The Town House by Norah Lofts

said suddenly,
    ‘You have more learning than most. Where did you come by it?’
    ‘I always heeded what our priest had to say.’
    ‘You should thank God for a good memory.’
    The good memory which so often reminded me how I had said to Kate,‘You shall be safe with me.’ Something to be grateful for indeed.
    That was my last night in the Abbey Infirmary, and it was a poor one. I slept in snatches, each full of strange and sometimes sinister dreams. Once I dreamed that my leg, like Peg-Leg’s, was cut off at the knee and that St. Egbert answered my prayer for a miracle by causing me to grow a golden leg, very marvellous to look at, but too heavy for me to drag; I lay on Rede dunghill, unable to walk and lamenting the miracle. Then Idreamed that Kate and I and Stephen were really starving, sitting before our hut, bowed over with the pain in our bellies. A great bird came swooping down, carrying Robin’s dead body in his bloody beak. Kate said,‘It will be all right to eat this meat. It is a gift from God.’
    From these and similar wild dreams I woke sweating, to lie and face the old gnawing anxiety again until once more I fell into uneasy slumber. I was glad when the bell rang for Prime.
    I rose and began to dress and found that my right shoe was missing. I hunted for it until the Infirmary servant brought the breakfast and then sat down to eat my porridge while it was still warm. I had almost finished when Brother Sebastian came hurrying in, carrying my shoe.
    ‘The miracle!’ he exclaimed. ‘The miracle, Martin. It happened. In my old head! Look.’ He held out my shoe on to which had been tacked, very neatly, another sole, two inches thick.
    ‘Try it. Try it.’ He was eager and impatient as a child. ‘The thought came to me at Matins and I asked Brother Anthony, our shoemaker, if he could do the work. He stayed up and worked instead of going back to his bed. How is it now?’
    I stood up and stood level.
    ‘Most wonderfully easy.’ I began to thank him, but he cut me short.
    ‘Thank St. Egbert who put the thought into my head. Now, when the stiffness has worn off you will hardly be the worse for your mishap.’
    Once more I tried to thank him. He stopped me again, tapping my hand with his finger.
    ‘Wait. There was something else I had to tell you before you go. Now what could it be? Nothing to do with your leg or my work… that is why I have forgotten it. But I shall… Oh yes! Martin, you live in Squatters Row as they call it.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, be warned by me. Begin to look for other accommodation. There is talk of clearing that wall and covering in the Ditch and making all tidy there. The Prior and the Cellarer were talking only yesterday. The Bishop of Dunwich came to visit and entered by the East Gate and made some unfavourable comment. They’re bound to take some action.’
    I’d had less than a moment to savour the joy of the shoe that mitigated my lameness.
    ‘I don’t suppose it will happen tomorrow or even next week,’ Brother Sebastian said kindly. ‘Our present Cellarer is too old to move quickly, but… well, I thought I would warn you.’
    I suppose I should have thanked him for that, too. As it was I took leave of him sullenly.
X
    Kate’s greeting of me was proof that our sharp words towards one another, the way we now lived, hardly touching one another, and all the worry and all the woe had not really set us apart. When I hobbled home she cried, partly at grief to see me so lame, but mainly with joy at seeing me again. She said how much she had missed me, how greatly she had longed to come and nurse me herself and I in turn said that I had missed her very sorely, thought of her by day and dreamed of her by night. I could hardly tell her what form those thoughts, those dreams had taken.
    Soon, however, I had to ask the question.
    ‘And has Master Webster held my place for me?’
    All the joy, the young-Kate look went out of her face, leaving the harassed, irritable one