The Secret Chamber at Chad Part 6

He would have been glad to get them to leave the place, but Bertram would not hear of it. He wished to try his own skill at some of the sports; and Julian, of course, must needs follow his example.

The skill and address of the Chadgrove brothers won the hearty admiration of the rustics, but it also brought them more than once into rivalry and collision with some of Mortimer's gentlemen-at-arms, who were not best pleased to be overmatched by mere striplings. It was also galling and irritating to them to note the popularity of these lads with the rustics. Any success of theirs was rewarded by loud shouting and applause, whilst no demonstration of satisfaction followed any feat performed by those wearing the livery of Mortimer. And if the lads scored a triumph over any of these latter, the undisguised delight of the beholders could not pa.s.s unnoticed by the vanquished.

Altogether there were so much jealousy and ill will aroused that little scuffles between the followers of Chad and Mortimer had already taken place in more than one part of the field. Warbel was getting very uneasy, and had persuaded Edred to use his influence with his brothers to return home before any real collision should have occurred, when a great tumult and shouting suddenly arose to interrupt the whispered colloquy, and Edred saw a great rush being made in the direction of the oak tree, where the hunchback preacher had been keeping his station the whole day long, always surrounded by a little knot of listeners.

Shouts and yells were filling the air, the voices being those of Mortimer's following.

"A Lollard, a Lollard! A heretic! Down with him! Away with him! To the fire with him! A Lollard, a Lollard!"

A deep flush overspread Edred's face. He made a spring forward; but Warbel laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

"It is no case for us to interfere in," he said, with clouded brow.

"If they have a heretic to deal with we must not meddle. It is not England's way for a score to attack one; but we must not interpose betwixt Mortimer and a heretic. That would be too much peril."

But almost before the man had done speaking Edred broke away, crying out excitedly: "My brothers, my brothers! they are there in the thick of it!" and with a groan of terror and dismay Warbel recognized the voice of Bertram raised in angry scorn.

"Stand back, you cowards! Who ever heard of fifty men against one, and he a cripple? The first who touches him I strike dead. A heretic! Pooh! nonsense. He is but a poor travelling peddler with his pack. See, here is the pack to speak for itself. For shame to mar a merry holiday in this unmannerly fashion! No; I will not give him up! Ye are no better than a pack of howling, ravening wolves. I am the Lord of Chad, and I will see that no violence is done this day. Back to your sports, ye unmannerly knaves. Are ye fit for nothing but to set upon one helpless man and worry him as dogs worry their helpless prey?"

Howls, execrations, oaths followed freely; but the village people were to a man with their young lord, and the scions of Mortimer felt it by instinct.

"Who is he? Whence came he?" was being asked on all sides; but none could give an answer. He was a stranger to the village, but all those who had been drinking in his words rallied round him, and declared he was but a simple peddler whose wares they had been buying; and Bertram, who really thought so, stood beside the tree, opened the bundle, and showed the innocent nature of the wares.

His brothers had forced their way to his side by this time, and helped to make a ring round the poor hunchback; and Edred kept a very sharp eye upon the emptying of the pack, resolved if there should be any book at the bottom to contrive that it should not reach the eyes of any of the vindictive followers of Mortimer.

But there was nothing of the sort to be seen. The man was both too poor and too wary to carry such dangerous things with him. His own thin volume had been slipped into some secret receptacle about his person, and his calmness of bearing helped to convince all who were open to conviction that he was innocent of the charge brought against him.

With dark, lowering faces, and many muttered threats, the Mortimer retainers drew off, seeing that with public feeling dead against them they could not prevail to work their will upon the intended victim. But Warbel was made very anxious by the words he heard openly spoken on all sides, and he would have given much to have hindered this act of Bertram's, generous and manly though he knew it to have been.

"It is ill work drawing down the charge of heresy," he remarked, as he got the boys at last in full march homeward. "Any other charge one can laugh to scorn; but no man may tell where orthodoxy ends and heresy begins. G.o.dly bishops have been sent to prison, and priests to the stake. How may others hope to escape?"

"Tush!" answered Bertram lightly; "there was never a heretic at Chad yet, and never will be one, I trow. Was I to see a poor cripple like that done to death without striking a blow in his defence--he in Chadwick, of which my father is lord of the manor?

Was I to see Mortimer's men turning a gay holiday into a scene of horror and affright? Never! I were unworthy of my name had I not interposed. The man was no heretic, and if he had been--"

"Have a care, sir, how thou speakest; have a care, I entreat thee!

Thou knowest not what ears may be listening!" cried Warbel, in a real fright.

Bertram laughed half scornfully.

"I have no need to be ashamed of what I think. I am a true son of the Church, and fear not what the vile Mortimer sc.u.m may say. But to pleasure thee, good Warbel, I will say no more. We will make our way home with all speed, and tell the tale to our father. I doubt not he will say it was well done. The Lord of Chad would ever have the defenceless protected, and stand between them and the false and treacherous bloodhounds of Mortimer. I have no fear that he will blame me. He would have done the same in my place."

"I trow he would," answered Warbel in a low voice; "but that does not make the deed done without peril of some sort following to the doer."

Chapter V: A Warning.

Sir Oliver and his wife listened with some anxiety to the boys'

story of the rescue of the peddler. Bertram observed the cloud upon his father's brow, and eagerly asked if he had done wrong.

"I say not so, my son," replied the knight. "I would ever have a child of mine merciful and just--the protector of the oppressed, and the champion of the defenceless; nevertheless--"

"And it was those bloodhounds of Mortimer's who were setting upon him," broke in Julian vehemently. "What right had they to molest him? Could we of Chad, upon our own soil, stand by and see it done?

I trow, father, that thou wouldst have done the same hadst thou been there."

A smile flitted over the face of the knight. He loved to see the generous fire burning in his boys' eyes; but for all that his face was something anxious as he made reply:

"Belike I should, my son, albeit perhaps in a something less vehement fashion. My authority would have served to keep down riot, and the charge against the peddler could have been forthwith examined, and if found false the man could then have been sent on his way in safety. But it is dangerous work just now to appear to side with those against whom the foul charge of heresy is brought.

Knowest thou--know any of ye--what gave rise to the sudden suspicion?"

Edred, who knew much more of the real nature of the peddler's occupation that day, kept his lips close sealed. He would not for worlds have told what he had seen and heard. His brothers were plainly ignorant of the peddler's exhortation, reading, and preaching. It was not for him to add to the anxieties of his parents.

Julian was the first to answer the question.

"It was but the idle spite of the people of Mortimer," he answered.

"They had baited the bull and the bear, and they had the mind to bait or burn a heretic whilst their blood was up, as a fit end to their day's pleasuring. I saw them prowling round the tree where the fellow was talking to the women and showing his wares; and suddenly they raised the shout. I called out to Bertram that Mortimer's people were bent on a mischief, and he sprang to the peddler's side before any had touched him, and we disappointed the h.e.l.l hounds of their prey. He had nothing in his pack but such wares as all peddlers have; and the people vowed he had done naught all the day but sell to all who came. It would have been sin and shame for us of Chad to have stood by to see him hounded perhaps to death. We could not choose but balk those evil men of their will.

None of our blood could have stood by to see such ill done!"

"I cannot blame ye, my sons," said the knight. "Ye have the blood of your forefathers in your veins, and it goes against all of us at Chad to see injustice and unrighteousness committed. I do but wish the cry raised against yon man had been anything else than that of heresy. The priests and magistrates are very busy now searching out all those suspected of that vile sin, and those who shelter them are accounted as guilty as those who are proved tainted. Our foe of Mortimer is very zealous in the good cause, and will not scruple to employ against us every weapon in his power. It would be an excellent thing in his eyes to show how mine own children had stood up to defend a Lollard heretic. I would we knew something more anent this man and his views.

"Warbel, didst thou know him? Is he anyone known in and about Chad?"

"I never saw his face before, sir," answered Warbel. "I know not so much as his name. I had thought of making some inquiries of the village folks. All I noted was that he seemed always to have plenty of persons around and about him, and his wares were nothing very attractive. Still, it is often the tales peddlers tell and the way they have with them that keeps a crowd always about them. Some of the folks of the place must know who and what he is."

"Yes, verily; and it would be well for thee to ride over tomorrow and make all needful inquiry. It would set my mind at rest to know that there was no cause of complaint against him. We cannot be blind to the fact that heretical doctrines are widely spread by those purporting to be hawkers and peddlers. Yet there must be many honest men who would scorn to be so occupied, and who know not even the name of these pestilent heresies."

And with that charge the knight tried to dismiss the subject from his mind; whilst Edred went to bed feeling terribly uneasy, and dreamed all night of the secret chamber, and how the time came when they were all forced to take refuge in it from the hatred of the Lord of Mortimer and his bloodthirsty followers.

But not even to his brothers did he tell all that he had heard and all that he knew. The words of the gospel in the familiar language of his country haunted him persistently. He felt a strange wish to hear more, although he believed the wish to be sin, and strove against it might and main. Some of the pa.s.sages clung tenaciously to his memory, and he fell asleep repeating them. When he woke the words were yet in his mind, and they seemed to get between him and the words of his task that day when the boys went to their tutor for daily instruction.

Brother Emmanuel had never found Edred so inattentive and absent before. He divined that the boy must have something on his mind, and let him alone. He was not surprised that he lingered when the others had gone, and then in a low voice asked his preceptor if he would meet him in the chantry, as he felt he could not be happy till he had made confession of a certain matter, done penance, and received absolution.

A request of that sort never met a denial from the monk. He sent Edred to the chantry to pray for an hour, and met him there at the end of that time to listen to all he had to say.

Edred's story was soon told--nothing held back, not even the innermost thoughts of his heart--and the expression of the face beneath the enshrouding cowl was something strange to see.

It was long before the monk spoke, and meantime Edred lay prostrate at his feet, thankful to transfer the burden weighing him down to the keeping of another, but little guessing what the burden was to him to whom he made this confession.

Well did Brother Emmanuel know and recognize the peril of entertaining such thoughts, longings, and aspirations as were now a.s.sailing the heart of this unconscious boy. That there was sin in all these feelings he did not doubt; that heavy penance must be done for them he would not for a moment have wished to deny. But yet when he came to place reason in the place of the formulas of the Church in which he had been reared, he knew not how to condemn that longing after the Word of G.o.d which was generally the first step towards the dreaded sin of heresy.

No one more sincerely abhorred the name and the sin of heresy. When men denied the presence of the living G.o.d in the sacraments of the Church, or attacked its time-honoured practices in which the heart of the young monk was bound up, then the whole soul of the enthusiast rose up in revolt, and he felt that such blasphemers well deserved the fiery doom they brought upon themselves. But when their sin was possessing a copy of the living Word; when all that could be alleged against them was that they met together to read that Word which was denied to them by their lawful pastors and teachers, and which they had no opportunity of hearing otherwise--then indeed did it seem a hard thing that they should be so mercilessly condemned and persecuted.

Yet he could not deny that this reading and expounding of the Scriptures by the ignorant and unlearned led almost invariably to those other sins of blasphemy and irreverence which curdled the very blood in his veins. Again and again had his heart burned within him to go forth amongst the people himself; to take upon himself and put in practice the office of evangelist, which he knew to be a G.o.d-appointed ministry, and yet which was so seldom worthily fulfilled, and himself to proclaim aloud the gospel, that all might have news of the Son of G.o.d, yet might be taught to reverence the holy sacraments more rather than less for the sake of Him who established them upon earth, and to respect the priesthood, even though it might in its members show itself unworthy, because it was a thing given by Christ for the edification of the body, and because He Himself, the High Priest pa.s.sed into the heavens, must needs have His subordinate priests working with Him and by Him on earth.

Again and again had longings such as these filled his soul, and he had implored leave to go forth preaching and teaching. But he had never won permission to do this. The request had been treated with contempt, and he himself had been suspected of ambition and other unworthy motives. He had submitted to the will of his superiors, as his vow of obedience obliged him to do; but none the less did his heart burn within him as he saw more and more plainly how men were thirsting for living waters, and realized with ever-increasing intensity of pain and certainty that if the Church herself would not give her children to drink out of pure fountains, they would not be hindered from drinking of poisoned springs, and thus draw down upon themselves all manner of evils and diseases.

He had never doubted for a moment the pureness of the source from which he himself drank. He was not blind to the imperfections many and great of individuals in high places, and the corruptions which had crept within the pale of the Church, but these appeared to him incidental and capable of amendment. He never guessed at any deeper poison at work far below, tainting the very waters at their source.

He was in all essential points an orthodox son of Rome; but he had imbibed much of the spirit of the Oxford Reformers, of whom Colet was at this time the foremost, and his more enlightened outlook seemed to the blind and bigoted of his own order to savour something dangerously of heresy.