Philip Gibbs - "Now It Can Be Told"

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by Robert Louis Stevenson - "The Pocket R.L.S."

F. Hopkinson Smith - "Kennedy Square"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




In fact, Sir John Foster came up with a considerable body of his
horsemen, just as his Captain, whose age rendered him unequal to the
combat with so strong and active a youth as Glendinning, was deprived
of his sword.

"Take it up for shame, old Stawarth Bolton," said the English Warden;
"and thou, young man, tell me who and what thou art?"

"A follower of the Earl of Murray, who bore his will to your honour,"
answered Glendinning,--"but here he comes to say it himself; I see the
van of his horsemen come over the hills."

"Get into order, my masters," said Sir John Foster to his followers;
"you that have broken your spears, draw your swords. We are something
unprovided for a second field, but if yonder dark cloud on the hill
edge bring us foul weather, we must bear as bravely as our broken
cloaks will bide it. Meanwhile, Stawarth, we have got the deer we
have hunted for--here is Piercie Shafton hard and fast betwixt two
troopers."

"Who, that lad?" said Bolton; "he is no more Piercie Shafton than I
am. He hath his gay cloak indeed--but Piercie Shafton is a round dozen
of years older than that slip of roguery. I have known him since he
was thus high. Did you never see him in the tilt-yard or in the
presence?"

"To the devil with such vanities!" said Sir John Foster; "when had I
leisure for them or any thing else? During my whole life has she kept
me to this hangman's office, chasing thieves one day and traitors
another, in daily fear of my life; the lance never hung up in the
hall, the foot never out of the stirrup, the saddles never off my
nags' backs; and now, because I have been mistaken in the person of a
man I never saw, I warrant me, the next letters from the Privy Council
will rate me as I were a dog--a man were better dead than thus slaved
and harassed."

A trumpet interrupted Foster's complaints, and a Scottish pursuivant
who attended, declared "that the noble Earl of Murray desired, in all
honour and safety, a personal conference with Sir John Foster, midway
between their parties, with six of company in each, and ten free
minutes to come and go."

"And now," said the Englishman, "comes another plague. I must go speak
with yonder false Scot, and he knows how to frame his devices, to cast
dust in the eyes of a plain man, as well as ever a knave in the north.
I am no match for him in words, and for hard blows we are but too ill
provided.--Pursuivant, we grant the conference--and you, Sir
Swordsman," (speaking to young Glendinning,) "draw off with your
troopers to your own party--march--attend your Earl's
trumpet.--Stawarth Bolton, put our troop in order, and be ready to
move forward at the wagging of a finger.--Get you gone to your own
friends, I tell you, Sir Squire, and loiter not here."

Notwithstanding this peremptory order, Halbert Glendinning could not
help stopping to cast a look upon the unfortunate Catherine, who lay
insensible of the danger and of the trampling of so many horses around
her, insensible, as the second glance assured him, of all and forever.
Glendinning almost rejoiced when he saw that the last misery of life
was over, and that the hoofs of the war-horses, amongst which he was
compelled to leave her, could only injure and deface a senseless
corpse. He caught the infant from her arms, half ashamed of the shout
of laughter which rose on all sides, at seeing an armed man in such a
situation assume such an unwonted and inconvenient burden.

"Shoulder your infant!" cried a harquebusier.

"Port your infant!" said a pikeman.

"Peace, ye brutes," said Stawarth Bolton, "and respect humanity in
others if you have none yourselves. I pardon the lad having done some
discredit to my gray hairs, when I see him take care of that helpless
creature, which ye would have trampled upon as if ye had been littered
of bitch-wolves, not born of women."

While this passed, the leaders on either side met in the neutral space
betwixt the forces of either, and the Earl accosted the English
Warden:

"Is this fair or honest usage, Sir John, or for whom do you hold the
Earl of Morton and myself, that you ride in Scotland with arrayed
banner, fight, slay, and make prisoners at your own pleasure? Is it
well done, think you, to spoil our land and shed our blood, after the
many proofs we have given to your mistress of our devotion due to her
will, saving always the allegiance due to our own sovereign?"

"My Lord of Murray," answered Foster, "all the world knows you to be a
man of quick ingine and deep wisdom, and these several weeks you have
held me in hand with promising to arrest my sovereign mistress's
rebel, this Piercie Shafton of Wilverton, and you have never kept your
word, alleging turmoils in the west, and I wot not what other causes
of hinderance. Now, since he has had the insolence to return hither,
and live openly within ten miles of England, I could no longer, in
plain duty to my mistress and queen, tarry upon your successive
delays, and therefore I have used her force to take her rebel, by the
strong hand, wherever I can find him."

"And is Piercie Shafton in your hands, then?" said the Earl of Murray.
"Be aware that I may not, without my own great shame, suffer you to
remove him hence without doing battle."

"Will you, Lord Earl, after all the advantages you have received at the
hands of the Queen of England, do battle in the cause of her rebel?" said
Sir John Foster.

"Not so, Sir John," answered the Earl, "but I will fight to the death in
defence of the liberties of our free kingdom of Scotland."

"By my faith," said Sir John Foster, "I am well content--my sword is
not blunted with all it has done yet this day."

"By my honour, Sir John," said Sir George Heron of Chipchase, "there
is but little reason we should fight these Scottish Lords e'en now,
for I hold opinion with old Stawarth Bolton, and believe yonder
prisoner to be no more Piercie Shafton than he is the Earl of
Northumberland; and you were but ill advised to break the peace
betwixt the countries for a prisoner of less consequence than that gay
mischief-maker."

"Sir George," replied Foster, "I have often heard you herons are
afraid of hawks--Nay, lay not hand on sword, man--I did but jest; and
for this prisoner, let him be brought up hither, that we may see who
or what he is--always under assurance, my Lords," he continued,
addressing the Scots.

"Upon our word and honour," said Morton, "we will offer no violence."

The laugh turned against Sir John Foster considerably, when the
prisoner, being brought up, proved not only a different person from
Sir Piercie Shafton, but a female in man's attire.

"Pluck the mantle from the quean's face, and cast her to the horse-boys,"
said Foster; "she has kept such company ere now, I warrant."

Even Murray was moved to laughter, no common thing with him, at the
disappointment of the English Warden; but he would not permit any
violence to be offered to the fair Molinara, who had thus a second
time rescued Sir Piercie Shafton at her own personal risk.

"You have already done more mischief than you can well answer," said
the Earl to the English Warden, "and it were dishonour to me should I
permit you to harm a hair of this young woman's head."

"My lord," said Morton, "if Sir John will ride apart with me but for
one moment, I will show him such reasons as shall make him content to
depart, and to refer this unhappy day's work to the judgment of the
Commissioners nominated to try offences on the Border."

He then led Sir John Foster aside, and spoke to him in this
manner:--"Sir John Foster, I much marvel that a man who knows your
Queen Elizabeth as you do, should not know that, if you hope any thing
from her, it must be for doing her useful service, not for involving
her in quarrels with her neighbours without any advantage. Sir Knight,
I will speak frankly what I know to be true. Had you seized the true
Piercie Shafton by this ill-advised inroad; and had your deed
threatened, as most likely it might, a breach betwixt the countries,
your politic princess and her politic council would rather have
disgraced Sir John Foster than entered into war in his behalf. But now
that you have stricken short of your aim, you may rely on it you will
have little thanks for carrying the matter farther. I will work thus
far on the Earl of Murray, that he will undertake to dismiss Sir
Piercie Shafton from the realm of Scotland.--Be well advised, and let
the matter now pass off--you will gain nothing by farther violence,
for if we fight, you as the fewer and the weaker through your former
action, will needs have the worse."

Sir John Foster listened with his head declining on his breast-plate.

"It is a cursed chance," he said, "and I shall have little thanks for
my day's work."

He then rode up to Murray, and said, that, in deference to his Lordship's
presence and that of my Lord of Morton, he had come to the resolution of
withdrawing himself, with his power, without farther proceedings.

"Stop there, Sir John Foster," said Murray; "I cannot permit you to
retire in safety, unless you leave some one who may be surety to
Scotland, that the injuries you have at present done us may be fully
accounted for--you will reflect, that by permitting your retreat, I
become accountable to my Sovereign, who will demand a reckoning of me
for the blood of her subjects, if I suffer those who shed it to depart
so easily."

"It shall never be told in England," said the Warden, "that John
Foster gave pledges like a subdued man, and that on the very field on
which he stands victorious.--But," he added, after a moment's pause,
"if Stawarth Bolton wills to abide with you on his own free choice, I
will say nothing against it; and, as I bethink me, it were better he
should stay to see the dismissal of this same Piercie Shafton."

"I receive him as your hostage, nevertheless, and shall treat him as
such," said the Earl of Murray. But Foster, turning away as if to give
directions to Bolton and his men, affected not to hear this
observation.

"There rides a faithful servant of his most beautiful and Sovereign
Lady," said Murray aside to Morton. "Happy man! he knows not whether
the execution of her commands may not cost him his head; and yet he is
most certain that to leave them unexecuted will bring disgrace and
death without reprieve. Happy are they who are not only subjected to
the caprices of Dame Fortune, but held bound to account and be
responsible for them, and that to a sovereign as moody and fickle as
her humorous ladyship herself!"

"We also have a female Sovereign, my lord," said Morton.

"We have so, Douglas," said the Earl,--with a suppressed sigh; "but it
remains to be seen how long a female hand can hold the reins of power
in a realm so wild as ours. We will now go on to Saint Mary's, and see
ourselves after the state of that House.--Glendinning, look to that
woman, and protect her.--What the fiend, man, hast thou got in thine
arms?--an infant as I live!--where couldst thou find such a charge, at
such a place and moment?"

Halbert Glendinning briefly told the story. The Earl rode forward to
the place where the body of Julian Avenel lay, with his unhappy
companion's arms wrapped around him like the trunk of an uprooted oak
borne down by the tempest with all its ivy garlands. Both were cold
dead. Murray was touched in an unwonted degree, remembering, perhaps,
his own birth. "What have they to answer for, Douglas," he said, "who
thus abuse the sweetest gifts of affection?"

The Earl of Morton, unhappy in his marriage, was a libertine in his
amours.

"You must ask that question of Henry Warden, my lord, or of John
Knox--I am but a wild counsellor in women's matters."

"Forward to Saint Mary's," said the Earl; "pass the word
on--Glendinning, give the infant to this same female cavalier, and let
it be taken charge of. Let no dishonour be done to the dead bodies,
and call on the country to bury or remove them.--Forward, I say, my
masters!"




Chapter the Thirty-Seventh.


Gone to be married?--Gone to swear a peace!

KING JOHN

The news of the lost battle, so quickly carried by the fugitives to
the village and convent, had spread the greatest alarm among the
inhabitants. The Sacristan and other monks counselled flight; the
Treasurer recommended that the church plate should be offered as a
tribute to bribe the English officer; the Abbot alone was unmoved and
undaunted.

"My brethren," he said, "since God has not given our people victory in
the combat, it must be because he requires of us, his spiritual
soldiers, to fight the good fight of martyrdom, a conflict in which
nothing but our own faint-hearted cowardice can make us fail of
victory. Let us assume, then, the armour of faith, and prepare, if it
be necessary, to die under the ruin of these shrines, to the service
of which we have devoted ourselves. Highly honoured are we all in this
distinguished summons, from our dear brother Nicholas, whose gray
hairs have been preserved until they should be surrounded by the crown
of martyrdom, down to my beloved son Edward, who, arriving at the
vineyard at the latest hour of the day, is yet permitted to share its
toils with those who have laboured from the morning. Be of good
courage, my children. I dare not, like my sainted predecessors,
promise to you that you shall be preserved by miracle--I and you are
alike unworthy of that especial interposition, which, in earlier
times, turned the sword of sacrilege against the bosom of tyrants by
whom it was wielded, daunted the hardened hearts of heretics with
prodigies, and called down hosts of angels to defend the shrine of God
and of the Virgin. Yet, by heavenly aid, you shall this day see that
your Father and Abbot will not disgrace the mitre which sits upon his
brow. Go to your cells, my children, and exercise your private
devotions. Array yourselves also in alb and cope, as for our most
solemn festivals, and be ready, when the tolling of the largest bell
announces the approach of the enemy, to march forth to meet them in
solemn procession. Let the church be opened to afford such refuge as
may be to those of our vassals, who, from their exertion in this day's
unhappy battle, or the cause, are particularly apprehensive of the
rage of the enemy. Tell Sir Piercie Shafton, if he has escaped the
fight--"

"I am here, most venerable Abbot," replied Sir Piercie; "and if it so
seemeth meet to you, I will presently assemble such of the men as have
escaped this escaramouche, and will renew the resistance, even unto
the death. Certes, you will learn from all, that I did my part in this
unhappy matter. Had it pleased Julian Avenel to have attended to my
counsel, specially in somewhat withdrawing of his main battle, even as
you may have marked the heron eschew the stoop of the falcon,
receiving him rather upon his beak than upon his wing, affairs, as I
do conceive, might have had a different face, and we might then, in a
more bellacose manner, have maintained that affray. Nevertheless, I
would not be understood to speak any thing in disregard of Julian
Avenel, whom I saw fall fighting manfully with his face to his enemy,
which hath banished from my memory the unseemly term of 'meddling
coxcomb,' with which it pleased him something rashly to qualify my
advice, and for which, had it pleased Heaven and the saints to have
prolonged the life of that excellent person, I had it bound upon my
soul to have put him to death with my own hand."

"Sir Piercie," said the Abbot, at length interrupting him, "our time
allows brief leisure to speak what might have been."

"You are right, most venerable Lord and Father," replied the
incorrigible Euphuist; "the preterite, as grammarians have it,
concerns frail mortality less than the future mood, and indeed our
cogitations respect chiefly the present. In a word, I am willing to
head all who will follow me, and offer such opposition as manhood and
mortality may permit, to the advance of the English, though they be my
own countrymen; and be assured, Piercie Shafton will measure his
length, being five feet ten inches, on the ground as he stands, rather
than give two yards in retreat, according to the usual motion in which
we retrograde."

"I thank you, Sir Knight," said the Abbot, "and I doubt not that you
would make your words good; but it is not the will of Heaven that carnal
weapons should rescue us. We are called to endure, not to resist, and may
not waste the blood of our innocent commons in vain--Fruitless opposition
becomes not men of our profession; they have my commands to resign the
sword and the spear,--God and Our Lady have not blessed our banner."

"Bethink you, reverend lord," said Piercie Shafton, very eagerly, "ere
you resign the defence that is in your power--there are many posts
near the entry of this village, where brave men might live or die to
the advantage; and I have this additional motive to make defence,--the
safety, namely, of a fair friend, who, I hope, hath escaped the hands
of the heretics."

"I understand you, Sir Piercie," said the Abbot--"you mean the
daughter of our Convent's miller?"

"Reverend my lord," said Sir Piercie, not without hesitation, "the
fair Mysinda is, as may be in some sort alleged, the daughter of one
who mechanically prepareth corn to be manipulated into bread, without
which we could not exist, and which is therefore an employment in
itself honourable, nay necessary. Nevertheless, if the purest
sentiments of a generous mind, streaming forth like the rays of the
sun reflected by a diamond, may ennoble one, who is in some sort the
daughter of a molendinary mechanic----"

"I have no time for all this, Sir Knight," said the Abbot; "be it
enough to answer, that with our will we war no longer with carnal
weapons. We of the spirituality will teach you of the temporality how
to die in cold blood, our hands not clenched for resistance, but
folded for prayer--our minds not filled with jealous hatred, but with
Christian meekness and forgiveness--our ears not deafened, nor our
senses confused, by the sound of clamorous instruments of war; but, on
the contrary, our voices composed to Halleluiah, Kyrie-Eleison, and
Salve Regina, and our blood temperate and cold, as those who think
upon reconciling themselves with God, not of avenging themselves of
their fellow-mortals."

"Lord Abbot," said Sir Piercie, "this is nothing to the fate of my
Molinara, whom I beseech you to observe, I will not abandon, while
golden hilt and steel blade bide together on my falchion. I commanded
her not to follow us to the field, and yet methought I saw her in her
page's attire amongst the rear of the combatants."

"You must seek elsewhere for the person in whose fate you are so
deeply interested," said the Abbot; "and at present I will pray of
your knighthood to inquire concerning her at the church, in which all
our more defenceless vassals have taken refuge. It is my advice to
you, that you also abide by the horns of the altar; and, Sir Piercie
Shafton," he added, "be of one thing secure, that if you come to harm,
it will involve the whole of this brotherhood; for never, I trust,
will the meanest of us buy safety at the expense of surrendering a
friend or a guest. Leave us, my son, and may God be your aid!"

When Sir Piercie Shafton had departed, and the Abbot was about to
betake himself to his own cell, he was surprised by an unknown person
anxiously requiring a conference, who, being admitted, proved to be no
other than Henry Warden. The Abbot started as he entered, and
exclaimed, angrily,--"Ha! are the few hours that fate allows him who
may last wear the mitre of this house, not to be excused from the
intrusion of heresy? Dost thou come," he said, "to enjoy the hopes
which fete holds out to thy demented and accursed sect, to see the
bosom of destruction sweep away the pride of old religion--to deface
our shrines,--to mutilate and lay waste the bodies of our benefactors,
as well as their sepulchres--to destroy the pinnacles and carved work
of God's house, and Our Lady's?"

"Peace, William Allan!" said the Protestant preacher, with dignified
composure; "for none of these purposes do I come. I would have these
stately shrines deprived of the idols which, no longer simply regarded
as the effigies of the good and of the wise, have become the objects
of foul idolatry. I would otherwise have its ornaments subsist,
unless as they are, or may be, a snare to the souls of men; and
especially do I condemn those ravages which have been made by the
heady fury of the people, stung into zeal against will-worship by
bloody persecution. Against such wanton devastations I lift my
testimony."

"Idle distinguisher that thou art!" said the Abbot Eustace, interrupting
him; "what signifies the pretext under which thou dost despoil the house
of God? and why at this present emergence will thou insult the master of
it by thy ill-omened presence?"

"Thou art unjust, William Allan," said Warden; "but I am not the less
settled in my resolution. Thou hast protected me some time since at
the hazard of thy rank, and what I know thou holdest still dearer, at
the risk of thy reputation with thine own sect. Our party is now
uppermost, and, believe me, I have come down the valley, in which thou
didst quarter me for sequestration's sake, simply with the wish to
keep my engagements to thee."

"Ay," answered the Abbot, "and it may be, that my listening to that
worldly and infirm compassion which pleaded with me for thy life, is now
avenged by this impending judgment. Heaven hath smitten, it may be,
the erring shepherd, and scattered the flock."

"Think better of the Divine judgments," said Warden. "Not for thy
sins, which are those of thy blended education and circumstances; not for
thine own sins, William Allan, art thou stricken, but for the accumulated
guilt which thy mis-named Church hath accumulated on her head, and those
of her votaries, by the errors and corruption of ages."

"Now, by my sure belief in the Rock of Peter," said the Abbot, "thou
dost rekindle the last spark of human indignation for which my bosom
has fuel--I thought I might not again have felt the impulse of earthly
passion, and it is thy voice which once more calls me to the
expression of human anger! yes, it is thy voice that comest to insult
me in my hour of sorrow, with these blasphemous accusations of that
church which hath kept the light of Christianity alive from the times
of the Apostles till now."

"From the times of the Apostles?" said the preacher, eagerly.
"_Negatur, Gulielme Allan_--the primitive church differed as much
from that of Rome, as did light from darkness, which, did time permit,
I should speedily prove. And worse dost thou judge, in saying, I come
to insult thee in thy hour of affliction, being here, God wot, with
the Christian wish of fulfilling an engagement I had made to my host,
and of rendering myself to thy will while it had yet power to exercise
aught upon me, and if it might so be, to mitigate in thy behalf the
rage of the victors whom God hath sent as a scourge to thy obstinacy."

"I will none of thy intercession," said the Abbot, sternly; "the
dignity to which the church has exalted me, never should have swelled
my bosom more proudly in the time of the highest prosperity, than it
doth at this crisis--I ask nothing of thee, but the assurance that my
lenity to thee hath been the means of perverting no soul to Satan,
that I have not given to the wolf any of the stray lambs whom the
Great Shepherd of souls had intrusted to my charge."

"William Allan," answered the Protestant, "I will be sincere with
thee. What I promised I have kept--I have withheld my voice from
speaking even good things. But it has pleased Heaven to call the
maiden Mary Avenel to a better sense of faith than thou and all the
disciples of Rome can teach. Her I have aided with my humble power--I
have extricated her from the machinations of evil spirits to which she
and her house were exposed during the blindness of their Romish
superstition, and, praise be to my Master, I have not reason to fear
she will again be caught in thy snares."

"Wretched man!" said the Abbot, unable to suppress his rising
indignation, "is it to the Abbot of St. Mary's that you boast having
misled the soul of a dweller in Our Lady's Halidome into the paths of
foul error and damning heresy?--Thou dost urge me, Wellwood, beyond
what it becomes me to bear, and movest me to employ the few moments of
power I may yet possess, in removing from the face of the earth one
whose qualities, given by God, have been so utterly perverted as thine
to the service of Satan."

"Do thy pleasure," said the preacher; "thy vain wrath shall not
prevent my doing my duty to advantage thee, where it may be done
without neglecting my higher call. I go to the Earl of Murray."

Their conference, which was advancing fast into bitter disputation,
was here interrupted by the deep and sullen toll of the largest and
heaviest bell of the Convent, a sound famous in the chronicles of the
Community, for dispelling of tempests, and putting to flight demons,
but which now only announced danger, without affording any means of
warding against it. Hastily repeating his orders, that all the
brethren should attend in the choir, arrayed for solemn procession,
the Abbot ascended to the battlements of the lofty Monastery, by his
own private staircase, and there met the Sacristan, who had been in
the act of directing the tolling of the huge bell, which fell under
his charge.