Outward you fare with the sea-wind, seeking your ancient right
To range with your foster-brethren, the sleepless waves of the sea,
And come at the end of your wandering home again to me.
By the bright Antares, the Shield of Sobieski,
By the Southern Cross ablaze above the hot black sea,
You shall seek the Pole-Star below the far horizon,--
Steer by Arthur's Wain, lads, and home again to me!
Caravel, sloop and galleon follow the salt sea gale
That whispers ever of treasure, the ancient maddening tale,--
Round the world he leads ye, the sorcerer of the sea,
Battered and patched and bleeding ye come again to me.
By the spice and sendal, beads and trumpery trinkets,
By the weight of ingots that cost a thousand dead,
You shall seek your fortune under hawthorn hedges,--
Come to know your birthright in the land you fled.
Sails of my sons and my lovers, I watch for ye through the night,
My lamps are trimmed and burning, my hearth is clear and bright.
With every sough of the trade-wind that blows across the sea
I wake and wait and listen for the call of your hearts to me.
By Saint Malo's lanterns, by Medusa-fires
Rolling round your plunging prows in midnight tropic sea,
You shall sight the beacon on my headlands lifting--
All sail set, lads, and home again to me!
XIV
SOLOMON'S SEAL
Where the moor met the woodland beyond the Fairies' Hill, old Izan went
painfully searching for the herbs she had been wont to find there. The
woodcutters had opened clearings that gave an unaccustomed look to the
place. Fumiter, mercury, gilt-cups, four-leaved grass and the delicate
blossoms of herb-robert came out to meet the sun with a half-scared
look, and wished they had stayed underground. The old wife was in a bad
humor, and she was not the better pleased when her donkey, moved by some
eccentric donkeyish idea, gave a loud bray and went trotting gleefully
off down the hill.
“Saints save us!” muttered the old woman, shaking a vain crutch after
him. “I can never walk all that distance.”
But the donkey was not to get his holiday so easily. There came a shout
from the forest, and a boy on a brown moor pony went racing off after
the truant beast, while a lady and a young girl looked on laughing.
It was a very pretty chase, but at last Roger came back in triumph and
tethered the donkey, repentant and lop-eared, to a wind-warped oak.
“O Mother Izan!” cried Eleanor, “we've found a great parcel of herbs. I
never saw this before, but mother thinks it's what they called polygonec
in France and used for bruises and wounds.”
The old woman seized eagerly on the plant. It was a long curved stalk
with a knotted root and oval leaves almost concealing the narrow
greenish bells that hung from the joints of the stem. “Aye,” she said,
“that's Solomon's Seal, and 'tis master good for ointment. The women,”
she added dryly, “mostly comes for it after their men ha' made holiday.”
Eleanor was already off her pony, and Roger followed her. “We'll get you
all you want, Mother Izan,” she called back; “there's ever so much of it
up here among the rocks.”
“I should like to know,” queried Roger as they pulled and pried at the
queer twisted roots, “why they call this Solomon's Seal. I don't believe
Solomon ever came here.”
“Maybe it was because he was so wise,” said Eleanor sagely. “Mother said
it was good to seal wounds. We'll ask David.”
In those days a knowledge of herbs and medicines was part of a lady's
education. Physicians were few, and in remote places the ladies of the
castle were called upon not only to nurse but to prescribe for cases of
accident, fever, wounds or pestilence. Rarely did a week go by without
Lady Philippa being consulted about some illness among her husband's
people. She had begun to teach Eleanor the use of herbs, especially the
nature of those to be found in the neighborhood, and here Mother Izan
was of great service. In her younger days she had ranged the country for
miles in every direction, in search of healing plants, and she knew what
grew in every swamp, glen, meadow and thicket.
“Mother Izan must have been uncommonly anxious to get that Solomon's
Seal,” said Roger as they rode home in the purple dusk. “I believe Howel
has been beating Gwillym again.”
Almost as well-informed as Mother Izan was David Saumond, the
stone-mason, who was rebuilding the village church. He had come to the
castle one day with news of Sir Stephen Giffard, Eleanor's uncle, who
had been a prisoner among the infidels but had now been ransomed and was
on his way home. Finding that David understood his business, the lord
and lady of the castle had decided to give into his hands the work to be
done on the church. Masons were scarce in England at that time, and most
of those who had skill were at work on half-built cathedrals. David was
a wise and thorough builder, but he had the reputation of being rather
crotchety. Sir Walter Giffard suspected that this was due to his
absolute honesty. He would rather pick up a job here and there which
he could do as it should be done, than to have steady employment where
scamped building was winked at. This suited the knight very well. He
wanted a man whom he need not watch.
“An unfaithful mason's like a broken tooth or a foot out of joint,”
observed the Scot when he saw some haphazard masonry he was to replace
with proper stonework. “That wall's a bit o' baith.”
David would take all the pains in the world with a well-meaning but slow
workman, but he disposed of shirkers and double-dealers without needless
words. Neither did he encourage discussion and idle talk about the work.
“A true mason's no sae glib-gabbet,” he observed one day. “There's no
need o' speechmaking to make an adder bite or a gude man work.”
David confirmed Mother Izan's opinion of the virtues of Solomon's Seal.
The Turks, he said, used to eat the young shoots, cooked. The children
already knew that Solomon was the Grand Worshipful Master of all the
masons of the world. About his majestic and mystical figure centered
legends and traditions innumerable. Solomon's Knot was a curious
intricate combination of curving lines. Solomon's signet was a stone of
magical virtues. The temple of Solomon was the most wonderful building
ever seen, and the secrets of its masonry were still treasured by master
masons everywhere. No sound of building was heard within its walls; the
stones were so perfectly cut and fitted that they slid into their places
without noise. And Solomon himself was the wisest man who ever lived.
He could understand the talk of the martins under the eaves, the mice
in the meal-tub and the beasts of burden in the stables, when they
conversed among themselves.
“Aiblins that's what gar'd him grow sae unco wise,” David ended. “You
bear in mind, Master Roger, that every leevin' thing ye see, frae
baukie-bird tae blackfish, kens some bit cantrip he doesna tell, and
ye'll be a Solomon--if ye live.”
David was eating his bread and cheese on the lee side of the wall when
Eleanor came by with a gray lump of clay in her hands.
“See what Gwillym has made,” she said.
David stopped with the cheese half way to his mouth. “Who's Gwillym?” he
asked.
“He's a boy we've known ever since he was very little--he's only eight
now--and he does make the most alive looking things out of clay. He
heard you telling about Solomon talking with the birds and beasts, and
he made this.”
The clay group was really an unusual piece of modelling for an untrained
hand. That a child should have made it was more than remarkable. The
thin bent figure of the wise King was seated on a throne formed of
gnarled tree-roots. On his wrist a raven perched; on his shoulder
crouched a squirrel, with tail alert for flight; two rabbits sat upright
at his feet; a lamb huddled against his knee on one side and a goat
on the other. The figures all had a curiously lifelike appearance. As
Eleanor said, one felt that if they heard a noise they would go away.
Moreover she saw with wonder that the head of King Solomon and his
lifted hand made him a fair portrait of David.
David took the clay group in his hand, turned it about, whistled softly.
“Wha owns this bairn?” he inquired.
“Howel's his father,” said Roger. “He's quite good to him--unless he's
drunk. Then he pounds him. He hates to have Gwillym make images; he
thinks it's witch-craft. Gwillym made an image of him once and the leg
broke off, and that very same day Howel's donkey kicked him and made him
lame for a week.”
“There's ower mony gowks in the land for a' the mills to grind,” said
David, and that was all they could get out of him. They knew he was
interested or he would not have been so Scotch. David could speak very
good English, and did as a rule, but with Eleanor and Roger he often
returned to the speech of his boyhood because they liked it so much.
They liked David exceedingly. He had seen more interesting things than
any one else they knew. He showed Roger how to make a fish-pond, and he
told Eleanor how the Saracen city in her tapestry ought to look. He
had himself been a slave among the infidels, and the children heard
his adventures with awe and delight. Eleanor loved the story of the
bath-pavilion like a tiny palace, built by the emir for the lady Halima,
and the turning of the course of a river to fill her baths and her
fountains, and water her gardens. Roger's hero was the young English
merchant who had escaped by swimming, under his master's very nose. If
one could have such exciting experiences it seemed almost worth while to
be a captive of the Moslems. But when Roger said so, David smiled a dry
smile and said nothing.
But it was of King Solomon that he spoke most, and he seemed to have the
sayings of the wise king all by heart. A Hebrew physician whom he had
once known used, he said, to write one of Solomon's proverbs on the lid
of every box of salve he sent out.
“You follow his wisdom, Master Roger,” David said one day, “and you'll
see how to build ye a house or a kingdom. 'Envy thou not the oppressor
and choose none of his ways,' he says. 'Withhold not good from them to
whom it is due, when it is in the power of man to do it,' he says. 'God
shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it
be good or whether it be evil.'
“I tell ye,” David added, glancing from the trim gray wall of the
lychgate up to the castle on the hill, “every day's judgment day wi' a
builder--or the head of a house.”
Thus the stonemason was touched more deeply perhaps than he would
have owned, by the likening of his face to that of Solomon in the clay
figures of little Gwillym ap Howel.
As the work on the church progressed three friends of David's journeyed
from Salisbury to see him. They had come from Lombardy a long time ago,
when they were Piero, Andrea and Gianbattista. At Avignon they were
known as Pierre, Jean-Baptiste and Andre, and in Spain they were
rechristened Pedro, Juan and Andres. Now they were called Peter, Andrew
and John,--and sometimes the Apostles. Peter understood vaulting; Andrew
could carve a stone image of anything he saw, and John had great skill
in the laying of pavements. They talked of cathedrals and palaces with a
familiarity that took one's breath away.
The building of a cathedral seemed to be full of a kind of fairy
lore. The plan was that of a crucifix, the chancel being the head,
the transept the arms and the nave representing body and legs. The two
western towers stood for Adam and Eve. There was a magic in numbers;
three, seven and nine were better than six, eleven or thirteen. Certain
flowers were marked for use in sacred sculpture as they were for
other purposes. Euphrasy or eyebright with its little bright eye was
a medicine for sore eyes. The four-petaled flowers,--the
cross-bearers,--were never poisonous, and many of them, as mustard and
cabbage, were valuable for food or medicine. But when Roger took this
lore to Mother Izan for her opinion she remarked that if that was
doctors' learning it was no wonder they killed more folk than they
cured.
In fact the three Lombard builders, while each man was a master of his
own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it
came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But
when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft
he set him a riddle to answer:
“The baldmouse and the chauve-souri,
The baukie-bird and bat,
The barbastel and flittermouse,--
How many birds be that?”
And the masons were all grinning at him before Roger found out that
these were half a dozen names for the bat, from as many different
places.
The vaulting of the roof of the church was now under consideration. For
so small a building the “barrel vault,” a row of round arches, was
often used; but David's voice was for the pointed arch throughout. “The
soarin' curve lifts the eye,” he said, “like the mountains yonder.” He
drew with a bit of charcoal a line so beautiful that it was like music.
It was not merely the meeting of two arcs of a circle, but the meeting
of two mysteriously curved perfect lines. Sir Walter Giffard saw at a
glance that here was the arch he had dreamed of.
He saw more than that. David was that rare builder, a man who can work
with his hands and see all the time inside his soul the completed work.
He could no more endure slipshod work or graceless lines in his building
than the knight himself could do a cowardly or dishonest thing. David
would have done his task faithfully in any case, but it rejoiced his
soul to find that the knight and his lady would know not only that their
village church was beautiful, but why it was so.
Andrew was at work upon the decorative carving of the arches of the
doorway. The outer was done in broad severe lines heavily undercut;
the next inner arch in a simple pattern of alternating bosses and short
lines--Andrew called it the egg and dart pattern--and the inner arch in
a delicate vine rather like the ivy that grew over the keep. Andrew said
it was a vine found in the ruins of the Coliseum at Rome.
When it came to the carving of the animals and birds and figures for the
inside of the church, Andrew's designs did not quite suit Lady Philippa.
They were either too classical or too grotesque; they were better fitted
to the elaborate richness of a great cathedral than to a little stone
church in the mountains. She would have liked figures which would seem
familiar to the people, of the birds and beasts they knew, but Andrew
did not know anything about this countryside.
“Mother,” said Eleanor one night after this had been talked over, “what
if Roger and I were to ask Andrew to go with us to Mother Izan's and see
her tame birds and animals, and Gwillym's squirrel? And we could explain
what he wants of them.”
Like many children in such remote places, Eleanor and Roger had picked
up dialects as they did rhymes or games, and often interpreted for a
peasant who knew neither Norman nor Saxon and wished to make himself
understood at the castle.
The idea met with approval, and the next day Lady Philippa, Eleanor,
Roger and Andrew went to the cottage by the Fairies' Well. They found
that David had been there before them.
“He's a knowledgeable man, that,” the old woman said with a shrewd
smile. “He's even talked Howel into letting the clay images alone,
he has. Gwillym's down by the claybank now, a-making Saint Blaise and
little Merlin.”
The cottage evidently was a new sort of place to Andrew, and his dark
eyes were full of kindly interest as he looked about. The old dame
sat humped in her doorway among her chirping, fluttering, barking and
squeaking pets. An ancient raven cocked his eye wisely at the visitors,
a tame hare hopped about the floor, a cat with three kittens, all as
black as soot, occupied a basket, and there were also a fox cub rescued
from a trap, a cosset lamb and a tiny hedgehog. Birds nested in the
thatch; a squirrel barked from the lintel, and all the four-footed
things of the neighborhood seemed at home there,
The stone-carver readily made friends with Gwillym, who seemed to
understand by some instinct his broken talk and lively gestures. When
Andrew wished to know what some bird or animal was like, the boy would
mold it in clay, or perhaps take him to some haunt of the woodlands
where they could lie motionless for a half-hour watching the live
creature itself.
But there was one among Gwillym's clay figures which they never saw
in the forest, and to which the boy never would give a name. It was a
shaggy half-human imp with stubby horns, goat-legs and little hoofed
feet. He modeled it, bent under a huge bundle, perched on a point of
rock, dancing, playing on an oaten pipe. Andrew was so taken with the
seated figure that he copied it in stone to hold up the font.
“What's that for?” asked David when he saw it. “Are ye askin' Auld
Hornie ben the kirk, man?”
Andrew laughed and dusted his pointed brown fingers. “One of Pan's
people, David. They will not stay away from us. If you sprinkle the
threshold with holy water they come through the window.”
That figure puzzled David, but Gwillym would say nothing. At last the
church was finished, and the village girls went gathering fresh rushes,
fragrant herbs and flowers to strew the floor. David went fishing
with Roger in Roger's own particular trout-stream. Coming back in the
twilight they beheld Gwillym dancing upon the moss, to the piping of
a strange little hairy man sitting on a rock. An instant later the
stranger vanished, and the boy came toward them searching their faces
with his solemn black eyes.
“That was my playfellow,” he said. “I have not seen him for a long time.
He and his people lived here once, but they ran away when there came to
be so many houses. I used to hide in the woods when father came seeking
me at Mother Izan's, and my playfellow gave me nuts and berries and
wild honey. He said that if father beat me I was to go and live with his
people. I think I should if you had not come.”
Howel, the mason, was a bewildered man that night. He agreed, before he
fairly knew what he was about, to David's adopting Gwillym as his own
son, to go with him to the house of a good woman in London and be taught
all that a lad should learn. In time he might be able to carve stone
saints and angels, kings and queens, gargoyles and griffins, for great
cathedrals. And all this had come of the forbidden clay toys.
“I beat him week after week,” he muttered, “for melling wi' mud images
and running away to the forest to play wi' devils. 'Twas no good to him,
being reared by an old witch.”
David's mouth set in a grim line and he rubbed the little black head
with his crooked, skillful, weatherworn hand.
“Even a child is known by his doings, whether his heart be pure, and
whether it be right,” he said half aloud as he led Gwillym away toward
his own lodgings. “But the fool hates knowledge. The hearing ear and the
seeing eye are the gifts of the Lord--and if a man was meant to be a
bat or a donkey he'd ha' been made so. When Solomon said that a wise son
maketh a glad father he didna reckon on a father being a fule. Ye'll say
yer farewells to Auld Hornie, laddie, and then we'll gang awa' to London
and leave Solomon's Seal i' the wilderness.”
And that was how the little wild cave-man of the forest came to be
inside a village church, under the font for the christening.
THE LEPRECHAUN
Terence he was a harper tall, and served the King o' Kildare, And lords
and lodies free-handed all gave largesse to him there, And once when he
followed the crescent moon to the rose of a summer dawn, Wandering down
the mountain-side, he met the Leprechaun.
And a wondrous power of heart and voice came over Terence then, For a
secret in his harp-strings lay, to call to the hearts of men, That he
could make magic of common songs, and none might understand The words he
said nor the dreams they bred--for he had them of Fairyland.
Eily she was a colleen fair, the light of the harper's eyes, And he won
by the aid of the Leprechaun his long-desired prize. The wedding-feast
was but just begun,--when 'twixt the dark and the day, Quick as the
water that runs to earth the Leprechaun slipped away!
So the daylight came, and the dreams were past, and the wild harp
sang no more,
And Terence looked at the cold black hearth and the silent open door,
And he cried, “I have sold my life this night, ye have my heart in
pawn,--
Take wife and gold, but come ye back, ye little Leprechaun!”
XV
BLACK MAGIC IN THE TEMPLE
No one could say just how it came to be whispered that the Templars of
Temple Assheton dealt in black magic. Travelers told strange tales of
France, where the Order was stronger than it was in England--tales of
unhallowed processionals and midnight incantations learned from the
infidels of Syria. A Preceptor, Gregory of Hildesheim, was said to
possess writings of a wizard who had suffered death some years before,
and to have used them for the profit of the Order.
Swart the drover, who had sold many good horses to the Templars and
expected to sell more, laughed at these uncanny rumors. Wealthy the
Order was, to be sure, but that was no miracle. Its vaults, being
protected not only by the consecration of the building but by its
trained body of military monks, often held the treasure of princes.
Moreover, this powerful military Order attracted many men of high
birth. Their estates became part of the common fund, since no individual
Templar could own anything.
Unfortunately, Swart's facts were so much less romantic than the tales
of enchantment that they made very little impression. The grasping
arrogance of the Templars caused them to be hated and feared, and if
they were really wizards it was just as well not to investigate them too
closely. And if they had in truth learned the art of making gold, it was
only another proof of that old and well-tried rule, “He who has, gets.”
Gregory had not, however, discovered that secret as yet. He had had
great hopes of certain formulae bought at a large price of a clerk named
Simon, who stole them from the reputed wizard; but when he tried them,
there was always some little thing which would not work. At last he
bethought him of one Tomaso of Padua, who had been a friend of the dead
man and might possibly have some some valuable knowledge. The physician
was at the time in a market-town about twelve miles off, resting for
a few days before proceeding to London. He was an old man and journeys
were fatiguing to him. Gregory sent a company of men-at-arms to invite
him to come to Temple Assheton. The request was made on a lonely path
in a forest, along which Tomaso was riding to visit a sick child on a
remote farm. It would have been impossible for him to refuse it.
Rain was dripping from the drenched bare boughs of half-fledged trees,
clouds hung purple-gray over the bleak moors; the river had overflowed
the meadows, and the horses floundered flank-deep over the paved ford.
Few travelers were abroad. Those who saw the black and white livery of
the Temple, and the old man in the long dark cloak who rode beside the
leader, looked at one another, and wondered.
When the cavalcade rode in at the great gate, where the round Temple
crouched half-hidden among its grim and stately halls, the physician was
taken at once to Gregory's private chamber. The Preceptor greeted him
urbanely. “Master Tomaso,” he said, “men say that you have learned to
make gold.”
“They say many things impossible to prove, as you are doubtless aware,”
Tomaso answered.
“Do you then deny that it is possible?” persisted Gregory.
“He is foolish,” Tomaso returned, “who denies that a thing may happen,
because he finds it extraordinary.”
“Under certain conditions, you would say, it can be done?”
“When the donkey climbs the ladder he may find carrots on the tiles,”
was the Paduan's reply. The weasel-like face of the Templar contorted in
a wry grin.
“You bandy words like an Aristotelian, sir alchemist,” he said sharply,
“therefore we will be plain with you. You shall be lodged here with
suitable means for your experiments until such time as your pretensions
are justified--if they are. Should you prove yourself a wizard, a
dabbler in the black art and a deceiver of the people, you shall be so
punished that all men may know we share not in your guilt. Reflection
hereupon may perchance quicken your understanding. Until you have news
of importance for our hearing, farewell.”