y.

The porter was peevish as he pulled him in, and bade him go and cut wood
in the wood-house for his keep, so all that afternoon he toiled in his
white kirtle at the cutting with another fellow who cursed as he cut,
but was silent after a while.

Yet, when supper and bed-time came and Master Richard had assisted at
compline in the abbey-church, still he knew not what the message was to
be on Monday, when he would see the King and speak with him.

On Sunday he did no servile work, except that he waited upon the guests,
girt with an apron, and washed the dishes afterwards. He heard four
masses that day, as well as all the hours, and prayed by himself a long
while at saint Edward's shrine, hearing the folks go by to the tilting,
and that night he went to bed with the servants, still ignorant of what
he should say on the next day.

I am sure that he was not at all disquieted by his treatment, for he did
not speak of it to me, except what was necessary, and he blamed no one.
When I saw the porter afterwards he told me nothing except that Master
Richard had worked well and willingly, and had asked for other tasks
when his were done. He had asked, too, for a plenty of water to bathe
himself, which he did not get. But whether he were disquieted or no on
that Sunday, at least he was content next day, for it was on the next
day at mass that our Lord told him what was the message that he was to
deliver to the King.

There was a Cluniac monk from France who had obtained leave to say mass
at the shrine of the Confessor, and Master Richard followed him and his
fellow to the altar at five o'clock in the morning to hear mass there
and see his Maker. [This is the common mediaeval phrase. Men did not
then bow their heads at the Elevation.]

He knelt down against the wall behind the high altar, and began to
address himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by the
splendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, that
Master Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold above
where the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side.
All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little wonder that
he could not pray well for thinking on them--the kings that lay here and
there and their effigies, and the paved steps on this side and that, and
the fair painted glass and the high dark roof. Near where he knelt, too,
he could see the great relic-chest, and knew what lay therein--the