* * * * *

When they were half-way over the fellow told him which was the abbey church, and Master Richard said that he knew it, for that he had seen it four years before when he came under our Lord’s hand from Cambridge, and that he would ask shelter from the monks.

“And there is an ankret [an ankret was a solitary, confined to one cell with episcopal ceremonies.], is there not?” asked Master Richard.

The man told him Yes, looking upon him curiously, and he told him, too, where was his cell.  Then he put him on shore without a word, save asking for his prayers.

I cannot tell you how Master Richard came to the ankret’s cell, for I was only at Westminster once when Master Richard went to his reward, but he found his way there, marvelling at the filth of the ways, and looked in through the little window, drawing himself up to it by the strength of his arms.

It was all dark within, he told me, and a stench as of a kennel came up from the darkness.

He called out to the holy man, holding his nostrils with one hand, and with the other gripping the bars and sitting sideways on the sill of the window.  He got no answer at first, and cried again.

Then there came an answer.

There rose out of the darkness a face hung all over with hair and near as black as the hair, with red-rimmed eyes that oozed salt rheum.  The holy man asked him what he wished, and why did he hold his nostrils.

“I wish to speak with your reverence,” said Master Richard, “of high things.  I hold my nostrils for that I cannot abide a stench.”

The red eyes winked at that.

“I find no stench,” said the holy man.

“For that you are the origin of its propagation,” said Master Richard, “and dwell in the midst of it.”

It was foolish, I think, of the sweet lad to speak like that, but he was an-angered that a man should live so.  But the holy solitary was not an-angered.

“And in God’s Majesty is the origin of my propagation,” he said. “Ergo.”

Master Richard could think of no seemly answer to that, and he desired, too, to speak of high matters; so he let it alone, and told the holy man his business, and where he lived.

“Tell me, my father,” he said, “what is the message that I bear to the King.  It may be that our Lord has revealed it to you:  He has not yet revealed it to me.”

“Are you willing to go dumb before the King?”

“I am willing if God will,” said Master Richard.

“Are you willing that the King should be deaf and dumb to your message?”

“If God will,” said Master Richard again.

“What is that which you bear on your breast?”

“It is the five wounds, my father.”

“Tell me of your life.  Are you yet in the way of perfection?”

Then the two solitaries talked together a long while; I could not understand all that Master Richard told to me; and I think there was much that he did not tell me, but it was of matters that I am scarce worthy to name, of open visions and desolations, and the darkness of the fourth Word of our Saviour on the rood; and again of scents and sounds and melodies such as those of which Master Rolle has written; and above all of charity and its degrees, for without charity all the rest is counted as dung.