Louise Lamprey

“ Such a blend as these weaving-folk, brought together by one aim, could teach the arbitrary barons their place. Normandy, Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany,—England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales—what a web of Empire they would make! And if into the dull russet and gray of this England there came a vivid young life like her Richard’s—yellow hair, sea-blue eyes, gay daring, impulsive [221] gallantry—and under all the stern fiber of the Norman—what kind of a tapestry would that be? Thus, as women have done through the centuries, Eleanor of Aquitaine let her mind play about her fingers. ”

“ Matteo averred thoughtfully, “there will be cathedrals in Italy, France, Normandy, Aquitaine, England, greater than the world has seen. There will be cliffs and forests of stone-work—arches, towers, pinnacles, groined and vaulted roofs, hundreds of statues of the saints. Every inch of it will be made beautiful as the forest is—with vines and creeping mosses, blossoms and the little wood-folk that shelter among trees. There will be great windows of stained and painted glass. There will be altar-pieces like those that we only dream to-day. ”

“ The bulky loom of Cornelys Bat was set up next morning in the old hall, and the Queen came down to watch the strange, complex, curious task. Then she would take the shuttle herself and try it, and to the surprise of every one, kept at the task until she might well have challenged a journeyman. While the threads interlaced and shifted in a rainbow maze her mind was traveling strange pathways. The shuttle, flung to and fro in deft strong skill, was not like the needle with its maddening stitch after stitch, and there was no petty chatter in the room. ”

“ Because iron is so simple, and there is no chance of getting an effect by using color or gilding, the task of making it beautiful is unlike that of painting a picture. The beauty of iron-work is the line, the curve, the proportion. If these are wrong one sees it at once; and the same is true when the work is right. Most of the work of Adam Smith, while strong and well wrought, was only by accident good to look at. Dickon was not allowed to do anything that his father did not oversee, and Adam Smith saw to it that no job left his shop which was not well done. ”

“ Dame Annis Lavender was rather doubtful, but she had confidence in Mary, and it was settled that Mary should go. She was to have the gown of blue sooner than she thought. The flax was already spun, Dame Garland did the weaving, and she and Mary’s mother dipped and dipped again until the web was a deep exquisite blue like a summer sky. Barbara made Mary a gift of a fair white linen cap and kerchief. The two girls, Barbara with her black eyes and hair, Mary with her gold-brown braids and calm blue eyes and wild-rose coloring, made a pretty picture together. ”

“ When Joan grew too old to play with her poppet she sometimes carried her to some fine house to show a new fashion, or style of embroidery. Marguerite had a finer wardrobe than any modern doll, for the little hats, hoods and head-dresses had each a costume to go with it, and all were kept in a chest Quentin had made for her, with the arms of Milan on the lid. No exiled Milanese ever quite gave up the hope that some day the city would be rebuilt in all its splendor, and the foreign governors driven from Lombardy. ”

“ You see, a mural painting is not like your illuminations. You can keep a book safe in a chest. But a painting on plaster—or on a wooden panel—is besieged day and night by dampness, and dryness, and dust, and smoke, changes of heat and cold,—everything. The wall may crack. The roof may take fire,—especially when pigeons and sparrows nest in the beams. The mere action of the air on any painting must be proved by years. ”

“ Language is not needed when a boy finds himself in the home of a born mother. All the same, Giovanni felt still more as if he must have waked up in heaven when he found sitting by the hearth a kind, grave old man who was himself an Italian, and to whom the tragedy of the downfall of Milan was known. Tomaso the physician told Dame Lavender all about it while Giovanni was helping Mary sort herbs in the still-room. ”

“ Some time before he had heard that the Princess Margaret, daughter of the French King, was in the city, with her husband, Prince Henry of England. It was for the Prince that Master Gerard had made that other chest. Things linked themselves together in this world, it seemed, like the apricots and blossoms of his design.
“Finish the chest,” said the Princess after a pause. “I will have it for a traveling casket. Can you carve a head on the top—or two heads, facing one another, man and woman?” [68]
“Like this?” asked Quentin, and he traced an outline on the bench. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was something which Padraig had never seen. He had painted pictures himself on parchment, and drawn designs in color for the craftsmen, but a wall-painting so full of life and color that it looked like a live angel come down from the skies, he had never seen made by any man. ”

“ A trouvère can go where others cannot. He knows what others dare not ask. He can say what others cannot. Were it not for that prince of mischief and minstrelsy, Bertran de Born, Henry and his folk would have been at peace long ago. Know men’s hearts, and though you are a beggar in the market-place, you can turn them as a man turns a stream with a wooden dam. You shall go with Christian to Troyes and thence to Tours, and I will keep your little friend here until he is restored, and bring him to you when I come to that place. ”

“ He was not a shy lad, particularly when he was doing what he could do well. He was used to working with people watching him. Not seldom they were making themselves disagreeable because the work was not done more quickly, but iron cannot be hurried. If a smith does not mean to spoil the temper of his work, he must keep his own temper well in hand.
The young man led his horse into the shade, and came to watch Dickon. As the leaf-curves began to stand out and the nubs of the acorn-cluster took shape he seemed more and more interested. ”

“ It was all done so easily and quickly that dinner was over before Ranulph found words for the gratitude which filled his soul.
“Will you not tell me,” he said hesitatingly at last, “to whom I may offer my thanks—and service—if I may not serve you in some way?”
“Give to some one else in need, when you can,” said his host calmly. “I am Tomaso of Padua. A physician’s business is healing, wherever he finds sickness in man or beast. Your little friend there needed certain things; your need is for other things; the man who is now coming up the stairs needs something else.” ”

“ Leather and silk and linen and velvet and broadcloth came to the London wharves, and London people were busy buying, selling, making and decorating every sort of apparel, from the girdle to hold a sword to the silken hood and veil of a lady. And nobody was busier than the men who worked in leather.
Nowadays we go into a shop and try on shoes made perhaps a thousand miles away, until we find a pair that will fit. But when Crispin Eyre’s father sold a pair of shoes he had seen those shoes made in his own shop, under his own eye, and chosen the leather. ”

“ On the plaster of the wall, in the sunset light, he began to draw, roughing it out with quick sure strokes, a procession of men and horses with some massive wheeled vehicle in the center. Presently this was seen to be a staging like a van, drawn by six white oxen harnessed in scarlet. Upon it stood churchmen in robes of ceremony, grouped about a tall standard rising high above their heads—a globe surmounted by a crucifix. [264] Padraig knew what this was. It was the Carocchio or sacred car bearing the standard of Milan—but Matteo was a Florentine. ”

“ Wool, however, was very satisfactory, not only because it was less costly than silk, but because it took dye well and made a web of rich soft colors. It was this which had drawn Robert Edrupt into Flanders to see what the weavers there were about, what sort of wool they used, and what the outlook was for their work. In Cornelys Bat he had found a man who could tell him very nearly all that there was to know about weaving.
Yet weaving is a craft of so many possibilities and complexities that a man may spend his whole life at it and still feel himself only a learner. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Brother Basil sighed. “I hope so. It is hard to see pages of priceless wisdom, scribed and illumined by loving and patient labor, scattered to the winds in the sack of a town. It made my soul ache to hear the monks of Ireland speak of the past. I believe that the King means to protect the Irish Abbeys, but this is a hard age for a peacemaker.”
“The Plantagenets were never scantly supplied with brains,” observed Tomaso dryly. “I think, myself, that the King will use the sword only to enforce the law, and that the robber barons are going to have a sad time of it henceforth. ”

“ Gilles the hurer was a cripple, and it was all that he could do to give Joan and her mother a roof over their heads. They had sometimes two meals a day; oftener one; occasionally none at all.
If he could have made hats and caps like those which he used to make when he was a tradesman in Milan, every sort of fine goods would have come into the shop. In processions and pageants, at banquets, weddings, betrothals, christenings, funerals, on every occasion in life, the people wore headgear which helped to make the picture. The fashion of a man’s hat suited his position in life. ”

“ Some of the work of old Adam Smith had gone as far as Jerusalem. Dickon felt occasionally that if he were a spear-head or a dagger, he would stand more chance of seeing the world than he did as the son of his father.
Adam was secretly proud of the lad who at thirteen could do nearly as much as he himself could. That was saying more than a little, for Adam Smith had the knack of making every blow count by putting it in exactly the right place. A man who can do that will double his strength. ”

“ HOW TOMASO, THE PHYSICIAN OF PADUA, FOUND A CURE FOR A WEARY SOUL There was thunder in the air, one summer day in King’s Barton. Dame Lavender, putting her drying herbs under cover, wondered anxiously what Mary was doing. The moods of the royal lady in the castle depended very much on the weather, and both of late had been uncertain. Strong-willed, hot-tempered, ambitious and adventurous, this Queen had no traits that were suited to a quiet existence in the country. Yet she would have been about as safe a person to have at large as a wild-cat among harriers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kings and noblemen usually preferred tapestry which could be saved in case of disaster, and carried about, to costly wall-paintings which [262] must remain where they were. Yet Padraig found Matteo’s rich and graceful figures equal in their way to the stone sculptures of any French master, and said so.
“It is like this, comrade,” the Florentine explained, slipping his arm across Padraig’s shoulders as they strolled past the church of Saint Ouen. “A picture is a soul; its life on earth depends upon the body that it inhabits; and we have not yet found out how to make its body immortal. ”

“ Alan and Padraig, Wilfrid, Guy, and David, came up the path. Brother Basil explained the discovery. They had already heard the news of the Lombard victory from Giovanni, who had ridden with the troubadour and stopped at the Abbey Farm.
“What shall we do with these mysteries?” Tomaso asked, holding out one of the deadly little grenades. “You must remember that some one else may find out the secret without our help. It is true that the man who did would risk being burned for a wizard in some places; still, there is little that men will not dare in the search for knowledge.” ”

“ If there is anywhere a man who can make things like that bowl of yours, I must learn what he can teach me. It may be that the secret has been lost—if it has, I will come back and work here again. A man was never meant to do less than his best, Edwitha.”
“I know,” said Edwitha. “Those figures make me feel so too. They always did. I don’t want to live anywhere but here—and now Audrey has gone away, uncle and aunt could never do without me—but I wish we could make beautiful things in England.” [194]
“Some of the clever ones are in England,” Wilfrid answered. ”