“A miracle, a miracle, my Father!”
“A miracle, i’ faith, my son: the Lord hath given guidance to the blind as He promised. Let us go down.”
They went by the white way under the stars; and Hilarius was full of awe and comfort because of the angels of God which attended on a poor friar.
At the village hostel they found rough but friendly entertainment and several guests. They dried themselves at a roaring fire, and Hilarius made a hearty meal; the Friar would eat nothing save a morsel of bread.
A messenger was there, a short stout man with stubbly beard, bright black eyes like beads, and a high colour. He was riding with despatches from the King to the Abbat at Bury, and had fearful tales to tell of the Plague; how in London they piled the dead in trenches, while many who escaped the pest died of want and cold; it was a city of the dead rather than the living. One great lord, travelling post-haste from Westminster, had been found by his servants to have the disorder, and they fled, leaving him by the wayside to perish.
Hilarius heard horror-struck.
“’Tis a grievous shame so to desert a sick master,” he said.
“Nay, lad,” said a chapman in the corner, “but a man loves his own skin best.”
“Ay, ay,” said a fat ruddy-faced miller, overtaken by the storm on his way to a neighbouring village, “a man’s own skin before all. Fill your belly first and your neighbour’s afterwards. Live and let live.”
“Ay, let live,” chimed in mine host, bustling in with a stoop of cider for the chapman, “but, by the Rood, ’tis cruel work when two lone women are murdered for a bit of mouldy bacon and a lump of bread; for I’se warrant ’tis a long day sin’ they had more than that at best.”