Pabo, the Priest: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

CHAPTER VI

THE SCROLL

The young, the thoughtless, were full of exultation over the rebuff that the Normans, with their bishop, had encountered, but the older and wiser men were grave and concerned. The Normans had indeed withdrawn in sullen resentment, outnumbered, and incapable of revenging on the spot and at once the disabled arm of their leader and the broken tooth of their prelate. The old men knew very well that matters would not rest thus; and they feared lest the events of that day when the party of foreigners penetrated to the Blessed Valley might prove the most fruitful in disastrous consequences it had ever seen.

Native princes had respected the sanctuary of David, but an English King and foreign adventurers were not likely to regard its privileges, nor fear the wrath of the saint who had hitherto rendered it inviolable. Bishop Bernard had at his back not only the whole spiritual force of the Latin Church, the most highly concentrated and practically organized in Christendom, but he was specially the emissary of the English King, with all the physical power of the realm to support him; and what was the prospect of a little green basin in the mountains, isolated from the world, occupied by three thousand people, belonging to the most loosely compacted Church that existed, with no political force to maintain its right and champion its independence—what chance had the sanctuary of David in Caio against the resentment of the English King and the Roman Church? Neither, as experience showed, was likely to pass over an affront. One would sustain the other in exacting a severe chastisement.

The hermit, who after over thirty years of retirement in one cell, far up the Mount Mallaen, had suddenly, and unsolicited, left his retreat to appear once more among his fellow-men, and then to pronounce a sentence of wo, had sunk exhausted after this supreme effort of expiring powers, and had been removed into the Archpriest's house, where he was ministered to by Morwen, Pabo's wife.

The old man lay as one in a trance, and speechless. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing on earth, and no efforts could induce him to take nourishment. With folded hands, muttering lips, and glazed eyes he continued for several days. Pabo and his wife looked on with reverence, not knowing whether he were talking with invisible beings which he saw. He answered no questions put to him; he seemed not to hear them, and he hardly stirred from the position which he assumed when laid on a bed in the house.

The hermit of Mallaen had been regarded with unbounded reverence throughout the country. He had been visited for counsel, his words had been esteemed oracular, and he was even credited with having performed miraculous cures.

That he was dying in their midst would have created greater attention and much excitement among the people of Caio at any other time, but now they were in a fever over the events of the bishop's visit, their alarm over the enforcing of the decree on marriages, and their expectation of punishment for the rough handling of their unwelcome visitors; and when one night the old hermit passed away, it was hardly noticed, and Morwen was left almost unassisted to pay the last duties to the dead, to place the plate of salt on his breast when laid out, and to light the candles at the head.

It was no holiday-time, and yet little work was done throughout the once happy valley. A cloud seemed to hang over it, and oppress all therein. Shepherds on the mountain drove their flocks together, that for awhile, sitting under a rock or leaning on their crooks, they might discuss what was past and form conjectures as to the future. Women, over their spinning, drew near each other, and in low voices and with anxious faces conversed as to the unions that were like to be dissolved. Men met in groups and passed opinions as to what steps should be taken to maintain their rights, their independence, and to ward off reprisals. Even children caught up the words that were whispered, and jeered each other as born out of legitimate wedlock, or asked one another who were their sponsors, and shouted that such could never intermarry.

So days passed. Spirits became no lighter; the gloom deepened. It was mooted who would tell of the relationships borne by those who were now contented couples?—so as to enable the bishop to separate them? Who would see selfish profit by betrayal of their own kin?