Masters of the Guild Part 20

As the work on the church progressed three friends of David's journeyed from Salisbury to see him. They had come from Lombardy a long time ago, when they were Piero, Andrea and Gianbattista. At Avignon they were known as Pierre, Jean-Baptiste and Andre, and in Spain they were rechristened Pedro, Juan and Andres. Now they were called Peter, Andrew and John,--and sometimes the Apostles. Peter understood vaulting; Andrew could carve a stone image of anything he saw, and John had great skill in the laying of pavements. They talked of cathedrals and palaces with a familiarity that took one's breath away.

The building of a cathedral seemed to be full of a kind of fairy lore. The plan was that of a crucifix, the chancel being the head, the transept the arms and the nave representing body and legs. The two western towers stood for Adam and Eve. There was a magic in numbers; three, seven and nine were better than six, eleven or thirteen. Certain flowers were marked for use in sacred sculpture as they were for other purposes. Euphrasy or eyebright with its little bright eye was a medicine for sore eyes. The four-petaled flowers,--the cross-bearers,--were never poisonous, and many of them, as mustard and cabbage, were valuable for food or medicine. But when Roger took this lore to Mother Izan for her opinion she remarked that if that was doctors' learning it was no wonder they killed more folk than they cured.

In fact the three Lombard builders, while each man was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a riddle to answer:

"The baldmouse and the chauve-souri, The baukie-bird and bat, The barbastel and flittermouse,-- How many birds be that?"

And the masons were all grinning at him before Roger found out that these were half a dozen names for the bat, from as many different places.

The vaulting of the roof of the church was now under consideration. For so small a building the "barrel vault," a row of round arches, was often used; but David's voice was for the pointed arch throughout. "The soarin'

curve lifts the eye," he said, "like the mountains yonder." He drew with a bit of charcoal a line so beautiful that it was like music. It was not merely the meeting of two arcs of a circle, but the meeting of two mysteriously curved perfect lines. Sir Walter Giffard saw at a glance that here was the arch he had dreamed of.

He saw more than that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work. He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their village church was beautiful, but why it was so.

Andrew was at work upon the decorative carving of the arches of the doorway. The outer was done in broad severe lines heavily undercut; the next inner arch in a simple pattern of alternating bosses and short lines- -Andrew called it the egg and dart pattern--and the inner arch in a delicate vine rather like the ivy that grew over the keep. Andrew said it was a vine found in the ruins of the Coliseum at Rome.

When it came to the carving of the animals and birds and figures for the inside of the church, Andrew's designs did not quite suit Lady Philippa.

They were either too cla.s.sical or too grotesque; they were better fitted to the elaborate richness of a great cathedral than to a little stone church in the mountains. She would have liked figures which would seem familiar to the people, of the birds and beasts they knew, but Andrew did not know anything about this countryside.

"Mother," said Eleanor one night after this had been talked over, "what if Roger and I were to ask Andrew to go with us to Mother Izan's and see her tame birds and animals, and Gw.i.l.l.ym's squirrel? And we could explain what he wants of them."

Like many children in such remote places, Eleanor and Roger had picked up dialects as they did rhymes or games, and often interpreted for a peasant who knew neither Norman nor Saxon and wished to make himself understood at the castle.

The idea met with approval, and the next day Lady Philippa, Eleanor, Roger and Andrew went to the cottage by the Fairies' Well. They found that David had been there before them.

"He's a knowledgeable man, that," the old woman said with a shrewd smile.

"He's even talked Howel into letting the clay images alone, he has.

Gw.i.l.l.ym's down by the claybank now, a-making Saint Blaise and little Merlin."

The cottage evidently was a new sort of place to Andrew, and his dark eyes were full of kindly interest as he looked about. The old dame sat humped in her doorway among her chirping, fluttering, barking and squeaking pets.

An ancient raven c.o.c.ked his eye wisely at the visitors, a tame hare hopped about the floor, a cat with three kittens, all as black as soot, occupied a basket, and there were also a fox cub rescued from a trap, a cosset lamb and a tiny hedgehog. Birds nested in the thatch; a squirrel barked from the lintel, and all the four-footed things of the neighborhood seemed at home there,

The stone-carver readily made friends with Gw.i.l.l.ym, who seemed to understand by some instinct his broken talk and lively gestures. When Andrew wished to know what some bird or animal was like, the boy would mold it in clay, or perhaps take him to some haunt of the woodlands where they could lie motionless for a half-hour watching the live creature itself.

But there was one among Gw.i.l.l.ym's clay figures which they never saw in the forest, and to which the boy never would give a name. It was a s.h.a.ggy half-human imp with stubby horns, goat-legs and little hoofed feet. He modeled it, bent under a huge bundle, perched on a point of rock, dancing, playing on an oaten pipe. Andrew was so taken with the seated figure that he copied it in stone to hold up the font.

"What's that for?" asked David when he saw it. "Are ye askin' Auld Hornie ben the kirk, man?"

Andrew laughed and dusted his pointed brown fingers. "One of Pan's people, David. They will not stay away from us. If you sprinkle the threshold with holy water they come through the window."

That figure puzzled David, but Gw.i.l.l.ym would say nothing. At last the church was finished, and the village girls went gathering fresh rushes, fragrant herbs and flowers to strew the floor. David went fis.h.i.+ng with Roger in Roger's own particular trout-stream. Coming back in the twilight they beheld Gw.i.l.l.ym dancing upon the moss, to the piping of a strange little hairy man sitting on a rock. An instant later the stranger vanished, and the boy came toward them searching their faces with his solemn black eyes.

"That was my playfellow," he said. "I have not seen him for a long time.

He and his people lived here once, but they ran away when there came to be so many houses. I used to hide in the woods when father came seeking me at Mother Izan's, and my playfellow gave me nuts and berries and wild honey.

He said that if father beat me I was to go and live with his people. I think I should if you had not come."

Howel, the mason, was a bewildered man that night. He agreed, before he fairly knew what he was about, to David's adopting Gw.i.l.l.ym as his own son, to go with him to the house of a good woman in London and be taught all that a lad should learn. In time he might be able to carve stone saints and angels, kings and queens, gargoyles and griffins, for great cathedrals. And all this had come of the forbidden clay toys.

"I beat him week after week," he muttered, "for melling wi' mud images and running away to the forest to play wi' devils. 'Twas no good to him, being reared by an old witch."

David's mouth set in a grim line and he rubbed the little black head with his crooked, skillful, weatherworn hand.

"Even a child is known by his doings, whether his heart be pure, and whether it be right," he said half aloud as he led Gw.i.l.l.ym away toward his own lodgings. "But the fool hates knowledge. The hearing ear and the seeing eye are the gifts of the Lord--and if a man was meant to be a bat or a donkey he'd ha' been made so. When Solomon said that a wise son maketh a glad father he didna reckon on a father being a fule. Ye'll say yer farewells to Auld Hornie, laddie, and then we'll gang awa' to London and leave Solomon's Seal i' the wilderness."

And that was how the little wild cave-man of the forest came to be inside a village church, under the font for the christening.

THE LEPRECHAUN

Terence he was a harper tall, and served the King o' Kildare, And lords and lodies free-handed all gave largesse to him there, And once when he followed the crescent moon to the rose of a summer dawn, Wandering down the mountain-side, he met the Leprechaun.

And a wondrous power of heart and voice came over Terence then, For a secret in his harp-strings lay, to call to the hearts of men, That he could make magic of common songs, and none might understand The words he said nor the dreams they bred--for he had them of Fairyland.

Eily she was a colleen fair, the light of the harper's eyes, And he won by the aid of the Leprechaun his long-desired prize.

The wedding-feast was but just begun,--when 'twixt the dark and the day, Quick as the water that runs to earth the Leprechaun slipped away!

So the daylight came, and the dreams were past, and the wild harp sang no more, And Terence looked at the cold black hearth and the silent open door, And he cried, "I have sold my life this night, ye have my heart in p.a.w.n,-- Take wife and gold, but come ye back, ye little Leprechaun!"

XV

BLACK MAGIC IN THE TEMPLE

No one could say just how it came to be whispered that the Templars of Temple a.s.sheton dealt in black magic. Travelers told strange tales of France, where the Order was stronger than it was in England--tales of unhallowed processionals and midnight incantations learned from the infidels of Syria. A Preceptor, Gregory of Hildesheim, was said to possess writings of a wizard who had suffered death some years before, and to have used them for the profit of the Order.

Swart the drover, who had sold many good horses to the Templars and expected to sell more, laughed at these uncanny rumors. Wealthy the Order was, to be sure, but that was no miracle. Its vaults, being protected not only by the consecration of the building but by its trained body of military monks, often held the treasure of princes. Moreover, this powerful military Order attracted many men of high birth. Their estates became part of the common fund, since no individual Templar could own anything.

Unfortunately, Swart's facts were so much less romantic than the tales of enchantment that they made very little impression. The grasping arrogance of the Templars caused them to be hated and feared, and if they were really wizards it was just as well not to investigate them too closely.

And if they had in truth learned the art of making gold, it was only another proof of that old and well-tried rule, "He who has, gets."

Gregory had not, however, discovered that secret as yet. He had had great hopes of certain formulae bought at a large price of a clerk named Simon, who stole them from the reputed wizard; but when he tried them, there was always some little thing which would not work. At last he bethought him of one Tomaso of Padua, who had been a friend of the dead man and might possibly have some some valuable knowledge. The physician was at the time in a market-town about twelve miles off, resting for a few days before proceeding to London. He was an old man and journeys were fatiguing to him. Gregory sent a company of men-at-arms to invite him to come to Temple a.s.sheton. The request was made on a lonely path in a forest, along which Tomaso was riding to visit a sick child on a remote farm. It would have been impossible for him to refuse it.

Rain was dripping from the drenched bare boughs of half-fledged trees, clouds hung purple-gray over the bleak moors; the river had overflowed the meadows, and the horses floundered flank-deep over the paved ford. Few travelers were abroad. Those who saw the black and white livery of the Temple, and the old man in the long dark cloak who rode beside the leader, looked at one another, and wondered.

When the cavalcade rode in at the great gate, where the round Temple crouched half-hidden among its grim and stately halls, the physician was taken at once to Gregory's private chamber. The Preceptor greeted him urbanely. "Master Tomaso," he said, "men say that you have learned to make gold."

"They say many things impossible to prove, as you are doubtless aware,"

Tomaso answered.

"Do you then deny that it is possible?" persisted Gregory.

"He is foolish," Tomaso returned, "who denies that a thing may happen, because he finds it extraordinary."

"Under certain conditions, you would say, it can be done?"