Chapter III: Part 3

“Yes,” answered Commagenus, “he died--the more is the pity; for he might have lived, had he chosen to use his own wisdom. Instead of that he imparted it on his death-bed to me. What care had he to live, an outcast in strange lands? But this world lost its wisest man; for I am no Gazophylacius. Only I am always learning.”

“Why, this is as strange a maze as ever man trod,” cried Makepeace. “You tell me that your master died a hundred and forty years ago, and that you, Galiani, were with him at the time.”

“Not Galiani, but Commagenus,” said the stranger in complacent amusement at the doctor’s bewilderment: “that was my name then. I was a youth, twenty years old, when I first came to Constantinople from the country which gave me my name--three years before the siege. There I became the favourite pupil of the great student of natural and medical science, Theodorus Gazophylacius.”

“Why, that makes you a hundred and seventy years old,” feebly remonstrated Makepeace. “Are you then the Wandering Jew?”

“Doctor, I am shocked,” said Commagenus. “Are such fables the stuff of which the _Speculum_ is made? I tell you there is nothing in this world that is not natural. That was my master’s constant teaching: also that to know and to will makes man master of nature. That much I learnt from him while he taught at Constantinople, and it was in my noviciate that I gathered from him the art to work such simple cures as you saw this afternoon. To prolong mere existence by keeping disease at bay--that he esteemed a vulgar art. To live long and die old, feeble and foolish--what gain is that to the man or his fellow-men? To live always, always to be young, always eager, always to be growing in wisdom and power--that was the secret for which he spent a lifetime’s search, and with his dying breath he told me that he had sought it in vain. Death, the last disease, is incurable: there is a stronger will than man’s. But he told me of a door of escape. In his last moments he was possessed with a dread that his discovery would perish in the general eclipse of learning which he foresaw as the result of the disappearance of the Byzantine schools, and, with solemn admonition as to its use, he imparted it to me. Death, the mere accident of the flesh, is transferable with the flesh. With will and knowledge, the spirit--all that you call character, intelligence, consciousness, memory--may pass from form to form, unchanged in the transition and always capable of growth and ripening. Alas, that I have not made better use of my master’s prescriptions! But it has been my evil fate. Another might do better.”

“These are heathen imaginings--snares and delusions of Satan,” cried Makepeace. “What talk is this of tampering with the divine in us? Man, are you a Christian?”

“I am what I am,” replied Commagenus: “but that this is waking fact and no delusion my history shall show you. After my beloved master’s death I set up in medical practice in a certain city of Dalmatia. The fame of my unusual healing powers spread in all the neighbourhood. Unfortunately it reached the ears of the bishop of the diocese. He was a sincere, well-meaning man, kind in all his relations with the laity of his diocese, but a trifle superstitious. He concluded that I was a necromancer and condemned me to be burnt alive. Until the moment when I found myself in a dungeon and on the eve of execution I had never thought to avail myself of the secret communicated to me by my master, and had even questioned its efficacy. The prospect of burning was so extremely repugnant to my feelings that I resolved to make practical trial of it. Shall I show you how it is done? No, you need not shrink from me. I have no wish to pass into simple old Matthew Makepeace. I can do better. Be assured that the will goes not with the act.”

Commagenus rose and fastened his gaze on Matthew. As he did so it seemed to the doctor that he grew and grew to a bulk and stature ineffable and dim. But that, he reasoned with himself, was an illusion of the sense, and for the moments when the fascinating glare was fixed on him he retained his consciousness. Slowly, deliberately, that Matthew might follow every movement in succession, he moved his hands and arms in gyrations and waves more intricate than any that Matthew had witnessed when the Greek stood on the mountebank’s platform that afternoon. Then he stooped over the table, and with extraordinary distinctness of articulation whispered in his ear one word. What that word was I do not know. Matthew Makepeace remembered it once, and forgot it for all the years that he lived afterwards.

The Greek took up his tale again. “My excellent master had informed me that, whether the subject were waking or asleep, the will and the word had equal effect. My gaoler slept in the condemned cell with me and the occasion seemed to me a particularly happy one for testing the accuracy of my master’s conclusions. Though I did not doubt the intensity of my will, in prospect of such an undesirable event as being burnt alive, I confess that I was surprised and more than gratified by the issue of the experiment. I had the satisfaction of leading my gaoler to the stake on the following morning.”

“What,” cried Makepeace: “do you tell me that the man was burnt? True,” he added, as a mitigating consideration suggested itself to his bewildered brain, “he was a papist. But, after all, what were you?”

Commagenus answered with the resignation of a parent satisfying an inquisitive child. “Yes, Matthew Makepeace, when your raiment is past your own use you make a gift of it to some humble dependent. When _he_ has worn it threadbare, what happens? It is burnt. You do not burn it: I did not burn him. Besides, this common man in ages to come will be held in reverence--in another name, I admit--as a martyr to medical science. Nevertheless I was little pleased, as you may think, with the integument which my brutal gaoler had left me. In my new and humble sphere of life I had few opportunities of self-improvement, and, taking the first that offered, I installed myself in the person of a Dominican friar. I am disposed to doubt whether I really bettered myself by my change of profession. I found that it required much ingenuity to sustain the part of crass ignorance which was associated with my new character, and the man’s companions were deplorable people. An accident, which had nearly proved fatal, relieved me of the disagreeable situation. In the course of my professional duties I was directed to take ship for Spain, where the Dominican order had an especial interest in the Office of the Holy Inquisition. On the voyage we fell in with a vessel belonging to a respectable merchant of Marseilles. The merchant, who was likewise the ship’s captain, was in the habit, when occasion offered, of diversifying the routine of commerce by piratical enterprise. With his crew he boarded and took possession of our vessel, informing us that we were his prisoners. As he had a reputation for probity to sustain at Marseilles, he judged it prudent to throw the whole of the crew and passengers of our vessel into the waves. However, learning that there was a clergyman on board, he seized the opportunity of making confession first and receiving plenary absolution from him of an outstanding balance of prior delinquencies. It was natural to avail myself of the opportunity for transferring myself into his person. It was pleasant to see him flounder in the sea with the rest, and I returned--if that is the right word--to Marseilles, in circumstances sufficiently ample to warrant retirement from a profession the ambiguous character of which offended my moral sense. But my experiences in the three careers of life which my destiny had recently forced upon me gave me an indelible prejudice against the Western Church. On the whole I am a Protestant.

“I need not detain you with my subsequent transmigrations. The merchant was elderly and so oppressively respectable that I was glad to exchange into the superior rank of a French marquisate. Since then, from Trebizond to Tarifa, I have studied men and manners in many capacities. Perhaps the time which was pleasantest to me, as a man of science, was spent in Peru with Pizarro, whom I attended as a captain of cavalry. But a fatal wound, inflicted by a poisoned arrow, compelled my return to Spain in the office of a ship’s boatswain. After all my wanderings my conscience reproached me with my culpable neglect of the art in whose elements I had been grounded by the ever-revered Gazophylacius. I resumed the medical studies which I was convinced were best suited to my bent and upbringing, by adopting the features and the status of a freshman in the University of Padua. As the freshman, under no possible circumstances, could have passed his examinations you will see that I conferred on him no small obligation by the assistance which I rendered. In my first year I obtained advancement to the person and professorial chair of Galiani. I am grieved to tell you that I left him seriously unwell at Salerno, ten years ago; and his decease, which followed almost immediately after, proved to me how wise had been my course in transferring myself into the healthy frame of the brother professor who attended him in the earlier phases of his malady. Come, doctor, you have let me chatter on with these tiresome details till I see you are three parts asleep.”

“Asleep!” roared Makepeace, who had been filled with rage, disgust and hatred by the shameless recital. “Asleep! Wretch, thief, assassin, defiler of the sanctuary of man! Begone, skirr, fly! Would that I could crush your basilisk head on the floor as I stand! But stay. I will fetch the University bedel. He shall clap you in the lowest hold of the Castle gaol.”

“Marry, good words, master doctor,” said the imperturbable stranger. “Your bedel, possibly, is a family man; and conscience forbids that, except in the last resort, I should lay a father of a family in a dungeon for crimes that, you are pleased to assert, are of my doing: and, except that I do not propose myself for the office of bedel, it were an easy thing for me to do so. But hearken, my honest friend. I wish you well--no man better. Getting old is a sad affair, sadder even than dying. I think that you are sixty, and I don’t think that just now you are quite in your best health. Has the world gone very well with you? In five years, ten years, will it go better? You have written a silly book that nobody will read, and you are ashamed of it. You have wasted your years of manhood in twisting ropes of sand. And the solitude, Matthew! My heart bleeds to think what your solitude will be. What friend have you to smooth the downhill course? Who cares for the friend of dead books? Altogether, you have very little use now for Matthew Makepeace. Who is it that should sleep in yonder bed?” he asked, pointing to the truckle used by Marmaduke Dacre. “Is he young? Is he comely? Has he friends to love him and be loved? Is he of a quick spirit and a high hope? Matthew Makepeace, you know the acts and the word. The door lies open to you. Take wisdom, and be young.”

“The door lies open to _you_,” shouted Makepeace, throwing it open as he spoke. “Pass out of it, and avoid the chamber of a Christian man: and the foul fiend fly away with you and your abominable suggestions!”

“Doctor Makepeace, I wish you a very good evening,” said his visitor.

* * * * *

The night was far advanced, and Matthew Makepeace had no mind for bed. A dim rush candle, set on a stool in a corner of the apartment, cast flickering shadows on the walls and floor. In an opposite dark corner his pupil slept. But for the dread of awaking him, Makepeace would have paced the room in his perplexity. As it was, he sat bent double on the stool by the window.

One thing was clear enough. If what he had seen and heard was not a fiction or the delusion of his senses, the _Speculum_ was a colossal stupidity. Even if the rejuvenations of Commagenus were as much in the course of nature as he affirmed them to be, did they not warrant the Pope’s most arrogant pretensions? But it was with himself that he was most concerned. Was it not the fact that, as Commagenus had declared, his life had been most miserably wasted? And the mistake was past repair. If only his youth had known! And his mind went back to a short, happy time, just after he had taken his degree, when he had served as chaplain in his far-away northern country, at the ancestral castle of the Dacres. His pupil then had been the present Lord, Marmaduke’s father; and the pupil had had so much to teach his master about hawks and horses and hounds that the master had little leisure to repay it in Greek and Latin. Those were happy days when they had roamed the Cumbrian fells together. And now this Lord Dacre was great in the councils of his sovereign, the wise and respected ruler of a barony that was almost a kingdom in itself. And in his trusting confidence he had committed his son to the care of his old master at Cambridge; and that son in course of years would naturally succeed to his father’s station.

Had Commagenus indeed sat in that chamber, only a few hours since, and unfolded to him the secret of perpetual youth? Yes: there was the evidence of the written scrap lying on the open page of the _Speculum_. True, Commagenus had made a detestable use of his wonderful power. But with Makepeace it would be different. He was conscious of his sobriety and virtue, and there were the noble traditions of the house of Dacre to keep him in the right way. He had abilities, if only he had youth and opportunity to use them, and the experience of sixty years was a better guarantee for their proper employment than any that a callow youth could offer. Clearer, louder than the voices of conscience or calculation there came back to him, like the drumming burden of an iterated song, the words “The door is open. Be young.” Was it fancy that a door seemed to open in the dark book-press opposite, and that through it he looked out on a sunny haze enveloping blue hills and waters and the towers of Dacre Castle? And cool breaths from heathery heights took up the refrain, and whispered to him “Be young.”

Matthew Makepeace crept quietly to the dark corner where his pupil lay. His will was intense as he had never known it before. He took care that his shadow should not fall on the sleeper’s face and arouse him. He made the wonderful passes--with what extraordinary clearness they were printed on his recollection! He stooped and whispered in his pupil’s ear the mysterious word.

If Matthew had expected a flash of lightning, the apparition of the Evil One, the jubilations of triumphant fiends on the success of his experiment, he was agreeably disappointed. Nothing of the kind happened. Only in the dim light of the candle he saw a grey shadow of weary age steal over his pupil’s face, and he felt the vigour and vitality of youth invade his own limbs as with the intoxication of wine. Then the wick suddenly flickered in the candle-socket and went out. He heard Marmaduke turn over in his bed with an uneasy sigh.

Then Makepeace woke to reason and a horrible dread. He dared not relight the candle for fear of rousing the sleeper. In the dark, before he was discovered, he must repeat the process which should restore each to his own person. In the dark, as nearly as he could, he went through the magical passes, and with extraordinary vehemence he willed himself back into Matthew Makepeace. But the word! Great heavens! It had passed from him as suddenly and completely as the light of the extinguished candle. In vain he racked his memory of every language, living or dead. It had no meaning in any language, living or dead: of that he felt sure, and he was sure of nothing else. For an hour, by his pupil’s bedside, he tore his hair in desperate efforts to recall it. For an hour he alternately cursed Commagenus and prayed that he might return before day to give him the forgotten word. Then the grey morning light began to creep through the casement, and the birds woke and sang.

There could be no shadow of doubt about it. There lay Matthew Makepeace before him, and the old man was drowsily stirring his limbs as the light broadened into day. And young Dacre, in a doctor’s gown, was looking down upon him, tortured with horrible thoughts. One thing was certain. He could never pass himself off as Marmaduke. Conscience, gratitude, affection forbade it. Besides, the thing was impossible. He, the torpid pedant, could never play the part of the young and chivalrous heir of the Dacres: and there would be Marmaduke to convict the imposture. Before his pupil woke, before the discovery was made, he must disappear from Cambridge. Quietly and in haste he took down his pupil’s clothes from the closet where they hung, and exchanged for them his doctor’s robes. Then he descended his stairs and stepped out into the cool shadows of the August morning. The porter was just opening the gate. He nodded familiarly to young Dacre as he passed. That was the last which any soul in Jesus College saw of Matthew Makepeace.

Unless, indeed, it were that same Matthew Makepeace who, with the homing instinct of a dying animal, crept back to Cambridge in poverty and wretchedness, and died in widow Pearson’s house in 1654. In any case the flagstone in the chapel transept told a lie: it was Marmaduke Dacre that lay beneath it.

One thing further I have to mention. When I first took down the _Speculum_ from its shelf in the college library I found it in the same virgin condition in which it had lain on the table of Matthew Makepeace on that fatal afternoon in August, 1604. No living soul had disturbed its repose for over 300 years. It was evidently the same copy: perhaps no other was ever issued. As I turned its pages a scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. It had been torn from the bottom corner of pages 273-4. On it was written in minute Greek letters an inscription which I translate:

“Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and wills with earnestness.”

Thankfull Thomas

A passage in the lately edited _Diary of George Evans_, 1649-1658, has called my attention to a singular and, I believe, unrecorded episode in the history of Jesus College.

With Mr. Evans himself the story is not concerned. It is sufficient to say that he was appointed to a fellowship at Jesus in 1650 by the Committee for Reforming the Universities, in place of an expelled Presbyterian. He was, as his name suggests, a Welshman, of the county of Radnor, and, of course, an Independent. He vacated his fellowship, on his marriage, in 1654, and retired to the living of Marston Monceux, co. Salop. He held the incumbency until his death, in 1672, having conformed at the Restoration.

The portion of his diary which has awaked my interest relates to the date June 11, 1652. For its explanation it is necessary to state that ten years previously, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the College had taken a quantity of its plate from the Treasury and delivered it to a certain Mr. John Poley, by him to be conveyed to His Majesty, who was then at Nottingham. As the whole society was under menace of expulsion before the end of 1642, they took the precaution, before quitting the College, of concealing the rest of the plate, as well as the chapel organ. This organ had been introduced in 1634 by the Master, Richard Sterne, who was Archbishop Laud’s chaplain, and had actively promoted his plans for the re-organisation of church ritual in the University. It was a small chamber instrument, easily transportable. When the new society, consisting of Presbyterians introduced by the Earl of Manchester, entered the College in January, 1643, they noted in the Treasury Book that they could only discover three pieces of plate. Entries in the Bursar’s Book in the year 1652 record that the rest of the plate was discovered in that year, and at a rather later date the organ was brought to light.

Some further notes respecting the Chapel in Commonwealth days will serve to explain certain points in the history which I have been able to unravel. The older of the two existing bells in the tower was cast by Christopher Gray in 1659. It took the place of another which was of pre-Reformation date and had probably served the Nunnery of Saint Radegund. This was a heavy tenor bell, and had apparently belonged to a set of four, named after the evangelists. It bore the emblem of Saint Mark, a lion, and the inscription in ancient lettering--

=Celorvm Marce resonet tvvs ympnvs in Arce.=

This bell, for many years previous to 1652, had been disused owing to the weakness of its frame and of the supporting floor.

The passage, above referred to, in George Evans’ diary runs as follows:

“June 11 [1652]. Present yᵉ Master, Mr. Woodcocke and Mr. Machin, fellows, with Mr. Thomas Buck, Thankfull Thomas and Robert Hitchcock digging, we digged up yᵉ treasury plate hidd in yᵉ Masters orchard. In all were seventeen peeces (then follows a list). Searched till prayers. But Quaerendm whether there be not yit other peeces and yᵉ treasure hidd by yᵉ former societie. Thomas saith Mr. Germyn cld avouch for more.”

On reading this extract, the name--for such it seemed to be--Thankfull Thomas, at once arrested my attention. It reminded me of a partially obliterated inscription on a flat gravestone which lies at the crossing of the transepts, close to the south-west pier of the tower--that one which is distinguished from the other piers by a dog-tooth moulding. The letters are so worn by treading that they can only be distinguished in certain lights, and indeed have altogether disappeared on the side of the stone which is furthest from the pier-base. What remains is to be read:--

=nkfull
mas=

followed by a date of which the figures =652= are legible.

I have searched the Register of the College for such a name, but, though it is complete for the years preceding 1652, I have been unable to find it. But in the College Order Book I have found, among other appointments of the year 1650, an entry, “Thomas constitutus est Custos Templi.” From which it would seem that Thomas was the surname of the Independent official corresponding to a verger or chapel-clerk. It is singular that he should have been buried, among Masters and Fellows, in such a conspicuous place in the Chapel.

The discovery of the plate in the Master’s orchard--brought about through the agency of Mr. Thomas Buck, of Catharine Hall, who was one of the Esquire Bedells--was matter for disappointment as much as congratulation to the Master and Fellows. They had a convinced belief that a much larger quantity of treasure remained concealed in some quarter of the College, and, as the passage in the diary shows, Thankfull Thomas suggested that Mr. Germyn probably knew something of the matter. Of him it is necessary to say a few words.

Gervase Germyn, of the county of Huntingdon, was admitted to the College in 1621, and in 1652 must have been a man of middle age. He was a Master of Arts, unmarried, and resided in Cambridge. He was not one of the expelled Fellows. He had acted as organist and choir-master in the mastership of Richard Sterne, and was passionately devoted to church music. After the removal of the organ and the installation of the new Master and Fellows, in 1643, his connection with the College ceased. He was miserably poor and supported himself by teaching music. His small, spare figure was ordinarily dressed in a thread-bare garb of semi-clerical appearance, and he had a quaintness of manner and speech which induced the belief that he was not of ordinary sanity.

Thankfull Thomas particularly disliked him. Gervase had a tone of superiority in addressing him which was the more galling because what he said was only remotely intelligible to the sexton; and he had a disagreeable habit of meddling with what he considered to be the duties and prerogatives of his office. Germyn must have possessed a key to the Chapel, for he was constantly presenting himself there at unexpected times, often late in the evening. He had a distracting habit of roaming about the building, and, as Thomas thought, spying on his actions from unseen quarters. Thomas had seen him looking down on him from the Nuns’ gallery in the north transept, or high up in the tower arcade.

Thomas took note of these circumstances and kept his knowledge to himself. His cupidity was aroused by the thought of the hidden treasure, and he was perfectly convinced that the clue to its discovery lay with Germyn. As it was useless to question him directly he resorted to a system of counter-espial.

His attention was particularly drawn to the Chapel tower, where he had more than once detected Germyn’s presence. The arcaded storey beneath the belfry is reached by a dark, winding stair in the wall at the north-east angle of the north transept. The staircase emerges, at a considerable height, on a Norman gallery, which, at the time of which I am speaking, was not protected on the transept side by a railing. Thomas was a timid man, and he made this alarming passage clutching each pillar as he passed it. Then another stair in the tower pier led up to the arcaded gallery, and there the inner communication stopped. A door in the north arcade opened on the roof of the transept, from which a dizzy ladder ascended to the belfry window. The ladder gave Thomas pause. It was old, weather-worn and crazy, and, unless by the light figure of Germyn, had perhaps never been scaled for a generation. The silent belfry above, encompassed by wheeling jackdaws, was a terror to his weak nerves. Even from the floor below he could see the gaping rottenness of its rafters: so he let it alone.

Secure on the Chapel floor he began his researches. In his vacant moments he roamed about chancel, transepts and nave, beating the walls and trampling the flags, if perchance he might light on some recess wherein the treasure was contained. At first his curiosity was excited by certain crosses graved on the nave floor. He did not know that they marked the processional path of the Saint Radegund nuns. But he could detect no sound of hollowness beneath them. Finally, he fastened his mind on a large, unmarked stone, next the south-west pier of the tower. Here, and in no other part of the Chapel, there was distinct evidence that a vault of some kind existed. Above it the disused bell-rope was attached to the pier.

Often, when the Chapel was closed after service hours, he scrutinised this stone. It had no mark of recent disturbance, but in ten years it was likely that any such indication had been obliterated. One summer evening in 1652 he was so engaged, and kneeling on the stone, when he was startled by the sudden falling of a shadow. He sprang to his feet and beheld Gervase Germyn.

“Good evening, friend,” said Germyn. “You work late. I was visiting some old friends that lie under the stones here, having a word with him or him that I have known, a remembered jest with one, a snatch of old song with another--who knows what? And here are you at the like business. And who, pray, is your friend?”

“Master Germyn,” replied Thomas stiffly, “an idle man may talk to dead men, if he will: a sexton has other business with them. How often am I to bid you not to meddle in my affairs?”

“You are very right,” said Germyn, “and now I perceive this is no man’s grave--yet. Perhaps the sexton is looking to make it one. And which, pray, of my friends, the new Fellows, has gone to his audit? Or is it to be mine, perhaps, or thine: and I think it be thine indeed, for I find thee lying on it. But you don’t know the Prince of Denmark: else I should ask you the clown’s riddle, ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the ship-wright, or the carpenter?’ It is a pretty riddle to ask within walls that are five hundred years old.”

“I make no graves,” answered Thomas, “and I have no time or patience for your riddles. I only ask you to begone.”

“Is the trade then so slack, friend Thomas, and is there none to give the sexton employment?--none of all that dig for death as for hid treasure, and some, perhaps, who dig for treasure and find death.”

Thomas was startled at the hint that his purpose was detected. He looked dubiously on the speaker, and the thought dawned on him that perhaps Germyn was offering himself as a confederate. “Treasure,” he said slowly; “yes, if you talk of treasure there is more sense in you than I thought. I don’t know but what we might find it together; and a poor man, such as you, might have his fair share, and none be the wiser.”

“You are wholly mistaken,” said Germyn, “if you think that I know anything of the treasure that you are looking for: and, if I knew, God forbid that I should rob the dead of their trust. No, let them keep it until the day of restitution, when their friends claim it of them. You are a bold man, Thomas, to think of the dead as if they had no sense of what happens to-day. For my part, though we talk as old friends, I have a dreadful awe of them: they can do so much, and I can’t hurt them, if I would. It is a marvel to me that you can walk and work at such an hour in a place that is so full of voices and presences. A holy man you should be! Do you know how Goodman Deane, the last man who held your office, died?”

“They tell me he died distracted. But I don’t trouble myself with fancies.”

“It was in August, two years since. What had he seen? What had he heard? They say that in his wanderings he often repeated ‘I should have rung, I should have rung.’ And I think I see his meaning. It is an old belief--God knows what of truth there is in it--that at the ringing of the church bell the congregations of the dead break up and give place to the living. Poor Deane! Mark could not speak for him: he has been dumb these twenty years, though one day, please God, he will speak again for his friends--of whom you are not one. And there is another old fancy that belongs to this church, and perhaps had something to do with Deane’s matter. It used to be told among the old society, that are scattered or dead now, that the festival of the Name of Jesus was a great day with the old dead folk. Each year at midnight on that day, which is the seventh of August, they assemble--men or women, I know not which--here in the church to observe the hour of Lauds. It was said that you could hear them trooping down from their chambers outside by a stair that does not exist, and they came through the church wall by a door that is unseen. Then, each in order, they rank themselves on the crosses that mark this pavement, and go round the church in darkness, for they need no lights. Their singing has been often heard, but I do not know that living eye has seen their procession, unless it were Deane’s, and, it seems, he did not live long after.”

“It is a curious fancy, truly,” said Thomas, “if one could credit it. But I don’t know why you tell it me, as I never visit the church after nightfall. And little as I believe your tale, I believe you less when you tell me that you know nothing of this treasure. But I spoke of it at a venture, and it is none of my business. So I leave you to your ghosts.”

* * * * *

Thankfull Thomas was not courageous, but his fears were not of a sentimental order. He was more than ever convinced that Germyn knew the secret of the hidden treasure, and that his story was a device to prevent him from continuing his search for it; and he had made up his mind that it lay under the stone where Germyn had interrupted him. At night he would be secure from his interference, and would have time to lift the stone and replace it in such a manner as to leave no trace of its disturbance. And as the date which Germyn had mentioned had passed out of his mind, it so happened that August 7 was the night which he chose for his enterprise.

It was past eleven when he entered the church with lantern and tools. The stone was heavy, and it took a considerable time to dislodge and lift it. Beneath it he saw a vault, some five feet deep. He lowered his lamp into it. Great was his disappointment to find it blankly empty. He had so fastened his expectations on this particular spot that hardly yet could he think himself mistaken. He let himself down into the vault that he might explore for some recess in its walls or floor.

He was still groping in semi-gloom when, above his head, he caught the sound of quiet treading, and then a waft of strange music. He was too unskilled to tell what the instrument might be, but the sound of it was soft and pleasant. It rose, and died away, and rose again in fitful strains. Then it went on in a continuous melody and was taken up by a voice peculiarly sweet and clear--so clear that the words were plainly distinguishable. “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then were we like unto them that dream.”

Thomas listened in amazement till the psalm ended and silence returned. Then he heard the shuffling of descending steps, and with a sudden horror he remembered the story of the dead men’s staircase and the phantom procession. He heard a door softly open in the dark transept, and he sprang wildly to the bell-rope above his head. One frightful clang: Mark spoke again after twenty years of silence: a rumble and a roar: the heavy bell splintered itself on the floor beneath, and Thankfull Thomas, in a pool of blood, lay in the grave of his own making.

* * * * *

In a corner of the belfry, where the floor was not broken by the falling bell, they discovered the organ, which had been hidden there since 1642.

* * * * *

The Restoration brought back a few survivors of the expelled Society of 1642, and with them Gervase Germyn. But in 1664 I find that George Loosemore was master of the College choristers, and Germyn was dead. At what precise date he died I cannot say. But one thing is known. The Chapel, after long neglect and misappropriation, was repaired, decorated and restored to Anglican usage about the year 1663. The reconciliation of the Church was marked by a choral service, and Germyn occupied his old seat at the organ. Among the psalms chosen for the service was the 126th, _In convertendo captivitatem Sion_. The singers had reached the last verse--“He that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him.” There the organ accompaniment faltered, failed, died, and left the choir to chant the _Gloria_ unassisted. The grey head of Gervase Germyn lay on the key-board, and the College had to seek a new organist.

The Palladium

On an unspecified morning in the year 1026, in the reign of Cnut, king, of happy memory, Aethelstan, abbat of Ramsey, delivered to the monks of his Benedictine household, in chapter assembled, an address which had notable consequences.

The reverend father took as the text of his discourse the verse, _in libro Regum tertio_, which in our Authorised Version is expressed--Know ye not that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the King of Syria?

With the ghostly lessons to be drawn from this passage we need not concern ourselves: indeed they were but lightly touched upon by the abbat. He turned almost directly to practical matters.

He dwelt feelingly on the palpable evidences of the poverty of their household--the bell-tower of their church, which had fallen in sudden ruin, and which the means of their household did not permit them to rebuild: the indecent sordidness of their chapter-house, within whose mud-built walls they were then assembled: the meagreness of the monastic diet, of which his brethren were the last to complain, but which reflected unfavourably on the coldness of Christian charity in the laity of the neighbourhood. And incidentally he contrasted these conditions with the splendour of the new temple, adorned with goodly stones and gifts, which their beloved friends at Ely had erected since the Danish wars had ended: the ephods of purple and scarlet affected by the ministers in Saint Etheldreda’s church: and the proverbial magnificence of Ely feasts.

He asked himself the cause of this contrast, and with humility he confessed that it lay in the remissness of himself and his venerable predecessors in the abbatial seat of Ramsey. He commended to the attention of his hearers a text, _in fine libri Josue_, in which it was recorded that the children of Israel had brought up the bones of Joseph with them from Egypt, and that the said bones had become the inheritance of the children of Joseph: and he enlarged on the advantages, pecuniary as well as spiritual, which undoubtedly rewarded those children.

What had Ramsey done to emulate an example so worthy? Nothing, or next to nothing. At a cost relatively small they had, indeed, procured from an ignorant rustic, who had dug them up at the town of Slepe, some bones which competent authority declared to be those of the Persian bishop, Saint Yvo. But, whether or not the cause lay in some lack of orthodoxy in this oriental prelate, it must be confessed that his remains had not been so miraculously effectual in procuring the liberality of the laity as had been anticipated. He ventured to suggest that the relics of a local saint might be more successful. He casually drew their attention in this matter to the example of the holy brethren of Ely. Not content with their heritage of the bones of Saint Etheldreda and the virgins, her relatives, they had recently forcibly detained and appropriated a consignment of the remains of Aednoth, bishop of Dorchester, addressed to Ramsey Abbey and belonging of right to it. While he did not defend the methods of their Ely brethren, he must applaud their conspicuous and practical piety.

The abbat deplored the circumstance that the vicinity of their abbey had produced no saint of such eminent merits as to transmit to his remains the powers that should evoke the faith and the funds so necessary to their present needs. As an illustration of the spirit which he would like to find among his own brethren he again invited their attention to the religious activity of their friends at Ely, who had despatched a naval and military force as far as Dereham, in Norfolk, and with tumult of war had abstracted from the church there the shrine and body of Saint Withburga, virgin. In fact the pious solicitude of their friends had sometimes carried them to lengths which, making the widest allowance for the purity of their motives, the abbat could not regard as otherwise than regrettable. In the recent Danish troubles the brethren of Saint Alban’s had committed to the safe keeping of the Ely monks the shrine containing the relics of the great Protomartyr of Britain. At the restoration of peace the Ely people had, indeed, returned the chest, but they afterwards maintained that they had substituted in it the remains of a less sacred person and had kept Saint Alban in their church. The Saint Alban’s brotherhood on their part asserted that, from a conscientious regard for the sanctity of their trust, they had thought well not to part with the veritable person of their tutelar saint, but to employ the pardonable stratagem of enclosing an inferior substitute in the shrine despatched to Ely. But the point in dispute was immaterial, inasmuch as the Ely relics, to whomsoever they had originally appertained, had contributed largely to the prosperity of that household, while the event proved that the proprietary interests of Saint Alban’s had been in no degree prejudiced. Blind Isaac bestowed the same blessing of earth’s fatness on supplanting Jacob and on first-born Esau. Charity and prudence alike dictated that, in the hearing of the giver, there should be no contention between brotherly households about a birth-right which, for all practical uses, each of them possessed in its integrity.

To what did the abbat’s observations tend? At the obscure church of Soham, Cambs., unworthy receptacle of so divine a treasure, rested what had been mortal of Saint Felix, bishop and evangelist of the East Angles. The bishop of the diocese in which Ramsey was situated, at the abbat’s instance, had procured royal letters patent authorising the Ramsey monks to transfer the sacred remains to their conventual church. Far be it from him to suggest such violent courses as had, in some measure, clouded the effulgent zeal of their Ely neighbours. The Soham folk, if properly approached, would, no doubt, show themselves compliant to the King’s will, and would be eager to collaborate in a work so happily inspired. He requested the chapter to express its views as to the proper methods of attaining their pious object of putting the bell-tower in a condition of permanent stability.

Prior Alfwin rose and, protesting veneration for his Superior, ventured to offer some remarks which, he trusted, would not be regarded as derogating from the respect due to the abbatial chair. Fraternal affection had, in his opinion, betrayed the Lord Abbat into an estimate of the character of the Ely people which was not warranted by the facts. The prior regarded them as sons of Belial. By what instinct of the Devil the holy father, Saint Aethelwold, had induced King Edgar to endow their monastery with wealth so disproportioned to their merits it was not for him to surmise. Among the estates so granted was the manor of Soham. There could be no doubt that, if they got wind of the proposed translation of their saint, the Soham men would fight. It would ill become their sacred calling to employ the carnal weapons to which the Ely brigands had resorted. “Let us rather,” said the prior, “attain our ends by friendly gifts and such arts as are permissible to our peaceful profession--wine, for instance, or beer.” The rest of the prior’s observations were directed to a discussion of the properties of poppy, mandragora and other soporific herbs.

After general discussion it was agreed that a letter should be despatched to the reeve of Soham, announcing the intention of the abbat and prior of paying their observance at the shrine of Saint Felix on an appointed day: that the abbey boat-carls should be in attendance to convey those officials thither from Erith hithe in the household barge: and that the cellarer should make such provision for the entertainment of the residents in Soham as might seem to his prudence expedient.

Brother Brihtmer, lately professed, added the observation that he knew a man or two--servants or tenants of the Abbey--Oswi, the miller, for instance, who carried off the ram for wrestling at Bury fair. With a few such at Erith he thought that he might be trusted to discuss the situation with the Ely men, if they got so far. He would also provide ten stout carls to row the barge from Erith to Soham and to undertake what else might be required of them at the latter place.

* * * * *

It was a notable day in the annals of the little town of Soham when the Ramsey barge, propelled by ten rowers, five a side, clad in the abbey uniform of bare arms and legs and a loose gown of green falding, was sighted on the far side of Soham mere. Quite a considerable throng of the principal inhabitants watched it from the wooden jetty, to which were moored the cobbles of the Soham fishermen. The reeve, in a murrey coat and blue hood, was an important figure in the group, and was accompanied by a select party of the leading sokemen. The local clergy were in attendance with a hastily improvised band of thurifers and choristers. These, with some of the better class of artificers, smiled with conscious importance, as specially nominated guests at the feast which the Ramsey monks brought with them for their entertainment in the parish gild-hall. The rest of the crowd, consisting of mariners and farm churls, were curious rather than enthusiastic, and more suspicious than curious: for Ramsey is far from Soham, and ancient adage told them that _fýnd synt feorbúend_--far-dwellers are enemies. At the first landing of the venerable passengers a temporary disturbance was caused by Grim, the fisherman of Ely monastery, who provocatively bit his thumb at the starboard bow oar of the abbat’s crew. When this difference had been adjusted by the intervention of the district hundred-man the procession was started for the church. At the tail of it, behind the boat-carls, stalked a black-avised monk of Ely, Peter by name, who pointedly withdrew from an official part in the ceremonies.

The banquet in the gild-hall was altogether a splendid affair. In the whole of their official experience the reeve, the hundred-man, and the local clergy had never received so warm a welcome or participated in such royal cheer. No thin English vintage this that was passed to them in the loving cup, fresh from dignified and consecrated lips, but rich old wine, warmed by Greek suns and cooled in the caverns of Ramsey cellars. The cottars who were admitted at the lower board had never known what it was to have so much ale, and so good, as the monastic vats supplied. Brother Peter of Ely looked on from the door, but took no part in the entertainment. He remarked that the Ramsey dignitaries were modest drinkers, and that the boat-carls looked at their blisters and passed the can to their Soham neighbours with the merest pretence of absorption.

As the liquor in the wassail bowls ebbed a gradual silence crept on the festal party. One after other, official and reverend heads declined upon the board: rustic bodies dropped from their benches on the floor, and stertorous slumber filled the hall. Only the abbat and prior sat erect and looked about them with ferret eyes, and the boat-carls spat on their hands and inspected their blisters. Brother Peter withdrew to the mere-strand, and by the lapping waters mused on the weakness of human heads and the shocking aspect of intemperance in which one has not participated.

What is this spectacle which presents itself to Brother Peter, meditative on the muddy margin of Soham mere, at the grey hour when country cocks do crow and bells do toll? A procession, silent but solid, actual not ghostly, of ten men bearing a coffer strung upon poles. Two dignified figures, their heads wrapt from the raw air in their hoods, bring up the rear. So our friends are making an early and unannounced departure! This is no time to ask the wherefore. Brother Peter tucks up his frock and runs his fleetest to the church. When he looks back from the porch he sees a vessel launched on the shimmering lake, with a broadening track of broken water in its wake.

The abbat and his men are two miles away over the mere when a strange clamour reaches their ears. Horns are blown; a church bell clangs; cries of “Haro” echo over the water; lights flash upon the strand. The boat-carls rest upon their oars; the abbat smiles; the prior chuckles. “Two miles: impossible!” says he; “and, as lay-brother Oswald was so prudent as to hide the oars of the Ely boat in the church tower, they won’t get started in a hurry.”

The prior sits in the sternage and directs the vessel’s course. Between him and the abbat Saint Felix reposes in his box. As they quit the mere and enter the narrow channel which connects it with the Ouse the abbat suggests a psalm and raises _Jubilate Deo_. The bow oars respond with a three-man glee in the fen-men’s fashion.

Sleeping Barway they pass, well out of hearing of their pursuers, and then they take the right hand fork of the river, and follow the Ouse stream which we now call the West River. Here they find themselves in a maze of willow-fringed islets and wandering channels which quit and re-enter the main stream. The sopping, gurgling freshets that drain the shallow meres on either hand, as the tidal waters drop, warn them of the perils of a divergence from the river’s course. But prior Alfwin knows what he is about, and holds on in the channel that in ten miles will bring them to Erith bank. Nevertheless their transit, impeded by snags and shallows and fallen trees, is of necessity slow. Under such circumstances one must think it an unwarranted security that induced some of the boat-carls to open a spare beer jar and beguile their toil with ill-timed refreshment. Three comatose bodies under the thwarts impose a severe addition of labour on the more self-respecting members of the crew.

It is the hour of prime, and alas! brother Alfwin, where are we now? Indubitably we are stuck in the mud, and the water is falling. We land on soggy banks, and with labour the boat-carls lift and pole the barge into deeper waters. The operation is repeated several times. Faint cries of “Haro” are borne by the breeze over the fens, and the Lord Abbat shudders with cold and fright. Praised be the saints, at last we are back in the main stream. But what is this? Is not this the identical snag on which we nearly wrecked ourselves the best part of an hour ago? _Deus in adjutorium!_ Here is the black prow of the Ely barge rounding the corner, not a hundred yards away, and Monk Peter stands in the bows, raucously shouting and shaking his fist at us! Half-naked figures start up out of the fen and run, hopping from tuft to tuft, on the bank, cheering and waving as they run--friends, foes, or simple spectators, who knows?

The long sweeps of the boat-carls churn the water into oozy froth as they bend themselves with frenzied energy to their task. Foot by foot the Ely men gain upon their predecessors. The game is up unless, as the stroke oars suggest, they lighten ship by heaving Saint Felix into the river. Rather a muddy death than so! Courage! We are less than a mile from Erith.

Lauded be the good Saint Felix, who miraculously interposes for our salvation from the jaws of destruction. Sudden, mysterious, a blanket of white fog rises from the fens and envelopes the river banks. Blotted out are the runners: they cry and wave no more. The Ely prow is swallowed up in vacuous whiteness: the swish of the Ely oars is silenced, and Monk Peter’s voice is raised in objurgation. They have run upon that willow that grows aslant the brook, and it is to be doubted that their bows are staved in. Were it not a Christian act to hail them with a loud _Benedicite_ in parting? And here is Erith strand and Brother Brihtmer and the Ramsey men. Brother Alfwin, it will be proper for you to give direction to the kitchener for a suitable congratulation for the brethren at supper to-night. To-morrow we will deliberate on the matter of the bell-tower.