In the Days of the Guild Part 24

It was some time before they met again at the Abbey. The gold arrived safely in due season, and Simon Gastard bade it good-by, with very sour looks. It was placed in charge of Brother Basil and Tomaso, and Wilfrid, who had been a Master Potter, took his place as apprentice to a new craft. His experience as a potter helped him, however, for the processes were in some ways rather alike. At last he was ready to make the gift he intended for Edwitha.

Padraig, the young artist and scribe who was making most of their designs, drafted a pattern for the work, but Wilfrid shook his head.

"That is too fine," he said. "Too many flowers and leaves--finikin work.

Make it simpler. Every one of those lines means a separate gold thread.

It will be all gold network and no flowers."

"As you will," Padraig answered. "It's the man that's to wear the cap that can say does it fit." And he tried again.

Wilfrid himself modified the design in one or two details, for he had made pottery long enough to have ideas of his own. The enamel was to show dewberry blossoms and fruit, white and red, with green leaves, on a blue ground; the band of enamel around the gold cup was to be in little oblong sections divided by strips of ruby red. It was not like anything else they had made. It was as English as a hawthorn hedge.

Very thin and narrow strips of gold were softened in the fire until they could be bent, in and out, in a network corresponding to the outlines of the design. This was fastened to the groundwork with flour paste. Then it was heated until the gold soldered itself on. Powdered gla.s.s of the red chosen for the berries was taken up in a tiny spoon made of a quill, and ladled carefully into each minute compartment, and packed firmly down. Then it was put into a copper case with small holes in the top, smooth inside, and rough like a grater outside, to let out the hot air and keep out hot ashes. The case had a long handle, and coals were piled all around it in a wall. When it had been heated long enough to melt the gla.s.s it was taken out and set aside to cool. This took some hours. When it was cold the gla.s.s had melted and sunk into the compartment as dissolved sugar sinks in a gla.s.s. More gla.s.s was put in and packed down, and the process repeated. When no more could possibly be heaped on the jewel-like bit of ruby gla.s.s inside the tiny gold wall, the white blossoms, green leaves, blue ground, and strips of deeper red, were made in turn. Only one color was handled at a time. If the gla.s.s used in the separate layers was not quite the same shade, it gave a certain depth and changefulness of color. Overheating, haste or carelessness would ruin the whole. Only the patient, intent care of a worker who loved every step of the work would make the right Limoges enamel. This was one of the simpler processes which are still known.

The polishing was yet to be done. A goatskin was stretched smooth on a wooden table; the medallion was fixed in a piece of wax for a handle, and polished first on a smooth piece of bone and then on the goatskin.

Each medallion was polished in turn until if half the work were wet and half dry the eye could detect no difference.

Alan brought his mother, Dame Cicely, to the gla.s.s-house while Wilfrid was still at work on the polishing, and after she had seen the great window they had made for the Abbey church at the King's order, she paused to look at the enamel.

"Tha'lt wear out thy ten finger-bones, lad," said she. "I'm pleased that my cheeses don't have to be rubbed i' that road. They say that women's work's never done, but good wheaten bread now--mix meal and leaven, and salt and water, and the batch'll rise itself."

"There's no place for a hasty man in the work of making amail, mother,"

drawled her son. "Nor in most other crafts, to my mind."

"My father told me once," quoth Wilfrid, smiling, "that no work is worth the doing for ourselves alone. We were making a wall round the sheepfold, and I, being but a lad, wondered at the tugging and bedding of great stones when half the size would ha' served. He wasn't a stout man neither--it was the spring before he died. He told me it was 'for the honor of the land.' I can see it all now--the silly sheep straying over the sweet spring turf, gray old Pincher guarding them, the old Roman wall that we could not ha' grubbed up if we would, and our wall joining it, to last after we were dead. That bit o' wall's been a monument to me all these years."

"You're not one to scamp work whatever you're at," Guy declared heartily, "but that cup's due to be finished by to-morrow."

When the wreath of blossoms was in place around the shallow golden bowl, the smaller garland around the base, and the stem was encircled with bands of ruby, azure and emerald, it was a chalice fit for the Queen of Fairyland if she were also a Suss.e.x la.s.s. Brother Basil, whose eye was never at fault, p.r.o.nounced it perfect. It was not like anything else that they had made, but that, he said, was no matter.

"When Abbot Suger of St. Denys made his master-works," Guy observed as he put away his tools for the night, "he did not bring workmen from Byzantium; he taught Frenchmen to do their own work. And an Englishman is as good as a Frenchman any day."

THE WATCHWORD

When from the lonely beacon height The leaping flame flared high, When bells rang out into the night Where ships at anchor lie, There orderly in all men's sight, With sword or pike in hand, Stood serf and craftsman, squire and knight For the Honor of the Land.

When war had pa.s.sed, and Peace at last Ruled over earth and sky, The bonds of ancient law held fast,-- The faith which cannot die.

Ah, call us aliens though you may-- We hear and understand, The deathless watchword wakes to-day,-- The Honor of the Land!

XXII

c.o.c.kATRICE EGGS

HOW TOMASO THE PHYSICIAN AND BASIL THE SCRIBE HELD THE KEYS OF EMPIRE

Brother Basil and Tomaso of Padua sat in the gla.s.s-house crypt, with an oaken chest heavily bound with iron between them. It had been brought in, and the ropes about it loosened, by sweating varlets who looked with awe at the crucibles, retorts, mortars, braziers, furnaces, beakers and other paraphernalia of what they believed to be alchemy. They had not agreed about the contents of that coffer. Samkin held that it was too heavy to be anything but gold. Hob maintained that if these wise men could make gold there was no point in sending them a chest full. Tom Dowgate ended the argument by inquiring which of them had ever handled gold enough to judge its weight, and reminding them of the weight of a millstone when tugged up hill.

It was gold, however. When doors were bolted and windows shuttered the two philosophers remained silent for a few moments, Tomaso stroking his white beard, Brother Basil fingering his rosary. Then the Paduan reached forward and tilted back the lid. Under a layer of parchment, leather and tow sc.r.a.ps used for packing, the bezants lay snug and orderly beneath, shining significantly in the light of the bronze lamp. There was coin enough in that chest to turn the scale, perhaps, in the next war in Christendom,--so the Chancellor had said when he saw it go.

Brother Basil weighed one of the bright new-minted pieces on his finger-end, thoughtfully.

"I wonder what this bit of metal will do in England," he mused.

"Strange--that a thing so easily destroyed should have such power over the hearts of men."

"It is like a Devil," said the unperturbed physician. "He does not come inside a man's heart unless he is invited. Gold as you will employ it means the upbuilding of those crafts that make men--not serfs. We shall make our treasure instead of hiring troopers to steal it, if your schools prosper."

Brother Basil sighed. "I hope so. It is hard to see pages of priceless wisdom, scribed and illumined by loving and patient labor, scattered to the winds in the sack of a town. It made my soul ache to hear the monks of Ireland speak of the past. I believe that the King means to protect the Irish Abbeys, but this is a hard age for a peacemaker."

"The Plantagenets were never scantly supplied with brains," observed Tomaso dryly. "I think, myself, that the King will use the sword only to enforce the law, and that the robber barons are going to have a sad time of it henceforth. Perhaps Henry is more in tune with the age than you think. Frederick Barbarossa is coming to grips with the Lombard cities, and it will be mailed knight against Commune this time. Meanwhile, let us get to work."

The gold was unpacked and hidden safely in the hollow of the wall behind the turning stone. When the younger men arrived the chest was carried up the narrow stair and refilled with various precious or fragile things which it was well to have out of the way. The furnaces were set alight and the working day began.

A fairy spell seemed to possess the fires and the crucibles. Brother Basil, working at a medallion of enamel, gave a delighted exclamation as he held up the finished work. The red roses of Saint Dorothea were like elfin blossoms.

"The saint herself might have come from Alexandria to help us," he said.

Guy, who never spared trouble, had been finishing a chalice begun before his recent journey to the south. Even the critical eye of the Abbot found no flaw in its beauty. The little group of artists had worked free from the Oriental stiffness and unreality of their first models. Their designs were conventional, but the working out was like the quaintly formal primness of wild flowers in garlands. The traditional shape might be much the same, but there was a living freshness and grace, a richness of color and strength of line, which were an improvement on the model.

Alan, who seldom talked of an idea until he had tried it out, betook himself to a corner and began doing odd things with his blowpipe. The others went to work on a reliquary, and paid no attention to him until their work was well under way. Then there was a chorus of admiration.

The sheet of gla.s.s just ready for the annealing was of the true heavenly azure that Brother Basil had tried in vain to get.

"You kept the rule, I hope?" inquired the monk with some anxiety. "We cannot lose that gla.s.s now that we have it."

Alan shifted from one foot to the other. "It wasn't my rule,--that is, not all of it," he answered bluntly. "I read a part on this torn page here, and it seemed to me that I might work out the rest by this," he showed a chalked formula on the wall. "I tried it, and it came right."

Tomaso caught up the sc.r.a.p of parchment. "What?" he said sharply. "Where did this come from?"

It was a piece that had been used for the packing of the gold. Parchment was not cheap, and all the bits had been swept into a basket. Although covered with writing, they could be sc.r.a.ped clean and used again. The Paduan bent over the rubbish and picked out fragment after fragment, comparing them with keen interest.

"No harm is done," he said as he met Alan's troubled gaze, "there may be something else worth keeping here. At any rate you shall make more blue gla.s.s. Keep the formula safe and secret."

There are days in all men's work which are remembered while memory endures--hours when the inspiration of a new thought is like a song of gladness, and the mind forgets the drag of past failure. The little group in the Abbey gla.s.s-house and the adjoining rooms where the goldsmiths worked, were possessed by this mood of delight. The chalice that Guy had finished, the deep azure gla.s.s and the reliquary represented more real achievement than they had to show for any day in the past six months. There was just the difference that separates the perfect from the not quite perfect. Their dreams were coming true.

The young men walked over the fields to supper at the Abbey farm, as usual, and Dame Cicely, as usual, stood in the door to greet them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'AND THERE GOES WHAT WOULD SEAT THE KING OF ENGLAND ON THE THRONE OF THE CaeSARS,' QUOTH TOMASO"--_Page 291_]

"How goes the work, lads?" she asked, and then caught Alan by the shoulder, crying, "No need to answer. I know by the face on thee. What hast been doing to make it shine so?"

"Only finished a piece o' work, mother," said Padraig with a grin. "It takes some men a long time to do that. If they would bide just this side of a masterpiece they'd save 'emselves trouble. But they will spend all their force on the last step."

"Aye," said Alan, "better leap clean over the Strid while you're about it."