Alan sat kicking his heels on the old Roman wall which was the most
solid part of the half-built cathedral. He had been born and brought up
on a farm not far away, and had never seen a town or a shop, although
he was nearly thirteen years old. Around the great house in which the
monks of the abbey lived there were a few houses of a low and humble
sort, and the farm-houses thereabouts were comfortable; but there was
no town in the neighborhood. The monks had come there in the beginning
because it was a lonely place which no one wanted, and because they
could have for the asking a great deal of land which did not seem to be
good for anything. After they had settled there they proceeded to drain
the marshes, fell the woods in prudent moderation, plant orchards and
raise cattle and sheep and poultry.
Alan's father was one of the farmers who held land under the Abbey, as
his father and grandfather had done before him. He paid his rent out of
the wool from his flocks, for very soon the sheep had increased far
beyond the ability of the monks to look after them. Sometimes, when a
new wall was to be built or an old one repaired, he lent a hand with
the work, for he was a shrewd and honest builder of common masonry and
a good carpenter as well. The cathedral had been roofed in so that
services could be held there, but there was only one small chapel, and
the towers were not even begun. All that would have to be done when
money came to hand, and what with the King's wars in Normandy, and
against the Scots, his expedition to Ireland, and his difficulties
with his own barons, the building trade in that part of England was
a poor one.
Alan wondered, as he tilted his chin back to look up at the strong and
graceful arches of the windows near by, whether he should ever see any
more of it built. In the choir there were bits of stone carving which
he always liked to look at, but there were only a few statues, and no
glass windows. Brother Basil, who had traveled in France and Italy and
had taught Alan something of drawing, said that in the cities where he
had been, there were marvelous cathedrals with splendid carved towers
and windows like jeweled flowers or imprisoned flame, but no such
glories were to be found in England at that time.
The boy looked beyond the gray wall at the gold and ruby and violet of
the sunset clouds behind the lace-work of the bare elms, and wondered
if the cathedral windows were as beautiful as that. He had an idea that
they might be like the colored pictures in an old book which Brother
Basil had brought from Rome, which he said had been made still further
east in Byzantium--the city which we know as Constantinople.
In the arched doorway which led from the garden into the orchard some
one was standing--a small old man, bent and tired-looking, with a pack
on his shoulder. Alan slid off the stone ledge and ran down the path.
The old man had taken off his cap and was rubbing his forehead wearily.
His eyes were big and dark, his hair and beard were dark and fine, his
face was lined with delicate wrinkles, and he did not look in the least
like the people of the village. His voice was soft and pleasant, and
though he spoke English, he did not pronounce it like the village
people, or like the monks.
"This--is the cathedral?" he said in a disappointed way, as if he had
expected something quite different.
"Yes," drawled Alan, for he spoke as all the farmer-folk did, with a
kind of twang.
"But they are doing no work here," said the old man.
Alan shook his head. "It has been like this ever since I can remember.
Father says there's no knowing when it will be finished."
The old man sighed, and then broke out in a quick patter of talk, as if
he really could not help telling his story to some one. Alan could not
understand all that he said, but he began to see why the stranger was
so disappointed. He was Italian; he had come to London from France, and
only two days after landing he had had a fall and broken his leg, so
that he had been lame ever since. Then he had been robbed of his money.
Some one had told him that there was an unfinished cathedral here, and
he had come all the way on foot in the hope of finding work. Now, it
seemed, there was no work to be had.
What interested Alan was that this old man had really helped to build
the wonderful French cathedrals of which Brother Basil had told, and he
was sure that if Brother Basil were here, something might be done. But
he was away, on a pilgrimage; the abbot was away too; and Brother Peter,
the porter, did not like strangers. Alan decided that the best thing to
do would be to take the old man home and explain to his mother.
Dame Cicely at the Abbey Farm was usually inclined to give Alan what he
asked, because he seldom asked anything. He was rather fond of spending
his time roaming about the moors, or trying to draw pictures of things
that he had seen or heard of; and she was not sure whether he would
ever make a farmer or not. She was touched by the old man's troubles,
and liked his polite ways; and Alan very soon had the satisfaction of
seeing his new friend warm and comfortable in the chimney-corner. The
rambling old farm-house had all sorts of rooms in it, and there was a
little room in the older part, which had a window looking toward the
sunset, a straw bed, a bench, and a fireplace, for it had once been
used as a kitchen. It was never used now except at harvest-time, and
the stranger could have that.
Nobody in the household, except Alan, could make much of the old
man's talk. The maids laughed at his way of speaking English; the men
soon found that he knew nothing of cattle-raising, or plowing, or
carpentering, or thatching, or sheep-shearing. But Alan hung about
the little room in all his spare time, brought fagots for the fire,
answered questions, begged, borrowed or picked up somewhere whatever
seemed to be needed, and watched with fascinated eyes all the doings
that went on.
The old man's name, it appeared, was Angelo Pisano, and he had actually
made cathedral windows, all by himself. Although Italian born, he had
spent much of his life in France, and had known men of many nations,
including the English. He meant now to make a window to show the Abbot
when he returned, and then, perhaps, the Abbot would either let him stay
and work for the Church, or help him to find work somewhere else.
The first thing that he did was to mix, in a black iron pot that Alan
found among rubbish, some sand and other mysterious ingredients, and
then the fire must be kept up evenly, without a minute's inattention,
until exactly the proper time, when the molten mass was lifted out in a
lump on the end of a long iron pipe. Alan held his breath as the old man
blew it into a great fragile crimson bubble, and then, so deftly and
quickly that the boy did not see just how, cut the bottle-shaped hollow
glass down one side and flattened it out, a transparent sheet of
rose-red that was smooth and even for the most part, and thick and
uneven around a part of the edge.
Everything had to be done a little at a time. Angelo was working with
such materials as he could get, and the glass did not always turn out
as he meant it should. Twice it was an utter failure and had to be
re-melted and worked all over again. Once it was even finer in color
than it would have been if made exactly by the rule. Angelo said
that some impurity in the metal which gave the color had made a more
beautiful blue than he expected. Dame Cicely happened to be there when
they were talking it over, and nodded wisely.
"'Tis often that way," said she. "I remember once in the baking, the
oven was too cold and I made sure the pasties would be slack-baked, and
they was better than ever we had."
Alan was not sure what the glassmaker would think of this taking it for
granted that cookery was as much a craft as the making of windows, but
the old man nodded and smiled.
"I think that there is a gramarye in the nature of things," he said,
"and God to keep us from being too wise in our own conceit lets it now
and then bring all our wisdom to folly. Now, my son, we will store these
away where no harm can come to them, for I have never known God to work
miracles for the careless, and we have no more than time to finish the
window."
They had sheets of red, blue, green, yellow and clear white glass, not
very large, but beautifully clear and shining, and these were set
carefully in a corner with a block of wood in front of them for
protection.
Then Angelo fell silent and pulled at his beard. The little money that
he had was almost gone.
"Alan, my son," he said presently, "do you know what lead is?"
Alan nodded. "The roof of the chapel was covered with it," he said, "the
chapel that burned down. The lead melted and rained down on the floor,
and burned Brother Basil when he ran in to save the book with the
colored pictures."
The glass-worker smiled. "Your Brother Basil," he said, "must have the
soul of an artist. I wonder now what became of that lead?"
"They saved a little, but most of it is mixed up with the rubbish and
the ashes," Alan said confidently. "Do you want it?"
Angelo spread his hands with a funny little gesture. "Want it!" he said.
"Where did they put those ashes?"
Lead was a costly thing in the Middle Ages. It was sometimes used for
roofing purposes, as well as for gutter-pipes and drain-pipes, because
it will not rust as iron will, and can easily be worked. Alan had played
about that rubbish heap, and he knew that there were lumps of lead among
the wood-ashes and crumbled stones. Much marveling, he led the artist to
the pile of rubbish that had been thrown over the wall, and helped to
dig out the precious bits of metal. Then the fire was lighted once more,
and triumphantly Angelo melted the lead and purified it, and rolled it
into sheets, and cut it into strips.
"Now," he said one morning, "we are ready to begin. I shall make a
medallion which can be set in a great window like embroidery on a
curtain. It shall be a picture--of what, my son?"
His dark eyes were very kind as he looked at the boy's eager face. The
question had come so suddenly that Alan found no immediate answer. Then
he saw his pet lamb delicately nibbling at a bit of green stuff which
his mother held out to it as she stood in her blue gown and white apron,
her bright hair shining under her cap.
"I wish we could make a picture of her," he said a little doubtfully.
Angelo smiled, and with a bit of charcoal he made a sketch on a board.
Alan watched with wonder-widened eyes, although he had seen the old man
draw before. Then they went together into the little room which had
seen so many surprising things, and the sketch was copied on the broad
wooden bench which they had been using for a table. Then holding one
end of a piece of string in the middle of the lamb's back, Angelo
slipped the charcoal through a loop in the other end, and drew a circle
round the whole. Around this he drew a wreath of flowers and leaves.
Then he laid the white glass over the lamb and drew the outline just as
a child would draw on a transparent slate, putting in the curls of the
wool, the eyes and ears and hoofs, with quick, sure touches. This done,
he set the white glass aside, and drew Dame Cicely's blue gown and the
blue of a glimpse of sky on the blue glass. The green of the grass and
the bushes was drawn on the green glass, and the roses on the red, and
on the yellow, the cowslips in the grass. When all these had been cut
out with a sharp tool, they fitted together exactly like the bits of a
picture-puzzle, but with a little space between, for each bit of the
picture had been drawn a trifle inside the line to leave room for the
framework.
Now it began to be obvious what the lead was for. With the same deftness
he had shown throughout the old glass-worker bent the strips of lead,
which had been heated just enough to make them flexible, in and out and
around the edges of the pieces of colored glass, which were held in
place as the leaden strips were bent down over the edges, as a picture
is held in the frame. When the work was finished, the medallion was a
picture in colored glass, of a woman of gracious and kindly bearing, a
pale gold halo about her face, her hand on the head of a white lamb,
and a wreath of blossoms around the whole. When the sun shone through
it, the leaden lines might have been a black network holding a mass of
gems. Dame Cicely looked at it with awed wonder, and the lamb bleated
cheerfully, as if he knew his own likeness.
[Illustration: "THE MEDALLION WAS A PICTURE IN COLORED GLASS"]
Then there was an exclamation from the gateway, and they turned to see
a thin-faced man in the robe and sandals of a monk, with sea-blue eyes
alight in joy and surprise.
"Is it you, indeed, Angelo!" he cried. "They told me that a glass-worker
was doing marvelous things here, and I heard a twelvemonth since that
you were leaving Normandy for England. Where have you been all this
time?"
The upshot of it all was that after much talk of old times and new
times, Angelo was asked to make a series of stained glass windows for
the Abbey, with all the aid that the friendship of the Abbot and Brother
Basil could supply. He kept his little room at the farm, where he could
see the sunset through the trees, and have the comfortable care of Dame
Cicely when he found the cold of the North oppressive; but he had a
glass-house of his own, fitted up close by the Abbey, and there Alan
worked with him. The Abbot had met in Rouen a north-country nobleman, of
the great Vavasour family, who had married a Flemish wife and was coming
shortly to live on his estates within a few miles of the Abbey. He
desired to have a chapel built in honor of the patron saint of his
family, and had given money for that, and also for the windows in the
Abbey. The Abbot had been thinking that he should have to send for these
windows to some glass-house on the Continent, and when he found that the
work could be done close at hand by a master of the craft, he was more
than pleased. With cathedrals and churches a-building all over England,
and the Abbot to make his work known to other builders of his Order,
there was no danger that Angelo would be without work in the future.
Some day, he said, Alan should go as a journeyman and see for himself
all the cathedral windows in Italy and France, but for the present he
must stick to the glass-house. And this Alan was content to do, for he
was learning, day by day, all that could be learned from a man superior
to most artists of either France or Italy.