In the Days of the Guild Part 2

"But they are doing no work here," said the old man.

Alan shook his head. "It has been like this ever since I can remember.

Father says there's no knowing when it will be finished."

The old man sighed, and then broke out in a quick patter of talk, as if he really could not help telling his story to some one. Alan could not understand all that he said, but he began to see why the stranger was so disappointed. He was Italian; he had come to London from France, and only two days after landing he had had a fall and broken his leg, so that he had been lame ever since. Then he had been robbed of his money.

Some one had told him that there was an unfinished cathedral here, and he had come all the way on foot in the hope of finding work. Now, it seemed, there was no work to be had.

What interested Alan was that this old man had really helped to build the wonderful French cathedrals of which Brother Basil had told, and he was sure that if Brother Basil were here, something might be done. But he was away, on a pilgrimage; the abbot was away too; and Brother Peter, the porter, did not like strangers. Alan decided that the best thing to do would be to take the old man home and explain to his mother.

Dame Cicely at the Abbey Farm was usually inclined to give Alan what he asked, because he seldom asked anything. He was rather fond of spending his time roaming about the moors, or trying to draw pictures of things that he had seen or heard of; and she was not sure whether he would ever make a farmer or not. She was touched by the old man's troubles, and liked his polite ways; and Alan very soon had the satisfaction of seeing his new friend warm and comfortable in the chimney-corner. The rambling old farm-house had all sorts of rooms in it, and there was a little room in the older part, which had a window looking toward the sunset, a straw bed, a bench, and a fireplace, for it had once been used as a kitchen. It was never used now except at harvest-time, and the stranger could have that.

n.o.body in the household, except Alan, could make much of the old man's talk. The maids laughed at his way of speaking English; the men soon found that he knew nothing of cattle-raising, or plowing, or carpentering, or thatching, or sheep-shearing. But Alan hung about the little room in all his spare time, brought f.a.gots for the fire, answered questions, begged, borrowed or picked up somewhere whatever seemed to be needed, and watched with fascinated eyes all the doings that went on.

The old man's name, it appeared, was Angelo Pisano, and he had actually made cathedral windows, all by himself. Although Italian born, he had spent much of his life in France, and had known men of many nations, including the English. He meant now to make a window to show the Abbot when he returned, and then, perhaps, the Abbot would either let him stay and work for the Church, or help him to find work somewhere else.

The first thing that he did was to mix, in a black iron pot that Alan found among rubbish, some sand and other mysterious ingredients, and then the fire must be kept up evenly, without a minute's inattention, until exactly the proper time, when the molten ma.s.s was lifted out in a lump on the end of a long iron pipe. Alan held his breath as the old man blew it into a great fragile crimson bubble, and then, so deftly and quickly that the boy did not see just how, cut the bottle-shaped hollow gla.s.s down one side and flattened it out, a transparent sheet of rose-red that was smooth and even for the most part, and thick and uneven around a part of the edge.

Everything had to be done a little at a time. Angelo was working with such materials as he could get, and the gla.s.s did not always turn out as he meant it should. Twice it was an utter failure and had to be re-melted and worked all over again. Once it was even finer in color than it would have been if made exactly by the rule. Angelo said that some impurity in the metal which gave the color had made a more beautiful blue than he expected. Dame Cicely happened to be there when they were talking it over, and nodded wisely.

"'Tis often that way," said she. "I remember once in the baking, the oven was too cold and I made sure the pasties would be slack-baked, and they was better than ever we had."

Alan was not sure what the gla.s.smaker would think of this taking it for granted that cookery was as much a craft as the making of windows, but the old man nodded and smiled.

"I think that there is a gramarye in the nature of things," he said, "and G.o.d to keep us from being too wise in our own conceit lets it now and then bring all our wisdom to folly. Now, my son, we will store these away where no harm can come to them, for I have never known G.o.d to work miracles for the careless, and we have no more than time to finish the window."

They had sheets of red, blue, green, yellow and clear white gla.s.s, not very large, but beautifully clear and s.h.i.+ning, and these were set carefully in a corner with a block of wood in front of them for protection.

Then Angelo fell silent and pulled at his beard. The little money that he had was almost gone.

"Alan, my son," he said presently, "do you know what lead is?"

Alan nodded. "The roof of the chapel was covered with it," he said, "the chapel that burned down. The lead melted and rained down on the floor, and burned Brother Basil when he ran in to save the book with the colored pictures."

The gla.s.s-worker smiled. "Your Brother Basil," he said, "must have the soul of an artist. I wonder now what became of that lead?"

"They saved a little, but most of it is mixed up with the rubbish and the ashes," Alan said confidently. "Do you want it?"

Angelo spread his hands with a funny little gesture. "Want it!" he said.

"Where did they put those ashes?"

Lead was a costly thing in the Middle Ages. It was sometimes used for roofing purposes, as well as for gutter-pipes and drain-pipes, because it will not rust as iron will, and can easily be worked. Alan had played about that rubbish heap, and he knew that there were lumps of lead among the wood-ashes and crumbled stones. Much marveling, he led the artist to the pile of rubbish that had been thrown over the wall, and helped to dig out the precious bits of metal. Then the fire was lighted once more, and triumphantly Angelo melted the lead and purified it, and rolled it into sheets, and cut it into strips.

"Now," he said one morning, "we are ready to begin. I shall make a medallion which can be set in a great window like embroidery on a curtain. It shall be a picture--of what, my son?"

His dark eyes were very kind as he looked at the boy's eager face. The question had come so suddenly that Alan found no immediate answer. Then he saw his pet lamb delicately nibbling at a bit of green stuff which his mother held out to it as she stood in her blue gown and white ap.r.o.n, her bright hair s.h.i.+ning under her cap.

"I wish we could make a picture of her," he said a little doubtfully.

Angelo smiled, and with a bit of charcoal he made a sketch on a board.

Alan watched with wonder-widened eyes, although he had seen the old man draw before. Then they went together into the little room which had seen so many surprising things, and the sketch was copied on the broad wooden bench which they had been using for a table. Then holding one end of a piece of string in the middle of the lamb's back, Angelo slipped the charcoal through a loop in the other end, and drew a circle round the whole. Around this he drew a wreath of flowers and leaves.

Then he laid the white gla.s.s over the lamb and drew the outline just as a child would draw on a transparent slate, putting in the curls of the wool, the eyes and ears and hoofs, with quick, sure touches. This done, he set the white gla.s.s aside, and drew Dame Cicely's blue gown and the blue of a glimpse of sky on the blue gla.s.s. The green of the gra.s.s and the bushes was drawn on the green gla.s.s, and the roses on the red, and on the yellow, the cowslips in the gra.s.s. When all these had been cut out with a sharp tool, they fitted together exactly like the bits of a picture-puzzle, but with a little s.p.a.ce between, for each bit of the picture had been drawn a trifle inside the line to leave room for the framework.

Now it began to be obvious what the lead was for. With the same deftness he had shown throughout the old gla.s.s-worker bent the strips of lead, which had been heated just enough to make them flexible, in and out and around the edges of the pieces of colored gla.s.s, which were held in place as the leaden strips were bent down over the edges, as a picture is held in the frame. When the work was finished, the medallion was a picture in colored gla.s.s, of a woman of gracious and kindly bearing, a pale gold halo about her face, her hand on the head of a white lamb, and a wreath of blossoms around the whole. When the sun shone through it, the leaden lines might have been a black network holding a ma.s.s of gems. Dame Cicely looked at it with awed wonder, and the lamb bleated cheerfully, as if he knew his own likeness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE MEDALLION WAS A PICTURE IN COLORED GLa.s.s"]

Then there was an exclamation from the gateway, and they turned to see a thin-faced man in the robe and sandals of a monk, with sea-blue eyes alight in joy and surprise.

"Is it you, indeed, Angelo!" he cried. "They told me that a gla.s.s-worker was doing marvelous things here, and I heard a twelvemonth since that you were leaving Normandy for England. Where have you been all this time?"

The upshot of it all was that after much talk of old times and new times, Angelo was asked to make a series of stained gla.s.s windows for the Abbey, with all the aid that the friends.h.i.+p of the Abbot and Brother Basil could supply. He kept his little room at the farm, where he could see the sunset through the trees, and have the comfortable care of Dame Cicely when he found the cold of the North oppressive; but he had a gla.s.s-house of his own, fitted up close by the Abbey, and there Alan worked with him. The Abbot had met in Rouen a north-country n.o.bleman, of the great Vavasour family, who had married a Flemish wife and was coming shortly to live on his estates within a few miles of the Abbey. He desired to have a chapel built in honor of the patron saint of his family, and had given money for that, and also for the windows in the Abbey. The Abbot had been thinking that he should have to send for these windows to some gla.s.s-house on the Continent, and when he found that the work could be done close at hand by a master of the craft, he was more than pleased. With cathedrals and churches a-building all over England, and the Abbot to make his work known to other builders of his Order, there was no danger that Angelo would be without work in the future.

Some day, he said, Alan should go as a journeyman and see for himself all the cathedral windows in Italy and France, but for the present he must stick to the gla.s.s-house. And this Alan was content to do, for he was learning, day by day, all that could be learned from a man superior to most artists of either France or Italy.

TROUBADOUR'S SONG

When we went hunting in Fairyland, (O the chiming bells on her bridle-rein!) And the hounds broke leash at the queen's command, (O the toss of her palfrey's mane!) Like shadows we fled through the weaving shade With quivering moonbeams thick inlaid, And the shrilling bugles around us played-- I dreamed that I fought the Dane.

Clatter of faun-feet sudden and swift, (O the view-halloo in the dusky wood!) And satyrs crowding the mountain rift, (O the flare of her fierce wild mood!) Boulders and hollows alive, astir With a goat-thighed foe, all teeth and fur, We husked that foe like a chestnut bur-- I thought of the Holy Rood.

We trailed from our shallop a magic net, (O the spell of her voice with its crooning note!) By the edge of the world, where the stars are set, (O the ripples that rocked our boat!) But into the mesh of the star-sown dream A mermaid swept on the las.h.i.+ng stream, A drift of spume and an emerald gleam-- I remembered my love's white throat.

When we held revel in Fairyland, (O the whirl of the dancers under the Hill!) The wind-harp sang to the queen's light hand, (O her eyes, so deep and still!) But I was a captive among them all, And the jeweled flagons were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with gall, And the arras of gold was a dungeon-wall,-- I dreamed that they set me free!

IV

THE GRa.s.sHOPPERS' LIBRARY

HOW RANULPH LE PROVENcAL CEASED TO BE A MINSTREL AND BECAME A TROUBADOUR

On a hillside above a stone-terraced oval hollow, a youth lay singing softly to himself and making such music as he could upon a rote. The instrument was of the sort which King David had in mind when he said, "Awake, psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early." It was a box-shaped thing like a zither, which at one time had probably owned ten strings. The player was adapting his music as best he might to favor its peculiarities. Notwithstanding his debonair employment, he did not look as if he were on very good terms with life. His cloak and hose were shabby and weather-stained, his doublet was still less presentable, his cheeks were hollow, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

Presently he abandoned the song altogether, and lay, chin in hand, staring down into the gra.s.s-grown, ancient pit.

It had begun its history as a Roman amphitheater, a thousand years before. Gladiators had fought and wild beasts had raged in that arena, whose encircling wall was high enough to defy the leap of the most agile of lions. Up here, on the hillside, in the archways outside the outermost ring of seats, the slaves had watched the combats. The youth had heard something about these old imperial customs, and he had guessed that he had come upon a haunt of the Roman colonists who had founded a forgotten town near by. He wondered, as he lay there, if he himself were in any better ease than those unknown captives, who had fought and died for the amus.e.m.e.nt of their owners.

Ranulph le Provencal, as he was one day to be known, was the son of a Provencal father and a Norman mother. In the siege of a town his father had been killed and his mother had died of starvation, and he himself had barely escaped with life. That had been the penalty of being on the wrong side of the struggle between the Normans of Anjou and their unwilling subjects in Aquitaine. At the moment the rebellious counts of Aquitaine were getting the best of it. Ranulph knew little of the tangled politics of the time, but it seemed to him that all France was turned into a c.o.c.kpit in which the sovereign counts of France, who were jealous of their independence, and the fierce pride of the Angevin dukes who tried to keep a foothold in both France and England, and the determined ambition of the King who sat in Paris, were warring over the enslavement of an unhappy people. He himself had no chance of becoming a knight; his life was broken off before it had fairly begun. He got his living by wandering from one place to another making songs. He had a voice, and could coax music out of almost any sort of instrument; and he had a trick of putting new words to familiar tunes that made folk laugh and listen.

Neighborhood quarrels had drained money and spirit out of the part of the country where he was, and he had almost forgotten what it was like to have enough to eat. The little dog that had followed him through his wanderings for a year foraged for sc.r.a.ps and fared better than his master; but now small Zipero was hungry too. The little fellow had been mauled by a mastiff that morning, and a blow from a porter's staff had broken his leg. Ranulph had rescued his comrade at some cost to himself, and might not have got off so easily if a sudden sound of trumpets had not cleared the way for a king's vanguard. As the soldiers rode in at the gates the young minstrel folded his dog in his cloak and limped out along the highway. Up here in the shade of some bushes by the deserted ruins, he had done what he could for his pet, but the little whimper Zipero gave now and then seemed to go through his heart.

Life had been difficult before, but he had been stronger, or more ignorant. He had made blithe songs when he was anything but gay at heart; he had laughed when others were weeping and howling; he had danced to his own music when every inch of his body ached with weariness; and it had all come to this. He had been turned out of his poor lodgings because he had no money; he had been driven out of the town because he would not take money earned in a certain way. He seemed to have come to the end.

If that were the case he might as well make a song about it and see what it would be like. He took up the rote, and began to work out a refrain that was singing itself in his head. Zipero listened; he was quieter when he heard the familiar sound. The song was flung like a challenge into the silent arena.