Category: Historical Novels
HILARIUS stood at the Monastery gate, looking away down the smooth, well-kept road to the highway beyond. It lay quiet and serene in the June sunshine, the white way to the outer world, and not even a dust cloud on the horizon promised the approach of the train of sumpter mule...
HILARIUS stood at the Monastery gate, looking away down the smooth, well-kept road to the highway beyond. It lay quiet and serene in the June sunshine, the white way to the oute...
2. Chapter 2“Now may God be good to us!” he cried with uplifted hands. “Since when did man paint the Blessed Mother with grey eyes and black hair—curly too, i’ faith?”
3. Chapter 3MARTIN THE MINSTREL sat under a wayside oak singing softly to himself as he tuned his vielle. He was a long lanky fellow with straight black locks flat against his sallow face,...
4. Chapter 4Hilarius woke with a start. He had fallen asleep on a bench in the sunny courtyard and his dream had carried him back to the forest. He sat rubbing his eyes and only half-awake,...
5. Chapter 5HILARIUS went back to the courtyard, his soul full of trouble. He leant against the fountain, playing with the cool water which fell with monotonous rhythm into the shallow time...
6. Chapter 6OCTOBER and November came and sped, and Hilarius’ longing to be a limner waxed with the waning year. One day by the waterside he met Martin, of whom he saw now much, now little,...
7. Chapter 7It is, for the most part, the moneyed man who flees from the face of Death; the poor man awaits him quietly, with patient indifference, in the field or under his own roof-tree;...
8. Chapter 8IT was a bitterly cold night and St Agnes’ Eve; the snow fell heavily, caught into whirling eddies by the keen north wind. Hilarius and the Friar, crossing an empty waste of ble...
9. Chapter 9IT is a far cry from St Alban’s to Bungay—which village of the good ford lies somewhat south-east of Norwich, five leagues distant—and the journey is doubled in the winter time....
10. Chapter 10HILARIUS fared but slowly; it was ill travelling on a high-road in good weather, but on a cross-road in the spring!—that was a time to commend oneself body and soul to the Saint...
11. Chapter 11THE Monastery by the forest pursued an even existence, with no great event to trouble its serenity, for it lay too far west for the Plague to be more than a terrible name.
12. Chapter 12It happened on this wise. He was sitting by his window after the noon repast, musing, as he was wont, on his dear son. The song of the bees busy in the herb-garden was very plea...
13. Chapter 13ANOTHER year wrote its record on forest and field. The weeks passed; summer sped to autumn, the ripe corn bowed to the sickle. The Convent’s lands were rich and heavy, virgin so...
14. Chapter 14THE Convent welcomed Hilarius gladly, and on the Feast of St Michael he made his profession, for the Prior deemed that he had served his noviciate and been found faithful; and t...
15. Chapter 15“Surely never before did such an ill-conditioned brood find shelter in a monastery!” he cried. “They grow fat, idle, insolent, quarrelsome-never at peace among themselves; never...
16. Chapter 16JUNE was at an end, and men cried aloud for rain. The hedges were white, the fields scorched and brown; the leaves fell from the trees as at autumn’s touch; the fruits scarce fo...
17. Chapter 17MEANWHILE, news came to the Monastery of the ill case of the village, for it lay scarce a league away across the forest; but the pine-trees stood as guardian angels in between.
18. Chapter 18THE Prior’s heart was ready, and it seemed to him as he passed up the village and saw the huddled, helpless people, that his little maid led him by the hand.