THE JESTERSWhere through the dapple of wood-shadows dreamingFaun-footsteps pattering run,Where the swift mountain-brooks silvery-gleamingCarol through rain and through sun,Thee do we follow, O Spirit of Gladness,—Thee to whom Laughter gave suck.We are thy people by night or by noontide,—We are thy loves, O Puck!Lips thou hast kissed have no pleasure in sadness,Bitterness, cant nor disdain.Hearts to thy piping beat bravely in gladnessThrough poverty, exile or pain.Gold is denied us—thine image we fashionOut of the slag or the muck.We are thy people in court or by campfire,—We are thy slaves, O Puck!We are the dancers whose morris-bells ringingSound the death-knell of our years.We are the harpers who turn into singingOur hopes and our foves and our fears.Thine is the tribute wrung hard from our anguishAfter the death blows are struck.We are thy bondmen who jest while we languish,—We are thy souls, O Puck!
In a blinding snow-storm that blotted out the roads and obscured the outlines of the densely forested mountains, two youths and a small donkey struggled over a mountain trail. Twice the donkey had to be pulled bodily out of a drift, and once for an hour or more the wayfarers were racked by the fear that they had lost their direction altogether. But at last, in the edge of the evening, they saw the lights of the city twinkling like a miniature Milky Way, and urged on their tired beast in the certainty of food and shelter at the end of the day.
They were very unlike, these two strangers. He who seemed the leader was a slender lad, dark and keen of face, who might from his looks have been either French or Italian. In reality he was a Milanese, Giovanni Bergamotto, the only survivor of one of the families driven out of Milan when Barbarossa took the city. He had lived nearly half his life in France and in England, and spoke several languages nearly or quite as well as his own.
The other was a big-shouldered, sullen-looking fellow with black eyes and hair and a skin originally brown and now still darker from his out-of-door life—a Pyrenean mountaineer known as Cimarron. It was doubtful if he himself knew what his name originally had been; to all who knew him now he was Cimarron, the mountain sheep,—strong, sure-footed, and silent, and not half as stupid as people often thought.
The two had been in Brittany, in Paris, in Sicily and in Castile during the past months, and in each country they had made their way directly to the place in which the ruler happened to be holding court. At court they had exhibited the marionette show now packed away in the donkey's saddle-bags, once, twice or thrice as the case might be, until Giovanni had succeeded in gaining audience with the wife of the ruler. He carried pedlar's goods of very choice varieties, which might well appeal to ladies of the court in those days of slow transportation and few shops.
Now the King of England had three daughters, each of them being married to some prince of importance on the Continent of Europe, and he had adopted this means of sending certain letters to be given into their hands. The letter was carried inside a marionette, the head of the little carved wooden figure being so made as to unscrew and reveal a deep narrow hole in the body. The last of the three was Matilda, wife of Henry the Lion Duke of Saxony, the most powerful vassal of Frederick Barbarossa; and Barbarossa and his court now occupied Goslar, the walled city of Prussia which the two comrades were approaching. Giovanni wished to have the Emperor's permission to go on to Saxony. It might save his being detained as a spy or interfered with in some other way.
He wished also to discover how far the preparations for the invasion of Italy had gone. From what he had heard he thought that Barbarossa was about to gather his forces. He himself intended to join the army of the Lombard League as soon as he had delivered his letter.
There was not much difficulty in finding an inn where they could have supper, and sleep, rolled up in their cloaks, on the floor in a corner of the common room. The donkey was unloaded and fed, and the saddle-bags were brought in to serve as pillows. Having eaten, they lay down to the dreamless sleep of healthy youth. Cimarron's mountain-bred ears caught the sound, two hours after, of clanking swords and trampling horses, and he signaled silently to Giovanni. Troopers clattered in, laughing, cursing, calling for this and that, and not seeing the two motionless figures in the dark corner at all. When all was still again Cimarron whispered,
“Who are they?”
“They are Swabian cavalry,” answered the other. “We were none too soon. The army is mustering already.”
Next morning Giovanni cast about for means to get inside the walls of the great castle, where the Imperial banner floated in the cold blue air. But there seemed to be no disposition to encourage foreigners. Cimarron, who could sometimes gain admittance as a horse-boy, was kicked out. There was tumult and excitement in the streets. Giovanni, retreating to a narrow alley to brush mud off his doublet, was aware that a man with keen observant eyes was regarding him from the doorway of a wine-shop. The man wore the cap and bells of a jester, and his fantastic costume was gorgeously colored and ornamented. He was drinking a cup of wine, and when that was finished he poured another for himself and began to sip it slowly. Catching Giovanni's eye, he asked,
“What's in those great saddle-bags, my friend?”
Giovanni nearly jumped, for the question was in his own native dialect—not only Lombard but the variety peculiar to Milan itself. But remembering that he must not betray his blood he answered meekly, in French,
“I crave your pardon, master. I do not understand your question.”
“I asked you,” said the jester, “what you had in your luggage. It was an idle question, but you might be a showman of Milan.”
Giovanni laughed with mingled amusement and horror. “Milan, do you say? Is it safe to say that name in Goslar? No, master, I am a poor showman from Paris, asking only the opportunity to display my puppets before the great folk. 'Tis a goodly show, I assure you, master—the play of the Ten Virgins. Having but six lady-figures I am forced to make them serve for the wise and the foolish virgins and the bride, but there are also a King, who in this play is the bridegroom, the Merchant, the Monk, the Jester—who is most amusing and can dance upon his head or his heels as you will. The figures were carved by the most skilful wood-carvers of Paris, and the play was written by a pious monk of the Benedictines.” (Padraig the scribe would have hooted at this.) “It is a most wise and diverting entertainment, master, I do assure you.” The jester seemed not to be listening very attentively. He twirled the stem of the wine-cup in his hand, crooning,
“'Fantoccini, fantoccino,—Chi s'arrischia baldacchino,Ognuno per se,Diavolo per tutti.'”
Only long practice in self-control could have kept Giovanni from starting. The rhyme was a common street-song which every lad in Milan, the city of puppet-shows, would recognize, and not only did it refer to the puppets as “fantoccini” instead of marionettes, but the significance of the last two lines, “Each for himself and the fiend for all,” was rather too pointed to be pleasant. But he only bowed uncomprehendingly and awaited the further comment of the singer with more interest than comfort.
“I have a mind to speak a word for your puppet-show,” said the jester, cradling his bauble in his arms. “The Emperor gives little thought to such toys; nevertheless he may be graciously pleased to spend a few minutes in that way to-night after supper. Follow me.”
He strutted away, a small pompous figure in scarlet and orange, and Giovanni noted the mingled deference and contempt with which he was regarded by the crowd. No more trouble was experienced in getting the donkey along the crowded streets. The fool's discordantly-clashing bells opened a way everywhere. The porter at the castle gate grinned and flung a jest at him, but admitted him and those who followed in his train, without question.
A few steps farther on they were halted by a tall, thin, sour-looking man in the elaborate headgear and robes of a dignitary of the household.
“How now, Master Stephen!” he said sternly. “What foolery is this?”
“Only a showman, Conrad,” grinned the jester. “He has a puppet-show in those fat bags of his. Did you think I was trying to smuggle meat-puddings out of the kitchens for my own solitary meals?”
The steward was not satisfied. “Show me the puppets,” he ordered. Giovanni obeyed.
The steward scrutinized the bride and her maidens, pulled the strings which moved the humpbacked jester, fingered the costumes, and then with a curt nod bade them go on. “But mind you, Master Stephen,” he said, shaking a long finger at the fool, “you are to be responsible for these fellows and keep them in sight from now until the time of the feast. If aught goes amiss you shall be whipt.”
The jester giggled, shook his bells, and began to climb a long flight of stairs in a tower opening on the courtyard, beckoning the two youths to follow him. Up and up they climbed, until at last the fool turned and motioned them to halt.
“Come within,” he said to Giovanni. “Let your servant await you with your baggage on the landing here. He will tell us if any one approaches.”
The room in which Giovanni found himself was a small wainscoted apartment in the top of the tower, furnished in a grotesque fashion well suited to the humped and twisted figure of its master. The jester flung off his tall curved cap and seated himself on the corner of a table. From a flask he poured out a cup of wine and offered it to his guest. “It is not drugged,” he said with a laugh, “you need not fear. No? Ah, well, perhaps you are right. I will drink it myself, though I should keep it for the night—the nights are very long sometimes.”
He set down the cup and leaned forward, peering intently into Giovanni's face. “You gave me a start just now,” he said. “I took you for a ghost—the ghost of a man I once knew—Giovanni Bergamotto.”
This was more than exciting; Giovanni's father had been one of the murdered hostages of Crema, and if his name came to the ears of the Emperor he would never leave the castle.
Searching his impassive face the jester nodded approvingly. “I knew it,” he said. “No one else would have behaved as you did—and it is for Milan. Milan!” He slipped from the table and stood up, the bells jangling a weird undertone to his every movement. “It is better you should know—I am—I was when I was alive—Stefano Baldi.”
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 cameTo found the Abbey and give the nameIn 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 raiseOne above other by blame or by praise.Now the angel who guarded the Eden gateHad 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 knowMore than the rest of us here below.There was jealousy, bitterness, wrath and fearAmong 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 JohnIn 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 seeWhy there was peace with the other three.They found Brother John by his bee-skeps brownWatching 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 coldBrother Sebastian, far from the fold.“Sheep of my sheepfold, by night and by dayI 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 heartThat in all of his doings in craft or in artHe might give God the glory. Since Adam's fallThe workman is nothing, the work is all.There was peace in the cloisters. The Abbot that nightGave thanks that his children had found the light.
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 branchesShiver, quiver in the sun,And with low persistent murmurThe hidden waters run,Far from bell and book and candleWith their grisly ban,In the tangle of the rushesSits the great god Pan.Oh, the unworn joy of livingIs not far to find,—Leave the bell and book and candleOf the world behind,In your coracle slow drifting,Without haste or plan,You shall catch the wordless musicOf the great god Pan.You shall wear the cap of rushes,And shall hear that dayAll the wild duck and the heronAnd the curlew say.You shall taste the wild bees' honeyThat since life beganThey have hidden for their master—For the great god Pan.You who follow in the pathwayOf the waters fleet,You shall tread the gold of springtime'Neath your careless feet,Gold the hasting rivers gatheredWithout thought of man,—Flung aside as hushed they listenedTo the pipes of Pan!
Lady Philippa sat with her little daughter Eleanor in the tapestry chamber. This was the only corner of the gray old Norman castle which seemed really their own. All the rest of it was under the rule of Sir Stephen Giffard, the eldest son of the house, and still more under the rule of his mother, Lady Ebba, who seemed more like a man than a woman and managed everything, in-doors and out, including her sons. Eleanor, watching her grandmother with shy observant eyes, was not quite sure whether her father came under that rule or not. He never disputed anything his mother said or opposed her will, but somehow, when he saw that his sweet Provencal wife wanted anything, he contrived that she should have it.
Eleanor could not help seeing, however, that her mother was careful not to appear discontented or melancholy, and to do all that a daughter could do for her husband's stern old mother. Both Sir Stephen Giffard and Sir Walter, Eleanor's father, were away most of the time, and if Lady Philippa had been disposed to make herself unhappy she might have been exceedingly miserable. The old chatelaine did not approve of luxury, even such small luxuries as were almost necessities in that vast pile of stone which was the inheritance of the Norman Giffards. The castle hall was as grim and bare as a guard-room except on state occasions, and the food was hardly better on the master's table than below the salt, where the common folk ate. To be sure, there was plenty to eat, such as it was. The old lord, who had been dead for many years now, had married the daughter of a Saxon earl when he was a young knight in England, and Lady Ebba had been used to plentiful provision in the house of her father. In the autumn, when the other castles in the neighborhood sent forth gay hunting parties, and the deep forest, whose trees had never known the ax since Caesar built his bridges in Gaul, rang to the hunting horns, there was no such merrymaking on the Giffard lands. Instead, the folk were salting down beef and fish and pork—particularly pork, from the herds of swine that roamed the woods feeding on the acorns and beech mast. Toward the end of the winter there seemed to be more pork than anything else on the table.
Lady Philippa had ruled her father's house when she was a girl of fourteen, and she could have taught the people a different way of living. She knew how to raise and care for the great variety of poultry, water-fowl, pigeons, hares, fish, and delicate small birds of many kinds, such as some of their neighbors had and the southern provinces of France enjoyed in even greater abundance. But Lady Ebba would have none of it. Fowls had to be carefully tended, protected from foxes, hawks and other enemies; the fierce half-wild hogs could take care of themselves. All that they needed was a peasant herdsman with a dog to keep them together and see that thieving neighbors did not help themselves. There was more food in one hog than in a whole covey of game birds, to say nothing of the trouble of catching and cooking the birds.
Neither did the old dame approve of tapestried walls, cups and bowls of silver, gold and enamel, flower-gardens or delicately-made dishes. Fortunately her daughter-in-law's herb-garden was not wholly under the ban. It contained herbs useful in medicine, and God has ordained that many useful plants are also beautiful in their season. Sage, balm, caraway, monk's hood, thyme, thrift, mint, and other plants therefore dwelt contentedly in a sunny nook of the castle. The Provence roses, lilies and violets needed little care, and having once taken root were not ousted. One reason may have been that on special occasions perfumed water was offered to some guest of importance, for the washing of the hands after eating. By her manner though not in words Lady Ebba conveyed the idea that it was as well to have some one in the house who had time and taste for such things. The embroidering of tapestries and rich robes, and the repairing of such vestments as had come to mending, might also be done by the person who had time for it.
The pleasantest hours in Eleanor's day were those that she spent with her mother in the tapestry chamber. Whenever the weather would allow it they sat there during the sunny hours of the day, and if Sir Walter was at home, or it was very cold and some important piece of work must be done, they could have a brazier of charcoal to keep them warm. There was no fireplace in the room.
It was not a very large room, and it was stone-floored and stone-walled. It was Lady Philippa's bedchamber. The bed was oak, built into the wall like a cupboard, and almost black with age. There were carved doors of oak that could be shut, making it look like an armoire, but these were usually open, displaying pillow-slips of fine linen and a linen coverlet, spun, woven, and embroidered with black silk, by the lady herself. On the floor were strewn rushes and fragrant herbs. There were two straight carved chairs of old oak, an ivory footstool and a small table which held a few books and an ebony work-box inlaid with ivory, and writing materials. Two carved chests set one on the other served as wardrobe. As for washing conveniences, these were brought in as they were needed, by the knight's body-servant or the lady's own maid. The real luxury in the room was the window, which was more than twice the size of the narrow slits that lighted the great hall, and opened to the south. On pleasant days the sun looked in early and lingered late, as if he loved the room and its gentle mistress.
The room had been much the same for more than a hundred years, the castle having been built during the tenth century. The thing that made it Lady Philippa's own particular room, which could have belonged to no one else, was the set of soft yet brilliant tapestries which covered the walls. They had been worked by her in her girlhood, and she sometimes felt that more than half her life was wrought into the quaint figures and innumerable flowers and leaves and emblems of those narrow panels of embroidery. They had adorned the room which had been hers in her father's castle, and single panels had curtained or covered wall-spaces in many other castles during her life as Queen Eleanor's maid of honor. Little Eleanor had heard the story of the pictures as soon as she was old enough to hear stories at all, and there was some story connected with the making of each part of the set. It presented in a series of scenes the history of Sainte Genevieve of Paris. In the first picture she was shown as a little girl tending her sheep; then there were pictures of her at the various exciting times in her life—her saving the people from the Huns, her staying of the plague, her audience with King Clovis and finally her peaceful old age among the people who loved her.
Eleanor was kneeling on the window-seat where she sometimes slept, her bright braids falling over her white linen underdress and gown of soft blue wool. “Mother,” she said earnestly, “I wish I could make some tapestry.”
Lady Philippa was deftly drawing together the edges of a rent in an old and magnificent gold-embroidered bed-curtain. “Have you finished your spinning, daughter?” she asked.
“N-o, but it is almost done. Mother, I will spin twice as much every day if you will teach me to do tapestry. Were you older than I am when you learned?”
“Not very much older. Perhaps you might begin now. Finish your task while I make this curtain whole, and we will see.”
When her mother said she would “see,” Eleanor knew that a favor was as good as granted. She spun away to a happy little song that Collet, her mother's maid, had taught her, and very soon the good linen thread was all wound smoothly and the little spinster sat demurely watching the preparations for her new undertaking.
First her mother opened the wardrobe chest and took out a strip of linen about twenty inches wide and of a brownish cream-color. Next she selected some skeins of dyed linen thread from a heap of all the colors of the rainbow, mementoes of the work her busy fingers had done during many years. In a little enameled box, very carefully wrapped in soft wool to keep them from rusting, were a few needles. Out of a wrapping of cotton paper came a thin stick of charcoal rather like a crayon—charred hard wood that could be used for drawing.
“Now,” said the lady smiling at the eager little face, “what shall we choose for the subject of your tapestry, and what is to be its use? Will you have it for a cushion, or a panel of a screen, or something else?”
“I think—a set of panels,” said Eleanor slowly. “It will take a long time, but I should like to do exactly like you.”
Lady Philippa gave a little, amused, affectionate laugh that ended in a sigh. “But, my dear child, you don't think of copying these?”
“N-o. But when I grow up I want my room to look like yours. I want the tapestry to have a story. Mother, do you think I could work the story of Saint George and the dragon? I like that best of all.”
Eleanor drank in all the tales told her so delightedly that her mother had never known she liked one much more than another. “But,” she said smiling, “Saint George was an English saint. He was born in Coventry.”
“That's why he is my favorite,” Eleanor explained. “You know father is English. And Saint George had so many adventures. I think he would be very interesting to do.”
“It is your tapestry, dear child,” her mother said, laughing her sweet, joyous laugh. “I am sure I think Saint George and the dragon would make a very handsome set. And we need not draw all the designs now. Perhaps by-and-by we shall know some one who will draw a dragon for us. Meanwhile you may begin on the first panel.”
Eleanor flung her arms around her mother. “Oh, mother dearest, it's so good of you. I'm so excited to begin. Please commence at the very first part of the story, for that will be easy.”
“Not so easy as you think, perhaps, sweetheart. However, we can but try. You mean the setting forth of the knight?”
“No, the time when he was a little boy, and the weird woman of the woods took him away and taught him everything. I like that part almost best of all.”
“Very well. That will be a wise beginning, for in embroidering the trees and flowers of the forest you will learn all the different stitches. You will have to embroider quite well before beginning on the figures.”
Eleanor leaned breathless over the table while her mother drew the outlines of the picture upon the linen—the witch-woman in her forest home, the straight, sturdy figure of small George standing before her. On two sides and the bottom of the panel were drawn gnarled and twisted tree-trunks and roots, ferns and flowers. Across the top a narrow conventional border was outlined, the cross of Saint George alternating with a five-petaled rose, the wild rose of England.
“You may begin the border now,” said Lady Philippa, threading a needle with brown thread. “This is outline stitch, and the design must all be outlined with this, using different colors according to the part of it you are working. Then each space is to be filled in with another stitch—you see it here in the tapestry. For the background we will use still another stitch, and when you are covering large spaces the work is to be done in tent-stitch. Every inch of this linen will be covered with embroidery when it is finished, you know.”
Eleanor looked very grave and responsible. She saw long years of work before her, occupied with the triumphant career of the soldier-saint. But the new work proved so fascinating that an hour had gone by before she knew it. It was hard to tear herself away and go down to the chilly stone hall. She was not expected to come very near the fire of blazing logs, and felt her grandmother's eye constantly upon her lest she should not sit erect or behave as a well-born maiden should. She felt also that if Lady Ebba knew how much time would be consumed by the adventures of Saint George, she would begin a calculation of the number of skeins of linen thread that might be spun in that time, to the enrichment of the family. Eleanor privately thought that there was bed-linen in the castle to last for at least twenty years—which was true.
Letters had been received at the castle that day. Sir Walter was on his way home, and with him an English knight who had been his friend for many years—ever since they were squires together in Normandy. Lady Philippa looked rather sad and wistful when she spoke of Sir Hugh l'Estrange. He had married her dearest childhood friend, Alazais de Montfaucon, and Alazais was dead. She had gone a bride into that foreign land, lived seven happy years, and died. Eleanor could not help wondering whether she should ever have any friends who were dear to her as these early friends were to her father and mother. She had never played with any other children at all.
The news of her father's coming had traveled more slowly than he himself did. The next day, while Eleanor and her mother were busy transplanting some asphodel, the horn blew at the gate, and in a few minutes the knight came striding across the turf and caught his wife in one arm and his daughter in the other. Behind him was a great tall man with laughing eyes and a rather sad mouth, and standing very straight and soldierly beside the stranger was a boy some two years older than Eleanor, whom Sir Hugh introduced as “my son, Roger.”
The following days were so full of excitement that little time was left for the tapestry chamber. The two knights were on their way southward to meet King Henry and aid him to pacify some of his turbulent subjects. Roger was to be left at the castle. It was usual for a knight to send his sons to some friend for training during the years when a boy must learn the duties of page and esquire. In this case there was more than usual reason for it, for Sir Hugh's castle was in a remote part of England and it would not be safe to leave his only son there during his absence.
Roger himself, while he frankly admitted that he did not much like leaving England, was keenly interested in all that he saw and heard. Soon it seemed as if he had always been at home in the old Norman castle. He called Lady Ebba “grandame,” as Eleanor had never dared to do, and though she was as strict with him as she was with every one else, she never seemed exactly displeased with him. Roger himself saw it.
“Why do you like boys better than girls?” he asked her point blank, one day.
“Men can fight,” Lady Ebba answered, curtly.
“Of course,” Roger reflected. “But women can make men fight. Father told me that once when the Danes tried to take your father's castle you held them off until he came back.”
Lady Ebba did not say anything. She rose and stalked away, but although her back was to Roger, Eleanor could see that she was actually smiling.
Eleanor knew that story. It gave her a feeling of enormous admiration and awe when she thought of it, but love—for a grandmother who had commanded a garrison, on scanty rations, besieged by fierce and bloodthirsty pirates—seemed a little out of place.
It was certainly far pleasanter, having Roger for a playmate. Eleanor thought it was better than having a sister. He taught her to run, to fish, to play bowls, nine-men-morris, and draughts. The dismal stone hall was not half so grim with Roger in her corner.
These diversions did not, however, interrupt the daily lessons, the task in spinning, or the newly-begun tapestry. To her great satisfaction Eleanor found that Roger liked the tapestry chamber nearly or quite as well as she did. When he saw Eleanor's tapestry he persuaded Sir Hugh l'Estrange to spend a rainy morning in making sketches for it.
“Father has been to Egypt and the other places,” he explained, “and knows just how they look. You never saw a dragon, though, father?” he added doubtfully.
“Not exactly, but I have seen a beast rather like one,” laughed the knight, and he drew a very fair picture of a crocodile, adding wings and a fiery breath and fearsome talons by way of establishing its dragonship. “I have seen the place where they say the monster was killed. And did you know that Saint George is said to have helped the Allies under Godfrey in the First Crusade, at the battle for Jerusalem?” While the children looked on in fascinated wonder, he sketched in a battle-scene—rather cramped for space because of the narrow linen web—showing Godfrey de Bouillon cheering on his knights, the saint on his great white horse leading the charge, and the banner of the Cross rising above the host. From the tapestried walls Sainte Genevieve and her people looked on with kindly interest at the little group.
When the two fathers had gone away life settled into a quiet but pleasant order. Roger shared some of Eleanor's lessons, and when she was at her spinning or needlework he was often by, with a bow to shape, a spear to polish or some other in-door work to do, while they listened to Lady Philippa's stories. To him nearly all of them were new.
As the spring advanced the three spent much time in the garden. A drain was needed in one place, and Roger retrieved a spade from the gardener's quarters and went at it. He had heard Lady Philippa say that she should like to have a “mount” there—an artificial hill made of packed earth and stones—and as he dug he threw the dirt inward and tramped it down. He explained that this was the way a castle mount was made if the hill selected was not high enough. The one at Lewes that William de Warenne had made was a hundred and fifty feet high.
Eleanor caught the enthusiasm, brought stones and helped tread them down with her stout little leather shoes, and old Jehan's grandson with his sabots helped also.
“Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could build a castle on the top?” Eleanor suggested as they stood looking at it.
“Perhaps we can—if your mother is willing. Ask her if we may have all the stones we pick out of the garden—if we don't harm the plants—will you, Eleanor?”
Eleanor climbed the winding stairs to the tapestry chamber, and came flying back with the glad permission. Then the small building force went to work in deep earnest.
“I know exactly how to build it, for I saw the building of our castle from the very first,” Roger explained.
“We lived in a tent all summer until it was done—part of it—so that we could have a room. First they dig a ditch, just like this one, around the mount, and they make a palisade of forest trees—whole trunks set close together—to keep off enemies. When they have time to build a stone wall, of course the wooden wall is taken down.
“Now here, on the most solid side of the mount, is the place for the keep. We use the biggest stones for that. The bottom storey of father's keep is partly cut right out of the rock, and the walls are twenty-five or thirty feet thick. Nobody can knock down that wall with a battering-ram! Here we'll make a great arched door, so that the knights can ride right in without dismounting when they're hard pressed by the enemy. Here's the drawbridge—” Roger hastily whittled off a piece of bark—“and this line I've scratched inside the outer wall is for the wall round the inner bailey. We'll have a watch-tower here—and here—and here. Father says that a good builder places his towers so that each one protects one or two others, and in the end every one is protected.
“In the storey above will be the great hall. These walls don't need to be so thick—not more than eighteen feet. Here on this side we'll cut a little room out of the thickness of the wall, for the private chamber of my lord and lady—”
“The tapestry chamber!” cried Eleanor.
“Yes,” Roger went on, “and here on the other side we have the well-chamber. There's a stone bason with a shaft that goes away down to the well in the lowest part of the castle, and the defenders can always get water by lowering a bucket when they're besieged. Up above is another storey for a guard-room, and a flat roof with battlements around it, where the sentinels can see for miles and miles across the country.”
The two children gazed at their castle mount and almost believed the walls, eighteen, twenty, thirty feet thick—rising before their eyes.
“But that isn't all of the castle,” said Eleanor at last.
“No; we'll build more towers after awhile, and have a banquet hall to entertain the King. And the soldiers and people will live in tents and wattled huts until the stonework is done. But the keep is the first thing to build, because, you see, you have to defend yourself from enemies no matter when they come.”
Lady Philippa's garden was cleared of stones in a much shorter time than she had expected. But to build a stone wall simply by laying one stone upon another is less easy than it seems. Roger had done something of the sort before, but he had had fragments of stone from the masons' work instead of water-washed pebbles. And when the keep was actually built as high as the first floor above the foundation, a heavy rain came, streams tore out one side of the mount, and the stone-work tumbled into a hopeless ruin.
In the crystal brilliance of the morning after the storm Roger surveyed it ruefully. “Father says,” he recalled, “that everything depends on the foundations. We'll do it over again and make the mount more solid.”
“And when it is done,” said Eleanor, never losing faith, “I'll beg some linen of mother and make tapestry for the walls of the little room and the great hall.”
But the stones would not stay in place. Roger tried plastering them with mud, then with clay. Neither would hold when dry. Then he saw a workman repairing part of the garden wall, and in an evil moment borrowed some of the mortar while the man was gone to his dinner. He had just set it down near the mount when Collet came to call the children to their own dinner. The bucket remained there, and Lady Ebba's old gray cat, chasing a hound she had discovered near the hole where her kittens were secreted, bounced off a wall and fell into the mortar—fortunately hind feet foremost. The indignant Jehan came searching for his bucket and kicked the pile of stones in all directions, Lady Ebba made stern inquiry into the misfortune which had come to her cat, and wall-building was abandoned.
For a week or more, Roger gardened, fished and practiced archery in a somewhat subdued fashion. Lady Philippa, watching Eleanor's brown head and the boy's tousled tow-colored mop, as they consulted over a boat Roger was making, smiled and sighed. She wished that Alazais were there to see them play together.
Not long after the disastrous building incident Sir Walter appeared one day with surprising news indeed. Sir Stephen Giffard, the elder brother, was about to marry and come to live in the old Norman chateau. The new chatelaine was a rich widow of Louvain. Sir Stephen and Lady Adelicia would be the lord and lady of the castle, and would have the tapestry chamber.
“Oh, moth-er!” cried Eleanor piteously. No other room in the castle would ever be so pleasant. She could not understand her mother's untroubled acceptance of the change.
“But my dear child,” Lady Philippa went on, “we shall not be here; we are going away. King Henry has given your father a great estate in a wild country in the west of England, and he is building a castle for our home. You will be an English maiden, sweetheart, and have your tapestry of Saint George for your very own room.”
Eleanor's eyes were starlike. Then her mouth began to droop a little. “Is Roger to stay here?”
“Roger will be with us. His father's castle is only a few leagues from ours, and he is going to leave Roger at our home for a year or more while he is away.”
This made it quite perfect. Roger rejoiced openly at the prospect of going back to England. In stray moments Eleanor wondered a little how Lady Ebba liked it. She rather doubted whether Lady Adelicia would be as content there as her mother.
When they rode away from the old Norman gateway for the last time Eleanor laughed gleefully: “I don't care where we go, mother,” she whispered, “we've the roots and seeds from your garden, and we shall have a tapestry chamber!”
THE CASTLE