II. HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY
The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the
Blessed Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from
man's salvation.
>From tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John
of the House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he
conducted the many high duties of his office. All around for many
a mile on every side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate
of which he was the master. In the center lay the broad Abbey
buildings, with church and cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and
frater-house, all buzzing with a busy life. Through the open
window came the low hum of the voices of the brethren as they
walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below. From across the
cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a Gregorian
chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir, while
down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother
Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.
Abbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at
the greensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open
Gothic arches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren
within. Two and two in their black-and-white garb with slow step
and heads inclined, they paced round and round. Several of the
more studious had brought their illuminating work from the
scriptorium, and sat in the warm sunshine with their little
platters of pigments and packets of gold-leaf before them, their
shoulders rounded and their faces sunk low over the white sheets
of vellum. There too was the copper-worker with his burin and
graver. Learning and art were not traditions with the Cistercians
as with the parent Order of the Benedictines, and yet the library
of Waverley was well filled both with precious books and with
pious students.
But the true glory of the Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and
so ever 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-meadows speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of
corn-land reclaimed from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the
southern slope of Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds,
the Frensham marshes drained and sown with vegetables, the
spacious pigeon-cotes, all circled the great Abbey round with the
visible labors of the Order.
The Abbot's full and florid face shone with a quiet content as he
looked out at his huge but well-ordered household. Like every
head of a prosperous Abbey, Abbot John, the fourth of the name,
was a man of various accomplishments. Through his own chosen
instruments he had to minister a great estate and to keep order
and decorum among a large body of men living a celibate life. He
was a rigid disciplinarian toward all beneath him, a supple
diplomatist to all above. He held high debate with neighboring
abbots and lords, with bishops, with papal legates, and even on
occasion with the King's majesty himself. Many were the subjects
with which he must be conversant. Questions of doctrine,
questions of building, points of forestry, of agriculture, of
drainage, of feudal law, all came to the Abbot for settlement. He
held the scales of justice in all the Abbey banlieue which
stretched over many a mile of Hampshire and of Surrey. To the
monks his displeasure might mean fasting, exile to some sterner
community, or even imprisonment in chains. Over the layman also
he could hold any punishment save only corporeal death, instead of
which he had in hand the far more dreadful weapon of spiritual
excommunication.
Such were the powers of the Abbot, and it is no wonder that there
were masterful lines in the ruddy features of Abbot John, or that
the brethren, glancing up, should put on an even meeker carriage
and more demure expression as they saw the watchful face in the
window above them.
A knock at the door of his studio recalled the Abbot to his
immediate duties, and he returned to his desk. Already he had
spoken with his cellarer and prior, almoner, chaplain and lector,
but now in the tall and gaunt monk who obeyed his summons to enter
he recognized the most important and also the most importunate of
his agents, Brother Samuel the sacrist, whose office,
corresponding to that of the layman's bailiff, placed the material
interests of the monastery and its dealings with the outer world
entirely under his control, subject only to the check of the
Abbot. Brother Samuel was a gnarled and stringy old monk whose
stern and sharp-featured face reflected no light from above but
only that sordid workaday world toward which it was forever
turned. A huge book of accounts was tucked under one of his arms,
while a great bunch of keys hung from the other hand, a badge of
his office, and also on occasion of impatience a weapon of
offense, as many a scarred head among rustics and lay brothers
could testify.
The Abbot sighed wearily, for he suffered much at the hands of his
strenuous agent. "Well, Brother Samuel, what is your will?" he
asked.
"Holy father, I have to report that I have sold the wool to Master
Baldwin of Winchester at two shillings a bale more than it fetched
last year, 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
from his cottage, for his Christmas rent is still unpaid, nor the
hen-rents of last year."
"He has a wife and four children, brother." He was a good, easy
man, the Abbot, though liable to be overborne by his sterner
subordinate.
"It is true, holy father; but if I should pass him, then how am I
to ask 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 wealth of 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
an authority. If the rule of his Order had robbed him of the
softer joys of life, 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's pond."
"Carp prosper only upon a gravel bottom. They must be put in also
in their due proportion, three milters to one spawner, brother
sacrist, and the spot must be free from wind, stony and sandy, an
ell deep, with willows and grass upon the banks. Mud for tench,
brother, gravel for carp."
The sacrist leaned forward with the face of one who bears tidings
of woe. "There are pike in the Abbot's pond," said he.
"Pike!" cried the Abbot in horror. "As well shut up a wolf in our
sheepfold. 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 pond must be drained, or we shall spend next Lent
upon stockfish, and have the brethren down with the great sickness
ere Easter Sunday has come to absolve us from our abstinence."
"The pond shall be drained, holy father; I have already ordered
it. Then we shall plant pot-herbs on the mud bottom, and after we
have gathered them in, return the fish and water once more from
the lower pond, so that they may fatten among the rich stubble."
"Good!" cried the Abbot. "I would have three fish-stews in every
well-ordered house - one dry for herbs, one shallow for the fry
and the yearlings, and one deep for the breeders and the
tablefish. But still, I have 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
his keys rattled as his bony hand clasped them more tightly.
"Young Nigel Loring!" said he. "He swore that he would do us
scathe, and in this way he has done it."
"How know you this?"
"Six weeks ago he was seen day by day fishing for pike at the
great Lake of Frensham. Twice at night he has been met with a
bundle of straw under his arm on the Hankley Down. Well, I wot
that the straw was wet and that a 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. It was bad enough when it was said that he slew the King's
deer in Woolmer Chase, or broke the head of Hobbs the chapman, so
that he lay for seven days betwixt life and death in our
infirmary, saved only by Brother Peter's skill in the pharmacies
of herbs; but to put pike in the Abbot's pond-why should he play
such a devil's prank?"
"Because he hates the House of Waverley, holy father; because he
swears that 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
heavier purse may weigh down the scales of Justice. When I have
passed the old house and have seen that aged woman with her
ruddled cheeks and her baleful eyes look the curses she dare not
speak, I have many a time wished that we had other neighbors."
"That we can soon bring about, holy father. Indeed, it is of it
that I wished to speak to you. Surely it is not hard for us to
drive them from the country-side. There are thirty years' claims
of escuage unsettled, and there is Sergeant Wilkins, the lawyer of
Guildford, whom I will warrant to draw up such arrears of dues and
rents and issues of hidage and 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. Within three days I will have
them at our mercy."
"They are an ancient family and of good repute. I would not treat
them too harshly, brother."
"Bethink you of the pike in the carp pond!"
The Abbot hardened his heart at the thought. "It was indeed a
devil's deed - 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 still lawful to do so Have these claims been
advanced?"
"Deacon the bailiff with his two varlets went down to the Hall
yesternight on the matter of the escuage, and came screaming back
with this young hothead raging at their heels. He is small and
slight, yet he has the strength of many men in the hour of his
wrath. The bailiff swears that he will go no more, save with half
a score of archers to uphold him."
The Abbot was red with anger at this new offense. "I will teach
him that the servants of Holy Church, even though we of the rule
of Saint Bernard be the lowliest and humblest of her children, can
still defend their own against the froward and the violent! Go,
cite this man before the Abbey court. Let him appear in the
chapter-house after tierce to-morrow."
But the wary sacrist shook his head: "Nay, holy father, the times
are not yet ripe. Give me three days, I pray you, that my case
against him may be complete. Bear in mind that the father and the
grandfather of this unruly squire were both famous men of their
day and the foremost knights in the King's own service, living in
high honor and dying in their knightly duty. The Lady Ermyntrude
Loring was first lady to the King's mother. Roger FitzAlan of
Farnham and Sir Hugh Walcott of Guildford Castle were each old
comrades-in-arms of Nigel's father, and sib to him on the distaff
side. Already there has been talk that we have dealt harshly with
them. Therefore, my rede is that we be wise and wary and wait
until his cup be indeed full."
The Abbot had opened his mouth to reply, when the consultation was
interrupted by a most unwonted buzz of, excitement from among the
monks in the cloister below. Questions and answers in excited
voices sounded from one side of the ambulatory to the other.
Sacrist and Abbot were gazing at each other in amazement at such a
breach of the discipline and decorum of their well-trained flock,
when there came a swift step upon the stair, and a white-faced
brother flung open the door and rushed into the room.
"Father Abbot!" he cried. "Alas, alas! Brother John is dead, and
the holy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-
virgate field!"
