"How make it good?" cried the worldly Peter. "Where we have put pence into that room we shall draw forth rose-nobles. Know you not the King's charge to his fighting men, 'Kill the lords, but spare the commons!' By sundown of the morrow one may walk among dead knights round about like sheeps' carcasses on a murrain'd moor. The Gastons, if there the Queen holdeth her place till she be met, will turn to marshes with gentle blood. And where shall they be buried, but here, within the holy Abbey's walls? Then see what comes: item, for tolling the death-bells; item, for streaking-board and face-cloth; item, for so many sin-eaters, to be of our own servitors; item, for so much waste of funeral torches; item, for funeral sermons; item, for the hiring of palls; item, for hiring of garlands of wax and gum to hang over the graves; item, for masses and candles before the rood at month's mind; item——"
"Peace, greedy Peter!" broke in the artist Thomas; "wert thou bred for a gravedigger? His Lordship mislikes this funeral zeal of thine. When thy grumbling for that the great Earl came not here from Barnet for his burial reached the Abbot's ears, he spoke wrothfully concerning it."
"So would he not, when I had shown him the charges in my book for that same," retorted Peter. "For how lives an Abbey save by the death of generous and holy men and women? And was it not a foul thing that the great Earl—lord of this manor, patron of this Abbey—should not have profitably laid his bones here, where now for four hundred years lie all the lords of Tewkesbury, Fitz-Hamons, Clares, De Spensers, Beauchamps—but should be filched away to Berkshire to enrich those Austin friars instead? Thus is religion scandalized, Sir Scrivener!"
Thomas turned away at this, mistrusting his temper in further argument; and Hugh would gladly have followed him out of the room, but that Peter bent his steps toward the storage chamber beyond, where lay hidden those wretched morris trappings. Prudence counselled the lad to depart, and let discovery take care of itself; but anxiety held him back, and he went in at the heels of the Sacristan.
Old Peter sent a speculative eye shrewdly over the contents of the room, making a rough enumeration as he progressed, and offering comments aloud from time to time half to himself.
"Full seven dozen small candles," he muttered, "but scarce a score of torches. How should we be shamed if they brought us a great lord like Somerset! The moulds shall be filled overnight." Then he turned up the corner of a purple velvet pall, noting its frayed edge and tarnished gilt braid. "Time was," he grumbled, "when for this eight crowns was gladly paid in hire; alack, but two months since Dame Willowby cried out against me when I asked a paltry five, and buried her good man under that fustian with the linen edge instead. Ah, the impious times we are fallen upon! Yet, if so be the press to get buried is great enough, and they carry the lights well up in air, a lord might be content with it at ten crowns." Again he mused over the waxen wreaths heaped on the floor.
"There are half as many more on the rood screen that may come down, if it be deftly done, and go into hire again for better men. The townspeople will be too stirred with battle talk to miss them."
Suddenly he turned to Hugh, and raised his voice. "The Sub-Prior will not hearken to me. What we are richest in is banners—here, against the wall, are a dozen of the bravest in all Gloucester. Yet in what do they serve!—naught save those trivial processions of Rogation Week, where all is outlay and nothing income. If he did but drop the hint, the fashion would rise to hire them for funerals; yet when I urged this upon him he laughed me to scorn! I tell thee, boy, there is no true piety left in mankind!"
Hugh had listened with but dull ears, his mind wavering between thoughts of what was going forward outside, and fears lest Peter should push his inquiries within the chamber too far. Here he said:—
"Good brother, if I do help thee to-night with the moulds—and later with what else is needful—wilt thou go with me now forth to the street and view these strange new things? I have never yet seen an army, harnessed for fighting, close at hand. And if thou art with me, Thomas will not be vexed."