The Young Lovell: A Romance

by Ford Madox Ford

Sir Symonde Vesey, who had been running along the battlements looking up, perceived, so near his hand could touch them, millions of little black clouds twisting in an agony like snakes. Then all that water fell upon him and hurled him from that height into the inner court, where he lay senseless a long while, and so was drowned in a gutter. There was no man there could stand up against that torrent of rain twisting round. Four waterspouts struck that Castle one after the other, and for ten hours so it rained that most of the hovels in the courtyard were washed down, and the mud there was so deep it was up to a man's thighs.

Men fought a little in the corridors, and some three or four were killed in the great kitchen where some had taken refuge. But they could find none of their leaders for a long time, and most of them gave over.

IV

At seven of that night the monk Francis with his masons had opened the hermitage, and lay brothers from the little monastery had borne the hermit's rotten corpse in a sheet into the church where a coffin was. So, because of the terrible smell, they carried the coffin itself out from that church and set it in the grave, though that was so full of rain-water that the coffin floated in it and the funeral rites were inaudible in the heavy gusts of rain. Though it was no more than eight o'clock in July the sky lowered, so that in the shadow of the church it was night.

The monk Francis staggered as he walked; his face was like alabaster where no mud was on it, and mud was over all his habit, splashed above the shoulder as if he had torn through brakes above water-courses. All that while he groaned and beat his chest and looked fearfully, now up the hills, now out to sea, now towards Scotland. Once whilst the masons worked he had fallen on his face in the water that ran round the church end.

But he had that hermitage for his charge and he would let no man lead him away. So, in that darkness, whilst the wind sighed furiously in the trees and the rain was in all their faces, they buried that holy man as best they might, saying that they would hold a fairer ceremony upon another day, for they were all affrighted and cast down by the events of that day and the heavy disasters that might follow. Then, as the lay brothers were bearing away the stretcher upon which they had carried that coffin, one of them cried out like a scream. Against the steely light of the North he had perceived a great cloak tossing out, over the churchyard wall. Then all heard a voice calling to them to send a religious there. So the abbot bade an old monk go, for that might be some sinner that desired to become an eremite in place of that holy man now dead. For thus God works in His wondrous way.

And so indeed it proved. They all stood there in the rain whilst the old monk talked to that form of darkness. The monk Francis was on his knees. Then that old monk came back to them and said that here indeed was come one that desired to go into that little hermit's kennel and there end his days. He was one that had been a good knight, but had sinned so grievously that until he was shriven he would not come upon the holy ground of that churchyard, and he desired the monk Francis to come to him and shrive him! Then that monk cried out with fear, but afterwards he went without the wall and stayed there. The tossing form had disappeared; for the man had kneeled down for his confession.

In the thick darkness the monk Francis came back to those that stayed and said that he approved that that man should be the eremite.

It all passed in the black night. That shape passed in at the little hole the masons had made, and an old mason, so skilled that he could do his work in the dark, put again those stones in their places. Then those monks sang as best they could the canticle "Ad te clamavi," and all men went away to talk under their beaten roofs of these fearful things. Upon all that place the black night came down, whipped by the fell and chilly rain, and all over that churchyard the water gurgled and washed, for it lay very low and all the gutters of the church poured down their invisible floods.

In a very high valley of Corsica the mistress of the world sate upon a throne of white marble in a little round temple that would not hold more than two or three people. A round roof it had, like a pie-dish, and little columns of white marble. All up the green grass of that valley amongst the asphodels walked her women, devising and sporting, in gowns of white and playing at ball with a sphere of gold. Down the valley ran a fierce stream with great and vari-coloured rocks, and in that warm place the sound of its torrent was agreeable to the ear. Agreeable too was the sight of the dazzling snows upon the Golden Mountain; they shone in the sun and the sky was more blue than can be imagined. At the feet of the goddess sat a large woman and extremely fair. Beside her, so that he held her hand, sitting on a couch of rosemary, was a dark shepherd very limber in his bronzed limbs, wearing a tunic of goat skins, a chain of gold that supported a gourd, a Phrygian cap of scarlet woollen work that was entwined with the leaves of the vine upon his black locks. He had in his hand a bow of ivory with tips of gold.