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.
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.