CHAPTER X.
THE ARENA It was in the evening of a warm May day that the Prior and Chris arrived at the hostelry in Southwark, which belonged to Lewes Priory.
It was on the south side of Kater Lane, opposite St.Olave's church, a great house built of stone with arched gates, with a large porch opening straight into the hall, which was high and vaulted with a frieze of grotesque animals and foliage running round it.

There were a few servants there, and one or two friends of the Prior waiting at the porch as they arrived; and one of them, a monk himself from the cell at Farley, stepped up to the Prior's stirrup and whispered to him.
Chris heard an exclamation and a sharp indrawing of breath, but was too well trained to ask; so he too dismounted and followed the others into the hall, leaving his beast in the hands of a servant.
The Prior was already standing by the monk at the upper end, questioning him closely, and glancing nervously this way and that.
"To-day ?" he asked sharply, and looked at the other horrified.
The monk nodded, pale-faced and anxious, his lower lip sucked in.
The Prior turned to Chris.
"They have suffered to-day," he said.
News had reached Lewes nearly a week before that the Carthusians had been condemned, for refusing to acknowledge the King as head of the English Church, but it had been scarcely possible to believe that the sentence would be carried out, and Chris felt the blood beat in his temples and his lips turn suddenly dry as he heard the news.
"I was there, my Lord Prior," said the monk.
He was a middle-aged man, genial and plump, but his face was white and anxious now, and his mouth worked.

"They were hanged in their habits," he went on.

"Prior Houghton was the first despatched;" and he added a terrible detail or two.
"Will you see the place, my Lord Prior ?" he said, "You can ride there.
Your palfrey is still at the door." Prior Robert Crowham looked at him a moment with pursed lips; and then shook his head violently.
"No, no," he said.

"I--I must see to the house." The monk looked at Chris.
"May I go, my Lord Prior ?" he asked.
The Prior stared at him a moment, in a desperate effort to fix his attention; then nodded sharply and wheeled round to the door that led to the upper rooms.
"Mother of God!" he said.