Silver Cross

The town of Middle Forest had long since pushed the forest from all sides. Its streets, forked as lightning, ran up to the castle and down to the river. The river here was near...

Up in the castle also was company to supper. William, Lord of Montjoy, entertained his cousin, Abbot Mark from Silver Cross, and Prior Matthew of Westforest, a dependent House f...

That same night the monk, Richard Englefield, lay upon his pallet in his cell at Silver Cross. The moon shone in at the small window. He was addressed to observing with his mind...

Montjoy rode through a dewy June morning. He crossed the bridge, his horse’s hoofs sounding deeply, an air from the sea filling nostrils, the light striking sails of fishing boa...

Not on a May but on a June morning--five days in fact after his supper at the house of Morgen Fay--Master Thomas Bettany found himself some miles up the Wander, and with him, ri...

In the Abbey of Silver Cross more and more did note fall upon Englefield. He was unaware of that. He had entered upon a stretch of the inward way where the landscape was absorbi...

The fog wrapped the river. The bridge showed now a few arches and now none. Boats were moths in a moth dimness and silence. Saint Leofric’s mount across the water could not be s...

Richard Englefield listened to the Abbot’s assertion that making of inner vessels of gold for heaven’s use was of more import than were dishes for abbot’s table and for gifts. H...

William, Lord of Montjoy, was ignorant of what machinations might be in progress up the Vale of Wander. The Abbot had said, “Would he be helpful? It is for the glory of Silver C...

Brother Anselm had been transferred, it seemed, from Westforest to Silver Cross. Richard Englefield found him here, and in the cell that had been Brother Oswald’s. The latter, w...

The monk Richard awoke, he knew not why. He woke widely, collectedly, his forces drawn to a point of expectation. “Awake, awake! Look!” seemed to echo in his soul that had sudde...

Silver Cross went in procession. The Abbot with the Prior of Westforest walked ahead and there followed chanting monks. Then came lay Brothers and villagers and a quarter of the...

She came no more. Night after night of dark,--only the star Memory and the sapphire star of passionate hope that once again, once again he would wake, clear, still, and know her...

In the torrent rush of feeling he came close before he kneeled. The light-swathed form stepped back from him. He knew overwhelming, aching, bursting sense of felicity that yet w...

In Middle Forest it was market morning, high May weather and many abroad. Country folk, town folk, folk from across river made a humming and buzzing in High Street and the marke...

Montjoy sat with a working face. He sat in his great chair on the dais in castle hall and his hands gripped the arms of the chair. At last he spoke with voice of one underground...

When upon his knees he had come most close to her, when she felt his hands, his brow, his breathing against her sandalled feet, she had given back in a kind of terror. Then, all...

“Idle--thou art idle! Hadst as well be in the new Indies as in my countinghouse! Paper costs--and there thou goest scrawling, scrawling, and never a sum adding nor thinking out...

As soon as might be, Montjoy would go that pilgrimage to Canterbury. Had it been true, that frightful story, were Mark and Westforest treacherous, Silver Cross down in the mire,...

Richard Englefield, in Westforest cell, might lie without movement, head buried in arms, but that was when he must sleep in order to gain and keep strength, or when Prior or Bro...

Sun came more and more slanting through the trees. Eating was done. The two sat in forest light and coolness, and they went over plans step by step so that there might rest no m...

Not John Cobb but Thomas Bettany, who knew whom here he could trust, sat on a Wednesday afternoon in gaoler’s room, drank ale with Godfrey and once more petitioned for one look...

Deep night. Over the castle Pegasus, over town southward the Eagle, walking down the west the Ploughman, low in the southwest the Scorpion, due south the Archer, on the meridian...

London folk went up and down. Palace where sat a strong king, Tower where traitors lay in ward, wall maintained through the centuries upon the base the Romans laid, Aldgate, New...

Clink of metals striking together, hammer sound, sound of the wheel, sound of the fed furnace, sound of voices among metals. Diccon Dawn, worker in rich metals with Jankin to he...

Clink of metals striking together, hammer sound, sound of the wheel, sound of the fed furnace, sound of voices among metals. Up and down this was the strain of the smiths’ stree...

A cot at the side of a wood, and a woodchopper and his sister who gathered faggots. The owner of the wood employing them, a miserly old man in a manor house, kept little company...

It stretched afar, the great wold. They were out upon it under the moon. All wildness, all loneliness! If there were a track it was a faint one. The ground rolled; all opened to...

It was still the wold when under pale fine sunshine they came to a smithy, rude and poor, set beneath a long wave, where a road went by. Lonely was the wold, lonely and lonely,...

So the smiths somewhat looked for many, but that day passed and the night and part of the next day and none came. Snow, too, held off. Sky pallid grey, earth grey, and all unear...

The Lord of Montjoy returned from his second and greater pilgrimage. This time he had seen Jerusalem. He was palmer. Bit of palm was wrought into his sleeve, stitched into his h...