It is thus a highly useful and versatile structure as well as being a rather fine building - a fact that I am sure would have delighted the good Anselm. Personally I have mixed feelings about the place having once been a reluctant guest there myself – a circumstance that was also, coincidentally, at the instigation of the dread Geoffrey de Saye. I owed my freedom then to the intervention of Abbot Samson who overruled de Saye and had me released. Unfortunately no such champion was going to ride to the rescue of Raoul de Gray - certainly not Prior Herbert - and Abbot-elect Hugh was still far away in France. Being thirty feet above the ground, the gaol is ideally suited to its purpose. Isolated, sheer and built of good solid Barnack stone, it is virtually impossible to escape from or to gain access to - unless, of course, you have the wherewithal to bribe the gaoler. Unfortunately I was running short of suitable currency with which to barter, the beadle having had my stock of apple wine and Netta my spare coin.
