The House of Walderne Part 13

"It will be difficult," replied the other.

Into the tavern they turned, and the noise suddenly subsided.

"What do ye here, ye reprobates, that ye stand drinking, dicing, quarrelling? To your hostels, every one of you," said the first.

Martin expected scornful resistance, and was surprised to see that instead, all the rapscallions evacuated the place, and the "proctors," as we should now call them, remained to remonstrate with the host, whose license they threatened to withdraw.

"How can I help it?" he said. "They be too many for me."

"If you cannot keep order, seek another trade," was the stern response. "We cannot have the morals of our scholars corrupted."

"Bless you, sirs, it is they who corrupt me. I don't know half the wickedness they do."

Our readers need not believe him, the proctors did not.

But Martin took the warning, and was bent on getting home, only he lost his way, and could not find it again. It was not for want of asking; but the young scholars he met preferred lies to truth, in the mere frolic of puzzling a newcomer, and sent him first to Frideswide's, thence to the East Gate, near Saint Clement's Chapel, and he was making his way back with difficulty along the High Street when he heard an awful confusion and uproar about the "Quatre Voies" (Carfax) Conduit.

"Down with the lubberly North men!"

"Split their skulls, though they be like those of the bullocks their sires drive!"

"Down with the moss troopers!"

"Boves boreales!"

And answering cries:

"Down with the lisping, smooth-tongued Southerners!"

"Australes asini!"

"Eheu!"

"Slay me every one with a burr in his mouth." (An allusion to the Northumbrian accent.)

"Down with the mincing fools who have got no r.r.r's"

"Burrrrn them, you should say."

"Frangite capita."

"Percut.i.te porcos boreales."

"Vim inferre australibus asinis."

"Sternite omnes Gallos."

So they shouted imprecations in Latin and English, and eke in French, for there were many Gauls about.

What chance of getting through the fighting, drunken, riotous mobs?

Quarterstaves were rising and falling upon heads and shoulders. No deadlier weapons were used, but showers of missiles from time to time descended, unsavoury or otherwise.

At length the superior force of the Northern men prevailed, and Martin, whose blood was strangely stirred, saw a slim and delicate youth fighting so bravely with a huge Northern ox ("bos borealis,"

he called him) that for a time he stayed the rush, until the whole Southern line gave way and Martin, entangled with the rout, got driven down Saint Mary's Lane, opposite the church of that name, an earlier building on the site of the present University church.

At an angle of the street, where another lane entered in, the young Southerner before mentioned turned to bay, and with three or four more of his countryfolk kept the narrow way against scores of pursuers.

Martin could not restrain himself any longer. He saw three or four men pressed by dozens, and rushed with all the fire of his generous and impetuous nature to their aid, in time to intercept a blow aimed at the young leader:

Well could he brandish such weapons, and he stood side by side and settled many a "bos borealis," or northern bullock, with as much zest as ever a southern butcher. But at length his leader fell, and Martin stood diverting the strokes aimed at his fallen companion, who was stunned for the moment, until a rough hearty voice cried out:

"Let them alone, they have had enough. 'Tis cowardly to fight a dozen to one. Listen, the row is on in the Quatre Voies again. We shall find more there."

The two were left alone.

Martin raised his wounded companion, whose head was bleeding profusely.

"Art thou hurt much?"

"Not so very much, only dazed. I shall soon be better. I am close home."

"Let me support you. Lean on me, I will see you safe."

"You came just in time. Where did you come from? I never saw you before--and where did you learn to handle the cudgel so well?"

"From the woods of merry Suss.e.x, and later on, the tilt yard of Kenilworth."

"Oh, you are a true Southerner, then. So am I, the second son of Waleran de Monceux of Herst, in the Andredsweald.

"Here we are at home--come in to Saint Dymas' Hall."

Chapter 8: Hubert At Lewes Priory.

William de Warrenne and Gundrada his wife, the daughter of the mighty Conqueror, were travelling on the Continent and made a pilgrimage to the famous Abbey of Clairvaux, presided over by the great abbot, poet, and preacher of the age, Saint Bernard. So much did they admire all they saw and heard, so sweet was the contrast of monastic peace to their life of ceaseless turmoil, that they determined to found such a house of G.o.d on their newly-acquired domains in Suss.e.x, after the fashion of Clairvaux.

Already they had superseded the wooden Saxon church of Saint Pancras, the boy martyr of ancient Rome, which they found at Lewes, by a stone building, and now upon its site they began to erect a mightier edifice by far, upon proportions which would entail the labour of generations.

A wondrous and beautiful priory arose; it covered forty acres, its church was as big as a cathedral, a magnificent cruciform pile--one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty-five feet in height from pavement to roof; there were twenty-four ma.s.sive pillars in the nave {14}, each thirty feet in circ.u.mference; but it was not until the time of their grandson, the third earl, that it was dedicated. Nor indeed were its comely proportions enhanced by the two western towers until the very date of our tale, nearly two centuries later. Then it lived on in its beauty, a joy to successive generations, until the vandals of Thomas Cromwell, trained to devastation, so completely destroyed it in a few brief weeks that the next generation had almost forgotten its site {15}.

The first monks were foreigners, by the advice of Lanfranc, and, as a great favour, Saint Bernard sent three of his own brethren from Clairvaux, who taught the good people of Lewes to sing "Jesu dulcis memoria." Loth though we are to confess it, there can be little doubt that the foreigners were a great advance in learning and piety upon the monks before the Conquest; the first prior, Lanzo, was conspicuous for his many virtues and sweet ascetic disposition.

There the bones of the founders were laid to rest beneath the gorgeous fabric they had founded, and there they had hoped to await the day of doom and righteous retribution. But alas! poor Normans!

in the sixteenth century old Harry pulled the grand church down above their heads; in the nineteenth the navvies, making the railroad, disinterred their bones. But they respected the dead, the names William and Gundrada were upon the coffins which their profane mattocks unearthed, and the reader may see them at Southover Church.

In the freshness of a May morning Hubert and his new uncle, Sir Nicholas HarenG.o.d, dismounted at the gate of the priory, having left their train at the hostelry up in the town.