“Stop the shaveling’s tongue, but shed no blood here,” cried Ivo; “seize him, seize them all, and bring them into the refectory!”—and so saying the chief rushed out of the chapel into the hall. It was an unequal match—thirty-nine men-at-arms against a few monks and boys and waiting men; yet before the superior could be dragged from the high altar, and conveyed with all his community into the hall, several of the Normans were made to measure their length on the chapel floor (they could not wrestle like our true Saxons), and some of them were so squeezed within their mail sleeves and gorgets[[40]] by the grip of Saxon hands, that they bore away the marks and smarts that lasted them many a day. It was for this that one of them cut the weazen[[41]] of the sturdy old cook as soon as he got him outside the chapel door, and that another of them cut off the ears of the equally stout cellarer.
At last they were all conveyed, bound with their cords or girdles, into the hall. The Taille-Bois, with his naked sword in his hand, and with a man-at-arms on either side of him, sat at the top of the hall in the superior’s chair of state; and the superior and the rest of the brotherhood were brought before him like criminals.
“Brother to the devil,” said Ivo, “what was meant by thy collecting of armed men—rebel and traitor serfs that shall rue the deed!—thy sounding of horns on the house-top; thy fighting monks that have killed one of my best men-at-arms; thy long delay in opening thy doors to those who knocked at them in the name of King William; thy outrages in the chapel, and all thy other iniquities which I have so oft-times pardoned at the prayer of the Lady Lucia? Speak, friar, and tell me why I should not hang thee over thine own gateway as a terror and an example to all the other Saxon monks in this country, who are all in their hearts enemies and traitors to the good king that God and victory have put over this land!”
Had it not been that Father Adhelm was out of breath, from his wrestling in the Chapel, I wist he never would have allowed Ivo Taille-Bois to speak so long without interruption. But by the time the Norman paused, the superior had partly recovered his breath; and he did not keep the Norman waiting for his answer.
“Son of the fire everlasting,” cried Adhelm, “it is for me to ask what meanest thou by thy transgressions, past and present? Why hast thou from thy first coming among us never ceased from troubling me and these other servants of the saints, the brothers of this poor cell? Why hast thou seized upon and emptied our granaries and our cellars (more the possessions of the saints and of the poor than our possessions)? Why hast thou carried off the best of our cattle? Why hast thou and thy people lamed our horses and our oxen, and killed our sheep and poultry? Why hast thou caused to be assailed on the roads, and beaten with staves and swords, the lay-brothers and servants of this house? Why didst thou come at the dead of night like a chief of robbers with thy men-at-arms and cut-throats to break in upon us and to wound and slay the servants of the Lord, who have gotten thy king’s peace, and letters of protection from the Archbishop Lanfranc?[[42]] Oh, Ivo Taille-Bois! tell me why thou shouldst not be overtaken by the vengeance of man’s law in this world, and by eternal perdition in the next?”
Ivo was not naturally a man of many words; and thinking it best to cut the discussion short, he grinned a grim grin, and said in a calm and business-like tone of voice, “Saxon! we did not conquer thy country to leave Saxons possessed of its best fruits. This house and these wide domains are much too good for thee and thine: I want them, and long have wanted them, to bestow upon others. Wot ye not that I have beyond the sea one brother and three cousins that have shaved their crowns and taken to thy calling—that in Normandie, Anjou, and Maine there are many of my kindred and friends who wear hoods and look to me for provision and establishment in this land of ignorance and heresy, where none of your home-dwelling Saxon monks know how to make the tonsure[[43]] in the right shape?”
“Woe to the land, and woe to the good Christian people of it!” said the superior and several of his monks; “it is then to be with us as with the brotherhood of the great and holy abbey of St. Albans! We are to be driven forth empty-handed and brokenhearted, and our places are to be supplied by rapacious foreigners who speak not and understand not the tongue of the English people! Ah woe! was it for this that Saxon saints and martyrs died and bequeathed their bones to our keeping and their miracles to our superintendence; that Saxon kings and queens descended from their thrones to live among us, and die among us, and enrich us, so that we might give a beauty to holiness, a pomp and glory to the worship of heaven, and ample alms, and still more ample employment to the poor? Was it for this the great and good men of our race, our thanes and our earls, bequeathed lands and money to us? Was it to fatten herds of alien monks, who follow in the bloody track of conquest and devastation, and come among us with swords and staves, and clad in mail even like your men-at-arms, that we and our predecessors in this cell have laboured without intermission to drain these bogs and fens, to make roads for the foot of man through this miry wilderness, to cut broad channels to carry off the waste waters to the great deep, to turn quagmires into bounteous corn fields, and meres into green pastures?”[[44]]
While the Saxon monks thus delivered themselves, Ivo and his Normans (or such of them as could understand what was said) ofttimes interrupted them, and spoke in this wise—“King William hath the sanction of his holiness the Pope for all that he hath done or doth. Lanfranc loveth not Saxon priests and monks, and Saxon priests and monks love not the king nor any of the Normans, but are ever privately preaching and prating about Harold and Edgar Etheling, and putting evil designs into the heads of the people. The Saxon saints are no saints: who ever heard their names beyond sea? Their half-pagan kings and nobles have heaped wealth here and elsewhere that generous Norman knights and better bred Norman monks[[45]] might have the enjoyment of it. The nest is too good for these foul birds: we have better birds to put into it. Let us then turn these Englishers out of doors.”
The last evil deed was speedily done, and superior, monks, novices, lay-brothers, were all thrust out of the gateway, and driven across the bridge. If the well-directed arrow of Elfric had slain one man-at-arms and the folk of Spalding town had slightly wounded two or three others, the Normans had killed Father Cedric, Hubert the porter, and the man that assisted him, had killed the cook, and cut off the ears of the cellarer. The conquerors therefore sought to shed no more blood, and the Taille-Bois was satisfied when he saw the brotherhood dispossessed and turned out upon the wide world with nothing they could call their own, except the sandals on their feet, and the torn clothes on their backs, and two or three church books. When a little beyond the moat they all shook the dust from their feet against the sons of the everlasting fire; and the superior, leisurely and in a low tone of voice, finished the malediction which he had begun in the chapel against Ivo Taille-Bois. This being over, Father Adhelm counted his little flock and said, “But oh, my children, where is the good Cedric?”
“Cedric was killed on the house-top, and lies dead in the moat,” said one of the lay-brothers who had learned his fate when the rest of the community were ignorant of it.