Chapter VII: Tours and Her Saint

In a few days, at early dawn, the journeys of Baithene and Ethne began again.

Eleazar hired a boat, and they went up the Loire to the city of Tours, where they landed.

This was the first city the captives had ever seen, and it impressed them greatly; the high walls, the tall houses, the villas of the Roman officials and rich citizens, in which it was set as if in a cluster of gems. They wondered how much more magnificent the great Rome itself could be. They were still among people of their own race, and language not quite unfamiliar was around them; but being on the south side of the river, in the kingdom of Theodoric, the Visigoth, the town had escaped the ravages of the other Gothic tribes, and also, now, of the Huns in northern and eastern Gaul. There, also for the first time, they saw a cathedral, the only sacred building they had yet beheld having been the round cell of hewn stones in Ireland, and the little chapel with the bell-tower on the sandy shore in Cornwall.

It was Friday evening when they arrived, and again the ritual of the Jewish Sabbath began in Eleazar’s home with the lighting of the seven-branched candlestick, and ended with the fragrance of the spices from the silver box, and the reading from the Hebrew manuscript. This Miriam had explained to Ethne. It was a thanksgiving to God for creating all sweet and pleasant things, a consecration of beauty, and a diffusion, symbolically, of the fragrance of the rest and worship of the Sabbath through the week. The words of the thanksgiving were, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who createst diverse kinds of spice, and all sweet and pleasant things.”

The next day Miriam and Eleazar remained at home, and the brother and sister were suffered to go together round the city. It was understood they were prisoners on parole; that day, therefore, was a memorable holiday to them.

Their first expedition was to the cathedral. It was still early morning when they entered. The loftiness of the vaulted roof, the vastness of the dimly-lighted spaces, the lights at the altar, the rich dresses of the officiating priests, the sweet and solemn singing of the choir, struck them with such awe and wonder, that they did not venture more than a few steps beyond the porch. Then, seeing the font, they felt that this at least belonged to them; that there they had the children’s right to stay; and they knelt down close beside it, and reverently crossing themselves, lifted up their hearts in prayer.

It was an early Mass, and when it was finished, and the congregation dispersed, the youth and maiden still knelt on beside the font.

In one of the chapels there was a tomb which seemed to receive much honour. Many of the worshippers paused beside it as they went out, and knelt there a few minutes in prayer. But when the last of the people had left, and the acolytes had finished their last services at the altar, and the brother and sister were left alone, they still lingered on. It felt more home-like to them than any place they had been in since they were swept away from their own Irish shores. It was indeed to them the Father’s house; and it was delightful to them to be together there for a while, quite alone. Ethne felt as if their mother might step in at any moment, with the radiant look she had on her face when she rose from the baptismal waters at Tara.

At last an aged monk came in, and went straight up to the tomb where so many had knelt. After a time they went up and knelt beside him. When he arose he looked kindly at them, and spoke to them in Latin, to which they responded as best they could. He evidently perceived at once that they were foreigners, and tried them with two or three languages; but they only shook their heads in perplexity, until, to their unspeakable delight, he said a few words in some Celtic tongue resembling their own, enough for them to understand and answer.

“You are from the Britanniæ,” he said. “I have been there with the holy bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes, to combat the Pelagian heresy;” and with some anxiety he asked, “You are not Pelagians?”

They had never heard of the Pelagian heresy, which was at all events negatively satisfactory. But when he asked them from which of the seven provinces of Britain they came, he found they did not know anything about the seven provinces of Britain, which perplexed him not a little.

“Whence then do you come?”

“From the island beyond Britain,” Baithene replied; and he added with a mixture of apology and pride, “From the island the Romans never conquered.”

“A heathen land!” exclaimed the monk, with some agitation. “How come you then to be Christians?”

For he had seen them make the sign of the Cross, and make it in the orthodox Latin way. The sign of the Cross had significance in more than one way, then, as the sound of church bells and many other symbols.

They told him about Patrick, and by degrees a light came into his face. He had heard a rumour of some new mission in that wild, far-off island, and also a rumour that the missionary bishop was in some way connected with their own sainted bishop, Martin of Tours. This he told them, and also that it was by the tomb of St. Martin they were standing. Both of their faces grew radiant at this new link with Patrick and home. Ethne knelt down again beside the tomb, and pressed her lips to the cold marble as if it had been a mother’s hand.

The monk questioned them about themselves, and listened with tender interest and strong indignation to their story.

“Kidnapped by Christians, and sold to a Jew!” he exclaimed, in a climax of horror. “In our Martin’s time we would have ransomed you at once at any price, if we had had to sell the vessels of the altar for it, as the blessed old man did himself when his young deacon moved too slowly to fulfil his bidding; in his impetuous eagerness taking off his own sacerdotal robe when he was about to celebrate Mass, and throwing it around a wretched, naked beggar! Just as in his eager youth, when he was a soldier, he had cut his military cloak in two to give it to a beggar at Amiens!”

They listened eagerly. That was indeed a saint worth hearing about.

The old monk was launched on an endless subject when he began with St. Martin.

“But, alas!” he sighed in conclusion, “times are changed. The ravages of the barbarians and the exactions of the Romans have impoverished us all; and now the frightful hordes of these savage Huns may be on us any day. Perhaps also we are poorer in ourselves; we care more for the splendour of our churches than for the poverty of our brothers. We want Martin’s poverty of spirit to make us rich as Martin to help and save. We want his love and faith before we can see the visions he saw. Have you ever heard of them? of how, in the night, he saw our Lord among His angels, clothed in the garment he had given the beggar, and heard Him say to them, ‘Know ye who has thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin!’” Then seeing the intense interest in their eyes, the old monk said—“Would you come and see the hovel where Martin lived?”

They followed him eagerly to a collection of huts and cells between the river and the cliffs, where, like the monks in Egypt and the East, he and many of his brethren still lived in community, but in separate caves and cells. And there he showed them Martin’s wooden hut, still carefully preserved.

“Here the saint lived and prayed,” he said. “And here, as some think, he had the loveliest vision of all.”

Then they listened with rapt attention, as he told how, “while Martin was praying in his cell, the Evil Spirit stood before him, clad in a glittering radiancy, by this purposing the more easily to deceive him; clad also in royal robes with a golden jewelled diadem, with shoes covered with gold, with serene face and bright looks, so as to seem nothing so little as what he was. Martin at first was dazzled by the sight, and for a long time both kept silence. At length the Evil One began. ‘Acknowledge,’ he said, ‘O Martin, whom thou seest. I am Christ. I am now descending on earth, and I wished first to manifest myself to thee.’ Martin still kept silence and made no answer. The Devil still continued to repeat his bold pretence. ‘Martin, why hesitate to believe, when thou seest I am Christ?’ Then Martin understood, by the revelation of the Spirit, that it was the Evil One and not God; and answered—‘Jesus the Lord said not He would come in glittering clothing and radiant with a diadem. I will not believe that the Christ is come save in that form in which He suffered; save with the wounds of the Cross.’ At these words the Evil One vanished in smoke, leaving a horrible, hellish stench and fumes behind him.”

The old man would have kept them till nightfall, but they felt bound in honour to return. Before they left the cells he gave them two small tablets, as letters of commendation to Anianus, Bishop of Orleans, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who would, he said, be sure to help them if possible. “But,” he added, in a desponding tone, “who knows whether Anianus and Lupus will be still living? or their cities, Orleans and Troyes, still standing? From all sides come the news of this army of locusts, these myriads of monstrous savages, ravaging and burning and destroying. Surely the end of the world is at hand. Yet these tablets may do you service; keep them carefully.” And Ethne wrapped them in the folds of her plaid.

The old monk accompanied them to the door of Eleazar’s lodging.

“Kidnapped by Christians, purchased by a Jew!” he murmured, as he turned reluctantly away and left them. “Would to God our Martin were here!”

Miriam received them affectionately, and not without a look of triumph at her husband, who had not been sure they would ever return. Ethne was somewhat perplexed at the good monk’s last words.

“Why should we wish to call Martin down again?” she said. “Do not the saints always go on helping us in heaven? And does not God go on making saints on earth?”

“I wonder if we shall ever find a living saint again on earth!” said Baithene.

And Ethne returned to her “lorica,” her breastplate, Patrick’s Irish hymn—

“Christ in the chariot;
Christ in the ship;
Christ behind me;
Christ before me;
Christ within me;
Christ above me.”