“It is not for thee, false monk! to set the limits to my daring, when my conscience sanctions that which I am doing, and when the cause of my country urges it to be done,” said Hereward.
“I will excommunicate thee as a sacrilegious robber,” said the prior.
“Archbishop Stigand, the true primate of England, will excommunicate thee as a traitor to his country and traitor to his church,” quoth the Lord of Brunn. “But I have little time to waste in words. Come, my merry men, be stirring! pack up all the plate, and all the hangings, and everything that we can carry with us.”
“They shall not have the keys,” said the chamberlain or treasurer of the house.
“We have them already,” quoth Elfric, who had been led to the chamberlain’s cell by one of the true Saxon monks. “We have the keys already, and so have we the engraven seals of silver gilt. The sigillum of so good a man as Abbat Brand shall never be used by so bad a man as Torauld. See! here it is, my lord!” And so saying Elfric handed the good massive seal to his master, who kissed it as though it had been a relic, and then put it in his bosom.
“This is sacrilege! This is the worst of thefts,” roared the prior. “This is done in the teeth of the law, and in outrage of the gospel. Sinful young man, knowest thou not the old Saxon law which saith, Sevenfold are the gifts of the Holy Spirit to the church, and seven are the degrees of ecclesiastical states and holy orders, and seven times should God’s servants praise God daily in church, and it is very rightly incumbent on all God’s friends that they love and venerate God’s church, and in grith and frith[[177]] hold God’s servants; and let him who injures them, by word or work, earnestly make reparation with a sevenfold bot, if he will merit God’s mercy, because holiness, and orders, and God’s hallowed houses, are, for awe of God, ever to be earnestly venerated?”
“I know that good Saxon law,” said Hereward, “and bow my head in reverence to it! I earnestly venerate this hallowed house and all houses that be hallowed, and all the shrines that belong to them. I do not rob, but only remove to safe keeping what others would rob; and, for any mischief that may be done to the goods of this house by such removal, I will myself make bot, not seven but seventy-fold, whenever England shall be free, and Harold restored to his throne.”
“Dreams!” said the prior—“thy King Harold lies six feet deep in Waltham clay!”
“Unmannered priest, thou liest in thy throat for saying so! King Harold is alive, is safe in some foreign land, and at his own good time will be back to claim his own. But come he back or come he not back, the Normans shall not have the spoil of this house. They have spoiled too many hallowed houses already! Look at Saint Alban’s! look at Saint Edmund’s-bury! and at York and Durham and Lindisfarn, and all other places, and tell me how they have respected Saxon saints and the property consecrate of our monasteries!”
“Leave that to us,” said the chamberlain.