The Door in the Wall

“All the bells of London were ringing the hour of Nones. St. Mary le Bow was nearest, St. Swithin’s was close by, and not far away stood great St. Paul’s. There were half-a-dozen others within sound, each clamoring to be heard. It seemed to Robin as if they were all inside his head screaming to be let out. Tears of vexation started to his eyes, but he held them back, for he remembered that a brave and ‘gentil’ knight does not cry.”

Young Robin, a nobleman’s son trapped at home in London because of sudden paralysis in his legs, fights depression while lying immobile in bed. The church bells torment him because he can’t move to escape their clamor. They also remind him that life goes on outside his room, but he can’t participate. In fact, the bells herald the beginning of a long journey for the boy.

“[…] he could not run. He couldn’t even get out of bed. Because he was unable to see out of the wind hole (window) Robin had learned to guess at what was going on down in the street.”

Robin becomes sick with an illness that takes away his legs’ ability to move. Confined to bed, endangered by immobility during a terrible pandemic, and feeling deeply sad, Robin strives to make use of whatever he has at hand. The sounds of the street become clues he can interpret; this gives his mind something to work on. Without realizing it, Robin is doing what his future mentor, Brother Luke, will encourage in him: employing all resources available to him.

“Robin examined for the hundredth time the carvings on the hammer beams supporting the roof of the hall. Each one was an angel with feathered wings. He studied one by one the grotesque carvings of dwarfs that decorated the roof bosses, and the corbels finishing the doorway. He wearied of thinking about them and wished that Ellen would come.”

A month into his loss of the use of his legs, Robin has examined in detail everything he can see from his little alcove room in the family house. Accustomed to activity and exploration, Robin endures the frustration of so little mental stimulation.