“What!” cried Betty, her mouth wide open in her excitement, “the very table at which the knights sat!—Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, Sir Perceval, Sir Galahad, and all the rest! Why, I never knew it was here, or I should have come to see it before anything else! To think of it’s being the real table!”
It was hard for Mrs. Pitt to tell Betty that all the legends concerning this table are pure fiction. “Not all authorities consider its identity absolutely certain,” she admitted unwillingly, “but we’re going to believe in it just the same. It must date from the sixth century! Fancy! However, it was all repainted in the time of Henry VIII, and these peculiar stripes and devices were the work of some sixteenth century brush.”
Betty sat right down on the floor, and stared up at the table of her adored King Arthur and his knights. With much difficulty could Mrs. Pitt persuade her to leave the hall, and that was not accomplished until after Betty had trustingly inquired of the guide whether he knew where the chairs were in which the knights sat when they gathered about the table, for “she’d like so much to find them right away.”
Passing under a gate of the old city-wall, and along the quaint streets of the town, the party came to Hyde Abbey,—or what little now remains of it.
“Alfred’s body was first buried in the old minster (cathedral); then it was carried to the new; and last of all, it was removed by the monks here to Hyde Abbey, which monastery Alfred himself had founded. In the eighteenth century the Abbey was almost entirely destroyed, and then it was that Alfred’s true burial-place was lost sight of. Later still, in making some excavations here, the workmen found an ancient coffin which was examined and believed to be that of the King. Reverently it was reburied and marked with a flat stone, and this doubtful grave is the only trace we now have of Alfred the Great.” They had all quietly followed Mrs. Pitt to the spot where, across the way from the Abbey, they saw the grave.
Before returning to the hotel that night, Mrs. Pitt suggested that they go to see the old Hospital of St. Cross.
“It’s only about a mile from the town,” she said. “There’s a charming little path along the banks of the Itchen, and I think we’d enjoy the walk in the cool of the afternoon.”
Mrs. Pitt was quite correct. It proved a delightful stroll, leading them to the fertile valley in which Henry de Blois built his Hospital of St. Cross, by the side of the pleasant little river.
“The Hospital was really founded by Henry de Blois, but three centuries later, Cardinal Beaufort took much interest in it, made some changes and improvements, and greatly aided in its support,” the children were told. “To this day, there is a distinction between the St. Cross Brethren and the Beaufort Brethren, but this is chiefly confined to the matter of dress. Seventeen men are living here now, and are most kindly treated, fed, clothed, and allowed to plant and tend their own tiny gardens.”
But the most interesting feature of St. Cross—that which in so remarkably vivid a way holds its connection with the past—is the dole. Since the reign of King Stephen, no one applying for food or drink at the Beaufort Tower of St. Cross Hospital, has ever been turned away. To each has been given, during all the centuries, a drink of beer and a slice of bread. A slight distinction is made between visitors by the scrutiny of the Brethren; for, to the tramp is handed a long draught of beer from a drinking-horn and a huge piece of bread, while to some are offered the old silver-mounted cup, and wooden platter.