Books: Masters of the Guild
L >>
L. Lamprey >> Masters of the Guild
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14
Giovanni's eyes blazed, "And you dare ask a Milanese to drink with you?"
"Hear me," begged the jester. "I sinned a great sin--yes; but I have lived
twelve years in torment of body and soul for that sin. I sinned for love
of a woman, and when I had betrayed my people she denied me, and her
brothers delivered me over to the executioners. They spared my life
because they thought it not worth the taking, and left me the wrecked and
crooked thing you see. Yet I have served Milan since her fall--I, the
traitor,--served her by a thousand petty treacheries and inventions. It
was I who sent Henry Plantagenet the news of Barbarossa's plans. I have
the favor of the Emperor, and hidden things are freely discussed before
me. They know I am Milanese and despise me, but they believe me bought
with gold and with the wine which is my besetting sin."
Giovanni was silent for very amazement. The fool mistook his attitude.
"See," he pleaded, tearing open his tunic, "here on my heart are the arms
of Milan. I kept the badge hidden here under the floor for years, for fear
that when I was whipt they would find it. But since I have the Emperor's
favor none dare touch me.
"Do you need money? Are you a spy? But nay--tell me not your errand. I
might--I might babble in the wine-shop, and then they would torture me to
find out the truth, and I might betray you as I betrayed your father. But
if you need money--look!"
He knelt above a corner of the hearth and raised a stone, thrusting his
hand into the deep hollow under it. He threw out handful after handful of
rich gold pieces that winked and gleamed in the pale sunlight. "They are
yours--all yours--for Milan."
Giovanni found his tongue. "When I was but a child," he said slowly,
weighing his words, "my mother taught me to hate and fear Stefano Baldi.
Yet in truth I neither hate nor fear you, Stefano, and I will trust you in
this matter. I have an errand at the court of Henry the Lion in Saxony,
and it was my hope that the Emperor, should he be pleased with our
marionettes, might give me safe-conduct that my journey be the sooner
ended. Then I shall go southward to fight for Milan."
Stefano pushed the gold back into the hole and replaced the stone. "I
see," he said. "The Emperor is as easily diverted by shows as the Brocken
by its clouds. Yet I think I can find a way to make him serve you. Be
ready to-night with your puppets and put your own soul into the jesting
and the mummery. That is the only thing for you to do. If that fails we
will try the gold."
Giovanni spent the hours before the banquet in setting his mimic theater
in order, trying every cord, pulley and weight to make sure that it worked
perfectly, brushing and reshaping the costumes, going over the songs and
speeches of the play in his head. Cimarron also was busy tuning his rebeck
and trying over the melodies of the songs which Ranulph the troubadour had
written for this little drama. It was based on the story of the ten
virgins, and contained much by-play and shrewd comment on the follies and
fashions of the day. Besides the written text Giovanni was wont to add
some patter of his own, improvised according to the mood of his audience
and the scene of the performance, but he ventured on very little of this
impromptu comedy on such an occasion as this. Too much was at stake.
After what seemed endless waiting the time came. The huge hall was filled
with gayly dressed knights, ladies, serving people, soldiers, and half the
petty princes of the Empire. The feasting had given place to wine-
drinking, songs and jesting. The Emperor, cold and impassive, sat in his
chair of state, his mind apparently a thousand miles away. Then there was
a great roar of laughter from the doorway, and a lane opened among the
audience to let Stefano come prancing through in all his grotesque
bravery, his bells chiming a goblin march. After him came Giovanni, and
Cimarron bearing the puppet theater. Giovanni made his obeisance and his
opening speech, and the play began.
There seemed to Giovanni to be two of him that night. One self was utterly
absorbed in the performance, intent on making every speech tell, every
song win its meed of applause and laughter, every little figure act with
the spirit and gayety of life. The other self hovered somewhere in the air
among the rafters of the hall, critically watching the whole scene. He
remembered a sensation something like it when he and Cimarron had crossed
a mountain torrent in Spain on a log a hundred and fifty feet above the
jagged rocks and tearing waters. And as on that occasion, Cimarron did his
part as calmly and indifferently as if he were mending a strap in the
donkey's harness.
Certainly the play was a success. Giovanni had never met with greater
applause or received more substantial rewards. The ladies gathered to
inspect his wooden figures after the play, like children at a fair. He was
just leaving the hall when a page came to him and directed him to wait in
an ante-room until the Emperor should be at leisure.
It was cold and bleak, and Giovanni's tense nerves shivered as he waited.
The noise of departing guests and the tramp of hoofs died away. It grew
colder and stiller in the small grim room. At last the Emperor came in,
and seated himself in a great chair. A servant brought in a brazier full
of coals and went away. The ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, a small man
with red hair and beard, and cold eyes, looked Giovanni over from head to
foot.
"You go," he said, "to the court of Henry Duke of Saxony?"
"Aye, Sire," said the youth.
"It is not a very safe journey. There are robbers in the forest."
"Surely," said Giovanni humbly, "a poor showman might hope to escape
them?"
"I fear not," said the Emperor with the ghost of a smile. "In their
disappointment they might break up your puppets and leave you fastened to
a tree for the wolves to devour. Such things have been done. I will give
you safe conduct and send you on with a company of merchants and soldiers,
if you will carry a message for me. Henry the Lion is delaying too long
with his answer. Tell him that the time has passed for trifling."
"Who," said Giovanni, wonderingly, "could dream of trifling with your
expressed wish?"
"Henry dreams, but he will awake," said the Emperor curtly. "Hark you--you
seem to be a clever mountebank, and I know what power fellows of your sort
have over the mob--add to your play lines to be spoken by your puppet
King. They should convey this meaning--that although he is a King he is
but a puppet incapable of independent action. Puppets that go wrong are
broken up and burned in the fire. My will is the law for my realm. Saxony
shall be taught that law as Milan was taught, if Henry dares disobey."
Writing a brief sentence or two on his tablets, the Emperor affixed his
signet and gave the missive to Giovanni. "That shall be your proof that
you come from me. Stefano tells me that you go on into Lombardy. Forget
not the meaning of your puppet-show when you reach those rebellious
states. They have been chastised once or twice before."
Giovanni was left alone. On the morrow he took his departure for Saxony
and did his errand. The Duke of Saxony remained at home, and Barbarossa
went on without his aid to meet defeat at Legnano. Giovanni met Stefano by
chance in Venice when the Emperor went there to sign the peace treaty.
"His armies were doomed from the first," the jester said in his hoarse
guttural sing-song. "They were weighted with the souls of the martyred
hostages of Crema. I have lived to see that siege avenged,--and now I must
go on livin--and never see Milan again."
Marveling much at the heights and depths in the soul of a traitor Giovanni
went on his way to England. There he discussed with Tomaso the Paduan
physician, Ranulph the troubadour and Brother Basil of the Irish
Benedictines the astonishing destruction of the Emperor's army. But he
said no word of Stefano.
"It is all in the formula on which his power was based," said the
alchemist thoughtfully. "No man--be he duke, prince or kaiser--can pose as
the master of humanity. Men are not puppets; they are free souls in a free
world. You cannot make even a puppet-player move contrary to its nature."
"That is true," said Giovanni. "And I have never had two that behaved
exactly alike. Fantoccini have their own ways of acting--and when you pull
the strings yourself, you know."
THE ABBOT'S LESSON
There were twelve good monks and an Abbot who came
To found the Abbey and give the name
In the early days when the stones were laid,
And each of them knew a craft or a trade.
Sebastian the shepherd and Peter the smith,
James who made leather, and sandals therewith,
Hilarius the cook, of great skill in his art,
Anselm whose herbal lay close to his heart,
Gildas the fisherman, Paul of the plough,
Arnold who looked to the bins and the mow,
Matthew the vintner and Mark the librarian,
Clement the joiner and John apiarian,
Each wise in his calling as craftsmen are made,--
And each deep in love with his own special trade.
But the Abbot was canny, and never would raise
One above other by blame or by praise.
Now the angel who guarded the Eden gate
Had pity in thinking on Adam's fate,
And sent him three servants, for earth, air and sea,
The sheep, and the fish, and the wise little bee.
And thus it has happened that some people know
More than the rest of us here below.
There was jealousy, bitterness, wrath and fear
Among these reverend brethren here,
With their leather and parchment and metal and stone,
And the seeds of dissension were freely sown--
Only Sebastian, Gildas and John
In their work appointed went placidly on.
The Abbot considered his turbulent flock,
And he saw the wicked beginning to mock,
And he gathered the craftsmen about him, to see
Why there was peace with the other three.
They found Brother John by his bee-skeps brown
Watching his bees in their elfin town.
"Little folk, little folk all a-wing,
More honey is yours when ye do not sting,
And that is a very sensible thing,"
Said Brother John to the bees.
They found Brother Gildas a-fishing for trout,
Oblivious that any one was about.
"Finny folk, finny folk, deep in the fen,
There's a bait for each fish if we only know when,--
And that is the way to fish for men,"
Said Brother Gildas to the fishes.
They found on the moorland bleak and cold
Brother Sebastian, far from the fold.
"Sheep of my sheepfold, by night and by day
I seek ye untiring wherever ye stray,--
For thus ye have taught me the Master's own way,"
Said Brother Sebastian the shepherd.
And the brethren were silent. Each prayed in his heart
That in all of his doings in craft or in art
He might give God the glory. Since Adam's fall
The workman is nothing, the work is all.
There was peace in the cloisters. The Abbot that night
Gave thanks that his children had found the light.
IV
PADRAIG OF THE SCRIPTORIUM
Padraig sat on the side of the hill where the Good People were said to
dance rings in the turf, his chin on his folded arms, his, arms resting on
his drawnup knees--thinking. He might have been taken for a sheogue
himself had any one been there to see. His hair was like a red flame, and
his eyes were blue as the sky; his arms and legs were as brown as his
young, sharp face, and he wore but one garment, a goatskin tunic. He could
run like a hare and climb like a squirrel and swim like a salmon, for he
had lived like a savage all his life, among the Irish hills.
Before he could remember, he had lost his father, a clever tinker who
could make silver brooches and mend brass kettles and had married an Irish
colleen in a seashore village. Then pirates raided the coast, and the
Irish girl with her baby escaped only by hiding in a cellar under a ruined
house. When the boy was seven years old his mother died, and since then he
had gone from one village to another as the fancy took him. For a week or
more he might be herding goats or sheep, fishing, or cutting peat for
fires; he stayed nowhere longer than he chose and owned nothing in the
world except what he wore. Under the tunic there hung a small leather bag
with the few relics his mother had left him. He could make a fish-hook of
a bit of bone, a boat of reeds, or a snare of almost any material he could
find where he happened to be.
From this place where he sat he could see a valley of wet meadow-land, in
the midst of which gray stone buildings were massed inside a wall which
enclosed also the garden and the cloisters. He knew that this was an
abbey.
Years before a company of twelve monks and a Prior had come there to found
a religious house. They brought from England an arklike chest containing
some manuscript books, and relics, chalices, candlesticks and other
treasures, and little else except their long black robes, girdles and
sandals. These monks, working in orderly and diligent fashion under their
superior's direction, had built a chapel, a dormitory, a dining-hall,
store-houses, barns,--and the community grew. The building was done first
of rough stone and wattle-work after the manner of the country, but later
of good cut stone. Half the countryside had been employed there when the
chapel was building. They had drained the marsh for their meadow-land,
their young trees were growing finely, their vineyard was thriving in a
sunny selected nook, their sheep flecked the hills all about them. A deep
fish-pond had been made where now two monks sat fishing. Padraig wondered
if they had caught anything as good as the lithe trout he had taken from a
mountain stream.
He was hungry, for he had been afoot since daylight, and he was wondering
whether to make a fire and cook his trout or offer them to the monks in
exchange for a supper. The wind that blew from the eight-side cone-roofed
kitchen brought to his nostrils a smell so delicious that he was drawn
like a fish on a line to the gates of the abbey.
He had met wandering monks and friars, but this was the first abbey he had
entered. When he knocked at the gate and the porter asked him what he
wanted, he was a little excited and rather scared.
But the porter, although rheumatic and grumpy, knew good fish when he saw
them, and considered them just the thing for the Abbot's supper. He let
Padraig in by the wicket gate, the door with a grating in it set in the
big door and only about a third as large. Soon the boy was sitting by the
kitchen fire eating a bowl of the most delicious broth he had ever tasted.
Round-faced Brother Hilarius, who had charge of the kitchens, was in so
good a humor over the trout that he suggested to Padraig that he might
herd sheep for the Abbey. The monks did a great deal of the work about
their farms and in their workshops themselves, but there was still much to
do, and they were usually willing to give work to anybody who did not ask
for more than food and lodging.
Padraig liked the Abbey, but he would probably have gone on before very
long had he not found something which interested him more than anything
else ever had. Brother Sebastian, the head shepherd, sent him one day to a
part of the buildings he had not before seen. The long stone-walled,
stone-floored room had little stalls down one side, each with its wooden
bench and reading-desk. On one of these desks lay open the first book
Padraig had ever seen.
It was not printed, but written, each letter carefully drawn with a quill
pen. The initials of the chapters, and the border around each page, had
been painted in an ornamental design like a tangle of leaves and vines, in
bright red, green, yellow, brown, black, blue. Twisted vines bore fruits,
flowers, tiny animals and birds, here and there a saint, angel or cherub.
The monk who was doing this illuminating was too much absorbed in his work
to know that any one had come in, at first. When he looked up and saw
Padraig standing there he smiled very kindly.
He was a gaunt man with eyes as blue as Padraig's own, black eyebrows and
lashes, and a queer dreamy look except when he smiled. His name was
Brother Basil. When he saw the bundle of especially fine sheepskins that
Padraig had brought his face lit up so that it seemed as if the sun had
come into the cloister. "Good!" he said. "I will give you a note to carry
back."
He took a bit of parchment which had once been written upon and had been
scraped clean enough to use again, and made some queer marks upon it with
his pen dipped in black fluid. That was the first time Padraig had ever
seen any one write.
It did not take long for Brother Basil to find out how fascinated the
herd-boy was with the work of the scriptorium. Before any one knew it
Padraig was learning to read and write. He learned so quickly that the
Abbot and Brother Mark, the librarian, thought he might make a scribe. But
when he was asked if he would like to be a monk, he shook his head like a
colt eager to be off. Writing was great fun; he practiced with a stick in
the sand or charcoal on a stone. But it did not suit his idea of life to
sit all day long filling books with page after page of writing.
He liked the making of colors even better than writing. In the twelfth
century painters could not buy paints wherever they might chance to be.
They had to make them. Brother Basil had studied in Constantinople, or
Byzantium as he called it, the treasure-house of books and of learning,
with its great libraries and its marvelous old parchments illuminated in
colors too precious to be used except for the Gospels or some rare volume
of the Church. As time went on Padraig learned all that Brother Basil
could teach him.
When a man is working on an important and difficult task, it means much to
have a helper tending the fires or grinding the paints, who regards the
work as the most important thing in the world and gives his whole mind to
his occupation. Such a helper may ask as many questions as he likes, and
his master will be glad to give him all the instruction he can possibly
want.
Most of the people of the Abbey, in fact, liked Padraig. He knew so little
that the monks and lay brothers and even the novices knew, and learned so
quickly, and was so ready to put his own knowledge at their disposal, that
it gave them the very comfortable feeling of being superior persons,
whenever he was about. But there was one person who did not like him. This
was Simon, a clerk attached to the house of the Irish prince who had given
the land for the Abbey. Simon was of the opinion that vagabond urchins
from no one knew where were not proper pupils for monastic schools even in
Ireland, which was on the extreme western edge of Christendom. But Brother
Basil paid no attention to Simon's opinion. In fact, it is doubtful
whether he ever knew that Simon had one.
The most serious trouble Brother Basil had in his work was that many of
the materials he needed could not be had in Ireland, nor could the Abbey
afford to send for them except in very small quantities. The monks were
rich compared with most other folk about them. They had food and drink and
warm clothing and well-built houses, and productive land. But as yet they
could not sell much of their produce at a profit which would make them
rich in money. Brother Basil therefore manufactured all the colors he
could, from the resources at hand. To make blue, he pounded up a piece of
an old stone he had brought from Canterbury. Gilding was done by making
gold-leaf out of real gold. The Tyrian purple was made from a gastropod of
the seas near Byzantium, and a little snail-like mollusk of Ireland would
serve to make a crimson like it. Thinning it, the painter could make pink.
There was no vermilion to be had, and red lead must be used for that color
and made by roasting white lead. The white lead was prepared by putting
sheets of lead in vats of grape skins when the wine had been crushed out
of them. Copper soaked in fermenting grape skins would make green, saffron
made it a yellower green,--and saffron was grown on the Abbey land--cedar
balsam would make it more transparent. Brother Basil was always trying
experiments. He was always glad to see a new plant or mineral which might
possibly give him a new color.
In all this Padraig was extremely useful. He made friends with a smith who
had a forge and furnace miles away, and wheedled him into lending them the
furnace for the roasting of metals. He ranged the woods and cliffs all
around the Abbey in search of plants, shrubs, trees and minerals. His
knowledge of the country saved Brother Basil many a weary tramp, and he
always took Padraig with him when he went looking for any especial thing
that was needed.
It was some time, however, before Padraig learned what Brother Basil
needed most of all. Now that the work of the scriptorium was coming to be
known, orders were received for splendidly illuminated missals and other
volumes, for which gilding was necessary. The brilliant colors would lose
half their beauty without the decorative touches of gilding to set them
off. And gold was costly.
"Where do men get gold?" Padraig asked one day.
"Out of the earth," answered Brother Basil absently.
"I mean," said Padraig hesitating, "what is it like when it is in the
earth? Is it a different color--like copper?" Copper, he knew, was often
green when it was found.
"Gold is always gold," said Brother Basil, coming out of his fit of dreamy
abstraction. "I have seen it washed out of rivers. Gold is heavier than
gravel, and when the river carries the gold with the earth down from the
mountains, the gold sinks to the bottom."
Padraig said no more, but a day or two later he was missing. The Abbot was
not pleased, for now he would have to take a man from other work to do
what the boy had been doing. Brother Basil was surprised and hurt. He had
never had such a pupil, and had begun to hope that they might always work
together for the love of the work and the glory of their Church.
"I suppose he was tired of us," Brother Basil said with a sigh. "He is
only a boy."
But Padraig was only a few miles away, high up among the hills where a
stream flowed through a ravine,--digging. He remembered seeing something
there long ago, before ever he came to the Abbey. He worked for two or
three days without finding anything at all. Then, just at sunset, he saw a
gleam of something like sunshine in a shadow where no sun shone. He
grubbed like a mole for a few minutes, and half a dozen tiny grains of
gold lay in his palm.
There was not much gold in the stream, but there was some. He dug and
pried and washed the scanty soil until he was sure that no more was there,
and then toward evening of the next day started home to the Abbey. When he
reached the gate it was dark, and the porter was astonished to see him.
By the light of a rush candle Brother Basil and the Abbot looked at the
precious grains of river-washed gold, twinkling like fairy stars. Brother
Basil's heart was content, not only because of the gold, but because his
most promising pupil, the wild herd-boy from the mountains, had not really
been weary of the work, but had proved his love for it and for his master.
The most excited person who heard of the discovery Padraig had made was
Simon the clerk. He had never lived in any country where gold could be
picked up in the streams, and he did not know, as Brother Basil did, that
these little dots of gold-dust had probably been washed down from some
rocky height miles away. He badgered Padraig in the hope of making him
tell where he had found them, but Padraig would not. It was one of his
best fishing-places, and he had no mind to have it ruined by a gold-hungry
clerk, seeking what had been put there for Brother Basil.
At last he grew tired of Simon's questioning, and took him aside and told
him a secret.
"I wonder," said Brother Basil, as he and his pupil went along a hillside
one day at the long, swinging trot they kept for long excursions, "what
Simon the clerk is doing there by the marsh. He seems to be looking for
something."
"He is," said Padraig with an impish grin. "He thinks the Cluricaune comes
there mornings to catch frogs, and if he can catch the Cluricaune he can
make him tell where all his gold is."
Brother Basil bit his lips to keep back a smile. "Now I wonder," he said
gravely, "who could have told him such a tale?"
"I did," said Padraig. "That is, I said old Granny Dooley told it to me
when I was small. I've hid in the bushes to watch for the Cluricaune
myself."
CAP O'RUSHES
Where the downward-swaying branches
Shiver, quiver in the sun,
And with low persistent murmur
The hidden waters run,
Far from bell and book and candle
With their grisly ban,
In the tangle of the rushes
Sits the great god Pan.
Oh, the unworn joy of living
Is not far to find,--
Leave the bell and book and candle
Of the world behind,
In your coracle slow drifting,
Without haste or plan,
You shall catch the wordless music
Of the great god Pan.
You shall wear the cap of rushes,
And shall hear that day
All the wild duck and the heron
And the curlew say.
You shall taste the wild bees' honey
That since life began
They have hidden for their master--
For the great god Pan.
Pages:
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14