THE CAMP OF REFUGE.

Isle of Ely and Camp of Refuge.

THE

CAMP OF REFUGE:

A Tale

OF

THE CONQUEST OF THE ISLE OF ELY.

EDITED,

WITH NOTES AND APPENDIX, BY

SAMUEL H. MILLER, F.R.A.S.,

Joint Author of “The Fenland, Past and Present.”

SECOND ANNOTATED EDITION.

ILLUSTRATED WITH MAPS.

WISBECH: LEACH & SON.

LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO.

WISBECH

LEACH AND SON, PRINTERS.

THE EDITOR’S PREFACE.

A generation has passed away since “The Camp of Refuge” first issued from the press. Although published anonymously, it shows that its author had a very extensive knowledge of the history and topography of the Fen district.

The book, however, while it embodied much real history, was put forth with no higher pretension than that of a tale, whose characters were historic personages, and whose incidents occurred, in the main, during the Norman Conquest.

Knowing that this interesting book had become very scarce, and thinking that it would prove as acceptable to this, and perhaps to the next, generation as it did to the past—the present publishers determined to offer a new edition to the public; trusting at the same time that its contents will help to foster a loyalty and a love for our English nation.

But with a new edition some few comments appeared necessary; therefore Notes to the text, a short Appendix, and two Maps have been added, not with a view merely to embellish the original work, nor to convert it into a real history, but to assist, in some measure, the youthful reader, or mayhap those, too, who have but limited means of consulting the many sources of information upon which the ground-work of the tale rests.

S. H. M.

June, 1880.

SECOND ANNOTATED EDITION.

In preparing this edition, care has been taken to correct whatever defects, typographical or otherwise, may have been found in the former one; several fresh foot-notes have been introduced, the Appendix has been re-arranged and enlarged, and a Map (adapted from Dugdale’s Monasticon), representing the ground plan of the Spalding Monastery, or “Succursal Cell,” has also been added.

These emendations and additions, it is confidently hoped, will ensure for the book a more extended appreciation than it has hitherto enjoyed.

S. H. M.

May, 1887.

THE CONTENTS.

THE FEN DISTRICT.

Horace E. Miller, del.

MAP to “CAMP OF REFUGE.”

THE CAMP OF REFUGE.

CHAPTER I.
THE MESSENGER.

It was long ago; it was in the year of grace one thousand and seventy, or four years after the battle of Hastings, which decided the right of power between the English and Norman nations, and left the old Saxon race exposed to the goadings of the sharp Norman lance, that a novice went on his way from the grand abbey of Crowland to the dependent house or succursal cell of Spalding,[^[1]] in the midst of the Lincolnshire fens. The young man carried a long staff or pole in his hand, with which he aided himself in leaping across the numerous ditches and rivulets that intersected his path, and in trying the boggy ground before he ventured to set his feet upon it. The upper end of his staff was fashioned like unto the staff of a pilgrim, but the lower end was armed with a heavy iron ferrule, from which projected sundry long steel nails or spikes. It was a fen-pole,[^[2]] such, I wist, as our fenners yet use in Holland, Lindsey, and Kesteven. In a strong and bold hand this staff might be a good war-weapon; and as the young man raised the skirts of his black garment it might have been seen that he had a short broad hunting-knife fastened to his girdle. He was a fair-haired, blue-eyed, and full-lipped youth, with an open countenance and a ruddy complexion: the face seemed made to express none but joyous feelings, so that the grief and anxiety which now clouded it appeared to be quite out of place. Nor was that cloud always there, for whensoever the autumn sun shone out brightly, and some opening in the monotonous forest of willows and alders gave him a pleasant or a varied prospect, or when the bright king-fisher flitted across his path, or the wild duck rose from the fen and flew heaven-ward,[^[3]] or the heron raised itself on its long legs to look at him from the sludge, or the timid cygnet went sailing away in quest of the parent swan, his countenance lighted up like that of a happy thoughtless boy. Ever and anon too some inward emotion made him chuckle or laugh outright. Thus between sadness and gladness the novice went on his way—a rough and miry way proper to give a permanent fit of ill-humour to a less buoyant spirit, for he had quitted the road or causeway which traversed the fens and was pursuing a devious path, which was for the greater part miry in summer, but a complete morass at the present season of the year. Notwithstanding all his well-practised agility, and in spite of the good aid of his long staff, he more than once was soused head over ears in a broad water-course. With a good road within view, it may be thought that he had some strong motive for choosing this very bad one; and every time that his path approached to the road, or that the screen of alders and willows failed him, he crouched low under the tall reeds and bulrushes of the fen, and stole along very cautiously, peeping occasionally through the rushes towards the road, and turning his ear every time that the breeze produced a loud or unusual sound. As thus he went on, the day declined fast, and the slanting sun shone on the walls of a tall stone mansion, battlemented and moated—a dwelling-house, but a house proper to stand a siege:[^[4]] and in these years of trouble none could dwell at peace in any house if unprovided with the means of holding out against a blockade, and of repelling siege and assault. All round this manor-house, to a wide space, the trees had been cut down and the country drained; part of the water being carried off to a neighbouring mere, and part being collected and gathered, by means of various cuts, to fill the deep moat round the house.

Here the young man, in fear of being discovered by those who occupied that warlike yet fair-looking dwelling, almost crawled on the ground. Nevertheless he quitted his track to get nearer to the house; and then, cowering among some reeds and bulrushes, he put his open hand above his eyebrows, and gazed sharply at the moat, the drawbridge, the low gateway with its round-headed arch, the battlements, and the black Norman flag that floated over them. The while he gazed, the blast of a trumpet sounded on the walls, and sounded again, and once again; and, after the third blast, a noise as of many horses treading the high road or causeway was heard among the fen reeds. The novice muttered, and almost swore blasphemously, (albeit by the rules of the order he was bound to use no stronger terms than crede mihi, or planè, or certè, or benedicamus Domina;)[^[5]] but he continued to gaze under his palm until the sounds on the road came nearer and trumpet replied to trumpet. Then, muttering “This is not a tarrying place for the feet of a true Saxon!” he crawled back to the scarcely perceptible track he had left, and kept on, in a stooping posture but at a rapid pace, until he came to a thick clump of alders, the commencement of a wood which stretched, with scarcely any interruption, to the banks of the river Welland. Here, screened from sight, he struck the warlike end of his staff against the trunk of a tree, and said aloud, “Forty Norman men-at-arms! by Saint Etheldreda[^[6]] and by the good eye-sight that Saint Lucia[^[7]] hath vouchsafed unto me! Forty Norman cut-throats, and we in our succursal cell only five friars, two novices, two lay-brothers, and five hinds! and our poor upper buildings all made of wood, old and ready to burn like tow! and not ten bows in the place or five men knowing how to use them! By Saint Ovin[^[8]] and his cross! were our walls but as strong as those of the monks of Ely, and our war-gear better, and none of us cowards, I would say, ‘Up drawbridge! defy this Norman woodcutter, who felled trees in the forest for his bread until brought by the bastard to cut Saxon throats and fatten upon the lands of our thanes and our churches and monasteries! I would spit at the beard of this Ivo Taille-Bois, and call upon Thurstan my Lord Abbat of Ely, and upon the true Saxon hearts in the Camp of Refuge, for succour!’” And the passionate young man struck the trunk of the poor unoffending tree until the bark cracked, and the long thin leaves, loosened by autumn, fell all about him.

He then continued his journey through the low, thick, and monotonous wood, and after sundry more leaps, and not a few sousings in the water and slips in the mud, he reached the bank of the Welland at a point just opposite to the succursal cell of Spalding. A ferry-boat was moored under the walls of the house. He drew forth a blast horn; but before putting it to his lips to summon the ferryman across, he bethought him that he could not be wetter than he was, that he had got his last fall in a muddy place, and that the readiest way to cleanse himself before coming into the presence of his superior would be to swim across the river instead of waiting to be ferried over. This also suited the impatient mood he was in, and he knew that the serf who managed the boat was always slow in his movements, and at times liable to sudden and unseasonable fits of deafness. So, throwing his heavy staff before him, like a javelin, and with so much vigour that it reached and stuck deep into the opposite bank, he leaped into the river and swam across after it. Before he came to the Welland the sun had gone down; but it was a clear autumnal evening, and if he was not seen in the twilight by a lay-brother stationed on the top of the house to watch for his return and to keep a look-out along the river, it must have been because the said lay-brother was either drowsy and had gone to sleep, or was hungry and had gone down to see what was toward in the kitchen.

The succursal cell of Spalding was but a narrow and humble place compared with its great mother-house at Crowland: it seemed to stand upon piles[^[9]] driven deep into the marshy ground; the lower part of the building was of stone, brick, and rubble, and very strong; but all the upper part was of wood, even as the wayfaring novice had lamented. A few small round-headed arches, with short thick mullions, showed where was the chapel, and where the hall, which last served as refectory, chapter, and for many other uses. Detached from the chapel was a low thick campanile or bell-tower, constructed like the main building, partly of stone, brick, and rubble, and partly of timber, the upper part having open arches, through which might be seen the squat old bell and the ponderous mallet, which served instead of a clapper. The Welland almost washed the back of the house,[^[10]] and a deep trench, filled by the water of the river, went round the other sides. Without being hailed or seen by anyone, the young man walked round from the river bank to the front of the house, where the walls were pierced by a low arched gateway, and one small grated window a little above the arch. “The brothers are all asleep, and before supper time!” said the novice, “but I must rouse old Hubert.” He then blew his horn as loud as he could blow it. After a brief pause a loud but cracked voice cried from within the gates, “Who comes hither, after evening song?”

“It is I, Elfric[^[11]] the novice.”

“The voice is verily that of child Elfric; but I must see with my eyes as well as hear with mine ears, for the Norman be prowling all about, and these be times when the wolf counterfeiteth the voice of the lamb.”

“Open, Hubert, open,” cried the novice, “open, in the name of Saint Chad![^[12]] for I am wet, tired, and a-hungred, and the evening wind is beginning to blow coldly from the meres. Open thy gate, Hubert, and let fall the bridge; I am so hungry that I could eat the planks! Prithee, is supper ready?”

To this earnest address no answer was returned; but after a minute or two the twilight showed a cowled head behind the grates of the window—a head that seemed nearly all eyes, so intensely did the door-porter look forth across the moat—and then the voice which before had been heard below, was heard above, saying, “The garb and figure be verily those of Elfric, and the water streams from him to the earth. Ho! Elfric the novice—an thou be he—throw back thy hood, and give the sign!”

“Abbat Thurstan[^[13]] and Saint Etheldreda for the East Englanders!” shouted the young man.

Here, another voice was heard from within the building calling out “Hubert, whom challengest? Is it Elfric returning from Crowland?”

“Yea,” quoth the portarius, “it is Elfric the novice safe back from Crowland, but dripping like a water-rat, and shivering in the wind. Come, help me lower the bridge, and let him in.”

The gate was soon opened, and the narrow drawbridge lowered. The youth entered, and then helped to draw up the bridge and make fast the iron-studded door. Within the archway every member of the little community, except those who were preparing the evening repast or spreading the tables in the refectory, and the superior who was prevented by his gout and his dignity from descending to the door-way to meet a novice (be his errand what it might), was standing on tip-toe, and open-mouthed for news; but Elfric was a practised messenger, and knowing that the bringer of bad news is apt to meet with a cold welcome, and that the important tidings he brought ought to be communicated first to the head of the house, he hurried through the throng, and crossing a cloistered court, and ascending a flight of stairs, he went straight to the cell of Father Adhelm,[^[14]] the sub-prior of Crowland Abbey, who ruled the succursal cell of Spalding. The monks followed him into the room; but the novices and lay-brothers stopped short at the threshold, taking care to keep the door ajar so that they might hear whatsoever was said within. “I give thee my benison, oh, my child! and may the saints bless thee, for thou art back sooner than I weened. But speak, oh Elfric! quick! tell me what glad tidings thou bringest from my Lord Abbat and our faithful brethren at Crowland, and what news of that son of the everlasting fire, our evil neighbour Ivo Taille-Bois?”

After he had reverentially kissed the hand of his superior, Elfric the novice spake and said:—

“Father, I bring no glad tidings; my news be all bad news! Ivo Taille-Bois is coming against us to complete his iniquities, by finishing our destruction; and the Abbat[^[15]] and our faithful brethren at Crowland are harassed and oppressed themselves, and cannot help us!”

The faces of the monks grew very long; but they all said in one voice, “Elfric, thou dreamest. Elfric, thou speakest of things that cannot be; for hath not my Lord Abbat obtained the king’s peace, and security for the lives of all his flock and the peaceful possession of all our houses, succursal cells, churches and chapels, farms and lands whatsoever, together with our mills, fisheries,[^[16]] stews, warrens, and all things appertaining to our great house and order?”[^[17]]

One of the primary duties imposed upon novices was to be silent when the elders spake. Elfric stood with his hands crossed upon his breast and with his eyes bent upon the floor, until his superior said “Peace, brothers! let there be silence until the youth hath reported what he hath heard and seen.” And then turning to Elfric, Father Adhelm added, “Bring you no missive from our good Abbat?”

“Yea,” said the novice, “I am the bearer of an epistle from my Lord Abbat to your reverence; and lo! it is here.” And he drew forth from under his inner garment a round case made of tin, and presented it most respectuously to the superior.

“I am enduring the pains of the body as well as the agony of the spirit,” said the superior, “and my swollen right hand refuses its office; brother Cedric, undo the case.”

Cedric took the case, opened it, took out a scroll of parchment, kissed it as if it had been a relic, unrolled it, and handed it to the superior.

“Verily this is a long missive,” said the superior, running his eyes over it, “and alack, and woe the while, it commenceth with words of ill omen! Brethren my eyes are dim and cannot read by twilight:[^[18]] the body moreover is faint, I having fasted from everything but prayer and meditation since the mid-day refection; and then, as ye can bear witness, I ate no meat, but only picked a stewed pike[^[19]] of the smallest. Therefore, brethren, I opine that we had better read my Lord Abbat’s epistle[^[20]] after supper (when will they strike upon that refectory bell?), and only hear beforehand what Elfric hath to say.”

The cloister-monks gladly assented, for they were as hungry as their chief, and, not being very quick at reading, were glad that the superior had not called for lights in the cell, and called upon them to read the letter.

“Now speak, Elfric, and to the point; tell the tale shortly, and after the evening meal the lamp shall be trimmed and we will draw our stools round the hearth in the hall, and read the abbat’s epistle and deliberate thereupon.”

Upon this injunction of Father Adhelm, the youth began to relate with very commendable brevity, that the abbey of Crowland was surrounded and in good part occupied by Norman knights and men-at-arms, who were eating the brotherhood out of house and home, and committing every kind of riot and excess; that the abbat had in vain pleaded the king’s peace, and shown the letters of protection granted him by Lanfranc,[^[21]] the new foreign primate of the kingdom; that the Normans had seized upon all the horses and mules and boats of the community; and that the abbat (having received disastrous intelligence from the north[^[22]] and from other parts of England where the Saxon patriots had endeavoured to resist the conqueror), had fallen sick, and had scarcely strength to dictate and sign the letter he brought.

“These are evil tidings indeed,” said the superior, “but the storm is yet distant, and may blow over without reaching us. It is many a rood from Crowland to Spalding, and there is many a bog between us. Those accursed knights and men-at-arms will not readily risk their horses and their own lives in our fens; and now that Ivo Taille-Bois hath so often emptied our granaries, and hath crippled or carried off all our cattle, we have the protecting shield of poverty. There is little to be got here but bare walls, and Ivo, having the grant of the neighbouring lands from the man they call King William, is not willing that any robber but himself should come hitherward. His mansion guards the causeway, and none can pass thereon without his bene placet. But, oh Elfric! what of the demon-possessed Ivo? Rests he not satisfied with the last spoils he made on our poor house? Abides he not true to his compact that he would come no more, but leave us to enjoy his king’s peace and the peace of the Lord? Heeds he not the admonition addressed to him by Lanfranc? Speak, Elfric, and be quick, for methinks I hear the step of the cellarer by the refectory door.”

“The strong keep no compact with the weak,” responded the novice, “and these lawless marauders care little for William their king, less for their archbishop, and nothing for the Lord! While I was hid in Crowland Abbey waiting for my Lord Abbat’s letter, I heard from one of the friars who can interpret their speech, that some of these Normans were saying that Ivo Taille-Bois wanted the snug nest at Spalding to put cleaner birds into it: that Ivo had made his preparations to dispossess us. And lo! as I came homeward through the fens, and passed as near as I might to the manor-house which Taille-Bois made his own by forcibly marrying the good Saxon[^[23]] owner of it, I heard the flourish of trumpets, and anon I saw, tramping along the causeway towards the well-garrisoned manor-house, forty Norman men-at-arms!”

“Not so, surely not so, Elfric,” said the superior in a quake, “danger cannot be so near us as that!”

“His eyes must have deceived him,” cried all the brothers.

“Nay,” said the youth, “I saw, as plainly as I now see the faces of this good company, their lances glinting in the setting sun, and their bright steel caps and their grey mail, and....”

“Fen-grass and willows,”[^[24]] cried the superior, who seemed determined not to give credit to the evil tidings, “what thou tookest for spears were bulrushes waving in the breeze, and thy steel-caps and grey mails were but the silvery sides of the willow-leaves turned upwards by the wind! Boy, fasting weakens the sight and makes it dim!”

“Would it were so,” quoth Elfric; “but so was it not! I heard the trumpet give challenge from the battlements—I heard the other trumpet give response—I heard the tramping of many hoofs along the hard solid causeway; and, creeping nearer to the road, I saw lances and horses and men—and they were even forty!”

“It cannot be,” said one of the monks, “for, when he made his last paction with us, Ivo Taille-Bois swore, not only by three Saxon saints but eke by six saints of Normandie, that he would do us and our house no further wrong.”

“The senses are deceptions,” said another of the brotherhood.

“The foul fiend, who often lurks in these wildernesses and plays fiery pranks in our fens, may have put it into this youth’s head to mar our peace with false alarms;” quoth another monk.

“Say warning, and not false alarm,” rejoined Elfric rather petulantly. “If you will not be warned, you will be surprised in your sleep or at your meals. These forty men-at-arms cannot come hither for other purpose than that of finishing our ruin and driving us hence. As sure as the sun riseth they will be here to-morrow morning.”

“The boy chafes, and loses respect for his elders,” said the monk who had last spoken.

“Let him sup with the cats!” cried the superior.

At this moment a bell was struck below; and at the signal the novices and lay-brothers ran from the door at which they had been listening, and the superior, followed by the monks, and at a respectful distance by the reproved and vexed novice, hobbled down stairs to the refectory.

The aspect of that hall, with its blazing wood fire, abundant tapers and torches, and well-spread tables, intimated that the superior’s account of the poverty and destitution to which Ivo the Norman had reduced the house was only figurative or comparative. That good father took his place at the head of the table; the monks took their seats according to their degree of antiquity; the novices and the lay-brothers sat below the salt;[^[25]] and poor Elfric, submissive to his penance, sat down cross-legged on the rushes in the middle of the floor, and in the midst of all the cats of the establishment, who, I wist, knew as well as the monks the meaning of the dinner and supper bell, and always trooped into the refectory to share the fragments of the feast. One of the novices ascended a little pulpit raised high in one of the angles of the hall, and the superior having blessed the good things placed before him, this young novice read from the book of Psalms while the rest of the company ate their meal. After all had been served, even to the meanest of the lay-brothers, Elfric’s bread and meat and his stoup of wine were handed to him on the floor—and then was seen what it signified to sup with the cats, for tabbies, greys, blacks, and whites all whisked their tails, and purred and mewed, and scratched round about him, greedy to partake with him, and some of the most daring even dipped their whiskers into his porringer, or scratched the meat from his spoon before it could reach his mouth. Nevertheless the young man made a hearty meal, and so, in spite of their fears and anxieties, did all the rest of that devout community. As grace was said, and as the reader was descending from the pulpit to do as the others had done, the superior, after swallowing a cup of wine, said rather blithely, “Now trim the good lamp and feed the fire, close the door, and place seats and the reading-desk round the hearth.” As the novices and lay-brothers hastened to do these biddings, Father Cedric whispered to the superior, “Would it not be fitting to shut out the young and the unordained, and deliberate by ourselves, maturi fratres?”[^[26]] “No,” replied the superior, “we be all alike concerned; let novices and lay-brothers stay where they are and hear the words of our Lord Abbat. If danger be so nigh, all must prepare to meet it, and some may be wanted to run into Spalding town to call upon all good Christians and true Saxons there to come to the rescue.” Then turning to the youth on the rushes he said, “Elfric the messenger, thou mayest rise and take thy seat in thy proper place: I cannot yet believe all thy news, and thou spokest when thou oughtest not to have spoken; but these are days of tribulation, and mischief may be nearer than we thought it. Yet, blessed be God! that provides food and drink for his creatures, and that makes the bounteous meal and the red wine revive the heart and courage of man, I feel very differently now from what I felt before supper, and can better bear the weight of evil news, and more boldly face the perils that may lie in my path.” By words or by looks all the brotherhood re-echoed this last sentiment.

CHAPTER II.
THE SUCCURSAL CELL.

The Abbat of Crowland’s letter, read aloud and slowly by the cheerful fire, had no note of gladness in it. It began “Woe to the Church! woe to the servants of God! woe to all of the Saxon race!” and it ended with, “Woe! woe! woe!” It related how all the prelates of English birth were being expelled by foreign priests, some from France and some from Italy; how nearly every Saxon abbat had been deprived, and nearly every religious house seized by men-at-arms and given over to strange shavelings from Normandie, from Anjou, from Picardie, from Maine, from Gasconie, and numberless other parts,[^[27]] and how these alien monks, who could not speak the tongue which Englishmen spoke, were occupying every pulpit and confessional, and consigning the people to perdition because they spoke no French, and preferred their old masters and teachers to their new ones, put over them by violence and the sword! Jealousies and factions continued to rage among the Saxon lords and among those that claimed kindred with the national dynasties; sloth and gluttony, and the dullness of the brain they produce, rendered of no avail the might of the Saxon arm, and the courage of the Saxon heart. Hence a dies iræ, a day of God’s wrath. Aldred,[^[28]] the archbishop of York, had died of very grief and anguish of mind: Stigand,[^[29]] the English and the true archbishop of Canterbury, after wandering in the Danelagh and in Scotland, and flying for his life from many places, had gone in helpless condition to the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely: Edgar Etheling, that royal boy, had been deserted by the Danes, who had crossed the seas in many ships to aid him; and he had fled once more in a denuded state to the court of Malcolm Caenmore, the Scottish king. In all the north of England there had been a dismal slaughter: from York to Durham not an inhabited village remained—fire and the sword had made a wilderness there—and from Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear to the Tyne, the remorseless conqueror, Herodes, Herode ferocior, a crueller Herod than the Herod of old, had laid waste the land and slaughtered the people. York Minster had been destroyed by fire, and every church, chapel, and religious house had been either destroyed or plundered by the Normans. Everywhere the Saxon patriots, after brief glimpses of success, had met with defeat and extermination, save and except only in the Camp of Refuge and the Isle of Ely; and there too misfortune had happened. Edwin and Morcar,[^[30]] the sons of Alfgar, brothers-in-law to King Harold, and the best and the bravest of the Saxon nobles, had quitted the Camp of Refuge, that last asylum of Anglo-Saxon independence, and had both perished. All men of name and fame were perishing. The Saxon commonalty were stupified with amazement and terror,—Pavefactus est Populus.[^[31]] The Normans were making war even upon the dead or upon the tombs of those who had done honour to their country as patriots, warriors, spiritual teachers and saints. Frithric,[^[32]] the right-hearted Abbat of St. Albans, had been driven from his abbey with all his brethren; and Paul, a young man from Normandie and a reputed son of the intrusive Archbishop Lanfranc, had been thrust in his place. And this Paul, as his first act in office, had demolished the tombs of all his predecessors, whom he called rude and idiotic men, because they were of the English race! And next, this Paul had sent over into Normandie for all his poor relations and friends—men ignorant of letters and of depraved morals—and he was dividing among this foul rapacious crew the woods and the farms, all the possessions and all the offices of the church and abbey of St. Albans. Crowland was threatened with the same fate, and he, the abbat, was sick and brokenhearted, and could oppose the Normans only with prayers—with prayers to which, on account of the sins of the nation, the blessed Virgin and the saints were deaf. The brethren in the succursal cell at Spalding must look to themselves, for he, the abbat, could give them no succour; and he knew of a certainty that Ivo Taille-Bois had promised the cell to some of his kith and kin in foreign parts.

The reading of this sad letter was interrupted by many ejaculations and expressions of anger and horror, grief and astonishment; and when it was over, the spirits of the community were so depressed that the superior thought himself absolutely compelled to call upon the cellarer and bid him fill the stoups again, to the end that there might be another short Biberes. When the monks had drunk in silence, and had crossed themselves after the draught, they began to ask each other what was to be done? for they no longer doubted that Elfric had seen the forty men-at-arms in the neighbourhood, or that Ivo Taille-Bois would be thundering at their gate in the morning. Some proposed sending a messenger into Spalding town, which was scarcely more than two good bow-shots distant from the cell, lighting the beacon on the tower, and sounding all the blast-horns on the house-top to summon the whole neighbourhood to their aid; but the superior bade them reflect that this would attract the notice of Ivo Taille-Bois, and be considered as an hostile defiance; that the neighbourhood was very thinly peopled by inexpert and timid serfs, and that most of the good men of Spalding town who possessed arms and the art of wielding them had already taken their departure for the Camp of Refuge. At last the superior said, “We cannot attempt a resistance, for by means of a few lighted arrows the children of Satan would set fire to our upper works, and so burn our house over our heads. We must submit to the will of Heaven, and endeavour to turn aside the wrath of our arch-persecutor. Lucia,[^[33]] the wife of Ivo Taille-Bois, was a high-born Saxon maiden when he seized upon her (after slaying her friends), and made her his wife in order to have the show of a title to the estates. As a maiden Lucia was ever good and Saxon-hearted, especially devout to our patron saint,[^[34]] and a passing good friend and benefactress to this our humble cell. She was fair among the daughters of men, fairest in a land where the strangers themselves vouchsafe to say that beauty and comeliness abound;[^[35]] she may have gotten some sway over the fierce mind of her husband, and at her supplications Ivo may be made to forego his wicked purposes. Let us send a missive to the fair Lucia.”

Here Brother Cedric reminded Father Adhelm that a letter would be of little use, inasmuch as the fair Lucia could not read, and had nobody about her in the manor-house that could help her in this particular. “Well then,” said the superior, “let us send that trusty and nimble messenger Elfric to the manor-house, and let him do his best to get access to the lady and acquaint her with our woes and fears. What sayest thou, good Elfric?”

Albeit the novice thought that he had been but badly rewarded for his last service, he crossed his arms on his breast, bowed his head, and said, “Obedience is my duty. I will adventure to the manor-house, I will try to see the Lady Lucia, I will go into the jaws of the monster, if it pleaseth your reverence to command me so to do. But, if these walls were all of stone and brick, I would rather stay and fight behind them: for I trow that the fair Lucia hath no more power over Ivo Taille-Bois than the lamb hath over the wolf, or the sparrow over the sparrow-hawk.”

“But,” said the superior, “unless Heaven vouchsafe a miracle, we have no other hope or chance than this. Good Elfric, go to thy cell and refresh thyself with sleep, for thou hast been a wayfarer through long and miry roads, and needest rest. We too are weary men, for we have read a very long letter and deliberated long on weighty trying business, and the hour is growing very late. Let us then all to bed, and at earliest morning dawn, after complines, thou wilt gird up thy loins and take thy staff in thine hand, and I will tell thee how to bespeak the Lady Lucia, an thou canst get to her presence. I will take counsel of my pillow, and call upon the saints to inspire me with a moving message that I shall send.”

Elfric humbly saluted the superior and all his elders by name, wished them a holy night, and withdrew from the refectory and hall to seek the rest which he really needed: but before entering his cell he went to the house-top to look out at the broad moon, and the wood, and the river, and the open country, intersected by deep cuts and ditches, which lay in front of the succursal cell. The night had become frosty, and the moon and the stars were shining their brightest in a transparent atmosphere. As the novice looked up the course of the Welland he thought he distinguished something afar off floating on the stream. He looked again, and felt certain that a large boat was descending the river towards the house. He remained silent and almost breathless until the vessel came so near that he was enabled to see that the boat was filled with men-at-arms, all clad in mail, who held their lances in their hands, and whose shields were fastened to the sides of the boat, glittering in the moonlight. “I count forty and one lances and forty and one shields,” said the youth to himself, “but these good friars will tell me that I have seen bulrushes and willow-leaves.” He closed his eyes for a time and then rubbed them and looked out again. There was the boat, and there were the lances and the shields and the men-at-arms, only nearer and more distinct, for the current of the river was rapid, and some noiseless oars or paddles were at work to increase the speed without giving the alarm. “I see what is in the wind,” thought Elfric; “the Normans would surprise us and expel us by night, without rousing the good people of Spalding town.” He ran down the spiral staircase; but, short as was the time that he had been on the housetop, every light had been extinguished in the hall during the interval, every cell-door had been closed; and a chorus of loud snores that echoed along the corridor told him that, maugre their troubles and alarms, all the monks, novices, and lay-brothers were already fast asleep. “I will do what I can do,” said the youth, “for if I wake the superior he will do nothing. If the men of Spalding town cannot rescue us, they shall at least be witnesses to the wrongs put upon us. Nay, Gurth the smith, and Wybert the wheelwright, and Nat the weaver, and Leolf the woodsman, be brave-hearted knaves, and have the trick of archery. From the yon side of those ditches and trenches, which these heavy-armed Normans cannot pass, perchance a hole or two may be driven into their chain jerkins!”

Taking the largest horn in the house he again ascended to the roof, and turning towards the little town he blew with all his strength and skill, and kept blowing until he was answered by three or four horns in the town. By this time the boat was almost under the walls of the monastery, and an arrow from it came whistling close over the youth’s head. “There are neither battlements nor parapets here,” said he, “and it is now time to rouse the brethren.” In a moment he was in the corridor rapping at the doors of the several cells, wherein the monks slept on, not hearing the blowing of the horns; but before half the inmates were roused from their deep slumber the Normans had landed from the boat, and had come round to the front of the house shouting, “Taille-Bois! Taille-Bois! Notre Dame to our aid! and Taille-Bois to his own! Get up, ye Saxon churls that be ever sleeping or eating, and make way for better men!”

The superior forgot his gout and ran to the hall. They all ran to the hall, friars, novices, lay-brothers, and hinds,[^[36]] and lights were brought in and hurried deliberations commenced, in which every one took part. Although there was overmuch sloth, there was little cowardice among these recluses. If there had been any chance of making good the defence of the house, well I ween the major part of them would have voted for resistance; but chance there was none, and therefore, with the exception of Elfric, whose courage, at this time of his life, bordered on rashness, they all finally agreed with the superior that the wisest things to do would be to bid Hubert the portarius throw open the gate and lower the bridge; to assemble the whole community in the chapel, light up all tapers on the high altar and shrines, and chant the Libera Nos Domine—Good Lord deliver us!

“It is not psalmody that will save us from expulsion,” thought Elfric.

Now Hubert the porter was too old and too much disturbed in spirit to do all that he had to do without help; and Father Cedric bade the sturdy novice go and assist him.

“May I die the death of a dog—may I be hanged on a Norman gibbet,” said Elfric to himself, “if I help to open the gates to these midnight robbers!” And instead of following Hubert down to the gate, he went again (sine Abbatis licentiâ, without license or knowledge of his superior) to the house-top, to see whether any of the folk of Spalding town had ventured to come nigh. As he got to the corner of the roof from which he had blown the horn, he heard loud and angry voices below, and curses and threats in English and in Norman French. And he saw about a score of Spalding-men in their sheepskin jackets and with bows and knives in their hands, menacing and reviling the mail-clad men-at-arms. The Saxons soon got themselves well covered from the foe by a broad deep ditch, and by a bank; but some of the Normans had brought their bows with them, and a shaft let fly at the right moment when one of the Saxons was exposing his head and shoulders above the bank, took effect, and was instantly followed by a wild scream or yell—“Wybert is down! Wybert is slain!”

“Then this to avenge him, for Wybert was a good man and true;” and Elfric, who had brought a bow with him from the corridor, drew the string to his ear and let fly an arrow which killed the Norman that had killed Wybert the wright. It was the men-at-arms who now yelled; and, even as their comrade was in the act of falling, a dozen more arrows came whistling among them from behind the bank and made them skip.

Ivo Taille-Bois lifted up his voice and shouted, “Saxon churls, ye mean to befriend your fainéant[^[37]] monks; but if ye draw another bow I will set fire to the cell and grill them all!”

This was a terrible threat, and the poor men of Spalding knew too well that Ivo could easily do that which he threatened. The noise had reached the chapel, where the superior was robing himself, and Father Cedric came to the house-top to conjure the Saxons to retire and leave the servants of the saints to the protection of the saints. At the top of the spiral staircase he found the novice with the bow in his hand; and he said unto him, “What dost thou here, et sine licentiâ”?[^[38]]

“I am killing Normans,” said Elfric; “but Wybert the wright is slain, and the men of Spalding are losing heart.”

“Mad boy, get thee down, or we shall all be burned alive. Go help Hubert unbar the gate and drop the bridge.”

“That will I never, though I break my monastic vow of obedience,” said the youth. “But hark! the chain rattles!—the bridge is down—the hinge creaks—by heaven! the gate is open—Ivo Taille-Bois and his devils are in the house! Then is this no place for me!” And before the monk could check him, or say another word to him, the novice rushed to the opposite side and leaped from the roof into the deep moat. Forgetting his mission—which was to conjure the Saxons in the name of Father Adhelm the superior of the house not to try the arms of the flesh,—old Cedric followed to the spot whence the bold youth had taken his spring, but before he got there Elfric had swum the moat and was making fast for the Welland, in the apparent intention of getting into the fens beyond the river, where Norman pursuit after him could be of no avail. The monk then went towards the front of the building and addressed the Saxons who still lingered behind the ditch and the bank, bemoaning the fate of Wybert, and not knowing what to do. Raising his voice so that they might hear him, Cedric beseeched them to go back to their homes in the town; and he was talking words of peace unto them when he was struck from behind by a heavy Norman sword which cleft his cowl and his skull in twain: and he fell over the edge of the wall into the moat. Some of the men-at-arms had seen Elfric bending his bow on the house-top, and the Norman who had been slain had pointed, while dying, in that direction. After gaining access they had slain old Hubert and the lay-brother who had assisted him in lowering the drawbridge; and then, while the rest rushed towards the chapel, two of the men-at-arms found their way to the roof, and there seeing Cedric they despatched him as the fatal archer and as the daring monk who had blown the horn to call out the men of Spalding. As Father Cedric fell into the moat, and the Normans were seen in possession of the cell, the men of Spalding withdrew, and carried with them the body of Wybert. But if they withdrew to their homes, it was but for a brief season and in order to carry off their moveable goods and their families; for they all knew that Ivo Taille-Bois would visit the town with fire and sword. Some fled across the Welland and the fens to go in search of the Camp of Refuge, and others took their way towards the wild and lonesome shores of the Wash.

But how fared the brotherhood in the chapel below? As Ivo Taille-Bois at the head of his men-at-arms burst into the holy place—made holy by the relics of more than one Saxon saint, and by the tomb and imperishable body of a Saxon who had died a saint and martyr at the hand of the Danish Pagans in the old time, before the name of Normans was ever heard of—the superior and friars, dressed in their stoles, as if for high mass, and the novices and the lay-brothers, were all chanting the Libera Nos; and they seemed not to be intimidated or disturbed by the flashing of swords and lances, or by the sinful imprecations of the invaders; for still they stood where they were, in the midst of tapers and flambards, as motionless as the stone effigies of the saints in the niches of the chapel; and their eyes moved not from the books of prayer, and their hands trembled not, and still they chanted in the glorious strain of the Gregorian chant[^[39]] (which Time had not mended), Libera Nos Domine! “Good Lord deliver us!” and when they had finished the supplication, they struck up in a more cheerful note, Deus Noster Refugium, God is our Refuge.

Fierce and unrighteous man as he was, Ivo Taille-Bois stood for a season on the threshold of the chapel with his mailed elbow leaning on the font that held the holy water; and, as the monks chanted, some of his men-at-arms crossed themselves and looked as if they were conscious of doing unholy things which ought not to be done. But when the superior glanced at him a look of defiance, and the choir began to sing Quid Gloriaris? “Why boasteth thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief?” Ivo bit his lips, raised up his voice—raised it higher than the voices of the chanting monks, and said, “Sir Priest, or prior, come forth and account to the servant of thy lawful King William of Normandie for thy unlawful doings, for thy gluttonies, backslidings, and rebellions, for thy uncleanliness of life and thy disloyalty of heart!” But Father Adhelm moved not, and still the monks sang on: and they came to the versets—“Thou hast loved to speak all words that may do hurt; oh! thou false tongue—therefore shall God destroy thee for ever: He shall take thee and pluck thee out of thy dwelling.”

“False monk, I will first pluck thee out of thine,” cried Ivo, who knew enough church Latin to know what the Latin meant that the monks were chanting; and he strode across the chapel towards the superior, and some of his men-at-arms strode hastily after him, making the stone floor of the chapel ring with the heavy tread of their iron-bound shoon; and some of the men-at-arms stood fast by the chapel door, playing with the fingers of their gloves of mail and looking in one another’s eyes or down to the ground, as if they liked not the work that Ivo had in hand. The monks, the novices, the lay-brothers, all gathered closely round their superior and linked their arms together so as to prevent Ivo from reaching him; and the superior, taking his crucifix of gold from his girdle, and raising it high above his head and above the heads of those who girded him in, and addressing the Norman chief as an evil spirit, or as Sathanas the father of all evil spirits, he bade him avaunt! Ivo had drawn his sword, but at sight of the cross he hesitated to strike, and even retired a few steps in arrear. The monks renewed their chant; nor stopped, nor were interrupted by any of the Normans until they had finished this Psalm. But when it was done Ivo Taille-Bois roared out, “Friars, this is psalmody enough! Men-at-arms, your trumpets! Sound the charge.” And three Normans put each a trumpet to his lips and sounded the charge; which brought all the men-at-arms careering against the monks and the novices and the lay-brothers; so that the living fence was broken and some of the brethren were knocked down and trampled under foot, and a path was opened for Ivo, who first took the golden crucifix from the uplifted hand of Father Adhelm and put it round his own neck, and then took the good father by the throat and bade him come forth from the chapel into the hall, where worldly business might be done without offering insult or violence to the high altar.

“I will first pour out the curses of the church on thy sacrilegious head,” said the superior, throwing off the Norman count, and with so much strength that Ivo reeled and would have fallen to the ground among the prostrate monks, if he had not first fallen against some of his men-at-arms. Father Adhelm broke away from another Norman who clutched him, but in so doing he left nearly all his upper garment in the soldier’s hand, and he was rent and ragged and without his crucifix when he reached the steps of the altar and began his malediction.

“Stop the shaveling’s tongue, but shed no blood here,” cried Ivo; “seize him, seize them all, and bring them into the refectory!”—and so saying the chief rushed out of the chapel into the hall. It was an unequal match—thirty-nine men-at-arms against a few monks and boys and waiting men; yet before the superior could be dragged from the high altar, and conveyed with all his community into the hall, several of the Normans were made to measure their length on the chapel floor (they could not wrestle like our true Saxons), and some of them were so squeezed within their mail sleeves and gorgets[^[40]] by the grip of Saxon hands, that they bore away the marks and smarts that lasted them many a day. It was for this that one of them cut the weazen[^[41]] of the sturdy old cook as soon as he got him outside the chapel door, and that another of them cut off the ears of the equally stout cellarer.

At last they were all conveyed, bound with their cords or girdles, into the hall. The Taille-Bois, with his naked sword in his hand, and with a man-at-arms on either side of him, sat at the top of the hall in the superior’s chair of state; and the superior and the rest of the brotherhood were brought before him like criminals.

“Brother to the devil,” said Ivo, “what was meant by thy collecting of armed men—rebel and traitor serfs that shall rue the deed!—thy sounding of horns on the house-top; thy fighting monks that have killed one of my best men-at-arms; thy long delay in opening thy doors to those who knocked at them in the name of King William; thy outrages in the chapel, and all thy other iniquities which I have so oft-times pardoned at the prayer of the Lady Lucia? Speak, friar, and tell me why I should not hang thee over thine own gateway as a terror and an example to all the other Saxon monks in this country, who are all in their hearts enemies and traitors to the good king that God and victory have put over this land!”

Had it not been that Father Adhelm was out of breath, from his wrestling in the Chapel, I wist he never would have allowed Ivo Taille-Bois to speak so long without interruption. But by the time the Norman paused, the superior had partly recovered his breath; and he did not keep the Norman waiting for his answer.

“Son of the fire everlasting,” cried Adhelm, “it is for me to ask what meanest thou by thy transgressions, past and present? Why hast thou from thy first coming among us never ceased from troubling me and these other servants of the saints, the brothers of this poor cell? Why hast thou seized upon and emptied our granaries and our cellars (more the possessions of the saints and of the poor than our possessions)? Why hast thou carried off the best of our cattle? Why hast thou and thy people lamed our horses and our oxen, and killed our sheep and poultry? Why hast thou caused to be assailed on the roads, and beaten with staves and swords, the lay-brothers and servants of this house? Why didst thou come at the dead of night like a chief of robbers with thy men-at-arms and cut-throats to break in upon us and to wound and slay the servants of the Lord, who have gotten thy king’s peace, and letters of protection from the Archbishop Lanfranc?[^[42]] Oh, Ivo Taille-Bois! tell me why thou shouldst not be overtaken by the vengeance of man’s law in this world, and by eternal perdition in the next?”

Ivo was not naturally a man of many words; and thinking it best to cut the discussion short, he grinned a grim grin, and said in a calm and business-like tone of voice, “Saxon! we did not conquer thy country to leave Saxons possessed of its best fruits. This house and these wide domains are much too good for thee and thine: I want them, and long have wanted them, to bestow upon others. Wot ye not that I have beyond the sea one brother and three cousins that have shaved their crowns and taken to thy calling—that in Normandie, Anjou, and Maine there are many of my kindred and friends who wear hoods and look to me for provision and establishment in this land of ignorance and heresy, where none of your home-dwelling Saxon monks know how to make the tonsure[^[43]] in the right shape?”

“Woe to the land, and woe to the good Christian people of it!” said the superior and several of his monks; “it is then to be with us as with the brotherhood of the great and holy abbey of St. Albans! We are to be driven forth empty-handed and brokenhearted, and our places are to be supplied by rapacious foreigners who speak not and understand not the tongue of the English people! Ah woe! was it for this that Saxon saints and martyrs died and bequeathed their bones to our keeping and their miracles to our superintendence; that Saxon kings and queens descended from their thrones to live among us, and die among us, and enrich us, so that we might give a beauty to holiness, a pomp and glory to the worship of heaven, and ample alms, and still more ample employment to the poor? Was it for this the great and good men of our race, our thanes and our earls, bequeathed lands and money to us? Was it to fatten herds of alien monks, who follow in the bloody track of conquest and devastation, and come among us with swords and staves, and clad in mail even like your men-at-arms, that we and our predecessors in this cell have laboured without intermission to drain these bogs and fens, to make roads for the foot of man through this miry wilderness, to cut broad channels to carry off the waste waters to the great deep, to turn quagmires into bounteous corn fields, and meres into green pastures?”[^[44]]

While the Saxon monks thus delivered themselves, Ivo and his Normans (or such of them as could understand what was said) ofttimes interrupted them, and spoke in this wise—“King William hath the sanction of his holiness the Pope for all that he hath done or doth. Lanfranc loveth not Saxon priests and monks, and Saxon priests and monks love not the king nor any of the Normans, but are ever privately preaching and prating about Harold and Edgar Etheling, and putting evil designs into the heads of the people. The Saxon saints are no saints: who ever heard their names beyond sea? Their half-pagan kings and nobles have heaped wealth here and elsewhere that generous Norman knights and better bred Norman monks[^[45]] might have the enjoyment of it. The nest is too good for these foul birds: we have better birds to put into it. Let us then turn these Englishers out of doors.”

The last evil deed was speedily done, and superior, monks, novices, lay-brothers, were all thrust out of the gateway, and driven across the bridge. If the well-directed arrow of Elfric had slain one man-at-arms and the folk of Spalding town had slightly wounded two or three others, the Normans had killed Father Cedric, Hubert the porter, and the man that assisted him, had killed the cook, and cut off the ears of the cellarer. The conquerors therefore sought to shed no more blood, and the Taille-Bois was satisfied when he saw the brotherhood dispossessed and turned out upon the wide world with nothing they could call their own, except the sandals on their feet, and the torn clothes on their backs, and two or three church books. When a little beyond the moat they all shook the dust from their feet against the sons of the everlasting fire; and the superior, leisurely and in a low tone of voice, finished the malediction which he had begun in the chapel against Ivo Taille-Bois. This being over, Father Adhelm counted his little flock and said, “But oh, my children, where is the good Cedric?”

“Cedric was killed on the house-top, and lies dead in the moat,” said one of the lay-brothers who had learned his fate when the rest of the community were ignorant of it.

“Peace to his soul, and woe to him that slew him!” said the superior; “but where is Elfric? I see not the brave boy Elfric.”

“I saw Elfric outside the walls of our house and running for the Welland, just as the Normans were admitted,” said the lay-brother who had before spoken, “and it must have been he that sent the arrow through the brain of the man-at-arms that lies there on the green sward.”

“He will send his arrows through the brains of many more of them,” said the superior. “My children, I feel the spirit of prophecy speaking within me, and I tell ye all that Elfric, our whilome novice, will live to do or cause to be done more mischief to the oppressors of his country than all the chiefs that have taken up arms against them. He hath a head to plan, and a heart to dare, and a strong hand to execute. I know the course he will take. He will return to the Isle of Ely, the place of his birth, in the midst of the many waters, and throw himself into the Camp of Refuge, where the Saxon motto is ‘Death or Independence.’”

Before moving to the near bank of the Welland, or to the spot to which the Normans had sent down the ferry-boat, Father Adhelm again counted his little flock, and said, “Cedric lies dead in the moat, Hubert and Bracho lie cold under the archway, Elfric the novice is fled to be a thorn in the sides of these Normans, but, oh tell me! where is good Oswald the cook?”

“After they had dragged your reverence into the hall, a man-at-arms cut his throat, even as Oswald used to cut the throats of swine; and he lies dead by the chapel-door.”

“Misericordia! (O mercy on us!) Go where we will, we shall never find so good a cook again!”

Although it seemed but doubtful where or when they should find material for another meal the afflicted community repeated the superior’s alacks and misericordias! mourning the loss of old Oswald as a man and as a Saxon, but still more as the best of cooks.[^[46]]

CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT HOUSE AT ELY.

Islands made by the sea, and yet more islands, inland, by rivers, lakes, and meres, have in many places ceased to be islands in everything save only in name.[^[47]] The changes are brought about by time and the fluctuations of nature, or by the industry and perseverance of man.

We, the monks of Ely that now live (Henrico Secundo, regnante),[^[48]] have witnessed sundry great changes in the Fen Country, and more changes be now contemplated; in sort that in some future age, men may find it hard to conceive, from that which they see in their day, the manner of country the Fen country[^[49]] was when the Normans first came among us. Then, I wist, the Isle of Ely was to all intents an inland island, being surrounded on every side by lakes, meres and broad rivers, which became still broader in the season of rain, there being few artificial embankments to confine them, and few or no droves or cuts to carry off the increase of water towards the Wash and the sea. The isle had its name from Helig or Elig,[^[50]] a British name for the Willow, which grew in great abundance in every part of it, and which formed in many parts low but almost impenetrable forests, with marshes and quagmires under them, or within them. Within the compass of the waters, which marked the limits of the country, and isolated it from the neighbouring countries—which also from south to north, for the length of well nigh one hundred miles, and from east to west, for the breath of well nigh forty miles, were a succession of inland islands, formed like Ely itself—there were numerous meres, marshes, rivers, and brooks. The whole isle was almost a dead flat, with here and there an inconsiderable eminence standing up from it. These heights were often surrounded by water; and when the autumnal or the spring rains swelled the meres and streams, and covered the flats, they formed so many detached islets. Though surrounded and isolated, they were never covered by water; therefore it was upon these heights and knolls that men in all times had built their towns, and their churches and temples. Communications were kept up by means of boats, carricks, and skerries, and of flat-bottomed boats which could float in shallow water; and, save in the beds of the rivers, and in some of the meres, the waters were but shallow even in the season of rains. But if it was a miry, it was not altogether a hungry land. When the waters subsided, the greenest and richest pasture sprung up in many parts of the plain, and gave sustenance to innumerable herds. The alluvial soil was almost everywhere rich and productive; and the patches which had been drained and secured, rewarded the industry and ingenuity of the inhabitants with abundant crops. The Roman conquerors, with amazing difficulty, had driven one of their military roads[^[51]] through the heart of the country; but this noble causeway was an undeviating straight line, without any branches or cross roads springing from it; and it was so flanked in nearly its whole extent by meres, pools, rivers, rivulets, swamps, and willow forests, that a movement to the one side or the other was almost impracticable, unless the Romans, or those who succeeded the conquerors in the use of the causeway, embarked in boats and travelled like the natives of the country. In all times it had been a land of refuge against invaders. In the days of Rome the ancient Britons rallied here, and made a good stand after all the rest of England had been subdued. Again, when Rome was falling fast to ruin, and the legions of the empire had left the Britons to take care of themselves, that people assembled here in great numbers to resist the fierce Saxon invaders. Again, when the Saxons were assailed by the Danes and Norwegians, and the whole host of Scandinavian rovers and pirates, the indwellers of the Isle of Ely, after enjoying a long exemption from the havoc of war and invasion, defied the bloody Dane, and maintained a long contest with him; and now, as at earlier periods, and as at a later date, the isle of Ely became a place of refuge to many of the people of the upland country, and of other and more open parts of England, where it had not been found possible to resist the Danish battle-axes. The traditions of the ancient Britons had passed away with that unhappy and extinct race; but the whole fenny country was full of Saxon traditions, and stories of the days of trouble when war raged over the isle, and the fierce Danes found their way up the rivers, which opened upon the sea, into the very heart of the country. The saints and martyrs of the district were chiefly brave Saxons who had fought the Danes in many battles, and who had fallen at last under the swords of the unconverted heathen. The miracles that were wrought in the land of many waters were for the most part wrought at the tombs of these Saxon warriors. The legends of patriotism were blended with the legends and rites of religion. Every church had its patriot saint and martyr; in every religious house the monks related the prowess, and chanted daily requiems, and said frequent masses to the soul of some great Saxon warrior who had fallen in battle; or to some fair Saxon maid or matron, who had preferred torture and death to a union with a pagan; or to some Saxon queen or princess, who, long before the coming of the Danes, and at the first preaching of the Gospel among the Saxons by Saint Augustine and his blessed followers, had renounced a throne and all the grandeurs and pleasures of the world, and all her riches, (relictis fortunis omnibus!) to devote herself to the service of heaven, to found a monastery, and to be herself the first lady abbess of the monastery she founded.

The foremost and most conspicious of all the heights in this fen country was crowned by the abbey and conventual house of Ely, around which a large town, entirely governed by the Lord Abbat, (or, in the Lord Abbat’s name, by the Cellarius of the abbey), had grown. The first conventual church was founded in the time of the Heptarchy, about the year of our Lord six hundred and seventy, by Saint Etheldreda, a queen, wife, virgin, and saint. Etheldreda[^[52]] was wife to King Egfrid,[^[53]] the greatest of the Saxon kings, and daughter of Anna, king of the East Angles, whose dominions included the isle of Ely, and extended over the whole of Suffolk and Norfolk. This the first abbey church was built by Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who, with his sainted companion, Benedict, bishop of Northumberland, had travelled in far countries to learn their arts, and had brought from Rome into England painted glass, and glaziers, and masons, and all manner of artificers. When the Church was finished, a monastery was built and attached to it by the same royal devotee. Neither the love of her husband nor any other consideration could make Etheldreda forego her fixed purpose of immuring herself in the cloisters. Many of her attached servants of both sexes, whom she had converted, followed her to Ely, and were provided with separate and appropriate lodgings. Etheldreda was the first abbess of Ely; and after many years spent in the exercise of devotion, in fasting, penitence, and prayer, she died with so strong an odour of sanctity that it could not be mistaken; and she was canonised forthwith by the pope at Rome. Some of her servants were beatified: one, the best and oldest of them all, Ovin,[^[54]] who was said to descend from the ancient Britons,[^[55]] and who had been minister to her husband the king, or to herself as queen, was canonised soon after his death. Huna, her chaplain, after assisting at her interment, retired to a small island in the Fens near Ely, where he spent the rest of his days as an anchorite, and died with the reputation of a saint. Many sick resorted to Huna’s grave and recovered health. Her sister Sexburga was the second abbess of Ely, and second only to herself in sanctity. She too was canonised; and so also were her successors the abbesses Ermenilda and Withburga.[^[56]] The bodies of all the four lay in the choir of the church. The house had had many good penmen, and yet, it was said that they had failed to record all the miracles that had been wrought at these tombs. But the holiness of the place had not always secured it. In or about the year 870 the unbelieving Danes, by ascending the Ouse, got unto Ely, slew all the monks and nuns, and plundered and destroyed the abbey. And after this, Saxon kings, no better than heathens, annexed all the lands and revenues of the house to the crown, to spend among courtiers and warriors the substance which Saint Ermenilda and the other benefactors of the abbey had destined to the support of peace-preaching monks, and to the sustenance of the poor. And thus fared it with the abbey of Ely, until the reign of the great and bountiful King Edgar, who in course of his reign founded or restored no fewer than fifty monasteries. In the year 970 this ever-to-be-revered king (Rex Venerandus) granted the whole of the island of Ely, with all its appurtenances, privileges, and immunities, to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester, who rebuilt the church and the monastery, and provided them well with monks of the Benedictine order. The charter of Edgar, as was recorded by that king’s scribe in the preamble to it, was granted “not privately and in a corner, but in the most public manner, and under the canopy of heaven.” The charter was confirmed by other kings, and subsequently by the pope. The great and converted Danish King Canute, who loved to glide along the waters of the river and listen to the monks of Ely singing in their choir, and who ofttimes visited the Lord Abbat, and feasted with him at the seasons of the great festivals of the church, confirmed the charter; and the cartularies of the house contained likewise the confirmation of King Edward the Confessor, now a saint and king in heaven, (in cœlo sanctus et rex.)

Theoretical and fabulous are the tales of those who say that the Saxons had no majestic architecture; that their churches and abbeys and monasteries were built almost entirely of wood, without arches or columns, without aisles or cloisters; and that there was no grandeur or beauty in the edifices of England until after the Norman conquest. The abbey built at Ely in the tenth century by the Saxon bishop Ethelwald was a stately stone edifice, vast in its dimensions, and richly ornamented in its details. Round-headed arches rested upon rows of massive columns; the roof of the church and the roof of the great hall of the abbey were arched and towering; and, high above all, a tower and steeple shot into the air, to serve as a landmark throughout the flat fenny country, and a guide to such as might lose themselves among the meres and the labyrinths of the willow forests. If the monks of Ely were lords of all the country and of all the people dwelling in it, those people and all honest wayfarers ever found the hospitable gates of the abbey open to receive them; and all comers were feasted, according to their several degrees, by the Lord Abbat, the prior, the cellarer, the hospitaller, the pietancer, or some other officer of the house. Twenty knights, with their twenty squires to carry arms and shield, (arma ac scuta), did service to the Lord Abbat as his military retainers; and in his great stables room was left for many more horses. The house had had many noble, hospitable, Saxon-hearted heads, but never one more munificent and magnificent than the Abbat Thurstan.[^[57]] He had been appointed to the dignity in the peaceful days of Edward the Confessor; but King Harold, on ascending the throne, had shown him many favours, and had given him the means of being still more generous. This last of our Saxon kings had begun his reign with great popularity, being accessible, affable, and courteous to all men, and displaying a great regard for piety and justice. In the Confessor’s time, under the title of earl, he had ruled as a sovereign[^[58]] in Norfolk and Suffolk and part of Cambridge, and he was a native of East Anglia. He had been open-handed and open-hearted. From all these reasons the people of this part of England were singularly devoted to his cause, and so thoroughly devoted to his person that they would not for a very long time believe that he had perished in the battle of Hastings; their hope and belief being that he had only been wounded, and would soon re-appear among them to lead them against the Norman.

When Duke William had been crowned in Westminster Abbey, and when his constantly reinforced and increasing armies had spread over the country, many of the great Saxon heads of religious houses, even like the Abbat of Crowland, had sent in their submission, and had obtained the king’s peace, in the vain hope that thus they would be allowed to retain their places and dignities, and preserve their brethren from persecution, and the foundations over which they presided from the hands of foreign spoilers and intruders. Not so Thurstan, my Lord Abbat of Ely. He would not forget the many obligations he owed, and the friendship and fealty he had sworn to the generous, lion-hearted Harold; and while the lands of other prelates and abbats lay open everywhere to the fierce Norman cavalry, and their hinds and serfs, their armed retainers and tenants, and all the people dwelling near them, were without heart or hope, and impressed with the belief that the Normans were invincible, Thurstan, from the window of the hall, or from the top of the abbey tower, looked across a wide expanse of country which nature had made defensible; and he knew that he was backed by a stout-hearted and devoted people, who would choke up the rivers with the dead bodies of the Normans, and with their own corpses, ere they would allow the invaders to reach the abbey of Ely and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda. Hence Thurstan had been emboldened to give shelter to such English lords, and such persecuted Saxons of whatsoever degree, as fled from the oppression of the conquerors to the isle of Ely. Thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of their mitres, abbots driven from their monasteries to make room for foreigners, all flocked hither; and whether they brought much money or rich jewels with them, or whether they brought nothing at all, they all met with a hospitable reception: so large and English was the heart of Abbat Thurstan. When it was seen that William was breaking all the old and free Saxon institutions, and the mild and equitable laws of Edward the Confessor, which he had most solemnly sworn to preserve and maintain; that the promptest submission to the conqueror ensured no lasting safety to life or property; and that the Normans, one and all, laity and clergy, knights and bishops, were proclaiming that all men of Saxon blood ought to be disseised of their property, and ought to be reduced to servitude and bondage, and were acting as if this system could soon be established, more and more fugitives came flying into the fen country. The town of Ely was roomy, but it was crowded; vast were the monastery, and hospitium, and dependencies, but they were crowded also: and far and near, on the dry hillocks, and in the green plains fenced from the waters, were seen huts and rude tents, and the blue smoke of many fires rising above the grey willows and alders.

It were long to tell how many chiefs and nobles of fame, and how many churchmen of the highest dignity, assembled at dinner-time, and at supper-time, in my Lord Abbat’s great hall, where each had his seat according to his rank, and where the arms of every great chief were hung behind him on the wall, and where the banner of every chief and noble floated over his head, pendant from the groined roof. All the bravest and most faithful of the Saxon warriors who had survived the carnage of Hastings, and of the many battles which had been fought since that of Hastings, were here; and in the bodies of these men, scarred with the wounds inflicted by the Norman lances, flowed the most ancient and noble blood of England. They had been thanes and earls, and owners of vast estates, but now they nearly all depended for their bread on the Lord Abbat of Ely. Stigand,[^[59]] the dispossessed Saxon Primate of all England, was here; Egelwin, the dispossessed Saxon Bishop of Durham, was here; Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, was here; and on one side of Alexander sat the good Bishop of Lindisfarn, while on the other side of him the pious Bishop of Winchester ate the bread of dependence and sorrow. Among the chiefs of great religious houses were Eghelnoth the Abbat of Glastonbury, and Frithric the most steadfast and most Saxon-hearted of all Lord Abbats. A very hard man, an unlettered, newly-emancipated serf, from one of the hungriest parts of Normandie or Maine, had taken possession of the great house at Glastonbury,[^[60]] and had caused the bodies of his predecessors, the abbats of English race, to be disinterred; and, gathering their bones together, he had cast them in one heap without the gates, as if, instead of being the bones of holy and beatified monks, they had been the bones of sheep, or oxen, or of some unclean animals. Frithric of Saint Albans, who had been spiritual and temporal lord of one of the fairest parts of England, of nearly all the woodland and meadow-land and corn-fields that lay between Saint Albans and Barnet on the one side, and between Luton and Saint Albans on the other side—Frithric, who had maintained one score and ten loaf-eaters or serving men in his glorious abbey, had wandered alone and unattended through the wilds and the fens, begging his way and concealing himself from Norman pursuit in the huts of the poorest men; and he had brought nothing with him to Ely save two holy books which had comforted him on his long wayfaring, and which he carried under his arm. Every great house was wanted by the conquerors for their unecclesiastical kindred; but Saint Albans was one of the greatest of them all, and Frithric had done that which the Normans and their duke would never forgive. When, months after that great assize of God’s judgment in battle, the battle of Hastings, (and after that the traitorous Saxon Witan, assembled in London, had sent a submissive deputation to William the Bastard at Berkhamstead to swear allegiance to him, and to put hostages into his hand,) the Normans were slaying the people, and plundering and burning the towns and villages, upon drawing nigh unto Saint Albans, they found their passage stopped by a multitude of great trees[^[61]] which had been felled and laid across the road, and behind which—if there had not been traitors in London and false Saxons everywhere—there would have been posted expert archers, and valorous knights and hardy yeomen, and nathless every monk, novice, lay-brother, and hind of the abbey, in such sort that the invaders and their war-horses would never have gotten over those barricades of forest trees, nor have ever ascended the hill where the great saint and martyr Albanus[^[62]] suffered his martyrdom in the days of the Dioclesian persecution, and where Offa the true Saxon king of Mercia erected the first church and the first great monastery for one hundred monks, that they might keep alive the memory of the just, and pray over his tomb seven times a-day. Wrathful was Duke William; for, albeit none stood behind those ramparts of timber to smite him and his host, he could not win forward, nor enter the town, nor approach the abbey, until his men-at-arms and the followers of his camp should with long toil clear the road, and remove one after the other those stout barriers of forest trees. Red was he in the face as a burning coal when he summoned to his presence Frithric the Lord Abbat, and demanded whose work it was, and why these oaken barriers were raised in the jurisdiction of the monastery. Abbat Frithric, whose heart was stouter than his own oaks, looked, as became the free descendant of Saxon thanes and Danish princes, right into the eyes of the conqueror, and said unto him in a loud voice, “I have done the duty appertaining to my birth and calling; and if others of my rank and profession had performed the like, as they well could and ought, it had not been in thy power to penetrate into the land thus far!” We have said his voice was loud when he spoke to the conqueror: it was so loud that the hills re-echoed it, and that men heard it that were hid in the woods to watch what the Normans would do, and avoid their fury; and when the echoes of that true Saxon voice died away, the thick growing oaks seemed to speak, for there came voices from the woods on either side the road, shouting, “Hail! all hail! Lord Frithric, our true Lord Abbat! If every Saxon lord had been true as he, Harold would now be king!”

Quoth Duke William, in an angered voice, “Is the spirituality of England of such power? If I may live and enjoy that which I have gotten, I will make their power less; and especially I mind to begin with thee, proud Abbat of Saint Albans!”

And how behaved Abbat Frithric when his domains were seized, and ill-shaven foreign monks thrust into his house, and savage foreign soldiers?—when, after that the conqueror had sworn upon all the relics of the church of Saint Albans, and by the Holy Gospels, to respect the abbey and all churches, and to preserve inviolate the good and ancient laws which had been established by the pious kings of England, and more especially by King Edward the Confessor, he allowed his Normans to kill the Saxon people without bot or compensation, plundered every church in the land, oppressed and despoiled all the abbeys, ploughed with ploughshares of red hot iron over the faces of all Saxons, and yet demanded from Frithric and his compeers a new oath of allegiance, and fuller securities for his obedience—what then did the Lord Abbat of Saint Albans? He assembled all his monks and novices in the hall of the chapter, and taking a tender farewell of them, he said, “My brothers, my children, the time is come when, according to Scripture, I must flee from city to city before the face of our persecutors—Fugiendum est a facie persequentium a civitate in civitatem.” And rather than be forsworn, or desert the good cause, or witness without the power of remedying them the sufferings and humiliations and forcible expulsions of his monks, he went forth and became a wanderer as aforesaid, until he crossed the land of willows and many waters, and came unto Ely, a lone man, with nought but his missal and his breviary under his arm. Now the Abbat Frithric was old when these years of trouble began; and constant grief and toil, and the discomforts of his long journey on foot from the dry sunny hill of Saint Albans to the fens and morasses of Ely, had given many a rude shake to the hour-glass of his life. Since his arrival at Ely he had wasted away daily: every time that he appeared in the hall or refectory he seemed more and more haggard and worn: most men saw that he was dying, but none saw it so clearly as himself. When the young and hopeful would say to him, “Lord Frithric, these evil days will pass away, the Saxons will get their own again, and thou wilt get back as a true Saxon to thine own abbey,” he would reply, “Young men, England will be England again, but not in my day; my next move is to the grave: Saint Albans is a heavenly place, but it is still upon earth, and, save the one hope that my country may revive, and that the laws and manners and the tongue of the Saxons may not utterly perish, my hopes are all in heaven!”

Some of the best and wisest of those who had sought for refuge in the isle of Ely, feared that when this bright guiding light should be put out, and other old patriots, like the Abbat Frithric, should take their departure, the spirit which animated this Saxon league would depart also, or gradually cool and decline.

CHAPTER IV.
THE MONKS OF ELY FEAST.

It was on a wet evening in Autumn, as the rain was descending in torrents upon swamps that seemed to have collected all the rains that had been falling since the departure of summer, and just as the monks of Ely were singing the Ave Maria (Dulce, cantaverunt Monachi in Ely!)[^[63]] that Elfric, the whilom novice of Spalding, surrounded by some of the Lord Abbat’s people, and many of the town folk, who were all laughing and twitching at his cloak, arrived at the gate of the hospitium.[^[64]] Our Lord Abbat Frithric had brought with him two holy books. Elfric, our novice, had brought with him two grim Norman heads, for he had not been idle on the road, but had surprised and killed on the borders of the fen country, first one man-at-arms, and then another; and the good folk of Ely were twitching at his mantle in order that they might see again the trophies which he carried under his broad sleeve. At his first coming to the well-guarded ford across the Ouse, the youth had made himself known. Was he not the youngest son of Goodman Hugh, who dwelt aforetime by Saint Ovin’s Cross, hard by the village of Haddenham, and only a few bow-shot from the good town of Ely.[^[65]] And when the Saxons had seen the two savage Norman heads, and had looked in the youth’s face, the elders declared that he was the very effigies of the Goodman Hugh; and some of the younkers said that, albeit his crown was shorn, and his eye not so merry as it was, they recalled his face well, and eke the days when Elfric the son of Goodman Hugh played at bowls with them in the bowling-alley of Ely, and bobbed for eels[^[66]] with them in the river, and went out with them to snare wild water-fowl in the fens. Judge, therefore, if he met not with an hospitable reception from town and gown, from the good folk of Ely, and from all the monks!

So soon as Elfric had refreshed himself in the hospitium, he was called to the presence of Abbat Thurstan, and in truth to the presence of all the abbat’s noble and reverend guests, for Thurstan was seated in his great hall, where the servitors were preparing for the supper. Elfric would have taken his trophies with him, but the loaf-man who brought the message doubted whether the abbat would relish the sight of dead men’s heads close afore suppertime, and told him that his prowess was already known; and so Elfric proceeded without his trophies to the great hall, where he was welcomed by the noble company like another David that had slain two Goliaths.[^[67]] When he had told the story of Ivo Taille-Bois’ long persecution and night attack, and his own flight and journey, and had answered numerous questions put to him by the grave assembly, Abbat Thurstan asked him whether he knew what had happened at Spalding since his departure, and what had become of Father Adhelm and his monks, and what fate had befallen the good Abbat of Crowland.

“After my flight from the succursal cell,” said the youth, “I dwelt for a short season at Crowland, hidden in the township, or in Deeping-fen, whither also came unto the abbey Father Adhelm and the rest of that brotherhood of Spalding; and there we learned how Ivo Taille-Bois had sent over to his own country to tell his kinsmen that he had to offer them a good house, convenient for a prior and five friars, ready built, ready furnished and well provided with lands and tenements; and how these heretical and unsound Norman monks[^[68]] were hastening to cross the Channel and take possession of the succursal cell at Spalding. My Lord Abbat of Crowland, having what they call the king’s peace, and holding the letters of protection granted by Lanfranc”.... “They will protect no man of Saxon blood, and the priest or monk that accepts them deserves excommunication,” said Frithric, the Abbat of Saint Albans.

“Amen!” said Elfric; “but our Abbat of Crowland, relying upon these hollow and rotten reeds, laid his complaints before the king’s council at that time assembled near unto Peterborough, and sought redress and restitution.[^[69]] But the Normans sitting in council not only refused redress and absolved Taille-Bois, but also praised him for what he had done in the way of extortion, pillage, sacrilege, and murder; and”....

“My once wise brother thy Abbat of Crowland ought to have known all this beforehand,” said the Abbat of Saint Albans; “for do not these foreigners all support and cover one another, and form a close league, bearing one upon another, even as on the body of the old dragon scale is laid over scale?”

“Sic est, my Lord Abbat,” said the youth, bowing reverentially to the dignitary of the church and the best of Saxon patriots, “so is it my lord! and dragons and devils are these Normans all! Scarcely had the decision of the king’s council reached our house at Crowland, ere it was surrounded by armed men, and burst open at the dead of night, as our poor cell at Spalding had been, and Father Adhelm and all those who had lived under his rule at Spalding, were driven out as disturbers of the king’s peace! I should have come hither sooner, but those to whom my obedience was due begged me to tarry awhile. Now I am only the forerunner of Father Adhelm and his brethren, and of my Lord Abbat of Crowland himself; for the abbat can no longer bear the wrongs that are put upon him, and can see no hope upon earth, and no resting-place in broad England, except in the Camp of Refuge.”

“Another abbat an outcast and a wanderer! This spacious house will be all too full of Saxon abbats and bishops: but I shall make room for this new comer,” said Frithric of Saint Albans to Egelwin, Bishop of Durham.[^[70]]

Divers of the monks of Ely, and specialiter the chamberlain, who kept the accounts of the house, and the cellarer, who knew the daily drain made on the winebutts, looked blank at this announcement of more guests; but the bounteous and big-hearted Abbat of Ely said, “Our brother of Crowland, and Father Adhelm of Spalding, shall be welcome here—yea, and all they may bring with them; but tell me, oh youth, are they near at hand, or afar off in the wilderness?”

“The feet of age travel not so fast as the feet of youth,” said Elfric, “age thinks, youth runs. I wot I was at Ramsey[^[71]] mere before they got to the Isle of Thorney, and crossed the Ouse before they came to the Nene, but as, by the blessing of the saints,” and the youth might have said, in consequence of exercise and low living, “Father Adhelm’s podagra hath left him, they can hardly fail of being here on the day of Saint Edmund,[^[72]] our blessed king and martyr, and that saint’s day is the next day after to-morrow.”

“It shall be a feast-day,” said Thurstan; “for albeit Saint Edmund be not so great a saint as our own saint, Etheldreda, the founder of this house, and the monks of Saint Edmund-Bury (the loons have submitted to the Norman!) have more to do with his worship than we have, King Edmund is yet a great saint—a true Saxon saint, whose worship is old in the land; and it hath been the custom of this house to exercise hospitality on his festival. Therefore will we hold that day as we have been wont to hold it; and our brothers from Crowland and Spalding, who must be faring but badly in the fens, shall be welcomed with a feast.”

So bounteous and open-handed was the true Saxon Abbat of Ely. But the chamberlain set his worldly head to calculate the expense, and the cellarer muttered to himself, “By Saint Withburga[^[73]] and her holy well, our cellars will soon be dry!”

On Saint Edmund’s eve, after evening service in the choir and after saying his prayers apart in the chapel of Saint Marie, Frithric, the Abbat of Saint Albans departed this life. His last words were, that England would be England still;[^[74]] and all those who heard the words and had English hearts, believed that he was inspired, and that the spirit of prophecy spoke in his dying voice. The Abbat of Crowland was so near, that he heard the passing-bell, as its sad sounds floated over the fens, telling all the faithful that might be there of their duty to put up a prayer for the dead. On Saint Edmund’s day the way-farers from Crowland arrived, and that abbat took possession of the cell, and of the seat in the refectory which had been occupied by Frithric. Fitting place was also found for Father Adhelm, who had grown so thin upon the journey that even Elfric scarcely knew him again. The feast in the hall was as magnificent as any that had been given there to King Canute, or even to any that had been given in the happy days of King Edward the Confessor; and the appetites of the company assembled were worthy of the best times. Fish, flesh, and fowl, and pasties of venison—nothing was wanting. The patrimony of Saint Etheldreda, the lands and waters appertaining unto the abbey, and administered by the bountiful abbat, furnished the best portions of the feast. Were there in the world such eels and eel-pouts as were taken in the Ouse and Cam close under the walls of the abbey? Three thousand eels, by ancient compact, do the monks of Ramsey pay every Lent unto the monks of Peterborough, for leave to quarry stone in a quarry appertaining to Peterborough Abbey; but the house of Ely might have paid ten times three thousand eels, and not have missed them, so plenty were there, and eke so good![^[75]] The fame of these eels was known in far countries; be sure they were not wanting on this Saint Edmund’s day. The streams, too, abounded with pike, large and fit for roasting, with puddings in their bellies; and the meres and stagnating waters swarmed with tench and carp, proper for stewing. Ten expert hinds attended to these fresh-water fisheries, and kept the abbat’s stews and the stews of the house constantly filled with fish. It is said by an ancient historian that here in the fenny country is such vast store of fish as astonishes strangers; for which the inhabitants laugh at them: nor is there less plenty of water-fowl;[^[76]] and for a single halfpenny five men may have enough of either, not only to stay their stomachs, but for a full meal! Judge, then, if my Lord Abbat was well provided. It was allowed on all sides that, for the Lenten season, and for all those fast-days of the Church when meat was not to be eaten, no community in the land was so well furnished as the monks of Ely; and that their fish-fasts were feasts. While the brethren of other houses grew thin in Quadragesima, the monks of Ely grew fat. Other communities might do well in roast meats and baked meats; but for a fish dinner—for a banquet in Lent—there was not in the land anything to compare with the dinners at Ely! Nor was there lack of the fish[^[77]] that swim the salt sea, or of the shell-fish that are taken on the sea-coast, or of the finny tribes that come up the river to spawn; the fishermen of Lynn were very devout to Saint Etheldreda, and made a good penny by supplying the monks; they ascended the Ouse with the best of their sea-fish in their boats, and with every fish that was in season, or that they knew how to take. And so, at this late November festival there were skates and plaice, sturgeon and porpoises, oysters and cockles spread upon my Lord Abbat’s table. Of the sheep and beeves we speak not; all men know the richness of the pasture that springs up from the annually inundated meadows,[^[78]] and the bounty of the nibbling crop that grows on the upland slopes with the wild thyme and the other savoury herbs that turn mutton into venison. Of the wild boars of the forest and fen only the hure or head was served up in this Aula Magna, the inferior parts being kept below for the use of the lay-brothers and hinds, or to be distributed by the hospitaller to the humbler degrees of pilgrims and strangers, or to be doled out to the poor of the town of Ely—for wot ye, when the Lord Abbat Thurstan feasted in Ely none fasted there: no! not the poorest palmer that ever put cockle-shell in his cap or took the pilgrim’s staff in his hand to visit the blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda! Of the wild buck, though less abundant in this fenny country than the boar, nought was served up for my Lord Abbat and his own particular guests except the tender succulent haunch; the lay-brothers and the loaf-eaters of the house, and the poor pilgrims and the poor of the town, got all the rest. The fat fowls of Norfolk, the capons of Caen in Normandie, and the pavoni or peacocks that first came from Italie a present from the Legatus à latere of his holiness the Pope, were kept and fattened in my Lord Abbat’s farm-yard; and well did his coquinarius know how to cook them! To the wild-fowl there was no end, and Elfric, our bold novice, the son of Goodman Hugh, who dwelt by Saint Ovin’s Cross, hard by the village of Haddenham, and who had been a fen-fowler from his youth, could have told you how facile it was to ensnare the crane[^[79]] and the heron, the wild duck and teal, and the eccentric and most savoury snipe. Well, we ween, before men cut down the covering woods, and drained the marshes, and brought too many people into the fens and too many great ships up the rivers, the whole land of Saint Etheldreda was like one great larder; and my Lord Abbat had only to say, “Go forth and take for me so many fowl, or fish, or boars,” and it was done. It is an antique and venerable proverb, that which sayeth good eating demands good drinking. The country of the fens was not productive of apple-trees, and the ale and beer that were drunk in the house, and the mead and idromel likewise, were brought from Norfolk and other neighbouring countries; but the abbat, and the officials, and the cloister monks drank better wine than apple-wine, better drink than mead or than pigment, for they drank of the juice of the generous vine, which Noah planted on the first dry hill-side he found. The monks of Glastonbury and Waltham, and of many other houses of the first reputation, cultivated the grape on their own soil, where it seldom would ripen, and drank English grape-wine much too sour and poor. Not so our lordly monks of Ely! They sent the shipmen of Lynn to the Elbe, and to the Rhine, and to the Mosel, to bring them more generous drink; and they sent them to the south even so far as Gasconie and Espaing for the ruby wine expressed from the grapes which grow in the sunniest clime. In the good times four keels, two from the German Ocean and two from the Gulf of Biscaye, steered every year through the sand-banks of the Wash to Lynn,[^[80]] and from Lynn up the Ouse even unto Ely, where the tuns were landed and deposited in the cellars of the abbey, under the charge of the sub-cellarer, a lay-brother from foreign parts, who had been a vintner in his youth. And in this wise it came to be a passant saying with men who would describe anything that was super-excellent—“It is as good as the wine of the monks of Ely!” Maugre the cellarer’s calculation of quantities, the best wine my Lord Abbat had in hand was liberally circulated at the feast in silver cups and in gold-mounted horns. Thus were the drinks equal to the viands, as well in quantity as in quality; and if great was the skill of the vintner, great also was the skill of the cook. In other houses of religion, and in houses, too, of no mean fame, the monks had often to lament that their coquinarius fed them over long on the same sort of dishes; but it was not so with our monks of Ely, who possessed a cook that had the art of giving variety to the selfsame viands, and who also possessed lands, woods, and waters that furnished the most varied materials for the cook to try his skill upon. As Father Adhelm finished his last slice of porpoise,[^[81]] curiously condimented with Eastern spices, as fragrant to the nose as they were savoury to the palate, he lifted up his eyes towards the painted ceiling, and said, “I did not hope, after the death of Oswald our cook at Spalding, to eat of so perfect a dish on this side the grave!”

Flowers[^[82]] there were none to strew upon the floor; but the floor of the hall was thickly strewed with sweet-smelling hay, and with the rushes that grow in the fens; and the feet of the loaf-men of the abbat and of the other servitors that waited on the lordly company made no noise as they hurried to and fro with the dishes and the wine-cups and drinking-horns. While dinner lasted, nought was heard but the voice of the abbat’s chaplain, who read the Psalms in a corner of the hall, the rattle of trenchers and knives, and, timeously,[^[83]] such ejaculations as these! “How good this fish! how good this flesh! how good this fowl! how fine this pasty! how rich this wine!” But when the tables were cleared, and grace after meat had been said, and my Lord Abbat’s cupbearer had filled the cup of every guest with bright old Rhenish, Thurstan stood up at the head of the table, and said, “Now drink we round to the health of England’s true king, and this house’s best friend, the Saxon-hearted Harold,[^[84]] be he where he will! And may he soon come back again! Cups off at a draught, while we drink Health to King Harold!”

“We drink his health, and he is dead—we wish him back, and he is lying in his coffin in the church of the abbey of Waltham, safe in the keeping of the monks of Waltham! The wine is good, but the toast is foolish.” Thus spake the envious prior to the small-hearted cellarer. But the rest of the goodly company drank the wassail with joy and exultation, and seemingly without any doubt that Harold was living and would return. In their minds[^[85]] it was the foul invention of the enemy—to divide and discourage the English people—which made King Harold die at Hastings. Who had seen him fall? Who had counted and examined that noble throng of warriors that retreated towards the sea-coast when the battle was lost by foul treachery, and that found boats and ships, and sailed away for some foreign land? Was not Harold in that throng, wounded, but with no deadly wound? Was it not known throughout the land that the Normans, when they counted the slain, not being able to find the body of Harold, sent some of our Saxon slaves and traitors to seek for it—to seek but not to find it? Was it not a mouldering and a mutilated corpse that the Normans caused to be conveyed to Waltham, and to be there entombed, at the east end of the choir, as the body of King Harold? And did not the monks of Waltham close up the grave with brick-work, and inscribe the slab, Hic jacet Harold infelix,[^[86]] without ever seeing who or what was in the coffin? So reasoned all of this good company, who loved the liberties of England, and who had need of the sustaining hope that the brave Harold was alive, and would come back again.

Other wassails followed fast one upon the other. They were all to the healths of those who had stood out manfully against the invader, or had preferred exile in the fens, and poverty in the Camp of Refuge to submission to the conqueror. “Not less than a brimming cup can we drink to the last arrived of our guests, our brother the Lord Abbat of Crowland, and our brother the prior of Spalding,” said Thurstan, filling his own silver cup with his own hand until the Rhenish ran over upon the thirsty rushes at his feet.

“Might I be allowed,” said Father Adhelm at a later part of the feast, “might my Lord Abbat vouchsafe me leave to call a wassail for an humble and unconsecrated member of the Saxon church—who is nevertheless a child of Saint Etheldreda, and a vassal of my Lord Abbat, being native to this place—I would just drink one quarter of a cup, or it might be one half, to Elfric the Novice, for he travelled for our poor succursal cell when we were in the greatest perils; he carried my missives and my messages through fire and water; he forewarned us of our last danger and extremity; and, albeit he had not our order for the deed, and is thereby liable to a penance for disobedience—he slew with his arrow Ivo Taille-Bois’ man-at-arms that had savagely slain good Wybert our wheel-wright.”

“Aye,” said Thurstan, “and he came hither across the fens as merry as David dancing before the ark; and he brought with him the heads of two Norman thieves who, with their fellows, had been murdering our serfs, and trying to find an opening that should lead them to the Camp of Refuge! Father Adhelm, I would have named thy youth in time; but as thou hast named him, let us drink his name and health even now! And let the draught be one half cup at least;—‘Elfric the novice of Spalding!’”

“This is unbecoming our dignity and the dignity of our house: next we shall waste our wine in drinking wassail to our loaf-eaters and swineherds,” muttered the cellarer to the prior.

But while the cellarer muttered and looked askance, his heart not being Saxon or put in the right place, the noblest English lords that were there, and the highest dignitaries of the church, the archbishop and the bishops, the Lord Abbats, and the priors of houses, that were so high that even the priors were styled Lords, Domini,[^[87]] and wore mitres, stood on their feet, and with their wine-cups raised high in their hands, shouted as in one voice, “Elfric the novice;” and all the obedientiarii or officials of the abbey of Ely that were of rank enow to be bidden to my Lord Abbat’s table, stood up in like manner and shouted, “Elfric the novice!” and, when the loud cheering was over, off went the wine, and down to the ringing board the empty silver cups and the golden-bound horns. He who had looked into those cups and horns might have smiled at Father Adhelm’s halves and quarters: they were nearly all filled to the brim: yet when they had quitted the lip and were put down upon the table, there was scarcely a heel-tap to be found except in the cup of the cellarer and in that of the envious prior of Ely. So strong were the heads and stomachs of our Saxon ancestors before the Normans came among us and brought with them all manner of people from the south with all manner of effeminacies.

Judge ye if Elfric was a proud man that day! At wassail-time the wide doors of the Aula Magna were thrown wide open; and harpers, and meni-singers, and men that played upon the trumpet, the horn, the flute, the pipe and tabor, the cymbal and the drum, or that touched the strings of the viola, assembled outside, making good music with instrument and voice; and all that dwelt within the precincts of the abbey, or that were lodged for the nonce in the guest-house, came, an they chose, to the threshold of the hall, and saw and heard what was doing and saying inside and what outside. Now Elfric was there, with palmers and novices trooping all around him, and repeating (albeit dry-mouthed and without cups or horns to flourish) the wassail of the lords and prelates, “Elfric the novice!” If at that moment my Lord Abbat Thurstan or Father Adhelm had bidden the youth go and drive the Normans from the strong stone keep of their doubly-moated and trebly-walled castle by Cam-Bridge, Elfric would have gone and have tried to do it. He no longer trod upon base earth, his head struck the stars, as the poets say.

The abbat’s feast, which began at one hour before noon, did not end until the hour of Ave Maria; nay, even then it was not finished, but only suspended for a short season by the evening service in the choir; for, after one hour of the night, the refectoriarius, or controller of the refectory, re-appeared in the hall with waxen torches and bright lanterns, and his servitors spread the table for supper.

As Abbat Thurstan returned to the refectory, leading by the hand his guest the Abbat of Crowland, that dispossessed prelate said to his host, “Tonight for finishing the feast; to-morrow morning for counsel.”

“Aye,” responded Thurstan, “to-morrow we will hold a chapter,—our business can brook no further delay—our scouts and intelligencers bring us bad news,—King Harold comes not, nor sends—the Camp of Refuge needs a head—our warriors want a leader of fame and experience, and one that will be true to the Saxon cause, and fearless. Woe the while! where so many Saxons of fame have proved traitors, and have touched the mailed hand of the son of the harlot of Falaise in friendship and submission, and have accepted as the gift of the butcher of Hastings the lands and honours which they held from their ancestors and the best of Saxon kings—where, I say, may we look for such a Saxon patriot and liberator? Oh, Harold! my lord and king, why tarriest thou? Holy Etheldreda, bring him back to thy shrine, and to the Camp of Refuge, which will cease to be a refuge for thy servants if Harold cometh not soon! But, courage my Lord of Crowland! The Philistines are not upon us; our rivers and ditches and marshes and meres are not yet drained, and no Saxon in these parts will prove so accursed a traitor[^[88]] as to give the Normans the clue to our labyrinths. The saint hath provided another joyous meal for us. Let us be grateful and gay to-night; let us sup well and strongly, that we may be invigorated and made fit to take strong and wise counsel in the morning.”

And heartily did the monks of Ely and their guests renew and finish their feast, and hopefully and boldly did they speak of wars and victories over the Normans, until the drowsiness of much wine overcame them, and the sub-chamberlain of the house began to extinguish the lights, and collect together the torches and the lanterns, while the cellarer collected all the spoons, taking care to carry the Lord Abbat’s spoon in his right hand, and the spoons of the monks in his left hand, according to the statutes of the Order. It was the last time that the feast of Saint Edmund the Martyr was kept in the true Saxon manner in the great house at Ely. The next year, and the year following that, the monks had little wine and but little ale to drink; and after the long years of trouble although the cellars were getting filled again, the true old Saxon brotherhood was broken up and mixed, a foreigner was seated in the place of Abbat Thurstan,[^[89]] and monks with mis-shaven tonsures and mis-shaped hoods and gowns filled all the superior offices of the abbey, purloining and sending beyond sea what my Lord Thurstan had spent in a generous hospitality, among true-born and generous-hearted Englishmen. But in this nether world even the gifts of saints and the chartered donation of many kings are to be kept only by the brave and the united: conquest recognises no right except as a mockery: the conquered must not expect to be allowed to call their life and limbs their own, or the air they breathe their own, or their wives and children their own, or their souls their own: they have no property but in the grave, no right but to die at the hour appointed for them. Therefore let men perish in battle rather than outlive subjugation, and look for mercy from conquerors! and, therefore, let all the nations of the earth be warned by the fate of the Anglo Saxons to be always one-hearted for their country.

This patriotic and eloquent appeal may be very appropriately reiterated at the present day. The sentiment which it inculcates is as essential now as it was when the Saxons were defending the “Camp of Refuge.” Is it not consolidation rather than extension which is needed for the well being of our country? Will not the future greatness of our nation hinge upon the development of the highest principles of humanity—the unity, loyalty and virtue of its peoples?

CHAPTER V.
THE MONKS OF ELY TAKE COUNSEL.

At as early an hour as the church services and devotional exercises would allow, Thurstan opened a chapter in the chapter-house, which stood on the north side, hard by the chief gate of the church. As his lordship entered, he said—the words that were appointed to be said on such occasions—“May the souls of all the deceased brethren of this house, and the souls of all true believers, rest in peace!” And the convent replied, “Amen!” Then the Lord Abbat spoke again, and said, “Benedicite,” and the convent bowed their heads. And next he said, “Oh Lord! in thy name!” and then, “Let us speak of the order.” And hereupon all present crossed themselves, and bent their heads on their breasts, and the business of the chapter commenced. Only the prior, the sub-prior, the cellarer or bursar, the sacrist, and sub-sacrist, the chamberlain or treasurer, and the other chief officials or obedientiarii, and the other cloistered monks, maturi fratres, whose noviciate had been long passed, and whose monastic vows had been all completed, had the right of being present in chapter, and of deliberating and voting upon the business of the house and order. All that passed in chapter was, in a manner, sub sigillo confessionis, and not to be disclosed by any deliberating member to the rest of the convent, or to any of them, and much less was it to be revealed to any layman, or to any man beyond the precincts of the abbey. In these consultations, on the day next after the festival of Saint Edmund’s, the monks of Ely sat long with closed doors. When they came forth of the chapter-house it was noticed that the face of the Lord Abbat was very red, and that the faces of the prior and cellarer were very pale. A lay-brother, who had been working on the top of the chapter-house out-side, repairing some chinks in the roof, whispered to his familiars that he had heard very high words passing below, and that he had distinctly heard my Lord Abbat say, “Since the day of my election and investiture no brother of this house has been loaded with chains, and thrown into the underground dungeon; but, by the shrine of Saint Etheldreda, were I to find one traitor among us, I would bind him and chain him, and leave him to rot! And were there two of our brotherhood unfaithful to the good cause, and to King Harold, and plotting to betray the last hopes of England and this goodly house, and its tombs and shrines and blessed relics, to the Norman, I would do what hath been done aforetime in this abbey—I would bury them alive, or build them up in the niches left in our deep foundation walls!”[^[90]]

Now the gossips of the house, making much out of little, went about the cloisters whispering to one another that some sudden danger was at hand, and that my Lord Abbat suspected the prior and the cellarer of some secret correspondence with the Norman knights that garrisoned Duke William’s castle near unto Cam-Bridge.

“If it be so,” said Elfric, the novice from Spalding, “I would advise every true Saxon monk, novice, and lay-brother, to keep their eyes upon the cellarer and the prior!”

“That shall be done,” said an old lay-brother.

“Aye, we will all watch their outgoings and their comings in,” said several of the gossips; “for the prior is a hard-dealing, peremptory man, and cunning and crafty at the same time, never looking one in the face; and ever since last pasque the cellarer hath shown an evil habit of stinting us underlings and loaf-eaters in our meat and drink.”

“He hath ever been given too little to drink himself to be a true Saxon,” said another; “we will watch him well!”

And they all said that they would watch the cellarer and eke the prior; that they would for ever love, honour, and obey Thurstan their good and bountiful Lord Abbat; and that they would all die with swords or spears in their hands rather than see the Normans enter the Camp of Refuge. So one-hearted was the community at this time.

Shortly after finishing the chapter in the usual manner, and coming out with his chaplains, singing Verba Mea, Lord Thurstan went into his own hall, and there assembled all the high and noble guests of the house, whether laics, or priests, or monks, and all the obedientiarii and cloistered brothers of the abbey, except the prior and the cellarer, who had gone to their several cells with faces yet paler than they were when they came forth from the chapter-house. In my Lord Abbat’s hall no business was discussed that appertained exclusively to the house or order: the deliberations all turned upon the general interests of the country, or upon the means of prolonging the struggle for national independence. Thurstan, after reminding the assembly that the Saxon heroes of the Camp of Refuge had foiled the Normans in two attempts they had made to penetrate into the Isle of Ely—the one in the summer of the present year, and the other in the summer of the preceding year, one thousand and sixty-nine—and that it was four good years since the battle of Hastings, which William the Norman had bruited on the continent as a victory which had given him possession of all England, frankly made it known to all present that he had certain intelligence that the Normans were making vast preparations at Cam-Bridge, at Bury, at Stamford, at Huntingdon, and even at Brunn, in order to invade the whole fenny country, and to press upon the Isle of Ely and the Camp of Refuge from many opposite quarters. My Lord Abbat further made it known that the duke had called to this service all his bravest and most expert captains, and a body of troops that had been trained to war in Brittanie and in other parts wherein there were fens and rivers and meres, and thick-growing forests of willow and alder, even as in the country of East Anglia. He also told them how Duke William had sworn by the splendour of God’s face that another year should not pass without seeing the Abbey of Ely in flames, the Camp of Refuge broken into and scattered, the rule of the Normans established over the whole land, and the refractory Saxons exterminated. “Now,” said my Lord Abbat, “it behoves us to devise how we shall withstand this storm, and to select some fitting and experienced captain that shall have authority over all the fighting men of our league, and that shall be able to measure swords with these vaunted leaders from foreign parts. Our brave Saxon chiefs in the camp, or in this house, and now present among us, are weary of their jealousies of one another, and have wisely agreed to obey, one and all, one single leader of experience and fame and good fortune, if such a leader can anywhere be found, having a true Saxon heart within him, and being one that hath never submitted to or negociated with the invader. Let us then cast about and try and find such a chief. Let every one speak his mind freely, and then we can compare and choose.”

Some named one chief, and some another: many brave and expert men were named successively and with much applause, and with many expressions of hope and confidence; but when Father Adhelm, the expelled prior of the succursal cell at Spalding, stood up in his turn, and with the briefest preamble named Hereward the son of Leofric, the late Lord of Brunn, Hereward the truest of Saxons, the other chiefs seemed to be all forgotten, even by those who had severally proposed them, and the assembly listened in silence, or with a silence interrupted only by shouts of triumph, while this good prior and whilom neighbour of Hereward related the chief events of that warrior’s life, and pointed out the hereditary and the personal claims he had to the consideration of his countrymen. Ever since the earliest days in which the Saxons gained a footing on the land, the Lords of Brunn, the ancestors of Hereward, had been famed for their valour in the field, famed for their prudence in the Witan and in all other councils, had been famed above all their neighbours for their hospitality! And when the Saxons embraced the Gospel as preached by Saint Augustine and his disciples, who had been so devout as the Lords of Brunn? who so bountiful to the shrines of saints and religious houses? who so ready to fight unto death in defence of the church? Notable it was, and known unto all that dwelt in the land of fens, that the house of Crowland, and the house of Ely, and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda, had been served in the hour of need by many of Hereward’s forefathers. When the unconverted, heathenish Danes were ravaging the country, and burning all the monasteries, and tethering their horses in the chapels of royal palaces, one Lord of Brunn fought in the ranks by the side of Friar Tolli,[^[91]] from sunrise to sunset, for the defence of the Abbey of Crowland, nor ceased fighting until three of the Danish sea-kings had been slain, and the monks had had time to remove their relics, and their books, and their sacred vases, into the impenetrable marshes of that vicinity. Another Lord of Brunn,[^[92]] who at the call of the monks had marched across the fens with all his people, and with all of his family that could wield a sword, had perished close under the walls of Ely Abbey, after defeating the Pagans, and driving them back towards their ships. The blood of each of these Lords of Brunn ran in the veins of Hereward, and his deeds had proved him worthy of the blood. In his youth—in the days of Edward[^[93]] the Confessor—when the cunning Normans were beginning to beset the court of the childless king, and to act as if the inheritance was already their own, and the people of England already their slaves, it chanced that our Hereward, who had been on a pilgrimage to Canterbury,[^[94]] came back to the sea by Dover, and found Count Eustace of Boulogne, and his French men-at-arms engaged in a fierce quarrel with the men of Dover, and galloping through the streets with their naked swords in their hands, striking men and women, and crushing divers children under their horses’ hoofs. Hereward, though but a stripling, drew his blade, rallied the dull townsfolk, who before had no leader, (and so were fighting loosely and without order, and without any science of war,) and renewing the battle at a vantage, he slew with his own hand a French knight; and then the men of Dover slew nineteen of the strangers, wounded many more, and drove Count Eustace and the rest out of the town to fly in dismay back to king Edward. Later, when Harold,[^[95]] as earl of the eastern counties, and chief of king Edward’s armies, marched into Wales to curb the insolent rage of King Griffith, Hereward attended him, and fought with him among the mountains and glens, and lakes and morasses of Wales, until that country was reduced by many victories, and Harold took shipping to return to King Edward with the head of Griffith stuck upon the rostrum or beak of his galley. Later still, when Hereward was of manly age, and King Edward the Confessor was dead, having bequeathed his crown to Harold, and Harold as our true king raised his banner of war to march against his own unnatural brother Earl Tostig,[^[96]] who had brought the King of Norway and a great army of Norwegians into the country of York to deprive him of his throne or dismember his kingdom, Hereward marched with him with many of his father’s stout men of Brunn, and fought under Harold’s eye in the great battle at Stamford Bridge—that battle which ceased not until Earl Tostig and the king of Norway were both slain, and the river was choked up with the Norwegian dead. From Stamford Bridge the march of bold Harold was to Hastings, for the Normans had landed while he had been vanquishing the Norwegians. On that long and rapid march,[^[97]] when hundreds of tried soldiers lagged behind, Hereward kept pace with his royal master; and when the battle was arrayed he was seen riding by Harold’s side; and when the battle joined, his battle-axe was seen close by the battle-axes of Harold and the king’s two loyal and brave brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, dealing terrible blows, and cutting the steel caps and the coats of mail of the Normans like chaff. Saxons, remember that he fought at Hastings through nine long hours, and did not yield until ye saw that ye were betrayed! Separated from his king in the fury of the last melée, Hereward attempted to rally the East Angles and the men of Kent; and failing in that, and hearing a mighty rumour that Harold the king was slain, he galloped to the port of Winchelsey with a few of his father’s trusty people, and there embarked for foreign parts, vowing that he would never bow his head to the conqueror. The father[^[98]] of Hereward, being old and infirm, and infected by the unmanly fears which made so many Saxons throw aside the sword before the conquest of England was well begun, had made haste to tender his allegiance to the son of the harlot, had obtained his peace, and had been allowed to retain his lordship of Brunn, after paying sundry fines for his son’s patriotism. But latterly the old Lord of Brunn had been gathered to his fathers, and a Norman chief had seized his manor-house and all his lands, and was now keeping them as his patrimony. Such, being told briefly, was the story which Father Adhelm told to my Lord Abbat of Ely and his guests and officials; and when he had done, he asked, where could a better chief be found for the Camp of Refuge than Hereward the true Saxon, and legitimate Lord of Brunn? And, hereupon, there was a clapping of hands and shouting of voices in all that noble and devout assembly—a shouting so loud that it echoed through all the abbey, and was heard as far off as Saint Ovin’s Cross; and the indwellers of the town of Ely, albeit they knew not what it meant, took up the cry, and shouted, “Hereward to the Camp of Refuge! Hereward for England!”

“Bethinks me,” said the cautelous Abbat of Crowland, when the noise had ceased, “that perchance Hereward will not come to us at our summons. He must know how false our country has proved to herself, and how great the progress the conqueror hath made in it: his lands and all his inheritance are gone, a price is set upon his head in England, and his valour and experience in war, and his other good qualities, have made for him a prosperous and honorable home in a foreign land.[^[99]] While yet in my poor house at Crowland, a shipman from the Wash, who trades to the opposite coast, told me that he had lately seen at Ypres my Lord Hereward, living in great affluence and fame; and the mariner further told me that Hereward had said to him that he would never wend back to a land of cowards and traitors; that he had carved himself out new estates in the fattest lands of the Netherlands, and that England had nothing to give him except dishonour or a grave.”[^[100]]

These representations damped the hopes of some of the company; but as Hereward’s mind could not be known without a trial, it was determined to send some trusty messenger across the seas, who might gain access to the presence of the chief, and at the same time purchase and bring back with him a supply of arms and warlike harness, with other things much needed in the Camp of Refuge. The difficulties of this embassage struck all that were present: “And who,” said the Lord Abbat, “shall be this trusty and expert messenger?”

“Were it not for the greenness of his years and the lowliness of his condition,” said the Prior of Spalding, “I would even venture to recommend for the mission my bold-hearted, clear-headed, and nimble-footed novice, Elfric.”

“Brother, thou hast said it,” responded Thurstan; “thy novice shall go! Let the youth be summoned hither.”

The novice was soon kneeling at my Lord Abbat’s feet, and was soon made acquainted as well with the difficult task he was expected to perform, as with the uncomfortable doubts which had been propounded by the Abbat of Crowland. When asked by his own immediate superior, Father Adhelm, whether he would undertake the task, he answered, “Marry, and that I will right gladly. When I first went to Spalding, I knew well Hereward, the son of the Lord of Brunn, and some of those that were nearest to him. If England is to be saved, he is the man that will save it. I would go to the world’s end to find him and bring him hither. I love my country, and I love travelling better than my meat and drink. I have oft-times prayed to Saint Ovin that he would vouchsafe me the grace of going into foreign parts! Moreover, my prime duty is obedience to my superiors. Let me depart instantly, and I will the sooner bring you back Lord Hereward!”

“Thou art very confident,” said the Abbat of Crowland: “how knowest thou that Hereward will come with thee?”

“My lord and master,” said the novice, “I ween I can take over with me a word of command, or a prayer more potential than a command, and one which Hereward could not withstand even if he were king of all the Netherlands’ country, and sure death stood upon the English beach to seize him on return!”

“What does this young man mean?” said the Abbat of Crowland.

Elfric blushed, stammered, and could not go on.

“What dost thou mean?” said his Prior of Spalding.

Elfric stammered more than before, which angered his superior, and brought down some harsh words upon his head.

“Nay,” said the good old Bishop of Lindisfarn,[^[101]] “chide not the young man, but give him to collect his thought and frame his speech. He may know more of Lord Hereward than any one here knoweth. But ... but I hope that this novice of a goodly house doth not think of employing any witchcraft or unlawful spell! De maleficio libera nos! From witchcraft and sacrilege, and all the arts of the devil, good Lord deliver us!”

The bishop crossed himself; they all crossed themselves; and Elfric not only crossed himself, but likewise said “Libera nos!” and “Amen!” But when he had so done and so said, his merry eye twinkled, and there was as much of a smile about his mouth as the reverence due to the company allowed of in a novice.

“If there be magic,” said he, “it is all white magic; if there be a spell, it is not an unholy spell.” And as Elfric said these words he looked into the good-natured, right hearty, and right English face of my Lord Abbat Thurstan.

“Speak on, boy,” said the abbat; “speak out, my brave boy, and fear nought!”

Being thus heartened, Elfric said: “Then, to speak with reverence before this noble and reverend company, I wot well there were, when I was first at Spalding, and when my Lord Hereward was at Brunn, certain love-passages....”

“Certain what?” said the expelled Abbat of Cockermouth, who was somewhat deaf.

“Love-passages,” said Elfric, looking very archly, and with a laugh in his eyes, if not on his lips; “certain love-passages between the son of the Lord of Brunn and the noble maiden Alftrude, the young daughter and heiress to the lord of the neighbouring town, that old Saxon lord, Albert of Ey.”[^[102]]

“Truth, the two houses stood not very far apart,” said the Abbat of Crowland; “but Albert of Ey was no friend to the old Lord of Brunn.”

“Most true, my lord; but Albert died before his neighbour, and left his wide estates to his fair daughter Alftrude, having first given her in ward to this Lanfranc, who is by some called Archbishop of Canterbury, and whose will and power few can gainsay. Moreover, the Ladie Alftrude is cousin to the Ladie Lucia, whom Ivo Taille-Bois hath made his wife; and as that arch-enemy of our house extends his protection to his wife’s cousin, not wishing that her lands should be seized by any hungry Norman other than a relation of his own, the heiress of Ey hath been allowed to live in the old manor-house, and to enjoy such proportion of her father’s wealth as Lanfranc chooseth to allow her. Many Norman knights have sought her hand, as the best means of obtaining her land, but the Saxon maiden had ever said Nay! And Lanfranc, who hath done violence to the very church for his own interest, and Ivo Taille-Bois, who got his own Saxon wife by violence, have hitherto had power enough to prevent any great wrong or violence being done to Ladie Alftrude, the heiress of Ey. Now the Ladie Alftrude remembers the times that are past, and sighs and weeps for the return of Hereward, vowing that she will wed none but him, and that——”

“Thou seemeth well informed in these matters,” said one of the monks; “but prithee, how didst thou obtain thine information?”

Elfric stammered a little, and blushed a good deal as he said, “The young Ladie Alftrude hath long had for her handmaiden one Mildred of Hadenham, a daughter of my late father’s friend, a maiden well behaved and well favoured, and pious withal; and when I was sent to the manor-house of Ey upon the business of our own house at Spalding, and when I met Mildred at the church, or wake, or fair, we were ever wont to talk about my Lord Hereward and my Ladie Alftrude, as well as of other matters.”

“Father Adhelm,” said my Lord Abbat of Crowland in a whisper, “surely thou hast allowed too much liberty to thy convent.”

“My lord,” replied the Prior of Spalding, “It is but a novice that speaks; Elfric is not a cloister monk.”

“No, and never will be,” said the Abbat of Crowland, in another whisper.

“I now see thy spell,” said Thurstan, addressing Elfric, who was standing silent, and still blushed; “I now see the witchcraft that thou wouldest use. And dost thou believe that the Ladie Alftrude so loves Hereward that she will jeopardise her estates for him, and call home and marry him, though an outlaw? And dost thou believe that Lord Hereward so loveth the Ladie Alftrude as to quit his new-found fortunes for her, and to come at her bidding into England?”

“I believe in loving hearts,” replied Elfric; “I believe in all that Mildred ever told me about Ladie Alftrude; and I can guess better than your shipman and trader of the Wash what it was that made Lord Hereward talk so high about his greatness in foreign parts, and vilipend[^[103]] his own country, and made declarations that he would never return to a land of cowardice, and treachery, and falsehood. The exile hath heard that the Ladie Lucia hath become the wife of Ivo-Taille-Bois, probably without hearing the violence and the craft which brought about that unholy marriage; and probably without knowing how much the Ladie Lucia grieves, and how very a prisoner she is in her own manor-house, and in the midst of her own lands and serfs. My Lord Hereward may also have heard some unlucky rumours about a marriage between the Lady Alftrude and some brother or cousin of Taille-Bois, which idle gossips said was to take place with the sanction of Lanfranc; and judge ye, my lords and holy fathers, whether this would not be enough to drive Hereward mad! But a little wit and skill, and a little good luck, and all these cross and crooked things may be made straight. If I can win to see the Ladie Alftrude, and get from her some love-token and some comfortable messages to the exiled Lord of Brunn, and if I can declare and vow, of mine own knowledge, that the heart of the fair Saxon is aye the same, write me down a traitor or a driveller, my lords, an I bring not Hereward back with me.”

“Of a surety he will do it,” said Abbat Thurstan, rubbing his hands joyously.

“I understand not much of this love logic, but I think he will do it,” said the Abbat of Crowland.

“He will do anything,” said the Prior of Spalding; “but once let loose on this wild flight, we shall never again get the young hawk back to hand.”

The rest of the business was soon arranged, and precisely and in every part as the novice himself suggested. No one thought of exacting oaths of fidelity from Elfric. His faith, his discretion, and his valour had been well tried already, and his honest countenance gave a better assurance than oaths and bonds. As Saxon monks were the least acceptable of all visitors to the Normans, and as the dress of monk or palmer no longer gave protection to any man of English birth, and as the late novice of Spalding might chance to be but too well known in Ivo Taille-Bois’ vicinity, Elfric disguised himself as one of the poorest of the wandering menestrels—half musician, half beggar and idiot; and in this guise and garb, he, on the second day after the feast of Saint Edmund, set out alone to find his way across the fens, through the posts and watches of the Normans, and so on to the manor-house and the jealously guarded bower of the Ladie Alftrude. He was to return to Ely, if good fortune attended him, within seven days; and then he would be ready to proceed to the country of the Netherlanders, to seek for Lord Hereward, and to purchase the warlike harness that was wanted. As soon as he had taken his departure from the abbey, a quick boat was sent down the Ouse with orders to the steadiest and oftenest-tried shipman of Lynn to get his good bark in readiness for a sea-voyage, and to bring it up to Ely, in order to take on board an important passenger bound on an embassage for my Lord Abbat.

Although the love of the Lady Alftrude might perchance bring back Lord Hereward, it was not likely that it should buy from the trading men of Ypres, or Ghent, or Bruges, the bows and the cross-bows, the swords and the lanceheads, the coats of mail, and the other gear that were so much wanted; and therefore Abbat Thurstan, after collecting what little he could from his guests and in the Camp of Refuge, and after taking his own signet-ring from his finger, and his own prelatical cross of gold and chain of gold from his neck, called upon the chamberlain and the cellarer and the sacrist for all the coin that had been put by the pilgrims into the shrine-box. This time the livid-faced cellarer was silent and obedient; but the chamberlain, demurring to the order of my Lord Abbat, said, “Surely these contributions of the faithful were at all times devoted to the repairing and beautifying of our church!”

“Thou sayeth it,” quoth my Lord Abbat; “but if we get not weapons and harness wherewith to withstand the invaders, we shall soon have no church left us to repair or beautify. By the holy face and incorruptible body of Saint Etheldreda, I will strip her very shrine of the gold plates which adorn it, and of the silver lamps which burn before it, and melt the gold and the silver, and barter the ingots for arms, rather than see the last refuge of my countrymen broken in upon, and the accursed Normans in my house of Ely!”

“But doth not this savour of sacrilege?” said the sacrist.

“Not so much as of patriotism and of real devotion to our saint and foundress. Saint Etheldreda, a true Saxon and East Anglian saint, will approve of the deed, if it should become necessary to strip her shrine. Her honour and sanctity depend not on lamps of silver and plates of gold, however rich and rare: the faithful flocked to her tomb, and said their orisons over it when it was but a plain stone block, with no shrine near it; and well I ween more miracles were wrought there, in the simple old times, than we see wrought now. Should the Normans get into our church, they will strip the shrine, an we do not; and they will rifle the tombs of Saint Sexburga, Saint Ermenilda, and Saint Withburga[^[104]] and cast forth the bodies of our saints upon the dung-heap! Oh, sacrist! know ye not how these excommunicated foreigners are everywhere treating the saints of Saxon birth, and are everywhere setting up strange saints, whose names were never before heard by Englishmen, and cannot be pronounced by them! The reason of all this is clear: our Saxon hagiology is filled with the names of those that were patriots as well as saints, and we cannot honour them in one capacity without thinking of them in the other.”

“This is most true,” said the chamberlain; “and the Normans be likewise setting up new shrines to the Blessed Virgin, and bringing in Notre Dames, and our Ladie of Walsingham, and other Ladies that were never heard of before; and they are enforcing pilgrimages in wholly new directions! If these things endure, alack and woe the while for our house of Ely, and for the monks of Saint Edmund’s-Bury, and for all Saxon houses! Our shrine boxes will be empty; we shall be neglected and forgotten in the land, even if the Normans do not dispossess us.”

CHAPTER VI.
IVO TAILLE-BOIS AND THE LADIE LUCIA.

Within the moated and battlemented manor-house near to the banks of the Welland, which Elfric had stopped to gaze upon as he was travelling from Crowland to Spalding, there was held a feast on the fourth day after the feast of Saint Edmund, for the said fourth day from the great Saxon festival was the feast-day of some saint of Normandie or of Anjou, and the Ladie Lucia, maugre her sorrow and affliction, had given birth to a male child a moon agone, and the child was to be baptized on this day with much rejoicing. Ivo Taille-Bois and his Norman retainers were glad, inasmuch as the birth of a son by a Saxon wife went to secure them in their possession of the estates; and the Ladie Lucia was glad of heart, as a mother cannot but rejoice at the birth of her first-born; and her Saxon servants, and all the old retainers of her father’s house, and all the Saxon serfs, were glad, because their future lord would be more than one half Saxon, being native to the country, a child of the good Ladie Lucia, the daughter of their last Saxon lord. So merry were all, that grievances seemed to be forgotten: the Normans ceased to oppress and insult; the Saxons ceased, for the time being, to complain. The feast was very bountiful, for the Ladie Lucia had been allowed the ordering of it; and the company was very numerous and much mixed, for many Saxons of name had been bidden to the feast, and pledges had been given on both sides that there should be a truce to all hostilities and animosities; that there should be what the Normans called the Truce of God until the son of Ivo Taille-Bois and Lucia, the presumptive heir to all the lands of the old lord, should be christened, and his christening celebrated in a proper manner. No less a man than the prelate Lanfranc had interfered in making this salutary arrangement. And for the first time since the death of her father, Lanfranc’s fair ward, the Ladie Alftrude, had come forth from her own manor-house to attend at the earnest invitation of her cousin the Ladie Lucia. The Saxon heiress had come attended by sundry armed men and by two aged English priests who stood high in the consideration and favour of the potent Lanfranc. When, landing from her boat (the country was now nearly everywhere under water), she walked up to the gate of the house, and entering, drew aside her wimple and showed her sweet young face and bright blue eyes, there rose a murmur of admiration from all that were assembled there: the Saxons vowed in good old English that the Ladie Alftrude was the fairest and noblest maiden in all England; and the Normans swore in Norman-French and with many a Vive Dieu that they had never beheld anything equal to her either on the other side of the seas or on this! Nay, some of the Norman knights, and more than one whose beard was growing grey while he was yet in poverty or wholly unprovided with any English estate, forgot the broad lands that Alftrude inherited, to think only of her beautiful face. Yet when Alftrude kissed her fair cousin and her cousin’s child, and sat down by the side of the Lady Lucia at the top of the hall, it was hard to say which was the more lovely, the young matron, or the scarcely younger maiden.

“Benedicite,” said a young monk of Evreux who had come over for promotion in some English abbey, “but the daughters of this land be fair to look upon!”

“They be,” said a starch man in mail, “and they will conquer the conquerors of England, and soon cause the name and distinction of Norman to be swallowed up and forgotten in the country.”

“Had I come hither before taking my vows at Evreux, the devil might have been a monk for me, but I would have been none of it!”

Peaceably, ay, and merrily, passed off the day. The fair Ladie Alftrude stood at the font, and was one of the sponsors for her cousin’s first-born. The banquet succeeded to the baptism, and dancing and music in the hall followed on the banquet. The old times seemed to be coming back again, those peaceful days of good King Edward, Cœli deliciæ,[^[105]] when every free-born Englishman enjoyed his own, and every noble thane or earl held hospitality to be one of his primary duties.

But Ivo Taille-Bois, though he boasted of being cousin to Duke William, was a greedy low-born churl, and therefore he needs must mar the happiness of his young wife (who ever since the birth of her son had been striving to forget how she had been made his wife), by talking of his unprovided brother, who had arrived in England, and was now tarrying about the Conqueror’s court in the hope of obtaining from Lanfranc the hand of his rich Saxon ward. The Ladie Lucia, knowing full well how her cousin’s heart lay toward Hereward, tried often to change the strain, but her Norman lord, forgetful even of courtesy to his guests, would still keep vexing her ear with his brother’s suit, and instead of continuing to be thankful to his saints for his own good fortune in getting so vast an heritage, and so fair a wife, and then so promising a child, he spoke as though he should feel himself a beggar until all the domains of the Ladie Alftrude were in the hands of his family. An anger that would not be concealed flashed in his eye whenever he saw any well-fa’red knight or gallant youth discoursing with Alftrude, and whether it were a Norman or a Saxon his wrath seemed equal. Desperate thoughts and dark designs flitted through his mind. At one time he thought that now that he had got the young heiress into his house he would forcibly keep her where she was until his brother should arrive and press his own suit in the ungodly manner of the first Norman conquerors; but he cowered under the dread of Lanfranc and a Norman sentence of excommunication, and he saw that the thing was not to be done without great peril and much bloodshed under his own roof, for the Saxon guests were numerous far above the Normans, and though, mayhap, several of his Norman guests would not have scrupled about the deed if it had been for their own profit, they could not be expected to concur in it, or even to allow it, when it was only for the profit of him and his brother. Vanity, thy name was Norman! There was young Guiscard[^[106]] of Avranches, there was tall Etienne[^[107]] of Rouen (and verily a tall and well-proportioned young man was he, and one that could talk glibly both in English and in French), there was Baldwin of the Mount, a most nimble dancer, and with a fine gilded cloak over his shoulders and not a crown in his purse (even like all the rest of them); there was old Mainfroy of La Perche, who had followed Robert Guiscard into Italie and Grecia, and had lost an eye and half of a nose in those wars before Ladie Alftrude was born; and there was old Drogo[^[108]] from Chinon, who looked as though he had added to his own nose that half of a nose Mainfroy had lost (so hugeous and misshapen was Drogo’s nose!); and not one of these gay knights but thought that the Lady Alftrude having once seen and heard him must prefer him to all the world. In their own conceit they were, one and all of them, already Lords of Ey and husbands of Alftrude. Judge ye then whether Ivo Taille-Bois could have safely ventured to stay his fair guest against her will, or shut up his wife’s cousin in close bower for his as yet unknown and unseen brother!

But there was now in the hall a merrier eye, and one more roguish withal, than ever shone under the brows of a Norman. The drawbridge being down, and the gate of the house wide open, that all who list might enter and partake according to his degree of some of the good things that were provided, a young Saxon glee-man or menestrel came over the bridge unchallenged, and only paused under the low archway of the gate. His dress was tattered and torn, and not free from the mud and slime of the fens, but sweet and clear was his voice, and merry and right old English his song; and so all the Saxons that heard him gave him welcome, and bade him enter the hall and sing a lay in honour of the Ladie Lucia and of her first-born son, who would be good lord to all Saxon folk as his grandfather had been before him. But before going into the hall, where the feast was just over, and all the tables cleared, the glee-man went aside into the buttery to renew his strength with a good meal, and refresh his voice with a cup of good wine. When he entered the hall the old Saxon seneschal cried, “A glee-man! another glee-man come to sing an English song!” The Norman menestrels looked scornfully at him and his tattered cloak; and the Saxon menestrels asked of one another who he might be; for none of them knew him, albeit the menestrels, like the beggars and other happy vagabonds of old England, were united in league and brotherhood, in sort that every menestrel of East Anglia was thought to know every other menestrel or glee-man of that countrie. But when the new and unknown comer had played his preludium on his Saxon lyre of four strings, and had sung his downright Saxon song with a voice that was clear as a bell, and at times loud as a trumpet, the English part of the company, from the highest degree to the lowest, shouted and clapped their hands; and all the English menestrels vowed that he was worthy of their guild; while even the Norman glee-men confessed that, although the words were barbarous and not to be understood by civil men, the air was good, and the voice of the best. Whether the words were ancient as the music, or whether they were made in part or wholly for the occasion by the singer, they went deep into the hearts both of the Ladie Alftrude and the Ladie Lucia; and while the young matron of the house put a little ring into a cup, and bade her little Saxon page fill the cup with the best wine, and hand it to the Saxon menestrel, the maiden Alftrude went straight to the spot where that menestrel was standing, and asked him to sing his song again. And when the glee-man had knelt on his knee to the mistress of the house, and had drained her cup of wine until not so much as the ghost of a drop was left in it, and when he had sung his song over again, and more deftly and joyously than he had sung it before, the Lady Alftrude still kept near him, and, discoursing with him, took three or more turns across the lower part of the hall. Saxon lords and Saxon dames and maidens of high degree were ever courteous to the poor and lowly, and ever honoured those who had skill in minstrelsy. At first the Ladie Alftrude smiled and laughed as if at some witty conceit let fall by the menestrel; but then those who watched her well, and were near enough to see, saw a cloud on her brow and a blush on her cheek, and then a paleness, and a short gasping as if for breath. But all this passed away, and the maiden continued to discourse calmly with the menestrel, and whenever the menestrel raised his voice it was only to give utterance to some pleasant gibe.

Ivo Taille-Bois, albeit he had seen him often under another hood, might not know him, and all the English glee-men might continue to wonder who he was; but we know full well that the menestrel was none other than Elfric the novice. He had found his way unscathed to Ey, and not finding the Ladie Alftrude there, he had followed her to the manor-house of her fair cousin, well pleased that such a celebration and feast would make easy his entrance into the house. A maiden of Alftrude’s degree could not travel and visit without a featy handmaiden attendant upon her. Rough men that bend bows and wield swords and spears, and make themselves horny fists, are not fit to dress a ladie’s hair or tie her sandals; and well we ween it becometh not priests with shaven crowns to be lacing a maiden’s bodice; and so, besides the armed men and the two churchmen, the Ladie Alftrude had brought with her Mildred of Hadenham, that maiden well-behaved and well-favoured and pious withal, whom Elfric was wont to entertain with talk about my Lord Hereward, as well as of other matters. Now Mildred of Hadenham was there at the lower end of the hall, seated among other handmaidens; and as soon as Elfric entered, or, at the latest, as soon as he finished the first verse of his song, she knew who the menestrel was as well as we do. While the Ladie Alftrude was before their eyes, few of the noble company cared to look that way or upon any other than her; but if a sharp eye had watched it would have seen that Mildred several times blushed a much deeper red than her mistress, and that the young glee-man’s eyes were rather frequently seeking her out. And at last, when the Ladie Alftrude returned to her cousin at the head of the hall, and the floor of the hall was cleared for an exhibition of dancers, the glee-man, after some gyrations, found his way to the side of Mildred of Hadenham, and kept whispering to her, and making her blush even redder than before, all the other handmaidens wondering the while, and much envying Mildred, for, albeit his cloak was tattered and his hose soiled, the young menestrel, besides having the sweetest voice, was surpassingly well-favoured in form and face, and had the happiest-looking eye that ever was seen.

The Ladie Alftrude talked long in a corner with her cousin the Ladie Lucia, and then there was a calling and consulting with Mildred of Hadenham, as though her mistress’s head-gear needed some rearrangement. And after this the two cousins and the waiting-woman quitted the hall, and went into an upper and inner chamber, and tarried there for a short while, or for about the time it takes to say a score of Aves. Then they come back to the hall, and the Ladie Lucia and the Ladie Alftrude sit down together where the company is most thronged. But where is the curiously delicate little ring that was glittering on Ladie Alftrude’s finger?... Ha! Ha! we wot well that Elfric hath got it, and other love-tokens besides, that he may carry them beyond seas, and bring back Hereward to his ladie-love and to England that cannot do without him. But where is that merriest of glee-men?... Many in the hall were asking the question, for they wanted to hear him again. But Elfric was gone, and none seemed to know how or when he went. Mayhap, maid Mildred knew something about it, for when the English part of the company began to call for the glee-man with the tattered cloak, that he might sing another merry song, she turned her face to the wall and wept.

Well, I ween, had our simple dull Saxons outwitted the nimble-witted Normans! Well had the menestrel and the ladies and the waiting-maid played their several parts! Could Ivo Taille-Bois but have known his errand, or have guessed at the mischief that he was brewing for him, either Elfric would never have entered those walls, or he would never have left them alive.

CHAPTER VII.
HEREWARD’S RETURN.

There may be between Thamesis and the Tyne worse seas and more perilous rocks; but when the north-east wind blows right into that gulf, and the waves of the German Ocean are driven on by the storms of winter, the practised mariner will tell ye that the navigation of the Wash, the Boston Deeps, and the Lynn Deeps, is a fearful thing to those who know the shoals and coasts, and a leap into the jaws of death to those that know them not. Besides the shallows near shore, there be sandbanks and treacherous shoals in the middle of the bay, and these were ofttimes shifting their places or changing their shapes. Moreover, so many rivers and broad streams and inundations, that looked like regular rivers in the wet seasons of the year, poured their waters into the Wash, that it required all the skill of the mariner and pilot to find a way into the proper bed of any one particular river, as the Ouse, the Nene, or the Welland.[^[109]] Here are many quick-sands, fatal to barks, when concealed under the water; and even in summer-tide, when the waters are dried, the shepherds and their flocks,[^[110]] are often taught by a woeful experience that these quick-sands have a wonderful force in sucking in and holding fast whatsoever cometh upon them. In this sort the perils of shipmen are not over even when they reach the shore, and are advancing to tread upon what seemeth like terra firma. The Wash and its sand-banks and the quick-sands had made more East-Anglian widows and orphans than were made by any other calamity besides, save always the fierce Norman conquest.

It was under one of the fiercest and loudest tempests that ever blew from the sky of winter, and upon one of the roughest seas that ever rolled into the Wash, that five barks, which seemed all to be deeply laden and crowded with men, drove past the shoal called the Dreadful,[^[111]] and made for that other shoal called the Inner Dousing. The sun, which had not been visible the whole day, now showed itself like a ball of fire as it sank in the west behind the flats and fens of Lincolnshire; and when the sun was down the fury of the tempest seemed to increase. When they had neared the Inner Dousing, four of the barks took in all their sail and lay-to as best they could in the trough of the sea; but the fifth bark stood gallantly in for the Wash, with nearly all her sails up. Swift as it bounded over the waves, it was dark night before the foremost bark reached the little cape where stands the chapel of our Ladie.[^[112]] Here the bark showed three lights at her mast-head, and then three lights over her prow, and then three over her stern. Quickly as might be, these lights from on board the fifth and foremost bark were answered by three times three of lights on the belfry of Our Ladie’s chapel; and had it not been for the roaring of the winds and the loud dashing of the sea on the resounding shore, those on land by Our Ladie’s chapel might have heard a three times three of hearty cheers from those on shipboard, and those on the ship might have heard every cheer given back with interest and increase by the crowd of true Saxons that stood by the chapel. The bark next showed at her masthead a broad blue light, such as had never been seen before in these parts; and presently from the lee side of the Inner Dousing four other bright blue lights gleamed across the black sky; and having in this wise answered signal, the four barks followed in the track of the fifth and came up with it off Our Ladie’s chapel. Still keeping a little in advance, like the pilot and admiral of the little fleet, the bark that had first reached the coast glided into Lynn Deeps; and as it advanced towards the mouth of the Ouse, signal-lights or piloting lights rose at every homestead and hamlet, from Kitcham[^[113]] to Stone’s-end, from Stone’s-end to Castle Rising, and from Castle Rising to the good town of Lynn. And besides these stationary lights, there were other torches running along the shore close above the line of sea foam. And much was all this friendly care needed, the deeps being narrow and winding and the shoals and sand-banks showing themselves on every side, and the wind still blowing a hurricane, and the masts of the barks bending and cracking even under the little sail that they now carried. On this eastern side of the Wash few could have slept, or have tarried in their homes this night; for when—near upon midnight, and as the monks of Lynn were preparing to say matins in the chapel of Saint Nicholas—the five barks swirled safely into the deep and easy bed of the Ouse, and came up to the prior’s wharf, and let go their anchors, and threw their stoutest cordage ashore, to the end that the mariners there might make them fast, and so give a double security against wind and tide, the wharf and all the river bank was covered with men, women, and children, and the houses in the town behind the river bank were nearly all lighted up, as if it had been Midsummer’s eve, instead of being the penultimate night[^[114]] of the Novena of Christmas. It was not difficult to make out that the foremost of the barks and one other belonged to Lynn, inasmuch as the Lynn folk leaped on board of them as soon as they were made fast at the wharf, calling upon their town fellows, their brothers or sons, and hugging them more Saxonico[^[115]] when they found them out on the crowded decks. The other barks were of foreign structure, and the mariners seemed to be all foreigners; but the many passengers in each of them were all Englishmen, and landsmen besides; for they had all been very sea-sick, and were now very impatient to get their feet upon dry land.

The first that landed from the foremost bark was a tall, robust, and handsome man, dressed as Saxon noblemen and warriors were wont to dress before the incoming of the ill fashions of Normandie.

He carried in his right hand a long straight and broad sword, the blade of which was curiously sheathed, and the hilt of which formed a cross. When he had crossed the plankings of the wharf, and reached the solid ground, he knelt on one knee and kissed the cross of his sword; and then throwing himself prone upon the earth, and casting wide his arms as though he would embrace it and hug it, he kissed the insensate soil, and thanked his God and every saint in the Saxon calendar for that he had been restored to the land which gave him birth, and which held the dust and bones of his fathers. Some who had seen him in former days on the Spalding side of the Wash, and some who had been apprised of his coming, began instantly to shout, “It is he!—it is Lord Hereward of Brunn! It is Hereward the Saxon! It is the Lord of Brunn, come to get back his own and to help us to drive out the Normans.” The shouts were taken up on every side, mariners and landsmen, foreigners and home-born fensmen, and women and children, crying, “It is Hereward the Saxon! Long live the young Lord of Brunn, who will never shut his hall-door in the face of a poor Englishman, nor turn his back on a Frenchman!” Some hemmed him in, and kissed his hands, and the sheath of his long straight sword, and the skirts of his mantle, and the very sandals on his feet; while others held their glaring torches close over his head, that they might see him and show him to their mates. It was one Nan of Lynn, and a well-famed and well-spoken woman, that said, as she looked upon the Lord Hereward, “We Englishwomen of the fens will beat the men-at-arms from Normandie, an we be but led by such a captain as this; with that steel cap on his head, and that scarlet cloak over his shoulders, he looks every inch as stalwart and as handsome a warrior as the archangel Michael, whose portraiture we see in our church!”

The person nearest in attendance on Lord Hereward was that lucky wight Elfric, who had been to seek him in foreign parts; but it was Elfric no longer attired either as a tattered menestrel or as a shaveling novice, but as something betwixt a blithesome page and an armed retainer. He too had more than one tear of joy in his eye as he trod upon the shore; but this tender emotion soon gave way to a hearty if not boisterous mirth, and so he kept shouting, “Make way for Hereward the Lord of Brunn!” and kept squeezing the hands of all the men and women and children he knew in Lynn, as they walked towards the convent where Hereward was to rest until daylight. Next to Elfric, the man that seemed most entirely devoted to the service and to the person of Hereward was a slight, slim man of middle stature and very dark complexion; his hair was long, and would have been blacker than the plumage of the raven save that time had touched it here and there with grey; his nose was arched like the beak of a goshawk; and his eye, that looked out from under a very black and bushy but very lofty eyebrow, was blacker and keener than the eye of any hawk or other fowl of prey. Some who had seen now and then a wandering Israelite, thought that this stranger looked marvellously like a Jew; but this was a marvellous mistake. None could think him either young or handsome; yet was there something about his person and in his face that none could help looking at, and then remembering for aye. Among the stout Saxons were some that could have taken the dark, slim stranger between their finger and thumb, and have squeezed the life out of him with as much ease as boys crack nuts; but there was a quickness and sharpness in the stranger’s eye that seemed to say he could outwit them all if he chose. On the way to the convent Hereward several times addressed him in some foreign tongue, and seemed by his looks to be taking advice of him.

As the convent was but a dependency of my Lord Abbat Thurstan, and a succursal cell to Ely, ye may judge whether the Lord of Brunn and those who came with him met with hospitality! Saxons and strangers (and all landed from the barks as soon as might be, and hastened to the convent) found suppers and beds, or suppers and clean sweet rushes to lie upon, either with the sub-prior or in the guest-house. In the morning, as soon as it was light, Hereward, Elfric, and the dark stranger, and a score of armed men, re-embarked in the good ship that had brought them to Lynn, and proceeded up the river Ouse, leaving the other four barks at their moorings under the prior’s wharf. These four craft were to keep a good look-out, and in case of any armed ships coming into the Wash they were to run, through the most intricate passage, for Spalding; but if no enemy should appear (and of this there was scarcely a chance, as the weather continued stormy, and the Normans were bad seamen, and very badly provided with shipping), they were all to wait at Lynn until Lord Hereward should come back from Ely to lead them to Spalding, and, farther still, to his own house at Brunn.

Broad and free was the river Ouse, and up as high as the junction of the Stoke[^[116]] Lord Hereward’s bark was favoured by the tide as well as by the wind. Above the Stoke the tide failed; but the wind blew steadily on, and many boats, with lusty rowers in them, came down from Ely and Chettisham and Littleport, and took the bark in tow, for the signal-lights and fires which had guided the fleet into Lynn had been carried across the fens and to the Abbey of Ely, and had told my Lord Abbat that the Lord Hereward was come. No bark had ever made such voyage before, nor have many made it since; but a good while before the sun went down our Lynn mariners made their craft fast to my Lord Abbat’s pier, and Hereward and his bold and trusty followers landed in the midst of a throng ten times greater and ten times more jubilant than that which had welcomed them at Lynn. Before quitting the ship Elfric put on his monastic habit. This he did not do without a sigh; and he carried with him under his novice’s gown the gay dress he had worn while in foreign parts and on shipboard. Maybe he expected that services might be required from him in which such an attire would be useful; or perhaps he hoped that his superior of Spalding and the Abbat of Crowland would, in considering the services he had rendered already, determine in their wisdom that the dress and calling of a monk were not those which suited him best. Although not bound by any irrevocable vow, Elfric was bound by the ties of gratitude to Father Adhelm, who had taken him into the succursal cell at Spalding when a very young and helpless orphan; and Elfric would never have been the man he proved himself if he had been forgetful of duties and obligations.

At the outer gate of the convent Lord Hereward was met and embraced and welcomed by the high-hearted abbat of the house, by the Archbishop Stigand, the Abbat of Crowland, and by all the prelates and high churchmen; and next by all the cloistered monks of Ely; and next by the lay lords and the Saxon warriors of all parts: and all this right reverend and right noble company shouted, “Welcome to our chief and our deliverer! Honour and welcome to the young Lord of Brunn!”

As Thurstan led the Saxon hero by the hand towards his own Aula Magna, he said, “But for the solemn season, which brooks not much noise,” (the town folk, and the hinds that had come in from the fens, and the novices and lay-brothers, were continuing to shout and make noise enough to wake the dead that were sleeping in the cloisters), “we would have received you, my lord, with a great clattering of bells and show of flags and banners! Nevertheless thou comest at a most suitable moment and on the very verge of the most joyous of all seasons; ’tis the vigil of the Nativity. On this Christmas eve, like all well-regulated religious houses and all good Christians, we fast upon a banquet of eels and fish. At midnight we have the midnight mass, chanted in our best manner; and to-morrow we feast indeed, and give up all our souls to joy. To-morrow, then, our bells shall be struck upon so that the Norman knights and men-at-arms shall hear them in Cam-Bridge Castle, and shall tremble while they hear! And our Saxon flags, and the banners of our saints, yea, the great banner of Saint Etheldreda itself, shall be hung out on our walls! And when the other duties of the day are over, we will sing a Te Deum laudamus for thy coming. My Lord Hereward, I have not known such joy, or half so much hope, since the day on which our good Edward (Rex venerandus) put this ring upon my finger and confirmed my election as abbat of this house! My hope then was that I should be enabled to be a good ruler of this ancient brotherhood, and good lord to all the Saxon folk that dwell on the land of Saint Etheldreda. Now my higher hope is that thou wilt be enabled, oh Hereward, to free all England from this cruel bondage!”

The young Saxon noble, being wholly a man of action, and gifted with much modesty, made but a very short reply to this and to other very long speeches; he simply said that he had come back to get back his own, and to help his good countrymen to get back their own; that the Norman yoke was all too grievous to be borne; that it was very strange and very sorrowful that brave King Harold came not back to his faithful people of East-Anglia; and that, until King Harold should come,[^[117]] he, Hereward, would do his best for his friends and for himself.

Though all were eager to be informed of the strength which the Lord of Brunn brought with him, and of the plans he proposed to pursue, Thurstan thought it churlish to question any man fasting. Hereward, however, declared that he had fared well on board the bark, and could well wait till supper-time. And so, having closed the doors of the abbat’s great hall, the lords and prelates proceeded to deliberate with the dispossessed Lord of Brunn. The sum of Hereward’s replies to many questions and cross-questions (he having no genius for narration) was simply this:—Elfric had found him out in Flanders, and had delivered to him letters, and messages, and tokens which had determined him to quit his adoptive country and return to England. Many English exiles who had been living in the Netherlands had made up their minds to come over with him. Such money as they could command among them all, or borrow at interest from the traders of Flanders, who seriously felt the loss of their trade with England, had been applied to the purchase of warlike harness, and to the hiring and equipping of three foreign barks. The master of a bark from Lynn that chanced to be in those parts had offered his bark and the services of himself and crew for nothing, or for what his liege lord the Abbat of Ely might at any time choose to give him. The gold and silver which my Lord Abbat had sent with Elfric had been properly and profitably employed; and, besides spear-heads, and swords, and bows, and jackets of mail, the Lynn bark now lying at my Lord Abbat’s pier, and the other Lynn bark left behind at that town, had brought such a quantity of Rhenish and Mosel wine as would suffice for the consumption of the whole house until next Christmas. Counting the men that had come in all the barks, there were more than one hundred and ten true-hearted Saxons, well armed and equipped, and well practised in the use of arms, as well in the Saxon fashion as in the fashions used abroad; and every one of these men was proper to become a centurion, or the trainer and leader of a hundred of our fen-men. It was Lord Hereward’s notion that our great house at Ely and the Camp of Refuge would be best relieved or screened from any chance of attack, by the Saxons making at once a quick and sharp attack all along the Norman lines or posts to the north and north-west of the Isle of Ely, or from Spalding to Brunn, and Crowland, and Peterborough. Some thought that his lordship preferred beginning in this direction because his own estates and the lady of his love were there: we will not say that these considerations had no weight with him, but we opine that his plan was a good one, and that no great commander, such as Hereward was, would have begun the war upon the invaders in any other manner, time or place. Twenty of the armed men he had brought with him from their wearisome exile—or more than twenty if my Lord Abbat thought fit—he would leave at Ely; with the rest, who had been left with the ships at Lynn, he would go to the Welland river, and make a beginning.

“But thou canst not go yet awhile,” said Abbat Thurstan, thinking of the Christmas festivals and of the Rhenish wines; “thou canst not quit us, my son, until after the feast of the Epiphany! ’Tis but twelve days from to-morrow, and the Normans are not likely to be a-stirring during those twelve days.”

“True, my Lord Abbat,” said Hereward, “the Normans will be feasting and rejoicing; but it is on that very account that I must go forthwith in order to take them unprepared and attack their bands separately, while they are feasting. An ye, holy brothers, give me your prayers, and the saints grant me the success I expect, I shall have recovered for ye the house at Spalding and the abbey of Crowland, and for myself mine humble house at Brunn, before these twelve days be over.”

“Then,” said the abbat, “thou mayest be back and keep the feast of the Epiphany with us.”

Hereward thought of keeping the feast in another place and with a different company, but the eager hospitality of Thurstan was not to be resisted, and so he promised that he would return, if he could do so without detriment to the business he had on hand. But when he spoke of setting forth on the morrow after high mass, not only the Lord Abbat, but every one that heard him, raised his voice against him, and Hereward yielded to the argument that it would be wicked to begin war on Christmas Day, or to do any manner of thing on that day except praying and feasting. Something did Hereward say in praise of Elfric, and of the ability, and courage, and quickness of invention he had displayed while on his mission in foreign parts, and on shipboard.

“Albeit,” said he, “I would not rob my good friends the Abbat of Crowland and the Prior of Spalding of so promising a novice, I needs must think that he would make a much better soldier than monk; nor can I help saying that I would rather have Elfric for my messenger and aid in the field than any Saxon youth I know, whether of low degree or high.”

“My good brother of Crowland and I have been thinking of these things,” said Abbat Thurstan; “and these are surely days when the saints of England require the services of men with steel caps on their heads as much as they require the services of men with shaven crowns. Not but that some of us that wear cowls have not wielded arms and done good battle in our day for the defence of our shrines and houses.”

At this moment the eels and fish of the Christmas-eve supper were all ready, and the best cask of Rhenish which the bark had brought up to my Lord Abbat’s pier was broached.

CHAPTER VIII.
LORD HEREWARD GOES TO GET HIS OWN.

In no time had there been at the house of Ely so great and glorious a festival of the Nativity as that holden in the year of Grace one thousand and seventy, the day after the return of the Saxon commander Hereward, Lord of Brunn. Learned brothers of the house have written upon it, and even to this day the monks of Ely talk about it. On the day next after the feast, several hours before sunrise, the mariners in the unloaded bark were getting all ready to drop down the Ouse to the good town of Lynn, and Lord Hereward was communing with the Abbat Thurstan, the Abbat of Crowland, and the Prior of Spalding, in my Lord Abbat’s bedchamber. The rest of the prelates and lay lords were sleeping soundly in their several apartments, having taken their leave of Hereward in a full carouse the night before. Many things had been settled touching correspondence or communication, and a general co-operation and union of all the Saxons in the Camp of Refuge and all that dwelt in the fen country, whether in the isle of Ely, or in the isle of Thorney, or in Lindsey, or in Holland, or in other parts. Fresh assurances were given that the chiefs and fighting men would all acknowledge Hereward as their supreme commander, undertaking nothing but at his bidding, and looking to none but him for their orders and instructions. Abbat Thurstan agreed to keep the score of men that had been brought up to Ely in the bark, but he demurred about receiving and entertaining, as the commander of these men, the dark stranger with the hooked nose and sharp eye. Hereward said that the stranger was a man remarkably skilled in the science of war, and in the art of defending places. Thurstan asked whether he were sure that he was not a spy of the Normans, or one that would sell himself to the Normans for gold? Then the Lord of Brunn told what he knew, or that which he had been told, concerning the dark stranger. He was from Italie, from a region not very far removed from Rome and the patrimony of Saint Peter; from the name of his town he was hight[^[118]] Girolamo of Salerno. His country has been all invaded, and devastated, and conquered by Norman tribes, from the same evil hive which had sent these depredators into merry England to make it a land of woe. Robert Guiscard, one of twelve brothers that were all conquerors and spoilers, had driven Girolamo from his home and had seized upon his houses and lands, and had abused the tombs of his ancestors, even as the followers of William the Bastard were now doing foul things with the graves of our forefathers. After enduring wounds, and bonds, and chains, Girolamo of Salerno had fled from his native land for ever, leaving all that was his in the hands of the Normans, and had gone over into Sicilie to seek a new home and settlement among strangers. But the Normans, who thought they had never robbed enough so long as there were more countries before them which they could rob and conquer, crossed the sea into Sicilie[^[119]] under Roger Guiscard, the brother of Robert, and made prey of all that fair island seven years before the son of the harlot of Falaise crossed the Channel and came into England. Now Girolamo of Salerno had vowed upon the relics of all the saints that were in the mother-church of Salerno, that he would never live under the Norman tyranny; and sundry of the Norman chiefs that went over with Roger Guiscard to Palermo had vowed upon the crosses of their swords that they would hang him as a dangerous man if they could but catch him. So Girolamo shook the dust of Sicilie and Mongibel[^[120]] from his feet, and, crossing the seas again, went into Grecia. But go where he would, those incarnate devils the Normans would be after him! He had not long lived in Grecia ere Robert Guiscard came over from Otrantum and Brundisium, to spoil the land and occupy it; therefore Girolamo fled again, cursing the Norman lance. He had wandered long and far in the countries of the Orient: he had visited the land of Egypt, he had been in Palestine, in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem; he had stood and prayed on the spot where our Lord was born, and on the spot where He was crucified; but, wearying of his sojourn among Saracens, he had come back to the Christian west to see if he could find some home where the hated Normans could not penetrate, or where dwelt some brave Christian people that were hopeful of fighting against those oppressors. He was roaming over the earth in quest of enemies to the Normans when Hereward met him, two years ago, in Flanders, and took his hand in his as a sworn foe to all men of that race. Was, then, Girolamo of Salerno a likely man to be a spy or fautor to the Normans in England? Thurstan acknowledged that he was not. “But,” said he, “some men are so prone to suspicion that they suspect everybody and everything that is near to them; and some men, nay, even some monks and brothers of this very house, are so envious of my state and such foes to my peace of mind, that whenever they see me more happy and fuller of hope than common, they vamp me up some story or conjure some spectrum to disquiet me and sadden me! Now, what said our prior and cellarer no later than last night? They said, in the hearing of many of this house, inexpert novices as well as cloister-monks, that the dark stranger must be either an unbelieving Jew or a necromancer; that when, at grand mass, the host was elevated in the church, he shot glances of fire at it from his sharp eyes; and that when the service was over they found him standing behind the high altar muttering what sounded very like an incantation, in a tongue very like unto the Latin.”

Hereward smiled and said, “Assuredly he was but saying a prayer in his own tongue. My Lord Abbat, this Girolamo of Salerno, hath lived constantly with me for the term of two years, and I will warrant him as true a believer as any man in broad England. He is a man of many sorrows, and no doubt of many sins; but as for his faith!—why he is a living and walking history of all the saints and martyrs of the church, and of every miraculous image of Our Ladie that was ever found upon earth. His troubles and his crosses, and his being unable to speak our tongue, or to comprehend what is said around him, may make him look moody and wild, and very strange: and I am told that in the country of his birth most men have coal-black hair and dark flashing eyes; but that in Salerno there be no Israelites allowed, and no necromancers or warlocks or witches whatsoever; albeit, the walnut-tree of Beneventum, where the witches are said to hold their sabbat, be not very many leagues distant. In truth, my good Lord Abbat, it was but to serve you and to serve your friends and retainers, that I proposed he should stay for a season where he is; for I have seen such good proofs of his skill in the stratagems of war, and have been promised by him so much aid and assistance in the enterprises I am going to commence, that I would fain have him with me. I only thought that if he stayed a while here in quiet, he might learn to speak our tongue; and that if during my absence the Normans should make any attempt from the side of Cam-Bridge upon this blessed shrine of Saint Etheldreda, he might, by his surpassing skill and knowledge of arms, be of use to your lordship and the good brothers.”

“These are good motives,” said Thurstan, “and do honour to thee, my son. It is not in my wont to bid any stranger away from the house.... But—but this stranger doth look so very strange and wild, that I would rather he were away. Even our sub-sacrist, who hath not the same nature as the prior and cellarer, saith that all our flaxen-headed novices in the convent are afraid of that thin dark man, and that they say whenever the stranger’s large black eye catches theirs they cannot withdraw their eyes until he turns away from them. I think, my Lord Hereward, the stranger may learn our tongue in thy camp. I believe that the Normans will not try on this side now that the waters are all out, and our rivers and ditches so deep; and if they do we can give a good account of them—and I really do think that thou wilt more need than we this knowing man’s services:—what say ye, my brother of Crowland?”

The Abbat of Crowland was wholly of the opinion of the Abbat of Ely, and so likewise was the Prior of Spalding. It was therefore agreed that Girolamo of Salerno should accompany the young Lord of Brunn.

“But” said Hereward, “in proposing to leave you this strange man from Italie, I thought of taking from you, for yet another while, that Saxon wight Elfric, seeing that he knoweth all this fen country better than any man in my train; and that, while I am going round by the river and the Wash, I would fain despatch, by way of the fens, a skilled and trustful messenger in the direction of Ey....”

“To salute the Ladie Alftrude, and to tell her that thou art come,” said the Abbat of Crowland.

“Even so,” quoth Hereward; “and to tell her moreover to look well to her manor-house, and to let her people know that I am come, and that they ought to come and join me at the proper time.”

“It is clear,” said the Prior of Spalding, “that none can do this mission an it be not Elfric, who knoweth the goings and comings about the house at Ey....”

“Aye, and the maid-servant that dwelleth within the gates,” quoth the Abbat of Crowland.

The Prior of Spalding laughed, and eke my Lord Abbat of Ely; and when he had done his laugh, Thurstan said “This is well said, and well minded; and as we seem to be all agreed that, upon various considerations, it would be better to unfrock the young man at once, let us call up Elfric, and release him from his slight obligations, and give him to Lord Hereward to do with him what he list. What say ye my brothers?”

The two dignified monks said “yea;” and Elfric being summoned was told that henceforth he was Lord Hereward’s man, and that he might doff his cucullis,[^[121]] and let his brown locks grow on his tonsure as fast as they could grow.

The monk that sleeps in his horse-hair camise,[^[122]] and that has nothing to put on when he rises but his hose and his cloak, is not long a-dressing; yet in less time than ever monk attired himself, Elfric put on the soldier garb that he had worn while abroad. And then, having received from Hereward a signet-ring and other tokens, and a long message for the Ladie Alftrude, together with instructions how he was to proceed after he had seen her; and having bidden a dutiful farewell and given his thanks to the Prior of Spalding and to the two abbats, and having gotten the blessing of all three, Elfric girded a good sword to his loins, took his fen-staff in his hand, and went down to the water-gate to get a light skerry, for the country was now like one great lake, and the journey to Ey must be mostly made by boat.

It was now nigh upon day-dawn. The Lord Abbat and a few others accompanied the Lord of Brunn to the pier, and saw him on board: then the mariners let go their last mooring, and the bark began to glide down the river.

Before the light of this winter day ended, Hereward was well up the Welland, and the whole of his flotilla was anchored in that river not far from Spalding, behind a thick wood of willows and alders, which sufficed even in the leafless season to screen the barks from the view of the Norman monks in the succursal cell.

As soon as it was dark, Hereward the liberator took one score and ten armed men into the lightest of the barks, and silently and cautiously ascended the river until he came close to the walls of the convent. The caution was scarcely needed, for the Normans, albeit they were ever reproaching the Saxons with gluttony and drunkenness, were feasting and drinking at an immoderate rate, and had taken no care to set a watch. Brightly the light of a great wood fire and of many torches shone through the windows of the hall as Hereward landed with his brave men and surrounded the house, while the mariners were taken good care of the ferry-boat.

“If these men were in their own house,” said Hereward, “it is not I that would disturb their mirth on such a night; but as they are in the house of other men, we must even pull them forth by the ears. So! where be the ladders?”

A strong ladder brought from the bark was laid across the moat, and ten armed men passed one by one over this ladder to the opposite side of the moat. The well-armed men were led by the brother of Wybert the wright, and by another of the men who had fled from Spalding town on that wicked night when Ivo Taille-Bois broke into the house. Now these two men of Spalding well knew the strong parts and the weak parts of the cell—as well they might, for they had ofttimes helped to repair the woodwork and the roof of the building. Having drawn the strong ladder after them to the narrow ledge of masonry on which they had landed, they raised it against the wall, and while some steadied it, first one armed man and then another climbed up by the ladder to the top of the stone and brick part of the walls. Then the brother of Wybert climbing still higher, by clutching the beams and the rough timber got to the house-top, and presently told those below in a whisper that all was right, that the door at the head of the spiral staircase was unfastened and wide open.

In a very short time ten armed men and the two hinds from Spalding town were safe on the roof; and the brother of Wybert said, “Now Saxons!” and as he heard the signal, Lord Hereward said, “Now Saxons, your horns!” And three stout Saxons, well skilled in the art of noise-making, put each his horn to his mouth and sounded a challenge, as loud as they could blow. Startled and wrathful, but not much alarmed, was the intrusive prior from Angers when he heard this noise, and bade his Angevin sacrist go to the window, and see what the Saxon slaves wanted at this time of night with their rascaille cow-horns! But when the sacrist reported that he saw a great bark lying in the river, and many armed men standing at the edge of the moat (in the darkness the sacrist took sundry stumps of willow-trees for warriors), the man of Angers became alarmed, and all Ivo Taille-Bois’ kindred became alarmed, and quitting the blazing fire and their good wine, they all ran to the windows of the hall to see what was toward. As they were a ruleless, lawless, unconsecrated rabble, who knew not what was meant by monastic discipline, and respect, and obedience, they all talked and shouted together, and shouted and talked so loud and so fast that it was impossible for any Christian man to be heard in answer to them. But at length the pseudo-prior silenced the gabble for a minute, and said, “Saxons, who are you, and what do you want at this hour, disturbing the repose of holy men at a holy season?”

Even this was said in Norman-French, which no man understood or could speak, except Hereward and the dark stranger who had attended him hither. But the Lord of Brunn gave out in good round French, “We are Saxons true, and true men to King Harold, and we be come to pull you out of this good nest which ye have defiled too long!”

“Get ye gone, traitors and slaves!” cried the false prior from Angers; “ye cannot cross our moat nor force our gates, and fifty Norman lances are lying hard by.”

“False monk, we will see,” quoth the Lord of Brunn. “Now, Saxons, your blast-horns again; blow ye our second signal!”

The hornmen blew might and main; and before their last blast had ceased echoing from an angle of the walls, another horn was heard blowing inside the house, and then was heard a rushing and stamping of heavy feet, and a clanging of swords in the hall, and a voice roaring, “Let me cleave the skull of two of these shavelings for the sake of Wybert the wright!”

“Thou art cold and shivering, Girolamo,” said Hereward; “but step out of that quagmire where thou art standing, and follow me. We will presently warm ourselves at the fireside of these Frenchmen.” Girolamo followed the Lord of Brunn to the front of the house; and they were scarcely there ere the drawbridge was down, and the gate thrown open.

“Well done, Ralph of Spalding,” said Hereward, who rushed into the house followed by the score of armed men. But those who had descended from above by the spiral staircase had left nothing to be done by those who ascended from below. The false prior and all his false fraternity had been seized, and had been bound with their own girdles, and had all been thrown in a corner, where they all lay sprawling the one on the top of the other, and screaming and begging for Misericorde. The brother of Wybert the wright had given a bloody coxcomb to the prior, and one of Hereward’s soldiers had slit the nose of a French monk that had aimed at him with a pike; but otherwise little blood had been shed, and no great harm done, save that all the stoups of wine and all the wine-cups had been upset in the scuffle. The brother of Wybert begged as a favour that he might be allowed to cut the throats of two of the false monks; but the Lord of Brunn, so fierce in battle, was aye merciful in the hour of victory, and never would allow the slaying of prisoners, and so he told the good man of Spalding town that the monks must not be slain; but that, before he had done with them, they should be made to pay the price of his brother’s blood; nay, three times the price that the Saxon laws put upon the life of a man of Wybert’s degree.

“I would give up that bot for a little of their blood!” said Wybert’s brother. But, nevertheless, he was obliged to rest satisfied; for who should dare gainsay the young Lord of Brunn?

Girolamo of Salerno, who understood nought of the debate between Hereward and the brother of Wybert, thought that the intrusive monks ought to be put into sacks and thrown into the river, inasmuch as that the Normans, when they conquered Salerno, threw a score of good monks of that town and vicinity into the sea; but when he delivered this thought unto the Lord Hereward, that bold-hearted and kind-hearted Saxon said that it was not the right way to correct cruelties by committing cruelties, and that it was not in the true English nature to be prone to revenge. All this while, and a little longer, the false alien monks, with their hands tied behind them, lay sprawling and crying Misericorde: howbeit, when they saw and understood that death was not intended, they plucked up their courage and began to complain and reprove.

“This is a foul deed,” said one of them, “a very foul deed, to disturb and break in upon, and smite with the edge of the sword, the servants of the Lord.”

“Not half so foul a deed,” quoth Hereward, “as that done by Ivo Taille-Bois, the cousin of ye all, and the man who put ye here, and thrust out the Saxon brotherhood at the dead of night, slaying their cook. Ye may or may not have been servants of the Lord in the countries from which ye came, but here are ye nought but intruders and usurpers, and the devourers of better men’s goods.”

Here the prior from Angers spoke from the heap in the corner, and said, “For this night’s work thou wilt be answerable unto the king.”

“That will I,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “when bold King Harold returns.”

“I will excommunicate thee and thy fautors,” said the intrusive prior.

“Thou hadst better not attempt it,” said Hereward, “for among my merry men be some that know enough of church Latin to make out the difference between a Maledicite and a Benedicite; and I might find it difficult to prevent their cutting your weazens.”[^[123]]

“Yet would I do it by bell, book and candle, if I could get the bell and candle, and read the book,” said the intrusive prior.

“Thou hadst better not attempt it,” said two or three voices from the heap; but another voice, which seemed buried under stout bodies and habits and hoods, said, “There is no danger, for our prior cannot read, and never had memory enough to say by heart more Latin than lies in a Credo. Beshrew you, brothers all, bespeak these Saxons gently, so that they may give us leave to go back into Normandie. If I had bethought me that I was to play the monk in this fashion, Ivo Taille-Bois should never have brought me from the plough-tail!”

When the Lord of Brunn and Girolamo of Salerno had done laughing, the Lord Hereward said, “Let this goodly hall be cleared of this foul rubbish. Girolamo, see these intruders carried on board the bark and thrown into the hold. We will send them to my Lord Abbat at Ely, that they may be kept as hostages. But tell the shipmen not to hurt a hair of their heads.”

When the alien monks understood that they must go, they clamoured about their goods and properties. This made Hereward wroth, and he said, “When ye thrust out the good English monks, ye gave them nought! Nevertheless I will give ye all that ye brought with ye.”

Here the voice that had spoken before from under the heap said, “We all know we brought nothing with us—no, not so much as the gear we wear! Therefore let us claim nothing, but hasten to be gone, and so hope to get back the sooner into Normandie.”

But the prior and the sacrist and divers others continued to make a great outcry about their goods, their holy-books, their altar vases, their beds and their bed-clothes; and as this moved Lord Hereward’s ire, he said to his merry men that they must turn them out; and the merry men all did turn them out by pulling them before and kicking them behind: and in this manner the unlettered and unholy crew that Ivo Taille-Bois had thrust into the succursal cell of Spalding were lugged and driven on shipboard, and there they were made fast under the hatches. As soon as they were all cleared out of the convent, Lord Hereward bade his Saxons put more fuel on the fire, and bring up more wine, and likewise see what might be in the buttery. The brother of Wybert the wright knew the way well both to cellar and buttery; and finding both well filled, he soon re-appeared with wine and viands enough. And so Hereward and his men warmed themselves by the blazing fire, and ate and drank most merrily and abundantly: and when all had their fill, and all had drunk a deep health to Hereward the liberator, they went into the monk’s snug cells, and so fast to sleep.

On the morrow morning they rose betimes. So featly had the thing been done over night, that none knew it but those who had been present. The good folk that yet remained in Spalding town, though so close at hand, had heard nothing of the matter. Hereward now summoned them to the house; but having his reasons for wishing not to be known at this present, he deputed one of his men to hold a conference with them, and to tell the few good men of Spalding that the hour of deliverance was at hand, that their false monks had been driven away, and that Father Adhelm and their true monks would soon return: whereat the Spalding folk heartily rejoiced. In the present state of the road, or rather of the waters, there was no fear of any Norman force approaching the succursal cell. Therefore Lord Hereward ordered that much of his munition of war should be landed and deposited in the convent: and leaving therein all his armed men with Girolamo of Salerno, he embarked alone in the lightest of his barks, and went up the river as far as the point that was nearest to Brunn. There, leaving the bark and all the sailors, and taking with him nought but his sword and his fen-staff, and covering himself with an old and tattered seaman’s coat, he landed and struck across the fens, and walked, waded, leaped, and swam, until he came within sight of his own old manor-house and the little township of Brunn.[^[124]] It was eventide, and the blue smoke was rising from the manor-house and from the town, as peacefully as in the most peaceful days. Hereward stopped and looked upon the tranquil scene, as he had done so many times before at the same hour in the days of his youth, when returning homeward from some visit, or from some fowling in the fens; and as he looked, all that had since passed became as a dream; and then he whistled and stepped gaily forward, as if his father’s house was still his own house,[^[125]] and his father there to meet and bless him. But, alack! his father was six feet under the sod of the churchyard, and a fierce Norman was in the house, with many men-at-arms. Awakening from his evening dream, and feeling that the invasion of England was no dream—the bloody battle of Hastings no dream—the death of his father no dream—and that it was a sad reality that he was a dispossessed man, barred out by force and by fraud from his own, the young Lord of Brunn avoided the direct path to the manor-house, and struck into a narrow sloppy lane which led into the township. As he came among the low houses, or huts, the good people where beginning to bar their doors for the night. “They will open,” said Hereward, “when they know who is come among them!” He made straight for the abode of one who had been his foster brother; and he said as he entered it, “Be there true Saxon folk in the house?”

“Yea,” said the man of the house.

“Then wilt thou not be sorry to see Hereward the Saxon and thy foster-brother;” and so saying he unmuffled himself and threw off his dirty ship cloak; and his foster brother fell at his feet, and kissed his hand, and hugged his knee, and said, “Is it even my young Lord Hereward?” and so wept for joy.

“It is even I,” said the young Lord of Brunn; “it is even I come back to get mine own, and to get back for every honest man his own. But honest men must up and help. Will the honest folk of Brunn strike a blow for Hereward and for themselves? Will the town-people, and my kith and kindred and friends in the old days, receive and acknowledge me?”

It was the wife of the foster-brother that was now kneeling and clasping Hereward’s knee, and that said, “The women of Brunn would brand every catiff in the township that did not throw up his cap and rejoice, and take his bill-hook and bow in his hand for the young Lord of Brunn!”

Every one of the notables was summoned presently; and they all recognised Hereward as their true lord and leader, vowing at the same time that they would follow him into battle against the Normans, and do his bidding whatever it might be. Many were the times that Hereward was forced to put his finger upon his lip to recommend silence; for they all wanted to hail his return with hearty Saxon shouts, and he wanted to avoid rousing the Normans in the manor-house for the present. The welcome he received left him no room to doubt of the entire affection and devotion of the town-folk; and the intelligence he gleaned was more satisfactory than he had anticipated. Raoul, a Norman knight, and, next to Ivo Taille-Bois, the most powerful and diabolical of all the Normans in or near to the fen-country, held the manor-house, and levied dues and fees in the township; but many of those who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and who had held their lands under the last quiet old Lord of Brunn, had never submitted to the intruder, nor had Raoul and his men-at-arms been able to get at them in their islands among the fens and deep waters. There was John of the Bogs, who had kept his house and gear untouched, and who could muster a score or twain of lusty hinds, well armed with pikes and bill-hooks and bows; there was Ralph of the Dyke, the chamberlain of the last Lord of Brunn, who had beaten off Raoul and his men-at-arms in a dozen encounters; there were other men, little less powerful than these two, who would be up and doing if Lord Hereward would only show himself, or only raise his little finger. The manor-house was well fortified and garrisoned; but what of that? For Lord Hereward it should be stormed and taken, though it should cost a score or twain of lives. Here the young Lord of Brunn told them that he hoped to get back his house without wasting a single drop of the blood of any of them, inasmuch as he had practised men of war not far from hand, together with engines of war proper for sieges. He bade them spread far and near the news of his return: he begged them to do this cautiously, and to remain quiet until he should come back among them; in the meanwhile they might be making such preparations for war as their means allowed. To-morrow night it would be the full of moon; and as soon as the good town-folk should see the moon rising over Elsey Wood[^[126]] they might expect him and his force. And now he must take a short repast and a little sleep, so as to be able to commence his return to the Welland river before midnight.

Long before midnight Hereward was on his way; but he travelled with much more ease than he had done in coming to Brunn, for his foster-brother and two other trusty men carried him in a boat the greater part of the way.

Being again at Spalding, the approaches to which had been curiously strengthened, during his short absence, by Girolamo of Salerno, Hereward sent off one of the barks for Ely to convey the news of his first success and the prisoners he had made to the Lord Abbat, and to bring back the good prior of Spalding to his own cell; he left one bark moored below Spalding to watch the lower part of the river, and prevent any but friendly boats from ascending (there was little danger of any Norman coming this way; but a good commander like the Lord of Brunn leaves nothing to chance, and neglects no precaution); and with the three other barks and Girolamo and twenty of his armed men he began to move up the river on the following morning. Ten men were left to hold the succursal cell, and protect the township of Spalding; and all such war-stores as were not immediately required were left in the convent. The three barks were to be moored near to the point of debarkation, so as to prevent any communication between Crowland and Spalding, it being very expedient to keep the intrusive monks at Crowland ignorant of what had passed and what was passing. True, these unholy Norman friars were feasting and keeping their Christmas, and were little likely to move out at such a season, or to take heed of anything that was happening beyond the walls of their own house: but Hereward, as we have said, neglected no precaution; and therefore it was that the Lord of Brunn was ever successful in war. When he and his troops landed at the bend of the river that was nearest to Brunn, it was made visible to all, and not without manifest astonishment, that Girolamo of Salerno could do many wondrous things. Under his direction light and shallow skerries, and boats made of wicker-work, and lined with skins, had been prepared; and while these were capable of carrying men and stores across the deeper streams that lay between the bend of the Welland and the town of Brunn, they were so light that they could easily be carried on the men’s shoulders. A catapult and another engine which Hereward had purchased in Flanders were taken to pieces in order to be carried in these boats and skerries; the more precious parts of the munition of war which Girolamo had made with his own hands before embarking for England were most carefully wrapped up in many cloths and skins, so that even in that wettest of countries they could not be wetted. There was one small package, a very small package was it, of which the dark stranger took especial care, carrying it himself, and telling Hereward that with its contents he could open the gates of the strongest of houses.

Notwithstanding the weight of their arms, and of the other burdens they had to bear from one stream or mere to another, the whole party pushed steadily forward across the more than half-inundated fens; and although some of the men, not being native fen-men, were not practised in such travelling, and although some of them could not swim, they all reached in safety a broad dry dyke[^[127]] near to the back of the township of Brunn a good hour before the full moon began to rise over Elsey-Wood. Having seen everything safely landed, Hereward walked alone into the town, going straight to the house of his foster-brother. But before he got into the rambling street he was accosted by three tall Saxons, who said, “Is it our Lord Hereward?”

“Yea; and are ye ready to be stirring? Have ye collected a few true men that will strike a blow for the houseless Lord of Brunn?”

“Thou shalt see, my Lord,” said one of the three, who was no less a man than John of the Bogs, and clapping his hands thrice, three score and more Saxons armed with bows and bills, and some of them with swords and battle-axes, started forth from behind so many alders and willow-trees; and at that moment the broad full moon showed her bright, full face over the bare trees of Elsey-Wood. The men had been well taught, and so they did not rend the air with a shout which might have startled the Normans in the manor-house; but every man of them, whether freeman or serf, knelt at Lord Hereward’s feet, and kissed his hand.

The score of armed men and all that had been brought with them from Spalding were soon carried into town. A supper was all ready, and smoking on the table of Lord Hereward’s foster-brother. Every man was welcomed as one amongst brethren, albeit these simple-minded men of Brunn started and looked askance when they saw the dark stranger with the hooked nose and fiery eyes; and much they marvelled all when they heard the young Lord of Brunn talking with this stranger in an unknown tongue.

“Wouldst thou have possession of thine house to-night or to-morrow morning?” said Girolamo. “At the hazard of burning a part of it I could gain thee admittance in less then half an hour by means of my Greek fire.”

“I would not have a plank of the dear old place burned,” said Hereward. “I would rather delay my entrance till the morning.”

“Then this must be a busy night,” replied the dark man.

And a busy night it was; for lo! in the morning, when Raoul the Norman knight awoke from the deep sleep which had followed his heavy overnight’s carouse, and looked forth from his chamber in the tower over the gateway of the manor-house, he saw what seemed another and a taller tower on the opposite side of the moat; and what seemed a bridge of boats laid across the moat; and in the tower were archers with their bows bent, and men-at-arms with swords and battle-axes. Raoul rubbed his eyes, and still seeing the same sight, thought it all magic or a dream. But there was more magic than this, for when he called up his sleepy household, and his careless and over-confident men-at-arms, and went round the house, he saw another bridge of boats leading to the postern-gate at the back of the house, and beyond that bridge he saw a catapult with a score of armed men standing by it. But look where he would, there were armed men; the manor-house was surrounded, and surrounded in such fashion that there could be no egress from it, and small hope of defending it. The despairing Norman knight, therefore, went back to his tower over the gateway, and called a parley.