Part 9

Tomaso smiled. "I knew that, my son," he said. "That is why I spoke of this to you. You may talk freely to me or to Ranulph the troubadour, but to no one else unless we give you leave. You must be patient, wise and industrious, and fit yourself to be a true citizen of the Commune. For the present, you must be a good subject of the English King, and learn the language."

Giovanni hid the precious secret in his heart during the months that followed, and learned both English and French with a rapidity that astonished Dame Lavender. He had a wisdom in herbs and flowers, too, that was almost uncanny. In the kitchen-gardens of the great houses where he had been a scullion, there were many plants used for perfumes, flavorings or coloring fluids, which were quite unknown to the English cook. He was useful to Dame Lavender both in the garden and the still-room. He knew how to make various delicious cakes as well, and how to combine spices and honey and syrups most cunningly, for he had seen pastry-cooks and confectioners preparing state banquets, and he never forgot anything he had seen.

The castle which crowned the hill in the midst of the small town where Dame Lavender lived had lately been set in order for the use of a very great lady--a lady not young, but accustomed to luxury and good living--and all the resources of Dame Lavender's garden had been taxed to provide perfumes, ointments and fresh rose-leaves, for the linen-presses and to be strewn about the floors. Mary and her mother had all that they could do in serving Queen Eleanor.

The Queen was not always easy to please. In her youth she had traveled with Crusaders and known the strange cities of the East; she had escaped once from a castle by night, in a boat, to free herself from a too-persistent suitor. She was not one of the meek ladies who spent their days in needlework, and as for spinning and weaving, she had asked scornfully if they would have her weave herself a hair shirt like a hermit. Mary Lavender was not, of course, a maid of honor, but she found that the Queen seemed rather to like having her about.

"I wish I had your secret, Marie of the Flowers," said graceful Philippa, one weary day. "Tell me what you do, that our Lady the Queen likes so well."

Mary smiled in her frank, fearless way. "It may be," she answered, "that it is the fragrance of the flowers. She desires now to embroider red roses for a cushion, and I have to ask Master Tomaso how to dye the thread."

The embroidering of red roses became popular at once, but soon there was a new trouble. The Queen began to find fault with her food.

"This cook flavors all his dishes alike," she said pettishly. "He thinks that colored toys of pastry and isinglass feed a man's stomach. When the King comes here--although he never knows what is set before him, that is true,--I would like well to have a fit meal for his gentlemen. Tell this Beppo that if he cannot cook plain toothsome dishes I will send for a farmer's wench from Longley Farm."

This was the first that had been heard of the King's intended visit, and great was the excitement in the kitchen. Ranulph dismounted at the door of Dame Lavender's cottage and asked for Giovanni. Beppo the cook had been calling for more help, and the local labor market furnished nothing that suited him. Would Giovanni come? He would do anything for Ranulph and for Mary.

"That is settled, then," laughed Ranulph. "I shall not have to scour the country for a scullion with hands about him instead of hoofs or horns."

In his fourteen years of poverty the little Italian had learned to hold his tongue and keep his eyes open. Beppo was glad enough to have a helper who did not have to be told anything twice, and in the hurry-scurry of the preparations Giovanni made himself useful beyond belief. The cakes, however, did not suit the Queen. Mary came looking for Giovanni in the kitchen-garden.

"Vanni," she said, "will you make some of your lozenges for the banquet? Beppo says you may. I think that perhaps his cakes are not simple enough, and I know that the King likes plain fare."

Giovanni turned rather white. "Very well, Mistress Mary," he answered.

Giovanni's lozenges were not candies, although they were diamond-shaped like the lozenges that are named after them. They were cakes made after the recipe still used in some Italian bakeries. He pounded six ounces of almonds; then he weighed eight eggs and put enough pounded sugar in the opposite scale to balance them; then he took out the eggs and weighed an equal amount of flour, and of butter. He melted the butter in a little silver saucepan. The eggs were not beaten, because egg-beaters had not been invented; they were strained through a sieve from a height into a bowl, and thus mixed with air. Two of the eggs were added to the pounded almonds, and then the whole was mixed with a wooden spoon in a wooden bowl. The paste was spread on a thin copper plate and baked in an oven built into the stone wall and heated by a fireplace underneath. While still warm the cake was cut into diamond-shaped pieces, called lozenges after the carved stone memorial tablets in cathedrals. The Queen approved them, and said that she would have those cakes and none other for the banquet, but with a little more spice. Beppo, who had paid the sweetmeats a grudging compliment, produced some ground spice from his private stores and told Giovanni to use that.

"Vanni," said Mary laughing as she passed through the kitchen on the morning of the great day, "do you always scour your dishes as carefully as this?" The boy looked up from the copper plate which he was polishing. Mary thought he looked rather somber for a cook who had just been promoted to the office of baker to the King.

"Things cannot be too clean," he said briefly. "Mistress Mary, will you ask Master Tomaso for some of the spice that he gave to your mother, for me?"

Mary's blue eyes opened. Surely a court cook like Beppo ought to have all the spice needed for a simple cake like this. However, she brought Giovanni a packet of the fragrant stuff an hour later, and found Beppo fuming because the work was delayed. The basket of selected eggs had been broken, the melted butter had been spilled, and the cakes were not yet ready for the oven. Giovanni silently and deftly finished beating his pastry, added the spice, rolled out the dough, began the baking. When the cakes came out of the oven, done to a turn, and with a most alluring smell, he stood over them as they cooled and packed them carefully with his own hands into a basket. Mary Lavender came through the kitchen just as the last layer was put in.

"Those are beautiful cakes, Vanni," she said kindly. "I am sure they are fit for the King. Did you use the spice I gave you?"

Giovanni's heart gave a thump. He had not reckoned on the fact that simple Mary had grown up where there was no need of hiding a plain truth, and now Beppo would know. The cook turned on him.

"What? What?" he cried. "You did not use my spices? You take them and do not use them?"

Mary began to feel frightened. The cook's black eyes were flashing and his mustache bristling with excitement, until he looked like the cross cat on the border of the Queen's book of fables. But Giovanni was standing his ground.

"I used good spice," he said firmly. "Try and see."

He held out one of the cakes to Beppo, who dashed it furiously to the ground.

"Where are my spices?" he shrieked. "You meant to steal them?" He dashed at the lad and seized him as if to search for the spices. Giovanni shook in his grasp like a rat in the jaws of a terrier, but he did not cringe.

"I sent that packet of spice to Master Tomaso an hour ago," he gasped defiantly, "asking him if it was wholesome to use in the kitchen--and here he is now."

At sight of the old physician standing calm as a judge in the doorway, Beppo bolted through the other door, seized a horse that stood in the courtyard and was gone before the astonished servants got their breath.

"What is all this?" inquired Tomaso. "I came to warn that man that the packet of spice which you sent is poison. Where did you get it?"

"The cook bought it of a peddler and gave it to Vanni," answered Mary, scared but truthful. "You all heard him say that he did," she added to the bystanders. "He told Vanni to use it in these cakes, but Vanni used the spice you gave us."

"I have seen that peddler before," gasped Giovanni. "He tried to bribe me to take the Queen a letter and a packet, and I would not. I put some of the spice in honey, and the flies that ate of it died. Then I sent it to you."

"It was a subtle device," said Tomaso slowly. "The spice would disguise the flavor. Every one knew that Giovanni was to make the cakes, and that the Queen will not come to the banquet. When it is served do you send each sauce to me for testing. We will have no poison in the King's dish."

The plot, as Tomaso guessed, had not been born of the jealousy of a cook, but of subtler brains beyond the seas. The Queen might well have been held responsible if the poison had worked. But when she heard of it she wept.

"I have not been loyal," she flung out, in tearful defiance, "but I would not have done that--never that!"

A SONG OF BIRDS AND BEASTS

I gaed awa' to Holyrood and there I built a kirk, And a' the birds of a' the air they helpit me to work. The whaup wi' her lang bill she dug up the stane, The dove wi' her short bill she brought it hame, The pyet was a wily bird and raised up the wa', The corby was a silly bird and she gar'd it fa', And bye cam' auld Tod Lowrie and skelpit them a'!

I gaed and I gaed and I cam' to London town, And a' the beasts of a' the earth were met to pull it down. The cock wi' his loud voice he raised a fearfu' din, The dragon he was dumb, but he creepit slyly in, The ramping tramping unicorn he clattered at the wa', The bear he growled and grumbled and scrabbled wi' his claw, Till bye cam' auld Tod Lowrie and dang them a'!

The leopard and the wolf they were fechtin' tooth and nail, The bear wad be a lion but he couldna raise a tail, The geese they heard the brattle and yammered loud and lang, The corby flyin' owre them he made his ain sang. The lion chased the unicorn by holt and by glen, Tod Lowrie met the hounds and he bade them come ben-- But the auld red rascal had twa holes tae his den!

The wolf lap in the fold and made havoc wi' the flock, The corby cleaned the banes in his howf on the rock, The weasel sacked the warren but he couldna grow fat, The cattie met a pullet and they never found that. They made a wicker boothie and they tethered there a goose, And owre the wee bit lintel they hung a braided noose,-- But auld Tod Lowrie he sat in his ain hoose!

NOTE: There is a pun in the third verse, as "tail" is an old word for a retinue or following. Albert the Bear was margrave of Brandenburg, the leopard was the emblem of Anjou, and the wolf in medieval fables stands for the feudal baron. The unicorn was the legendary beast of Scotland, and the dragon that of Wales. The cock stands for France. Henry II. is satirized as the bold and cunning fox, Tod Lowrie. The allusion to the trap in the last three lines is to the offer of the throne of the Holy Roman Empire to the English monarch, during a time of general international hostility and disorder.

XIII

A DYKE IN THE DANELAW

HOW DAVID LE SAUMOND CHANGED THE COURSE OF AN ANCIENT NUISANCE

Farmer Appleby was in what he called a fidget. He did not look nervous, and was not. But the word, along with several others he sometimes used, had come down to him from Scandinavian forefathers. The very name with its ending "by" showed that his farm was a part of the Danelaw.

Along the coast, and in the part of England fronting the North Sea, Danish invaders had imposed their own laws and customs on the country, and were strong enough to hold their own even in the face of a Saxon King. It was only a few years since the Danegeld, the tax collected from all England to ward off the raids of Danish sea-rovers, had been abolished. But Ralph Appleby was as good an Englishman as any.

Little by little the Danelaw was yielding to the common law of England, but that did not worry an Appleby. He did not trouble the law courts, nor did they molest him. The cause of his fidget was a certain law of nature by which water seeks the shortest way down. One side of his farm lay along the river. Like most of the Danish, Norse, Icelandic or Swedish colonists, his long-ago ancestor had settled on a little river in a marsh. First he made camp on an island; then he built a house on the higher bank. Then the channel on the near side of the island filled up, and he planted the rich soil that the river had brought with orchards, and pastured fat cattle in the meadows. Three hundred years later the Applebys owned one of the most prosperous farms in the neighborhood.

Now and then, however, the river remembered that it had a claim on that land. The soil, all bound and matted with tough tree-roots and quitch-grass, could not be washed away, but the waters took their toll in produce. The year before the orchards had been flooded and two-thirds of the crop floated off. A day or two later, when the flood subsided, the apples were left to fatten Farmer Kettering's hogs, rooting about on the next farm. Hob Kettering's stubborn little Saxon face was all a-grin when he met Barty Appleby and told of it. It speaks well for the friendship of the two boys that there was not a fight on the spot.

That was not all. The stone dyke between the river and the lowlands had been undermined by the tearing current, and must be rebuilt, and there were no stone-masons in the neighborhood. Each farmer did his own repairing as well as he could. The houses were of timber, plaster, some brick and a little rude masonry. There were not enough good masons in the country to supply the demand, and even in building castles and cathedrals the stone was sometimes brought, ready cut, from France. In some parts of England the people used stone from old Roman walls, or built on old foundations, but in Roman times this farm had been under water in the marsh. The building of Lincoln Cathedral meant a procession of stone-barges going up the river loaded with stone for the walls, quarried in Portland or in France. When landed it was carried up the steep hill to the site of the building, beyond reach of floods that might sap foundations. It was slow work building cathedrals in marsh lands.

The farmer was out in his boat now, poling up and down along the face of the crumbling wall, trying to figure on the amount of stone that would be needed. He never picked a stone out of his fields that was not thrown on a heap for possible wall-building, but most of them were small. It would take several loads to replace what the river had stolen--and then the whole thing might sink into the mud in a year or two.

"Hech, master!" said a voice overhead. "Are ye wantin' a stone-mason just now?"

Ralph Appleby looked up. On the little bridge, peering down, was a freckled, high-cheek-boned man with eyes as blue as his own, and with a staff in one big, hard-muscled hand. He wore a rough, shabby cloak of ancient fashion and had a bundle on his shoulder.

"I should say I be," said the surprised farmer. "Be you wanting the job?"

The stranger was evidently a Scot, from his speech, and Scots were not popular in England then. Still, if he could build a wall he was worth day's wages. "What's yer name?" Appleby added.

"Just David," was the answer. "I'm frae Dunedin. There's muckle stone work there."

"I make my guess they've better stuff for building than that pile o' pebbles," muttered the farmer, leaping ashore and kicking with his foot the heap of stone on the bank. "I've built that wall over again three times, now."

The newcomer grinned, not doubtfully but confidently, as if he knew exactly what the trouble was. "We'll mend all that," he said, striding down to peer along the water-course. The wriggling stream looked harmless enough now.

"You've been in England some time?" queried Appleby.

"Aye," said David. "I learned my trade overseas and then I came to the Minster, but I didna stay long. Me and the master mason couldna make our ideas fit."

Barty, sorting over the stones, gazed awestruck at the stranger. Such independence was unheard-of.

"What seemed to be the hitch?" asked the farmer coolly.

"He was too fond o' making rubble serve for buildin' stone," said David. "Then he'd face it with Portland ashlars to deceive the passer-by."

"Ye'll have no cause to worry over that here," said Ralph Appleby dryly. "I'm not using ashlars or whatever ye call them, in my orchard wall. Good masonry will do."

"Ashlar means a building stone cut and dressed," explained David. "I went along that wall of yours before you came. If you make a culvert up stream with a stone-arched bridge in place of the ford yonder, ye'll divert the course of the waters from your land."

"If I put a bridge over the Wash, I could make a weir to catch salmon," said the startled farmer. "I've no cut stone for arches."

"We'll use good mortar and plenty of it, that's all," said David. "I'll show ye."

The things that David accomplished with rubble, or miscellaneous scrap-stone, seemed like magic to Barty. He trotted about at the heels of the mason, got very tired and delightfully dirty, asked numberless questions, which were always answered, and considered David the most interesting man he had ever met. David solved the building-stone problem by concocting mortar after a recipe of his own and using plenty of it between selected stones. Sometimes there seemed to be almost as much mortar as there was stone, but the wedge-shaped pieces were so fitted that the greater the pressure on the arch the firmer it would be. Laborers were set to work digging a channel to let the stream through this gully under the arches, and it seemed glad to go.

"When I'm a man, David," announced Barty, lying over the bridge-rail on his stomach and looking down at the waters that tore through the new channel, "I shall be a mason just like you. The river can't get our apples now, can it?"

David grinned. "Water never runs up hill," he said. "And it will run down hill if it takes a thousand years. You learn that first, if you want to be a mason, lad."

"But everybody knows that," Barty protested.

"Two and two mak' four, but if you and me had twa aipples each, and I ate one o' mine, and pit the ither with yours to mak' fower and you didna find it out it wad be a sign ye didna know numbers," retorted David, growing more and more Scotch as he explained. "And when I see a mason lay twa-three stones to twa-three mair and fill in the core wi' rubble I ken he doesna reckon on the water seeping in."

"But you've put rubble in those arches, David," said Barty, using his eyes to help his argument.

"Spandrel, spandrel, ye loon," grunted David. "Ye'll no learn to be a mason if ye canna mind the names o' things. The space between the arch and the beam's filled wi' rubble and good mortar, but the weight doesna rest on that--it's mostly on the arches where we used the best of our stanes. And there's no great travel ower the brig forbye. It's different with a cathedral like yon. Ye canna build siccan a mighty wall wi' mortar alone. The water's aye searchin' for a place to enter. When the rocks freeze under the foundations they crumble where the water turns to ice i' the seams. When the rains come the water'll creep in if we dinna make a place for it to rin awa' doon the wa'. That's why we carve the little drip-channels longways of the arches, ye see. A wall's no better than the weakest stane in it, lad, and when you've built her you guard her day and night, summer and winter, frost, fire and flood, if you want her to last. And a Minster like York or Lincoln--the sound o' the hammer about her walls winna cease till Judgment Day."

Barty looked rather solemnly at the little, solid, stone-arched bridge, and the stone-walled culvert. While it was a-building David had explained that if the stream overflowed here it would be over the reedy meadows near the river, which would be none the worse for a soaking. The orchards and farm lands were safe. The work that they had done seemed to link itself in the boy's mind to cathedral towers and fortress-castles and the dykes of Flanders of which David had told.

The loose stone from the ruined wall was used to finish a wall in a new place, across the corner of the land by which the river still flowed. This would make a wharf for the boats.

"This mortar o' yours might ha' balked the Flood o' Noah, belike," said Farmer Appleby, when they were mixing the last lot.

"I wasna there, and I canna say," said David. "But there's a way to lay the stones that's worth knowing for a job like this. Let's see if ye ken your lesson, young chap."

David's amusement at Barty's intense interest in the work had changed to genuine liking. The boy showed a judgment in what he did, which pleased the mason. He had always built walls and dams with the stones he gathered when his father set him at work. His favorite playground was the stone-heap. Now he laid selected stones so deftly and skillfully that the tiny wall he was raising was almost as firm as if mortar had been used.

"You lay the stones in layers or courses," he explained, "the stretcher stones go lengthwise of the wall and the head-stones with the end on the face of the wall, and you lay first one and then the other, 'cordin' as you want them. When the big stones and the little ones are fitted so that the top of the layer is pretty level it's coursed rubble, and that's better than just building anyhow."

"What wey is it better?" interposed David.

Barty pondered. "It looks better anyhow. And then, if you want to put cut stone, or beams, on top, you're all ready. Besides, it takes some practice to lay a wall that way, and you might as well be practicing all you can."

The two men chuckled. A part of this, of course, Farmer Appleby already knew, but he had never explained to Barty.

The boy went on. "The stones ought to be fitted so that the face of the wall is laid to a true line. If you slope it a little it's stronger, because that makes it wider at the bottom. But if you slope it too much the water won't run off and the snow will lie. If you've got any big stones put them where they will do the most good, 'cause you want the wall to be strong everywhere. A bigger stone that is pretty square, like this, can be a bond stone, and if you use one here and there it holds the wall together. David says the English gener'lly build a stone wall with a row of headers and then a row of stretchers, but in Flanders they lay a header and then a stretcher in every row."

"How many loads of stone will it take for this wall?" asked David. Barty hesitated, measured with his eye, and then made a guess. "How much mortar?" He guessed again. The estimate was so near Farmer Appleby's own figures that he was betrayed into a whistle of surprise.

"He's gey canny for a lad," said David, grinning. "He's near as wise as me. We've been at that game for a month."

"Never lat on, but aye lat owre, Twa and twa they aye mak' fowre."

Barty quoted a rhyme from David.

"I reckon you've earned over and above your pay," said Farmer Appleby. He foresaw the usefulness of all this lore when Barty was a little older. The boy could direct a gang of heavy-handed laborers nearly as well as he could.

"Any mason that's worth his salt will dae that," said David, unconcernedly.