The monastery; The abbot.

THE MONASTERY. 119
iot for certain reasons come to the Monastery, where, with as good will,
and with more convenience, we might have given you a better reception,
than, striking the table with my hammer, I called a brother- Timothy,
said I, let them saddle Benedict-let them saddle my black palfrey, and
bid the Sub-Prior and some half-score of attendants be in readiness tomorrow after matins —we would ride to Glendearg. -Brother Timothy
stared, thinking, I imagine, that his ears had scarce done him justice-but
I repeated my commands, and said, Let the Kitchener and Refectioner go
before to aid the poor vassals to whom the place belongs in making a suitable collation. So that you will consider, good Sir Piercie, our mutual incommodities, and forgive whatever you may find amiss."
"By my faith," said Sir Piercie Shafton, "there is nothing to forgive -
If you spiritual warriors have to submit to the grievous incommodities
which your lordship narrates, it would ill become me, a sinful and secular
man, to complain of a bed as hard as a board, of broth which relished as if
made of burnt wool, of flesh, which, in its sable and singed shape, seemed
to put me on a level with Richard Coeur-de-Lion, when he ate up the head
of a Moor carbonadoed, and of other viands savouring rather of the rusticity of this northern region."
"By the good Saints, sir," said the Abbot, somewhat touched in point
of his character for hospitality, of which he was in truth a most faithful
and zealous professor, " it grieves me to the heart that you have found our
vassals no better provided for your reception-Yet I crave leave to observe,
that if Sir Piercie Shafton's affairs had permitted him to honour with his
company our poor house of Saint Mary's, he might have had less to complain of in respect of easements."
" To give your lordship the reasons," said Sir Piercie Shafton, " why I
could not at this present time approach your dwelling, or avail myself of
its well-known and undoubted hospitality, craves either some delay, or,"
looking around him, " a limited audience."
The Lord Abbot immediately issued his mandate to the Refectioner:' Hie thee to the kitchen, Brother Iilarius, and there make inquiry of our
brother the Kitchener, within what time he opines that our collation may
be prepared, since sin and sorrow it were, considering the hardships of this
noble and gallant knight, no whit mentioning or weighing those we ourselves have endured, if we were now either to advance or retard the hour
of refection beyond the time when the viands are fit to be set before us."
Brother Hilarius parted with an eager alertness to execute the will of his
Superior, and returned with the assurance, that punctually at one afternoon
would the collation be ready.
"Before that time," said the accurate Refectioner, "the wafers, flamms,
and pastry-meat, will scarce have had the just degree of fire which learned
pottingers prescribe as fittest for the body; and if it should be past one
o'clock, were it but ten minutes, our brother the Kitchener opines, that the
haunch of venison would suffer in spite of the skill of the little turn-broche
whom he has recommended to your holiness by his praises."
"How I" said the Abbot, "a haunch of venison! -from whence comes
that dainty? I remember not thou didst intimate its presence in thy hamper
of vivers."
"So please your holiness and lordship," said the Refectioner, "he is a
son of the woman of the house who has shot it and sent it in -killed but
now; yet, as the animal heat hath not left the body, the Kitchener undertakes it shall eat as tender as a young chicken - and this youth hath a
special gift in shooting deer, and never misses the heart or the brain; so
that the blood is not driven through the flesh, as happens too often with us.
It is a hart of grease -your holiness has seldom seen such a haunch."
"Silence, Brother Hilarius," said the Abbot, wiping his mouth; "it is
not beseeming our order to talk of food so earnestly, especially as we must