Before her there, beside a wayside cross, Denise saw many people gathered to welcome her, but her heart wished them away. She would have come quietly to this new refuge, nor had she foreshadowed Dom Silvius’s pageantry. Here were gathered the Abbey singing boys in white stoles, the precentor with them; also a number of the Brethren, two and two, solemn figures with hoods and hanging sleeves that seemed to catch the shadows. All the townsfolk had streamed out from their boroughs, old and young. Some carried green boughs, the girls had their bosoms full of flowers, even toddling children had their posies. Denise’s blood became as water in her when she saw all these people gathered there, ready with their gaping awe, and their inquisitive reverence. The bright colours of their clothes, the greens, blues, and russets became a blur before eyes that felt hot with bitter tears. It was all so much mockery to Denise. The precentor’s arms waved; the singing boys moved off two and two to lead her, singing some quaint chant. The people were down on their knees beside the road, all save the girls who strewed their flowers before her. And Denise rode by on her white palfrey, her eyes blind, her cheeks burning, a strangle of humiliation in her throat, knowing what these people could not know, and shamed to the heart because of it. She saw neither the silent faces under the row of cowls, nor the green boughs that waved, nor the hands that were stretched out to her by children and by women. Nor did she see Dom Silvius’s subtle and happy face as he rode beside her, carrying a wooden cross upon his shoulder. So the white-stoled boys chanted, the bells rang and the slow and sombre Brethren threaded their way between the green boughs and the colours. The people followed on, and began to buzz and to chatter. “The Lady of Miracles has come to dwell with us,” they said. Their mouths were full of all manner of marvels, and each began to think of the advantage that might be dreamed of. “She shall keep the sheep rot from us,” quoth one. “And cure the bone ache and the rheumatics,” said another. A fat, pork butcher with a face the colour of swine’s flesh remembered that his dame was to take to her bed in a month, and that he would have her blessed by Denise. A charm against “the staggers” was the desire of a carrier. Wuluric, a wax chandler, wondered whether his trade would be increased. One old woman was eaten up with a sore that would not heal. “I shall beg me a little of her spittle,” said she, “a holy virgin’s spittle on a dock leaf is a wondrous cure.” So they brought Denise to her cell near Mountjoye Hill, and from that hour they began to call the little field below it “Virgin’s Croft.”