FOOTNOTES
[53] [See Note L.] Demolition of Abbeys.
[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.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUUM CUIQUE TRIBUITUR.
Let us leave the snug cot and return to the desolate ruins of the Abbey.
Scarcely have the sounds of the footsteps of our two friends died away, when another step comes along the cloisters from the opposite direction, and after the pause of a moment it ascends the stair leading to the Abbot’s chamber.
Hush! the new-comer is talking to himself, soliloquizing aloud.
“Methought I heard steps and voices, and saw from the opposite cloister the gleam of a light in this very chamber. Nicholas has played me false—the young hound; I shall have a rod in pickle for his back. He should have been here to-night, to share my watch; he sent word he was on their track, and that they were en route for Glastonbury Abbey; no doubt to visit the secret chamber, and he knew that I meant to await him here alone, where I have had but a cold time of it, and, I fear, a useless watch, for how can one person guard so large a place?
“Still the secret might be worth keeping to ourselves, for I am assured there is much gold, and if we could but surprise and slay them after they have betrayed their secret, we might enrich ourselves and no man the wiser, and then make our market of the parchments afterwards. ’Tis but an old man and a mere boy; Nicholas might grapple with the young one, and willingly would, for he hates him, while I disposed of the monk-knight, which would but cost me a thrust or two; and then if my page were sore pressed, I might lend him a moment’s assistance, although it would be rare sport to see him finish my precious nephew himself, and I think he could, for he must be the stronger, since he has had no confinement or torture to weaken his nerves or sap his health, and should be the better swordsman of the two. Ah! what is this?”
He was trembling with excitement, not unmingled with a sensation like fear, as he turned a dark lantern, and caused the hidden light to reveal the entrance, which Cuthbert had unwittingly left ajar, for the spring, rusty with damp, had failed to act.
Down the thirty steps; down to the iron door at the bottom, first closing the upper door.
“I shall have the secret all to myself, not even Nicholas shall know more than I choose to reveal; a man is his own best confidant, thanks to the saint, or may be the devil, who has helped me. Ha! ha!”
Suddenly he started, and a chill of terror caused the cold sweat to stand on his brow; was that a peal of distant laughter mocking his words? Satanic laughter?
“I am becoming fanciful. Ah! here is the spring; no more mystery, the door opens, I will press it back against the wall; yes it is safe, it stands quite still.”
He enters the vault, and passes from mortal sight for ever.
Let us stand outside and watch that door.
It is certainly moving, almost imperceptibly; oh, how terrible that slight motion. It increases in speed, vires acquirit eundo; oh! will no one warn the guilty wretch within of his danger.
Clang! In that sound is the awful doom of one who is lost soul and body,—the warning portent is explained, its fore-boding fulfilled.
Again that low but awful peal of laughter breaks the echoes. Ah! who shall paint the agony of the few hopeless days of darkness, which remain to him in his icy tomb—the pangs of hunger and thirst, delirium, and madness?
We draw a veil over them, and bid Sir John Redfyrne a last farewell.
Upon the following morning the sun rose brightly upon the earth; so soundly slept Sir Walter and his adopted son, that old Hodge had to knock once or twice ere he could arouse them.
“Look, Cuthbert,” cried Sir Walter; “the rising sun dispersing the darkness of the night, a harbinger of better days to us; dress quickly, commend thyself to God, and let us be stirring: for although we have heard nought of Sir John, it may be as well to put the sea between us and him, now our work is accomplished.”
They occupied adjacent couches in the same room, and both had slept, without once awaking, from the time they lay their heads on their pillows; a sense of delicious rest, of labour achieved, had been theirs.
And now after their thanksgivings to God, they came down to breakfast with hot spiced wine, before a warm fire; and although the reverence always accorded to rank in those days, made the old yeoman hesitate to set “cheek by jowl” with a knight and Prior rolled into one, yet Sir Walter soon put him at his ease, and the four made the last breakfast which they were ever to share together.
Cuthbert’s heart was too full for speech; he had cause to entertain the warmest feelings of affection for his kind foster-parents, and now he was leaving them perhaps for ever, for he could not hope to re-visit England, unless a total change took place in the government and its policy; and meanwhile the sands of life were running out for the aged couple.
But the last farewells had to be said; the honest yeoman brought the two horses round to the back door; the few necessaries they had were packed in their saddle-bags, and bidding a longing lingering last farewell, they turned their backs upon Glastonbury, and took the road for Lyme Regis.
They rode leisurely, for they knew no need for special haste, and enjoyed the invigorating and bracing air; oft-times from some eminence they turned back, and looked over the plain of Avalon upon the lofty Tor, with mingled feelings; it was the land-mark of home, but it was the place where foul injustice had been wreaked upon one they had both loved.
Late in the evening they beheld the sea in the far distance, and soon after nightfall entered Lyme Regis, where Cuthbert sought his uncle, while he left Sir Walter at the inn.
Such a journey as they had accomplished would have been difficult in France without passports, or in any continental land until a much later day; but in England well-dressed and respectable travellers might travel unquestioned, in the absence of any cause to the contrary, and take up their quarters without exciting suspicion, even in the last days of bloody Harry.
Cuthbert sought his “uncle,” with whom it will be remembered he had spent the ten months after the martyrdom of the Abbot, and found him just returned from a fishing expedition. At first the old fisherman could not recognize the lad who had once won his affections in the young man who stood before him, but when he did so, the warmth of the reception was all that could be desired; he almost dragged Cuthbert to his “aunt,” and no persuasion would induce them to let the youth return to spend the night at the inn with Sir Walter.
What a story had Cuthbert to tell them! “Uncle,” “aunt,” and two or three “cousins,” stalwart young fishermen: they stood aghast with open mouths and erected ears at his narration of the scenes at Exeter, which were quite fresh to them, for news travelled very slowly in those days, and even otherwise they might not have recognized Cuthbert under the altered name.
And when he asked their help to convey him and his adopted father across sea, he was met by an enthusiastic reply, “Wind and tide both serve, why not to-morrow morning, my boy; loath are we to part with thee so soon, but thy safety is the first consideration.”
So the following morning Sir Walter and Cuthbert, both clad in fishers’ garb, joined the fisherman and his stalwart sons on the beach. The largest boat, or rather sloop, was got under weigh, the wind blew directly off shore, and soon they saw the white cliffs of Dorset, and the red ones of Devon, which meet near Lyme Regis, receding on the right and left.
As they drew out to sea, and the whole coast line became visible, Hey Tor and the moorland hills loomed in the far distance on the left, and until they sank beneath the sea Cuthbert never took his eyes from them.
Now all was sea and sky for many hours, until the coasts of Normandy, about the mouth of the Seine, came into sight. And they ran the boat up the river to the nearest point to the great Abbey of Bec, founded by the famous Herlwin in 1034, and which had furnished two successive Archbishops to Canterbury in the persons of Lanfranc and Anselm.
The present Abbot had been a personal friend of Father Ambrose, and so soon as they had bidden a kind and grateful farewell to their English friends, the honest fishermen, who absolutely refused the offer of gold for their services, they directed their steps to the famous Abbey.
After a journey of some hours, they arrived safely at Bec.
“Behold an Abbey, which God has yet preserved from the spoilers,” said Father Ambrose, as he looked upon the glorious pile—grand as that they had lost—and then added with a sigh, “Alas, poor Glastonbury.”
There they met unbounded hospitality, and Father Ambrose only waited to bestow his adopted son in the care of the Baron de Courcy, whose castle was hard by, ere he resumed that life he had never willingly abandoned.
The Baron de Courcy was a descendant of an old and famous Norman house, distinguished in the days of the Conquest, when Aymer de Courcy, refusing to share in the sports of England, retired to his Norman estate, although he had fought at Hastings, and enjoyed the favour of the Conqueror.
His good qualities, well known to those who have read of them in the “Andredsweald,” a chronicle of the house of Michelham in Sussex,[57] had not suffered in transmission through so many generations: and our Cuthbert found a warm reception in the Norman household.
And so they both gained a home, each after his own heart, and the recent trials seemed only to enhance the sweet sense of security they now enjoyed.
“When the shore is gained, at last,
Who will count the billows past?”
But they had not been three months in their new homes, when tidings arrived from England of the death of their oppressor. Henry VIII. had passed to his last account on the early morn of the twenty-eighth of January, fifteen-hundred and forty-seven; passed from his earthly flatterers and parasites, who had treated him as if he were a demi-god, to the awful judgment bar whither he had sent before him by the hands of the executioner some seventy thousand of those subjects who had been committed by the King of kings to his care.
There, where prince and peasant, lord and slave, king and monk, are all equal, where there is no respect of persons, we leave him and close our tragical story.
