"And after that, the Abbot with his couent
Han sped hem for to burien him ful faste."
They buried Geoffroi de la Bourne, the day after his murder, in a pit
dug in the castle chapel, under the flags. The bell tolled, the tapers
burnt, the pillars of the place were bound round with black. Upon the
altar was a purple cloth. Dom Anselm got him a new black cope for the
occasion, and was sober as may be. After the coffin had been lowered,
and the holy water sprinkled upon it, all the company knelt at a Mass
said for the repose of that dark soul.
"Do Thou, we beseech Thee, O Lord, deliver the soul of Thy servant from
every bond of guilt." Anselm went down to the grave-side from the
altar-steps, while page-boys, acolytes for the time, carried the cross
and the holy water.
It was not a very impressive ceremony. I do not think that the little
chapel made it appear sordid and tawdry. It was not the lack of
furniture for ritual. Some more subtle force was at work. God would not
be present at that funeral, one might almost say.
After the service was over and the Mass was said, Fulke summoned Lewin
and Anselm to him in his own chamber. The squires were not there, for
the preparations for the siege were being pushed on rapidly, and they
were directing them.
The three men sat round a small, massive table drinking beer. "Well,"
said Fulke, "it is most certain that it was this theow Hyla. Everything
points to that. As far as we have found, he was the chief instrument in
the plot. For, look you, it was to him, so that boy said before he died,
that the others looked. He seemed to be the leader. By grace of Heaven
all the rogues shall die a very speedy death, but for him I will have
especial care."
"The thing is to catch him," said Dom Anselm, "and I wist no easy job.
Are you going to pull down Icomb Priory?"
"I would do that, and burn every monk to cinders if I had time and men
enough."
"That is impossible," said Lewin. "I have been there to buy missals for
barter from their scriptors. My lord, it's in the middle of a lake, up a
steep hill, and with a great moat and twin outer walls. We could never
come by Icomb."
"Also," said Anselm, "we have but a week at the most before we are
within these four walls with no outgoing for many a day. The Bastard
will be here in a week."
"What's to do?" Fulke asked gloomily.
Lewin contemplatively drained a fresh rummer of beer. "This is all I can
think of," said he. "These serfs have fled to Icomb, and, no doubt, have
been taken in very gladly by the monks. We are not loved in these parts,
Lord Fulke. But Richard Espec is not going to keep them in great ease
with wine and heydegwyes. They will work for their bread. Outside the
monastery walls there is a village for the servants, on the edge of the
corn-lands. Now see, lord. A man may go begging to Icomb, may he not?
For the night he will sleep in the hospitium. After that, if he wanteth
work, and will sign and deliver seisin to be a man of Icomb for three
years, I doubt nothing but the monks will have him gladly. They do ever
on that plan. He will live in the village. Well, then, that night let
there be a swift boat moored to the island, and let the first man come
to it and tell those therein where this devil Hyla lies. The rest is
very easy. A man can be bound up and thrown into the boat in
half-an-hour, and then we will have him here."
"Ventail and Visor!" said Fulke, "that is good, Lewin, we will have him
safe as a rat. But I have another thought too. I had forgotten. The
man's daughter Elgifu is still in the castle. It is not fitting that she
should live."
"'Tis but a girl," said Lewin, the sentimentalist.
Fulke snarled at him. "Girl or no girl, she shall die, and die heavily.
By the rood! I will avenge my father's murder so that men may talk of
it."
His narrow face was lit up with spite, and he brought his hand down upon
the table with a great blow.
"Perhaps you are right, my lord," said Lewin; "it is as well that she
should be killed. I only thought that she is a very pretty girl."
"There are plenty more, minter."
He went to the door and opened it, shouting down the stairs. A
man-at-arms came clattering up to him, making a great noise in the
narrow stone stairway. He ordered that the girl should be brought to
him, and presently she stood in front of them white and trembling, for
she saw their purpose in their eyes.
"You are going to be hanged, girl," said Fulke, "and first you shall
be well whipped in the castle yard. What of that? Do you like that?
Hey?"
She burst into pitiful pleadings and tremulous appeals. Her voice rang
in agony through the room. "I cannot die, lord," she said. "Oh, lord,
kill me not. My lord, my lord! my dear lord! For love of the Saints! I
cannot bear it!"
The brute watched her with a sneer, and then turned to the man-at-arms.
"Tie her up to the draw-well, strip her naked, and give her fifty
stripes. Then hang her, naked, on the tree outside the castle gate."
The man lifted her up in his arms, a light burden, and bore her
shrieking and struggling away.
Fulke leant back against the wall with a satisfied smile. Dom Anselm had
composed his features to an expression of stern justice, Lewin was white
and sick. Human life went for very little in those days, but he did not
like this torture of girls.
Gundruda, the pretty waiting maid, who watched the execution with great
complaisance, told him afterwards that the poor girl was dead, or at
least quite insensible to pain, long before the whipping was over.
"Little fool to stay here when she might have gone with the other,"
concluded Gundruda.
"Fool indeed," said he, "I cannot forget it--I am not well, Gundruda,
pretty one." She put her arms round him, and they strolled away
together.
So Elgifu paid bitterly for her folly, and went to a rest which was
denied her in this world.
In the early afternoon one of the men-at-arms, dressed as a peasant, set
out for Icomb by water.
Lewin stayed with Gundruda a little while, trying to find comfort in her
smiles and forgetfulness in her bright laughing eyes.
But the minter could find very little satisfaction with the girl. Her
beauty and sprightly allurements had no appeal for him just then. There
was no thrill even in her kisses. So after a while he left her, for a
sudden longing to be alone came over him. The idea was strong in him to
get as far away from the world as possible. By many steps he mounted to
the top of Outfangthef. As he emerged into the light, after the dusk of
the stairs, it began to be evening.
Down below, over all the castle works, men were busy at the defences,
clustering on the walls like a swarm of flies. Presently, one by one,
torches flared out, so that work might still go on when it was dark.
Lewin leaned over the parapet and surveyed the dusky world, full of
trouble and despair. A great truth came to him. He realised that he had
been born too soon, and was not made for that age of blood and steel.
The solitary isolation of the tower top intensified the loneliness of
his own soul.
Surveying life and its possibilities for him, he could see nothing but
misery in it. As the unseen nightwinds began to fly round him and
whisper, he took a resolve. When this siege began and Lord Roger
attacked Hilgay, he would arm and go out to death, seeking it in some
brave adventure. He would give up, he thought, his treason plot with
Anselm. There was nothing else that he could do, there was no
enjoyment--every man he knew was the same, the same, ever-lastingly the
same. Life was dull. He laughed a bitter, despairing laugh, and went
down to the castle again.
There was a great carouse that evening at Hilgay, for the works were
nearly done, and a spy had brought word that the forces of Lord Roger
were not as strong as earlier reports had led them to believe.
While the candles burnt all night by the grave in the chapel, all the
castle garrison, with the exception of the sentries, got most gloriously
drunk. Lewin was no exception.
It is a relief to turn from the contemplation of that sordid, evil place
to the quiet of the Priory in the lake. Yet it must be remembered that
Hilgay is an exact type of hundreds of other strongholds existing in
England at that time. The incalculable wickedness of the space of years,
when the secluded historian wrote that "Christ and all His angels seemed
asleep," is very difficult to imagine.
In truth, it was a bestial, malignant, inhuman time. We are not grateful
enough for the blessings of to-day. Imagine, if you please, what these
people were.
There is no need to outrage our nice tastes by revolting detail. Realism
can be pushed too far. But, for the sake of a clear understanding, take
Baron Fulke of Hilgay, and listen to a few personal details.
The beast was a very well-bred man. That is to say, he was of the
aristocracy, a peer with a great record of birth. We have seen that he
stripped his mistress naked, and had her killed by rough scoundrels in
his pay. He never had a qualm. So much for his character, which was as
much like the legendary devil as may be. But about the man as a
personality.
Supposing that we could draw a parallel between that time and our own
time. Fulke would correspond to half a dozen young gentlemen we all
know, considered from the point of view of social status. A boy we meet
at a dance, or a dinner, who is a member of a great family, for example.
Fulke, unpleasant as it is to say it, _hardly ever washed_. Brutally, in
a modern police court, he would be considered as a verminous person. In
the time of King Stephen, no one--and we can make no exception for the
saints of God themselves--had ever heard of a pocket handkerchief. The
world was malodorous! A dog-kennel would hardly have suffered any one of
our heroes and heroines, That is one reason why it is so difficult for
the veracious historian to present his characters as they really were.
It is hard to explain them, people are too accustomed to Romance.
There is hardly anything in our steam age so delightful as "Romance."
The romance of the early Middle Ages has a quality of glamour which will
hold our attention and have our hearts for ever. We always look for, and
desire refinements of fact in life. Human nature demands some sort of an
ideal. Our friends of the fens can hardly be called romantic, but they
are human.
While all these cut-throats were rioting in the keep, Richard Espec, the
prior of Icomb, was sitting in his cell working.
A candle in an iron holder stood on the table by him, and threw a none
too brilliant light upon a mass of documents. "Contrepaynes" of leaves,
pages of accounts, and letters from brother churchmen.
At the moment, the prior was checking the accounts of the oil mill,
which was a source of revenue to the house.
There came a knock at the door with a "Benedicite," the prior bid the
knocker enter. The new-comer was the sub-prior, John Croxton, Richard
Espec's great friend and counsellor.
"Sit down," said the prior, "and tell me the news--is there any news? I
am very weary of figuring, and I feel sad at heart. Richard Cublery has
paid no rent for a year and a half, since he fell to drinking heavily
with John Tichkill."
"We can survive that," said the sub-prior.
"Yes, yes; I am not accoyed at that, brother, but the letters and
tidings from the outside world oppress me. The various and manifold
illegalities and imposts which never cease or fail on the wretched
people, and the burnings and murders lie heavy on my heart. Oh, our Lord
has some wise purpose, I do not doubt, but it is all very dark to mortal
eyes."
"I have read," said the sub-prior, "somewhat of history in my time. But
never in Latin times, nor can I hear of it of the Greeks, was there such
a spirit of devilish wickedness abroad over a land."
"The lords of this country seem to me to be the daemons of hell in
mortal dress. Mind you what Robert Belesme did? His godchild was hostage
to him for its father, and the father did in some trifling way offend
him. Robert tore out the poor little creature's eyes with his nails.
William of Malmesbury hath writ it in his book, and, please God, the
world will never forget it."
"The king has got to him all the worst rogues from over the seas.
William of Ypres, Hervé of Léon, and Alan of Duran, there are three
pretty gentlemen! The king is no king. There are in England, so to
speak, as many kings, or rather tyrants, as lords of castles."
"Well, one of them is gone," said Richard Espec, "and I trust God will
forgive him, though I feel that it is not likely. He was one of the
worst ones, was Geoffroi de la Bourne."
"That was he. For myself, I cannot even understand how a man can be as
bad as that. A sinner, yes, and a bad one, but from our point of view,
you and I, can you see yourself, even if you were not a monk, doing any
of these things?"
"Without doubt, brother. Only an old man like I can really know how foul
and black a thing the human heart is. Every one is a potential Geoffroi,
save but for the grace of God, given for sweet Christ's sake."
"Yes, father," said the younger man, folding his arms meekly. The
candles on the tables began to gutter towards their end, and throw
monstrous shadows upon the faces and over the forms of the two monks.
They were talking in low tones, and the little stone room was very
silent. The dying candle-flames filled it with rich, velvety shadows,
and dancing yellow lights.
"Hyla and his friends have been given the large hut that Swegn had
before he died. I saw the meeting between him and his womenfolk. They
hardly looked to see him again."
"I do not care much to have so many women about," said Richard, with the
true monkish distrust of the other sex. "Nevertheless, the men can not
be easily kept without their wives. And of this Hyla--what do you think
of him?"
"He seems a very strong nature for a serf. Singularly contained within
himself, and, I think, proud of his revenge."
"That must not be, then. We must not let him be that. I well think that
he has been chosen by God as His instrument, and for that I rejoice. But
the man must not get proud. He is a serf, and a serf he will be always.
It is in his blood, and it is right that it should be so. I am no
upholder of any destruction of order. It is our duty to treat our slaves
well, and that we do; but they remain our slaves. Tell the brother who
directs the serfs that this Hyla should be well looked to, that he lie
in his true place."
The prior concluded with considerable vehemence. No one was more
theoretically conservative than he, and although, in this time of
anarchy, he approved of Hyla's deed, yet it certainly shocked his
instinctive respect for _les convenances_. It would have been difficult
to find a better creature than the fat prior of Icomb, a man more truly
charitable, or of a more pious life. But, had the course of this story
been different, and had Hyla lived his life at the monastery, he could
never have risen in the social scale. If the prior had discovered the
force of the man, his potentialities as a social force, he would have
sternly repressed them. Hyla's duty was to work, and be fed for his
work. The Catholic Church, with its vast hierarchy, its huge social
machinery, crushed all progress in the direction of freedom. No doubt,
Richard Espec, worthy gentleman though he was, would have been
considerably surprised if he had been told that he would be as Hyla,
and no more, in heaven. We hear too much about the humility of the
priesthood in the early Middle Ages. Of course, the great political
churchmen, such as Henry of Winchester or Thurston of York, were petty
kings, with ceremonial courts and armies. People knelt as they passed,
because they were princes as well as priests. But there is a delusion
that the ordinary monk or priest was, in effect, a perfect radical,
holding doctrines of equality, at any rate, as far as he himself was
concerned. Nothing of the sort was possible in the face of the one
crushing social fact of serfdom. Richard Espec would have washed Hyla's
feet with pleasure--there was precedent, and it was a formal act of
humiliation. At the same time, he would not have made his bed in Hyla's
hut or sat with him at meat.
The sub-prior received his superior's remarks with due reverence, and
the talk glided into other channels. While they sat there came footsteps
running down the cloister, and then a beating at the door. A young monk
entered, breathless, and knelt before the prior.
"News, father," said he, and craved permission to tell it. "Father,"
said the young man, and tears streamed down his cheeks, "our good
friend, Sir John Leyntwarden, is dead, and among the martyrs. Sir John
was saying Mass at the wayside altar of Saint Alban, the protomartyr
whom God loves. Sir John doth ever say a wayside Mass in the early
mornings, and calls down a blessing upon the Norwich road thereby. Now
the boy Louis Seéz was helping Sir John to serve the Mass, and his tale
is this--Sir John had just divided the Host, and allowed the particle to
fall into the chalice. Indeed, he was saying the _Haec commixtio_.
Suddenly they heard a loud laugh, and so harsh was it in the holy
stillness that verily Satan might have had just such a laugh. Father,
thinking that it was indeed some daemon come out of the wood, Sir John
started and turned round. There he saw five gentlemen on horseback and
in armour. They had ridden up very quietly over the turf. Down the road,
a mile away, Sir John saw a great company moving. He saw spears, and the
sun on armour and waggons. He knew then that this was some great lord's
war train, and that the gentlemen who were watching him had ridden on
before."
The young monk stopped a moment for lack of breath and labouring under
great agitation. The other two gazed intently at him in great
excitement. Sir John Leyntwarden, the priest of Hawle, was their very
good friend, and a holy man. The news was horrible.
"Calm, brother," said the prior, "say an _Ave_ and pray a moment, peace
will come to you then."
The curious remedy served its turn wonderfully well--wherefore let no
man smile at Richard Espec--and the young monk resumed his narrative.
"Then said Sir John to the gentlemen, 'Sirs, the _Agnus Dei_ is not yet,
and there is time for you to kneel and take our Lord's Body with us.
_Vere dignum et justum est aequum et salutare._ Then the leader of the
party, a powerful, great man, laughed again. Louis says it was verily
like a devil mocking, for it was very bitter, mirthless, and cold. This
lord said, 'We take no Mass, but, by hell, we will have these thy
vessels. They are too good for a hedge priest.' Then he did turn to a
lady who sat by upon a white horse, very dark, and with white teeth
which laughed. 'What Kateryn?' said he. 'They will make thee a
drinking-cup and a plate until I can give thee better from the cellars
of Hilgay.' Then Louis knew who it was. That was my Lord Roger Bigot
with Kateryn Larose, his concubine, and the war train was on its way to
Hilgay Tower to overthrow Fulke de la Bourne.
"Sir John held up the cross at his girdle and dared them that they
should come nearer to the Body of Christ. The harlot in the saddle
kissed her fingers to him, and the whole company laughed. Then, with no
more ado, they took him and bound him. In the melley little Louis
slipped away, and the grievous things which happened he saw from a tree
hard by. They emptied the chalice and pyx upon the ground. 'Look,' said
Lord Roger, 'there is your God, Sir Priest, and thus I treat Him.' With
that a-stamped upon the Host, and all the company laughed at that awful
crime."
Richard Espec and John Croxton burst into loud cries of pity and horror
at this point. Tears rained down the prior's face as he heard how these
evil men had entreated the Body and Blood.
"Louis thought to see heaven open and Abdiel drop from the morning sky,
like fire, to kill them. But God made no sign.
"Then Sir John, lying bound upon the ground, began to pray in a loud
voice that God would terribly punish these men. He called upon them the
curse of all the Saints, and he said to Roger Bigot that for this deed
he should lie for ever in hell. There was something strange about his
voice, or perhaps they were frightened at the curses. Roger ground his
mailed heel into Sir John's face till it was no face and he was silent.
Then for near half-an-hour they did torture him with terrible tortures,
and with one unspeakable. You know, father, in what manner the saints
have suffered that have fallen into the hands of Robert, or Roger, or
Geoffroi. Sir John could not abear it, and he screamed loudly till his
voice rang through all the wood. So died dear Sir John in the fresh
morning."
Richard Espec made the sign of the cross, and said solemnly, "_Posuisti,
Domine, super caput ejus, coronam de lapide pretioso. Alleluia_." Then
he said, "Go and summon all the brethren to the chapter-house, for I
have somewhat to say to them." And being left alone he fell upon his
knees in prayer.
The great bell in the centralone began to toll loudly.
This dreadful news touched the prior very nearly. Dom Leyntwarden, the
vicar of Hawle-in-the-wood, a tiny hamlet now deserted, was an intimate
and close friend of his. The murdered priest was a shrewd adviser upon
business affairs, and would often come over to the monastery and be its
guest for a few days, to help in any worldly business that might be
afoot. He was endeared to the whole Priory. It was a terrible instance
of the times in which they lived. The good priest saying Mass at the
little wayside altar by the wood in the fresh morning air. The sneering,
relentless fiends in mail, and the smiling girl upon her palfrey. In one
short hour their friend had passed from them in agony, from the real
presence of God into the real presence of God made manifest to his eyes.
The prior was resolved to address the assembled brethren in the
chapter-house, not one being absent.
We are enabled to see how all this bore upon the fortunes of Hyla.
Sir John Leyntwarden was martyred by Roger Bigot on his way to attack
Hilgay.
Sir John was a friend of the monks with whom Hyla had taken refuge. On
the occasion of the news the prior summoned a chapter of the brethren,
and all the men living in the monastery village on the hill who were not
serfs.
The village was practically empty and free to the hands of a long boat
of armed men, which, under cover of the dark, was now moving swiftly
over the lake.