The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely

It was long ago; it was in the year of grace one thousand and seventy, or four years after the battle of Hastings, which decided the right of power between the English and Norman nations, and left the old Saxon race exposed to the goadings of the sharp Norman lance, that a novice went on his way from the grand abbey of Crowland to the dependent house or succursal cell of Spalding, in the midst of the Lincolnshire fens. The young man carried a long staff or pole in his hand, with which he aided himself in leaping across the numerous ditches and rivulets that intersected his path, and in trying the boggy ground before he ventured to set his feet upon it. The upper end of his staff was fashioned like unto the staff of a pilgrim, but the lower end was armed with a heavy iron ferrule, from which projected sundry long steel nails or spikes. It was a fen-pole, such, I wist, as our fenners yet use in Holland, Lindsey, and Kesteven. In a strong and bold hand this staff might be a good war-weapon; and as the young man raised the skirts of his black garment it might have been seen that he had a short broad hunting-knife fastened to his girdle. He was a fair-haired, blue-eyed, and full-lipped youth, with an open countenance and a ruddy complexion: the face seemed made to express none but joyous feelings, so that the grief and anxiety which now clouded it appeared to be quite out of place. Nor was that cloud always there, for whensoever the autumn sun shone out brightly, and some opening in the monotonous forest of willows and alders gave him a pleasant or a varied prospect, or when the bright king-fisher flitted across his path, or the wild duck rose from the fen and flew heaven-ward, or the heron raised itself on its long legs to look at him from the sludge, or the timid cygnet went sailing away in quest of the parent swan, his countenance lighted up like that of a happy thoughtless boy. Ever and anon too some inward emotion made him chuckle or laugh outright. Thus between sadness and gladness the novice went on his way—a rough and miry way proper to give a permanent fit of ill-humour to a less buoyant spirit, for he had quitted the road or causeway which traversed the fens and was pursuing a devious path, which was for the greater part miry in summer, but a complete morass at the present season of the year. Notwithstanding all his well-practised agility, and in spite of the good aid of his long staff, he more than once was soused head over ears in a broad water-course. With a good road within view, it may be thought that he had some strong motive for choosing this very bad one; and every time that his path approached to the road, or that the screen of alders and willows failed him, he crouched low under the tall reeds and bulrushes of the fen, and stole along very cautiously, peeping occasionally through the rushes towards the road, and turning his ear every time that the breeze produced a loud or unusual sound. As thus he went on, the day declined fast, and the slanting sun shone on the walls of a tall stone mansion, battlemented and moated—a dwelling-house, but a house proper to stand a siege: and in these years of trouble none could dwell at peace in any house if unprovided with the means of holding out against a blockade, and of repelling siege and assault. All round this manor-house, to a wide space, the trees had been cut down and the country drained; part of the water being carried off to a neighbouring mere, and part being collected and gathered, by means of various cuts, to fill the deep moat round the house.