“The senses are deceptions,” said another of the brotherhood.
“The foul fiend, who often lurks in these wildernesses and plays fiery pranks in our fens, may have put it into this youth’s head to mar our peace with false alarms;” quoth another monk.
“Say warning, and not false alarm,” rejoined Elfric rather petulantly. “If you will not be warned, you will be surprised in your sleep or at your meals. These forty men-at-arms cannot come hither for other purpose than that of finishing our ruin and driving us hence. As sure as the sun riseth they will be here to-morrow morning.”
“The boy chafes, and loses respect for his elders,” said the monk who had last spoken.
“Let him sup with the cats!” cried the superior.
At this moment a bell was struck below; and at the signal the novices and lay-brothers ran from the door at which they had been listening, and the superior, followed by the monks, and at a respectful distance by the reproved and vexed novice, hobbled down stairs to the refectory.
The aspect of that hall, with its blazing wood fire, abundant tapers and torches, and well-spread tables, intimated that the superior’s account of the poverty and destitution to which Ivo the Norman had reduced the house was only figurative or comparative. That good father took his place at the head of the table; the monks took their seats according to their degree of antiquity; the novices and the lay-brothers sat below the salt;[[25]] and poor Elfric, submissive to his penance, sat down cross-legged on the rushes in the middle of the floor, and in the midst of all the cats of the establishment, who, I wist, knew as well as the monks the meaning of the dinner and supper bell, and always trooped into the refectory to share the fragments of the feast. One of the novices ascended a little pulpit raised high in one of the angles of the hall, and the superior having blessed the good things placed before him, this young novice read from the book of Psalms while the rest of the company ate their meal. After all had been served, even to the meanest of the lay-brothers, Elfric’s bread and meat and his stoup of wine were handed to him on the floor—and then was seen what it signified to sup with the cats, for tabbies, greys, blacks, and whites all whisked their tails, and purred and mewed, and scratched round about him, greedy to partake with him, and some of the most daring even dipped their whiskers into his porringer, or scratched the meat from his spoon before it could reach his mouth. Nevertheless the young man made a hearty meal, and so, in spite of their fears and anxieties, did all the rest of that devout community. As grace was said, and as the reader was descending from the pulpit to do as the others had done, the superior, after swallowing a cup of wine, said rather blithely, “Now trim the good lamp and feed the fire, close the door, and place seats and the reading-desk round the hearth.” As the novices and lay-brothers hastened to do these biddings, Father Cedric whispered to the superior, “Would it not be fitting to shut out the young and the unordained, and deliberate by ourselves, maturi fratres?”[[26]] “No,” replied the superior, “we be all alike concerned; let novices and lay-brothers stay where they are and hear the words of our Lord Abbat. If danger be so nigh, all must prepare to meet it, and some may be wanted to run into Spalding town to call upon all good Christians and true Saxons there to come to the rescue.” Then turning to the youth on the rushes he said, “Elfric the messenger, thou mayest rise and take thy seat in thy proper place: I cannot yet believe all thy news, and thou spokest when thou oughtest not to have spoken; but these are days of tribulation, and mischief may be nearer than we thought it. Yet, blessed be God! that provides food and drink for his creatures, and that makes the bounteous meal and the red wine revive the heart and courage of man, I feel very differently now from what I felt before supper, and can better bear the weight of evil news, and more boldly face the perils that may lie in my path.” By words or by looks all the brotherhood re-echoed this last sentiment.
CHAPTER II.
THE SUCCURSAL CELL.
The Abbat of Crowland’s letter, read aloud and slowly by the cheerful fire, had no note of gladness in it. It began “Woe to the Church! woe to the servants of God! woe to all of the Saxon race!” and it ended with, “Woe! woe! woe!” It related how all the prelates of English birth were being expelled by foreign priests, some from France and some from Italy; how nearly every Saxon abbat had been deprived, and nearly every religious house seized by men-at-arms and given over to strange shavelings from Normandie, from Anjou, from Picardie, from Maine, from Gasconie, and numberless other parts,[[27]] and how these alien monks, who could not speak the tongue which Englishmen spoke, were occupying every pulpit and confessional, and consigning the people to perdition because they spoke no French, and preferred their old masters and teachers to their new ones, put over them by violence and the sword! Jealousies and factions continued to rage among the Saxon lords and among those that claimed kindred with the national dynasties; sloth and gluttony, and the dullness of the brain they produce, rendered of no avail the might of the Saxon arm, and the courage of the Saxon heart. Hence a dies iræ, a day of God’s wrath. Aldred,[[28]] the archbishop of York, had died of very grief and anguish of mind: Stigand,[[29]] the English and the true archbishop of Canterbury, after wandering in the Danelagh and in Scotland, and flying for his life from many places, had gone in helpless condition to the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely: Edgar Etheling, that royal boy, had been deserted by the Danes, who had crossed the seas in many ships to aid him; and he had fled once more in a denuded state to the court of Malcolm Caenmore, the Scottish king. In all the north of England there had been a dismal slaughter: from York to Durham not an inhabited village remained—fire and the sword had made a wilderness there—and from Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear to the Tyne, the remorseless conqueror, Herodes, Herode ferocior, a crueller Herod than the Herod of old, had laid waste the land and slaughtered the people. York Minster had been destroyed by fire, and every church, chapel, and religious house had been either destroyed or plundered by the Normans. Everywhere the Saxon patriots, after brief glimpses of success, had met with defeat and extermination, save and except only in the Camp of Refuge and the Isle of Ely; and there too misfortune had happened. Edwin and Morcar,[[30]] the sons of Alfgar, brothers-in-law to King Harold, and the best and the bravest of the Saxon nobles, had quitted the Camp of Refuge, that last asylum of Anglo-Saxon independence, and had both perished. All men of name and fame were perishing. The Saxon commonalty were stupified with amazement and terror,—Pavefactus est Populus.[[31]] The Normans were making war even upon the dead or upon the tombs of those who had done honour to their country as patriots, warriors, spiritual teachers and saints. Frithric,[[32]] the right-hearted Abbat of St. Albans, had been driven from his abbey with all his brethren; and Paul, a young man from Normandie and a reputed son of the intrusive Archbishop Lanfranc, had been thrust in his place. And this Paul, as his first act in office, had demolished the tombs of all his predecessors, whom he called rude and idiotic men, because they were of the English race! And next, this Paul had sent over into Normandie for all his poor relations and friends—men ignorant of letters and of depraved morals—and he was dividing among this foul rapacious crew the woods and the farms, all the possessions and all the offices of the church and abbey of St. Albans. Crowland was threatened with the same fate, and he, the abbat, was sick and brokenhearted, and could oppose the Normans only with prayers—with prayers to which, on account of the sins of the nation, the blessed Virgin and the saints were deaf. The brethren in the succursal cell at Spalding must look to themselves, for he, the abbat, could give them no succour; and he knew of a certainty that Ivo Taille-Bois had promised the cell to some of his kith and kin in foreign parts.