"I thought buried treasure existed only in books!" I remarked,
recollecting "Treasure Island" and other such romances. "Certainly I
never anticipated that I should be actually engaged in a real treasure
hunt."
"Nor did I, until I saw the gravity of the whole thing, and how deeply
in earnest are these people."
"They have no idea that The Closed Book is again in my possession?" I
asked.
"None whatever. The volume was stolen from Harpur Street, of course,
and they are puzzled to know into whose hands it has fallen. All the
chief dealers in manuscripts in London--Quaritch, Maggs, Tregaskis,
Dobell, and the others--have been warned that if the Arnoldus is offered
them it is stolen property."
"Well, it is not very likely that any of them will have the offer," I
laughed. "It will be kept in a safe place now I have it in my
possession again, you may depend upon that."
Walter Wyman had turned over the many folios of my transcript, and was
reading the portion concerning the hidden treasure of the Abbey of
Crowland. I think the list of gold and silver objects so plainly set
out appealed to him.
"We'll go back to Peterborough tonight," he said, "sleep at the `Angel,'
and visit Crowland, as it is now spelt, tomorrow. I've heard that the
ruins of the abbey are very fine. It will be an interesting outing, if
nothing else."
"Before we go we had better take a tracing of the unnamed plan," I
suggested. "It may assist us, and yet it may, on the other hand, be a
plan of an entirely different place. One thing, however, is certain--
namely, that it had been drawn there with some distinct object, just as
the plan marked `Treyf.'"
To this he agreed, and going downstairs I obtained the packet containing
the book from the hotel manager's safe, and together we carefully traced
the rough plan in question. It was merely an arrangement of lines and
numerals, which told us absolutely nothing. Still, we both felt
half-convinced that it must somehow concern the Crowland treasure which
was hidden from the king's men at the time the abbey was dissolved and
destroyed.
At seven-thirty, after an early dinner, we left by the London express
for Peterborough, arriving back at the old-fashioned "Angel" just before
eleven. In travelling I carried the precious Arnoldus myself, fearing
to lose it; but at our hotel I again transferred it to the landlord's
safe, with injunctions to the hotel keeper to be careful of it, as its
value was considerable.
Next morning was bright and sunny, and taking a carriage from the hotel
we drove out to Crowland, a fen village distant some seven miles.
Perhaps you may have visited it, an old-world straggling place
clustering about the time-worn, blackened ruins of the ancient abbey, a
venerable pile which even in its present gaunt decay displays mute
evidence of a long-past glory.
As we stood before its restored tower and great ruined, roofless aisles,
where arches still remain that are the wonder of the modern builder, we
could not help reflecting on the vicissitudes through which the grand
old place had passed from its foundation, A.D. 713, as a memorial to the
Saxon Saint Guthlac, down to its complete dissolution and overthrow by
Henry VIII. Because of its isolation in that great marsh, it was for
centuries a place of refuge, where the monks were engaged in a noble and
great work, employed in prayer, writing manuscripts, building bridges,
making roads, or constructing by degrees that noble monument to the
glory of God, the great abbey, the nursing mother of Cambridge
University, and the very centre of Christian life in the fens of
Lincolnshire. Though those venerable aisles are roofless, and the
wonderful Early English life-sized statues in the western front of the
nave are blackened by age and crumbling to decay; though all traces of
the original dimensions of the place are lost in the ill-kept and weedy
churchyard surrounding it, the old pile is still one of the noblest
buildings in England, wonderful in its station, unique in its beauty,
and a valuable relic of Christian devotion, interesting alike to the
architect, the historian, and the antiquary.
The guide to the place, which we purchased of the sacristan, told us
that the vast structure, consisting of the porch, western tower, and the
north aisle, with the ruins of the nave, did not represent one-fourth of
the original abbey church. Indeed, the grey, time-stained building
which we stood before was little more than the north aisle of the church
attached to the abbey, and therefore conveyed no more adequate idea of
the extent of the monastic building than the ruins of a domestic chapel
will of the castle or mansion to which it was attached. At the time of
the dissolution it was standing in all its glory, with the wooden roof
of the now ruined nave richly gilt, the great windows full of fine
stained glass, two grand organs, and altar blazing with gold, silver,
and gems.
The north aisle still remains roofed over,--but uninteresting--to do
duty as the parish church; but the magnificent nave is stripped,
mutilated, and open to the four winds of heaven, for what sacrilege the
commissioners of Henry VIII did not commit in old Godfrey Lovel's day,
Oliver Cromwell's soldiers completed when they stormed the place and
shattered the remaining walls and windows in 1643.
Together we strolled into the space enclosed by the nave, wandering
among the grey old ruins, where the quiet was broken only by the
twittering of a bird. The morning was bright, with a warm sun and
cloudless sky; but its very light seemed to render the venerable pile,
rich with deeds long since forgot, the more bare, solemn, and imposing.
We were alone, for the sacristan, having received the sixpence for the
guide, had returned to her cottage, allowing us to roam there at our own
sweet will. Therefore, when in a spot where we thought we should be
unobserved, I drew forth the transcript I had made of the old monk's
record, and reread it aloud to my companion in order that my memory
might be refreshed, and that he should know the exact wording of what
was written.
We smiled at the simplicity of the old Abbot John sending Thomas
Cromwell a present of his fen fish in the hope he would be appeased and
pass by the abbey without seizing it; yet, as I afterwards discovered,
the original of that very letter is still preserved in the British
Museum, and I have had it in my own hand, thus showing that old Godfrey
must have possessed the entire confidence of his abbot.
In front of where I stood, let into the ruined wall and beaten by the
weather, was a grey slate which I knew to be of fifteenth-century
workmanship. The incised marginal inscription, in Lombardic characters,
read as follows:
"PETRE: PRECES: P: .ME: PETRO: PASTOR: PIE: P: ME."
This, being translated, reads:
Peter (offer) prayers for me. Peter,
Pious Shepherd (pray) for me.
In the centre of the slab was a floriated cross, and the words, "Orate
p. aia Johanis Tomson." In 1423 John Tomson gave ten marks for the
building of the abbey tower, and it appeared that the marginal
inscription was a prayer addressed either to the Apostle St Peter or to
John Tomson's father confessor, named Peter.
Those great bare walls and high pointed arches, grey and frowning,
rudely broken, yet perfect in grace and symmetry, surely furnished a
striking instance of the uncertainty of all human labours. In the day
when the soldier-monk Godfrey lived there it was the seat of devotion
and learning, the abode of luxury and ease, possessing riches in
abundance, and vessels for its use of the most costly description; now,
except in that portion fitted as a church, it scarcely afforded shelter
to a rook or daw, and the last remains of its once almost unparalleled
magnificence were smouldering silently and mingling with the soil on
which they stood:
"Whilst in the progress of long decay,
Thrones sink to dust, and nations pass away."
We turned again to the old chronicle of the monk who had lived there and
actually seen those massive walls torn down by Southwell's men; the monk
who, with the abbot himself and his friend the Scotch monk Maxwell, had
at midnight on the first of December, 1538, concealed the greater part
of the abbey treasures.
According to Godfrey's statement, Malcolm had kept watch at the south
door while the abbot and himself had carried the three chests out and
sunk them in the centre and at the deepest part of the fish pond. It
was hidden in the same pond in which he had previously concealed the
Borgia jewels--namely, in the lake at a spot indicated, being one
hundred and thirty-one paces south of the grand altar. The pond was
never dry, it appeared, even in the hottest summer, and like all other
monastery waters contained carp for Fridays. The Borgia treasure he
managed to secure before leaving Crowland with his friend Malcolm
Maxwell, but the abbey plate and jewels and the silver altar he had been
compelled to leave, the two others who alone knew the secret, in
addition to himself, having died. He had recorded the existence of the
treasure from a sense of religious duty, feeling that the Catholic
Church should not suffer by entire loss of such a magnificent property.
His directions were by no means explicit, but in our eagerness we
resolved to investigate as far as possible.
Passing up what was once the nave, where great trees now flourished and
bushes grew in tangled profusion, we came to the high round-toothed arch
and two massive piers which were all that remained of the central tower.
Beyond, although the abbey church extended just as far eastward as the
ruins ran westward, all had disappeared.
There was no sign of the whereabouts of the grand altar from which to
take our bearings. The whole of the eastern side of the church had been
swept away and converted into a modern churchyard.
"Perhaps the guide will tell us something," Wyman suggested, and at once
began to scan its pages, while we stood in the rank grass beneath the
shadow of that magnificent arch which is the admiration of all modern
builders.
Presently he pointed out to me the original measurements, showing that
the nave had been one hundred and forty-four feet long by twenty-eight
feet wide and seventy-five feet high, which after careful comparison
with other calculations, made it clear that the grand altar must have
stood eighty-six feet from the broken pier of the central tower where we
stood.
We had fortunately purchased a measuring tape in Peterborough;
therefore, without delay, we marked out eighty-six feet in a direct
easterly direction towards the open fen pastures straight before us,
and, looking round, discovered to our satisfaction some broken stone
foundations hidden in the grass and weeds--evidently the lower stones of
the grand altar mentioned by the monk Godfrey.
Some twelve feet farther on there were some similar moss-grown stones,
which struck me as being the remains of the rear of the demolished
altar; therefore from this latter point we determined to take our
bearings, and begin our operations.
We stood and glanced around to find the monastery fish pond. Southward
in the direction indicated, in the centre of a grass field, which,
filled with mounds where old foundations had been overgrown, was a deep
dip in the ground, a small pond quite unlike the deep lake full of old
carp that we had imagined.
"That's it?" I exclaimed, much disappointed. "There certainly isn't
much water there. I suppose we had better measure the hundred and
thirty-one paces, so as to be quite certain that it really is the spot."
"Come along," cried my friend. "Let's do it separately;" and, turning
our faces to the south, we paced on, each counting silently, and being
compelled to scale the churchyard wall in our progress.
At one hundred and nine paces, however, I arrived at the edge of what
had, no doubt, once been a big pond, for the grassy hollow was some
thirty feet wide and sixty long, divided into two, and in each remained
a few feet of muddy water from which the cattle drank.
The discrepancy in the distance puzzled us. Was it possible that the
celebrated silver altar of Crowland and the three chestfuls of treasure
lay buried in the centre of the slime of that half-dried pond?
Surely the lake must have been of much larger dimensions in Godfrey's
day; and, if it were, then the distance between its edge and the grand
altar would not be so great.
I produced the tracing of the mysterious plan contained in The Closed
Book, but failed to comprehend it in any detail. The shaky lines,
intended to be straight, were mostly numbered, as though denoting paces
distant. But there was no number 131, or 109, as I had found it, hence
we were utterly mystified, and both inclined to believe that in
imagining the plan to concern Crowland we had been mistaken.
We both stood at the edge of the muddy pond and glanced into its green,
stagnant water.
Was it possible that the great treasures of that half-demolished abbey,
whose high ruined walls and buttresses cast their shadows behind, had
been hidden deep in the mud below by the same hand that had written The
Closed Book, the hand that had envenomed its pages and thus preserved
the great secret from age to age?
It seemed almost incredible in these matter-of-fact times, and yet we
both felt confident that the treasure enumerated in that list lay
cunningly concealed somewhere in that vicinity.