The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

Whilst I have been preaching, who preach so rarely and so ill, the good cure has been soliciting the lord of the manor to step into the church, and give order what shall be done with his great-great-grandfather.

“Ods bodikins! what, have you dug him up?”

“Nay, my lord, he never was buried.”

“What, the old dict was true after all?”

“So true that the workmen this very day found a skeleton erect in the pillar they are repairing. I had sent to my lord at once, but I knew he would be here.”

“It is he! 'Tis he!” said his descendant, quickening his pace. “Let us go see the old boy. This youth is a stranger, I think.”

Gerard bowed.

“Know then that my great-great-grandfather held his head high and being on the point of death, revolted against lying under the aisle with his forbears for mean folk to pass over. So, as the tradition goes, he swore his son (my great-grandfather), to bury him erect in one of the pillars of the church” (here they entered the porch). “'For,' quoth he, 'NO BASE MAN SHALL PASS OVER MY STOMACH.' Peste!” and even while speaking, his lordship parried adroitly with his stick a skull that came hopping at him, bowled by a boy in the middle of the aisle, who took to his heels yelling with fear the moment he saw what he had done. His lordship hurled the skull furiously after him as he ran, at which the cure gave a shout of dismay and put forth his arm to hinder him, but was too late.

The cure groaned aloud. And as if this had evoked spirits of mischief, up started a whole pack of children from some ambuscade, and unseen, but heard loud enough, clattered out of the church like a covey rising in a thick wood.

“Oh! these pernicious brats,” cried the cure. “The workmen cannot go to their nonemete but the church is rife with them. Pray Heaven they have not found his late lordship; nay, I mind, I hid his lordship under a workmen's jerkin, and—saints defend us! the jerkin has been moved.”

The poor cure's worst misgivings were realized: the rising generation of the plebians had played the mischief with the haughty old noble. “The little ones had jockeyed for the bones oh,” and pocketed such of them as seemed adapted for certain primitive games then in vogue amongst them.

“I'll excommunicate them,” roared the curate, “and all their race.”

“Never heed,” said the scapegrace lord: and stroked his hawk; “there is enough of him to swear by. Put him back! put him back!”

“Surely, my lord, 'tis your will his bones be laid in hallowed earth, and masses said for his poor prideful soul?”

The noble stroked his hawk.

“Are ye there, Master Cure?” said he. “Nay, the business is too old: he is out of purgatory by this time, up or down. I shall not draw my purse-strings for him. Every dog his day. Adieu, Messires, adieu, ancestor;” and he sauntered off whistling to his hawk and caressing it.

His reverence looked ruefully after him.

“Cretensis incidit in Cretensem,” said he sorrowfully. “I thought I had him safe for a dozen masses. Yet I blame him not, but that young ne'er-do-weel which did trundle his ancestor's skull at us: for who could venerate his great-great-grandsire and play football with his head? Well it behoves us to be better Christians than he is.” So they gathered the bones reverently, and the cure locked them up, and forbade the workmen, who now entered the church, to close up the pillar, till he should recover by threats of the Church's wrath every atom of my lord. And he showed Gerard a famous shrine in the church. Before it were the usual gifts of tapers, etc. There was also a wax image of a falcon, most curiously moulded and coloured to the life, eyes and all. Gerard's eye fell at once on this, and he expressed the liveliest admiration. The cure assented. Then Gerard asked, “Could the saint have loved hawking?”

The cure laughed at his simplicity. “Nay, 'tis but a statuary hawk. When they have a bird of gentle breed they cannot train, they make his image, and send it to this shrine with a present, and pray the saint to work upon the stubborn mind of the original, and make it ductile as wax: that is the notion, and methinks a reasonable one, too.”

Gerard assented. “But alack, reverend sir, were I a saint, methinks I should side with the innocent dove, rather than with the cruel hawk that rends her.”

“By St. Denys you are right,” said the cure. “But, que voulez-vous? the saints are debonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop of Avignon sent this one.”

“What! do bishops hawk in this country?”

“One and all. Every noble person hawks, and lives with hawk on wrist. Why, my lord abbot hard by, and his lordship that has just parted from us, had a two years' feud as to where they should put their hawks down on that very altar there. Each claimed the right hand of the altar for his bird.”

“What desecration!”

“Nay! nay! thou knowest we make them doff both glove and hawk to take the blessed eucharist. Their jewelled gloves will they give to a servant or simple Christian to hold: but their beloved hawks they will put down on no place less than the altar.”

Gerard inquired how the battle of the hawks ended.

“Why, the abbot he yielded, as the Church yields to laymen. He searched ancient books, and found that the left hand was the more honourable, being in truth the right hand, since the altar is east, but looks westward. So he gave my lord the soi-disant right hand, and contented himself with the real right hand, and even so may the Church still outwit the lay nobles and their arrogance, saving your presence.”

“Nay, sir, I honour the Church. I am convent bred, and owe all I have and am to Holy Church.”

“Ah, that accounts for my sudden liking to thee. Art a gracious youth. Come and see me whenever thou wilt.”

Gerard took this as a hint that he might go now. It jumped with his own wish, for he was curious to hear what Denys had seen and done all this time. He made his reverence and walked out of the church; but was no sooner clear of it than he set off to run with all his might: and tearing round a corner, ran into a large stomach, whose owner clutched him, to keep himself steady under the shock; but did not release his hold on regaining his equilibrium.

“Let go, man,” said Gerard.

“Not so. You are my prisoner.”

“Prisoner?”

“Ay.”

“What for, in Heaven's name?”

“What for?