Maid Marian | Page 3

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Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock

Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software

MAID MARIAN


CHAPTER I
Now come ye for peace here, or come ye for war? SCOTT.
"The abbot, in his alb arrayed," stood at the altar in the abbey-chapel of
Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek, rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed,
to solemnise the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of
the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert Fitz-Ooth, Earl of
Locksley and Huntingdon. The abbey of Rubygill stood in a
picturesque valley, at a little distance from the western boundary of
Sherwood Forest, in a spot which seemed adapted by nature to be the
retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine
trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with

excellent game. The bride, with her father and attendant maidens,
entered the chapel; but the earl had not arrived. The baron was amazed,
and the bridemaidens were disconcerted. Matilda feared that some evil
had befallen her lover, but felt no diminution of her confidence in his
honour and love. Through the open gates of the chapel she looked
down the narrow road that wound along the side of the hill; and her ear
was the first that heard the distant trampling of horses, and her eye was
the first that caught the glitter of snowy plumes, and the light of
polished spears. "It is strange," thought the baron, "that the earl should
come in this martial array to his wedding;" but he had not long to
meditate on the phenomenon, for the foaming steeds swept up to the
gate like a whirlwind, and the earl, breathless with speed, and followed
by a few of his yeomen, advanced to his smiling bride. It was then no
time to ask questions, for the organ was in full peal, and the choristers
were in full voice.
The abbot began to intone the ceremony in a style of modulation
impressively exalted, his voice issuing most canonically from the roof
of his mouth, through the medium of a very musical nose newly tuned
for the occasion. But he had not proceeded far enough to exhibit all the
variety and compass of this melodious instrument, when a noise was
heard at the gate, and a party of armed men entered the chapel. The
song of the choristers died away in a shake of demisemiquavers,
contrary to all the rules of psalmody. The organ-blower, who was
working his musical air-pump with one hand, and with two fingers and
a thumb of the other insinuating a peeping-place through the curtain of
the organ-gallery, was struck motionless by the double operation of
curiosity and fear; while the organist, intent only on his performance,
and spreading all his fingers to strike a swell of magnificent chords, felt
his harmonic spirit ready to desert his body on being answered by the
ghastly rattle of empty keys, and in the consequent agitato furioso of
the internal movements of his feelings, was preparing to restore
harmony by the segue subito of an appoggiatura con foco with the
corner of a book of anthems on the head of his neglectful assistant,
when his hand and his attention together were arrested by the scene
below. The voice of the abbot subsided into silence through a
descending scale of long-drawn melody, like the sound of the ebbing

sea to the explorers of a cave. In a few moments all was silence,
interrupted only by the iron tread of the armed intruders, as it rang on
the marble floor and echoed from the vaulted aisles.
The leader strode up to the altar; and placing himself opposite to the
abbot, and between the earl and Matilda, in such a manner that the four
together seemed to stand on the four points of a diamond, exclaimed,
"In the name of King Henry, I forbid the ceremony, and attach Robert
Earl of Huntingdon as a traitor!" and at the same time he held his drawn
sword between the lovers, as if to emblem that royal authority which
laid its temporal