"He did not speak."
"Well," said the chaplain, "we will say a mass for him tomorrow, to quiet his disturbed spirit, and he will, perhaps, vex us no more, poor lad."
Etienne and Louis were very anxious to hear all the details of Pierre's ghostly encounter, and questioned him very closely. The former vowed he would have challenged the spectre; he did not fear Wilfred living, nor would he fear him dead.
The whole conversation at the castle hearth that night was about ghosts, demons, witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, and such-like; and about two hours before midnight our young Normans went to bed pleasantly terrified.
It was All Saints' Day, the day appointed for the consecration of the new Priory of St. Deny's. The monks from Coutances had arrived. The bishop of that diocese, already known to our readers, had reached Aescendune to perform the ceremony, by permission of the Bishop of Worcester, the sainted Wulfstan, in whose jurisdiction the priory lay; and there was a grand gathering of Norman barons and their retainers.
Strange it was that the same Epistle and Gospel which still serve in the English Prayer Book for that day should have been read in the ears of the Norman warriors--that they should have heard the Beatitudes in the Gospel:
"Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God:
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy:"
--and then gone forth to work out their own righteousness in the manner peculiar to their nation. Well, perhaps there are not wanting similar examples of inconsistency in the nineteenth century.
So, with all the pomp of ecclesiastical ceremony, with gorgeous vestments, lighted tapers, and clouds of incense, the new building was dedicated to God.
And then, while the preparations for the evening banquet in the hall were being made by the menials of the kitchen, the guests had a grand tournament on the open mead in front of the castle, where they did not study how to perform works of mercy.