"Justorum Animae in Manu dei sunt, et non Tanget Illos Tormentum
Malitiae: Visi sunt Oculis Insipientium Mori, Illi Autem sunt in
Pace."
The chapter-house at Icomb was a low, vaulted chamber divided into three
compartments by rows of pillars bearing arches. A stone seat ran all
round it for the monks, and the prior's seat was opposite the entrance.
Two arches on each side of the doorway--there was no actual
door--allowed the deliberations to be heard outside in the cloister.
This was according to the invariable Cistercian plan. No one, save the
monks themselves, could actually sit in the chapter-house, but
others--in this case, the head men of the village--could stand in the
cloister, and so become fully cognisant of the proceedings within.
The brothers filed through the dark cloisters towards the red doorways
which showed that the chapter-house was lit within. The big bell in the
centralone kept tolling unceasingly. One by one the brothers entered and
seated themselves upon the stone bench. Two of the _fratres conversi_
stood by the prior's throne with torches. A sudden murmur of talk hummed
through the place. The night was exceedingly hot.
A glance round at the seated figures would hardly have prepossessed the
modern spectator. One and all, young and old, were as frowsy and
unsavoury a lot as ever poisoned the air of a warm summer's night. The
white, emaciated faces smeared with dirt, the matted beards, and
glowing, excited eyes, all combined to produce a singularly unpleasant
picture.
Yet as the torchlight revealed one distressing detail after another it
also played upon a congregation of as holy men as could have been found
anywhere in that century. Not for them the licence and luxury of some of
the great monasteries, where the monks pursued the deer or set their
falcons at feathered game with no less ardour than they followed a
petticoat through a wood. Not for them chased cups of pimentum and morat
while the tables groaned under fish, flesh and fowl. It is a pity, no
doubt, that they were not nice according to our ideas, but we can well
forget that if we remember that they were indeed very holy men.
Presently the prior came in and took his seat upon the stone throne
after he had said a short Latin prayer. The farmers and other villagers
pressed to the archways of the opening, and, rising to his feet, Richard
Espec spake in this wise:
"Brethren, this is a perilous time; and such a scourge was never heard
since Christ's passion. You hear how good men suffer the death.
Brethren, this is undoubted for the offences of England. Ye read, as
long as the children of Israel kept the commandments of God, so long
their enemies had no power over them, but God took vengeance of their
enemies. We have erred, I wist, in our own lives, and God has sent this
upon us. For when the Jews broke God's commandments then they were
subdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry for
our offences. Undoubted He will take vengeance of our enemies; I mean
those blood-stained lords that causeth so many good men to suffer thus.
Alas! it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood should be shed.
Therefore, good brethren, for the reverence of God, every one of you
devoutly pray, and say this psalm, 'O God, the heathen are come into
Thine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem
a heap of stones. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to be
meat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of Thy saints unto the
beasts of the field. Their blood have they shed like water on every side
of Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them. We are become an open
scorn to our enemies, a very scorn and derision to them that are round
about us. Oh, remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, and
that soon, for we are come to great misery. Help us, O God of our
salvation, for the glory of Thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for
Thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?'
Ye shall say this psalm," continued the prior, "every Friday, after the
Litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God
will cease this extreme scourge."
Then he went on to tell them of the martyrdom of Dom John, and what a
good and holy man he was. "Even now, my dear brethren," said he, "I know
him to be a saint in heaven. _He has seen God_, and talked with His
Holiness, Saint Peter. Our Lady has smiled upon him. In the golden
streets he has walked with gladness. I think that perhaps he is here
with us now, our dear brother, that he sees us, and is full of love
towards us all."
As his voice dropped towards the close, full of emotion, there was loud
applause. As in very early Christian times, the brethren saluted the
oration with a beating of hands.
And with that noise we must leave the hooded figures sitting among the
shadows.
The curtain of this short chronicle must fall upon them for ever, in a
red light, with black shadows, with the noise of a clapping of hands.
Their lives were framed in stone, and swords were about them. They were
very ignorant, very prejudiced, superstitious and dirty--a big
indictment! Nevertheless, it is certain that their influence upon the
time was good and pure. It is the fashion to rail at monasteries of all
periods. Many blockheads can never get over the mere _fact_ of the
Dissolution! In a spirit of curiosity I examined half-a-dozen histories
of the baser type--the sort of histories that are still given to
fourth-form boys and quite grown-up girls. One and all, if they
mentioned the monasteries in the reign of King Stephen at any length,
either openly condemned them or damned them with faint praise. I take
this opportunity of correcting messires, the historians, upon a point of
FACT. It is odd that the hopelessly incompetent clergyman-schoolmaster
should so invariably turn historian to-day. His monumental and appalling
ignorance of the times and peoples he treats of--ignorance unillumined
with a single ray of insight--is displayed on every line of his
lucubrations. Nothing, apparently, would lead him to read and dig and
sift for himself so that he might know just a little of what he writes
about. Let me, at any rate, assure him, that while, as is natural, there
were plenty of bad monks in the reign of Stephen, as a whole, the
monasteries were very praiseworthy institutions, and had a beneficent
influence upon the country. In short, my little priory at Icomb, is a
perfectly fair and typical example of its class.
While the monks were in the chapter-house, and afterwards attending a
special service in the chapel, a long boat glided rapidly over the lake.
It was a dark, thunderous night, and nothing betrayed the quiet passage
of the craft, save the dusky glitter of the water as the oars rose and
sank. Now and again some low orders in Norman-French regulated the pace
or altered the direction of the boat.
When the voyagers were about half-way across the mere, as near as they
could judge, they heard the sudden tolling of the great bell of the
Priory. The sullen, angry notes came across the water, out of the dark,
in waves of booming sound. There was a muttered order, and the oars
stopped in their swing. The boat rushed on for thirty yards or so,
gradually losing its momentum, until at length it became stationary.
"What does that betoken, Huber?" asked a voice.
"I do not know," replied the man-at-arms. "Pardieu, I cannot tell."
"Do you think they know that we are near?"
"Not unless they have found out that Heraud has come with a certain
purpose. Perchance Hyla saw him and recognised him."
"Not he. Heraud shaved his face and cropped his hair, and the minter
drew lines upon his face, and painted the poor divell's visage all over
with some hell brew. I seed them at it. His own mother would never have
thought him made of her blood."
"Then, by Godis teeth! what does the bell mean?"
"Oh, the old women are making prayers or saying Mass."
"Pagan! Mass is not at this hour, nor would they ring the great bell in
that way."
"Then the prior has given up his vows, and is about to wed the Lady
Abbess of Denton, and the monks are ringing for joy that one of them
should at length prove himself a man." A chuckle went through the boat
at this none too excellent a joke.
"Like enough," Huber said, "but whatever it may mean we must keep our
tryst with Heraud. It was to be a church's length from the main landing
where the monks keep their boats. A church's length to the left."
"It will not be easy to find, the night is very thick. We must go very
slow."
"Yes," said Huber "we must go with great care. Come forward! Are you
ready? Allery!"
The boat glided slowly on again towards the direction of the island.
Presently a deeper blackness loomed up in front of them, and they saw
that they were close to land. The smell of land, of herbage and flowers,
came to them, and hot as it had been upon the lake, it seemed hotter now
that they were come to shore.
As the nose of the boat brushed the outgrowing reeds, hissing at the
contact, the bell on the hill above stopped suddenly. A great silence
enveloped them as they waited.
Huber gave a long, low whistle, but there was no answer. He repeated it
at intervals of about a minute.
They were getting restive, wondering what might have happened, when
Huber changed his tactics. He began to whistle very softly and
sweetly--the scamp had a pipe like any bird--the lilt of a love-song. It
was a plaintive air which rose and fell delicately in the night. Most of
them knew it, for it was a popular song among the soldiers of that day,
and had been made by a strolling minstrel one evening in the Picard camp
at Gournay, and thence spread all over Northern Europe by the
mercenaries.
The men-at-arms began to nod to its rhythm and beat quiet time to it.
Then one fellow began to whistle a bass under his breath, and another
and another took up the air very quietly, till the boat was like a cage
of fairy singing birds. They were so amused by their occupation, and,
indeed, they were producing a very pretty concert, that they quite
forgot their purpose for the moment, and abandoned themselves one and
all to the music. It recalled many merry memories of Tilliers and
Falaise, of Mortain and Arques, and of the orchards of their Norman
home.
They were beginning the whole thing all over again--so much did it
please them--when they became aware of another and more distant
augmentation to their concert. They stopped, and the silvery whistle
from the bank still shivered out a note or two before it stopped. In a
moment more they heard splashing, and a dark figure pushed aside the
reeds and waded out to them.
"It is all safe," said the new-comer. "The murderer is here sure enough.
He does not know who I am, and I am in a hut close to his."
"Bon," said Huber, "I am glad to see you. Lord Fulke will be very
pleased. We feared something was wrong when we heard the bell."
"Depardieux! and well you might. I did not think of that. But natheless,
that bell means good fortune for our little plan, my friends. All the
monks and all the villeins from the village have gone inside to service
in the chapel. Only the theows are alone, and it will be an easy matter
to take the man without interference if we are quick."
"How far is it from here?"
"As a bird flies, about two furlongs. But it will be longer for us, for
we must make a detour to keep away from the walls. We shall come on the
village from behind. There is a big midden ditch, but I have a plank to
cross it."
"We'll give Sir Hyla a dip in it as we pass."
"'Twould be a fitting mitra."
Then with no more words, led by Heraud, they left the boat and stole
silently up the hill in the dark.
An archer remained in the boat to guard it and to help them to find it
again.
Hyla retired into his hut about half-past eight. He had been working all
day, cleaning out pig-styes and carting the manure to the ditch which
ran north of the village, and which served as a slight defence, and also
as a storing place for fertilizing material to spread upon the fields. A
strange occupation, perhaps, for a man who had but lately done a deed
of such moment, and who was more than half a hero! But he had been set
to this work purposely by the monks, who knew human nature, and thought
it best for the man. The monks were the only psychologists in the
twelfth century.
With some men this would have been wise, no doubt, but to Hyla's credit
it should be said that he thought very little about himself. His rather
heavy, sullen manner may easily have conveyed a false impression as to
his own estimate of himself, but he was humble enough in reality.
In fact, Hyla was too humble, and more so than befitted his strong
nature. He cleaned the filth from the styes with never a thought that he
might be better or more profitably employed. And in this fact we have
another vivid expression of the psychology of serfdom.
The only certain way in which it is possible to get at the inner meaning
of a period in history, is by the comparison of the attitude of an
individual brain towards his time, and the attitude of a general type of
brain. The individual with the point of view must, of course, be a known
quantity.
Historians, I am certain, have not yet entirely realised this simple and
beautiful method. Properly understood, it is as mathematically exact as
any comparative method can possibly be. It is the way in which history
will be written in the future when the modern Headmaster-Historian will
no longer be allowed to write an "epoch" and dispose of the two first
editions entirely among the boys of his own school.
Of its extreme fascination as a pursuit the cultured cannot speak too
highly. It combines the pleasures of the laboratory with the pleasures
of psychology, and never was Science so happily wedded to Art.
Here is a trifling case in point. Friend Hyla--whose temperament we know
something of--felt no degradation in cleaning out the pig-stye, although
he had just done a great and noble thing. We know Hyla as a man very far
from perfect. We know him subject to the ordinary failings of mankind.
Why, then, was Hyla content? The answer supplies us with a luminous
exposition of serfdom as a social state, how stern a thing it was, how
bitter. Pages of rhetoric could give no better explanation of that hard
fact.
So Hyla had been quite content, and as the sun was setting he sat down
outside his hut with his wife on one side and his daughter on the
other, as happy as a man could be. Bread and meat lay upon the ground by
his side. A cow's horn full of Welsh ale was stuck into the turf by him.
He was now working for kind masters who would not beat him or ill-treat
his womankind. His hut was weather-proof, his food was excellent, and
the peace of the holy life near by was stealing over him, and he was at
last at rest. The peace of it all was like a cup of cold water to a poor
man dying of thirst.
He stroked his wife's hard gnarled hand, very glad to be so close to
her. He looked with unconscious admiration at the frank beauty of Frija
as she lay gracefully by his side. Only one grief assailed him now, and
that was the thought of Elgifu. He put it from him with a shudder. Yet,
he thought, they would hardly hurt her. He was a man of bitter
experience, and felt that she would be fairly safe in that wicked time.
Before the little family retired to rest, Cerdic came to them to pray.
The ex-lawer of dogs had, it must be confessed, most of the instincts of
the street-corner preacher. He was never so happy as when he was making
an extempore prayer, and in his heart of hearts he felt sure that he
should have been a priest. Hyla regarded this accomplishment of his
friend's with unfeigned admiration. Cerdic's praying was his one great
pleasure. Both men were perfectly sincere about it. Cerdic and Hyla were
both quite certain that the Saints heard and remarked upon every word.
At the same time, in an age when music was a monopoly, literature a
thing for the fortunate few, and the theatre was not, these poor fellows
found their æsthetic excitement in family prayers. Indeed, if we come
to think of it, the Puritan classes in England to-day are much the same.
Indeed, as long as the saving grace of Sincerity is present, the plan
seems excellent. It will not fill the pockets of the theatrical manager,
but it will keep a good many fools out of mischief.
So, with full bellies and in great peace of mind, Hyla and Cerdic prayed
to God, and fell upon sleep.
Another hour of peaceful sleep remains for you, poor Hyla. Another
little hour, and then good-bye to sleep. Good-bye to wife and child and
comfort for ever and a day. A few short hours and you go to the
beginning of your great martyrdom. Your works shall live after you.
But hush! the time is nearly gone, the sands are running very rapid in
the glass. Sleep has still a gift for you, lie undisturbed!