winter had come, and since denise’s cell stood on the northern slope of mountjoye hill, it was bitter cold there, nor would the north wind be stopped by such things as a thorn hedge or a closed door. to denise the cold was but part of the misery that was closing upon her, for people were hardier in those days, and less softened by the luxury of glass and carpets. but it was not the cold that kept her wakeful through the night, but the blank and unpitying face of the future that never departed from before her eyes. denise knew the truth now, and soon the world might know it also.
the abbey folk had sent her no winter gear, but that was dom silvius’s affair, perhaps due to his meanness, or his discontent with her, or to the feeling that a recluse whose prayers went unanswered needed to be chastened by wind and frost. it seemed very far from that day in may when the meadows were sheeted in gold, and the singing boys sang her into the abbey leuga. denise would have had no winter clothes, had not a good woman who distrusted dom silvius, sent her a lamb’s-wool tunic, and a cloak lined with rabbit’s skin.
so the winter deepened, and denise saw always that shame that was coming nearer day by day. she knew now how utterly she had failed, and the reason thereof seemed in herself. life had thrust hypocrisy upon her insidiously and by stealth. she would have fled from it, but the wide world seemed cold and empty, nor was she free to follow her own will. reginald the abbot was her lord now, both in the law and in the spirit, he could have her taken if she fled, condemned, whipped, and turned forth with contumely in the eyes of all. denise had her woman’s pride, a pride that shrank from the thought of a public scourging and of open shame.
two weeks or more after christmas, on a clear frosty morning, three women came to denise’s cell, and one of these women was the smith’s wife, bridget. they had loitered on the road awhile, talking volubly, priming one another for some enterprise. no one had come near denise for a month or more, save the abbey servant who left food at the cell, but never saw her face.
so the three women came to denise’s cell, and stood before the closed door, smirking and making a mystery of the event. they had christened each other “warts,” “sterility,” and “thorn-in-the-thumb,” and their business was to win a glimpse of denise.
dame bridget, or “thorn-in-the-thumb,” made a devout beginning. she was a big woman with a high colour, and a mouth that was generally noisy, a woman of coarse texture, and of gross outlines that showed nature as a craftswoman at her worst.
bridget had picked up some latin words, and she began with these, as though such a prelude would impress denise with their seriousness in coming.
“sister,” she said with a snuffle, when she had come to the end of her latinity. “here are three poor women in need of a blessing. we pray you to come out to us, holy sister, and to touch us with your hands.”
denise had no thought of treachery that morning, and she opened her door, and stood there on the threshold. the three women were kneeling humbly enough in the wet grass, their hoods drawn forward, their hands together as in prayer.
bridget showed a thumb red and swollen about the pulp.
“there was a thorn twig in a faggot, sister,” she said. “i laid my hand to the sticks, and the thorn went into my thumb. it has kept me awake o’ nights with the pain of it.”
then sterility had a hearing, and while denise bent over her, for the woman chose to whisper, thorn-in-the-thumb nudged warts with her elbow, and stared denise over from head to foot.
lastly, warts displayed her imperfections, looking most meekly into denise’s shadowy eyes. and when denise had touched them all and given them her blessing, the three women departed, walking very circumspectly till they gained the road. then thorn-in-the-thumb flung her arms about the necks of her neighbours, crumpled them to her, and laughed gross laughter that was not pleasant to hear. and they went up the hill together, gaggling like geese, blatantly exultant over the thing that they had discovered.
very soon hardly a man or woman in the five boroughs of battle had not heard what bridget and her neighbours had to tell. rumours had been rife of late, but this last cup was spiced with the palatable truth. the women spoke more loudly than the men, were more strenuous and vindictive, more self-righteous, more eager to have the hypocrite proclaimed. mightily sore were some of the worthy folk who had gone on their knees for nothing before denise’s cell. they were quick to cry out that they had been cheated, more especially those who had left an offering to bribe the blessed ones in heaven. the insolence of this jade, setting herself up as a virgin and a saint! “out with her,” was the common cry. as for dom silvius he was little better than a fool.
with all these hornets humming even in the midst of winter, some of the older burghers and the head men of the boroughs went secretly to speak with dom silvius, and to show him discreetly how matters stood. such an open sore needed healing; it was an offence and an insult to st. martin, and the saints. old oliver de dengemare was their spokesman, a man with a wise eye and a sagacious nose. dom silvius kept an imperturbable countenance, and heard them out to the bitter end, though inwardly he was aflame with wrath and infinite vexation. “the jade, the impudent jade.” his brain beat out such imprecations while the old men talked.
no sooner had they gone than he crept off to whisper it all to reginald the abbot. now reginald was a man of easy nature, bland, kindly, one who chose a suave word rather than a sour one. silvius came to him, cringing yet venomous, slaver dropping from his mouth as he stuttered and spat his wrath. he took the thing as infamous towards himself; the greed, the self-love, and the ambition in him were tugging at the leashes.
“let them hound her out and spit upon her,” he said, driving the nails into the palms of his hands, the muscles straining in his pendulous throat. “let them spit upon her.”
abbot reginald placed the sponge of his placidity over dom silvius’s mouth.
“brother,” he cautioned him; “such things should not be spoken till the anger is out of one. a hot head at night calls for penitence in the morning.”
he saw very clearly how matters were with silvius, that the monk’s zeal had turned sour, and sickened him; and that he was mad that all his astuteness should have taken, in the eyes of his little world, the motley of the fool.
“you are too hasty, my brother,” he said. “does a man whose wife has lost her virtue, shout it from the house-tops? come, my friend, let us consider.”
but silvius would not be appeased. the fanatical cat had spread its claws, a beast more cruel than any creature out of the woods. reginald of brecon watched him, as a fat man who had dined well might watch the petulant tantrums of a child. he took to turning the ring upon his finger, a trick habitual with him when he was deep in thought.
“it is growing dark,” he said at last, glancing at the window.
then he rose and stood awhile before the fire. silvius had ceased to spit and to declaim.
“my cloak and hood, brother silvius. you will find them there in the recess.”
the monk obeyed his lord. when he returned with the cloak, reginald held up two fingers, and spoke one word:—
“peace.”
there was not the glimmer of a star in the sky when two dim figures climbed mountjoye hill. a north wind was blowing and whistled coldly into reginald’s sleeves. dom silvius jerked from side to side, looking restlessly into the darkness as though his blood were still hot and bitter in him despite the cold. reginald understood the savage impatience that possessed his monk, for he bade him wait at the gate in the hedge, and went on alone to the cell.
silvius kept watch there, striding to and fro, blowing on his nails, and beating his arms against his body like a great black bird. he envied his abbot the rights of an unbridled tongue, for silvius would have been a libertine that night in the matter of godly invective and abuse. he could hear voices, the dull, half-suppressed voices of people who spoke earnestly, and yet with passion. once he thought that something stirred in the hedge near him, for he was startled, and stood still to listen. a prowling fox might have taken fright, or a bird fluttered from its roosting place.
meanwhile on the threshold of that dark cell stood reginald the abbot, shocked, unable to retain much store of anger. a shadowy something knelt there close to him. the very heart of denise seemed under his feet.
“lord, let me go,” was all that she could ask.
and again—
“lord, let me go, away yonder, into the dark.”
reginald looked down at her from the serene height of his abbacy.
“daughter,” he said at last, with no sententiousness, “go, and god pity you. it is better that this should end. yet, wait till the day comes. you would lose your way on a night such as this.”
“i will wait, lord,” she answered, utterly humble because of his kindness, and her own poignant shame.
when abbot reginald returned through the gate in the thorn hedge, dom silvius’s voice hissed at him out of the darkness, for the cold had sharpened a venomous tongue.
“the jade, has she confessed?”
reginald was possessed by a sudden unchristian lust to smite dom silvius across the mouth.
“my son,” he said very quietly, “take care how you cast stones.”
and he was more cold to silvius on the homeward way than the breath of the winter wind.
but silvius, that dreamer of dreams, that most mundane monk, who thought more of the jewels crusting a reliquary than the cross of christ, did a vile and a mean thing that night. denise, poor child, was to slip away, so reginald said, at dawn; but reginald did not tell dom silvius that he had left money on the stones whereon she knelt. and silvius, still venomous because he deemed himself befooled, took pains to betray denise’s secret going. and the method of the betrayal was the meanest trick of all.
when he had seen abbot reginald safe within the abbey, he called two servants and went out with a basket of victuals to visit certain of the sick poor. that the hour was a strange one for such charity counted for nothing with silvius whose head was full of the ferment of his spite. many of the folk had gone to their beds, but some few he found still lingering about the covered embers on the hearth.
it was counted for holiness to silvius that he should come on god’s errand at such an hour.
“feed my sheep,” the lord had said.
and silvius fed certain of them that night with hypocritical humilities, shaking his head sadly, and dropping a few treacherous words like crumbs into mouths that hungered.
