Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers | Page 5

all afraid of the Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the Baron out--had his boots been out of the question; so he resolved to have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just without the walls of Canterbury, and presented himself in a vision to its abbot. No one who has ever visited that ancient city can fail to recollect the splendid gateway which terminates the vista of St. Paul's street, and stands there yet in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train of miniature artillery which now adorns its battlements is, it is true, an ornament of a later date; and is said to have been added some centuries after by a learned but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of shooting any wiser man than himself, who might chance to come that way. Tradition is silent as to any discharge having taken place, nor can the oldest inhabitant of modern days recollect any such occurrence. [Footnote: Since the appearance of the first edition of this Legend "the guns" have been dismounted. Rumor hints at some alarm on the part of the Town Council.] Here it was, in a handsome chamber, immediately over the lofty archway, that the Superior of the monastery lay buried in a brief slumber, snatched from his accustomed vigils. His mitre--for he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament--rested on a table beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in all the colors of the rainbow.
"Anselm!" said the beatific vision,--"Anselm! are you not a pretty fellow to lie snoring there when your brethren are being knocked at head, and Mother Church herself is menaced?--It is a sin and a shame, Anselm!"
"What's the matter?--Who are you?" cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes, which the celestial splendour of his visitor had set a-winking. "Ave Maria! St. Austin himself! Speak, _Beatissime!_ what would you with the humblest of your votaries?"
"Anselm!" said the saint, a "brother of our order, whose soul Heaven assoilzie! hath been foully murdered. He had been ignominiously kicked to the death, Anselm; and there he lieth check-by-jowl with a wretched carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for unseemly grinning. Arouse thee, Anselm!"
"Ay, so please you, _Sanctssime!_" said the Abbot. "I will order forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty _Paters,_ and thirty _Aves."_
"Thirty fools' heads!" interrupted his patron, who was a little peppery.
"I will send for bell, book, and candle--"
"Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. Write me now a letter to his Holiness the Pope in good round terms, and another to the Sheriff, and seize me the never-enough-to-be anathematized villain who hath done this deed! Hang him as high as Haman, Anselm!--up with him!--down with his dwelling place, root and branch, hearth-stone and roof-tree,--down with it all, and sow the site with salt and sawdust."
St. Austin, it will perceived, was a radical reformer.
"Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's eloquence: "ay, marry will I, and that instanter. But there is one thing you have forgotten most Beatified--the name of the culprit."
"Robert de Shurland."
"The Lord of Sheppey! Bless me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself, "won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a powerful: blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and--"
"What is that to you, since yours will not be of the number?"
"Very true, _Beatissime!_--I will don me with speed and do your bidding."
"Do so, Anselm!--fail not to hang the Baron, burn his castle, confiscate his estate, and buy me two large wax candles for my own particular shrine out of your share of the property."
With this solemn injunction, the vision began to fade.
"One thing more!" cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
"What is that?" asked the Saint.
"_O Beate Augustine, ora pro nobis!_"
"Of course I shall," said St. Austin. _"Pax vo-biscum!"_--and Abbot Anselm was left alone.
Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been murdered,--two friars--ten, twenty; a whole convent had been assaulted, sacked, burnt,--all the monks had been killed, and all the nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where was it?"--"When was it?"--"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain, the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on