The King's Achievement Part 56

"Ah! you d.a.m.ned hound!" roared the young squire's voice; and his hand went up with the whip in it.

Ralph did not move a muscle. He seemed cut in steel.

"Let us go," said Dom Anthony again, to Chris, almost tenderly; "it is enough that we are turned out by force."

"You can go by the church, if you will," said Ralph composedly. "In fact--" He stopped as the murmur howled up again from the gate--"In fact you had better go that way. They do not seem to be your friends out there."

"We will go whichever way you wish," remarked the elder monk.

"Then the church," said Ralph, "or some other private door. I suppose you have one. Most of your houses have one, I believe."

The sneer snapped the tension.

Dom Anthony turned his back on him instantly.

"Come, brother," he said.

Chris took his father by the arm as he went up the steps.

"Come, sir," he said, "we are to go this way."

There was a moment's pause. The old man still stared down at his elder son, who was standing below in the same position. Chris heard a deep breath, and thought he was on the point of speaking; but there was silence. Then the two turned and followed the others into the cloister.

CHAPTER VII

AXES AND HAMMERS

Chris sat next morning at a high window of a house near Saint Michael's looking down towards the south of the town.

They had escaped without difficulty the night before through the church-entrance, with a man whom Ralph sent after them to see that they carried nothing away, leaving the crowd roaring round the corner of the gate, and though people looked curiously at the monks, the five laymen with them protected them from a.s.sault. Mr. Morris had found a lodging a couple of days before, unknown to Chris, in the house of a woman who was favourable to the Religious, and had guided the party straight there on the previous evening.

The two monks had said ma.s.s in Saint Michael's that morning before the town was awake; and were now keeping within doors at Sir James's earnest request, while the two gentlemen with one of the servants had gone to see what was being done at the priory.

From where Chris sat in his black habit at the leaded window he could see straight down the opening of the steep street, across the lower roofs below, to where the great pile of the Priory church less than half-a-mile away soared up in the sunlight against the water-meadows where the Ouse ran to the south of the town.

The street was very empty below him, for every human being that could do so had gone down to the sacking of the priory. There might be pickings, sc.r.a.ps gathered from the h.o.a.rds that the monks were supposed to have gathered; there would probably be an auction; and there would certainly be plenty of excitement and pleasure.

Chris was himself almost numb to sensation. The coolness that had condensed round his soul last night had hardened into ice; he scarcely realised what was going on, or how great was the catastrophe into which his life was plunged. There lay the roofs before him--he ran his eye from the west tower past the high lantern to the delicate tracery of the eastern apse and chapels--in the hands of the spoilers; and here he sat dry-eyed and steady-mouthed looking down on it, as a man looks at a wound not yet begun to smart.

It was piteously clear and still. Smoke was rising from a fire somewhere behind the church, a noise as of metal on stone c.h.i.n.ked steadily, and the voices of men calling one to another sounded continually from the enclosure. Now and again the tiny figure of a workman showed clear on the roof, pick in hand; or leaning to call directions down to his fellows beneath.

Dom Anthony looked in presently, breviary in hand, and knelt by Chris on the window-step, watching too; but he spoke no word, glanced at the white face and sunken eyes of the other, sighed once or twice, and went out again.

The morning pa.s.sed on and still Chris watched. By eleven o'clock the men were gone from the roof; half an hour had pa.s.sed, and no further figure had appeared.

There were footsteps on the stairs; and Sir James came in.

He came straight across to his son and sat down by him. Chris looked at him. The old man nodded.

"Yes, my son," he said, "they are at it. Nothing is to be left, but the cloister and guest-house. The church is to be down in a week they say."

Chris looked at him dully.

"All?" he said.

"All the church, my son."

Sir James gave an account of what he had seen. He had made his way in with Nicholas and a few other persons, into the court; but had not been allowed to enter the cloister. There was a furnace being made ready in the calefactorium for the melting of the lead, he had been told by one of the men; and the church, as he had seen for himself, was full of workmen.

"And the Blessed Sacrament?" asked Chris.

"A priest was sent for this morning to carry It away to a church; I know not which."

Sir James described the method of destruction.

They were beginning with the apse and the chapels behind the high altar.

The ornaments had been removed, the images piled in a great heap in the outer court, and the bra.s.ses had been torn up. There were half a dozen masons busy at undercutting the pillars and walls; and as they excavated the carpenters made wooden insertions to prop up the weight. The men had been brought down from London, as the commissioners were not certain of the temper of the Lewes people. Two of the four great pillars behind the high altar were already cut half through.

"And Ralph?"

The old man's face grew tense and bitter.

"I saw him in the roof," he said; "he made as if he did not see me."

They were half-through dinner before Nicholas joined them. He was flushed and dusty and furious.

"Ah! the hounds!" he said, as he stood at the door, trembling. "They say they will have the chapels down before night. They have stripped the lead."

Sir James looked up and motioned him to sit down.

"We will go down again presently," he said.

"But we have saved our luggage," went on Nicholas, taking his seat; "and there was a parcel of yours, Chris, that I put with it. It is all to be sent up with the horses to-night."

"Did you speak with Mr. Ralph?" asked Dom Anthony.

"Ah! I did; the dog! and I told him what I thought. But he dared not refuse me the luggage. John is to go for it all to-night."

He told them during dinner another fact that he had learned.

"You know who is to have it all?" he said fiercely, his fingers twitching with emotion.

"It is Master Gregory Cromwell, and his wife, and his baby. A fine nursery!"