the scriptorium found Padraig diligently at work on a new design for
the border of the manuscript he was illuminating. The central figure was
that of a wolf crouching under a thorn-bush to slip out of the shaggy
skin which disguised his human form. Under his feet lay a child
unconscious. At a distance could be seen the distracted mother, and
other wolves pursued terrified people flying to shelter. Once, before he
came to the Abbey, Padraig had been chased by wolves, and had spent the
night in a tree. He drew his wolf with a lifelike accuracy, inspired by
the memory of those long, cold hours under a winter moon.
Instead of pausing with a word of criticism or suggestion, as usual,
Brother Basil took up the drawing and put it in his scrip. All that he
said was, “Find another design, Padraig, my son.”
To others Padraig might seem an unruly spirit, neither to command nor to
coax, but the word of Brother Basil was his law and his gospel. He began
to draw new figures on fresh parchment, but he could not quite put out
of his mind the unlooked-for fate of his wolf. Current gossip often gave
hints for the work of the illuminators, and he knew the work had been
good.
It was plain enough that Brother Basil was in one of his absent-minded
fits. There was no beguiling him into talk at such times. If any of
those under his direction presumed upon his mood to do careless or
ill-judged work, they found his eye as keen and his word as ready as
usual. But his mind--his real self--was not there. Padraig wondered
whether this could have any connection with the unlucky picture.
Next day there was deeper concern in the scriptorium. Brother Basil was
not present at all. The work went on under Brother Mark, the librarian,
but the heart of it was not the same. The untiring patience, brilliant
imagination and high ideals of the man who was not only their master but
their friend, had made him the soul of the little group of artists.
He could not be away for a morning without every one feeling the
difference. At times he had gone afield for a day or even longer,
searching for balsams, pigments, minerals and other things needed for
the work, but he had nearly always taken Padraig with him. This time he
had gone alone.
Padraig was as curious as a squirrel and as determined as a mink, and he
wished very much to know what this meant. He did not exactly believe the
werewolf story, although it had so impressed him that he could not help
making the picture; but he did not like to think of it in connection
with the mysterious absence of Brother Basil. A priest of the Church
might be able to defy a loup-garou, but if the wolves were real ones
they might not know him from any ordinary man.
There is no land so full of fairy-lore and half-forgotten legends as
Ireland. Princes in their painted halls and slaves in their mud cabins
listened to the shanachies or wandering story-tellers, with wonder,
terror and delight. Cluricaunes, banshees, giants, witches, monsters,
pookas and the little red-capped people of the fairy rings, were known
to the dwellers in many a wattled hut where Padraig had slept. Old
people who spoke no language but their own luminous Irish winged his
young imagination with tales far more marvelous than those of Nennius,
the monk of Bangor.
Still, Padraig had never himself seen any of these extraordinary beings.
He also suspected that Brother Basil would not vouch for the truth of
everything in the Latin books he taught his pupils how to read.
Days passed, and Brother Basil had not returned. The uneasiness among
the monks was growing. It was said that the Abbot himself was as much in
the dark as they were. Padraig had just made up his mind that he could
endure it no longer, when the Abbot sent for him.
It had been decided, Padraig learned, that he, as Brother Basil's wonted
companion on such excursions, would have the best chance of finding him
now. All that any one knew was that he had gone out of the great gate
one morning early, and no one had seen him since.
“Nobody would,” said Padraig, “if he went straight north into the hills.
No one lives near the old road through the forest.”
It was in that direction that all the wolf-tracks had led from the
sheep-fold, and the country was a wilderness of marsh and mountain. The
Abbot looked at the boy keenly, kindly.
“Are you willing to go alone?” he asked.
“It is the best way,” Padraig replied quickly. “One can get on
faster,--and there are not many here who can climb like him. I think he
must have met with an accident far from any dwelling.”
“He is well beloved by the people. If any one had found him we should
have heard. And you have no fear?”
Padraig hesitated. “There are many frightful things in the world,” he
said slowly. “Long ago I knew that if I let myself fear, fear would be
my master all the days of my life. But I am not like the others. I am
his dog. I will find him if I live.”
“Go, my son, and God be with you,” said the Abbot solemnly. And Padraig
went.
He took three days' provision in a leathern bag, and a pike such as
the countrymen used, and headed straight toward the hills. He knew that
copper was to be found in some parts of the range, but why Brother Basil
should go there alone, particularly just at this time, Padraig could not
see.
He trotted over the slopes of tilled land near the Abbey, forded the
river, circled a pond, and crossed a bog by froglike leaps from hassock
to hassock. In time he came to the base of a steep rocky height, almost
a precipice. On the left was a black mud-hole; to the right were craggy
masses of rock. A long slanting break in the cliff led upward to the
left. He thrust his staff in this and began to climb.
Thus far there was no choice, for this was the only direction Brother
Basil could have taken without some one having seen him on the way. From
the height it might be possible to make observations.
Only a gossoon of the hills could have gone up the face of the rock as
Padraig did, and he presently found himself on a ledge about twenty
feet up, above the quagmire. It was less than a foot wide at first, but
widened toward the left, and seedling trees had formed a growth which
appeared to merge into the densely wooded hill beyond. He pushed his way
along this insecure foothold until the trees began to thin as if there
were an open space beyond. Then directly in front of him sounded the
unmistakable snarl of a wolf.
There was no time to think. He braced himself against the cliff, and
grasping his pike, awaited the assault of the beast. Either he or the
wolf, or both together, would be tumbled into the slough. But there
followed only a guttural word of command in Irish. Then a voice that he
knew called, “Padraig, my son, is that you?”
Nothing in heaven or earth could have stopped Padraig then. He broke
through the thicket into the clearing, and halted, breathless and
amazed.
Brother Basil, unharmed and serene, sat upon a rude wooden bench at the
entrance of a cave, and around him were gathered wolves and wolf-like
human beings clad in wolf-pelts. One, who seemed the leader, stood
erect, broad-shouldered and muscular, in a mantle made of the hide of
a giant wolf, the head shaped into a helmet to be drawn mask-like
down over the face. A fire smoldered in the cave's black throat, and
meat--mutton-bones--roasted on a sharpened stake thrust into a crevice
of the rock. An old woman, wasted and wrinkled, wrapped in a yellow-gray
wolfskin lined with lamb's wool, lay on a pile of leaves near the fire,
and savage heads emerging from the undergrowth might have been those of
wolves, or of men in the guise of wolves.
In the craziest legends of the chronicles there was no such scene as
this. For one whirling moment Padraig believed everything he had heard
or read of werewolf or of loup-garou. In the name of Saint Kevin, what
could this be but the very lair of the beast? Yet Brother Basil showed
neither fear nor aversion. Padraig knelt to kiss the outheld hand.
“Father,” he faltered, “they sent me to find you.”
“It is well that you have come,” the monk answered with his untroubled
smile, “you and no one else. I stumbled upon this place,--really
stumbled, for a stone rolled under my foot,--and here I had to stay
until this troublesome lame knee would permit me to walk.”
“That is not the whole of it,” growled the leader of the wolf-people.
“Our dogs winded him, and had he been like any other monk who ever told
beads he would have been pulled down. But he spoke to them in our own
tongue, and my mother, hearing his voice, would have him come to her,
for she had seen no priest for many years. When he heard our story he
said that he would be our friend. And so he would, I believe, had we
been what the foolish have thought us.”
“Then,” stammered Padraig, “it is not true that--that--”
“That the loup-garou is abroad in the land?” finished Brother Basil with
delicate scorn. “No. Wolves are wolves, and men are men,--and some men
are thieves.”
“He means,” snapped the wolf-man, “that one of your own stewards opened
the gates to us, using our tracks to hide his own.”
Padraig grinned knowingly. “Simon,” he said. “Simon.”
“Even so,” said Brother Basil.
“He was very zealous about those wolves,” said Padraig, reflectively,
“especially about using spiritual weapons and not slings and spears
against them. But how--”
“It was the thieving of young lambs of the choicest breed that set
the shepherds to thinking there must be more than wolves abroad,” the
wolf-leader went on. “But for your Simon, with his long tongue, they
might have driven us away, for Abbot Cuthbert is no coward, nor has he
patience with cowards. But Simon came upon us one night, when we had
broken into the sheep-fold and were making off, and he was not too
frightened to choose for himself out of what was left. Then when we came
again he gave us the meat we came for, taking certain fine fleeces and
lambskins for himself. We stole as the wild creatures do, for food; we
have no use for parchments or carded wool. We killed as they kill, to
fend off our enemies. The Danish sea-wolves and the armored wild beasts
of Strongbow and de Lacy hunted us as if we were wolves indeed. What
could we do but hunt as the wolves hunt, snatch our meat where we could,
hide like foxes in the holes of the mountain, make ourselves dreaded
that we might live, and not die? The Normans brought to Dermot
MacMurragh two hundred heads of the men of Ossory for his delight. All
my mother's children were killed by them save only myself. Well for you
that you are no Norman, young clerk with the red head, or not the word
of a hundred priests had saved you.”
“And sooner or later the Norman cross-bows would find you, even as they
search out hart or heron,” interposed Brother Basil sternly. “I have
warned you, Ruric, that this harrying and plundering must cease. Turn
from your wickedness and bear yourselves hereafter as Christian men, and
your souls shall live. And because ye were sorely tried, with God's help
a way may be opened for you to escape your enemies.
“Padraig, you see here a remnant of the men of Ossory, whom the Normans
drove into the inhospitable haunts of the forest. The quarry of that
evil hunting ran wild like the dogs who followed their masters. As the
country grew more settled, these half-bred wolf-hounds found out the
sheepfolds, and led their masters to the spoil.”
“Even a Norman gives the road to the werewolf,” said the Ossorian with
a harsh laugh. “The mercy they deny to man or wolf, they granted us when
they thought us neither man nor wolf. Aye, we chased them roaring to the
very gates of their castles. Had our own people known the truth some
of them might have betrayed us, being very poor. Therefore, we made it
easiest for them to keep within doors after nightfall, and in this the
priests and monks were of great help. Until you, Father, came to seek
us out, believing that God had thought even for a man who had lost his
human birthright, none hunted or hindered us. We were the masters, being
without hope and without fear of God or man.”
“Peace, my son,” said Brother Basil gently. “Padraig, you will go to
the Abbot and tell him what you have seen, and ask him of his charity to
reveal nothing until I return. I would send him a letter, had I not lost
my scrip with my tablets in my encounter with the dogs. Things being as
they were, it would not have been safe to send any of Ruric's folk with
a message.”
“No,--not with Simon watching the gate,” agreed Padraig, cheerfully. “I
wonder does he know how many lies he has told in this matter?”
“He will have enough to do in accounting to the Abbot for those that are
known,” said Brother Basil with a certain edge to his voice that
Padraig knew well. “I think, however, that he really believes he has had
dealings with the werewolf. There are men who would run, shaking with
terror, to pledge their souls to the foul fiend if they saw their profit
in it. If he knew the truth he could sell his knowledge easily, and I
am not disposed to undeceive him now. Since Ruric gave me his promise to
end this evil I have thought much of the matter, and I believe that the
Abbot will approve my plan. Let him send men with a hurdle to the foot
of the cliff to-morrow. No one need be told more than that I am lame
through an accident.”
“Some of them will look foolish when they hear that,” Padraig observed
with satisfaction. “I grieve for your lameness, Father, and yet I could
leap and sing all the way home for joy that it is not as we feared.”
“There would be naught to laugh at if any other man had found us out, I
warrant you,” Ruric said gruffly. “The Father won my promise from me by
his gentle and comforting words to my old mother in her distress, for
she feared to die, knowing how we had lived. I had not thought there
could be such fearless faith and kindness in any man. Say to your Abbot
moreover that if he, or you, or any of your folk play us false they will
find that a werewolf can hunt down anything that runs.”
“If I deceived ye,” Padraig answered gravely, “I would throw myself
straightway into the river to cheat your vengeance.” As he tightened
the straps of his sandals he looked once more at the strange and savage
assembly. There were some thirty men and women and several half-grown
youngsters, garbed in wolfskins so shaped as to leave them free to run
or climb. Shoes were skilfully fashioned like a great wolf-paw; skins
were joined so cunningly that when the wearer loped along a hillside in
the chill pale gold of the winter sunset, or skulked among the shadows
of summer woods, any one would swear that what he saw was a lurking
wolf. The wolf-mask with its long muzzle and furry ears concealed the
face, the unshorn beards and hair mingled with the shaggy shoulder-fur
of the tunics. A shepherd looking for missing lambs would find only
wolf-tracks to guide him. Traps had been sprung or smashed, storehouses
rifled, watchdogs killed. Even the hard-headed and harder-hearted Norman
huntsmen turned back one day, when they discovered their hounds baying
at the foot of a tree.
Padraig knew all about the slaughter done by Dermot MacMurragh and his
Norman allies, up and down Ossory. Fierce in their despair, vengeful
in their cunning, these refugees had run wild like their dogs. The huge
untamed brutes were stronger than collies and wiser than wolves, and
nothing could have kept them from raiding any sheepfold that they
scented.
The Abbot heard Padraig's story through without comment, his eyes
blazing under their shaggy brows. If any one but Brother Basil had asked
him to stay his hand, he would not have given two thoughts to it, but it
was Brother Basil, and the matter must be considered.
“These men,” he said grimly, “are outlaws, red-handed robbers. They have
broken the law of God and man. They deserve justice, not mercy.”
“If they can be caught,” ventured Padraig.
“You think they cannot be taken?”
Padraig shook his head. “I stood as near them as I am to you, and I did
not see them until they wished to be seen. They run like foxes and climb
like cats. They will be killed or kill themselves, every man and woman
of them, rather than be taken. Were it not better they should live like
christened souls than be hunted like beasts?”
The Abbot rose and began to pace the floor. “Go, my son,” he said not
unkindly, “and send Simon, the steward, to me.”
But Simon was not to be found. Brother Mark, the librarian, being of
a distrustful disposition, had been asking many questions of late
regarding the parchments prepared for the scriptorium. Simon had
perhaps taken fright. He had not returned, in any case, from the nearest
market-town, whither he had gone that morning. When it was found that
everything upon which he could lay his hands had gone with him, some
of the brethren were inclined to think the whole werewolf panic an
invention of the steward's to hide his thieving. Padraig went to the
foot of the cliff, accompanied by two men with a hurdle, and found
Brother Basil safe and in good spirits, but neither wolf, wolfling nor
wolf-man was to be seen. Not so much as the sound of a wolf's howling
was heard about the sheep-folds, and shepherds and sheep-dogs tended
the lambs that spring undisturbed. There were those who said that the
werewolves had been driven away by the prayers of Brother Basil when he
visited the forest. After awhile a legend grew up and was told to the
Welsh clerk Giraldus, about a werewolf who met a priest in the forest
and begged him to give Christian aid and comfort to his dying mate.
The story goes that the priest remained all night conversing with the
unfortunate man, who behaved rather as a man than as a wolf.
When spring stirred the travel on the Irish roads a party of forest folk
appeared one day at the Abbey and asked for baptism. Their children had,
it appeared, grown up in the wilderness without knowledge of religion.
Such things were not unheard of in those days, and after baptism the
party went down to the seaport and took ship for England, where they
lived for some years in the service of a Norman knight, Hugh l'Estrange.
When finally a sort of peace was patched up in Ireland between the
Normans and the Irish chiefs, Ruric and his folk returned. But no more
was heard of the wolves of Ossory.
ST. HUGH AND THE BIRDS
When good Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Was a boy in Avalon,
He knew the birds and their houses
And loved them every one,
Merle and mavis and grosbeak,
Gay goshawk, and even the wren,--
When he took Saint Benedict's service
It wasn't the least different then!
“They taught me to sing to my Lord,” quo' he,
“And to dig for my food i' the mould
And whithersoever my wits might flee,
To come in out o' the cold.”
When wise Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Was a bishop wi' crosier tall,
A wild swan flew from the marshes
Over the cloister wall,
Crooked its neck to be fondled--
Giles, that was vain of his wit,
Said, “Here is a half-made Bishop!”
--But the Saint never smiled a bit!
“My swan will fight for his lord,” quo' he,
“And remember what he has heard.
He flies to my gatepost and waits for me--
My friends, make a friend of the bird!”
VIII
THE ROAD OF THE WILD SWAN
“Four larders God gave man, four shall there ever be--
The mountain, the valley, the marsh, and the sea.”
Roger hummed the old rhyme absent-mindedly and then took to whistling
the air, while his small strong fingers pulled and knotted at the hawk's
lure he was making. Just now the training of young falcons was absorbing
all of his leisure time. The falconer, Marcel, had showed him how to
make the lure, which was shaped something like a pair of wings made
of quilted leather and thickly fledged with the wing-feathers of
game-birds. When the falconer, who carried it fastened to his wrist by
a long cord, gave it a peculiar toss in the air, it looked very like a
flying bird. He did this, giving at the same time a certain call, when
he wished to bring back the hawk or falcon after flight.
This particular lure was intended for the education of a young merlin of
great beauty and promise, destined for Eleanor's use. The merlin was
a type of falcon well adapted to a lady's purpose, and hawking parties
were common among the Norman-English families of the neighborhood--often
including dames and demoiselles who flew their own falcons. Roger was
rather proud of the fact that Eleanor could ride as well almost as he
could, and was quite as fearless. The bright-eyed sleek-plumaged Mabonde
had been her pet for weeks, and would already answer her call and eat
from her hand. The little round bells of silver, the jesses and hood of
Spanish leather, for the falcon's hunting-gear (Sir Walter's gift) were
laid away in Eleanor's own coffret. She looked forward happily to riding
forth some day with the falcon perched on her small gloved fist, alert
for flight.
“Roger,” she said, frowning a little in her puzzle, “that song is true
enough, about the mountains and the valleys and the sea--the river, that
is,--but what do we get out of the marsh? You can't even go in there
with a boat.”
Roger sloped whistling and gave the matter thought. “We get something
out of it when we go hawking,” he decided. “Herons and swans and ducks
and wild geese,--widgeon,--all sorts of water-birds nest there. Maybe
there used to be other game--when they made the song.”
Most of Sir Walter's domain was fertile valley, dense forest or barren
moorland, but there was an area of marsh whose usefulness was not yet
clear. A swampy shallow strip was thick with osiers from the blown
catkins of the pollard willows; reeds grew thick as wheat and higher
than a man's head--if any man could have walked on the black oozy
quagmire; and as Roger had said, the water-fowl, secure from dogs or
bowmen, were nested in that wet paradise by scores. There was a heronry
among the trees on the edge of it, but otherwise the marsh was not used
save as a storehouse for the basket-makers. They made paniers, hampers,
mews or wicker cages in which the hunting birds were kept when moulting,
and even small boats from the osiers and reeds. But the greater part of
the swamp was impassable to a boat and too insecure for foot-travel. In
very rainy weather any one looking down upon it from a height could
see that there was a sort of islet in the middle, but no one could have
reached it with a boat unless in flood-time; and in very dry weather,
when some of the ridges lay uncovered, the water-channels became thick
black mud.
Nothing in all this, however, gave serious cause for uneasiness. A
natural preserve for game-birds was a good thing to have. Forty or
fifty varieties of water-fowl were found on Norman tables at one time
or another. The objection to that marsh was that it was too convenient a
refuge for runaways.
The serfs upon the land were not slaves, in the sense of being bought
and sold like cattle. They belonged with the land. A nobleman who became
owner of an estate took over with it the right to the obedience and
service of its people. When he had a proper sense of his own obligations
there was very little trouble, as a rule. If the shock-haired peasants
toiled and sweated over the building of a castle, their own thatched
cottages were so much the safer from invading enemies. If they paid rent
in grain, cattle and fowls they shared in the feasting and gayety on
any great occasion. The castle, with its large household and numerous
guests, was a market for the neighborhood. It gave the people a chance
of winning a better living than the stubborn soil alone would yield.
Children growing up knew that if a boy could ride or fight or do any
sort of work especially well, his lord would have use for him; if a girl
could spin, weave, sew or had a knack with poultry, her lady would
have a place for her. The country folk hereabouts had grown proud of
belonging to the Giffard lands.
There were exceptions. One was Tammuz at the Ford. He and his
black-a-vised kinfolk had little to do with the villagers, and
the village had even less to do with them. It was said that they
occasionally helped themselves to a sucking-pig, a fowl, or other
produce, and if punishment was attempted, were none too good to burn
ricks and maim cattle. It was said also that they had a hiding place in
the swamp.
If the marsh became a den of runaway serfs it would not be well for the
peace of the neighborhood. Sir Walter Giffard's patience was growing
short. He thought of draining the marsh if possible, when the reeds
could be burned and the land reclaimed.