Pabo, the Priest: A NovelBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Pabo, the Priest: A Novel
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Great Britain -- History -- Henry I, 1100-1135 -- Fiction; Priests -- Fiction; Wales -- Fiction
Bernard of St. David's was at his castle of Llawhaden, near Narberth. He
was there near his Norman friends and supporters. He had no relish for
banishment to the bare and remote corner of Pembrokeshire stretching as
a hand into the sea, as though an appeal from Wales to Ireland for
assistance. Moreover, Bernard was by no means assured that his presence
where was the throne would be acceptable, and that it might not provoke
some second popular commotion which would cost him a further loss of
teeth. Llawhaden lay in a district well occupied by Norman soldiers and
Flemish settlers. The residence there was commodious in a well-wooded
and fertile district. The castle was strong, secure against surprises,
built by architect and masons imported from Normandy, as were all those
constructed by the conquerors throughout the South of Wales.
In Llawhaden Bernard lived like a temporal baron, surrounded by fighting
men, and never going abroad without his military retinue. It was said
that he ever wore a fine steel-chain coat of mail under his woolen
ecclesiastical habit. In his kitchen, as about his person, no native was
suffered to serve, so suspicious was he lest an attempt should be made
on his life, by poison or by dagger.
Happily, he was not required to perform any ecclesiastical functions,
for he was profoundly ignorant of these; but the situation was such that
he was not required to ordain clergy or consecrate churches. Clergy were
not lacking. The ne'er-do-weels of England, men who were for their
immorality or crimes forced to leave their cures, hasted to Wales, where
they readily found preferment, as the great object in view with the
invaders was to dispossess the natives of their land and of their
churches.
"So you are here," said the bishop. He spoke with inconvenience, as one
front tooth had been knocked out and another broken. Unless he drew down
his upper lip, his words issued from his mouth indistinctly, accompanied
by a disagreeable hiss. "Hah!--have the bumpkins paid up so readily that
you are here with the money? How many marks have they had to disgorge?"
"Your fatherliness," said the chaplain, "I have brought nothing with me
save unsatisfactory tidings."
"What! They will not pay?"
"They can be made to find the silver," said Cadell; "that I do not
doubt. For centuries those men of Caio have prospered and have hoarded.
Other lands have been wasted, not theirs; other stores pillaged, theirs
have been untouched."
"It is well. They will bear further squeezing. But what ails thee? Thou
lookest as though thou hadst bitten into a crab-apple."
"I have come touching the miracle."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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