The Clerk's Tale [antikvár]

CbapteR 1 11 in all it was a warm January, as Januarys went, this year of God's grace 1446, with never a freeze nor snow after Twelfth Night, even at St. Hilary's that was supposed to be a year's coldest day and now it was coming on to St. Paul's. The nights nipped and there were ice-rims to puddles and watering troughs more dawns than not but the days were only damp and gray, the world all heavy with rain and thaw rather than stiff with cold. In some sheltered places there was even grass beginning to green, as here in St. Mary's infirmary garden where the little square of turf with the ash tree in its midst, the herb beds, and careful gravel paths were kept from the winds of the Chiltem Hills and the Berkshire Downs by nunnery buildings on