The wall about Canterbury Hall is not imposing. I stood on my toes, reached as high as I could, and came within a hand's breadth of the top of the enclosure. A man would need but a short ladder to climb over the wall, but the cobbles at my feet would leave no mark if a ladder had once rested there. Outside the wall, however, might be another matter.
Master John and Arthur studied me while I studied the wall and the cobbles at its base. While I examined the wall a bell rang from the nearby priory Church of St Frideswide. I recognized the bells. I had heard them ring out to summon students to battle during the St Scholastica Day riots, when I was new to Oxford as a student at Balliol College.
"Time for mass," Wyclif explained. Arthur and I followed him to the chapel as scholars left their cells and moved silently across the yard to join our small procession.
I could not keep my thoughts on worship. My mind reviewed what I had learned of Canterbury Hall, which was little enough. I pondered monks and antagonistic secular scholars, the weight of twenty-two books, and ladders.
My brooding mist dissolved when Master John concluded his sermon, performed the kiss of peace, and then passed the gospel to the scholars who, each in turn, also kissed God's word. I watched intently to see did any shy from this duty. For a man to kiss the gospel while he hid evil in his heart would be a grave sin, as all present in the chapel, even Arthur, knew. My hope for easy resolution of theft was frustrated. All kissed the holy book with fervor. Either all were innocent of complicity in larceny, or one, at least, had no fear for his soul.
It was time for dinner when mass was done. I began to recognize the diet of Canterbury Hall. The meal was another pease pottage with a maslin loaf, cheese, and ale. The pottage was flavored again with bacon, and the ale was fresh. The meal was hot, tasty, and filling. But a man could soon become weary of the fare. Perhaps this was one reason the scholars of Canterbury Hall were so contentious.
It was the work of the fellows to take down the tables after the meal. During the week the benches would then be arranged for disputation, and the tables set up again for supper. There would be no debates this day; it was Sunday. But the tables were stacked against the wall regardless of the day.
The work was none of Master John's, so he left the hall immediately after his dinner was finished. I followed, and Arthur trudged behind. The tedium of the diet at Canterbury Hall seemed not to affect Arthur's appetite. I believe he would have preferred to stay for another bowl of pottage.
Master Wyclif turned and spoke when we were well away from the hall and any listening ear. "You spoke of ladders," he reminded me.
"Indeed. But if a ladder was propped against the inner side of the wall, it would leave no mark against the cobbles. We must go out and inspect the outer side of the wall."
We did. But before we passed through the gate I stepped off the distance from the end of Master John's chamber to the front wall, on Schidyard Street; seventeen paces. Outside the wall, at the corner where south and east walls meet, I began to step off the distance, and stopped when I completed seventeen paces.
This experiment was also a disappointment. There were no cobbles here, outside the wall, but if a ladder was recently placed here the mark was lost in the foliage which found the warmth of a sun-warmed south wall agreeable.
I was unwilling to give up the search so easily. A closer inspection was needed. I knelt and on hands and knees inspected the ground about the base of the wall. I assumed a ladder tall enough to top the wall would have its base one pace or a little more from the foot of the wall. So it was along such a line I searched. Arthur grasped my intent and wordlessly joined me in examining the sod. This was a fruitless enterprise. We gained only soiled hands and stained chauces at the knees.
Arthur's remark that a thief or two had come over the wall had seemed to me so likely that I was reluctant to give up the theory, although I had found no evidence that it was so.
"Nothing, eh?" Wyclif observed.
I shook my head, brushed mould from hands and knees, and turned my gaze to the nearby structures which lay close to the south wall of Canterbury Hall. Of these there were few. Three houses stood between Canterbury Hall and the town wall, where the wall abutted St Frideswide's Priory. These housed, I assumed, three families and their businesses.
The buildings were much alike; two stories, with shops and workrooms below, the family living quarters above. They were of timber, wattle and daub. Two had recently thatched roofs; one roof, however, was old and decayed and whoever slept beneath it was going to awaken often in a damp bed. Whatever business occupied these homes, it was seemingly enough to keep them, but not enough to bring prosperity. In difficult times like this, perhaps that is all a man can ask of his craft.
A muddy lane led from Schidyard Street and gave access to these structures. As the homes faced this lane, it was the tofts at the rear of the houses which abutted the south wall of Canterbury Hall.
The tofts were not large, nor were they walled. They appeared to be cultivated. Indeed, the last of the season's cabbages and turnips were yet unharvested from the toft nearest Schidyard Street.
No sound of labor or commerce came from the houses. This was the Lord's Day. The inhabitants were enjoying their day of rest.
I turned to Master John, ready to acknowledge defeat, when my eye scanned the side of the middle house. A ladder lay on the turf close by the west wall of the structure. It was in shadow, nearly invisible as it lay, one side on the earth, the other propped low against the side of the house.
I pointed to the ladder: "Look there." Arthur and Master John followed my arm, then turned to me. A look of triumph flickered across the scholar's face.
"Whose houses are these?" I asked.
"A cobbler and two who deal in wool… yarn spinners."
"The middle house?"
"A yarn-maker, I think. The fellow's wife and daughters card and comb and work the distaff. The husband busies himself with buying and selling."
The middle house featured the decaying roof. "I think wool may not provide much custom," Master John observed.
"Nay," Arthur agreed. "Not since the great dyin'. Them as is dead have no need o' new garments, an' them as live can wear what the dead need no more."
I walked across the muddy toft to the rear of the yarn-spinner's house and rapped upon the door. I heard a bench scrape across a flagged floor — perhaps there had once been more prosperity in this house than at present — and the door cracked open. The man who stood in the opening was clearly puzzled to have callers in his toff. He peered from me to Arthur to Master John. I thought a flash of recognition crossed his features when he saw Master Wyclif.
"The ladder which lays aside your house, for what is it used?"
The fellow was puzzled by my question. Why should three men, one in the black gown of a scholar, approach his home through the toft on a quiet Sunday afternoon and enquire about a ladder?
"'Tis the thatcher's," he answered. "Me roof is bad. Needs redone afore winter."
The questioning look never left the man's face while he provided this simple answer. He surely sought some reason why three strange men should enquire about a ladder.
"You need to borrow a ladder?" he finally asked. "Thatcher won't mind, I'm thinkin', so long as it's back 'ere when he begins work."
"When will that be?"
"Soon, I 'ope. Thought he was to begin last week."
"How long has the ladder been here?"
"Dropped it off with a cart-load of reeds near a fortnight past. Reeds is out front. 'Ope 'e gets round to me roof soon, 'fore November rains set in."
"Does the ladder lay now just as it did when the thatcher left it?"
"Dunno… paid no heed."
"Would you come and have a look?"