Every head was turned as the English knight thus told his story, and, while the younger soldiers smiled disdainfully, good Codrington at my side crossed himself again and again, and I saw his soldier lips trembling as prayer and verse came quick across them.
“Ah! the saint was on foot without a doubt, and it might have chilled all the breath in a common man to see him stand there alive, and witful, who had so long been dead and mindless, to meet the light of those sockets where the eyes had so long been dull! But ’tis a blessed thing to be an abbot!—to have a heart whiter than one’s mother’s milk, and a soul of limpid clearness. That holy friar, without one touch of mortal fear—it is his very own asseveration—rose and welcomed his noble guest, and sat him in the daïs, and knelt before him, and adored, and, bold in goodness, waited to be cursed or canonized—withered by a glance of those eyes no man could safely look on, or hoist straight to St. Peter’s chair, just as chance should have it.”
“Wonderful and marvelous!” gasped Codrington, “I would have given all my lands to have knelt at the bottom of that hall whose top was sanctified by such a presence.”
“And I,” cried another knight, “would have given this dinted suit of Milan that I sit in, and a tattered tent somewhere on yonder dark hillside (the which is all I own of this world), to have been ten miles away when that same thing happened. Surely it was most dread and grim, and may Heaven protect all ordinary men if the fashion spreads with saints!”
“They will not trouble you, no doubt, good comrade. This one rose in no stern spirit to rebuke, but as the pale commissioner of Heaven to reward virtue and bless merit. Ill would it beseem me to tell, or you, common, gross soldiers of the world, to listen to what passed between those two. ’Twere rank sacrilege to mock the new-risen’s words by retailing them over a camp table, even though the table be that of the King himself; and who are we, rough, unruly sons of Mother Church, that we should submit to repetition the converse of a prelate with one we scarce dare name!” Whereon Worringham drank silently from his goblet, and half a dozen knights crossed themselves devoutly.
“And there is another reason why I should be silent,” he continued. “The Abbot will not tell what passed between them. Only so much as this: he gives out with modest hesitance that his holy living and great attainments had gone straighter to Heaven than the smoke of Abel’s altar-fire, and thus, on these counts and others, he had been specially selected for divine favors, and his ancient Church for miracle. The priest, so the Wonder vowed, must be made a cardinal, and have next reversion of the Papal chair. Meanwhile pilgrims were to hold the wonder-shrine of St. Olaf’s no less holy tenantless than tenanted, to be devout, and above all things liberal, and pray for the constant intercession of that Messenger who could no longer stay. Whereon, quoth the Abbot, a wondrous light did daze the watcher’s sight—unheard, unseen of other men the walls and roof fell wide apart—and then and there, amid a wondrous hum of voices and countless shooting stars, that Presence mounted to the sky, and the Abbot fell fainting on the floor!”
“Truly a strange story, and like to make St. Olaf’s coffers fuller than King Edward’s are.”
“And to do sterling service to the reverend Prior! What think you, Sir?” said one, turning to me, who had kept silent all through this strange medley of fact and cunning fiction. “Is it not a tale that greatly redounds to the holy father’s credit, and like to do him material service?”
“No doubt,” I answered, “it will serve the purpose for which ’twas told. But whether the adventure be truly narrated or not only the Abbot and he who supped with him can know.”
“Ah!” they laughed, “and, by Our Lady! you may depend upon it the priest will stick to his version through thick and thin.”