  I have said that we heard all too much of our powerful and wicked neighbour Brian Fitzcount. But now that he knew Henry Plantagenet was coming, and was one that would have power to destroy him and to put an end to all plundering and castle-building, a sudden repentance seized his time-hardened conscience. Some did much praise him for this, and greatly admired the seeming severity of his penance; but it is to be feared that he, like many others among our castle-builders and depredators, did only repent when he found that he could sin no more. So great had been his crimes, and so noted was Duke Henry for his strict execution of justice, that, notwithstanding his long adherence to Henry's mother, Sir Brian could not hope to escape a severe punishment, with forfeiture of the broad lands which had become his by marriage, and with deprivation of the great riches he had accumulated by plundering the country. In this wise no secure asylum was open to him except in the cloisters or in taking the cross. And before the Plantagenet returned into England Sir Brian Fitzcount did take upon him the cross, and giving up his terrible castle at Wallingford with all his fiefs, and abandoning all his riches—relictis fortunis omnibus—he joined other crusaders and took his departure for Palestine. His wife Maud, the rich daughter of Sir Robert d'Oyley, had before this time retired into a convent in Normandie, and there, being awakened to a sense of the wickedness of her past life, she did soon take the veil. As they had no issue, and left no knight near of kin, King Henry, soon after his coronation, took possession of Wallingford Castle and of the honour of Wallingford; and from that happy moment the troubles of the country and of our good house ceased. Such was the fate of our worst enemy; but of the scarcely less wicked Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe we still could learn nothing of certain, and the rumours which reached us were very contradictory, some saying that he had been slain by Welsh thieves, some that he had fled beyond sea, some that he had entered into religion under a feigned name, and was preparing to take the monastic vows in the Welsh house at Bangor, and some asserting that he had gone with a desperate band into Scotland to take service with that king and aid him in subjugating the wild mountaineers of the north. Nay, there was still another report common among the poor country folk that dwelt upon Kennet near Speen, and it was to the effect that Satan had carried him away bodily. In short, none knew what had become of him, but all prayed that they might never see his face again. Henry Plantagenet was busied in reducing the castles of some of his turbulent barons in Normandie when he received the news of King Stephen's demise. Being well assured that none in England would dare question his right to the vacant throne, and being moreover a wise prince, who always finished that which he had in hand before beginning any new thing, he prosecuted his sieges, and ceased not until he had reduced all the castles. Thus it was good six weeks after the death of Stephen, and hard upon the most solemn festival of the Nativity, when Henry came into England with his wife Eleanor and a mighty company of great men. He was received as a deliverer, and there was joy and exultation in the heart of every true Englishman at his coming. A wondrously handsome and strong prince he was, albeit his hair inclined to that colour which got for his great-uncle the name of Rufus or Red King. His forehead was broad and lofty, as if it were the seat of great wisdom, and a sanctuary of high schemes of government. His eyes were round and large, and while he was in a quiet mood, they were calm, and soft, and dovelike; but when he was angered, those eyes flashed fire and were like unto lightning. His voice!—it made the heart of the boldest quake when he raised it in wrath, or in peremptory command; but it melted the soul like soft music when he was in the gentle mood that was more common to him, and it even won men's hearts through their ears: it was by turns a trumpet or a lute. Great, and for a prince miraculous, was his learning, his grandfather, the Beauclerc, not having been a finer scholar: wonderful was his eloquence, admirable his steadiness, straightforwardness and sagacity in the despatch of all business. He breathed a new life, and put a new soul into the much worn and distracted body of England. There shall be peace in this land, said he; and peace sprang up as quick as the gourd of the prophet: there shall be justice among men of all degrees; and there was justice. Having taken the oaths to be good king and lord—to respect mother church and the ancient liberties of the people, the great Plantagenet was solemnly crowned and anointed in the royal city of Winchester on the 19th of the kalends of December, by Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury; and Eleanor, his wife, was crowned with him. In the speech which he did then deliver, he boasted of the Saxon blood which he inherited from his grandmother, Queen Maud, of happy memory, who descended in right line from Alfredus Magnus; and these his royal words did much gratify the English people, without giving offence to the lords and knights of foreign origin, who, by frequent intermarriages, had themselves become more than half Saxons, and who had long since prided themselves in the name of Englishmen, and would, in truth, be called by none other name. And full soon did Henricus Secundus make it a name of terror to Normandie, to the whole of France, and all circumjacent nations; and now that I write, in his happy time, hath he not filled the highest offices in church and state with men of English birth, and with many of the unmixed Saxon race? From his first entrance into the government of this realm, he was principally directed in matters of law and justice by our great lord archbishop, Thomas À Becket, then only archdeacon of Canterbury, provost of Beverley, and prebendary of Lincoln, and St. Paul's, London; and our Lord Thomas, as all men do know, is the son of Gilbert À Becket, merchant of the city of London. King Henry kept his Christmas at Bermondsey; and it was from that place that he issued his royal mandate, that all the foreign mercenaries and companies of adventure that had done such terrible mischief in the wars between King Stephen and Matilda should depart the land within a given time, and without carrying with them the plunder they had made. Divers of these men had been created earls and barons, and still kept possession of fiefs and castles, but they nearly all yielded for the great dread they had of the new king, and so got them out of England by the appointed day, as naked and poor as they were when, for our sins, they first came among us; and many a Fleming and Brabanter, Angevin and Breton, from being a baron and castle-builder, returned to the plough-tail in his own country. As the spring season approached, our great king repaired unto Wallingford Castle, and there convened a great council of earls, bishops, abbats, and some few citizens of note and wealthy franklins. It was a pleasant and right joyous journey that which I had with our Lord Abbat Reginald, and Sir Alain de Bohun, and my young Lord Arthur. Already the hamlets which had been burned began to rear again their yellow-thatched roofs in the bright sun; the wasted and dispeopled towns were already under repair; the shepherd, with his snowy flock and skipping lambs, was again whistling on the hill sides like one that had nought to fear; the hind was singing at his labours in the fertile fields; the farmer and the trader were travelling with their wains and pack-horses, from grange to market and from town to town, without dread of being robbed, and seized, and castle-bound; skiffs and barks were ascending and descending the river with good cargaisons, and without having a single lance or sword among their crews; the trenches cut in the churchyards were filled up, the unseemly engines of war were taken down from the church towers, and the church bells, being replaced, again filled the air with their holy and sanctifying sounds. Even the wilderness and the solitary place partook of the spirit of this universal peace and gladness: there was sunshine in every man's face, whether bond or free. In summa, it seemed, in truth, a time when the wolf dwelt with the lamb, and the leopard lay down with the kid, and the lion with the fatted calf; when the iron of the great engines of war was turned into a ploughshare, the sword into a pruning-hook, and the lance into a pastoral crook. I, who did well remember the sad state of things only a few months agone, did much marvel that a country could so soon recover from the horrors of war, and the depth of a universal anarchy and havoc; and did, with a melting heart and moistened eye, offer up my thanks to the Giver of all good things that it should be so. It was at Wallingford that I did see, for the first time, our far-renowned Thomas À Becket. There was no seeing him without discerning the great heights to which he was destined to rise, even more by his natural gifts than by the king's favour. At this time he numbered some thirty-six or thirty-seven years; and from his childhood those years had been years of study or of active business, as well of a secular as of an ecclesiastical kind. A handsome man was he at that season, and blithe and debonnaire, and, mayhap, a trifle too much given to state affairs, and the pomps and vanities of this world, for a churchman: but, oh, John the Evangelist, what a mind was his! what readiness of wit and reach of thought! And what an eagerness was in him to raise his countrymen to honour, to make his country happy and full of glory, and to raise the church in power and dignity! "Angli sumus, we be Englishmen," said he to our lord abbat, "and we must see to raise the value of that name." Great and long experienced statesmen there were in this great council at Wallingford, men that had travailed in negotiation at home and abroad, and that had grown grey and bald in state offices; but verily they all seemed children compared with the son of our London merchant, and they one and all submitted their judgment to that of Thomas À Becket, who had barely passed the middle space of human life. Numerous were the wise and healing resolutions adopted in that great council, the most valuable of all being, that the crown lands which King Stephen had alienated, in order to satisfy his rapacious barons, should be resumed and re-annexed to the crown; and that not one of the eleven hundred and more castles, which the wicked castle-builders had made in Stephen's time, should be allowed to stand as a place of arms. Some few were to remain to curb the Welsh and Scots, or to guard the coast; but these were to be intrusted to the keeping of the king's own castellans: of the rest, not a stone was to be left upon another. This had been decreed before, but time had not been allowed King Stephen to do the work; and so easy and over indulgent was he, that it is possible the work would not have been done for many a year if he had continued to live and reign. Even in these sun-shining days there were some slight clouds raised by the jealousies and ambitions and craving appetites of certain of our great men, who sought to raise themselves at the cost of others. Certain magnates whose names shall not soil this pure parchment—certain self-seeking men who had been allied with Brian Fitzcount and Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe, and who, like Sir Ingelric, had shifted from side to side, tried hard to fill the ears of King Henry and his secretarius Thomas À Becket with tales unfavourable to Sir Alain de Bohun and his son Arthur; as that they had made war against the king's mother, and had oppressed and plundered the lords that were favourable to her cause, and had ever been the steadiest and most devoted of all the partisans of the usurper Stephen. But neither the king nor À-Becket was to be moved by these evil reports. "I do see," said the sharp and short-dealing secretarius, "that all the good and quiet people of his country bear testimony in favour of the Lord of Caversham and his brave son: I do further see (and here À-Becket, with a light and quick thumb, turned over great scrolls of parchment which had affixed to them the name and seal of King Stephen) that in the nineteen years he so faithfully served the late king, the said Sir Alain de Bohun hath not added a single manor, nay, nor a single rood of land, to the estates bequeathed unto him by his father or inherited through his wife; and also do I see that he hath aspired after no new rank, or title, or office, or honour whatsoever, but is now, save in the passage of time and the wear of nineteen years' faithful and at times very hard service, that which he was at the demise of Henricus Primus; and having all these things in consideration, I do opine that the Lord of Caversham hath ever followed the dictates of a pure conscience, and hath ever been and still is a man to be trusted and honoured by our Lord the King Henricus Secundus." "And I," quoth the right royal Plantagenet, "I who am come hither to make up differences, to reconcile factions, to heal the wounds which are yet bleeding, and to give peace to this good and patient and generous English people, will give heed to no tales told about the bygone times. The faith and affection which Sir Alain de Bohun did bear unto my unhappy predecessor, in bad fortune as well as in good, are proofs of the fidelity he will bear unto me when I have once his oath. My lords, there be some among ye that cannot show so clean a scutcheon! What with the turnings from this side to that and from that to this, and the castle-buildings and other doings of some of ye, I should have had a wilderness for a kingdom! But these things will I bury in oblivion, and this present mention of them is only provoked by ill-advised discourses, and the whisperings and murmurings of a few. But let that faction look to this—I am Henry Plantagenet, and not Stephen of Blois! With the laws to my aid I will be sole king in this land, and be obeyed as such! The reign of the eleven hundred kings is over! Let me hear no more of this. By all the saints in heaven and all their shrines on earth! I will hold that man mine enemy, and an enemy to the peace of this kingdom, that saith another word against Sir Alain de Bohun, or his son, or any lord or knight that hath done as they have done in the times that be past." And so it was that our good Lord of Caversham was received by the king, not as an old enemy but as an old friend, and was admitted to sit with the greatest of the lords in consultation in Wallingford Castle, and there to give his advice as to the best means of improving the condition of his country. And a few days after this, when Sir Alain and his son Arthur had taken the oaths of allegiance and fidelity unto King Henry and his infant son, the king with his own hands made our young Lord Arthur knight, giving him on that great occasion the sword which he had worn at his own side, and a splendid horse which had been brought for his own use from Apulia in Italie, out of the stables of the great Count of Conversano, who hath long bred the best horses in all Christendom, to his no small profit and glory. Upon the breaking up of the council of Wallingford our great Plantagenet prepared to march into the west with a well furnished army, in order to reduce by siege the castles of Hugh Mortimer and a few other arrogant barons who had the madness to defy him. Before quitting Brian Fitzcount's great house, the king said to Sir Alain de Bohun, "For forty days, and not longer, I may have my young knight Sir Arthur with me. Unto thee, in the meantime, I give commission to level every castle whatsoever that hath been left standing in this fair country of Berkshire." Seeing our lord abbat start a little at these words, the king said, in his sweetest voice, "Aye, my lord abbat, even Reading Castle must down with the rest; but ye will not feel the want of it, for with God's help none shall trouble thy house, or cause the least mischief to thy lands or vassals while I am king of England; and as a slight token of my trust and esteem, thy good and near neighbour Sir Alain shall keep his battlements standing. It were a task worthy of thee, good my lord, that thou shouldest even go with Sir Alain on his present mission, and sprinkle some holy water on the ground where these accursed castles have stood, and build here and there a chapel upon the spots." Our abbat, who ever much affected the society of Sir Alain, and who loved the good work in hand, said he would perform this task; and for this the king gave him thanks. "Before I go hence," said the king to the Lord of Caversham, "is there no grace or guerdon that thou wouldest ask of me?" Sir Alain responded that he and his son had had grace and guerdon enow. "By our Ladie of Fontevraud," quoth the king, "I have given thee nothing, and have only given thy son a horse and a sword and his knighthood. Bethink thee, good Sir Alain, is there no thing that thou canst ask, and that I ought to give?" Sir Alain smiled and shook his head, and said that there was nothing he could ask for. "By the bones of my grandfather," quoth the king, "thou art the first man I ever found in Anjou, Normandie, or England, of this temper of mind! But I have a wish to give if thou hast none to take; I charge thee with a service that is important to me and the people, and that must cost thee somewhat ere thou shalt have finished it; and, therefore, would I give thee beforehand some suitable reward.... What, still dumb and wantless?" Here our lord abbat, bethinking himself of sundry things, whispered to his neighbour, "Sir Alain, say a word for Sir Arthur's marriage with the gentle Alice, and ask the king's grace for a free gift of the forfeited lands which once appertained to Sir Ingelric." "Beshrew me," quoth the Lord of Caversham, "I never thought of the king's consent being necessary to my son's marriage. I thank thee, lord abbat, and will speak to that point." Yet when he spake, all that he told was the simple story of the nurture which had been given in his own house by his sweet wife to the fair daughter of Sir Ingelric, and of the long and constant love which had been between that maiden and his only son, and all that he asked was that the king, as natural guardian of all noble orphans, would allow the marriage. The eyebrows of the Plantagenet kept arching and rising in amazement, until Abbat Reginald thought that they would get to the top of his forehead, high as it was. When he spake again, which he did not do for a space, he said, "And is this formula, that costs me nothing, all that thou hast to ask from the King of England, Duke of Normandie, and Earl of Anjou, Poictou, and Aquitaine?" "Verily," replied Sir Alain, "'tis all that I can think of, and for that one favour I will ever be your bedesman." "Sir Alain," said our abbat, tugging him by the skirt, "thou hast said no one word touching the lands of Sir Ingelric." "We need them not," said the high-minded old knight, "we be rich enow without. If Sir Ingelric were alive and penitent, I might, in this happy time of reconciliation and oblivion of past wrongs, ask the fiefs for him; but as it is, let them go, or let the king keep them—he may need them more than I." "Well!" quoth the Plantagenet, "I see thou hast taken counsel. So now, my trusty Sir Alain, tell me what guerdon I shall give thee for the services with which thou art charged." "My liege lord," quoth the lord of Caversham, "I, who in the times that are past have so often done that which liked me not for no fee or reward, but only in discharge of the oaths I had sworn, would not now ask a guerdon for the performance of a task so grateful unto me. Let my son espouse the fair Alice, and I am more than content." But the king, who had been turning things over in his mind while our abbat had been counselling Sir Alain, now called in Sir Arthur de Bohun, and said to him thus:—"Sir Knight of mine own making, I, the king, do give unto thee the hand of that little ladie Alice thou wottest of; and I do confer as a dower upon the said ladie Alice all the manors, honours, and lands whatsoever that were by her mother conveyed to Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe. It were not well that so noble a damsel should go portionless to her husband. Ye may be people of that rare sort that would care not for the fiefs, but the noble maiden might feel it. The less we say of her unnatural sire Sir Ingelric the better for him and for us. Whether he be dead or alive, the lands which were his through his two marriages are confiscated. It were but a common act of justice to give back to the maiden that which was her mother's, and I would as my free gift add the lands of the second marriage. À-Becket shall see to it, and draw up the grant before we go hence. Sir Arthur, I hail thee lord of Speen, and wish thee joy with thy bride. These forty days of war will soon be over, and with thy ladie's prayers to help us, we may finish with this mad Hugh de Mortimer in much less time." Arthur knelt at the feet of the Plantagenet, and kissed his royal hand, and said it was too much grace and over much greatness; and both father and son joined in telling the king that the lands of the mother of Alice would be more than enough without the inheritance of the dark ladie. "Of a truth," said Sir Alain, "I should fear that that evil heritage would come to us burthened with a curse; for it was ill acquired by the father of the dark ladie, and was ever by her misused." "Well," quoth the king, "we will keep part of those lands in our own hands, and give a part to the abbat and monks of Reading, who will know how to remove the curse with masses and prayer, and almsgiving to the poor." It was now the turn of our lord abbat to give thanks, which he did like the noble and learned churchman that he was. And all these things being pre-arranged, Thomas-À-Becket penned the royal grant for the fair Alice, and a new charter for our house; and the king signed and sealed the twain. By the charter he confirmed all preceding charters and donations. And he gave to the abbey two good manors which had belonged to the dark ladie, together with permission to enclose a park, in the place called Cumba, for the use of the sick, whether monks or strangers. And very soon after, upon his returning out of the west country, the king, by a particular charter, gave the monks of Reading licence to hold a fair every year on the day of St. James and the three following days, and confirmed our old right to a Sunday market at Thatcham, commanding the inhabitants of the country to attend the said market, and the jealous men of Newbury not to hinder them or molest them. He also made us a grant of forty marks of silver, to be paid annually out of his exchequer until he should be enabled to secure unto us a revenue of the same value in lands. Verily, we the monks of Reading did no more suffer for that which we had done in the past time than did our noble neighbours of Caversham. When that the great men saw in what high esteem Sir Alain and Sir Arthur were held by the king, they spake to them cap in hand, and vexed their wit to make them fine flattering speeches; yea, the very lords who had essayed to work their ruin did now make them big professions of friendship. So the Plantagenet departed and went unto Gloucester and Bridgenorth with his great battalia and engines of war, and the lord abbat and I, Father Felix, went with Sir Alain de Bohun to perambulate and perlustrate the country of Barkshire, bearing with us the royal mandate to all heads of boroughs and townships and all good men to assist in rooting out the foul donjons which disfigured the fair country like blots of ink let fall upon a pure skin of parchment. Expeditive and very complete was the work we made; for even as at Speen the country people of their own free will came flocking to us with their pickaxes and mattocks on their shoulders; and so soon as a castle was levelled, our lord abbat, in pontificalibus, did sprinkle holy water upon the spot to drive away the evil spirits that had so long reigned there; and did, in the tongue of the people, as well as in Latin, put up a prayer that such wickednesses might not be again known in the land. Divers strange things and many recondite holes and corners, and most secret and undiscoverable chambers, were brought to light in the course of these demolishings; but it was not until we broke down and took to pieces a castle near Shrivenham, on the confines of Barks, an outlying and little known place, that we laid open to the light of day a very tragic spectacle, which was in itself a conclusion to a part of this my narration. Upon our coming to it, this castellum, like all the rest, was deserted, the draw-bridge being down, and the portcullis and all other gates removed by the serfs of the neighbouring manors, who had made themselves good winter fires of the wood thereof. Nay, some poor houseless men had for a season dwelt within the keep, and penned their swine in the courtyard; but they had been terrified thence by unaccountable and horrible noises at midnight; and these men and their neighbours declared that it was the most accursed place in all the country. It was a wonderful thing to see how fast those walls toppled down, and how soon the deep moat was filled up. When the thick southern wall of the square keep was all but levelled, Sir Alain de Bohun's people came suddenly upon a secret chamber which had been contrived with much art and cunning within the said wall. The men reached it by demolishing the masonry above, but the access to it had been through a crooked passage which mounted from a cell underground, and then through a low narrow doorway, the door of which contained more iron than oak, and closed inward with certain hidden springs, the secret whereof was not to be apprehended by any of us until the door was knocked down and taken to pieces. Within this dark and narrow chamber was revealed a great heap of gold and silver, being well nigh as much as we had found at Speen; and, prone upon this heap, with the face buried among the gold and silver pieces, and with the arms stretched out as though he had died in the act of clutching the heap, was seen the body of a knight in black mail. At the first glance Sir Alain's people and the serfs that were helping them cried out joyously, "Gold! gold!" but then they took the knight in his armour for some scaled dragon or demon that was guarding the treasure, and they ran away, crying "Diabolus! It is the devil!" As it especially concerned monks to deal with the great dragon, and lay evil spirits, Abbat Reginald and I, Father Felix, with an acolyte, who was but of tender age, and truth to say, sorely afeared, hastened with Sir Alain to that pit within the wall. "By the blessed rood!" said the Lord of Caversham, as he looked down into the hollow space—"That is no living devil, but the dead body of Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe! I know him by that black mail of Milan, and by the rare hilt of that sword, which I did give him when we were sworn friends and brothers." "This is wonderful, and I see the finger of Heaven in it," said our abbat, crossing himself: and we all crossed ourselves for the amazement and horror that was upon us. The meaner sort, who had fled from the dead knight, now bethought themselves of the glittering gold, and came back to the edge of that narrow pit; and when we, the monks, had thrown some holy water therein, and caused our acolyte to hold the cross over the gap, two of Sir Alain's men-at-arms descended, and re-ascending, brought forth the body and laid it at our feet upon its back, and with its face turned towards the heavens. Jesu Maria! but it was a ghostly sight! From the little air that had been in that narrow cell, and from the great siccity or dryness of the place, betwixt stones, flint, and mortar, the body had not wasted away, or undergone the rapid corruption of the damp grave; and albeit the face was all shrivelled and shrunk, it was not hard to trace some of the lineaments of the unhappy Sir Ingelric. Within the cavity of the mouth were pieces of coined gold, as tho' he had set his famishing teeth in them; and within his clenched hands, clenched by the last agony and convulsion of death, were pieces of gold and silver. On the brow was the well-known mark of a wound which that unhappy knight had gotten in his early days in fighting for King Stephen; the Agnus Dei, and the little cross at the breast, were those of Sir Ingelric, and were marked with his name; and the blade of the sword bore the conjoined names of Sir Ingelric and Sir Alain. Having noted and pointed out all these things, Abbat Reginald, after another and more copious aspersion of the blessed water, which is holier than the stream which now floweth in Jordan, raised his right hand and said, "My children, there is a dread lesson and example in that which lieth before us! Crooked courses ever lead to evil ends, albeit not always in this nether world. But here is one that hath reaped upon earth the fruit of his crimes, and that hath perished by the demon that first led him astray—aye, perished upon a heap of gold and silver, and of famine, the cruellest of deaths, and in a miser's hole—a robber's hiding-place—unpitied, unheeded, unconfessed, with the fiend mocking him, and bidding him eat his gold, and with the interdict of holy mother church and the curses of ruined men pressing upon his sinful soul. And was it for this, oh Sir Ingelric, that thou didst soil thy faith, and betray thy king and friends, and waste the fair land of thy birth, and rack and torture the poor? Take hence the excommunicate body and bury it deep in unconsecrated earth; but remember, oh my children, all that which ye have this day seen!" The gold and silver we removed and put into strong coffers, in order that we might use them with the same justice and regard to the poor that we had used with the treasure found in Sir Ingelric's own castle at Speen. When we came to make inquiries among the people of those parts, and to put their several reports together, we made a good key to the awful enigma and mystery of Sir Ingelric's death. That castle by Shrivenham had been made by one of the very worst of the castle-building robbers, who had never raised any standard but his own over his donjon keep. In the autumnal season of the year preceding that in which we came to destroy the place, and at the time when the joint orders of King Stephen and Henry Plantagenet were sent forth against the castle-holders, there suddenly appeared at Shrivenham a band that came from the westward, and that were headed by a knight in black mail, and with a black plume to his casque; and by some of those reaches of treachery which were common among these evil doers, the new-comers got possession of this castellum, and made a slaughter of the builder of it, and of the men that were true to him. But the new comers had not been a day in possession of the castle when intelligence was brought them by a scout that a force of King Stephen, which had tracked them from the westward, was approaching Shrivenham; and thereupon, and for that the castle was too unfurnished with victual to withstand any beleaguer, the strangers fled from it more suddenly than they had come to it. As the vicinage was almost deserted, and as the few people fled and hid themselves, the black band had no communications with them during their brief stay; but two poor serfs who had watched their departure had described it as being full of panic, terror, and of a dread of other things besides that of the close approach of the king's force (which force never came at all); for they had heard the band bewailing that they had no longer a leader, that their chief had disappeared in the castellum, and that the devil must have carried him off bodily: and the serfs did well mark that the knight in the black mail was not among them, nor at their head, as they had seen him at their first coming. And as Sir Alain's people, in finishing their good work at the castellum, threw open the subterrain winding passage, of which mention hath been made, they found the body of an old man with a bundle of great keys at his girdle, and a long dagger sticking in his left side; and his head lay close to the strong door of the treasure chamber, and between the body and the door were picked up a strong bag and part of a long extinguished torch. "By Saint Lucia, who presideth over man's blessed organ of sight and the glorious light of day," quoth our abbat; "by sweet Saint Lucia, I do see daylight through that dark passage. The bait of that gold drew Sir Ingelric hither, to be taken as in a trap. He was eager to have the first hanselling and most precious bits of the treasure, or mayhap to carry off the whole, or conceal it for his own use, counting upon more time than heaven allowed him. That old unshriven traitor was, doubtless, one of the men of the castle-builder, that betrayed their master, and him Sir Ingelric slew so soon as he had led him to the chamber and opened the door, with the intent that he should not divulge unto others the secret of the hiding place. Peradventure, the old man in his death-struggles dashed out the light and pulled to the open door; or Sir Ingelric, being left in darkness, and uninformed of the fastenings, did in his great haste kick the door and so cause it to fly to, and shut for ever upon him." We did all think that the riddle was well read by Abbat Reginald, and that this was a natural conclusion to the other and better known incidents of Sir Ingelric's dark story. By the time we had finished with the wicked castles of Barkshire, our great and ever victorious King Henry had finished with that perverse man Hugh de Mortimer; and as we came to our house at Pangbourne on our way back to Reading, we there met the young Lord of Caversham, Sir Arthur de Bohun, who had been dismissed to his home by the king, and not without some further proof of the royal friendship, for, as it was ever in his nature to do, Sir Arthur had done manfully in the king's sieges and other emprises. It was a happy meeting to all of us, and there was no longer any public calamity to cloud or reproach our private happiness. The donjons were all down, or in good keeping; and, from end to end and in all its breadth England was at peace, and none of the baronage were so daring as to resist the king and the law. Dulce mihi nomen pacis!—ever sweet unto me was the name of peace, and now we had both the name and the substance of it. It was therefore resolved at Pangbourne that the marriage of Sir Arthur and the Lady Alice should be celebrated on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, which was now near at hand. Upon coming to Caversham Sir Alain de Bohun hung his shield upon the wall, intending to go forth to no more wars. Then he put into the hands of the gentle Alice the king's charter which conferred upon her the domains of her mother, telling her, in his jocose way, that as she had now so goodly an inheritance she might be minded to quit the humble house and poor people at Caversham, and get her to court to match with some great earl. And at this that fairest of maidens placed the king's charter in the hands of Sir Arthur, and with a blushing cheek and without words spoken, went out of the hall. Sir Arthur did afterwards inform her, in the gentlest manner, of the sure death of Sir Ingelric many months agone; and, albeit he had been so unnatural a father, Alice shed many tears, and made a vow to give money to the church and poor, that his sinful soul might be prayed for. The dreadful manner of Sir Ingelric's death was carefully concealed from the young bride, and hath never been fully made known unto her. She was united to Sir Arthur in our abbey church, on the happiest festival of St. Michael that our house had ever known, for the season was mild and beautiful, the harvest had been abundant, we had gotten in all our crops without hindrance, our granaries were filled with corn and our hearts with joy; and as all of us, from the lord abbat down to the obscurest lay brother, had a surpassing affection as well for the gentle bride as for her noble mate, who had in a manner been our son and pupil, and an old reverence and love for Sir Alain and his ladie, we could not but rejoice at the great joy we saw in them. But all good people, gentle or simple, bond or free, did jubilate on this happy day; and when the bride and bridegroom returned homeward, the procession which followed them, shouting and singing, and calling down blessings upon their young heads, was so long as to run in an unbroken line from the midst of the King's mead to the end of Caversham-bridge; for our good vassals of Reading town had all put on their holiday clothes and shut up their houses, and all the people of Caversham were afoot, and Tilehurst, and Sulham, and Charlton, and Purley, and Sunning, and Speen, and Pangbourne, and every other township and village for miles round-about had poured out their inhabitants; and not a franklin or serf, not a man, woman, or child among them all, but was feasted either by Sir Alain or Sir Arthur, or by us the monks of Reading. Methinks the sun never rose and set upon so beautiful a day! The air and the earth rejoiced, and the flowing waters; the full Thamesis and our own quick and resonant Kennet made music and thanksgiving together; and seemed it to me that I had never so loved the country of my birth, and the fair scenes in which my life had been past from infancy to ripe manhood; and yet had I ever loved that fair country above all that mine eyes had seen in much travelling. Natale solum dulcedine cunctos mulcet. Oh native soil, thou softenest man's heart, and fillest it with love of thee! Now did the Ladie Alice more than verify the happy prediction which our good Abbat Edward put forth in the stormy time, to wit, that the little maiden which came to our house in the basket, and which I, Felix the novice, and Philip the lay-brother did convey by night unto Caversham, would make amends for the ingratitude and treasons and other wicked doings of her father. Betwixt that merry wedding-day and the day that now is, there have been nine long years, and they have all been years of peace and happiness to the good house at Caversham, with that increase and multiplication which God willed when the world was in its infancy and all unpeopled. Happy, too, hath been our house at Reading, and great the increase of the abbey in beauty and splendour. Some few griefs and trials we have had; for earth, at the happiest, was never meant to be heaven; and we all live to die, and must die to live again. The good and bountiful Lord Abbat Reginald deceased on the fourth of the kalends of February, in the year of grace eleven hundred and fifty-eight; but he died full of years and honour, and verily, the Lord Abbat Roger that now is, hath been approved his very worthy successor. As our wealth increased under the blessed peace, and the sage government of our great king, and the favour of our Lord Thomas À Becket, for some while chancellor of the kingdom, and now and for the two years last past, by the grace of God, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England, we of the chapter did begin to think that our church was not sufficiently lofty and spacious, and that wondrous improvements might be made in it, if we devoted to the task some of our superfluous wealth. And six years agone, when our Lord Reginald was in the twelfth year of his government over us (may our Ladie the Virgin, and St. John and St. James ever have him in their holy keeping), we made a beginning; and the year last past, being the year of our redemption eleven hundred and sixty-four, we finished our great church, which hath been so much enlarged and altered that it may be called a new church; and Rex Henricus Secundus being present with ten suffragan bishops, and great lay barons too many to count, our Lord Archbishop Thomas did consecrate it with that solemnity and magnificence which he puts into all his doings: and on the very day on which the archbishop consecrated our church, the king, keeping his royal promise, granted us a land revenue of forty marks of silver out of the manor of Hoo in Kent, by assignment of Sir Robert Bardolph, the lord of that manor. And our mighty and ever victorious king, who is no less a friend to learning and learned men, nor less a patron of the church than was his grandfather the Beauclerc, hath ordered books to be bought for the enriching of our library, and hath given us another charter confirming our liberties and immunities, and enjoining all the kings that may come after him to observe the same, and calling upon the Lord to snatch them out of the land of the living, together with their posterity, if they or any one of them should seek to infringe our charter, or lessen our rights and properties. "Quam qui infringere vel minuere presumpserit, extrahat eum dominus et evertat de terra viventium cum omni posteritate sua." These be the king's very words in the second great charter he hath given us. Here I surcease from the pleasant labours which have amused the few lonely hours that my various duties left me. There cannot be a better time to stop and say vale! Henricus Secundus is king; Thomas À Becket is primate; Roger is lord abbat of Reading; and I, Felix the Sunningite, and novice that was, am poor sub-prior; and every monk of the house is a man of English birth. It hath been noted of late, that our prior declineth apace; and there hath been a talk among the cloister monks that I best merit that succession, which would place me next in dignity and greatness to the mitred lord abbat of this royal abbey. But, alas! what is increase of dignity but increase of care! I do hope that our good prior may live all through this winter; albeit, it is a very sharp one, and old men be falling fast around us.—Vale et semper Vale! THE END.LONDON: WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET. 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