But the prior could not or would not then speak.
“Hola!” cried the abbat. “Is mine authority gone from me? Is the power I hold from Heaven, and from the sainted Confessor,[[233]] Rex venerandus, and by the one-voiced vote of this house, already usurped? Is my call to be disobeyed? Shall this false monk insult me before the brotherhood by refusing to answer me? I appeal to all the monks in chapter assembled.”
Several of the monks said that the prior was bound to answer the question which the abbat had put to him; but the chamberlain stood forward and said with an insolent tone, that in a chapter like the present every monk might speak or be silent as he thought best; that the question was irrelevant; and that, moreover, Brother Thurstan (mark ye, he called him frater, and not dominus or abbat!) had put the said question in a loud, angry, and unmannerly voice; and was, as he was but too apt to be, in a very fierce and ungodly passion of rage.
“Oh chamberlain!” cried the abbat, “thou art in the complot against me and thy country and the patrimony of Saint Etheldreda, and I have long thought it, and....” “And I,” said the chamberlain, audaciously interrupting the Lord Abbat while he was speaking, “And I have long thought that thou hast been leading this house into perdition, and that thou art not fit to be the head of it.”
A few of the cloister-monks started to their feet at these daring words, and recited the rules of the Order of Saint Benedict, and called upon the chamberlain and upon all present to remember their vows of obedience, and the respect due to every lord abbat that had been canonically elected and appointed; but alas! the number of these remonstrants was very small—much smaller than it would have been only the day before, for the faction had travailed hard during the night, and had powerfully worked upon the fears of the monks, more especially by telling them that neither bread nor wine could anywhere be had, and that a new legate was coming into England from the pope to excommunicate every Saxon priest and monk that did not submit to the Conqueror. Now when Thurstan saw how few there were in chapter that seemed to be steady to their duty, and true to their vows and to the rules of the order (promulgated by Saint Benedict and confirmed by so many pontiffs of Rome, and so many heads of the Benedictine Order, dwelling in the house on Mons Casinium, by the river Liris, where Saint Benedict himself dwelt, and fasted and prayed, when he was in the flesh), his heart, bold and stout as it was, sank within him, and he fell back in his carved seat and muttered to himself, “My pastoral crook is broken! My flock are turned into wolves!”
But, among the true-hearted Saxon monks, there was one that had the courage to defy the prior and his faction, and to stand forward and to speak roundly in defence of the oppressed Lord Abbat; and when he had spoken others found heart to do the same; and thereupon the weak and unsteady part of the chapter, who had no malice against Thurstan, and who had only taken counsel of their fears and craving stomachs, began to fall away from the line where the factious would have kept them, and even to reprove the chamberlain and the prior. This change of wind refreshed both the body and the soul of Thurstan, who knew as little of fear as any man that lived; and who had been borne down for a moment by the weight and agony of the thought that all his friends were either arrayed against him, or were too cowardly to defend him. Speaking again as one having authority and the power to enforce it, he commanded the prior and chamberlain to sit silent in their seats. And the two rebel monks sate silent while Thurstan, in a very long and earnest discourse, but more free from the passion of wrath than it had been, went once more over the history of his life and doings, from the day of his election down to the present troublous day; and spoke hopefully of the return of King Harold, and confidently of the ability of the Saxons to defend the Fen-country if they only remained true to themselves and to the Lord Hereward, without plots or machinations or cowardly and treacherous compacts with the enemy. The Lord Abbat’s discourse lasted so long that it was now near the hour of dinner; and, as much speaking bringeth on hunger and thirst, he was led to think about food and drink, and these thoughts made him say, “My children, ye all know that the Lord of Brunn hath gone forth of the Camp, at the point of day, to procure for us corn and wine. He hath sworn to me to bring us both—and when did the Lord of Brunn break his oath or fail in an enterprise? I tell ye one and all that he hath vowed to bring us wine and bread or die!”
The door of the chapter-house was closed and made fast, in order that none should go out or come in so long as the chapter lasted; but while Thurstan was saying his last words, the sub-sacrist, who was sitting near a window which looked into the quadrangle or open square of the abbey, very secretly and adroitly made a sign to some that were standing below in the quadrangle; and scarcely had the Lord Abbat pronounced the word “die” when a loud wailing and shouting was heard from without, and then the words “He is dead! He is dead! The Lord Hereward is killed!”
At these sounds Thurstan turned as pale as a white-washed wall, and others turned as pale as Thurstan; and the traitor-monks smote their breasts and made a show of being as much grieved and astounded as any of them.
“Ah woe!” said the abbat, “but this is fatal news! What fresh sorrow is this upon me! Hereward lost! He dead, whose arm and counsels formed our strength! Oh! that I had died yesterday, or an hour ago! But who brings the dire news? What and where is the intelligencer? Suspend this miserable chapter, and throw open the door that we may see and hear.”
The sub-sacrist was the first that rushed to the door, and threw it wide open and called upon a crowd of men without to come in and speak to the Lord Abbat.