The Sepulchre And The Shrine

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Title:     The Sepulchre And The Shrine
Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles [More Titles by Charles]

"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

The great torrent of the First Crusade had been sweeping for weeks through the valley of the Danube. Along that "highway of nations" tribe after tribe had poured westward, leaving its deposit in castle and village, on dominant height and in sheltered hollow. And now the rush of men swept back eastward: no slowly advancing tide of emigration, but a wild torrent of enthusiasm, which would leave behind it nothing but graves and the bones of unburied thousands. And yet in that death were seeds of life.

Week after week the Lady of the Tannenburg had seen from the terrace of her castle the bands of peasants pass on their way,--men and women and little children, with the red-cross on the shoulder,--to the Tomb of Christ, to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel. Multitudes almost entirely composed of the poor: no plumed helmets or richly caparisoned war-horses. The red-cross, of common stuff, was fastened on the poor garments of the peasants. The only chariots were the rough cart drawn by oxen taken from the plough, carrying the mothers and the little ones, who were too feeble to walk.

Of geography they knew little more than the children, who cried out as each town came in sight, "Is that Jerusalem?" The patient oxen would suffice to carry them and theirs, they thought, to the Master's Grave!

The rich had loans to effect, lands to sell, affairs to arrange, stewards and agents to appoint, before they could commence the perilous journey with a fitting escort. Moreover, to them the Holy Land contained something more than the Sepulchre of Christ. It contained rich Moslem cities to be plundered, fertile lands to be possessed, fair provinces to be reigned over. To the poor it contained only the Master's Grave. And He who leadeth the blind by a way that they know not, led the people then as now.

The rich, for the most part, came back impoverished. The poor, for the most part, never came back at all: but from their graves sprang the first-fruits of freedom for Europe. The religious enthusiasm for which they died had begun the emancipation of their class. From chattels, attached to the soil like its crops and its stones, they had become men. The Master's Grave was theirs to die for, as much as it was their lords'; the Master's will was theirs to live for, as much as for the noblest.

Day by day the Lady of the Tannenburg had watched the pilgrim-bands passing slowly in irregular groups through the broad valley beneath her. Night by night she had seen the camp-fires gleaming through the pine-woods, and heard the "Dieu le veut" echo from crag to crag. Often she had sent her only child, young Rudolf, with a band of retainers, bearing bread and meat from her stores, fruit from her orchards, and wine from her vineyards, to be distributed among the pilgrims. And night by night, as the hosts passed by, they knew the Lady's castle by the one steadfast light from one arched window, which never failed to shed its faint glow over the castle wall.

It was well known among them that scarcely a year before, her husband, Sir Rudolf of the Tannenburg, had died. It was said that he had been on the eve of joining the Crusade; and many a vow was made to the young Rudolf that his father's name should be faithfully remembered at the Holy Sepulchre. The boy knew that the tears which came into his mother's eyes when he told her of those vows were tears that heal. But at last one evening, as he rose from his prayer at her knee, he looked up into her face, while a sudden light broke over his, and said,--

"Mother, are not all the people going to the same Holy Grave?"

"The same? Surely, my son," she said, bowing her head reverently. "The Grave of Christ, our Lord."

"We have our own holy grave, mother!" he replied--"thou and I. But have we no share in this Grave of Christ?"

"Surely; their Lord is ours," she said; "and His Holy Sepulchre is ours, in common with all Christendom."

"Then, mother! mother!" he exclaimed, gazing full into her eyes, "let us also go to the Grave, to weep there, with all His Christendom. Let us do what my father meant to do. Who will remember his name as we would there?"

For a few moments she made no reply. The casement stood open, although it was winter, and through the stillness of the frosty air echoed once more the solemn, "Dieu le veut."

"Out of the mouth of the babes who are Thine, out of the mouth of Thy poor, O Christ, Thou speakest. I listen--I obey. God wills it.--My boy," she said quietly, pressing him to her heart, "God has surely spoken by thee. My heart speaks by thee. We will go."

She sat beside the child till he slept, till the long lashes shaded the flushed cheek, and the half-open lips and the small clenched hand seemed to tell of some boyish dream of conflict with the infidel.

Kneeling beside her sleeping child, she made her first vow in the presence of all that made life living to her.

And then she went down to keep solitary vigil in the castle-chapel; to kindle those sepulchral lamps which were seen far across the valley, which she never suffered any hands but her own to trim or feed.

Her own room was bare and austere as any monastic cell. All her precious things were lavished on the mortuary chapel, which was her treasure-chamber, the resting-place she longed to share, the threshold of the Father's house. On the steps of that memorial altar, which was a tomb, and there only in the world, she felt at home.

The light of the flickering lamps, contending with the steadfast, silent moonbeams, wrought strange magical contrasts of glow and gloom on silver shrine, and polished marble pavement, and jewelled paten, and chalice, and gold-embroidered drapery; and beyond, on the rich Gothic sculpture, here and there relieving the shadows of the arched aisle.

And kneeling there once more, she renewed the vow, in the presence of what made life death to her, and death as the threshold of life.

"Dieu le veut," she said, pressing her forehead on the cold marble. "O Christ, I take the cross on me, for me and for him. Accept it for both, and shelter us both with Thine."

* * * * *

It was early spring.

Forth through the green Danube valley they went,--the mother and her son, Snorro the old castellan, and Gunhilda the nurse, with other faithful old servants of the house.

At night they slept under a tent, or in any lowly hut they could find.

In the morning they awoke with no stately walls between them and Nature.

To the boy, the journey amongst the forests and by the streams was one perpetual holiday.

And on the mother also soft dews of healing began to fall, from sunsets and sunrises, and the opening of leaves, and the songs of birds, and the life of all the humble happy creatures.

But most of all from this, that she had stepped down from the cold height of her solitary sorrow, and went forth as one bearing the common burden of humanity.

"We are going to the Holy Grave that belongs to us all!" she said to herself. "We go with Thy poor, Thou who wast poor Thyself! We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou also hast died and hast been buried!"

Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.

"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."

Meanwhile, all the time the earth was bearing her lowly witness to the resurrection in opening buds and nestling birds, and all the renewal of the spring. Yet the Lady thought only, "My love is dead. My Lord has died."

But one twilight, as they walked together in the sombre shadows of a pine-forest, the boy said to her,--

"Mother, I heard strange talk last night by the camp-fires. Old Snorro was talking to Gunhilda, and he said he could not make out all this wandering to the Sepulchre in the Morning Land. His mother, he said, used to tell him how, when they lived far away by the Northern Seas, the young men and maidens mourned for the death of Balder the Good and Beautiful, the sun-god, until one day a stranger priest came, with the Cross, from the south, and told them to mourn no longer for the slain god, for he brought them tidings of One good, and strong, and beautiful, the Light of all the worlds, who had wrestled with death and had not been overcome, but had broken through the grave and risen in immortal life to give life to men. If indeed He lived, Snorro said, why did all the people run away from the places He set them in, to His grave, where He was not, instead of praying to Him, and trying to please Him in the heaven where He is? And Gunhilda said Snorro must not talk of things he did not understand; that it was a good and holy work to wrest the Holy Grave from the infidel; the priest said so, and the Pope said so; and how should he know who had only been a Christian at all for two generations? Old Snorro did not seem satisfied. He said he only wanted to understand. And she said he ought not to want to understand; that was like Eve, and like the devil, and was the beginning of all wickedness. And so they were whispering on when I fell asleep.

"Mother, what did old Snorro mean?"

She took his hand, and they walked on some little time in silence.

"Was old Snorro quite wrong, mother?" the boy said at length.

"Not quite, my son," she said. "I think not altogether wrong. Our Lord is surely living. Nevertheless, it is surely right that we should reverence the Holy Grave, and seek to wrest it from the unbeliever."

But that night she had a strange dream. She thought the ancient spirits, with legends of whom her Northern land was full, were all awake, careering through the forest like winds, flickering like the flames of the dying camp-fires, flitting to and fro like shadows; water-spirits from the forest-pools, dwarfs from the mountains, gnomes from under the hills. And some were laughing, some were sighing; but all kept saying to each other,--

"It is the old funeral procession we remember so long ago; it is the old, old wail. The children of men are mourning once more their Good and their Beautiful slain, and buried, and lost. Once more they find their best and dearest in a grave. For a little while we thought the death-wail was interrupted, swallowed up in the New Song of Life and Victory. But it has come back. Balder the Beautiful, the Light of heaven, is slain. This new Light of Life, this new Hope of the children of men, is also slain. It is the old funeral train, and the old death-wail. We--the earth-born, spirits of the waters and the forests and the hills--live on, and send our echoes on from age to age. They--the heaven-born--die, and mourn, and pay vain worship to their dead. Once more the religion of the children of men is a pilgrimage to a grave."

All that day the wondering doubt of old Snorro the Norseman, and the moans and whispers of that strange dream, sent wild, bewildering echoes through the Lady's heart.

And that evening it chanced that the encampment lay amidst the ruins of some deserted dwellings on the outskirts of a walled city.

The Lady could not sleep; and as she lay awake in the silence, broken only now and then by the howling of wolves from the forest, and the baying of watch-dogs from the city, every now and then a low faint moaning fell on her ear, as if from a little distance.

At first she thought it was but some of those strange moanings which the winds make at night among the woods. She listened more intently, until she became sure that faint articulate sounds mingled with the moans, which she knew could only come from a human voice.

Softly she arose, and glided to where the sound seemed to be.

And there, in the angle of one of the charred and shattered walls, she found a young maiden stretched helplessly on a heap of dry leaves.

At the gentle tones of the Lady's voice, the maiden's eyes languidly opened.

After a time she consented to take a little food and wine from the Lady's hands: and then slowly she told how she was of the hated and hunted Hebrew race, and had lived with her people in this the Jewish Quarter, outside the city walls, until, two nights ago, a wild band of Crusaders had fallen on them at midnight, had set fire to their dwellings, and killed all who could not flee, calling them Infidels and Enemies of Christ; while she herself, long laid on a sick-bed, unable to move, had been strangely overlooked, and left there to die alone.

Many days the Lady sat beside her, and tenderly soothed and served her, refusing to abandon this destitute sufferer, even to pursue the way of the Holy Cross.

"For," she said, "I would not have Him say to me in that day, 'I was sick and a stranger, and ye visited Me not.'"

Thus the company of Crusaders went on their way; and the Lady and her son, with their retainers, were left by themselves among the ruined dwellings between the city and the forest.

At first the sick girl seemed to revive with the tender care lavished on her; and her heart opened freely to the motherly heart that had thus taken her to itself.

"It is very strange," she would say; "what does it all mean? He whom you worship was one of our people. A good man of your people told me once He loved our race; and forgave even those who were most cruel to Him; and wept over our sorrows, which He foresaw; and forbade any to think He did not love us. Such a lovely portrait the good man drew of your Christ, I thought if I had lived on earth when He did, I must have been a Christian. But His Christians hate our race, and never forgive, and hunt us to death."

"Not all," the Lady said tenderly. "It is He who bade me minister to you."

"If you are like Him, and all Christians were like you," the maiden said, "I might be a Christian even now. But all is so strange!" she went on. "Our people say your Christ is dead, and was buried long ago. But your Book says He rose again, and lives evermore. Yet all His Christians seem to think He has left nothing so precious behind, belonging to Him, as His grave. But if indeed He lay in it only those three days, what was it more than a sick-bed, from which one rises to new health and strength? It is strange. If He lives, has He left you nothing more precious than a grave?"

"Surely He lives!" the Lady said; "and I think He has left us much more precious and dearer to Him than His grave. Poor child," she said, her whole face radiant with the thought, "I think you are dearer, dearer to Him than His Holy Sepulchre. For you may be His living shrine. He said once in a parable, 'In that ye do it to one of the least of these, ye do it unto Me.'"

A heavenly light shone from the dark Oriental eyes of the dying girl.

"Did He say so?" she said. "Then your Christ was indeed different from those who call themselves by His name."

And soon afterwards she resumed,--

"Lady, it may be that I shall see Him soon--see your Christ. It may be I shall find He is our Christ. It may be I shall find He was born my Saviour also, and that He will receive even me among His brethren. It may be He will be pleased with what you have done for me."

And soon afterwards the large wistful eyes grew languid, and were closed in death.

* * * * *

The morning broke over the pine-tops, and over the towers of the city, and on the Lady watching beside her sleeping boy, and on the Jewish maiden sleeping the sleep of death.

And with the morning broke peals of bells from every tower in the city, and every lonely chapel scattered through the far-off glades of the forest.

Easter Bells.

The Passion Week had come and passed, unheeded, whilst the Lady sat and watched through her agony with the dying girl.

And now the Easter burst on her with a glad surprise, as if it had been the first; as if the tidings of Resurrection had now first burst on her from heaven.

The Lord has risen indeed.

It was true. His Sepulchre was empty. But heaven and earth were full of Him, and of His glory.

* * * * *

"Mother," said her boy, when they rose from their morning prayer together, "what do all these joy-bells mean? Is it a king's marriage, or a great victory? Can it be that they have rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel at last?"

"They are indeed ringing for a Great Victory," she replied; "the greatest ever won. It is Easter Day, my son. This day our Lord left His grave for ever, and rose victorious over death, and opened the gate of everlasting life to all believers."

And still the bells pealed joyfully on, from the villages on the plains and hill-sides, from the rocky castled heights, from the depths of the forest--

"Io! revixit,
Sicuti dixit,
Pius illæsus,
Funere Jesus!"

Then, looking on the motionless form stretched in the shroud beside her, the echo of her own words came back to her,--

"The Lord is risen indeed, and liveth for evermore. Dearer than His empty grave to Him is every sufferer such as this. His Sepulchre is empty; suffering men and women are His shrine, where we may meet Himself."

* * * * *

And retracing her steps to her castle, beside it she built a hospice for the sick and the forsaken, from which she suffered none, Greek or Latin, Jew or Gentile, to be repelled--the only claim she admitted being need of succour.

And in thus ministering to His poor, she found indeed, in the depths of her own heart, that He was risen, living for evermore, and present every hour.

Through His Sepulchre, the grave of her beloved and her own had become to her but as an encampment for the night beside the Great Captain's, on the Battle-field.

In His life she learned that they also lived; and in living unto Him, once more she found she was living with them.

[The end]
Elizabeth Rundle Charles's short story: Sepulchre And The Shrine

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