Guy Bouverel was again in his own country, where he was called,
according to the habit of the day, Guy of Limoges. He had spent nearly
ten years working with Eloy, the master artist, in Limoges, and studying
the art of enameling on copper, silver and gold. The new name was to him
what a degree from some famous university is to the modern scientist.
When a man was called Guy of Limoges, William of Sens, or Cornelys of
Arras, it usually meant that he was a good example of whatever made the
place mentioned famous. Guy Bouverel might be anybody. The name was
known among the goldsmiths of Guthrum's Lane in London; that was all.
But Guy of Limoges meant a reputation for enamel-work.
The matter on which he was meditating, however, as he left Cold Harbor
and walked up toward the house of Wilfrid the potter, was clean outside
his own craft. The King, being much pleased with certain work done at
the Abbey for which Guy was bound, had questioned him about it, and
ended by giving him a rather large order. Brother Basil, a wise monk
from an Irish monastery, had come to England to gather artists and
artisans, and was for the time at this Abbey in the north, directing
and aiding some work for the Church. Several of the company that lay
the night before at Cold Harbor were going there, and among them they
would be able to do what the King required.
The dowry of Princess Joan was to include a table of gold twelve feet
long, twenty-four gold cups and as many plates, and some other trifles.
A part of this work would be done in Limoges; but the King seemed to
think that the rest might be done in England quite as well. He had also
ordered stained glass for a chapel, and some reliquaries, or cases for
precious relics, and three illuminated missals. The Sicilian court was
one of the most splendid in Europe. The King evidently meant his
daughter's setting out to be nowise shabby.
A chest of gold was to be delivered by the Chancellor to Guy, and he was
to accompany it, with its guard, to its destination. One of the King's
accountants would be nominally in charge, but of course if anything
should happen to the chest, Guy would be in difficulties. There were
ingots, or lumps, of gold, cast in molds for convenience in packing, and
to be used in the goldsmith-work; but the greater part of the gold was
coined bezants--coins worth about half a sovereign in modern money, and
minted in Byzantium. This would pay for materials brought from almost
every corner of the known world, and for the work of the skilled
metal-worker, enamel-worker, glassmaker, and lumineur who would fill the
order. Tomaso the physician had established himself in a half-ruined
tower not far from the workshop on the Abbey lands, and would aid them
in working out certain problems; and altogether, it was such a prospect
as any man of Guy's age and ambition might find agreeable.
"Hola, lad!" called Ranulph the troubadour cheerily. "Have you the world
on your shoulders, or only some new undertaking?"
Guy laughed, with a certain sense of relief. He had known Ranulph for
some time, and it occurred to him that here he might safely find a
listener.
"Do you know a certain clerk named Simon Gastard?" he asked.
"I have not that pleasure," laughed the troubadour. "Ought I to know
him?"
"Not if you can help it," said Guy, "if he is the same Gastard whom I
heard of in France five years ago. Didst ever hear of sweating gold?"
"It sounds like the tale of King Midas," Ranulph chuckled. "How,
exactly, does it happen?"
"It does not happen," Guy answered, "except an itching palm be in the
treasury. There was a clerk in Paris who took a cask full of gold pieces
and sand, which being rolled about, gold more or less was ground off by
the sand without great change in the look of the coin. Then, the coins
being taken out in a sieve and the sand mixed with water, the gold dust
sank to the bottom and was melted and sold, while the coins were paid on
the nail. I had as lief get money by paring a cheese, but that's as you
look at it. If I have to travel with this fellow I should like to know
that there is nothing unusual about the chest our gold is in. I cannot
keep awake all the time, and there is enough in that chest to make a
dozen men rich. I knew a rascal once who made a hole in the bottom of
a chest, stole most of the coin, and then nailed the chest to the floor
to hide its emptiness."
Ranulph laughed sympathetically. "You do see the wrong side of mankind
when you have anything to do with treasure."
"Unless you know something of it," returned Guy grimly, "you won't be
allowed to handle treasure more than once."
"True," admitted Ranulph. "Why not take turns watching the chest?"
"The others who are bound for the Abbey have gone on. I had to wait for
the Chancellor, and then I saw Gastard."
"Ask the potter," said Ranulph at last. "He can be trusted, and he may
know of some one who has a chest that will defy your clerk. I suppose
you don't expect him to steal it, chest and all?"
"No; I have had dealings with the captain of the guard before. He is Sir
Stephen Giffard, a West-country knight, and he will send men who can be
trusted. The trouble is, you see, that I am not sure about Gastard. But
he could not object to the secure packing of the gold."
By this time they had reached Wilfrid's house, and he was at home. When
Guy unfolded his problem the potter looked thoughtful.
"I may have the very thing you want," he said. "Come here."
He led the way into a small room which he used as a study, and dragged
into the middle of the floor a carved oaken chest bound with iron. There
was just enough carved work on it to add to its look of strength. Two
leopards' heads in wrought iron, with rings in their jaws, formed
handles on the ends. The corners were shielded with rounded iron plates
suggesting oak leaves. The ornamental wrought iron hinges, in an oak
and acorn pattern, stretched more than half way across the lid and
down the back. Iron bolts passing through staples held the lid, and
acorn-headed nails studded it all over. In fact, the iron was so spread
over it in one way and another that to break it up one would have needed
a small saw to work in and out among the nails, or a stone-crusher. When
the lid was thrown back, more iron appeared, a network of small rods
bedded into the inner surface of lid, bottom and sides. The staples
holding the lock went clean through the front to the inside of the box.
"What a piece of cunning workmanship!" said Guy in admiration. "It is
like some of the German work, and yet that never came over seas."
"No," said Wilfrid, "it was done here in the Sussex Weald. I had the
idea of it when I came back from France, and young Dickon, whom you saw
last night, made the iron-work. He began with the hinges and handles,
and then Quentin of Peronne did the wood-work and brought the chest
here, and Dickon fitted in these grilles yesterday."
"Will you sell it?" asked Guy. The other hesitated.
"I had meant to keep it to show the Abbey folk," he said. "I had thought
it might get Dickon a job at some cathedral."
"We'll use it to pack some gold-work that's to go to the King," averred
Guy promptly. "Will that content you?"
"It ought to," smiled Wilfrid, well satisfied, as he took the contents
of the coffer out and shut down the lid.
"What's your price?" asked Guy.
Wilfrid hesitated again. It might have been thought that he was
wondering how much he could possibly ask. But it was not that.
"I met you in London, Master Bouverel," he said finally, "and I
understood you to be a worker in amail."
Amail was the common name for enamel. The corruption may have come from
the fancied likeness of the work to the richly ornamented "mail," or
from the fact that the enamel covered the gold as mail covers a man's
body.
"Amail, gold and silver work, and jewelry," said Guy.
"Is it hard to learn?"
"That depends," returned the goldsmith. "I was brought up to the craft,
and I've been at it ten year now in Limoges, but I'm a prentice lad
beside the masters."
"Well, it's like this," said the potter slowly. "I saw amail in France
and Limoges that fair made me silly. I know a bit of glass-work, and
something of my own trade, but this was beyond me. I'll never be aught
but a potter, but if you can give me a piece o' that I'll give you the
chest and what you like besides to make up the price."
Guy smiled--he had never suspected that Wilfrid felt about the enameling
as he himself did. "You shall have it and welcome," he answered. "But
why not come to the Abbey and learn to do the work yourself--if you can
leave your own workshop? We can do with more men, and there might be
things about the glazing and that which would be useful in your
pottery."
Wilfrid met the suggestion gladly. He could make arrangements to leave
the pottery in the hands of his head man for a while; for all the work
they did was common ware which a man could almost make in his sleep. If
he could study some of the secrets of glazing and color work with Guy,
he might come back with ideas worth the journey.
He did not tell Edwitha anything about the enamel-work. That was to be
a surprise.
It was some time before they met again at the Abbey. The gold arrived
safely in due season, and Simon Gastard bade it good-by, with very sour
looks. It was placed in charge of Brother Basil and Tomaso, and Wilfrid,
who had been a Master Potter, took his place as apprentice to a new
craft. His experience as a potter helped him, however, for the processes
were in some ways rather alike. At last he was ready to make the gift
he intended for Edwitha.
Padraig, the young artist and scribe who was making most of their
designs, drafted a pattern for the work, but Wilfrid shook his head.
"That is too fine," he said. "Too many flowers and leaves--finikin work.
Make it simpler. Every one of those lines means a separate gold thread.
It will be all gold network and no flowers."
"As you will," Padraig answered. "It's the man that's to wear the cap
that can say does it fit." And he tried again.
Wilfrid himself modified the design in one or two details, for he had
made pottery long enough to have ideas of his own. The enamel was to
show dewberry blossoms and fruit, white and red, with green leaves, on a
blue ground; the band of enamel around the gold cup was to be in little
oblong sections divided by strips of ruby red. It was not like anything
else they had made. It was as English as a hawthorn hedge.
Very thin and narrow strips of gold were softened in the fire until
they could be bent, in and out, in a network corresponding to the
outlines of the design. This was fastened to the groundwork with flour
paste. Then it was heated until the gold soldered itself on. Powdered
glass of the red chosen for the berries was taken up in a tiny spoon
made of a quill, and ladled carefully into each minute compartment, and
packed firmly down. Then it was put into a copper case with small holes
in the top, smooth inside, and rough like a grater outside, to let out
the hot air and keep out hot ashes. The case had a long handle, and
coals were piled all around it in a wall. When it had been heated long
enough to melt the glass it was taken out and set aside to cool. This
took some hours. When it was cold the glass had melted and sunk into the
compartment as dissolved sugar sinks in a glass. More glass was put in
and packed down, and the process repeated. When no more could possibly
be heaped on the jewel-like bit of ruby glass inside the tiny gold wall,
the white blossoms, green leaves, blue ground, and strips of deeper red,
were made in turn. Only one color was handled at a time. If the glass
used in the separate layers was not quite the same shade, it gave
a certain depth and changefulness of color. Overheating, haste or
carelessness would ruin the whole. Only the patient, intent care of
a worker who loved every step of the work would make the right Limoges
enamel. This was one of the simpler processes which are still known.
The polishing was yet to be done. A goatskin was stretched smooth on
a wooden table; the medallion was fixed in a piece of wax for a handle,
and polished first on a smooth piece of bone and then on the goatskin.
Each medallion was polished in turn until if half the work were wet and
half dry the eye could detect no difference.
Alan brought his mother, Dame Cicely, to the glass-house while Wilfrid
was still at work on the polishing, and after she had seen the great
window they had made for the Abbey church at the King's order, she
paused to look at the enamel.
"Tha'lt wear out thy ten finger-bones, lad," said she. "I'm pleased that
my cheeses don't have to be rubbed i' that road. They say that women's
work's never done, but good wheaten bread now--mix meal and leaven, and
salt and water, and the batch'll rise itself."
"There's no place for a hasty man in the work of making amail, mother,"
drawled her son. "Nor in most other crafts, to my mind."
"My father told me once," quoth Wilfrid, smiling, "that no work is
worth the doing for ourselves alone. We were making a wall round the
sheepfold, and I, being but a lad, wondered at the tugging and bedding
of great stones when half the size would ha' served. He wasn't a stout
man neither--it was the spring before he died. He told me it was 'for
the honor of the land.' I can see it all now--the silly sheep straying
over the sweet spring turf, gray old Pincher guarding them, the old
Roman wall that we could not ha' grubbed up if we would, and our wall
joining it, to last after we were dead. That bit o' wall's been a
monument to me all these years."
"You're not one to scamp work whatever you're at," Guy declared
heartily, "but that cup's due to be finished by to-morrow."
When the wreath of blossoms was in place around the shallow golden bowl,
the smaller garland around the base, and the stem was encircled with
bands of ruby, azure and emerald, it was a chalice fit for the Queen of
Fairyland if she were also a Sussex lass. Brother Basil, whose eye was
never at fault, pronounced it perfect. It was not like anything else
that they had made, but that, he said, was no matter.
"When Abbot Suger of St. Denys made his master-works," Guy observed as
he put away his tools for the night, "he did not bring workmen from
Byzantium; he taught Frenchmen to do their own work. And an Englishman
is as good as a Frenchman any day."