Masters of the Guild Part 17

"To be sure!" cried Guy Bouverel. "Do you know books as well as cooking- pots, O man of the oldest profession?"

Martin grinned. "I heard a song about that once," he answered, "and I have never forgotten it. It was a lucky song--for some folk."

It was fortunate that at that time of year the sun does not set until after eight o'clock, for no one could have borne to leave that pavement without seeing the whole of it. The children, quite forgotten for once in their lives, grubbed in the piles of earth and found bewitching bronze lion-heads and ornamental k.n.o.bs and handles, and pictured tiles. At last they all went in to a very late supper. All the guests could be sheltered at Wilfrid's home if the young men were satisfied to lodge in Cold Harbor.

"It is like finding out the people who lived here when the land was young," said Wilfrid, his eyes very bright.

"And there were also the men who made the dewponds," mused Master Gay.

"And there were those Druids of whom my father told me," said Josian wonderingly. "This is like a fairy tale, Al-an. Is York the same?"

"Brother Basil said once that our England is a land of lost kingdoms,"

Alan answered her. "I see what he meant."

Excavation went on during the following days until all the pavements of the old Roman house had been cleared. The two others were larger but not so fine as the first they had uncovered. One was of stone blocks laid in a sort of checkerboard pattern, and the other of mosaic in a conventional pattern of black and gray and brown and red. They found that under these floors there was an open s.p.a.ce about two feet high. The tiled floor which was covered with the mosaic was supported by a mult.i.tude of dwarf pillars of stone and brick. This s.p.a.ce, although they did not know it, was the hypocaust or heating chamber of the colonial Roman house, and had been kept filled with hot air from a furnace. Beams of wood and heaps of tiles indicated that there had been an upper storey of wood. This in fact was the case, the Romans having a strong objection to sleeping on the ground floor.

Now there was no more doubt that Cold Harbor might be made into a well- appointed tavern. With a little masonry to reenforce them the walls would form a base for a half-timbered house roofed with tiles from Wilfrid's pottery. The largest room would be the general guest-room in which the tables would be set for all comers, and those who could not afford better accommodation might sleep there on benches or on the floor. For guests of higher station, especially those who had ladies in their party, private chambers and dining-rooms would be provided. Master Gay intended to furnish a suite for himself and any of his friends who came that way.

"And by the way," said Guy suddenly, "Cold Harbor will never do for a name. What shall you call the inn, Martin?"

Bouvin snapped his fingers. "I have thought and thought until my head goes to split. I would call it Boulogne Harbor, but there is no picture you could make of that."

"'Mouth' is the English for harbor," suggested Wilfrid. "But all the country people would call it 'Bull-and-Mouth."

Padraig began sketching with a bit of charcoal on the broken wall. "Make it that and I'll paint the sign for ye. 'Bull-and-Mouth'--every hungry man will see the meaning o' that."

With a dozen strokes he sketched a huge mouth about to swallow a bull.

This, done with a fine show of color, became the sign of the tavern.

Martin never tired of explaining the pun to those who asked. Even before the guest-rooms were finished, travelers began arriving, drawn by the fame of Martin's savory and succulent dishes. Pilgrims, merchants, knights, squires, showmen, soldiers, minstrels, scholars, sea-captains--they came and came again. Almost every subject in church or state, from Peter's pence to the Third Crusade, from the Const.i.tutions of Clarendon to clipped money, was discussed at Martin's tables, with point and freedom. Cold Harbor entered upon a new life and became part of the foundation of a new empire.

GALLEY SONG

Amber, copper, jet and tin, Anklet, bracelet, necklace, pin,-- That is the way the trades begin Over the pony's back.

Mother-o'-pearl or malachite, Ebony black or ivory white Lade the dromond's rushing flight Over Astarte's track.

Crucifix or mangonel, Steel for sword or bronze for bell,-- That is the way we trafficking sell, Out of the tempest's wrack.

Marble, porcelain, tile or brick, Hemlock, vitriol, a.r.s.enic-- Souls or bodies barter quick-- Masters, what d'ye lack?

XIII

THE WISDOM OF THE GALLEYS

It was Nicholas Gay's last night at home. At dawn his father's best ship, the Sainte Spirite, would weigh anchor for the longest eastward voyage she had ever undertaken. His father's brother, Gervase Gaillard of Bordeaux, was going out in charge of the venture. Gilbert Gay, the London merchant, who had altered his name though not his long-sighted French mind in his twenty years of England, thought this an excellent time for his eighteen- year-old son to see the world.

Since Nicholas could remember, he had known the wharves of the Thames and the changeful drama of London Pool. He had been twice to Normandy, but to a lad French by birth, that was hardly a foreign land. Now he was to see countries neither English nor French--some of them not even Christian.

Half Spain and all the north coast of Africa were Moslem. Sicily and Sardinia had Saracen traditions. This would be his first sight of the great sea-road from Gibraltar to Byzantium.

During the past three years Gilbert Gay had been often absent, and the boy had taken responsibility of the sort that makes a man. With the keen aquiline French profile he had a skin almost as fair as a girl's, and yellow-brown waving hair. The steady gray eyes and firm lips, however, had nothing girlish about them.

As luck had it these last hours were crowded with visitors. Robert Edrupt, the wool-merchant, and David Saumond, the mason, were taking pa.s.sage in the Sainte Spirite. Guy Bouverel had a share in her cargo, and came for a word about that and to bid Nicholas good-by. Brother Ambrosius, a solemn- faced portly monk, had letters to send to Rome. Lady Adelicia Giffard came to ask that inquiry be made for her husband, who had gone on pilgrimage more than a year before, and had not been heard of for many months. The poor soul was as nearly distraught as a woman could be. She begged Gervase Gaillard to ask all the pilgrims and merchants he met whether in their travels they had seen or heard of Sir Stephen Giffard, and should any trace of him be found, to send a messenger to her without delay. She was wealthy, and promised liberal reward to any one who could help her in the search. It was her great fear that the knight had been taken prisoner by the Moslems.

"I think that you must have heard of it in that case," said Gilbert Gay gently, "since these marauders ever demand ransom. I pray you remember, my lady, that there are a thousand chances whereby in these unsettled times a man may be delayed, or his letters fail to reach you. 'Tis not well to brood over vain rumors."

"I know," whimpered the poor lady, "but I cannot--I cannot bear that he should be a captive and suffering, and I with h.o.a.rded gold that I have no heart to look upon. 'Tis cruel."

"Holy Church," observed Brother Ambrosius, "hath always need of our hearts and of our gold, lady. Peace comes to the spirit that hath learned the sweet uses of submission. To dote on the things of the flesh is unpleasing to G.o.d."

"When I was in Spain," said Edrupt, "I heard a monk preaching a new religion. He urged his hearers to aid in rescuing the captives held in Moslem slavery. 'Tis said he has saved many."

"Were it not well," pursued Brother Ambrosius as if he had not heard, "to think upon the glorious opportunity of a captive to bear witness to his faith? We read how angels delivered the apostles from prison, and how Saint Paul in his bonds exhorted and rebuked his people, to the edification of many."

"True," commented Gilbert Gay rather dryly, "but we are not all Saint Pauls. And I have never known of G.o.d sending angels to do work that He might properly expect of men and women."

This was a new idea to Brother Ambrosius. Not finding a place in his mind for one just then, he looked meek and said nothing, and presently took his leave.

"Saint Paul was a tentmaker, was he not?" queried Guy Bouverel when the door had closed upon the churchman. "Had he rowed in the galleys I doubt whether we should have had those Epistles."

Nicholas recalled this conversation the next day, as the st.u.r.dy little ship of English oak filled her great sails and went blithely out upon the widening estuary of the Thames. The last of the dear London landmarks faded into the gray soft sky. Soon the sailors would begin to look for Sheerness and the Forelands, Dungeness, Beachy Head. Nicholas leaned on the rail above the dancing morning waters and remembered it all.

There was his mother's sweet pale face under the white coif, her busy fingers completing a last bit of st.i.tchery for him. There was his father's fine, keen, kindly face bent over his account-books and coffers. There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the months to come.

Edrupt came up just as a long Venetian galley went plowing out to sea, the great oars flashing in the sunlight, one rank above another. "They do not have to pray for a fair wind, those Venetians," Nicholas commented idly.

"That galley's past praying for anything," Edrupt said grimly. "You may be glad that your men fear neither wind nor seas--nor you. 'Tis an ill thing to sail the seas with those who serve only through fear."

Nicholas had not thought of it in that way. He knew, of course, that the slaves who rowed the racing galleys were the offscouring of mankind, desperate men, drawn from all nations. It was as much as two men could do to handle one oar, and all must pull in unison as a huge machine. The Venetian dromond was to other merchant-ships as the dromedary to other camels. To make the speed required the rowers must put forth their whole strength, hour after hour, day after day.

Any work which makes men into parts of a machine is not likely to improve them as men. When they have no love for their work and no hope of reward, and do not even speak the same language, the one motive which can be depended upon to keep them going is fear. The whip of the overseer bred festering, burning hatred, but it kept the sweeps from breaking their monotonous unceasing motion. If the voyage were quick, the profits were the greater, and no one cared for anything else.

Thinking of the hard sea-bitten faces of the galley-slaves Nicholas rejoiced that rather than live so the crew of the Sainte Spirite would every man of them choose a clean death at sea.

Some days later it seemed as if they were fated to die so. A Biscay tempest caught them, and from dark to daylight they were buffeted by the giant battledores of wind and sea. Nicholas spent the sleepless hours in lending a hand and cheering the men as he could.

At last they sighted the great Rock of Gibraltar, fifteen hundred feet of it clear against the sky, like the gateway pillar of another world.

Between Europe and Africa they pa.s.sed into the blue Mediterranean,--blue with the salty sparkle beloved of all sea-lovers since Ulysses. Light warm winds, the scent of orange-groves and rose-gardens, a sky only less deep in its azure splendor than the sea itself--it seemed indeed another world.

But the Sainte Spirite had not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on the Barbary coast.

The blackness of that storm ended, for Nicholas Gay, in a plunge into the black waters and a glimpse of the high lantern of his father's ship dancing above the tossing foam like a witch-fire, for an instant before she went down. When he came to himself he was lying on hot sand in the sunshine, and Edrupt and David Saumond were bending anxiously over him.