The Serf

by Guy Thorne

  CHAPTER IX

  "Justorum Animae in Manu dei sunt, et non Tanget Illos Tormentum Malitiae: Visi sunt Oculis Insipientium Mori, Illi Autem sunt in Pace."

  The chapter-house at Icomb was a low, vaulted chamber divided into threecompartments by rows of pillars bearing arches. A stone seat ran allround it for the monks, and the prior's seat was opposite the entrance.Two arches on each side of the doorway--there was no actualdoor--allowed the deliberations to be heard outside in the cloister.This was according to the invariable Cistercian plan. No one, save themonks themselves, could actually sit in the chapter-house, butothers--in this case, the head men of the village--could stand in thecloister, and so become fully cognisant of the proceedings within.

  The brothers filed through the dark cloisters towards the red doorwayswhich showed that the chapter-house was lit within. The big bell in thecentralone kept tolling unceasingly. One by one the brothers entered andseated themselves upon the stone bench. Two of the _fratres conversi_stood by the prior's throne with torches. A sudden murmur of talk hummedthrough the place. The night was exceedingly hot.

  A glance round at the seated figures would hardly have prepossessed themodern spectator. One and all, young and old, were as frowsy andunsavoury a lot as ever poisoned the air of a warm summer's night. Thewhite, emaciated faces smeared with dirt, the matted beards, andglowing, excited eyes, all combined to produce a singularly unpleasantpicture.

  Yet as the torchlight revealed one distressing detail after another italso played upon a congregation of as holy men as could have been foundanywhere in that century. Not for them the licence and luxury of some ofthe great monasteries, where the monks pursued the deer or set theirfalcons at feathered game with no less ardour than they followed apetticoat through a wood. Not for them chased cups of pimentum and moratwhile the tables groaned under fish, flesh and fowl. It is a pity, nodoubt, that they were not nice according to our ideas, but we can wellforget that if we remember that they were indeed very holy men.

  Presently the prior came in and took his seat upon the stone throneafter he had said a short Latin prayer. The farmers and other villagerspressed to the archways of the opening, and, rising to his feet, RichardEspec spake in this wise:

  "Brethren, this is a perilous time; and such a scourge was never heardsince Christ's passion. You hear how good men suffer the death.Brethren, this is undoubted for the offences of England. Ye read, aslong as the children of Israel kept the commandments of God, so longtheir enemies had no power over them, but God took vengeance of theirenemies. We have erred, I wist, in our own lives, and God has sent thisupon us. For when the Jews broke God's commandments then they weresubdued by their enemies, and so be we. Therefore let us be sorry forour offences. Undoubted He will take vengeance of our enemies; I meanthose blood-stained lords that causeth so many good men to suffer thus.Alas! it is a piteous case that so much Christian blood should be shed.Therefore, good brethren, for the reverence of God, every one of youdevoutly pray, and say this psalm, 'O God, the heathen are come intoThine inheritance; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalema heap of stones. The dead bodies of Thy servants have they given to bemeat to the fowls of the air, and the flesh of Thy saints unto thebeasts of the field. Their blood have they shed like water on every sideof Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them. We are become an openscorn to our enemies, a very scorn and derision to them that are roundabout us. Oh, remember not our old sins, but have mercy upon us, andthat soon, for we are come to great misery. Help us, O God of oursalvation, for the glory of Thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins forThy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?'Ye shall say this psalm," continued the prior, "every Friday, after theLitany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly Godwill cease this extreme scourge."

  Then he went on to tell them of the martyrdom of Dom John, and what agood and holy man he was. "Even now, my dear brethren," said he, "I knowhim to be a saint in heaven. _He has seen God_, and talked with HisHoliness, Saint Peter. Our Lady has smiled upon him. In the goldenstreets he has walked with gladness. I think that perhaps he is herewith us now, our dear brother, that he sees us, and is full of lovetowards us all."

  As his voice dropped towards the close, full of emotion, there was loudapplause. As in very early Christian times, the brethren saluted theoration with a beating of hands.

  And with that noise we must leave the hooded figures sitting among theshadows.

  The curtain of this short chronicle must fall upon them for ever, in ared light, with black shadows, with the noise of a clapping of hands.

  Their lives were framed in stone, and swords were about them. They werevery ignorant, very prejudiced, superstitious and dirty--a bigindictment! Nevertheless, it is certain that their influence upon thetime was good and pure. It is the fashion to rail at monasteries of allperiods. Many blockheads can never get over the mere _fact_ of theDissolution! In a spirit of curiosity I examined half-a-dozen historiesof the baser type--the sort of histories that are still given tofourth-form boys and quite grown-up girls. One and all, if theymentioned the monasteries in the reign of King Stephen at any length,either openly condemned them or damned them with faint praise. I takethis opportunity of correcting messires, the historians, upon a point ofFACT. It is odd that the hopelessly incompetent clergyman-schoolmastershould so invariably turn historian to-day. His monumental and appallingignorance of the times and peoples he treats of--ignorance unilluminedwith a single ray of insight--is displayed on every line of hislucubrations. Nothing, apparently, would lead him to read and dig andsift for himself so that he might know just a little of what he writesabout. Let me, at any rate, assure him, that while, as is natural, therewere plenty of bad monks in the reign of Stephen, as a whole, themonasteries were very praiseworthy institutions, and had a beneficentinfluence upon the country. In short, my little priory at Icomb, is aperfectly fair and typical example of its class.

  While the monks were in the chapter-house, and afterwards attending aspecial service in the chapel, a long boat glided rapidly over the lake.It was a dark, thunderous night, and nothing betrayed the quiet passageof the craft, save the dusky glitter of the water as the oars rose andsank. Now and again some low orders in Norman-French regulated the paceor altered the direction of the boat.

  When the voyagers were about half-way across the mere, as near as theycould judge, they heard the sudden tolling of the great bell of thePriory. The sullen, angry notes came across the water, out of the dark,in waves of booming sound. There was a muttered order, and the oarsstopped in their swing. The boat rushed on for thirty yards or so,gradually losing its momentum, until at length it became stationary.

  "What does that betoken, Huber?" asked a voice.

  "I do not know," replied the man-at-arms. "Pardieu, I cannot tell."

  "Do you think they know that we are near?"

  "Not unless they have found out that Heraud has come with a certainpurpose. Perchance Hyla saw him and recognised him."

  "Not he. Heraud shaved his face and cropped his hair, and the minterdrew lines upon his face, and painted the poor divell's visage all overwith some hell brew. I seed them at it. His own mother would never havethought him made of her blood."

  "Then, by Godis teeth! what does the bell mean?"

  "Oh, the old women are making prayers or saying Mass."

  "Pagan! Mass is not at this hour, nor would they ring the great bell inthat way."

  "Then the prior has given up his vows, and is about to wed the LadyAbbess of Denton, and the monks are ringing for joy that one of themshould at length prove himself a man." A chuckle went through the boatat this none too excellent a joke.

  "Like enough," Huber said, "but whatever it may mean we must keep ourtryst with Heraud. It was to be a church's length from the main landingwhere the monks keep their boats. A church's length to the left."

  "It will not be easy to find, the night is very thick. We must go veryslow."

  "Yes," said Huber "w
e must go with great care. Come forward! Are youready? Allery!"

  The boat glided slowly on again towards the direction of the island.Presently a deeper blackness loomed up in front of them, and they sawthat they were close to land. The smell of land, of herbage and flowers,came to them, and hot as it had been upon the lake, it seemed hotter nowthat they were come to shore.

  As the nose of the boat brushed the outgrowing reeds, hissing at thecontact, the bell on the hill above stopped suddenly. A great silenceenveloped them as they waited.

  Huber gave a long, low whistle, but there was no answer. He repeated itat intervals of about a minute.

  They were getting restive, wondering what might have happened, whenHuber changed his tactics. He began to whistle very softly andsweetly--the scamp had a pipe like any bird--the lilt of a love-song. Itwas a plaintive air which rose and fell delicately in the night. Most ofthem knew it, for it was a popular song among the soldiers of that day,and had been made by a strolling minstrel one evening in the Picard campat Gournay, and thence spread all over Northern Europe by themercenaries.

  The men-at-arms began to nod to its rhythm and beat quiet time to it.Then one fellow began to whistle a bass under his breath, and anotherand another took up the air very quietly, till the boat was like a cageof fairy singing birds. They were so amused by their occupation, and,indeed, they were producing a very pretty concert, that they quiteforgot their purpose for the moment, and abandoned themselves one andall to the music. It recalled many merry memories of Tilliers andFalaise, of Mortain and Arques, and of the orchards of their Normanhome.

  They were beginning the whole thing all over again--so much did itplease them--when they became aware of another and more distantaugmentation to their concert. They stopped, and the silvery whistlefrom the bank still shivered out a note or two before it stopped. In amoment more they heard splashing, and a dark figure pushed aside thereeds and waded out to them.

  "It is all safe," said the new-comer. "The murderer is here sure enough.He does not know who I am, and I am in a hut close to his."

  "Bon," said Huber, "I am glad to see you. Lord Fulke will be verypleased. We feared something was wrong when we heard the bell."

  "Depardieux! and well you might. I did not think of that. But natheless,that bell means good fortune for our little plan, my friends. All themonks and all the villeins from the village have gone inside to servicein the chapel. Only the theows are alone, and it will be an easy matterto take the man without interference if we are quick."

  "How far is it from here?"

  "As a bird flies, about two furlongs. But it will be longer for us, forwe must make a detour to keep away from the walls. We shall come on thevillage from behind. There is a big midden ditch, but I have a plank tocross it."

  "We'll give Sir Hyla a dip in it as we pass."

  "'Twould be a fitting mitra."

  Then with no more words, led by Heraud, they left the boat and stolesilently up the hill in the dark.

  An archer remained in the boat to guard it and to help them to find itagain.

  Hyla retired into his hut about half-past eight. He had been working allday, cleaning out pig-styes and carting the manure to the ditch whichran north of the village, and which served as a slight defence, and alsoas a storing place for fertilizing material to spread upon the fields. Astrange occupation, perhaps, for a man who had but lately done a deedof such moment, and who was more than half a hero! But he had been setto this work purposely by the monks, who knew human nature, and thoughtit best for the man. The monks were the only psychologists in thetwelfth century.

  With some men this would have been wise, no doubt, but to Hyla's creditit should be said that he thought very little about himself. His ratherheavy, sullen manner may easily have conveyed a false impression as tohis own estimate of himself, but he was humble enough in reality.

  In fact, Hyla was too humble, and more so than befitted his strongnature. He cleaned the filth from the styes with never a thought that hemight be better or more profitably employed. And in this fact we haveanother vivid expression of the psychology of serfdom.

  The only certain way in which it is possible to get at the inner meaningof a period in history, is by the comparison of the attitude of anindividual brain towards his time, and the attitude of a general type ofbrain. The individual with the point of view must, of course, be a knownquantity.

  Historians, I am certain, have not yet entirely realised this simple andbeautiful method. Properly understood, it is as mathematically exact asany comparative method can possibly be. It is the way in which historywill be written in the future when the modern Headmaster-Historian willno longer be allowed to write an "epoch" and dispose of the two firsteditions entirely among the boys of his own school.

  Of its extreme fascination as a pursuit the cultured cannot speak toohighly. It combines the pleasures of the laboratory with the pleasuresof psychology, and never was Science so happily wedded to Art.

  Here is a trifling case in point. Friend Hyla--whose temperament we knowsomething of--felt no degradation in cleaning out the pig-stye, althoughhe had just done a great and noble thing. We know Hyla as a man very farfrom perfect. We know him subject to the ordinary failings of mankind.Why, then, was Hyla content? The answer supplies us with a luminousexposition of serfdom as a social state, how stern a thing it was, howbitter. Pages of rhetoric could give no better explanation of that hardfact.

  So Hyla had been quite content, and as the sun was setting he sat downoutside his hut with his wife on one side and his daughter on theother, as happy as a man could be. Bread and meat lay upon the ground byhis side. A cow's horn full of Welsh ale was stuck into the turf by him.He was now working for kind masters who would not beat him or ill-treathis womankind. His hut was weather-proof, his food was excellent, andthe peace of the holy life near by was stealing over him, and he was atlast at rest. The peace of it all was like a cup of cold water to a poorman dying of thirst.

  He stroked his wife's hard gnarled hand, very glad to be so close toher. He looked with unconscious admiration at the frank beauty of Frijaas she lay gracefully by his side. Only one grief assailed him now, andthat was the thought of Elgifu. He put it from him with a shudder. Yet,he thought, they would hardly hurt her. He was a man of bitterexperience, and felt that she would be fairly safe in that wicked time.

  Before the little family retired to rest, Cerdic came to them to pray.The ex-lawer of dogs had, it must be confessed, most of the instincts ofthe street-corner preacher. He was never so happy as when he was makingan extempore prayer, and in his heart of hearts he felt sure that heshould have been a priest. Hyla regarded this accomplishment of hisfriend's with unfeigned admiration. Cerdic's praying was his one greatpleasure. Both men were perfectly sincere about it. Cerdic and Hyla wereboth quite certain that the Saints heard and remarked upon every word.At the same time, in an age when music was a monopoly, literature athing for the fortunate few, and the theatre was not, these poor fellowsfound their aesthetic excitement in family prayers. Indeed, if we cometo think of it, the Puritan classes in England to-day are much the same.Indeed, as long as the saving grace of Sincerity is present, the planseems excellent. It will not fill the pockets of the theatrical manager,but it will keep a good many fools out of mischief.

  So, with full bellies and in great peace of mind, Hyla and Cerdic prayedto God, and fell upon sleep.

  Another hour of peaceful sleep remains for you, poor Hyla. Anotherlittle hour, and then good-bye to sleep. Good-bye to wife and child andcomfort for ever and a day. A few short hours and you go to thebeginning of your great martyrdom. Your works shall live after you.

  But hush! the time is nearly gone, the sands are running very rapid inthe glass. Sleep has still a gift for you, lie undisturbed!