Masters of the Guild Part 15

"I have trusted no man as I am trusting you now. I have been looking for some means of sending her away to Tomaso, her father's old friend, but the thing has been most difficult to arrange. I dare not wait longer. Will you take her away, with her nurse Maddalena, and protect her as if she were your sister? You will have the aid of Giovanni, though he has never known this secret."

Alan's eyes met those of the old man eagerly and frankly. "Master Stefano," he answered, "I will guard her with my life. But can she be ready to go at once?"

Stefano nodded. "The preparations that remain to be made will take no more than an hour or two. She is a good traveler. My servant will secure horses for you and meet you just before sunrise, near the gate. Maddalena will come there with her, and you must not ride so fast as to arouse curiosity.

I have to play the buffoon at a banquet to-night, and there is but little time, therefore--addio!"

Alan walked home slowly, pondering on all he had seen and heard that day.

Coming within sight of his lodgings, he found the street full of people gazing at the windows, out of which a thick smoke was pouring.

"What has happened here?" he asked of a little inn-keeper from Boulogne, with whom he had some acquaintance.

"They say it is the devil," the other replied with a shrug. "Mortally anxious to see him they seem to be."

Alan shouldered his way through the crowd and ran up the stairs. Half way up he met Simon reeling down, and caught him by the arm. "What have you been about?" he asked sternly.

"The gold is bew-witched!" bubbled Simon, arms waving and eyes rolling in terrified despair. "It is changed in the crucible! It is the work of Satan!"

"Nonsense!" said Alan roughly. "You have been roasting the wrong ore. I could have told you it was not true gold. Be quiet, or we shall be driven out of Goslar."

Simon was too distracted to heed, and Alan went hastily up to the rooms, where he found some copper pyrites in process of oxidation, giving forth volumes of strangling sulphur smoke. After quenching the fire and doing what he could to purify the air he gathered his belongings together and left the house, extremely annoyed. He could see suspicion and even threatening in the look of the crowd.

He went into the alley where Martin Bouvin's little inn was and asked shelter for the night.

"I go away to-morrow," he said, "and there is no returning to that place for hours to come."

"H'm!" said the inn-keeper. "What really happened?"

Alan explained. "My faith," commented Bouvin, decanting some wine into his guest's cup, "you are well rid of that fellow. Do you know that he has been spying on you for a week? He dared not follow you, but he tried to hire some one else to do it--that I know."

It was already late. Alan dozed off, despite his uneasiness, for he had had a tiring day. Suddenly he awoke and sat bolt upright. There was a commotion in the street. The innkeeper was peeping out through a hole in the solid shutters. "It is the clerk again," he said. "He is haranguing the people."

Alan slipped out and came up on the outskirts of the crowd. He caught the words "fool's gold" in Simon's shrill voice, and then the crowd began to mutter, "Die Hexe! Die Hexe!"

Alan waited to hear no more. He knew that this meant that sinister thing, a witch-hunt. If Simon had connected Stefano's house and his reputed h.o.a.rd of gold with his disastrous experiment, and possibly suspected Josian's existence there, it was a time for quick thought and bold action. He raced down the street leading to the rear of the house, vaulted the wall and found old Maddalena unlocking the small side door.

"Get her away," he said in a low voice, "at once--there is danger!"

The old woman pointed up the stairs, and Alan went leaping over them to find the girl hooded and cloaked for the journey in the small room, now bare and cold as the moonlight. Her soft light steps kept pace with his to the garden gate; he hurried her and Maddalena out, bidding them walk away quietly. Then he turned back, heaped a pile of straw and rubbish under the stairs, and flung the contents of a lighted charcoal brazier on it. As the fire blazed up he heard the snarl of the mob coming down the street which pa.s.sed the front entrance. He could hear words in the incoherent shouting- -"Die Hexe! Die Hexe! Brennen--brennen!"

As he shut the gate and slipped away he found Martin Bouvin keeping pace with him, "Do you know what has happened?" the little man asked. "The guests at the Prince's banquet came late into the street and found Simon raving about his gold. They questioned him, and he told them of a mysterious house where an old witch dwelt and changed into a young girl at sunset. The Prince knew the house. He asked Master Stefano what it meant.

When he got no answer but a jest he struck Stefano down and rode over him.

He is dead. Then the people caught up the cry and began to talk of burning the witch. They are all out there now, and the Prince is trying to make his guard go in after the gold. That was a good thought of yours, setting fire to the house: they will stay to watch it. I will go with you if I may, Master. If Stefano is gone Goslar is no good place for me!"

Alan remembered now that the jester had spoken in terms of friends.h.i.+p of Martin Bouvin. In any case they were now nearing the gate where the man stood waiting with the horses. Josian and Maddalena were already mounted.

As the servant held Alan's stirrup the Englishman looked down and saw under the hood the black piercing eyes and thin face of Giovanni.

"It is all right," whispered the Milanese with a glance at Bouvin. "He can ride the pack-horse. His only reason for staying here was Stefano's business."

The sleepy guard let them out without a look, and they rode on at a good pace toward the mountains. Josian had not said one word.

"Are you afraid, Princess?" Alan asked presently.

She shook her head. When she heard the story of the jester's death she was less shaken than Alan had feared. "He told me last night that he could not live long," she said sadly. "I knew that I should never see him again in this world."

At last they halted for an hour beside a little spring. Josian looked back at the gray pointed roofs and towers of Goslar. "Al-an," she said, "what was that light in the sky?"

"It was your tower," Alan answered. "No one will ever live there again, since you cannot."

Alan marveled at Josian's self-possession during the rough journey. She obeyed orders like a child, showed no fear in the most perilous pa.s.ses, and fared as roughly as the others did, with quiet endurance. Soon, however, they had crossed the frontier and met the party of travelers in whose company were the London merchant and his wife and son.

Then began days and weeks of travel, the like of which Alan had not known.

He had gone from one place to another in such company as offered, many a time, but here were folk who knew every road and every inn, beguiled the hours with songs and jests and stories, and made the time pa.s.s like a holiday. He found that his knowledge of the out-of-door world interested Josian more than the ballads and tales of the others. He often rode at her side for an hour or more, pointing out to her the secret quick life of woodland and meadow, and finding perhaps that she already knew the bird, squirrel, marmot or hare, by another name. "London is well enough," he said one day, "but 'tis not for me. I could never live grubbing in the dark there like a mouldiwarp."

Josian's delicate brows drew together. "Mouldi--what strange beast is that, Al-an?" and Alan laughed and explained that it was a mole.

It was at noon of one of the long fragrant days of early summer, while the travelers rested in the forest, that Josian spoke of the jester once more.

In the green stillness of the deep woods, birds singing and shy delicate blossoms gemming the moss, the fierce and savage past was like a dream.

"Father Stephen gave me a packet that last night," she said. "He gave Giovanni gold for the journey, but this parcel he said I must carry myself and show to you when I thought fit. I wonder what it can be?"

Alan took the packet and turned it over. It was sealed with a device of Greek letters.

"That is my father's signet," the girl added. "Here is his ring," and she drew from under her bodice a man's ring, hung on a slender gold chain, the stone a great emerald carved with the Greek "AEI"--"Always." Alan cut the cord of the packet and handed it to her. "It is not for me to open it," he said.

She unfolded, tenderly and reverently, the wrappings of parchment and oiled silk, and disclosed a compact ma.n.u.script closely written on the thinnest leaves, in a firm clear hand. Lifting two or three of the pages she read eagerly and then looked up, her eyes alight with wondering joy.

"Here are all the most precious of his writings, Al-an!" she cried, "the secrets that were in all the books that were lost--written clearly so that I myself can read them! Oh, it is like having him come back to speak to us--and Father Stephen, too--here by ourselves in the forest! And now you will know all the secrets of his work, for they are written here."

Alan's face had gone whiter than the parchment. Here indeed was the treasure he had come to seek. And it was Josian's free gift.

But that was not all. "Josian," he said, not putting out his hand even to touch the precious parcel, "you must not give away these ma.n.u.scripts so lightly. They are worth much gold, child--they are a rich dowry for you.

You must wait until you see Tomaso the physician, and he will tell you what is best to do with them."

She shook her head. "Oh, n-o," she said. "Father Stephen said that you would make good use of them, and had earned them--but I think he knew quite well what you would say. Perhaps some day you will feel differently."

Dame Cicely of the Abbey Farm welcomed Josian in due time as a daughter.

When she and Alan had been married about three months Josian was surveying a panel of just-completed embroidery in which all the colors in exquisite proportion blended in a gold-green jeweled arabesque. Alan came up behind her and caught the sunlight through it. He asked to borrow it, and reproduced the design in painted gla.s.s. That was the first window which he made for York Minster.

Among the formulae in the scripts which were Josian's dowry were several for stained gla.s.s and the making of colors to be used therein. By means of one of these it became possible to make gla.s.s of wonderful rich hues, through which the light came white, as if no gla.s.s were there. This is one of the secrets known to the workers of the Middle Ages and now lost; but in old windows there still remain fragments of the gla.s.s.

If to-day certain precious bits of gla.s.s, ruby-red, emerald-green, sapphire-blue, topaz-yellow, set in the windows of old cathedrals, could speak, they would say proudly that they are the work of Alan of York and Josian, the daughter of Archiater, the philosopher.

NEW ALTARS

I Publius Curtius, these many years dwelling Among these barbarians, a foe and a prefect, To Those whom they wors.h.i.+p unreasoning, G.o.ds of the Land, I raise this new altar.

To Thee whom the wild hares in silence foregathering Wors.h.i.+p with ears erect in the moonlight, (And vanish at sound of a footstep approaching) G.o.d of the Downs, I pour this libation.