A brief while later, paced slowly from the cloisters the long devotional line, Hugh, all aglow with pride in his new office, advancing at its head, with the jewelled cross upheld aloft. After him were singing boys in surplices and singing men with added copes; then two score monks in ebon black with lighted tapers, the secular canons, the priests of the Abbey, the priors, the deacons attired for the altar, and last the venerable Abbot, John Strensham, bent with age and infirmities, and wearing over his vestments an almuce with hood of ermine, because his blood was cold. Into the choir the procession filed with measured step and solemn chant—and then, as by some sudden stroke of universal palsy, foot halted and song died on lips.
Such a scene as never monk or abbot had dreamt of in Tewkesbury lay before them.
The doors of the rood screen hung wide, so that vision swept from the choir down through the nave and its outer parts, where the simple and base-born heard the Mass, straight to the great north porch. Here, too, the doors were open, for daylight streamed therefrom transversely across the nave. And in this light the amazed monks saw a mired, blood-stained, bedraggled swarm of armed men struggling fiercely for entrance before their fellows, and among these some who smote and felled the others with their swords or battle-axes—amid clamor of shrieks and violent curses, rising above the ground-note of a deep wild shouting as from a multitude without, and the furious clash of steel on steel. The wrath of hell raged here and tore itself before them on the consecrated floor of heaven.
While yet this spell of bewilderment lay upon the astounded spectators in the choir, Hugh felt himself clutched by the shoulder and pushed forward down the steps and into the aisle by a strong though trembling hand. It was the old Abbot, who in the moment of horror at this sacrilege forgot his years. Raising himself to his full height, and snatching the great beryl monstrance from the altar, he hurried now down the nave at such a pace that the cross-bearer, whom he dragged at his side, and the wondering monks and choristers who followed, were fain almost to run if they would not let him reach the porch alone.
The western end of the nave held now a closely-packed mass of fugitives, with scarce a weapon among them—gilded and blazoned knight huddled against unkempt billman, lord and varlet jammed together—all crowding backward in despair from the open porch where, bestriding corpses on the blood-wet flags, a dozen mailed ruffians with naked swords and axes bent ferocious, hungry scowls upon them.
Helpless and dazed, as in an evil dream, the boy felt himself thrust forward into the very front of these war-wolves; and as he stood there, holding the cross as steadily as might be, within a cloth-yard shaft's length of their ravening jaws and flame-lit eyes, his foolish knees knocked together, and he had liked to swoon.
But then—lo! these fierce men put down their blades, and, bowing first, with ill-will slunk backwards to the sides of the porch; and the foremost, still doggedly, even fell upon their knees. Then, the way being clear, Hugh saw that where the churchyard graves had been was now, underfoot, a slaughter pen, and above a wilderness of wild faces and dripping pike-heads. And in the forefront of this awful array, with one mailed foot on the threshold of the porch itself, stood the noblest figure of a man the boy's eyes had ever compassed—a youngish man of uncommon stature and great girth of shoulders, girt with polished steel armor picked in gold, and having on its breast a silver sun with flaring jewelled rays. He too grasped a huge naked sword, and sank its point before the cross Hugh held—the while two esquires made loose the rivets of his towering helmet and lifted it from him. Then he, not too humbly, bowed his head—a shapely head, with reddish-golden curls—and lifting it, looked into the church with the flushed face and glance of a very god of war.
The Abbot, tottering as he came, pushed Hugh aside and reared himself proudly in the porch, holding the monstrance with shaken hand above his head, and crying out:—
"Where thou standest, my liege, thou art not King, but only Edward Plantagenet, a sinner even as the meanest of us, and with the blood of God's children on thy hands. Therefore abase thyself. It is the Host!"
The King dropped to his knees for the counting of ten, then rose and made a step within the porch, still searching sharply with restless eyes into the shadows of the nave.