Noble beast! right well had he atoned his mistake that evening, and in a few minutes more we left the greenwood, and now he swept us over the Abbot’s fat meadows, where the white morning mist was lying ghostly in wreaths and wisps upon the tall wet grass, and then we staggered into the foss and spurned the short turf, and so past the checkered cloisters, and pulled up finally at a low postern door I had espied as we approached the nearest wall of the noble Saxon monastery. Surely never was a traveler in such a hurry to be admitted as I, and I beat upon that iron-studded door with the knob of my dagger in a way which must have been heard in every cell of that sacred pile.
“My friend,” said a reverend head which soon appeared at a little window above, “is this not unseemly haste at such an hour, and my Lord Abbot not yet risen to matins?”
“For the love of Heaven, father,” I said, “come down and let us in!” for by this time the Normans were not a bowshot away, and it still looked as if we might fall into their hands.
“Why,” said the unwotting monk, “no doubt the hospitality of St. Olaf’s walls was never refused to weary strangers, but you must go round to the lodge and rouse the porter there—truly he sleeps a little heavy, but no doubt he will admit you eventually.”
“Sir Priest,” I shouted in my rage and fear as the good old fellow went meandering on, “our need is past all nicety of etiquette! Here is Editha of Voewood, the niece of your holy Abbot himself, and yonder are they who would harry and take her. Come down, come down, or by the Holy Rood our blood will forever stain your ungenerous lintel!”
By this time the horsemen were breasting the smooth green glacis that led up to the monastery walls—half a dozen of them had outlived that wild race—the reins were upon their smoking chargers’ necks, their reeking spurs red and ruddy with their haste, the spattered clay and loam of many a woodland rivulet checkering their horses to the shoulders, and each rider as he came shouting and clapping his hands upon the foam-speckled neck of these panting steeds that strained with thundering feet to the last hundred yards of green sward and the prize beyond.
Nearer and nearer they came, and my fair, tall Saxon wife put down her little ones by the opening of the door and covered them with her skirt as she turned her pale, white, tearless face to the primrose flush of the morning. And I—with bitterness and despair in my heart—unsheathed my Saxon sword and cast the scabbard fiercely to the ground, and stood out before them—my bare and heaving breast a fair target for those glittering oncoming Norman lances!
And then—just when that game was all but lost—there came the sweet patter of sandaled feet within, bolt by bolt was drawn back; willing hands were stretched out; the mother and her babes were dragged from the steps—even my charger was swallowed by the friendly shelter, and I myself was pulled back lastly—the postern slammed to, and, as the great locks turned again, and the iron bars fell into their stony sockets, we heard the Norman chargers’ hoofs ringing on the flagstones, and the angry spear-heads rattling on the outer studs of that friendly oaken doorway.
Thus was the gentle franklin saved; but little did I think in saving her how long I was to lose her. I had but stabled my noble beast down by the Abbot’s own palfrey, and fed and watered him with loving gratitude, and then had gone to Editha and my own supper (waited on by many a wondering, kindly one of these corded, russet Brothers), when that strange fate of mine overtook me once again. I know not how it was, but all on a sudden the world melted away into a shadowy fantasy, my head sank upon the supper-board, and there—between the goodly Abbot and the fair Saxon lady—I fell into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.