Sir Nigel, Page 3

  II. HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY

  The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the BlessedApostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from man'ssalvation.

  From tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John ofthe House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he conductedthe many high duties of his office. All around for many a mile on everyside stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was themaster. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church andcloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with abusy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of thebrethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below.From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of aGregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir,while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of BrotherPeter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.

  Abbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at thegreensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open Gothicarches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren within. Two and twoin their black-and-white garb with slow step and heads inclined, theypaced round and round. Several of the more studious had brought theirilluminating work from the scriptorium, and sat in the warm sunshinewith their little platters of pigments and packets of gold-leaf beforethem, their shoulders rounded and their faces sunk low over the whitesheets of vellum. There too was the copper-worker with his burin andgraver. Learning and art were not traditions with the Cisterciansas with the parent Order of the Benedictines, and yet the libraryof Waverley was well filled both with precious books and with piousstudents.

  But the true glory of the Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and soever and anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk,soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee,fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadowsspeckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimedfrom heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope ofCrooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshesdrained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, all circledthe great Abbey round with the visible labors of the Order.

  The Abbot's full and florid face shone with a quiet content as helooked out at his huge but well-ordered household. Like every head ofa prosperous Abbey, Abbot John, the fourth of the name, was a man ofvarious accomplishments. Through his own chosen instruments he had tominister a great estate and to keep order and decorum among a large bodyof men living a celibate life. He was a rigid disciplinarian toward allbeneath him, a supple diplomatist to all above. He held high debate withneighboring abbots and lords, with bishops, with papal legates, and evenon occasion with the King's majesty himself. Many were the subjectswith which he must be conversant. Questions of doctrine, questions ofbuilding, points of forestry, of agriculture, of drainage, of feudallaw, all came to the Abbot for settlement. He held the scales of justicein all the Abbey banlieue which stretched over many a mile of Hampshireand of Surrey. To the monks his displeasure might mean fasting, exile tosome sterner community, or even imprisonment in chains. Over the laymanalso he could hold any punishment save only corporeal death, insteadof which he had in hand the far more dreadful weapon of spiritualexcommunication.

  Such were the powers of the Abbot, and it is no wonder that therewere masterful lines in the ruddy features of Abbot John, or that thebrethren, glancing up, should put on an even meeker carriage and moredemure expression as they saw the watchful face in the window abovethem.

  A knock at the door of his studio recalled the Abbot to his immediateduties, and he returned to his desk. Already he had spoken with hiscellarer and prior, almoner, chaplain and lector, but now in the talland gaunt monk who obeyed his summons to enter he recognized the mostimportant and also the most importunate of his agents, Brother Samuelthe sacrist, whose office, corresponding to that of the layman'sbailiff, placed the material interests of the monastery and its dealingswith the outer world entirely under his control, subject only to thecheck of the Abbot. Brother Samuel was a gnarled and stringy old monkwhose stern and sharp-featured face reflected no light from above butonly that sordid workaday world toward which it was forever turned. Ahuge book of accounts was tucked under one of his arms, while a greatbunch of keys hung from the other hand, a badge of his office, and alsoon occasion of impatience a weapon of offense, as many a scarred headamong rustics and lay brothers could testify.

  The Abbot sighed wearily, for he suffered much at the hands of hisstrenuous agent. "Well, Brother Samuel, what is your will?" he asked.

  "Holy father, I have to report that I have sold the wool to MasterBaldwin of Winchester at two shillings a bale more than it fetched lastyear, for the murrain among the sheep has raised the price."

  "You have done well, brother."

  "I have also to tell you that I have distrained Wat the warrener fromhis cottage, for his Christmas rent is still unpaid, nor the hen-rentsof last year."

  "He has a wife and four children, brother." He was a good, easy man, theAbbot, though liable to be overborne by his sterner subordinate.

  "It is true, holy father; but if I should pass him, then how am I toask the rent of the foresters of Puttenham, or the hinds in the village?Such a thing spreads from house to house, and where then is the wealthof Waverley?"

  "What else, Brother Samuel?"

  "There is the matter of the fish-ponds."

  The Abbot's face brightened. It was a subject upon which he was anauthority. If the rule of his Order had robbed him of the softer joys oflife, he had the keener zest for those which remained.

  "How have the char prospered, brother?"

  "They have done well, holy father, but the carp have died in the Abbot'spond."

  "Carp prosper only upon a gravel bottom. They must be put in also intheir due proportion, three milters to one spawner, brother sacrist,and the spot must be free from wind, stony and sandy, an ell deep, withwillows and grass upon the banks. Mud for tench, brother, gravel forcarp."

  The sacrist leaned forward with the face of one who bears tidings ofwoe. "There are pike in the Abbot's pond," said he.

  "Pike!" cried the Abbot in horror. "As well shut up a wolf in oursheepfold. How came a pike in the pond? There were no pike last year,and a pike does not fall with the rain nor rise in the springs. The pondmust be drained, or we shall spend next Lent upon stockfish, and havethe brethren down with the great sickness ere Easter Sunday has come toabsolve us from our abstinence."

  "The pond shall be drained, holy father; I have already ordered it. Thenwe shall plant pot-herbs on the mud bottom, and after we have gatheredthem in, return the fish and water once more from the lower pond, sothat they may fatten among the rich stubble."

  "Good!" cried the Abbot. "I would have three fish-stews in everywell-ordered house--one dry for herbs, one shallow for the fry and theyearlings, and one deep for the breeders and the tablefish. But still, Ihave not heard you say how the pike came in the Abbot's pond."

  A spasm of anger passed over the fierce face of the sacrist, and hiskeys rattled as his bony hand clasped them more tightly. "Young NigelLoring!" said he. "He swore that he would do us scathe, and in this wayhe has done it."

  "How know you this?"

  "Six weeks ago he was seen day by day fishing for pike at the great Lakeof Frensham. Twice at night he has been met with a bundle of straw underhis arm on the Hankley Down. Well, I wot that the straw was wet and thata live pike lay within it."

  The Abbot shook his head. "I have heard much of this youth's wild ways;but now indeed he has passed all bounds if what you say be truth. Itwas bad enough when it was said that he slew the King's deer in WoolmerChase, or broke the head of Hobbs the chapman, so that he lay for sevendays betwixt life and death in our infirmary, saved only by BrotherPeter's skill in the pharmacies of herbs; but to put pike in the Abbot'spond--why should he play such a devil's prank?"

  "Because he h
ates the House of Waverley, holy father; because he swearsthat we hold his father's land."

  "In which there is surely some truth."

  "But, holy father, we hold no more than the law has allowed."

  "True, brother, and yet between ourselves, we may admit that the heavierpurse may weigh down the scales of Justice. When I have passed the oldhouse and have seen that aged woman with her ruddled cheeks and herbaleful eyes look the curses she dare not speak, I have many a timewished that we had other neighbors."

  "That we can soon bring about, holy father. Indeed, it is of it that Iwished to speak to you. Surely it is not hard for us to drive them fromthe country-side. There are thirty years' claims of escuage unsettled,and there is Sergeant Wilkins, the lawyer of Guildford, whom I willwarrant to draw up such arrears of dues and rents and issues of hidageand fodder-corn that these folk, who are as beggarly as they are proud,will have to sell the roof-tree over them ere they can meet them. Withinthree days I will have them at our mercy."

  "They are an ancient family and of good repute. I would not treat themtoo harshly, brother."

  "Bethink you of the pike in the carp pond!"

  The Abbot hardened his heart at the thought. "It was indeed a devil'sdeed--when we had but newly stocked it with char and with carp. Well,well, the law is the law, and if you can use it to hurt, it is stilllawful to do so. Have these claims been advanced?"

  "Deacon the bailiff with his two varlets went down to the Hallyesternight on the matter of the escuage, and came screaming back withthis young hothead raging at their heels. He is small and slight, yethe has the strength of many men in the hour of his wrath. The bailiffswears that he will go no more, save with half a score of archers touphold him."

  The Abbot was red with anger at this new offense. "I will teach him thatthe servants of Holy Church, even though we of the rule of Saint Bernardbe the lowliest and humblest of her children, can still defend their ownagainst the froward and the violent! Go, cite this man before the Abbeycourt. Let him appear in the chapter-house after tierce to-morrow."

  But the wary sacrist shook his head: "Nay, holy father, the times arenot yet ripe. Give me three days, I pray you, that my case against himmay be complete. Bear in mind that the father and the grandfather ofthis unruly squire were both famous men of their day and the foremostknights in the King's own service, living in high honor and dying intheir knightly duty. The Lady Ermyntrude Loring was first lady tothe King's mother. Roger FitzAlan of Farnham and Sir Hugh Walcott ofGuildford Castle were each old comrades-in-arms of Nigel's father, andsib to him on the distaff side. Already there has been talk that we havedealt harshly with them. Therefore, my rede is that we be wise and waryand wait until his cup be indeed full."

  The Abbot had opened his mouth to reply, when the consultation wasinterrupted by a most unwonted buzz of excitement from among the monksin the cloister below. Questions and answers in excited voices soundedfrom one side of the ambulatory to the other. Sacrist and Abbot weregazing at each other in amazement at such a breach of the discipline anddecorum of their well-trained flock, when there came a swift step uponthe stair, and a white-faced brother flung open the door and rushed intothe room.

  "Father Abbot!" he cried. "Alas, alas! Brother John is dead, and theholy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-virgatefield!"