Masters of the Guild Part 4

James who made leather, and sandals therewith, Hilarius the cook, of great skill in his art, Anselm whose herbal lay close to his heart, Gildas the fisherman, Paul of the plough, Arnold who looked to the bins and the mow, Matthew the vintner and Mark the librarian, Clement the joiner and John apiarian, Each wise in his calling as craftsmen are made,-- And each deep in love with his own special trade.

But the Abbot was canny, and never would raise One above other by blame or by praise.

Now the angel who guarded the Eden gate Had pity in thinking on Adam's fate, And sent him three servants, for earth, air and sea, The sheep, and the fish, and the wise little bee.

And thus it has happened that some people know More than the rest of us here below.

There was jealousy, bitterness, wrath and fear Among these reverend brethren here, With their leather and parchment and metal and stone, And the seeds of dissension were freely sown-- Only Sebastian, Gildas and John In their work appointed went placidly on.

The Abbot considered his turbulent flock, And he saw the wicked beginning to mock, And he gathered the craftsmen about him, to see Why there was peace with the other three.

They found Brother John by his bee-skeps brown Watching his bees in their elfin town.

"Little folk, little folk all a-wing, More honey is yours when ye do not sting, And that is a very sensible thing,"

Said Brother John to the bees.

They found Brother Gildas a-fis.h.i.+ng for trout, Oblivious that any one was about.

"Finny folk, finny folk, deep in the fen, There's a bait for each fish if we only know when,-- And that is the way to fish for men,"

Said Brother Gildas to the fishes.

They found on the moorland bleak and cold Brother Sebastian, far from the fold.

"Sheep of my sheepfold, by night and by day I seek ye untiring wherever ye stray,-- For thus ye have taught me the Master's own way,"

Said Brother Sebastian the shepherd.

And the brethren were silent. Each prayed in his heart That in all of his doings in craft or in art He might give G.o.d the glory. Since Adam's fall The workman is nothing, the work is all.

There was peace in the cloisters. The Abbot that night Gave thanks that his children had found the light.

IV

PADRAIG OF THE SCRIPTORIUM

Padraig sat on the side of the hill where the Good People were said to dance rings in the turf, his chin on his folded arms, his, arms resting on his drawnup knees--thinking. He might have been taken for a sheogue himself had any one been there to see. His hair was like a red flame, and his eyes were blue as the sky; his arms and legs were as brown as his young, sharp face, and he wore but one garment, a goatskin tunic. He could run like a hare and climb like a squirrel and swim like a salmon, for he had lived like a savage all his life, among the Irish hills.

Before he could remember, he had lost his father, a clever tinker who could make silver brooches and mend bra.s.s kettles and had married an Irish colleen in a seash.o.r.e village. Then pirates raided the coast, and the Irish girl with her baby escaped only by hiding in a cellar under a ruined house. When the boy was seven years old his mother died, and since then he had gone from one village to another as the fancy took him. For a week or more he might be herding goats or sheep, fis.h.i.+ng, or cutting peat for fires; he stayed nowhere longer than he chose and owned nothing in the world except what he wore. Under the tunic there hung a small leather bag with the few relics his mother had left him. He could make a fish-hook of a bit of bone, a boat of reeds, or a snare of almost any material he could find where he happened to be.

From this place where he sat he could see a valley of wet meadow-land, in the midst of which gray stone buildings were ma.s.sed inside a wall which enclosed also the garden and the cloisters. He knew that this was an abbey.

Years before a company of twelve monks and a Prior had come there to found a religious house. They brought from England an arklike chest containing some ma.n.u.script books, and relics, chalices, candlesticks and other treasures, and little else except their long black robes, girdles and sandals. These monks, working in orderly and diligent fas.h.i.+on under their superior's direction, had built a chapel, a dormitory, a dining-hall, store-houses, barns,--and the community grew. The building was done first of rough stone and wattle-work after the manner of the country, but later of good cut stone. Half the countryside had been employed there when the chapel was building. They had drained the marsh for their meadow-land, their young trees were growing finely, their vineyard was thriving in a sunny selected nook, their sheep flecked the hills all about them. A deep fish-pond had been made where now two monks sat fis.h.i.+ng. Padraig wondered if they had caught anything as good as the lithe trout he had taken from a mountain stream.

He was hungry, for he had been afoot since daylight, and he was wondering whether to make a fire and cook his trout or offer them to the monks in exchange for a supper. The wind that blew from the eight-side cone-roofed kitchen brought to his nostrils a smell so delicious that he was drawn like a fish on a line to the gates of the abbey.

He had met wandering monks and friars, but this was the first abbey he had entered. When he knocked at the gate and the porter asked him what he wanted, he was a little excited and rather scared.

But the porter, although rheumatic and grumpy, knew good fish when he saw them, and considered them just the thing for the Abbot's supper. He let Padraig in by the wicket gate, the door with a grating in it set in the big door and only about a third as large. Soon the boy was sitting by the kitchen fire eating a bowl of the most delicious broth he had ever tasted.

Round-faced Brother Hilarius, who had charge of the kitchens, was in so good a humor over the trout that he suggested to Padraig that he might herd sheep for the Abbey. The monks did a great deal of the work about their farms and in their workshops themselves, but there was still much to do, and they were usually willing to give work to anybody who did not ask for more than food and lodging.

Padraig liked the Abbey, but he would probably have gone on before very long had he not found something which interested him more than anything else ever had. Brother Sebastian, the head shepherd, sent him one day to a part of the buildings he had not before seen. The long stone-walled, stone-floored room had little stalls down one side, each with its wooden bench and reading-desk. On one of these desks lay open the first book Padraig had ever seen.

It was not printed, but written, each letter carefully drawn with a quill pen. The initials of the chapters, and the border around each page, had been painted in an ornamental design like a tangle of leaves and vines, in bright red, green, yellow, brown, black, blue. Twisted vines bore fruits, flowers, tiny animals and birds, here and there a saint, angel or cherub.

The monk who was doing this illuminating was too much absorbed in his work to know that any one had come in, at first. When he looked up and saw Padraig standing there he smiled very kindly.

He was a gaunt man with eyes as blue as Padraig's own, black eyebrows and lashes, and a queer dreamy look except when he smiled. His name was Brother Basil. When he saw the bundle of especially fine sheepskins that Padraig had brought his face lit up so that it seemed as if the sun had come into the cloister. "Good!" he said. "I will give you a note to carry back."

He took a bit of parchment which had once been written upon and had been sc.r.a.ped clean enough to use again, and made some queer marks upon it with his pen dipped in black fluid. That was the first time Padraig had ever seen any one write.

It did not take long for Brother Basil to find out how fascinated the herd-boy was with the work of the scriptorium. Before any one knew it Padraig was learning to read and write. He learned so quickly that the Abbot and Brother Mark, the librarian, thought he might make a scribe. But when he was asked if he would like to be a monk, he shook his head like a colt eager to be off. Writing was great fun; he practiced with a stick in the sand or charcoal on a stone. But it did not suit his idea of life to sit all day long filling books with page after page of writing.

He liked the making of colors even better than writing. In the twelfth century painters could not buy paints wherever they might chance to be.

They had to make them. Brother Basil had studied in Constantinople, or Byzantium as he called it, the treasure-house of books and of learning, with its great libraries and its marvelous old parchments illuminated in colors too precious to be used except for the Gospels or some rare volume of the Church. As time went on Padraig learned all that Brother Basil could teach him.

When a man is working on an important and difficult task, it means much to have a helper tending the fires or grinding the paints, who regards the work as the most important thing in the world and gives his whole mind to his occupation. Such a helper may ask as many questions as he likes, and his master will be glad to give him all the instruction he can possibly want.

Most of the people of the Abbey, in fact, liked Padraig. He knew so little that the monks and lay brothers and even the novices knew, and learned so quickly, and was so ready to put his own knowledge at their disposal, that it gave them the very comfortable feeling of being superior persons, whenever he was about. But there was one person who did not like him. This was Simon, a clerk attached to the house of the Irish prince who had given the land for the Abbey. Simon was of the opinion that vagabond urchins from no one knew where were not proper pupils for monastic schools even in Ireland, which was on the extreme western edge of Christendom. But Brother Basil paid no attention to Simon's opinion. In fact, it is doubtful whether he ever knew that Simon had one.

The most serious trouble Brother Basil had in his work was that many of the materials he needed could not be had in Ireland, nor could the Abbey afford to send for them except in very small quant.i.ties. The monks were rich compared with most other folk about them. They had food and drink and warm clothing and well-built houses, and productive land. But as yet they could not sell much of their produce at a profit which would make them rich in money. Brother Basil therefore manufactured all the colors he could, from the resources at hand. To make blue, he pounded up a piece of an old stone he had brought from Canterbury. Gilding was done by making gold-leaf out of real gold. The Tyrian purple was made from a gastropod of the seas near Byzantium, and a little snail-like mollusk of Ireland would serve to make a crimson like it. Thinning it, the painter could make pink.

There was no vermilion to be had, and red lead must be used for that color and made by roasting white lead. The white lead was prepared by putting sheets of lead in vats of grape skins when the wine had been crushed out of them. Copper soaked in fermenting grape skins would make green, saffron made it a yellower green,--and saffron was grown on the Abbey land--cedar balsam would make it more transparent. Brother Basil was always trying experiments. He was always glad to see a new plant or mineral which might possibly give him a new color.

In all this Padraig was extremely useful. He made friends with a smith who had a forge and furnace miles away, and wheedled him into lending them the furnace for the roasting of metals. He ranged the woods and cliffs all around the Abbey in search of plants, shrubs, trees and minerals. His knowledge of the country saved Brother Basil many a weary tramp, and he always took Padraig with him when he went looking for any especial thing that was needed.

It was some time, however, before Padraig learned what Brother Basil needed most of all. Now that the work of the scriptorium was coming to be known, orders were received for splendidly illuminated missals and other volumes, for which gilding was necessary. The brilliant colors would lose half their beauty without the decorative touches of gilding to set them off. And gold was costly.

"Where do men get gold?" Padraig asked one day.

"Out of the earth," answered Brother Basil absently.

"I mean," said Padraig hesitating, "what is it like when it is in the earth? Is it a different color--like copper?" Copper, he knew, was often green when it was found.

"Gold is always gold," said Brother Basil, coming out of his fit of dreamy abstraction. "I have seen it washed out of rivers. Gold is heavier than gravel, and when the river carries the gold with the earth down from the mountains, the gold sinks to the bottom."

Padraig said no more, but a day or two later he was missing. The Abbot was not pleased, for now he would have to take a man from other work to do what the boy had been doing. Brother Basil was surprised and hurt. He had never had such a pupil, and had begun to hope that they might always work together for the love of the work and the glory of their Church.

"I suppose he was tired of us," Brother Basil said with a sigh. "He is only a boy."

But Padraig was only a few miles away, high up among the hills where a stream flowed through a ravine,--digging. He remembered seeing something there long ago, before ever he came to the Abbey. He worked for two or three days without finding anything at all. Then, just at sunset, he saw a gleam of something like suns.h.i.+ne in a shadow where no sun shone. He grubbed like a mole for a few minutes, and half a dozen tiny grains of gold lay in his palm.

There was not much gold in the stream, but there was some. He dug and pried and washed the scanty soil until he was sure that no more was there, and then toward evening of the next day started home to the Abbey. When he reached the gate it was dark, and the porter was astonished to see him.

By the light of a rush candle Brother Basil and the Abbot looked at the precious grains of river-washed gold, twinkling like fairy stars. Brother Basil's heart was content, not only because of the gold, but because his most promising pupil, the wild herd-boy from the mountains, had not really been weary of the work, but had proved his love for it and for his master.

The most excited person who heard of the discovery Padraig had made was Simon the clerk. He had never lived in any country where gold could be picked up in the streams, and he did not know, as Brother Basil did, that these little dots of gold-dust had probably been washed down from some rocky height miles away. He badgered Padraig in the hope of making him tell where he had found them, but Padraig would not. It was one of his best fis.h.i.+ng-places, and he had no mind to have it ruined by a gold-hungry clerk, seeking what had been put there for Brother Basil.

At last he grew tired of Simon's questioning, and took him aside and told him a secret.

"I wonder," said Brother Basil, as he and his pupil went along a hillside one day at the long, swinging trot they kept for long excursions, "what Simon the clerk is doing there by the marsh. He seems to be looking for something."

"He is," said Padraig with an impish grin. "He thinks the Cluricaune comes there mornings to catch frogs, and if he can catch the Cluricaune he can make him tell where all his gold is."

Brother Basil bit his lips to keep back a smile. "Now I wonder," he said gravely, "who could have told him such a tale?"