A Legend of Reading Abbey

by Charles MacFarlane

So the Plantagenet departed and went unto Gloucester and Bridgenorth with his great battalia and engines of war, and the lord abbat and I, Father Felix, went with Sir Alain de Bohun to perambulate and perlustrate the country of Barkshire, bearing with us the royal mandate to all heads of boroughs and townships and all good men to assist in rooting out the foul donjons which disfigured the fair country like blots of ink let fall upon a pure skin of parchment. Expeditive and very complete was the work we made; for even as at Speen the country people of their own free will came flocking to us with their pickaxes and mattocks on their shoulders; and so soon as a castle was levelled, our lord abbat, in pontificalibus, did sprinkle holy water upon the spot to drive away the evil spirits that had so long reigned there; and did, in the tongue of the people, as well as in Latin, put up a prayer that such wickednesses might not be again known in the land. Divers strange things and many recondite holes and corners, and most secret and undiscoverable chambers, were brought to light in the course of these demolishings; but it was not until we broke down and took to pieces a castle near Shrivenham, on the confines of Barks, an outlying and little known place, that we laid open to the light of day a very tragic spectacle, which was in itself a conclusion to a part of this my narration. Upon our coming to it, this castellum, like all the rest, was deserted, the draw-bridge being down, and the portcullis and all other gates removed by the serfs of the neighbouring manors, who had made themselves good winter fires of the wood thereof. Nay, some poor houseless men had for a season dwelt within the keep, and penned their swine in the courtyard; but they had been terrified thence by unaccountable and horrible noises at midnight; and these men and their neighbours declared that it was the most accursed place in all the country. It was a wonderful thing to see how fast those walls toppled down, and how soon the deep moat was filled up. When the thick southern wall of the square keep was all but levelled, Sir Alain de Bohun's people came suddenly upon a secret chamber which had been contrived with much art and cunning within the said wall. The men reached it by demolishing the masonry above, but the access to it had been through a crooked passage which mounted from a cell underground, and then through a low narrow doorway, the door of which contained more iron than oak, and closed inward with certain hidden springs, the secret whereof was not to be apprehended by any of us until the door was knocked down and taken to pieces. Within this dark and narrow chamber was revealed a great heap of gold and silver, being well nigh as much as we had found at Speen; and, prone upon this heap, with the face buried among the gold and silver pieces, and with the arms stretched out as though he had died in the act of clutching the heap, was seen the body of a knight in black mail. At the first glance Sir Alain's people and the serfs that were helping them cried out joyously, "Gold! gold!" but then they took the knight in his armour for some scaled dragon or demon that was guarding the treasure, and they ran away, crying "Diabolus! It is the devil!"

As it especially concerned monks to deal with the great dragon, and lay evil spirits, Abbat Reginald and I, Father Felix, with an acolyte, who was but of tender age, and truth to say, sorely afeared, hastened with Sir Alain to that pit within the wall.

"By the blessed rood!" said the Lord of Caversham, as he looked down into the hollow space—"That is no living devil, but the dead body of Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe! I know him by that black mail of Milan, and by the rare hilt of that sword, which I did give him when we were sworn friends and brothers."

"This is wonderful, and I see the finger of Heaven in it," said our abbat, crossing himself: and we all crossed ourselves for the amazement and horror that was upon us. The meaner sort, who had fled from the dead knight, now bethought themselves of the glittering gold, and came back to the edge of that narrow pit; and when we, the monks, had thrown some holy water therein, and caused our acolyte to hold the cross over the gap, two of Sir Alain's men-at-arms descended, and re-ascending, brought forth the body and laid it at our feet upon its back, and with its face turned towards the heavens. Jesu Maria! but it was a ghostly sight! From the little air that had been in that narrow cell, and from the great siccity or dryness of the place, betwixt stones, flint, and mortar, the body had not wasted away, or undergone the rapid corruption of the damp grave; and albeit the face was all shrivelled and shrunk, it was not hard to trace some of the lineaments of the unhappy Sir Ingelric. Within the cavity of the mouth were pieces of coined gold, as tho' he had set his famishing teeth in them; and within his clenched hands, clenched by the last agony and convulsion of death, were pieces of gold and silver. On the brow was the well-known mark of a wound which that unhappy knight had gotten in his early days in fighting for King Stephen; the Agnus Dei, and the little cross at the breast, were those of Sir Ingelric, and were marked with his name; and the blade of the sword bore the conjoined names of Sir Ingelric and Sir Alain. Having noted and pointed out all these things, Abbat Reginald, after another and more copious aspersion of the blessed water, which is holier than the stream which now floweth in Jordan, raised his right hand and said, "My children, there is a dread lesson and example in that which lieth before us! Crooked courses ever lead to evil ends, albeit not always in this nether world. But here is one that hath reaped upon earth the fruit of his crimes, and that hath perished by the demon that first led him astray—aye, perished upon a heap of gold and silver, and of famine, the cruellest of deaths, and in a miser's hole—a robber's hiding-place—unpitied, unheeded, unconfessed, with the fiend mocking him, and bidding him eat his gold, and with the interdict of holy mother church and the curses of ruined men pressing upon his sinful soul. And was it for this, oh Sir Ingelric, that thou didst soil thy faith, and betray thy king and friends, and waste the fair land of thy birth, and rack and torture the poor? Take hence the excommunicate body and bury it deep in unconsecrated earth; but remember, oh my children, all that which ye have this day seen!"

The gold and silver we removed and put into strong coffers, in order that we might use them with the same justice and regard to the poor that we had used with the treasure found in Sir Ingelric's own castle at Speen.

When we came to make inquiries among the people of those parts, and to put their several reports together, we made a good key to the awful enigma and mystery of Sir Ingelric's death. That castle by Shrivenham had been made by one of the very worst of the castle-building robbers, who had never raised any standard but his own over his donjon keep. In the autumnal season of the year preceding that in which we came to destroy the place, and at the time when the joint orders of King Stephen and Henry Plantagenet were sent forth against the castle-holders, there suddenly appeared at Shrivenham a band that came from the westward, and that were headed by a knight in black mail, and with a black plume to his casque; and by some of those reaches of treachery which were common among these evil doers, the new-comers got possession of this castellum, and made a slaughter of the builder of it, and of the men that were true to him. But the new comers had not been a day in possession of the castle when intelligence was brought them by a scout that a force of King Stephen, which had tracked them from the westward, was approaching Shrivenham; and thereupon, and for that the castle was too unfurnished with victual to withstand any beleaguer, the strangers fled from it more suddenly than they had come to it. As the vicinage was almost deserted, and as the few people fled and hid themselves, the black band had no communications with them during their brief stay; but two poor serfs who had watched their departure had described it as being full of panic, terror, and of a dread of other things besides that of the close approach of the king's force (which force never came at all); for they had heard the band bewailing that they had no longer a leader, that their chief had disappeared in the castellum, and that the devil must have carried him off bodily: and the serfs did well mark that the knight in the black mail was not among them, nor at their head, as they had seen him at their first coming. And as Sir Alain's people, in finishing their good work at the castellum, threw open the subterrain winding passage, of which mention hath been made, they found the body of an old man with a bundle of great keys at his girdle, and a long dagger sticking in his left side; and his head lay close to the strong door of the treasure chamber, and between the body and the door were picked up a strong bag and part of a long extinguished torch.

"By Saint Lucia, who presideth over man's blessed organ of sight and the glorious light of day," quoth our abbat; "by sweet Saint Lucia, I do see daylight through that dark passage. The bait of that gold drew Sir Ingelric hither, to be taken as in a trap. He was eager to have the first hanselling and most precious bits of the treasure, or mayhap to carry off the whole, or conceal it for his own use, counting upon more time than heaven allowed him. That old unshriven traitor was, doubtless, one of the men of the castle-builder, that betrayed their master, and him Sir Ingelric slew so soon as he had led him to the chamber and opened the door, with the intent that he should not divulge unto others the secret of the hiding place. Peradventure, the old man in his death-struggles dashed out the light and pulled to the open door; or Sir Ingelric, being left in darkness, and uninformed of the fastenings, did in his great haste kick the door and so cause it to fly to, and shut for ever upon him."

We did all think that the riddle was well read by Abbat Reginald, and that this was a natural conclusion to the other and better known incidents of Sir Ingelric's dark story.

By the time we had finished with the wicked castles of Barkshire, our great and ever victorious King Henry had finished with that perverse man Hugh de Mortimer; and as we came to our house at Pangbourne on our way back to Reading, we there met the young Lord of Caversham, Sir Arthur de Bohun, who had been dismissed to his home by the king, and not without some further proof of the royal friendship, for, as it was ever in his nature to do, Sir Arthur had done manfully in the king's sieges and other emprises. It was a happy meeting to all of us, and there was no longer any public calamity to cloud or reproach our private happiness. The donjons were all down, or in good keeping; and, from end to end and in all its breadth England was at peace, and none of the baronage were so daring as to resist the king and the law. Dulce mihi nomen pacis!—ever sweet unto me was the name of peace, and now we had both the name and the substance of it. It was therefore resolved at Pangbourne that the marriage of Sir Arthur and the Lady Alice should be celebrated on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, which was now near at hand.

Upon coming to Caversham Sir Alain de Bohun hung his shield upon the wall, intending to go forth to no more wars. Then he put into the hands of the gentle Alice the king's charter which conferred upon her the domains of her mother, telling her, in his jocose way, that as she had now so goodly an inheritance she might be minded to quit the humble house and poor people at Caversham, and get her to court to match with some great earl. And at this that fairest of maidens placed the king's charter in the hands of Sir Arthur, and with a blushing cheek and without words spoken, went out of the hall. Sir Arthur did afterwards inform her, in the gentlest manner, of the sure death of Sir Ingelric many months agone; and, albeit he had been so unnatural a father, Alice shed many tears, and made a vow to give money to the church and poor, that his sinful soul might be prayed for. The dreadful manner of Sir Ingelric's death was carefully concealed from the young bride, and hath never been fully made known unto her. She was united to Sir Arthur in our abbey church, on the happiest festival of St. Michael that our house had ever known, for the season was mild and beautiful, the harvest had been abundant, we had gotten in all our crops without hindrance, our granaries were filled with corn and our hearts with joy; and as all of us, from the lord abbat down to the obscurest lay brother, had a surpassing affection as well for the gentle bride as for her noble mate, who had in a manner been our son and pupil, and an old reverence and love for Sir Alain and his ladie, we could not but rejoice at the great joy we saw in them. But all good people, gentle or simple, bond or free, did jubilate on this happy day; and when the bride and bridegroom returned homeward, the procession which followed them, shouting and singing, and calling down blessings upon their young heads, was so long as to run in an unbroken line from the midst of the King's mead to the end of Caversham-bridge; for our good vassals of Reading town had all put on their holiday clothes and shut up their houses, and all the people of Caversham were afoot, and Tilehurst, and Sulham, and Charlton, and Purley, and Sunning, and Speen, and Pangbourne, and every other township and village for miles round-about had poured out their inhabitants; and not a franklin or serf, not a man, woman, or child among them all, but was feasted either by Sir Alain or Sir Arthur, or by us the monks of Reading. Methinks the sun never rose and set upon so beautiful a day! The air and the earth rejoiced, and the flowing waters; the full Thamesis and our own quick and resonant Kennet made music and thanksgiving together; and seemed it to me that I had never so loved the country of my birth, and the fair scenes in which my life had been past from infancy to ripe manhood; and yet had I ever loved that fair country above all that mine eyes had seen in much travelling. Natale solum dulcedine cunctos mulcet. Oh native soil, thou softenest man's heart, and fillest it with love of thee!