Free A Trail of Ink by Mel Starr Page B

minded to aid me. So I thought.
    The gloom of my spirit matched the gloom of my cell. No friend knew of my plight, and those who put me in this place would not tell them. No, this was not true. There was a friend who knew of my affliction. I knelt in the rotten rushes covering the dirt floor of the cell and called upon the Lord Christ to free me from my unjust captors. Perhaps, I hoped, He had already noted my misfortune and set a plan in motion for my freedom. But it would do no harm to remind Him of my trouble in case other matters had captured His attention. An unwelcome thought came to mind. If the Lord Christ loved and served me only so much as I loved and served Him, where then might I be?
    From this point I must tell the tale as it was told to me. For two days I lived in the cell beneath Oxford Castle, awaiting my fate, unknowing of the answer to my prayers taking place outside the castle walls. I was fed stale bread, thin pottage, and foul water. I would not again complain of the cook at Canterbury Hall.
    Arthur returned to Canterbury Hall for his dinner with information he thought I would be pleased to learn. But the bell rang for dinner and I did not appear. Arthur saw no reason to go hungry just because I was tardy, so sat at his place at the low end of the table and devoured two bowls of pottage with little concern for me. He told me later he assumed I had again found my dinner with Kate Caxton.

    Sir Thomas Barnet, justice of the peace and he who apprehended me on the Holywell Street, was known to several onlookers at my arrest. One of these had business with Robert Caxton, and was on his way to the stationer’s shop when he saw me confronted and dragged off to the castle. This tale he reported to the stationer. Kate overheard his account.
    When, for the second day, I did not call at the shop, Kate became uneasy. The customer who told of my arrest was not close enough to the scene to hear of that with which I was charged, but he saw that the man seized was tall and wore a fur coat - which had been stripped from him. Kate knew I owned such a garment.
    I did not appear at Canterbury Hall for my supper and Arthur knew something was amiss. He did not know where I might have gone in search of books, but did know where I might have gone in search of a maid. Although darkness was settling upon Oxford, Arthur hastened to Holywell Street. Be there a man safe from attack on a dark street, that man is Arthur. He wears the blue and black livery of Lord Gilbert Talbot. Few men wish to anger a powerful lord, even if they may not know the noble’s colors, by attacking one of his servants. Grooms seldom own much worth taking, and Arthur is a powerful man, worth two in a brawl.
    So he went unmolested to the stationer’s shop where, after some pounding upon the door, Robert Caxton opened to him. My disappearance, and the arrest of a young man wearing a fur coat on the Holywell Street, caused much consternation at the stationer’s shop that night. Arthur would have gone to the castle then, but Caxton persuaded him that he would not be received, the gate being closed for the night.
    Arthur told me he spent a sleepless night, and at dawn ran to Canterbury Hall, pounded upon Master Wyclif’s chamber door, and together they returned to Caxton’s shop. The four then hurried to the castle and entered as a warder drew up the portcullis.

    Kate said it took some time to find the sheriff. They discovered a man who directed them to the clerk’s anteroom, but the sheriff was not in. They waited. When Sir John arrived he dismissed their plea for my release. He told Master John that I had been arrested and charged on presentment of evidence. He, himself, had seen the evidence. Trial would be tomorrow. Had Master John evidence he wished to set before the court, he might do so on the morrow.
    The clerk showed them firmly from his office, and it was Kate who, in the castle forecourt, turned to Arthur and bid him ride to Bampton for Lord