The Serf

"I have heard it a hundred times, but never listened till now," said Anselm. "But what say they of Faucon peregryn? what means fremde londe?"

"It stands for foreign land in their speech," said the Jew. "Hast much to learn of thy flock, Anselm?"

"Not I. My belly moves at the crooning. It is like the wind in the forest of a winter's night. Come you to supper."

"That I will, when I have washed my hands; they are all foul with pike's blood."

Dom Anselm gave a superior smile, and turned towards the hall.

The great keep lifted its huge angular block of masonry high into the ruddy evening air, Outfangthef frowned over the bailey below. The door which opened on the hall steps stood wide, and the servants were hurrying in and out with dishes of food, while the men-at-arms stood lingering round it till supper should be ready.

Cookery was an art upon the upward path, and Geoffroi's chef was no mean professor of it. The hungry crowd saw bowls of stew made from goose and garlic borne up the stairs. Pork and venison in great quarters followed, and after them came two kitchen serfs carrying wooden trays of pastry, and round cakes piously marked with a cross.

Soon came the summons to supper. A page boy came down the steps and cried that my lord was seated, and every one pressed up the stairs with much jangling of metal and grinding of feet upon the stones. To our modern ideas the great hall would present an extraordinary sight. This rich nobleman fed with less outward-seeming comfort than a pauper in a clean-scrubbed, whitewashed workhouse of to-day. And yet, though many a lazy casual would grumble at a dinner served as was Geoffroi de la Bourne's, there was something enormously impressive in the scene. We are fortunate in many old chronicles and tales which enable us to reconstruct it in all its picturesqueness.

Imagine, then, that you are standing on the threshold of the hall just as supper has been begun.

The hall was a great room of bare stone, with a roof of oaken beams, in which more than one bird had its nest. There was an enormous stone chimney, now all empty of fire, and the place was lit with narrow chinks, unglazed, pierced in the ten-foot wall. The day of splendid oriels was yet to come in fortress architecture, which was, like the time, grim and stern. It was dusk now in the outside world, and the hall was lit with horn lanterns, and also with tall spiked sticks, into which were fixed rough candles of tallow. The table went right up the hall, and was a heavy board supported on trestles. Benches were the only seats.

On a daïs at the far end of the building was the high table, where Geoffroi and his son and daughter sat. The two squires, Brian de Burgh and Richard Ferville, also sat at the high table, and Dom Anselm had a place on the baron's right hand.

Lewin was seated at the head of the lower table, and the baron could lean over and speak to him if he had a mind to do so.

Geoffroi and his son sat in chairs which were covered with rugs, and at their side stood great goblets of silver. The dim light threw fantastic shadows upon the colours of the dresses and the weapons hung on pegs driven into the wall, blending them into a harmonious whole.

It was a picture of warm reds and browns, of mellow, comfortable colours, with here and there a sudden twinkle of rich, vivid madder or old gold.

When every one was seated, Geoffroi nodded to Dom Anselm, who thereupon pattered out a grace, an act of devotion which was rather marred by the behaviour of Lord Fulke, who was audibly relating some merry tale to his friend, Brian de Burgh.

Then every one fell to with a great appetite. The serfs, kneeling, brought barons of beef and quarters of hot pork on iron dishes. Each man cut what he fancied with his dagger or hunting-knife, and laid it on his trencher. Such as chose stew or ragout, ate it from a wooden bowl, scooping up the mess in their bare hands. Lady Alice held a bone in her white fingers, and gnawed it like any kitchen wench; and so did they all, and were, indeed, none the worse for that.

Geoffroi de la Bourne, the central figure of that company, was a tall, thin man of some five-and-fifty years. His face was lined and seamed with deep furrows. Heavy brows hung over cold green eyes, and a beaked eagle nose dominated a small grey moustache, which did not hide a pair of firm, thin lips. His grey hair fell almost to his shoulders.

Geoffroi, like his son and the squires, was dressed in a tunic, long, tight hose, a short cloak trimmed with expensive fur, and shoes with peaked corkscrew toes.

The Baron sat eating quickly, and joining little in the talk around him. He seemed very conscious of his position as lord of vast lands, and had the exaggerated manner of the overworked business man.

He had many things to trouble him. The mint was not going well. His unblushing adulteration of coined monies was severely commented on, and his silver pennies were looked upon with suspicion in more than one mercantile centre. The king was ill, and the license made possible by the disordered state of the country was exciting the great churchmen to every intrigue against the barons. Moreover, plunder was become increasingly difficult. Merchants no longer passed with their trains anywhere near the notorious castle of Hilgay, and, except for his immediate retainers, all the country round was up in arms against Geoffroi.

He had imagined that stern, repressive measures would terrify his less powerful neighbours into silence. Two flaming churches in the fens and the summary hanging of the priests had, however, only incensed East Anglia to a passion of hatred.

Even as he sat at supper a certain popular Saxon gentleman, Byrlitelm by name, lay at the bottom of an unmentionable hole beneath Outfangthef, groaning his life away in darkness and silence, while his daughter was the sport and plaything of the two young squires. Disquieting rumours were abroad about the intentions of the powerful Roger Bigot of Norwich, who was known to be hand-in-glove with the Earl of Gloucester, the half-brother of Matilda.

Added to these weighty troubles, Geoffroi, who like all nobles of that day was an expert carver in wood and metal, had cut his thumb almost to the bone by the slip of a graving tool, and it throbbed unbearably. A still further annoyance threatened him. Gertrude of Albermarl, a little girl of fifteen, now acting as an attendant to Lady Alice, was a ward of his whom he had taken quietly, usurping one of the especial privileges of his friend the king.

The Crown managed the estates of minors, and held the right of giving in marriage the heirs and heiresses of its tenants. "The poor child may be tossed and tumbled chopped and changed, bought and sold, like a jade in Smithfield, and, what is more, married to whom it pleaseth his guardian – whereof many evils ensue," says Jocelyn de Brakelond, and the wardship of little Gertrude was a very comfortable thing. Stephen had heard of this act of Geoffroi's, and had sent him a peremptory summons to send the child immediately to town. Geoffroi had that day determined that little Gertrude should be married incontinently, to the young ruffian his son, but the step was a grave one to take, and would probably alienate the king irrevocably.

So he ate his supper gloomily. Every one in the place knew immediately that he was displeased, and it cast a gloom over them also.

As the meal went on, conversation became fitful and constrained, and the crowd of lecheurs, or beggars, who waited round the door, disputing scraps of food with the lean fen dogs, could be distinctly heard growling and gobbling among themselves in obscene chatter.

When at last Lady Alice withdrew and the cups were filled afresh with cool wine from the cellar, Geoffroi signed to Fulke to come up to him. The young man was a debauched creature of twenty-six, clean-shaven. His hair was not long like his father's, but clipped close. The back of his head was also shaven, and gave him a fantastic, elfin appearance. It was a custom to shave the back of the head, which was very generally adopted, especially in hot weather, among the young dandies of the time.[2 - It is quite possible that this fashion of the shavelings accounted for the mistake of Harold's spies at the Conquest, who said that there were more priests in the Norman camp than fighting men in the English army!]

"Letters from the king," said Geoffroi shortly, in a deep, hoarse voice.

"About Gertrude?"

"Yes, that is it. Now there is but one answer to make to that. You must marry her in a day or so, and then nothing more can be said."

"That is the only thing," said Fulke, grinning and wrinkling up his forehead till his stubble of hair seemed squirting out of it. "But I will not give up my pleasures for that."

"Who asked you?" said the father. "She is but a child and a-knoweth nothing – you can make them her maids-in-waiting, that will please her." He laughed a short, snarling laugh. "Sir Anselm shall tie the knot with Holy Church her benediction."

He summoned that scandalous old person from his wine.

"Priest," said he, "my Lord Fulke is about to wed little Lady Gertrude; so make you ready in a day or two. I will give you the gold cross I took from Medhampstede, for a memorial, and we will eke have a feast for every one of my people."

"It is the wisest possible thing, Lord Geoffroi," said Anselm. "I will say a Mass or two and get to praying for the young folk, and Heaven will be kind to them."

"That do," said Fulke and Geoffroi, making the sign of the cross, for, strange as it may seem, both the scoundrels were real believers in the mysterious powers of the chaplain. Though they saw him drunken, lecherous, and foul of tongue, yet they believed entirely in his power to arrange things for them with God. Indeed, paradoxical as it may sound, if Anselm had not been at Hilgay, both of them would have been better men. They would not have dared some of their excesses, had it not been possible to obtain immediate absolution. A rape and a murder were cheap at a pound of wax altar lights and a special Mass.

"Here's good fortune," said Anselm, lifting the cup and bowing to Fulke.

"Thank you for't," said the young man. "Father, the minter shall make us a ring, and his mouth shall give the tidings to the other officers. Lewin, come you here, you have a health to drink." Lewin was summoned to the upper table, and sat drinking with them, pledging many toasts. Once he cast a curious glance at Anselm, and that worthy smiled back at him.

The evening was growing very hot and oppressive as it wore on. It was quite dark outside and there was thunder in the air. Every now and again the sky muttered in wrath, and at such sounds a sudden stillness fell upon the four knaves at the high table, and, putting down their wine vessels, they crossed themselves. Lewin made the "great cross" each time, "from brow to navel, and from arm to arm."