The Hidden Treasure of Glaston

by Eleanore M Jewett

  “Only a bat,” said Dickon reassuringly. “Hear him scolding us?”

  The high piping gibberish reassured Hugh that it was indeed a bat, but that sound, too, was eerie and strange as it grew fainter and died in the distance.

  “The way seems longer than when we came in,” whispered Hugh.

  “It would,” agreed Dickon stoutly. “Light makes a great difference. But we can’t go wrong; there’s no other passage. What’s that?” It was his turn to pause, breathless.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” breathed Hugh.

  They both listened intently. Utter, complete, intense silence and then it came again. Hugh heard it this time, though very faint and distant the ringing of a metal bell.

  “Come on! We’ve got to get out!” gasped Dickon, plunging ahead in the darkness, only to stop again in a moment with a groan, having cracked his head against a projecting boulder in the roofing.

  Neither said a word but, breathing hard, made the best speed they could along the passageway till they spied at length a narrow shaft of light and knew that they were close to the cleft that would let them out above ground and into the safe upper world of daylight. When they had finally squeezed through the opening, they lay on the soft moor grass, still shaken and trembling.

  “What was it? What could it have been?” said Hugh.

  “A bell ringing. It couldn’t have been anything else; but what bell and who was ringing it? I tell you there’s no way into that hidden chamber but this—and nobody passed us going in. They couldn’t have! Nobody larger than us could get through that cleft in the moor and nothing but a mouse or a bat could get by us in the passage without our knowing!”

  The two looked at each other speechlessly.

  “Could it be something—somebody—not human?” suggested Hugh questioningly after a pause.

  Dickon nodded and then crossed himself. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “But a ghost or spirit would not make a real sound or ring a real bell, would it?” Hugh continued.

  “Anything could happen in Glaston,” declared Dickon.

  “But it would be a good happening—a sort of holy happening in a place where so many saints have been, wouldn’t it? So we needn’t have got so scared.” Hugh spoke more confidently.

  They were quiet for a moment, thinking things over.

  “You—you won’t be afraid to go back another time as we planned? I guess—I’m not—too scared, either.” In the light of day on the solid, familiar earth, Dickon’s courage was returning. Hugh’s also. He nodded his assurance.

  “I’ll tell you what it might have been!” said he. “Your bell, the treasure one you said was like St. Patrick’s, it might have tipped over in the chest. Sounds would seem loud and carry far in that dark, narrow passage.”

  Dickon looked doubtful. “Maybe,” said he, “but it wasn’t the same tone. Well, we’ve just got to find out!”

  “And we’ll dig out that hole in the corner and explore further!” Hugh added.

  The boys stood up and turned toward the abbey. They said little, each being busy with his own thoughts.

  Hugh found himself still holding the sheets of parchment he had taken from the chest in the treasure chamber. He was glad he had not dropt them in his excitement, and rolling them into as small a bundle as he could, he concealed them in his sleeve, wondering where he could hide them from the keen eyes of Brother John, yet have them handy for closer inspection and study.

  Before reaching the cloisters they passed the Old Church as it was called; the queer rectangular building of wood and lead that enclosed the flooring of the oldest place of worship in the Island of Britain—the Chapel of St. Joseph. Neither Hugh nor Dickon knew as yet the history of it, but it was an object of daily, almost hourly, view, for it stood just to the west of the Church of St. Mary where all the services and offices of the monastic community took place.

  With a sudden impulse Hugh moved toward the door of the Old Church, Dickon following him. Just inside he found a conveniently loose board in the wall to the left of the entrance. A wooden casing had evidently at some time long past been built over the original structure of the church and Hugh, feeling inside the broken boarding, could reach down to the floor, a deep, ample, and wonderful storage room in which to hide the parchments.

  “There!” said he with satisfaction. “That is a perfect place! I can keep all the pages I want to in there, and slip away at odd times and study them without anybody’s knowing. I guess nobody comes in here much, do they?”

  Dickon shook his head. “No, they have all their services and church doings in St. Mary’s now. I’ve never seen even Brother Sacristan going in here.”

  “I somehow think those books and loose pages in the underground chest will make interesting reading.” Hugh spoke with animation.

  “Maybe,” said Dickon dubiously.

  “We might even find something that would tell us about the treasure chamber—what it was built for and when it was used—”

  “That’s so!” Dickon showed more interest. “But what I want to know now, more than anything on earth, is who rang that bell—or what—and everything.” He ended lamely enough.

  5. Missing Pages

  IN SPITE OF their eagerness, several days passed before Hugh and Dickon were able to pursue their underground adventures further. Brother Symon, the almoner, found work grown suddenly heavier because of a fresh inroad of destitute and ailing men from the village, and Dickon was transferred from the grange to the almonry to help him. That meant long busy hours for the boy and much tramping through the roads and near-by villages, while accompanying the good brother on his missions of charity, as well as aiding him in his work with the poor who gathered daily about the gates and within the grounds of the abbey.

  As for Hugh, it seemed to him that Brother John was minded to keep him at scriptorium work longer and more steadily than even the traditional choir-schoolboys in the old days. Ordinarily he would have worked contentedly enough, for the smell of parchment was ever pleasing to his nostrils and he had already grown proficient in mixing colors, grinding gold, and cutting new quills as well as in making the ink for the novices, which seemed always to be in fresh demand. He liked to sit in the shady cloister copying the script and was getting astonishingly good at it. But now, with his mind full of Dickon’s hallows and the mysterious room and passage underground, he fidgeted restlessly, whatever his task, and drew down more than one reproof on his head from the usually gentle brother, until finally something happened which pointed to a possible connection between his daily routine work and that day of adventure with Dickon.

  The bell for Sext, the noontide church service, usually caught both Hugh and Brother John in the midst of work in the kitchen, often at a stage most difficult to leave. While the ink was still gummy or the minium, the scarlet dye, was too pale, or a piece of parchment just ready to come out of its soaking and be stretched, the bell would summon them clamorously and Brother John would dry his hands, swing a kettle on a crane back from the hotter part of the fire, and obediently prepare to leave his work where it was. Sometimes, however, on very busy days, he would abruptly bid Hugh stay on until he should return, or until the task in hand should be finished.

  One morning he sent the boy early to the kitchen, not even waiting for the customary hour or more of study and copying in the novices’ cloister, and he himself followed soon after, coming in with his arms full of dusty, old, board-covered manuscripts and loose sheets. Hugh sighed when he saw him, well knowing what that meant; soaking in milk, scraping carefully with pumice stone, erasing, as best he could, records and accounts which had no present-day value. Parchment and vellum were growing more costly every day, so Brother John said, and it would be a wicked waste to use new sheets for kitchen accounts, or for the novices to blot and scratch when they first graduated from wax tablets to writing real script.

  As far as possible skins from their own Glastonbury sheep, calves, and goats were used for scriptorium work
and the final preparation of these fell to Brother John and any assistant he could get hold of. That was tiresome enough, Hugh thought, for each skin must be washed thoroughly, unhaired, scraped, and washed again, then stretched evenly on a frame to dry. But then you had something worth showing for your pains. Hugh soon came to feel toward a new sheet of soft, fine texture some of the satisfaction that showed in Brother John’s face when he inspected a finished skin minutely, putting his eyes close up to the frame, noting the color and grain of it, and nodding his head in silent approval. But making an old parchment fit to use again was a dull and thankless task, Hugh thought, no matter how one might look upon it. And now Brother John was depositing on a table a load of old stuff that would mean endless labor for both of them.

  “I have been in the vault under the big church,” said he, “and I found a press that had been quite forgotten. There seemed to be nothing in it of any value, only accounts and paltry records and some very ill-written scripts. But the parchment is still firm and good.”

  Drawing up a stool, he sat down and began rummaging among the heap of old pages and broken bindings, picking out sheets here and there that were less cracked and torn than others.

  Hugh had pricked up his ears at the mention of a vault beneath the great church and listened eagerly for more, but Brother John’s mind was on parchment.

  “Now these pages are excellent,” he said, “strong and heavy. They will stand much erasure and will come out as good as new. Get the tubs ready, boy; some of these can doubtless be washed clean with clear water, or milk of course, if the ink proves refractory.”

  He handed Hugh a bundle of loose sheets and then bent his nearsighted gaze on a book in large, square, board binding.

  “And this,” he continued, “hath the look of very old parchment, but the script is scarce more than a century. An account of monies, of no value to us, not even dated. But if I mistake not, the ink is durable. Milk and meal; soak all the sheets and then rub gently when the skin has been well softened.”

  He cut the tough leather strips that ran in little grooves at the back of the binding, and pulled the boards apart. Dust flew as he slapped the loosened pages and piled them on the table with the others.

  Hugh bent obediently over the first sheets and Brother John worked along with him.

  “Did you say, Brother John, that these old manuscripts came from a vault underground?” he asked after a few moments.

  “Aye,” replied the monk, “from a crypt under the nave of St. Mary’s.”

  Hugh tried not to sound particularly interested as he put the next question. “Are there many such storage places?”

  “None that we know of save this one, though tradition has it that there was once a vault hidden somewhere between the abbey and the sea, where the brothers used to store their treasure in time of pirate raids. It must have been destroyed, or else it caved in, for no one has known of it for more than a century. Perhaps it never existed. At least it is gone now, out of the memory of all living.” The monk breathed a little sigh and paused for a moment in his work as if thinking deeply.

  “Did they—did the brothers in old times recover the treasure that they hid—or might it—some of it be still buried somewhere?”

  Brother John turned and looked at Hugh keenly, a queer expression on his face. “Have any idle wits among the lay brothers been telling you aught?” said he. “What do you know of Glastonbury treasure, hidden or open?”

  “Naught whatever!” Hugh assured him hastily. “I was but wondering; a vault caved in and forgotten somewhere on the moors—the thought makes the mind jump—and Glaston is so old—” he left his sentence unfinished. Brother John was still looking at him in that odd way as if he were half-minded to say something very important.

  “Aye,” said he again shortly. “Glaston is so old, it might indeed have the greatest treasure in the world hidden within it. True, my boy, but mark my words; if there be great and hidden treasure in Glaston, it is spiritual treasure, not such a thing as a man might hold in his two hands. To seek that—the material sort would make a body restless, unquiet, yearning day and night for—” he broke off and plunged his hands vigorously into the tub of meal and warm milk where some of the sheets were already soaking.

  “Go to! boy, thou art as idle as if there were naught to be done this day save to wag thy tongue! Fetch the pumice stone and bestir thyself! Scrape me this sheet clean and neat and, mind, not a hole scraped through or thou shalt rue it!”

  Hugh said nothing further, but his mind was galloping. He must take care or Brother John would guess at Dickon’s find. And what did he mean by that queer talk about treasure? He could scarcely bear to wait to go on with his explorations with Dickon! But he would not be free till this work was finished; that was certain. He fell to with a better will and more energy.

  “This parchment has some scroll work on the margin,” said he in a matter-of-fact voice, as if he had already forgotten the subject they had been discussing. “Seems as if it were a pity to destroy it.” He held up the sheet he was working on for Brother John to see.

  The monk glanced at it, then looked more carefully. Interlaced ribbons of design ran down the margin and adorned the top. The script was large and rounded rather than angular.

  “Place it to one side,” Brother John ordered. “I had not noticed the border. Perhaps our rubricator would find interest in the design, for it is ancient and unusual.”

  Hugh rummaged among the other sheets. “And here be pages with black and white drawings.” He laughed suddenly. “Here is Our Lord God with His crown awry and His eyes too big for His head! By my faith, a child could have drawn better!”

  “Saxon without doubt,” said Brother John, without looking up. “They were clumsy artists, those Saxons of old, and knew naught whatever about beauty in a manuscript. Scrape it clean.”

  Hugh picked up his pumice stone, then hesitated. “Might I not keep that one, Brother John? I have never seen God look so funny!”

  “Tut, tut, lad, be not blasphemous,” reproved the monk. “Keep it if thou wilt, but pay for it with a little more nimbleness and speed in thy fingers!”

  The boy returned to his soaking and scraping and before long the bell for Sext clanged demandingly. He began at once to dry his hands and put away his pumice stone, but Brother John motioned him impatiently.

  “Nay, nay, Hugh, work on! The morning bath vanished like a will o’ the wisp and naught to show for it! I would that rather Abbot would allow me to stay also, but he will not. Scrape me these and these and whatever more thou hast time for, and I will return directly after the office and see what has been accomplished.”

  With that he departed hurriedly and Hugh fell to examining the parchment sheets again. He had in mind the pages he had brought out from the secret vault and wondered if any of these might be of the same time and type. The one with the crude drawing of God on it had an odd and ancient looking script that might be similar. He would take it away with him and compare it. There were several more pages with sketches on them, but the script was not the same; looked more modern. One such sheet stuck stubbornly to its neighbor. He pried the two gently apart. The one that had been covered was distinctly like those he had hidden behind the loose panel of the Old Church. As Hugh studied it more carefully he realized it was written in the very same large rounded letters and stilted Latin. He slipt it under the sheet Brother John had told him he might have, resolving to compare them all more carefully later. Then he dipt the one that had been on top in the warm milk. The ink on it showed no signs of dissolving, did not even turn brown, so he left it to soak awhile and, taking his pumice stone, began gently rubbing the script of another that had come out of the same batch. After a few moments he paused, looked at the sheet more closely, then took it to the light. Under the script that he was so carefully removing was the faint impression of another, earlier writing. He wondered what it might be. It was very difficult, nay, impossible, to remove the top layer of lettering without injuring tha
t which lay beneath it, but the little he could see bore again a distinct resemblance to the sheet that had been stuck to its fellow, and so also to the pages he had taken from the vault underground.

  With infinite care he continued, softening with milk, scraping ever so gently. It was clear to him what had happened. The original script, written on heavy, durable parchment, had been very imperfectly removed before the sheet had been overwritten by some later hand, a fate that the page stuck to its neighbor had escaped, and also the one with the odd drawing on it. Evidently they had once been pages of a very ancient book of which Hugh’s hidden sheets might just possibly have been also a part. He studied the script beneath the script more intently. There was one word he could make out quite clearly. “Glaston,” and another, a name partly obliterated, “Joseph Arimath—”

  At that moment the kitchen door opened and Brother John entered. Hugh started guiltily, realizing that he had accomplished next to nothing during the period of Sext.

  “What art doing, Hugh?” Brother John’s voice sounded stern. His arms were again filled with old manuscripts. “And what hast thou done during this hour?”

  “I—Brother John, I have found something interesting. There is older writing under this, and one sheet was stuck to another and overlooked, and hath on it the same queer script.”

  He paused. Brother John, still frowning disapproval, advanced to the table on which Hugh had placed the sheets.

  “I bade thee clean and scrape, not decipher, and—what is this?” He dropt his whole armful of manuscripts with a clatter on the floor, seized the parchment sheet that Hugh had been working over and stared at it with his mouth open. Then he rushed to the window where the light was better.

  “Quick, boy, get me all the sheets that were with these! Hast scraped any others? Are any of them soaking? Fetch them out! Fetch them out!”