The Deserter, and Other Stories: A Book of Two Wars

Then, like some dissolving mist before Hugh's gaze, everything was altered. The Queen with her escort was ambling one way, toward the gray Abbey walls and the passage at the mill; her gallant young son was galloping with his group of knights back whence he came; the Courtenay company, close at hand, was gathering itself into ranks, with knights clambering heavily into saddles, and men-at-arms striking their pikes together. The whole broad field was, as by some magic hand, set in motion; everywhere troops were marching, standards fluttering forward, trumpets calling shrill-voiced to one another.

The boy, lifting his head now above the hedge, looked upon this vast shifting picture with but a dazed comprehension. The beauty of it all was so great that its grim meaning missed his mind. As far as eye could reach, armed bodies of men, with banners and harness glittering in the sunlight, met the vision. And now, of a sudden, all movement ceased. The birds in the ivy on the ruin behind him sang into the morning air, and no trumpet answered them. The landscape stood still.

Suddenly the boy clapped hands to ears, and stared affrightedly about him. A demon-like roaring sound had burst, as out of the very earth, which rocked and quivered under the shock. A thousand thunder-claps in one, out from the clear sky! Quailing with fright, as lesser belching noises succeeded, shaking the ground and confounding all senses and wits, Hugh backed out of the ditch, and felt, rather than made, his way rearward to the shadow of the ruins. Creeping up upon a ragged heap of tumbled stones, he ventured to look forth again.

A broadened veil of smoke – curious, thin, bluish smoke – all unlike that from burning thatches or stubble refuse – hung now upon the horizon where the royal standard had been. Was it still there? Hugh could not tell. Flashes of fire leaped swiftly for an instant here and there from this veil of smoky haze, and after each dart of flame there burst this deafening, thunderous roar which had so appalled him. Then it broke upon his brain that these were cannon, of which all men had long since heard, but few had ever seen on English soil. More than this it was not easy to grasp of what was going forward. Along the line of smoke, where sky ought to meet earth, could be seen confused masses of horse and footmen struggling together, but whither moving or how faring in their conflict could not be told. The men under Courtenay's banner had marched westward toward the windmill, and were not in sight.

All at once Hugh's gaze was diverted from this distant prospect to a strange apparition nearer at hand – a brownish-gray sort of globe, like a full moon, which, low to earth, stood between him and the smoke, and seemed to wax in bigness visibly as he looked. There was not time for thought before this ball, singing to itself as it came, swelled to giant size in the lad's vision – then smashed into the vine-clad wall beside him with a huge scattering of stones and mortar. The wall quivered for a moment, then fell outward, prone to the sward.

Without hesitation, Hugh slid down from his perch, and half-choked with dust and lime ran toward Swilgate Brook as fast as ever his legs would carry him. He made no pause, nor cast any glance backward, until he stumbled, panting and aflame with fright, into the cool shadow of the Abbey's big west gate. Not till its ponderous doors had clanged shut behind him, did he venture to draw breath.

Only the slowest and stoutest of the lay servitors in the kitchen lingered yet over their morning meal when the boy, his hunger led forward by keenest smelling sense, found his way thither. Within this low-vaulted chamber it was as if the confusion of tongues had fallen again. There were some hardier spirits who had, from sundry distant points of vantage, seen a tithe of what Hugh had witnessed. These told their tales to gaping, awe-stricken groups with much bold embroidery and emblazoning of fancy, peopling the field with mailed giants, and imputing to magic the mystery of the cannons, whose dire bellowings gave even these stony kitchen walls a throbbing pulse. Worse still was what the village vagabonds – permitted for the once to enter freely and mix with their betters before the fires – related with rolling eyes and quaking voices, to wile further victuals from the frightened cooks.

Into such riot ran this babel of loose tongues that not even the Precentor's entrance stilled it. This gentle, soft-eyed old monk had, indeed, no thought to govern aught or any, and gazed about over the motley throng as one abashed, until his glance fell upon Hugh. To him he beckoned, and, when the two were without upon the stairs, made hurried explanation: —

"His Lordship will himself sing the early Mass, with pontifical procession, and full chapter ceremonial. Get thee with all speed into thy surplice, comb out thy locks – shalt bear the cross!"

A brief while later, paced slowly from the cloisters the long devotional line, Hugh, all aglow with pride in his new office, advancing at its head, with the jewelled cross upheld aloft. After him were singing boys in surplices and singing men with added copes; then two score monks in ebon black with lighted tapers, the secular canons, the priests of the Abbey, the priors, the deacons attired for the altar, and last the venerable Abbot, John Strensham, bent with age and infirmities, and wearing over his vestments an almuce with hood of ermine, because his blood was cold. Into the choir the procession filed with measured step and solemn chant – and then, as by some sudden stroke of universal palsy, foot halted and song died on lips.

Such a scene as never monk or abbot had dreamt of in Tewkesbury lay before them.

The doors of the rood screen hung wide, so that vision swept from the choir down through the nave and its outer parts, where the simple and base-born heard the Mass, straight to the great north porch. Here, too, the doors were open, for daylight streamed therefrom transversely across the nave. And in this light the amazed monks saw a mired, blood-stained, bedraggled swarm of armed men struggling fiercely for entrance before their fellows, and among these some who smote and felled the others with their swords or battle-axes – amid clamor of shrieks and violent curses, rising above the ground-note of a deep wild shouting as from a multitude without, and the furious clash of steel on steel. The wrath of hell raged here and tore itself before them on the consecrated floor of heaven.

While yet this spell of bewilderment lay upon the astounded spectators in the choir, Hugh felt himself clutched by the shoulder and pushed forward down the steps and into the aisle by a strong though trembling hand. It was the old Abbot, who in the moment of horror at this sacrilege forgot his years. Raising himself to his full height, and snatching the great beryl monstrance from the altar, he hurried now down the nave at such a pace that the cross-bearer, whom he dragged at his side, and the wondering monks and choristers who followed, were fain almost to run if they would not let him reach the porch alone.

The western end of the nave held now a closely-packed mass of fugitives, with scarce a weapon among them – gilded and blazoned knight huddled against unkempt billman, lord and varlet jammed together – all crowding backward in despair from the open porch where, bestriding corpses on the blood-wet flags, a dozen mailed ruffians with naked swords and axes bent ferocious, hungry scowls upon them.

Helpless and dazed, as in an evil dream, the boy felt himself thrust forward into the very front of these war-wolves; and as he stood there, holding the cross as steadily as might be, within a cloth-yard shaft's length of their ravening jaws and flame-lit eyes, his foolish knees knocked together, and he had liked to swoon.

But then – lo! these fierce men put down their blades, and, bowing first, with ill-will slunk backwards to the sides of the porch; and the foremost, still doggedly, even fell upon their knees. Then, the way being clear, Hugh saw that where the churchyard graves had been was now, underfoot, a slaughter pen, and above a wilderness of wild faces and dripping pike-heads. And in the forefront of this awful array, with one mailed foot on the threshold of the porch itself, stood the noblest figure of a man the boy's eyes had ever compassed – a youngish man of uncommon stature and great girth of shoulders, girt with polished steel armor picked in gold, and having on its breast a silver sun with flaring jewelled rays. He too grasped a huge naked sword, and sank its point before the cross Hugh held – the while two esquires made loose the rivets of his towering helmet and lifted it from him. Then he, not too humbly, bowed his head – a shapely head, with reddish-golden curls – and lifting it, looked into the church with the flushed face and glance of a very god of war.

The Abbot, tottering as he came, pushed Hugh aside and reared himself proudly in the porch, holding the monstrance with shaken hand above his head, and crying out: —

"Where thou standest, my liege, thou art not King, but only Edward Plantagenet, a sinner even as the meanest of us, and with the blood of God's children on thy hands. Therefore abase thyself. It is the Host!"

The King dropped to his knees for the counting of ten, then rose and made a step within the porch, still searching sharply with restless eyes into the shadows of the nave.

"My Lord Abbot," he said, in a soft, full voice of stately measure which belied his glance, "I and my brothers and our trusty friends have desire to forthwith enter this holy edifice, and with thee offer reverent thanks for this our resplendent victory." As the Abbot held his silence, the King added, "I had not looked to find a Strensham lifting himself between the saints and my piety."

The Abbot found his voice: "I am stricken in years, my liege. My life has been thine as long as has thy crown; take it now if needs be. But while it lasts me, into this consecrated house thou may'st not enter to ravish or mete punishment. Pledge me thy royal faith that no man within these walls shall feel thy wrath – that all shall be suffered to go forth in peace!"

"Since what time, my Lord Abbot," asked the King, dryly, "hath the privilege of sanctuary descended upon the black monks of Tewkesbury?"

"Where God's flesh and blood are, there is sanctuary!" shrilled the Abbot. "By the pains of Calvary, thou shalt not enter unpledged – save over my old bones!"

While the King's answer hung yet in doubt, an old monk slipped past the Abbot, and, thrusting his shaven gray poll in obeisance close before Edward, mumbled a request which none behind him might hear. It was Peter, the Brother Sacristan – and the King, so far from buffeting the audacious shaveling with his gauntlet, thought for a moment, then smiled, and waved Peter aside.

"On my kingly honor, I promise," he said firmly, with a glance ranging from Peter to the Abbot, and the half-smile playing on his handsome, ruddy face. "Before God, I promise! And for this sacrilegious bloodshed here, will I do penance!"

The Abbot's withered old lips formed a mute thanksgiving. "My liege," he faltered, "some forewarning of your triumph of a surety brought me from my bed to the altar this day. Praise God thy enemies are put under thy feet! Pray God for humility and a gentle spirit, these to stay thee from trampling them! Wilt follow, and hear the Mass?"

Thus strangely, the broken procession was reformed, and Hugh, aweary now under the weight of the cross, sick with the smell of blood and the sight of hewn corpses at his feet, stumbled back again up the aisle, past the rood screen, into the choir, the singers chanting the solemn Te Deum Laudamus behind him, and King, princes, nobles and knights and monks and soldiers following the Abbot to the High Altar. Here, out of pity at his white face, another took his office on him, and Hugh, escaping from the incense-laden air of the choir, staggered into the ambulatory, faint and distressed. He had too little wit left to note that the side aisles and transepts held scores of skulking fugitive soldiers, and that others of a like kidney were hiding in the shrine chapels about him.

Not even when one of these came forth from the enclosure dedicated to St. Edmund the Martyr, and laid hand upon his shoulder, was he startled, but only looked up with wan indifference on his chalk-like face.

"Where had ye that ring?" a deep voice asked, with tightened grip upon his shoulder to point the query.

Hugh saw now that it was a stalwart young man who questioned him – and one of quality, despite the miry disorder of his dress and armor, and his dust-stained face. What could be discerned of this face was pleasing enough, too – but the lad's head was whirling and his tongue numbed at its roots. For his life he could not speak.

"That ring!" the stranger went on excitedly. "I saw it on your hand whilst you held the cross – the which, now I think on't, saved our lives. Fear nothing, lad! Tell me, how came you by it? Perchance I am beholden to you for the letter last night – if so – will ye not speak, I say!"

Hugh, with a despairing effort, gathered his wits, and asked faintly: "Are you the Sir Hereward, then, to whom 'twas writ?"

"Aye, none other – what there is left of me. And writ ye the letter? And at whose behest?"

The boy opened his mouth to answer, looked blankly up into his questioner's face – then, as the swelling chant ceased suddenly in the choir beyond, rolled supinely on the stones at Sir Hereward's feet, in a deadly swoon.

Through what remained of this awful Saturday, and through the startled hush of the Sunday following it, the boy kept his bed in a faint, drowsing languor, broken by fits of shuddering under the terror of evil dreams. Oft and again, the writing monks came in compassion to his bedside, but his shaken wits made of these visitors only black figures in the background of an endless scared vision of stark corpses, bearing blood-stained heraldic shields along the pages of his book.

The second night came, and, lagging desperately through the long watches, stole off by a trick at last while the lad slept – so that he woke crowned as he lay with sunlight. The neglected book was in his thoughts first of all – and then came consciousness that he was better – and then, as he opened his eyes and blinked against the full light, he saw that Peter was in the room, bearing a steaming dish of broth.

"Art fit for great news?" the Sacristan asked, roughly enough, but looking down upon the boy with a kindly light shining from under his gray, shaggy brows. "The Prince Richard – my Lord Duke of Gloster – hath sent hither for our best scrivener to attend him at the Tolzey, and Brother Thomas, conferring with the Abbot, hath nominated thee. Not that thou art our best, nor near it, but thy masters are in cowls and gowns, and since Saturday's sacrilege no monk may stir forth to serve the Princes or the King. Art fit for it?"

Hugh sat up in bed, and put hand to brow, and smiled wistfully. "Aye, save for a foolish little wandering here," he made answer, "naught ails me now!" And for proof he seized the dish and buried his jowl in it.

Peter strode up and down before the narrow casement, grumbling as his gown flapped about his heels.

"Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" he sneered. "Well may the King laugh us to scorn as witless loons! For what is 'sacrilege' but a weapon forged by Holy Church to use against the laity, to our great profit and their uplifting? Yet here are we, turning its point upon our own throats! Because a little paltry blood was spattered in the porch – lo! for a full month now the Church must lie in penitential darkness, no matins, no masses, no vespers – until it be purified and newly consecrated. Was ever such madness? Here with mine own eyes have I seen the son of a king, he that was born Prince of Wales, shovelled into a grave in the choir without so much as a rush-light. The flags are all up for burials – the Earl of Devon, the Lord Wenlock, the Lord John Beaufort, and scores of knights and brave gentlemen brought to us by God's own hand – and yet we may not harvest so much as a penny for it all! Oh! senseless chapter, to decree such folly!"

Hugh had in swift silence dressed himself the while the old monk babbled, and stood now in all readiness. "I will to the scriptorium, good Peter," he said eagerly, "to bring ink and pens and paper, and then take orders from Brother Thomas for my going."

"Thomas thou may'st not see, nor any other," said the Sacristan; "each is in his cell, upon his knees, because of this same sacrilege, and there must stick for days!"

"But thou art here!"

"Oh, aye!" the old monk growled. "Belike I took the habit overlate in life to learn the trick of good, thick, solid praying. They set me now and again at small, light supplications, but when great things are besought, my help seems never needful. Moreover, I have the burials to order. A sweet task, truly! To be laying the bones of princes and lords in consecrated ground as thick together as rogues in the stocks at fair-time, and not the purchase of so much as a gum-wreath to show for it!"

The two walked through the long deserted corridor overhanging the cloisters, and entered the tenantless writing room. Naught had been touched since that fateful Friday night, when Hugh had written the letter for the strange knight. He recalled this now, as he took his inkhorn from the dusty table.

"Oh – tell me, Peter," he said, "saw you aught of the Devon gentleman – him to whom that letter was writ – he was in the Abbey when – "

"Aye, more than once. He was holding you in his arms when Thomas and I found you. A goodly youngster – a thought too hasty, it may be, but sound at heart. He hath promised a year's masses for the dead Earl of Devon, when things come right again. They were in some sort kinsmen. And I have sown in his mind pious thoughts of, moreover, rearing an altar-tomb in the Lady Chapel, with effigy and sculptured sides. Oh, aye – he had food from me yestere'en here in this very room, and so hotly pressed payment on me that – "

Even as the Sacristan spoke the veil of silence hanging like a pall over the Abbey was rent by a shrill, piercing shriek from the cloister-green below! Clambering to the table, and peering forth, Hugh saw the figures of men running along the vaulted walks, and of others, mailed, and with weapons, chasing them. From the church beyond proceeded a great tumult, with angry shouts, and the clashing of steel.

The King's word was broken. The fugitives were being dragged from sanctuary!

Above the noises of search and despairing flight which now filled the air, there rose suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps near at hand. Then the further door was flung open, and Sir Hereward Thayer, breathless, bareheaded, and without his corselet, made hasty entrance. His eyes brightened as they fell upon Peter.

"The wolves are on us," he said, "and we have not so much as a stick to fend them off. It is no shame to hide. Where shall I find security, good brother?"

"Alack! there will be none here!" cried Peter. "If they are in the church itself, think you they will spare mere cells and offices?"

"Whither leads this room?" asked Sir Hereward, opening the middle door, and looking in upon Peter's array of candles, banners, wreaths, and palls. "Here, under these, I can make myself secret till the search be done!"

Without further words, he lifted from the darkest corner a pile of disordered linen stuffs, loose shrouds, and grave-cloths, and coverings for coffins. The Sacristan, as he looked from the doorway, noted with shrewd swiftness the gay colors of the morris-dresses underneath, and, stepping forward, laid his hand upon them. Then Hugh, hurriedly, and with faltering lips, told Peter what they were, and the story of their guilty presence – and lo! the old monk laughed aloud.

Then suddenly – as the clamor of the chase deepened outside – Peter hissed commands into Sir Hereward's ear.

"Get you into this motley in all haste! Lose no moment! Thus only can you win outside and pass the gates, and go unquestioned through the town!"

CHAPTER III.

HOW HUGH MET THE PRINCE

Only a brief space later, Hugh and this new companion in painted fool's clothes and with raddled cheeks made their way forth from the great west gate to the green. No formless loitering of idle men-at-arms now met their gaze. Straight lines of pikemen had been posted before each entrance to church or monastery, and in the open space beyond stood long regular ranks of other soldiers, with fluttering standards and a forest of tall weapons – all newly burnished – ashine in the morning sun.

The twain, with as bold a front as might be, walked down this passage of pikes until the captain of the watch, a burly, bearded man in Flemish armor, stopped them with uplifted hand; and two dozen pike-heads clashed down as by a single touch, to bar alike progress and retreat.

"I am the scrivener of the Abbey," Hugh called out from within this steel girdle, "and go forth to the Tolzey at behest of your master and mine – the Lord Duke of Gloster."

"And this merry fellow; hath the Duke need for him likewise?" the captain asked, with sharp glances. "I'm sworn his Grace looks more for headsmen than for morris-dancers, as to-day's wind blows."

"Put thy queries to the Duke himself," said Hugh; "and hold us no longer waiting here, as he waits at the Tolzey."

Grumbling in his beard, the captain dropped his hand, and the pikes flashed upward. Hugh and the mock fool passed forth, and turned their feet townwards across the trampled sward. At the church gate to their right hand, a greater body of armed men stood, and beyond these, within the churchyard, high plumes on knightly helmets nodded in the morning breeze. Of what was going forward there the two saw nothing, but hurried on, glad to pass unquestioned.

They came thus to the market-place, held clear by solid walls of troopers, mailed, and armed to the teeth, behind whom the townsfolk, now heartily of but one opinion, strove to win friends and peep between steel shoulders into the open space. Still unmolested, the boy, bearing his inkhorn and scroll well before him as a badge of craft, passed with his companion to the side of the cross – where workmen toiled with axe and mallet to rear a platform of newly hewn beams and boards – and held his course straight to the Tolzey.

"Saw you what they build, there by the cross?" whispered Sir Hereward. "It is a scaffold, where presently axes shall hew flesh and blood, not logs." And then he added, "Whither go we; into the very tusks of the boar?"

"Nay, but to get behind him," returned Hugh, in the same sidelong whisper. "Halt you at the Tolzey door; mix there with the throng which idly gapes upon the soldiery, until chance offers to steal through some alley to the open fields."

"And you leave me there?"

"How shall it be otherwise? And – I say it now – farewell; the saints protect thee!"

"A word," the masker whispered. "Art sure it was a knight who ordered the letter to be writ?"

"None other. A knight in full battle harness. And —Oh! God save us! It is he!"

Before the low-browed Tolzey, or Toll-booth, a house of bricks on timber, with projecting gallery reared over open pillars, an urgent throng of citizens swarmed behind two rows of soldiers, to note the uttermost of what was passing. This Tolzey – at once exchange and town hall, court-house and jail – had in its long life seen strange things, but nothing like unto to-day, when the King's brother, Richard of Gloster, and John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, held bloody assize upon the enemies of the King. Above the gable floated, side by side, two standards of deep red stuff, on which were wrought, one the silver boar of Gloster, Lord Constable of England, one the silver lion rampant of Norfolk, Earl Marshal.

And at the porch, pushing their way through the press of onlookers under the arches between the pillars, a knot of men-at-arms dragged forward that same strange knight at whose bidding Hugh had written the letter!

"Look! It is he!" the boy repeated breathlessly, quickening his pace for the instant, then shrinking back dismayed.

Sir Hereward laid a firm hand on his arm. "I quit ye not here!" he swore, between clenched teeth. "Hasten we forward, and into the presence of the court."

"But – it means death to thee – " the boy began, as the other hurried him on.