Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Uma squeezed my less functional hand, which she was in the habit of holding as we walked, 'A place of some ambivalence.' she murmured. I nodded, and the three of us began the long descent into the plain.

We continued down the Hills through the rest of that day, often with the distant city in sight beckoning us on, into the wide river-plain, and as we walked a thaw set in around us. Rivulets formed and tinkled as the snow continued to melt, birds sang, and presently in a copse of thin, elegant trees with patchy silvery bark we found clumps of tiny white flowers, shaped like bells. The track we were on became muddy and our feet crackled in what was left of ice as thin as paper. We saw deer, small and reddish brown with white bellies and tiny antlers, not unlike those that live in the deepest thickets of our mountain forests. Indeed, they put me in mind, almost for the first time since we left London, of Prince Harihara and his penchant for hunting. I wondered what had happened to his collection of crossbows and bolts, and for the life of me I could not recall seeing them unloaded from the donkeys' backs at Alderman Dawtrey's house. I supposed they must have got there and were stored somewhere – in his cellars, perhaps.

These deer were browsing on holly until they caught our scent when they melted away from us almost magically and certainly without a sound and probably before they would have been within easy range of the Prince's weapons. Once, beneath a grove of bigger, heavier trees, we saw wild pigs rooting away in the mast that littered the woodland floor. They would have been easier prey.

As we drew nearer the river, we found small settlements of human habitation, though to our eyes, mine and Uma's, most of the dwelling-places seemed less than suitable for domestic animals. They were mostly round, made from woven lengths of willow, the cracks between filled with mud, straw and what was clearly dried dung, with roofs of dried grass or reeds, and high enough in the centres only for a man to stand in. Spirals of bluish-white smoke rose from the centres of these tiny domes, smoke which was aromatic enough and filled the air with a not unpleasant pungent smell, but they must have been hell to live and breathe in. By far the greater part of the Inglysshe people live in huts like these, since those who did not collaborate with their Norman conquerors were enslaved by them.

In the afternoon the track we were on returned to the riverbank, whose serpentine course it followed with an almost continuous line of small, stunted trees, from which the thin branches had been sliced, leaving knobbly lumps like rough boulders at the tops of the trunks. These thin willow branches were used in many ways: woven, they formed the walls of the hovels, or were used m sections called hurdles to make fences. The thinner ones were made into baskets.

Meanwhile, the city of Oxenford loomed nearer through the gathering river mists. Soon we were picking our way through a muddy, wretched shanty-town that huddled around the low walls, which enclosed spires and towers in some numbers, almost as many as there had been in London, but for different reasons. Here they marked the prison- or barrack-like tenements occupied by communities of monks, friars and clerics: Oxenford, it seemed, was not only a prosperous town at the head of the navigable reaches of the Thames, communicating by ancient Roman roads with the middle and northern parts of the country, but also a centre of religious learning and other studies too.

It was not into the city that Enoch led us but to a Franciscan friary outside the city walls, indeed on the southern side of the river and to the west of the main town. We thus passed in front of the main gate, which was protected by a small but ancient castle, and moved on, through a ribbon of tightly packed huts that lay between the wall and the river, until we came to a small ferry- station.

Here we divested ourselves of our leprous disguise, smearing the white clay into an even mask and casting aside our clappers, for Enoch managed to make it clear to us that the time had arrived when we should aim to be welcomed rather than rejected by our fellows.

The river was now flowing briskly, brown and with scurrying eddies, and our passage across it was terrifying, bringing us nearer to a watery death than the typhoons I have lived through in the China Sea. Our craft was a tiny round boat like a cockle-shell made of woven willow branches smeared with a black sticky substance, which was meant to render them sound. However, it let in water quicker than a young lad dressed in rags could scoop it out while his father paddled us across.

We were now on a long island called Osney lying between the main river and one of its tributaries and largely filled by the Franciscan friary. Enoch knew that Oxenford was a good place for us to separate since we wished to head north and he west, and also because we would find here Wycliffites and Lollards, who were in sympathy with the Brothers of the Free Spirit, amongst the Franciscans.

The buildings in which the Franciscans lived and studied were attractive and modern. They were mostly of brick, a recently discovered material amongst these people, two storeys in height with rows of stone-framed windows, built round two squares or quadrangles. The first of these was planted with herbs in formal rows; in the second, there was a fish-pool. From this they took the large black carp that supplemented their Lenten diet. Two larger buildings, whose pitched roofs were a storey higher than the rest, separated the quadrangles. One was a chapel, the other a refectory. On the ground floors to the sides there were also a library, kitchens, stalls for domestic animals, and above, reached by a narrow stone spiral stair, the rooms of the Prior and a council chamber. The rest was made up of the cells where the friars slept and studied, tiny rooms reached by separate staircases.

The Brothers wore coarse brownish-grey gowns, belted with a rope and with hoods or cowls. Often they wore these up, not, we were told, for warmth, but to signify to their brethren that they were deep in thought, meditation or prayer and did not wish to be spoken to. When the hoods lay on their shoulders, their heads were revealed as shaven, not all over like our Buddhist monks, but in a circle leaving a ring of hair above their ears. All priests, and men intending to be priests, monks or friars, wore their hair thus, but the Franciscans' bald patch was larger and more noticeable than that of the rest.

We were given a warm welcome, for it is a part of the duties demanded by the rule of their founder that travellers, especially poor travellers, and we were certainly that, should always be given what they require. Warm, that is, in feeling, though plain and meagre as far as food and lodging went. We were given a broth made from stewed chicken bones, carrots and cabbage, but at least it was hot, served with black rye bread, and a thin beer to drink. Our beds, however, were nothing but sacks filled with straw laid on prickly, if springy, pallets of dried heather in a long, communal dormitory set apart for visitors. At least we had it to ourselves – few poor people travelled by choice at that time of year.

Just as we were preparing for bed, and wondering how we would keep warm through the night, one of the Brothers knocked at the door and told us that the Prior would like to have conversation with us. Leaving Enoch, Uma and I followed our guide across the quadrangle and up to the Prior's rooms, the principal one of which served as his study. In it there were a hundred books or more, a desk to read them on, a large table, several chairs, and a steadily burning fire.

Prior Peter Marcus, the kindest, most considerate man I have ever met, was small, completely and naturally bald, with mysteriously piercing blue eyes beneath bushy eyebrows, a small snub nose and full lips that creased almost too readily into a broad smile. His fingers, too, were extraordinary: short and almost stubby, very pink, but strong with square-cut nails that were almost white. As soon as he saw us he rose from the largest chair, crudely carved (truth to tell almost all the carving we saw north of Venice was crude, whether of stone or wood), and almost rolled round the large table in front of him to take both my hands in his.