“It is all I ask: now depart ere they are stirring. It wants about three hours to dawn, the moon shines, the snow has ceased, so that thou wilt reach Michelham in time for early mass. I will take thee to thine horses.”
She led them forth; the horses were quietly saddled and bridled. No watch was kept; who could dread a foe at such a time and season? She opened the gateway in an outer defence of osier work and ditch which encompassed the little settlement.
One maternal kiss—it was the last.
And the three, earl, squire, and boy, went forth into the night, the boy riding behind the squire.
Chapter [2]: Michelham Priory.
At the southern verge of the mighty forest called the Andredsweald, or Anderida Sylva, Gilbert d’Aquila, last of that name, founded the Priory of Michelham for the good of his soul.
The forest in question was of vast extent, and stretched across Sussex from Kent to Southampton Water; dense, impervious save where a few roads, following mainly the routes traced by the Romans, penetrated its recesses; the haunts of wild beasts and wilder men. It was not until many generations had passed away that this tract of land, whereon stand now so many pretty Sussex villages, was even inhabitable: like the modern forests of America, it was cleared by degrees as monasteries were built, each to become a centre of civilisation.
For, as it has been well remarked, without the influence of the Church there would have been in the land but two classes—beasts of burden and beasts of prey—an enslaved serfdom, a ferocious aristocracy.
And such an outpost of civilisation was the Priory of Michelham, on the verge of the debatable land where Saxon outlaws and Norman lords struggled for the mastery.
On the southern border of this sombre forest, close to his Park of Pevensey, Gilbert d’Aquila, as almost the last act of his race in England {[4]}, built this Priory of Michelham upon an island, which, as we have told in a previous tale, had been the scene of a most sanguinary contest, and sad domestic tragedy, during the troubled times of the Norman Conquest; the eastern embankment, which enclosed the Park of Pevensey and kept in the beasts of the chase for the use of Norman hunters, was close at hand.