Chapter 14We were assembled in the north transept, a place little used as it suffers from damp. On the far wall is the mural of angels ascending to heaven by a stair, although much of the plaster has fallen away or is obscured by black mould. The central section where much of the masonry had collapsed, revealed a deep recess underneath one of the massive stone buttresses that supported the abbey. It formed a dark and forbidding backdrop for the abbot as he continued his sermon.
Today’s lesson was particularly lengthy and exceedingly wrathful, for it was his most vexed subject; the sins of the flesh. Abbot Thomas of Giffing stood stiffly before a stone pulpit while he listed the failings of the monks who were to be disciplined. We had all been called forth to witness the punishment for the
