Chapter 15
A Chat by the Fire
Master Brooks had been waiting for them.
The thin, bookish boy had been patiently standing just within the heavy gates in the back wall of St. Wulf’s-Without-Aldersgate, but he was now urgently waving Nicolas and his companions to follow him inside as night closed in behind them. “This way! This way!” he insisted, holding a flickering torchlight aloft. There were only a few straggling travelers at this late hour of the day, and the gatekeep guards were about to lower the portcullis for the night. A few minutes more, and Nicolas and his companions would have been stranded on the cobblestone bridge high above the river, which churned angrily in the darkness far below.
As soon as they were all within the safety of the gate’s archway, Master Brooks took the le
