THE  REDEEMED  CAPTIVE:

A  TALE  OF  INGHAM  PRIORY
 

by
 

THE  REV.  ARTHUR  BROWN,
Rector of Catfield, Norfolk.
Author of the “Last of the Abbots,”  “Stanch for the King,”  etc.

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves besides.

                                                                COWPER.
 

Norwich:
Samuel Miller & Co.,

London:  Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.

1875.

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Chap. I

THE  FOUNDATION  OF THE  PRIORY…….……………………………………………………………………...1

Chap. II

STORY  OF  THE  GREAT  TOMB…………………………………………………………………………………25

Chap. III

ORDER  OF  TRINITARIAN  FRIARS……………………………………………………………………………..51

Chap. IV

CHRISTIANS  MADE  TURKS……………………………………………………………………………………..74

Chap. V

THE  CAPTIVE’S  TE  DEUM………………………………………………………………………………………94

Chap. VI

TWICE  REDEEMED…………………………………………………………………………………………........114

Chap. VII

THE  GREATER  REDEMPTION………………………………………………………………………………….138

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CHAPTER  I

The Foundation of the Priory

But let my dew feet never fail
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high-embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting dim religious light.

                                               MILTON.

About the year 1360, in the palmy days of that most able monarch Edward the Third, one of his valiant knights, Sir Miles Stapleton–a Yorkshireman of ancient family who had married a Norfolk heiress–“having served in the French wars with great bravery and fidelity,” returned to his home at Ingham in Norfolk, and finding the parish church there in a dilapidated condition, piously determined to rebuild it at his own cost, and obtained licence to erect beside it a priory  “of the Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives.”

   A knight who distinguished himself in the eyes of such a king, and who was among the companions in arms of the redoubtable Black Prince, must have been no carpet warrior.  Sir Miles was chosen  one of the first Knights of the Garter upon the institution of that Order in 1349  {The plate of his arms is still remaining in his stall in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.}, and since then he had had plenty of hard fighting, having probably done his part in the glorious fields of Cressy and Poitiers.

   But the year 1360 saw peace concluded at Bretigny between France and England, and so the gallant knight could lay aside his war-worn armour, and in the retirement of his manor-house at Ingham plan out his peaceful work of Church restoration and extension.

   And well he did it.  Whatever may have been his motives, the work itself was done nobly, liberally, and in most excellent taste.  He must have freely given pounds where an ordinary landowner of the nineteenth century would have groaned over a shilling.  The lofty and elegant tower of Ingham Church still stands forth unrivalled among the churches of the neighbourhood to attest the taste and bounty of its founder; and though many years of shameful neglect–far worse than superstition–have brought the noble fabric into a state of melancholy decay and dilapidation, yet the beauty of its form shines through all disguise, just as rags even cannot hide true nobility of nature.

   It was a coincidence that may have some significance as we proceed with our story, that about the time the Church and Priory of Ingham were built, the distant rumbling of two very different storms were heard:  in the east, the Saracens had begun their terrible inroads upon Europe, that filled the Christian world with alarm;  in the West, the voice of Wickliffe was first being lifted up at Oxford in protest against Romish error, from which men needed to be redeemed more than from any Turkish bondage.

   The solemn dedication was over, the voice of the preacher who, like another Peter the Hermit, had preached the gospel of extermination to the infidel, had died away, when a little group of persons was gathered round the magnificent new tomb (on the north side of the chancel) that had been the “cynosure of all eyes” that day.

   One of them was John de Pevesey, sacrist of the Priory, to whom was committed the spiritual charge of the parish–the “cure of souls”, as the weighty saying is–and who had been doing his best to gratify his new parishioners by showing them all the beauties of their renovated Church.  A comfortable face was John de Pevesey’s, a smooth, clear-complexioned, shining face, in perfect and pleasant harmony with a polish bald head upon which nature had early bestowed the tonsure in measure fit for at least an abbot.  It was one of those faces to which you instantly surrender your confidence, though they leave you uncertain as to the degree of their intelligence :  and his face was a true index of his character.  So bright a countenance was yet further set off by the white robe of his Order, with a cross on the breast in red and blue.

   “So this is the grand tomb of Sir Oliver!” said a voice with a thin metal sound in it that was very disagreeable : “well, they have been a long time making it for him : it must  nigh upon twenty years ago since he came home from the wars to die.  I remember how ill he looked the last time I saw him at mass, like a man who had worn himself out : a stern fierce man always was Sir Oliver, one that dearly loved a fray.”

   The speaker was an old woman, by her dress a well-to-do poor person, by her looks hard, plausible, and with a large amount of funded bad temper, by name Mistress Ann Winfarthing.

   “Was Sir Oliver an old man when he died?” enquired the sacrist.

   “He looked old enough–much older than he was,” she replied; “but he was worn out.  He was always fighting somewhere ever since he was in favour with poor silly Edward, the king’s father, God bless them.  But what is that writing on the tomb, father?”

   The sacrist read,  “Mounsier Oliver de Ingham gist icy, et Dame Elizabeth sa compagne, que luy Dieu de les almes eit mercy.”  “Mercy!” said the old woman with wiry emphasis, “aye, may God rest his soul!”

   “Little doubt of that,” exclaimed a third voice, in deepest bass, that formed a startling cadence to the shrill tones of the other, “little doubt of that.  The knight who spent his days in serving his king, who, better still, sent so many Frenchmen out of the world, and, best of all, who sheathed his sword scores of times in the carcases of pagan dogs, must have entered Paradise, if any one ever has.”

   The voice came from a human form that was worthy of it–a very mountain of a man–a giant six feet high in spite of stooping shoulders, for threescore years and ten had passed over his head, and left it white like a snow-capped hill, with equally snowy moustaches and beard of fullest development.  But when you looked into his face you saw at once that the mountain was a volcano, quiescent from age but not by any means extinct.  The ferocious warfare of those days had lighted fires which burned in secret, and only failed to burst forth from lack of opportunity and of physical power.

   “Nay,” said the sacrist, who did not yet know his man, “we doubt not that just Heaven will duly remember all the good knight’s worthy deeds;  yet as a sinful man, such as we all are, he stands in need of mercy, and for that mercy in his behalf the Church’s prayers are rightly sought.”

   “Fie upon you, neighbour Lionel,” cried the old woman, before the sacrist had done speaking;  “you must not bring your heathen notions into this place.  But, prithee, father, take not too much notice of what he says;  he has so long followed the trade of war that his talk savours often too much of the shambles.”

    The old soldier distained to notice this plain speaking, but addressed himself to the cleric –“Sir priest,” he said, “all that you say is no doubt very good  :  the parson and his book have their place and I always gave them reverence and always will; but ever since the Croises began to fight the infidel, have we not been told that the sure road to heaven was to cut the throats of the enemies of the cross, wherever they were to be met with?  And if we had not been told it, must it not be so?  Who runs such risk for his God as the man who puts on the cross against the Saracens?  What is mumbling prayers in a snug church and with a full belly, to fasting, and everlasting fighting in foreign lands?” 

   “But Sir Oliver never put on the cross?”

   “I say he did.”

   “The last Crusade was over, and the Holy City recaptured by the infidel, when he could have been but a child.”

   “Come, father,” said the soldier with a snort of contempt, “you know more than  I do about most things, but I know more than you about this.  Are there no infidels save in the Holy Land?  Are there no pagans in Pruce, or Moors in Spain, or unbelievers even in France?  I tell you,” he continued, and his voice rolled through the church, “the man who lies beneath that tomb has been almost everywhere, and this old body of mine has followed him almost everywhere.  There hang his helmet and his coat of mail,” pointing over the tomb, “that I have cleaned many a time, and the blood that I have wiped from them again and again has been the blood of pagans.  He never rested.  If there were nothing stirring that he could do for his king, he would seek out something that he might do for his God, no matter where.  He did put on the cross.  The very tomb before your eyes tells you so.  Do you not see how unrestful he lies there, with one hand grasping his sword; with the other, as if raising himself up on being startled from slumber?  Ah, there is a story told there  :  I know all about it.  But it must be enough now that it tells the story of his putting on the cross.”

   The kind-hearted sacrist smiled beamingly on the old soldier, being greatly interested in what he said with so much earnestness of manner.  “I cannot marvel at thy zeal for such a master,” he said, “and I rejoice to hear from thy lips that the great Sir Oliver de Ingham was so faithful a servant of the cross;  but he himself asks our prayers, and he shall have them, for the best of men is but a sinner.”

   He did not say that, whether he wanted them or not;  Sir Oliver was to have the prayers of the brethren as a matter of bargain, the Priory having been founded with an eye to that;  or did he observe that the old soldier, in proving that Sir Oliver had carried the cross, had not proved all he had asserted at the first, which was that the good knight must needs be at rest because he had fought so well in every way.  Yet that was in reality the old man’s creed, and the creed of many for years after the last Crusade was ended.  They drifted into it.  The savage warfare against the infidel was made to ennoble bloodshed, and by degrees men learned to love bloodshed for its own sake, and ceased to discriminate the quality of the blood they shed.

   “A sinner was he?” persisted Lionel.  “Well–he shall be my saint, and this tomb shall be his shrine, where I would fain worship.  A sinner?  yes, father : and so may you call this fair girl, that is listening to us with all her ears;  and yet methinks even you, with all your learning and your prayers, would change places with her when it came to the last shrift.”

   He gently laid his hand as he spoke on the shoulder of the maiden of some twenty summers, who had indeed been listening to them, as he said, with all her ears–nay, with eyes and mouth too, for her lips were slightly parted in the eagerness of her attention, and her eyes were sparkling with intelligence.

   She shrank under the touch, but not from any repugnance to the old soldier, nor had he done it rudely, but simply from the suddenness of the recall to self-consciousness;  for with a slight flush on her face she looked archly upon him, and said, “Oh, master Lionel, why did you not go on telling us about the great Sir Oliver?  You have told me many stories about him, but you have never said before what you have told us just now.  What are those Saracens?  and what makes them enemies of the cross?  and why is it a good thing to kill them?”

   “Now aroint thee, child,” cried Mistress Winfarthing, impatiently.  “Thou art always for hearing tales and ballads, and stories of grand doings of Sir This and Sir That.  I’ve brought thee up to be a good housewife, and by’r Lady these fancies will spoil thee for everything;  or dost thou dream of being some day a fine dame like the best of them?”

   It was spoken peevishly, and the insinuation was utterly groundless, yet in sober truth there was a delicacy and refinement in that young face and figure, to say nothing of beauty, which might well become a high-born dame.

   The girl made no other reply than a smile of great good-nature.  It was not the place for controversy, least of all on personal matters;  but the sacrist, pleased with her manner, and perhaps impressed,–as why should he not be?–with her beauty, interposed in her behalf, and said, “Nay, mother, do not chide your daughter for her curiosity in these things.  She is no worse than I myself am;  for dearly do I wish to know all that this good man can tell us about the brave knight here.  You forget that, as a stranger among you, all is new to me.”

   “Go on then, Lionel Pickfire,” said the old lady snappishly, “and turn the heads of priest and maiden with your long-winded tales.”

   “Pickfire!” exclaimed the sacrist, tickled at the odd title.  “Why do you call him by so strange a name?”

   “Because it tells truly his nature.  Pickfire or poker he is, and a red-hot one too, always stirring up wars and fighting.

   The veteran gave a chuckling growl of assent, but the young girl seemed dissatisfied with so equivocal an explanation, and fixing her earnest eyes on the sacrist, said, “Indeed, father, it is not a name to be ashamed of.  The noble Black Prince himself gave it to him, because wherever he went he stirred up the courage of the men.  He called him ‘Le Pique-feu,’ and the ignorant folk have turned it into ‘Pickfire.’”

   “Ignorant , indeed!,” piped Mistress Winfarthing;  “and pray who has made Madam Cicely so wise about all this?”

   “Sir Miles’s armourer told me the story of it.”

   “Ah,” sighed the old soldier, “they gave me the name before he was born, and before the gallant Prince had earned his spurs.  It reminds me of the last time I saw that armour, which new hangs up there, in the midst of the foe : and so, by your leave, sir priest, I will rest my old body on this bench and tell you the story of

SIR  OLIVER  DE  INGHAM  AT  BORDEAUX

   “You must know that this Sir Oliver was a very great man in his day, and was entrusted with many important duties, both in the time of Edward the Second and of our present king.  For some years he was Seneschal of Aquitaine, and so fiercely did he maintain the king’s rights there that his name was a terror to the French.  Cressy and Poitiers were grand victories, but who can say how much they were owing to that dread of English knocks and English fierceness which captains like Sir Oliver had long before been beating into them?  At the same time, however, he treated the peaceable inhabitants so justly and well, protecting them from violence, and studying their welfare and happiness, that they began to like their English master better than their French ones.  This was especially the case at Bordeaux, our capital.  It was more like an English city.  The people were perfectly friendly, and owned that they lived more securely, and that their trade prospered more under our rule than had ever been the case under their own kings.  Well I remember grumbling at this, and thinking we should never again hear the war trumpet.  But in the year 1340, only little more than two years before Sir Oliver died, and he was then breaking down, though he scorned to own it, the French made a desperate effort to get possession again of the country.  It was the year our good king took the title King of France, and I suppose they thought that the more we took of the title, the less we should have of the soil.  A large army, we heard, was gathered together and marching down upon us into Aquitaine.

   “We were very unsuccessful in opposing them at first.  Town after town opened its gates to them, and though no great battle was fought, the English were always retreating before the enemy, and letting them get nearer to Bordeaux.  It seemed as if the fear of the Frenchman had fallen upon us.  It was even whispered that our brave Seneschal had lost his old spirit, and was running away from them;  only Sir Oliver soon put a stop to the whisperers, for he got hold of some score of them, including a knight or two, and hanged them all of a row on as many trees.

   “Still, onward came the French, and we were at length fairly shut up in Bordeaux, baffled, puzzled, and sorely dispirited.  They were a hospitable people those people of Bordeaux, and, as I said, looked upon us as more their friends than their enemies, and upon the French as more their enemies than their countrymen.  Many of them told me at that time that they dreaded the coming of their army, and would gladly help us, if they could, to drive them away.  But great at first was the consternation in the city.

   I noticed our Seneschal closely all the while, and could see nothing in him but his old look of calm determination : if anything, he seemed a little more inclined to joke than usual, and that was not much.  Once I took the liberty of one who had served so long with him, and spoke to him about our strange situation.

   “‘Sir Oliver,’ I said, ‘are these Frenchmen going to eat us, after all?’

   “‘Not without plenty of Bordeaux wine,’ he grimly replied.

   “‘Pardon my boldness, Sir Oliver, but why are we to let them get into the city?’

   “‘Why do you let a nut get between those great jaws of yours?’

   “‘Marry, to crack it thereby!’

   “‘Dost thou not see, fool?  Trust me to crack the Frenchman this time : I shall not have many more chances.’

   “And he rode away with a smile on his face, more sad than otherwise.

   “Then my eyes began to open.

   “The story got abroad that the English were going aboard the shipping in the river and quit the country;  but I never believed it.  However, many did, and some went off to tell the Frenchmen so, and I fancied Sir Oliver encouraged them to do it.

   “After this, Sir Oliver met the chief burgesses in the Town-hall, but none were admitted besides, except the principal captains of the army;  and when that meeting was over, it struck me that both captains and burgesses looked gayer than they had done since we came back to the city.

   “At last the Frenchmen drew very near–and then every one knew what would happen, though none were allowed to go outside the walls.

   “Onward came the enemy, strong and confident.  We could hear their trumpets in the distance, though not one of us was to be seen.  The walls were deserted;  the gates stood wide open :  from the towers the golden lilies of France were displayed, as if the city were restored to her.  As they entered the great gate the inhabitants shouted a welcome, and onward through the street streamed the exulting Frenchmen till the market-place was reached.  There they formed in dense masses, and still the stream flowed on.

   “But there was an ominous silence in that place.  No voice welcomed them : not an inhabitant was to be seen.

   “Their trumpets sounded their own welcome, and when the noise of them had died away, one solitary answering trumpet sounded ours.

   “From every street around the market-place poured the English;  from every house rushed the armed inhabitants;  from every window gleamed the pointed shaft.  Two distinct shouts were heard, and each was a terrible one–the cry of angry surprise and the yell of triumph.  Then came the slaughter.  There was no chance for them, though they did their best, and died like men.  The tide of soldiery flowed wildly back toward the gate, and then it was we nearly lost good part of our prey.

   “Sir Oliver had placed some barrels in the gate-house full of the new powder with which they now discharge cannon, and his plan was that these should be fired so as to blow up the gateway and cut off the enemy’s retreat as soon as the attack was begun.  But from some cause or other the explosion had not taken place.

   “I was binding up a wound which had made me feel dizzy, when Sir Oliver rode out of the mêlée, and came up to me.

   “‘Morte dieu!’ he cried, ‘what do those caitiffs at the gate?  Run, man, run, and stir up that fire for me.’

   “I was soon there, for I knew how to reach it by another way, and in a few minutes a tremendous crash told that the last hope of the Frenchmen was gone.

   “How I escaped, I know not;  but when they brought me afterwards, black and grievously hurt, before the Seneschal, he was pleased to tell them all what deed it was that I had done, and to call me from that time forth Le Pique-feu.”

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CHAPTER  II

Story of the Great Tomb

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. – GRAY.

   Cicely Mavis had been the innocent cause of much curiosity and debate among the good folk of Ingham.  Some twenty years before Ingham Church was rebuilt, as recorded in the previous chapter, it was observed by the neighbours–and who does not observe his neighbour’s business in a country village?–that Mistress Ann Winfarthing had suddenly and without any warning to the aforesaid neighbours, become charged with the care and custody of a charming babe not more than six months old.  As she had no children of her own, it could not be, they knew, her grandchild : and some said it must be a brother’s or a sister’s child, or, more likely, grandchild;  or perhaps it might be the motherless one of some distant cousin;  or possibly her late husband, whom she had so fondly loved since his decease, might have had some distant relatives of his own, one of whom had died and left the little stranger to her tender mercies.  But though all worked more or less hard at the problem, no one sought its solution directly from Ann Winfarthing herself, and for this reason, because it was more than any of them dared to do.  Her tongue could speak “like the piercings of a sword,” could run you through and through with the ease of a master of fence.

   In course of time, the neighbours got reconciled to their perplexity, and even forgot that there was anything to be perplexed about.  The baby-bud, which the most child-hating bachelor must have fondled and kissed, opened into a childish flower that won the hearts of all, so bright and good and graceful was she.  The poor people called her their little lady;  and a lady she was, if we mean by that one whose unselfish woman’s nature is made yet more attractive by the charm of manner.  Cicely grew up among them free and unrestrained in her friendship for them, lighting up unconsciously every home she entered;  and yet all the while receiving from one and all a secret deference and respect, which nothing in her outward circumstances could in the least account for.

   There was one exception to this.  Mistress Winfarthing never acknowledged and never felt that there was anything uncommon in her young charge.  She was incapable of perceiving it.  Not because she was poor, for the poor are generally quick in detecting real superiority of nature, and in this case all else had paid glad homage to it;  but because she herself was hard, selfish and unimpressionable.  Her nature was metallic, like her voice.  She saw nothing in Cicely different from what might be seen in any other village damsel, and if a neighbour chanced to say a word in her praise, the amiable old lady would invariably break out into complaints of her child (as she called her), as if she were the daily torment of her life.  Yet it was cruelly, absurdly untrue, for no daughter could be more docile and promptly obedient to a parent than was Cicely Mavis to her who, by some freak of fortune, had obtained so singular a control over the young girl.

   What that freak of fortune was we can partly relate, though for our part we rejoice, nay exult, in the highly rational conviction–notwithstanding all the clever nonsense that is written now-a-days against a special providence–that no freak of fortune happens without God’s permission;  the guilt or folly of it must rest with man, but the permission on God’s part is with special view to ends He has in view.

   Late, then, on the night before that eventful day, some twenty years before, when Cicely’s first arrival made all the village rife with speculation, a quiet but decided knock was heard at her cottage door by Ann Winfarthing;  and on her opening it, a figure entered, cloaked, booted and spurred for riding, and carrying awkwardly a bundle.  The quality of the visitor was manifest at a glance, and satisfied her that it was no vulgar ruffian who was thus strangely intruding on her, though it left her none the less surprised.

   “Fear nothing, my good woman,” said the gentleman, in a quiet tone of voice that was yet more assuring;  “I am a friend, though I come as a stranger, and at an unseasonable hour, too.  But I want to render you a service, and you to render me a service in return.  Prithee shut the door first.”

   For the poor woman was so taken by surprise at the apparition, that she was still standing with her hand on the open door.

   “You are poor,” he said.

   “Poor, but honest,” was her brief reply.

   “Would you like to earn a more than comfortable living honestly?”

   “I understand you not.”

   “Look here,” and the stranger placed a small bag on the table;  “there are ten marks : would you like to earn ten marks every year, paid beforehand, and more as they are wanted?”

   Her eyes glistened at the thought, for though honest she loved a penny much and a mark more.

   “What am I wanted to do, good sir?”

   The stranger unwrapped his bundle, and disclosed a sleeping cherub, so sweet a babe that even Ann Winfarthing’s calculating mind took in the fact as promising comfort to the one who nursed it.  “Take charge for me of this child.  Bring her up as your own.  Do what you like with her.  Should she live, let her marry some clown.  So long as she lives ten marks shall be paid you every year for yourself, and whatever more you want for her.  There shall be no stinting, I promise you.  This day every year meet me in Norwich, where I shall tell you, and the money shall be paid.”

   “Is it all right about the child?” asked the woman irresolutely.

   “Ask no questions,” replied the stranger sternly : “a nurse-child is not a nine-day’s-wonder;  but ten marks a-year is enough to maintain a priest, and that is saying much.”

   The bargain was struck and faithfully adhered to on both sides fro a score of years.  Liberally was Mistress Ann treated, and all could see it in her well-to-do appearance and comfortable living, though they knew not and had left off wondering how it could so be : and honestly did she, for her part, fulfil her engagement to the child, so far as feeding, clothing, and protecting her went.  In one respect only did she go beyond, and in spirit even contravene, the directions given her–she sent all admiring clowns to the right about with merciless uniformity.  If there was some conscience in this, there was much policy;  and certainly there was little need for it, since Cicely Mavis, the name the stranger gave the child, had no affinity with clowns.

   We have seen how her mother reproved her for the opposite tendency to fancy whatever related to the noble deeds of those of higher station than herself.  The hard old woman set it down to vanity, but in truth it was not vanity but instinct that made her thus fanciful.  She felt differently, she did not aspire to be different from those around her.  And this feeling was irrepressible.  It was this that made the old soldier, Lionel, so acceptable a companion to her.  He was an inexhaustible mine of the treasures of story and adventure she loved so much.  The old man saw it, and liked it, and was in consequence a frequent and always a most unwelcome visitor at Mistress Winfarthing’s cottage.  Indeed, so stinging were her repulses, so virulent her tongue, that any one who was not completely tongue-proof and insult-proof, must have been kept away.  But Lionel was cased in such armour of proof.  The storm fell on him, and battered down on him, and he knew it not, till it ceased from very weariness.

   A day or two after the dedication of the church, the old man paid one of these visits, and chanced to find both Cicely and her mother at home.

   “Good morrow, mistress,” said the soldier, as his massive form filled up for a moment the door-way;  “and you, my little lady, how fare you to-day?  I have come to tell you the story you wanted so to hear the other day in our grand new church.  Never have I told it you before : but the picture of it on the tomb brought it all back to me so.”

   Cicely clapped her hands for joy, and was thanking him with all her heart, when a volley was discharged from the lips of her mother.

   “We want none of your stories here this morning, Lionel Pickfire;  we have plenty to do in the house without wasting the time in having our heads filled with rubbish.  Go and tell them in the ale-house, and don’t come to busy folks’ doors, making young people more idle than they are with your rodomontades.  I am ashamed of you.  You get worse and worse.  Instead of casting in your mind how you will answer to God for all the blood you have shed in your long life, you go about boasting of it in the ear of every young girl of the village, as if you were a boy wanting a sweetheart instead of being what you are, the great-grandfather of the parish.”

   Mistress Winfarthing took her breath and old Lionel a seat.

   “I will wait, an it please you, mistress, till you have done the tidying up,” said he at length.

   “Then you will have to wait till it is time to go to bed.”

   “Nay, that’s a long time : I had better begin at once.”

   “Mother, we shall soon have done,” pleaded Cicely.  “I have been working hard all the morning, for I thought Master Lionel might perchance look in upon us.”

   “So that is what you work for, is it?  And so, if there were no Master Lionel to tell tales, why, marry, there would be little or no work done.”

   And on she went for a whole half-hour in quiet, not noisy, vituperation;  and all the while Cicely kept on with her work, casting sly looks from time to time on old Lionel, as if to see whether the great castle were holding out, which it did with imperturbable constancy even to the end.

   “Have you said all you wish to say, mistress?” enquired he, awaking from a sort of doze, after a long silence.

   But the enemy was completely exhausted, and there was no answer.

   “Then will I begin my story.”

SIR  OLIVER  DE  INGHAM  AMONG  THE  MOORS

   “You remember in what a singular way the figure of Sir Oliver is placed on his tomb–how he appears to be lying on a rock, or a bed of round flints, and how he seems ready to jump up on his feet, his right arm crossing his breast and grasping his sword, while the left arm crosses his breast to his right shoulder, the hand resting on the stony pillow.  You remember too how, in the background, there is a wood, and wild animals of various sorts, and a strange-looking man stringing his bow, and another man, with a green hood over his head, blowing a horn.  Altogether it seems to describe a wild sort of scene : and so it was.  It describes what really happened to him in his lifetime, and what he ever after thought a great deal about, and I dare say wished to have remembered after he was dead.

  “Well, when Sir Oliver was a young and lusty knight, high in favour with our late King Edward the Second, he was seized with a desire to go and flesh his sword in some part of the world where the enemies of the cross were to be found.  It was said that the king, his father, our noble Edward the First, had vowed in his latter days to deliver yet the Holy Land, and that, on his death-bed, he devoted a prodigious sum to equip and support a proud corps of knights who should carry his heart there.  The old feeling had not yet died out, though it was fast going, and Sir Oliver was one of those who still acknowledged the duty of fighting for his God.  Little encouragement had he from the silk-and-satin knights of those days, but go he would and go he did : and as one solitary lance could not win Palestine back, he went into Spain and offered himself as a volunteer to King Alphonso of Castile, to fight the Moors in Granada;  and I went with him.

   It was not Sir Oliver’s first campaign, though it was mine.  He had fought at Bannockburn, that dreadful field of carnage;  and had seen the Highland billmen deal their ghastly blows, that lopped off limbs like twigs, and crunched through armour as if it had been parchment.  They were fierce and vengeful warriors;  but these Saracens were incarnate fiends.  A battle with them was like no other warfare that I have ever witnessed, and I have seen much since then.  The hate of hell was in their very looks.  They neither gave nor asked for quarter;  and we learned their ways.  We paid them in their own measure : we soon became as savage as they were.  It was a conflict, not between man and man, but between God and the devil.  Oh, it was a noble school in which to learn to be a soldier!  Never have I forgotten the lessons I learned in that campaign.

   “You asked me who these Saracens were, and why they were the enemies of the cross.  Know then, little maiden, that they are an eastern race of people who, under various names, have for centuries past made war on Christendom.  It is their religion to persecute and destroy Christians, even as it is our to resist and exterminate them.  Why their religion should teach them so, I know not, except it be that the devil is its author;  and truly, in their fiery blood and quenchless hatred he has weapons forged in his own furnace.

   “But I must to my tale.  We had crossed the Sierra Morena, or Black Mountains,–one of those great rows of mighty hills that interrupt your march in Spain, and that make fighting so much more difficult in that country,–when we found ourselves suddenly confronted by a host of Saracens, the likes of which we had never seen before.  It seemed as if all the powers of the Moslem were gathered together against us.  Like a sea of glittering snow they came on, and we, even had we thought of doing otherwise, had nothing left us but to fight them, though ten to our one.  The battle was desperate and bloody;  and after losing more than half our numbers, we were forced to retreat through the mountain pass by which we came.

   “Sir Oliver was among the missing.  He had been seen hewing his way through swarms of furious pagans eager to overwhelm so distinguished a knight by their very numbers, and it was feared he had been unhorsed and slain.

   “I known not why, but I never thought so myself.  Something always seemed to tell me that he was yet alive, and that we should see his face again. I felt sure that if he had escaped he would be trying to make his way through the mountain pass to rejoin us;  so, taking with me a score of stout English hearts, I started on the wild and perilous enterprise of rescuing our brave knight.

   “We were obliged to avoid the mountain road for fear of the enemy, so we skirted it as best we might.  Sometimes we were clambering heights at the risk of our necks, and then we would come to a wide expanse of more level country;  but all was desolate and terrible to behold.  We seemed to be on a mad and hopeless errand, and every step we took disheartened us the more.  My only hope was in the horn I took with me, which I blew from time to time, and which perchance, in God’s mercy, Sir Oliver might hear, and recognize its well-known notes.  But the echoes only mocked us as they were taken up from one and another of the surrounding hills, and we almost grew afraid to hear it.

   “In the meanwhile Sir Oliver had escaped;  but only, as it appeared, to perish miserably among the mountains.  Breaking through the murderous crowd of his assailants he had been driven into the pass by another way, and soon lost his road.  Worn out with fatigue, hungry and thirsty, night overtook him, and he laid him down on the bare rock to sleep, as many a soldier of the cross had done before.  The morning air ever breathes hope, and hope was sorely needed in that awful prospect that frowned upon his waking eyes.  So he pushed on with painful slowness and ever-increasing difficulty.  His horse was wounded, and soon from that and thirst became powerless to proceed.  Nor could he in any case have gone much further, since the wild road became wilder yet at every step.  Another night was spent, without even a four-footed friend for company;  yet four-footed enemies were not far off, for the terrible stillness of those dark hours of solitude was broken by the sound of wild beasts of prey.

   “Then came a third day of dreary struggling without hope and almost without aim.  Yet before he began that day’s march, he vowed a vow.  Drawing his sword, from which the pagan blood was yet unwiped, he swore upon it that if his life were spared, that sword should thenceforth be ever ready to obey the call to slay the infidel where opportunity should offer;  and that one-half his lands should be devoted ere he died to found a house for the redemption of captives taken by the Saracens.  Then he sheathed his sword, and manfully toiled on.

   “Often has Sir Oliver repeated to me what his sensations were during that dreadful day.  The memory of them seemed scorched into his brain;  nay, the gloomy scenery, so frightful in its loneliness, was impressed in all its most trifling particulars upon his mind, as figures are burnt into the window-glass;  specially the last scene on which his eyes rested that day, when a wood high above cast an alluring shadow over the rocky road he trode, where, late in the afternoon, he cast himself down to die.

   “In the delirium of a troubled sleep, he fancied, among a hundred other fitful and contradictory imaginings, that he was awaiting the trumpet of doom;  and the thought, the only thought, that troubled him was–Had he fulfilled his vow?  Had his sword drunk enough of the blood of the enemies of the cross?

   “His earthly doom was nearer than he thought : for as he lay in painful slumber on the rock, a party of Moors, who had observed him for some time from a distance before he fell down, were drawing near to dispatch him.  Stealthily they crept on towards their victim, when the cheery sound of a horn close by arrested them.  In an instant, aroused by the same trumpet-call, the knight awoke from his sleep, and endued for the moment with supernatural strength, with one hand grasped his sword while with the other he raised himself to spring to his feet.

   “Mine was the breath that blew that horn, and mine the hands that caught him as he almost fell again.  Sir Oliver was saved.

   “Canst thou wonder, maiden, that the good knight should wish to have that day for ever had in remembrance?  Or that I should think on it with pride?

   Cicely listened with all her usual devoutenss of attention.  Very unusual, however, was her look of puzzled sadness at the close.  Perhaps it was the more sad because she observed the restless, unsatisfied expression of the old soldier’s eyes, like that of a caged wild beast.

   “That was a brave deed, Master Lionel,” she said;  “but are these Saracens God’s creatures like ourselves?”

   “Assuredly not,” was the prompt reply : “they are the devil’s creatures, if anyone must know the making of them;  but I never thought of such a thing before.”

   “Then have they no souls?”  persisted the maiden.

   “I know not, and I care not,” said the other, carelessly;  and then he broke out in a hoarse chuckle, as if the idea had very much tickled his fancy–“to think of those fiends having souls like Christians, though!”

   “Then they are not men?”

   “Oh, yes, they are men;  and many of them are very handsome men, though slightly built;  and as to their women, there can be no doubt they are beautiful enough to those who have a liking for wild cats.”

   “But men without souls?”

   “Parbleu!  You drive me into a corner, maiden.  I know not how to answer you.  I tell you we never thought of such matters.  You must go puzzle them out of the priest, though marry, he knows as much about a Saracen as he does of a wild elephant.”

   There was a pause.

   “Why do you ask these strange questions, little lady?  You never ask them when I tell you of our brave doings among the Frenchmen.”

   “Because they are Christians.”

   There was another pause.

   “Why is it so much more pleasing to heaven to kill Saracens than it is to kill Christians?” she asked.

   “Did I not say that they were enemies of the cross?”

   “Can they not be made Christians, and then fought with as you fight the Frenchmen?”

   “Can you make a wild beast a Christian?”

   “Christians are sometimes as fierce and cruel as wild beasts.”

   The old man laughed at this truly feminine turn in the argument, and said, “You speak sooth, little maiden;  and here comes one as fierce as any catamount.”

   He nodded towards the door by which Mistress Winfarthing was that moment re-entering, having long ago left them in disgust.

   “Yes, Master Lionel,” added Cicely, gently, but with emphasis;  “and there are other faces which I should love to look on, if they were not so wild and glaring at times.”

   It was evident that thoughts were stirring in that fair young bosom, which the old soldier’s explanations had by no means satisfied.

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CHAPTER  III

Order of Trinitarian Friars

   The blood of men should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man.  It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our kind.  The rest is vanity, the rest is crime.

BURKE.

   The Religious Order to which the Priory of Ingham belonged, was one of those which owed its origin to the Crusades.  About the year 1198, when the enthusiasm of Fulke of Neuilly was arousing throughout France that revival of religious zeal which led to the fifth Crusade, the first house of the Order was founded in Paris, by John de Matta and Felix de Valois;  and about twenty years later the Order was introduced into England.  The special feature that distinguished it from other religious orders was, that a portion of its revenues was devoted to the redemption of captives taken by the Turks.  Pope Innocent III. appointed all its possessions to be divided into three parts;  one for subsistence, another for the relief of the poor, and a third for the redemption of captives according to the rule of St. Victor.  The words in which this object is stated are, “ad redemptionem captivorum qui sunt incarcerati pro fide Christi in paganis [sic].”  By the same authority the friars of this order were permitted to wear white robes, with a cross red and blue on their breasts.

   It was called the Order of the Holy Trinity, and the friars were called Trinitarians, because all their churches, including that of Ingham, were dedicated to the Holy Trinity.  And the explanation of this appears to be that it was in solemn and perpetual remembrance of the fact that St. Victor, whose rule they followed, was the first great champion of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  If this be so, then have we reason to thank these Trinitarian friars for thus perpetuating the memory of that undeniable fact of history that not until the time of St. Victor, that is, the close of the second century, had anyone calling himself a Christian entertained any notion subversive of that vital doctrine.  And we venture to stop the flow of our story yet a moment longer to say to all who reject that doctrine, and to all who have misgivings about it, and to all who are afraid of a fearless, down-right confession of it, even before the clever fellows we have to enlighten us in these days,–let these white-robed Trinitarian friars remind you that for the first two hundred years of the Christian Church no Christian had doubts, or misgivings, or fears such as you have.  They were a novelty when St. Victor expelled Theodotus from the Church for denying the divinity of Christ.

   The friars of this order were also called Mathurins, either from the name of one of the first founders, John de Matta, or because the original house in Paris was situated near the chapel of St. Mathurine.

   How they managed the business of redeeming captives we know not;  but there can be little doubt it was expensive work.  When Saladin took Jerusalem, the price of redemption for the common Latin population, that is, neither nobles nor soldiers, was fixed by him at the rate of ten crowns of gold for a man, five for a woman, and one for a child.  The ransom of Richard I. was one hundred and fifty thousand marks;  but then he was a king and his captors were Christians, not Turks.  However, it was a real work of mercy to find the money for redemption, since the alternative was slavery, to which, so far as this world is concerned, death was far preferable.

   The Priory of Ingham was not a large one.  It consisted at first of a prior, a sacrist, and six other brethren;  and the number was designed to be made up of thirteen, when the revenues had so increased “that ten marks annually could be allowed each religious.”  We have no means of judging of the building itself, for the ruins that remain are devoid of all character, not having left them even the melancholy privilege of being seen by the passer-by, since they are shadowed by the village public-house, in the gardens of which the foundations of the old walls may still be traced.  The only thing that seems clear is, that the cloisters adjoined the north side of the church, into which there was access from them by a door, when the white-robed friars proceeded thither to worship in the stalls that yet remain in the chancel. {There was a chapel, dedicated to St. Mary, on the south side of the church;  but it was pulled down in 1800.} 

   It is a pertinent question to ask how it happened that a house of this particular religious order should have been founded some seventy years after the crusades which gave birth to that order had finally ceased.  The answer might be given that such houses did not always fulfil the objects for which they were originally founded;  though this explanation would apply to those which had been in existence some time, rather than to one newly founded.  In any case, however, we are inclined to think that the speciality of the Order was still a living reality among the objects for which the Priory of Ingham was founded.  The redemption of captives, even though the crusades had ceased, was not a mere figure of speech in the eyes of the founder, Sir Miles Stapleton, whose father-in-law, Sir Oliver de Ingham, had, as we have seen, his own particular reasons for promoting such a work of mercy.  It may have been a sacred trust committed to his successor, though the wars had long delayed its being carried out till Sir Oliver had been dead some seventeen years.

   At any rate, the question is suggestive.  It opens up a phase of history deeply important and not always duly weighed;  and as it gives some little complexion to our story, and saves it perhaps from being a colourless annal of the past, we will just take a glance at that history.

   Turk-fever was an epidemic that grievously tormented Europe at various periods during some seven hundred years.  It is difficult to realize this now, when the Grand Turk himself is so friendly and liberal, and his political influence so little to be dreaded;  and when the intellectual acumen of these days has discovered that the religion of Mohamet is a very good sort of thing in its way.  But Mohammedanism, like Romanism, must be judged of us as a system, and we must interpret that system by the history of its doings when unchecked by modern enlightenment backed by superior physical force.  The system is as evil now as it ever was, but it lacks the power.  When it had the power, however, so terribly was it exercised that we cannot wonder at its producing from time to time the epidemic of Turk-fever.  The fear of the Turk was a thing amply justified by the facts.  During the reign of the Khaliph Omar, a period of about ten years, the Saracens could boast that they had subdued Syria, Chaldæa, Persia, and Egypt, taken thirty-six thousand cities, towns, and castles;  destroyed four thousand Christian churches, fire and idol temples, and built fourteen hundred mosques.  And though the crusades themselves were not called forth by any aggressiveness on the part of the Saracens at the time of their commencement, yet more  than once Christendom was in imminent danger of being made tributary to the great Mohamedan power.  Down to the time of Charles the Fifth that power was a plague that threatened ever and anon to devastate Europe, and abundantly fulfilled the woes which it was foretold it would bring down upon mankind, as one of the grand devices of the devil for hindering God’s work on earth.

   And the Crusades, though not dictated by fear of the Saracens, had a great deal to do with aggravating the symptoms of this Turk-fever.  They taught the Christian world to hate the infidel, even more than before and afterwards it feared him.  If, at the commencement of them, it was thought to be the highest aim and object of a Christian to help to wrest the holy places from the Saracen, it was thought, long before their close, that no more meritorious act could be performed than to kill him for his own sake.  Christian and Saracen became alike in this : each believed it to be a passport to heaven to strike the other’s head off.  There was little thought of conversion, none of argument, or explanation.  The sword alone was to be appealed to, which, in the words of that most religious crusader, St. Louis, the true knight “ought to thrust into the belly of his adversary as far as it would go.”  And so it came to pass that “Crusades with idolaters and erring Christians were considered as virtuous and as necessary as crusades with Saracens.  The south of France was saturated with heretical blood;  and those booted apostles, the Teutonic Knights, converted, sword in hand, the Prussians and Lithuanians from idolatry to Christianity” {Mills’ History of the Crusades, vol. ii, p. 346.}–if such can be called conversion in which reason takes no part.  It was as if the Divine command had been to go into all the world, and cut the throat of every unbeliever. 

   This development of muscular Christianity may have had to do with the founding of Ingham Priory, in which the mark of the Turk is to be seen so evidently : at all events it puzzled the brains of Cicely Mavis, as already mentioned, and determined her to take the advice of old Lionel, though skeptically given, and go seek an explanation from the kind-hearted sacrist.

   Accordingly, the very next day, after matins, she sought him out.  John de Pevesey was so far at least a true clergyman as to act on the maxim, that the person who wanted to see him was the very one he wanted to see;  and his fair young parishioner was therefore quickly at her ease.  The house of God in those days was not shut up during the time no service was going on, but was a meeting-house in more ways than one,–a center of union among the people;  in some sort a place of business, perhaps a place of gossip, but certainly a place of usefulness, a sort of home, in the eyes of all.

   “I have come, father,” said the maiden, “to ask you a question which Master Lionel tells me you can answer.”

   “What is it, my child?”

   “Why is it so pleasing to heaven to slay Saracens?”

   The good sacrist was at first inclined to smile at the question;  but seeing something in the damsel’s countenance the very reverse of childish levity, he checked himself , and said, “Who has put it into your head to think of such a thing?”

   “No one,” she replied;  “it came there of itself, as Master Lionel was talking of the brave knight there;  and I cannot away with it.  He looks so savage as he speaks of killing these Saracens;  his eye fires up so like a burning coal, that though at other times I love his venerable face, he makes me shudder when he talks so.  Is it right, father, to take such pleasure in slaying them?”

   The sacrist was again about to silence her by the common-place method of reminding her of her youth, but her look checked him a second time, and though not clever, he was by far too wise to discourage enquiry when earnestly intelligent.

   “You do not ask, my child,” he gravely said, “from idle curiosity.  I see plainly.  And though I know not that it can do you any good, yet I will strive to answer you.  These Saracens, then, who, under various names, have for ages past made war against Christendom, and now hold possessions again of the holy places where our dear Lord lived and died, are by the Spirit of God doomed to destruction.  As the Holy Father, Innocent III., himself declared, they are ‘the beast, foretold by the Spirit, that will not live forever : its age is 666.’ {Encyclical Letter of Pope Innocent III.}  Therefore to destroy them is a work pleasing to God, even as it was well pleasing to Him of old to exterminate the nations who possessed the Land of Promise.” 

   Had Cicely known the Holy Scriptures, she might have replied that nowhere do they say that God has any pleasure in the death of him that dieth;  and that whatever judicial work He may have given Israel of old to do for him, no trace of any command can be found in them for Christians to slaughter unbelievers.  However, the light of nature gave her some dim persuasion of the former truth, and she said, modestly enough, but with firmness, “Can the good Lord take any pleasure in slaying sinners?”

   “Trouble not yourself about that,” was the sacrist’s answer, who never troubled himself about anything that was beyond his book;  “the good Lord must do right, and the Holy Father must tell us what is right.”

   But Cicely was obstinate in her notion of God, as all are who have been secretly instructed from above to “understand the loving-kindness of the Lord,” and who “observe” the things that are written even in the book of nature;  and she said softly, as if speaking to herself, “God cannot look as Master Lionel looks when he talks about killing Saracens : oh no, it cannot be, it cannot be!”

   “Remember, child, He is the great Judge,” urged the sacrist.

   “But when the judge sentenced Black Tom the smith to die the other day at Norwich, they say he looked so sorry.”

   “Black Tom, whatever he may have been, was not so black as these accursed Turks.”

   “What do they, father?”

   “All the works of darkness.”

   “They are more wicked then than ever Christians are?”

   “Christians cannot be like them in wickedness.  They deny the Saviour of mankind, and spit and trample on His cross : they are reprobate sinners”–

   “But, father,” interrupted Cicely, “Master Lionel has often told me how in the French wars the rough soldiers sometimes do that;  and indeed,” she added with hesitation, “I have heard the old man himself speak very lightly about these holy things.”

   “They are fierce and savage beyond all other people,” continued the sacrist, not noticing the interruption, and mistaking warmth for argument;  “their hearts know no pity, sparing neither man nor woman, infant nor ancient of days.”  {The worthy sacrist could not know what happened only eight years afterwards, when Mohammed Shah Barnum slaughtered 100,000 Hindoos in fulfillment of a vow;  or when, not many years later, Tamerlane constructed a tower of 2000 living human bodies, piled up with mortar in layers like bricks.}

   “That is like what the minstrels sing of in their songs,” put in Cicely, intuitively perceiving an advantage over her reverend instructor : “how, when Jerusalem was taken, the Christian knights rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of their horses, and how women, girls, and boys were slaughtered, so that the streets were strewed with the mangled limbs of men, women, and children.  I never knew who the Saracens were, but now I do.”

   “Their blood be upon their own heads!” exclaimed the sacrist piously.

   “But one thing more, father,” said the maiden.

   “Tell me, were English people always Christians?”

   “No, not always.  Time was when they were pagans like the rest;  but a good monk, named Augustine, came over with a little band of holy men, and converted them to the faith.”

   “They did not kill them in those days?”

   “They were not Saracens.”

   But even the bland, comfortable sacrist was not satisfied with the answer, and hastened in perplexity to another venue.

   “You little wot, fair daughter, the suffering thousands have endured at the hands of these infidels.  Even now, in various parts, are captives groaning under cruel bondage to them.  I have talked with those who have been rescued from it by the instrumentality of our Order, and doleful, direful is the tale they have told–but who comes here?”

   A gentleman and lady were coming up the church, and as there were then no square pews for stalled oxen to intercept the view, we can see them well : and they were worth looking at.

   Sir Miles Stapleton–for he it was–was a tall, wiry, graceful man, in the prime of life, with the handsome, open face of a genuine Yorkshireman.  Noble fellows must those knights of King Edward have been, and he was one of them : and as he paced easily up the nave, in tunic and cloak of sober hue, his figure and bearing were worthy of one who had made his mark even among the heroes of Cressy and Poitiers.  Yet there were lines in that gallant face that told of long-continued wear and tear, and more than hinted at the fact that the brave hearts who won our English victories were often made old before their time thereby.  By his side walked his true “compagne,” the Lady Joan, every inch a daughter of the renowned Sir Oliver : handsome, yet too stern of feature to be attractive in the softest sense.  Her long flowing robe, tight-fitting round the throat, swept along the ground, while her hair, braided on each side and surmounted by a head-piece of the period, increased the stateliness of her appearance.

   They went up towards the high altar, and kneeling before it spent a few moments in prayer, which some would call a superstitious act, and no one more than he who never prays at all.  Then they returned together, meeting at the great south door the sacrist, with whom, Cicely had just parted.

   “Has the prior told you the good news, Father Pevesey?” enquired the knight, evidently pleased with them himself.

   “What news, Sir Miles?”

   “That the first-fruits of our priory are granted to us.  The price of redemption has been agreed on and paid for one who has long been captive among the Moors.  They say he has been in slavery for nearly twenty years and by the amount of ransom required, he must be a knight, though, strange to say, his name is quite unknown.”

   “Now heaven and our Lady be praised!” ejaculated the sacrist, with hearty sincerity.  “These are good tidings in very deed. 

   “He will come hither to return thanks for his deliverance, so soon as he can cross the sea for England.”

   “He shall be welcome among us as one alive from the dead.”

   But the quick eye of the lady detected that others besides redeemed captives were welcome to the good sacrist’s offices;  so she said, “What would the maiden, Cicely Mavis, have of you,

Father Pevesey, to-day?  you were in earnest converse together.”

   “She came in,” he said, with a smile, “to ask me why it was pleasing to heaven to cut a Paynim’s throat.”

   “Beshrew me!–exclaimed the knight, “she should wait and ask that question of him who hath just escaped from the hellish clutches of the infidel.”

   “Marry!” cried the lady, “but I would bid her leave such questions to her betters, and go mind her spinning.”

   The sacrist smiled again–his was a sunny face, remember–and bidding the knight and his lady good den, went up to his room over the porch, which, with the second room above that, formed his official residence, and may be seen to this day.

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CHAPTER  IV

Christians Made Turks

   If you prick us, do we not bleed?  If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?  And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?  If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

SHAKSPEARE.

   Sound conclusions are often wrongly applied for want of a quick eye to detect exceptional circumstances.  So it was with Lady Joan’s conclusion with regard to Cicely Mavis.  It was a sound general maxim that young women should not indulge in idle gossip instead of minding the house.  But if the lady’s eye had only been more quick to discern the character that shone in Cicely’s face instead of being a wee bit offended at its beauty, she would have made some allowance for the girl’s inquisitiveness.  And had she known that Cicely’s home duties were ever faultlessly performed, she would never have said what she did.

   Curiosity, however, was a little excited in the lady’s mind by what the sacrist had told her;  and so it came to pass that in a few days she surprised Ann Winfarthing by making her appearance at her cottage door.

   The Lady Joan had not lived much at Ingham for years past, and consequently she knew but little, and therefore cared but little, about the people of the place.  The circumstances of Mistress Ann, and the now almost forgotten story of her young charge, were therefore only very partially and imperfectly known to her;  and haughty and high as she was, she arrived at the door with a prospect before her she little dreamt of, of a very pretty kettle of fish.

   “Are you Ann Winfarthing?” asked the stately dame, with as much sympathy in her tone as if she were addressing a mile-stone.

   Mistress Ann made her humble reverence, for there were no such silly people in those days as ill-mannered ones, and admitted the fact in briefest language.

   “And this is your daughter?” she continued, stalking in, and looking hard at Cicely, who happened to be busy at her spinning.

   “No, my lady, she is not my daughter, though I have been as a mother to her.”

   “Your granddaughter, then?”

   “No, my lady, I never had a child of my own.”

   “A nurse-child?–I remember something about it.  There was a great deal of gossip about it some years ago.  The child was left at your door by somebody : was not that it?”

  “No, my lady, no one left a child at my door, and as to the gossip, whatever poor people may do in that way, a lady like you, madame, would never listen to such a thing.”

   Ann said this in so insinuating and respectful a manner, that the lady, after a searching glance that could discover no flaw in the plausibility of it, forebore to press that question further.

   “But how do you get your living?  You seem well to do : your cottage is more comfortable than most others”–and she looked around with hawk’s eyes–“where can it all come from?”

   These inquisitorial words, which some visitors of the poor still adopt in our days, but which they should ordinarily leave to the relieving-officer, were not to be lightly regarded or proudly resented, coming as they did from so great a lady, the wife of the lord of the town, in days when the poor were little better than serfs tied to the soil.  But Ann Winfarthing had a temper, and these questions touched a sore point;  only she had the tongue of a diplomatist, when she saw it needful.

   “Lady,” she said, with a pause that was very emphatic, “poor folk such as we are can have no secrets to be kept from those who are our masters and benefactors;  but, nathless, there are things best not told in some hearings,” she glanced at Cicely, who was standing reverently all the time before the great lady,–a nymph before haughty Juno.

   The dame eyed Ann suspiciously, and the turned her gaze on Cicely, and back to the old woman again.

   “Strange!” she said, “passing strange!  But you must tell me all another time.  Mind, you must keep nothing back : I must know all.  What right have such as you to flaunt a mystery like this before our very eyes.”

   “I cry you pardon, lady,” replied the old woman, striving to repress her rising temper;  “I have flaunted nothing : I ask for nothing but to be let alone.  None can find fault with Ann Winfarthing for meddling.  We live to ourselves, and trouble nobody.”

   “And tell me, maiden,” said the lady, turning sharply on Cicely, “why it is you went to Father Pevesey?”

   “To ask him about the Saracens, if it please your ladyship.”

   “And what do you want to know about the Saracens?” exclaimed the other, contemptuously.

   “What indeed!” croaked Mistress Winfarthing : “nay, has she been doing that?  ’Tis not with my knowledge, lady : ’tis all her own doing.  To think of such a thing!  What are the Saracens to us?  But the girl is always after such things as that.  That old Pickfire will turn her brains : marry, that he will.”

   “I did but ask the good father why it was so pleasing to heaven to slay these Saracens,” said Cicely, looking fearlessly into the face of her haughty inquisitor.

   “What matters it to a poor girl like you?”

   The colour mounted high, as she replied, “As much to me, good lady, as to one so high as you.”

   “How so?” and the Lady Joan could frown like her father.

   “Because,” said Cicely, with the pathos of simple earnestness, “we both alike want to know how good God is.”

   “Gramercy, child!”  thou shouldest be a clerk.  But come, since you are so learned, shew me what that has to do with slaying Saracens.”

   “Oh, lady, ’tis not for me to teach my betters.”

   “I grant you that, and what is more, that you cannot do it;  but still, tell me how you worked it out so as to teach yourself.”

   “I did not work it out, lady : it came into my heart, and that can speak better than my tongue.”

   “By our Lady, a pretty speech!  Where learnt you, maiden, thus the language of the Troubadours?”

   “Come then to the point.  What has killing Saracens to do with Heaven’s goodness?”

   “If God take pleasure in it, then methought must God be like Master Lionel when he glories in their blood;  and that I could not bear to think of.”

   The Lady Joan laughed out right merrily;  and Mistress Winfarthing laughed too, but by no means merrily–there was a leaden ring in it like that of counterfeit coin.  But Cicely stood unabashed before them, like honesty herself.

   “So Heaven, forsooth, cannot take pleasure in the work it hath commanded, lest it be like Lionel Pique-feu!  Pardieu, just the contrary should I have said–’tis about the only thing in which Lionel Pique-feu hath aught that resembles Heaven.”

   “Thou shalt no more listen to the old dotard’s tales, silly child,” said Mistress Ann.

   “Nay,” replied Cicely, “but his laugh and look can I never forget : and then”–she hesitated, and softly added,–“we must all of us see God.”

   “Tush!” said the Lady Jane, fiercely;  “leave that to the priest.”  Then, changing her tone to one of raillery, she added, “Come, mother, you must take this moping child of yours, and get her married to one of our grooms.  She wants some one besides you to spin and cook for.”

   It was now the old woman’s turn to fire up.

   “Groom, indeed!  They may or may not be good enough for a poor girl like her;  but good or bad, I want them not.  The girl is mine and no one else’s, and, saving your presence, she shall not be sent to market while Ann Winfarthing can do her duty by her, as she has done these twenty years.”  

   The lady’s lip curled with scorn, as she said, “Be that as you please, Ann Winfarthing, but remember, I must hear all about this dainty damsel, else shall I send Le Pique-feu to stir you up.”

   But alas!  old Lionel’s days were nearly numbered.

   The flame of life with some people flickers long in the socket before it finally expires;  with others it goes out like the powerful gas-jet when the stream that supplies it is gradually turned off at the main.  So was it with the old soldier.  Without any warning, and with no noticeable ailment, the powerful frame that had had so much of animal life in it began of a sudden to fail, as if the supply were being cut off.  He lost appetite and strength.  There was no pain, but life seemed just oozing out.  At first, his walks were restricted;  then he could only get to his gate;  and then he was confined to the house;  but further than this he refused to retreat.  He would on no account keep to his bed.  To the last he sat by day in his chair, like a sentinel true to his post.

  The sacrist saw that the time was short, and he diligently set about the work of preparing a fellow-sinner for the great change.  He visited him, conversed with him, read to him legends of the saints–for Bible he had none–exhorted him, said prayers by his side.  Yet, with all his diligence, he failed to make any the slightest impression on his parishioner.  A more skilled physician than he might as signally have failed, it is true;  but in the worthy father’s case the treatment itself was radically defective.  It was that of a physician who was totally wrong, to begin with, in his diagnosis.  He made the fatal mistake–common still among us–of attacking symptoms rather than the seat of disease.  He had not the slightest notion of the extent and rankness of the disease.  He did not understand that while it is right to point out plainly to a man what have been his particular sins, those sins (whatever they maybe) are only symptoms of a universal corruption of his nature, a total alienation of heart from his God.  He did not know that whatever be the complexion of their lives, all must take the same place before God in this respect–that they are lost sinners who can be saved only by faith in the blood of Christ.

   So, dealing superficially, though honestly, with the old man, he found the surface impenetrable to every appeal he brought to bear on it.

   “In a long life like yours, good Master Lionel,” he would say, “ there must have been many a misdeed, and it behooves you to begin the reckoning without delay.  I pray you think of this matter.”

   “Never fear for me, Sir Priest,” was the reply;  “I am too old a soldier to be afraid of anything.”

   “But the bravest heart must needs fear God.”

   “So I have always done.  Many a paternoster have I said when others were cursing and blaspheming.  You know not what devilry there is in wild soldiers.  I tell you I have heard men flinging their oaths at Heaven itself as they lay in their agony, with the cold sweat of death upon them.”

  “Nevertheless, my son, like all the rest, you have sinned.”

   “Like all the rest, I have–what then?”

   “I would hear thy confession.”

   “Tell me what to say : all I know is Peccavi–that I picked up from an old French monk, who tried to teach me manners when at Bordeaux.  But he was a sly old rogue.”  And the old man’s eyes twinkled most impenitently amidst the snowy masses of his hair.

   “Surely, my son, said the sacrist gravely, “thou canst call to mind the past, and say, ‘I have done this thing that was wrong and that thing that was wrong.’”

   “Verily, and so I can;  and go on till the convent-bell rings for supper.  But, Qu’importe?  as the Frenchman used to say when he was taken prisoner.  Let bygones be bygones.  Heaven’s memory is not so long as you priests make out.  And besides, there’s a long list on the other side.  There’s more to my credit than otherwise.  I have cut many a Pagan’s throat.”

   “But the Church requires confession.”

   “Do as you will with me;  I am satisfied.”

   “Fain would I hear thee acknowledge thy sin as holy men of old have done.  Thou, a man of blood, must need to do so more than they.”

   “I know not, father.  I only know that I am content.  You cannot frighten me.  And as to blood–why how can Heaven find fault with that, when all the time we were shedding it in Heaven’s name?”

   “The sword needs wiping that has executed righteous judgment.”

   “You are too learned for me,” replied the old man, with a weary look of impatience;  “however, do what you will with me;  I never interfered with the priest.  I am satisfied.”

   And so it seemed all along.  The war-stained soldier was satisfied–satisfied with himself, totally insensible to his guilt before the Great Judge.  Nor was he more ignorant in this than thousands still are among ourselves, than all are till taught of God;  for while we shrink from his deeds of blood and reckless living, we must remember that they were in themselves the fruits of the spirit of the age, that had made war a merit before heaven, and bloodshed a passport to eternal felicity.

   There was something dreadful in the way in which this evil spirit seemed to possess old Lionel to the last.  There he sat–to a casual observer, venerable old age in noblest type; but to one who looked into those eyes when deeds of blood and violence were spoken of, it was the face of a wild beast, too feeble to rend the prey, but scenting it with unabated pleasure.

   An instance of this greatly shocked the sacrist one day.  He was reading from a book of legends the story of St. George and the Dragon, very much on the same principle (not very highly rational) as that on which biographies are often read still, that because a man was a good Christian, therefore it must do good to hear about him.  The legend was very diffuse in details, as is the manner with legends generally, and also with biographies.  The description of the horrible monster–his fiery breath, and many forked tails, and scaly armour–was intensely vivid.  But the account of the battle was reality itself.  You felt yourself there : you heard the hideous roaring and the shock of conflict.  You smelt the sulphurous smoke.  You saw the streams of blood that poured like rivers from the dragon’s wounds.  So interested was the sacrist in his reading, that he never looked up till he had done, and the last writhing of the dragon was over;  and then he wished he had never read the story at all.

   A great oath rattled shockingly through the room, as the old man said,–his whole countenance lighted up with an expression of wild delight that was quite painful to witness in one so situated,–“Well done, Saint George!  St George for merry England!  Thousands of times have I shouted his name, but never before knew the gallant knight he was.  As you read it, Sir Priest, it made me think I was again amongst those fiery Moors, under the burning sun of Spain, with their wild shouts dinning in my ears, and their sharp scimitars flashing around me, and their blood–but I shall never see such things more.”

   And he sighed a mighty sigh.

   “There are better things to see hereafter, my son,” said the sacrist, with a shudder.

   But he might as well have essayed to comfort a disappointed tiger with such a thought.

   And in this state of mind the old man died–died, without a struggle and without a fear;  so peacefully that many said, as they say still of such cases, that all must therefore be well.  Yet such peace proves nothing save the truth of Scripture, when it says, “There are no bands in their death.”

   Men like him were the residuum of the Crusades, in their effects upon the Christian world.  In the vain attempt to redeem the holy places from the power of the Turk, they brought thousands into bondage under lusts and passions that made them no better than the Turk himself.

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CHAPTER  V

The Captive’s  Te Deum

The heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close;
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turned when he rose.

                                                                        MOORE.

   The bells of Ingham Church rang out a merry peal one day, and all the village people and the whole neighbourhood around knew the reason why.  For some time past it had been generally understood that the new Priory had been successful in obtaining the redemption from slavery among the Moors of one who had long been in captivity, and that this earnest of its beneficent work would ere long be present in the collegiate church at a special service of thanksgiving. Strange stories were current amongst the gossip-mongers as to who this captive was;  and for this simple reason, because no one–not even the friars themselves–knew anything whatever about him.  Some said he was a relative of Sir Miles;  others, that it was an Ingham man named Adam Goggs, who had gone to the wars years ago, and never since been heard of;  and one rustic lover of the marvelous repeated a dream he had so often, that people began to treat it as reality at last, namely, that it was the old king, Edward the Second, whose end had been so shrouded in mystery.  Every day they looked for the coming of the stranger;  and so wild were their anticipations, that if they had seen him prancing by on a Barbary steed, surrounded by Moorish princes gorgeously appareled, they would have taken it as a matter of course.

   However, in due time, the Redeemed Captive arrived at the Priory;  but no one saw him come, so at least as to recognize him.  The news of it quickly spread from the convent that night, and the joy-bells from the noble church-tower next morning confirmed the glad tidings.

   The Church was filled to overflowing that day, for crowds flocked to it from all the neighbouring villages.  Gallant knights and fair ladies thought it well worth their while to be there : the artisan  and chapman let business take its chance in order to witness the ceremonial;  and the ploughman got his holiday that he might join in the spectacle with the rest.  Every bench was occupied;  while at the west end, where there were no benches–about one-third of the body of the church–a dense mass of people took up all the standing room.

   And now every eye was turned towards the cloister door as a procession entered by it into the church, chanting the gladsome words of the 136^th Psalm.  First came thurifers scattering light clouds of incense, then acolytes and choristers, and then the little band of white-robed, red-crossed friars, their Prior, Richard Marleburgh, bringing up the rear.  And there, in their midst, walking between two of the brethren was the object to which all attention was diverted at that moment–the Redeemed Captive.  No one could have mistaken him amongst that company.  Too plainly had the iron eaten into his soul.  He was an old man, with perfectly white close-cropped hair that strangely contrasted with the deep bronze, almost brown complexion of his skin.  A hideous scar disfigured his face, which would nevertheless have been handsome but for the scowling expression that had settled down on it.  Flesh he seemed to have none : it was as if he had been dried in the sun.  And yet, though he walked with a limp, his step was that of a younger man than he looked.

   As the procession passed into the chancel, he took his place at a prie-dieu in front of the holy rood, and very appropriate were the words of the chant at that point–“Who remembered us in our low estate , for His mercy endureth for ever : And hath redeemed us from our enemies, for His mercy endureth for ever.”  Yet those who were near enough to scan him closely observed then, and indeed throughout the service, that no look of joy even glimmered on that dark sad face.  The melancholy that brooded over it seemed too heavy to be dispelled even for an instant.

   The prior ascended the pulpit and addressed a few words of explanation to the people,  His text was before him, and he stuck to it.  He spoke of the sufferings of their now rescued brother, and how, though dwelling in the midst of the infidel, he had not denied the faith.  He expatiated on the cruelties to which he had been subjected, the marks of which they could themselves behold : and he explained how through the godly bounteousness of the founder of their house, they had been the blessed means of bringing back this sheep of Christ’s flock out of the howling wilderness.  “And you, my son,” he concluded, “who, for some good and weighty reasons, are yet a stranger to us in name, we welcome back among us as being no stranger in deed.  We welcome you as a brother in Christ’s name;  for His you have never ceased to be.  Though separated from His Church and ordinances these twenty years past and more, you have cleaved steadfastly to Him in heart and in profession.  The gates of hell have not prevailed against you, as they never shall, according to His promise, against any who hold them fast to His Holy Church.  Welcome, thrice welcome, unknown brother, yet well known, into the congregation of Christ’s flock, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

   And all the people said out loud, “Amen.”

   Then, descending from the pulpit, the prior, accompanied by all the brethren, advanced to where the captive was standing, and taking him again by the hand, led him into the chancel, where he was censed, and his robe taken off him, and a new robe put on him;  and then they brought him before the high-altar, and there he knelt in prayer, the whole congregation preserving a profound silence.

   At length he arose from his knees;  and then there pealed forth from organ and choir the glorious Te Deum.

   It was a deeply affecting sight, and as those jubilant strains swelled through the beautiful house of God, where the once slave now stood in his new-bought freedom, it afforded a touching illustration of a yet more blessed emancipation, and of the truth that

“A soul redeemed demands a life of praise.”

   Yet, though some shed tears from the warmth of their feelings, and others cried–for it is catching–because they saw their neighbours do so, the most unmoved among them all was the stranger himself.  He went through his part with perfect propriety, and with an ease of manner that showed of itself that he was no vulgar captive;  yet of emotion of any sort he evinced not the smallest degree.  It was as if he were incapable of it–past feeling.

   The crowd remained while high mass was said, prostrating themselves when the host was elevated, and then awaited the return of the procession, that they might have another near inspection of the stranger.  Many knights and gentlemen came forward to shake him by the hand, among the first of whom was Sir Miles Stapleton.  Indeed, he accompanied him through the crowd, talking with him, and noticing one and another of the byestanders.

   It was in this way that, as it happened, he caught sight of the eager face of Cicely Mavis intently gazing on the stranger.  She had come with her mother to the church, her feelings wrought up to a high pitch at the thought of seeing one who had been a captive among the Saracens;  and there she stood, in her simple holiday attire, her whole soul looking out at her eyes.

   “Ha! maiden,” cried Sir Miles, good-naturedly, “so you have come with all the rest to see the Saracen’s handiwork!  Come hither, and look on it well.”

   And he put out his hand to draw the girl forward, who timidly yielded to the summons.

   “Here is a child, Sir Stranger,” he began, smiling on her, and then turning towards his companion, “who–“

   But he could get no further : what he saw stopped all utterance.

   The stranger had started back, and was staring on Cicely with a look of unutterable surprise : all apathy gone, every nerve twitching with excitement, even the scowl no longer visible.  It was as if a bright vision of hope had suddenly presented itself to one given up to despair.

   “Merciful heaven!” he slowly exclaimed–and as he spoke, his accent was strange, and he seemed at times to have forgotten his native tongue–“it is herself : it is Cicely.  Just as she was when I left her!  And yet it cannot be.  Twenty years ago.  And she is dead too!  both dead!  But is it her spirit come to welcome me this day?”

   “Nay, my good sir,” said Sir Miles, across whose mind the suspicion flashed that the poor man was deranged in his intellect;  “this damsel is no spirit, but fair flesh and blood, and her name is Cicely Mavis.  I pray you let us pass on.”

   “It is her image, her very image : I cannot be mistaken,” continued the stranger, still keeping his eyes fastened on the frightened girl.  “It is the face and form I have had before me these twenty years of weary death–the only sight I had to comfort me and make me wish to live.  And yet,” he added, with a deep-drawn sigh, “it cannot be.  But let me touch thee.”

   And he moved towards her, as in a dream.

   “Come away, Cicely, come away,” cried a shrill voice.  “let not that Saracen get hold on thee.  I always said thy dabbling in such things would be thy ruin;”  and Ann Winfarthing pulled at her with all her feeble might.

   The confusion and astonishment were increasing.  As to the friars, they looked at one another and at their eccentric guest in blank dismay.  But at this juncture Sir Miles whispered to the prior, and crying out in a tone of command, “Make way, good people, for the prior,” seized the stranger by the arm, and pointed to the cloister door.

   “Not without her,” exclaimed the stranger, and the knight found that the bony arm was like a bar of iron.

   “Avaunt, thou imp of darkness!” screamed Ann, preparing to fly at him, as he took the hand of the bewildered Cicely.

   “Hold thy peace, old fool,” growled the knight in Ann’s ear, “and come along with us.”

   And thus in strange fashion, and amidst stranger confusion, they passed into the cloisters, and through them into the refectory, leaving the crowd within the church to form their own conclusions as to the meaning of this unexpected episode, which they did in every conceivable variety.

   “Sir Miles,” said the stranger, still grasping Cicely by the hand, “I am John de Saxham of Westhall.”

   He said this so abruptly, and yet so calmly, that the good knight in his turn was staggered, and gazed at the speaker in mute astonishment.

   “My old camerade, John de Saxham?” at length he exclaimed, eying the other critically, if not scornfully.

   “The same.”

   “That cannot be.  He has been dead these many years.”

   “I tell you nay.  He is alive, and stands before you.  Know you this?” and he drew from his breast a small poniard of beautiful inlaid work : “once we exchanged weapons, and this one of yours has been with me ever since, and done much work.”

   “Why told you not your name at first?” enquired Sir Miles, recognizing the weapon, but still perplexed.

   “Because,” promptly replied the other, “I thought John de Saxham was as good as dead, for my heart had died within me.  Listen, and let this maiden–who, spite of all unlikelihoods, I truly believe, will prove that I am alive again–sit by my side as I tell my tale of woe.”

________________________

  
   “One and twenty years ago, in fulfillment of a vow made long before in time of mortal illness, I put on the cross and, in company with a small band of Christian volunteers, quitted my country for a brief  campaign against the infidel in the south of Spain.  Bitter was the pang of separation from my home at Westhall, which had not long become a paradise by the presence of my fair young bride, and which promised ere long to be made yet happier by the arrival of an angel visitor.  But the call was urgent.  The pagan powers of Morocco and Granada were thundering at the gates of Tarifa;  and then was the time, methought, to do God real service in a short and sharp crusade.

   “Alas, alas!  it was sharp, but not short.  In the sanguinary battle before Tarifa, in which the Christians under Alphonso of Castile were victorious, I was taken prisoner, hurried in a state of insensibility into a boat, and carried to Africa–a slave.  There, under