Books: Masters of the Guild
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L. Lamprey >> Masters of the Guild
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David stopped with the cheese half way to his mouth. "Who's Gwillym?" 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 Gwillym make images; he thinks
it's witch-craft. Gwillym 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. 'God 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 Gwillym ap Howel.
As the work on the church progressed three friends of David's journeyed
from Salisbury to see him. They had come from Lombardy a long time ago,
when they were Piero, Andrea and Gianbattista. At Avignon they were known
as Pierre, Jean-Baptiste and Andre, and in Spain they were rechristened
Pedro, Juan and Andres. Now they were called Peter, Andrew and John,--and
sometimes the Apostles. Peter understood vaulting; Andrew could carve a
stone image of anything he saw, and John had great skill in the laying of
pavements. They talked of cathedrals and palaces with a familiarity that
took one's breath away.
The building of a cathedral seemed to be full of a kind of fairy lore. The
plan was that of a crucifix, the chancel being the head, the transept the
arms and the nave representing body and legs. The two western towers stood
for Adam and Eve. There was a magic in numbers; three, seven and nine were
better than six, eleven or thirteen. Certain flowers were marked for use
in sacred sculpture as they were for other purposes. Euphrasy or eyebright
with its little bright eye was a medicine for sore eyes. The four-petaled
flowers,--the cross-bearers,--were never poisonous, and many of them, as
mustard and cabbage, were valuable for food or medicine. But when Roger
took this lore to Mother Izan for her opinion she remarked that if that
was doctors' learning it was no wonder they killed more folk than they
cured.
In fact the three Lombard builders, while each man was a master of his own
especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to
matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when
David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set
him a riddle to answer:
"The baldmouse and the chauve-souri,
The baukie-bird and bat,
The barbastel and flittermouse,--
How many birds be that?"
And the masons were all grinning at him before Roger found out that these
were half a dozen names for the bat, from as many different places.
The vaulting of the roof of the church was now under consideration. For so
small a building the "barrel vault," a row of round arches, was often
used; but David's voice was for the pointed arch throughout. "The soarin'
curve lifts the eye," he said, "like the mountains yonder." He drew with a
bit of charcoal a line so beautiful that it was like music. It was not
merely the meeting of two arcs of a circle, but the meeting of two
mysteriously curved perfect lines. Sir Walter Giffard saw at a glance that
here was the arch he had dreamed of.
He saw more than that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work
with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He
could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than
the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would
have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to
find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their village
church was beautiful, but why it was so.
Andrew was at work upon the decorative carving of the arches of the
doorway. The outer was done in broad severe lines heavily undercut; the
next inner arch in a simple pattern of alternating bosses and short lines-
-Andrew called it the egg and dart pattern--and the inner arch in a
delicate vine rather like the ivy that grew over the keep. Andrew said it
was a vine found in the ruins of the Coliseum at Rome.
When it came to the carving of the animals and birds and figures for the
inside of the church, Andrew's designs did not quite suit Lady Philippa.
They were either too classical or too grotesque; they were better fitted
to the elaborate richness of a great cathedral than to a little stone
church in the mountains. She would have liked figures which would seem
familiar to the people, of the birds and beasts they knew, but Andrew did
not know anything about this countryside.
"Mother," said Eleanor one night after this had been talked over, "what if
Roger and I were to ask Andrew to go with us to Mother Izan's and see her
tame birds and animals, and Gwillym's squirrel? And we could explain what
he wants of them."
Like many children in such remote places, Eleanor and Roger had picked up
dialects as they did rhymes or games, and often interpreted for a peasant
who knew neither Norman nor Saxon and wished to make himself understood at
the castle.
The idea met with approval, and the next day Lady Philippa, Eleanor, Roger
and Andrew went to the cottage by the Fairies' Well. They found that David
had been there before them.
"He's a knowledgeable man, that," the old woman said with a shrewd smile.
"He's even talked Howel into letting the clay images alone, he has.
Gwillym's down by the claybank now, a-making Saint Blaise and little
Merlin."
The cottage evidently was a new sort of place to Andrew, and his dark eyes
were full of kindly interest as he looked about. The old dame sat humped
in her doorway among her chirping, fluttering, barking and squeaking pets.
An ancient raven cocked his eye wisely at the visitors, a tame hare hopped
about the floor, a cat with three kittens, all as black as soot, occupied
a basket, and there were also a fox cub rescued from a trap, a cosset lamb
and a tiny hedgehog. Birds nested in the thatch; a squirrel barked from
the lintel, and all the four-footed things of the neighborhood seemed at
home there,
The stone-carver readily made friends with Gwillym, who seemed to
understand by some instinct his broken talk and lively gestures. When
Andrew wished to know what some bird or animal was like, the boy would
mold it in clay, or perhaps take him to some haunt of the woodlands where
they could lie motionless for a half-hour watching the live creature
itself.
But there was one among Gwillym's clay figures which they never saw in the
forest, and to which the boy never would give a name. It was a shaggy
half-human imp with stubby horns, goat-legs and little hoofed feet. He
modeled it, bent under a huge bundle, perched on a point of rock, dancing,
playing on an oaten pipe. Andrew was so taken with the seated figure that
he copied it in stone to hold up the font.
"What's that for?" asked David when he saw it. "Are ye askin' Auld Hornie
ben the kirk, man?"
Andrew laughed and dusted his pointed brown fingers. "One of Pan's people,
David. They will not stay away from us. If you sprinkle the threshold with
holy water they come through the window."
That figure puzzled David, but Gwillym would say nothing. At last the
church was finished, and the village girls went gathering fresh rushes,
fragrant herbs and flowers to strew the floor. David went fishing with
Roger in Roger's own particular trout-stream. Coming back in the twilight
they beheld Gwillym dancing upon the moss, to the piping of a strange
little hairy man sitting on a rock. An instant later the stranger
vanished, and the boy came toward them searching their faces with his
solemn black eyes.
"That was my playfellow," he said. "I have not seen him for a long time.
He and his people lived here once, but they ran away when there came to be
so many houses. I used to hide in the woods when father came seeking me at
Mother Izan's, and my playfellow gave me nuts and berries and wild honey.
He said that if father beat me I was to go and live with his people. I
think I should if you had not come."
Howel, the mason, was a bewildered man that night. He agreed, before he
fairly knew what he was about, to David's adopting Gwillym as his own son,
to go with him to the house of a good woman in London and be taught all
that a lad should learn. In time he might be able to carve stone saints
and angels, kings and queens, gargoyles and griffins, for great
cathedrals. And all this had come of the forbidden clay toys.
"I beat him week after week," he muttered, "for melling wi' mud images and
running away to the forest to play wi' devils. 'Twas no good to him, being
reared by an old witch."
David's mouth set in a grim line and he rubbed the little black head with
his crooked, skillful, weatherworn hand.
"Even a child is known by his doings, whether his heart be pure, and
whether it be right," he said half aloud as he led Gwillym away toward his
own lodgings. "But the fool hates knowledge. The hearing ear and the
seeing eye are the gifts of the Lord--and if a man was meant to be a bat
or a donkey he'd ha' been made so. When Solomon said that a wise son
maketh a glad father he didna reckon on a father being a fule. Ye'll say
yer farewells to Auld Hornie, laddie, and then we'll gang awa' to London
and leave Solomon's Seal i' the wilderness."
And that was how the little wild cave-man of the forest came to be inside
a village church, under the font for the christening.
THE LEPRECHAUN
Terence he was a harper tall, and served the King o' Kildare,
And lords and lodies free-handed all gave largesse to him there,
And once when he followed the crescent moon to the rose of a summer dawn,
Wandering down the mountain-side, he met the Leprechaun.
And a wondrous power of heart and voice came over Terence then,
For a secret in his harp-strings lay, to call to the hearts of men,
That he could make magic of common songs, and none might understand
The words he said nor the dreams they bred--for he had them of Fairyland.
Eily she was a colleen fair, the light of the harper's eyes,
And he won by the aid of the Leprechaun his long-desired prize.
The wedding-feast was but just begun,--when 'twixt the dark and the day,
Quick as the water that runs to earth the Leprechaun slipped away!
So the daylight came, and the dreams were past, and the wild harp
sang no more,
And Terence looked at the cold black hearth and the silent open door,
And he cried, "I have sold my life this night, ye have my heart in
pawn,--
Take wife and gold, but come ye back, ye little Leprechaun!"
XV
BLACK MAGIC IN THE TEMPLE
No one could say just how it came to be whispered that the Templars of
Temple Assheton dealt in black magic. Travelers told strange tales of
France, where the Order was stronger than it was in England--tales of
unhallowed processionals and midnight incantations learned from the
infidels of Syria. A Preceptor, Gregory of Hildesheim, was said to possess
writings of a wizard who had suffered death some years before, and to have
used them for the profit of the Order.
Swart the drover, who had sold many good horses to the Templars and
expected to sell more, laughed at these uncanny rumors. Wealthy the Order
was, to be sure, but that was no miracle. Its vaults, being protected not
only by the consecration of the building but by its trained body of
military monks, often held the treasure of princes. Moreover, this
powerful military Order attracted many men of high birth. Their estates
became part of the common fund, since no individual Templar could own
anything.
Unfortunately, Swart's facts were so much less romantic than the tales of
enchantment that they made very little impression. The grasping arrogance
of the Templars caused them to be hated and feared, and if they were
really wizards it was just as well not to investigate them too closely.
And if they had in truth learned the art of making gold, it was only
another proof of that old and well-tried rule, "He who has, gets."
Gregory had not, however, discovered that secret as yet. He had had great
hopes of certain formulae bought at a large price of a clerk named Simon,
who stole them from the reputed wizard; but when he tried them, there was
always some little thing which would not work. At last he bethought him of
one Tomaso of Padua, who had been a friend of the dead man and might
possibly have some some valuable knowledge. The physician was at the time
in a market-town about twelve miles off, resting for a few days before
proceeding to London. He was an old man and journeys were fatiguing to
him. Gregory sent a company of men-at-arms to invite him to come to Temple
Assheton. The request was made on a lonely path in a forest, along which
Tomaso was riding to visit a sick child on a remote farm. It would have
been impossible for him to refuse it.
Rain was dripping from the drenched bare boughs of half-fledged trees,
clouds hung purple-gray over the bleak moors; the river had overflowed the
meadows, and the horses floundered flank-deep over the paved ford. Few
travelers were abroad. Those who saw the black and white livery of the
Temple, and the old man in the long dark cloak who rode beside the leader,
looked at one another, and wondered.
When the cavalcade rode in at the great gate, where the round Temple
crouched half-hidden among its grim and stately halls, the physician was
taken at once to Gregory's private chamber. The Preceptor greeted him
urbanely. "Master Tomaso," he said, "men say that you have learned to make
gold."
"They say many things impossible to prove, as you are doubtless aware,"
Tomaso answered.
"Do you then deny that it is possible?" persisted Gregory.
"He is foolish," Tomaso returned, "who denies that a thing may happen,
because he finds it extraordinary."
"Under certain conditions, you would say, it can be done?"
"When the donkey climbs the ladder he may find carrots on the tiles," was
the Paduan's reply. The weasel-like face of the Templar contorted in a wry
grin.
"You bandy words like an Aristotelian, sir alchemist," he said sharply,
"therefore we will be plain with you. You shall be lodged here with
suitable means for your experiments until such time as your pretensions
are justified--if they are. Should you prove yourself a wizard, a dabbler
in the black art and a deceiver of the people, you shall be so punished
that all men may know we share not in your guilt. Reflection hereupon may
perchance quicken your understanding. Until you have news of importance
for our hearing, farewell."
With what he could summon of dignity, the Preceptor turned from the calm
gaze of the physician and left the guards to conduct him to his lodging.
There was really nothing else to do. It was a risk, of course. Tomaso was
well known. He had the confidence of the King himself. But the situation
was difficult. Prince John, who was usually in straits despite his
father's generosity, had hinted to Gregory lately that he meant to inquire
in person about the reported making of gold in the Temple. Could he have
guessed somehow that two chests of ingots from a Cadiz galley had come to
Temple Assheton instead of to the King's treasury? Or did he believe the
story of the making of gold?
Gregory was but too certain that if John found any treasure of doubtful
title he would seize it, and he was acutely unhappy. However, if Tomaso
possessed the secret--or some other secret of value--there was yet a
chance to save the Cadiz ingots. If this plan failed the scapegoat would
not be a Templar.
Tomaso knew what was passing in his enemy's mind, not through any
supernatural means, but by his knowledge of human nature. He was aware, as
he lay on his narrow straw bed, that his life was in imminent danger. No
one knew where he was; no message could reach his friends. A discredited
wizard could count on no popular sympathy. The record of his studies for
many years would vanish like the wind-blown candle-flame. Yet after some
hours of wakefulness he slept, as tranquilly as a child.
A red-headed youth in the dress of a clerk, who was to have met Tomaso on
the morrow, waited for him in vain. On the second day he started in search
of his old friend, and weary and mud-bespattered, came at last to Temple
Assheton. On the road he fell in with Swart the drover, who told him of
the reported alchemy. "Gold would be common as fodder if any man could
make it," Swart growled, "and when a man's wise beyond others in the art
of healing, 'tis wicked folly to burn him alive for't."
Padraig's face lost every trace of color. "W-who says that?"
"The crows and herons, I suppose," said the drover coolly. "Anyhow none of
the folk in the village know where the story started, and nobody but a
bird on the wing could see over those walls. 'Tis said that ten days
hence, if the old doctor don't make gold for them, they'll burn him for a
wizard. Now that's no sense, for if he could make gold he'd be a wizard no
bounds, and they'd not burn him then, I reckon."
Padraig looked down the valley at the tender gold-green grass and the
snowdrift apple-boughs of spring, It seemed impossible that those grim
gray walls held within them this cruel and implacable spirit. "Can I get a
trustworthy messenger?" he asked. "I would send a letter to the Master's
friends."
With the ready understanding of men who see and judge strange faces
constantly, Swart and Padraig had taken each other's measure and been
satisfied. "My nephew Hod will go," Swart answered. Hod was the son of the
farmer whose house Tomaso had visited.
Padraig was busy with tablets and inkhorn. He folded and sealed his note,
written in the clear stubbed hand of the monasteries. "I am Padraig," he
said, "a scribe of the Irish Benedictines. If the Master comes to harm
there will be a heavy reckoning, but that will come too late. I will
rescue him or die with him--are you with me?"
Swart pulled at his huge beard. "The Swarts of Aschenrugge," he said,
"have dwelt too long in these parts to bow neck to a Templar. Hod shall
ride with the letter, and if it be thy choice to risk thine own life for
thy master's I've no call to betray thee."
A dark-browed yokel came to the door with the bridle of Swart's best horse
over his arm. "Take this," Padraig directed, "to Robert Edrupt, the wool
merchant at Long Lea near Stratton. If he be from home give it to his wife
Barbara and tell her to open and read it. She is wise and will do what is
right. Here is money--all I have--but you shall be paid well when the
errand is done; I have asked Edrupt to see to that."
Hod stuck his thumbs in his belt. "Put up thy money," he muttered. "The
old doctor he cured our Cicely, he did."
The messenger gone, Padraig went straight to the Temple and asked to see
the Preceptor. Gregory listened at first with suspicion, then with wonder,
to what the stranger told. It seemed that, hearing that a famous alchemist
was at work in the Temple, he had come to crave the privilege of acting as
his servant. It was, he said, absolutely necessary that such a master
should have a disciple at hand for the actual work, and be left
undisturbed in meditation meanwhile."
"Is this necessary to the making of gold?" asked Gregory.
"Surely," Padraig assured him. "The pupil cannot do the work of the
master, the master must not be compelled to labor as the pupil. It is
written in our books--Feliciter is sapit, qui periculo alieno sapit--Those
are fortunate who learn at the risk of another,--and again, He is wise who
profits by others' folly."
Gregory eyed the stranger warily, but in Padraig's blue eyes he saw only
childlike innocence and fanatical zeal. If a madman, he was a useful one.
By his help the experiments could be carried on without imperiling any
Templar. He directed a page to show Padraig the way to Tomaso's chamber.
"My son!" said the physician as he lifted his eyes from his writing and
saw who was in the doorway, "how came you here?"
"I came to be with you, Master," Padraig answered with a glance behind him
to make sure the page was gone, "to rescue you if I can. What else could I
have done?"
Then he related his conversation with Gregory. "Through a drover of this
place who is our friend," he ended, "I have sent word to Robert Edrupt
asking him to get word of this to the King or to the Bishop. But if help
does not come in time--"
"Che sara sara (What will be, will be)," said Tomaso coolly. "I have made
a fair copy of these writings in the hope that I might send them to
Brother Basil."
Padraig knelt at the physician's feet, his beseeching eyes raised to the
kindly, serene old face. "Master Tomaso," he stammered, "they shall not do
this thing--I cannot b-bear it! We have--we have the formula for the
Apples of Sodom, and--and other things. They would give more than gold for
that knowledge."
Tomaso laid a gentle hand upon the young shoulder. "My dear son," he said,
"when we learned the secrets of Archiater--those secrets which mean death-
-we promised one another, all of us, never to use them save to the glory
of God and the honor of our land. Which of these, think you, would be
served by lending them to the evil plots of a traitor?"
Padraig caught the hand of his master in both his own. "It is beyond
endurance!" he cried piteously.
"I have knowledge," Tomaso went on, "that this Gregory is partly pledged
to the faction of Prince John. The Templars have no country, but they
think, with some reason, that they can bend John to their purposes. What
would they do, with the power these fires of Tophet would give them?
Padraig, there is no safety in the breaking of a pledge."
A thought came into the boy's mind, and a wild hope with it. "Master
Tomaso," he cried, "if I can find a way to use our knowledge without
breaking the pledge, will you give me my way?"
The Paduan looked long into the uplifted eager face. "It is good to be so
loved," he said. "I will trust you. Yet grieve not, whatever comes,--the
stars are my fortress, God is my lamp. The bridge to eternal life is very
short."
Padraig's cell was the one just below, and the window looked out across
the moors. Chin on his crossed arms, he pondered long under the stars. The
next day he informed the Preceptor that the alchemist was ready to begin
the making of Spanish gold, and must on no account be disturbed.
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