_THE TRUST FULFILLED._
Once more at the midnight hour Cuthbert sought the Abbey precincts; the
night was bright--it was almost as light as day, the moon was at the
full.
But all the town was buried in sleep; not a watch dog barked--not a
watchman stirred--alone, unobserved, Cuthbert walked along the streets.
The chief entrance into the Abbey was from S. Mary Magdalene Street,
which lay on the west of the ruined pile; it led to the Chapel of S.
Joseph, and through that chapel, eastward, one passed into the nave of
the great church.
When Cuthbert approached, he saw the entrance yawning wide, like a
cavern, for the gates had been sold for the value of the wood;[53] and
he entered into the desecrated chapel, which so many generations had
revered as the very sanctuary of Avalon, the holy place, as men said,
trodden of old, by the saintly feet of him of Arimathæa.
On the right was the porter’s cell, but where, alas, was the porter?
he had been driven to beggary, and in accordance with the vagrant laws
drawn up by Henry himself, had been stripped naked from the waist
upward, tied to the end of a cart, and beaten with whips through the
town, “till his body was bloody by reason of such whipping.”[54]
He had not dared to beg again so he simply starved, and made his moan
to the God of Heaven, died and received a pauper’s funeral, let us hope
to be carried like a beggar of old, “by angels into Abraham’s bosom.”
His fate was perhaps milder than the fate of many of his brethren,
who unable to find work, and unwilling to starve, had repeated their
offence, had been brutally mutilated on the second occasion, and, on
the third, hung, as felons and enemies of the commonwealth.
Cuthbert drank sadly of the holy well and plucked a sprig of the thorn,
ere he entered the nave of the church. What a sight then met his view!
The defaced tomb stones, broken altars, empty niches, all stood out in
brilliant relief as the chill moon looked down upon them, that November
night; “Ichabod--the glory is departed” might well have been inscribed
on that ruined fane.
It was as large as most of our cathedrals, for the extreme length of
the building, from S. Joseph’s Chapel at the west, to the Ladye Chapel
at the east, was no less than five hundred and eighty feet, and there
were two deep transepts, on the east of each of which, were also two
chapels.
The thronging multitudes, the incense laden air, the swelling chants,
the imposing processions, the pealing anthem, all came to the
remembrance of this solitary youth, as he knelt before the ruined
altar, where as an acolyte he had so often knelt, and wept.
Rising, for it was near midnight, to fulfil his tryst, he traversed the
south transept where the famous clock had once stood which told not
only day and hour, but the changes of sun and moon,[55] and made for
a door in the south aisle of the nave. Here he paused as his eye fell
upon the epitaph to the memory of Richard Beere, the predecessor of
the last Abbot of Glastonbury, who elected in the year 1493, had died
in peace, in the thirty-first year of his rule, the year before the
birth of Cuthbert; happy was he in the time of his life, happy too in
his death, for he was taken from the evil to come; although there was
no visible cloud in the horizon, to make him say with Louis Quinze,
“_Après moi le déluge_.” Glastonbury Abbey had then attained the summit
of its prosperity, being one of the richest and most renowned of all
the abbeys of England.
Cuthbert passed through the doorway in the south aisle, and entered the
cloisters, which stood at the south side of the great church, forming a
square of two hundred and twenty feet, surrounded by an arcade in which
the poor monks had once been accustomed to take the air in winter,
and to seek the shade in summer, while they held colloquy in their
recreation hour.
Leaving the chapter house on the east, he turned the angle of the
cloister, and passed along the front of the refectory on his road to
the Abbot’s lodgings, which lay to the south-west of the pile.
But here he paused, and recalled the past as he gazed around the
cloisters: on the east lay the _chapter house_, which he had once
regarded with such reverent awe, where had been the Lord Abbot’s
throne, so worthily filled by its last occupant; behind him the
_refectory_ occupied the whole south side of the square, where
Cuthbert remembered seven long tables whereat the monks had taken
their sober repasts,[56] while one of their number read from the pulpit
the Holy Scriptures or some godly tome of the fathers: to the west lay
the _fratery_ or apartments of the novices, and to the north was the
great south front of the church.
Over the cloisters was a gallery, from which had opened the _library_,
wherein had been many valuable MSS., including one of Livy, which
perhaps contained the lost decades: it had been sold to wrap up
groceries; the _scriptorium_, where the ill-fated brethren had made
copies of the Holy Scriptures and the Office books of the Church; the
_common room_, wherein around the great hearth the brethren assembled
in hours of leisure; the _wardrobe_, and the _treasury_.
All lay alike in sad ruin: all that _would_ sell had been sold: the
mere shell of the building remained.
Over these rooms, on what we may call the _second_ floor, lay the
_dormitories_, where each monk had had his little cell containing a
bed, a table, a crucifix and a drawer for papers and books. Hard by was
the schoolroom, and the apartments of the choristers and other boys,
who had lived in the house.
While in the cloister, calling back the past to mind, he heard a
step,--was it that of Father Ambrose? Cuthbert called in a subdued
voice, but no answer was returned; he hurried up to the end of the
cloister, his hand on his sword, but saw no one.
Well might the ruined desecrated pile suggest awe in this midnight hour.
“O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.”
Then he remembered that the unhappy Nicholas in his dying gasps had
cried--
“Sir John; the secret chamber; midnight; beware!” and had died before
he could offer the reparation of explanation.
And now he had reached the Abbot’s former dwelling, a detached
building, connected by a covered way with the cloisters. It stood west
of the refectory and great hall; it had suffered less from violence
than the rest of the building, being probably designed for use as a
private dwelling.
Ascending the short flight of steps which led to the porch, he entered
the chamber on the right, which had been the Abbot’s especial retreat;
it was in that room, with its old oak wainscotting and carved ceiling,
that he had received the momentous communication which had changed the
whole course of his then future life, and accepted the trust about to
be fulfilled.
And, as he waited, old familiar shapes seemed to gather around him,
and for one instant, he thought he saw the Abbot seated in his chair,
gazing benignantly upon him.
He strove to pray, as the best way of driving away imaginary visions,
when he heard the clock of the town church begin to strike the midnight
hour.
But before it had struck six times, a firm step was heard on the
stairs; it mounted higher and higher, Cuthbert knew the tread and his
heart beat lighter; another moment and Father Ambrose stood before him
in the doorway.
“Father!”
“Thou wert here first, then, Cuthbert my son, and hast met with no
accident by the way.”
“How long hast thou been in the ruins, father?”
“But just arrived from the inn where I have left my horse,--why?”
“Because I heard a footfall.”
“Nay, it was fancy; we will soon do our errand and depart. Has thy
journey been, like mine, uneventful?”
[Illustration: “HE PRESSED THE CENTRE OF THE BUD SHARPLY WITH HIS
THUMB.”
_Page 239._]
“Not uneventful, father; Nicholas Grabber, the red-haired page at the
inn, is no more. He had played the spy over night, learnt all our
arrangements, and even the fatal secret of the chamber: had he lived we
had been lost.”
“Didst thou slay him, then?”
“Nay, it was the hand of God; and I am free from blood-guiltiness:” and
Cuthbert told the whole story, which we need not say Sir Walter heard
with intense interest.
“Poor lad! we will pray for his soul as he desired; Sir John has a
heavy reckoning before him;--I wonder where _he_ is now! But, my son,
to our task; the night wears on.”
Cuthbert well remembered the directions which the Abbot had given
him; he had written them and conned them again and again during the
intervening years. Amongst the cunning carving which yet ornamented
the wainscotting of the ruined chamber, he felt for the rose which
was fourth in order from the outer door, and third from the floor;
he pressed the centre of the bud sharply with his thumb, and the old
broken bookcase, which had been left as a fixture, not worth removing,
but broken in mere wantonness, suddenly flew open in the manner of a
door.
How near the enemy must have been to the secret, yet the door, which
was the back of the bookcase, was ponderous, and the bolt only yielded
to the spring, which was released by the pressure upon the carved rose
many feet away.
Thirty steps they descended, after fastening the upper door behind
them, and below the very foundations, came upon the iron one. Cuthbert
touched the spring and it slowly opened.
“We must fasten it carefully back,” said the youth as they stood
without, “by this bolt at the bottom, which falls into the pavement
close to the adjacent wall; for did it swing to when we were within, we
should never get out till the day of doom; it shuts with a spring, and
can only be opened from without.”
As he spoke he set the heavy door carefully back, as yet unsecured,
against the wall; they watched it with curiosity; at first it appeared
to stand still, then began slowly to move, increased speed in going,
and shut with a loud resonant clang.
“So it was doubtless contrived in order to catch any unauthorized
intruder upon the secrets of the Abbey, who had not observed the bolt
and its purpose,” said Father Ambrose. “Secure it carefully, my son.”
Cuthbert did so, and they entered the vault; and now the youth drew
the key, which he had kept all these long years, from the pocket in
his vest; he inserted it in the lock, the rusty wards turned with
difficulty, but with a little force yielded, and they raised the
ponderous lid until it fell back and rested against the wall.
There, as when the Abbot shewed them years before to Cuthbert, lay the
missing treasures of the Abbey: the gemmed reliquaries, the golden and
jewelled pyxes, the chalices of solid gold, the heaps of coined money,
which a parliament, liberal in disposing of the property of others had
given to the king, only he could not get them. All this enormous wealth
had thus been saved from the tyrant’s clutch; but it will be remembered
that his disappointed avarice had aroused that animosity against the
late Abbot, which was only satiated by the life-blood of the victim.
And beside it all, lay the yet more precious documents, rolls of
parchments, bundles of letters, deeds of gift, and the violated
charters of the Abbey.
“We must burn all the letters,” said Father Ambrose; “such were the
Abbot’s last instructions.”
One by one they burnt them all by the flames of their lanthorn, until
nought was left which could possibly serve as matter of accusation
against any person.
“We may now depart, our duty done; we may borrow sufficient of this
coined gold for our present needs, incurred in its preservation; the
rest must be left until a sovereign, in communion with the Holy See,
sits again upon the throne, when it will help to restore the Abbey,
and refurnish it with sacred vessels; how long, O God, until this
tyranny be overpast?”
They closed the lid, locked it, and left the vault, shutting the iron
door; glad were they to exchange its chilling grave-like atmosphere for
the fresh air above.
They tarried not, but left the Abbey immediately; and at Cuthbert’s
request sought the shelter of his foster father’s cottage, where they
found the old couple awaiting them, and received the warmest welcome;
the curtains were drawn, to hide the light from the neighbours, should
any prying eyes be abroad in the darkness; fresh wood was heaped upon
the fire, a jug of mulled sack was prepared, and so they drove the cold
out of their bodies, and banished the remembrance of the icy vault.
And afterwards they sought their warm beds and slept soundly, under
the thatched roof of the humble cot, grateful for the comfort which
providence afforded them, and happy beyond description to feel that
the difficult and dangerous task committed to them, was successfully
accomplished.
FOOTNOTES
[53] See Note L. Demolition of Abbeys.
[54] See Preface.
[55] It was purchased for Wells Cathedral where it may still be seen.
[56] People talk of bloated monks, and imagine them revelling in
luxuries. The expression is as just, neither more nor less, as that of
“a bloated aristocrat,” used of a gentleman by a Socialist.