Part 15

‘She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own. I did not know at the time, but she’d been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper--one great heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep--painted and gilt.’

It must ha’ justabout looked fine,’ said Mr Springett.

‘That’s the curiosity of it. ‘Twas bad--rank bad. In my conceit I must needs show it to Torrigiano, in the chapel. He straddles his legs, hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. We were never far apart, I’ve told you.

‘“That is pig’s work,” says our Master. “Swine’s work. You make any more such things, even after your fine Court suppers, and you shall be sent away.”

‘Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. “It is so bad then, Master?” he says. “What a pity!”

‘“Yes,” says Torrigiano. “Scarcely you could do things so bad. I will condescend to show.”

‘He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing (it was too bad for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron’s sweet stuff if you don’t torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled my stomach handsomely, and the Master let me put the work through the smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride.’

‘Good stuff is good iron,’ said Mr Springett. ‘I done a pair of lodge gates once in Eighteen hundred Sixty-three.’

‘Oh, I forgot to say that Bob Brygandyne whipped away my draft of the ship’s scroll-work, and would not give it back to me to re-draw. He said ‘twould do well enough. Howsoever, my lawful work kept me too busied to remember him. Body o’ me, but I worked that winter upon the gates and the bronzes for the tomb as I’d never worked before! I was leaner than a lath, but I lived--I lived then!’ Hal looked at Mr Springett with his wise, crinkled-up eyes, and the old man smiled back.

‘Ouch!’ Dan cried. He had been hollowing out the schooner’s after-deck, the little gouge had slipped and gashed the ball of his left thumb,--an ugly, triangular tear.

‘That came of not steadying your wrist,’ said Hal calmly. ‘Don’t bleed over the wood. Do your work with your heart’s blood, but no need to let it show.’ He rose and peered into a corner of the loft.

Mr Springett had risen too, and swept down a ball of cobwebs from a rafter.

‘Clap that on,’ was all he said, ‘and put your handkerchief atop. ‘Twill cake over in a minute. It don’t hurt now, do it?’

‘No,’ said Dan indignantly. ‘You know it has happened lots of times. I’ll tie it up myself. Go on, sir.’

‘And it’ll happen hundreds of times more,’ said Hal with a friendly nod as he sat down again. But he did not go on till Dan’s hand was tied up properly. Then he said:

‘One dark December day--too dark to judge colour--we was all sitting and talking round the fires in the chapel (you heard good talk there), when Bob Brygandyne bustles in and--“Hal, you’re sent for,” he squeals. I was at Torrigiano’s feet on a pile of put-locks, as I might be here, toasting a herring on my knife’s point. ‘Twas the one English thing our Master liked--salt herring.

‘“I’m busy, about my art,” I calls.

‘“Art?” says Bob. “What’s Art compared to your scroll-work for the SOVEREIGN? Come.”

‘“Be sure your sins will find you out,” says Torrigiano. “Go with him and see.” As I followed Bob out I was aware of Benedetto, like a black spot when the eyes are tired, sliddering up behind me.

‘Bob hurries through the streets in the raw fog, slips into a doorway, up stairs, along passages, and at last thrusts me into a little cold room vilely hung with Flemish tapestries, and no furnishing except a table and my draft of the SOVEREIGN’s scrollwork. Here he leaves me. Presently comes in a dark, long-nosed man in a fur cap.

‘“Master Harry Dawe?” said he.

‘“The same,” I says. “Where a plague has Bob Brygandyne gone?”

‘His thin eyebrows surged up in a piece and come down again in a stiff bar. “He went to the King,” he says.

‘“All one. Where’s your pleasure with me?” I says, shivering, for it was mortal cold.

‘He lays his hand flat on my draft. “Master Dawe,” he says, “do you know the present price of gold leaf for all this wicked gilding of yours?”

‘By that I guessed he was some cheese-paring clerk or other of the King’s Ships, so I gave him the price. I forget it now, but it worked out to thirty pounds--carved, gilt, and fitted in place.

‘“Thirty pounds!” he said, as though I had pulled a tooth of him. “You talk as though thirty pounds was to be had for the asking. None the less,” he says, “your draft’s a fine piece of work.”

‘I’d been looking at it ever since I came in, and ‘twas viler even than I judged it at first. My eye and hand had been purified the past months, d’ye see, by my iron work.