Books: Masters of the Guild
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L. Lamprey >> Masters of the Guild
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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.
Half the seamen were gone; so was the captain; so was all of the cargo.
Gervase Gaillard had been injured by a falling mast and was helpless. The
coast was strange to them all, but the old merchant and Edrupt made a
guess that it was a part of Morocco somewhere near the town of Fez. Food
they had none; water they might find; and the merchants had not lost quite
all they had in the wreck. Some gold and jewels they had saved, secured
about their persons. These would pay the passage of the company to London-
-if they had luck.
They were considering what to do next when a body of some twoscore
horsemen swept down upon them. The leader might have been either Turk or
Frank. He was as dark as a Saracen and wore the chain-mail, scimitar and
light helmet of the heathen, but he spoke Levantine rather too well for a
Moor, and with a different intonation.
"Who are you?" he asked curtly. Nicholas Gay stood up, not yet quite
steady on his feet.
"We are London merchant folk," he said, "from the wrecked ship Sainte
Spirite, whereof my father, Gilbert Gay, was owner. My uncle here is our
chief man, but as you see, he is injured and cannot move. If we may get
food and lodging until we are able to return to England, we will requite
it freely."
"London," repeated the soldier. "A parcel of London traders, eh?" He spoke
a few words to the Moor who rode next him, in another language. "This is
the domain of Yusuf of the Almohades," he went on, "and we make no terms
with the enemies of God. Yet we condemn no man to starve. Ye shall have
food and lodging so long as ye remain with us. Doubtless ye are honest and
will pay, but in this barbarous land there are many thieves. Therefore we
will take charge of such wealth as ye have. As for that old man, he cannot
live to reach his home. Abu Hassan!"
A trooper spurred toward the old merchant and thrust him through with his
lance. He half rose, groaned and fell back, dead. Others, dismounting,
seized upon the astonished and indignant castaways, and took from them
with the deftness of practiced hands whatever they had of value. This was
too much for the Breton and English sailors. They would have fought it out
then and there. But Nicholas spoke quickly so that only those nearest him
heard.
"There is no gain in being killed here one by one. Wait and be silent.
Pass the word to the rest."
When the prisoners had been herded into a compact company in the center of
the mounted troop, the leader chirruped to his horse. "It grows late," he
said. "Y'Allah!" And at the point of the lance the captives were driven
forward.
They were taken through the crowded narrow streets of a squalid town and
left in a walled enclosure where two negroes brought them an earthen jar
of water and some sort of cooked grain in a large bowl. The sun blazed
down upon their shelterless heads and flies hummed about the filth in the
unclean place. Nicholas, when their hunger had been partly satisfied and
there was no more to eat or drink, addressed himself to the others in a
cool and quiet voice.
"Friends, it is like we are to be sold into slavery among the infidels. If
each man is left to shift for himself they may break us. If we stand by
one another and keep our faith we may yet win home to England. They may
not separate us at first, and I have been thinking that if they find out
the value of a company of men freely choosing to work together in harmony,
they will hardly separate us at all. But we must obey their will, we must
keep order among ourselves, and above all, we must seem to have given up
all hope of escape. What say you?"
Edrupt spoke first. "I'm with you, lad. 'Tis our one chance of seeing home
again, I do think."
David Saumond's shrewd eyes were scanning the faces of the sailors. "I'll
no be the last to join ye," he said. "But all must agree. One man out
would make a hole i' the dyke."
A big Breton sailor stepped forward. "Kadoc of Saint Malo sticks to his
ship," he growled, and drew with his forefinger a line in the dust. "Who's
next?"
One after another, but with little hesitation, the men crossed the line.
All had some idea of what awaited them in the Moorish provinces. It was no
new thing for captives of European blood to be sold as slaves. Gangs of
them toiled on canals, walls, fortresses, in grain-fields, on board
galleys. Those leaders of Islam who urged a holy war sowed fortifications
wherever they went. The need for slave labor for such work was greater
than the supply. Much of the slave population was unfit for anything but
the simplest and rudest tasks, and could be kept at work only by the
constant use of the whip.
All the tales Nicholas had heard of slavery crowded into his mind in the
first moments of captivity. Once a black-browed Sicilian had told of a
night of blood and flame, when the slaves of a galley, mad with toil,
privation and hatred, killed their masters and attempted to seize the
ship,--and almost succeeded. "Slaves cannot unite," the Sicilian ended
contemptuously. "There is always a Judas." But Gilbert Gay had chosen his
men for this voyage with especial care. Every man of them, Nicholas
believed, could be trusted.
They had never dreamed of anything like the next few days--the filth, the
degradation, the cruelty. Nicholas was glad, when half-naked Moslem boys
called them names from a safe distance, that the others could not
understand. The insults of an Oriental are primitive and plain--and very
old. Nicholas had a trick of absorbing languages, and already knew half a
score of outlandish tongues and dialects.
Not only the townspeople but their Moslem fellow-slaves held the Kafirs in
contempt. Their rations were sometimes food condemned by the Moslem faith.
Edrupt's cool common sense and David's dry humor were of valiant service
in those days. The Scot averred that better men than Mahomet had been bred
on barley bannocks, and that the flat coarse cakes of the Berbers were as
near them as a heathen could be expected to come. He also warned them that
Moses knew what he was about when he forbade pork to his people, and that
the pigs that ran in the streets of an African town were very different
eating from the beech-fed hogs of Kent. From a Jewish physician for whom
he had once built a secret treasure-vault he had picked up a rough-and-
ready knowledge of medicine which was of very considerable value.
One morning they were all marched off, in charge of a greasy indifferent-
looking Turk, to work on a canal embankment. The garden of an emir's
favorite was to have a new bath-pavilion. Here the great strength of
Kadoc, the hard clean muscle and ready resourcefulness of Edrupt, and the
Scotch mason's experience in the ways of stones and waters, set the pace
for the rest. The seamen studied how to use their strength to the best
advantage as they had once studied the sky and the sea. They moved
together to the tune of their own chanteys, and the Turk discovered that
this one gang was worth any two others on the ground. When questioned,
Nicholas replied briefly that it was the way of his people.
The foreign-looking officer smiled incredulously when this explanation was
given, and watched them for some time with obvious suspicion. But the men
seemed not to be plotting together, and to be thinking only of their work.
If the English were fools enough to do more than they were made to do it
was certainly no loss to their masters.
"I should like to know the name of that vinegar-faced captain," said
Edrupt one day. "I mistrust he wasn't born here."
"No," said Nicholas. "They call him the Khawadji, and they never use that
name for one of themselves."
"He's too free with his whip. Yon tall man that tends his horses could
tell something of that, I make my guess."
One night they came on the Khawadji's stable-man caring for a lame horse
with such skill that Nicholas spoke of it. By some instinct he spoke in
Norman-French. The other answered in the same tongue.
"Every knight should know his horse."
"You are of gentle birth, my lord?"
"Call me not lord," the Norman said wearily. "I have seen too much to be
any man's lord hereafter. Since my fever I am fit only for this, and none
will know the grave of Stephen Giffard."
Nicholas' heart leaped. "Sir," he said quickly, "ere we left London the
Lady Adelicia, your wife, came to my father's house to beseech him to aid
her in searching for you. If any of us ever see home again I will take
care that she is told of this."
The knight looked ten years younger. "I thank you," he answered gravely.
"And if I should not live to see her again, I would have her know that my
thoughts have been constantly of her."
"Is not this Khawadji a caitiff knight of France? He does not seem like a
Moor."
The Norman nodded. "He is Garin de Biterres, a miscreant of Guienne. My
brother balked him in some villainy years ago. He took me for Walter when
he saw me, and let it out. Aquitaine being too hot to hold him, and the
Normans in Ireland refusing to enlist him, he came through the Breach of
Roland and took service under the Crescent. He was once a slave among the
Moors of Andalusia, and owes his deformity to that. He cozened an old
beggar into treating his leg with some ointment which would wither it up
so that he could not work, and it never wholly recovered."
"How comes it that he has not allowed you to send word to your people?
Most of these folk are greedy for ransom."
"I think he keeps me here for his pleasure. At first he took the letters I
wrote and pretended to have sent them, and gibed in his bitter fashion
when no reply came. That is how I know that the letters were not sent at
all. Had my lady heard so much as a word of my captivity she would have
searched me out."
The approach of some troopers broke off the conversation, and Nicholas
went his way, marveling at the strange chances of life.
Some months passed, during which the English worked at varying tasks--
brickmaking, the hauling of brick and cut stone, the building of walls.
Then a merchant called Mustafa came seeking slaves for his galley. After
much crafty bargaining he secured Nicholas and his companions for about
two-thirds the original price asked. But the Khawadji refused to part with
Stephen Giffard.
The galley was a rackety, noisome trading-ship that plied along the coast.
On board were already some rowers of various races, accustomed to the
work, but the bulk of the labor was to be done by the new men. It was
killing toil. Fed on black beans and coarse bread and unclean water, they
worked the ship from one filthy white-walled port to another, never seeing
more than the dock where the galley anchored or some mean street where
their barracks might be. There were times when Nicholas seemed to himself
hardly more human than the rats that gnawed and scrabbled in the dark at
night. He began to see how a galley-slave is made--molded and tainted
through and through by that of which he is a part.
The clean comradeship of the little group of Northern exiles did not count
for so much in this work. The pace of the ship was the average pace of the
whole crew. They became too weary to think or feel, too ravenous to
disdain the most unwholesome rations. Nicholas found himself mysteriously
aware of the moods of those about him, as men are when herded together in
silent multitudes. In the free world one feels this only now and then--in
an army, a mob, a church. Among slaves the dog-like instinct is common.
They know more of their masters than their masters can ever know of them.
Nicholas had been carefully trained by wise parents to the habit of self-
control, but he found that he was moved nevertheless by the mad
unreasoning impulses of the half-barbarous people about him, ridden
fiercely by their black thoughts of hate and fear. That it was the same
with his comrades he knew from little things they said--and even more from
what they did not say. They grew dulled to beauty and suffering alike.
There were glorious dawns, that flushed the white walls of a seaport rose-
red, above waters of mingled ink and blood that changed as by magic to
blue like lapis-lazuli. Then the sky turned saffron and the minarets were
of a fleeting gold above the deep blue shadows of the streets. There were
velvet nights when the stars blazed like a king's ransom, and white-robed
desert men moved in the moist chill air like phantoms. But all this was as
little to them as to the lizards that crept along the walls or the sweeps
they handled with their hardening hands. Years after, Nicholas recalled
those nights and those mornings and knew that something that sat within
his deadened brain had been alive and had stored the memories for him. But
he did not know it then.
Mustafa bragged among his friends, from Jebel el Tarik to Iskanderia, of
his fine ship and his unparalleled crew. The listeners would smile and
stroke their beards and exclaim at intervals, "Ma sh'Allah!"--believing
perhaps one tenth of what they heard. Oftenest he boasted of the Feringhi
rowers whom he had purchased from the sheikh's own steward in the slave-
market of Lundra--a city of mist and wealth and pigs and fair maidens.
Thus it came about that Ahmed ibn Said, the host, and Abu Selim, the
letter-writer of the bazaar, devised a jest for a supper at the khan. They
would send for one of these Frankish slaves and see what he would say. The
flattered Mustafa agreed, and the messenger returned with Nicholas Gay,
whose gray eyes and yellow hair caused a mild sensation.
The guests began to ask questions, first in Levantine, then in Arabic.
Were there bazaars in Lundra? Did the people drink coffee? Had they
camels? Did the muezzin call them to prayer? Did the women sleep upon the
housetops? Was the city most like Aleppo the White, or Istamboul, or
Damasc-ush-Shah? How many Muslimun were there? How many of the idolaters?
To these inquiries Nicholas replied, at first with faint amusement at the
mingled shrewdness and ignorance of these men, then with a fierce pride in
his city which made his words, as the letter-writer expressed it, shine
like rubies and sing like a fountain. The merchants listened, and munched
their sticky baclawi, ripe olives and dates and figs, and drank many tiny
cups of coffee, more entertained than they had ever been by Mustafa.
Finally the host sent for a basket of fruit--great pale Egyptian melons,
pomegranates, oranges, figs--and graciously bestowed it upon the gifted
galley-slave. He meant to come next day, he said, and with Mustafa's
permission behold the prowess of the English in swimming.
To every one's surprise, Ahmed really came. Those who could swim were had
out of their stifling quarters and allowed to do so. Nicholas could swim
like an eel, and all were amazed when, after swimming farther out than any
of the others, he flung up his arms, uttered a loud cry, and vanished.
They watched and searched, but nothing more was seen of him, and there was
mourning among the English.
But there was a Genoese galley in the harbor, and Nicholas had seen it. He
had dived, swum under water as far as he could inshore, and come up with
his head inside the scooped-out rind of a large melon. During the search
the seeming melon quietly bobbed away toward a reedy shallow, and the
swimmer hid among the reeds until dark, and then swam across to the
Genoese ship. The captain knew Gilbert Gay and listened with interest to
the youth's story.
The Genoese captain did not care to interfere with' Mustafa in a town full
of his Moslem countrymen. He waited until the crazy trading-galley was
well out to sea and rammed her with the beak of his own ship. Crossbowmen
lined the rail, grappling irons were thrown out, and the captain, with
Nicholas and some soldiers, went and unearthed Mustafa among bales of
striped cotton. When he understood that they merely wanted all of his
Feringhi slaves, he thankfully surrendered them.
"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 grass 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 Gwillym 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 Gwillym has made," she said.
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