The Serf
by Guy Thorne · English · Gutenberg #41829 · 355,890 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Serf
Author: Guy Thorne
Release date: January 12, 2013 [eBook #41829]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SERF ***
THE SERF
THE SERF
By
GUY THORNE
_Author of "When It Was Dark"
"A Lost Cause," etc., etc._
Illustration
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
18 East 17th Street----New York
GREENING & CO., LTD., London
TO THE
MEMBERS OF THE
NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. 1
II. 25
III. 52
IV. 79
V. 103
VI. 128
VII. 150
VIII. 168
IX. 189
X. 205
XI. 217
XII. 230
XIII. 242
XIV. 250
XV. 270
XVI. 286
XVII. 297
THE SERF
CHAPTER I
"When Christ slept"
_This is the history of a man who lived in misery and torture, and was
held as the very dirt of the world. In great travail of body and mind,
in a state of bitter and sore distress, he lived his life. His death was
stern and pitiless, for they would have slain a dog more gently than
he._
_And yet, while his lords and masters survive only in a few old
chronicles of evil Latin, or perhaps you may see poor broken effigies of
them in a very ancient church, the thoughts that Hyla thought still run
down time, and have their way with us now. They seared him with heat and
scourged him with whips, and hung him high against the sunset from the
battlements of Outfangthef Tower, until his body fell in pieces to the
fen dogs in the stable yards below. Yet the little misshapen man is
worthy of a place in your hearts._
_Geoffroi de la Bourne is unthought-of dust; Fulke, his son, claims fame
by three lines in an old compte-book as a baron who enjoyed the right
of making silver coin. In the anarchy of King Stephen's reign he coined
money, using black metal--"moneta nigra"--with no small profit to
himself. So he has three lines in a chronicle._
_Hyla, serf and thrall to him, has had never a word of record until
now._
_And yet Hyla, who inspired the village community--the first Radical one
might fancy him to be--was greater than Fulke or Geoffroi; and this is
the Story of his life. The human heart that beat in him is even as the
heart of a good man now. It will be difficult to see any lovable things
in this slave, who was a murderer, and whose life was so remote from
ours. But, indeed, in regarding such a man, one must remember always his
environment. With a little exercise of thought you will see that he was
a lovable man, a small hero and untrumpeted, but worthy of a place in a
very noble hierarchy._
* * * * *
A man sat in a roughly-constructed punt or raft, low down among the
rushes, one hot evening in June. The sun was setting in banks of
blood-red light, which turned all the innumerable water-ways and pools
of the fen from black to crimson. In the fierce light the tall reeds
and grasses rose high into the air, like spears stained with blood.
Although there was no wind to play among the rushes and give the reeds a
voice, the air was full of sound, and an enormous life palpitated and
moved all round.
The marsh frogs were barking to each other with small elfin voices, and
diving into the pools in play. There was a continual sucking sound, as
thousands of great eels drew in the air with their heads just rising
from the water. Now and again some heavy fish would leap out of the
pools with a great noise, and the bitterns called to each other like
copper gongs.
Very high in the air a few birds of the plover species wailed sadly to
their mates, grieving that day was over.
These sounds of busy life were occasionally mingled with noises which
came from the castle and village on the high grounds which bordered the
fen on the south. Now and again the sound of hammers beating upon metal
floated over the water, showing that they were working in the armourer's
shop. A bell rang frequently, and some one was learning to blow calls
upon a horn, for occasionally the clear, sweet notes abruptly changed
into a windy lowing, like a bull in pain.
The man in the punt was busy catching eels with a pronged pole, tipped
with iron. He drove the pole through the water again and again till a
fish was transfixed, and added to the heap in the bottom of the boat. He
was a short, thick-set fellow, with arms which were too long for his
body, and huge hands and feet. No hair grew upon his face, which was
heavy and without expression, though there was evidence of intelligence
in the light green-grey eyes.
Round his neck a thin ring of iron was soldered, and where the two ends
had been joined together another and smaller ring had been fixed. He was
dressed in a coat of leather, black with age and dirt, but strong and
supple. This descended almost to his knees, and was caught in round the
middle by a leather strap, which was fastened with an iron pin.
His arms were bare, and on one of them, just below the fore-arm, was a
red circle the size of a penny, burnt into the flesh, and bearing some
marks arranged in a regular pattern.
This was Hyla, one of the serfs belonging to Geoffroi de la Bourne,
Baron of Hilgay, and the holder of lands near Mortain, in France.
The absolute anarchy of the country in 1136,--the dark age in which this
story of Hyla begins--secured to each petty baron an overwhelming power,
and Geoffroi de la Bourne was king, in all but name, of the fens, hills,
and corn-lands, from Thorney to Thetford, and the undoubted lord of the
Southfolk.
For many miles the fens spread under the sky from Ely to King's Lynn,
then but a few fisher huts. Hilgay itself rose up on an eminence towards
the south of the Great Fen. At the bottom of the hill ran the wide river
Ouse, and beyond it stretched the treacherous wastes.
The Castle of Hilgay stood on the hill itself, and was surrounded by a
small village, built in the latter years of Henry's reign. It was one of
the most modern buildings in East Anglia. Here, surrounded by his
men-at-arms, villeins, and serfs, Geoffroi de la Bourne lived secure,
and kept the country-side in stern obedience. The Saxon Chronicle, which
at the time was being written in the Monastery of Peterborough, says of
him: "He took all those he thought had any goods, both by night and day,
men and women alike, and put them in prison to get their gold and
silver, and tortured them with tortures unspeakable."
Of he and his kind it says: "Never yet was there such misery in the
land; never did heathen men worse than they. Christ slept, and all His
saints."
Hyla had been spearing his eels in various backwaters and fen-pools
which wound in and out from the great river. When his catch was
sufficient, he laid down the trident, and, taking up the punt pole, set
seriously about the business of return. The red lights of the sky turned
opal and grew dim as he sent his punt gliding swiftly in and out among
the rushes.
After several minutes of twisting and turning, the ditch widened into a
large, still pool, over which the flies were dancing, and beyond it was
the black expanse of the river itself. As the boat swung out into the
main stream, the castle came plain to the view. A well-beaten road
fringed with grass, among which bright golden kingcups were shining, led
up to the walls. Clustered round the walls was a little village of
sheds, huts, and houses, where the labourers and serfs who were
employed on the farm-lands lived.
The castle itself was a massive and imposing place, of great strength
and large area. At one corner of the keep stood a great tower, the
highest for many miles round, which was covered with a pointed roof of
tiles, like that of a French chateau. This was known as the Outfangthef
Tower, and Geoffroi and his daughter, Lady Alice, had their private
chambers in it.
There was something very stately in the view from the river, all
irradiated as it was by the ruddy evening light.
Hyla's punt glided over the still waters till it reached a well-built
landing-stage of stone steps descending into the river. Several punts
and boats were tied up to mooring stakes. Hard by, the sewage from the
castle was carried down by a little brook, and the air all about the
landing-place was stagnant and foul.
He moored the punt, and, stringing his eels upon an iron hook, carried
them up the hill in the waning light. The very last lights of the day
were now expiring, and the scene was full of peace and rest, as night
threw her cloak over the world. A rabbit ran across Hyla's path from
side to side of the road, a dusky flash; and, high up in the air, a bird
suddenly began to trill the night a welcome.
The man walked slowly, lurching along with his head bent down, and
seeing nothing of the evening time. About half-way up the hill he heard
someone whistling a comic song, with which a wandering minstrel had
convulsed the inmates of the castle a night or two before.
Sitting by the roadside in the dusk, he could distinguish the figure of
Pierce, one of the men-at-arms. He was oiling the trigger and barrel of
a crossbow, and polishing the steel parts with a soft skin. The
man-at-arms lived in the village with his wife, and was practically in
the position of a villein, holding some fields from Lord Geoffroi in
return for military service. He was from Boulogne, and had been in the
garrison of one of Robert de Bellême's castles in Normandy.
The lessons learnt at Tenchebrai had sunk deep into the mind of this
fellow; and when any dirty work was afoot or any foul deed to be done,
to Pierce was given the doing of it. As Hyla approached, he stopped his
whistling, and broke out into the words of the song, which, filthy and
obscene as it was, had enormous popularity all over the countryside.
Then he noticed the serf's approach. "Who are you?" he called out in a
_patois_ of Norman-French and English, with the curious see-saw of
French accentuation in his voice.
"Hyla!" came the answer, and there was strength and music in it.
Something seemed to tickle the soldier to immediate merriment when he
heard the identity of the man with the eels.
Hyla knew him well. When he was free from his duties in the castle, Hyla
and his wife worked in this man's fields for a loaf of wastel bread or a
chance rabbit, and he was in a sense their immediate employer and
patron.
It was at the order of Pierce that Hyla had been fishing that evening.
The soldier chuckled on, regarding the serf with obvious amusement,
though for what reason _he_ could not imagine.
"Show your catch," he said at last.
He was shown the hook of great eels, some of which still writhed slowly
in torture.
"Take them to my wife," said the soldier, "and take what you want of
them for yourself and your people."
"Very gladly," said Hyla, "for there are many mouths to fill."
"Oh! that can be altered," said the soldier, with a grin; "your family
can be used in other ways, and live in other housen than under your
roof-tree."
"Duke Christ forbid!" said Hyla, giving the Saviour the highest name he
knew; "had I not my children and my wife, I should be poor indeed."
"God's teeth!" cried the soldier, with a nasty snarl and complete change
of tone, "_your_ wife, _your_ girls! Man, man! we have been too good to
the serfs of late. See to this now, when I was in the train of my Lord
de Bellême, both in France and here, we killed serfs like rabbits.
"Well I remember, in the Welsh March, how we hanged men like you up by
the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their
thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their
feet. We put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them till
they went into the brain. We put men into prisons where adders, snakes,
and toads were crawling, and so we tormented them. And the whiles we
took their wives and daughters for our own pleasure. Hear you that,
Hyla, my friend? Get you off to my wife with the eels, you old dog."
He blazed his bold eyes at the serf, and his swarthy face and coal-black
hair seemed bristling with anger and disdain. His face was deeply pitted
with marks which one of the numerous varieties of the plague had left
upon it, and as his white, strong teeth flashed in anger through the
gloom, he looked, so Hyla thought, like the grinning devil-face of stone
carved over the servants' wicket at Icombe Abbey.
He slunk away from the man-at-arms without a word, and toiled on up the
hill. He fancied he could hear Pierce laughing down below him, and he
spat upon the ground in impotent rage.
He soon came to a few pasture fields on the outskirts of the village,
some parts of them all silver-white with "lady-smocks." Hardy little
cows, goats, and sheep roamed in the meadows, which were enclosed with
rough stone walls. A herd of pigs were wallowing in the mud which lined
the banks of the sewage stream, for, with their usual ignorance, the
castle architects allowed this to run right through the pastures on the
hill slope.
The cows were lowing uneasily to each other, for they were tormented by
hosts of knats and marsh-begotten flies which rose up from the fen
below.
Past the fields the road widened out into a square of yellow,
dust-powdered grass--the village green--and round this were set some of
the principal houses.
There was no room for comfortable dwelling-places inside the castle
itself for the crowd of inferior officers and men-at-arms. Accordingly
they made their home in the village at its walls, and could retreat into
safety in times of war.
Eustace, the head armourer, had a house here, the best in the village,
roofed with shingle and built of solid timber. The men-at-arms, Pierce
among them, who were married, or lived with women taken in battle, had
their dwellings there; and one thatched Saxon house belonged to Lewin,
the worker in metal, and chief of Baron Geoffroi's mint.
Hyla was a labourer in the mint, and under the orders of Lewin the Jew.
In 1133 it was established as a general truth and legal adage, by the
Justiciar of England himself, that no subject might coin silver money.
The adulteration practised in the baronial mints had reduced coins,
which pretended to be of silver, into an alloy which was principally
composed of a bastard copper. A few exceptions were made to the law, but
all private mints were supposed to be under the direct superintendence
of crown officials. In the anarchy of Stephen's reign this rule became
inoperative, and many barons and bishops coined money for themselves.
Few did this so completely and well as Geoffroi de la Bourne.
When Bishop Roger of Salisbury made his son Chancellor of the Exchequer,
in King Henry's reign, the chancellor had in his train a clever Jew boy,
baptised by force, very skilful in the manual arts.
It was the youth Lewin who invented the cloth, chequered like a
chess-board, which covered the table of the "Exchequer," and on which
money was counted out; and he also claimed that the "tallies" which were
given in receipt for taxes to the county sheriffs were a product of his
fertile brain.
This man, was always looked upon with suspicion by the many churchmen
with whom he came in contact. Finance was almost entirely in the hands
of the great clergymen, and the servant Lewin was distrusted for his
cleverness and anti-Christian blood. At dinner many a worthy bishop
would urge the chancellor to dismiss him.
The Jew was too shrewd not to feel their hostility and know their
dislike; and when he came across Geoffroi de la Bourne in the Tower
Royal, where Cheapside now stands, he was easily persuaded to enter his
service.
At Hilgay Castle he was at the head of a fine organisation of
metal-workers, and under the direct protection of a powerful chief. So
lawless was the time that he could gratify the coarse passions of his
Eastern blood to the full, and he counted few men, and certainly no
other Jew in East England, more fortunately circumstanced than he was.
A few villeins of the farmer class, who were also skilled men at arms,
had rough houses in the village, and tilled the corn-fields and looked
after the cattle. Beyond their dwellings, on the verge of the woods of
oak and beech which purpled the southern distance, were the huts of the
serfs.
Hyla passed slowly through the village. On the green, by a well which
stood in the centre, a group of light-haired Saxon women were chattering
over their household affairs. At the doors of some of the houses of the
Norman men-at-arms sat French women on stools, rinsing pot herbs and
scouring iron cooking bowls. Their black hair, prominent noses, and
alert eyes contrasted favourably with the somewhat stupid faces of the
Saxons, and there could be seen in them more than one sign of a
conquering race.
They were also more neatly dressed, and a coarse flax linen bound their
temples in its whiteness, or lay about their throats.
Stepping over a gutter full of evil-smelling refuse, Hyla came to the
house of Pierce, and beat upon the wooden door, which hung upon hinges
of leather made from bullock's hide.
It swung open, and Adelais, the soldier's wife, named after the Duke of
Brabant's daughter, stood upon the threshold obedient to the summons.
She took the eels from him without a word, and began to unhook them.
"Pierce said that I might have some fish to take home," Hyla told her
humbly.
"You may take your belly full," she answered; "it's little enough I like
the river worms, for that is all they are. My man likes them as little
as I."
"It was he that sent me a-fishing," said Hyla in surprise.
"Then he had a due reason," said the woman; "but get you home, the
evening is spent, and the night comes."
Just then, from the castle above their heads, which towered up into the
still warm air, came the mellow sound of a horn, and following upon it
the deep tolling of a bell ringing the curfew.
Although the evening bell did not ring at that time with any legal
significance as it did in towns, its sound was generally a signal for
sleep; and as the brazen notes floated above them, the groups at the
doors and on the green broke up and dispersed.
"Sleep well, Hyla!" Adelais said kindly, and, retiring into the house,
she shut her door.
Hyla went on till he came opposite the great gate of the castle, and
could hear the guards being changed on the other side of the drawbridge.
He was now on the very brow of the hill, and, stopping for a moment,
looked right down over the road he had traversed. The moon was just
rising, and the road was all white in its light. Far beyond, the vast
fens were a sea of white mist, and the blue will-o'-the-wisp was
beginning to bob and pirouette among it. The air of the village was
full of the sweet pungent smell of the blue wood smoke.
The night was full of peace and sweetness, and, as the last throbbing
note of the curfew bell died away, it would have been difficult to find
a gentler, mellower place.
Thin lines of lights, like jewels in velvet, began to twinkle out in the
black walls of the castle as he turned towards the place of the serfs.
He went down a lane fringed with beeches, and emerged upon the open
glade. A fire was burning in the centre, and dark forms were flitting
round it cooking the evening meals. Dogs were barking, and there was a
continual hum and clatter of life.
Picture for yourself an oblong space surrounded by heavy trees, the
outer boles being striped clear of bark, and many of them remaining but
dead stumps.
Round the arena stood forty or fifty huts of wood, wattled with oziers
and thatched with fern and dried rushes.
Many of the huts were built round a tree trunk, and the pole in the
middle served to hang skins and implements upon by means of wooden pegs
driven into it.
A hole in the roof let out smoke, and in the walls let in the light.
The floors of these huts were of hard-beaten earth, as durable as stone;
but they were littered with old bones, dust, and dried rushes for
several inches deep, and swarming with animal life.
They were the merest shelters, and served only for sleep. Most of the
household business was conducted in the open before the huts, and in
fine weather the fires were nearly all outside. In winter time the serf
women and girls generally suffered from an irritating soreness of the
eyes, which was produced by living in the acrid smoke which filled the
shelters and escaped but slowly through the roofs.
The household utensils were few and simple. A large wooden bucket, which
was carried on a pole between two women, served to fetch water from the
well upon the village green, for the serfs had no watering-place in
their own enclosure. An earthenware pot or so--very liable to break and
crack, as it was baked from the black and porous fen clay--and an iron
cooking pot, often the common property of two or more families,
comprised the household goods.
They slept in the back part of the huts, men, women, and children
together, on dried fern, or with, perhaps, an old and filthy sheep's
skin for cover. The sleeping-room was called the "bower."
This enclosure where the theows lived was known as the "fold," as it was
fenced in from the forest, on which it abutted, by felled trees. This
was done for protection against wild beasts. Herds of wild and savage
white cattle, such as may now only be seen at Chillingham, roamed
through the wood. Savage boars lived on the forest acorns, and would
attack an unarmed man at sight. Wolves abounded in the depths of the
forest. It often happened that some little serf child wandered away, and
was never seen again, and it was useless for a thrall to attempt escape
into its mysterious depths.
For the most part only married serfs lived in the fold or "stoke," as it
was sometimes called. Many of the younger men were employed as grooms
and water-carriers in the castle, or slept and lived in sheds and cattle
houses belonging to the men-at-arms and farmers in the village.
It was thus that the serfs lived, and Hyla skirted the fold till he came
to his own house. He was very tired and hungry, and eager for a meal
before sleeping.
All the morning he had laboured, sweating by the glowing fires of the
mint, pouring molten metal into the moulds. At mid-day the steward had
given him a vessel of spoilt black barley for his wife to bake bread,
and he had taken it home to her and his two daughters against his
return.
In the afternoon Hyla and his two daughters, Frija and Elgifu, girls of
twenty and nineteen, had been at work dunging the fields of Pierce the
man-at-arms, and the evening had been spent, as we have seen, in
spearing eels.
Hyla was very weary and hungry. When he came up to his hut he saw
angrily that the fire in front of it was nothing but dead embers, and,
indeed, was long since cold. His two little sons, who were generally
tumbling about naked by the hut, were not there, nor could he see Gruach
his wife.
He flung down the eels in a temper, and called aloud, in his strong
voice, "Frija! Elgifu! Gruach!"
His cries brought no response, and he turned towards the fire in the
centre of the stoke which was now but a red glow, and round which
various people were sitting eating their evening meal.
He burst into the circle. "Where is Gruach?" he said to a young man who
was dipping his hand into an earthen pot held between his knees.
This was Harl, an armourer's rivetter, who generally lived within the
castle walls.
"Gruach is at the hut of Cerdic," he said, with some embarrassment, and,
so it seemed to Hyla, with pity in his voice.
The men and women sitting by the fire turned their faces towards him
without exception, and their faces bore the same expression as Harl's.
Hyla stared stupidly from one to the other. His eyes fell upon Cerdic
himself, a kennel serf, and something of a veterinary surgeon. It was he
who cut off two toes from each dog used for droving, so that they should
not hunt the deer.
Fastened to his girdle was the ring through which the feet of the
"lawed" dogs were passed, and he carried his operating knife in a sheath
at his side.
"My woman is in your hut, Cerdic," said Hyla, "and why is she with?"
"She is with," said Cerdic, "because she is in sore trouble, and walks
in fear of worse. Go you to her, Hyla, and hear her words, and then
come you here again to me."
A deep sigh burst from all of them as Cerdic spoke, and one woman fell
crying.
Hyla turned, and strode hastily to Cerdic's hut. He heard a low moaning
coming from it, which rose and fell unceasingly, and was broken in upon
by a woman's voice cooing kind words of comfort.
He pushed into the hut. It was quite dark and full of foetid smoke and
a most evil odour.
"Gruach," he said, "Gruach! why are you not home? What hurts you?"
The moaning stopped, and there was a sound of some one rising.
Then a voice, which Hyla recognised as belonging to Cerdic's wife, said,
"Here is your man, Gruach! Rise and tell him what bitter things have
been afoot."
Gruach rose, a tall woman of middle age, and came out of the hut into
the twilight.
"Hyla!" she said, "Saints help you and me, for they have taken Elgifu
and Frija to the castle."
The man quivered all over as if he would have fallen on the ground. Then
he gripped his wife's arm. "Tell me," he said hoarsely, "To the castle?
to the castle? Frija and Elgifu?"
"Aye, your maids and mine, and maids no longer. I had gone to Adelais to
seek food for this night, and found you sent a-fishing. Frija and Elgifu
were carrying the dung to the fields. Pierce was in the field speaking
to our girls. Then came Huber and John from the castle with their pikes,
and they took away our daughters, saying Lord Geoffroi and Lord Fulke
had sent for them. Huber struck me in the face at my crying. 'Take
care!' cwaeth he, 'old women are easily flogged; there is little value
in you.' And I saw them holding my girls, and they took them in the
great gate of the castle laughing, and I did not see them again."
Hyla said nothing for a minute, but remained still and motionless. The
blow struck him too hard for speech.
"Get you home," he said at length, "if perchance you may fall asleep. I
am going to talk with Cerdic. Take her home, wife, and God rest you for
your comfort!"
He walked quickly across the open space back to the fire. The circle was
broken up, and only Cerdic and Harl sat there waiting Hyla's return.
Stuck into the ground was a cow's horn full of ale, and as Hyla came
into the circle of dim red light, Harl handed it to him.
He drank deep, and drank again till the comfort of the liquor filled his
craving stomach, and his brain grew clearer.
"Sit here, friend," said Cerdic. "This is a foul thing that has been
done."
CHAPTER II
"Coelum coeli Domino terram autem dedit filiis hominum."
In the fifth volume of an instructive work by Le Grand d'Aussy, who was,
in his way, a kind of inferior Dean Swift, there is an interesting
story, one of a collection of "Fabliaux."
There was once a genial ruffian who lived by highway robbery, but who,
on setting about his occupation, was careful to address a prayer to the
Virgin. He was taken at the end, and sentenced with doom of hanging.
While the executioner was fitting him with the cord, he made his usual
little prayer. It proved effectual. The Virgin supported his feet "with
her white hands," and thus kept him alive two days to the no small
surprise of the executioner, who attempted to complete his work with a
hatchet. But this was turned aside by the same invisible hand, and the
executioner bowed to the miracle, and unstrung the robber. With
that--very naturally--the rogue entered a monastery.
In another tale the Virgin takes the shape of a nun, who had eloped from
the convent where she was professed, and performs her duties for ten
years. At last, tired of a libertine life, the nun returned unsuspected.
This signal service was performed in consideration of the nun's having
never omitted to say an _Ave_ as she passed the Virgin's image.[1]
[1] _These stories are perfectly fair examples of monastic
teachings in the Twelfth Century. Roughly speaking, any one
might do anything if he or she said an occasional_ Ave. _Indeed,
Dom Mathew Paris, the most pious and trustworthy monkish
historian, and in his way a scourge to the laxity of his own
order, has more than one story of this kind in which he
evidently believes._
It may be therefore said, without exciting any undue surprise, that
Geoffroi de la Bourne had a resident chaplain in the castle, one Dom
Anselm, and that religious ceremonies were more or less regularly
observed.
In the outer courtyard of the castle a doorway led into the chapel. This
was a long room, with a roof of vaulted stone lit by windows on the
courtyard side, full of some very presentable stained glass. The glass,
which had far more lead in it than ours, was in fact a kind of mosaic,
and the continual lattice work of metal much obscured the pattern.
What could be seen of it, however, represented Saint Peter armed, and
riding out to go hawking, with a falcon on his wrist.
Strips of cloth bandaged cross-wise from the ankle to the knee, and
fastened over red stockings, were part of the saint's costume, and he
wore black-pointed shoes split along the instep almost to the toes,
fastened with two thongs.
In fact, the artists of that day were under the influence of a realistic
movement, in much the same way as the exhibitors in the modern French
salon, and what superficial students of Twelfth-Century manners put down
as unimaginative ignorance was really the outcome of a widely understood
artistic pose.
On a shrine by the chapel door stood an image of the Blessed Virgin, a
trifle gaudy. The head was bound round with a linen veil, and a loose
gown of the same material was laced over a tight-fitting bodice. Round
the arms were wound gold snake bracelets, imitations, made by Lewin in
the forge, of some old Danish ornaments in the possession of the Lady
Alice de la Bourne. The foldings of the robe were looped up here and
there with jewelled butterflies, differing not at all from a Palais
Royal toy of to-day.
In front of the shrine hung two lamps, or "light vats" as they were
called, of distinctly Roman type--luxuries which were rare then, and of
which Dom Anselm was exceedingly proud. They dated from the time of King
Alfred, that inventive monarch, who had adapted the idea of lamps from
old Roman relics found in excavations.
Except that the altar furniture was in exceedingly good taste, it
differed hardly at all from anything that may be seen in twenty London
churches to-day.
There were no pews or seats in the chapel, save some heavy oak chairs by
the altar side, where a wooden perch, clamped to the table itself and
white with guano, indicated that Geoffroi de la Bourne would sit with
his hawks.
The sun rose in full June majesty the next morning, and soon shone upon
the picturesque activity of a mediæval fortress in prosperous being.
The serfs and workmen, who slept in lightly constructed huts of thin elm
planks under a raised wooden gallery which went round the courtyard,
rose from the straw in which they lay with the dogs, and, shaking
themselves, set about work.
The windlass of the well creaked and groaned as the water for the horses
was drawn. The carpenters began their labour of cutting boards for some
new mead-benches which were wanted in the hall, and men began to stoke
afresh the furnaces of the armoury and mint.
Paved ways ran from door to door of the various buildings, but all the
rest of the bailey was carpeted with grass, which had been sown there to
feed the cattle who would be herded within the walls in dangerous times.
About half-past eight Dom Anselm let himself out of a little gate in the
corner of Outfangthef Tower, and came grumbling down the steps. He
crossed the courtyard, taking no notice of the salutations of the
labourers, but looking as if he were half asleep, as indeed he was. His
long beard was matted and thick with wine-stains from the night before,
and his thin face was an unhealthy yellow colour.
He unlocked the chapel door, and mechanically pushed a dirty thumb into
a holy water stoup. Then he bowed low to the monstrance on the altar,
and lower still to the figure of the Virgin. After the hot sunshine of
the outside world, the chapel was chill and damp, and the air struck
unpleasantly upon him.
He went up to the altar to find his missal. Sleeping always in a filthy
little cell with no ventilation, and generally seeking his bed in a
state of intoxication, had afflicted the priest with a chronic catarrh
of the nose and throat--as common a complaint among the priesthood then
as it is now in the country districts of Italy and southern France.
Quite regardless of his environment, he expectorated horribly even as he
bowed to the presence of Christ upon the altar.
It is necessary for an understanding of those times to make a point of
things, which, in a tale of contemporary events, would be unseemly and
inartistic. Dom Anselm saw nothing amiss with his manners, and the fact
helps to explain Dom Anselm and his brethren to the reader.
With a small key the priest opened a strong box banded with bronze, and
drew from it the vessels.
Among the contents of the box were some delicate napkins which Lady
Alice had worked--some of those beautiful pieces of embroidery which
were known all over Europe as "English work."
When the silver vessels were placed upon the altar, and everything was
ready for the service, the thirst of the morning got firm hold upon Dom
Anselm's throat.
He left the chapel, and summoned a theow who was passing the door with a
great bundle of cabbages in his arm.
"Set those down," he said, "and ring the bell for Mass;" and while the
man obeyed, and the bell beat out its summons to prayer--very musical in
the morning air--he strode across the courtyard to the mint.
By this time, in the long, low buildings, the fires were banked up, the
tools lay ready upon the benches, and the men were greasing the moulds
with bacon fat.
The priest went through the room with two raised fingers, turning
quickly and mechanically towards the toil-worn figures who knelt or
bowed low for his blessing. He walked towards an inner room, the door of
which was hung with a curtain of moth-eaten cat-skin--the cheapest
drapery of the time. Pushing this curtain aside, he entered with a
cheery "Good-day!" to find, as he expected, Lewin, the mint-master.
The Jew was a slim man of middle size, clean-shaven, and with dark-red
hair. His face was handsome and commanding, and yet animal. The wolf and
pig struggled for mastery in it. He was engaged in opening the
brass-bound door of a recess or cupboard in the wall, where the dies for
stamping coin were kept in strict ward.
The mint-master straightway called to one of the men in the outer room,
who thereon brought in a great horn of ale in the manner of use. Every
morning the priest would call upon the Jew, so that they might take
their drink together. Each day the two friends conveniently forgot--or
at any rate disregarded--the rule which bids men fast before the Mass.
Lewin attended Church with great devotion, and, like many modern
Israelites, was most anxious that the fact of his ancient and honourable
descent should be forgotten.
Though he himself was a professing Christian, and secure in his
position, yet his brethren, who nearly always remained staunch to their
ancient faith, were in very sad case in the Twelfth Century. Vaissette,
in his history of Languedoc, dwells upon a pleasing custom which
obtained at Toulouse, to give a blow on the face to a Jew every Easter.
In some districts of England, from Palm Sunday to Easter was regarded as
a licensed time for the baiting of Jews, and the populace was regularly
instigated by the priests to attack Jewish houses with stones. Yet, at
the same time, it was possible for a Jew to obtain a respectable
position if he avoided the practice of usury, and Lewin the minter was
an example of the fact.
"This is the best beer of the day," said the priest, "eke the beer at
noon meat. My belly is so hot in the morning, and all the pipes of my
body burn."
Lewin poured out some ale from the horn into a Saxon drinking-glass with
a rounded bottom like a modern soda-water bottle--the invariable
pattern--and handed the horn back to Dom Anselm. They drank
simultaneously with certain words of pledge, and clinked the vessels
together.
"It's time for service," said the clergyman, when the horn was empty.
"Lady Alice will be upon arriving and in a devilish temper, keep I her
waiting."
"Lord Geoffroi," said Lewin, "will he be at Mass?"
The priest grinned with an evil smile. "What do you think, minter?" he
chuckled. "Geoffroi never comes to Mass when he sins a mortal sin o'er
night; no, nor young Fulke either."
Lewin looked enquiringly at him.
"Two of the men-at-arms brought the daughters of one Hyla into the
castle last night before curfew."
"He works for me here," said the minter.
"I am sorry for him," said the priest, "and I do not like this force,
for the girls were screaming as they took them to Outfangthef. Lord
Christ forbid that I should ever take from a maiden what she would not
give. It will mean candles of real wax for me from Geoffroi, this will."
"The master is a stern man," said Lewin as they entered the chapel door.
Lady Alice was already in the chapel, kneeling on the altar steps, and
behind her were two or three maids also kneeling.
On the eyelids of one of these girls the tears still stood glistening,
and a red mark upon her cheek showed that Lady Alice had not risen in
the best of tempers. The chatelaine frowned at Anselm when she heard his
foot-steps, and, turning, saw him robing by the door.
Many of the workmen and men-at-arms crowded into the chapel, all
degrees mingling together. Some of the villein farmers had come in from
the village, sturdy, open-featured men, prosperously dressed in woollen
tunics reaching to the knees, fastened with a brooch of bone. The serfs
knelt at the back, and as the deep pattering Latin rolled down the
church every head was bent low in reverence.
Although among nearly all of them there was such a contrast between
conduct and belief, yet, at the daily mystery and miracle of the Mass,
every evil brain was filled with reverence and awe. When the Host was
raised--the very body of Christ--to them all, you may judge how it moved
every human heart.
The system which held them all was a very easy and pleasant system.
Unconditional submission to the Church, and belief in her mysteries,
ensured the redemption of sins and the joys of heaven hereafter. To the
popular mind, my Lords the Saints and the Blessed Virgin were great,
good-humoured people, always approachable by an _Ave_ and a little
private understanding with the priest. It was, indeed, the pleasantest
and easiest of all religious systems.
This, then, was the ordinary attitude of men and women towards the
unseen, and it helps to explain the wickedness of the time. Yet it must
not be thought that in this dark tapestry there were no lighter threads.
The saints of God were still to be found on earth. Bright lines of gold
and white and silver ran through the warp and woof, and we shall meet
with more than one fine and Christian character in this story of Hyla.
The stately monotone went on. Huber and John, the two men-at-arms who
had hurried the poor serf girls into the castle the night before, knelt
in reverence, and beat their breasts.
"The Lord is debonair," Huber muttered to himself. Alice de la Bourne
forgot her ill temper and petty dislike of pretty Gundruda, her maid,
and fervently made the sign of the cross. Lewin alone, of all that
kneeling throng, was uninfluenced by the ceremony and full of earthly
thoughts.
After Mass was over, Anselm remained kneeling, repeating prayers, while
the congregation filed out into the sunlight. A little significant
incident happened on the very threshold. A poor serf had become
possessed of a rosary made from the shells of a pretty little pink and
green snail which was found--not too frequently--in the marshes below.
This possession of his he valued, and, as he said his prayers day by
day, it became invested with a mystical importance. He looked on it as a
very holy thing.
Coming out of church, among the last of the crowd, he let it fall upon
the step of the door. He was stooping to pick it up, when he came in the
way of Huber, the soldier, who sent him flying into the courtyard with a
hearty kick.
The soldier stepped upon the rosary, breaking most of the shells, and
then picked it up in some curiosity. He had it in his hand, and was
showing it to his companions, when the serf, who had risen from the
ground, leapt upon him in anger.
There was an instant scuffle, and a loud explosion of oaths. In a second
or two three or four men held the unhappy serf by the arms, and had
fastened him up to the post of the well in the centre of the yard. They
tied him up with two or three turns of the well rope, which they
unhooked from the bucket.
Huber took his leather belt and flogged him lustily, after his tunic of
cat-skin had been pulled down to the waist. The wretch screamed for
mercy, and attracted all the workmen round, who stood watching--the
serfs in timid silence, and the men-at-arms with mirth and laughter. It
may sound incredible, but Lady Alice herself, standing on the top step
of the stairway leading to the tower door, watched with every sign of
amusement. It was, in fact, no uncommon thing in those cruel times for
great Norman and Saxon ladies to order their slaves to be horribly
tortured on the slightest provocation. Cruelty seemed an integral part
of their characters. There is, for example, a well-attested story of
Ethelred's mother, who struck him so heavily with a bunch of candles
which lay to her hand, that he fell senseless for near an hour.
Dom Anselm came out of chapel after a while, and sought the cause of the
uproar.
"There, my men," he said, "let the theow go. Whatever he has done, he
has paid toll now. And look to it, Henry, that you say an _Ave_ to our
Blessed Lady that you harbour no wrath towards your just lords."
With that they let him go, and, bleeding and sobbing, the poor fellow
slunk away into the stables. Sitting in the straw, he cried as if his
heart would break, until he felt hot breath on his cheek, and looking
up saw large mild eyes, like still woodland pools, regarding him with
love. Above him towered the vast form of "Duke Robert," Geoffroi's great
war charger, as large and ponderous as a small elephant, his one dear
friend. So he forgot his troubles a little while.
It was now about nine o'clock, and breakfast was served. The Baron and
his son, and also the Lady Alice, never appeared in the great hall until
the "noon meat" at three. They ate the first meal of the day in the
"bowers" or sleeping chambers.
While the Lady Alice and her women superintended the more important
household business, or sat in the orchard outside the south wall of the
castle with their needlework, the Baron was throned in the gateway of
the castle conducting the business of his estate, and presiding over a
kind of local court.
The Justices in Eyre were hardly yet sufficiently established on
circuit, and, moreover, the country was in so disturbed a state that the
administration of law was merely in most cases, certainly at Hilgay, a
question of local tyranny.
The whole business of the day was well afoot with all its multifarious
activity when Hyla rested from his work, and sitting under the shadow
of a stone wall, ate a hunk of bread which he had brought with him. He
had sat late with Cerdic the night before, and, as he had half expected,
had been bidden in the morning to work in Pierce's fields, and not to go
to the castle. All the morning, since early dawn, he had been manuring
fields with marl, in the old British fashion. The work was very hard, as
the fields were only in the first stage of being reclaimed from wild
common land, and required infinite preparation.
The supply of dung had given out, and the marl was hard to carry and bad
to breathe.
The awful blow dealt to his whole life had dazed his brain for hours,
but the long talk with Cerdic and Harl had condensed his pain within
him, and turned it to strong purpose.
He thought over his life as he remembered it, his dull life of slavery,
and saw with bitter clearness how the clouds were gathering round him
and his kind. The present and the future alike were black as night, and
the years pressed more and more heavily as they dragged onwards.
During the last years the serfs at Hilgay had been more ill-used and
down-trodden than ever before. The Saxon gentlemen, who had held the
forefathers of Hyla in thrall, were stern and hard, but life had been
possible with them. Life was more light-hearted. Githa would sometimes
dance upon the green when the day's work was done, and spend a few
long-hoarded triens in an ivory comb or a string of coloured beads.
The Gesith or Thanes, the lesser nobility, had not been unkind to their
slaves, and there was sometimes a draught of "pigment" for them--a sweet
liquor, made of honey, wine, and spice--at times of festival.
Now everything was changed, and among the serfs a passionate spirit of
hatred and revolt was springing up. The less intelligent of them sank
into the condition of mere beasts of burden, without soul or brain. On
the other hand, adversity had sharpened the powers of others, and in
many of them was being born the first glimmerings of a consciousness
that even they had rights.
Hyla himself was one of the most advanced among his brethren. He felt
his manhood and "individuality" more than most of them. "I am I" his
brain sometimes whispered to him. The cruel oppressions to which he was
subject roused him more poignantly day by day.
Some nine months before a peculiarly atrocious deed had consolidated the
nebulous and unexpressed sense of revolt among the serfs of Hilgay into
a regular and definite subject of conversation.
The Forest Laws, which Knut had fenced round with a number of ferocious
edicts, placing the deer and swine far above the serfs themselves, were
made even more vigorous and harsh by the Normans. A theow named Gurth,
who had been seen by a forester picking wood for fires, was suspected of
killing a young boar, which had been found not long after with its belly
ripped open by a sharp stake. Parts of the animal had been cut away,
obviously by a knife, and were missing. Although the serf was absolutely
innocent of the beast's slaughter, which was purely accidental--he had
come upon it dead in the forest, and taken a forequarter to his
home--Geoffroi de la Bourne burnt him in the centre of the village, and
flogged mercilessly all the serfs, women included, who were thought to
have partaken of the dish.
Since that time the men-at-arms and inferior followers of the castle had
taken license to ill-use the serfs in every possible way. The virtue of
no comely girl or married woman was safe, floggings were of daily
occurrence, and, as there were plenty of theows to work, nothing was
said if one or two were occasionally killed or maimed for life in a
drunken brawl.
The serfs in the castle itself had no thoughts but of submission; but
those who lived in the stoke, mingling freely with each other, and with
the poor freedom of their own huts and wives, began to meet night by
night round the central fire to discuss their wrongs.
The Normans never went into the stoke, or at least very rarely. The
theows could not escape, and so that they did the tasks set them, their
proceedings at night mattered not at all.
Hyla sat munching his manchet, and drinking from a horn of sour Welsh
ale, a thin brew staple to the common people. The thought of Frija and
Elgifu was almost more than he could bear.
It is interesting to note that Hyla's passionate anger was directed
entirely against his masters. He had never known a spiritual revolt. It
never entered his head to imagine that the God to whom he prayed had
much to do with the state of the world. He never supplicated for bodily
relief in his prayers, but only for pardon for his sins and for hope of
heaven. The principalities and powers of the other world were too awful
and mysterious, he thought, to have any actual bearing upon life.
The dominant idea of his brain was a lust for revenge, and yet it was by
no means a _personal_ revenge. He was full of pity for his friends, for
all the serfs, and his own miseries were only as a drop in the cup of
his wrath.
Night by night the serfs had begun to sit in the stoke holding conclave.
It was an ominous gathering for those in high places! Hyla was generally
the speaker of these poor parliaments. "HE went after the herons this
noon, with Lady Alice and the squires," one man would say, provoking
discussion.
"Yes," Hyla might answer, "and his falcon had t' head in a broidered
hood eke a peal of silver bells. Never a bonnet of fine cloth for you,
Harl; you are no bird."
"HE rode over Oswald's field of ripening corn, and had noon meat with
all his train at the farm."
"That is the law for a lord. Or--"
"I was at the hall door, supper time, among the lecheurs. Lord Fulke he
did call me, and bade me fetch the board for chess and the images,
having in his mind to game with Brian de Burgh. He broke the board on my
head when I knelt with it, for he said I had the ugliest face he ever
saw."
"Lord Christ made your face," would come from Cerdic or Hyla, and the
ill-favoured one would finger his scars with more resentment than ever.
This man Cerdic was a born agitator. Without the dogged sincerity of
Hyla, he had a readier tongue and a more commanding presence. His own
injuries were the mainspring of his actions, for he had once been a full
ceorl, with boc-land of his own. From yeoman to serf was a terrible drop
in the social scale. As a ceorl, Cerdic had a freeman's right of bearing
arms, and could have reasonably hoped to climb up, by years of industry
and fortunate speculation, into the ranks of the Gesith or Thanes.
Speculation, indeed, proved his ruin, and debt was the last occasion of
his downfall. He was nearly sixty now, and a slave who could own no
property, take no oath, complete no document.
As Hyla sat in the sun he saw Cerdic coming towards him, followed by a
little frisking crowd of puppies. The lawer of dogs sat him down beside
his friend, and, taking out his knife, began to whet it upon a hone.
"It's a sure thing, then?" he said to Hyla. "You are certain in purpose,
Hyla? You will do it indeed? Remember, eftsoons you said that it was in
you to strike a blow for us all; but it's a fool's part to fumble with
Satan his tail. Are you firm?"
He took one of the little dogs between his knees, a pretty, frisking
little creature, thinking nothing of its imminent pain, and, holding one
of its fore-paws in his hand, picked up the knife. The puppy whined
piteously as the swift scalpel divided the living gristle of its foot,
but its brethren frisked about all unheeding.
Hyla saw nothing for a time. He seemed thinking. His intelligent eyes
were glazed and far away, only the impassive, hairless face remained,
with little or no soul to brighten it. And yet a great struggle was
surging over this poor man's heart, and such as he had never known
before. To his rough and animal life an emotional crisis was new and
startling. Something seemed to have suddenly given way in his
brain--some membrane which hitherto had separated him from real things.
While the little dog struggled and yelped as its bleeding paw was thrust
in measurement through the metal ring, a new man was being born. Hyla's
sub-conscious brain told him that nothing that had happened before
mattered a shred of straw. He had never understood what life might mean
for a man till now.
An IDEAL was suddenly revealed to him. But to accept that ideal? that
was hard indeed. It meant almost certain death and torture for himself.
The promptings of self-interest, which spring from our lower nature, and
which are pictorially personified into a grim personality, began to
flutter and whisper.
"Supposing," they said, "that you did this, that you killed Geoffroi for
his sins, and to show that the down-trodden and the poor are yet men,
and can exact a penalty. How much better would your companions be? Fulke
would be lord then, and he is even as his father. Let it go, hold Gruach
in your arms--you have that joy, you know. And work is not so bad. They
have not beaten you yet; there are sometimes good things to eat and
drink, are there not? Mind when you took home a whole mess of goose and
garlic from the hall door? Often you snare a rabbit, and the minter is
not ill-disposed to you. You are the best of his men; to you it is given
to drive the die and hammer the coin, to beat the die into the silver
and to burnish it. It is possible--stranger things have happened--that
you might even gain freedom, and become a villein. Lewin might speak for
you--who knows? These things have happened before. Is it indeed worth
while to do this thing?"
While these thoughts were racing through Hyla's brain, and he was
considering them, a strange thing happened. To the struggling brain of
the serf, all unused to any subtle emotion, Nature made a direct
æsthetic appeal.
In the middle sky a lark began to trill a song so loud and tuneful, so
instinct with Freedom, that it seemed a direct message to him. He stared
up at the tiny speck from which these heavenly notes were falling down
to earth, and his doubts rolled up like a curtain.
He saw that it was his duty to kill Geoffroi for the sake of the others,
and, come what might, he said to himself that he would do this thing.
The clumsy medium of the printed page has allowed us to follow Hyla's
thoughts very slowly. Even as his resolve was taken, he heard Cerdic
muttering that it was "ill to fumble with Satan's tail."
"I'll do it," he said, "and it's not the Divell that will be glad,
Cerdic. No, it's not the Divell," he repeated, a little at a loss what
further to say.
Cerdic pulled from his tunic a little cross of wood, and held it out to
him. The passer-by would have seen two serfs, ill-clothed, unwashed,
uncouth, eating bread and cheese under a wall. He would never have put a
thought to them. Yet the conference of the two was fraught with
tremendous meaning to those times. For a hundred years Hyla was
remembered, and a star in the darkness to the weary; and after his name
was forgotten, the influence of his deeds made life sweeter for many
generations of the poor.
Hyla took the little cross, so that he might swear faith. With a
lingering memory of the form in which men swore oath of fealty to their
lords, he said, "I become true man to this deed from this day forward,
of life and limb and earthly service, and unto it shall be true and
faithful, and bear to you faith, Cerdic, for the aid I claim to hold of
you."
He did this in seriousness, beyond all opinion; but the importance of
the occasion, and the drama of it, pleased him not a little. The new toy
of words was pleasant.
Cerdic kissed him, entering into the spirit of the oath, for it was the
custom to kiss a man sworn to service.
"And I also am with you to the end," said Cerdic, "and may all false
ribalds die who use poor men so."
In a high voice which shook with hate he quavered out a verse of the
"Song of the Husbandman," a popular political song of those days; a
ballad which the common people sang under their breath:
"Ne mai us nyse no rest rycheis ne ro.
Thus me pileth the pore that is of lute pris:
Nede in swot and in swynk swynde mot swo."
It was the poor fellow's Marseillaise!
"_There may not arise to us, or remain with us, riches or rest. Thus
they rob the poor man, who is of little value: he must waste away in
sweat and labour._"
Doggerel, but how bitter! A sign of the times which Geoffroi could not
hear--ominous, threatening.
"A right good song, Cerdic," said Hyla. "But it will not be ever so. I
know not if we shall see it, but all things change and change shall
come from us. A tree stands not for ever."
The two men gazed steadfastly into each other's eyes, and then went
about their work in silence.
* * * * *
The drama of this history may now be said to have begun. The lamps are
trimmed, the scene set, and you shall hear the stirring story of Hyla
the Serf.
CHAPTER III
The last night of Geoffroi de la Bourne
While Cerdic and Hyla sat in the field weaving their design to
completion, Lord Geoffroi, Lord Fulke, Lady Alice, and Brian de Burgh,
the squire, set out after forest game. They were attended by a great
hunting train. Very few people of any importance were left in the
castle, save Lewin and Dom Anselm.
The sun, though still very hot, had begun to decline towards his western
bower, and the quiet of the afternoon already seemed to foreshadow the
ultimate peace of evening.
Very little was doing in the castle. Some of the grooms lay about
sleeping in the sun, waiting the long return of the hunters in idleness.
From the armoury now and again the musical tinkering of a chisel upon
steel sounded intermittent. Soon this also stopped, and a weapon-smith,
who had been engraving foliates upon a blade, came out of his forge
yawning. The Pantler, a little stomachy man, descended from the great
hall, and, passing through the court, went out of the great gate into
the village. Time seemed all standing still, in the silence and the
heat.
Dom Anselm came into the court-yard, and sat him down upon a bench by
the draw-well, just in the fringe of the long violet shadow thrown over
the yard by Outfangthef. There was a bucket of water, full of cool green
lights, standing by the well. After a little consideration, the priest
kicked off his sandals and thrust his feet into its translucence. Then,
comfortably propped up against the post, he fell to reading his
Latin-book. In half-an-hour the book had slipped from his hand, and he
was fast asleep.
While he slept, a door opened in the tower. From it came Pierce, and
after him two girls, tall, comely Saxon lasses, bronzed by sun and wind.
One of them, the eldest of the two, held her hands clenched, and her
face was set in sullen silence. Her eyes alone blazed, and were dilated
with anger. The younger girl seemed more at ease. Her eyes were timid,
but a half smile lingered on her pretty, rather foolish lips. She
fingered a massive bracelet of silver which encircled her arm. Pierce
was giving Frija and Elgifu their freedom.
They came down the steps, and he pointed across the court-yard towards
the gateway passage. "There! girls," said he, "there lies your way, to
take or leave, just as suits your mind. For me, were I you, I'd never go
back to the stoke. Hard fare, and dogs lying beyond all opinion! My
Lords bid me say that you can take your choice."
Frija swung round at him, shaking with passion.
"Vitaille and bower," she shrilled at him, "and the prys shame! A lord
for a leofman, indeed! Before I would fill my belly with lemman's food
to your lord's pleasure, I would throw myself from Outfangthef."
Pierce smiled calmly at her.
"You talk of shame!--it is my lord's, if shame there is! Off with you to
the fold, little serf lamb!"
She flushed a deep crimson, and seemed to cower at his words. "Come,
Elgifu," she said, "mother will be glad to see us come, even coming as
we do."
"Pretty Elgifu!" said the man. "No, you are not going! My Lord Fulke's a
fine young man. Did he not give you that bracelet? Stay here with us
all, good comrades, and you shall be our little friend. We will treat
you well. Is it not so?"
The girl hesitated. She was a pretty, brainless little thing, and had
not protested. They had been kind enough to her. The stoke seemed very
horrible and noisome after the glories of the castle. Her sister's
burning flow of Saxon seemed unnecessary. Frija looked at her in
surprise at her hesitation.
"Say nothing to the divell," she cried impatiently; "come you home to
mother."
Her imperious elder sister's tone irritated the little fool. "No, then,"
she said. "I will stay here. I will not go with you. You may talk of
'shame,' but if shame it is to live in this tower, then I have shame for
my choys. Life is short; it is better here."
With that frank confession, she turned to the man-at-arms for approval.
He stepped in front of her, and, scowling at Frija, bid her be off. With
a great cry of sorrow, the elder girl bowed her head and swiftly walked
away. They saw her disappear through the gateway, and heard the
challenge and laughter of the guards, pursuing her with jests as she
went by.
"Oh, you are wise, pretty one!" said Pierce, putting his arm round her
waist. "See, now, I will take you to the topmost part of the tower, to
that balcony. We shall see all the country-side from there!"
They turned and entered Outfangthef, and the clanging of the door as it
closed behind them roused Anselm from his slumber.
He sat up, stupidly gazing round him. His book was fallen, and a dog was
nosing in its pages. He kicked the cur away, and picked up the breviary.
By the shadow of the tower, which stood at the corner of the keep, he
saw the afternoon was getting on. He looked round him impatiently, and,
even as he did so, saw the man he was expectant of approaching.
"I am late," said Lewin, as he came up; "but I have been hearing news,
and have much to tell you. We had better go at once."
"Whiles I fetch my staff," said the other, and soon they were walking
through the village, down the road which led to the fen. They came to
the fields, where a herd of swine was feeding among the sewage.
"They are unclean things," said Lewin, regarding them with dislike.
"Though I am no Jew in practice, yet I confess that I do not like them.
Pig! the very name is an outrage to one's ear."
"So not I," said Dom Anselm. "When the brute lives in the charge of a
Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but she becomes a Norman, and
is called 'pork,' when she is carried to castle-hall to feast among us.
I want no better dish."
"Each to his taste. But here we are. By the Mass, but the place stinks!"
They had come to the landing-stage in the river, and, indeed, the odour
was almost unbearable. For twenty yards round, the water was thick with
foulness. They got into a flat-bottomed boat and pushed off across the
stream. The water was too deep to pole in the centre, but one or two
vigorous strokes sent them gliding towards the further rushes. Lewin
punted skilfully, skirting the reeds, which rose far above his head,
until he came to a narrow opening.
"This will do as well as another," he said, and turned the boat down it.
The water-way was little more than two yards wide, and the reeds grew
thick and high, so that they could only see a little way in front. At
last, after many turns and twists, they came to a still, green pool, a
hundred yards across. In this stagnant evil-looking place they rested,
floating motionless in the centre.
"Geoffroi himself, were he in the reeds, could not hear us now," said
the priest.
"True, but drop a line to give a reason for being here."
The priest took from his girdle a line, wound upon a wooden spool.
Baiting the hook with a piece of meat, he dropped it overboard, and
settled himself comfortably in the bottom of the boat.
"Now, Lewin," said he, "you may go into the matter."
"I will tell you all I have heard," said the minter, "and we will settle
all we purpose to do. You have heard that Roger Bigot has taken Norwich,
and assumed the earldom of the county in rebellion to the king. Hamo de
Copton, the moneyer, is a correspondent of mine, from London, and we
have been interested together in more than one mercantile venture. From
him letters are to hand upon the disposal of four chests of silver
triens in London. You know our money is but token money, and not worth
the face value of the stamp. We are making trial to circulate our money
through Hamo, and in return he sends Lord Geoffroi bars of silver
uncoined. Now, the letter bears a post scriptum to this end. 'The king
is sick, and indeed was taken so before Whitsuntide.' The talk is all
that his cause is losing, and that wise men will be nimble to seize
opportunity. Hamo urges me to consider well if I should seek some other
master than Geoffroi, who is the king's friend."
He stopped suddenly, alarmed by a great disturbance in the water. A pike
had swallowed Anselm's bait and was beating about the pool five or six
yards away, leaping out of the water in its agony. They hauled the line
in slowly, until the great, evil-looking creature was snapping and
writhing at the boat-side. Then, with a joint heave, it lay at the
bottom of the boat, and was soon despatched by the minter's dagger.
"Go on," said Dom Anselm.
"Yestreen," resumed Lewin, "John Heyrown was privy with me for near two
hours. He comes peddling spice from Dentown, hard by Norwich town. I
have known him privily these six months. From him I hear that Roger
Bigot is in the article of setting forth to come upon us here to take
the castle. Geoffroi has great store of fine armour of war, eke fine
metals and jewels of silver and gold. Hilgay would extend Roger's arm
far south, and make a fort for him on the eastern road to London. He is
pressing to London with a great force and inventions of war. Now,
listen, John Heyrown is neither more nor less than in his pay, and he
comes here to see if he can find friends within our walls. Roger knows
of me and my value, and offereth me a high place, and also for my
friends, do I but help him. What do you say?"
Dom Anselm's thin face wrinkled up in thought, weighing the chances.
"I think," he said at last, very slowly, "I think, that we must throw
our lot in with Roger Bigot, and be his men."
"I also," said Lewin. "And I have already been preparing a token of our
choice."
He pulled a piece of vellum from his tunic.
"Here is a map of the castle, clear drawn. There you see marked the weak
spot by the orchard wall; Geoffroi has been long a-mending of it since
we noticed the sinking, but nothing has been done. To enter the castle
need not be difficult. The donjon will be harder; but I have marked a
plan for that also. At the foot of Outfangthef lie _les oubliettes_, and
many deep cellars, raised on arches. It is there keep we our coined
silver and the silver in bars. With his engines, knowing the spot, Roger
could mine deep, and Outfangthef would fall, leaving a great breach."
Anselm took the plan with admiration.
"It's finely writ," he said; "should'st have been in a scriptorium."
"My two hands are good thralls to me," said Lewin, pleased at the
compliment to his work. "Then you and I stand committed to this thing?"
"Since it seems the wisest course, for Lord Roger is a great lord and
strong, I give you my hand."
"Let it be so, friend Anselm. I will give John the plan this night."
"Then it is a thing done. But what is your immediate end?--for I
conceive you have some near purpose in view."
"Some time I will tell you, but not yet."
"It's a woman, you dog!" said the priest with a grin.
"We must homewards," answered the other. "Hark! I hear the horns, they
have returned from the chase."
As he spoke, clear and sweet the tantivy came floating down the hill and
over the water.
"We shall be late for supper," said Lewin, "make haste; take the other
pole."
"God forbid we should be late for supper," said Anselm, and they began
to push back.
"Will Geoffroi know that Roger is about to attack Hilgay?" Anselm asked
Lewin.
"Certainly he will, in a day or two. You may be sure that he has friends
in Norwich, and an expedition does not start without a clatter and talk
all along the country-side. I would wager you a wager, Sir Anselm, that
Geoffroi will hear of it by to-morrow morn."
"And then?"
"Why then to making ready, to get provision and vitaille for the siege."
"Well, I wait it in patience: I never moil and fret. He who waiteth, all
things reach at the last."
"Beware of too much patience, Sir Anselm. Mind you the fable of Chiche
Vache, the monstrous cow, who fed entirely on patient men and women,
and, the tale went, was sorely lean on that fare?
"'Gardez vous de la shicheface,
El vous mordra s'el vous encontre.'"
The Jew gave out the song with a fine trill in his voice, which was as
tuneful as a bell.
The priest, as he watched him and marked his handsome, intelligent face,
was filled with wonder of him. There was nothing he could not do well,
so ran his thoughts, and an air of accomplishment and ease was attendant
upon all his movements. As he threw back his head, drinking in the
evening air, and humming his catch--"el vous mordra s'el vous
encontre"--Anselm was suddenly filled with fear of him. He seemed not
quite to fit into life. He was a Jew, too, and his forefathers had
scourged God Incarnate. Strange things were said about the Jews--art
magic helped them in their work. The priest clutched the cross by his
side, and there was a wonderful comfort in the mere physical contact
with it.
"No," said he, "I have never heard of Chiche Vache that I can call to
mind. I do not care much for fables and fairy tales. There is merry
reading in the lives of Saints, and good for the soul withal."
"The loss is yours, priest. I love the stories and tales of the common
folk, eke the songs they sing to the children. I can learn much from
them. Chiche Vache is as common to the English as to French folk. 'Lest
Chichewache yow swelwe in hir entraille,'" he drawled in a capital
imitation of the uncouth Saxon speech.
By that time they had got to the castle and turned in at its gates.
The courtyard was full with a press of people, and busy as a hive.
Outside the stable doors the horses were being rubbed down by the serfs.
As they splashed the cool water over the quivering fetlocks and hot
legs, all scratched by thorns and forest growth, they crooned a little
song in unison. The "ballad of my lord going hawking" was a melancholy
cadence, which seemed, in its slow minors, instinct with the sadness of
a conquered race. The first verse ran--
"Lord his wyfe upstood and kyssed,
Faucon peregryn on wryst;
Faucon she of fremde londe,
With hir beek Sir Heyrown fonde."
Lewin and Anselm passed by them and stood watching a moment.
"Hear you that song of the grooms?" Lewin said.
"I have heard it a hundred times, but never listened till now," said
Anselm. "But what say they of Faucon peregryn? what means fremde londe?"
"It stands for foreign land in their speech," said the Jew. "Hast much
to learn of thy flock, Anselm?"
"Not I. My belly moves at the crooning. It is like the wind in the
forest of a winter's night. Come you to supper."
"That I will, when I have washed my hands; they are all foul with pike's
blood."
Dom Anselm gave a superior smile, and turned towards the hall.
The great keep lifted its huge angular block of masonry high into the
ruddy evening air, Outfangthef frowned over the bailey below. The door
which opened on the hall steps stood wide, and the servants were
hurrying in and out with dishes of food, while the men-at-arms stood
lingering round it till supper should be ready.
Cookery was an art upon the upward path, and Geoffroi's _chef_ was no
mean professor of it. The hungry crowd saw bowls of stew made from goose
and garlic borne up the stairs. Pork and venison in great quarters
followed, and after them came two kitchen serfs carrying wooden trays of
pastry, and round cakes piously marked with a cross.
Soon came the summons to supper. A page boy came down the steps and
cried that my lord was seated, and every one pressed up the stairs with
much jangling of metal and grinding of feet upon the stones. To our
modern ideas the great hall would present an extraordinary sight. This
rich nobleman fed with less outward-seeming comfort than a pauper in a
clean-scrubbed, whitewashed workhouse of to-day. And yet, though many a
lazy casual would grumble at a dinner served as was Geoffroi de la
Bourne's, there was something enormously impressive in the scene. We are
fortunate in many old chronicles and tales which enable us to
reconstruct it in all its picturesqueness.
Imagine, then, that you are standing on the threshold of the hall just
as supper has been begun.
The hall was a great room of bare stone, with a roof of oaken beams, in
which more than one bird had its nest. There was an enormous stone
chimney, now all empty of fire, and the place was lit with narrow
chinks, unglazed, pierced in the ten-foot wall. The day of splendid
oriels was yet to come in fortress architecture, which was, like the
time, grim and stern. It was dusk now in the outside world, and the hall
was lit with horn lanterns, and also with tall spiked sticks, into which
were fixed rough candles of tallow. The table went right up the hall,
and was a heavy board supported on trestles. Benches were the only
seats.
On a daïs at the far end of the building was the high table, where
Geoffroi and his son and daughter sat. The two squires, Brian de Burgh
and Richard Ferville, also sat at the high table, and Dom Anselm had a
place on the baron's right hand.
Lewin was seated at the head of the lower table, and the baron could
lean over and speak to him if he had a mind to do so.
Geoffroi and his son sat in chairs which were covered with rugs, and at
their side stood great goblets of silver. The dim light threw fantastic
shadows upon the colours of the dresses and the weapons hung on pegs
driven into the wall, blending them into a harmonious whole.
It was a picture of warm reds and browns, of mellow, comfortable
colours, with here and there a sudden twinkle of rich, vivid madder or
old gold.
When every one was seated, Geoffroi nodded to Dom Anselm, who thereupon
pattered out a grace, an act of devotion which was rather marred by the
behaviour of Lord Fulke, who was audibly relating some merry tale to his
friend, Brian de Burgh.
Then every one fell to with a great appetite. The serfs, kneeling,
brought barons of beef and quarters of hot pork on iron dishes. Each man
cut what he fancied with his dagger or hunting-knife, and laid it on his
trencher. Such as chose stew or ragout, ate it from a wooden bowl,
scooping up the mess in their bare hands. Lady Alice held a bone in her
white fingers, and gnawed it like any kitchen wench; and so did they
all, and were, indeed, none the worse for that.
Geoffroi de la Bourne, the central figure of that company, was a tall,
thin man of some five-and-fifty years. His face was lined and seamed
with deep furrows. Heavy brows hung over cold green eyes, and a beaked
eagle nose dominated a small grey moustache, which did not hide a pair
of firm, thin lips. His grey hair fell almost to his shoulders.
Geoffroi, like his son and the squires, was dressed in a tunic, long,
tight hose, a short cloak trimmed with expensive fur, and shoes with
peaked corkscrew toes.
The Baron sat eating quickly, and joining little in the talk around him.
He seemed very conscious of his position as lord of vast lands, and had
the exaggerated manner of the overworked business man.
He had many things to trouble him. The mint was not going well. His
unblushing adulteration of coined monies was severely commented on, and
his silver pennies were looked upon with suspicion in more than one
mercantile centre. The king was ill, and the license made possible by
the disordered state of the country was exciting the great churchmen to
every intrigue against the barons. Moreover, plunder was become
increasingly difficult. Merchants no longer passed with their trains
anywhere near the notorious castle of Hilgay, and, except for his
immediate retainers, all the country round was up in arms against
Geoffroi.
He had imagined that stern, repressive measures would terrify his less
powerful neighbours into silence. Two flaming churches in the fens and
the summary hanging of the priests had, however, only incensed East
Anglia to a passion of hatred.
Even as he sat at supper a certain popular Saxon gentleman, Byrlitelm by
name, lay at the bottom of an unmentionable hole beneath Outfangthef,
groaning his life away in darkness and silence, while his daughter was
the sport and plaything of the two young squires. Disquieting rumours
were abroad about the intentions of the powerful Roger Bigot of Norwich,
who was known to be hand-in-glove with the Earl of Gloucester, the
half-brother of Matilda.
Added to these weighty troubles, Geoffroi, who like all nobles of that
day was an expert carver in wood and metal, had cut his thumb almost to
the bone by the slip of a graving tool, and it throbbed unbearably. A
still further annoyance threatened him. Gertrude of Albermarl, a little
girl of fifteen, now acting as an attendant to Lady Alice, was a ward of
his whom he had taken quietly, usurping one of the especial privileges
of his friend the king.
The Crown managed the estates of minors, and held the right of giving in
marriage the heirs and heiresses of its tenants. "The poor child may be
tossed and tumbled chopped and changed, bought and sold, like a jade in
Smithfield, and, what is more, married to whom it pleaseth his
guardian--whereof many evils ensue," says Jocelyn de Brakelond, and the
wardship of little Gertrude was a very comfortable thing. Stephen had
heard of this act of Geoffroi's, and had sent him a peremptory summons
to send the child immediately to town. Geoffroi had that day determined
that little Gertrude should be married incontinently, to the young
ruffian his son, but the step was a grave one to take, and would
probably alienate the king irrevocably.
So he ate his supper gloomily. Every one in the place knew immediately
that he was displeased, and it cast a gloom over them also.
As the meal went on, conversation became fitful and constrained, and the
crowd of lecheurs, or beggars, who waited round the door, disputing
scraps of food with the lean fen dogs, could be distinctly heard
growling and gobbling among themselves in obscene chatter.
When at last Lady Alice withdrew and the cups were filled afresh with
cool wine from the cellar, Geoffroi signed to Fulke to come up to him.
The young man was a debauched creature of twenty-six, clean-shaven. His
hair was not long like his father's, but clipped close. The back of his
head was also shaven, and gave him a fantastic, elfin appearance. It was
a custom to shave the back of the head, which was very generally
adopted, especially in hot weather, among the young dandies of the
time.[2]
"Letters from the king," said Geoffroi shortly, in a deep, hoarse voice.
"About Gertrude?"
"Yes, that is it. Now there is but one answer to make to that. You must
marry her in a day or so, and then nothing more can be said."
"That is the only thing," said Fulke, grinning and wrinkling up his
forehead till his stubble of hair seemed squirting out of it. "But I
will not give up my pleasures for that."
"Who asked you?" said the father. "She is but a child and a-knoweth
nothing--you can make them her maids-in-waiting, that will please her."
He laughed a short, snarling laugh. "Sir Anselm shall tie the knot with
Holy Church her benediction."
[2] _It is quite possible that this fashion of the shavelings
accounted for the mistake of Harold's spies at the Conquest, who
said that there were more priests in the Norman camp than
fighting men in the English army!_
He summoned that scandalous old person from his wine.
"Priest," said he, "my Lord Fulke is about to wed little Lady Gertrude;
so make you ready in a day or two. I will give you the gold cross I took
from Medhampstede, for a memorial, and we will eke have a feast for
every one of my people."
"It is the wisest possible thing, Lord Geoffroi," said Anselm. "I will
say a Mass or two and get to praying for the young folk, and Heaven will
be kind to them."
"That do," said Fulke and Geoffroi, making the sign of the cross, for,
strange as it may seem, both the scoundrels were real believers in the
mysterious powers of the chaplain. Though they saw him drunken,
lecherous, and foul of tongue, yet they believed entirely in his power
to arrange things for them with God. Indeed, paradoxical as it may
sound, if Anselm had not been at Hilgay, both of them would have been
better men. They would not have dared some of their excesses, had it not
been possible to obtain immediate absolution. A rape and a murder were
cheap at a pound of wax altar lights and a special Mass.
"Here's good fortune," said Anselm, lifting the cup and bowing to Fulke.
"Thank you for't," said the young man. "Father, the minter shall make us
a ring, and his mouth shall give the tidings to the other officers.
Lewin, come you here, you have a health to drink." Lewin was summoned to
the upper table, and sat drinking with them, pledging many toasts. Once
he cast a curious glance at Anselm, and that worthy smiled back at him.
The evening was growing very hot and oppressive as it wore on. It was
quite dark outside and there was thunder in the air. Every now and again
the sky muttered in wrath, and at such sounds a sudden stillness fell
upon the four knaves at the high table, and, putting down their wine
vessels, they crossed themselves. Lewin made the "great cross" each
time, "from brow to navel, and from arm to arm."
Little Gertrude was long since a-bed, her prayers said, and her little
dark head tucked under the coverlet. She felt quite safe from the
thunder, for she had invoked Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Luke and
Saint Matthew, to stand round her bed all night, and she knew that they
would be there while she slept. Who, indeed, shall say that my Lords the
Saints were not guarding the sleeping child on that eventful night?
Geoffroi began to be less taciturn as the wine warmed him. Some bone
dice were produced, and they fell to playing for silver pennies. One of
the squires joined them, but the other left the hall early, as he had
some tender business afoot with Gundruda, the pretty serving-maid.
In the middle of the game, a stir came about at the hall door. One or
two of the soldiers went to see what was toward. A traveller, wet with
rain, was asking speech with Geoffroi, and he was brought up to the high
table by Huber and John.
"My lord," said he, "you will remember me. I am Oswald, your liege man.
I come from Norwich bearing news of war. I have been there a-buying
rams, and I bring you grave news. Roger Bigot is arming all his men in
hot speed, and comes to Hilgay to overthrow us. In a week or two he will
be here. He is very strong in arms."
These tidings affected the five men very differently.
Lewin glanced quickly at Anselm, and then turned to Oswald, waiting
more. The young squire tossed his head, and rang his hand upon the table
joyously. Fulke's lips tightened, and an ugly light came into his eyes.
The Baron alone showed no outward sign of agitation. He drummed his
fingers on the side of the wine-goblet for a minute, in silence.
Then he suddenly looked up, "Well," he said, "that is news, Oswald, but
I had thought to hear it a month since! Let the man come up against me
if he will, he shall rot for't, damn his soul! I am lord of this
country-side, with a rare lot of devils, lusty for blood, to guard this
keep. A week, you say? Very well, in a week he shall find us ready. But
get you to the table, Oswald, along of my merry men, and see that you
drink in God's name. Get you drunken, Oswald, my man; I thank you for
this. Get you drunk. Really, you should, in God's name. Huber! John!
Tell Master Pantler from me to put rope to windlass and draw up a cask
of wine for the men-at-arms. HEI! HEI!! HEI!!!" he shouted in a vast and
wonderful voice, rising in his seat and holding his beaker above his
head, "Men of mine! men of mine! my Lord Roger Bigot, the bastard from
Norwich town, lusteth for our blood and castle. The foining scamp
a-comes riding with a great force to take us. Drink ye all to me, men of
mine, and we will go against this traitor to the king--HEI! HEI! HEI!"
There was a fierce roar of exultation which pierced the very roof. The
war spirit ran like fire round the great hall, and as Geoffroi's tall
figure stood high above them, his voice rolled louder than the mightest
shouter there.
They broached the cask of wine, and brought torches into the hall until
the whole place flamed with light. The enthusiasm was indescribable.
They had all been long spoiling for a fight, and here was news indeed!
Oswald was plied with drink and pestered with questions.
When, in some half-hour's time, the excitement had in some degree
subsided, it began to be told among the men that a jongleur was in the
castle, and had been there since the afternoon. Lewin told Geoffroi of
this, and the man was sent for, so that he might amuse them with songs
of battle.
CHAPTER IV
Other incidents which occurred on the last night of Geoffroi de la
Bourne
In the early Middle Ages, no less than now, men and women believed in
ominous happenings to those about to die. Strange things were known to
occur in monasteries when a priest was going, and it was said that the
night before a battle soldiers would sometimes feel an icy cold wind
upon their faces, which fell from Death himself, beating his great
wings.
There were no materialists in England in those times, and the unseen
world was very near and present to men's minds.
On this night of thunder and alarms, there was to happen another of
those supernatural occurrences which are so difficult to explain away.
About the time the jongleur was brought into the hall--a little elderly
man, very pleasant and merry, but yet with something greedy, brutal,
and dangerous in his face--the enclosure of the serfs began to be
agitated by new and terrible emotions. Tragedy, indeed, had often
entered there, but it was at the bidding of some one in the outside
world. To-night she was to be invoked by the downtrodden and oppressed
themselves.
When men are gathered together, set upon some fearful act of retribution
or revenge, the very air seems instinct with the thoughts that are in
their hearts, and fluid with the electricity of the great deed to be
done.
In the centre of the stoke the common fire burnt without flame, for the
rain had tamed it. Round the fire sat the conspirators, and in the
stillness, for the rain was over and there was no wind, the murmuring of
their voice seemed like the note of an organ hidden in the wood.
Round the stoke the giant trees made a tremendous sable wall, grim and
silent, and even the dark sky above was brighter and more hopeful than
the silent company of trees. The sky was full of flickering
lightnings--white, green, and amethyst--and ever and again the thunder
murmured from somewhere over against Ely. Sometimes a spear of
lightning came right into the stoke, cracking like a whip.
The little group of inky figures round the embers seemed in no way
disturbed by the elements, but only drew closer and fell into more
earnest talk.
Hyla, Cerdic, Harl, Gurth, and Richard, sat planning the murder of
Geoffroi. On the morrow the Baron was to ride after a great boar which
the foresters knew of in the wood. This was settled, and it was thought
there would be a great hunt, for the boar was cunning, fierce, and old.
Now Geoffroi was skilled in all the elaborate science of woodcraft. He
knew every word of the pedantic Norman jargon of the hunt in all its
extravagance. He could wind upon his horn every mot known to the chase,
and no man could use the dissecting dagger upon a dead stag more
scientifically than he. More than all this, he rode better and with more
ardour than either his son or squires. Often it would happen that he
would gallop far into the forest after game, outstripping all his train.
They were used to that, and would often start another quarry for
themselves. Geoffroi was a moody man, happy alone, privy to himself,
and it had become somewhat of a custom to let him ride alone.
Now the serfs plotted that they should lie hidden in the underwood and
turn the boar towards a distant glade called Monkshood. In that open
space--for the trees were sparse there and studded the turf at wide
intervals--it was probable that Geoffroi would wind the death mot of the
quarry. It was to be his last mellow call in this world, for Hyla
planned to take him as he stood over the dead boar and kill him in the
ride.
Then when he had done the work, he was to return through the brushwood
towards the village. Provided only that the other hunters were far away
while he was killing the Baron, his presence in the wood would excite
little comment, even if he was seen returning. Moreover, he purposed to
carry an armful of dry sticks, so that he might appear as if he were
gathering kindling wood.
He would reach the stoke, he thought, just about the time that the
huntsmen would discover the Baron lying stark. He was to go through the
village, down the hill to the river, and embark in a small punt. He
would fly for his life then, poling swiftly through all the waterways of
the fen till he reached Icombe in the heart of the waters, where he
should find sanctuary and lie hid till happier times.
Hyla sat among them curiously confident. He never for a moment doubted
the result of the enterprise. None of them did. The resolution which
they had taken was too overwhelming to allow a suspicion of failure.
There was something terrible in this grim certainty.
In an hour or two, Gruach and Frija, with the two little prattling boys,
were to be taken down to the river and to set out for the Priory
beforehand, so that Hyla should find them waiting him. Harl was to punt
throughout the night, hoping to reach safety by dawn. It was a hard
journey, for the Priory was fifteen miles away.
"It is near time to set out," said Harl. "My heart is gride at this
night's work."
"Sore things always happen in time of wracke," said Cerdic. "See that
you protect Gruach and Frija in their unlustiness."
"The boat shall speed as boat never did before, and they shall be safe
at dawning."
Hyla had been sitting in silence staring at the red heart of the fire as
if he saw pictures there. "I am nothing accoyed," he said at length, "I
fear nothing save for Elgifu."
Harl beat upon the ground with his fist. "An you kill Geoffroi, I have a
mind to deal with Fulke also in sic a way. Little Elgifu!"
"She was always a little fool," said Hyla roughly. "She has made choys
and lies in the arms of a lord. Think no more of her, Harl. I hope they
will not hurt her, that is all."
"They will not hurt her, I wote," Cerdic broke in cheerfully. "They will
gain nothing by that. She is a piece of goods of value. They will not
hurt her."
The arrangements were all made for the flight of Gruach and Frija; the
plot was planned in every detail, and a silence fell upon them. Few of
them had the art of conversation or knew how to talk. Hyla sat silent,
with nothing in his brain to say. Although he was in a state of fierce
excitement, of exultation at a revelation of self, which appeared
miraculous in its freshness--as if he had been suddenly given a new
personality--he had never a word to say. Cerdic was his firm and
faithful friend, but he could express none of the thoughts surging over
him even to Cerdic. The poor toiling, tired souls had never learnt the
gift of speech; they were cut off from each other, except in the rarest
instances.
For example, a combination, such as the one we are discussing, was
unheard of. Of course, only a few of the serfs had been told of the
plot, for it would not have been safe in the hands of many of them. Yet,
that eight or nine men, with all the stumbling blocks of inherited
slavery, a miserable life, and an incredible lack of opportunity, should
have learnt and put in practice the lesson of combination, is a most
startling fact.
"Combination," indeed, was born that night, and stood ready to be
clothed with a vigorous life, and to supply the means for a slow but
glorious revolution. The direct effects of the proceedings at Hilgay
have affected our whole history to this day.
After a half-hour of silence, broken only by an occasional
word-of-course, the women, who had been sleeping to gain strength, were
summoned for departure.
The great enterprise seemed to knit the men at the fire together in a
wonderful way. They felt they must keep with each other, and all rose to
accompany the fugitives to the river. The little boys, sleepily
protesting, were carried in the arms of two of the men, and the
melancholy procession stole out into the warm darkness. The other serfs
were all asleep, and deep breathings resounded as they passed the huts.
At the entrance to the stoke a mongrel dog barked at them, but a blow
with a stick sent him away whining.
In a few minutes, treading very quietly, they were passing along the
green by the castle. There were still points of light in the towering
black walls, and distant sounds of revelry coming to them sent them
along with faster steps.
Now that the enterprise was actually embarked upon, most of them felt
very uneasy. The mere sight of that enormous pile brought before their
minds the tremendous power they were going up against. It was so visible
and tangible a thing, such a symbol of their own poor estate.
But Frija, as she passed the castle, spat towards the palisades and
ground her teeth in fury. That heartened them up a little. They had
wives and daughters also. As Gruach passed, she wept bitterly for Elgifu
within. They went without mishap through the village. All the houses
were silent and showed no sign of life. The way was very dark, though
the white chalk of the road helped them a little to find it. Also, now
and then, the lightning lit up the scene strangely, showing the members
of the group to each other, hurrying, very furtive and white of face.
The fens opened before them as a wall of white vapour. No stranger would
have imagined the vast flat expanses beyond. The mist might have
concealed any other kind of scenery. Standing on the hill they could see
the mysterious blue lights dancing over the fen. They crossed themselves
at that. It was thought that restless souls danced over the waters at
night, and that many evil things were abroad after dark.
They were quite close to the landing-stage and, encircled by the mist,
walking very warily, when Harl, who was a pioneer, was heard to give a
quick shout of alarm.
Another voice was heard roughly challenging. They passed through the
vapour and came suddenly upon Pierce, the man-at-arms. At his feet lay a
heap of fish, phosphorescent in the dark. He looked at them with deep
amazement. "What are you?" he said.
As he spoke, and his voice gave clue to his identity, Hyla gathered
himself together and leapt upon him. The two men fell with a great
clatter on to the very edge of the landing-stage, slipping and
struggling among the great heap of wet fish. Had not the others come to
their assistance both would have been in the water.
Hyla rose bleeding from scratches on the face. Gurth had a great bony
hand over the soldier's mouth, and the others held him pinned to the
ground, so that he was quite powerless.
"Get the women away," said Cerdic, "get the women away."
Harl stepped from punt to punt until he came to a long light boat of
oak, low in the water, and built for speed. He cast off the rope which
tied it to one of the other punts, and brought it alongside the steps.
He put a bundle of clothing and food in the centre, and waited for
Gruach and her daughter.
Hyla lifted the little boys, wrapped in cat-skins, into the boat, and
turned to Gruach. She lay sobbing in his arms, pressing her wet face to
his.
"Pray Lord Christ that I am with you on the morrow, wife," he said, "and
fare you well!" He embraced Frija, and helped both women into the boat.
Harl took up the pole.
"Farewell!" came in a deep, low chorus from the group of serfs, and,
with no further words, the boat shot away into the dark. They could hear
the splash of the pole and the wailing of the women, and then the
darkness closed up and hid them utterly.
The men closed round Pierce. There seemed no hesitation in their
movements. It was felt by every one that he must die. Despite his
frantic struggles, they unbuckled his belt and dagger. Cerdic pulled
down the neck of his tunic and laid bare the flesh beneath. Hyla
unsheathed the dagger, trembling with joy as his enemy lay beneath
him----
It was as easy as killing a cat, and they took the body and sank it in
mid-stream. Then they stood upon the landing-stage speechless, huddled
close together--torn by exultation and fear.
Cerdic saw that they were terrified at what had been done. "Come,
friends," said he, "fall upon your knees with me, and pray the Blessed
Virgin to shed her favour upon Hyla and his work to-morrow. The fish are
at one black knave already, to-morrow a greater shall meet his man in
hell. Our Lady and my Lords the Saints are with us; get you to praying."
In a moment a sudden flash of lightning, which leapt across the great
arch of heaven, showed a group of kneeling forms, silent, with bended
heads.
Soon they went stealing up the hill again, but not before Gurth had
delivered himself of a grim, though practical pleasantry. "I'll have the
divell's fish," he said, and with that he slung them over his shoulder,
for they were threaded upon a string.
* * * * *
The jongleur in the hall played upon his crowth, and sang them
Serventes, Lays, and songs of battle. Between each song he rested his
fiddle upon the floor and drank a draught of morat, till his lips and
chin were all purple with the mulberry juice. Then he would say that he
would give them a little something which dealt with the great surquedy
and outrecuidance of a certain baron, the son of a lady of ill-fame, and
how, being in his cups, this man was minded to go up in fight against a
rock. So, forthwith, the hero got him up on his destrier and ran full
tilt against the rock. "Then," the jongleur would conclude in quite the
approved modern music-hall style, "the sward was all besprent with what
remained." Vulgar wit then was own brother to coarse wit to-day, and a
vulgar fool in the twelfth century differed but little from a vulgar
fool in the nineteenth.
A broad grin sat solid upon the faces of the soldiers. When the jongleur
began to sing little catches in couplets, plucking the string of his
crowth the while for accompaniment, they nudged each other with delight
at each coarse suggestion. They were exactly like a group of little
foolish boys in the fourth form of a public school, just initiated into
the newness of cheap wit, whispering ancient rhymes to each other.
Perhaps there was not much harm in it. When we grow to the handling of
our own brain unadorned vulgarity revolts us, as a rule, but there is
hardly a man, before his brain has ripened, who has not sniggered upon
occasion at unpleasant trivialities. It is no manner of use ignoring the
fact. Put the question to yourself, if you are a man, and remember, not
without gratitude for the present, what an unprofitable little beast you
were.
They were children, these men-at-arms. They had the cruelty of
wolves--or children, the light-heartedness of children. Imagine what
Society would be if children of fourteen were as strong and powerful as
their elders. If you can conceive that, you can get a little nearer to
the men-at-arms.
But as the grotesque little man mouthed and chattered, his teeth
flashing white in his purple-stained jaws, like some ape, the more
powerful brains at the high table had no excuse for their laughter.
The hedge priest roared with delight, Fulke sniggered meaningly, and a
sardonic grin lit up the stern countenance of Geoffroi de la Bourne.
Lewin must be given credit for a finer attitude. He seemed insufferably
bored by the whole thing, and longing to be in bed.
The night wore on, and they drank deep, till more than one head lay low.
Geoffroi filled his cup again and again, but each potation left him
clearer in brain, affecting him not at all. At last he rose to seek his
couch. Dom Anselm was snoring heavily, Lewin had already departed, and
Fulke was playing dice with the squire.
"I have no mind to sleep for a while," Geoffroi said, "the night is
hot. Bring a torch," he said to a serf; and then turning to the
jongleur, "come with me, Sir Jester, to my bed-side, and relate to me
some merry tales till I fall upon sleep, for I am like to wake long this
night."
Preceded by the flickering of the torch, and followed by the minstrel,
he left the hall. They descended the steps in red light and deepest
shadow, and came out into the courtyard which was very still. Every one
was asleep save one lean dog, who, hearing footsteps, padded up and
thrust his cold nose into Geoffroi's hand. He fondled the creature,
standing still for a moment, sending a keen eye round the big empty
space, as who should find some enemy lurking there. The two others
waited his pleasure.
"Come, come," he said at length in curiously detached tones, extremely
and noticeably unlike his usual quick incisiveness, "we will get to
bed."
He turned towards Outfangthef. They had taken some three paces towards
the tower, when a lightning flash of dazzling brilliancy leapt right
over the sky from pole to pole, and showed the whole scene as bright as
in the day. Geoffroi stopped suddenly, as did the others, expecting a
great peal of thunder. Suddenly the Baron began to shiver and bend. He
wheeled round tottering, and caught the minstrel by the shoulder. The
little man squeaked like a rat in the jaws of a dog.
"Hist!" said Geoffroi, "What do you hear? What do you hear, man?"
"Nothing, my lord," said the jongleur in deep amazement.
"Listen, jongleur. What do you hear now?" said he.
"My lord, I can hear nothing," answered the little man.
"I have drunken too deep," said the Baron; "surely I am most devilishly
drunk, for I can hear, I can hear"--he leant in the manner of a man
listening--"I can hear now as I speak to you, voices as of a great
company of men praying to Our Lady--listen! their voices are praying
deeply. I think they must be monks."
"Lord, look you to this," whispered the serf, terror-stricken.
The dog, perhaps because he felt the three men were going in fear, or
perhaps from some deeper and more hidden reason which men do not yet
understand, crouched low on the ground and hid his head between his
paws, whining.
"They are praying to the Blessed Virgin," said Geoffroi. "Can you hear
nothing--those deep voices?"
"My lord," said the jongleur with more confidence, "the night is late,
and I have known many sounds appear like human voices in the night. A
cow loweth or a beetle boometh in the orchard flowers."
"What it may be I do not know," answered he, "but I know that it is no
ox a-lowing or fly upon the wing. I am not mocked. There is something
wrong with the night."
"The more reason, Sir Geoffroi, that I should divert you with tales and
jests. These fearful nights of strange lights in the sky and noises from
the fen lands need some light business to fill the mind. To bed, my
lord!"
"Come then," said Geoffroi. "God shield us, it is very hot," and as he
turned, the sweat stood in great drops upon his brow.
At the exact moment the little party entered the door of Outfangthef,
the serfs, far down in the fen, rose from their knees, and began to
steal swiftly and noiselessly up the hill.
The Baron's sleeping chamber was an octagonal stone room with a groined
roof. A faldestol, the great-grandfather of our own armchair, spread
with cushions, stood by a tall candlestick. The bed boasted curtains and
a roof, though its occupant lay upon nothing more luxurious than straw.
On a low table near the faldestol were some vessels of glass and silver.
Arms hung upon the walls, and a litter of shavings on the floor showed
the Baron had been carving at some time during the day. On the perch by
the bed head sat Geoffroi's favourite hawk, now sunk in motionless and
sinister sleep.
Taken as a whole, the apartment was extremely comfortable and even
luxurious in its appearance. To reconstruct it nowadays would cost the
modern æsthete an enormous sum of money.
The serf knelt at the threshold and delivered the torch to the jongleur,
who lit the candle from it. Then Geoffroi shut the door, and, removing
his tunic and short cloak, flung himself on the bed.
"Sit there," he said to the man, pointing to the faldestol. "There is
wine upon the table if you are thirsty." Then he added with a change of
manner, "you are well found in faëry tales and sic like. What means the
noise I have heard to-night?"
"They say, my lord, that souls that cannot rest may be heard singing and
wailing in the fen, calling on each other in reproach."
"The pot upbraiding the kettle for the soot on't! Well, well, that sweet
morat is bad for a man, I think. Better stick to wine. The honey makes
the brain mad."
"There is poison in many flowers," said the jongleur, "and what likes a
bee's belly well enough may be bad for a man. It was the drink in you,
my lord, for I heard no sound."
"It does not matter much. It is done and over. For the minute I was
accoyed. Tell me a story."
"The night before the great fight of Senlac," said the jongleur, "is
told of as a most wonderful strange night. The minstrel, Taillefer, went
a-wandering round the camp fires, cheering the hearts of the soldiers
with songs, by the order of Duke William himself. The Duke had made
order that but little wine was to be given to the troops, and that they
were to ride into battle shriven and fasting. So he sent Taillefer to
cheer them with songs. The minstrel wandered from fire to fire over the
hill till he was weary and would sleep. He came, as he went, to the old
fort of the Haestingas, and there, under a ruined wall, he laid him
down.
"Now my lord, Sir Taillefer was a very evil man. By the rood, but he was
an evil man! Whatever deviltry a could lay his mind to, that did he, and
he was in great favour with the Duke.
"Now two days before the battle the Norman army had come sailing from
Saint Valeri, and had landed on the sands of England at Bulverhithe,
near Pevensey, or Anderida, as some will have it. No Saxon came to
oppose the landing, for the fighting men were all at the northern war on
Derwent banks. In the village, Taillefer came upon a farmhouse, where
the farmer was away at the war, for all the houses were empty of men.
There did he find and ill-use a beautiful Saxon girl, who did resist him
with many tears. He was a gay fellow, with ever a song in's mouth, but
for all that, his dwelling that night was besprent with tears and
wailing.
"Now, as Taillefer lay a-sleeping in the old fort, there came to him and
stood by his side a long, thin man, with yellow hair and a cleft lip.
'What are you?' said Taillefer. 'Look well at me,' said the man, 'for I
am the father of Githa, whom you used with violence. To-morrow morn we
shall meet again. You will be singing your last song.'
"Now Taillefer was a brave man, and loved a fight, so with that he got
him his axe and cleft the man from head to toe. But the blow went
through the air as if no one was there, and the axe, falling upon a
rock, was splintered into pieces and Taillefer a top of it, sprawling
face down, and, they say, bawling most lustily. Two soldiers found him,
and he said he was drunk to them, though he was no more drunk than my
crowth.
"On the morrow, at nine of the clock, the bugles rang out mots of war,
and the Normans were about advancing. Taillefer, in great inward fear,
for he knew that he would die that day, prayed a boon from the Duke,
that he might strike the first blow of the fight. He did not want to
live long with the fear upon him. The Duke said aye to his question, so
a-got on his destrier, and went riding out of the lines singing gaily,
though 'twas said his face was very pale. He couched his lance at a
Saxon, and pierced him through. Then a tall, thin man, with yellow hair
and s cleft lip, came swiftly at him with a sword, and thrust it into
his belly before he could recover the lance. 'It is you, then,' said
Taillefer, and died in great torment."
His voice sank into silence, and he lifted the wine-cup for refreshment.
"It is a strange story," said Geoffroi, "and a pitiful to-do about a
theow girl. I do not believe that story."
"I spun it as 'twas told to me, my lord," said the teller humbly.
The big man moved among the crackling straw and crossed himself, and we
who have no great crime upon our conscience need not be careful to
enquire into his thoughts.
"I will sleep now," he said after a pause.
The minstrel rose to go, bowing a farewell.
"No," said Geoffroi; "stay there, make your bed in that faldestol
to-night. I do not care to be alone. And, mark well! that if you hear
any untoward noise, or should you hear a sound of men's voices praying,
rouse me at once."
He turned his face towards the wall, and before long his deep breathing
showed that sleep had come to him.
The candle began to burn very low and to flicker. The jongleur saw
enormous purple shadows leap at each other across the room, and play,
fantastic, about the bed. He rose and peered out of a narrow unglazed
window in the thickness of the wall. The hot air from the room passed by
his cheeks as it made its way outside. There was no lightning now, and
the sky was beginning to be full of a colourless and clear light, which
showed that dawn was about to begin. Far, far away in some distant
steading, the jongleur heard the crowing of a cock.
As he watched, the daylight began to flow and flood out of the East, and
close to the window he heard a thin, reedy chirp from a starling just
half awake.
He turned round towards the room, thinking he heard a stir. He saw the
elderly man on the bed risen up upon his elbow. His right hand pointed
towards the opposite wall, at a space over the table. With a horrid fear
thumping in his heart and sanding his throat, the minstrel saw that
Geoffroi's eyes were open in an extremity of terror, and his nostrils
were caught up and drawn like a man in a fit.
"My lord! my lord!" he quavered at him.
There was no sign that Geoffroi heard him, except for a quivering of his
pointing, rigid finger. The minstrel took up a vessel of glass from the
table, and flung it on the floor.
The crash roused the Baron. His arm dropped and his face relaxed, and,
with a little groan, he fell face down in a swoon. The minstrel hopped
about the room in an agony of indecision. Then he took the jug of wine,
the only liquid he could find, and, turning the Baron on his back, he
flung it in his face.
Geoffroi sat up with a sudden shout, all dripping crimson. He held out
his red-stained hand. "What is this? What is this?" he cried in a high,
unnatural voice. "This is blood on my hand!"
"No, my lord, it is wine," said the jongleur; "you fell into a deep
swoon, and it was thus I roused you."
"Did you see him?" said Geoffroi. "Oh, did you see him by the wall?
Christ shield us all! It was Pierce, a soldier of mine. His throat was
cut and all bloody, and he made mouths like a man whose throat is slit
in war."
"My lord, you are disordered," said the jongleur. "You ate pork at
supper, a wonderful bad thing for the belly at night."
Geoffroi said never a word, but fell trembling upon his knees.
CHAPTER V
The three trees of Monkshood Glade.
How fresh the morning air was in the wood! A million yellow spears
flashed through the thick leaves and stabbed the undergrowth with gold.
A delicious smell of leaves and forest beasts scented the cool breezes,
and birds of all colours sang hymns to the sun.
An early summer morning in a great wood! In all life there is nothing so
mysteriously delightful. Where the leaves of the oaks and elms and
beeches were so thick that they turned the spaces below into fragrant
purple dusk, what soft bright-eyed creatures might lie hid! In the hot
open glades brilliant little snakes lay shining, and green-bronze
lizards, like toy dragons, slept in armour. The fat singing bees that
shouldered their way through the bracken wore broad gold bands round
their fur, and had thin vibrating wings of pearl. They were like jewels
with voices.
Upon a piece of smooth grass sward, nibbled quite short by rabbits,
which sloped down to a brook of brown and amber water, sat Lewin, the
minter. His fine clear-cut face harmonised with all the beauty around,
and he drank in the air as if it had been wine. There was a soft look in
his eyes as of a man dreaming of lovely things. His face is worth a
little scrutiny. The glorious masses of dark-red hair gave it an
aureola, the long straight nose showed enormous force of character, but
the curve of the lips was delicate and refined, and seemed to oppose a
weakness. There was something dreamy, treacherous, and artistic in his
countenance.
For an hour Lewin had come into the wood to forget his scheming and
ambitions and to be happy in the sunlight. He plucked blades of grass
idly and threw them into the brook. Once he looked up, feeling that
something was watching him, and saw mild eyes regarding him from a
thicket. It was a young fawn which had come to drink in the brook, and
saw him with gentle surprise. He gave a hunting halloa, and immediately
the wood all round was alive with noise and flying forms. Part of a
herd of deer had been closing round his resting-place, and were leaping
away in wild terror at his shout.
The forest became silent again, until he heard feet crackling on the
leaves and twigs, and looking up saw a radiant vision approaching him. A
tall, dark girl, lithe as a willow, was coming through the wood.
Lewin sprang up from the little lawn and went down the path to meet her,
holding out his hands.
"Ah, Gundruda!" he said, "I have waited your coming. How fair you are
this beautiful morning!"
"Go away," she said, with a flash of pearls. "That is what you say to
every girl."
"Of course, Gundruda mine. I love all women; my heart is as large as an
abbey."
"Then your fine speeches lose all their value, minter. But I have a
message."
He dropped his banter at once. "Yes! yes!" he said eagerly.
"My lord goeth after a boar this afternoon with Sir Fulke, and my Lady
Alice will be by the well in the orchard when they have gone."
"Good," said he, "there will I be also. Are Richard and Brian going
hunting?"
"No; they will be hard at work with all the theows and men-at-arms
fortifying the castle. Oh, Lewin, there is such a to-do! Last night as
ever was, came a messenger to say Roger Bigot is coming to Hilgay to
kill us all, and Christ help us! that is what I say."
A shrill note of alarm had come into her voice, for she had seen war
before, and knew something of the unbridled cruelty that walked with
conquerors. At that he put his arm round her waist and drew her close to
him. They were a fine pair as they stood side by side in the wood. Lewin
captured one pretty hand in his--a little, white, firm hand that curled
up comfortably in his clasp. Then he kissed her on her soft cheeks.
"How beautiful you are," he said in a soft, dreamy voice, deep and rich.
He strained her to him. "Oh, how strange and beautiful you are,
Gundruda. I would that for ever you were in my arms. There is nothing
like you in the world, Gundruda. You are worth kingdoms. Oh, you
beautiful girl!"
She abandoned herself to his caresses, with closed eyes and quick
shuddering breaths of pleasure. Suddenly the mellow notes of a horn in
all their proud sweetness came floating through the wood, and this
amorous business came to a sudden end.
Geoffroi was starting out to the hunt.
The two people in the wood went back to the castle by devious ways. They
found that Lord Geoffroi with a few attendants had already left the
castle and entered the forest.
The castle-works were humming with activity. The weapon smiths were
forging and fitting arrow heads, and making quarels and bolts. The
carpenters were building hoards, or wooden pent houses, which should be
run out on the top of the curtains. The crenelets, which grinned between
the roof and the machicolade at the top of Outfangthef, were cleared of
all obstructions. A trébuchet for slinging stones--invented in Flanders,
and very effective at short range--was being fitted together on the roof
of the Barbican. Hammers were tapping, metal rang on metal, the saws
groaned, and a great din of preparation pervaded everything.
In one corner of the bailey a man was cutting lead into strips so that
it could be more easily made molten and poured upon besiegers. In
another a group were hoisting pitch barrels on to the walls with a
pulley and tackle.
In and out of the great gateway rough carts were rattling every moment,
full of apples and wheat from the farmhouses round.
A row of patient oxen were stabled in a pen, hastily knocked up with
beams of fir, in one corner of the bailey. In the field by the castle
side, the swine shrieked horribly as a serf killed them relentlessly,
and in the kitchens the women boiled, dried, and salted before glowing
wood fires.
Long before dawn, scouts on swift horses had been posting along the
Norwich road, and messages had been sent to all the villeins proper to
fulfil their pledge of service.
Tongues wagged unceasing.
"Come ye here, cripples, and give a hand to this beam."
"Have you gotten your money safe, minter? The bastard son a letcheth
after coined monies."
"Aye, and after more things than coined monies. Gundruda, beauty, Roger
hath a fat Turkman privy to him, and going always in his train. He will
marry you to the black man!"
"By the rood, then, I'd as soon wed him as you!"
"Roger taketh with him always a crucet hûs, my son."
"And what is that, then, Father Anselm?"
"Know you not the crucet hûs? fight lustily, then, or you may know him
too well. The crucet hûs, that is a chest which is short and narrow and
shallow. Roger putteth men therein, and putteth sharp stones upon him so
that all his limbs be brake thereby. My Lord Bigot loveth it. Also he
useth the 'Lâŏ and grim.' 'Tis a neck bond, my lad, of which two or
three men had enough to bear one! It is so made that it is fastened to a
beam. And Roger putteth a sharp iron round about the man's throat and
his neck, so that he cannot in any direction sit or lie or sleep, but
must bear all that iron."
"God's teeth! Father! you have a merry way of comfort."
"Truth is stern, Huber; fight then lustily, and get you shriven
to-morrow."
"That will I, Father."
"And you, John and Denys, and Robert, all you soldiers. Come you to me
ere this fight, and pay Holy Church her due fee, and have safety for
your souls. An if you die then you will be saved men, and among the
merry angels and my Lords the Saints, as good as they in heaven. An you
go not to battle with hearts purged of sin, the divell will have every
mother's son of you. Alas, how miserable and rueful a time will be then!
And you who are whilom in shining armour-mail, with wine to drink, and
girls to court for your pleasure, will lie in a portion of fire but
seven foot long."
Thus, Anselm, the hedge priest, passing from group to group in beery
exhortation.
Who knows how it affected them?
The heavenly sun still looks into the lowest valleys. The unclean hands
of that false priest, unfaithful minister that he was, may have given
the mass to a sick soul with great spiritual comfort. The bestial old
man may have absolved dark men, penitent of their sins, because they
themselves earnestly believed in his power.
As he sat in the chapel during that day, the mysterious powers conferred
on him from Saint Peter himself, in unbroken succession, may, indeed,
have flowed through him, giving grace.
Lewin lounged about the courtyard listening to his exhortations with
amusement, yet not without wonder at the strange psychic force which
moved the minds of these rough men. The crafty, sensual sentimentalist,
of course, had no illusions about the abstract, yet the idea always
fascinated him when it came. It was very grand and sonorous, he thought,
this bondage to mystery, this ritual of the unseen. So lonely a man was
he, immured in the impregnable fortress of his own brain, for there was
no mental equal for him at Hilgay, that for mere mind-food he gave
himself over to wild fancies. Our Lord upon the cross was more beautiful
to him than to many devout believers, and he would have told you that he
could hear the going of God in the wind. Sometimes he half-wondered if
it were not true that Christ died.
He went into his mint, deserted now, and sat him down upon a bench in
his little room. The sunshine cut its living way through the dust of the
silent empty place. A whip lay upon the floor, where it had been thrown
by an overseer of the theows who worked in the mint. There were flies
upon it. He kicked the thing aside with disgust; it was a reminder of
the stern terrible age in which he lived, and in which he felt so out of
place. Depression began to flow over him in silent waves, until he
remembered that he was to meet Lady Alice in the afternoon. That turned
the current of his idle, discontented thoughts towards a more palpable
thing. His secret wooing of the Norman lady who was so proud and
stately was very dear to him, and the romance of it pleased him even
more than the mere material joys he hoped some day to gain from it.
Proud as she was, womanlike she at least deigned to listen to him, and
his crafty brain schemed darkly to take opportunity as it came, and make
her his own by treachery. He went out again among the busy workmen, and
began to direct some smiths who were rivetting a suit of brass armour,
engraved with a curious pattern of beetles and snakes in arabesque,
which required delicate handling.
The weapon smiths were grumbling because they were short of hands for
the heavier parts of their labour. Five or six of the most reliable
serfs could not be found anywhere. Some one had seen them going into the
forest, and it was supposed that they were acting as beaters for
Geoffroi. Every one grumbled at the Baron. It was thought that this was
no time for amusements. A boar would keep, herons would last till the
world's end, deer would get them young every year till the world
stopped. Every hour Roger Bigot came slowly nearer, and the men of
Hilgay wanted the comfort of a master mind to direct and reassure them
at a time like this.
The two squires fussed and raved, and stormed till the sweat stood in
great drops upon them, but they could not get half the work out of the
men that Geoffroi, or even Fulke, were able to. They had no personality
and were ineffective, lacking that most potent and most powerful of
human things. But every one did his best, nevertheless, and by
"noon-meat" work had distinctly advanced, and already the castle began
to wear something of an aspect of war.
It is extraordinary how a building or a place can be transformed in our
minds by a few outward touches, combined with an attitude of
expectation. If one has waited for a wedding in an almost empty church,
the coming ceremony has an actual power of destroying the somewhat
funereal aspect of the place. A single vase of flowers upon the altar
seems swollen to a whole tree of bloom, the footsteps of a melancholy
old man unlocking the rusty door, or spreading the priest's robes for
him, is magnified into the beating of many feet. A crowd is created,
expectant of a bride.
In a country lane on a hot summer afternoon, on Sunday, we say that a
"Sabbath peace" is over all the land. The wind in the trees seems
whispering litanies, and the soft voices of the wood-pigeons sound like
psalms, the woods are at orisons, and the fields at prayer. As evening
comes gently on, the feeling becomes intensified, though there is
nothing but the chance lin-lan-lone of a distant bell to help it. The
evening is not really more peaceful and gracious on the day of rest. The
rooks wing home with mellow voices indeed, and the plover calls sweetly
down the wind for his mate, but these are ordinary sounds. You may hear
them on week days. The peace is in our own hearts, subjective and holy,
informed by our own thoughts.
In the very air of the castle there was a tremulous expectation of war.
Lady Alice, in her chamber, far away from the tumult, knew it. Little
Gertrude, in the orchard, felt in her blood that the day was not
ordinary; the very dogs sought wistfully to understand the excitement
that pervaded everything.
At noon-meat, the jongleur, who had remained in the castle, blear-eyed
and silent, got very drunk indeed. A madness of excitement got hold of
him, and he sang war songs in a strident unnatural voice. The stern
choruses rang out in the sunshine, with a pitiful whining of the crowth.
All the afternoon the men hummed fierce catches as they went about their
work. The day was cloudless and very hot. About five o'clock, when the
sun's rays began to strike the ground slantingly, and the world was full
of the curious relative sadness that comes with evening, the toilers
knocked off for a rest. The pantler brought out horns of Welsh ale, and
they sat round the well discussing the great impending event, the
strength of the defences, the number of the enemy, the chances of the
fight. The jongleur was lying insensible by the well-side, and a merry
fool was bedabbling his shameless old face with pitch from a bucket,
when the attention of every one in the castle was suddenly arrested by
the distant but quite unmistakable sound of a horn.
A deep silence fell upon them all. Then they heard it again, no hunting
mot or tuneful call of peace, but a long, keen, threatening note of
alarm!
The thundering of a horse's feet growing ever nearer and nearer throbbed
in the air. The sound seemed a great way off. Some one shouted some
quick orders. The pins were pulled from the portcullis chains, so that
upon releasing a handle it would fall at once. That was all they could
do for the moment. They heard that the horseman was coming on at a most
furious gallop. The sound came from the great main drive of the forest.
Quick conjectures flew about among them all.
"Godis head! surely Roger is ten days away."
"So the scouts have said. He moveth very slowly. Oswald saw it with his
own eyën."
"We shall know before one should tell to twenty, listen!"
The news-bringer, whoever he might be, was now close at hand, and with
startling effect he sent before him another keen vibratory note of his
invisible horn. It seemed to come right up to the very castle gate, and
to break in metallic sound at the feet of those standing near.
In a moment more they saw him turn out from among the interlacing forest
trees, and come furiously down the turf towards them.
"It's Kenulf, the forester," shouted two or three voices at once.
"Surely some one rides after him."
The rider was now close upon them, and vainly trying to pull in his
horse. The animal was maddened by the goring of his spurs--long single
spikes in the fashion of that time--and would not stop. So, with a
shrill shout of warning and an incredible echoing and thunder of noise,
he galloped over the drawbridge, under the vaulted archway of the gate
tower, and only pulled up when he was in the bailey itself, and
confronted with the great rock of the keep.
For a moment he could not speak in his exhaustion, but by his white face
and haunted eyes they saw that he had some terrible news.
There was a horn of beer propped up against the draw-well, which some
one had set down at the distant noises of the forester's coming. Brian
de Burgh picked it up and gave it to the gasping fellow. Then he
stammered out his news, striking them cold with amazement.
"My Lord Geoffroi is dead, gentlemen," said he. "He has been murdered. I
came upon him standing by the three trees in Monkshood. He had an arrow
right through his mouth, nailed to a tree was he, and the grass all
sprent with him. Gentlemen, I came into the glade half-an-hour after I
had seen my lord well and alive. He rode fiercely ahead of us after the
boar, towards Monkshood. My lord loves to ride alone, and Sir Fulke
followed but slowly, and set a peregryn at a heron on the way. But I
pressed on faster, so that an Lord Geoffroi killed the boar, and when he
had made the first cuts, I should do the rest. God help us all, and Our
Lady too! I did come into the glade half a mile away from where the
three trees stand. My eyën go far and they are very keen. There was a
man, I could see, standing still, but as I blew a call he went swiftly
into the underwood. Then came I to the trees and saw my lord standing
dead. Sir Fulke and the train came up soon after, and they are bringing
It home. Make you ready. Cwaeth he to me, that you were to make proper
mourning, to light the torches and say the Mass, and have many lights
upon the holy table. And so my lord shall the quicker find rest. Haste!
haste! for soon they will be near, and there is scant of time withouten
great haste. Take me to my lady, for I would tell her."
"No," said a girl, who was standing by, very hastily, "I will prepare
her first," and with that Gundruda, with a face full of wonder, slipped
away to the postern which led to the orchard.
So this was how the first tidings of Hyla's vengeance came to the
castle.
* * * * *
Now the killing of Geoffroi de la Bourne happened in this way.
As one might imagine, there was no sleep for the serfs on the night
before the attempt. From the time when they had stolen up the hill after
the murder of Pierce to the coming of dawn was but short. They spent it
round the dead fire among the noises of the night.
A great exultation was born in the heart of each man. Hyla showed them
his blood-stained hands, with vulgar merriment at the sight, rejoicing
in the deed. They were all animated with the lust of slaughter. Wild
hopes began to slide in and out of their minds. One could hardly expect
anything fine--in externals--from these rough boorish men. Although
their purpose was noble, and the feelings that animated them had much
that owed its existence to a love for their fellows, a protest of
essential human nature against oppression and foul wrongs, yet their
talk was coarse and brutal about it all. This must be chronicled in
order to present a proper explanation of them, but if it is understood
it will be forgiven. No doubt the canons of romance would call for
another kind of picture. The men would keep vigil, full of lofty
thoughts, high words, and prayers to God. They would have spoken of
themselves as Christ's ministers of wrath; the romancer would have
prettily compared them to King David with his Heaven-ordered mission of
vengeance. And yet King David, for example, mutilated the Philistines in
a fearfully brutal way--it is for any one to read--and how much more
would not these poor fellows be likely to shock and offend our nice
sensibilities. No doubt it was horrible of Hyla to call up a sleeping
puppy and make it lick Pierce's blood from his hands, but this story is
written to make Hyla explicit, and Hyla was not refined.
Early in the morning the conspirators took a meal together before
setting out to play their various parts in this tragedy. Harl was
already far away with the women. Gurth was to go down to the river and
take the swiftest punt away from the landing-place and hide in the reeds
upon the other side. A whistle would summon him when Hyla and Cerdic
came down to the water ready for flight. Gurth was to sink the other
punts, to make pursuit impossible for a time.
Cerdic, Richard, and a third man called Aescwig were to lie in the wood
to turn the boar, as well as they were able, towards the glade of
Monkshood. They were lean, wiry men, swift of foot, and knew that they
could do this. Cerdic had a swift dog concealed, for it was unlawed,
which he used for poaching. It would help them. Hyla himself would lurk
in the glade with his knife, waiting in the hope of his enemy.
After the first meal they slunk off to their posts with little outward
emotion and but few words of parting. The clear cold light of the
morning chilled them, and robbed the occasion of much of its excitement.
But for all that went they doggedly towards their work.
For a certain distance Hyla went in company with the three beaters, but
at a point they stopped, and he proceeded onwards alone.
When he had got far on upon his way to Monkshood he lay down deep in the
fern to rest, and watched the sky between the delicate lace of the
leaves.
He saw a tiny wine-coloured spider swinging from branch to branch like a
drop of blood on a silver cord, the sunlight so irradiated it. The wild
bees were already hard at work filling their bags of ebony and gold with
the sweet juices of flowers. The honeysuckle swung its trumpets round
the brown pillar of an oak, like censers of amber and ivory, shedding
delicate incense on the air. The breezes carried the rich scents to and
fro from tree to tree. Hyla felt weary now that the hour was so close at
hand. He was not excited, nor did he even feel the slightest tremor of
fear. He was simply indifferent and tired. He wanted to sleep for ever
in this silent, sunlit place.
He was wearing Pierce's dagger round his waist, and he took it out to
see if it was sharp enough. The stains of blood still held to it in
films of brown and purple, but its point was needle-like, and the edge
bitter keen. He put it down by his side upon a great fern tuft over
which countless ants were hurrying. It fell among the ants as a streak
of lightning falls among a crowd of men. Then, like some uncouth spirit
of the wood, some faun, one might have fancied, he fell into a long,
dreamless sleep.
He was awakened suddenly, when the sun was already at its height, by the
sweet fanfaronade of distant horns. He glided away towards Monkshood
swiftly and silently, a brown thing stealing through the undergrowth
upon his malign errand. At last he came to the place he sought.
Monkshood Glade was a long narrow drive, carpeted with fine turf and
surrounded with a thick wall of trees. In shape it was like the aisle of
a cathedral. At the far end of the place it opened out into a half
circle, like a lady chapel, and, to carry out the simile, where the
altar should have been three great trees were standing in a triangle.
The trunks of the trees grew within a hand's breadth of each other and
formed a deep recess, with no entry save the one at the base of the
triangle. Inside this place it was quite dark and cool.
Hyla crept into the undergrowth at the side of the glade, about twenty
yards from the entrance to this little tree-cave, and lay waiting,
crouching on his belly.
For an hour or two--it seemed ages to him--nothing happened whatever.
The business of the wood went on all round, but there was no sound of
human life. The waiting made him restive and uneasy. He began to
remember how many the chances were that Geoffroi would not come that
way. He began to see on how slender a possibility his hopes rested, and
to wonder at himself and his companions for having trusted so great an
issue to such a chance.
Then, quite suddenly, his heart leapt up and began to beat furiously,
till the sound of its throbbing seemed to be surely filling all the
wood. Peering out of the scrub he saw far down the glade a grey speck
moving rapidly in his direction. It grew larger every moment as he
watched, and next he saw that it was followed by a second and larger
object, which almost immediately resolved itself into a man on horseback
riding hard. In two minutes the boar and its pursuer were close upon
him. He saw the boar galloping, with blood and foam round its tusks, and
heard its harsh grunting. He could see its eyes as bright as live coals.
Geoffroi was thundering twenty yards behind. Suddenly he saw the Baron
taking aim at his quarry with a short, thick bow. He guided his horse,
still in full career, a little to one side, by the pressure of his
knees. It was a wonderful piece of horsemanship. He saw a quick movement
of Geoffroi's arm, and, though the arrow sped too quickly for him to
trace its course, the great boar with a hoarse squeal stumbled upon its
fore-legs. It rose, staggered round in a circle, for the great forest
beasts die hard, and then with a final squeal rolled over upon its side,
with its hoofs stark and stiff in the air.
This took place between Hyla and the trees.
Geoffroi reined in his horse and, throwing his bow upon the ground,
dismounted and ran towards the boar. He drew his hunting knife as he
went.
As silently as a snake Hyla crept out of the undergrowth. Geoffroi's
back was towards him and he was leaning over the boar with his knife.
Hyla picked up the bow. The horse, heaving from its exertions, regarded
him with mild eyes devoid of curiosity. Hyla took a barbed hunting shaft
from the little quiver at the saddle side. He fitted it carefully to the
bow. Suddenly the Baron stood up and was about to turn round when Hyla
drew the bow-string to his shoulder, English fashion, and shot the
arrow. It struck Geoffroi in the muscles of the left shoulder and went
deep into him.
With a horrid yell of agony he spun round towards his unseen foe. Hyla
had rapidly fitted another arrow to the bow and stood confronting him.
For a moment the two men stood regarding each other. Then very slowly
Geoffroi began to retreat backwards towards the trees. Hyla kept the
arrow pointed at his heart.
"That was for Elgifu," he said.
Geoffroi reached the three trees, and went backwards into the recess.
His eye rolled round desperately. Then he made a last effort. "Put that
down," he roared with terrible authority. But the time had gone by when
he could make Hyla cower.
"This is for Frija," said Hyla, and an arrow quivered in Geoffroi's
mouth and passed through his head, transfixing him to the tree trunk
behind.
A sudden impulse flooded the Serf's brain, quick, vivid, and uplifting:
the tears started into his eyes though he knew not why.
Once more the bow-string twanged as a third arrow sank silently into the
corpse. "For FREEDOM!" he whispered fearfully, wondering at himself.
Hyla stood watching the frightful sight with calm contemplation. The
Baron dead and bloody was nothing. He began to feel a positive contempt
for the man he had feared so long.
As he stood with a smile distorting his face, a horn rang out down the
glade, and he saw that a horseman was riding hard towards him. Making
the sign of the cross, he slipped into cover and began to fly swiftly
through the wood.
CHAPTER VI
Per varios casus, per tot discrimena rerum, tendimus in LATIUM sedes
ubi fata quietas ostendunt.
There is always and forever a haven we can win. In all the chances and
turmoils of this life, howeversomuch we are tossed upon the seas of
circumstance, somewhere, without doubt, there is peace.
For the intellect distracted and pierced through by every fresh morsel
of knowledge, for the brain tired out by the senses, for the body full
of the sickness, let us say, of a great town, somewhere the Fates have a
quiet resting place. There is peace waiting. Let Alecto, Megaera and
Tisiphone shriek and wail ever so loudly, they shall not break it.
Tendimus in Latium--we are all going towards Latium. For some of us it
is the blessed peace of the grave, and others are to find it in this
life. Somewhere there is peace!
Hyla felt an utter weariness of life and all its appeals as he fled
through the forest. The hot wan wine of revenge that had been his blood
was now cool and stagnant. That stern old devil-hearted man that he had
made into a filthy corpse had passed away out of knowledge as if he had
never been. The brain of the serf was all empty of sensation, save for
that great weariness. His body was full of the mere instinct of
self-preservation. The legs on which he ran, the arms which pushed aside
the forest branches, the furtive eyes which sought for foes, all acted
independently of his brain. Nature itself working in him bade him fly.
For himself, had he thought about it, he would hardly have cared, even
though he had been captured. But none the less was his fleeing swift and
sure.
He twisted his tortuous way through the thick hazel shoots, which struck
him in the face as he buffeted them, and his bare arms and legs were
scarred and pricked in a thousand places with thorns from the trailing
undergrowth.
When he had beat back to the other end of Monkshood, walking parallel to
the glade, he heard voices close to him and the noise of a company of
people entering the ride at the far end of the glade. By the three
sinister trees, he heard the keen notes of a horn blowing in eager
summons. Suddenly a new and terrible fear came to him. The dogs, which
were whining all round, would most surely smell him in a moment. He
could hear their excited movements on every side. He realised that he
should have made a much greater detour, and that he had, in fact,
stumbled into the very middle of his enemies.
He could see no way out of his perilous position, and felt that he was
certain of immediate discovery. But the Fates, which were providing a
short peace for him, willed that his capture was not yet to be. The
urgent note of Kenulph's horn, half a mile away, attracted the dogs, and
they gave tongue, and, dashing out of the cover, spread up the drive in
a long line. Fulke, who was within ten yards of the hidden murderer,
cheered them on.
"I can see figures," shouted a huntsman, "one, two horses. They must be
my lord and Kenulph, and Sir Boar is dead. Come along, Sir Fulke, we are
not very far behind after all!"
With that the whole company pressed out into the ride and thundered
away, and Hyla was left solitary. The narrowness of the escape
heartened him into fresh endeavour, and once more he began his swift
career through the wood. After another mile of hard going, he sat for a
moment. 'Twas then that he heard a low sibilant noise, like the hiss of
a snake. He started up, looking round him on every side. He heard the
sound again, and it seemed to come from the sky above.
He looked up into the depths of a beech tree above him, and presently
there appeared a lean brown leg among the leaves. A body followed, and
Cerdic dropped on to the turf.
"Well?" said Cerdic, "God be with you! What have you done?"
"Killed him," said Hyla with a curious pride, though he tried hard to
appear unconscious of his great merit. "He's dead, sure enough. I well
think he is in hell now--he and Pierce in the same fire."
"The Saints have watched thee with kind eyën that you did it, Hyla. In
hell is my lord, and there a will lie, for Saint Peter that hath the key
is not so scant of wit as to let him go. Let us thank Our Lady that did
strengthen your arm."
"Yes, let us thank her," said Hyla. "I gave him two arrows, 'one for
Elgifu,' I said, and 'this one for Frija,' I said. That was how I did
it. So that he might be sure for what he died, you wist. Yes, that was
just how I did it."
He had a curious shame which prevented a reference to the third shaft.
He was not sure if Cerdic would have understood that arrow of FREEDOM.
He hardly realised it himself.
"By Godis rood, you have done well, my friend. But pray, pray that you
may be clean, and that Our Lady may wesshe you of blood guilt."
They knelt down, and became straightway enveloped in a mystery that was
not of this world. The dead man in the tree-cave could not stir Hyla as
this sudden invoking of God's mother, for he was certain that she was
close by in the wood, listening.
Cerdic made prayer, because he was a man of quick wit and glib of
tongue.
"O Lady of Heaven," said he, "we call upon you in our souls' need, and I
will plainly tell you why. And that is this: Hyla has killed our Lord
Geoffroi, for he did take his girls. And Lord Geoffroi has sorely
oppressed us and beaten us, and so, dead is he. And we pray you that we
be made clean of the killing in Godis sight. And if it may be so, we ask
that you will say to the heavenly gateward that he should ne'er let our
Lord Geoffroi therein. For Saint Peter knoweth not how bad a man he was.
And we would that you wilt say by word that he be cast down with Judas
and with all the devils into hell, Amen." And then in a quick aside to
Hyla, "'Amen' fool, I did not hear you say it."
With that Hyla said "Amen" very lustily, and they both rose from their
knees. "I am gride that I said no 'Amen,'" said Hyla, "but I was
listening to the prayer. It was a wonderful good prayer, Cerdic."
"Yes," said the other, "I can pray more than a little when it so comes
to me. Had I but some Latin to pray in I doubt nothing that I would get
my own bocland back before I die. But come, we are far from safety yet.
It gets late, we must go swiftly."
They met with no mishap, and saw no man till they were on the very
outskirts of the wood, and not more than a couple of hundred yards from
the stoke itself. They were about thirty yards from the main entrance to
the wood, a road which was beaten hard with the coming and going of men
and horses.
There they stopped for a consultation. Was it better, they asked each
other, to gather some kindling wood and go boldly through the village as
if upon the ordinary business of the day, or, on the other hand, to make
a wide half circle, and reach the river a mile away from the
landing-stage?
It was quite certain that as yet no news of the Baron's death had
reached the castle. There could be no doubt of that. They might walk
openly through the village with no suspicion. Yet, at the same time,
they might very probably be met by a man-at-arms or one of the minor
officials of the castle, and ordered to some work within its gates. It
was a difficult question to decide upon hurriedly, and yet it must be
settled soon. Every moment wasted in council meant--so they took it--a
chance less for freedom. As they discussed the issue in an agony of
indecision they both found that terror was flowing over them in waves.
Cerdic's throat contracted and was pulled back again into a dry
tightness. He cleared his throat at every sentence, as who should be
about the nervous effort of a public speech.
As for Hyla, his stomach became as though it were full of water, and his
bowels were full of an aching which was fearfully exciting and which at
the same time, strangely enough, had an acute physical pleasure in it.
Their indecision was stopped by an event which left only one method of
flight open to them.
As they tossed the chance back and forward to one another, debated upon
it and weighed it, they heard the noise of a horseman passing by _ventre
à terre_. As he passed he sounded his horn. They wormed their way to the
road as they heard him coming, and saw that it was the forester Kenulph.
His face was ashen grey and set rigid with excitement, and then both
simultaneously saw that he was bearing the news to the castle.
He passed them like rain blown by the wind, and turning the corner was
lost to their sight.
"This makes our way clear algates," said Cerdic. "Sith Kenulph rides to
castle hall, we must be bold. It will take while a man might tell
hundreds for them to take the news. He will hold all the castle in
thrall. They will be forslackt for half-an-hour. He is there by now, all
clad with loam and full of his news. Come out into the village and go
down to river bank. We go to clear the brook mouth. It's all mucky and
begins to kill the fish. Remember, that is what we go to do."
"I obey your heasts, Sir Cerdic," Hyla answered him with a smile. "Come,
come upon the way. I think it matters not much one way or the other, but
we may win our sanctuary by hardiment. Algates, we are ywrocken."[3]
"Yes, that are we, and revenge is sweet. No more will he ill-use our
girls, or burn us on the green. Surely he has a deep debt to pay."
While they had been speaking they had been gathering great armfuls of
fallen twigs and branches, and soon they went slowly down the ride with
these. The frowning gates of the castle came into their view, but
Kenulph had already entered them, and the very guards had left the
gates. They passed by to the right, and came on to the green. One or two
women were busy washing linen at the doors of the houses, but save for
them no one was about.
They passed the long walls of the castle, skirting the moat, by which a
smooth path ran, till they came to the fields. There they were stopped
for a few minutes. One Selred, a serf who tended swine, came out of the
field where his charges dwelt. He was a half-witted creature, but little
removed from the swine themselves. He carried a spear head, broken off a
foot down the shaft, and this had been sharpened on a hone of hard wood
for a weapon with which to kill the swine. He pointed to the row of dead
animals which lay stark and unclean on one side of the field.
[3] Revenged.
"Nearly fifty," said he, "have I killed this day for siege vittaille, to
their very great dreriment. Holy Maid! never did you hear such
squealing."
They shook him off after a time, but with difficulty. He was infinitely
proud of his achievement. "I do love pig's flesh," he gibbered after
them as they fled down the hill.
From the castle there now came the shrill notes of a tucket, and then
the castle bell began to toll furiously, and a confused noise of
shouting floated down the hill. When they hurried to the landing-stage
they found that the boats had been duly scuttled. Here and there a
gunwale projected out of the water, and on the stones lay the windac of
a cross-bow with which holes had been made in the boats.
Hyla gave a long, low whistle, and waited for Gurth to glide out of the
reeds bordering the great fen. There was no reply, and the two fugitives
looked at each other in alarm. Then Cerdic whistled rather louder, but
still the welcome sight of the boat did not come to them.
"Something has happened to the mome," Cerdic said, "I am sure that he
would not forslowe us like this if a were safe."
"What shall we do?" asked Hyla.
"I do not know," said Cerdic, his courage oozing out of him every
moment. Their position was certainly sufficiently perilous. There was,
as yet, nothing to connect them with the crime, but half-an-hour might
alter everything. It was, moreover, quite certain that, in a search, one
party at least would be sent down to the river.
They stood there gazing at each other in great alarm.
"I have a great fear that we are lost," Hyla said.
"Indeed, I believe so," answered the other, with strained, terrified
eyes.
Both of them felt that they were hard in the very grip of unkind
circumstance. They shook like river-side willows when the wind blows.
Now as they stood together communing as to what they should do, and with
a great sinking of heart, it chanced that their faces were turned
towards the river, away from the castle. They looked most eagerly
towards the reeds upon the other side.
The river ran sluggishly like oil, and there was no breaking up of its
surface. Here and there some dancing water-flies made a tiny ripple, but
that was all.
Suddenly a great fish leapt out of the middle water high into the air. A
flash of silver, a glimpse of white belly, and with a loud report it was
gone. Sullen circles widened out and broadened towards them. Then they
saw at the very place where the bream had disappeared the still surface
of the water was violently agitated. They watched in amazement. A great
black object heaved slowly up into view, full six feet long. It was the
body of Pierce, the man-at-arms, all swollen by water. The face was
puffed into an enormous grotesque, and the open eyes seemed cognisant of
them.
The faces of the two serfs became ashen white, and they looked at each
other in terrible fear.
"Christ, what a visnomie!" said Cerdic.
"God shows us that we are to die. My lord will be ywrocken" said Hyla.
"See how it seems alive."
"Yes, that does it. I can see the hole in's neck. The fishes have been
at it."
"Oh, courage, courage! Our Lady never means us to die, whistle for Gurth
once more. Perchance he is nearer now, perchance he is nearer, and, not
knowing we are here, cometh not."
"I cannot sound a note, my breath is hot and my lips are very dry.
Whistle you for me."
Just then a noise of shouting behind their backs made them both wheel
round swiftly. Half-way down the hill a group of men-at-arms were
running towards them.
Cerdic gave a great wail of despair.
One of the soldiers dropped upon his knee, and a long arrow came past
them singing like a great wasp. It ricochetted over the water into the
reeds beyond. The soldiers were now a hundred and fifty yards away,
shouting fiercely as they came on.
Hyla turned a last hopeless glance to the river. Just as he did so a
long nose shot out of the reeds, and the punt they had waited for glided
swiftly towards them.
"Hallo, hallo!" Cerdic yelled in an agony of excitement. "Quick, quick,
else we die!"
There was a sudden jar as the prow of the punt collided with the
masonry. The two serfs leapt into it. Gurth took the long pole and
plunged it deep into the water. The muscles grew rigid on his bare back
and stood out upon his arms as he bent for one mighty stroke. The
soldiers were only twenty yards away. With an incredible slowness, so it
seemed to the fugitives, the arms of the punter began to lengthen as the
boat moved. In another second the propelling impulse gathered force and
speed, and just as the first man arrived upon the landing-stage it
glided rapidly over the water. There was a thud as it struck the
floating body, and a horrid liquid bubbling, and then in another second
they entered the passage and the reeds hid them from view. Gurth sank
down, deadly sick, upon the floor of the punt, and the pole, held by one
hand only, dragged among the rushes with a sound like a sickle in corn.
The three men crouched in the bottom of the boat, listening to the angry
clamour on the opposite shore. An arrow or two passed over their heads,
and one fell from a height into the very prow of the boat, but none of
them were touched. There was not an ounce of courage among them. They
had no strength to go on.
The castle bell away on the hill-top still rang loudly, and the shrill
metallic notes of the tuckets called and answered to each other all
round.
As they lay in the reeds not thirty yards from their pursuers, these
noises of alarm filled them with fear. A voice rang out from the excited
babble across the river and flung an echoing and malignant threat at
them.
Although they could see nothing, the whole scene was painted for them
with noise. They heard the voices sink into a quick murmur of
conversation, and then hurried footsteps sped up the hill with messages
for the castle.
Still they stayed trembling in the punt and made no effort to escape.
All the weight of the terrible traditions that overhung their class was
upon them. The great effort they had made, their incredible boldness,
now left them with little more spirit, in spite of their good fortune,
than whipped dogs. The moment was enough, for the moment they were safe
from capture, and the voices of the soldiers--how terribly near!--did
not stir them to action.
It was only when their peril became imminent that they were roused from
their apathy. Sounds of activity floated over to them. A voice was
giving directions, and then there was a shout of "Now," followed by a
harsh, grating noise. The serfs realised that the soldiers had been able
to drag one of the sunken punts on to the landing-stage. Almost
immediately a noise of hammering was heard. They were repairing the
boat.
At that shrill, ominous sound Cerdic rose from the bottom of the punt
trembling with excitement. "Men," he said in a deep startled voice, "we
have been here too long, and death is like to come our way. Oh, faint
hearts that we have been, and the Saints with us so long, and the Holy
Maid helping us! Come, silent now! take poles and let us get away. I
know the fens better than those divells."
So confident was his voice and so burning with excitement, that in one
moment it lashed their cowardice away. Hyla sprung towards the stern
pole and Gurth lifted the other, then, with hardly a movement save a few
tiny splashes, the boat glided slowly away into the heart of the fen.
The voices of the soldiers became fainter and more faint till they could
hear them no more.
The ringing blows of the hammer pursued them a little further, until in
a few minutes those also died away, and they were alone in the fen.
All round them the great reeds rose and whispered, enormous bulrushes
with furry heads like young water-rats nodded towards them as they raced
for their life down those dark mysterious waterways. Deeper and deeper
into the heart of the great fen sped the boat. Gurth and Hyla worked
with the precision of machines. There was a wonderfully stimulating
effect in the rhythm of the action. The water became a deep shining
black, showing incalculable depths below. In order to propel the boat at
all they had to skirt the very fringe of the morass, for there only
could the poles find bottom. At each heave and lift, under which the
punt kicked forward like some living thing, the poles came up clotted
and smeared with stinking black mud, undisturbed before for hundreds of
years. Sometimes, at a deeper push, the mud was a greyish white and
studded with tiny shells, tokens which the great grey sea had left
behind to tell that once it had dominion there.
All wild nature fled before their racing approach. A hundred yards
ahead, even in those tortuous ways, fat unclean birds of the fen rose
heavily and clanged away over the marshes. As the throb of the poles
came near them, the fish shouldered each other in flight. Every now and
again they rushed over a still, wicked pool teeming with fish, and the
rush of their passage made white-bellied fish leap out of the water in
terror. Once they saw a great black vole, as large as a rabbit, swimming
in the middle of the water. He heard them coming, and turned a wet
smooth head to look; then with a twinkle of his eyes he dived and
disappeared.
Gradually the speed of the boat slackened as the two men grew tired. The
excitement of the day began to tell on them, and they felt in their arms
how weary they were. Cerdic, who perhaps by virtue of his years or
personal magnetism seemed to be indubitably their leader, saw it in
their faces. He saw that not only were they physically worn out, but
that energy was going from their brains also.
"Stop you," said this shrewd person. "We are far from them now. It is
time for rest and belly food." Nothing loth, they put down the punt
poles, and pushed the nose of the boat into a little bay of reeds, out
of the main water.
"Food?" said Hyla, "with all my heart, I did not know you had any. Where
is it pight?"
Cerdic gave a little superior grin. He took up a skin wallet which lay
by his side and produced the materials for a feast. Six great green
eggs, stolen from a sitting duck which had belonged to the ill-fated
Pierce, were the staple food. Boiled hard and eaten with black bread and
some scraps of cold meat, they were a banquet to the fugitives. For
drink they had nothing but marsh water, which they sucked up through a
hollow reed. It was blackish and rather stagnant, but it refreshed them
mightily.
"And how far have you got now, do you think?" said Gurth.
"Near half way," answered Cerdic, "but it has been easy going, and we
shall not get such free water now. It is a back way to Icomb that we
have come by up till now. Whybeare there was a broad passage, a great
stretch of water, but that was in King William's time, when boats
brought corn from Edmundsbury. Now the monks have corn-land of their
own, and corn comes from Norwich also. The passage is all grown with
weed and reeds, and no man may go up it in any vessel."
"Where must we go, then?" Hyla asked him.
"Nor'wards for some miles, taking any way we can that is open. Then we
shall come to the lake of Wilfrith, and beyond that is the Abbey."
"What is Wilfrith lake, and who was he?" said Hyla. "I have been upon
its water, but I do not know why it is called that. Also, it has a bad
name, and they say spirits are seen upon it."
Cerdic crossed himself at that.
"Wilfrith was once Prior of Icomb," he said, "a good priest, and much
loved by God. Upon a day he was walking by the lake side, when he was
seized by lawless men and robbed of his gold cross, and left bound to a
tree in the forest, near the monastery. It was evening, and he could see
the robbers getting into their boats to cross the lake. So he prayed to
God. 'Lord,' he cried, 'I have not loved Thee enough. Deliver me from my
need, and with Thy help I will so correct and frame my life that
henceforth I may serve Thee better.' As he prayed, and when the thieves
were about half way over the lake, there came a great black hand up out
of the water and seized the boat and dragged it into the depths. At the
same time his bonds fell from him, and he became free."
"A black hand," said Hyla uneasily, "that would be a fearful thing to
meet with."
"We shall not do so," said Cerdic, "for I believe that the Great Ones
are helping us to-day. Who knows that they are not with us now? We have
killed Lord Geoffroi for his cruelty and sins, for all he was a lord. Do
you think Lord Christ would have let him be killed if he had not wished
it? Not he. He's no fool. I tell you," he said, cracking the shell of
his second egg, and with great sincerity in his voice, "I tell you that
like as not Sir Gabriel or Lord Abdiel, or one of the angels is flying
over the boat with his sword in's hand and his tucket on his shoulder."
They all looked up to see if the angel was there, but only a little wind
rustled the tops of the rushes, though the sky above was beginning to be
painted with evening.
They prattled there a little longer, willing that their rest should be
complete.
Now, at eventide, all the fishes began to rise at the flies, and the
waters became like stained-glass, and peace was over all that wild
scene.
The voices of the serfs insensibly dropped, and made low murmurs, no
louder than the sounds of the cockchafers and long-mailed water-flies
that now boomed and danced over the fen.
The moon was slowly rising when they put out again on the last stage of
their journey, punting with less haste, but making good going,
nevertheless. They were in excellent spirits.
CHAPTER VII
"Introibo ad altare Dei."
"Surely," said a monk of Bec, "God has made the evening beautiful and
full of lights, so that we may think on Him at that time, and as we
watch the very gates of heaven in the sky, pray to our Father that we
may some day be there also."
It was a holy and wonderful evening-time, as the boat glided on through
the vast shining solitudes. The heavenly influence stole into the souls
of the three serfs, and purged them of all fear and sorrow. Imagine the
enormous change in their lives. A curtain seemed to have fallen over all
that they had known. The noise of the horrible castle, the sharp orders,
the lash of the whip, the foetid terrors of the stoke, had all
vanished as if they had never been. Before them might lie a wonderful
life, possible happiness, freedom. At any rate, for the moment they were
free, and the sky shone like the very pavements of heaven.
All three of them noticed the beautiful sunset with surprise, as if it
were a thing that had never been before their eyes till now.
Day by day, as their work at Hilgay was drawing to a close, the sky had
been as beautiful as this. The sky had been all gold and red, and copper
green and great purple clouds had passed over it like a march of kings.
But they had never seen it until now. Freedom had come to them and
whispered in their ears. She had passed her hands over their eyes, and
they began to know, with a sort of wonder, that the world was beautiful.
Nor was this all of the gracious message. Everything was altered. Hyla,
it will be remembered, had a face of little outward intelligence. He
had, in fact, the face of a serf. But the latent possibilities of it had
been made fine realities within the last few hours. What he had done,
his own independent action, woke up the God in him, as it were. His
voice was not so slipshod. Round his mouth were two fine lines of
decision, his lips did not seem so full, his eyes were alert and
conscious.
Gurth was a sunny-haired, nut-brown youth, straight as a willow wand,
and of a careless, happy disposition. But he had been cowed by the stern
and cruel subjection under which he had lived. One could see the change
in him also. He flung his arms about as he punted, with the graceful
movements of a free man who felt his limbs his own. Little smiles
rippled round his lips, he looked like a young man thinking of a girl.
It is obviously most difficult for us to project ourselves with any
certainty into the mood of these three men. The whole conditions of our
lives are so absolutely different. But we can at any rate imagine for
ourselves, with some kindness of spirit, how joyous these tremulous
beginnings of freedom must have been! The modern talk of "freedom," the
boasting of nations that enjoy it, does not mean very much to us. The
thing is a part of our lives, we do not know how much it is. But who
shall estimate the mysterious splendour that irradiated the hearts of
those three poor outcasts?
The long supple poles went swishing into the water and the boat leapt
forward. They rose trailing out of the water, and the drops fell from
them in cascades of jewels, green, crimson, and pearl. Every now and
again the turnings of the passage brought them to a stretch of water
which went due west. Then they glided up a sheet of pure vivid crimson,
and at the end the fiery half-globe of the sun.
Just as the sun was dipping away they rested again for half-an-hour, and
when they went on it was dark. At last, when the night was all velvet
black and full of mysterious voices, they turned a corner, and suddenly
the punt poles could find no bottom, though they went on with the
impetus of the last stroke.
A greater silence suddenly enveloped them, they saw no reeds round them,
the horizon seemed indefinite.
"This is Wilfrith Lake," said Cerdic, "and we are near home."
Now an unforeseen difficulty presented itself. The lake was far too deep
to punt in, and they had no oars. For the next hour their progress would
be slow. Cerdic came to the rescue. With his knife he cut a foot of wood
from each punt pole, with infinite labour; then he fashioned the tough
wood into four stout pegs. Gurth drilled two holes in the gunwales of
the punt, with the dagger which had been taken from Pierce. Then they
hammered the pegs into the holes and made rough rowlocks. There were no
seats in the punt, and the thin poles did not catch the water very well,
but by standing with their faces towards the bow they were able to make
slow but steady progress.
It was a little unnerving. They could not be sure of their direction
except in a very general way. It was chilly on this great lake, and very
lonely. Hyla, and Gurth also, began to think of the great black hand.
Who knew what lay beneath those sombre waters?
Never before in their lives had they spent such an exciting day. Hardy
as they were, inured to all the chances and changes of a rough day, they
began to be rather afraid, and their nerves throbbed uncomfortably.
Indeed, it is little to be wondered at. They were men and not machines
of steel. Once a great moth, which had strayed far out over the waters,
flapped into Hyla's face with an unpleasant warmness and beating of
wings. He gave a little involuntary cry of alarm, which was echoed with
a quick gasp from the other two.
"What is that?" said Cerdic.
"Only a buterfleoge," Hyla answered him. "For the moment I was fearful,
but it was nothing, and as light as a leaf on a linden tree."
The other two crossed themselves without answering, and strained their
eyes out into the dark.
"Hist!" said Gurth suddenly. "Listen! Cannot you hear anything? Wailing
voices like spirits in pain!" They shipped the poles and bent out over
the boat listening intently.
Something strange was occurring some half a mile away, judging from the
sound. A long musical wail came over the water at regular intervals, and
it was answered by the sound of many voices.
As they watched and listened in terror, they saw a tiny speck of light
on a level with the water, which appeared to be moving towards them. The
voices grew louder, and then with a gasp of relief the fugitives heard
the tones of men singing.
"They are the fathers from Icomb," said Hyla; "they are looking for us,
and have come out in their boats."
In the still night a deep voice chanted a verse of the sixty-ninth
psalm. The sonorous words of comfort rolled towards them:
"_Deus in adjutiorum meum intende: Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina._"
Then came the antiphon in a great volume of sound: "_Confundantur et
revereantur: qui quaerunt animam meam._"
The single voice complained out into the night: "_Avertantur retorsum,
et erubescant; qui volunt mihi mala._"
The many voices replied in thunderous appeal: "_Avertantur statim
erubescentur: qui dicunt mihi, euge, euge!_"
Then the cantor sang with singular and penetrating sweetness:
"_Exsultent et laetantur in te omnes qui quaerunt te: et dicant semper,
magnificetur Dominus, qui diligunt salutare tuum._"
And the poor monks answered him of their estate: "_Ego vero egenus et
pauper sum. Deus adjuva me!_"
The boat of the fathers was now quite close to the serfs. The lantern in
the bows sent out long wavering streaks of light into the dark, and the
many voices were full, and clear, and strong.
"Ahoy! ahoy!" shouted Cerdic in tremulous salutation.
The singing stopped suddenly, save for the cantor, who quavered on for a
word or two of the _Gloria_. "What are you?" came over the water.
"Hyla of Hilgay, with Cerdic and Gurth."
There was a full-voiced shout of welcome, and the great boat came
alongside with a swirl of oars.
The lantern showed many dark figures, some of them wearing the tonsure,
and rows of pale faces gazed at the three serfs with eager interest.
A tall man in the bows of the boat, with a thin, sharp face peered at
them. "We expected you," he said simply, "and we prayed that you might
come, Benedicite! What news bring you? What is done? Christ be with you!
Have you struck the tyrant and avenged the blood of the saints whom he
slew?"
"Father," said Hyla, "I did kill the divell, sure enough. With two
arrows--'One for Frija,' I said, and 'this for Elgifu.' I have blood
guilt upon me."
The man in the bows lifted his right hand and stretched out two fingers
and a thumb. They saw he was a priest. Then he said the _Confiteor_:
"_Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te
ad vitam aeternam._"
And every man in the boat answered "Amen."
Then the priest changed his tone, and became brisk and business-like.
"You have lost your oars, fools," he said. "Or, perhaps, you brought
none. Should'st have remembered the lake. Take a stern rope and we'll
tow ye home like knights. Now then, brethren, ye have heard the news,
God in His mercy hath sent power to these poor men and aided their arm,
so that they have slain the burner of His priests and ravisher of poor
maids. God has answered our prayers. Sing we to Him then a song of
thanksgiving. Sing up every man-jack of you, for God has wonderfully
dealt with these poor men."
And then with a sudden crash of sound they began to sing the greatest of
all hymns, the _Te Deum_.
"_Te Deum Laudamus: te Dominum confitemur_," pulsed and rang through the
night in glad appeal. So fervent and joyous was the song, the monks sang
it so merrily, and withal it was to such a good and jocund tune, that
Hyla was overcome entirely. He knelt in the swiftly-moving punt sobbing
like a little child. Once he raised his face to heaven, and behold,
there was a bright white moon silvering all the sky!
Very soon they came to the opposite shore of the lake, indeed, before
the final "_In te Domine_."
The shore sloped gradually down to the lake's edge in a smooth sweep of
grass sward which met the water without any break. A few yards up the
slope high trees fringed a road which led to the Abbey on the hill-top.
Icomb was, in fact, a low island about half a mile square. Its highest
point was hardly out of the fen mists. Round about in the county, the
place was always spoken of as an Abbey, though it was, as a matter of
fact, no more than a Priory, and of no great importance at that.
Icomb was a new offshoot from Saint Bernard's famous Abbey of Clairvaux.
Very little was as yet known of the Cistercians, and the monks of Icomb
were regarded as mysterious and not altogether desirable people by the
great religious houses at Ely and Medhampstede.
It was part of the Cistercian rule that the founders of an abbey should
choose some lonely, dismal place for their home. The idea was not
entirely that of the eremite, for the Cistercians were improvers as
well as colonists.
Icomb was the most lonely place in all the Eastern counties that the
monks could have chosen for their retreat from the perils and unrests of
this world. The low, tree-crowned island hill, surrounded by vast
waters, protected by savage swamps, hidden in the very heart of the fen,
was ideal for their purpose.
In that time not even churches were safe from lawless bandits like
Geoffroi de la Bourne or Roger Bigot. Although men like these were
belted knights of noble family, and still kept up much of the ceremonial
of their position, they were little more than robbers, and instances
abound of their sacrilege.
But as yet none of them had troubled Icomb. The place was very
inaccessible; it was excellently protected by Nature, the defences were
very strong, and the garrison a fine one.
The lay-brothers or _fratres conversi_ were lusty and used to arms. Many
of them had borne a pike in battle before entering into the peace of the
Church. Then there were a goodly number of serfs and fenmen employed on
the daily business of the Priory, who would all fight to the death if it
were attacked.
No better sanctuary could be found for fugitives. Richard Espec, the
prior of Icomb, was always ready to extend the hand of welcome to the
oppressed. The time was so black and evil, such a horrible cloud of
violence hung over England, that he felt it his bounden duty to make his
house a refuge.
The Priory, like all Cistercian monasteries, was surrounded by a strong
wall for defence. The buildings, though large and well built, were of a
studied plainness. No glorious tower rose into the sky, but little
ornament relieved the bareness of the walls. By the rules of that order
only one tower, a centralone, was permitted, and that, so it was
ordained, must be very low. All unnecessary pinnacles and turrets were
absolutely prohibited. In the chapel the triforium was omitted, and the
windows were of plain glass with no colour. The crosses on the altars
were of simple wood, and the candlesticks of beaten iron. Lewin would
have been absolutely disgusted with Icomb.
The buildings consisted of the chapel, a chapter-house adjoining,
connected with the church by a sacristy and a cell, the refectory and
monks' dormitories, and the calefactorium, or day-room. Here the monks
met in the daytime to gossip and to grease their sandals. In winter it
was warmed by flues set in the pavement. The centre of the block of
buildings was occupied by the cloisters and a grass plot.
The two boats were hauled up the slope, and the party went singing up
the hill in the moonlight. The dark trees which lined the road nodded
and whispered at their passing, as the holy song went rolling away among
the leaves. The three serfs felt wonderfully safe and happy. The dark
depths of the thicket had no suggestion of a lurking enemy, the moon
shone full and white over the road, and above, the tall buildings of the
Priory waited for them. The hand of God seemed leading them, and His
presence was very near.
They came to the gateway and the priest beat upon it with his
walking-stick. In a moment it swung open, and they heard the porter say
"Deo gratias," thanking Heaven that it had afforded him the chance of
giving hospitality. Then, according to use, he fell upon his knees with
a loud "Benedicite."
The priest who had met them went at once in search of the prior. In a
minute or two he returned, saying that the prior was praying in the
chapel, but that he would see them in the sacristy when he rose.
They were shown into a low, vaulted room with oak chests all round, and
lit by a horn lantern. A half-drawn curtain separated it from the
church, and through a vista of pillars they could see the high altar
gleaming with lights, and a bowed figure on the steps before it. The
rest of the great place was in deep shadow.
They sat down upon one of the chests and waited. A profound silence
enveloped them, the wonderful and holy silence of a great church at
night. A faint, sweet smell of spices pervaded the gloom.
Suddenly they realised that they were tired to death. All three leant
back against the wall in motionless fatigue and let the silence steal
into their very blood. They ceased to think or conjecture, and let all
their souls be filled with that great, fragrant peace.
At last they heard some one coughing in the church, waking shrill
echoes, and in a moment the sound of approaching footsteps. Richard
Espec came in at the door. He was a short, enormously fat man, with a
shrewd, benevolent face. He wore a white scapular and a hooded cowl,
and on his breast gleamed the gold cross of Wilfrith. He blessed them as
he entered, and they fell on their knees before him. He turned and drew
the curtain over the door, shutting out the view of the church, and then
sitting down upon a chest, regarded them with a penetrating though
kindly glance.
"Ye are tired, my men," he said. "I can see it in your faces. Sit down
again. Now I know from Harl, your friend, and Gruach, the wife of Hyla,
what business you went out to do. Which of you is Hyla?"
"I am Hyla, father."
"Well?"
"Father," said poor Hyla, trembling exceedingly, "I have killed Lord
Geoffroi."
The prior gave a slight start, and said nothing for a minute or two. At
last he spoke.
"I may be wrong, Hyla, but I wist not. I do tell you here that I believe
our Heavenly Father has guided your arm, and that you were appointed an
instrument of His hand. Therefore, to-morrow you shall confess to one of
the brethren and receive absolution for your act, if indeed you need it.
And you shall be with your friends, servants to the monastery, well
treated. Outside the walls live many of our fishermen and farm hands,
and you and your wife and daughters shall be given a hut there. And I
charge you three that you live well and wisely with us. Remember, ye
come from Satan his camp, and from among evil men, and that we were not
as they. But I well think you will be good and live for Christ. Not in
fear of God's anger, but in pleasure and joy at His love and kindly
_régime_, so that at last ye may join the faithful who have scand to
heaven before you. I will pray for you, my sons, very often. Now I will
call Brother Eoppa, our hospitaller, and he will give you food and a
nipperkin of wine. But before you go to your rest I ask you to pray with
me."
He knelt down, panting a little with the exertion, and said the Lord's
Prayer in Latin. Then he opened a door which led into the cloisters.
Outside the door the light of the sacristy lantern showed a thin sheet
of copper hanging from an iron bracket. The prior struck this with his
clenched fist, and a brother came running in answer. He committed the
serfs to him with a kind smile, and then went back into the great,
silent church.
The four went down the North Walk together, and turned into the western
cloister. A door leading out of this led them into the hospitium, where
the lay-brother, who had charge of guests, presently joined them.
"Hungry?" said he, "I think well you must be that. Brother Maurice is
broiling fish for ye, and that is a dish that Saint Peter himself loved.
It would be waiting now, but that kitchen fire was very low. Here is
wine, a nipperkin for each of you."
Presently they heard footsteps echoing in the cloister.
"I can smell your fish in the slype," said the hospitaller. "It's here.
Fall to, and bless God who gives ye a fat meal."
He left them alone to eat, meeting another lay-brother in the cloister
and going with him into the kitchen.
"Dull fellows, I call them," said he.
"Yes. They do not look very sensefull."
"Poor men, they have been evilly used, no doubt. They have rid the world
of as bloody a devil as ever cumbered it. I mind well what he did to the
hedge priest in Hilgay fen," and they fell talking of Geoffroi and his
iniquities with bated breath.
Hyla, Cerdic, and Gurth made a great meal.
"It's wonderful well cooked," said Gurth.
"And good corn-bread," said Cerdic.
"Never did I drink such wine before," said Hyla, and without further
words, they fell asleep upon three straw mattresses placed for them
against the wall. The tolling of the bell in the centralone, calling the
monks to the night-offices, did not disturb them. Nor were they assailed
by any dreams. "Nature's dear nurse," tended them well at the close of
that eventful night.
CHAPTER VIII
"And after that, the Abbot with his couent
Han sped hem for to burien him ful faste."
They buried Geoffroi de la Bourne, the day after his murder, in a pit
dug in the castle chapel, under the flags. The bell tolled, the tapers
burnt, the pillars of the place were bound round with black. Upon the
altar was a purple cloth. Dom Anselm got him a new black cope for the
occasion, and was sober as may be. After the coffin had been lowered,
and the holy water sprinkled upon it, all the company knelt at a Mass
said for the repose of that dark soul.
"Do Thou, we beseech Thee, O Lord, deliver the soul of Thy servant from
every bond of guilt." Anselm went down to the grave-side from the
altar-steps, while page-boys, acolytes for the time, carried the cross
and the holy water.
It was not a very impressive ceremony. I do not think that the little
chapel made it appear sordid and tawdry. It was not the lack of
furniture for ritual. Some more subtle force was at work. God would not
be present at that funeral, one might almost say.
After the service was over and the Mass was said, Fulke summoned Lewin
and Anselm to him in his own chamber. The squires were not there, for
the preparations for the siege were being pushed on rapidly, and they
were directing them.
The three men sat round a small, massive table drinking beer. "Well,"
said Fulke, "it is most certain that it was this theow Hyla. Everything
points to that. As far as we have found, he was the chief instrument in
the plot. For, look you, it was to him, so that boy said before he died,
that the others looked. He seemed to be the leader. By grace of Heaven
all the rogues shall die a very speedy death, but for him I will have
especial care."
"The thing is to catch him," said Dom Anselm, "and I wist no easy job.
Are you going to pull down Icomb Priory?"
"I would do that, and burn every monk to cinders if I had time and men
enough."
"That is impossible," said Lewin. "I have been there to buy missals for
barter from their scriptors. My lord, it's in the middle of a lake, up a
steep hill, and with a great moat and twin outer walls. We could never
come by Icomb."
"Also," said Anselm, "we have but a week at the most before we are
within these four walls with no outgoing for many a day. The Bastard
will be here in a week."
"What's to do?" Fulke asked gloomily.
Lewin contemplatively drained a fresh rummer of beer. "This is all I can
think of," said he. "These serfs have fled to Icomb, and, no doubt, have
been taken in very gladly by the monks. We are not loved in these parts,
Lord Fulke. But Richard Espec is not going to keep them in great ease
with wine and heydegwyes. They will work for their bread. Outside the
monastery walls there is a village for the servants, on the edge of the
corn-lands. Now see, lord. A man may go begging to Icomb, may he not?
For the night he will sleep in the hospitium. After that, if he wanteth
work, and will sign and deliver seisin to be a man of Icomb for three
years, I doubt nothing but the monks will have him gladly. They do ever
on that plan. He will live in the village. Well, then, that night let
there be a swift boat moored to the island, and let the first man come
to it and tell those therein where this devil Hyla lies. The rest is
very easy. A man can be bound up and thrown into the boat in
half-an-hour, and then we will have him here."
"Ventail and Visor!" said Fulke, "that is good, Lewin, we will have him
safe as a rat. But I have another thought too. I had forgotten. The
man's daughter Elgifu is still in the castle. It is not fitting that she
should live."
"'Tis but a girl," said Lewin, the sentimentalist.
Fulke snarled at him. "Girl or no girl, she shall die, and die heavily.
By the rood! I will avenge my father's murder so that men may talk of
it."
His narrow face was lit up with spite, and he brought his hand down upon
the table with a great blow.
"Perhaps you are right, my lord," said Lewin; "it is as well that she
should be killed. I only thought that she is a very pretty girl."
"There are plenty more, minter."
He went to the door and opened it, shouting down the stairs. A
man-at-arms came clattering up to him, making a great noise in the
narrow stone stairway. He ordered that the girl should be brought to
him, and presently she stood in front of them white and trembling, for
she saw their purpose in their eyes.
"You are going to be hanged, girl," said Fulke, "and first you shall
be well whipped in the castle yard. What of that? Do you like that?
Hey?"
She burst into pitiful pleadings and tremulous appeals. Her voice rang
in agony through the room. "I cannot die, lord," she said. "Oh, lord,
kill me not. My lord, my lord! my dear lord! For love of the Saints! I
cannot bear it!"
The brute watched her with a sneer, and then turned to the man-at-arms.
"Tie her up to the draw-well, strip her naked, and give her fifty
stripes. Then hang her, naked, on the tree outside the castle gate."
The man lifted her up in his arms, a light burden, and bore her
shrieking and struggling away.
Fulke leant back against the wall with a satisfied smile. Dom Anselm had
composed his features to an expression of stern justice, Lewin was white
and sick. Human life went for very little in those days, but he did not
like this torture of girls.
Gundruda, the pretty waiting maid, who watched the execution with great
complaisance, told him afterwards that the poor girl was dead, or at
least quite insensible to pain, long before the whipping was over.
"Little fool to stay here when she might have gone with the other,"
concluded Gundruda.
"Fool indeed," said he, "I cannot forget it--I am not well, Gundruda,
pretty one." She put her arms round him, and they strolled away
together.
So Elgifu paid bitterly for her folly, and went to a rest which was
denied her in this world.
In the early afternoon one of the men-at-arms, dressed as a peasant, set
out for Icomb by water.
Lewin stayed with Gundruda a little while, trying to find comfort in her
smiles and forgetfulness in her bright laughing eyes.
But the minter could find very little satisfaction with the girl. Her
beauty and sprightly allurements had no appeal for him just then. There
was no thrill even in her kisses. So after a while he left her, for a
sudden longing to be alone came over him. The idea was strong in him to
get as far away from the world as possible. By many steps he mounted to
the top of Outfangthef. As he emerged into the light, after the dusk of
the stairs, it began to be evening.
Down below, over all the castle works, men were busy at the defences,
clustering on the walls like a swarm of flies. Presently, one by one,
torches flared out, so that work might still go on when it was dark.
Lewin leaned over the parapet and surveyed the dusky world, full of
trouble and despair. A great truth came to him. He realised that he had
been born too soon, and was not made for that age of blood and steel.
The solitary isolation of the tower top intensified the loneliness of
his own soul.
Surveying life and its possibilities for him, he could see nothing but
misery in it. As the unseen nightwinds began to fly round him and
whisper, he took a resolve. When this siege began and Lord Roger
attacked Hilgay, he would arm and go out to death, seeking it in some
brave adventure. He would give up, he thought, his treason plot with
Anselm. There was nothing else that he could do, there was no
enjoyment--every man he knew was the same, the same, ever-lastingly the
same. Life was dull. He laughed a bitter, despairing laugh, and went
down to the castle again.
There was a great carouse that evening at Hilgay, for the works were
nearly done, and a spy had brought word that the forces of Lord Roger
were not as strong as earlier reports had led them to believe.
While the candles burnt all night by the grave in the chapel, all the
castle garrison, with the exception of the sentries, got most gloriously
drunk. Lewin was no exception.
It is a relief to turn from the contemplation of that sordid, evil place
to the quiet of the Priory in the lake. Yet it must be remembered that
Hilgay is an exact type of hundreds of other strongholds existing in
England at that time. The incalculable wickedness of the space of years,
when the secluded historian wrote that "Christ and all His angels seemed
asleep," is very difficult to imagine.
In truth, it was a bestial, malignant, inhuman time. We are not grateful
enough for the blessings of to-day. Imagine, if you please, what these
people were.
There is no need to outrage our nice tastes by revolting detail. Realism
can be pushed too far. But, for the sake of a clear understanding, take
Baron Fulke of Hilgay, and listen to a few personal details.
The beast was a very well-bred man. That is to say, he was of the
aristocracy, a peer with a great record of birth. We have seen that he
stripped his mistress naked, and had her killed by rough scoundrels in
his pay. He never had a qualm. So much for his character, which was as
much like the legendary devil as may be. But about the man as a
personality.
Supposing that we could draw a parallel between that time and our own
time. Fulke would correspond to half a dozen young gentlemen we all
know, considered from the point of view of social status. A boy we meet
at a dance, or a dinner, who is a member of a great family, for example.
Fulke, unpleasant as it is to say it, _hardly ever washed_. Brutally, in
a modern police court, he would be considered as a verminous person. In
the time of King Stephen, no one--and we can make no exception for the
saints of God themselves--had ever heard of a pocket handkerchief. The
world was malodorous! A dog-kennel would hardly have suffered any one of
our heroes and heroines, That is one reason why it is so difficult for
the veracious historian to present his characters as they really were.
It is hard to explain them, people are too accustomed to Romance.
There is hardly anything in our steam age so delightful as "Romance."
The romance of the early Middle Ages has a quality of glamour which will
hold our attention and have our hearts for ever. We always look for, and
desire refinements of fact in life. Human nature demands some sort of an
ideal. Our friends of the fens can hardly be called romantic, but they
are human.
While all these cut-throats were rioting in the keep, Richard Espec, the
prior of Icomb, was sitting in his cell working.
A candle in an iron holder stood on the table by him, and threw a none
too brilliant light upon a mass of documents. "Contrepaynes" of leaves,
pages of accounts, and letters from brother churchmen.
At the moment, the prior was checking the accounts of the oil mill,
which was a source of revenue to the house.
There came a knock at the door with a "Benedicite," the prior bid the
knocker enter. The new-comer was the sub-prior, John Croxton, Richard
Espec's great friend and counsellor.
"Sit down," said the prior, "and tell me the news--is there any news? I
am very weary of figuring, and I feel sad at heart. Richard Cublery has
paid no rent for a year and a half, since he fell to drinking heavily
with John Tichkill."
"We can survive that," said the sub-prior.
"Yes, yes; I am not accoyed at that, brother, but the letters and
tidings from the outside world oppress me. The various and manifold
illegalities and imposts which never cease or fail on the wretched
people, and the burnings and murders lie heavy on my heart. Oh, our Lord
has some wise purpose, I do not doubt, but it is all very dark to mortal
eyes."
"I have read," said the sub-prior, "somewhat of history in my time. But
never in Latin times, nor can I hear of it of the Greeks, was there such
a spirit of devilish wickedness abroad over a land."
"The lords of this country seem to me to be the daemons of hell in
mortal dress. Mind you what Robert Belesme did? His godchild was hostage
to him for its father, and the father did in some trifling way offend
him. Robert tore out the poor little creature's eyes with his nails.
William of Malmesbury hath writ it in his book, and, please God, the
world will never forget it."
"The king has got to him all the worst rogues from over the seas.
William of Ypres, Hervé of Léon, and Alan of Duran, there are three
pretty gentlemen! The king is no king. There are in England, so to
speak, as many kings, or rather tyrants, as lords of castles."
"Well, one of them is gone," said Richard Espec, "and I trust God will
forgive him, though I feel that it is not likely. He was one of the
worst ones, was Geoffroi de la Bourne."
"That was he. For myself, I cannot even understand how a man can be as
bad as that. A sinner, yes, and a bad one, but from our point of view,
you and I, can you see yourself, even if you were not a monk, doing any
of these things?"
"Without doubt, brother. Only an old man like I can really know how foul
and black a thing the human heart is. Every one is a potential Geoffroi,
save but for the grace of God, given for sweet Christ's sake."
"Yes, father," said the younger man, folding his arms meekly. The
candles on the tables began to gutter towards their end, and throw
monstrous shadows upon the faces and over the forms of the two monks.
They were talking in low tones, and the little stone room was very
silent. The dying candle-flames filled it with rich, velvety shadows,
and dancing yellow lights.
"Hyla and his friends have been given the large hut that Swegn had
before he died. I saw the meeting between him and his womenfolk. They
hardly looked to see him again."
"I do not care much to have so many women about," said Richard, with the
true monkish distrust of the other sex. "Nevertheless, the men can not
be easily kept without their wives. And of this Hyla--what do you think
of him?"
"He seems a very strong nature for a serf. Singularly contained within
himself, and, I think, proud of his revenge."
"That must not be, then. We must not let him be that. I well think that
he has been chosen by God as His instrument, and for that I rejoice. But
the man must not get proud. He is a serf, and a serf he will be always.
It is in his blood, and it is right that it should be so. I am no
upholder of any destruction of order. It is our duty to treat our slaves
well, and that we do; but they remain our slaves. Tell the brother who
directs the serfs that this Hyla should be well looked to, that he lie
in his true place."
The prior concluded with considerable vehemence. No one was more
theoretically conservative than he, and although, in this time of
anarchy, he approved of Hyla's deed, yet it certainly shocked his
instinctive respect for _les convenances_. It would have been difficult
to find a better creature than the fat prior of Icomb, a man more truly
charitable, or of a more pious life. But, had the course of this story
been different, and had Hyla lived his life at the monastery, he could
never have risen in the social scale. If the prior had discovered the
force of the man, his potentialities as a social force, he would have
sternly repressed them. Hyla's duty was to work, and be fed for his
work. The Catholic Church, with its vast hierarchy, its huge social
machinery, crushed all progress in the direction of freedom. No doubt,
Richard Espec, worthy gentleman though he was, would have been
considerably surprised if he had been told that he would be as Hyla,
and no more, in heaven. We hear too much about the humility of the
priesthood in the early Middle Ages. Of course, the great political
churchmen, such as Henry of Winchester or Thurston of York, were petty
kings, with ceremonial courts and armies. People knelt as they passed,
because they were princes as well as priests. But there is a delusion
that the ordinary monk or priest was, in effect, a perfect radical,
holding doctrines of equality, at any rate, as far as he himself was
concerned. Nothing of the sort was possible in the face of the one
crushing social fact of serfdom. Richard Espec would have washed Hyla's
feet with pleasure--there was precedent, and it was a formal act of
humiliation. At the same time, he would not have made his bed in Hyla's
hut or sat with him at meat.
The sub-prior received his superior's remarks with due reverence, and
the talk glided into other channels. While they sat there came footsteps
running down the cloister, and then a beating at the door. A young monk
entered, breathless, and knelt before the prior.
"News, father," said he, and craved permission to tell it. "Father,"
said the young man, and tears streamed down his cheeks, "our good
friend, Sir John Leyntwarden, is dead, and among the martyrs. Sir John
was saying Mass at the wayside altar of Saint Alban, the protomartyr
whom God loves. Sir John doth ever say a wayside Mass in the early
mornings, and calls down a blessing upon the Norwich road thereby. No
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