caught Alan by the shoulder. “Listen, you young chaser of dreams--what
would you give to see what Archiater left? Eh? Would you guard
the secret with your life? Eh? They burned the books in the public
square--yes--but if there was something that was not a book, what would
you do for a sight of that?”
Alan's heart was pounding with excitement, but his face was unmoved.
“I am not good at fencing, Master Stefano. I have been frank with you
because I am assured that you are to be trusted, and I think that you
trust me or you would not thus play with me. When you are ready to ask a
pledge,--ask it.”
“Well and straightly spoken,” nodded the jester. “If I reveal to you
what I know of this philosopher and his work, you shall pledge yourself
to betray nothing, to say nothing--not so much as a hint that I knew
him--whether I am alive or dead.”
Now and then in his life Alan had acted from pure blind instinct. This
was the blindest, blackest place it had ever led him to. He did not
hesitate. “I promise,” he said.
“Very good,” said the jester, and drummed thoughtfully upon the table.
“We will begin with matters which are not bound up in your promise--for
they concern your friend who desires to sift out the clerk's tale
about his mine. This is the true story. Archiater found many metals and
minerals in these hills, and made some of his experiments in the ruins
of an old pagan temple close to the spot where he discovered a vein of
copper. He was half a winter trying out what he found, from arsenic to
zircon. Simon watched him by stealth, tracked him like a beagle, and
finally went to one high in authority with the report that he was making
secret poisons. This would have been no crime had the poisons been
available for practical use. As it was, they felt it safest to have
Archiater seized when he came back to the city, and tried as a wizard.
“They ransacked his house and got his books, of course, but Simon had
stolen some stray manuscripts he found in the old ruin and sold them.
Nothing, however, was gained by the person who paid the money, because
the writings were partly in cipher, and the key to the cipher had been
burned in the public square.”
“Then the Templars may still have the manuscripts,” mused Alan
disconsolately.
“Maybe,” the fool said with a little laugh, “but I said there might be
something that was not a manuscript. Come you with me.”
Taking a rushlight from a shelf the jester toiled slowly up two
flights of winding stairs, and then a short, straight flight of wooden
steps,--opened a door, and stood aside to let Alan pass. The young man
paused on the threshold in silent wonder.
The room within was not large, but it glowed from floor to ceiling like
some rare work in mosaic or Limoges enamel. The walls were hung with
such tapestries as Alan had seen on rare holidays in a cathedral, or in
the palace of duke or bishop. They were covered with needlework of
silk in all the colors of the rainbow, wrought into graceful interwoven
garlands and figures. The cushions of chair and settle, the panels of
a screen, the curtains of the latticed windows, displayed still more
of this marvelous embroidery, subtly contrasted and harmonized with the
coloring of a rich Persian rug upon the floor. The heart of all this
glowing, exquisite beauty was a young girl in straight-hanging robes
of fine silk and wool, her gleaming bronze hair falling free over her
shoulders from a gold fillet, her deep eyes meeting the stranger's with
the sweet frankness of a sheltered, beloved child.
The jester bowed low, his gay fantastic cap in hand, all his fleering,
mocking manner changed to a gentle deference.
“Josian, my dear,” he said, “this is the young man of whom I sent you
word. He has traveled many weary miles to see and speak with Archiater's
daughter.”
TO JOSIAN FROM PRISON
I
Sweetheart my daughter:
These three days and nights
(Stephen has told me) thou dost grieve for me
Silently, hour by hour. Yet do not so,
My little one, but think what happiness
We shared together, and attend thy tasks
Diligently as thou 'rt ever wont to do.
When thou dost add thy mite of joyous life
To the great world, thou art a giver too,
Like to the birds who make us glad in spring.
Be happy therefore, little bird, and stay
Warm in thy nest upon the housetop high,
Where may God keep thee safe. And so, good-night.
II
Dearest my little one:
It hath been ruled
That I shall go away to that far land
Which I have told thee of. Men call it Death.
Thou knowest that our souls cannot be free
Dwelling within these houses of the flesh,
Yet for love's sake we do endure this bondage,
As would I gladly if God willed it so.
Stephen will care for thee as for a daughter,--
Be to him then a daughter; he has none
Save thee to love him. For the rest, remember
That in the quiet mind the soul sees truth,
And I shall speak to thee in our loved books,
As in the sunshine and the sound of music,
The beauty and the sweetness of the world.
Three kisses give I thee,--brow, eyes, and lips.
Think wisely, and see clearly, and speak gently.
Thy little bed at night shall hold thee safe
As mine own arms,--thine elfin needle make
Thy little room a bright and lovely bower.
Thy household fairies Rainbow, Lodestone, Flint,
Shall do thy will. Thy stars have said to me
That thou wilt see far lands and many cities.
Await thy Prince from that enchanted shore
Beyond the rainbow's end, and read with him
Thy magic runes. This charge I lay on him
That he shall love thee--more than I--farewell!
Thy father,
ARCHIATER
To Josian my daughter and sole heiress.
XI
ARCHIATER'S DAUGHTER
Alan was gathering his French for some sort of greeting, when the young
girl spoke in a sweet clear voice and in English.
“I am glad that you have come,” she said. “Father Stephen says that you
desire to hear of my father.”
“I came from England in the hope that I might,” Alan answered simply.
“I cannot tell you very much of his work,” the girl went on, motioning
him to a seat, with a quaint grace of gesture. “I was so very tiny, you
see, when he went away. He used to tell me stories and sing little songs
to me, and teach me to know the flowers and the birds. My mother would
have done so, he said, and he wished so far as he could to be both
father and mother to me. It seemed to me that he was so, and I loved
him--not as dearly as he loved me, because I was so small, but as much
as I possibly could. Oh, much more than my nurse, although Maddalena is
very dear to me.
“We lived almost always in the city, so that we had not any garden,
but we had pots of flowers in the windows, and I used to tend them.
Sometimes, when my father went into the woods and the fields, he would
take me, and then I was happy; no bird could have been happier. I would
weave garlands of flowers, singing my rhymes about colors, and he taught
me how to arrange them to make every blossom beautiful in its place.
“When he sat writing at his table he called me his mouse, and if I kept
still I had cheese for my dinner with the bread and fruit. But when I
forgot and made a noise he would say that the mouse must be caught in
a trap, and he would take me in his arms and call Maddalena to carry me
away. And sometimes he went out alone, or shut himself in his own room
for days and days. Once he came out in the twilight and found me asleep
with my head on his threshold. After that he said that I must have work
to do while he did his work, and he would have Maddalena teach me the
use of the needle. He dyed the silks for me himself in beautiful colors,
and when I had done my task he would teach me to read in the big books
and the small, and to draw pictures of what I read. Here is one of the
very books I used to read with him.”
Alan would have thought what he saw was impossible if anything had
seemed unbelievable in this elfin girl. She laid open upon the table a
finely illuminated copy, in Greek, of Aesop's Fables, written on vellum
in a precise beautiful hand.
“He himself wrote books for me--not many, for he said there were books
enough in the world. One was on the nature of herbs, and another was
about the stars and their houses in the heavens. But they were lost,
those books. Father Stephen brought me others, but they are not the
same; my father wrote those only for me.”
“Had your father no friends?” Alan asked, with a great compassion for
the lonely man bending his genius to make a world for his motherless
baby.
“Not many, and none here except Father Stephen, who knew my mother when
she was a child, in Ravenna. People came sometimes, but they were not
friends; their eyes were cold and their voices hard. Since my father
went away two old friends of his have been here with Father Stephen,
but they came only once. They were not of this people; they came from
Byzantium.”
“And you have lived here always?”
The maiden laughed, a merry laughter like the lilt of a woodlark. “Oh,
no--o! Father Stephen has taken me to many places--to Venice once,
and to Rome, and when I was little we lived in Cordova. That is how I
learned to speak in different languages. I learned a new one every year
for four years. But for three years I have stayed in Goslar, and Father
Stephen says that no one must know I am here. That is queer, is it not,
to live in a city where not even the people in the next house know that
you are alive? Perhaps some day I shall go away, and live as others do.
I wonder very much what it will be like.”
The jester's face was shadowed by a sad tenderness. “May you never wish
yourself back in your cage, my child,” he said. “But it grows late, and
I think that you have told this guest all that you can of your father's
work.”
“All that I know,” the young girl said, regretfully. “I really know so
little of it--and the books were lost.”
In a maze Alan followed the jester down the darkening stairway. At the
foot Stefano turned and faced him. “You see what she is,” he said.
“She is Archiater's only child--she has his signet ring and his letters
written her from prison--only two, but I risked my own life to get them
for her. When they took him away they did not know that such a little
creature existed. She was but seven years old, and her nurse, Maddalena,
hid with her in a chest in the garret, telling her that it was a game.
That night I took them to a place of safety.”
“And you have taken care of her ever since?” the young man asked. The
jester nodded his big head. Then, as a group of courtiers came around
the corner, with a mocking gesture, Stefano limped away. Alan heard
their shout of laughter at his words of greeting, and went home in a
dream.
During the following days Stefano treated him with every appearance of
confidence. By the jester's invitation he spent many hours at the tall
ancient house, in that enchanted room with its latticed windows looking
out over street and wall to the mountains. Stefano spent the time
lounging on the divan or in the great chair, or watching the street far
below. He said very little and often seemed scarcely to hear the talk of
the youth and the maiden.
Their talk ranged over many subjects. The girl could read not only in
Latin, the common language of all scholars, but in Greek and Arabian.
Many of her books were heavy leatherbound tomes by Avicenna, Averroes,
Damascene, Pliny, and other writers whose very names were unfamiliar to
Alan's ears. She poised above them like a bee over a garden, gathering
what pleased her bright fancy. Sometimes while they talked she would be
working upon her tapestry, some rich, delicate or curious design in her
many-hued silks.
Alan found that her father had begun teaching her the laws of design and
color before she could read. He had told her that colors were like notes
in music, and had their loves and hates as people do.
“Is it not so in your work, Al-an?” she asked. “Do not the good colors
and the bad contend always until you bring them into agreement?”
Alan had told her of his work, and it seemed to interest her immensely.
She was greatly delighted when she learned that he had found memoranda
in her father's own handwriting, which had led to the making of
wonderful deep blue glass.
“If I had the little books he wrote for me,” she said one day, “you
might find something beautiful in them also.”
He watched and wondered at the sure instinct guiding her deft, small
fingers in the placing of colors--the purple fruit, the gold-green vine
or the scarlet pomegranate flower in her maze-like embroidery. “But how
can you make pictures in the windows,” she would say, with her lilting
laughter, “if you do not know about color?”
To Alan's secret amusement he perceived that she thought her life very
ordinary and natural, while his own adventures on the moorland farm of
his boyhood were to her like fairy-tales. She was shyly but intensely
curious about his mother. She had never known anything of the ways of
mothers except from books and tales.
One bright morning she took from a coffer a prism of rock-crystal. “This
is one of the playthings my father gave me,” she said. “Look how it
makes the colors dance upon the wall.”
Like a quick silent fairy the little rainbow flitted here and there. “He
told me,” she went on, “that seven invisible colors live together in a
sunbeam, but when they pass this magic door they must go in single file,
and then we may see them. Not all are good colors. Some are bad and
quarrelsome, and some are good when they are alone, but not when they
are with colors they do not like. But when they live together in peace
they make the beautiful clear daylight, and we see the world exactly as
it is.”
“As it is--saints protect her,” muttered old Maddalena, and the jester
smiled his twisted smile.
That evening Stefano said suddenly, “What are you going to do with your
clerk?”
“To-morrow,” said Alan, “I shall go to his mine.”
“You have not been there?”
“No; he has made some silly excuse each time it has been suggested.”
“He will never take you there,” said the jester. “You will see.”
“Simon,” said Alan pleasantly that night, “I am going into the mountains
with you to-morrow.”
Suspicion, fear, jealous greed, chased one another over the clerk's mean
face. “You are in great haste,” he muttered. “It is not good weather,
but we will go of course, if you wish.”
In the morning Simon lay groaning with rheumatism, unable to move. Alan
made a fire, covered him warmly, left food within his reach, and went
out to think the matter over. Unconsciously his steps tended toward the
house of the jester. Stefano, coming out, caught sight of him.
“Hey!” said the fool, “why are you not in the mountains?”
Alan explained. The other gave a dry little laugh. “That need not hinder
you,” said he. “I will send some one to show you the place. Come to
the market-square an hour hence and look for a youth with two horses. I
think you would pass for a wood-cutter if you had an ax.”
Acting on this hint, Alan provided himself with ax and maul, and found
in the place appointed a serving boy riding one horse and leading
another. He had reason to be glad of the rough life of his boyhood,
for he had ridden all over the moors, bareback, on just such wiry
half-broken animals, and the road they now took was not an easy one.
At last they left the horses in a dell at the foot of the ledges and
scrambled up to a small stone building near the top of the mountain,
half hidden among evergreens. Its door was gone and its roof half
fallen in, but in it could be seen a stone altar and various tools and
utensils, wood cut and ready for burning. Evidently some one had been
using the place--in fact, some one was here now. As Alan stood in the
doorway a figure rose from a pile of leaves in the corner.
“Vanni!” said Alan under his breath.
“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.