despatched to the reeve of Soham, announcing the intention of the abbat
and prior of paying their observance at the shrine of Saint Felix on
an appointed day: that the abbey boat-carls should be in attendance to
convey those officials thither from Erith hithe in the household barge:
and that the cellarer should make such provision for the entertainment
of the residents in Soham as might seem to his prudence expedient.
Brother Brihtmer, lately professed, added the observation that he knew
a man or two--servants or tenants of the Abbey--Oswi, the miller, for
instance, who carried off the ram for wrestling at Bury fair. With a
few such at Erith he thought that he might be trusted to discuss the
situation with the Ely men, if they got so far. He would also provide
ten stout carls to row the barge from Erith to Soham and to undertake
what else might be required of them at the latter place.
* * * * *
It was a notable day in the annals of the little town of Soham when the
Ramsey barge, propelled by ten rowers, five a side, clad in the abbey
uniform of bare arms and legs and a loose gown of green falding, was
sighted on the far side of Soham mere. Quite a considerable throng of
the principal inhabitants watched it from the wooden jetty, to which
were moored the cobbles of the Soham fishermen. The reeve, in a murrey
coat and blue hood, was an important figure in the group, and was
accompanied by a select party of the leading sokemen. The local clergy
were in attendance with a hastily improvised band of thurifers and
choristers. These, with some of the better class of artificers, smiled
with conscious importance, as specially nominated guests at the feast
which the Ramsey monks brought with them for their entertainment in the
parish gild-hall. The rest of the crowd, consisting of mariners and
farm churls, were curious rather than enthusiastic, and more suspicious
than curious: for Ramsey is far from Soham, and ancient adage told
them that _fýnd synt feorbúend_--far-dwellers are enemies. At the
first landing of the venerable passengers a temporary disturbance was
caused by Grim, the fisherman of Ely monastery, who provocatively bit
his thumb at the starboard bow oar of the abbat’s crew. When this
difference had been adjusted by the intervention of the district
hundred-man the procession was started for the church. At the tail of
it, behind the boat-carls, stalked a black-avised monk of Ely, Peter by
name, who pointedly withdrew from an official part in the ceremonies.
The banquet in the gild-hall was altogether a splendid affair. In the
whole of their official experience the reeve, the hundred-man, and the
local clergy had never received so warm a welcome or participated in
such royal cheer. No thin English vintage this that was passed to them
in the loving cup, fresh from dignified and consecrated lips, but rich
old wine, warmed by Greek suns and cooled in the caverns of Ramsey
cellars. The cottars who were admitted at the lower board had never
known what it was to have so much ale, and so good, as the monastic
vats supplied. Brother Peter of Ely looked on from the door, but took
no part in the entertainment. He remarked that the Ramsey dignitaries
were modest drinkers, and that the boat-carls looked at their blisters
and passed the can to their Soham neighbours with the merest pretence
of absorption.
As the liquor in the wassail bowls ebbed a gradual silence crept on
the festal party. One after other, official and reverend heads declined
upon the board: rustic bodies dropped from their benches on the floor,
and stertorous slumber filled the hall. Only the abbat and prior sat
erect and looked about them with ferret eyes, and the boat-carls spat
on their hands and inspected their blisters. Brother Peter withdrew to
the mere-strand, and by the lapping waters mused on the weakness of
human heads and the shocking aspect of intemperance in which one has
not participated.
What is this spectacle which presents itself to Brother Peter,
meditative on the muddy margin of Soham mere, at the grey hour when
country cocks do crow and bells do toll? A procession, silent but
solid, actual not ghostly, of ten men bearing a coffer strung upon
poles. Two dignified figures, their heads wrapt from the raw air in
their hoods, bring up the rear. So our friends are making an early and
unannounced departure! This is no time to ask the wherefore. Brother
Peter tucks up his frock and runs his fleetest to the church. When he
looks back from the porch he sees a vessel launched on the shimmering
lake, with a broadening track of broken water in its wake.
The abbat and his men are two miles away over the mere when a strange
clamour reaches their ears. Horns are blown; a church bell clangs;
cries of “Haro” echo over the water; lights flash upon the strand. The
boat-carls rest upon their oars; the abbat smiles; the prior chuckles.
“Two miles: impossible!” says he; “and, as lay-brother Oswald was so
prudent as to hide the oars of the Ely boat in the church tower, they
won’t get started in a hurry.”
The prior sits in the sternage and directs the vessel’s course. Between
him and the abbat Saint Felix reposes in his box. As they quit the mere
and enter the narrow channel which connects it with the Ouse the abbat
suggests a psalm and raises _Jubilate Deo_. The bow oars respond with a
three-man glee in the fen-men’s fashion.
Sleeping Barway they pass, well out of hearing of their pursuers, and
then they take the right hand fork of the river, and follow the Ouse
stream which we now call the West River. Here they find themselves in
a maze of willow-fringed islets and wandering channels which quit and
re-enter the main stream. The sopping, gurgling freshets that drain
the shallow meres on either hand, as the tidal waters drop, warn them
of the perils of a divergence from the river’s course. But prior Alfwin
knows what he is about, and holds on in the channel that in ten miles
will bring them to Erith bank. Nevertheless their transit, impeded by
snags and shallows and fallen trees, is of necessity slow. Under such
circumstances one must think it an unwarranted security that induced
some of the boat-carls to open a spare beer jar and beguile their toil
with ill-timed refreshment. Three comatose bodies under the thwarts
impose a severe addition of labour on the more self-respecting members
of the crew.
It is the hour of prime, and alas! brother Alfwin, where are we now?
Indubitably we are stuck in the mud, and the water is falling. We
land on soggy banks, and with labour the boat-carls lift and pole the
barge into deeper waters. The operation is repeated several times.
Faint cries of “Haro” are borne by the breeze over the fens, and the
Lord Abbat shudders with cold and fright. Praised be the saints, at
last we are back in the main stream. But what is this? Is not this the
identical snag on which we nearly wrecked ourselves the best part of an
hour ago? _Deus in adjutorium!_ Here is the black prow of the Ely barge
rounding the corner, not a hundred yards away, and Monk Peter stands
in the bows, raucously shouting and shaking his fist at us! Half-naked
figures start up out of the fen and run, hopping from tuft to tuft, on
the bank, cheering and waving as they run--friends, foes, or simple
spectators, who knows?
The long sweeps of the boat-carls churn the water into oozy froth as
they bend themselves with frenzied energy to their task. Foot by foot
the Ely men gain upon their predecessors. The game is up unless, as the
stroke oars suggest, they lighten ship by heaving Saint Felix into the
river. Rather a muddy death than so! Courage! We are less than a mile
from Erith.
Lauded be the good Saint Felix, who miraculously interposes for our
salvation from the jaws of destruction. Sudden, mysterious, a blanket
of white fog rises from the fens and envelopes the river banks.
Blotted out are the runners: they cry and wave no more. The Ely prow
is swallowed up in vacuous whiteness: the swish of the Ely oars is
silenced, and Monk Peter’s voice is raised in objurgation. They have
run upon that willow that grows aslant the brook, and it is to be
doubted that their bows are staved in. Were it not a Christian act
to hail them with a loud _Benedicite_ in parting? And here is Erith
strand and Brother Brihtmer and the Ramsey men. Brother Alfwin, it will
be proper for you to give direction to the kitchener for a suitable
congratulation for the brethren at supper to-night. To-morrow we will
deliberate on the matter of the bell-tower.
“Candid reader,” says the Ramsey chronicler, “this is a queer tale.
The authority for it is ancient but shaky--_fluctuans veterum nobis
tradidit relatio_. I by no means require you to believe it, provided
only that in any case you have unhesitating faith that the relics of
Saint Felix were translated from the aforesaid town of Soham to Ramsey
church, and that there the saint confers inestimable benefits on his
worshippers.” Ramsey abbey is gone: the shrine of Saint Felix is gone.
The tale of the boat race remains. I ask you to believe it, if you can.
[Illustration: _In the Fens._]
The Sacrist of Saint Radegund
On a certain day in mid June in the year 1431 the tolling of the bell
in St. Radegund’s church tower announced to the neighbours of the
Priory that a nun was to be buried that day.
In an interval between church services the nuns wander in the garden,
which is also the graveyard of St Radegund’s, and lies sequestered
next the chancel walls. To-day they are drawn thither by a new-made
empty grave; for a funeral is a mildly exciting incident in conventual
routine. But three sisters sit in the cloister on the stone bench next
the chapter door. Also a small novice is curled up on the paved floor
with her back against the bench. The day is warm, and the church wall
casts a grateful shadow where they sit. And, because labour and silence
are enjoined in the cloister, they rest, and two of them gossip, and
Agnes Senclowe, the novice, listens and lays to heart.
The two who gossip are Joan Sudbury, succentrix, and Elizabeth Daveys,
who is older than Joan, and holds no office in the monastery. With them
sits, and half dozes, Emma Denton, who is very old and very infirm. She
does not gossip, for she has hardly spoken a word of sense these forty
years past. She is a heavy affliction to the cloister society. She
lives mainly in the infirmary, and does not attend church. She knows
when it is the hour for a meal, and she knows very little else. If she
speaks an intelligible word, it is about something that happened forty
years ago. She remembers the great pestilence in 1390.
What ailed poor sister Emma to bring her to this sad pass? When she
was young she was something of a religious enthusiast, and because
enthusiasm was rare in the cloister, she was promoted by her sisters to
high station. When they made her Sacrist she had her one and dearest
wish. To have the charge of the beautiful church, of the books,
vestments and jewels of the sanctuary, to live in the holy place,
with holy thoughts for companions, and in the unfailing round of holy
duties--was not that a happy lot? Dignified too the office was; for in
the little cloister world the Prioress herself was scarcely a greater
lady than the Sacrist. The Sacrist did not sleep with the other nuns in
the dormitory; her constant duties did not allow her ordinarily to take
her meals in the refectory. Like the Prioress, she had her own servant
to attend her, her own house to dwell in. Her habitation was built
against the northern chancel wall, and consisted of two chambers. From
the upper room, through a hole pierced in the wall, she watched the
never-dying light that hung before the High Altar.
But it was not good to be Sacrist for long. The unvarying routine of
duty produces torpidity; holy thoughts uncommunicated end in cessation
of thought; the solitude was deadly. The office was not coveted by the
sisterhood, and was seldom held for more than a year or two together.
Wherefore they rejoiced when Emma Denton held it for nine years. For
nine years she trimmed the sacred lamp. During nine years her own light
dwindled out, and at last the world became dark to sister Emma.
The crazy belfry rocked with the swaying of the bell, which, being
cracked, was doubly dolorous. The sound of it roused old sister Emma
to a dim consciousness of what was passing, and she spoke to nobody in
particular.
“The bell,” she said, “the bell again! Last week it tolled, and we
buried two. Now there are two more in the dead-house.”
“The saints protect us!” said sister Joan; “she is at her old talk of
the pestilence year.”
“It was Assumption Day,” continued the old nun, “when we buried them.
We had no Mass that day. To-day it is the cellaress and sister Margery
Cailly--God pardon her for a sinful woman. No; Margery is sick, not
dead; and I forget, I forget.”
“Margery Cailly,” cried Joan Sudbury, “what quoth she of Margery
Cailly, that goes to her grave to-day? Margery Cailly, that has been
our most religious Sacrist ever since yonder poor thing fell beside her
wits.”
“Religious you may call her,” said Elizabeth Daveys, “but God knows,
and sister Emma knows, that of her which we know not. Thirty years have
I lived in St Radegund’s, and I remember not the time when any but
Margery was our Sacrist, and well I know that the sacristy has been her
prison all those days. But I have heard sister Emma say in her dull way
that Margery once knew the convent prison too.”
“Well, twelve years I have spent here, and never had speech with the
Sacrist. Once I was alone in the church when it was dark, and the
daylight only lingered aloft in the roof, and of a sudden I lighted on
her in the chancel, busied in her office. Her pale face in her black
hood showed like a spirit’s, and I thought it was the blessed Radegund
that had come down from her window, and I was horribly afraid.”
“I think that from the sacristy window her eye followed me about the
garden as I walked there,” said Elizabeth. “It follows me still, and it
makes my flesh creep. What good woman would shun her sisters so? Heaven
rest her soul, for be sure she has much to answer for. If she has
confessed herself, it is not to our confessor or the Prioress, for I
think she has hardly spoken these many years to any but Alice Portress
that waits on her.”
“Yes, Alice was with her at the end. It was Alice that dug the grave;
Alice rings the knell; Alice laid her out in her Sacrist’s chamber, and
she has placed two white roses on the dead woman’s breast.”
“Roses?” said Elizabeth Daveys; “roses are not for dead nuns. Whence
got she roses?”
“That I can tell you,” said the novice, glad to take her part in
the conversation, “for Alice told me herself. She got them from the
churchyard of St Peter’s on the hill.”
* * * * *
The office for the dead was said, the empty grave was filled, and Alice
the Portress was closeted with the Prioress.
“To you, lady Prioress--not to the Nuns in Chapter--I confess the sin
of my youth; not to them, nor yet to you while sister Margery lived.
She is gone, and why should I remain? Forty years we shared the
secret. She is past censure or forgiveness. On me let the blame rest. I
ask no pardon, but only to be dismissed from the house of St Radegund,
that I have so unworthily served.
[Illustration: _Entrance to Chapter House._]
“There is none but myself and poor sister Emma that remembers St
Radegund’s before the pestilence year. I was but a child then, and my
mother was Portress before me. My mother often brought me to the lodge,
and I used to play with the novices, or sit at the gate when my mother
was away. Margery had but lately come to St Radegund’s--seventeen,
perhaps, or eighteen years of age she was. Hers was a proud family--the
Caillys of Trumpington, and they were rich, and good to St Radegund’s.
They are gone and forgotten now, but often have I heard old Thomas
Key tell of them, for he was a Trumpington man, and he knew the De
Freviles of Shelford too. There are De Freviles at Shelford yet, but I
think that none there remembers young Nicholas De Frevile that was Sir
Robert’s son.
“I had a child’s thought--that Margery was the most beautiful creature
in the wide world--most beautiful and best. And because she was young
and fair and gracious in speech even our hard sisters loved her, and
thought it pity of the world when her fair tresses were shorn and she
took the ugly veil. For Margery was not religious. God pardon me for
my sinful words, but I think she was meant for better things than
religion and a cloister. And though she was good and kind to all,
Margery did not take to our sisters. There was some trouble--I know
not what, for she never told--and for some family reason she was sent
to St Radegund’s, and ill she liked it. So she went about her work in
cloister and church, grieving; and there was talk of her among the
sisters. Some thought, some said, that they knew, but Margery said
nothing.
“It is all forgotten now, for the pestilence wiped out the memory of
those days. Scarcely twelve months had gone since she took the veil
when Margery Cailly disappeared from the Priory. You may think what
babble of tongues there was in our parlour--how they who were wisest
had always known how it would be, and the rest rebuked them for not
telling them beforehand. And so for another twelvemonth she was lost to
us, and some sisters, who were kind, hoped that she would come back,
and some who were kinder, hoped she would not.
“Then, one day in the year before the pestilence, comes an apparitor
with our lost Margery, and a letter to the Prioress from the Lord
Bishop of Ely. The letter is to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury,
in his visitation of Lincoln diocese, has found Margery there, living
a secular life; and because secular life is sin to those who have
entered the religious order, he commits her to his brother of Ely, in
order that the lost sheep may be restored to the fold where she was
professed. And his Lordship of Ely--Heaven help him for a blundering
bachelor!--directs that she shall be committed to the convent
prison-house until she repents of her wickedness, and when she is
loosed from it, shall make public confession in Chapter, and implore
the pardon of the sisters for her enormities.
“Our Prioress was kinder to Margery than the Bishop meant--who
could not be kind to her? Her prison life was no longer than would
satisfy the Bishop’s enquiries, and as for the confession in the
Chapter-house--it never happened. There were some, though they liked
not confession for themselves, who thought an opportunity was missed,
and blamed the Prioress; for cloister talk is dull if we know not one
another’s failings. Still, the sisters were kind to Margery, and very
kind when they wanted to get the secret from her. But she said never
a word about it, unless it were to the Prioress. Beautiful she was
as ever, but grief and humiliation were on her, heavy as death, and
because she confided in none, she lost the friendship of the sisters.
To me, who was but a child, she would talk, but scarcely to another,
and her talk with me was never about herself.
“One other there was with whom sometimes she had speech, and that was
old Thomas Key, maltster and trusty servant in general matters of the
Priory. Him she had known in happier days when he was a tenant of the
Caillys at Trumpington. Her family was too proud and too pious to
remember the disgraced nun, and they never visited her; but from Thomas
she learnt something of home and the outside world.
“Then came the dreadful year when the pestilence raged in Cambridge
town. The nuns had been used to get leave from the Prioress to go out
into the town, but there was no gadding now. The gate was closely
barred, and none were admitted from outside except Thomas Key. We
carried the Host in procession about the Nuns’ Croft and--laud be to
the saints!--it protected our precincts from the contagion. And while
the sinful world without died like the beasts that perish, we sat
secure, but frightened, in our cloister, and blessed our glorious saint
for extending the protection of her prayers over the pious few who did
her service in St Radegund’s.
“You have heard how the parish clergy died that year. One, two,
sometimes three died in one parish, and the Bishop found it hard to
provide successors. Boys that had barely taken the tonsure a week
before were sent in haste to anoint the sick and bury the dead in
places where the plague had left an unshepherded flock. Sir John Dekyn,
priest of St Peter’s church on the hill, was one that died, and his
successor did not live a fortnight after him. Then we heard from Thomas
Key that a mere youth had taken the place, one Sir Nicholas of the
Shelford De Frevile family, who had but lately been ordered priest at
Ely. And we were told that he worked with a feverous zeal among the
poor, the sick, and the dying of his parish.
[Illustration: _The Chancel Squint._]
“Now when this news was brought to sister Margery by Thomas Key, it
was to her as a summons from death to life. Her eye brightened and
her cheek glowed when she heard of the heroic goodness of this young
priest. While the sisters shuddered and shrank at each morning’s fatal
news, she was consumed with a passionate desire to know what was
passing in the plague-stricken town, and she plied my mother and Thomas
Key with incessant questionings. ‘Who was sick of the townsfolk? Were
any of the clergy visited? How went it with the poor in St Peter’s,
where the pestilence was hottest?’ For some weeks she heard that the
light burned still at night in St Peter’s parsonage, and that the
priest was unscathed, incessant in his ministrations and blessed by his
parishioners. And it seemed as though the sickness was abating.
“Then, late one afternoon in early August, there came a call for
Margery. Thomas Key brought it, and whether it was his own tidings, or
a message from some other, I cannot say; Margery never told me. But
this I know, that she took me apart in the cloister and spoke to me,
and she was terribly moved and her voice was choked. ‘Little Alice,’
she said, ‘as you love me, get me the gate-key after Lauds to-night.
It is life or death to me to go out into the town. Only do it, and say
nothing--no, not to your mother.’ Young as I was, I knew how the nuns
were used to humour my mother into letting them pass the gate; but that
was in day-time. At night, in our besieged state, with the death-bells
tolling all around, it seemed a terrible thing to venture. But I asked
no questions. Say it was the recklessness of a girl--say it was the
love that I bore to Margery. I stole the key and gave it to her after
sundown.
“What happened afterwards I will tell you as it was told to me by
Thomas Key, who waited for her outside the gate. They passed along the
dark, deserted streets. The plague-fires burnt low in the middle of the
roadway, but there were none to tend them, and no living thing they saw
but the starving dogs, herded at barred doors. They crossed the bridge
and mounted to St Peter’s church. The priest’s manse--you know it--is a
low house next the church. A white rose, still in flower, clambered on
its walls, and, half hidden by its sprays, a taper gleamed through the
open window; but there was no sound of life within. They pushed open
the door and entered.
“Stretched on his pallet, forsaken and untended, lay the young priest
of St Peter’s, the pangs of death upon him. Margery threw herself on
her knees by his bed-side, and Thomas watched and waited. For a time
there was silence, for Margery had no voice to pray. Only at times the
dying man grumbled and wandered in his talk; but little he said that
Thomas understood.
“Then after a long time, he stirred himself uneasily and uttered one
word, ‘Margery.’ And she--alas the day!--put out her arm and laid it on
his shoulder. In an instant the dying man half raised himself on his
bed and turned his eyes on her, and there was recognition in them. And
one arm he threw about her neck, and felt blindly for the fair locks
that had been shorn long since, and he said heavily and painfully,
‘Margery, _belle amie_, let us go to the pool above the mill, where the
great pike lie, and sun and shadow lie on the deep water.’ So Thomas
knew that they were boy and girl again by the old mill at Trumpington.