CHAPTER X.

LANFRANC, PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND.

Waltheof, instead of continuing his journey northward, left his retinue privily, and, with as small a following as the state of the country rendered imperative, made his way to Canterbury and craved audience of the Primate, appealing to him in the double capacity of a spiritual father, and, for the time, while King William should be absent, as a temporal superior also, the archbishop having been appointed justiciary of the kingdom in conjunction with Robert, Earl of Morton, and Geoffry, Bishop of Coutances.

After certain ceremonious delays, he was received. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England, was a man of high character and subtle intellect, uniting the business capacities and breadth of view of the man of the world, to the piety and earnestness of a sincere churchman.

A Lombard by birth, he had attained eminence in his youth as a law student at Pavia. His birth was not noble, but his parents were said to have been of senatorial rank, which indicated a good social position. His eloquence as a lawyer was so great, that he triumphed over veteran opponents, and soon became famous. Italy, however, was at that time torn by dissensions, and he was early involved in political quarrels, so that he deemed it wise to quit the arena of his forensic triumphs, and to seek the less genial but safer climate of Normandy. Here he soon attained high eminence, and opened a school at Avranches, to which scholars came in crowds; but suddenly the illustrious advocate disappeared, and no one knew whither.

He was discovered, some three years later, living the life of a penitent in the secluded monastery of Bec, a small establishment founded by his countryman Herluin, but which afterwards became famous through having supplied Canterbury with three archbishops. After a time, Lanfranc became the prior of Bec, and was as much sought as a religious teacher as he had hitherto been as a lawyer.

In his newly-awakened zeal, Lanfranc took it upon him to denounce the intended marriage of the Duke of Normandy with Matilda of Flanders; the Pope having threatened excommunication, as the couple were within the prohibited degrees of relationship.

One fine day, the quiet monks of Bec, working in their garden amongst their cabbages and onions, were surprised by the advent of a gay company of knights in holiday attire, surrounding an ecclesiastic who rode pompously upon a fine white mule. The excitement increased to boiling point when the visitor was found to be the duke's chaplain Herfast, whom we have already introduced to the reader as holding the Bishopric of Elmham in 1075, and that his retinue was composed of nobles high in favour at the court; and the much-impressed monks hastened to tell their prior of the honour shown him. But the prior was giving audience to a beggar, and made the duke's emissaries wait till his conference was leisurely concluded. He understood perfectly well that William wished to bribe him, by this display of favour, into giving his assent to the wedding, and he had a mind to assert his independence.

Herfast was as ignorant as he was pompous, and the accomplished prior took every opportunity of exposing his guest's ignorance, even placing in his hands an abcdarium, or spelling-book, to the great amusement of the spectators and the huge wrath of Herfast, who rode back to his royal master with a fine tale of the insolence of the Lombard upstart.

William was so incensed, that he fell into a paroxysm of rage, ordered Lanfranc out of the country, and sent a band of soldiers to burn one of the granges of the monastery to the ground, as a practical witness to his anger at the way in which his courtiers had been treated.

Imagine the consternation amongst the monks of Bec. Lanfranc, however, was equal to the occasion. William had ordered him to quit the country. But the brethren of Bec were poor, and there were no parliamentary trains in those dark ages to carry passengers from one end of a country to the other for a penny a mile. They must travel in the saddle or on foot. Churchmen, for the most part, patronised mules of considerable size and high breeding, and journeyed in no small state. But the only animal the stables of Bec could boast was a sorry steed, angular of joint and far from sound. None the less the prior mounted it, and set off for Rouen, where he had been bidden to appear before the duke ere he quitted the country.

William came forth to meet the haughty churchman, who had dared to thwart and condemn him, and to make fun of his chaplain, accompanied by a gallant train of knights and squires. He expected to meet a cavalcade almost as numerous and magnificent as his own.

His face was dark with anger, and he wrapped himself in thoughtful taciturnity, meditating a rebuke befitting the insolence with which his condescension and favour had been met.

He grew impatient when along the straight level road nothing could be seen but a single horseman on a lame jade, whose nose almost touched the ground at every step, and whose pace was easily kept up with by a follower on foot.

As this sorry trio approached, however, he saw that the men were habited as monks, and Herfast, who rode beside his royal master on his sleek white mule, flushed deeply red.

''Tis Lanfranc himself!' he exclaimed.

'What new mummery is this?' demanded William, his keen eyes straying over the comical figure of the prior and his wretched mount, and a smile gleaming over his stern face, brief but irrepressible, for William was a lover of horseflesh, and spared no pains or expense in the importation of fine horses from Spain for his own use. The creature he bestrode was a splendid animal, and the strongest of contrasts to the prior's pitiful nag.

Slight as the smile was, and hastily repressed, Lanfranc saw it, and took instant advantage.

'By your commands,' said the audacious prior airily, 'I am leaving your dominions, but it is only at a foot's pace that I can proceed on such a wretched beast as this; give me a better horse, and I shall be better able to obey your commands.'

William had a keen sense of humour, and perhaps felt that the clever Lombard would be a formidable foe.

He laughed a royal laugh of magnificent amusement. 'Who ever heard before,' he asked, 'of an offender venturing to ask a donation from the very judge he has offended?'

Herfast grew redder than ever with chagrin and mortification, for he saw very plainly that the subtle prior had mollified the duke by his intrepid joke. And so it was, and from this strange meeting resulted no less a matter than the establishment of a friendship which lasted till William's death.

Not long afterwards, Lanfranc went to Rome to plead with the Pope, and urge him to give his sanction to that marriage which the prior had hitherto opposed so bitterly. And this he did without inconsistency, for his opposition had been based upon William's defiance of the Holy See; when, therefore, he persuaded the haughty duke to humble himself, and plead meekly for a dispensation, with promises that he and his bride would bind themselves to many duties in return, amongst others, to endow each an abbey and two hospitals, the seeming submission of Lanfranc was really a triumph.

After a while, though much against his will, Lanfranc was induced to leave Normandy, and assume the onerous post of Primate of William's newly-conquered kingdom of England. He even appealed to Pope Alexander II. to extricate him from the difficulties of such high office, and to permit him to return to the monastic life, which above all things delighted him. But the Pope refused to interfere, and Lanfranc accepted the inevitable, and set to work with courageous zeal to make the best of his manifold duties. And he acquitted himself like a brave and good man, steering a wise course amongst the jealous Normans and aggrieved Saxons, selecting virtuous men to fill the posts which became vacant; and though, no doubt, partaking the prejudices of the conquerors, yet securing good men amongst the Saxon clergy as friends. The Church of England owes much to him, for he was distinctly an imperialist, and stoutly resisted papal aggression, laying the seeds of that nationality which has saved us from so many evils.

It may be imagined that the simple-minded and gentle Waltheof, much more adept at wielding a seax than at chopping logic, and who was as wax in the hands of his clever wife, was as water under the treatment of this subtle Lombard, who could mould to his wishes even the self-willed and astute William.

The archbishop received the Earl of Northumberland with much pomp and circumstance, giving him the ceremonious honour due to his high rank and his position as husband of the king's niece, so that Waltheof had to beg for a private interview.

This being granted, the unhappy hero knew not how to begin his forced confession, and the keen black eyes with which Lanfranc searched his face did not lessen his confusion.

But the archbishop had no intent to deal harshly with his illustrious penitent.

His features softened with a winning smile. 'What hast thou to say to me, my son?' he asked in a gentle voice. 'Why hesitate? Dost thou not know me for a true friend?'

'Alas, father! I have a sad tale of sin and weakness to reveal to thine ears,' said the son of Siward at length. 'But I pray thee advise me. I have taken an oath, and since then, heated with wine, and somewhat overawed by numbers, I have taken a second contrary thereto. By which am I bound? Am I forsworn in that, notwithstanding this second oath, I sent the messenger to thee, who, if nought mischanced, reached Canterbury some four days agone?'

'Thou hast sinned, my son, answered the archbishop gravely; 'but not so heavily but that, after due penance, the offence may be pardoned. An unwilling oath, taken under the compulsion of an excited crowd, can scarce bind as that which was the fruit of calm reflection and sober judgment. Rather must it be accounted evil in thee, that thou didst consort with a man who was anathema of the Holy Church.' His mobile face grew stern, but it was a sternness not unmixed with sorrow.

'Nay,' answered Waltheof eagerly, 'I knew not of that till the banquet was well-nigh ended, when it was impossible to turn back.'

He was relieved at the tone of the archbishop, yet could not keep reflecting bitterly in his heart, that this light treatment of a forced oath when taken by the son of Siward _against_ William, was very different to the view taken of that made by the son of Godwin _for_ William. Harold had been branded a perjurer for abjuring a forced oath.

'Nevertheless,' said the archbishop, not yet relaxing his face, 'thou hadst knowledge that the men whose bread was broken for thee were acting in direct opposition to the mandate of thy king-lord and kinsman, whose clemency had pardoned thy former misdeeds against him, whose hand had been reached to thee in fellowship, and whose niece had been given to thee to be bone of thy bone, flesh of thy flesh.'

'In good sooth, father,' replied Waltheof reluctantly, and with the air of a schoolboy repeating a lesson by rote, 'I thought mine uncle and king-lord was playing a somewhat tyrannical part in dividing two true lovers. I see now that he had reasons which I little suspected.'

This defence had been suggested by Judith.

Lanfranc's fine sensitive face grew sad. Speaking in a low, sorrowful voice, as though the subject caused him inexpressible pain, he said, 'My son, it was not for light or frivolous reasons that William our king-lord interfered to thwart the wishes of his earls. Nor was it without cause, or, in truth, without grievous necessity, that I declared the anathema of the Holy Church against the son of the man who did more than any other to crown our Norman duke an English king. Had it been but a question of a marriage,' the archbishop continued in the same strain, but in a still softer tone, and rather as if speaking to himself than to the earl, 'God forbid that I should have parted whom He had elected in His all-seeing wisdom to unite!' He sighed deeply, for in his youth he had been the husband of a much-loved wife, whose death had taken all flavour from earthly joy for him, and had been the cause of his precipitate retreat from a position of wealth and fame, to seek consolation in the cloister. 'I have loved Roger Fitzosbern as a son! I have striven with him in affection! But, alas! in vain. One folly was added to another, until at last foolishness swelled into crime. He denied justice to the injured. He invaded the property of his king-lord, and of his peers; and now he has crowned all by this attempted treason, brought to the light at the unholy banquet at which thou wert thyself tempted to evil, Waltheof! Ah! I have wept tears of blood over this lost sheep. Would that my efforts had recalled him to the fold! But the time is past.'

He stretched out his thin, transparent hands before him, his dark eyes fixed upon space, as if contemplating a vision of the bloodshed to come.

He was silent, and Waltheof, being a man of few words, was silent also.

Suddenly the Lombard turned his gleaming eyes upon the Northumbrian earl. Waltheof started, for in his heart was no repentance for having attended the banquet, nor for any of his treasonable designs, but only a fierce wrath against the Norman wife who had defeated his plans, and brought him more tightly under the yoke he hated, and it seemed to him as if those dark eyes could read his most secret thoughts. He shifted his huge frame uneasily, so that the bracelets which ringed his tattooed arms almost to the elbow, clanged together, and his large fingers sought the jewelled haft of the hunting-knife which hung at his baldric, not threateningly, but from habit.

Yet if his thoughts were read, they were ignored.

'But thou at least art here!' Lanfranc exclaimed, his mobile features lighted by a brilliant smile. 'Thy better angel has prevailed, and, by the mercy of Our Lady, has brought thee back to the fold at the eleventh hour.'

Waltheof looked relieved, and he lifted his head and tossed back the yellow mane which had fallen over his face.

'I pray thee, father,' he said earnestly, encouraged by the Primate's smile; 'stand by me in my trouble, and plead my cause with William of Normandy. _Thou_ hast the power to influence him. Advise me how I may best act to win his pardon for my transgression; how best assure him of the sincerity of my return to allegiance.'

'I will stand by thee, my son,' replied the archbishop, clasping Waltheof's great hand in his slender fingers. And he fulfilled his promise with unswerving fidelity, even to the last, when the unfortunate son of Siward lay doomed to death in prison; nor, if Lanfranc could have prevented it, would William have consummated that greatest blot upon his reign, the execution of the Northumbrian earl. 'Thou art impulsive, my son, and simple-minded, and therefore easily snared. But I believe not that thy heart is evil, or that thou wouldst be other than a pious son of our Holy Mother Church.'

'No, indeed!' said Waltheof, much affected by the appeal, which roused all the natural piety and humility of his nature. He crossed himself with much fervour. 'Tell me what to do, father. Whatever thou wilt command I will perform.'

'My son, I would bid thee cross the sea to Normandy and seek William in person, confessing all frankly, and throwing thyself on his mercy. Nor would it be detrimental to thy suit if thy hands bore somewhat of the produce of the lands and honours he has bestowed upon thee with so lavish a generosity.'

Waltheof shuddered. It was no pleasant prospect to the powerful earl, whose head had of late been so filled with schemes of ambition, thus to humble himself a second time to the conqueror of his people.

But Waltheof's courage was more of the physical order than the moral. He was, besides, of gentle disposition, and sincerely desired to avert bloodshed, and he thought that his defection from the ranks of the conspirators would prevent any attempt to meet William in the field.

Therefore he bowed his head. 'Thine advice is meet, father,' he said; 'I will cross the seas and seek William, bearing rich presents to testify my regret for the past, and present goodwill.'