Sir Nigel | Page 6

son Eustace, Nigel's father, had found a glorious death nine years
before this chronicle opens upon the poop of a Norman galley at the
sea-fight of Sluys. The lonely old woman, fierce and brooding like the
falcon mewed in her chamber, was soft only toward the lad whom she
had brought up. All the tenderness and love of her nature, so hidden
from others that they could not imagine their existence, were lavished
upon him. She could not bear him away from her, and he, with that
respect for authority which the age demanded, would not go without
her blessing and consent.
So it came about that Nigel, with his lion heart and with the blood of a
hundred soldiers thrilling in his veins, still at the age of two and twenty,
wasted the weary days reclaiming his hawks with leash and lure or
training the alans and spaniels who shared with the family the big
earthen-floored hall of the manor-house.
Day by day the aged Lady Ermyntrude had seen him wax in strength

and in manhood, small of stature, it is true, but with muscles of steel -
and a soul of fire. From all parts, from the warden of Guildford Castle,
from the tilt-yard of Farnham, tales of his prowess were brought back
to her, of his daring as a rider, of his debonair courage, of his skill with
all weapons; but still she, who had both husband and son torn from her
by a bloody death, could not bear that this, the last of the Lorings, the
final bud of so famous an old tree, should share the same fate. With a
weary heart, but with a smiling face, he bore with his uneventful days,
while she would ever put off the evil time until the harvest was better,
until the monks of Waverley should give up what they had taken, until
his uncle should die and leave money for his outfit, or any other excuse
with which she could hold him to her side.
And indeed, there was need for a man at Tilford, for the strife betwixt
the Abbey and the manor-house had never been appeased, and still on
one pretext or another the monks would clip off yet one more slice of
their neighbor's land. Over the winding river, across the green meadows,
rose the short square tower and the high gray walls of the grim Abbey,
with its bell tolling by day and night, a voice of menace and of dread to
the little household.
It is in the heart of the great Cistercian monastery that this chronicle of
old days must take its start, as we trace the feud betwixt the monks and
the house of Loring, with those events to which it gave birth, ending
with the coming of Chandos, the strange spear-running of Tilford
Bridge and the deeds with which Nigel won fame in the wars.
Elsewhere, in the chronicle of the White Company, it has been set forth
what manner of man was Nigel Loring. Those who love him may read
herein those things which went to his making. Let us go back together
and gaze upon this green stage of England, the scenery, hill, plain and
river even as now, the actors in much our very selves, in much also so
changed in thought and act that they might be dwellers in another world
to ours.

II. HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY
The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the Blessed
Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from man's
salvation.
>From tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John of

the House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he conducted
the many high duties of his office. All around for many a mile on every
side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was the
master. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and
cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with a
busy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of
the brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below.
From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a
Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir,
while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother
Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.
Abbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at the
greensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open Gothic
arches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren within. Two and
two in their black-and-white garb with slow step and heads inclined,
they paced round and round.