Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
"I had forgotten," the Bishop said. So he stood by the table whilst
that old man took off the great cope, the silver cross and the white
robes and stole that were beneath and fetched a purple gown edged with
fur—for he considered that Bishop to be cold and weak with the blood
that had been let from him the day before as the custom was. Upon the
Bishop’s head he set a furred cap, covering his ears, and hung round his
neck once more the silver chain with the great crucifix in silver
dependent. And so the Bishop, when he had drunk a little more wine,
went up the stairs slowly to his chamber, and the vestiarius called in
several pages and young boys and saw to it that they laid those
vestments away in due order.
The Bishop’s chamber had been taken out of a Norman gallery with pillars
and arcades. Here many men-at-arms in parti-coloured woollen garments
of natural wool and yellow, sat about on the floor or between the
arcades, playing at dice together or drinking from flagons. Their
immensely long pikes stood against the arches beside them. One, with
his eyes shut, leaned back against the wall, saying prayers in penance
for a crime he had committed.
The Bishop, upon the monk’s arm passed slowly down this corridor to his
chamber which had bare walls painted yellow in honour of St. Cuthbert; a
great quantity of books, very big or very little, were upon shelves. A
great many manuscripts in rolls lay upon other shelves, and papers that
overflowed from chests, of which there were five, along one wall. There
was a pallet bed in this room; a three-cornered stool and a coarsely
hewed lectern; a prie-dieu and a crucifix. Thus it was a very bare
room. This Bishop, though he affected somewhat great state before the
people, was, in secret, a very ascetic man.
Few people, however, came into this bare room—not even his highest
officers. The square windows—but that had been done in Bishop
Skirlawe’s days just a hundred years ago—were filled with bright glass,
showing once again the history of the translation of St. Cuthbert. All
in little squares this history was, monks with shaven heads crouching
down as if the space would not contain them, and the head of Dun Cow
showing yellow against a background of glass shining like pigeon’s blood
rubies. One of these little, square casements hung open and through it
the distant landscape showed clear, with hills grey and woods grey-blue,
astonishing for its tranquillity.
So, the monk Francis being sat up on his three-legged stool, the Bishop
began to pace up and down before the long window space—backwards and
forwards over the tiles, with an immense swiftness. Once he turned his
face imperiously to where the monk sat and said harshly:
"Pray God, you bring me no ill news."
The monk, who had been gazing, out of respect, at the tiles, raised his
glance to say:
"I think it is rather good news."
The Bishop said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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