Here I, Felix the novice, and Philip the lay-brother, who had carried little Alice from the abbey unto Caversham, and who had loved the child ever since, did say "Amen! amen! So be it."
"The children," said an honest franklin who had stood by all the time of these discourses, "be surely gone with the Countess of Anjou for Oxenford; as on the road beyond the town I saw a blue-eyed boy riding before a man-at-arms, and a little girl in the arms of a waiting-woman who rode close to the countess on a piebald horse, and both the children were crying piteously."
"Then will we recover them at Oxenford," said one of the knights.
Sir Alain de Bohun, with a part of the company who had come with him, mounted for Caversham; and when Sir Alain began to ride, I could see that he rode hotly and impatiently. The rest of the knightly company we entertained in the abbey as best we could, and lodged them for that night, the good franklins having brought us in some clean straw and rushes for that purpose. The commoner sort slept in the open air on the Falbury, with their weapons by their sides.
But before the troublous day was finished, other dismal tidings and sights of woe were brought to our house. John Appold and Ralph Wain, two franklins whilome of good substance, who farmed some of our outstanding abbey lands beyond Pangbourne, came to tell us that their houses had been burned, their granaries emptied, and the plough-hinds and shepherds and all the serfs driven away by Matilda's people, who had chained them together by their iron neck-collars, and had goaded them before them like cattle with the points of their lances. And before these sad tales were well ended, Will Shakeshaft, a faithful steward who dwelt in a house our lord abbat had at Purley, arrived on a maimed horse, and with a ghastly cut across his face, to let us know that violence had been done to his wife, and that that fair house had been burned also. A little later there came three of our poor serfs howling so that it was dreadful to hear, and holding in the air their red and still bleeding stumps. They had been amputated and then liberated, in order that they might go forth and show all the people what they had to expect if they opposed or so much as forbore to aid and join the empress-queen. As the night became dark, we could trace the march of the countess by a line of fire and smoke. Such were the things which drove the poor people of England into impiety and blasphemy, making them say that Christ and the saints had fallen asleep! And these things lasted in the land for fifteen more years.
V.
When baptized Christian men did steal the children of other Christian men, yea, and torture and slay them, no marvel was it that the unconverted Israelites, who had been allowed to come into the land in great numbers since the Norman conquest, should do deeds of the like sort. So it was, that in King Stephen's reign the rich Jews of Norwich did buy a Christian child from its poor parents a little before Easter, and on the Long Friday, when the church was mourning for the crucifixion of our Lord, they tortured him after the same manner as our Lord was tortured, and did nail him on a rood in mockery of our Saviour; and afterwards buried him. These sacrilegious and cruel Jews thought that their horrible crime would be concealed, but it was revealed from above, and the people of Norwich smote the Jews and tortured them as they merited; and the Lord showed that the Christian child was a holy martyr: and the monks took him and buried him with all honour and reverence in Norwich Minster; and he is called Saint William, and through our Lord wonderful miracles are wrought at his tomb even in our own day, and his festival is kept with becoming solemnity on the twenty-fifth of the kalends of March.
Sad and sinful was it for Christian parents to sell their children to Jew, or even to Gentile. The evil practice had once been common in England, and in the port of Bristowe children were once sold in great numbers to be carried into Ireland and elsewhere; but the church had put down the unnatural traffic, and when King Stephen came to the throne no freeman would have sold his child. But want and hunger now severed the natural tie, and starving parents sold their starving children rather than see them die before their eyes and they unable to help them. Yea, frantic mothers would give their infants from their dried-up breasts to any strangers that would promise to nourish them. Horresco repetens! I do shudder in the telling of it, but so it was. Fair English children were again sold to traffickers on the western coast, who carried them into Ireland, and in such numbers that the slave-market of the Irishry was all over-stocked with them. In the happy and plentiful days which now be in the land such things are hard to believe; but I, as a novice, did often see them with mine own eyes, and the causes that led thereunto. Yea, have I seen the poor people of England roaming by the wayside and eating garbage which scarcely the fox or the foul birds of the air would touch, rambling in the woods and fields in search of roots and berries, ay, grazing on the bank-side like cattle, or that great sinner Nebuchadnezzar; for flocks and herds were swept away, and slaughtered, and wasted by the armed bands that ever ranged the country, or were kept penned up within the castles of the strong men—those pestilent barons and knights that were now for Matilda and now for Stephen, and always for plunder and all crime, living and fattening upon great and bloody thievings—magna et sanguineolentia latrocinia: and the fields could not be cultivated because of the continual passing and repassing, and burning, and fighting, and slaying of these armed hosts and bands of robbers, who did worse than the heathen had ever done; for after a time they spared neither church nor churchyard, neither a bishop's land nor an abbat's land, and not more the lands of a priest than the fields of a franklin, but plundered both monks and clerks! And so it came to pass that nearly every man that could, robbed another, and carried away his wife or daughter, and did with her what he list. If two men or three came riding to a town, all the township fled, concluding them to be robbers. Some of our bishops and learned men continually did excommunicate them and curse them; but the effect thereof was nought, for they were one and all accursed, and forsworn, and abandoned; and grieves me to say that too many bishops and churchmen were men of violent and unsteady councils and castle-builders themselves, waging war like the lay lords, and being as void as they of steadiness and loyalty, and mercy for the people. Verily I myself have seen prelates clad in armour and mounted on war-horses, even as at the time of the Conquest, and in that guise directing the siege or the attack, or drawing lots with the rest for the booty. The strong men constantly laid gilds on the towns, and called it by a Norman name which signifyeth torture; and when the poor townfolk had no more to give, then they plundered and burned the towns; so that thou mightest go a whole day's journey and never behold a man sitting in a town or see a field that was tilled. To till the ground was as useless as to plough the sea, for no man could hope to reap that which he sowed. Thus the earth bare little or no corn; and bread became of a fearful dear price; and flesh, and cheese, and butter were there none for the poor. Ay, franklins who had been rich men, and who had kept good house and been bountiful to the poor and to mother church, were seen begging alms on the road. Many of the poorest died of hunger on a soil which God had blessed with fertility, but which sinful men had turned into a wilderness; and many, going distraught, threw themselves into the rivers, or hanged themselves in the woods. This was greater woe than England had witnessed during the long wars of the Norman conquest; and it was in this abyss of misery that fathers and mothers sold their children.
On the morning after his going to Caversham Sir Alain de Bohun returned unto our house with the knights who had gone with him; and before it was time to begin the service of tertia in the church, he and all the company, as well foot as horse, marched away to the north-west. They intended for Oxenford, but did not take the direct road; for they had learned from scouts that Matilda's party had been strengthened by some bands from the eastward, and Sir Alain and his friends hoped to get an increase of strength in the westward before they turned round upon the countess. But while the partisans of King Stephen were marching to the westward and gaining great strength on the borders of Wiltshire, the Countess of Anjou suddenly decamped from Oxenford and began a march for Winchester, for she had at length conceived suspicion and alarm at the conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, the king's brother, and our lord the pope's legate. Intending to pass through Berkshire into Hampshire and unto Winchester, she took her course by Cumnor, Abingdon, and Wallingford. The news of her approach was a death-blow to our good abbat. He had been for some time past declining. He could not away with the thought of Matilda's evil doings unto our house. Being a man formerly addicted to hospitality, good company, cheerful conversation, music, and innocent mirth, he was observed to forsake all this with much melancholy and pensiveness, and so to droop and pine away; but yet was it the news of the countess's coming that gave the finishing stroke. Eheu! and Miserrimus! A better monk or a nobler lord abbat was never slain by princely violence and the wickedness of excommunicate men. He was at Sir Alain de Bohun's castle, and I and Philip the lay-brother were in attendance upon him when our scouts brought the intelligence that Matilda was at Abingdon with the heads of her columns pointing along the road towards Reading. The good, kind-hearted man had gone to Caversham in order to console the Ladie Alfgiva, whom he found, like Rachel, mourning for her children, yet not mourning like one that would not be comforted. But comfortless and sad was the face of our lord abbat when he gave his niece the parting blessing, and warned her to look well to her castle, and bade the warder to keep close the gates, and not admit so much as a strange dog within the walls. There had been a slow fever in his veins ever since the bad visit of the Angevin countess, and now his limbs shook and his eyes seemed to swim in his head, and he had much ado to mount the rough upland horse which had been procured for him in lieu of his gentle-paced palfrey. "Felix, my boy," said he unto me as we descended the slopes of Caversham towards the river, "ride close to my bridle-hand, for I am faint, and a heavy sickness is upon my heart." As he rode across the meads, the breeze, which blew freshly and coolly from the broad river, did somewhat revive him; but anon he complained of the rough motion of his steed, and gently lamented the loss of his ambling grey, which Matilda had stolen from him so foully. When near to the great gate of the abbey he turned round and looked towards the river and the Caversham hills that were shining in the setting sun; and then, as he went under the archway, I saw tears drop from his eyes, and I heard him mutter to himself, "'Tis a right beauteous sight, but I shall see it no more." And that night, and before the middle watches thereof, praying for the community of Reading and all England besides, and imploring the saints to protect the house at Caversham and the two sweet children, he turned his face to the wall and died, to the unspeakable grief of every honest member of the house. He left this troubled world in such good repute as a virtuous and holy man, that assuredly he merited beatification, if not the higher glories of canonization.—In Domino moritur.