"Spare him, lad, spare him for me! … Yet if he should come under your sword, put a bit more force in the blow for my sake."
"Trust me for that… I shall split him six inches deeper—and tell him why as I do it."
"It will make me still more your debtor. By the Holy Evangels! if I were assured the Abbot Aldam of Kirkstall had aught to do with that attack upon me, I would harry his worthless old mummery shop so clean a mouse would starve in it."
"Hark you, Sir John," said Aymer, "I may resign the Flat-Nose to you, but I shall claim a hand in that harrying business if the time ever ripen."
"Sorry the day for the Cistercian when we batter down his gates," the old Knight laughed, yet with a menacing ring in his words.
"Sorry, indeed, for those on the other side of the gates," came a voice from behind the arras, and the King parted the hangings. … "Though may I ask whose gates are in to be battered and for what purpose?"
"The gates of Kirkstall Abbey, under certain conditions, so please Your Majesty," said De Bury.
Richard elevated his eyebrows ever so slightly.
"And the conditions?" he asked.
"Proof that the Abbot Aldam was concerned in a recent murderous assault upon me, or that he harbors a certain flat-nosed ruffian who led it," Sir John replied.