Bang--slam--bang-bang--slam! slam! slam!
If anybody on the Chepe in the twelfth century had ever heard of
rifle-practice, early risers thereabouts might have been reminded of
the crackle of guns. The noise was made by the taking down of shutters
all along the shop fronts, and stacking them together out of the way.
The business day in London still begins in the same way, but now there
are plate-glass windows inside the shutters, and the shops open between
eight and nine instead of soon after day-break.
It was the work of the apprentices and the young sons of shop-keepers
to take down the shutters, sweep the floors, and put things in order
for the business of the day. This was the task which Guy, nephew of
Gamelyn the goldsmith, at the sign of the Gold Finch, particularly
liked. The air blew sweet and fresh from the convent gardens to the
eastward of the city, or up the river below London Bridge, or down from
the forest-clad hills of the north, and those who had the first draft
of it were in luck. London streets were narrow and twisty-wise, but not
overhung with coal smoke, for the city still burned wood from the
forests without the walls.
On this May morning, Guy was among the first of the boys who tumbled
out from beds behind the counter and began to open the shops. The
shop-fronts were all uninclosed on the first floor, and when the
shutters were down the shop was separated from the street only by the
counter. Above were the rooms in which the shop-keeper and his family
lived, and the second story often jutted over the one below and made
a kind of covered porch. In some of the larger shops, like this one
of Goldsmiths' Row, the jewelers' street, there was a third story
which could be used as a storeroom. There were no glass cases or glass
windows. Lattices and shutters were used in window-openings, and the
goods of finer quality were kept in wooden chests. The shop was also a
work-room, for the shopkeeper was a manufacturer as well, and a part if
not all that he sold was made in his own house.
Guy, having stacked away the shutters and taken a drink of water from
the well in the little garden at the rear, got a broom and began to
sweep the stone floor. It was like the brooms in pictures of witches,
a bundle of fresh twigs bound on the end of a stick, withes of supple
young willow being used instead of cord. Some of the twigs in the broom
had sprouted green leaves. Guy sang as he swept the trash out into the
middle of the street, but as a step came down the narrow stair he hushed
his song. When old Gamelyn had rheumatism the less noise there was,
the better. The five o'clock breakfast, a piece of brown bread, a bit
of herring and a horn cup of ale, was soon finished, and then the
goldsmith, rummaging among his wares, hauled a leather sack out of a
chest and bade Guy run with it to Ely House.
This was an unexpected pleasure, especially for a spring morning as fair
as a blossoming almond tree. The Bishop of Ely lived outside London
Wall, near the road to Oxford, and his house was like a palace in a
fairy-tale. It had a chapel as stately as an ordinary church, a great
banquet-hall, and acres of gardens and orchards. No pleasanter place
could be found for an errand in May. Guy trotted along in great
satisfaction, making all the speed he could, for the time he saved on
the road he might have to look about in Ely House.
For a city boy, he was extremely fond of country ways. He liked to walk
out on a holiday to Mile End between the convent gardens; he liked to
watch the squirrels flyte and frisk among the huge trees of Epping
Forest; he liked to follow at the heels of the gardener at Ely House
and see what new plant, shrub or seed some traveler from far lands had
brought for the Bishop. He did not care much for the city houses, even
for the finest ones, unless they had a garden. Privately he thought
that if ever he had his uncle's shop and became rich,--and his uncle
had no son of his own,--he would have a house outside the wall, with
a garden in which he would grow fruits and vegetables for his table.
Another matter on which his mind was quite made up was the kind of
things that would be made in the shop when he had it. The gold finch
that served for a sign had been made by his grandfather, who came from
Limoges, and it was handsomer than anything that Guy had seen there in
Gamelyn's day. Silver and gold work was often sent there to be repaired,
like the cup he had in the bag, a silver wine-cup which the Bishop's
steward now wanted at once; but Guy wanted to learn to make such cups,
and candlesticks, and finely wrought banquet-dishes himself.
He gave the cup to the steward and was told to come back for his money
after tierce, that is, after the service at the third hour of the day,
about half way between sunrise and noon. There were no clocks, and Guy
would know when it was time to go back by the sound of the church bells.
The hall was full of people coming and going on various errands. One was
a tired-looking man in a coarse robe, and broad hat, rope girdle, and
sandals, who, when he was told that the Bishop was at Westminster on
business with the King, looked so disappointed that Guy felt sorry for
him. The boy slipped into the garden for a talk with his old friend the
gardener, who gave him a head of new lettuce and some young mustard,
both of which were uncommon luxuries in a London household of that day,
and some roots for the tiny walled garden which he and Aunt Joan were
doing their best to keep up. As he came out of the gate, having got his
money, he saw the man he had noticed before sitting by the roadside
trying to fasten his sandal. The string was worn out.
A boy's pocket usually has string in it. Guy found a piece of leather
thong in his pouch and rather shyly held it out. The man looked up with
an odd smile.
"I thank you," he said in curious formal English with a lisp in it.
"There is courtesy, then, among Londoners? I began to think none here
cared for anything but money, and yet the finest things in the world
are not for sale."
Guy did not know what to answer, but the idea interested him.
"The sky above our heads," the wayfarer went on, looking with narrowed
eyes at the pink may spilling over the gray wall of the Bishop's
garden,--"flowers, birds, music, these are for all. When you go on
pilgrimage you find out how pleasant is the world when you need not
think of gain."
The stranger was a pilgrim, then. That accounted for the clothes, but
old Gamelyn had been on pilgrimage to the new shrine at Canterbury, and
it had not helped his rheumatism much, and certainly had given him no
such ideas as these. Guy looked up at the weary face with the brilliant
eyes and smile,--they were walking together now,--and wondered.
"And what do you in London?" the pilgrim asked.
"My uncle is a goldsmith in Chepe," said the boy.
"And are you going to be a goldsmith in Chepe too?"
"I suppose so."
"Then you like not the plan?"
Guy hesitated. He never had talked of his feeling about the business,
but he felt that this man would see what he meant. "I should like it
better than anything," he said, "if we made things like those the
Bishop has. Uncle Gamelyn says that there is no profit in them, because
they take the finest metal and the time of the best workmen, and the pay
is no more, and folk do not want them."
"My boy," said the pilgrim earnestly, "there are always folk who want
the best. There are always men who will make only the best, and when
the two come together----" He clapped his hollowed palms like a pair
of cymbals. "Would you like to make a dish as blue as the sea, with
figures of the saints in gold work and jewel-work--a gold cup garlanded
in flowers all done in their own color,--a shrine threefold, framing
pictures of the saints and studded with orfrey-work of gold and gems,
yet so beautiful in the mere work that no one would think of the
jewels? Would you?"
"Would I!" said Guy with a deep quick breath.
"Our jewelers of Limoges make all these, and when kings and their armies
come from the Crusades they buy of us thank-offerings,--candlesticks,
altar-screens, caskets, chalices, gold and silver and enamel-work of
every kind. We sit at the cross-roads of Christendom. The jewels come to
us from the mines of East and West. Men come to us with full purses
and glad hearts, desiring to give to the Church costly gifts of their
treasure, and our best work is none too good for their desire. But here
we are at Saint Paul's. I shall see you again, for I have business on
the Chepe."
Guy headed for home as eagerly as a marmot in harvest time, threading
his way through the crowds of the narrow streets without seeing them.
He could not imagine who the stranger might be. It was dinner time, and
he had to go to the cook-shop and bring home the roast, for families
who could afford it patronized the cook-shops on the Thames instead of
roasting and baking at home in the narrow quarters of the shops. In the
great houses, with their army of servants and roomy kitchens, it was
different; and the very poor did what they could, as they do everywhere;
but when the wife and daughters of the shopkeeper served in the shop,
or worked at embroidery, needle-craft, weaving, or any light work of
the trade that they could do, it was an economy to have the cooking
done out of the house.
When the shadows were growing long and the narrow pavement of
Goldsmith's Row was quite dark, someone wearing a gray robe and a broad
hat came along the street, slowly, glancing into each shop as he passed.
To Guy's amazement, old Gamelyn got to his feet and came forward.
"Is it--is it thou indeed, master?" he said, bowing again and again.
The pilgrim smiled.
"A fine shop you have here," he said, "and a fine young bird in training
for the sign of the Gold Finch. He and I scraped acquaintance this
morning. Is he the youth of whom you told me when we met at Canterbury?"
It was hard on Guy that just at that moment his aunt Joan called him to
get some water from the well, but he went, all bursting with eagerness
as he was. The pilgrim stayed to supper, and in course of time Guy found
out what he had come for.
He was Eloy, one of the chief jewelers of Limoges, which in the Middle
Ages meant that his work was known in every country of Europe, for that
city had been as famous for its gold work ever since the days of Clovis
as it is now for porcelain. Enamel-work was done there as well, and the
cunning workmen knew how to decorate gold, silver, or copper in colors
like vivid flame, living green, the blue of summer skies. Eloy offered
to take Guy as an apprentice and teach him all that he could for the
sake of the maker of the Gold Finch, who had been his own good friend
and master. It was as if the head of one of the great Paris studios
should offer free training for the next ten years to some penniless
art student of a country town.
What amazed Guy more than anything else, however, was the discovery that
his grumbling old uncle, who never had had a good word to say for him in
the shop, had told this great artist about him when they met five years
before, and begged Eloy if ever he came to London to visit the Gold
Finch and see the little fellow who was growing up there to learn the
ancient craft in a town where men hardly knew what good work was. Even
now old Gamelyn would only say that his nephew was a good boy and
willing, but so painstaking that he would never make a tradesman; he
spent so much unnecessary time on his work.
"He may be an artist," said Eloy with a smile; and some specimens of the
work which Guy did when he was a man, which are now carefully kept in
museums, prove that he was. No one knows how the enamel-work of Limoges
was done; it is only clear that the men who did it were artists. The
secret has long been lost--ever since the city, centuries ago, was
trampled under the feet of war.