Falconer's Crusade by Ian Morson — Read

The crude bird-shaped thing flipped in the air and plummeted to the ground at the foot of the tower. It splintered into pieces on the icy, hard earth. At the top of the tower, a face peered out over the parapet and then disappeared. Eventually the man emerged through a door at the foot of the Great Keep fortifying the west end of Oxford and began to cast around in search of the artefact he had launched from the tower. He walked in ever greater circles out from the yellow stone walls until his foot crunched on a piece of the debris. He sighed as he picked up the evidence of his continuing failure to emulate the simplest of God's creatures. He still could not mimic the birds' skill of flight, and he turned the hide and stick construction over in his hands. It had been a long day for Regent Master William Falconer.

He had risen well before the first hour of the day, barely six hours past midnight. In the darkness of the winter morning, he briefly splashed icy water over his face before sharing a simple breakfast with the students in his hall, Aristotle's. By then he had already taken the opportunity to finish the bird-shaped form he thought would soar and swoop from the tower when he had time to launch it. He insisted, as was the custom, that his students spoke only Latin when sharing meals. But by sext, the sixth hour of the day, after having taught his younger students in the hall and having got the main meal out of the way without too much attention to Latin, he was impatient to try out his model. However, he still had lectures to give all afternoon in schools. The ninth hour, nones, was well past before he had a chance to test the thing, and he gladly forewent supper to hurry to the Great Keep in the gathering gloom.