FOOTNOTES
[51] If the Lord Himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say: if the Lord Himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us; &c. (Psalm cxxiv.)
[52] In those days this was a common invocation. S. Martin was a favourite saint in England: it shews the tendency of language to become the vehicle of lower ideas, that this invocation of S. Martin was corrupted into “O my eye and Betty Martin” in Protestant days.
CHAPTER XIII.
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?”
“He pressed the centre of the bud sharply with his thumb.”
“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.
