The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely
by Charles MacFarlane · English · Gutenberg #46744 · 851,185 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely
Author: Charles MacFarlane
Editor: Samuel Henry Miller
Release date: September 1, 2014 [eBook #46744]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAMP OF REFUGE: A TALE OF THE CONQUEST OF THE ISLE OF ELY ***
THE CAMP OF REFUGE.
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[Illustration: ISLE OF ELY AND CAMP OF REFUGE.]
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THE
CAMP OF REFUGE:
A Tale
OF
THE CONQUEST OF THE ISLE OF ELY.
---------------------
EDITED,
WITH NOTES AND APPENDIX, BY
SAMUEL H. MILLER, F.R.A.S.,
_Joint Author of “The Fenland, Past and Present.”_
-------
SECOND ANNOTATED EDITION.
-------
_ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS._
-------
WISBECH: LEACH & SON.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WISBECH
LEACH AND SON, PRINTERS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE EDITOR’S PREFACE.
A generation has passed away since “THE CAMP OF REFUGE” first issued
from the press. Although published anonymously, it shows that its
author had a very extensive knowledge of the history and topography of
the Fen district.
The book, however, while it embodied much real history, was put forth
with no higher pretension than that of a tale, whose characters were
historic personages, and whose incidents occurred, in the main, during
the Norman Conquest.
Knowing that this interesting book had become very scarce, and thinking
that it would prove as acceptable to this, and perhaps to the next,
generation as it did to the past—the present publishers determined to
offer a new edition to the public; trusting at the same time that its
contents will help to foster a loyalty and a love for our English
nation.
But with a new edition some few comments appeared necessary; therefore
Notes to the text, a short Appendix, and two Maps have been added, not
with a view merely to embellish the original work, nor to convert it
into a real history, but to assist, in some measure, the youthful
reader, or mayhap those, too, who have but limited means of consulting
the many sources of information upon which the ground-work of the tale
rests.
S. H. M.
_June, 1880._
SECOND ANNOTATED EDITION.
In preparing this edition, care has been taken to correct whatever
defects, typographical or otherwise, may have been found in the former
one; several fresh foot-notes have been introduced, the Appendix has
been re-arranged and enlarged, and a Map (adapted from _Dugdale’s
Monasticon_), representing the ground plan of the Spalding Monastery,
or “Succursal Cell,” has also been added.
These emendations and additions, it is confidently hoped, will ensure
for the book a more extended appreciation than it has hitherto enjoyed.
S. H. M.
_May, 1887._
THE CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Messenger 1
II. The Succursal Cell at Spalding 18
III. The Great House at Ely 40
IV. The Monks of Ely Feast 56
V. The Monks of Ely take counsel 76
VI. Ivo Taille-Bois and the Ladie Lucia 96
VII. Hereward’s Return 106
VIII. Lord Hereward goes to get his own 120
IX. Elfric the ex-novice, and Girolamo of Salerno, prepare
to play at devils 145
X. The House at Crowland 153
XI. The Linden Grove and Ladie Alftrude 172
XII. The Marriage and the Ambuscade 185
XIII. How Lord Hereward and his Ladie lived at Ey 203
XIV. Hereward is made Knight 215
XV. The Castle at Cam-Bridge and a Battle 232
XVI. The Traitorous Monks of Peterborough 245
XVII. Hereward goes to Brunn, and is disturbed there 260
XVIII. The Danes and their King’s son 281
XIX. The Norman Witch 308
XX. The Norman Duke tries again 320
XXI. The Monks of Ely complain and plot 335
XXII. Hereward brings Corn and Wine to Ely 360
XXIII. A Chapter and a Great Treason 389
XXIV. The Dungeon 413
XXV. The Normans in the Camp 428
XXVI. A Fire and a Rescue 446
XXVII. Hereward still Fights 458
XXVIII. The Happy End 466
Appendix—
Note A. Foundation of Ely Abbey 480
Note B. The Legend of S. Lucy 480
Note C. Ovin’s Cross at Ely 481
Note D. Spalding Priory 481
Note E. Archbishop Parker’s Salt Vat 481
Note F. Abbey of S. Alban 482
Note G. Crowland Abbey 482
Note H. Ramsey Abbey 483
Note I. Thorney Abbey 483
Note J. King’s Lynn in the 18th Century 484
Note K. Camp of Refuge Surrendered 485
Note L. Peterborough Abbey 486
Note M. The Gift of Brand 487
Note N. Knut’s Visit to Ely 487
Fenland Bibliography 487
Maps—The Isle of Ely (_Frontispiece._)
The Fen District.
Ground Plan of the Spalding Monastery and Boundaries,
_from Dugdale’s Monasticon_ (_to face page 481._)
THE FEN DISTRICT.
[Illustration:
_Horace E. Miller, del._
MAP _to_ “CAMP OF REFUGE.”]
THE CAMP OF REFUGE.
CHAPTER I.
THE MESSENGER.
It was long ago; it was in the year of grace one thousand and seventy,
or four years after the battle of Hastings, which decided the right of
power between the English and Norman nations, and left the old Saxon
race exposed to the goadings of the sharp Norman lance, that a novice
went on his way from the grand abbey of Crowland to the dependent house
or succursal cell of Spalding,[1] in the midst of the Lincolnshire
fens. The young man carried a long staff or pole in his hand, with
which he aided himself in leaping across the numerous ditches and
rivulets that intersected his path, and in trying the boggy ground
before he ventured to set his feet upon it. The upper end of his staff
was fashioned like unto the staff of a pilgrim, but the lower end was
armed with a heavy iron ferrule, from which projected sundry long steel
nails or spikes. It was a fen-pole,[2] such, I wist, as our fenners yet
use in Holland, Lindsey, and Kesteven. In a strong and bold hand this
staff might be a good war-weapon; and as the young man raised the
skirts of his black garment it might have been seen that he had a short
broad hunting-knife fastened to his girdle. He was a fair-haired,
blue-eyed, and full-lipped youth, with an open countenance and a ruddy
complexion: the face seemed made to express none but joyous feelings,
so that the grief and anxiety which now clouded it appeared to be quite
out of place. Nor was that cloud always there, for whensoever the
autumn sun shone out brightly, and some opening in the monotonous
forest of willows and alders gave him a pleasant or a varied prospect,
or when the bright king-fisher flitted across his path, or the wild
duck rose from the fen and flew heaven-ward,[3] or the heron raised
itself on its long legs to look at him from the sludge, or the timid
cygnet went sailing away in quest of the parent swan, his countenance
lighted up like that of a happy thoughtless boy. Ever and anon too some
inward emotion made him chuckle or laugh outright. Thus between sadness
and gladness the novice went on his way—a rough and miry way proper to
give a permanent fit of ill-humour to a less buoyant spirit, for he had
quitted the road or causeway which traversed the fens and was pursuing
a devious path, which was for the greater part miry in summer, but a
complete morass at the present season of the year. Notwithstanding all
his well-practised agility, and in spite of the good aid of his long
staff, he more than once was soused head over ears in a broad
water-course. With a good road within view, it may be thought that he
had some strong motive for choosing this very bad one; and every time
that his path approached to the road, or that the screen of alders and
willows failed him, he crouched low under the tall reeds and bulrushes
of the fen, and stole along very cautiously, peeping occasionally
through the rushes towards the road, and turning his ear every time
that the breeze produced a loud or unusual sound. As thus he went on,
the day declined fast, and the slanting sun shone on the walls of a
tall stone mansion, battlemented and moated—a dwelling-house, but a
house proper to stand a siege:[4] and in these years of trouble none
could dwell at peace in any house if unprovided with the means of
holding out against a blockade, and of repelling siege and assault. All
round this manor-house, to a wide space, the trees had been cut down
and the country drained; part of the water being carried off to a
neighbouring mere, and part being collected and gathered, by means of
various cuts, to fill the deep moat round the house.
Here the young man, in fear of being discovered by those who occupied
that warlike yet fair-looking dwelling, almost crawled on the ground.
Nevertheless he quitted his track to get nearer to the house; and then,
cowering among some reeds and bulrushes, he put his open hand above his
eyebrows, and gazed sharply at the moat, the drawbridge, the low
gateway with its round-headed arch, the battlements, and the black
Norman flag that floated over them. The while he gazed, the blast of a
trumpet sounded on the walls, and sounded again, and once again; and,
after the third blast, a noise as of many horses treading the high road
or causeway was heard among the fen reeds. The novice muttered, and
almost swore blasphemously, (albeit by the rules of the order he was
bound to use no stronger terms than _crede mihi_, or _planè_, or
_certè_, or _benedicamus Domina_;)[5] but he continued to gaze under
his palm until the sounds on the road came nearer and trumpet replied
to trumpet. Then, muttering “This is not a tarrying place for the feet
of a true Saxon!” he crawled back to the scarcely perceptible track he
had left, and kept on, in a stooping posture but at a rapid pace, until
he came to a thick clump of alders, the commencement of a wood which
stretched, with scarcely any interruption, to the banks of the river
Welland. Here, screened from sight, he struck the warlike end of his
staff against the trunk of a tree, and said aloud, “Forty Norman
men-at-arms! by Saint Etheldreda[6] and by the good eye-sight that
Saint Lucia[7] hath vouchsafed unto me! Forty Norman cut-throats, and
we in our succursal cell only five friars, two novices, two
lay-brothers, and five hinds! and our poor upper buildings all made of
wood, old and ready to burn like tow! and not ten bows in the place or
five men knowing how to use them! By Saint Ovin[8] and his cross! were
our walls but as strong as those of the monks of Ely, and our war-gear
better, and none of us cowards, I would say, ‘Up drawbridge! defy this
Norman woodcutter, who felled trees in the forest for his bread until
brought by the bastard to cut Saxon throats and fatten upon the lands
of our thanes and our churches and monasteries! I would spit at the
beard of this Ivo Taille-Bois, and call upon Thurstan my Lord Abbat of
Ely, and upon the true Saxon hearts in the Camp of Refuge, for
succour!’” And the passionate young man struck the trunk of the poor
unoffending tree until the bark cracked, and the long thin leaves,
loosened by autumn, fell all about him.
He then continued his journey through the low, thick, and monotonous
wood, and after sundry more leaps, and not a few sousings in the water
and slips in the mud, he reached the bank of the Welland at a point
just opposite to the succursal cell of Spalding. A ferry-boat was
moored under the walls of the house. He drew forth a blast horn; but
before putting it to his lips to summon the ferryman across, he
bethought him that he could not be wetter than he was, that he had got
his last fall in a muddy place, and that the readiest way to cleanse
himself before coming into the presence of his superior would be to
swim across the river instead of waiting to be ferried over. This also
suited the impatient mood he was in, and he knew that the serf who
managed the boat was always slow in his movements, and at times liable
to sudden and unseasonable fits of deafness. So, throwing his heavy
staff before him, like a javelin, and with so much vigour that it
reached and stuck deep into the opposite bank, he leaped into the river
and swam across after it. Before he came to the Welland the sun had
gone down; but it was a clear autumnal evening, and if he was not seen
in the twilight by a lay-brother stationed on the top of the house to
watch for his return and to keep a look-out along the river, it must
have been because the said lay-brother was either drowsy and had gone
to sleep, or was hungry and had gone down to see what was toward in the
kitchen.
The succursal cell of Spalding was but a narrow and humble place
compared with its great mother-house at Crowland: it seemed to stand
upon piles[9] driven deep into the marshy ground; the lower part of the
building was of stone, brick, and rubble, and very strong; but all the
upper part was of wood, even as the wayfaring novice had lamented. A
few small round-headed arches, with short thick mullions, showed where
was the chapel, and where the hall, which last served as refectory,
chapter, and for many other uses. Detached from the chapel was a low
thick campanile or bell-tower, constructed like the main building,
partly of stone, brick, and rubble, and partly of timber, the upper
part having open arches, through which might be seen the squat old bell
and the ponderous mallet, which served instead of a clapper. The
Welland almost washed the back of the house,[10] and a deep trench,
filled by the water of the river, went round the other sides. Without
being hailed or seen by anyone, the young man walked round from the
river bank to the front of the house, where the walls were pierced by a
low arched gateway, and one small grated window a little above the
arch. “The brothers are all asleep, and before supper time!” said the
novice, “but I must rouse old Hubert.” He then blew his horn as loud as
he could blow it. After a brief pause a loud but cracked voice cried
from within the gates, “Who comes hither, after evening song?”
“It is I, Elfric[11] the novice.”
“The voice is verily that of child Elfric; but I must see with my eyes
as well as hear with mine ears, for the Norman be prowling all about,
and these be times when the wolf counterfeiteth the voice of the lamb.”
“Open, Hubert, open,” cried the novice, “open, in the name of Saint
Chad![12] for I am wet, tired, and a-hungred, and the evening wind is
beginning to blow coldly from the meres. Open thy gate, Hubert, and let
fall the bridge; I am so hungry that I could eat the planks! Prithee,
is supper ready?”
To this earnest address no answer was returned; but after a minute or
two the twilight showed a cowled head behind the grates of the
window—a head that seemed nearly all eyes, so intensely did the
door-porter look forth across the moat—and then the voice which before
had been heard below, was heard above, saying, “The garb and figure be
verily those of Elfric, and the water streams from him to the earth.
Ho! Elfric the novice—an thou be he—throw back thy hood, and give the
sign!”
“Abbat Thurstan[13] and Saint Etheldreda for the East Englanders!”
shouted the young man.
Here, another voice was heard from within the building calling out
“Hubert, whom challengest? Is it Elfric returning from Crowland?”
“Yea,” quoth the portarius, “it is Elfric the novice safe back from
Crowland, but dripping like a water-rat, and shivering in the wind.
Come, help me lower the bridge, and let him in.”
The gate was soon opened, and the narrow drawbridge lowered. The youth
entered, and then helped to draw up the bridge and make fast the
iron-studded door. Within the archway every member of the little
community, except those who were preparing the evening repast or
spreading the tables in the refectory, and the superior who was
prevented by his gout and his dignity from descending to the door-way
to meet a novice (be his errand what it might), was standing on
tip-toe, and open-mouthed for news; but Elfric was a practised
messenger, and knowing that the bringer of bad news is apt to meet with
a cold welcome, and that the important tidings he brought ought to be
communicated first to the head of the house, he hurried through the
throng, and crossing a cloistered court, and ascending a flight of
stairs, he went straight to the cell of Father Adhelm,[14] the
sub-prior of Crowland Abbey, who ruled the succursal cell of Spalding.
The monks followed him into the room; but the novices and lay-brothers
stopped short at the threshold, taking care to keep the door ajar so
that they might hear whatsoever was said within. “I give thee my
benison, oh, my child! and may the saints bless thee, for thou art back
sooner than I weened. But speak, oh Elfric! quick! tell me what glad
tidings thou bringest from my Lord Abbat and our faithful brethren at
Crowland, and what news of that son of the everlasting fire, our evil
neighbour Ivo Taille-Bois?”
After he had reverentially kissed the hand of his superior, Elfric the
novice spake and said:—
“Father, I bring no glad tidings; my news be all bad news! Ivo
Taille-Bois is coming against us to complete his iniquities, by
finishing our destruction; and the Abbat[15] and our faithful brethren
at Crowland are harassed and oppressed themselves, and cannot help us!”
The faces of the monks grew very long; but they all said in one voice,
“Elfric, thou dreamest. Elfric, thou speakest of things that cannot be;
for hath not my Lord Abbat obtained the king’s peace, and security for
the lives of all his flock and the peaceful possession of all our
houses, succursal cells, churches and chapels, farms and lands
whatsoever, together with our mills, fisheries,[16] stews, warrens, and
all things appertaining to our great house and order?”[17]
One of the primary duties imposed upon novices was to be silent when
the elders spake. Elfric stood with his hands crossed upon his breast
and with his eyes bent upon the floor, until his superior said “Peace,
brothers! let there be silence until the youth hath reported what he
hath heard and seen.” And then turning to Elfric, Father Adhelm added,
“Bring you no missive from our good Abbat?”
“Yea,” said the novice, “I am the bearer of an epistle from my Lord
Abbat to your reverence; and lo! it is here.” And he drew forth from
under his inner garment a round case made of tin, and presented it most
respectuously to the superior.
“I am enduring the pains of the body as well as the agony of the
spirit,” said the superior, “and my swollen right hand refuses its
office; brother Cedric, undo the case.”
Cedric took the case, opened it, took out a scroll of parchment, kissed
it as if it had been a relic, unrolled it, and handed it to the
superior.
“Verily this is a long missive,” said the superior, running his eyes
over it, “and alack, and woe the while, it commenceth with words of ill
omen! Brethren my eyes are dim and cannot read by twilight:[18] the
body moreover is faint, I having fasted from everything but prayer and
meditation since the mid-day refection; and then, as ye can bear
witness, I ate no meat, but only picked a stewed pike[19] of the
smallest. Therefore, brethren, I opine that we had better read my Lord
Abbat’s epistle[20] after supper (when will they strike upon that
refectory bell?), and only hear beforehand what Elfric hath to say.”
The cloister-monks gladly assented, for they were as hungry as their
chief, and, not being very quick at reading, were glad that the
superior had not called for lights in the cell, and called upon them to
read the letter.
“Now speak, Elfric, and to the point; tell the tale shortly, and after
the evening meal the lamp shall be trimmed and we will draw our stools
round the hearth in the hall, and read the abbat’s epistle and
deliberate thereupon.”
Upon this injunction of Father Adhelm, the youth began to relate with
very commendable brevity, that the abbey of Crowland was surrounded and
in good part occupied by Norman knights and men-at-arms, who were
eating the brotherhood out of house and home, and committing every kind
of riot and excess; that the abbat had in vain pleaded the king’s
peace, and shown the letters of protection granted him by Lanfranc,[21]
the new foreign primate of the kingdom; that the Normans had seized
upon all the horses and mules and boats of the community; and that the
abbat (having received disastrous intelligence from the north[22] and
from other parts of England where the Saxon patriots had endeavoured to
resist the conqueror), had fallen sick, and had scarcely strength to
dictate and sign the letter he brought.
“These are evil tidings indeed,” said the superior, “but the storm is
yet distant, and may blow over without reaching us. It is many a rood
from Crowland to Spalding, and there is many a bog between us. Those
accursed knights and men-at-arms will not readily risk their horses and
their own lives in our fens; and now that Ivo Taille-Bois hath so often
emptied our granaries, and hath crippled or carried off all our cattle,
we have the protecting shield of poverty. There is little to be got
here but bare walls, and Ivo, having the grant of the neighbouring
lands from the man they call King William, is not willing that any
robber but himself should come hitherward. His mansion guards the
causeway, and none can pass thereon without his _bene placet_. But, oh
Elfric! what of the demon-possessed Ivo? Rests he not satisfied with
the last spoils he made on our poor house? Abides he not true to his
compact that he would come no more, but leave us to enjoy his king’s
peace and the peace of the Lord? Heeds he not the admonition addressed
to him by Lanfranc? Speak, Elfric, and be quick, for methinks I hear
the step of the cellarer by the refectory door.”
“The strong keep no compact with the weak,” responded the novice, “and
these lawless marauders care little for William their king, less for
their archbishop, and nothing for the Lord! While I was hid in Crowland
Abbey waiting for my Lord Abbat’s letter, I heard from one of the
friars who can interpret their speech, that some of these Normans were
saying that Ivo Taille-Bois wanted the snug nest at Spalding to put
cleaner birds into it: that Ivo had made his preparations to dispossess
us. And lo! as I came homeward through the fens, and passed as near as
I might to the manor-house which Taille-Bois made his own by forcibly
marrying the good Saxon[23] owner of it, I heard the flourish of
trumpets, and anon I saw, tramping along the causeway towards the
well-garrisoned manor-house, forty Norman men-at-arms!”
“Not so, surely not so, Elfric,” said the superior in a quake, “danger
cannot be so near us as that!”
“His eyes must have deceived him,” cried all the brothers.
“Nay,” said the youth, “I saw, as plainly as I now see the faces of
this good company, their lances glinting in the setting sun, and their
bright steel caps and their grey mail, and....”
“Fen-grass and willows,”[24] cried the superior, who seemed determined
not to give credit to the evil tidings, “what thou tookest for spears
were bulrushes waving in the breeze, and thy steel-caps and grey mails
were but the silvery sides of the willow-leaves turned upwards by the
wind! Boy, fasting weakens the sight and makes it dim!”
“Would it were so,” quoth Elfric; “but so was it not! I heard the
trumpet give challenge from the battlements—I heard the other trumpet
give response—I heard the tramping of many hoofs along the hard solid
causeway; and, creeping nearer to the road, I saw lances and horses and
men—and they were even forty!”
“It cannot be,” said one of the monks, “for, when he made his last
paction with us, Ivo Taille-Bois swore, not only by three Saxon saints
but eke by six saints of Normandie, that he would do us and our house
no further wrong.”
“The senses are deceptions,” said another of the brotherhood.
“The foul fiend, who often lurks in these wildernesses and plays fiery
pranks in our fens, may have put it into this youth’s head to mar our
peace with false alarms;” quoth another monk.
“Say _warning_, and not false alarm,” rejoined Elfric rather
petulantly. “If you will not be warned, you will be surprised in your
sleep or at your meals. These forty men-at-arms cannot come hither for
other purpose than that of finishing our ruin and driving us hence. As
sure as the sun riseth they will be here to-morrow morning.”
“The boy chafes, and loses respect for his elders,” said the monk who
had last spoken.
“Let him sup with the cats!” cried the superior.
At this moment a bell was struck below; and at the signal the novices
and lay-brothers ran from the door at which they had been listening,
and the superior, followed by the monks, and at a respectful distance
by the reproved and vexed novice, hobbled down stairs to the refectory.
The aspect of that hall, with its blazing wood fire, abundant tapers
and torches, and well-spread tables, intimated that the superior’s
account of the poverty and destitution to which Ivo the Norman had
reduced the house was only figurative or comparative. That good father
took his place at the head of the table; the monks took their seats
according to their degree of antiquity; the novices and the
lay-brothers sat below the salt;[25] and poor Elfric, submissive to his
penance, sat down cross-legged on the rushes in the middle of the
floor, and in the midst of all the cats of the establishment, who, I
wist, knew as well as the monks the meaning of the dinner and supper
bell, and always trooped into the refectory to share the fragments of
the feast. One of the novices ascended a little pulpit raised high in
one of the angles of the hall, and the superior having blessed the good
things placed before him, this young novice read from the book of
Psalms while the rest of the company ate their meal. After all had been
served, even to the meanest of the lay-brothers, Elfric’s bread and
meat and his stoup of wine were handed to him on the floor—and then
was seen what it signified to sup with the cats, for tabbies, greys,
blacks, and whites all whisked their tails, and purred and mewed, and
scratched round about him, greedy to partake with him, and some of the
most daring even dipped their whiskers into his porringer, or scratched
the meat from his spoon before it could reach his mouth. Nevertheless
the young man made a hearty meal, and so, in spite of their fears and
anxieties, did all the rest of that devout community. As grace was
said, and as the reader was descending from the pulpit to do as the
others had done, the superior, after swallowing a cup of wine, said
rather blithely, “Now trim the good lamp and feed the fire, close the
door, and place seats and the reading-desk round the hearth.” As the
novices and lay-brothers hastened to do these biddings, Father Cedric
whispered to the superior, “Would it not be fitting to shut out the
young and the unordained, and deliberate by ourselves, _maturi
fratres_?”[26] “No,” replied the superior, “we be all alike concerned;
let novices and lay-brothers stay where they are and hear the words of
our Lord Abbat. If danger be so nigh, all must prepare to meet it, and
some may be wanted to run into Spalding town to call upon all good
Christians and true Saxons there to come to the rescue.” Then turning
to the youth on the rushes he said, “Elfric the messenger, thou mayest
rise and take thy seat in thy proper place: I cannot yet believe all
thy news, and thou spokest when thou oughtest not to have spoken; but
these are days of tribulation, and mischief may be nearer than we
thought it. Yet, blessed be God! that provides food and drink for his
creatures, and that makes the bounteous meal and the red wine revive
the heart and courage of man, I feel very differently now from what I
felt before supper, and can better bear the weight of evil news, and
more boldly face the perils that may lie in my path.” By words or by
looks all the brotherhood re-echoed this last sentiment.
CHAPTER II.
THE SUCCURSAL CELL.
The Abbat of Crowland’s letter, read aloud and slowly by the cheerful
fire, had no note of gladness in it. It began “Woe to the Church! woe
to the servants of God! woe to all of the Saxon race!” and it ended
with, “Woe! woe! woe!” It related how all the prelates of English birth
were being expelled by foreign priests, some from France and some from
Italy; how nearly every Saxon abbat had been deprived, and nearly every
religious house seized by men-at-arms and given over to strange
shavelings from Normandie, from Anjou, from Picardie, from Maine, from
Gasconie, and numberless other parts,[27] and how these alien monks,
who could not speak the tongue which Englishmen spoke, were occupying
every pulpit and confessional, and consigning the people to perdition
because they spoke no French, and preferred their old masters and
teachers to their new ones, put over them by violence and the sword!
Jealousies and factions continued to rage among the Saxon lords and
among those that claimed kindred with the national dynasties; sloth and
gluttony, and the dullness of the brain they produce, rendered of no
avail the might of the Saxon arm, and the courage of the Saxon heart.
Hence a _dies iræ_, a day of God’s wrath. Aldred,[28] the archbishop of
York, had died of very grief and anguish of mind: Stigand,[29] the
English and the true archbishop of Canterbury, after wandering in the
Danelagh and in Scotland, and flying for his life from many places, had
gone in helpless condition to the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely:
Edgar Etheling, that royal boy, had been deserted by the Danes, who had
crossed the seas in many ships to aid him; and he had fled once more in
a denuded state to the court of Malcolm Caenmore, the Scottish king. In
all the north of England there had been a dismal slaughter: from York
to Durham not an inhabited village remained—fire and the sword had
made a wilderness there—and from Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear
to the Tyne, the remorseless conqueror, _Herodes, Herode ferocior_, a
crueller Herod than the Herod of old, had laid waste the land and
slaughtered the people. York Minster had been destroyed by fire, and
every church, chapel, and religious house had been either destroyed or
plundered by the Normans. Everywhere the Saxon patriots, after brief
glimpses of success, had met with defeat and extermination, save and
except only in the Camp of Refuge and the Isle of Ely; and there too
misfortune had happened. Edwin and Morcar,[30] the sons of Alfgar,
brothers-in-law to King Harold, and the best and the bravest of the
Saxon nobles, had quitted the Camp of Refuge, that last asylum of
Anglo-Saxon independence, and had both perished. All men of name and
fame were perishing. The Saxon commonalty were stupified with amazement
and terror,—_Pavefactus est Populus_.[31] The Normans were making war
even upon the dead or upon the tombs of those who had done honour to
their country as patriots, warriors, spiritual teachers and saints.
Frithric,[32] the right-hearted Abbat of St. Albans, had been driven
from his abbey with all his brethren; and Paul, a young man from
Normandie and a reputed son of the intrusive Archbishop Lanfranc, had
been thrust in his place. And this Paul, as his first act in office,
had demolished the tombs of all his predecessors, whom he called rude
and idiotic men, because they were of the English race! And next, this
Paul had sent over into Normandie for all his poor relations and
friends—men ignorant of letters and of depraved morals—and he was
dividing among this foul rapacious crew the woods and the farms, all
the possessions and all the offices of the church and abbey of St.
Albans. Crowland was threatened with the same fate, and he, the abbat,
was sick and brokenhearted, and could oppose the Normans only with
prayers—with prayers to which, on account of the sins of the nation,
the blessed Virgin and the saints were deaf. The brethren in the
succursal cell at Spalding must look to themselves, for he, the abbat,
could give them no succour; and he knew of a certainty that Ivo
Taille-Bois had promised the cell to some of his kith and kin in
foreign parts.
The reading of this sad letter was interrupted by many ejaculations and
expressions of anger and horror, grief and astonishment; and when it
was over, the spirits of the community were so depressed that the
superior thought himself absolutely compelled to call upon the cellarer
and bid him fill the stoups again, to the end that there might be
another short _Biberes_. When the monks had drunk in silence, and had
crossed themselves after the draught, they began to ask each other what
was to be done? for they no longer doubted that Elfric had seen the
forty men-at-arms in the neighbourhood, or that Ivo Taille-Bois would
be thundering at their gate in the morning. Some proposed sending a
messenger into Spalding town, which was scarcely more than two good
bow-shots distant from the cell, lighting the beacon on the tower, and
sounding all the blast-horns on the house-top to summon the whole
neighbourhood to their aid; but the superior bade them reflect that
this would attract the notice of Ivo Taille-Bois, and be considered as
an hostile defiance; that the neighbourhood was very thinly peopled by
inexpert and timid serfs, and that most of the good men of Spalding
town who possessed arms and the art of wielding them had already taken
their departure for the Camp of Refuge. At last the superior said, “We
cannot attempt a resistance, for by means of a few lighted arrows the
children of Satan would set fire to our upper works, and so burn our
house over our heads. We must submit to the will of Heaven, and
endeavour to turn aside the wrath of our arch-persecutor. Lucia,[33]
the wife of Ivo Taille-Bois, was a high-born Saxon maiden when he
seized upon her (after slaying her friends), and made her his wife in
order to have the show of a title to the estates. As a maiden Lucia was
ever good and Saxon-hearted, especially devout to our patron saint,[34]
and a passing good friend and benefactress to this our humble cell. She
was fair among the daughters of men, fairest in a land where the
strangers themselves vouchsafe to say that beauty and comeliness
abound;[35] she may have gotten some sway over the fierce mind of her
husband, and at her supplications Ivo may be made to forego his wicked
purposes. Let us send a missive to the fair Lucia.”
Here Brother Cedric reminded Father Adhelm that a letter would be of
little use, inasmuch as the fair Lucia could not read, and had nobody
about her in the manor-house that could help her in this particular.
“Well then,” said the superior, “let us send that trusty and nimble
messenger Elfric to the manor-house, and let him do his best to get
access to the lady and acquaint her with our woes and fears. What
sayest thou, good Elfric?”
Albeit the novice thought that he had been but badly rewarded for his
last service, he crossed his arms on his breast, bowed his head, and
said, “Obedience is my duty. I will adventure to the manor-house, I
will try to see the Lady Lucia, I will go into the jaws of the monster,
if it pleaseth your reverence to command me so to do. But, if these
walls were all of stone and brick, I would rather stay and fight behind
them: for I trow that the fair Lucia hath no more power over Ivo
Taille-Bois than the lamb hath over the wolf, or the sparrow over the
sparrow-hawk.”
“But,” said the superior, “unless Heaven vouchsafe a miracle, we have
no other hope or chance than this. Good Elfric, go to thy cell and
refresh thyself with sleep, for thou hast been a wayfarer through long
and miry roads, and needest rest. We too are weary men, for we have
read a very long letter and deliberated long on weighty trying
business, and the hour is growing very late. Let us then all to bed,
and at earliest morning dawn, after complines, thou wilt gird up thy
loins and take thy staff in thine hand, and I will tell thee how to
bespeak the Lady Lucia, an thou canst get to her presence. I will take
counsel of my pillow, and call upon the saints to inspire me with a
moving message that I shall send.”
Elfric humbly saluted the superior and all his elders by name, wished
them a holy night, and withdrew from the refectory and hall to seek the
rest which he really needed: but before entering his cell he went to
the house-top to look out at the broad moon, and the wood, and the
river, and the open country, intersected by deep cuts and ditches,
which lay in front of the succursal cell. The night had become frosty,
and the moon and the stars were shining their brightest in a
transparent atmosphere. As the novice looked up the course of the
Welland he thought he distinguished something afar off floating on the
stream. He looked again, and felt certain that a large boat was
descending the river towards the house. He remained silent and almost
breathless until the vessel came so near that he was enabled to see
that the boat was filled with men-at-arms, all clad in mail, who held
their lances in their hands, and whose shields were fastened to the
sides of the boat, glittering in the moonlight. “I count forty and one
lances and forty and one shields,” said the youth to himself, “but
these good friars will tell me that I have seen bulrushes and
willow-leaves.” He closed his eyes for a time and then rubbed them and
looked out again. There was the boat, and there were the lances and the
shields and the men-at-arms, only nearer and more distinct, for the
current of the river was rapid, and some noiseless oars or paddles were
at work to increase the speed without giving the alarm. “I see what is
in the wind,” thought Elfric; “the Normans would surprise us and expel
us by night, without rousing the good people of Spalding town.” He ran
down the spiral staircase; but, short as was the time that he had been
on the housetop, every light had been extinguished in the hall during
the interval, every cell-door had been closed; and a chorus of loud
snores that echoed along the corridor told him that, maugre their
troubles and alarms, all the monks, novices, and lay-brothers were
already fast asleep. “I will do what I can do,” said the youth, “for if
I wake the superior he will do nothing. If the men of Spalding town
cannot rescue us, they shall at least be witnesses to the wrongs put
upon us. Nay, Gurth the smith, and Wybert the wheelwright, and Nat the
weaver, and Leolf the woodsman, be brave-hearted knaves, and have the
trick of archery. From the yon side of those ditches and trenches,
which these heavy-armed Normans cannot pass, perchance a hole or two
may be driven into their chain jerkins!”
Taking the largest horn in the house he again ascended to the roof, and
turning towards the little town he blew with all his strength and
skill, and kept blowing until he was answered by three or four horns in
the town. By this time the boat was almost under the walls of the
monastery, and an arrow from it came whistling close over the youth’s
head. “There are neither battlements nor parapets here,” said he, “and
it is now time to rouse the brethren.” In a moment he was in the
corridor rapping at the doors of the several cells, wherein the monks
slept on, not hearing the blowing of the horns; but before half the
inmates were roused from their deep slumber the Normans had landed from
the boat, and had come round to the front of the house shouting,
“Taille-Bois! Taille-Bois! Notre Dame to our aid! and Taille-Bois to
his own! Get up, ye Saxon churls that be ever sleeping or eating, and
make way for better men!”
The superior forgot his gout and ran to the hall. They all ran to the
hall, friars, novices, lay-brothers, and hinds,[36] and lights were
brought in and hurried deliberations commenced, in which every one took
part. Although there was overmuch sloth, there was little cowardice
among these recluses. If there had been any chance of making good the
defence of the house, well I ween the major part of them would have
voted for resistance; but chance there was none, and therefore, with
the exception of Elfric, whose courage, at this time of his life,
bordered on rashness, they all finally agreed with the superior that
the wisest things to do would be to bid Hubert the portarius throw open
the gate and lower the bridge; to assemble the whole community in the
chapel, light up all tapers on the high altar and shrines, and chant
the _Libera Nos Domine_—Good Lord deliver us!
“It is not psalmody that will save us from expulsion,” thought Elfric.
Now Hubert the porter was too old and too much disturbed in spirit to
do all that he had to do without help; and Father Cedric bade the
sturdy novice go and assist him.
“May I die the death of a dog—may I be hanged on a Norman gibbet,”
said Elfric to himself, “if I help to open the gates to these midnight
robbers!” And instead of following Hubert down to the gate, he went
again (_sine Abbatis licentiâ_, without license or knowledge of his
superior) to the house-top, to see whether any of the folk of Spalding
town had ventured to come nigh. As he got to the corner of the roof
from which he had blown the horn, he heard loud and angry voices below,
and curses and threats in English and in Norman French. And he saw
about a score of Spalding-men in their sheepskin jackets and with bows
and knives in their hands, menacing and reviling the mail-clad
men-at-arms. The Saxons soon got themselves well covered from the foe
by a broad deep ditch, and by a bank; but some of the Normans had
brought their bows with them, and a shaft let fly at the right moment
when one of the Saxons was exposing his head and shoulders above the
bank, took effect, and was instantly followed by a wild scream or
yell—“Wybert is down! Wybert is slain!”
“Then this to avenge him, for Wybert was a good man and true;” and
Elfric, who had brought a bow with him from the corridor, drew the
string to his ear and let fly an arrow which killed the Norman that had
killed Wybert the wright. It was the men-at-arms who now yelled; and,
even as their comrade was in the act of falling, a dozen more arrows
came whistling among them from behind the bank and made them skip.
Ivo Taille-Bois lifted up his voice and shouted, “Saxon churls, ye mean
to befriend your fainéant[37] monks; but if ye draw another bow I will
set fire to the cell and grill them all!”
This was a terrible threat, and the poor men of Spalding knew too well
that Ivo could easily do that which he threatened. The noise had
reached the chapel, where the superior was robing himself, and Father
Cedric came to the house-top to conjure the Saxons to retire and leave
the servants of the saints to the protection of the saints. At the top
of the spiral staircase he found the novice with the bow in his hand;
and he said unto him, “What dost thou here, _et sine licentiâ_”?[38]
“I am killing Normans,” said Elfric; “but Wybert the wright is slain,
and the men of Spalding are losing heart.”
“Mad boy, get thee down, or we shall all be burned alive. Go help
Hubert unbar the gate and drop the bridge.”
“That will I never, though I break my monastic vow of obedience,” said
the youth. “But hark! the chain rattles!—the bridge is down—the hinge
creaks—by heaven! the gate is open—Ivo Taille-Bois and his devils are
in the house! Then is this no place for me!” And before the monk could
check him, or say another word to him, the novice rushed to the
opposite side and leaped from the roof into the deep moat. Forgetting
his mission—which was to conjure the Saxons in the name of Father
Adhelm the superior of the house not to try the arms of the flesh,—old
Cedric followed to the spot whence the bold youth had taken his spring,
but before he got there Elfric had swum the moat and was making fast
for the Welland, in the apparent intention of getting into the fens
beyond the river, where Norman pursuit after him could be of no avail.
The monk then went towards the front of the building and addressed the
Saxons who still lingered behind the ditch and the bank, bemoaning the
fate of Wybert, and not knowing what to do. Raising his voice so that
they might hear him, Cedric beseeched them to go back to their homes in
the town; and he was talking words of peace unto them when he was
struck from behind by a heavy Norman sword which cleft his cowl and his
skull in twain: and he fell over the edge of the wall into the moat.
Some of the men-at-arms had seen Elfric bending his bow on the
house-top, and the Norman who had been slain had pointed, while dying,
in that direction. After gaining access they had slain old Hubert and
the lay-brother who had assisted him in lowering the drawbridge; and
then, while the rest rushed towards the chapel, two of the men-at-arms
found their way to the roof, and there seeing Cedric they despatched
him as the fatal archer and as the daring monk who had blown the horn
to call out the men of Spalding. As Father Cedric fell into the moat,
and the Normans were seen in possession of the cell, the men of
Spalding withdrew, and carried with them the body of Wybert. But if
they withdrew to their homes, it was but for a brief season and in
order to carry off their moveable goods and their families; for they
all knew that Ivo Taille-Bois would visit the town with fire and sword.
Some fled across the Welland and the fens to go in search of the Camp
of Refuge, and others took their way towards the wild and lonesome
shores of the Wash.
But how fared the brotherhood in the chapel below? As Ivo Taille-Bois
at the head of his men-at-arms burst into the holy place—made holy by
the relics of more than one Saxon saint, and by the tomb and
imperishable body of a Saxon who had died a saint and martyr at the
hand of the Danish Pagans in the old time, before the name of Normans
was ever heard of—the superior and friars, dressed in their stoles, as
if for high mass, and the novices and the lay-brothers, were all
chanting the _Libera Nos_; and they seemed not to be intimidated or
disturbed by the flashing of swords and lances, or by the sinful
imprecations of the invaders; for still they stood where they were, in
the midst of tapers and flambards, as motionless as the stone effigies
of the saints in the niches of the chapel; and their eyes moved not
from the books of prayer, and their hands trembled not, and still they
chanted in the glorious strain of the Gregorian chant[39] (which Time
had not mended), _Libera Nos Domine!_ “Good Lord deliver us!” and when
they had finished the supplication, they struck up in a more cheerful
note, _Deus Noster Refugium_, God is our Refuge.
Fierce and unrighteous man as he was, Ivo Taille-Bois stood for a
season on the threshold of the chapel with his mailed elbow leaning on
the font that held the holy water; and, as the monks chanted, some of
his men-at-arms crossed themselves and looked as if they were conscious
of doing unholy things which ought not to be done. But when the
superior glanced at him a look of defiance, and the choir began to sing
_Quid Gloriaris?_ “Why boasteth thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou
canst do mischief?” Ivo bit his lips, raised up his voice—raised it
higher than the voices of the chanting monks, and said, “Sir Priest, or
prior, come forth and account to the servant of thy lawful King William
of Normandie for thy unlawful doings, for thy gluttonies, backslidings,
and rebellions, for thy uncleanliness of life and thy disloyalty of
heart!” But Father Adhelm moved not, and still the monks sang on: and
they came to the versets—“Thou hast loved to speak all words that may
do hurt; oh! thou false tongue—therefore shall God destroy thee for
ever: He shall take thee and pluck thee out of thy dwelling.”
“False monk, I will first pluck thee out of thine,” cried Ivo, who knew
enough church Latin to know what the Latin meant that the monks were
chanting; and he strode across the chapel towards the superior, and
some of his men-at-arms strode hastily after him, making the stone
floor of the chapel ring with the heavy tread of their iron-bound
shoon; and some of the men-at-arms stood fast by the chapel door,
playing with the fingers of their gloves of mail and looking in one
another’s eyes or down to the ground, as if they liked not the work
that Ivo had in hand. The monks, the novices, the lay-brothers, all
gathered closely round their superior and linked their arms together so
as to prevent Ivo from reaching him; and the superior, taking his
crucifix of gold from his girdle, and raising it high above his head
and above the heads of those who girded him in, and addressing the
Norman chief as an evil spirit, or as Sathanas the father of all evil
spirits, he bade him avaunt! Ivo had drawn his sword, but at sight of
the cross he hesitated to strike, and even retired a few steps in
arrear. The monks renewed their chant; nor stopped, nor were
interrupted by any of the Normans until they had finished this Psalm.
But when it was done Ivo Taille-Bois roared out, “Friars, this is
psalmody enough! Men-at-arms, your trumpets! Sound the charge.” And
three Normans put each a trumpet to his lips and sounded the charge;
which brought all the men-at-arms careering against the monks and the
novices and the lay-brothers; so that the living fence was broken and
some of the brethren were knocked down and trampled under foot, and a
path was opened for Ivo, who first took the golden crucifix from the
uplifted hand of Father Adhelm and put it round his own neck, and then
took the good father by the throat and bade him come forth from the
chapel into the hall, where worldly business might be done without
offering insult or violence to the high altar.
“I will first pour out the curses of the church on thy sacrilegious
head,” said the superior, throwing off the Norman count, and with so
much strength that Ivo reeled and would have fallen to the ground among
the prostrate monks, if he had not first fallen against some of his
men-at-arms. Father Adhelm broke away from another Norman who clutched
him, but in so doing he left nearly all his upper garment in the
soldier’s hand, and he was rent and ragged and without his crucifix
when he reached the steps of the altar and began his malediction.
“Stop the shaveling’s tongue, but shed no blood here,” cried Ivo;
“seize him, seize them all, and bring them into the refectory!”—and so
saying the chief rushed out of the chapel into the hall. It was an
unequal match—thirty-nine men-at-arms against a few monks and boys and
waiting men; yet before the superior could be dragged from the high
altar, and conveyed with all his community into the hall, several of
the Normans were made to measure their length on the chapel floor (they
could not wrestle like our true Saxons), and some of them were so
squeezed within their mail sleeves and gorgets[40] by the grip of Saxon
hands, that they bore away the marks and smarts that lasted them many a
day. It was for this that one of them cut the weazen[41] of the sturdy
old cook as soon as he got him outside the chapel door, and that
another of them cut off the ears of the equally stout cellarer.
At last they were all conveyed, bound with their cords or girdles, into
the hall. The Taille-Bois, with his naked sword in his hand, and with a
man-at-arms on either side of him, sat at the top of the hall in the
superior’s chair of state; and the superior and the rest of the
brotherhood were brought before him like criminals.
“Brother to the devil,” said Ivo, “what was meant by thy collecting of
armed men—rebel and traitor serfs that shall rue the deed!—thy
sounding of horns on the house-top; thy fighting monks that have killed
one of my best men-at-arms; thy long delay in opening thy doors to
those who knocked at them in the name of King William; thy outrages in
the chapel, and all thy other iniquities which I have so oft-times
pardoned at the prayer of the Lady Lucia? Speak, friar, and tell me why
I should not hang thee over thine own gateway as a terror and an
example to all the other Saxon monks in this country, who are all in
their hearts enemies and traitors to the good king that God and victory
have put over this land!”
Had it not been that Father Adhelm was out of breath, from his
wrestling in the Chapel, I wist he never would have allowed Ivo
Taille-Bois to speak so long without interruption. But by the time the
Norman paused, the superior had partly recovered his breath; and he did
not keep the Norman waiting for his answer.
“Son of the fire everlasting,” cried Adhelm, “it is for me to ask what
meanest thou by thy transgressions, past and present? Why hast thou
from thy first coming among us never ceased from troubling me and these
other servants of the saints, the brothers of this poor cell? Why hast
thou seized upon and emptied our granaries and our cellars (more the
possessions of the saints and of the poor than our possessions)? Why
hast thou carried off the best of our cattle? Why hast thou and thy
people lamed our horses and our oxen, and killed our sheep and poultry?
Why hast thou caused to be assailed on the roads, and beaten with
staves and swords, the lay-brothers and servants of this house? Why
didst thou come at the dead of night like a chief of robbers with thy
men-at-arms and cut-throats to break in upon us and to wound and slay
the servants of the Lord, who have gotten thy king’s peace, and letters
of protection from the Archbishop Lanfranc?[42] Oh, Ivo Taille-Bois!
tell me why thou shouldst not be overtaken by the vengeance of man’s
law in this world, and by eternal perdition in the next?”
Ivo was not naturally a man of many words; and thinking it best to cut
the discussion short, he grinned a grim grin, and said in a calm and
business-like tone of voice, “Saxon! we did not conquer thy country to
leave Saxons possessed of its best fruits. This house and these wide
domains are much too good for thee and thine: I want them, and long
have wanted them, to bestow upon others. Wot ye not that I have beyond
the sea one brother and three cousins that have shaved their crowns and
taken to thy calling—that in Normandie, Anjou, and Maine there are
many of my kindred and friends who wear hoods and look to me for
provision and establishment in this land of ignorance and heresy, where
none of your home-dwelling Saxon monks know how to make the tonsure[43]
in the right shape?”
“Woe to the land, and woe to the good Christian people of it!” said the
superior and several of his monks; “it is then to be with us as with
the brotherhood of the great and holy abbey of St. Albans! We are to be
driven forth empty-handed and brokenhearted, and our places are to be
supplied by rapacious foreigners who speak not and understand not the
tongue of the English people! Ah woe! was it for this that Saxon saints
and martyrs died and bequeathed their bones to our keeping and their
miracles to our superintendence; that Saxon kings and queens descended
from their thrones to live among us, and die among us, and enrich us,
so that we might give a beauty to holiness, a pomp and glory to the
worship of heaven, and ample alms, and still more ample employment to
the poor? Was it for this the great and good men of our race, our
thanes and our earls, bequeathed lands and money to us? Was it to
fatten herds of alien monks, who follow in the bloody track of conquest
and devastation, and come among us with swords and staves, and clad in
mail even like your men-at-arms, that we and our predecessors in this
cell have laboured without intermission to drain these bogs and fens,
to make roads for the foot of man through this miry wilderness, to cut
broad channels to carry off the waste waters to the great deep, to turn
quagmires into bounteous corn fields, and meres into green
pastures?”[44]
While the Saxon monks thus delivered themselves, Ivo and his Normans
(or such of them as could understand what was said) ofttimes
interrupted them, and spoke in this wise—“King William hath the
sanction of his holiness the Pope for all that he hath done or doth.
Lanfranc loveth not Saxon priests and monks, and Saxon priests and
monks love not the king nor any of the Normans, but are ever privately
preaching and prating about Harold and Edgar Etheling, and putting evil
designs into the heads of the people. The Saxon saints are no saints:
who ever heard their names beyond sea? Their half-pagan kings and
nobles have heaped wealth here and elsewhere that generous Norman
knights and better bred Norman monks[45] might have the enjoyment of
it. The nest is too good for these foul birds: we have better birds to
put into it. Let us then turn these Englishers out of doors.”
The last evil deed was speedily done, and superior, monks, novices,
lay-brothers, were all thrust out of the gateway, and driven across the
bridge. If the well-directed arrow of Elfric had slain one man-at-arms
and the folk of Spalding town had slightly wounded two or three others,
the Normans had killed Father Cedric, Hubert the porter, and the man
that assisted him, had killed the cook, and cut off the ears of the
cellarer. The conquerors therefore sought to shed no more blood, and
the Taille-Bois was satisfied when he saw the brotherhood dispossessed
and turned out upon the wide world with nothing they could call their
own, except the sandals on their feet, and the torn clothes on their
backs, and two or three church books. When a little beyond the moat
they all shook the dust from their feet against the sons of the
everlasting fire; and the superior, leisurely and in a low tone of
voice, finished the malediction which he had begun in the chapel
against Ivo Taille-Bois. This being over, Father Adhelm counted his
little flock and said, “But oh, my children, where is the good Cedric?”
“Cedric was killed on the house-top, and lies dead in the moat,” said
one of the lay-brothers who had learned his fate when the rest of the
community were ignorant of it.
“Peace to his soul, and woe to him that slew him!” said the superior;
“but where is Elfric? I see not the brave boy Elfric.”
“I saw Elfric outside the walls of our house and running for the
Welland, just as the Normans were admitted,” said the lay-brother who
had before spoken, “and it must have been he that sent the arrow
through the brain of the man-at-arms that lies there on the green
sward.”
“He will send his arrows through the brains of many more of them,” said
the superior. “My children, I feel the spirit of prophecy speaking
within me, and I tell ye all that Elfric, our whilome novice, will live
to do or cause to be done more mischief to the oppressors of his
country than all the chiefs that have taken up arms against them. He
hath a head to plan, and a heart to dare, and a strong hand to execute.
I know the course he will take. He will return to the Isle of Ely, the
place of his birth, in the midst of the many waters, and throw himself
into the Camp of Refuge, where the Saxon motto is ‘Death or
Independence.’”
Before moving to the near bank of the Welland, or to the spot to which
the Normans had sent down the ferry-boat, Father Adhelm again counted
his little flock, and said, “Cedric lies dead in the moat, Hubert and
Bracho lie cold under the archway, Elfric the novice is fled to be a
thorn in the sides of these Normans, but, oh tell me! where is good
Oswald the cook?”
“After they had dragged your reverence into the hall, a man-at-arms cut
his throat, even as Oswald used to cut the throats of swine; and he
lies dead by the chapel-door.”
“_Misericordia!_ (O mercy on us!) Go where we will, we shall never find
so good a cook again!”
Although it seemed but doubtful where or when they should find material
for another meal the afflicted community repeated the superior’s alacks
and misericordias! mourning the loss of old Oswald as a man and as a
Saxon, but still more as the best of cooks.[46]
CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT HOUSE AT ELY.
Islands made by the sea, and yet more islands, inland, by rivers,
lakes, and meres, have in many places ceased to be islands in
everything save only in name.[47] The changes are brought about by time
and the fluctuations of nature, or by the industry and perseverance of
man.
We, the monks of Ely that now live (_Henrico Secundo, regnante_),[48]
have witnessed sundry great changes in the Fen Country, and more
changes be now contemplated; in sort that in some future age, men may
find it hard to conceive, from that which they see in their day, the
manner of country the Fen country[49] was when the Normans first came
among us. Then, I wist, the Isle of Ely was to all intents an inland
island, being surrounded on every side by lakes, meres and broad
rivers, which became still broader in the season of rain, there being
few artificial embankments to confine them, and few or no droves or
cuts to carry off the increase of water towards the Wash and the sea.
The isle had its name from Helig or Elig,[50] a British name for the
Willow, which grew in great abundance in every part of it, and which
formed in many parts low but almost impenetrable forests, with marshes
and quagmires under them, or within them. Within the compass of the
waters, which marked the limits of the country, and isolated it from
the neighbouring countries—which also from south to north, for the
length of well nigh one hundred miles, and from east to west, for the
breath of well nigh forty miles, were a succession of inland islands,
formed like Ely itself—there were numerous meres, marshes, rivers, and
brooks. The whole isle was almost a dead flat, with here and there an
inconsiderable eminence standing up from it. These heights were often
surrounded by water; and when the autumnal or the spring rains swelled
the meres and streams, and covered the flats, they formed so many
detached islets. Though surrounded and isolated, they were never
covered by water; therefore it was upon these heights and knolls that
men in all times had built their towns, and their churches and temples.
Communications were kept up by means of boats, carricks, and skerries,
and of flat-bottomed boats which could float in shallow water; and,
save in the beds of the rivers, and in some of the meres, the waters
were but shallow even in the season of rains. But if it was a miry, it
was not altogether a hungry land. When the waters subsided, the
greenest and richest pasture sprung up in many parts of the plain, and
gave sustenance to innumerable herds. The alluvial soil was almost
everywhere rich and productive; and the patches which had been drained
and secured, rewarded the industry and ingenuity of the inhabitants
with abundant crops. The Roman conquerors, with amazing difficulty, had
driven one of their military roads[51] through the heart of the
country; but this noble causeway was an undeviating straight line,
without any branches or cross roads springing from it; and it was so
flanked in nearly its whole extent by meres, pools, rivers, rivulets,
swamps, and willow forests, that a movement to the one side or the
other was almost impracticable, unless the Romans, or those who
succeeded the conquerors in the use of the causeway, embarked in boats
and travelled like the natives of the country. In all times it had been
a land of refuge against invaders. In the days of Rome the ancient
Britons rallied here, and made a good stand after all the rest of
England had been subdued. Again, when Rome was falling fast to ruin,
and the legions of the empire had left the Britons to take care of
themselves, that people assembled here in great numbers to resist the
fierce Saxon invaders. Again, when the Saxons were assailed by the
Danes and Norwegians, and the whole host of Scandinavian rovers and
pirates, the indwellers of the Isle of Ely, after enjoying a long
exemption from the havoc of war and invasion, defied the bloody Dane,
and maintained a long contest with him; and now, as at earlier periods,
and as at a later date, the isle of Ely became a place of refuge to
many of the people of the upland country, and of other and more open
parts of England, where it had not been found possible to resist the
Danish battle-axes. The traditions of the ancient Britons had passed
away with that unhappy and extinct race; but the whole fenny country
was full of Saxon traditions, and stories of the days of trouble when
war raged over the isle, and the fierce Danes found their way up the
rivers, which opened upon the sea, into the very heart of the country.
The saints and martyrs of the district were chiefly brave Saxons who
had fought the Danes in many battles, and who had fallen at last under
the swords of the unconverted heathen. The miracles that were wrought
in the land of many waters were for the most part wrought at the tombs
of these Saxon warriors. The legends of patriotism were blended with
the legends and rites of religion. Every church had its patriot saint
and martyr; in every religious house the monks related the prowess, and
chanted daily requiems, and said frequent masses to the soul of some
great Saxon warrior who had fallen in battle; or to some fair Saxon
maid or matron, who had preferred torture and death to a union with a
pagan; or to some Saxon queen or princess, who, long before the coming
of the Danes, and at the first preaching of the Gospel among the Saxons
by Saint Augustine and his blessed followers, had renounced a throne
and all the grandeurs and pleasures of the world, and all her riches,
(_relictis fortunis omnibus!_) to devote herself to the service of
heaven, to found a monastery, and to be herself the first lady abbess
of the monastery she founded.
The foremost and most conspicious of all the heights in this fen
country was crowned by the abbey and conventual house of Ely, around
which a large town, entirely governed by the Lord Abbat, (or, in the
Lord Abbat’s name, by the Cellarius of the abbey), had grown. The first
conventual church was founded in the time of the Heptarchy, about the
year of our Lord six hundred and seventy, by Saint Etheldreda, a queen,
wife, virgin, and saint. Etheldreda[52] was wife to King Egfrid,[53]
the greatest of the Saxon kings, and daughter of Anna, king of the East
Angles, whose dominions included the isle of Ely, and extended over the
whole of Suffolk and Norfolk. This the first abbey church was built by
Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, with his sainted companion,
Benedict, bishop of Northumberland, had travelled in far countries to
learn their arts, and had brought from Rome into England painted glass,
and glaziers, and masons, and all manner of artificers. When the Church
was finished, a monastery was built and attached to it by the same
royal devotee. Neither the love of her husband nor any other
consideration could make Etheldreda forego her fixed purpose of
immuring herself in the cloisters. Many of her attached servants of
both sexes, whom she had converted, followed her to Ely, and were
provided with separate and appropriate lodgings. Etheldreda was the
first abbess of Ely; and after many years spent in the exercise of
devotion, in fasting, penitence, and prayer, she died with so strong an
odour of sanctity that it could not be mistaken; and she was canonised
forthwith by the pope at Rome. Some of her servants were beatified:
one, the best and oldest of them all, Ovin,[54] who was said to descend
from the ancient Britons,[55] and who had been minister to her husband
the king, or to herself as queen, was canonised soon after his death.
Huna, her chaplain, after assisting at her interment, retired to a
small island in the Fens near Ely, where he spent the rest of his days
as an anchorite, and died with the reputation of a saint. Many sick
resorted to Huna’s grave and recovered health. Her sister Sexburga was
the second abbess of Ely, and second only to herself in sanctity. She
too was canonised; and so also were her successors the abbesses
Ermenilda and Withburga.[56] The bodies of all the four lay in the
choir of the church. The house had had many good penmen, and yet, it
was said that they had failed to record all the miracles that had been
wrought at these tombs. But the holiness of the place had not always
secured it. In or about the year 870 the unbelieving Danes, by
ascending the Ouse, got unto Ely, slew all the monks and nuns, and
plundered and destroyed the abbey. And after this, Saxon kings, no
better than heathens, annexed all the lands and revenues of the house
to the crown, to spend among courtiers and warriors the substance which
Saint Ermenilda and the other benefactors of the abbey had destined to
the support of peace-preaching monks, and to the sustenance of the
poor. And thus fared it with the abbey of Ely, until the reign of the
great and bountiful King Edgar, who in course of his reign founded or
restored no fewer than fifty monasteries. In the year 970 this
ever-to-be-revered king (_Rex Venerandus_) granted the whole of the
island of Ely, with all its appurtenances, privileges, and immunities,
to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester, who rebuilt the church and the
monastery, and provided them well with monks of the Benedictine order.
The charter of Edgar, as was recorded by that king’s scribe in the
preamble to it, was granted “not privately and in a corner, but in the
most public manner, and under the canopy of heaven.” The charter was
confirmed by other kings, and subsequently by the pope. The great and
converted Danish King Canute, who loved to glide along the waters of
the river and listen to the monks of Ely singing in their choir, and
who ofttimes visited the Lord Abbat, and feasted with him at the
seasons of the great festivals of the church, confirmed the charter;
and the cartularies of the house contained likewise the confirmation of
King Edward the Confessor, now a saint and king in heaven, (_in cœlo
sanctus et rex_.)
Theoretical and fabulous are the tales of those who say that the Saxons
had no majestic architecture; that their churches and abbeys and
monasteries were built almost entirely of wood, without arches or
columns, without aisles or cloisters; and that there was no grandeur or
beauty in the edifices of England until after the Norman conquest. The
abbey built at Ely in the tenth century by the Saxon bishop Ethelwald
was a stately stone edifice, vast in its dimensions, and richly
ornamented in its details. Round-headed arches rested upon rows of
massive columns; the roof of the church and the roof of the great hall
of the abbey were arched and towering; and, high above all, a tower and
steeple shot into the air, to serve as a landmark throughout the flat
fenny country, and a guide to such as might lose themselves among the
meres and the labyrinths of the willow forests. If the monks of Ely
were lords of all the country and of all the people dwelling in it,
those people and all honest wayfarers ever found the hospitable gates
of the abbey open to receive them; and all comers were feasted,
according to their several degrees, by the Lord Abbat, the prior, the
cellarer, the hospitaller, the pietancer, or some other officer of the
house. Twenty knights, with their twenty squires to carry arms and
shield, (_arma ac scuta_), did service to the Lord Abbat as his
military retainers; and in his great stables room was left for many
more horses. The house had had many noble, hospitable, Saxon-hearted
heads, but never one more munificent and magnificent than the Abbat
Thurstan.[57] He had been appointed to the dignity in the peaceful days
of Edward the Confessor; but King Harold, on ascending the throne, had
shown him many favours, and had given him the means of being still more
generous. This last of our Saxon kings had begun his reign with great
popularity, being accessible, affable, and courteous to all men, and
displaying a great regard for piety and justice. In the Confessor’s
time, under the title of earl, he had ruled as a sovereign[58] in
Norfolk and Suffolk and part of Cambridge, and he was a native of East
Anglia. He had been open-handed and open-hearted. From all these
reasons the people of this part of England were singularly devoted to
his cause, and so thoroughly devoted to his person that they would not
for a very long time believe that he had perished in the battle of
Hastings; their hope and belief being that he had only been wounded,
and would soon re-appear among them to lead them against the Norman.
When Duke William had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, and when his
constantly reinforced and increasing armies had spread over the
country, many of the great Saxon heads of religious houses, even like
the Abbat of Crowland, had sent in their submission, and had obtained
the king’s peace, in the vain hope that thus they would be allowed to
retain their places and dignities, and preserve their brethren from
persecution, and the foundations over which they presided from the
hands of foreign spoilers and intruders. Not so Thurstan, my Lord Abbat
of Ely. He would not forget the many obligations he owed, and the
friendship and fealty he had sworn to the generous, lion-hearted
Harold; and while the lands of other prelates and abbats lay open
everywhere to the fierce Norman cavalry, and their hinds and serfs,
their armed retainers and tenants, and all the people dwelling near
them, were without heart or hope, and impressed with the belief that
the Normans were invincible, Thurstan, from the window of the hall, or
from the top of the abbey tower, looked across a wide expanse of
country which nature had made defensible; and he knew that he was
backed by a stout-hearted and devoted people, who would choke up the
rivers with the dead bodies of the Normans, and with their own corpses,
ere they would allow the invaders to reach the abbey of Ely and the
shrine of Saint Etheldreda. Hence Thurstan had been emboldened to give
shelter to such English lords, and such persecuted Saxons of whatsoever
degree, as fled from the oppression of the conquerors to the isle of
Ely. Thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of their
mitres, abbots driven from their monasteries to make room for
foreigners, all flocked hither; and whether they brought much money or
rich jewels with them, or whether they brought nothing at all, they all
met with a hospitable reception: so large and English was the heart of
Abbat Thurstan. When it was seen that William was breaking all the old
and free Saxon institutions, and the mild and equitable laws of Edward
the Confessor, which he had most solemnly sworn to preserve and
maintain; that the promptest submission to the conqueror ensured no
lasting safety to life or property; and that the Normans, one and all,
laity and clergy, knights and bishops, were proclaiming that all men of
Saxon blood ought to be disseised of their property, and ought to be
reduced to servitude and bondage, and were acting as if this system
could soon be established, more and more fugitives came flying into the
fen country. The town of Ely was roomy, but it was crowded; vast were
the monastery, and hospitium, and dependencies, but they were crowded
also: and far and near, on the dry hillocks, and in the green plains
fenced from the waters, were seen huts and rude tents, and the blue
smoke of many fires rising above the grey willows and alders.
It were long to tell how many chiefs and nobles of fame, and how many
churchmen of the highest dignity, assembled at dinner-time, and at
supper-time, in my Lord Abbat’s great hall, where each had his seat
according to his rank, and where the arms of every great chief were
hung behind him on the wall, and where the banner of every chief and
noble floated over his head, pendant from the groined roof. All the
bravest and most faithful of the Saxon warriors who had survived the
carnage of Hastings, and of the many battles which had been fought
since that of Hastings, were here; and in the bodies of these men,
scarred with the wounds inflicted by the Norman lances, flowed the most
ancient and noble blood of England. They had been thanes and earls, and
owners of vast estates, but now they nearly all depended for their
bread on the Lord Abbat of Ely. Stigand,[59] the dispossessed Saxon
Primate of all England, was here; Egelwin, the dispossessed Saxon
Bishop of Durham, was here; Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was here; and
on one side of Alexander sat the good Bishop of Lindisfarn, while on
the other side of him the pious Bishop of Winchester ate the bread of
dependence and sorrow. Among the chiefs of great religious houses were
Eghelnoth the Abbat of Glastonbury, and Frithric the most steadfast and
most Saxon-hearted of all Lord Abbats. A very hard man, an unlettered,
newly-emancipated serf, from one of the hungriest parts of Normandie or
Maine, had taken possession of the great house at Glastonbury,[60] and
had caused the bodies of his predecessors, the abbats of English race,
to be disinterred; and, gathering their bones together, he had cast
them in one heap without the gates, as if, instead of being the bones
of holy and beatified monks, they had been the bones of sheep, or oxen,
or of some unclean animals. Frithric of Saint Albans, who had been
spiritual and temporal lord of one of the fairest parts of England, of
nearly all the woodland and meadow-land and corn-fields that lay
between Saint Albans and Barnet on the one side, and between Luton and
Saint Albans on the other side—Frithric, who had maintained one score
and ten loaf-eaters or serving men in his glorious abbey, had wandered
alone and unattended through the wilds and the fens, begging his way
and concealing himself from Norman pursuit in the huts of the poorest
men; and he had brought nothing with him to Ely save two holy books
which had comforted him on his long wayfaring, and which he carried
under his arm. Every great house was wanted by the conquerors for their
unecclesiastical kindred; but Saint Albans was one of the greatest of
them all, and Frithric had done that which the Normans and their duke
would never forgive. When, months after that great assize of God’s
judgment in battle, the battle of Hastings, (and after that the
traitorous Saxon Witan, assembled in London, had sent a submissive
deputation to William the Bastard at Berkhamstead to swear allegiance
to him, and to put hostages into his hand,) the Normans were slaying
the people, and plundering and burning the towns and villages, upon
drawing nigh unto Saint Albans, they found their passage stopped by a
multitude of great trees[61] which had been felled and laid across the
road, and behind which—if there had not been traitors in London and
false Saxons everywhere—there would have been posted expert archers,
and valorous knights and hardy yeomen, and nathless every monk, novice,
lay-brother, and hind of the abbey, in such sort that the invaders and
their war-horses would never have gotten over those barricades of
forest trees, nor have ever ascended the hill where the great saint and
martyr Albanus[62] suffered his martyrdom in the days of the Dioclesian
persecution, and where Offa the true Saxon king of Mercia erected the
first church and the first great monastery for one hundred monks, that
they might keep alive the memory of the just, and pray over his tomb
seven times a-day. Wrathful was Duke William; for, albeit none stood
behind those ramparts of timber to smite him and his host, he could not
win forward, nor enter the town, nor approach the abbey, until his
men-at-arms and the followers of his camp should with long toil clear
the road, and remove one after the other those stout barriers of forest
trees. Red was he in the face as a burning coal when he summoned to his
presence Frithric the Lord Abbat, and demanded whose work it was, and
why these oaken barriers were raised in the jurisdiction of the
monastery. Abbat Frithric, whose heart was stouter than his own oaks,
looked, as became the free descendant of Saxon thanes and Danish
princes, right into the eyes of the conqueror, and said unto him in a
loud voice, “I have done the duty appertaining to my birth and calling;
and if others of my rank and profession had performed the like, as they
well could and ought, it had not been in thy power to penetrate into
the land thus far!” We have said his voice was loud when he spoke to
the conqueror: it was so loud that the hills re-echoed it, and that men
heard it that were hid in the woods to watch what the Normans would do,
and avoid their fury; and when the echoes of that true Saxon voice died
away, the thick growing oaks seemed to speak, for there came voices
from the woods on either side the road, shouting, “Hail! all hail! Lord
Frithric, our true Lord Abbat! If every Saxon lord had been true as he,
Harold would now be king!”
Quoth Duke William, in an angered voice, “Is the spirituality of
England of such power? If I may live and enjoy that which I have
gotten, I will make their power less; and especially I mind to begin
with thee, proud Abbat of Saint Albans!”
And how behaved Abbat Frithric when his domains were seized, and
ill-shaven foreign monks thrust into his house, and savage foreign
soldiers?—when, after that the conqueror had sworn upon all the relics
of the church of Saint Albans, and by the Holy Gospels, to respect the
abbey and all churches, and to preserve inviolate the good and ancient
laws which had been established by the pious kings of England, and more
especially by King Edward the Confessor, he allowed his Normans to kill
the Saxon people without bot or compensation, plundered every church in
the land, oppressed and despoiled all the abbeys, ploughed with
ploughshares of red hot iron over the faces of all Saxons, and yet
demanded from Frithric and his compeers a new oath of allegiance, and
fuller securities for his obedience—what then did the Lord Abbat of
Saint Albans? He assembled all his monks and novices in the hall of the
chapter, and taking a tender farewell of them, he said, “My brothers,
my children, the time is come when, according to Scripture, I must flee
from city to city before the face of our persecutors—_Fugiendum est a
facie persequentium a civitate in civitatem_.” And rather than be
forsworn, or desert the good cause, or witness without the power of
remedying them the sufferings and humiliations and forcible expulsions
of his monks, he went forth and became a wanderer as aforesaid, until
he crossed the land of willows and many waters, and came unto Ely, a
lone man, with nought but his missal and his breviary under his arm.
Now the Abbat Frithric was old when these years of trouble began; and
constant grief and toil, and the discomforts of his long journey on
foot from the dry sunny hill of Saint Albans to the fens and morasses
of Ely, had given many a rude shake to the hour-glass of his life.
Since his arrival at Ely he had wasted away daily: every time that he
appeared in the hall or refectory he seemed more and more haggard and
worn: most men saw that he was dying, but none saw it so clearly as
himself. When the young and hopeful would say to him, “Lord Frithric,
these evil days will pass away, the Saxons will get their own again,
and thou wilt get back as a true Saxon to thine own abbey,” he would
reply, “Young men, England will be England again, but not in my day; my
next move is to the grave: Saint Albans is a heavenly place, but it is
still upon earth, and, save the one hope that my country may revive,
and that the laws and manners and the tongue of the Saxons may not
utterly perish, my hopes are all in heaven!”
Some of the best and wisest of those who had sought for refuge in the
isle of Ely, feared that when this bright guiding light should be put
out, and other old patriots, like the Abbat Frithric, should take their
departure, the spirit which animated this Saxon league would depart
also, or gradually cool and decline.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MONKS OF ELY FEAST.
It was on a wet evening in Autumn, as the rain was descending in
torrents upon swamps that seemed to have collected all the rains that
had been falling since the departure of summer, and just as the monks
of Ely were singing the Ave Maria (_Dulce, cantaverunt Monachi in
Ely!_)[63] that Elfric, the whilom novice of Spalding, surrounded by
some of the Lord Abbat’s people, and many of the town folk, who were
all laughing and twitching at his cloak, arrived at the gate of the
hospitium.[64] Our Lord Abbat Frithric had brought with him two holy
books. Elfric, our novice, had brought with him two grim Norman heads,
for he had not been idle on the road, but had surprised and killed on
the borders of the fen country, first one man-at-arms, and then
another; and the good folk of Ely were twitching at his mantle in order
that they might see again the trophies which he carried under his broad
sleeve. At his first coming to the well-guarded ford across the Ouse,
the youth had made himself known. Was he not the youngest son of
Goodman Hugh, who dwelt aforetime by Saint Ovin’s Cross, hard by the
village of Haddenham, and only a few bow-shot from the good town of
Ely.[65] And when the Saxons had seen the two savage Norman heads, and
had looked in the youth’s face, the elders declared that he was the
very effigies of the Goodman Hugh; and some of the younkers said that,
albeit his crown was shorn, and his eye not so merry as it was, they
recalled his face well, and eke the days when Elfric the son of Goodman
Hugh played at bowls with them in the bowling-alley of Ely, and bobbed
for eels[66] with them in the river, and went out with them to snare
wild water-fowl in the fens. Judge, therefore, if he met not with an
hospitable reception from town and gown, from the good folk of Ely, and
from all the monks!
So soon as Elfric had refreshed himself in the hospitium, he was called
to the presence of Abbat Thurstan, and in truth to the presence of all
the abbat’s noble and reverend guests, for Thurstan was seated in his
great hall, where the servitors were preparing for the supper. Elfric
would have taken his trophies with him, but the loaf-man who brought
the message doubted whether the abbat would relish the sight of dead
men’s heads close afore suppertime, and told him that his prowess was
already known; and so Elfric proceeded without his trophies to the
great hall, where he was welcomed by the noble company like another
David that had slain two Goliaths.[67] When he had told the story of
Ivo Taille-Bois’ long persecution and night attack, and his own flight
and journey, and had answered numerous questions put to him by the
grave assembly, Abbat Thurstan asked him whether he knew what had
happened at Spalding since his departure, and what had become of Father
Adhelm and his monks, and what fate had befallen the good Abbat of
Crowland.
“After my flight from the succursal cell,” said the youth, “I dwelt for
a short season at Crowland, hidden in the township, or in Deeping-fen,
whither also came unto the abbey Father Adhelm and the rest of that
brotherhood of Spalding; and there we learned how Ivo Taille-Bois had
sent over to his own country to tell his kinsmen that he had to offer
them a good house, convenient for a prior and five friars, ready built,
ready furnished and well provided with lands and tenements; and how
these heretical and unsound Norman monks[68] were hastening to cross
the Channel and take possession of the succursal cell at Spalding. My
Lord Abbat of Crowland, having what they call the king’s peace, and
holding the letters of protection granted by Lanfranc”.... “They will
protect no man of Saxon blood, and the priest or monk that accepts them
deserves excommunication,” said Frithric, the Abbat of Saint Albans.
“Amen!” said Elfric; “but our Abbat of Crowland, relying upon these
hollow and rotten reeds, laid his complaints before the king’s council
at that time assembled near unto Peterborough, and sought redress and
restitution.[69] But the Normans sitting in council not only refused
redress and absolved Taille-Bois, but also praised him for what he had
done in the way of extortion, pillage, sacrilege, and murder; and”....
“My once wise brother thy Abbat of Crowland ought to have known all
this beforehand,” said the Abbat of Saint Albans; “for do not these
foreigners all support and cover one another, and form a close league,
bearing one upon another, even as on the body of the old dragon scale
is laid over scale?”
“_Sic est_, my Lord Abbat,” said the youth, bowing reverentially to the
dignitary of the church and the best of Saxon patriots, “so is it my
lord! and dragons and devils are these Normans all! Scarcely had the
decision of the king’s council reached our house at Crowland, ere it
was surrounded by armed men, and burst open at the dead of night, as
our poor cell at Spalding had been, and Father Adhelm and all those who
had lived under his rule at Spalding, were driven out as disturbers of
the king’s peace! I should have come hither sooner, but those to whom
my obedience was due begged me to tarry awhile. Now I am only the
forerunner of Father Adhelm and his brethren, and of my Lord Abbat of
Crowland himself; for the abbat can no longer bear the wrongs that are
put upon him, and can see no hope upon earth, and no resting-place in
broad England, except in the Camp of Refuge.”
“Another abbat an outcast and a wanderer! This spacious house will be
all too full of Saxon abbats and bishops: but I shall make room for
this new comer,” said Frithric of Saint Albans to Egelwin, Bishop of
Durham.[70]
Divers of the monks of Ely, and _specialiter_ the chamberlain, who kept
the accounts of the house, and the cellarer, who knew the daily drain
made on the winebutts, looked blank at this announcement of more
guests; but the bounteous and big-hearted Abbat of Ely said, “Our
brother of Crowland, and Father Adhelm of Spalding, shall be welcome
here—yea, and all they may bring with them; but tell me, oh youth, are
they near at hand, or afar off in the wilderness?”
“The feet of age travel not so fast as the feet of youth,” said Elfric,
“age thinks, youth runs. I wot I was at Ramsey[71] mere before they got
to the Isle of Thorney, and crossed the Ouse before they came to the
Nene, but as, by the blessing of the saints,” and the youth might have
said, in consequence of exercise and low living, “Father Adhelm’s
podagra hath left him, they can hardly fail of being here on the day of
Saint Edmund,[72] our blessed king and martyr, and that saint’s day is
the next day after to-morrow.”
“It shall be a feast-day,” said Thurstan; “for albeit Saint Edmund be
not so great a saint as our own saint, Etheldreda, the founder of this
house, and the monks of Saint Edmund-Bury (the loons have submitted to
the Norman!) have more to do with his worship than we have, King Edmund
is yet a great saint—a true Saxon saint, whose worship is old in the
land; and it hath been the custom of this house to exercise hospitality
on his festival. Therefore will we hold that day as we have been wont
to hold it; and our brothers from Crowland and Spalding, who must be
faring but badly in the fens, shall be welcomed with a feast.”
So bounteous and open-handed was the true Saxon Abbat of Ely. But the
chamberlain set his worldly head to calculate the expense, and the
cellarer muttered to himself, “By Saint Withburga[73] and her holy
well, our cellars will soon be dry!”
On Saint Edmund’s eve, after evening service in the choir and after
saying his prayers apart in the chapel of Saint Marie, Frithric, the
Abbat of Saint Albans departed this life. His last words were, that
England would be England still;[74] and all those who heard the words
and had English hearts, believed that he was inspired, and that the
spirit of prophecy spoke in his dying voice. The Abbat of Crowland was
so near, that he heard the passing-bell, as its sad sounds floated over
the fens, telling all the faithful that might be there of their duty to
put up a prayer for the dead. On Saint Edmund’s day the way-farers from
Crowland arrived, and that abbat took possession of the cell, and of
the seat in the refectory which had been occupied by Frithric. Fitting
place was also found for Father Adhelm, who had grown so thin upon the
journey that even Elfric scarcely knew him again. The feast in the hall
was as magnificent as any that had been given there to King Canute, or
even to any that had been given in the happy days of King Edward the
Confessor; and the appetites of the company assembled were worthy of
the best times. Fish, flesh, and fowl, and pasties of venison—nothing
was wanting. The patrimony of Saint Etheldreda, the lands and waters
appertaining unto the abbey, and administered by the bountiful abbat,
furnished the best portions of the feast. Were there in the world such
eels and eel-pouts as were taken in the Ouse and Cam close under the
walls of the abbey? Three thousand eels, by ancient compact, do the
monks of Ramsey pay every Lent unto the monks of Peterborough, for
leave to quarry stone in a quarry appertaining to Peterborough Abbey;
but the house of Ely might have paid ten times three thousand eels, and
not have missed them, so plenty were there, and eke so good![75] The
fame of these eels was known in far countries; be sure they were not
wanting on this Saint Edmund’s day. The streams, too, abounded with
pike, large and fit for roasting, with puddings in their bellies; and
the meres and stagnating waters swarmed with tench and carp, proper for
stewing. Ten expert hinds attended to these fresh-water fisheries, and
kept the abbat’s stews and the stews of the house constantly filled
with fish. It is said by an ancient historian that here in the fenny
country is such vast store of fish as astonishes strangers; for which
the inhabitants laugh at them: nor is there less plenty of
water-fowl;[76] and for a single halfpenny five men may have enough of
either, not only to stay their stomachs, but for a full meal! Judge,
then, if my Lord Abbat was well provided. It was allowed on all sides
that, for the Lenten season, and for all those fast-days of the Church
when meat was not to be eaten, no community in the land was so well
furnished as the monks of Ely; and that their fish-fasts were feasts.
While the brethren of other houses grew thin in Quadragesima, the monks
of Ely grew fat. Other communities might do well in roast meats and
baked meats; but for a fish dinner—for a banquet in Lent—there was
not in the land anything to compare with the dinners at Ely! Nor was
there lack of the fish[77] that swim the salt sea, or of the shell-fish
that are taken on the sea-coast, or of the finny tribes that come up
the river to spawn; the fishermen of Lynn were very devout to Saint
Etheldreda, and made a good penny by supplying the monks; they ascended
the Ouse with the best of their sea-fish in their boats, and with every
fish that was in season, or that they knew how to take. And so, at this
late November festival there were skates and plaice, sturgeon and
porpoises, oysters and cockles spread upon my Lord Abbat’s table. Of
the sheep and beeves we speak not; all men know the richness of the
pasture that springs up from the annually inundated meadows,[78] and
the bounty of the nibbling crop that grows on the upland slopes with
the wild thyme and the other savoury herbs that turn mutton into
venison. Of the wild boars of the forest and fen only the hure or head
was served up in this Aula Magna, the inferior parts being kept below
for the use of the lay-brothers and hinds, or to be distributed by the
hospitaller to the humbler degrees of pilgrims and strangers, or to be
doled out to the poor of the town of Ely—for wot ye, when the Lord
Abbat Thurstan feasted in Ely none fasted there: no! not the poorest
palmer that ever put cockle-shell in his cap or took the pilgrim’s
staff in his hand to visit the blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda! Of
the wild buck, though less abundant in this fenny country than the
boar, nought was served up for my Lord Abbat and his own particular
guests except the tender succulent haunch; the lay-brothers and the
loaf-eaters of the house, and the poor pilgrims and the poor of the
town, got all the rest. The fat fowls of Norfolk, the capons of Caen in
Normandie, and the pavoni or peacocks that first came from Italie a
present from the _Legatus à latere_ of his holiness the Pope, were kept
and fattened in my Lord Abbat’s farm-yard; and well did his coquinarius
know how to cook them! To the wild-fowl there was no end, and Elfric,
our bold novice, the son of Goodman Hugh, who dwelt by Saint Ovin’s
Cross, hard by the village of Haddenham, and who had been a fen-fowler
from his youth, could have told you how facile it was to ensnare the
crane[79] and the heron, the wild duck and teal, and the eccentric and
most savoury snipe. Well, we ween, before men cut down the covering
woods, and drained the marshes, and brought too many people into the
fens and too many great ships up the rivers, the whole land of Saint
Etheldreda was like one great larder; and my Lord Abbat had only to
say, “Go forth and take for me so many fowl, or fish, or boars,” and it
was done. It is an antique and venerable proverb, that which sayeth
good eating demands good drinking. The country of the fens was not
productive of apple-trees, and the ale and beer that were drunk in the
house, and the mead and idromel likewise, were brought from Norfolk and
other neighbouring countries; but the abbat, and the officials, and the
cloister monks drank better wine than apple-wine, better drink than
mead or than pigment, for they drank of the juice of the generous vine,
which Noah planted on the first dry hill-side he found. The monks of
Glastonbury and Waltham, and of many other houses of the first
reputation, cultivated the grape on their own soil, where it seldom
would ripen, and drank English grape-wine much too sour and poor. Not
so our lordly monks of Ely! They sent the shipmen of Lynn to the Elbe,
and to the Rhine, and to the Mosel, to bring them more generous drink;
and they sent them to the south even so far as Gasconie and Espaing for
the ruby wine expressed from the grapes which grow in the sunniest
clime. In the good times four keels, two from the German Ocean and two
from the Gulf of Biscaye, steered every year through the sand-banks of
the Wash to Lynn,[80] and from Lynn up the Ouse even unto Ely, where
the tuns were landed and deposited in the cellars of the abbey, under
the charge of the sub-cellarer, a lay-brother from foreign parts, who
had been a vintner in his youth. And in this wise it came to be a
passant saying with men who would describe anything that was
super-excellent—“It is as good as the wine of the monks of Ely!”
Maugre the cellarer’s calculation of quantities, the best wine my Lord
Abbat had in hand was liberally circulated at the feast in silver cups
and in gold-mounted horns. Thus were the drinks equal to the viands, as
well in quantity as in quality; and if great was the skill of the
vintner, great also was the skill of the cook. In other houses of
religion, and in houses, too, of no mean fame, the monks had often to
lament that their coquinarius fed them over long on the same sort of
dishes; but it was not so with our monks of Ely, who possessed a cook
that had the art of giving variety to the selfsame viands, and who also
possessed lands, woods, and waters that furnished the most varied
materials for the cook to try his skill upon. As Father Adhelm finished
his last slice of porpoise,[81] curiously condimented with Eastern
spices, as fragrant to the nose as they were savoury to the palate, he
lifted up his eyes towards the painted ceiling, and said, “I did not
hope, after the death of Oswald our cook at Spalding, to eat of so
perfect a dish on this side the grave!”
Flowers[82] there were none to strew upon the floor; but the floor of
the hall was thickly strewed with sweet-smelling hay, and with the
rushes that grow in the fens; and the feet of the loaf-men of the abbat
and of the other servitors that waited on the lordly company made no
noise as they hurried to and fro with the dishes and the wine-cups and
drinking-horns. While dinner lasted, nought was heard but the voice of
the abbat’s chaplain, who read the Psalms in a corner of the hall, the
rattle of trenchers and knives, and, timeously,[83] such ejaculations
as these! “How good this fish! how good this flesh! how good this fowl!
how fine this pasty! how rich this wine!” But when the tables were
cleared, and grace after meat had been said, and my Lord Abbat’s
cupbearer had filled the cup of every guest with bright old Rhenish,
Thurstan stood up at the head of the table, and said, “Now drink we
round to the health of England’s true king, and this house’s best
friend, the Saxon-hearted Harold,[84] be he where he will! And may he
soon come back again! Cups off at a draught, while we drink Health to
King Harold!”
“We drink his health, and he is dead—we wish him back, and he is lying
in his coffin in the church of the abbey of Waltham, safe in the
keeping of the monks of Waltham! The wine is good, but the toast is
foolish.” Thus spake the envious prior to the small-hearted cellarer.
But the rest of the goodly company drank the wassail with joy and
exultation, and seemingly without any doubt that Harold was living and
would return. In their minds[85] it was the foul invention of the
enemy—to divide and discourage the English people—which made King
Harold die at Hastings. Who had seen him fall? Who had counted and
examined that noble throng of warriors that retreated towards the
sea-coast when the battle was lost by foul treachery, and that found
boats and ships, and sailed away for some foreign land? Was not Harold
in that throng, wounded, but with no deadly wound? Was it not known
throughout the land that the Normans, when they counted the slain, not
being able to find the body of Harold, sent some of our Saxon slaves
and traitors to seek for it—to seek but not to find it? Was it not a
mouldering and a mutilated corpse that the Normans caused to be
conveyed to Waltham, and to be there entombed, at the east end of the
choir, as the body of King Harold? And did not the monks of Waltham
close up the grave with brick-work, and inscribe the slab, HIC JACET
HAROLD INFELIX,[86] without ever seeing who or what was in the coffin?
So reasoned all of this good company, who loved the liberties of
England, and who had need of the sustaining hope that the brave Harold
was alive, and would come back again.
Other wassails followed fast one upon the other. They were all to the
healths of those who had stood out manfully against the invader, or had
preferred exile in the fens, and poverty in the Camp of Refuge to
submission to the conqueror. “Not less than a brimming cup can we drink
to the last arrived of our guests, our brother the Lord Abbat of
Crowland, and our brother the prior of Spalding,” said Thurstan,
filling his own silver cup with his own hand until the Rhenish ran over
upon the thirsty rushes at his feet.
“Might I be allowed,” said Father Adhelm at a later part of the feast,
“might my Lord Abbat vouchsafe me leave to call a wassail for an humble
and unconsecrated member of the Saxon church—who is nevertheless a
child of Saint Etheldreda, and a vassal of my Lord Abbat, being native
to this place—I would just drink one quarter of a cup, or it might be
one half, to Elfric the Novice, for he travelled for our poor succursal
cell when we were in the greatest perils; he carried my missives and my
messages through fire and water; he forewarned us of our last danger
and extremity; and, albeit he had not our order for the deed, and is
thereby liable to a penance for disobedience—he slew with his arrow
Ivo Taille-Bois’ man-at-arms that had savagely slain good Wybert our
wheel-wright.”
“Aye,” said Thurstan, “and he came hither across the fens as merry as
David dancing before the ark; and he brought with him the heads of two
Norman thieves who, with their fellows, had been murdering our serfs,
and trying to find an opening that should lead them to the Camp of
Refuge! Father Adhelm, I would have named thy youth in time; but as
thou hast named him, let us drink his name and health even now! And let
the draught be one half cup at least;—‘Elfric the novice of Spalding!’”
“This is unbecoming our dignity and the dignity of our house: next we
shall waste our wine in drinking wassail to our loaf-eaters and
swineherds,” muttered the cellarer to the prior.
But while the cellarer muttered and looked askance, his heart not being
Saxon or put in the right place, the noblest English lords that were
there, and the highest dignitaries of the church, the archbishop and
the bishops, the Lord Abbats, and the priors of houses, that were so
high that even the priors were styled Lords, _Domini_,[87] and wore
mitres, stood on their feet, and with their wine-cups raised high in
their hands, shouted as in one voice, “Elfric the novice;” and all the
obedientiarii or officials of the abbey of Ely that were of rank enow
to be bidden to my Lord Abbat’s table, stood up in like manner and
shouted, “Elfric the novice!” and, when the loud cheering was over, off
went the wine, and down to the ringing board the empty silver cups and
the golden-bound horns. He who had looked into those cups and horns
might have smiled at Father Adhelm’s halves and quarters: they were
nearly all filled to the brim: yet when they had quitted the lip and
were put down upon the table, there was scarcely a heel-tap to be found
except in the cup of the cellarer and in that of the envious prior of
Ely. So strong were the heads and stomachs of our Saxon ancestors
before the Normans came among us and brought with them all manner of
people from the south with all manner of effeminacies.
Judge ye if Elfric was a proud man that day! At wassail-time the wide
doors of the Aula Magna were thrown wide open; and harpers, and
meni-singers, and men that played upon the trumpet, the horn, the
flute, the pipe and tabor, the cymbal and the drum, or that touched the
strings of the viola, assembled outside, making good music with
instrument and voice; and all that dwelt within the precincts of the
abbey, or that were lodged for the nonce in the guest-house, came, an
they chose, to the threshold of the hall, and saw and heard what was
doing and saying inside and what outside. Now Elfric was there, with
palmers and novices trooping all around him, and repeating (albeit
dry-mouthed and without cups or horns to flourish) the wassail of the
lords and prelates, “Elfric the novice!” If at that moment my Lord
Abbat Thurstan or Father Adhelm had bidden the youth go and drive the
Normans from the strong stone keep of their doubly-moated and
trebly-walled castle by Cam-Bridge, Elfric would have gone and have
tried to do it. He no longer trod upon base earth, his head struck the
stars, as the poets say.
The abbat’s feast, which began at one hour before noon, did not end
until the hour of Ave Maria; nay, even then it was not finished, but
only suspended for a short season by the evening service in the choir;
for, after one hour of the night, the refectoriarius, or controller of
the refectory, re-appeared in the hall with waxen torches and bright
lanterns, and his servitors spread the table for supper.
As Abbat Thurstan returned to the refectory, leading by the hand his
guest the Abbat of Crowland, that dispossessed prelate said to his
host, “Tonight for finishing the feast; to-morrow morning for counsel.”
“Aye,” responded Thurstan, “to-morrow we will hold a chapter,—our
business can brook no further delay—our scouts and intelligencers
bring us bad news,—King Harold comes not, nor sends—the Camp of
Refuge needs a head—our warriors want a leader of fame and experience,
and one that will be true to the Saxon cause, and fearless. Woe the
while! where so many Saxons of fame have proved traitors, and have
touched the mailed hand of the son of the harlot of Falaise in
friendship and submission, and have accepted as the gift of the butcher
of Hastings the lands and honours which they held from their ancestors
and the best of Saxon kings—where, I say, may we look for such a Saxon
patriot and liberator? Oh, Harold! my lord and king, why tarriest thou?
Holy Etheldreda, bring him back to thy shrine, and to the Camp of
Refuge, which will cease to be a refuge for thy servants if Harold
cometh not soon! But, courage my Lord of Crowland! The Philistines are
not upon us; our rivers and ditches and marshes and meres are not yet
drained, and no Saxon in these parts will prove so accursed a
traitor[88] as to give the Normans the clue to our labyrinths. The
saint hath provided another joyous meal for us. Let us be grateful and
gay to-night; let us sup well and strongly, that we may be invigorated
and made fit to take strong and wise counsel in the morning.”
And heartily did the monks of Ely and their guests renew and finish
their feast, and hopefully and boldly did they speak of wars and
victories over the Normans, until the drowsiness of much wine overcame
them, and the sub-chamberlain of the house began to extinguish the
lights, and collect together the torches and the lanterns, while the
cellarer collected all the spoons, taking care to carry the Lord
Abbat’s spoon in his right hand, and the spoons of the monks in his
left hand, according to the statutes of the Order. It was the last time
that the feast of Saint Edmund the Martyr was kept in the true Saxon
manner in the great house at Ely. The next year, and the year following
that, the monks had little wine and but little ale to drink; and after
the long years of trouble although the cellars were getting filled
again, the true old Saxon brotherhood was broken up and mixed, a
foreigner was seated in the place of Abbat Thurstan,[89] and monks with
mis-shaven tonsures and mis-shaped hoods and gowns filled all the
superior offices of the abbey, purloining and sending beyond sea what
my Lord Thurstan had spent in a generous hospitality, among true-born
and generous-hearted Englishmen. But in this nether world even the
gifts of saints and the chartered donation of many kings are to be kept
only by the brave and the united: conquest recognises no right except
as a mockery: the conquered must not expect to be allowed to call their
life and limbs their own, or the air they breathe their own, or their
wives and children their own, or their souls their own: they have no
property but in the grave, no right but to die at the hour appointed
for them. Therefore let men perish in battle rather than outlive
subjugation, and look for mercy from conquerors! and, therefore, let
all the nations of the earth be warned by the fate of the Anglo Saxons
to be always one-hearted for their country.
This patriotic and eloquent appeal may be very appropriately
reiterated at the present day. The sentiment which it inculcates is
as essential now as it was when the Saxons were defending the “Camp
of Refuge.” Is it not consolidation rather than extension which is
needed for the well being of our country? Will not the future
greatness of our nation hinge upon the development of the highest
principles of humanity—the unity, loyalty and virtue of its
peoples?
CHAPTER V.
THE MONKS OF ELY TAKE COUNSEL.
At as early an hour as the church services and devotional exercises
would allow, Thurstan opened a chapter in the chapter-house, which
stood on the north side, hard by the chief gate of the church. As his
lordship entered, he said—the words that were appointed to be said on
such occasions—“May the souls of all the deceased brethren of this
house, and the souls of all true believers, rest in peace!” And the
convent replied, “Amen!” Then the Lord Abbat spoke again, and said,
“_Benedicite_,” and the convent bowed their heads. And next he said,
“Oh Lord! in thy name!” and then, “Let us speak of the order.” And
hereupon all present crossed themselves, and bent their heads on their
breasts, and the business of the chapter commenced. Only the prior, the
sub-prior, the cellarer or bursar, the sacrist, and sub-sacrist, the
chamberlain or treasurer, and the other chief officials or
_obedientiarii_, and the other cloistered monks, _maturi fratres_,
whose noviciate had been long passed, and whose monastic vows had been
all completed, had the right of being present in chapter, and of
deliberating and voting upon the business of the house and order. All
that passed in chapter was, in a manner, _sub sigillo confessionis_,
and not to be disclosed by any deliberating member to the rest of the
convent, or to any of them, and much less was it to be revealed to any
layman, or to any man beyond the precincts of the abbey. In these
consultations, on the day next after the festival of Saint Edmund’s,
the monks of Ely sat long with closed doors. When they came forth of
the chapter-house it was noticed that the face of the Lord Abbat was
very red, and that the faces of the prior and cellarer were very pale.
A lay-brother, who had been working on the top of the chapter-house
out-side, repairing some chinks in the roof, whispered to his familiars
that he had heard very high words passing below, and that he had
distinctly heard my Lord Abbat say, “Since the day of my election and
investiture no brother of this house has been loaded with chains, and
thrown into the underground dungeon; but, by the shrine of Saint
Etheldreda, were I to find one traitor among us, I would bind him and
chain him, and leave him to rot! And were there two of our brotherhood
unfaithful to the good cause, and to King Harold, and plotting to
betray the last hopes of England and this goodly house, and its tombs
and shrines and blessed relics, to the Norman, I would do what hath
been done aforetime in this abbey—I would bury them alive, or build
them up in the niches left in our deep foundation walls!”[90]
Now the gossips of the house, making much out of little, went about the
cloisters whispering to one another that some sudden danger was at
hand, and that my Lord Abbat suspected the prior and the cellarer of
some secret correspondence with the Norman knights that garrisoned Duke
William’s castle near unto Cam-Bridge.
“If it be so,” said Elfric, the novice from Spalding, “I would advise
every true Saxon monk, novice, and lay-brother, to keep their eyes upon
the cellarer and the prior!”
“That shall be done,” said an old lay-brother.
“Aye, we will all watch their outgoings and their comings in,” said
several of the gossips; “for the prior is a hard-dealing, peremptory
man, and cunning and crafty at the same time, never looking one in the
face; and ever since last pasque the cellarer hath shown an evil habit
of stinting us underlings and loaf-eaters in our meat and drink.”
“He hath ever been given too little to drink himself to be a true
Saxon,” said another; “we will watch him well!”
And they all said that they would watch the cellarer and eke the prior;
that they would for ever love, honour, and obey Thurstan their good and
bountiful Lord Abbat; and that they would all die with swords or spears
in their hands rather than see the Normans enter the Camp of Refuge. So
one-hearted was the community at this time.
Shortly after finishing the chapter in the usual manner, and coming out
with his chaplains, singing _Verba Mea_, Lord Thurstan went into his
own hall, and there assembled all the high and noble guests of the
house, whether laics, or priests, or monks, and all the obedientiarii
and cloistered brothers of the abbey, except the prior and the
cellarer, who had gone to their several cells with faces yet paler than
they were when they came forth from the chapter-house. In my Lord
Abbat’s hall no business was discussed that appertained exclusively to
the house or order: the deliberations all turned upon the general
interests of the country, or upon the means of prolonging the struggle
for national independence. Thurstan, after reminding the assembly that
the Saxon heroes of the Camp of Refuge had foiled the Normans in two
attempts they had made to penetrate into the Isle of Ely—the one in
the summer of the present year, and the other in the summer of the
preceding year, one thousand and sixty-nine—and that it was four good
years since the battle of Hastings, which William the Norman had
bruited on the continent as a victory which had given him possession of
all England, frankly made it known to all present that he had certain
intelligence that the Normans were making vast preparations at
Cam-Bridge, at Bury, at Stamford, at Huntingdon, and even at Brunn, in
order to invade the whole fenny country, and to press upon the Isle of
Ely and the Camp of Refuge from many opposite quarters. My Lord Abbat
further made it known that the duke had called to this service all his
bravest and most expert captains, and a body of troops that had been
trained to war in Brittanie and in other parts wherein there were fens
and rivers and meres, and thick-growing forests of willow and alder,
even as in the country of East Anglia. He also told them how Duke
William had sworn by the splendour of God’s face that another year
should not pass without seeing the Abbey of Ely in flames, the Camp of
Refuge broken into and scattered, the rule of the Normans established
over the whole land, and the refractory Saxons exterminated. “Now,”
said my Lord Abbat, “it behoves us to devise how we shall withstand
this storm, and to select some fitting and experienced captain that
shall have authority over all the fighting men of our league, and that
shall be able to measure swords with these vaunted leaders from foreign
parts. Our brave Saxon chiefs in the camp, or in this house, and now
present among us, are weary of their jealousies of one another, and
have wisely agreed to obey, one and all, one single leader of
experience and fame and good fortune, if such a leader can anywhere be
found, having a true Saxon heart within him, and being one that hath
never submitted to or negociated with the invader. Let us then cast
about and try and find such a chief. Let every one speak his mind
freely, and then we can compare and choose.”
Some named one chief, and some another: many brave and expert men were
named successively and with much applause, and with many expressions of
hope and confidence; but when Father Adhelm, the expelled prior of the
succursal cell at Spalding, stood up in his turn, and with the briefest
preamble named Hereward the son of Leofric, the late Lord of Brunn,
Hereward the truest of Saxons, the other chiefs seemed to be all
forgotten, even by those who had severally proposed them, and the
assembly listened in silence, or with a silence interrupted only by
shouts of triumph, while this good prior and whilom neighbour of
Hereward related the chief events of that warrior’s life, and pointed
out the hereditary and the personal claims he had to the consideration
of his countrymen. Ever since the earliest days in which the Saxons
gained a footing on the land, the Lords of Brunn, the ancestors of
Hereward, had been famed for their valour in the field, famed for their
prudence in the Witan and in all other councils, had been famed above
all their neighbours for their hospitality! And when the Saxons
embraced the Gospel as preached by Saint Augustine and his disciples,
who had been so devout as the Lords of Brunn? who so bountiful to the
shrines of saints and religious houses? who so ready to fight unto
death in defence of the church? Notable it was, and known unto all that
dwelt in the land of fens, that the house of Crowland, and the house of
Ely, and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda, had been served in the hour of
need by many of Hereward’s forefathers. When the unconverted,
heathenish Danes were ravaging the country, and burning all the
monasteries, and tethering their horses in the chapels of royal
palaces, one Lord of Brunn fought in the ranks by the side of Friar
Tolli,[91] from sunrise to sunset, for the defence of the Abbey of
Crowland, nor ceased fighting until three of the Danish sea-kings had
been slain, and the monks had had time to remove their relics, and
their books, and their sacred vases, into the impenetrable marshes of
that vicinity. Another Lord of Brunn,[92] who at the call of the monks
had marched across the fens with all his people, and with all of his
family that could wield a sword, had perished close under the walls of
Ely Abbey, after defeating the Pagans, and driving them back towards
their ships. The blood of each of these Lords of Brunn ran in the veins
of Hereward, and his deeds had proved him worthy of the blood. In his
youth—in the days of Edward[93] the Confessor—when the cunning
Normans were beginning to beset the court of the childless king, and to
act as if the inheritance was already their own, and the people of
England already their slaves, it chanced that our Hereward, who had
been on a pilgrimage to Canterbury,[94] came back to the sea by Dover,
and found Count Eustace of Boulogne, and his French men-at-arms engaged
in a fierce quarrel with the men of Dover, and galloping through the
streets with their naked swords in their hands, striking men and women,
and crushing divers children under their horses’ hoofs. Hereward,
though but a stripling, drew his blade, rallied the dull townsfolk, who
before had no leader, (and so were fighting loosely and without order,
and without any science of war,) and renewing the battle at a vantage,
he slew with his own hand a French knight; and then the men of Dover
slew nineteen of the strangers, wounded many more, and drove Count
Eustace and the rest out of the town to fly in dismay back to king
Edward. Later, when Harold,[95] as earl of the eastern counties, and
chief of king Edward’s armies, marched into Wales to curb the insolent
rage of King Griffith, Hereward attended him, and fought with him among
the mountains and glens, and lakes and morasses of Wales, until that
country was reduced by many victories, and Harold took shipping to
return to King Edward with the head of Griffith stuck upon the rostrum
or beak of his galley. Later still, when Hereward was of manly age, and
King Edward the Confessor was dead, having bequeathed his crown to
Harold, and Harold as our true king raised his banner of war to march
against his own unnatural brother Earl Tostig,[96] who had brought the
King of Norway and a great army of Norwegians into the country of York
to deprive him of his throne or dismember his kingdom, Hereward marched
with him with many of his father’s stout men of Brunn, and fought under
Harold’s eye in the great battle at Stamford Bridge—that battle which
ceased not until Earl Tostig and the king of Norway were both slain,
and the river was choked up with the Norwegian dead. From Stamford
Bridge the march of bold Harold was to Hastings, for the Normans had
landed while he had been vanquishing the Norwegians. On that long and
rapid march,[97] when hundreds of tried soldiers lagged behind,
Hereward kept pace with his royal master; and when the battle was
arrayed he was seen riding by Harold’s side; and when the battle
joined, his battle-axe was seen close by the battle-axes of Harold and
the king’s two loyal and brave brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, dealing
terrible blows, and cutting the steel caps and the coats of mail of the
Normans like chaff. Saxons, remember that he fought at Hastings through
nine long hours, and did not yield until ye saw that ye were betrayed!
Separated from his king in the fury of the last _melée_, Hereward
attempted to rally the East Angles and the men of Kent; and failing in
that, and hearing a mighty rumour that Harold the king was slain, he
galloped to the port of Winchelsey with a few of his father’s trusty
people, and there embarked for foreign parts, vowing that he would
never bow his head to the conqueror. The father[98] of Hereward, being
old and infirm, and infected by the unmanly fears which made so many
Saxons throw aside the sword before the conquest of England was well
begun, had made haste to tender his allegiance to the son of the
harlot, had obtained his peace, and had been allowed to retain his
lordship of Brunn, after paying sundry fines for his son’s patriotism.
But latterly the old Lord of Brunn had been gathered to his fathers,
and a Norman chief had seized his manor-house and all his lands, and
was now keeping them as his patrimony. Such, being told briefly, was
the story which Father Adhelm told to my Lord Abbat of Ely and his
guests and officials; and when he had done, he asked, where could a
better chief be found for the Camp of Refuge than Hereward the true
Saxon, and legitimate Lord of Brunn? And, hereupon, there was a
clapping of hands and shouting of voices in all that noble and devout
assembly—a shouting so loud that it echoed through all the abbey, and
was heard as far off as Saint Ovin’s Cross; and the indwellers of the
town of Ely, albeit they knew not what it meant, took up the cry, and
shouted, “Hereward to the Camp of Refuge! Hereward for England!”
“Bethinks me,” said the cautelous Abbat of Crowland, when the noise had
ceased, “that perchance Hereward will not come to us at our summons. He
must know how false our country has proved to herself, and how great
the progress the conqueror hath made in it: his lands and all his
inheritance are gone, a price is set upon his head in England, and his
valour and experience in war, and his other good qualities, have made
for him a prosperous and honorable home in a foreign land.[99] While
yet in my poor house at Crowland, a shipman from the Wash, who trades
to the opposite coast, told me that he had lately seen at Ypres my Lord
Hereward, living in great affluence and fame; and the mariner further
told me that Hereward had said to him that he would never wend back to
a land of cowards and traitors; that he had carved himself out new
estates in the fattest lands of the Netherlands, and that England had
nothing to give him except dishonour or a grave.”[100]
These representations damped the hopes of some of the company; but as
Hereward’s mind could not be known without a trial, it was determined
to send some trusty messenger across the seas, who might gain access to
the presence of the chief, and at the same time purchase and bring back
with him a supply of arms and warlike harness, with other things much
needed in the Camp of Refuge. The difficulties of this embassage struck
all that were present: “And who,” said the Lord Abbat, “shall be this
trusty and expert messenger?”
“Were it not for the greenness of his years and the lowliness of his
condition,” said the Prior of Spalding, “I would even venture to
recommend for the mission my bold-hearted, clear-headed, and
nimble-footed novice, Elfric.”
“Brother, thou hast said it,” responded Thurstan; “thy novice shall go!
Let the youth be summoned hither.”
The novice was soon kneeling at my Lord Abbat’s feet, and was soon made
acquainted as well with the difficult task he was expected to perform,
as with the uncomfortable doubts which had been propounded by the Abbat
of Crowland. When asked by his own immediate superior, Father Adhelm,
whether he would undertake the task, he answered, “Marry, and that I
will right gladly. When I first went to Spalding, I knew well Hereward,
the son of the Lord of Brunn, and some of those that were nearest to
him. If England is to be saved, he is the man that will save it. I
would go to the world’s end to find him and bring him hither. I love my
country, and I love travelling better than my meat and drink. I have
oft-times prayed to Saint Ovin that he would vouchsafe me the grace of
going into foreign parts! Moreover, my prime duty is obedience to my
superiors. Let me depart instantly, and I will the sooner bring you
back Lord Hereward!”
“Thou art very confident,” said the Abbat of Crowland: “how knowest
thou that Hereward will come with thee?”
“My lord and master,” said the novice, “I ween I can take over with me
a word of command, or a prayer more potential than a command, and one
which Hereward could not withstand even if he were king of all the
Netherlands’ country, and sure death stood upon the English beach to
seize him on return!”
“What does this young man mean?” said the Abbat of Crowland.
Elfric blushed, stammered, and could not go on.
“What dost thou mean?” said his Prior of Spalding.
Elfric stammered more than before, which angered his superior, and
brought down some harsh words upon his head.
“Nay,” said the good old Bishop of Lindisfarn,[101] “chide not the
young man, but give him to collect his thought and frame his speech. He
may know more of Lord Hereward than any one here knoweth. But ... but I
hope that this novice of a goodly house doth not think of employing any
witchcraft or unlawful spell! _De maleficio libera nos!_ From
witchcraft and sacrilege, and all the arts of the devil, good Lord
deliver us!”
The bishop crossed himself; they all crossed themselves; and Elfric not
only crossed himself, but likewise said “_Libera nos!_” and “_Amen!_”
But when he had so done and so said, his merry eye twinkled, and there
was as much of a smile about his mouth as the reverence due to the
company allowed of in a novice.
“If there be magic,” said he, “it is all white magic; if there be a
spell, it is not an unholy spell.” And as Elfric said these words he
looked into the good-natured, right hearty, and right English face of
my Lord Abbat Thurstan.
“Speak on, boy,” said the abbat; “speak out, my brave boy, and fear
nought!”
Being thus heartened, Elfric said: “Then, to speak with reverence
before this noble and reverend company, I wot well there were, when I
was first at Spalding, and when my Lord Hereward was at Brunn, certain
love-passages....”
“Certain _what_?” said the expelled Abbat of Cockermouth, who was
somewhat deaf.
“Love-passages,” said Elfric, looking very archly, and with a laugh in
his eyes, if not on his lips; “certain love-passages between the son of
the Lord of Brunn and the noble maiden Alftrude, the young daughter and
heiress to the lord of the neighbouring town, that old Saxon lord,
Albert of Ey.”[102]
“Truth, the two houses stood not very far apart,” said the Abbat of
Crowland; “but Albert of Ey was no friend to the old Lord of Brunn.”
“Most true, my lord; but Albert died before his neighbour, and left his
wide estates to his fair daughter Alftrude, having first given her in
ward to this Lanfranc, who is by some called Archbishop of Canterbury,
and whose will and power few can gainsay. Moreover, the Ladie Alftrude
is cousin to the Ladie Lucia, whom Ivo Taille-Bois hath made his wife;
and as that arch-enemy of our house extends his protection to his
wife’s cousin, not wishing that her lands should be seized by any
hungry Norman other than a relation of his own, the heiress of Ey hath
been allowed to live in the old manor-house, and to enjoy such
proportion of her father’s wealth as Lanfranc chooseth to allow her.
Many Norman knights have sought her hand, as the best means of
obtaining her land, but the Saxon maiden had ever said Nay! And
Lanfranc, who hath done violence to the very church for his own
interest, and Ivo Taille-Bois, who got his own Saxon wife by violence,
have hitherto had power enough to prevent any great wrong or violence
being done to Ladie Alftrude, the heiress of Ey. Now the Ladie Alftrude
remembers the times that are past, and sighs and weeps for the return
of Hereward, vowing that she will wed none but him, and that——”
“Thou seemeth well informed in these matters,” said one of the monks;
“but prithee, how didst thou obtain thine information?”
Elfric stammered a little, and blushed a good deal as he said, “The
young Ladie Alftrude hath long had for her handmaiden one Mildred of
Hadenham, a daughter of my late father’s friend, a maiden well behaved
and well favoured, and pious withal; and when I was sent to the
manor-house of Ey upon the business of our own house at Spalding, and
when I met Mildred at the church, or wake, or fair, we were ever wont
to talk about my Lord Hereward and my Ladie Alftrude, as well as of
other matters.”
“Father Adhelm,” said my Lord Abbat of Crowland in a whisper, “surely
thou hast allowed too much liberty to thy convent.”
“My lord,” replied the Prior of Spalding, “It is but a novice that
speaks; Elfric is not a cloister monk.”
“No, and never will be,” said the Abbat of Crowland, in another whisper.
“I now see thy spell,” said Thurstan, addressing Elfric, who was
standing silent, and still blushed; “I now see the witchcraft that thou
wouldest use. And dost thou believe that the Ladie Alftrude so loves
Hereward that she will jeopardise her estates for him, and call home
and marry him, though an outlaw? And dost thou believe that Lord
Hereward so loveth the Ladie Alftrude as to quit his new-found fortunes
for her, and to come at her bidding into England?”
“I believe in loving hearts,” replied Elfric; “I believe in all that
Mildred ever told me about Ladie Alftrude; and I can guess better than
your shipman and trader of the Wash what it was that made Lord Hereward
talk so high about his greatness in foreign parts, and vilipend[103]
his own country, and made declarations that he would never return to a
land of cowardice, and treachery, and falsehood. The exile hath heard
that the Ladie Lucia hath become the wife of Ivo-Taille-Bois, probably
without hearing the violence and the craft which brought about that
unholy marriage; and probably without knowing how much the Ladie Lucia
grieves, and how very a prisoner she is in her own manor-house, and in
the midst of her own lands and serfs. My Lord Hereward may also have
heard some unlucky rumours about a marriage between the Lady Alftrude
and some brother or cousin of Taille-Bois, which idle gossips said was
to take place with the sanction of Lanfranc; and judge ye, my lords and
holy fathers, whether this would not be enough to drive Hereward mad!
But a little wit and skill, and a little good luck, and all these cross
and crooked things may be made straight. If I can win to see the Ladie
Alftrude, and get from her some love-token and some comfortable
messages to the exiled Lord of Brunn, and if I can declare and vow, of
mine own knowledge, that the heart of the fair Saxon is aye the same,
write me down a traitor or a driveller, my lords, an I bring not
Hereward back with me.”
“Of a surety he will do it,” said Abbat Thurstan, rubbing his hands
joyously.
“I understand not much of this love logic, but I think he will do it,”
said the Abbat of Crowland.
“He will do anything,” said the Prior of Spalding; “but once let loose
on this wild flight, we shall never again get the young hawk back to
hand.”
The rest of the business was soon arranged, and precisely and in every
part as the novice himself suggested. No one thought of exacting oaths
of fidelity from Elfric. His faith, his discretion, and his valour had
been well tried already, and his honest countenance gave a better
assurance than oaths and bonds. As Saxon monks were the least
acceptable of all visitors to the Normans, and as the dress of monk or
palmer no longer gave protection to any man of English birth, and as
the late novice of Spalding might chance to be but too well known in
Ivo Taille-Bois’ vicinity, Elfric disguised himself as one of the
poorest of the wandering menestrels—half musician, half beggar and
idiot; and in this guise and garb, he, on the second day after the
feast of Saint Edmund, set out alone to find his way across the fens,
through the posts and watches of the Normans, and so on to the
manor-house and the jealously guarded bower of the Ladie Alftrude. He
was to return to Ely, if good fortune attended him, within seven days;
and then he would be ready to proceed to the country of the
Netherlanders, to seek for Lord Hereward, and to purchase the warlike
harness that was wanted. As soon as he had taken his departure from the
abbey, a quick boat was sent down the Ouse with orders to the steadiest
and oftenest-tried shipman of Lynn to get his good bark in readiness
for a sea-voyage, and to bring it up to Ely, in order to take on board
an important passenger bound on an embassage for my Lord Abbat.
Although the love of the Lady Alftrude might perchance bring back Lord
Hereward, it was not likely that it should buy from the trading men of
Ypres, or Ghent, or Bruges, the bows and the cross-bows, the swords and
the lanceheads, the coats of mail, and the other gear that were so much
wanted; and therefore Abbat Thurstan, after collecting what little he
could from his guests and in the Camp of Refuge, and after taking his
own signet-ring from his finger, and his own prelatical cross of gold
and chain of gold from his neck, called upon the chamberlain and the
cellarer and the sacrist for all the coin that had been put by the
pilgrims into the shrine-box. This time the livid-faced cellarer was
silent and obedient; but the chamberlain, demurring to the order of my
Lord Abbat, said, “Surely these contributions of the faithful were at
all times devoted to the repairing and beautifying of our church!”
“Thou sayeth it,” quoth my Lord Abbat; “but if we get not weapons and
harness wherewith to withstand the invaders, we shall soon have no
church left us to repair or beautify. By the holy face and
incorruptible body of Saint Etheldreda, I will strip her very shrine of
the gold plates which adorn it, and of the silver lamps which burn
before it, and melt the gold and the silver, and barter the ingots for
arms, rather than see the last refuge of my countrymen broken in upon,
and the accursed Normans in my house of Ely!”
“But doth not this savour of sacrilege?” said the sacrist.
“Not so much as of patriotism and of real devotion to our saint and
foundress. Saint Etheldreda, a true Saxon and East Anglian saint, will
approve of the deed, if it should become necessary to strip her shrine.
Her honour and sanctity depend not on lamps of silver and plates of
gold, however rich and rare: the faithful flocked to her tomb, and said
their orisons over it when it was but a plain stone block, with no
shrine near it; and well I ween more miracles were wrought there, in
the simple old times, than we see wrought now. Should the Normans get
into our church, they will strip the shrine, an we do not; and they
will rifle the tombs of Saint Sexburga, Saint Ermenilda, and Saint
Withburga[104] and cast forth the bodies of our saints upon the
dung-heap! Oh, sacrist! know ye not how these excommunicated foreigners
are everywhere treating the saints of Saxon birth, and are everywhere
setting up strange saints, whose names were never before heard by
Englishmen, and cannot be pronounced by them! The reason of all this is
clear: our Saxon hagiology is filled with the names of those that were
patriots as well as saints, and we cannot honour them in one capacity
without thinking of them in the other.”
“This is most true,” said the chamberlain; “and the Normans be likewise
setting up new shrines to the Blessed Virgin, and bringing in Notre
Dames, and our Ladie of Walsingham, and other Ladies that were never
heard of before; and they are enforcing pilgrimages in wholly new
directions! If these things endure, alack and woe the while for our
house of Ely, and for the monks of Saint Edmund’s-Bury, and for all
Saxon houses! Our shrine boxes will be empty; we shall be neglected and
forgotten in the land, even if the Normans do not dispossess us.”
CHAPTER VI.
IVO TAILLE-BOIS AND THE LADIE LUCIA.
Within the moated and battlemented manor-house near to the banks of the
Welland, which Elfric had stopped to gaze upon as he was travelling
from Crowland to Spalding, there was held a feast on the fourth day
after the feast of Saint Edmund, for the said fourth day from the great
Saxon festival was the feast-day of some saint of Normandie or of
Anjou, and the Ladie Lucia, maugre her sorrow and affliction, had given
birth to a male child a moon agone, and the child was to be baptized on
this day with much rejoicing. Ivo Taille-Bois and his Norman retainers
were glad, inasmuch as the birth of a son by a Saxon wife went to
secure them in their possession of the estates; and the Ladie Lucia was
glad of heart, as a mother cannot but rejoice at the birth of her
first-born; and her Saxon servants, and all the old retainers of her
father’s house, and all the Saxon serfs, were glad, because their
future lord would be more than one half Saxon, being native to the
country, a child of the good Ladie Lucia, the daughter of their last
Saxon lord. So merry were all, that grievances seemed to be forgotten:
the Normans ceased to oppress and insult; the Saxons ceased, for the
time being, to complain. The feast was very bountiful, for the Ladie
Lucia had been allowed the ordering of it; and the company was very
numerous and much mixed, for many Saxons of name had been bidden to the
feast, and pledges had been given on both sides that there should be a
truce to all hostilities and animosities; that there should be what the
Normans called the Truce of God until the son of Ivo Taille-Bois and
Lucia, the presumptive heir to all the lands of the old lord, should be
christened, and his christening celebrated in a proper manner. No less
a man than the prelate Lanfranc had interfered in making this salutary
arrangement. And for the first time since the death of her father,
Lanfranc’s fair ward, the Ladie Alftrude, had come forth from her own
manor-house to attend at the earnest invitation of her cousin the Ladie
Lucia. The Saxon heiress had come attended by sundry armed men and by
two aged English priests who stood high in the consideration and favour
of the potent Lanfranc. When, landing from her boat (the country was
now nearly everywhere under water), she walked up to the gate of the
house, and entering, drew aside her wimple and showed her sweet young
face and bright blue eyes, there rose a murmur of admiration from all
that were assembled there: the Saxons vowed in good old English that
the Ladie Alftrude was the fairest and noblest maiden in all England;
and the Normans swore in Norman-French and with many a _Vive Dieu_ that
they had never beheld anything equal to her either on the other side of
the seas or on this! Nay, some of the Norman knights, and more than one
whose beard was growing grey while he was yet in poverty or wholly
unprovided with any English estate, forgot the broad lands that
Alftrude inherited, to think only of her beautiful face. Yet when
Alftrude kissed her fair cousin and her cousin’s child, and sat down by
the side of the Lady Lucia at the top of the hall, it was hard to say
which was the more lovely, the young matron, or the scarcely younger
maiden.
“_Benedicite_,” said a young monk of Evreux who had come over for
promotion in some English abbey, “but the daughters of this land be
fair to look upon!”
“They be,” said a starch man in mail, “and they will conquer the
conquerors of England, and soon cause the name and distinction of
Norman to be swallowed up and forgotten in the country.”
“Had I come hither before taking my vows at Evreux, the devil might
have been a monk for me, but I would have been none of it!”
Peaceably, ay, and merrily, passed off the day. The fair Ladie Alftrude
stood at the font, and was one of the sponsors for her cousin’s
first-born. The banquet succeeded to the baptism, and dancing and music
in the hall followed on the banquet. The old times seemed to be coming
back again, those peaceful days of good King Edward, _Cœli
deliciæ_,[105] when every free-born Englishman enjoyed his own, and
every noble thane or earl held hospitality to be one of his primary
duties.
But Ivo Taille-Bois, though he boasted of being cousin to Duke William,
was a greedy low-born churl, and therefore he needs must mar the
happiness of his young wife (who ever since the birth of her son had
been striving to forget how she had been made his wife), by talking of
his unprovided brother, who had arrived in England, and was now
tarrying about the Conqueror’s court in the hope of obtaining from
Lanfranc the hand of his rich Saxon ward. The Ladie Lucia, knowing full
well how her cousin’s heart lay toward Hereward, tried often to change
the strain, but her Norman lord, forgetful even of courtesy to his
guests, would still keep vexing her ear with his brother’s suit, and
instead of continuing to be thankful to his saints for his own good
fortune in getting so vast an heritage, and so fair a wife, and then so
promising a child, he spoke as though he should feel himself a beggar
until all the domains of the Ladie Alftrude were in the hands of his
family. An anger that would not be concealed flashed in his eye
whenever he saw any well-fa’red knight or gallant youth discoursing
with Alftrude, and whether it were a Norman or a Saxon his wrath seemed
equal. Desperate thoughts and dark designs flitted through his mind. At
one time he thought that now that he had got the young heiress into his
house he would forcibly keep her where she was until his brother should
arrive and press his own suit in the ungodly manner of the first Norman
conquerors; but he cowered under the dread of Lanfranc and a Norman
sentence of excommunication, and he saw that the thing was not to be
done without great peril and much bloodshed under his own roof, for the
Saxon guests were numerous far above the Normans, and though, mayhap,
several of his Norman guests would not have scrupled about the deed if
it had been for their own profit, they could not be expected to concur
in it, or even to allow it, when it was only for the profit of him and
his brother. Vanity, thy name was Norman! There was young Guiscard[106]
of Avranches, there was tall Etienne[107] of Rouen (and verily a tall
and well-proportioned young man was he, and one that could talk glibly
both in English and in French), there was Baldwin of the Mount, a most
nimble dancer, and with a fine gilded cloak over his shoulders and not
a crown in his purse (even like all the rest of them); there was old
Mainfroy of La Perche, who had followed Robert Guiscard into Italie and
Grecia, and had lost an eye and half of a nose in those wars before
Ladie Alftrude was born; and there was old Drogo[108] from Chinon, who
looked as though he had added to his own nose that half of a nose
Mainfroy had lost (so hugeous and misshapen was Drogo’s nose!); and not
one of these gay knights but thought that the Lady Alftrude having once
seen and heard him must prefer him to all the world. In their own
conceit they were, one and all of them, already Lords of Ey and
husbands of Alftrude. Judge ye then whether Ivo Taille-Bois could have
safely ventured to stay his fair guest against her will, or shut up his
wife’s cousin in close bower for his as yet unknown and unseen brother!
But there was now in the hall a merrier eye, and one more roguish
withal, than ever shone under the brows of a Norman. The drawbridge
being down, and the gate of the house wide open, that all who list
might enter and partake according to his degree of some of the good
things that were provided, a young Saxon glee-man or menestrel came
over the bridge unchallenged, and only paused under the low archway of
the gate. His dress was tattered and torn, and not free from the mud
and slime of the fens, but sweet and clear was his voice, and merry and
right old English his song; and so all the Saxons that heard him gave
him welcome, and bade him enter the hall and sing a lay in honour of
the Ladie Lucia and of her first-born son, who would be good lord to
all Saxon folk as his grandfather had been before him. But before going
into the hall, where the feast was just over, and all the tables
cleared, the glee-man went aside into the buttery to renew his strength
with a good meal, and refresh his voice with a cup of good wine. When
he entered the hall the old Saxon seneschal cried, “A glee-man! another
glee-man come to sing an English song!” The Norman menestrels looked
scornfully at him and his tattered cloak; and the Saxon menestrels
asked of one another who he might be; for none of them knew him, albeit
the menestrels, like the beggars and other happy vagabonds of old
England, were united in league and brotherhood, in sort that every
menestrel of East Anglia was thought to know every other menestrel or
glee-man of that countrie. But when the new and unknown comer had
played his preludium on his Saxon lyre of four strings, and had sung
his downright Saxon song with a voice that was clear as a bell, and at
times loud as a trumpet, the English part of the company, from the
highest degree to the lowest, shouted and clapped their hands; and all
the English menestrels vowed that he was worthy of their guild; while
even the Norman glee-men confessed that, although the words were
barbarous and not to be understood by civil men, the air was good, and
the voice of the best. Whether the words were ancient as the music, or
whether they were made in part or wholly for the occasion by the
singer, they went deep into the hearts both of the Ladie Alftrude and
the Ladie Lucia; and while the young matron of the house put a little
ring into a cup, and bade her little Saxon page fill the cup with the
best wine, and hand it to the Saxon menestrel, the maiden Alftrude went
straight to the spot where that menestrel was standing, and asked him
to sing his song again. And when the glee-man had knelt on his knee to
the mistress of the house, and had drained her cup of wine until not so
much as the ghost of a drop was left in it, and when he had sung his
song over again, and more deftly and joyously than he had sung it
before, the Lady Alftrude still kept near him, and, discoursing with
him, took three or more turns across the lower part of the hall. Saxon
lords and Saxon dames and maidens of high degree were ever courteous to
the poor and lowly, and ever honoured those who had skill in
minstrelsy. At first the Ladie Alftrude smiled and laughed as if at
some witty conceit let fall by the menestrel; but then those who
watched her well, and were near enough to see, saw a cloud on her brow
and a blush on her cheek, and then a paleness, and a short gasping as
if for breath. But all this passed away, and the maiden continued to
discourse calmly with the menestrel, and whenever the menestrel raised
his voice it was only to give utterance to some pleasant gibe.
Ivo Taille-Bois, albeit he had seen him often under another hood, might
not know him, and all the English glee-men might continue to wonder who
he was; but we know full well that the menestrel was none other than
Elfric the novice. He had found his way unscathed to Ey, and not
finding the Ladie Alftrude there, he had followed her to the
manor-house of her fair cousin, well pleased that such a celebration
and feast would make easy his entrance into the house. A maiden of
Alftrude’s degree could not travel and visit without a featy handmaiden
attendant upon her. Rough men that bend bows and wield swords and
spears, and make themselves horny fists, are not fit to dress a ladie’s
hair or tie her sandals; and well we ween it becometh not priests with
shaven crowns to be lacing a maiden’s bodice; and so, besides the armed
men and the two churchmen, the Ladie Alftrude had brought with her
Mildred of Hadenham, that maiden well-behaved and well-favoured and
pious withal, whom Elfric was wont to entertain with talk about my Lord
Hereward, as well as of other matters. Now Mildred of Hadenham was
there at the lower end of the hall, seated among other handmaidens; and
as soon as Elfric entered, or, at the latest, as soon as he finished
the first verse of his song, she knew who the menestrel was as well as
we do. While the Ladie Alftrude was before their eyes, few of the noble
company cared to look that way or upon any other than her; but if a
sharp eye had watched it would have seen that Mildred several times
blushed a much deeper red than her mistress, and that the young
glee-man’s eyes were rather frequently seeking her out. And at last,
when the Ladie Alftrude returned to her cousin at the head of the hall,
and the floor of the hall was cleared for an exhibition of dancers, the
glee-man, after some gyrations, found his way to the side of Mildred of
Hadenham, and kept whispering to her, and making her blush even redder
than before, all the other handmaidens wondering the while, and much
envying Mildred, for, albeit his cloak was tattered and his hose
soiled, the young menestrel, besides having the sweetest voice, was
surpassingly well-favoured in form and face, and had the
happiest-looking eye that ever was seen.
The Ladie Alftrude talked long in a corner with her cousin the Ladie
Lucia, and then there was a calling and consulting with Mildred of
Hadenham, as though her mistress’s head-gear needed some rearrangement.
And after this the two cousins and the waiting-woman quitted the hall,
and went into an upper and inner chamber, and tarried there for a short
while, or for about the time it takes to say a score of _Aves_. Then
they come back to the hall, and the Ladie Lucia and the Ladie Alftrude
sit down together where the company is most thronged. But where is the
curiously delicate little ring that was glittering on Ladie Alftrude’s
finger?... Ha! Ha! we wot well that Elfric hath got it, and other
love-tokens besides, that he may carry them beyond seas, and bring back
Hereward to his ladie-love and to England that cannot do without him.
But where is that merriest of glee-men?... Many in the hall were asking
the question, for they wanted to hear him again. But Elfric was gone,
and none seemed to know how or when he went. Mayhap, maid Mildred knew
something about it, for when the English part of the company began to
call for the glee-man with the tattered cloak, that he might sing
another merry song, she turned her face to the wall and wept.
Well, I ween, had our simple dull Saxons outwitted the nimble-witted
Normans! Well had the menestrel and the ladies and the waiting-maid
played their several parts! Could Ivo Taille-Bois but have known his
errand, or have guessed at the mischief that he was brewing for him,
either Elfric would never have entered those walls, or he would never
have left them alive.
CHAPTER VII.
HEREWARD’S RETURN.
There may be between Thamesis and the Tyne worse seas and more perilous
rocks; but when the north-east wind blows right into that gulf, and the
waves of the German Ocean are driven on by the storms of winter, the
practised mariner will tell ye that the navigation of the Wash, the
Boston Deeps, and the Lynn Deeps, is a fearful thing to those who know
the shoals and coasts, and a leap into the jaws of death to those that
know them not. Besides the shallows near shore, there be sandbanks and
treacherous shoals in the middle of the bay, and these were ofttimes
shifting their places or changing their shapes. Moreover, so many
rivers and broad streams and inundations, that looked like regular
rivers in the wet seasons of the year, poured their waters into the
Wash, that it required all the skill of the mariner and pilot to find a
way into the proper bed of any one particular river, as the Ouse, the
Nene, or the Welland.[109] Here are many quick-sands, fatal to barks,
when concealed under the water; and even in summer-tide, when the
waters are dried, the shepherds and their flocks,[110] are often taught
by a woeful experience that these quick-sands have a wonderful force in
sucking in and holding fast whatsoever cometh upon them. In this sort
the perils of shipmen are not over even when they reach the shore, and
are advancing to tread upon what seemeth like _terra firma_. The Wash
and its sand-banks and the quick-sands had made more East-Anglian
widows and orphans than were made by any other calamity besides, save
always the fierce Norman conquest.
It was under one of the fiercest and loudest tempests that ever blew
from the sky of winter, and upon one of the roughest seas that ever
rolled into the Wash, that five barks, which seemed all to be deeply
laden and crowded with men, drove past the shoal called the
Dreadful,[111] and made for that other shoal called the Inner Dousing.
The sun, which had not been visible the whole day, now showed itself
like a ball of fire as it sank in the west behind the flats and fens of
Lincolnshire; and when the sun was down the fury of the tempest seemed
to increase. When they had neared the Inner Dousing, four of the barks
took in all their sail and lay-to as best they could in the trough of
the sea; but the fifth bark stood gallantly in for the Wash, with
nearly all her sails up. Swift as it bounded over the waves, it was
dark night before the foremost bark reached the little cape where
stands the chapel of our Ladie.[112] Here the bark showed three lights
at her mast-head, and then three lights over her prow, and then three
over her stern. Quickly as might be, these lights from on board the
fifth and foremost bark were answered by three times three of lights on
the belfry of Our Ladie’s chapel; and had it not been for the roaring
of the winds and the loud dashing of the sea on the resounding shore,
those on land by Our Ladie’s chapel might have heard a three times
three of hearty cheers from those on shipboard, and those on the ship
might have heard every cheer given back with interest and increase by
the crowd of true Saxons that stood by the chapel. The bark next showed
at her masthead a broad blue light, such as had never been seen before
in these parts; and presently from the lee side of the Inner Dousing
four other bright blue lights gleamed across the black sky; and having
in this wise answered signal, the four barks followed in the track of
the fifth and came up with it off Our Ladie’s chapel. Still keeping a
little in advance, like the pilot and admiral of the little fleet, the
bark that had first reached the coast glided into Lynn Deeps; and as it
advanced towards the mouth of the Ouse, signal-lights or piloting
lights rose at every homestead and hamlet, from Kitcham[113] to
Stone’s-end, from Stone’s-end to Castle Rising, and from Castle Rising
to the good town of Lynn. And besides these stationary lights, there
were other torches running along the shore close above the line of sea
foam. And much was all this friendly care needed, the deeps being
narrow and winding and the shoals and sand-banks showing themselves on
every side, and the wind still blowing a hurricane, and the masts of
the barks bending and cracking even under the little sail that they now
carried. On this eastern side of the Wash few could have slept, or have
tarried in their homes this night; for when—near upon midnight, and as
the monks of Lynn were preparing to say matins in the chapel of Saint
Nicholas—the five barks swirled safely into the deep and easy bed of
the Ouse, and came up to the prior’s wharf, and let go their anchors,
and threw their stoutest cordage ashore, to the end that the mariners
there might make them fast, and so give a double security against wind
and tide, the wharf and all the river bank was covered with men, women,
and children, and the houses in the town behind the river bank were
nearly all lighted up, as if it had been Midsummer’s eve, instead of
being the penultimate night[114] of the Novena of Christmas. It was not
difficult to make out that the foremost of the barks and one other
belonged to Lynn, inasmuch as the Lynn folk leaped on board of them as
soon as they were made fast at the wharf, calling upon their town
fellows, their brothers or sons, and hugging them _more Saxonico_[115]
when they found them out on the crowded decks. The other barks were of
foreign structure, and the mariners seemed to be all foreigners; but
the many passengers in each of them were all Englishmen, and _landsmen_
besides; for they had all been very sea-sick, and were now very
impatient to get their feet upon dry land.
The first that landed from the foremost bark was a tall, robust, and
handsome man, dressed as Saxon noblemen and warriors were wont to dress
before the incoming of the ill fashions of Normandie.
He carried in his right hand a long straight and broad sword, the blade
of which was curiously sheathed, and the hilt of which formed a cross.
When he had crossed the plankings of the wharf, and reached the solid
ground, he knelt on one knee and kissed the cross of his sword; and
then throwing himself prone upon the earth, and casting wide his arms
as though he would embrace it and hug it, he kissed the insensate soil,
and thanked his God and every saint in the Saxon calendar for that he
had been restored to the land which gave him birth, and which held the
dust and bones of his fathers. Some who had seen him in former days on
the Spalding side of the Wash, and some who had been apprised of his
coming, began instantly to shout, “It is he!—it is Lord Hereward of
Brunn! It is Hereward the Saxon! It is the Lord of Brunn, come to get
back his own and to help us to drive out the Normans.” The shouts were
taken up on every side, mariners and landsmen, foreigners and home-born
fensmen, and women and children, crying, “It is Hereward the Saxon!
Long live the young Lord of Brunn, who will never shut his hall-door in
the face of a poor Englishman, nor turn his back on a Frenchman!” Some
hemmed him in, and kissed his hands, and the sheath of his long
straight sword, and the skirts of his mantle, and the very sandals on
his feet; while others held their glaring torches close over his head,
that they might see him and show him to their mates. It was one Nan of
Lynn, and a well-famed and well-spoken woman, that said, as she looked
upon the Lord Hereward, “We Englishwomen of the fens will beat the
men-at-arms from Normandie, an we be but led by such a captain as this;
with that steel cap on his head, and that scarlet cloak over his
shoulders, he looks every inch as stalwart and as handsome a warrior as
the archangel Michael, whose portraiture we see in our church!”
The person nearest in attendance on Lord Hereward was that lucky wight
Elfric, who had been to seek him in foreign parts; but it was Elfric no
longer attired either as a tattered menestrel or as a shaveling novice,
but as something betwixt a blithesome page and an armed retainer. He
too had more than one tear of joy in his eye as he trod upon the shore;
but this tender emotion soon gave way to a hearty if not boisterous
mirth, and so he kept shouting, “Make way for Hereward the Lord of
Brunn!” and kept squeezing the hands of all the men and women and
children he knew in Lynn, as they walked towards the convent where
Hereward was to rest until daylight. Next to Elfric, the man that
seemed most entirely devoted to the service and to the person of
Hereward was a slight, slim man of middle stature and very dark
complexion; his hair was long, and would have been blacker than the
plumage of the raven save that time had touched it here and there with
grey; his nose was arched like the beak of a goshawk; and his eye, that
looked out from under a very black and bushy but very lofty eyebrow,
was blacker and keener than the eye of any hawk or other fowl of prey.
Some who had seen now and then a wandering Israelite, thought that this
stranger looked marvellously like a Jew; but this was a marvellous
mistake. None could think him either young or handsome; yet was there
something about his person and in his face that none could help looking
at, and then remembering for aye. Among the stout Saxons were some that
could have taken the dark, slim stranger between their finger and
thumb, and have squeezed the life out of him with as much ease as boys
crack nuts; but there was a quickness and sharpness in the stranger’s
eye that seemed to say he could outwit them all if he chose. On the way
to the convent Hereward several times addressed him in some foreign
tongue, and seemed by his looks to be taking advice of him.
As the convent was but a dependency of my Lord Abbat Thurstan, and a
succursal cell to Ely, ye may judge whether the Lord of Brunn and those
who came with him met with hospitality! Saxons and strangers (and all
landed from the barks as soon as might be, and hastened to the convent)
found suppers and beds, or suppers and clean sweet rushes to lie upon,
either with the sub-prior or in the guest-house. In the morning, as
soon as it was light, Hereward, Elfric, and the dark stranger, and a
score of armed men, re-embarked in the good ship that had brought them
to Lynn, and proceeded up the river Ouse, leaving the other four barks
at their moorings under the prior’s wharf. These four craft were to
keep a good look-out, and in case of any armed ships coming into the
Wash they were to run, through the most intricate passage, for
Spalding; but if no enemy should appear (and of this there was scarcely
a chance, as the weather continued stormy, and the Normans were bad
seamen, and very badly provided with shipping), they were all to wait
at Lynn until Lord Hereward should come back from Ely to lead them to
Spalding, and, farther still, to his own house at Brunn.
Broad and free was the river Ouse, and up as high as the junction of
the Stoke[116] Lord Hereward’s bark was favoured by the tide as well as
by the wind. Above the Stoke the tide failed; but the wind blew
steadily on, and many boats, with lusty rowers in them, came down from
Ely and Chettisham and Littleport, and took the bark in tow, for the
signal-lights and fires which had guided the fleet into Lynn had been
carried across the fens and to the Abbey of Ely, and had told my Lord
Abbat that the Lord Hereward was come. No bark had ever made such
voyage before, nor have many made it since; but a good while before the
sun went down our Lynn mariners made their craft fast to my Lord
Abbat’s pier, and Hereward and his bold and trusty followers landed in
the midst of a throng ten times greater and ten times more jubilant
than that which had welcomed them at Lynn. Before quitting the ship
Elfric put on his monastic habit. This he did not do without a sigh;
and he carried with him under his novice’s gown the gay dress he had
worn while in foreign parts and on shipboard. Maybe he expected that
services might be required from him in which such an attire would be
useful; or perhaps he hoped that his superior of Spalding and the Abbat
of Crowland would, in considering the services he had rendered already,
determine in their wisdom that the dress and calling of a monk were not
those which suited him best. Although not bound by any irrevocable vow,
Elfric was bound by the ties of gratitude to Father Adhelm, who had
taken him into the succursal cell at Spalding when a very young and
helpless orphan; and Elfric would never have been the man he proved
himself if he had been forgetful of duties and obligations.
At the outer gate of the convent Lord Hereward was met and embraced and
welcomed by the high-hearted abbat of the house, by the Archbishop
Stigand, the Abbat of Crowland, and by all the prelates and high
churchmen; and next by all the cloistered monks of Ely; and next by the
lay lords and the Saxon warriors of all parts: and all this right
reverend and right noble company shouted, “Welcome to our chief and our
deliverer! Honour and welcome to the young Lord of Brunn!”
As Thurstan led the Saxon hero by the hand towards his own Aula Magna,
he said, “But for the solemn season, which brooks not much noise,” (the
town folk, and the hinds that had come in from the fens, and the
novices and lay-brothers, were continuing to shout and make noise
enough to wake the dead that were sleeping in the cloisters), “we would
have received you, my lord, with a great clattering of bells and show
of flags and banners! Nevertheless thou comest at a most suitable
moment and on the very verge of the most joyous of all seasons; ’tis
the vigil of the Nativity. On this Christmas eve, like all
well-regulated religious houses and all good Christians, we fast upon a
banquet of eels and fish. At midnight we have the midnight mass,
chanted in our best manner; and to-morrow we feast indeed, and give up
all our souls to joy. To-morrow, then, our bells shall be struck upon
so that the Norman knights and men-at-arms shall hear them in
Cam-Bridge Castle, and shall tremble while they hear! And our Saxon
flags, and the banners of our saints, yea, the great banner of Saint
Etheldreda itself, shall be hung out on our walls! And when the other
duties of the day are over, we will sing a _Te Deum laudamus_ for thy
coming. My Lord Hereward, I have not known such joy, or half so much
hope, since the day on which our good Edward (_Rex venerandus_) put
this ring upon my finger and confirmed my election as abbat of this
house! My hope then was that I should be enabled to be a good ruler of
this ancient brotherhood, and good lord to all the Saxon folk that
dwell on the land of Saint Etheldreda. Now my higher hope is that thou
wilt be enabled, oh Hereward, to free all England from this cruel
bondage!”
The young Saxon noble, being wholly a man of action, and gifted with
much modesty, made but a very short reply to this and to other very
long speeches; he simply said that he had come back to get back his
own, and to help his good countrymen to get back their own; that the
Norman yoke was all too grievous to be borne; that it was very strange
and very sorrowful that brave King Harold came not back to his faithful
people of East-Anglia; and that, until King Harold should come,[117]
he, Hereward, would do his best for his friends and for himself.
Though all were eager to be informed of the strength which the Lord of
Brunn brought with him, and of the plans he proposed to pursue,
Thurstan thought it churlish to question any man fasting. Hereward,
however, declared that he had fared well on board the bark, and could
well wait till supper-time. And so, having closed the doors of the
abbat’s great hall, the lords and prelates proceeded to deliberate with
the dispossessed Lord of Brunn. The sum of Hereward’s replies to many
questions and cross-questions (he having no genius for narration) was
simply this:—Elfric had found him out in Flanders, and had delivered
to him letters, and messages, and tokens which had determined him to
quit his adoptive country and return to England. Many English exiles
who had been living in the Netherlands had made up their minds to come
over with him. Such money as they could command among them all, or
borrow at interest from the traders of Flanders, who seriously felt the
loss of their trade with England, had been applied to the purchase of
warlike harness, and to the hiring and equipping of three foreign
barks. The master of a bark from Lynn that chanced to be in those parts
had offered his bark and the services of himself and crew for nothing,
or for what his liege lord the Abbat of Ely might at any time choose to
give him. The gold and silver which my Lord Abbat had sent with Elfric
had been properly and profitably employed; and, besides spear-heads,
and swords, and bows, and jackets of mail, the Lynn bark now lying at
my Lord Abbat’s pier, and the other Lynn bark left behind at that town,
had brought such a quantity of Rhenish and Mosel wine as would suffice
for the consumption of the whole house until next Christmas. Counting
the men that had come in all the barks, there were more than one
hundred and ten true-hearted Saxons, well armed and equipped, and well
practised in the use of arms, as well in the Saxon fashion as in the
fashions used abroad; and every one of these men was proper to become a
centurion, or the trainer and leader of a hundred of our fen-men. It
was Lord Hereward’s notion that our great house at Ely and the Camp of
Refuge would be best relieved or screened from any chance of attack, by
the Saxons making at once a quick and sharp attack all along the Norman
lines or posts to the north and north-west of the Isle of Ely, or from
Spalding to Brunn, and Crowland, and Peterborough. Some thought that
his lordship preferred beginning in this direction because his own
estates and the lady of his love were there: we will not say that these
considerations had no weight with him, but we opine that his plan was a
good one, and that no great commander, such as Hereward was, would have
begun the war upon the invaders in any other manner, time or place.
Twenty of the armed men he had brought with him from their wearisome
exile—or more than twenty if my Lord Abbat thought fit—he would leave
at Ely; with the rest, who had been left with the ships at Lynn, he
would go to the Welland river, and make a beginning.
“But thou canst not go yet awhile,” said Abbat Thurstan, thinking of
the Christmas festivals and of the Rhenish wines; “thou canst not quit
us, my son, until after the feast of the Epiphany! ’Tis but twelve days
from to-morrow, and the Normans are not likely to be a-stirring during
those twelve days.”
“True, my Lord Abbat,” said Hereward, “the Normans will be feasting and
rejoicing; but it is on that very account that I must go forthwith in
order to take them unprepared and attack their bands separately, while
they are feasting. An ye, holy brothers, give me your prayers, and the
saints grant me the success I expect, I shall have recovered for ye the
house at Spalding and the abbey of Crowland, and for myself mine humble
house at Brunn, before these twelve days be over.”
“Then,” said the abbat, “thou mayest be back and keep the feast of the
Epiphany with us.”
Hereward thought of keeping the feast in another place and with a
different company, but the eager hospitality of Thurstan was not to be
resisted, and so he promised that he would return, if he could do so
without detriment to the business he had on hand. But when he spoke of
setting forth on the morrow after high mass, not only the Lord Abbat,
but every one that heard him, raised his voice against him, and
Hereward yielded to the argument that it would be wicked to begin war
on Christmas Day, or to do any manner of thing on that day except
praying and feasting. Something did Hereward say in praise of Elfric,
and of the ability, and courage, and quickness of invention he had
displayed while on his mission in foreign parts, and on shipboard.
“Albeit,” said he, “I would not rob my good friends the Abbat of
Crowland and the Prior of Spalding of so promising a novice, I needs
must think that he would make a much better soldier than monk; nor can
I help saying that I would rather have Elfric for my messenger and aid
in the field than any Saxon youth I know, whether of low degree or
high.”
“My good brother of Crowland and I have been thinking of these things,”
said Abbat Thurstan; “and these are surely days when the saints of
England require the services of men with steel caps on their heads as
much as they require the services of men with shaven crowns. Not but
that some of us that wear cowls have not wielded arms and done good
battle in our day for the defence of our shrines and houses.”
At this moment the eels and fish of the Christmas-eve supper were all
ready, and the best cask of Rhenish which the bark had brought up to my
Lord Abbat’s pier was broached.
CHAPTER VIII.
LORD HEREWARD GOES TO GET HIS OWN.
In no time had there been at the house of Ely so great and glorious a
festival of the Nativity as that holden in the year of Grace one
thousand and seventy, the day after the return of the Saxon commander
Hereward, Lord of Brunn. Learned brothers of the house have written
upon it, and even to this day the monks of Ely talk about it. On the
day next after the feast, several hours before sunrise, the mariners in
the unloaded bark were getting all ready to drop down the Ouse to the
good town of Lynn, and Lord Hereward was communing with the Abbat
Thurstan, the Abbat of Crowland, and the Prior of Spalding, in my Lord
Abbat’s bedchamber. The rest of the prelates and lay lords were
sleeping soundly in their several apartments, having taken their leave
of Hereward in a full carouse the night before. Many things had been
settled touching correspondence or communication, and a general
co-operation and union of all the Saxons in the Camp of Refuge and all
that dwelt in the fen country, whether in the isle of Ely, or in the
isle of Thorney, or in Lindsey, or in Holland, or in other parts. Fresh
assurances were given that the chiefs and fighting men would all
acknowledge Hereward as their supreme commander, undertaking nothing
but at his bidding, and looking to none but him for their orders and
instructions. Abbat Thurstan agreed to keep the score of men that had
been brought up to Ely in the bark, but he demurred about receiving and
entertaining, as the commander of these men, the dark stranger with the
hooked nose and sharp eye. Hereward said that the stranger was a man
remarkably skilled in the science of war, and in the art of defending
places. Thurstan asked whether he were sure that he was not a spy of
the Normans, or one that would sell himself to the Normans for gold?
Then the Lord of Brunn told what he knew, or that which he had been
told, concerning the dark stranger. He was from Italie, from a region
not very far removed from Rome and the patrimony of Saint Peter; from
the name of his town he was hight[118] Girolamo of Salerno. His country
has been all invaded, and devastated, and conquered by Norman tribes,
from the same evil hive which had sent these depredators into merry
England to make it a land of woe. Robert Guiscard, one of twelve
brothers that were all conquerors and spoilers, had driven Girolamo
from his home and had seized upon his houses and lands, and had abused
the tombs of his ancestors, even as the followers of William the
Bastard were now doing foul things with the graves of our forefathers.
After enduring wounds, and bonds, and chains, Girolamo of Salerno had
fled from his native land for ever, leaving all that was his in the
hands of the Normans, and had gone over into Sicilie to seek a new home
and settlement among strangers. But the Normans, who thought they had
never robbed enough so long as there were more countries before them
which they could rob and conquer, crossed the sea into Sicilie[119]
under Roger Guiscard, the brother of Robert, and made prey of all that
fair island seven years before the son of the harlot of Falaise crossed
the Channel and came into England. Now Girolamo of Salerno had vowed
upon the relics of all the saints that were in the mother-church of
Salerno, that he would never live under the Norman tyranny; and sundry
of the Norman chiefs that went over with Roger Guiscard to Palermo had
vowed upon the crosses of their swords that they would hang him as a
dangerous man if they could but catch him. So Girolamo shook the dust
of Sicilie and Mongibel[120] from his feet, and, crossing the seas
again, went into Grecia. But go where he would, those incarnate devils
the Normans would be after him! He had not long lived in Grecia ere
Robert Guiscard came over from Otrantum and Brundisium, to spoil the
land and occupy it; therefore Girolamo fled again, cursing the Norman
lance. He had wandered long and far in the countries of the Orient: he
had visited the land of Egypt, he had been in Palestine, in Jerusalem,
in Bethlehem; he had stood and prayed on the spot where our Lord was
born, and on the spot where He was crucified; but, wearying of his
sojourn among Saracens, he had come back to the Christian west to see
if he could find some home where the hated Normans could not penetrate,
or where dwelt some brave Christian people that were hopeful of
fighting against those oppressors. He was roaming over the earth in
quest of enemies to the Normans when Hereward met him, two years ago,
in Flanders, and took his hand in his as a sworn foe to all men of that
race. Was, then, Girolamo of Salerno a likely man to be a spy or fautor
to the Normans in England? Thurstan acknowledged that he was not.
“But,” said he, “some men are so prone to suspicion that they suspect
everybody and everything that is near to them; and some men, nay, even
some monks and brothers of this very house, are so envious of my state
and such foes to my peace of mind, that whenever they see me more happy
and fuller of hope than common, they vamp me up some story or conjure
some spectrum to disquiet me and sadden me! Now, what said our prior
and cellarer no later than last night? They said, in the hearing of
many of this house, inexpert novices as well as cloister-monks, that
the dark stranger must be either an unbelieving Jew or a necromancer;
that when, at grand mass, the host was elevated in the church, he shot
glances of fire at it from his sharp eyes; and that when the service
was over they found him standing behind the high altar muttering what
sounded very like an incantation, in a tongue very like unto the Latin.”
Hereward smiled and said, “Assuredly he was but saying a prayer in his
own tongue. My Lord Abbat, this Girolamo of Salerno, hath lived
constantly with me for the term of two years, and I will warrant him as
true a believer as any man in broad England. He is a man of many
sorrows, and no doubt of many sins; but as for his faith!—why he is a
living and walking history of all the saints and martyrs of the church,
and of every miraculous image of Our Ladie that was ever found upon
earth. His troubles and his crosses, and his being unable to speak our
tongue, or to comprehend what is said around him, may make him look
moody and wild, and very strange: and I am told that in the country of
his birth most men have coal-black hair and dark flashing eyes; but
that in Salerno there be no Israelites allowed, and no necromancers or
warlocks or witches whatsoever; albeit, the walnut-tree of Beneventum,
where the witches are said to hold their sabbat, be not very many
leagues distant. In truth, my good Lord Abbat, it was but to serve you
and to serve your friends and retainers, that I proposed he should stay
for a season where he is; for I have seen such good proofs of his skill
in the stratagems of war, and have been promised by him so much aid and
assistance in the enterprises I am going to commence, that I would fain
have him with me. I only thought that if he stayed a while here in
quiet, he might learn to speak our tongue; and that if during my
absence the Normans should make any attempt from the side of Cam-Bridge
upon this blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda, he might, by his
surpassing skill and knowledge of arms, be of use to your lordship and
the good brothers.”
“These are good motives,” said Thurstan, “and do honour to thee, my
son. It is not in my wont to bid any stranger away from the house....
But—but this stranger doth look so very strange and wild, that I would
rather he were away. Even our sub-sacrist, who hath not the same nature
as the prior and cellarer, saith that all our flaxen-headed novices in
the convent are afraid of that thin dark man, and that they say
whenever the stranger’s large black eye catches theirs they cannot
withdraw their eyes until he turns away from them. I think, my Lord
Hereward, the stranger may learn our tongue in thy camp. I believe that
the Normans will not try on this side now that the waters are all out,
and our rivers and ditches so deep; and if they do we can give a good
account of them—and I really do think that thou wilt more need than we
this knowing man’s services:—what say ye, my brother of Crowland?”
The Abbat of Crowland was wholly of the opinion of the Abbat of Ely,
and so likewise was the Prior of Spalding. It was therefore agreed that
Girolamo of Salerno should accompany the young Lord of Brunn.
“But” said Hereward, “in proposing to leave you this strange man from
Italie, I thought of taking from you, for yet another while, that Saxon
wight Elfric, seeing that he knoweth all this fen country better than
any man in my train; and that, while I am going round by the river and
the Wash, I would fain despatch, by way of the fens, a skilled and
trustful messenger in the direction of Ey....”
“To salute the Ladie Alftrude, and to tell her that thou art come,”
said the Abbat of Crowland.
“Even so,” quoth Hereward; “and to tell her moreover to look well to
her manor-house, and to let her people know that I am come, and that
they ought to come and join me at the proper time.”
“It is clear,” said the Prior of Spalding, “that none can do this
mission an it be not Elfric, who knoweth the goings and comings about
the house at Ey....”
“Aye, and the maid-servant that dwelleth within the gates,” quoth the
Abbat of Crowland.
The Prior of Spalding laughed, and eke my Lord Abbat of Ely; and when
he had done his laugh, Thurstan said “This is well said, and well
minded; and as we seem to be all agreed that, upon various
considerations, it would be better to unfrock the young man at once,
let us call up Elfric, and release him from his slight obligations, and
give him to Lord Hereward to do with him what he list. What say ye my
brothers?”
The two dignified monks said “yea;” and Elfric being summoned was told
that henceforth he was Lord Hereward’s man, and that he might doff his
cucullis,[121] and let his brown locks grow on his tonsure as fast as
they could grow.
The monk that sleeps in his horse-hair camise,[122] and that has
nothing to put on when he rises but his hose and his cloak, is not long
a-dressing; yet in less time than ever monk attired himself, Elfric put
on the soldier garb that he had worn while abroad. And then, having
received from Hereward a signet-ring and other tokens, and a long
message for the Ladie Alftrude, together with instructions how he was
to proceed after he had seen her; and having bidden a dutiful farewell
and given his thanks to the Prior of Spalding and to the two abbats,
and having gotten the blessing of all three, Elfric girded a good sword
to his loins, took his fen-staff in his hand, and went down to the
water-gate to get a light skerry, for the country was now like one
great lake, and the journey to Ey must be mostly made by boat.
It was now nigh upon day-dawn. The Lord Abbat and a few others
accompanied the Lord of Brunn to the pier, and saw him on board: then
the mariners let go their last mooring, and the bark began to glide
down the river.
Before the light of this winter day ended, Hereward was well up the
Welland, and the whole of his flotilla was anchored in that river not
far from Spalding, behind a thick wood of willows and alders, which
sufficed even in the leafless season to screen the barks from the view
of the Norman monks in the succursal cell.
As soon as it was dark, Hereward the liberator took one score and ten
armed men into the lightest of the barks, and silently and cautiously
ascended the river until he came close to the walls of the convent. The
caution was scarcely needed, for the Normans, albeit they were ever
reproaching the Saxons with gluttony and drunkenness, were feasting and
drinking at an immoderate rate, and had taken no care to set a watch.
Brightly the light of a great wood fire and of many torches shone
through the windows of the hall as Hereward landed with his brave men
and surrounded the house, while the mariners were taken good care of
the ferry-boat.
“If these men were in their own house,” said Hereward, “it is not I
that would disturb their mirth on such a night; but as they are in the
house of other men, we must even pull them forth by the ears. So! where
be the ladders?”
A strong ladder brought from the bark was laid across the moat, and ten
armed men passed one by one over this ladder to the opposite side of
the moat. The well-armed men were led by the brother of Wybert the
wright, and by another of the men who had fled from Spalding town on
that wicked night when Ivo Taille-Bois broke into the house. Now these
two men of Spalding well knew the strong parts and the weak parts of
the cell—as well they might, for they had ofttimes helped to repair
the woodwork and the roof of the building. Having drawn the strong
ladder after them to the narrow ledge of masonry on which they had
landed, they raised it against the wall, and while some steadied it,
first one armed man and then another climbed up by the ladder to the
top of the stone and brick part of the walls. Then the brother of
Wybert climbing still higher, by clutching the beams and the rough
timber got to the house-top, and presently told those below in a
whisper that all was right, that the door at the head of the spiral
staircase was unfastened and wide open.
In a very short time ten armed men and the two hinds from Spalding town
were safe on the roof; and the brother of Wybert said, “Now Saxons!”
and as he heard the signal, Lord Hereward said, “Now Saxons, your
horns!” And three stout Saxons, well skilled in the art of
noise-making, put each his horn to his mouth and sounded a challenge,
as loud as they could blow. Startled and wrathful, but not much
alarmed, was the intrusive prior from Angers when he heard this noise,
and bade his Angevin sacrist go to the window, and see what the Saxon
slaves wanted at this time of night with their rascaille cow-horns! But
when the sacrist reported that he saw a great bark lying in the river,
and many armed men standing at the edge of the moat (in the darkness
the sacrist took sundry stumps of willow-trees for warriors), the man
of Angers became alarmed, and all Ivo Taille-Bois’ kindred became
alarmed, and quitting the blazing fire and their good wine, they all
ran to the windows of the hall to see what was toward. As they were a
ruleless, lawless, unconsecrated rabble, who knew not what was meant by
monastic discipline, and respect, and obedience, they all talked and
shouted together, and shouted and talked so loud and so fast that it
was impossible for any Christian man to be heard in answer to them. But
at length the pseudo-prior silenced the gabble for a minute, and said,
“Saxons, who are you, and what do you want at this hour, disturbing the
repose of holy men at a holy season?”
Even this was said in Norman-French, which no man understood or could
speak, except Hereward and the dark stranger who had attended him
hither. But the Lord of Brunn gave out in good round French, “We are
Saxons true, and true men to King Harold, and we be come to pull you
out of this good nest which ye have defiled too long!”
“Get ye gone, traitors and slaves!” cried the false prior from Angers;
“ye cannot cross our moat nor force our gates, and fifty Norman lances
are lying hard by.”
“False monk, we will see,” quoth the Lord of Brunn. “Now, Saxons, your
blast-horns again; blow ye our second signal!”
The hornmen blew might and main; and before their last blast had ceased
echoing from an angle of the walls, another horn was heard blowing
inside the house, and then was heard a rushing and stamping of heavy
feet, and a clanging of swords in the hall, and a voice roaring, “Let
me cleave the skull of two of these shavelings for the sake of Wybert
the wright!”
“Thou art cold and shivering, Girolamo,” said Hereward; “but step out
of that quagmire where thou art standing, and follow me. We will
presently warm ourselves at the fireside of these Frenchmen.” Girolamo
followed the Lord of Brunn to the front of the house; and they were
scarcely there ere the drawbridge was down, and the gate thrown open.
“Well done, Ralph of Spalding,” said Hereward, who rushed into the
house followed by the score of armed men. But those who had descended
from above by the spiral staircase had left nothing to be done by those
who ascended from below. The false prior and all his false fraternity
had been seized, and had been bound with their own girdles, and had all
been thrown in a corner, where they all lay sprawling the one on the
top of the other, and screaming and begging for Misericorde. The
brother of Wybert the wright had given a bloody coxcomb to the prior,
and one of Hereward’s soldiers had slit the nose of a French monk that
had aimed at him with a pike; but otherwise little blood had been shed,
and no great harm done, save that all the stoups of wine and all the
wine-cups had been upset in the scuffle. The brother of Wybert begged
as a favour that he might be allowed to cut the throats of two of the
false monks; but the Lord of Brunn, so fierce in battle, was aye
merciful in the hour of victory, and never would allow the slaying of
prisoners, and so he told the good man of Spalding town that the monks
must not be slain; but that, before he had done with them, they should
be made to pay the price of his brother’s blood; nay, three times the
price that the Saxon laws put upon the life of a man of Wybert’s degree.
“I would give up that bot for a little of their blood!” said Wybert’s
brother. But, nevertheless, he was obliged to rest satisfied; for who
should dare gainsay the young Lord of Brunn?
Girolamo of Salerno, who understood nought of the debate between
Hereward and the brother of Wybert, thought that the intrusive monks
ought to be put into sacks and thrown into the river, inasmuch as that
the Normans, when they conquered Salerno, threw a score of good monks
of that town and vicinity into the sea; but when he delivered this
thought unto the Lord Hereward, that bold-hearted and kind-hearted
Saxon said that it was not the right way to correct cruelties by
committing cruelties, and that it was not in the true English nature to
be prone to revenge. All this while, and a little longer, the false
alien monks, with their hands tied behind them, lay sprawling and
crying Misericorde: howbeit, when they saw and understood that death
was not intended, they plucked up their courage and began to complain
and reprove.
“This is a foul deed,” said one of them, “a very foul deed, to disturb
and break in upon, and smite with the edge of the sword, the servants
of the Lord.”
“Not half so foul a deed,” quoth Hereward, “as that done by Ivo
Taille-Bois, the cousin of ye all, and the man who put ye here, and
thrust out the Saxon brotherhood at the dead of night, slaying their
cook. Ye may or may not have been servants of the Lord in the countries
from which ye came, but here are ye nought but intruders and usurpers,
and the devourers of better men’s goods.”
Here the prior from Angers spoke from the heap in the corner, and said,
“For this night’s work thou wilt be answerable unto the king.”
“That will I,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “when bold King Harold returns.”
“I will excommunicate thee and thy fautors,” said the intrusive prior.
“Thou hadst better not attempt it,” said Hereward, “for among my merry
men be some that know enough of church Latin to make out the difference
between a Maledicite and a Benedicite; and I might find it difficult to
prevent their cutting your weazens.”[123]
“Yet would I do it by bell, book and candle, if I could get the bell
and candle, and read the book,” said the intrusive prior.
“Thou hadst better not attempt it,” said two or three voices from the
heap; but another voice, which seemed buried under stout bodies and
habits and hoods, said, “There is no danger, for our prior cannot read,
and never had memory enough to say by heart more Latin than lies in a
Credo. Beshrew you, brothers all, bespeak these Saxons gently, so that
they may give us leave to go back into Normandie. If I had bethought me
that I was to play the monk in this fashion, Ivo Taille-Bois should
never have brought me from the plough-tail!”
When the Lord of Brunn and Girolamo of Salerno had done laughing, the
Lord Hereward said, “Let this goodly hall be cleared of this foul
rubbish. Girolamo, see these intruders carried on board the bark and
thrown into the hold. We will send them to my Lord Abbat at Ely, that
they may be kept as hostages. But tell the shipmen not to hurt a hair
of their heads.”
When the alien monks understood that they must go, they clamoured about
their goods and properties. This made Hereward wroth, and he said,
“When ye thrust out the good English monks, ye gave them nought!
Nevertheless I will give ye all that ye brought with ye.”
Here the voice that had spoken before from under the heap said, “We all
know we brought nothing with us—no, not so much as the gear we wear!
Therefore let us claim
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