the precious grains of river-washed gold, twinkling like fairy stars.
Brother Basil's heart was content, not only because of the gold, but
because his most promising pupil, the wild herd-boy from the mountains,
had not really been weary of the work, but had proved his love for it
and for his master.
The most excited person who heard of the discovery Padraig had made was
Simon the clerk. He had never lived in any country where gold could be
picked up in the streams, and he did not know, as Brother Basil did,
that these little dots of gold-dust had probably been washed down from
some rocky height miles away. He badgered Padraig in the hope of making
him tell where he had found them, but Padraig would not. It was one
of his best fishing-places, and he had no mind to have it ruined by a
gold-hungry clerk, seeking what had been put there for Brother Basil.
At last he grew tired of Simon's questioning, and took him aside and
told him a secret.
“I wonder,” said Brother Basil, as he and his pupil went along
a hillside one day at the long, swinging trot they kept for long
excursions, “what Simon the clerk is doing there by the marsh. He seems
to be looking for something.”
“He is,” said Padraig with an impish grin. “He thinks the Cluricaune
comes there mornings to catch frogs, and if he can catch the Cluricaune
he can make him tell where all his gold is.”
Brother Basil bit his lips to keep back a smile. “Now I wonder,” he said
gravely, “who could have told him such a tale?”
“I did,” said Padraig. “That is, I said old Granny Dooley told it to
me when I was small. I've hid in the bushes to watch for the Cluricaune
myself.”
CAP O'RUSHES
Where the downward-swaying branches
Shiver, quiver in the sun,
And with low persistent murmur
The hidden waters run,
Far from bell and book and candle
With their grisly ban,
In the tangle of the rushes
Sits the great god Pan.
Oh, the unworn joy of living
Is not far to find,--
Leave the bell and book and candle
Of the world behind,
In your coracle slow drifting,
Without haste or plan,
You shall catch the wordless music
Of the great god Pan.
You shall wear the cap of rushes,
And shall hear that day
All the wild duck and the heron
And the curlew say.
You shall taste the wild bees' honey
That since life began
They have hidden for their master--
For the great god Pan.
You who follow in the pathway
Of the waters fleet,
You shall tread the gold of springtime
'Neath your careless feet,
Gold the hasting rivers gathered
Without thought of man,--
Flung aside as hushed they listened
To the pipes of Pan!
V
THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER
Lady Philippa sat with her little daughter Eleanor in the tapestry
chamber. This was the only corner of the gray old Norman castle which
seemed really their own. All the rest of it was under the rule of Sir
Stephen Giffard, the eldest son of the house, and still more under the
rule of his mother, Lady Ebba, who seemed more like a man than a woman
and managed everything, in-doors and out, including her sons. Eleanor,
watching her grandmother with shy observant eyes, was not quite sure
whether her father came under that rule or not. He never disputed
anything his mother said or opposed her will, but somehow, when he saw
that his sweet Provencal wife wanted anything, he contrived that she
should have it.
Eleanor could not help seeing, however, that her mother was careful
not to appear discontented or melancholy, and to do all that a daughter
could do for her husband's stern old mother. Both Sir Stephen Giffard
and Sir Walter, Eleanor's father, were away most of the time, and if
Lady Philippa had been disposed to make herself unhappy she might
have been exceedingly miserable. The old chatelaine did not approve of
luxury, even such small luxuries as were almost necessities in that
vast pile of stone which was the inheritance of the Norman Giffards.
The castle hall was as grim and bare as a guard-room except on state
occasions, and the food was hardly better on the master's table than
below the salt, where the common folk ate. To be sure, there was plenty
to eat, such as it was. The old lord, who had been dead for many years
now, had married the daughter of a Saxon earl when he was a young knight
in England, and Lady Ebba had been used to plentiful provision in
the house of her father. In the autumn, when the other castles in the
neighborhood sent forth gay hunting parties, and the deep forest, whose
trees had never known the ax since Caesar built his bridges in Gaul,
rang to the hunting horns, there was no such merrymaking on the
Giffard lands. Instead, the folk were salting down beef and fish and
pork--particularly pork, from the herds of swine that roamed the woods
feeding on the acorns and beech mast. Toward the end of the winter there
seemed to be more pork than anything else on the table.
Lady Philippa had ruled her father's house when she was a girl of
fourteen, and she could have taught the people a different way of
living. She knew how to raise and care for the great variety of poultry,
water-fowl, pigeons, hares, fish, and delicate small birds of many
kinds, such as some of their neighbors had and the southern provinces of
France enjoyed in even greater abundance. But Lady Ebba would have none
of it. Fowls had to be carefully tended, protected from foxes, hawks and
other enemies; the fierce half-wild hogs could take care of themselves.
All that they needed was a peasant herdsman with a dog to keep them
together and see that thieving neighbors did not help themselves. There
was more food in one hog than in a whole covey of game birds, to say
nothing of the trouble of catching and cooking the birds.
Neither did the old dame approve of tapestried walls, cups and bowls
of silver, gold and enamel, flower-gardens or delicately-made dishes.
Fortunately her daughter-in-law's herb-garden was not wholly under the
ban. It contained herbs useful in medicine, and God has ordained that
many useful plants are also beautiful in their season. Sage, balm,
caraway, monk's hood, thyme, thrift, mint, and other plants therefore
dwelt contentedly in a sunny nook of the castle. The Provence roses,
lilies and violets needed little care, and having once taken root were
not ousted. One reason may have been that on special occasions perfumed
water was offered to some guest of importance, for the washing of the
hands after eating. By her manner though not in words Lady Ebba conveyed
the idea that it was as well to have some one in the house who had
time and taste for such things. The embroidering of tapestries and rich
robes, and the repairing of such vestments as had come to mending, might
also be done by the person who had time for it.
The pleasantest hours in Eleanor's day were those that she spent with
her mother in the tapestry chamber. Whenever the weather would allow it
they sat there during the sunny hours of the day, and if Sir Walter was
at home, or it was very cold and some important piece of work must be
done, they could have a brazier of charcoal to keep them warm. There was
no fireplace in the room.
It was not a very large room, and it was stone-floored and stone-walled.
It was Lady Philippa's bedchamber. The bed was oak, built into the wall
like a cupboard, and almost black with age. There were carved doors of
oak that could be shut, making it look like an armoire, but these
were usually open, displaying pillow-slips of fine linen and a linen
coverlet, spun, woven, and embroidered with black silk, by the lady
herself. On the floor were strewn rushes and fragrant herbs. There were
two straight carved chairs of old oak, an ivory footstool and a small
table which held a few books and an ebony work-box inlaid with ivory,
and writing materials. Two carved chests set one on the other served
as wardrobe. As for washing conveniences, these were brought in as they
were needed, by the knight's body-servant or the lady's own maid. The
real luxury in the room was the window, which was more than twice the
size of the narrow slits that lighted the great hall, and opened to the
south. On pleasant days the sun looked in early and lingered late, as if
he loved the room and its gentle mistress.
The room had been much the same for more than a hundred years, the
castle having been built during the tenth century. The thing that made
it Lady Philippa's own particular room, which could have belonged to no
one else, was the set of soft yet brilliant tapestries which covered the
walls. They had been worked by her in her girlhood, and she sometimes
felt that more than half her life was wrought into the quaint figures
and innumerable flowers and leaves and emblems of those narrow panels
of embroidery. They had adorned the room which had been hers in her
father's castle, and single panels had curtained or covered wall-spaces
in many other castles during her life as Queen Eleanor's maid of honor.
Little Eleanor had heard the story of the pictures as soon as she was
old enough to hear stories at all, and there was some story connected
with the making of each part of the set. It presented in a series of
scenes the history of Sainte Genevieve of Paris. In the first picture
she was shown as a little girl tending her sheep; then there were
pictures of her at the various exciting times in her life--her saving
the people from the Huns, her staying of the plague, her audience with
King Clovis and finally her peaceful old age among the people who loved
her.
Eleanor was kneeling on the window-seat where she sometimes slept, her
bright braids falling over her white linen underdress and gown of soft
blue wool. “Mother,” she said earnestly, “I wish I could make some
tapestry.”
Lady Philippa was deftly drawing together the edges of a rent in an old
and magnificent gold-embroidered bed-curtain. “Have you finished your
spinning, daughter?” she asked.
“N-o, but it is almost done. Mother, I will spin twice as much every day
if you will teach me to do tapestry. Were you older than I am when you
learned?”
“Not very much older. Perhaps you might begin now. Finish your task
while I make this curtain whole, and we will see.”
When her mother said she would “see,” Eleanor knew that a favor was as
good as granted. She spun away to a happy little song that Collet, her
mother's maid, had taught her, and very soon the good linen thread was
all wound smoothly and the little spinster sat demurely watching the
preparations for her new undertaking.
First her mother opened the wardrobe chest and took out a strip of
linen about twenty inches wide and of a brownish cream-color. Next she
selected some skeins of dyed linen thread from a heap of all the colors
of the rainbow, mementoes of the work her busy fingers had done during
many years. In a little enameled box, very carefully wrapped in soft
wool to keep them from rusting, were a few needles. Out of a wrapping of
cotton paper came a thin stick of charcoal rather like a crayon--charred
hard wood that could be used for drawing.
“Now,” said the lady smiling at the eager little face, “what shall we
choose for the subject of your tapestry, and what is to be its use? Will
you have it for a cushion, or a panel of a screen, or something else?”
“I think--a set of panels,” said Eleanor slowly. “It will take a long
time, but I should like to do exactly like you.”
Lady Philippa gave a little, amused, affectionate laugh that ended in a
sigh. “But, my dear child, you don't think of copying these?”
“N-o. But when I grow up I want my room to look like yours. I want the
tapestry to have a story. Mother, do you think I could work the story of
Saint George and the dragon? I like that best of all.”
Eleanor drank in all the tales told her so delightedly that her mother
had never known she liked one much more than another. “But,” she said
smiling, “Saint George was an English saint. He was born in Coventry.”
“That's why he is my favorite,” Eleanor explained. “You know father is
English. And Saint George had so many adventures. I think he would be
very interesting to do.”
“It is your tapestry, dear child,” her mother said, laughing her sweet,
joyous laugh. “I am sure I think Saint George and the dragon would make
a very handsome set. And we need not draw all the designs now. Perhaps
by-and-by we shall know some one who will draw a dragon for us.
Meanwhile you may begin on the first panel.”
Eleanor flung her arms around her mother. “Oh, mother dearest, it's so
good of you. I'm so excited to begin. Please commence at the very first
part of the story, for that will be easy.”
“Not so easy as you think, perhaps, sweetheart. However, we can but try.
You mean the setting forth of the knight?”
“No, the time when he was a little boy, and the weird woman of the woods
took him away and taught him everything. I like that part almost best of
all.”
“Very well. That will be a wise beginning, for in embroidering the trees
and flowers of the forest you will learn all the different stitches. You
will have to embroider quite well before beginning on the figures.”
Eleanor leaned breathless over the table while her mother drew the
outlines of the picture upon the linen--the witch-woman in her forest
home, the straight, sturdy figure of small George standing before her.
On two sides and the bottom of the panel were drawn gnarled and twisted
tree-trunks and roots, ferns and flowers. Across the top a narrow
conventional border was outlined, the cross of Saint George alternating
with a five-petaled rose, the wild rose of England.
“You may begin the border now,” said Lady Philippa, threading a needle
with brown thread. “This is outline stitch, and the design must all be
outlined with this, using different colors according to the part of
it you are working. Then each space is to be filled in with another
stitch--you see it here in the tapestry. For the background we will use
still another stitch, and when you are covering large spaces the work is
to be done in tent-stitch. Every inch of this linen will be covered with
embroidery when it is finished, you know.”
Eleanor looked very grave and responsible. She saw long years of work
before her, occupied with the triumphant career of the soldier-saint.
But the new work proved so fascinating that an hour had gone by before
she knew it. It was hard to tear herself away and go down to the chilly
stone hall. She was not expected to come very near the fire of blazing
logs, and felt her grandmother's eye constantly upon her lest she should
not sit erect or behave as a well-born maiden should. She felt also that
if Lady Ebba knew how much time would be consumed by the adventures of
Saint George, she would begin a calculation of the number of skeins of
linen thread that might be spun in that time, to the enrichment of the
family. Eleanor privately thought that there was bed-linen in the castle
to last for at least twenty years--which was true.
Letters had been received at the castle that day. Sir Walter was on his
way home, and with him an English knight who had been his friend for
many years--ever since they were squires together in Normandy. Lady
Philippa looked rather sad and wistful when she spoke of Sir Hugh
l'Estrange. He had married her dearest childhood friend, Alazais de
Montfaucon, and Alazais was dead. She had gone a bride into that
foreign land, lived seven happy years, and died. Eleanor could not help
wondering whether she should ever have any friends who were dear to
her as these early friends were to her father and mother. She had never
played with any other children at all.
The news of her father's coming had traveled more slowly than he himself
did. The next day, while Eleanor and her mother were busy transplanting
some asphodel, the horn blew at the gate, and in a few minutes the
knight came striding across the turf and caught his wife in one arm and
his daughter in the other. Behind him was a great tall man with laughing
eyes and a rather sad mouth, and standing very straight and soldierly
beside the stranger was a boy some two years older than Eleanor, whom
Sir Hugh introduced as “my son, Roger.”
The following days were so full of excitement that little time was left
for the tapestry chamber. The two knights were on their way southward
to meet King Henry and aid him to pacify some of his turbulent subjects.
Roger was to be left at the castle. It was usual for a knight to send
his sons to some friend for training during the years when a boy must
learn the duties of page and esquire. In this case there was more than
usual reason for it, for Sir Hugh's castle was in a remote part of
England and it would not be safe to leave his only son there during his
absence.
Roger himself, while he frankly admitted that he did not much like
leaving England, was keenly interested in all that he saw and heard.
Soon it seemed as if he had always been at home in the old Norman
castle. He called Lady Ebba “grandame,” as Eleanor had never dared to
do, and though she was as strict with him as she was with every one
else, she never seemed exactly displeased with him. Roger himself saw
it.
“Why do you like boys better than girls?” he asked her point blank, one
day.
“Men can fight,” Lady Ebba answered, curtly.
“Of course,” Roger reflected. “But women can make men fight. Father told
me that once when the Danes tried to take your father's castle you held
them off until he came back.”
Lady Ebba did not say anything. She rose and stalked away, but although
her back was to Roger, Eleanor could see that she was actually smiling.
Eleanor knew that story. It gave her a feeling of enormous admiration
and awe when she thought of it, but love--for a grandmother who
had commanded a garrison, on scanty rations, besieged by fierce and
bloodthirsty pirates--seemed a little out of place.
It was certainly far pleasanter, having Roger for a playmate. Eleanor
thought it was better than having a sister. He taught her to run, to
fish, to play bowls, nine-men-morris, and draughts. The dismal stone
hall was not half so grim with Roger in her corner.
These diversions did not, however, interrupt the daily lessons, the
task in spinning, or the newly-begun tapestry. To her great satisfaction
Eleanor found that Roger liked the tapestry chamber nearly or quite as
well as she did. When he saw Eleanor's tapestry he persuaded Sir Hugh
l'Estrange to spend a rainy morning in making sketches for it.
“Father has been to Egypt and the other places,” he explained, “and
knows just how they look. You never saw a dragon, though, father?” he
added doubtfully.
“Not exactly, but I have seen a beast rather like one,” laughed the
knight, and he drew a very fair picture of a crocodile, adding wings
and a fiery breath and fearsome talons by way of establishing its
dragonship. “I have seen the place where they say the monster was
killed. And did you know that Saint George is said to have helped the
Allies under Godfrey in the First Crusade, at the battle for Jerusalem?”
While the children looked on in fascinated wonder, he sketched in a
battle-scene--rather cramped for space because of the narrow linen
web--showing Godfrey de Bouillon cheering on his knights, the saint on
his great white horse leading the charge, and the banner of the Cross
rising above the host. From the tapestried walls Sainte Genevieve and
her people looked on with kindly interest at the little group.
When the two fathers had gone away life settled into a quiet but
pleasant order. Roger shared some of Eleanor's lessons, and when she was
at her spinning or needlework he was often by, with a bow to shape, a
spear to polish or some other in-door work to do, while they listened to
Lady Philippa's stories. To him nearly all of them were new.
As the spring advanced the three spent much time in the garden. A drain
was needed in one place, and Roger retrieved a spade from the gardener's
quarters and went at it. He had heard Lady Philippa say that she should
like to have a “mount” there--an artificial hill made of packed earth
and stones--and as he dug he threw the dirt inward and tramped it down.
He explained that this was the way a castle mount was made if the hill
selected was not high enough. The one at Lewes that William de Warenne
had made was a hundred and fifty feet high.
Eleanor caught the enthusiasm, brought stones and helped tread them down
with her stout little leather shoes, and old Jehan's grandson with his
sabots helped also.
“Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could build a castle on the top?”
Eleanor suggested as they stood looking at it.
“Perhaps we can--if your mother is willing. Ask her if we may have all
the stones we pick out of the garden--if we don't harm the plants--will
you, Eleanor?”
Eleanor climbed the winding stairs to the tapestry chamber, and came
flying back with the glad permission. Then the small building force went
to work in deep earnest.
“I know exactly how to build it, for I saw the building of our castle
from the very first,” Roger explained.
“We lived in a tent all summer until it was done--part of it--so that
we could have a room. First they dig a ditch, just like this one, around
the mount, and they make a palisade of forest trees--whole trunks set
close together--to keep off enemies. When they have time to build a
stone wall, of course the wooden wall is taken down.
“Now here, on the most solid side of the mount, is the place for the
keep. We use the biggest stones for that. The bottom storey of father's
keep is partly cut right out of the rock, and the walls are twenty-five
or thirty feet thick. Nobody can knock down that wall with a
battering-ram! Here we'll make a great arched door, so that the knights
can ride right in without dismounting when they're hard pressed by the
enemy. Here's the drawbridge--” Roger hastily whittled off a piece of
bark--“and this line I've scratched inside the outer wall is for
the wall round the inner bailey. We'll have a watch-tower here--and
here--and here. Father says that a good builder places his towers so
that each one protects one or two others, and in the end every one is
protected.
“In the storey above will be the great hall. These walls don't need to
be so thick--not more than eighteen feet. Here on this side we'll cut a
little room out of the thickness of the wall, for the private chamber of
my lord and lady--”
“The tapestry chamber!” cried Eleanor.
“Yes,” Roger went on, “and here on the other side we have the
well-chamber. There's a stone bason with a shaft that goes away down to
the well in the lowest part of the castle, and the defenders can always
get water by lowering a bucket when they're besieged. Up above is
another storey for a guard-room, and a flat roof with battlements around
it, where the sentinels can see for miles and miles across the country.”
The two children gazed at their castle mount and almost believed the
walls, eighteen, twenty, thirty feet thick--rising before their eyes.
“But that isn't all of the castle,” said Eleanor at last.
“No; we'll build more towers after awhile, and have a banquet hall to
entertain the King. And the soldiers and people will live in tents and
wattled huts until the stonework is done. But the keep is the first
thing to build, because, you see, you have to defend yourself from
enemies no matter when they come.”
Lady Philippa's garden was cleared of stones in a much shorter time than
she had expected. But to build a stone wall simply by laying one stone
upon another is less easy than it seems. Roger had done something of
the sort before, but he had had fragments of stone from the masons' work
instead of water-washed pebbles. And when the keep was actually built as
high as the first floor above the foundation, a heavy rain came, streams
tore out one side of the mount, and the stone-work tumbled into a
hopeless ruin.
In the crystal brilliance of the morning after the storm Roger surveyed
it ruefully. “Father says,” he recalled, “that everything depends on the
foundations. We'll do it over again and make the mount more solid.”
“And when it is done,” said Eleanor, never losing faith, “I'll beg some
linen of mother and make tapestry for the walls of the little room and
the great hall.”