Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Contents:
The Price of Blood
The Catof Cat Copse
De Facto and De Jure
Sigbert’sGuerdon
The Beggar’s Legacy
AReview of the Nieces
Come to Her Kingdom
Mrs.Batseyes
Chops
Ab irâ et odio, et omni malâ voluntate,
Liberanos, Domine.
A fulgure et tempestate,
Liberanos, Domine.
A morte perpetuâ,
Liberanos, Domine.
So rang forth the supplication, echoing from rock and fell, as thepeople of Claudiodunum streamed forth in the May sunshine to invokea blessing on the cornlands, olives, and vineyards that won vantage-groundon the terraces carefully kept up on the slopes of the wonderful needle-shapedhills of Auvergne.
Very recently had the Church of Gaul commenced the custom of goingforth, on the days preceding the Ascension feast, to chant Litanies,calling down the Divine protection on field and fold, corn and wine,basket and store. It had been begun in a time of deadly perilfrom famine and earthquake, wild beast and wilder foes, and it had beenadopted in the neighbouring dioceses as a regular habit, as indeed itcontinued throughout the Western Church during the fourteen subsequentcenturies.
One great procession was formed by different bands. The childrenwere in two troops, a motley collection of all shades; the deep oliveand the rolling black eye betraying Ethiopian or Moorish slave ancestry,the soft dark complexion and deep brown eye showing the Roman, and therufous hair and freckled skin the lower grade of Cymric Kelt, whilea few had the more stately pose, violet eye, and black hair of the Gael. The boys were marshalled with extreme difficulty by two or three youngmonks; their sisters walked far more orderly, under the care of someconsecrated virgin of mature age. The men formed another troop,the hardy mountaineers still wearing the Gallic trousers and plaid,though the artisans and mechanics from the town were clad in the tunicand cloak that were the later Roman dress, and such as could claim theright folded over them the white, purple-edged scarf to which the togahad dwindled.
Among the women there was the same scale of decreasing nationalityof costume according to rank, though the culmination was in resemblanceto the graceful classic robe of Rome instead of the last Parisian mode. The poorer women wore bright, dark crimson, or blue in gown or wrappingveil; the ladies were mostly in white or black, as were also the clergy,excepting such as had officiated at the previous Eucharist, and whowore their brilliant priestly vestments, heavy with gold and embroidery.
Beautiful alike to eye and ear was the procession, above all froma distance, now filing round a delicate young green wheatfield, nowlost behind a rising hill, now glancing through a vineyard, or contrastingwith the gray tints of the olive, all that was incongruous or disorderlyunseen, and all that was discordant unheard, as only the harmoniouscadence of the united response was wafted fitfully on the breeze tothe two elderly men who, unable to scale the wild mountain paths inthe procession, had, after the previous service in the basilica andthe blessing of the nearer lands, returned to the villa, where theysat watching its progress.
It was as entirely a Roman villa as the form of the ground and theneed of security would permit. Lying on the slope of a steep hill,which ran up above into a fantastic column or needle piercing the sky,the courts of the villa were necessarily a succession