Chapter 10
“Oh, he can be trusted,” said Giovanni, with a glance at the guide. “I have been here two days. This was Archiater's private workshop. The mountain people think it is haunted, so that it is a good place to hide. I was not pleased when I found that your clerk had taken it for his own. I lay upon the roof for two hours yesterday watching him. Having an errand at Rheims I thought I would come along and see what had happened to you.”
Alan had as yet no right to tell the most important thing that had happened. “I have not been here before,” he said. “Simon has put me off, and he does not know I am here now.”
“Has he shown you his findings? He took a bag away with him--a heavy one.”
“Only some minerals which are worth more than he thinks. I have been working with them more or less. He is mightily curious about the action of the furnace. I make a guess he is going to try to test the ore himself.”
“There is a donkey-load of it here,” said Giovanni, tilting with his foot a stone in the floor. Under it gleamed a mass of irregular shining fragments and yellow lumps of stone. Alan picked up one and scraped it, struck it with a hammer, rubbed it across a chip of wood, “Guy was right,” he said, “it is not gold. I can prove that to the fellow if he gives me a chance.”
“What shall you do?”
“I am not sure. Are you safe here?”
“So long as they do not know I am here. Master Gay and his son are at Rheims, and I am to join them. If you will come to-morrow or the day after we can go together. I will show you a short way over the mountains that Cimarron found when we were here. Stefano knows of my coming, and I shall see him to-night.”
Alan had been thinking. “Vanni, I will do this. I will go with you to-morrow if I can, but if I do not meet you here before noon you will know that I must stay on. Will that answer?”
“I suppose it must. I dislike leaving you here with a twice-proved rascal like this Simon. You do not know what he may do.”
“I should like to thrash him,” said Alan. “He is planning to get the whole of this gold, as he thinks it, for himself.”
“Of course he is. But what good would it do to beat him? You cannot thrash the inside of him, can you?”
Alan laughed, and strode off to the place where the horses were tethered. Before returning to his lodgings he went to see Stefano.
“Well,” said the jester when he had heard all, “what shall you do?”
Alan hesitated. “So far as my errand is concerned,” he answered, “I might join Giovanni to-morrow. We had all along suspected that the ore was only fool's gold. But--”
“I know,” nodded the jester. “And for that other reason, I am going to tell you something. I have known for some time that Josian is not safe in my care. It has never been over-safe, this arrangement, but while she was a child the risk was not so great. Also, having the Emperor's favor, I could do more for her than any one else could--then.
“I have thought for some days that the house was watched, and I do not like that. Some one may have got wind of her being here, or may be tempted by the reports of my hoard of gold. It is not hidden here, but they may think it is. There is danger in the air. I can smell it.
“I have trusted no man as I am trusting you now. I have been looking for some means of sending her away to Tomaso, her father's old friend, but the thing has been most difficult to arrange. I dare not wait longer. Will you take her away, with her nurse Maddalena, and protect her as if she were your sister? You will have the aid of Giovanni, though he has never known this secret.”
Alan's eyes met those of the old man eagerly and frankly. “Master Stefano,” he answered, “I will guard her with my life. But can she be ready to go at once?”
Stefano nodded. “The preparations that remain to be made will take no more than an hour or two. She is a good traveler. My servant will secure horses for you and meet you just before sunrise, near the gate. Maddalena will come there with her, and you must not ride so fast as to arouse curiosity. I have to play the buffoon at a banquet to-night, and there is but little time, therefore--addio!”
Alan walked home slowly, pondering on all he had seen and heard that day. Coming within sight of his lodgings, he found the street full of people gazing at the windows, out of which a thick smoke was pouring.
“What has happened here?” he asked of a little inn-keeper from Boulogne, with whom he had some acquaintance.
“They say it is the devil,” the other replied with a shrug. “Mortally anxious to see him they seem to be.”
Alan shouldered his way through the crowd and ran up the stairs. Half way up he met Simon reeling down, and caught him by the arm. “What have you been about?” he asked sternly.
“The gold is bew-witched!” bubbled Simon, arms waving and eyes rolling in terrified despair. “It is changed in the crucible! It is the work of Satan!”
“Nonsense!” said Alan roughly. “You have been roasting the wrong ore. I could have told you it was not true gold. Be quiet, or we shall be driven out of Goslar.”
Simon was too distracted to heed, and Alan went hastily up to the rooms, where he found some copper pyrites in process of oxidation, giving forth volumes of strangling sulphur smoke. After quenching the fire and doing what he could to purify the air he gathered his belongings together and left the house, extremely annoyed. He could see suspicion and even threatening in the look of the crowd.
He went into the alley where Martin Bouvin's little inn was and asked shelter for the night.
“I go away to-morrow,” he said, “and there is no returning to that place for hours to come.”
“H'm!” said the inn-keeper. “What really happened?”
Alan explained. “My faith,” commented Bouvin, decanting some wine into his guest's cup, “you are well rid of that fellow. Do you know that he has been spying on you for a week? He dared not follow you, but he tried to hire some one else to do it--that I know.”
It was already late. Alan dozed off, despite his uneasiness, for he had had a tiring day. Suddenly he awoke and sat bolt upright. There was a commotion in the street. The innkeeper was peeping out through a hole in the solid shutters. “It is the clerk again,” he said. “He is haranguing the people.”
Alan slipped out and came up on the outskirts of the crowd. He caught the words “fool's gold” in Simon's shrill voice, and then the crowd began to mutter, “Die Hexe! Die Hexe!”
Alan waited to hear no more. He knew that this meant that sinister thing, a witch-hunt. If Simon had connected Stefano's house and his reputed hoard of gold with his disastrous experiment, and possibly suspected Josian's existence there, it was a time for quick thought and bold action. He raced down the street leading to the rear of the house, vaulted the wall and found old Maddalena unlocking the small side door.
“Get her away,” he said in a low voice, “at once--there is danger!”
The old woman pointed up the stairs, and Alan went leaping over them to find the girl hooded and cloaked for the journey in the small room, now bare and cold as the moonlight. Her soft light steps kept pace with his to the garden gate; he hurried her and Maddalena out, bidding them walk away quietly. Then he turned back, heaped a pile of straw and rubbish under the stairs, and flung the contents of a lighted charcoal brazier on it. As the fire blazed up he heard the snarl of the mob coming down the street which passed the front entrance. He could hear words in the incoherent shouting--“Die Hexe! Die Hexe! Brennen--brennen!”
As he shut the gate and slipped away he found Martin Bouvin keeping pace with him, “Do you know what has happened?” the little man asked. “The guests at the Prince's banquet came late into the street and found Simon raving about his gold. They questioned him, and he told them of a mysterious house where an old witch dwelt and changed into a young girl at sunset. The Prince knew the house. He asked Master Stefano what it meant. When he got no answer but a jest he struck Stefano down and rode over him. He is dead. Then the people caught up the cry and began to talk of burning the witch. They are all out there now, and the Prince is trying to make his guard go in after the gold. That was a good thought of yours, setting fire to the house: they will stay to watch it. I will go with you if I may, Master. If Stefano is gone Goslar is no good place for me!”
Alan remembered now that the jester had spoken in terms of friendship of Martin Bouvin. In any case they were now nearing the gate where the man stood waiting with the horses. Josian and Maddalena were already mounted. As the servant held Alan's stirrup the Englishman looked down and saw under the hood the black piercing eyes and thin face of Giovanni.
“It is all right,” whispered the Milanese with a glance at Bouvin. “He can ride the pack-horse. His only reason for staying here was Stefano's business.”
The sleepy guard let them out without a look, and they rode on at a good pace toward the mountains. Josian had not said one word.
“Are you afraid, Princess?” Alan asked presently.
She shook her head. When she heard the story of the jester's death she was less shaken than Alan had feared. “He told me last night that he could not live long,” she said sadly. “I knew that I should never see him again in this world.”
At last they halted for an hour beside a little spring. Josian looked back at the gray pointed roofs and towers of Goslar. “Al-an,” she said, “what was that light in the sky?”
“It was your tower,” Alan answered. “No one will ever live there again, since you cannot.”
Alan marveled at Josian's self-possession during the rough journey. She obeyed orders like a child, showed no fear in the most perilous passes, and fared as roughly as the others did, with quiet endurance. Soon, however, they had crossed the frontier and met the party of travelers in whose company were the London merchant and his wife and son.
Then began days and weeks of travel, the like of which Alan had not known. He had gone from one place to another in such company as offered, many a time, but here were folk who knew every road and every inn, beguiled the hours with songs and jests and stories, and made the time pass like a holiday. He found that his knowledge of the out-of-door world interested Josian more than the ballads and tales of the others. He often rode at her side for an hour or more, pointing out to her the secret quick life of woodland and meadow, and finding perhaps that she already knew the bird, squirrel, marmot or hare, by another name. “London is well enough,” he said one day, “but 'tis not for me. I could never live grubbing in the dark there like a mouldiwarp.”
Josian's delicate brows drew together. “Mouldi--what strange beast is that, Al-an?” and Alan laughed and explained that it was a mole.
It was at noon of one of the long fragrant days of early summer, while the travelers rested in the forest, that Josian spoke of the jester once more. In the green stillness of the deep woods, birds singing and shy delicate blossoms gemming the moss, the fierce and savage past was like a dream.
“Father Stephen gave me a packet that last night,” she said. “He gave Giovanni gold for the journey, but this parcel he said I must carry myself and show to you when I thought fit. I wonder what it can be?”
Alan took the packet and turned it over. It was sealed with a device of Greek letters.
“That is my father's signet,” the girl added. “Here is his ring,” and she drew from under her bodice a man's ring, hung on a slender gold chain, the stone a great emerald carved with the Greek “AEI”--“Always.” Alan cut the cord of the packet and handed it to her. “It is not for me to open it,” he said.
She unfolded, tenderly and reverently, the wrappings of parchment and oiled silk, and disclosed a compact manuscript closely written on the thinnest leaves, in a firm clear hand. Lifting two or three of the pages she read eagerly and then looked up, her eyes alight with wondering joy.
“Here are all the most precious of his writings, Al-an!” she cried, “the secrets that were in all the books that were lost--written clearly so that I myself can read them! Oh, it is like having him come back to speak to us--and Father Stephen, too--here by ourselves in the forest! And now you will know all the secrets of his work, for they are written here.”
Alan's face had gone whiter than the parchment. Here indeed was the treasure he had come to seek. And it was Josian's free gift.
But that was not all. “Josian,” he said, not putting out his hand even to touch the precious parcel, “you must not give away these manuscripts so lightly. They are worth much gold, child--they are a rich dowry for you. You must wait until you see Tomaso the physician, and he will tell you what is best to do with them.”
She shook her head. “Oh, n-o,” she said. “Father Stephen said that you would make good use of them, and had earned them--but I think he knew quite well what you would say. Perhaps some day you will feel differently.”
Dame Cicely of the Abbey Farm welcomed Josian in due time as a daughter. When she and Alan had been married about three months Josian was surveying a panel of just-completed embroidery in which all the colors in exquisite proportion blended in a gold-green jeweled arabesque. Alan came up behind her and caught the sunlight through it. He asked to borrow it, and reproduced the design in painted glass. That was the first window which he made for York Minster.
Among the formulae in the scripts which were Josian's dowry were several for stained glass and the making of colors to be used therein. By means of one of these it became possible to make glass of wonderful rich hues, through which the light came white, as if no glass were there. This is one of the secrets known to the workers of the Middle Ages and now lost; but in old windows there still remain fragments of the glass.
If to-day certain precious bits of glass, ruby-red, emerald-green, sapphire-blue, topaz-yellow, set in the windows of old cathedrals, could speak, they would say proudly that they are the work of Alan of York and Josian, the daughter of Archiater, the philosopher.
NEW ALTARS
I Publius Curtius, these many years dwelling Among these barbarians, a foe and a prefect, To Those whom they worship unreasoning, Gods of the Land, I raise this new altar.
To Thee whom the wild hares in silence foregathering Worship with ears erect in the moonlight, (And vanish at sound of a footstep approaching) God of the Downs, I pour this libation.
To Thee whom the trout in the rainbow foam drifting Behold in the sunlight through wet leafage sifting (And vanish like shadows of clouds in the water) God of the Streams, I pay this my tribute.
To Thee whom the skylark, in rapture ascending Adores in his dithyramb perfect, unending, (And vanishes in the high heaven still singing) God of the Mist, I utter this prayer.
To Ye whom my children, born here in my mansion, Reverence beyond the gods of their fathers, And love as they love their own mother, Gods of the Land, I build ye this temple!
XII
COLD HARBOR
Wilfrid, the potter, stood with his wife and children, looking at what was left of a little old cottage. Fire had left it a heap of ashes and half-burned timbers and rubbish. The red roof-tiles glowed like embers of dead centuries.
“I'd never ha' turned the old man out,” he said pensively, “but now he's gone and the cot's gone too, we'll see what's under this end of Cold Harbor.”
Edwitha, his wife, looked up, her eyes sparkling through quick tears.
“I was hoping you'd say that, Wilfrid,” she said with eager wistfulness. “I've longed so to know--but he'd lived there since our fathers and mothers were children. 'Twould ha' been like taking the soul out of his body to drive him away.”
She was a slender, pretty creature, almost as childlike in her way of speaking as if she had been no older than Dorothea or Alfred. The children listened with pleased excitement commingled with a certain awe. Gaffer Bartram had seemed as much a part of their lives as the sun or the wind or the old pollard willow. When he was strong enough he taught Alfred to snare rabbits and catch moles; when rheumatism crippled him he sat by the door making baskets and telling Dorothy rhymes and tales of seventy years ago. Then first his old gray cat Susan had disappeared, after that the old man himself, and last the cottage caught fire and burned. And father was actually giving orders to the men to dig up the garden and see what lay under it.
There is a mysterious immovable setness about the Sussex Downs. What is there seems to have been there always. The oldest man cannot say when the great white hollows were first scooped out of the chalk, or the dewponds made on the heights. Ever since there were people in Sussex--whether it is five thousand years ago or fifteen thousand--the short wind-swept turf has been grazed by woolly flocks. Before ever a Norman castle held a vantage-height the tansy grew dark and rank in cottage gardens and the children went gathering woodruff and speedwell and the elfin gold of “little socks and shoes.” Any change, good or bad, is a loss to some one--the land is so full of the life of the past.
Wilfrid and Edwitha well understood this, though they would never have put it into fine phrases. They could not have said it except to each other, and for that there was no need of speech. Because of it they had left the old man at peace in his cottage, and even after he was dead they put off the uncovering of what might lie under the soil of his garden and his orchard.
Wilfrid's pottery had grown up in the last ten years near a claybank, not far from the boundary between his father's land and Edwitha's old home. An irregular terrace broke the slope above it, and here the tilled land had come to an end at one point because the plows came hard against a buried Roman wall. Not being able to break up the solid masonry of Roman builders done a thousand years before, Wilfrid's father had cleared away the soil, roofed over the ruin which he found, and used it to store grain. This was Cold Harbor.
As Wilfrid's pottery prospered he found another use for the building. There was no tavern thereabouts, and when the Saxon abbey five or six miles away could house no more guests, or his workmen could not all find lodging in the neighborhood, it was possible to shelter there. The roof was weather-tight, a wood fire could be built on the stone hearth, and with fresh straw from Borstall Farm for beds, provisions from the same source, and their own cloaks for covering, travelers found themselves fairly comfortable.
Like others of its kind the building came to be known as “Cold Harbor,” a “herbergage” or lodging, without food or heat being provided. Sometimes an enterprising innkeeper would take possession of such a place after a time and furnish it as an inn.
At this very time, unknown to Wilfrid, some of his friends were discussing such a possibility as they rode up from Dover. Gilbert Gay the merchant, his wife Thomasyn and his son Nicholas were returning from France, and in their company were Alan of York and Josian his wife, Guy Bouverel the goldsmith, and others. West of Canterbury they came up with a stout bright-eyed little man who looked as if he had fed well all his life, and was called Martin Bouvin.
“What luck, Martin?” asked Master Gay. The little man spread his hands in a gesture of comic despair. All the tavern-sites seemed to be held by some religious house that owned the land, or some nobleman who allowed the innkeeper to use his device as a sign.
“There ought to be an inn there in Sussex where Wilfrid's pottery is,” observed the goldsmith. “When I halt there to see Wilfrid I find nine times out of ten that I must e'en quarter myself on him. D'ye remember that old place he calls Cold Harbor? That would be a proper house for a tavern.”
“It is not large enough,” objected the merchant. “Any tavern worth the name would need more room than that within a twelvemonth. Still, other buildings could be added. If you and the potter can come to an agreement, Bouvin, I will aid you in fitting up the building and you may repay me in dinners. There's not a cook this side Rouen who can match your chestnut soup.”
“Made with the yolk of an egg and a little wine of Xeres?” asked Guy with interest. “Giovanni made it so for us once.”
The merchant waved a protesting hand. “No, no, no, no--lemon, man, lemon, with white stock, pepper, salt, a little parsley. Sherry is an excellent drink, but not in chestnut soup, I pray you.”
“What matters it,” asked Alan innocently, “so the food is wholesome and pleasant?
“That is what might be expected of you, you Northern barbarian,” laughed Guy. “Where did you get your cunning, Martin?”
The little man's beady black eyes twinkled knowingly. “A true cook, Master Bouverel, takes all good things where he finds them. I make bouillabaisse for those who like it, but--between you and me--Norman matelote of fish is just as good. I cook pigeon broth as they do in Boulogne, I make black bean soup as they do in Spain. I was born in Boulogne, but I have cooked in many other places--in Avignon, where they say the angels taught them how to cook--Messina, Paris, Genoa, all over Aquitaine with the routiers. Perigueux is a very agreeable place--you know the truffles there? I cook sometimes cutlets of lamb and veal in a casserole with truffles, mushrooms, bacon in strips, a lemon sliced, shallots, some chicken stock, and herbs--yes, that is very good. Oh, I can cook for French, Norman, Gascon, Spanish, Lombard--any people. Only in Goslar. That was one horreeble place, Goslar! The people eat pork and cabbage, pork and cabbage, and black bread--chut!” He made a grimace at the memory.
“I fear you will find some of that sort among our English travelers,” said Gilbert Gay amusedly. “Not all of them will appreciate--what was that you gave us in Paris? epigrammes of lamb, the cutlets dipped in chicken stock and fried. Swine are still among our chief domestic animals.”
“Oh, as to that,” said the chef quickly, “I am not too proud to cook for people who like simple things--meat broiled and roasted with plain bread. And do you know that one must be a very fine cook to do such work well? When I am alone, which is not often, I prepare for myself fresh vegetables, broil a fish that has not forgotten the water,--and with a roll and a little fruit, that is my dinner. The soteltes at kings' tables, all colored sugar and pastry and isinglass--they are only good for people who can eat peacock, and those are very few. Do you know, Master Gay, what is the great secret of my art? To know what is good, and not spoil it.”
“I foresee,” laughed the merchant, “that we shall all be making excuses to come down from London if you stay in Sussex with your saucepans. But hey! there are the towers of the abbey already, and it is not yet mid-afternoon. Let us ride on to see Wilfrid and find out whether he approves of our fine plan.”
While this discussion of the noble art of cookery was going on miles away, Wilfrid and Edwitha, with no thought of inns, were watching the laborers digging where Wilfrid thought the rest of the building ought to be. In his travels he had seen other Roman houses better preserved than this, and by inquiring of learned men had gained some idea of Roman civilization. He had been told that Roman officials in England often built villas in places rather like this terrace, and since the building already unearthed was the end of the walls in one direction, the rest of the villa might be found under the cottage of old Bartram and his orchard, garden and cow-byre.