The Door in the Wall: List 3

When he came out, he said, “I have a doubt whether this be a good place to stay. There are ill-seeming ruffians sitting about the fire, and the goodwife hath a slatternly look, but we have no choice. Come, then.”

"...The child will be nothing, for he cannot move fast, and he will sleep sound. He was like to die of weariness while he ate. Hark! The big one snores like a braying jack!”

"...The child will be nothing, for he cannot move fast, and he will sleep sound. He was like to die of weariness while he ate. Hark! The big one snores like a braying jack!”

John pulled the cloak in and wrapped it partly around him so that he could get out of the window without falling, and held him under the arras until he could get hold of the cloak.

“Haste!” urged Robin. “They are so befuddled that each is pounding the other, thinking it is us they have caught.”

The door was secured by a padlock, but John-go-in-the-Wynd managed to get in through the granary window.

Most of the students were poor, and were dressed in every sort of particolored gown or tunic.
“It seems to me,” said Robin, “as if they try to see how outlandish they can make themselves look.”

Once they had to turn aside and allow a cavalcade of horsemen to pass.

So they turned aside and spent some hours at the fair, tethering the horses near the gate, giving a penny to a lad for watching them.

By night of that day they reached an abbey set in a hollow.

Its square tower stood above the trees in sign of welcome to the travelers, who were most grateful for the hospitality of the abbot.

“Let us hope we are not overtaken by marauding Welsh,” said the friar hopefully, “for we are at the border. We shall say the office, to remind us in Whose care we are, here as well as everywhere.”

There was no ale and only one withered apple left, but water flowed in the river hard by, from which John filled the leather flagons.

After they had eaten, John sang a ballad while he dried his clothes.

“How welcome the hearth and fire will be,” declared Brother Luke. “Let us hope we shall be as welcome.”

“By my faith, if we be not welcome, then the serf is an ingrate. For when I passed this way before, I helped yon woodman bind up the wound he’d got from a fallen ax. Then I carried him on my back to the cot, where the woman tended him.”

“By my faith, if we be not welcome, then the serf is an ingrate. For when I passed this way before, I helped yon woodman bind up the wound he’d got from a fallen ax. Then I carried him on my back to the cot, where the woman tended him.”

“Now thanks be to Him who guided us aright,” said Brother Luke devoutly, blessing himself.

The drawbridge was down and the gate opened to them without question, and they were received in the Great Hall as if they had been emissaries of the King.

Nearby were her ladies and two little boys who romped with the hounds.

“I shall make a sorry page, my lady,” said Robin ruefully. “But I can sing and I can read a little to while away the time for your lordship,” he offered, “and I can pen letters for you.”

“By night, or under cover of mist,” said Adam, “a whole army could creep over hill and through forest without being seen. ’Tis from the north and west that we look for trouble. Lord Jocelyn to the west hath long coveted this domain. And Sir Hugh Fitzhugh, to the north yonder, who is cousin to Sir Peter, hath a quarrel with him.”

“Aye, ’tis just there this side of the church. A tidy bit of a house on the heath where she lives alone with her cat. There is a path all the way. If thou’rt to call upon her she would bake thee a bannock.”

“No,” said John, “for ’tis a long way round by Letham Bridge. I go through the town and by the drovers’ road and across the ford beyond.”

It was more difficult for Robin to go down the circular stair from the top of the keep than it had been to go up. Each step was set on a center newel, and the steps fanned out from it.

They had gone up and down stair after stair; up to the watchtowers and the belfry of the chapel. To the kitchens and storerooms, to the armory and down to the dungeons.

Then John took Robin to the stables to see the horses. There were dappled Percherons from France and shire geldings of tremendous size built to bear the weight of men in armor.

How he wished he might ride it, going astride properly, as he should.

Last of all, they went to the workshop near the stables. There the yew bows were made and repaired; staves for lances and pikestaffs were cut.

Part of each day was spent with Adam the yeoman shooting at a mark. Part of the day in studying Latin.