As we watched from the upper window, Father Bain and the boy disappeared beneath us, into the house. The crowd remained outside, muttering and jostling. A few of the bolder souls chinned themselves on the window ledges, attempting to peer within.
Geilie shut the window with a slam, making a break in the anticipatory rumble below.
"Stealing, most like," she said laconically, returning to the herb table. "Usually is, wi' the tanners' lads."
"What will happen to him?" I asked curiously. She shrugged, crumbling dried rosemary between her fingers into the mortar.
"Depends on whether Arthur's dyspeptic this morning, I should reckon. If he's made a good breakfast, the lad might get off with a whipping. But happen he's costive or flatulent"—she made a moue of distaste—"the boy'll lose an ear or a hand, most like."
I was horrified, but hesitant to interfere directly in the matter. I was an outlander, and an Englishwoman to boot, and while I thought I would be treated with some respect as an inhabitant of the castle, I had seen many of the villagers surreptitiously make the sign against evil as I passed. My intercession might easily make things worse for the boy.
"Can't you do anything?" I asked Geilie. "Speak to your husband, I mean; ask him to be, er, lenient?"
Geilie looked up from her work, surprised. Clearly the thought of interfering in her husband's affairs had never crossed her mind.
"Why should you care what happens to him?" she asked, but curiously, not with any hostile meaning.
"Of course I care!" I said. "He's only a lad; whatever he did, he doesn't deserve to be mutilated for life!"
She raised pale brows; plainly this argument was unconvincing. Still, she shrugged and handed me the mortar and pestle.
"Anything to oblige a friend," she said, rolling her eyes. She scanned her shelves and selected a bottle of greenish stuff, labeled, in fine cursive script, EXTRACT OF PEPPERMINT.
"I'll go and dose Arthur, and whilst I'm about it, I'll see if aught can be done for the lad. It may be too late, mind," she warned. "And if that poxy priest's got a hand in, he'll want the stiffest sentence he can get. Still, I'll try. You keep after the pounding; rosemary takes forever."
I took up the pestle as she left, and pounded and ground automatically, paying little heed to the results. The shut window blocked the sound both of the rain and the crowd below; the two blended in a soft, pattering susurrus of menace. Like any schoolchild, I had read Dickens. And earlier authors, as well, with their descriptions of the pitiless justice of these times, meted out to all ill-doers, regardless of age or circumstance. But to read, from a cozy distance of one or two hundred years, accounts of child hangings and judicial mutilation, was a far different thing than to sit quietly pounding herbs a few feet above such an occurrence.
Could I bring myself to interfere directly, if the sentence went against the boy? I moved to the window, carrying the mortar with me, and peered out. The crowd had increased, as merchants and housewives, attracted by the gathering, wandered down the High Street to investigate. Newcomers leaned close as the standees excitedly relayed the details, then merged into the body of the crowd, more faces turned expectantly to the door of the house.
Looking down on the assembly, standing patiently in the drizzle awaiting a verdict, I suddenly had a vivid understanding of something. Like so many, I had heard, appalled, the reports that trickled out of postwar Germany: the stories of deportations and mass murder, of concentration camps and burnings. And like so many others had done, and would do, for years to come, I had asked myself, "How could the people have let it happen? They must have known, must have seen the trucks, the coming and going, the fences and smoke. How could they stand by and do nothing?" Well, now I knew.
The stakes were not even life or death in this case. And Colum's patronage would likely prevent any physical attack on me. But my hands grew clammy around the porcelain bowl as I thought of myself stepping out, alone and powerless, to confront that mob of solid and virtuous citizens, avid for the excitement of punishment and blood to alleviate the tedium of existence.
People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans—hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning—have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it, was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.