Books: Masters of the Guild
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L. Lamprey >> Masters of the Guild
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To Thee whom the skylark, in rapture ascending
Adores in his dithyramb perfect, unending,
(And vanishes in the high heaven still singing)
God of the Mist, I utter this prayer.
To Ye whom my children, born here in my mansion,
Reverence beyond the gods of their fathers,
And love as they love their own mother,
Gods of the Land, I build ye this temple!
XII
COLD HARBOR
Wilfrid, the potter, stood with his wife and children, looking at what was
left of a little old cottage. Fire had left it a heap of ashes and half-
burned timbers and rubbish. The red roof-tiles glowed like embers of dead
centuries.
"I'd never ha' turned the old man out," he said pensively, "but now he's
gone and the cot's gone too, we'll see what's under this end of Cold
Harbor."
Edwitha, his wife, looked up, her eyes sparkling through quick tears.
"I was hoping you'd say that, Wilfrid," she said with eager wistfulness.
"I've longed so to know--but he'd lived there since our fathers and
mothers were children. 'Twould ha' been like taking the soul out of his
body to drive him away."
She was a slender, pretty creature, almost as childlike in her way of
speaking as if she had been no older than Dorothea or Alfred. The children
listened with pleased excitement commingled with a certain awe. Gaffer
Bartram had seemed as much a part of their lives as the sun or the wind or
the old pollard willow. When he was strong enough he taught Alfred to
snare rabbits and catch moles; when rheumatism crippled him he sat by the
door making baskets and telling Dorothy rhymes and tales of seventy years
ago. Then first his old gray cat Susan had disappeared, after that the old
man himself, and last the cottage caught fire and burned. And father was
actually giving orders to the men to dig up the garden and see what lay
under it.
There is a mysterious immovable setness about the Sussex Downs. What is
there seems to have been there always. The oldest man cannot say when the
great white hollows were first scooped out of the chalk, or the dewponds
made on the heights. Ever since there were people in Sussex--whether it is
five thousand years ago or fifteen thousand--the short wind-swept turf has
been grazed by woolly flocks. Before ever a Norman castle held a vantage-
height the tansy grew dark and rank in cottage gardens and the children
went gathering woodruff and speedwell and the elfin gold of "little socks
and shoes." Any change, good or bad, is a loss to some one--the land is so
full of the life of the past.
Wilfrid and Edwitha well understood this, though they would never have put
it into fine phrases. They could not have said it except to each other,
and for that there was no need of speech. Because of it they had left the
old man at peace in his cottage, and even after he was dead they put off
the uncovering of what might lie under the soil of his garden and his
orchard.
Wilfrid's pottery had grown up in the last ten years near a claybank, not
far from the boundary between his father's land and Edwitha's old home. An
irregular terrace broke the slope above it, and here the tilled land had
come to an end at one point because the plows came hard against a buried
Roman wall. Not being able to break up the solid masonry of Roman builders
done a thousand years before, Wilfrid's father had cleared away the soil,
roofed over the ruin which he found, and used it to store grain. This was
Cold Harbor.
As Wilfrid's pottery prospered he found another use for the building.
There was no tavern thereabouts, and when the Saxon abbey five or six
miles away could house no more guests, or his workmen could not all find
lodging in the neighborhood, it was possible to shelter there. The roof
was weather-tight, a wood fire could be built on the stone hearth, and
with fresh straw from Borstall Farm for beds, provisions from the same
source, and their own cloaks for covering, travelers found themselves
fairly comfortable.
Like others of its kind the building came to be known as "Cold Harbor," a
"herbergage" or lodging, without food or heat being provided. Sometimes an
enterprising innkeeper would take possession of such a place after a time
and furnish it as an inn.
At this very time, unknown to Wilfrid, some of his friends were discussing
such a possibility as they rode up from Dover. Gilbert Gay the merchant,
his wife Thomasyn and his son Nicholas were returning from France, and in
their company were Alan of York and Josian his wife, Guy Bouverel the
goldsmith, and others. West of Canterbury they came up with a stout
bright-eyed little man who looked as if he had fed well all his life, and
was called Martin Bouvin.
"What luck, Martin?" asked Master Gay. The little man spread his hands in
a gesture of comic despair. All the tavern-sites seemed to be held by some
religious house that owned the land, or some nobleman who allowed the
innkeeper to use his device as a sign.
"There ought to be an inn there in Sussex where Wilfrid's pottery is,"
observed the goldsmith. "When I halt there to see Wilfrid I find nine
times out of ten that I must e'en quarter myself on him. D'ye remember
that old place he calls Cold Harbor? That would be a proper house for a
tavern."
"It is not large enough," objected the merchant. "Any tavern worth the
name would need more room than that within a twelvemonth. Still, other
buildings could be added. If you and the potter can come to an agreement,
Bouvin, I will aid you in fitting up the building and you may repay me in
dinners. There's not a cook this side Rouen who can match your chestnut
soup."
"Made with the yolk of an egg and a little wine of Xeres?" asked Guy with
interest. "Giovanni made it so for us once."
The merchant waved a protesting hand. "No, no, no, no--lemon, man, lemon,
with white stock, pepper, salt, a little parsley. Sherry is an excellent
drink, but not in chestnut soup, I pray you."
"What matters it," asked Alan innocently, "so the food is wholesome and
pleasant?
"That is what might be expected of you, you Northern barbarian," laughed
Guy. "Where did you get your cunning, Martin?"
The little man's beady black eyes twinkled knowingly. "A true cook, Master
Bouverel, takes all good things where he finds them. I make bouillabaisse
for those who like it, but--between you and me--Norman matelote of fish is
just as good. I cook pigeon broth as they do in Boulogne, I make black
bean soup as they do in Spain. I was born in Boulogne, but I have cooked
in many other places--in Avignon, where they say the angels taught them
how to cook--Messina, Paris, Genoa, all over Aquitaine with the routiers.
Perigueux is a very agreeable place--you know the truffles there? I cook
sometimes cutlets of lamb and veal in a casserole with truffles,
mushrooms, bacon in strips, a lemon sliced, shallots, some chicken stock,
and herbs--yes, that is very good. Oh, I can cook for French, Norman,
Gascon, Spanish, Lombard--any people. Only in Goslar. That was one
horreeble place, Goslar! The people eat pork and cabbage, pork and
cabbage, and black bread--chut!" He made a grimace at the memory.
"I fear you will find some of that sort among our English travelers," said
Gilbert Gay amusedly. "Not all of them will appreciate--what was that you
gave us in Paris? epigrammes of lamb, the cutlets dipped in chicken stock
and fried. Swine are still among our chief domestic animals."
"Oh, as to that," said the chef quickly, "I am not too proud to cook for
people who like simple things--meat broiled and roasted with plain bread.
And do you know that one must be a very fine cook to do such work well?
When I am alone, which is not often, I prepare for myself fresh
vegetables, broil a fish that has not forgotten the water,--and with a
roll and a little fruit, that is my dinner. The soteltes at kings' tables,
all colored sugar and pastry and isinglass--they are only good for people
who can eat peacock, and those are very few. Do you know, Master Gay, what
is the great secret of my art? To know what is good, and not spoil it."
"I foresee," laughed the merchant, "that we shall all be making excuses to
come down from London if you stay in Sussex with your saucepans. But hey!
there are the towers of the abbey already, and it is not yet mid-
afternoon. Let us ride on to see Wilfrid and find out whether he approves
of our fine plan."
While this discussion of the noble art of cookery was going on miles away,
Wilfrid and Edwitha, with no thought of inns, were watching the laborers
digging where Wilfrid thought the rest of the building ought to be. In his
travels he had seen other Roman houses better preserved than this, and by
inquiring of learned men had gained some idea of Roman civilization. He
had been told that Roman officials in England often built villas in places
rather like this terrace, and since the building already unearthed was the
end of the walls in one direction, the rest of the villa might be found
under the cottage of old Bartram and his orchard, garden and cow-byre.
No other house in the neighborhood was as old as that cottage. It was
built of beams put together without nails and filled in with a rude
wattle-work plastered thickly with coat after coat of mud. Instead of
being thatched like most houses of its kind the roof had been covered with
fine red tiles,--possibly Roman work. It seemed that the soil must have
washed in over the ruins of the Roman building so very long ago that there
had been time for trees to grow above it.
Thus Wilfrid reasoned. As his laborers dug and moiled and sweated under
the hot clear sun, he watched with lively interest for whatever they might
turn up. It is to be feared that Edwitha's maids were less carefully
looked after than usual after the work began, and the children spent every
minute they could in following their mother or their father about to see
what was going to happen.
There was another reason besides curiosity for keeping watch of the work.
If any pottery should be discovered, Wilfrid did not wish to have it
broken by a careless mattock.
Then Dorothy came running from the house to find her mother and father
bending over a newly-unearthed Roman wall. "Father!" she cried, "a man is
come to see you!"
"Oh!" said Wilfrid, not very eagerly. He brushed some of the earth from
his clothes with a handful of weeds and went toward the gate, where a
horseman sat awaiting him. As he came nearer the man dismounted and came
toward him with outstretched hand.
"Alan!" cried the potter joyfully. "I heard you were abroad. Come in, and
I'll send for Edwitha."
"Not so fast," said his guest. "I am but a harbinger. Guy Bouverel and
Master Gay the merchant with his wife and son, and some others, are coming
along. We'll stay at the Abbey, but we rode on to see you first. I've my
wife with me, Wilfrid."
"That's news indeed," said the potter cordially. "And who may she be? Some
foreign damsel you met in your pilgrimage?"
"That's one way of saying it," answered Alan smiling. "You shall see her
and judge for yourself. How's all here?"
Wilfrid smiled rather sheepishly. "You and your wife must come and stay
with us," he insisted. "We'll make you welcome, spite of being a bit
upset. Edwitha has been taking holiday. We're digging up the farm to see
what's at the other end of Cold Harbor, lad."
"Make no ado about us," Alan protested. "It's partly about Cold Harbor
that we came--but here they all are, upon my life!"
A merry company of travelers rode up the lane, and as they dismounted
Edwitha came over the little footpath across the field, with the children
clinging to her hands--a little embarrassed to find so many folk arriving
and she not there. The boy scampered up to his father piping loudly,
"Father, come you quick--we've found a picture in the ground!"
"What's all this?" asked Master Gay. And after Wilfrid's explanation
nothing would do but that they all should go immediately to see what had
come to light. When they beheld it the younger men could not keep from
taking a hand themselves. With brooms of twigs, and potsherds, and water
from the well in Cold Harbor, they industriously swept and scraped and
washed the pavement which the men had now partly uncovered.
It was a mosaic floor of tiny blocks of red, black, yellow, white, brown,
cream and slate-blue, set in cement so strong that not an inch of the fine
even surface had warped. It was not a large pavement, and might have been
the floor of a small dining or sitting-room so placed as to command a view
of the valley. A part of one wall remained. It had been plastered and then
covered with a finer plaster which was frescoed with a row of painted
pillars against the deep marvelous red of Pompeii. The design of the floor
was not at first clear. The edge was decorated with a conventional pattern
in gray and white. The corners were cut off by diagonal lines making an
eight-sided central space. This was outlined by a guilloche, or border of
intertwining bands of brilliant colors. Inside this again was a circle
divided into alternate square and triangular spaces with still brighter
borders, containing each some bird or animal. In the central space was a
seated figure playing on a harp, while around him were packed in a close
group a lion, a ram, a bull, a goat, a crab, fishes, and other figures.
Nobody at first saw what it could be.
"If I mistake not," said the little stout man, Martin Bouvin, at last, "it
is Sir Orpheus playing to the beasts."
"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 knobs 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 space about two feet high. The tiled floor which
was covered with the mosaic was supported by a multitude of dwarf pillars
of stone and brick. This space, 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 Constitutions 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, arsenic--
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 passage 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 hoarded 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 God."
"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 God 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 sturdy 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 stitchery 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 passed 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.
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