Now there was no visible imagination that came to him then; he said expressly that it was not so. There was none to be seen there but the priest in the vestment with his hood on his shoulders, and the frater conversus [that is, the lay brother.] who held the skirt and shook the bell. Only it appeared to him that the priest held up the Body for a great space, and in that long time Master Richard understood many things that had been dark to him before. Of some of the things I have neither room nor wit to write; but they were such as these.
He understood how it was that souls might go to hell, and yet that it was good that they should go; how it was that our Saviour was born of His blessed Mother without any breaking of her virginity; how it is that all things subsist in God; in what manner it is that God comes into the species of the bread. But he could not tell me how these things were so, nor what it was that was shewed him…. [There follow a few confused remarks on the relations of faith to spiritual sight.]
There were two more things that were shewed him: the first, that he should not return home alive, but that his dead corpse should be carried there, and the second, what was the tidings that he should bear to the King.
Then he fell forward on his face, and so lay until the ending of the mass.
How Master Richard cried out in Westminster Hall: and of his coming to a Privy Parlour
Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum: dico ego opera mea regi.
My heart hath uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king.—Ps. xliv. 1.
V
It would be about half an hour before the King's dinner-time, which was ten o'clock, that Master Richard came again to the hall.
There was not so great a press that day, and the holy youth was able to make his way near to the barrier that held back the common folk, and to see the King plainly. He was upon his seat beneath the cloth-of-estate that was quartered with the leopards and lilies, and had his hat upon his head. About him, beneath the scaffold on which he sat were the great nobles, and my lord cardinal had a chair set for him upon the right-hand side, on the step below the King's.