Our Client
FORE:The abbot of Winchcombe had now become a frequent guest at Sudley. The feelings enkindled by the detention of Edith, and the defiance of De Boteler had passed away and were forgotten. Expiatory presents had been made to the abbey, and a promise given that a gift of land should be added to its already ample endowments. Sudbury, as we have already related, had questioned the monk respecting Holgrave and the child, and, from the evasive replies returned, was strongly inclined to favour the opinion of Isabella, who now, that the application to the smith had failed, became more urgent that some compulsory measure should exact an unequivocal avowal from father John. The wishes of one so powerfully connected as the wife of the influential De Boteler, were, no doubt, of some weight with the abbot; but these certainly would not have influenced him so far as to induce him to adopt a conduct incompatible with the dignity of his character, had not father John been known of late to express strange opinions; and the monk, though poor and friendless, was one of those whose opinions somehow (it can scarcely be said why) appeared of consequence. It was true that, although but an illiterate bondman when he gained admission to the cloister, he was now, if not entirely, the most learned, undoubtedly the most talented and industrious within its walls: no monk transcribed so much, none was more devout, more strict in discipline, more attentive to the numerous and fatiguing duties of his situation as a secular monk in administering the sacraments, attending the sick, &c. But, though thus exemplary, strange things were said of him. He had been heard to declare, for instance, that villeinage was oppressive, and in every sense unjust; and that every villein was justified, whenever an opportunity offered, in escaping from bondage. These opinions, although not sufficiently heinous to have subjected him to ecclesiastical punishment, were yet considered sinful;the first as uncharitable, and the second as subversive of good order: and they induced Sudbury to act with more rigour than he would have been inclined to adopt had there been only the vague suspicions of the lady to urge his interference. Father John, therefore, was again questioned, and commanded, by his vow of obedience, to disclose the retreat of Holgrave, and reveal all he knew respecting the lost child: but threats availed not. In the midst of these adjurations, the abbot received a paper from a messenger, who burst breathless into the room, with the intelligence that the Lady Isabella had fallen down in a swoon in her own chamber.The engine set to work, and soon everything that had not been destroyed by fire was destroyed by water. But the flames were beaten. They hissed and blackened into smoke. When dawn broke over the eastern shoulder of Boarzell, the fire was out. A rasping pungent smell rose from a wreckage of black walls and little smoking piles of what looked like black rags. Water poured off the gutters of the house, and soused still further the pile of furniture and bedding that had been pulled hastily out of it. The farm men gathered round the buckets, to drink, and to wash their smoke-grimed skins. Reuben talked over the disaster with the head of the fire brigade, who endorsed his opinion of spontaneous combustion; and Realf of Grandturzel sat on a heap of ashesand sobbed.
