“Then, if thou darest not answer this question, who reigns above us now? Has the Norman star set, as I once hoped it might, behind the red cloud of rebellion? or does it still shine to the shame of all Saxons?”
“Sir Saint,” answered the monk, with a little touch of the courage and pride of his race gleaming for a moment through his drunken humility, “rebellion never scared the Norman power—so much I know for certain; and Saxon and Norman are one by the grace of God, linked in brotherhood under the noble Edward. Expurgate thy divergences; erase ‘invaders and invaded’ from thy memory, and drink as I drink —if, indeed, all this be news to thee—for the first time to ‘England and to the English!’”
“Waes hael, Sir Monk—‘England and the English!’”
“Drink hael, good saint!” he answered, giving me the right acceptance of my flagon challenge, “and I do hereby receive thee most paternally into the national fold! Nevertheless, thou art the most perplexing martyr that ever honored this holy fane”—and he raised the great silver cup to his lips and took a mighty pull. Then he gazed reflectively for a moment into the capacious measure, as though the pageantry of history were passing across the shining bottom in fantastic sequence, and looked up and said—“Most wonderful—most wonderful! Why, then, you know nothing of William the Red?”
“The William I knew was red enough in the hands.”
“Ah! but this other one who followed him was red on the head as well, and an Anselm was Archbishop while he reigned.”
“Well, and who came next in thy preposterous tale?”
“Henry Plantagenet—unless all this sack confuses my memory—I have told thee, good saint, I am better at mass and breviar than at missals and scroll.”
“And better, no doubt, than either at thy cellar score-book, priest! But what befell your Henry?”
“Frankly, I am not very certain; but he died eventually.”