Chapter Nineteen.
Eureka!
In the court where the prebendaries’ chambers were situated, within the Cathedral Close at Canterbury, was an underground vault, known as Monday’s Hole. Here the stocks were kept, but the place was very rarely used as a prison. A paling, four feet and a half in height, and three feet from the window, cut off all glimpses of the outer world from any person within. A little short straw was strewn on the floor, between the stocks and the wall, which formed the only bed of any one there imprisoned. It was a place where a man of any humanity would scarcely have left his dog; cold, damp, dreary, depressing beyond measure.
That litter of straw, on the damp stones, had been for five weary weeks the bed of Alice Benden. She was allowed no change of clothes, and all the pittance given her for food was a halfpenny worth of bread, and a farthing’s worth of drink. At her own request she had been permitted to receive her whole allowance in bread; and water, not over clean nor fresh, was supplied for drinking. No living creature came near her save her keeper, who was the bell-ringer at the cathedral—if we except the vermin which held high carnival in the vault, and were there in extensive numbers. It was a dreadful place for any human being to live in; how dreadful for an educated and delicate gentlewoman, accustomed to the comforts of civilisation, it is not easy to imagine.
But to the coarser tortures of physical deprivation and suffering had been added the more refined torments of heart and soul. During four of those five weeks all God’s waves and billows had gone over Alice Benden. She felt herself forsaken of God and man alike—out of mind, like the slain that lie in the grave—forgotten even by the Lord her Shepherd.
One visitor she had during that time, who had by no means forgotten her. Satan has an excellent memory, and never lacks leisure to tempt God’s children. He paid poor Alice a great deal of attention. How, he asked her, was it possible that a just God, not to say a merciful Saviour, could have allowed her to come into such misery? Had the Lord’s hand waxed short? Here were the persecutors, many of them ungodly men, robed in soft silken raiment, and faring sumptuously every day; their beds were made of the finest down, they had all that heart could wish; while she lay upon dirty straw in this damp hole, not a creature knowing what had become of her. Was this all she had received as the reward of serving God? Had she not tried to do His will, and to walk before Him with a perfect heart? and this was what she got for it, from Him who could have swept away her persecutors by a word, and lifted her by another to the height of luxury and happiness.
Poor Alice was overwhelmed. Her bodily weakness—of which Satan may always be trusted to take advantage—made her less fit to cope with him, and for a time she did not guess who it was that suggested all these wrong and miserable thoughts. She “grievously bewailed” herself, and, as people often do, nursed her distress as if it were something very dear and precious.
But God had not forgotten Alice Benden. She was not going to be lost—she, for whom Christ died. She was only to be purified, and made white, and tried. He led her to find comfort in His own Word, the richest of earthly comforters. One night Alice began to repeat to herself the forty-second Psalm. It seemed just made for her. It was the cry of a sore heart, shut in by enemies, and shut out from hope and pleasure. Was not that just her case?
“Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul? and why art thou so disquieted within me? Put thy trust in God!”
A little relieved, she turned next to the seventy-seventh Psalm. She had no Bible; nothing but what her well-stored memory gave her. Ah! what would have become of Alice Benden in those dark hours, had her memory been filled with all kinds of folly, and not with the pure, unerring Word of God? This Psalm exactly suited her.
“Will the Lord absent Himself for ever?—and will He be no more entreated? Is His mercy clean gone for ever?—and is His promise come utterly to an end for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious?—and will He shut up His loving-kindness in displeasure? And I said, It is mine infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest.”
A light suddenly flashed, clear and warm, into the weak, low, dark heart of poor lonely Alice. “It is mine infirmity!” Not God’s infirmity—not God’s forgetfulness! “No, Alice, never that,” it seemed just as if somebody said to her: “it is only your poor blind heart here in the dark, that cannot see the joy and deliverance that are coming to you—that must come to all God’s people: but He who dwells in the immortal light, and beholds the end from the beginning, knows how to come and set you free—knows when to come and save you.”
The tune changed now. Satan was driven away. The enemy whom Alice Benden had seen that day, and from whom she had suffered so sorely, she should see again no more for ever. From that hour all was joy and hope.
“I will magnify Thee, O God my King, and praise Thy name for ever and ever!”
That was the song she sang through her prison bars in the early morning of the 25th of February. The voice of joy and thanksgiving reached where the moan of pain had not been able to penetrate, to an intently listening ear a few yards from the prison. Then an answering voice of delight came to her from without.
“Alice! Alice! I have found thee!”
Alice looked up, to see her brother Roger’s head and shoulders above the paling which hid all but a strip of sky from her gaze.
“Hast thou been a-searching for me all these weeks, Roger?”
“That have I, my dear heart, ever since thou wast taken from the gaol. How may I win at thee?”
“That thou canst not, Hodge. But we may talk a moment, for my keeper, that is the bell-ringer of the minster, is now at his work there, and will not return for an half-hour well reckoned. Thou wert best come at those times only, or I fear thou shalt be taken.”
“I shall not be taken till God willeth,” said Roger. “I will come again to thee in a moment.”
He ran quickly out of the precincts, and into the first baker’s shop he saw, where he bought a small loaf of bread. Into it he pushed five fourpenny pieces, then called groats, and very commonly current. Then he fixed the loaf on the end of his staff, and so passed it through the bars to Alice. This was all he could do.
“My poor dear heart, hast thou had no company in all this time?”
“I have had Satan’s company a weary while,” she answered, “but this last night he fled away, and the Lord alone is with me.”
“God be praised!” said Roger. “And how farest thou?”
“Very ill touching the body; very well touching the soul.”
“What matter can I bring thee to thy comfort?”
“What I lack most is warmth and cleanly covering. I have no chance even to wash me, and no clothes to shift me. But thou canst bring me nought, Hodge, I thank thee, and I beseech thee, essay it not. How fares little Christie?—and be all friends well?”
“All be well, I thank the Lord, and Christie as her wont is. It shall do her a power of good to hear thou art found. Dost know when thou shalt appear before the Bishop?”
“That do I not, Hodge. It will be when God willeth, and to the end He willeth; and all that He willeth is good. I have but to endure to the end: He shall see to all the rest. Farewell, dear brother; it were best that thou shouldst not tarry.”
As Roger came within sight of Staplehurst on his return, he saw a woman walking rapidly along the road to meet him, and when he came a little nearer, he perceived that it was Tabitha. Gently urging his horse forward, they met in a few minutes. The expression of Tabitha’s face alarmed Roger greatly. She was not wont to look so moved and troubled. Grim and sarcastic, even angry, he had seen her many times; but grieved and sorrowful—this was not like Tabitha. Roger’s first fear was that she had come to give him some terrible news of Christie. Yet her opening words were not those of pain or terror.
“The Lord be thanked you were not here this day, Roger Hall!” was Tabitha’s strange greeting.
“What hath happed?” demanded Roger, stopping his horse.
“What hath happed is that Staplehurst is swept nigh clean of decent folks. Sheriffs been here—leastwise his man, Jeremy Green—and took off a good dozen of Gospellers.”
“Tom—Christie?” fell tremulously from Roger’s lips.
“Neither of them. I looked to them, and old Jeremy knows me. I heard tell of their coming, and I had matters in readiness to receive them. I reckon Jerry had an inkling of that red-hot poker and the copper of boiling water I’d prepared for his comfort; any way, he passed our house by, and at yours he did but ask if you were at home, and backed out, as pleasant as you please, when Nell made answer ‘Nay.’”
“Then whom have they taken?”
“Mine hostess of the White Hart gat the first served. Then they went after Nichol White, and Nichol Pardue.”
“Pardue!” exclaimed Roger.
“Ay, Nichol: did not touch Collet. But they took Emmet Wilson, and Fishwick, butcher, and poor Sens Bradbridge, of all simple folks.”
“And what became of her poor little maids?” asked Roger pityingly.
“Oh, Collet’s got them. I’d have fetched ’em myself if she hadn’t. They’ve not taken Jack Banks, nor Mall. Left ’em for next time, maybe.”
“Well, I am thankful they took not you, Tabitha.”
“Me? They’d have had to swallow my red-hot poker afore they took me. I count they frighted Christie a bit, fearing they’d have you; but I went to see after the child, and peaced her metely well ere I came thence.”
“I am right thankful to you, sister. Tabitha, I have found Alice.”
“You have so?—and where is she?”
Roger gave a detailed account of the circumstances.
“Seems to me they want a taste of the poker there,” said Tabitha in her usual manner. “I’ll buy a new one, so that I run not out of stock ere customers come. But I scarce think old Jeremy’ll dare come a-nigh me; it’ll be Sheriff himself, I reckon, when that piece of work’s to be done. If they come to your house, just you bid Nell set the poker in the fire, and run over for me, and you keep ’em in talk while I come. Or a good kettle of boiling water ’d do as well—I’m no wise nice which it is—or if she’d a kettle of hot pitch handy, that’s as good as anything.”
“I thank you for your counsel, Tabitha. I trust there may be no need.”
“And I the like: but you might as well have the pitch ready.”