THE

CAMP OF REFUG E.

CHAPTER I.

THE MESSENGER.

It was long ago; it was in the year of grace one thousand and seventy, or four years after the battle of Hastings, which decided the right of power between the English and Norman nations, and left the old Saxon race exposed to the goadings of the sharp Norman lance, that a novice went on his way from the grand abbey of Crowland to the dependent house or succursal cell of Spalding, in the midst of the Lincolnshire fens. The young man carried a long staff or pole in his hand, with which he aided himself in leaping across the numerous ditches and rivulets that intersected his path, and in trying the boggy ground before he ventured to set his feet upon it. The upper end of his staff was fashioned like unto the staff of a pilgrim, but the lower end was armed with a heavy iron ferrule, from which projected sundry long steel nails or spikes. It was a fen-pole, such, I wist, as our fenners yet use in Hoiland, Lindsey, and Kesteven.

VOL. I.

B

In a strong and bold hand this staff might be a good war-weapon; and as the young man raised the skirts of his black garment it might have been seen that he had a short broad hunting-knife fastened to his girdle. He was a fair-haired, blueeyed, and full-lipped youth, with an open countenance and a ruddy complexion: the face seemed made to express none but joyous feelings, so that the grief and anxiety which now clouded it appeared to be quite out of place. Nor was that cloud always there, for whensoever the autumn sun shone out brightly, and some opening in the monotonous forest of willows and alders gave him a pleasant or a varied prospect, or when the bright king-fisher flitted across his path, or the wild-duck rose from the fen and flew heaven-ward, or the heron raised itself on its long legs to look at him from the sludge, or the timid cygnet went sailing away in quest of the parent swan, his countenance lighted up like that of a happy thoughtless boy. Ever and anon too some inward emotion made him chuckle or laugh outright. Thus between sadness and gladness the novice went on his way—a rough and miry way proper to give a permanent fit of ill-humour to a less buoyant spirit, for he had quitted the road or causeway which traversed the fens and was pursuing a devious path, which was for the greater part miry in summer, but a complete morass at the present season of the year. Notwithstanding all his well-practised agility, and in spite of the good aid of his long staff, he more than once was soused head over ears in a broad water-course. With a good road within view, it may be thought that he had some strong motive for choosing this very bad one; and every time that

his path approached to the road, or that the screen of alders and willows failed him, he crouched low under the tall reeds and bulrushes of the fen, and stole along very cautiously, peeping occasionally through the rushes towards the road, and turning his ear every time that the breeze produced a loud or unusual sound. As thus he went on, the day declined fast, and the slanting sun shone on the walls of a tall stone mansion, battlemented and moated-a dwelling-house, but a house proper to stand a siege: and in these years of trouble none could dwell at peace in any house if unprovided with the means of holding out against a blockade, and of repelling siege and assault. All round this manor-house, to a wide space, the trees had been cut down and the country drained; part of the water being carried off to a neighbouring mere, and part being collected and gathered, by means of various cuts, to fill the deep moat round the house.

Here the young man, in fear of being discovered by those who occupied that warlike yet fair-looking dwelling, almost crawled on the ground. Nevertheless he quitted his track to get nearer to the house; and then, cowering among some reeds and bulrushes, he put his open hand above his eyebrows, and gazed sharply at the moat, the drawbridge, the low gateway with its round-headed arch, the battlements, and the black Norman flag that floated over them. The while he gazed, the blast of a trumpet sounded on the walls, and sounded again, and once again; and, after the third blast, a noise as of many horses treading the high road or causeway was heard among the fen reeds. The novice muttered, and almost swore blasphemously,

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(albeit by the rules of the order he was bound to use no stronger terms than crede mihi, or plane, or certe, or benedicamus Domino ;) but he continued to gaze under his palm until the sounds on the road came nearer and trumpet replied to trumpet. Then, muttering "This is not a tarrying place for the feet of a true Saxon!" he crawled back to the scarcely perceptible track he had left, and kept on, in a stooping posture but at a rapid pace, until he came to a thick clump of alders, the commencement of a wood which stretched, with scarcely any interruption, to the banks of the river Welland. Here, screened from sight, he struck the warlike end of his staff against the trunk of a tree, and said aloud, Forty Norman men-at-arms! by Saint Etheldreda and by the good eye-sight that Saint Lucia hath vouchsafed unto me! Forty Norman cutthroats, and we in our succursal cell only five friars, two novices, two lay-brothers, and five hinds! and our poor upper buildings all made of wood, old and ready to burn like tow! and not ten bows in the place or five men knowing how to use them! By Saint Ovin and his cross! were our walls but as strong as those of the monks of Ely, and our war-gear better, and none of us cowards, I would say, "Up drawbridge! defy this Norman woodcutter, who felled trees in the forest for his bread until brought by the bastard to cut Saxon throats and fatten upon the lands of our thanes and our churches and monasteries! I would spit at the beard of this Ivo Taille-Bois, and call upon Thurstan my Lord Abbat of Ely, and upon the true Saxon hearts in the Camp of Refuge, for succour !" And the passionate young man struck the trunk of the poor unoffending tree until the bark cracked,

and the long thin leaves, loosened by autumn, fell all about him.

He then continued his journey through the low, thick, and monotonous wood, and after sundry more leaps, and not a few sousings in the water and slips in the mud, he reached the bank of the Welland at a point just opposite to the succursal cell of Spalding. A ferry-boat was moored under the walls of the house. He drew forth a blasthorn; but before putting it to his lips to summon the ferryman across, he bethought him that he could not be wetter than he was, that he had got his last fall in a muddy place, and that the readiest way to cleanse himself before coming into the presence of his superior would be to swim across the river instead of waiting to be ferried over. This also suited the impatient mood he was in, and he knew that the serf who managed the boat was always slow in his movements, and at times liable to sudden and unseasonable fits of deafness. So, throwing his heavy staff before him, like a javelin, and with so much vigour that it reached and stuck deep into the opposite bank, he leaped into the river and swam across after it. Before he came to the Welland the sun had gone down; but it was a clear autumnal evening, and if he was not seen in the twilight by a lay-brother stationed on the top of the house to watch for his return and to keep a look-out along the river, it must have been because the said lay-brother was either drowsy and had gone to sleep, or was hungry and had gone down to see what was toward in the kitchen.

The succursal cell of Spalding was but a narrow and humble place compared with its great mother