Chapter 3

One cried out to him to know how far was it to London, but he shook his head and said that he was a stranger. The fellow jeered and named him bumpkin, but the rest said nothing, and looked on him as they passed, and two at the end doffed their caps. They were about two hundred, and one rode in front with a banner borne before him; but it was a still hot day, and Master Richard could not see the device, for the folds hung about the staff.

He saw other folks after that here and there, although he avoided the villages where he could; but he got no supper, and an hour before sunset he came to the ferry over against Westminster. The wherries were drawn up on the beach, and he came down to these past Lambeth House, wondering how he was to get over.

He besought one man for the love of Jesu to take him over, but he would not; and another for the love of Mary, and a third for the sake of the Rood of Bromholm, [a famous relic of the True Cross.] and a fourth for the love of saint Anthony. And at that they laughed at him, coming round him and looking on him curiously, and crying that they would have all the saints out of him before _Avemaria_, and asking to know his business. When he told them in his simplicity that he was to see the King, they laughed the more, and said that the King was gone to be a monk at saint Edmond's, and that he had best look for him there.

Then he asked yet another, a great fellow with a hairy face and chest, to take him over for the love of saint Denis and saint Giles, and the fellow swore a great oath, elbowed his way out of the press that were all staring and laughing, and bade him follow.

So he got into the boat and sat there while the man carried down the oars, and all the rest crowded to look and question and mock. He told me that he supposed at the time that all the folks looked at him for that they were not used to see solitaries, but I do not think it was that. I tell you that one who looked a little on Master Richard would look long, and that one who looked long must either laugh or weep, so surprising was his beauty and his simplicity.

* * * * *

When they were half-way over the fellow told him which was the abbey church, and Master Richard said that he knew it, for that he had seen it four years before when he came under our Lord's hand from Cambridge, and that he would ask shelter from the monks.

"And there is an ankret [an ankret was a solitary, confined to one cell with episcopal ceremonies.], is there not?" asked Master Richard.

The man told him Yes, looking upon him curiously, and he told him, too, where was his cell. Then he put him on shore without a word, save asking for his prayers.

I cannot tell you how Master Richard came to the ankret's cell, for I was only at Westminster once when Master Richard went to his reward, but he found his way there, marvelling at the filth of the ways, and looked in through the little window, drawing himself up to it by the strength of his arms.

It was all dark within, he told me, and a stench as of a kennel came up from the darkness.

He called out to the holy man, holding his nostrils with one hand, and with the other gripping the bars and sitting sideways on the sill of the window. He got no answer at first, and cried again.

Then there came an answer.

There rose out of the darkness a face hung all over with hair and near as black as the hair, with red-rimmed eyes that oozed salt rheum. The holy man asked him what he wished, and why did he hold his nostrils.

"I wish to speak with your reverence," said Master Richard, "of high things. I hold my nostrils for that I cannot abide a stench."

The red eyes winked at that.

"I find no stench," said the holy man.

"For that you are the origin of its propagation," said Master Richard, "and dwell in the midst of it."

It was foolish, I think, of the sweet lad to speak like that, but he was an-angered that a man should live so. But the holy solitary was not an-angered.

"And in God's Majesty is the origin of my propagation," he said. "_Ergo_."

Master Richard could think of no seemly answer to that, and he desired, too, to speak of high matters; so he let it alone, and told the holy man his business, and where he lived.

"Tell me, my father," he said, "what is the message that I bear to the King. It may be that our Lord has revealed it to you: He has not yet revealed it to me."

"Are you willing to go dumb before the King?"

"I am willing if God will," said Master Richard.

"Are you willing that the King should be deaf and dumb to your message?"

"If God will," said Master Richard again.

"What is that which you bear on your breast?"

"It is the five wounds, my father."

"Tell me of your life. Are you yet in the way of perfection?"

Then the two solitaries talked together a long while; I could not understand all that Master Richard told to me; and I think there was much that he did not tell me, but it was of matters that I am scarce worthy to name, of open visions and desolations, and the darkness of the fourth Word of our Saviour on the rood; and again of scents and sounds and melodies such as those of which Master Rolle has written; and above all of charity and its degrees, for without charity all the rest is counted as dung.

_Avemaria_ rang at sunset, but they did not hear it, and at the end the holy man within crept nearer and raised himself.

"I must see your face, brother," he said. "It may be then that I shall know the message that your soul bears to the King."

Master Richard came out of his heavenly swoon then, and saw the face close to his own, and what he said of it to me I dare not tell you, but he bitterly reproached himself that he had ever doubted whether this were a man of God or no.

As he turned his own face this way and that, that the failing light might fall upon it, he said that beneath him in the little street there was a crowd assembled, all silent and watching the heavenly colloquy.

When he looked again, questioning, at the holy old man, he saw that the other's face was puckered with thought and that his lips pouted through the long-falling hair. Then it disappeared, and a grunting voice came out of the dark, but the sound of it was as if the old man wept.

"I do not know the message, brother. Our Lord has not shewed it to me, but He has shewed me this--that soon you will not need to wear His wounds. That I have to say. _Oremus pro invicem._" ["Let us pray for one another."]

* * * * *

The crowd pressed close upon Master Richard as he came down from the window, and, going in the midst of them in silence, he came to saint Peter's gate where the black monks dwell, and was admitted by the porter.

How Master Richard saw the King in Westminster Hall: and of the Mass at Saint Edward's Altar

_Revelabit condensa: et in templo ejus omnes dicent gloriam._

He will discover the thick woods: and in His temple all shall speak His glory.--_Ps. xxviii. 9._

IV

Master Richard did not tell me a great deal of his welcome in the monastery: I think that he was hardly treated and flouted, for the professed monks like not solitaries except those that be established in reputation; they call them self-willed and lawless and pretending to a sanctity that is none of theirs. Such as be under obedience think that virtue the highest of all and essential to the way of perfection. And I think, perhaps, they were encouraged in this by what had been said of themselves by our holy lord ten years before, for he was ever a favourer of monks. [This may have been Eugenius IV., called _Gloriosus_. If so, it would fix the date of Richard at about 1444.] But Master Richard did not blame them, so I will not, but I know that he was given no cell to be private in, but was sent to mix with the other guests in the common guest-house. I know not what happened there, but I think there was an uproar; there was a wound upon his head, the first wound that he received in the house of his friends, that I saw on him a little later, and he told me he had had it on his first coming to London. It was such a wound as a flung bone or billet of wood might make. He had now the _caput vulneratum_, as well as the _cor vulneratum_ [wounded head ... wounded heart.] of the true lover of Jesus Christ.

* * * * *

He desired, after his simplicity, on the following morning, to speak with my lord abbot, but that could not be, and he only saw my lord at terce before mass, afar off sitting in his stall, a great prelate with his chain, and with one who bore a silver wand to go before him and do him service.

He prayed long in the church and at the shrine, and heard four or five masses, and saw the new grave of the Queen in the midst of the lady-chapel [This may have been Queen Katharine, whose body was afterwards moved.], and did his devotions, hoping that our Lord would show him what to speak to the King, and then went to dinner, and after dinner set out to Westminster Hall, where he was told that the King could be seen that day.

He passed through the little streets that lay very nastily, no better than great gutters with all the filth of the houses poured out there, but he said that the folks there were yet more surprising, for these were they who had taken sanctuary here, and were dwelling round the monastery with their wives and children. There were all sorts there, slayers of men and deer, thieves, strikers of the clergy _suadente diabolo_ ["at the devil's persuasion"--a technical phrase], false-coiners, harlots, and rioters; all under the defence of Religion, and not suffered to go out but on peril of being taken. He had a little company following him by the time that he came to the gate, some mocking and some silent, and all looking on him as he went.

When he came to the door of the hall the men that stood there would not let him in until he entreated them. They told him that the King was now going to dinner, and that the time was past, so he knew that it was not yet his hour to give the message that he knew not. But they let him in at last, and he stood in the crowd to see the King go by.

There was a great company there, and a vast deal of noise, for the audiences were done, and the bill-men were pushing the folks with their weapons to make room for the great men to go by, and the heralds were crying out. Master Richard stood as well as he could, but he was pushed and trampled about, and he could not see very well. They went by in great numbers; he saw their hats and caps and their furred shoulders between the crooked glaives that were gilded to do honour to the King, but there was such a crying out on all sides that he could not ask which was the King.

At last the shouting grew loud and then quiet, and men bowed down on all sides; and he saw the man whom he knew must be the King.

He had a long face (as I saw for myself afterwards), rather sallow, with a long straight nose and small, full mouth; his eyebrows were black and arched high, and beneath them his sorrowful eyes looked out on the people; he was bowing his head courteously as he came. On his head he wore a black peaked cap of velvet; there was ermine at his collar and a gold chain lay across his shoulders.

Now this is what Master Richard saw with the eyes of his body, but with the eyes of his soul he saw something so strange that I know not how to name or explain it. He told me that it was our Saviour whom he saw go by between the gilded glaives, as He was when He went from Herod's hall. I do not understand how this may be. The King wore no beard as did our Saviour, he was full fourteen years younger at that time than was Jesu Christ when He suffered His bitter passion. They were of a height, I suppose, and perhaps the purple that the King wore was of the same colour as that which our Lord had put on him, but that was all the likeness that ever I could see, for the King's hair was black and his complexion sallow, but our Lord's was corn colour, and His face white and ruddy. [A reference, I suppose, to Cant. Cant. v. 10.] And, again, the one was but a holy man, and the other God Almighty although made man for our salvation.

Yet perhaps I did not understand Master Richard aright, and that he meant something else and that it was only to the eyes of the soul that the resemblance lay. If this is so, then I think I understand what it was that he saw, though I cannot explain it to you, any more than could he to me. There be some matters so high that no mouth can tell them, heart only can speak to heart, but I can tell you this, that Master Richard did not mean that our Lord was in the hall that day as He is in heaven and in the sacrament of the altar; it was something else that he meant.... [There follows a doctrinal disquisition.]

* * * * *

When Master Richard came out from the hall, he told me that he was in a kind of swoon, but having his eyes open, and that he knew not how he came back to the guest-house. It was not until he knocked upon the door that he saw that the crowd was about him again, staring on him silently.

The porter was peevish as he pulled him in, and bade him go and cut wood in the wood-house for his keep, so all that afternoon he toiled in his white kirtle at the cutting with another fellow who cursed as he cut, but was silent after a while.

Yet, when supper and bed-time came and Master Richard had assisted at compline in the abbey-church, still he knew not what the message was to be on Monday, when he would see the King and speak with him.

On Sunday he did no servile work, except that he waited upon the guests, girt with an apron, and washed the dishes afterwards. He heard four masses that day, as well as all the hours, and prayed by himself a long while at saint Edward's shrine, hearing the folks go by to the tilting, and that night he went to bed with the servants, still ignorant of what he should say on the next day.

I am sure that he was not at all disquieted by his treatment, for he did not speak of it to me, except what was necessary, and he blamed no one. When I saw the porter afterwards he told me nothing except that Master Richard had worked well and willingly, and had asked for other tasks when his were done. He had asked, too, for a plenty of water to bathe himself, which he did not get. But whether he were disquieted or no on that Sunday, at least he was content next day, for it was on the next day at mass that our Lord told him what was the message that he was to deliver to the King.

There was a Cluniac monk from France who had obtained leave to say mass at the shrine of the Confessor, and Master Richard followed him and his fellow to the altar at five o'clock in the morning to hear mass there and see his Maker. [This is the common mediaeval phrase. Men did not then bow their heads at the Elevation.]

He knelt down against the wall behind the high altar, and began to address himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by the splendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, that Master Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold above where the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side. All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little wonder that he could not pray well for thinking on them--the kings that lay here and there and their effigies, and the paved steps on this side and that, and the fair painted glass and the high dark roof. Near where he knelt, too, he could see the great relic-chest, and knew what lay therein--the girdle of our Blessed Lady herself, mirror of chastity; the piece of stone marked by Christ's foot as He went up to heaven; a piece of the Very Rood on which He hanged; the precious blood that He shed there, in a crystal vase; the head of saint Benet, father of monks. [Surely not!] All these things have I seen, too, myself, so I know that they are truly there.

Behind him, as he kneeled on the stones, sounded the singing of the monks, and the noise of so much praise delighted him, but they ended soon, and at _Sanctus_ his spirit began to be rapt into silence, and the holy things to make heaven about him.

He told me that he did not know what befell him until it came to the elevation of the sacring: only he knew that his soul was filled with lightness and joyousness, as when he had walked in the wood at dawn three days before.

But as he lifted up his hands to see his God and to beat upon his breast, it appeared to him, he said, as if his feet rested again on some higher place: until then he had been neither on earth nor in heaven.

Now there was no visible imagination that came to him then; he said expressly that it was not so. There was none to be seen there but the priest in the vestment with his hood on his shoulders, and the _frater conversus_ [that is, the lay brother.] who held the skirt and shook the bell. Only it appeared to him that the priest held up the Body for a great space, and in that long time Master Richard understood many things that had been dark to him before. Of some of the things I have neither room nor wit to write; but they were such as these.

He understood how it was that souls might go to hell, and yet that it was good that they should go; how it was that our Saviour was born of His blessed Mother without any breaking of her virginity; how it is that all things subsist in God; in what manner it is that God comes into the species of the bread. But he could not tell me how these things were so, nor what it was that was shewed him.... [There follow a few confused remarks on the relations of faith to spiritual sight.]

There were two more things that were shewed him: the first, that he should not return home alive, but that his dead corpse should be carried there, and the second, what was the tidings that he should bear to the King.

Then he fell forward on his face, and so lay until the ending of the mass.

How Master Richard cried out in Westminster Hall: and of his coming to a Privy Parlour

_Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum: dico ego opera mea regi._

My heart hath uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king.--_Ps. xliv. 1._

V

It would be about half an hour before the King's dinner-time, which was ten o'clock, that Master Richard came again to the hall.

There was not so great a press that day, and the holy youth was able to make his way near to the barrier that held back the common folk, and to see the King plainly. He was upon his seat beneath the cloth-of-estate that was quartered with the leopards and lilies, and had his hat upon his head. About him, beneath the scaffold on which he sat were the great nobles, and my lord cardinal had a chair set for him upon the right-hand side, on the step below the King's.

All was very fair and fine, said Master Richard, with pieces of rich stuff hanging upon the walls on this side and that beneath the windows, and, finest of all were the colours of the robes, and the steel and the gold and the white fur and the feathers, and the gilded glaives and trumpets, and coat-armour of the heralds.

There was a matter about to be concluded, but Master Richard could not tell what it was, for there was a din of talking all about him, and he saw many clerks and Religious very busy together in the crowd, shaking their fingers, lifting their brows, and clacking like rooks at sunset--so the young man related it. There were two fellows with their backs to him, standing in an open space before the scaffold with guards about them. One of the two was a clerk, and wore his square cap upon his head, and the other was not.

The King looked sick; he was but a young man at that time, not two years older than Master Richard. He was listening with his head down, to a clerk who whispered in his ear, kneeling by his side with papers and a great quill in his hand, and the King's eyes roved as he listened, now up, now down, and his fingers with rings upon them were arched at his ear. My lord cardinal had a ruddy face and bright holy eyes, and sat in his sanguine robes with his cap on his head, looking out with his lips pursed at the clerks and monks that babbled together beyond the barrier. He was an old man at this time, but wondrous strong and hearty.

At the end the King sat up, and there was a silence, but he spoke so low and quick, with his eyes cast down, and the shouting followed so hard upon his words, that Master Richard could not hear what was said. But it seemed to content the clerks and the Religious [King Henry VI. was a great favourer of ecclesiastics.], for they roared and clamoured and one flung up his cap so that it fell beyond the barrier and he could not come at it again. Then the two prisoners louted to the King, and went away with their guards about them; and the King stood up, and the cardinal.

Now this was the time on which Master Richard had determined for himself, but for a moment he could not cry out: it seemed as if the fiend had gripped him by the throat and were hammering in his bowels. The King turned to the steps, and at that sight Master Richard was enabled to speak.

He had not resolved what to say, but to leave that to what God should put in his mouth, and this is what he cried, in a voice that all could hear.

"News from our Lord! News from our Lord, your grace."

He said that when he cried that, that was first silence, and then such a clamour as he had never heard nor thought to hear. He was pushed this way and that; one tore at his shoulder from behind; one struck him on the head: he heard himself named madman, feeble-wit, knave, fond fellow. The guards in front turned themselves about, and made as though they would run at the crowd with their weapons, and at that the men left off heaving at Master Richard, and went back, babbling and crying out.

Then he cried out again with all his might.

"I bring tidings from my Lord God to my lord the King," and went forward to the barrier, still looking at the King who had turned and looked back at him with sick, troubled eyes, not knowing what to do.

A fellow seized Master Richard by the throat and pulled him against the barrier, menacing him with his glaive, but the King said something, raising his hand, and there fell a silence.

"What is your business, sir?" asked the King.

The fellow released Master Richard and stood aside.

"I bring tidings from our Lord," said the young man. He was all out of breath, he told me, with the pushing and striking, and held on to the red-painted barrier with both hands.

The King stooped and whispered with at cardinal, who was plucking him by the sleeve, for the space of a _paternoster_, and the murmuring began to break out again. Then he turned, and lifted his hand once more for silence.

"What are the tidings, sir?"

"They are for your private ear, your grace."

"Nay," said the King, "we have no private ear but for God's Word."

"This is God's Word," said Master Richard.

There was laughter at that, and the crowd came nearer again, but the King did not laugh. He stood still, looking this way and that, now on Master Richard, and now on the cardinal, who was pulling again at sleeve. It seemed as if he could not determine what to do.

Then he spoke again.

"Who are you, sir?"

"I am a solitary, named Richard Raynal," said the young man. "I come from the country, from ... [It is most annoying that the name of the village is wanting.] Sir John Chaldfield, the parson, will undertake for me, your grace."

"Is Sir John here?" asked my lord cardinal, smiling at the clerks.

"No, my lord," said Master Richard, "he has his sheep in the wilderness. He cannot run about to Court."

There was again a noise of laughter and dissent from the crowd of clerks, and my lord cardinal smiled more than ever, shewing his white teeth in the midst of his ruddy face.

"This is a witty fellow, your grace," said my lord cardinal aloud to the King. "Will your grace be pleased to hear him in private?"