CHAPTER VI
THE SCROLL
The young, the thoughtless, were full of exultation over the rebuff thatthe Normans, with their bishop, had encountered, but the older and wisermen were grave and concerned. The Normans had indeed withdrawn in sullenresentment, outnumbered, and incapable of revenging on the spot and atonce the disabled arm of their leader and the broken tooth of theirprelate. The old men knew very well that matters would not rest thus;and they feared lest the events of that day when the party of foreignerspenetrated to the Blessed Valley might prove the most fruitful indisastrous consequences it had ever seen.
Native princes had respected the sanctuary of David, but an English Kingand foreign adventurers were not likely to regard its privileges, norfear the wrath of the saint who had hitherto rendered it inviolable.Bishop Bernard had at his back not only the whole spiritual force ofthe Latin Church, the most highly concentrated and practically organizedin Christendom, but he was specially the emissary of the English King,with all the physical power of the realm to support him; and what wasthe prospect of a little green basin in the mountains, isolated from theworld, occupied by three thousand people, belonging to the most looselycompacted Church that existed, with no political force to maintain itsright and champion its independence--what chance had the sanctuary ofDavid in Caio against the resentment of the English King and the RomanChurch? Neither, as experience showed, was likely to pass over anaffront. One would sustain the other in exacting a severe chastisement.
The hermit, who after over thirty years of retirement in one cell, farup the Mount Mallaen, had suddenly, and unsolicited, left his retreat toappear once more among his fellow-men, and then to pronounce a sentenceof wo, had sunk exhausted after this supreme effort of expiring powers,and had been removed into the Archpriest's house, where he wasministered to by Morwen, Pabo's wife.
The old man lay as one in a trance, and speechless. His eyes were open,but he saw nothing on earth, and no efforts could induce him to takenourishment. With folded hands, muttering lips, and glazed eyes hecontinued for several days. Pabo and his wife looked on with reverence,not knowing whether he were talking with invisible beings which he saw.He answered no questions put to him; he seemed not to hear them, and hehardly stirred from the position which he assumed when laid on a bed inthe house.
The hermit of Mallaen had been regarded with unbounded reverencethroughout the country. He had been visited for counsel, his words hadbeen esteemed oracular, and he was even credited with having performedmiraculous cures.
That he was dying in their midst would have created greater attentionand much excitement among the people of Caio at any other time, but nowthey were in a fever over the events of the bishop's visit, their alarmover the enforcing of the decree on marriages, and their expectation ofpunishment for the rough handling of their unwelcome visitors; and whenone night the old hermit passed away, it was hardly noticed, and Morwenwas left almost unassisted to pay the last duties to the dead, to placethe plate of salt on his breast when laid out, and to light the candlesat the head.
It was no holiday-time, and yet little work was done throughout the oncehappy valley. A cloud seemed to hang over it, and oppress all therein.Shepherds on the mountain drove their flocks together, that for awhile,sitting under a rock or leaning on their crooks, they might discuss whatwas past and form conjectures as to the future. Women, over theirspinning, drew near each other, and in low voices and with anxious facesconversed as to the unions that were like to be dissolved. Men met ingroups and passed opinions as to what steps should be taken to maintaintheir rights, their independence, and to ward off reprisals. Evenchildren caught up the words that were whispered, and jeered each otheras born out of legitimate wedlock, or asked one another who were theirsponsors, and shouted that such could never intermarry.
So days passed. Spirits became no lighter; the gloom deepened. It wasmooted who would tell of the relationships borne by those who were nowcontented couples?--so as to enable the bishop to separate them? Whowould see selfish profit by betrayal of their own kin?
The delay was not due to pitiful forbearance, to Christian forgiveness;it boded preparation for dealing an overwhelming blow. The Welsh Princeor King was a fugitive. From him no help could be expected. His castleof Dynevor was in the hands of the enemy. To the south, the Normansblocked the exit of the Cothy from its contracted mouth; to east, theTowy valley was in the hands of the oppressor, planted in impregnablefortresses; to the west, Teify valley was in like manner occupied. Onlyto the north among the wild, tumbled, barren mountains, was there nocontracting, strangling, steel hand.
The autumn was closing in. The cattle that had summered in the _hafod_(the mountain byre) were returning to the _hendre_ (the winter home).Usually the descent from the uplands was attended with song and laughand dancing. It was not so now. And the very cattle seemed to perceivethat they did not receive their wonted welcome.
Pabo went about as usual, but graver, paler than formerly--for his mindwas ill at ease. It was he who had shed the first blood. A triflingspill, indeed, but one likely to entail serious results. The situationhad been aggravated by his act. He who should have done his utmost toward off evil from his flock had perpetrated an act certain to provokedeadly resentment against them. He bitterly regretted his passionateoutbreak; he who should have set an example of self-control had failed.Yet when he looked on his wife, her gentle, patient face, the tendernesswith which she watched and cared for the dying hermit, again his cheekflushed, the veins in his brow swelled, and the blood surged in hisheart. To hear her insulted, he could never bear; should such an outragebe repeated, he would strike again.
Pabo sat by his fire. In Welsh houses even so late as the twelfthcentury there were no structural chimneys--these were first introducedby the Flemish settlers--consequently the smoke from the wood firecurled and hung in the roof and stole out, when tired of circling there,through a hole in the thatch.
On a bier lay the dead man, with candles at his head--his white faceillumined by the light that descended from the gap in the roof. At thefeet crouched a woman, a professional wailer, singing and swayingherself, as she improvised verses in honor of the dead, promised himthe glories of Paradise, and a place at the right hand of David, andthen fell to musical moans.
Morwen sat by the side, looking at the deceased--she was awaiting herturn to kneel, sing, and lament--and beside her was a rude bench onwhich were placed cakes and ale wherewith to regale such as came in towake the dead.
And as Pabo looked at his wife he thought of the peaceful useful lifethey had led together.
She had been the daughter of a widow, a harsh and exacting woman, whohad long been bedridden, and with whose querulousness she had bornemeekly. He had not been always destined to the Archpriesthood. His unclehad been the ecclesiastical as well as political head of the tribe; buton his death his son, Goronwy, had been passed over, as deformed, andtherefore incapable of taking his father's place, and the chiefship hadbeen conferred on Pabo, who had already been for some years ordained inanticipation of this selection.
Pabo continued to look at his wife, and he questioned whether he couldhave understood the hearts of his people had he not himself known whatlove was.
"Husband," said Morwen, "there is a little roll under his hand."
Pabo started to consciousness of the present.
"I have not ventured to remove it; yet what think you? Is it to beburied with him? It almost seems as though it were his testament."
The Archpriest rose and went to where the dead man lay; his long whitebeard flowed to his waist, and the hands were crossed over it.
"It is in the palm," said Morwen.
Pabo passed his fingers through the thick white hair and drew forth ascroll, hardly two fingers' breadth in width; it was short also, as hesaw when he uncurled it.
He opened and read.
"Yes, it is his will. 'To Pabo, the Archpriest, my cell--as a refuge;and----'" He ceased, rolled up the little coil once more, and placed itin
his bosom.
A stroke at the door, and one of the elders of the community, namedHowel the Tall, entered.
"It seems fit, Father Pabo, to us to meet in council. What say you? Allare gathered."
"It is well; I attend."