Chapter 11
No other house in the neighborhood was as old as that cottage. It was built of beams put together without nails and filled in with a rude wattle-work plastered thickly with coat after coat of mud. Instead of being thatched like most houses of its kind the roof had been covered with fine red tiles,--possibly Roman work. It seemed that the soil must have washed in over the ruins of the Roman building so very long ago that there had been time for trees to grow above it.
Thus Wilfrid reasoned. As his laborers dug and moiled and sweated under the hot clear sun, he watched with lively interest for whatever they might turn up. It is to be feared that Edwitha's maids were less carefully looked after than usual after the work began, and the children spent every minute they could in following their mother or their father about to see what was going to happen.
There was another reason besides curiosity for keeping watch of the work. If any pottery should be discovered, Wilfrid did not wish to have it broken by a careless mattock.
Then Dorothy came running from the house to find her mother and father bending over a newly-unearthed Roman wall. “Father!” she cried, “a man is come to see you!”
“Oh!” said Wilfrid, not very eagerly. He brushed some of the earth from his clothes with a handful of weeds and went toward the gate, where a horseman sat awaiting him. As he came nearer the man dismounted and came toward him with outstretched hand.
“Alan!” cried the potter joyfully. “I heard you were abroad. Come in, and I'll send for Edwitha.”
“Not so fast,” said his guest. “I am but a harbinger. Guy Bouverel and Master Gay the merchant with his wife and son, and some others, are coming along. We'll stay at the Abbey, but we rode on to see you first. I've my wife with me, Wilfrid.”
“That's news indeed,” said the potter cordially. “And who may she be? Some foreign damsel you met in your pilgrimage?”
“That's one way of saying it,” answered Alan smiling. “You shall see her and judge for yourself. How's all here?”
Wilfrid smiled rather sheepishly. “You and your wife must come and stay with us,” he insisted. “We'll make you welcome, spite of being a bit upset. Edwitha has been taking holiday. We're digging up the farm to see what's at the other end of Cold Harbor, lad.”
“Make no ado about us,” Alan protested. “It's partly about Cold Harbor that we came--but here they all are, upon my life!”
A merry company of travelers rode up the lane, and as they dismounted Edwitha came over the little footpath across the field, with the children clinging to her hands--a little embarrassed to find so many folk arriving and she not there. The boy scampered up to his father piping loudly, “Father, come you quick--we've found a picture in the ground!”
“What's all this?” asked Master Gay. And after Wilfrid's explanation nothing would do but that they all should go immediately to see what had come to light. When they beheld it the younger men could not keep from taking a hand themselves. With brooms of twigs, and potsherds, and water from the well in Cold Harbor, they industriously swept and scraped and washed the pavement which the men had now partly uncovered.
It was a mosaic floor of tiny blocks of red, black, yellow, white, brown, cream and slate-blue, set in cement so strong that not an inch of the fine even surface had warped. It was not a large pavement, and might have been the floor of a small dining or sitting-room so placed as to command a view of the valley. A part of one wall remained. It had been plastered and then covered with a finer plaster which was frescoed with a row of painted pillars against the deep marvelous red of Pompeii. The design of the floor was not at first clear. The edge was decorated with a conventional pattern in gray and white. The corners were cut off by diagonal lines making an eight-sided central space. This was outlined by a guilloche, or border of intertwining bands of brilliant colors. Inside this again was a circle divided into alternate square and triangular spaces with still brighter borders, containing each some bird or animal. In the central space was a seated figure playing on a harp, while around him were packed in a close group a lion, a ram, a bull, a goat, a crab, fishes, and other figures. Nobody at first saw what it could be.
“If I mistake not,” said the little stout man, Martin Bouvin, at last, “it is Sir Orpheus playing to the beasts.”
“To be sure!” cried Guy Bouverel. “Do you know books as well as cooking-pots, O man of the oldest profession?”
Martin grinned. “I heard a song about that once,” he answered, “and I have never forgotten it. It was a lucky song--for some folk.”
It was fortunate that at that time of year the sun does not set until after eight o'clock, for no one could have borne to leave that pavement without seeing the whole of it. The children, quite forgotten for once in their lives, grubbed in the piles of earth and found bewitching bronze lion-heads and ornamental knobs and handles, and pictured tiles. At last they all went in to a very late supper. All the guests could be sheltered at Wilfrid's home if the young men were satisfied to lodge in Cold Harbor.
“It is like finding out the people who lived here when the land was young,” said Wilfrid, his eyes very bright.
“And there were also the men who made the dewponds,” mused Master Gay.
“And there were those Druids of whom my father told me,” said Josian wonderingly. “This is like a fairy tale, Al-an. Is York the same?”
“Brother Basil said once that our England is a land of lost kingdoms,” Alan answered her. “I see what he meant.”
Excavation went on during the following days until all the pavements of the old Roman house had been cleared. The two others were larger but not so fine as the first they had uncovered. One was of stone blocks laid in a sort of checkerboard pattern, and the other of mosaic in a conventional pattern of black and gray and brown and red. They found that under these floors there was an open space about two feet high. The tiled floor which was covered with the mosaic was supported by a multitude of dwarf pillars of stone and brick. This space, although they did not know it, was the hypocaust or heating chamber of the colonial Roman house, and had been kept filled with hot air from a furnace. Beams of wood and heaps of tiles indicated that there had been an upper storey of wood. This in fact was the case, the Romans having a strong objection to sleeping on the ground floor.
Now there was no more doubt that Cold Harbor might be made into a well-appointed tavern. With a little masonry to reenforce them the walls would form a base for a half-timbered house roofed with tiles from Wilfrid's pottery. The largest room would be the general guest-room in which the tables would be set for all comers, and those who could not afford better accommodation might sleep there on benches or on the floor. For guests of higher station, especially those who had ladies in their party, private chambers and dining-rooms would be provided. Master Gay intended to furnish a suite for himself and any of his friends who came that way.
“And by the way,” said Guy suddenly, “Cold Harbor will never do for a name. What shall you call the inn, Martin?”
Bouvin snapped his fingers. “I have thought and thought until my head goes to split. I would call it Boulogne Harbor, but there is no picture you could make of that.”
“'Mouth' is the English for harbor,” suggested Wilfrid. “But all the country people would call it 'Bull-and-Mouth.”
Padraig began sketching with a bit of charcoal on the broken wall. “Make it that and I'll paint the sign for ye. 'Bull-and-Mouth'--every hungry man will see the meaning o' that.”
With a dozen strokes he sketched a huge mouth about to swallow a bull. This, done with a fine show of color, became the sign of the tavern. Martin never tired of explaining the pun to those who asked. Even before the guest-rooms were finished, travelers began arriving, drawn by the fame of Martin's savory and succulent dishes. Pilgrims, merchants, knights, squires, showmen, soldiers, minstrels, scholars, sea-captains--they came and came again. Almost every subject in church or state, from Peter's pence to the Third Crusade, from the Constitutions of Clarendon to clipped money, was discussed at Martin's tables, with point and freedom. Cold Harbor entered upon a new life and became part of the foundation of a new empire.
GALLEY SONG
Amber, copper, jet and tin, Anklet, bracelet, necklace, pin,-- That is the way the trades begin Over the pony's back.
Mother-o'-pearl or malachite, Ebony black or ivory white Lade the dromond's rushing flight Over Astarte's track.
Crucifix or mangonel, Steel for sword or bronze for bell,-- That is the way we trafficking sell, Out of the tempest's wrack.
Marble, porcelain, tile or brick, Hemlock, vitriol, arsenic-- Souls or bodies barter quick-- Masters, what d'ye lack?
XIII
THE WISDOM OF THE GALLEYS
It was Nicholas Gay's last night at home. At dawn his father's best ship, the Sainte Spirite, would weigh anchor for the longest eastward voyage she had ever undertaken. His father's brother, Gervase Gaillard of Bordeaux, was going out in charge of the venture. Gilbert Gay, the London merchant, who had altered his name though not his long-sighted French mind in his twenty years of England, thought this an excellent time for his eighteen-year-old son to see the world.
Since Nicholas could remember, he had known the wharves of the Thames and the changeful drama of London Pool. He had been twice to Normandy, but to a lad French by birth, that was hardly a foreign land. Now he was to see countries neither English nor French--some of them not even Christian. Half Spain and all the north coast of Africa were Moslem. Sicily and Sardinia had Saracen traditions. This would be his first sight of the great sea-road from Gibraltar to Byzantium.
During the past three years Gilbert Gay had been often absent, and the boy had taken responsibility of the sort that makes a man. With the keen aquiline French profile he had a skin almost as fair as a girl's, and yellow-brown waving hair. The steady gray eyes and firm lips, however, had nothing girlish about them.
As luck had it these last hours were crowded with visitors. Robert Edrupt, the wool-merchant, and David Saumond, the mason, were taking passage in the Sainte Spirite. Guy Bouverel had a share in her cargo, and came for a word about that and to bid Nicholas good-by. Brother Ambrosius, a solemn-faced portly monk, had letters to send to Rome. Lady Adelicia Giffard came to ask that inquiry be made for her husband, who had gone on pilgrimage more than a year before, and had not been heard of for many months. The poor soul was as nearly distraught as a woman could be. She begged Gervase Gaillard to ask all the pilgrims and merchants he met whether in their travels they had seen or heard of Sir Stephen Giffard, and should any trace of him be found, to send a messenger to her without delay. She was wealthy, and promised liberal reward to any one who could help her in the search. It was her great fear that the knight had been taken prisoner by the Moslems.
“I think that you must have heard of it in that case,” said Gilbert Gay gently, “since these marauders ever demand ransom. I pray you remember, my lady, that there are a thousand chances whereby in these unsettled times a man may be delayed, or his letters fail to reach you. 'Tis not well to brood over vain rumors.”
“I know,” whimpered the poor lady, “but I cannot--I cannot bear that he should be a captive and suffering, and I with hoarded gold that I have no heart to look upon. 'Tis cruel.”
“Holy Church,” observed Brother Ambrosius, “hath always need of our hearts and of our gold, lady. Peace comes to the spirit that hath learned the sweet uses of submission. To dote on the things of the flesh is unpleasing to God.”
“When I was in Spain,” said Edrupt, “I heard a monk preaching a new religion. He urged his hearers to aid in rescuing the captives held in Moslem slavery. 'Tis said he has saved many.”
“Were it not well,” pursued Brother Ambrosius as if he had not heard, “to think upon the glorious opportunity of a captive to bear witness to his faith? We read how angels delivered the apostles from prison, and how Saint Paul in his bonds exhorted and rebuked his people, to the edification of many.”
“True,” commented Gilbert Gay rather dryly, “but we are not all Saint Pauls. And I have never known of God sending angels to do work that He might properly expect of men and women.”
This was a new idea to Brother Ambrosius. Not finding a place in his mind for one just then, he looked meek and said nothing, and presently took his leave.
“Saint Paul was a tentmaker, was he not?” queried Guy Bouverel when the door had closed upon the churchman. “Had he rowed in the galleys I doubt whether we should have had those Epistles.”
Nicholas recalled this conversation the next day, as the sturdy little ship of English oak filled her great sails and went blithely out upon the widening estuary of the Thames. The last of the dear London landmarks faded into the gray soft sky. Soon the sailors would begin to look for Sheerness and the Forelands, Dungeness, Beachy Head. Nicholas leaned on the rail above the dancing morning waters and remembered it all.
There was his mother's sweet pale face under the white coif, her busy fingers completing a last bit of stitchery for him. There was his father's fine, keen, kindly face bent over his account-books and coffers. There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the months to come.
Edrupt came up just as a long Venetian galley went plowing out to sea, the great oars flashing in the sunlight, one rank above another. “They do not have to pray for a fair wind, those Venetians,” Nicholas commented idly.
“That galley's past praying for anything,” Edrupt said grimly. “You may be glad that your men fear neither wind nor seas--nor you. 'Tis an ill thing to sail the seas with those who serve only through fear.”
Nicholas had not thought of it in that way. He knew, of course, that the slaves who rowed the racing galleys were the offscouring of mankind, desperate men, drawn from all nations. It was as much as two men could do to handle one oar, and all must pull in unison as a huge machine. The Venetian dromond was to other merchant-ships as the dromedary to other camels. To make the speed required the rowers must put forth their whole strength, hour after hour, day after day.
Any work which makes men into parts of a machine is not likely to improve them as men. When they have no love for their work and no hope of reward, and do not even speak the same language, the one motive which can be depended upon to keep them going is fear. The whip of the overseer bred festering, burning hatred, but it kept the sweeps from breaking their monotonous unceasing motion. If the voyage were quick, the profits were the greater, and no one cared for anything else.
Thinking of the hard sea-bitten faces of the galley-slaves Nicholas rejoiced that rather than live so the crew of the Sainte Spirite would every man of them choose a clean death at sea.
Some days later it seemed as if they were fated to die so. A Biscay tempest caught them, and from dark to daylight they were buffeted by the giant battledores of wind and sea. Nicholas spent the sleepless hours in lending a hand and cheering the men as he could.
At last they sighted the great Rock of Gibraltar, fifteen hundred feet of it clear against the sky, like the gateway pillar of another world. Between Europe and Africa they passed into the blue Mediterranean,--blue with the salty sparkle beloved of all sea-lovers since Ulysses. Light warm winds, the scent of orange-groves and rose-gardens, a sky only less deep in its azure splendor than the sea itself--it seemed indeed another world.
But the Sainte Spirite had not come whole out of her struggle with the powers of the abyss. Timbers were sadly strained, a mast was gone, every man on board was weary and muscle-sore. And then a Levantine gale drove the crippled merchantman down on the Barbary coast.
The blackness of that storm ended, for Nicholas Gay, in a plunge into the black waters and a glimpse of the high lantern of his father's ship dancing above the tossing foam like a witch-fire, for an instant before she went down. When he came to himself he was lying on hot sand in the sunshine, and Edrupt and David Saumond were bending anxiously over him.
Half the seamen were gone; so was the captain; so was all of the cargo. Gervase Gaillard had been injured by a falling mast and was helpless. The coast was strange to them all, but the old merchant and Edrupt made a guess that it was a part of Morocco somewhere near the town of Fez. Food they had none; water they might find; and the merchants had not lost quite all they had in the wreck. Some gold and jewels they had saved, secured about their persons. These would pay the passage of the company to London--if they had luck.
They were considering what to do next when a body of some twoscore horsemen swept down upon them. The leader might have been either Turk or Frank. He was as dark as a Saracen and wore the chain-mail, scimitar and light helmet of the heathen, but he spoke Levantine rather too well for a Moor, and with a different intonation.
“Who are you?” he asked curtly. Nicholas Gay stood up, not yet quite steady on his feet.
“We are London merchant folk,” he said, “from the wrecked ship Sainte Spirite, whereof my father, Gilbert Gay, was owner. My uncle here is our chief man, but as you see, he is injured and cannot move. If we may get food and lodging until we are able to return to England, we will requite it freely.”
“London,” repeated the soldier. “A parcel of London traders, eh?” He spoke a few words to the Moor who rode next him, in another language. “This is the domain of Yusuf of the Almohades,” he went on, “and we make no terms with the enemies of God. Yet we condemn no man to starve. Ye shall have food and lodging so long as ye remain with us. Doubtless ye are honest and will pay, but in this barbarous land there are many thieves. Therefore we will take charge of such wealth as ye have. As for that old man, he cannot live to reach his home. Abu Hassan!”
A trooper spurred toward the old merchant and thrust him through with his lance. He half rose, groaned and fell back, dead. Others, dismounting, seized upon the astonished and indignant castaways, and took from them with the deftness of practiced hands whatever they had of value. This was too much for the Breton and English sailors. They would have fought it out then and there. But Nicholas spoke quickly so that only those nearest him heard.
“There is no gain in being killed here one by one. Wait and be silent. Pass the word to the rest.”
When the prisoners had been herded into a compact company in the center of the mounted troop, the leader chirruped to his horse. “It grows late,” he said. “Y'Allah!” And at the point of the lance the captives were driven forward.
They were taken through the crowded narrow streets of a squalid town and left in a walled enclosure where two negroes brought them an earthen jar of water and some sort of cooked grain in a large bowl. The sun blazed down upon their shelterless heads and flies hummed about the filth in the unclean place. Nicholas, when their hunger had been partly satisfied and there was no more to eat or drink, addressed himself to the others in a cool and quiet voice.
“Friends, it is like we are to be sold into slavery among the infidels. If each man is left to shift for himself they may break us. If we stand by one another and keep our faith we may yet win home to England. They may not separate us at first, and I have been thinking that if they find out the value of a company of men freely choosing to work together in harmony, they will hardly separate us at all. But we must obey their will, we must keep order among ourselves, and above all, we must seem to have given up all hope of escape. What say you?”
Edrupt spoke first. “I'm with you, lad. 'Tis our one chance of seeing home again, I do think.”
David Saumond's shrewd eyes were scanning the faces of the sailors. “I'll no be the last to join ye,” he said. “But all must agree. One man out would make a hole i' the dyke.”
A big Breton sailor stepped forward. “Kadoc of Saint Malo sticks to his ship,” he growled, and drew with his forefinger a line in the dust. “Who's next?”
One after another, but with little hesitation, the men crossed the line. All had some idea of what awaited them in the Moorish provinces. It was no new thing for captives of European blood to be sold as slaves. Gangs of them toiled on canals, walls, fortresses, in grain-fields, on board galleys. Those leaders of Islam who urged a holy war sowed fortifications wherever they went. The need for slave labor for such work was greater than the supply. Much of the slave population was unfit for anything but the simplest and rudest tasks, and could be kept at work only by the constant use of the whip.
All the tales Nicholas had heard of slavery crowded into his mind in the first moments of captivity. Once a black-browed Sicilian had told of a night of blood and flame, when the slaves of a galley, mad with toil, privation and hatred, killed their masters and attempted to seize the ship,--and almost succeeded. “Slaves cannot unite,” the Sicilian ended contemptuously. “There is always a Judas.” But Gilbert Gay had chosen his men for this voyage with especial care. Every man of them, Nicholas believed, could be trusted.
They had never dreamed of anything like the next few days--the filth, the degradation, the cruelty. Nicholas was glad, when half-naked Moslem boys called them names from a safe distance, that the others could not understand. The insults of an Oriental are primitive and plain--and very old. Nicholas had a trick of absorbing languages, and already knew half a score of outlandish tongues and dialects.
Not only the townspeople but their Moslem fellow-slaves held the Kafirs in contempt. Their rations were sometimes food condemned by the Moslem faith. Edrupt's cool common sense and David's dry humor were of valiant service in those days. The Scot averred that better men than Mahomet had been bred on barley bannocks, and that the flat coarse cakes of the Berbers were as near them as a heathen could be expected to come. He also warned them that Moses knew what he was about when he forbade pork to his people, and that the pigs that ran in the streets of an African town were very different eating from the beech-fed hogs of Kent. From a Jewish physician for whom he had once built a secret treasure-vault he had picked up a rough-and-ready knowledge of medicine which was of very considerable value.
One morning they were all marched off, in charge of a greasy indifferent-looking Turk, to work on a canal embankment. The garden of an emir's favorite was to have a new bath-pavilion. Here the great strength of Kadoc, the hard clean muscle and ready resourcefulness of Edrupt, and the Scotch mason's experience in the ways of stones and waters, set the pace for the rest. The seamen studied how to use their strength to the best advantage as they had once studied the sky and the sea. They moved together to the tune of their own chanteys, and the Turk discovered that this one gang was worth any two others on the ground. When questioned, Nicholas replied briefly that it was the way of his people.