years. Then Abbot Mark making discoveries, there had been given him a stone room with a furnace, goldsmith’s tools and two Brothers for helpers. If you had a master maker among your monks waste him not in digging, sowing, weeding and gathering! Now he made lovely things for the church, and for the Abbot’s table. He made presents for the Abbot to send prelates and princes. The Abbot bragged of his work. When great visitors came they were shown him in his smithy.
Not only so, but because he was silent—brown-blond, tall and still, like King David in the picture—and evidently a hunter after God, and scrupulous to do all the Rule demanded, and all that it allowed of austerity supererogative—he had fame as monk. Some of his brethren wished him well and leaned upon his presence, taking as it were his sunlight, valuing him in and for Silver Cross. Two or three who also hunted God met him and understood him. Others found in him a reproach, and others were indifferent or secretly laughed. Silver Cross was much like the world. Brother Richard continued his struggle and his hunting, under an exterior still as the church, stripped and simple.
Work this day—work on a rich silver salt cellar for the Abbot to give to a bishop. As he worked in his stone room with his hammers and gravers it was coming across him with a breath of mockery—it was coming with a breath of mockery like a wind from a foggy sea—“Above and below the salt at a bishop’s table. Above and below the salt—Christ’s table. Nicodemus above the salt—blind Bartimeus and the woman of Samaria below?”
He shook off phantasy. The Abbot was his spiritual father whom he had undertaken to obey, not criticise. True monk must obey and not question—not question, not doubt, not compare, not judge. He must kill Imagination, wagging so. Oh, Truth and Beauty—Truth and Beauty—Truth and Beauty!
The sun on Gethsemane. The sun on the Blessed among women sitting on her doorstep, behind her the sound of the carpenters working.
Sext. The chanting, and the windows ruby and emerald, sapphire and amethyst glass, the glowing patterns, the rows of small figures. The dark vault of the church and the shafts of gold dust. The cool, the sense of suspension. The great picture burning forth—the Blessed among women!
For long now the picture had taken his heart. She was so glorious—she was so sure—she was an ardent flame mounting with a golden passion upward! And yet she was tender, compassionate. None might doubt that, looking at her lips and the light and shadow, the modelling, beneath the eyes. She was so tall—did she turn her head, so and so would be the exquisite long line of the throat. Almost at times he thought she turned her head. She was alive—splendidly so, with glory. “Blessed among women—Blessed among women—hold me more fully—take me with you into heaven—take me—!”
Afternoon and work still. The sun going down. Vespers. The Magnificat. The red-gold light on the picture, uncertain, making her to seem to move. So would she stand in the round. “Blessed among women—Blessed among women, I am here, thy child and lover! Make me whole—take me with thee. Speak, speak to me!”
Night. He did not sleep in the dormitory. There were six cells of privilege, established when Abbot Reginald of old had made certain alterations. Brother Oswald who was writing the Chronicle of Silver Cross, Brothers Peter and Allen who illuminated the great Psalter, Brother Timothy who had been longest monk of Silver Cross and was growing like a child, Brother Norbert who was the Abbot’s kinsman had the five, and Brother Richard who made wealthy things in gold and silver the sixth. So was not the Rule, but in many things nowadays abbots modified Rule.
Compline. Night in his cell. “Ah, if the noble and rich visions were but more real! Ah, if I had the power to move and make move! Ah, if the picture would become Herself—for me, for me!”
CHAPTER IV
Montjoy rode through a dewy June morning. He crossed the bridge, his horse’s hoofs sounding deeply, an air from the sea filling nostrils, the light striking sails of fishing boats gliding away below the arches where all widened. Montjoy was bound for Damson Wood.
Montjoy rode homeward in the evening, after a day in the deep wood, after a visit to Damson Hill graveyard. His two stout serving men, riding the brown and the roan behind him, thought it a strange visit.
Nearing the bridge Montjoy checked the black horse and turning slightly, looked back at Saint Leofric’s mound. There was now full, level flow of reddened light, and the mound was bathed in it. The church stood up in that light, the cloister walls were made faery.
“Oh, Hugh and Hugh! I walk in your heart and I see the dark engines, and I walk in your mind and it is a hold for sorceries!”
He put his horse into motion. “Such a plan and such a course could never have come to Mark! Though it might have come to Prior Matthew.”
He was upon the bridge. Others were crossing. Sir Robert Somerville he caught up with. “Well met, Somerville!”
“My lord Montjoy—” Somerville presented his kinsman riding beside him. The sunset reddened and reddened. The waters glowed below the arches, the boats moved, a barge slipped underneath, emerged and went up stream, its rowers singing. The dark houses rose from the river bank. One that was narrow and latticed, close to the old wall, drew their eyes. The sunset made its windows to blaze. Somerville and Montjoy both saw, without the physical eye, the courtesan, Morgen Fay.
Somerville began to talk of where he had been. He had been to show his kinsman Saint Leofric’s and a miracle.
Said Sir Humphrey, “I have always desired to see a miracle.”
“Saw you one?”
“You gibe!” said Somerville. “But we did see one. It would not be wise, even for Montjoy, to doubt to the throng that we saw one!”
“What happened?”
“A woman received her sight.”
They left the bridge. The dying rose of the sun touched Middle Forest’s High Street. Folk were yet abroad, going this way and going that; most or all going home. Droning sound was in the air; then Saint Ethelred’s bell began to ring.
Somerville talked on. He lived so, with vivacity, like a quick sword playing with joy in its own point and edge, like wine liking its own sparkle from beaker to cup. To a certain depth he could read Montjoy. Old rivalries, jealousies conflicts existed between Somerville and Montjoy. Now all the sea above was calm, but those ancient tendencies stayed like reefs below. Light-drawing boats could pass above them, but greater craft might be in danger.
Somerville’s quick and agreeable voice jetted on. His eye, quick as a hawk’s, marked the small erect man riding the black horse. If Montjoy in his nature had sensitive tracts, far be it from Somerville not to touch these! Do it always, though with swordly skill, keeping one’s self invisible, invulnerable!
Montjoy, it was evident, did not like Saint Leofric’s miracles. Why? Somerville, using wit, found part of it. All affairs were seesaw! You go up; I go down. Up Saint Leofric; down Saint Willebrod. Up Dominican; down Cistercian. Up Prior Hugh; down Abbot Mark, Montjoy’s kinsman. Up Friary; down Silver Cross, enriched by, linked to, the castle on the hill. Up neighbour’s glory; down my glory! If Montjoy, as apparently was the case, identified his glory with that of Silver Cross—Why, or to what extent, who cared? He did it, that was evident! His doing it answered for Somerville’s cue.
Somerville with malice dilated upon the throng at Saint Leofric’s
