Masters of the Guild Part 19

"Shall we put this fellow to death?" inquired the captain. Mustafa understood the tone and gesture though not the words, and turned a dirty yellow-gray. "No," said Nicholas Gay. "He was a good master--for an Arab."

Mustafa took heart. He would never reach port, he complained, being so short-handed.

"You can work your ship under sail for that distance," said the Genoese, twisting his mustachios, "if you dare loose your other slaves." At that Mustafa had an ague. When they saw the last of him he was making slow and crooked progress.

"And after all," said Edrupt one day, as they sighted the cliffs of Dover, "you bore witness among the heathen, as the fat old monk directed."

"Stupid pig!" David grumbled. "I'd like fine to have him bearing witness in a Barbary brick-yard, sweating and whaizling over his tale o' brick.

He'd throw his six hundred a day or I'd have his hide."

"All the same," said Edrupt thoughtfully, "a Londoner beats a Turk even for a galley-slave--eh, Nicholas?"

"We were never slaves," said Nicholas. "We were free men doing the work of slaves for a time. We had memory and hope left us. There is nothing to be learned at such work. Stick together and give them the slip if you can-- that's all the wisdom of the galleys."

HARBOUR SONG

Sails in the mist-gray morning, wide wings alert for flight, Outward you fare with the sea-wind, seeking your ancient right To range with your foster-brethren, the sleepless waves of the sea, And come at the end of your wandering home again to me.

By the bright Antares, the Shield of Sobieski, By the Southern Cross ablaze above the hot black sea, You shall seek the Pole-Star below the far horizon,-- Steer by Arthur's Wain, lads, and home again to me!

Caravel, sloop and galleon follow the salt sea gale That whispers ever of treasure, the ancient maddening tale,-- Round the world he leads ye, the sorcerer of the sea, Battered and patched and bleeding ye come again to me.

By the spice and sendal, beads and trumpery trinkets, By the weight of ingots that cost a thousand dead, You shall seek your fortune under hawthorn hedges,-- Come to know your birthright in the land you fled.

Sails of my sons and my lovers, I watch for ye through the night, My lamps are trimmed and burning, my hearth is clear and bright.

With every sough of the trade-wind that blows across the sea I wake and wait and listen for the call of your hearts to me.

By Saint Malo's lanterns, by Medusa-fires Rolling round your plunging prows in midnight tropic sea, You shall sight the beacon on my headlands lifting-- All sail set, lads, and home again to me!

XIV

SOLOMON'S SEAL

Where the moor met the woodland beyond the Fairies' Hill, old Izan went painfully searching for the herbs she had been wont to find there. The woodcutters had opened clearings that gave an unaccustomed look to the place. Fumiter, mercury, gilt-cups, four-leaved gra.s.s and the delicate blossoms of herb-robert came out to meet the sun with a half-scared look, and wished they had stayed underground. The old wife was in a bad humor, and she was not the better pleased when her donkey, moved by some eccentric donkeyish idea, gave a loud bray and went trotting gleefully off down the hill.

"Saints save us!" muttered the old woman, shaking a vain crutch after him.

"I can never walk all that distance."

But the donkey was not to get his holiday so easily. There came a shout from the forest, and a boy on a brown moor pony went racing off after the truant beast, while a lady and a young girl looked on laughing. It was a very pretty chase, but at last Roger came back in triumph and tethered the donkey, repentant and lop-eared, to a wind-warped oak.

"O Mother Izan!" cried Eleanor, "we've found a great parcel of herbs. I never saw this before, but mother thinks it's what they called polygonec in France and used for bruises and wounds."

The old woman seized eagerly on the plant. It was a long curved stalk with a knotted root and oval leaves almost concealing the narrow greenish bells that hung from the joints of the stem. "Aye," she said, "that's Solomon's Seal, and 'tis master good for ointment. The women," she added dryly, "mostly comes for it after their men ha' made holiday."

Eleanor was already off her pony, and Roger followed her. "We'll get you all you want, Mother Izan," she called back; "there's ever so much of it up here among the rocks."

"I should like to know," queried Roger as they pulled and pried at the queer twisted roots, "why they call this Solomon's Seal. I don't believe Solomon ever came here."

"Maybe it was because he was so wise," said Eleanor sagely. "Mother said it was good to seal wounds. We'll ask David."

In those days a knowledge of herbs and medicines was part of a lady's education. Physicians were few, and in remote places the ladies of the castle were called upon not only to nurse but to prescribe for cases of accident, fever, wounds or pestilence. Rarely did a week go by without Lady Philippa being consulted about some illness among her husband's people. She had begun to teach Eleanor the use of herbs, especially the nature of those to be found in the neighborhood, and here Mother Izan was of great service. In her younger days she had ranged the country for miles in every direction, in search of healing plants, and she knew what grew in every swamp, glen, meadow and thicket.

"Mother Izan must have been uncommonly anxious to get that Solomon's Seal," said Roger as they rode home in the purple dusk. "I believe Howel has been beating Gw.i.l.l.ym again."

Almost as well-informed as Mother Izan was David Saumond, the stone-mason, who was rebuilding the village church. He had come to the castle one day with news of Sir Stephen Giffard, Eleanor's uncle, who had been a prisoner among the infidels but had now been ransomed and was on his way home.

Finding that David understood his business, the lord and lady of the castle had decided to give into his hands the work to be done on the church. Masons were scarce in England at that time, and most of those who had skill were at work on half-built cathedrals. David was a wise and thorough builder, but he had the reputation of being rather crotchety. Sir Walter Giffard suspected that this was due to his absolute honesty. He would rather pick up a job here and there which he could do as it should be done, than to have steady employment where scamped building was winked at. This suited the knight very well. He wanted a man whom he need not watch.

"An unfaithful mason's like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint,"

observed the Scot when he saw some haphazard masonry he was to replace with proper stonework. "That wall's a bit o' baith."

David would take all the pains in the world with a well-meaning but slow workman, but he disposed of shirkers and double-dealers without needless words. Neither did he encourage discussion and idle talk about the work.

"A true mason's no sae glib-gabbet," he observed one day. "There's no need o' speechmaking to make an adder bite or a gude man work."

David confirmed Mother Izan's opinion of the virtues of Solomon's Seal.

The Turks, he said, used to eat the young shoots, cooked. The children already knew that Solomon was the Grand Worshipful Master of all the masons of the world. About his majestic and mystical figure centered legends and traditions innumerable. Solomon's Knot was a curious intricate combination of curving lines. Solomon's signet was a stone of magical virtues. The temple of Solomon was the most wonderful building ever seen, and the secrets of its masonry were still treasured by master masons everywhere. No sound of building was heard within its walls; the stones were so perfectly cut and fitted that they slid into their places without noise. And Solomon himself was the wisest man who ever lived. He could understand the talk of the martins under the eaves, the mice in the meal- tub and the beasts of burden in the stables, when they conversed among themselves.

"Aiblins that's what gar'd him grow sae unco wise," David ended. "You bear in mind, Master Roger, that every leevin' thing ye see, frae baukie-bird tae blackfish, kens some bit cantrip he doesna tell, and ye'll be a Solomon--if ye live."

David was eating his bread and cheese on the lee side of the wall when Eleanor came by with a gray lump of clay in her hands.

"See what Gw.i.l.l.ym has made," she said.

David stopped with the cheese half way to his mouth. "Who's Gw.i.l.l.ym?" he asked.

"He's a boy we've known ever since he was very little--he's only eight now--and he does make the most alive looking things out of clay. He heard you telling about Solomon talking with the birds and beasts, and he made this."

The clay group was really an unusual piece of modelling for an untrained hand. That a child should have made it was more than remarkable. The thin bent figure of the wise King was seated on a throne formed of gnarled tree-roots. On his wrist a raven perched; on his shoulder crouched a squirrel, with tail alert for flight; two rabbits sat upright at his feet; a lamb huddled against his knee on one side and a goat on the other. The figures all had a curiously lifelike appearance. As Eleanor said, one felt that if they heard a noise they would go away. Moreover she saw with wonder that the head of King Solomon and his lifted hand made him a fair portrait of David.

David took the clay group in his hand, turned it about, whistled softly.

"Wha owns this bairn?" he inquired.

"Howel's his father," said Roger. "He's quite good to him--unless he's drunk. Then he pounds him. He hates to have Gw.i.l.l.ym make images; he thinks it's witch-craft. Gw.i.l.l.ym made an image of him once and the leg broke off, and that very same day Howel's donkey kicked him and made him lame for a week."

"There's ower mony gowks in the land for a' the mills to grind," said David, and that was all they could get out of him. They knew he was interested or he would not have been so Scotch. David could speak very good English, and did as a rule, but with Eleanor and Roger he often returned to the speech of his boyhood because they liked it so much.

They liked David exceedingly. He had seen more interesting things than any one else they knew. He showed Roger how to make a fish-pond, and he told Eleanor how the Saracen city in her tapestry ought to look. He had himself been a slave among the infidels, and the children heard his adventures with awe and delight. Eleanor loved the story of the bath-pavilion like a tiny palace, built by the emir for the lady Halima, and the turning of the course of a river to fill her baths and her fountains, and water her gardens. Roger's hero was the young English merchant who had escaped by swimming, under his master's very nose. If one could have such exciting experiences it seemed almost worth while to be a captive of the Moslems.

But when Roger said so, David smiled a dry smile and said nothing.

But it was of King Solomon that he spoke most, and he seemed to have the sayings of the wise king all by heart. A Hebrew physician whom he had once known used, he said, to write one of Solomon's proverbs on the lid of every box of salve he sent out.

"You follow his wisdom, Master Roger," David said one day, "and you'll see how to build ye a house or a kingdom. 'Envy thou not the oppressor and choose none of his ways,' he says. 'Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of man to do it,' he says. 'G.o.d shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.'

"I tell ye," David added, glancing from the trim gray wall of the lychgate up to the castle on the hill, "every day's judgment day wi' a builder--or the head of a house."

Thus the stonemason was touched more deeply perhaps than he would have owned, by the likening of his face to that of Solomon in the clay figures of little Gw.i.l.l.ym ap Howel.