CHAPTER XII
GORONWY
The Blessed Valley, which for nearly five hundred years had enjoyed the"Peace of Dewi," which had remained untroubled in the midst of the mostviolent commotions, was now a prey to the spoiler.
Throughout the whole basin all was trouble. The armed men, servants ofthe bishop, for the most part Normans or Englishmen, but some Welshmenwho had taken service under the oppressors of their countrymen, weredispersed through the district.
Ostensibly they were engaged in numbering the hearths, for the exactionof the fine, but with this they did not content themselves. They enteredevery house, and conducted themselves therein as masters, aware thatthey were not likely to be called to order for the grossest outrages byeither Rogier or by the bishop.
They demanded food and drink, they ransacked the habitations andplundered them. They wasted what they could not consume, and destroyedwhat they did not take. The men they treated with contumely and thewomen with insult.
A farmer who had a _hafod_, a summer byre, as well as a _hendre_, awinter residence, must pay for both. The poorest squatter would beforced to contribute as well as the wealthiest proprietor. "A mark ofsilver for a house," said Rogier; "settle it among you how the money isto be extracted. The rich will pay for the poor. In a fortnight we shallhave every hearth registered."
One wretched man, whose hovel had been broken into, set fire to it."This," said he, "shall not be counted. I have no house now, no roof, nohearth. Therefore it shall not be reckoned in."
"It was recorded before you set it in flames," was the answer. "It paysall the same."
A father attempting to defend his daughter against one of the dissolutesoldiers received a blow on his head which cut it open and cast himsenseless on the ground. He lay in a precarious condition; and the girlhad been carried off.
A lone woman, aged, and a widow dependent on the charity of theneighbors, through their dispersion, or through forgetfulness, had diedin solitude, by starvation.
Several well to-do men, landowners, in attempting to resist theplunderers had been unmercifully beaten.
It was an open secret that Rogier was seeking in all directions for thebeautiful Morwen; but Tall Howel had the cunning to evade his search, bymoving her about from house to house.
On Sunday, with the exception of some of the soldiers, hardly anynatives appeared in the church. The few who did show were some oldwomen. It transpired that the inhabitants of the Caio district had gonefor their religious duties to some of the chapels, of which there wereat least six, scattered over the territory of the tribe, where they hadbeen ministered to by the assistant clergy.
When this came to Cadell's ears, he had his horse saddled, and attendedby some of the men-at-arms, rode to the residences of these vicars,dismissed them from their offices, and had them removed by the bishop'sretainers and thrust over the borders, with a threat of imprisonmentshould they return.
On the following Sunday the church of Cynwyl was as deserted as before."He has deprived us of our pastors," said the people. "He cannot rob usof our God."
Then as Cadell learned that they had assembled in the chapels, and hadunited in prayer under the conduct of one of the elders, he rode roundagain, and had the roofs of these chapels removed.
"This is better," said the people. "There is naught now betwixt us andGod. He will hear us the readier."
The day arrived for the benediction of the waters of the Annell. Then ittranspired that the rod of Cynwyl had been abstracted from the church.In a rage, Cadell sent for the hereditary custodian.
Morgan appeared with imperturbable face. "Ah!" said he, "this comes ofhaving here such godless rascals as you have, foreigners who respectnothing human and divine. You brought forth the staff to lay it on thebody--and this before all eyes. These rapacious men saw that there wasgold on the case, and that stones of price were encrusted therein. Hadthey stolen the case and left the wooden staff, it would not havemattered greatly. But what to them are the merits of one of our greatsaints? They regard them not."
Rogier now considered that it were well to hasten matters to aconclusion. He accordingly sent round messengers to every principalfarmhouse to summon a meeting of the elders in the council-house, thathe might know whether they were ready with the fine, and what measuresthey had taken to raise it.
Cadell was dissatisfied and uneasy. He sat ruminating over the fire. Thehall that had escaped being burnt had been accommodated for hisoccupation without much difficulty, as such articles as were needed tofurnish it were requisitioned without scruple from the householders ofCaio.
But Cadell was discontented. In a few days the bishop's servants, whohad brought him to the place and had seen him there installed, would bewithdrawn. Then he would be left alone in the midst of a hostile andincensed population. Although they might not overtly resist him, theywould be able in a thousand ways to make his residence among themunendurable. He might wring from them their ecclesiastical dues, butwould be unable to compel those many services, small in themselves,which go to make life tolerable. He had already encountered reluctanceto furnish him with fuel, to supply him with meal and with milk, tofetch and to carry, to cook and to scour. To get nothing done save bythe exercise of threats was unpleasant when he was able to call to hisaid the military force placed at his disposal; when, however, that forcewas withdrawn, the situation would be unendurable.
If there had been a party, however small, in the place that favored theEnglish, he would have been content; but to be the sole representativeof the foreign tyranny, political as well as ecclesiastical, under whichthe people writhed, was beyond his strength. And the situation wasaggravated by the fact that he was himself a Welshman, and was thereforeregarded with double measure of animosity as a renegade.
He was uneasy, as well, on another head. Rogier had let drop a hint thathis brother intended to reduce the Archpriesthood of Caio to a merevicariate on small tithe, and to appropriate to himself the great tithewith the object of eventually endowing therewith a monastery in thebasin of the Cothi, probably by the tarns at the southern end. "We shallnever crush the spirit out of this people," said Rogier, "unless weplant a castle on Pen-y-ddinas, or squat an abbey by those naturalfishponds at Talley."
If this were done, then he, Cadell, would have been inadequately repaidfor the vexations and discomforts he would be forced to endure.
The troop sent with him, Cadell could not but see, had done their utmostto roughen his path. They had exasperated the people beyond endurance.
As he sat thus musing a young man entered cautiously, looked around, andsidled towards him. He was deformed.
The chaplain looked up and asked what he required.
"I have come for a talk," said the visitor. "May I sit? I know this hallwell; it belonged to my father. I am Goronwy, son of the formerArchpriest Ewan or John, as you please to call him."
Cadell signed to a seat. He was not ill-pleased at a distraction fromhis unpleasant thoughts, and he was not a little gratified to find a manof the place ready to approach him without apparent animosity orsuspicion.
"You do not appear to me to have a pleasant place," pursued Goronwy. "Isaw a beetle once enter a hive. The bees fell on him, and in spite ofhis hardness, stung him to death, and after that built a cairn of waxover him. There he lay all the summer, and every bee that entered orleft the hive trampled on the mound of wax that covered their enemy."
"Their stings shall be plucked out," said Cadell.
"Aye, but you cannot force them to furnish you with honey, nor preventthem from entombing you in wax. They will do it--imperceptibly, andtread you underfoot at the last."
Cadell said nothing to this; he muttered angrily and contemptuously, anddrew back from the fire to look at his visitor.
A lad with a long face, keen, beady eyes, restless and cunning, longarms, and large white hands. His body was misshapen and short, but hislimbs disproportionately long.
"I should have been Archpriest here," pursued he; "but because I am notstr
aight as a wand, they rejected me. In your Latin Church, are they asparticular on this point?"
"We can dispense with most rules--if there be good reason for it."
"Do you think, in the event of your getting tired of being here, amongthose who do not love you, that you could make room for me?"
"For you!" Cadell stared.
"Aye! I ought to have been chief here, only they passed me over forPabo. I have a hereditary right to be both chief and priest in Caio."
Then Cadell laughed.
"You are a misshapen fool," he said; "dost think that Bishop Bernardwould give thee such a place as this--to foment rebellion against him?"
"He might give it to me, if I undertook to do him a great service, andto bring the place under his feet."
"What service could such as you render?"
"Would not that be a service to bring all Caio into subjection. See! Idoubt not that a good fat prebend would be more to your liking than thislost valley among the mountains, traversed by the Sarn Helen alone,which was a road frequented once when the Romans were here, and thegold-mines were worked, and Loventum was a city. But now--it is naught.Few use it."
Cadell mused on this astonishing proposal.
It was quite true. He would rather far be a canon at St. David's, withnothing to do, than be stationed here in this lonely nook surrounded byenemies. Caio, however, with Llansawel and Pumpsaint, its daughterbenefices, was a rich holding, and not to be sacrificed except forsomething better. Yet he feared the intentions of Bernard with regardto it.
"You see," continued Goronwy, "that the people are so maddened at whathas been done and so bitterly opposed to you that were I appointed inyour room----"
"But you are not a priest."
"Was not Bernard pitchforked into the priesthood and episcopate in oneday? Could not something of the sort be done with me?"
Again Cadell was silent.
Goronwy suffered him to brood over the proposal.
"If you were to leave for something better they would hail me as one ofthemselves, and their rightful chief. And I would repay the bishop andyou for doing it."
Still Cadell did not speak.
Then Goronwy drew nearer to him. His small eyes contracted and his thinlips became pointed as he said, "Pabo is not dead."
Cadell started.
"Dead! I know he is dead! I saw his body!"
Goronwy broke into a mocking laugh.
"I saw him--charred; and I had him buried under a dungheap outside thechurch garth, as befitted one struck down by the judgment of Heaven."
"Pabo is not dead," repeated Goronwy jeeringly.
"He is dead. It was a manifest miracle. I have told the bishop of it. Itwould spoil everything if, after I had announced it, he were found notto be dead."
"Yes," said the young man, rubbing his large hands together, "it wouldspoil everything."
Then, seized by a sudden terror, Cadell exclaimed, "It wasthreatened--the staff of Cynwyl would raise the dead. It has done itbefore."
"Oh! the staff of Cynwyl had naught to do with it."
"Merciful heavens, angels and saints protect me! If that burned lump israised, and walks, and were to come here, and--come to me when inbed----!" In the horror of the thought, Cadell was unable to concludethe sentence. But he broke forth: "It is not so. If he be alive, he isno longer under the dungheap where he was laid. I will go see."
"Go, by all means," said Goronwy, and laughed immoderately.
"Tell me more. You know more."
"Nay, go and see. I will tell nothing further till I have a written andsealed promise from the bishop that he will appoint me Archpriest ofCaio."
Cadell ran from the hall. Filled with terror, he got together some ofthe men of the bishop, and they searched where the burnt body had beenlaid. It was not there.
Back to the hall came the chaplain. Goronwy still sat over the firewarming and then folding and unfolding his hands.
"He is gone. He is not where we buried him," gasped Cadell.
"Oh, he is gone! I told you Pabo was alive. He is walking to andfro--when the moon shines you may see him. When it is dark he will comeon you unawares, from behind, and seize you."
Cadell cowered in alarm. "I would to Heaven I were out of this place!"he gasped.
"Now, mark you," said Goronwy. "Get the promise of this Archpriesthoodfor me, and I will deliver Pabo, risen from the dead, into your hands,and, if he desire it also, Morwen into the arms of Rogier."
Pabo, the Priest: A Novel Page 12