“By the forty saints that Augustine sent to this benighted island, he takes his fasting wonderfully well! He is firm in gammon and brisket—and, by that saintly band, he has even a touch of color in his cheeks, unless these flickering lights play my eyes a trick!” whereupon his Reverence regarded me with lively admiration, little witting it was more than a breathless marvel, a senseless body, he was thus addressing.
In a moment he turned again: “Thou didst not tell me the date of this old fellow’s—Heaven forgive me!—of this blessed martyr’s sleep. How long ago said the chronicles since this wondrous trance began?”
“My Lord, I computed the matter, and here, by that veracious, unquestionable record, he has lain three hundred years and more!”
At this extraordinary statement the portly Abbot whistled as though he were on a country green, and I, so startling, so incredulous was it, involuntarily turned my head toward them, and gathered my breath to cast back that audacious lie. But neither movement nor sign was seen, for at that very moment the quiet novice laid a finger upon the monk’s full sleeve and whispered hurriedly, “Father!—the Earl—the Earl!” and both looked down the chancel.
At the bottom the door swung open, giving a brief sight of the pale-blue evening beyond, and there entered a tall and martial figure who advanced in warlike harness to the altar steps, and, placing down the helm decked with plumes that danced black and visionary in the dim cresset light, he fell upon one knee.
“Pax vobiscum, my son!” murmured the Abbot, extending his hands in blessing.
“Et vobis,” answered the gallant, “da mihi, domine reverendissime, misericordiam vestram!” And at the sound of their voices I raised me to my elbow, for the young warlike Earl, as he bent him there, was sheathed and armed in a way that I, though familiar with many camps, had never seen before.
Over his fine gold hauberk was a wondrous tabard, a magnificent emblazoned surtout, and, as he knelt, the light of the waxen altar tapers twinkled upon his steel vestments, they touched his yellow curls and sparkled upon the jeweled links of the chain he had about his neck; they gleamed from breast-plate and from belt; they illuminated the thick-sown pearls and sapphires of his sword-hilt, and glanced back in subdued radiance, as befited that holy place, from gauntlets and gorget, from warlike furniture and lordly gems, down to the great rowels of the golden spurs that decked his knightly heels.
The acolyte had shrunk into the shadows, and the Earl had had his blessing, when the Abbot drew him into the recess where I lay in the moonbeams, that he might speak him the more privately—that Churchman little guessing what a good listener the stern, cold saint, so trim and prone upon his marble shrine, could be!
“Ah, noble Codrington,” quoth the monk, “truly we will to the confessional at once, since thou art in so much haste, and thou shalt certainly travel the lighter for leaving thy load of transgressions to the holy forgiveness of Mother Church; but first, tell me true, dost thou really sail for France to-night?”