As to the daring, Thurstan was right: but as to the will, he was wrong; for the prior and the chamberlain, and some others, would have accused Hereward if they had only had courage enough so to do.
The abbat next told the prior and all the members of the house that were present, that he had taken no important step without the advice and vote of the chapter; that of late, in many cases, the vote in chapter had been in direct opposition to his own wishes and declared feelings; and that whether it were the taking of the shrine-money, or the bargaining with the Israelites, or the calling back of the Danes (that source of so much woe), or the giving up of the Peterborough treasure, he had been out-voted by the majority, at the head of which had always stood the prior and the chamberlain. If honest-hearted Thurstan had called for a vote of the brotherhood at this moment it would have gone for him, and the prior and his coadjutors would have been confounded; if he had ceased speaking altogether, and had dismissed the assembly, some mischief might have been avoided or delayed; but unluckily he went on to speak about the obligation the house lay under of feeding and supporting the Saxon lords and warriors in the Camp of Refuge, about his general administration of the revenues of the abbey, and about other matters which had nothing to do with the Salernitan or the foul charges brought against him; and, saying that these were things to be discussed in a chapter of the whole house, and that if it could be proved that in any of these things he had wilfully done amiss or acted upon a selfish motive, he would readily resign mitre and crozier and return to the lowliest condition of a cloister-monk, he quitted the hall, beckoning Girolamo to follow him, and leaving the monks together to be wrought upon by the craft and malice and treachery of the prior and the chamberlain, who had sold their souls not to one devil but to two—the demon of lucre and the demon of ambition and pride. As soon as he was out of the hall, the prior put his evil face under the cowl of the chamberlain, and whispered, “Brother, ’t was our good fortune that put the word in his mouth! We will soon call a chapter and depose him from his authority. Our task will then be easy; but as long as he is abbat many timid minds will fear him.”
“But,” whispered the chamberlain in return, “we must first of all shake the faith which too many here present have put in his words, and in the protestations of Girolamo.”
“The logic of hunger will aid us,” said the prior, “and so will the promptings of fear: there is not a measure of wheat in Ely, and the report hath been well spread that the Normans intend to begin their attack very soon, and to put every monk to the sword that shall not have previously submitted. To-morrow Hereward goes upon some desperate expedition to try to get us corn and wine: he cannot, and will not succeed; and, while he is absent, we can report of him and his expedition as we list.”
“’Tis well imagined,” said the chamberlain in another whisper; “but we must undo the effect of that devil Girolamo’s speech, and prepare the minds of the monks for the work we would have them do.”
While the prior and the chamberlain were thus whispering together, divers of the old monks, who loved not their faction and who had grown weary of this long sitting, quitted the hall without leaving the mantle of their wisdom and experience behind them; and after their departure the prior and his faction so perplexed the dull wits of the honester part of the community, that they again began to believe that the Salernitan was a necromancer and the abbat his fautor, that there was no hope of getting corn or wine unless they submitted to Duke William, and that if they did not submit they would all be murthered by the Normans.
They also spoke, and at great length, of the privations they had undergone ever since the beginning of the war.
“Yea! how long and how manifold have been our sufferings,” said the sub-sacrist. “When this accursed Camp first began to be formed, was not our house entirely filled with guests? Did they not seize upon our hall, nay, even upon our kitchen? And were not we of the convent obliged to take our meals in the dormitory, as well on flesh days as on fish-days? Were not all open spaces in the monastery crowded, so that the abbey looked more like a fair than a house of religion? Was not the grass-plot of the cloisters so trampled down by the feet of profane fighting-men that no vestige of green was to be seen upon it? And though most of these guests be now gone into the Camp, because there is little left here for them to devour, do not the cellars, the store-houses, the kitchen, and every part of the house speak of their having been here, and of the poverty and disorder in which they have left us?”
“Aye,” said the refectorarius, “wonderful hath been the waste! The revenue of the abbat, the common property of the house, and the incomings allotted to the several officials to enable them to bear the charges and do the duties of their offices, have all been anticipated and consumed! And let our improvident Abbat tell me how I am to find that which I am bound to provide for the whole convent to wit, pots, noggins, cups, table-cloths, mats, basons, double-cloths, candlesticks, towels, plates, saltcellars, silver plates wherewith to mend the cups that be broken, and the like; besides furnishing three times in the year, to wit, at All Saints, Christmas, and Easter, five burthens of straw to put under the feet of the monks in the refectory, and five burthens of rushes and hay wherewith to strew the hall?”
“And I,” quoth the cellarius, “how am I to be father unto the whole convent inasmuch as meat and drink be concerned, when I have not a penny left to spend in township or market? By the rules of the Order, Statutis Ordinis, when any monk at table asks me for bread or for beer, in reason, I am to give it him; but how am I to give without the wherewithal?”