On the green skirts of the Forest of Arden there was a spot which the
windings of the Avon stream had almost made into an island, and here in
the olden time the half-savage herdsmen of King Ethelred kept vast
droves of the royal swine. The sunny loops of the river cut clearings
on the east and south and west, but on the north the Forest lay dense
and dark and perilous. For in those ancient days wolves still prowled
about the wattled folds of the little settlement of Wolverhampton, and
Birmingham was only the rude homestead of the Beormingas, a cluster of
beehive huts fenced round with a stockade in the depths of the woods.
Among the swineherds of the King there was one named Eoves, and one
day, while wandering through the glades of great oaks on this edge of
the Forest, he saw three beautiful women who came towards him singing a
song more strange and sweet than he had ever heard. He told his
fellows, and the story spread far and wide. Some said that the three
beautiful women were three goddesses of the old pagan world, and
thought Eoves had acted very foolishly in not speaking to them. Others
said they might have been the Three Fates, in whose hands are the lives
of men, and the joy of their lives, and the sorrow they must endure,
and the death which is the end of their days; and they thought that
perhaps Eoves had been wise to keep silence.
But when the holy Bishop Egwin heard the tale, he visited the place
alone, and in the first glimmer of the sunrise, when all wild creatures
are tame and the earth is most lovely to look upon, he beheld the three
beautiful women, and he saw in a moment that they were the Virgin
Mother Mary and two heavenly handmaidens. "And our Lady," he used
afterwards to say, "was more white-shining than lilies and more freshly
sprung than roses, and the savage forest was filled with the fragrance
of Paradise."
Straightway the Bishop sent his woodmen and had the aged oaks felled
and the underwood cleared away; and on the spot where the beautiful
women had stood a fair church was built for the worship of the true
God, and around it clustered the cells of an abbey of Black Monks. In
a little while people no longer spoke of the place by its old name, but
called it Eovesholme, because of the vision of Eoves.
Now when more than three and a half centuries had gone by, and Agelwyn
the Great-hearted was Abbot, there was a Saxon noble, young and
dissolute, who had been stricken by the Yellow Plague, and, after three
days' sickness, had been abandoned by his friends and followers in what
seemed to be his last agony. For the Yellow Plague was a sickness so
ghastly and dreadful that men called it the Yellow Death, and fled from
it as swiftly as they might. But in the dead and dark of the third
night a beautiful Child, crowned with roses and bearing in his hand a
rose, had come to the dying thane and said: "Now mayest thou see that
the best the world can give--call it by what name thou wilt and prize
it at its utmost worth--is nothing more than these: wind and smoke and
a dream and a flower. But though all have fled from thee and left thee
to die alone in grievous plight, this night thou shalt not die."
Then he was bidden to rise on the morrow--"for strength shall be given
thee," said the Child--and travel with the sun westward till he came to
the Abbey of Egwin, and there he must tell the Abbot all that had
befallen him.
"And the good Abbot will receive thee among his sons," said the Child;
"and after that, in a little while, thou shalt go on a journey, and
then again in a little while shalt come to me."
On the morrow Rheinfrid the thane rose from his bed hale and strong,
but his whole nature was changed; and he made no more account of life
and of all that makes life sweet--as honour and wealth and joy and use
and the love of man and woman--than one makes of wind and smoke and a
dream and a flower; and all that he greatly desired was to undertake
the journey which had been foretold, and to see once more the Child of
the Roses.
Westward he rode with the sun and came at nightfall to the Abbey of
Eovesholme; and there he told Agelwyn the Abbot the story of his wild
life and his sickness and the service that had been laid upon him.
The Abbot embraced him, saying, "Son, welcome art thou to our house,
and thy home shall it be till the time comes for thy journey."
For a whole year Rheinfrid was a novice in the house, and when the year
had gone by he took the vows. In the presence of the brotherhood he
cast himself on the pavement before the high altar, and the pall of the
dead was laid over him, and the monks sang the dirge of the dead, for
now he was indeed dying to this world. And from his head they cut the
long hair, and clothed him in the habit of a monk, and henceforth he
was done with all earthly things and was one of themselves.
"Surely, now," he thought, "the time of my journey draws near." But
one year and a second and yet a third passed away, and there came to
him no call, and he grew wearied with waiting, and weariness begot
sullenness and discontent, and he questioned himself: "Was it not a
dream of sickness which deceived me? An illusion of pain and darkness?
Why should I waste my life within these walls?" But immediately
afterwards he was filled with remorse, and confessed his thoughts to
the Abbot.
"Have faith and patience, my son," said Agelwyn. "Consider the many
years God waited for thee, and grew not impatient with thy delay. When
His good time comes thou shalt of a certainty set out on thy journey."
So for a while Rheinfrid ceased to repine, and served faithfully in the
Abbey.
In the years which followed, William the Norman came into these parts
and harried whole shires on account of the rebels and broken men who
haunted the great roads which ran through the Forest. Cheshire and
Shropshire, Stafford and Warwick were wasted with fire and sword. And
crowds naked and starving--townsmen and churls, men young and old,
maidens and aged crones, women with babes in their arms and little ones
at their knees--came straggling into Eovesholme, fleeing most
sorrowfully from the misery of want.
In the little town they lay, indoors and out, and it was now that the
Abbot got himself the name of the Great-hearted. For he gave his monks
orders that all should be fed and cared for; and daily from his own
table he sent food for thirty wanderers whom he named his guests, and
daily in memory of the love of Christ he washed the feet of twelve
others, and never shrank from the unhappy lepers among them. But for
all his care the people died lamentably from grief and sickness--on no
day fewer than five or six between prime and compline; and these poor
souls were buried by the brethren. Of the little children that were
left to the mothering of the east wind, some were adopted by the canons
and priests of the Abbey church, and others by the monks.
In his eagerness to help and solace, the Abbot even sent forth
messengers to bring in the fugitives to refuge. Now on a day that
Rheinfrid went out on this work of mercy, he met at a crossway a number
of peasants fleeing before a dozen Norman men-at-arms. He raised his
arm and called to them to make a stand, but they were too much
terrified to heed him. Then he saw that one of the soldiers had seized
by the hair a fair Saxon woman with a babe at her bosom, and with a
great cry he bade him let her go, for his blood was hot within him as
he thought of the Saxon woman who had carried him in her arms and
suckled him when he was but such a little child. But the Norman only
laughed and turned the point of his sword against the monk.
Then awoke the long line of thanes slumbering in wild caves and dark
ways of his soul, and with a mighty drive of his fist he struck the
man-at-arms between the eyes, so that he fell like a stone. With
savage curses the knave's comrades rushed in against the monk, but
Rheinfrid caught up the Norman's sword, and with his grip on the hilt
of it his old skill in war-craft came back to him, and he carried
himself like a thane of the old Sea-wolves, and the joy of battle
danced in his eyes.
Ill was it then for those marauders. One of them he clove through the
iron cap; the neck of another he severed with a sweep of the bitter
blade.
And now that he was fighting he remembered his calling, and with a
clear voice he chanted the great psalm of the man who has sinned:
"Miserere mei Deus--Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy
loving-kindness; according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies
blot out my transgressions."
The strength of ten was in his body, and verse by verse he laid the
Normans low, till of the troop no more than two were left. These were
falling back before him as he pressed onward chanting his Miserere,
when a body of horsemen rode up and drew rein to watch the issue.
"By the Splendour of God!" cried the leader, as he glanced at the woman
and scanned the number of the dead tumbled across the road, "it is a
_Man_!"
Rheinfrid looked up at the new comer, and saw a gigantic, ruddy-faced
man of forty, clad in chain mail and wearing a circlet of gold about
his massive head. At once he felt sure that he was face to face with
the Master of England. Still he kept his sword's point raised for
another attack, and with a quiet frankness met the Conqueror's
imperious gaze.
"Ha, monk! hast thou no fear of me?" cried William, frowning.
"Lord King, hast thou no fear of God?" Rheinfrid retorted.
For a moment the King's haughty eyes blazed with wrath, but William
ever loved a strong man and dauntless, and he laughed gaily: "Nay, thou
hast slain enough for one day; let us cry truce, and tell me of what
house thou comest."
So Rheinfrid spoke to the King about Eovesholme, and the Abbot, and the
harbouring of the miserable fugitives, and told the tale of his own
fighting that day. And the great Norman was well pleased, and
afterwards he gave Agelwyn the custody of Winchcombe Abbey when the
abbot of that house fell under his displeasure. As for Rheinfrid he
took the woman and her babe into the town; and many others he rescued
and succoured, but he neither slew nor smote any man thereafter.
Now for eight long years Rheinfrid lived in the quiet of the cloister,
striving to be patient and to await God's own time; and his daily
prayer was that of the Psalmist: "How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?
For ever? How long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?"
In the ninth year, after long sickness, the soul of Agelwyn passed out
of the shadow of this flesh unto the clemency of God, and shortly after
his death a weariness of well-doing and a loathing of the dull days of
prayer beset Rheinfrid; and voices of the joy of life called to him to
strip off his cowl and flee from his living tomb.
As he knelt struggling with the temptation the little Child crowned
with roses stood beside him, looking at him with sad reproachful eyes.
"Couldst thou not be patient a little while?" he asked.
"A little while!" exclaimed Rheinfrid; "see! twelve, thirteen, long
years have gone by, and is that a little while?"
But the Child answered gravely: "An evil thing is impatience with the
delays of God, to whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand
years as one day."
And Rheinfrid knew not what reply to make, and as he hesitated the
Child began to fade away. "Do not go, do not go yet," he cried; "grant
me at least one prayer--that I shall see thee again at the time I shall
have most need of thee."