed the throne. He looked across the crowd and wondered how all these people could just watch. How can they stand here and do nothing? How can they pretend that this was normal, ethical, or humane? How could they let this be done to another human being? But then he remembered back to Montreal, and how he had done exactly the same thing when the five Innu had been tossed into the fire. Perhaps this was some poetic justice for all the times he himself had stood by and watched. At least the burning of men made him sick, but he knew that there were few noblemen here who wouldn’t eat a good meal tonight. Though the same couldn’t be said for the masses, they too wouldn’t ponder over it. When their every moment was controlled and every aspect of their life dictated, what could they do? They had depended on the Church and their masters for all things for too long, and they had lost the ability to think for themselves. Somewhere deep inside them they knew this was wrong. But just like an addict knows what he is doing to himself was wrong, they were too far along to change. They were too addicted to chaos and hatred for order and peace. They had been made to believe that there was nothing left to fight for. This was Alexander’s utopia imagined. He didn’t want to be the king of man, but king of sheep, and now he was finally collecting the wool. Thus the only hope for change was already too far gone. The people had lost their drive and Joseph didn’t know if they could ever have it back. They began to cheer again, just as before in Montreal.

The mindlessness of the moment was driven into Joseph’s heart. He would have spoken to the plebeians, told them that they had been held back from imagining their potential, but there were no words left in his larynx and his heart was too heavy to speak. He decided to dedicate the last moments of his life to the God that he had been told betrayed his people long ago, though now he knew it was a lie. He prayed, though his hands were bound and his soul damned. Please, God, do not let my words be useless. Please do not let the dream of change die with me. We are humans, we can be better. We can improve, we just need a sign. We need a guiding light to take away the darkness. Don’t abandon us in our most desperate hour, I beg of You.

A torch bearer began marching across the promenade. Behind him there was a consortium of priests and drummers beating softly, but ominously on their instruments. The cheering grew louder; they were in for a show. Suddenly a tiny child, a benign, harmless thing, with starved cheeks and thin legs tapped his father on the leg.

“What is it, Martin?” his father asked sharply, annoyed at being disturbed.

“Why are they burning that man?” The child was full of the innocence of youth, not understanding the scene in front of him at all.

The man pondered this for a moment, though his tired, wind beaten brain was made for milling wheat and didn’t cogitate very long. “Why, he’s a heretic, of course.”

“Well,” said Martin, “what did he do. You told me they only burn someone when they’ve done something bad, so what did he do?”

Martin’s father, Hans, looked down at his son and stared him straight in the eye. It took a great deal of effort, but he admitted it. “I don’t know, Martin, I haven’t the slightest clue.” And with that a small, unassuming chill broke up his spine, and he started thinking it wasn’t something his child should see. He took Martin up on his shoulder, the years and hard labour had weakened him, but his son was only a little load.

The two of them walked to their little thatched roof shack that served as a home and though they could still hear the crowd in the distance, it’s cheering was just that much quieter without them.

                                                              -The End-