The King's Achievement
Page 10
CHAPTER X
THE ARENA
It was in the evening of a warm May day that the Prior and Chris arrivedat the hostelry in Southwark, which belonged to Lewes Priory.
It was on the south side of Kater Lane, opposite St. Olave's church, agreat house built of stone with arched gates, with a large porch openingstraight into the hall, which was high and vaulted with a frieze ofgrotesque animals and foliage running round it. There were a fewservants there, and one or two friends of the Prior waiting at the porchas they arrived; and one of them, a monk himself from the cell atFarley, stepped up to the Prior's stirrup and whispered to him.
Chris heard an exclamation and a sharp indrawing of breath, but was toowell trained to ask; so he too dismounted and followed the others intothe hall, leaving his beast in the hands of a servant.
The Prior was already standing by the monk at the upper end, questioninghim closely, and glancing nervously this way and that.
"To-day?" he asked sharply, and looked at the other horrified.
The monk nodded, pale-faced and anxious, his lower lip sucked in.
The Prior turned to Chris.
"They have suffered to-day," he said.
News had reached Lewes nearly a week before that the Carthusians hadbeen condemned, for refusing to acknowledge the King as head of theEnglish Church, but it had been scarcely possible to believe that thesentence would be carried out, and Chris felt the blood beat in histemples and his lips turn suddenly dry as he heard the news.
"I was there, my Lord Prior," said the monk.
He was a middle-aged man, genial and plump, but his face was white andanxious now, and his mouth worked. "They were hanged in their habits,"he went on. "Prior Houghton was the first despatched;" and he added aterrible detail or two.
"Will you see the place, my Lord Prior?" he said, "You can ride there.Your palfrey is still at the door."
Prior Robert Crowham looked at him a moment with pursed lips; and thenshook his head violently.
"No, no," he said. "I--I must see to the house." The monk looked atChris.
"May I go, my Lord Prior?" he asked.
The Prior stared at him a moment, in a desperate effort to fix hisattention; then nodded sharply and wheeled round to the door that led tothe upper rooms.
"Mother of God!" he said. "Mother of God!" and went out.
Chris went through with the strange priest, down the hall and out intothe porch again. The others were standing there, fearful and whispering,and opened out to let the two monks pass through.
Chris had been tired and hot when he arrived, but he was conscious nowof no sensation but of an overmastering desire to see the place; hepassed straight by his horse that still stood with a servant at hishead, and turned up instinctively toward the river.
The monk called after him.
"There, there," he cried, "not so fast--we have plenty of time."
They took a wherry at the stairs and pushed out with the stream. Thewaterman was a merry-looking man who spoke no word but whistled tohimself cheerfully as he laid himself to the oars, and the boat began tomove slantingly across the flowing tide. He looked at the monks now andagain; but Chris was seated, staring out with eyes that saw nothing downthe broad stream away to where the cathedral rose gigantic and gracefulon the other side. It was the first time he had been in London since acouple of years before his profession, but the splendour and strength ofthe city was nothing to him now. It only had one significance to hismind, and that that it had been this day the scene of a martyrdom. Hismind that had so long lived in the inner world, moving amongsupernatural things, was struggling desperately to adjust itself.
Once or twice his lips moved, and his hands clenched themselves underhis scapular; but he saw and heard nothing; and did not even turn hishead when a barge swept past them, and a richly dressed man leaned fromthe stern and shouted something mockingly. The other monk lookednervously and deprecatingly up, for he heard the taunting threat acrossthe water that the Carthusians were a good riddance, and that therewould be more to follow.
They landed at the Blackfriars stairs, paid the man, who was stillwhistling as he took the money, and passed up by the little stream thatflowed into the river, striking off to the left presently, and leavingthe city behind them. They were soon out again on the long straight roadthat led to Tyburn, for Chris walked desperately fast, paying littleheed to his companion except at the corners when he had to wait to knowthe way; and presently Tyburn-gate began to raise its head high againstthe sky.
Once the strange monk, whose name Chris had not even troubled to ask,plucked him by his hanging sleeve.
"The hurdles came along here," he said; and Chris looked at him vacantlyas if he did not understand.
Then they were under Tyburn-gate, and the clump of elms stood beforethem.
* * * * *
It was a wide open space, dusty now and trampled.
What grass there had been in patches by the two little streams thatflowed together here, was crushed and flat under foot. The elms castlong shadows from the west, and birds were chirping in the branches;there was a group or two of people here and there looking curiouslyabout them. A man's voice came across the open space, explaining; andhis arm rose and wheeled and pointed and paused--three or four childrenhung together, frightened and interested.
But Chris saw little of all this. He had no eyes for the passingdetails; they were fixed on the low mound that rose fifty yards away,and the three tall posts, placed in a triangle and united bycross-beams, that stood on it, gaunt against the sky.
As he came nearer to it, walking as one in a dream across the dustyground and trampled grass, and paying no heed to the priest behind himwho whispered with an angry nervousness, he was aware of the ends ofthree or four ropes that hung motionless from the beams in the stillevening air; and with his eyes fixed on these in exaltation and terrorhe stumbled up the sloping ground and came beneath them.
There was a great peace round him as he stood there, stroking one ofthe uprights with a kind of mechanical tenderness; the men were silentas they saw the two monks there, and watched to see what they would do.
The towers of Tyburn-gate rose a hundred yards away, empty now, butcrowded this morning; and behind them the long road with the fields andgreat mansions on this side and that, leading down to the city in frontand Westminster on the right, those two dens of the tiger that hadsnarled so fiercely a few hours before, as she licked her lips red withmartyrs' blood. It was indescribably peaceful now; there was no soundbut the birds overhead, and the soft breeze in the young leaves, and thetrickle of the streams defiled to-day, but running clean and guiltlessnow; and the level sunlight lay across the wide flat ground and threwthe shadow of the mound and gallows nearly to the foot of the gate.
But to Chris the place was alive with phantoms; the empty space hadvanished, and a sea of faces seemed turned up to him; he fancied thatthere were figures about him, watching him too, brushing his sleeve,faces looking into his eyes, waiting for some action or word from him.For a moment his sense of identity was lost; the violence of theassociations, and perhaps even the power of the emotions that had beenwrought there that day, crushed out his personality; it was surely hewho was here to suffer; all else was a dream and an illusion. From hisvery effort of living in eternity, a habit had been formed that nowasserted itself; the laws of time and space and circumstance for themoment ceased to exist; and he found himself for an eternal instantfacing his own agony and death.
* * * * *
Then with a rush facts re-asserted themselves, and he started andlooked round as the monk touched him on the arm.
"You have seen it," he said in a sharp undertone, "it is enough. Weshall be attacked." Chris paid him no heed beyond a look, and turnedonce more.
It was here that they had suffered, these gallant knights of God; theyhad stood below these beams, their feet on the cart that was theirchariot of glory, their necks in the rope that wo
uld be their heavenlybadge; they had looked out where he was looking as they made theirlittle speeches, over the faces to Tyburn-gate, with the same sun thatwas now behind him, shining into their eyes.
He still stroked the rough beam; and as the details came home, and heremembered that it was this that had borne their weight, he leaned andkissed it; and a flood of tears blinded him.
Again the priest pulled his sleeve sharply.
"For God's sake, brother!" he said.
Chris turned to him.
"The cauldron," he said; "where was that?"
The priest made an impatient movement, but pointed to one side, awayfrom where the men were standing still watching them; and Chris sawbelow, by the side of one of the streams a great blackened patch ofground, and a heap of ashes.
The two went down there, for the other monk was thankful to get to anyless conspicuous place; and Chris presently found himself standing onthe edge of the black patch, with the trampled mud and grass beyond itbeside the stream. The grey wood ashes had drifted by now far across theground, but the heavy logs still lay there, charred and smoked, that hadblazed beneath the cauldron where the limbs of the monks had beenseethed; and he stared down at them, numbed and fascinated by thehorror of the thought. His mind, now in a violent reaction, seemedunable to cope with its own knowledge, crushed beneath its weight; andhis friend heard him repeating with a low monotonous insistence--
"Here it was," he said, "here; here was the cauldron; it was here."
Then he turned and looked into his friend's eyes.
"It was here," he said; "are you sure it was here?"
The other made an impatient sound.
"Where else?" he said sharply. "Come, brother, you have seen enough."
* * * * *
He told him more details as they walked home; as to what each had said,and how each had borne himself. Father Reynolds, the Syon monk, hadlooked gaily about him, it seemed, as he walked up from the hurdle; thesecular priest had turned pale and shut his eyes more than once; thethree Carthusian priors had been unmoved throughout, showing neithercarelessness nor fear; Prior Houghton's arm had been taken off to theLondon Charterhouse as a terror to the others; their heads, he hadheard, were on London Bridge.
Chris walked slowly as he listened, holding tight under his scapular thescrap of rough white cloth he had picked up near the cauldron, drinkingin every detail, and painting it into the mental picture that wasforming in his mind; but there was much more in the picture than theother guessed.
The priest was a plain man, with a talent for the practical, and knewnothing of the vision that the young monk beside him was seeing--of theair about the gallows crowded with the angels of the Agony and Passion,waiting to bear off the straggling souls in their tender experiencedhands; of the celestial faces looking down, the scarred and gloriousarms stretched out in welcome; of Mary with her mother's eyes, and hervirgins about her--all ring above ring in deepening splendour up to thewhite blinding light above, where the Everlasting Trinity lay poised inlove and glory to receive and crown the stalwart soldiers of God.