Before the English lay-brothers could make any answer, the foul smell, which kept growing stronger, was accompanied by a terrible rumbling noise:—and then there came most violent gusts of wind, which extinguished all the lamps, cressets, torches, and candles; and then, upon the darkness of the hall, there burst a livid, ghastly, blue light, and above and below, from side to side, the hall seemed filled with streaming blue flames, and still that atrocious stench grew stronger and stronger! Abbat, monks, men-at-arms, and all, rushed out of the hall, some crying that it was the eve of the day of judgment, and some roaring that it must be the devils of Crowland come back again. Outside the hall, in the darkened corridor (and by this time there was not a single lamp left burning in any part of the house, but only the altar-lights in the church) they ran against and stumbled over other Frenchmen who were running up from the inferior offices and from the stables, for they had all and several been driven away by blue lights and foul smells; and every mother’s son of them believed that the Crowland devils had been sent to dispossess them and drive them back to Normandie. The corridor was long and straight, but as dark as pitch; some fell in their flight and rolled the one over the other, and some stood stock still and silent as stocks, save that their knees knocked together and their teeth chattered; and some ran forward howling for mercy, and confessing their sins to that hell-darkness. But, when near the end of the long dark passage, a French monk and a man-at-arms that ran the foremost of them all fell through the flooring with a hideous crash, and were heard shrieking from some unexplored regions below, that the fiends had gotten them—that the devils of Crowland were whirling them off to the bottomless pit! [The pit or fetid pool into which these two evil-doers were thrown was not bottomless, though deep; yet I wist nothing was ever more seen either of that monk or of that man-at-arms.] As these piercing shrieks were heard from below, the Normans roared in the corridor—some blaspheming and cursing the day and hour that they came to England, others praying to be forgiven, with many a Libera nos! and Salve! and others gnashing their teeth and yelling like maniacs. But some there were that made no noise at all, for they had swooned through excess of fear.
And now there came an exceeding bright light from the chasm in the floor through which the monk and the man-at-arms had fallen; but the light, though bright, was still of a ghastly blue tinge; and by that light full twenty devils, or it might be more, were seen ascending and descending to and from the flaming pit, or chasm in the floor. Some of these fiends had blubber-lips, beetle heads, humped shoulders, and bandy legs, and were hirsute[[137]] and black as soot; others of them were red and altogether shapeless; others were round and yellow; but all their visages were most irregular and frightful, and they had all long tails tipped with fire, and flashes of red, green, and yellow flames came out of the mouths of every one of them. As for hoarse throats, no voices could be hoarser and more dreadful than the voices of these lubber-fiends as they went up and down the pit, like buckets in a well, or as they roared in the dark cavities under the passage, and beneath the very spot where the Normans lay huddled. The intrusive abbat tried to say a De profundis, but the words stuck in his throat, not being very familiar with that passage.
By degrees that exceeding bright light from the chasm in the floor died away, leaving the corridor as black as Erebus. “An we could but get to the church door,” said one of the false monks, “we might be safe! Will no man try?—Is there no brave man-at-arms that will adventure along this passage and see whether we can cross that chasm and get out of it?” The men-at-arms thought that this was a reconnaissance to be more properly made by monks, who were supposed to know more about the devil and his ways than did plain soldiers: nevertheless several of them said they would adventure, if they had but their swords or their pikes with them. But they had all left their weapons in their several lodgings; and so, not one of them would budge. The darkness continued, but the voices which had been roaring below ground ceased. At last Alain of Beauvais, fortifying himself with such short prayers and Latin interjections as he could recollect, and crossing himself many score times, resolved to go along the dark passage and try whether there could be an exit from it. Slowly he went upon his hands and knees, groping and feeling the floor with his hands, and now and then rapping on the floor with his fist to essay whether it was sound. Thus this unrighteous intruder went on groping and rapping in the dark until he came close to the edge of the chasm. Then a quivering blue light shot out of the pit, and then—monstrum horrendum! a head, bigger than the heads of ten mortal men, and that seemed all fire and flame within, rose up close to the intrusive abbat’s nose, and a sharp shrill voice was heard to say in good Norman French, “Come up, my fiends, from your sombre abodes! Come up and clutch me my long while servant and slave Alain of Beauvais!” The intrusive abbat rushed back screaming, and fell swooning among the swooned. Again the long corridor was filled with that intense and intolerable blue light, and again the blubber fiends ascended and descended like buckets in a well, and again the horrible noise was heard below, and the devil that spoke the good Norman French was heard shouting, “Devil Astaroth, art thou ready? Devil Balberith, hast thou lit thy fires on the top of the waters? Devil Alocco, are thy pools all ready to receive these Norman sinners? Fiends of the fen, are your torches all prepared? Fire fiends, are ye ready with your unquenchable fires? Incubuses[[138]] and succubuses, demons, devils, and devilings all, are ye ready?” And the hoarse voices, sounding as if they came from the bowels of the earth, roared more fearfully than before; and one loud shrill voice, that sounded as if close to the mouth of the pit, said in good Norman French, “Yea, great devil of Crowland, we be all ready!”
“’Tis well,” said the other voice, “then set fire to every part of this once holy building, over which the sins of these Norman intruders have given us power! Fire it from porch to roof-tree, and if they will seek to abide here, let them perish in the flames, and be buried under the cinders and ashes.”
“If the devil had spoken Saxon,” said one of the monks, “I should have known nought of his meaning, but since he parleys in Norman, it is not I that will neglect his warning!” And rushing back into the hall where they had so lately been feasting, and bursting open one of the windows, this well-advised intruder leaped from the window into the stinking moat. As when a frighted ram is seized by the horns and dragged by the shepherd hind through the brake, all the silly flock that could not move before follow him one by one, even so did our Norman monks and men-at-arms follow the first monk through the window and into the foul moat! Such as had swooned were brought, if not to their senses, to the use of their legs and arms, by the renewal of that exceeding bright light, or by the pinches and twitches of their comrades, which they took for pinchings of the devil—roaring accordingly. But in a wondrously short space of time every one of the intruders was outside of the house, and was either sprawling in the foul moat, or wading through muck and mud towards the firm, dry causeway. There was great peril of drowning or of being suffocated in the bogs; nor were they yet free from the supernatural terrors, for ghastly blue fires were burning on the surface of sundry of the deeper pools, and there was an overpowering stench of sulphur. Not one of them doubted but that the lights were from hell; yet, truth to say, those blue flames showed them how to avoid the deep pools in which they might have been drowned, and how to find their way to the causeway; for the moon had not yet risen, and except when illuminated by these unearthly lights the fens were as dark as chaos. When they had floundered a long while in the mud and fen-bogs, they got to the firm and dry causeway which the holy Guthlacus had made for the use of better men. They were so exhausted by the fatigue, fright, and agony of mind they had undergone, that they all threw themselves flat upon the narrow road, and there lay in their soaked clothes, and shivering in the cold winds of night. They were still so near to Crowland that they could see bright lights, with nothing blue or unearthly about them, streaming from the windows of the abbey and from almost every house in the township, and could very distinctly hear the ringing of the church bells and the shouting of triumphant voices.
“The like of this hath not been seen or heard,” said Alain of Beauvais; “the serfs of Crowland are in league with the devils of Crowland! The Saxon rebels to King William have called the demons to their assistance!”
“Nothing so clear,” said one of the men-at-arms, “but let my advice be taken. The moon is rising now, therefore let us rise and follow the road that lies before us, and endeavour to get out of these infernal fens to the town of Huntingdon or to the castle at Cam-Bridge, or to some other place where there be Normans and Christians. If the men of Crowland should come after us, Saxons and slaves as they are, they may drive us from this causeway to perish in the bogs, or cut us to pieces upon the narrow road, for we have not so much as a single sword among us all!”
“We have nothing,” groaned Alain of Beauvais.
“Aye,” grunted one of his friars, “we brought little with us and assuredly we take less away with us! We be poorer than when we came and drove the English abbat out of his house with nought but his missal and breviary.”
“But we men-of-war depart much poorer than we came,” said one of the soldiers; “for each of us brought a good stout English horse with him, and arms and armour—and all these are left to the devils of Crowland; and we shall all be laughed at for being devil-beaten, though how men-at-arms can contend with demons I cannot discover. But hark! what new din is that?”