Sarum
Page 70
It explained why he had not seen her before; but he was surprised to learn that this blonde child belonged to Bartholomew, who was tall and dark. His old adversary and he were on terms of distant politeness: his former mentor had never attempted to become a carver of figures, but his painstaking if unoriginal work had earned him some respect in the guild and he was now in charge of the masons who were building the cloisters. After a moment’s surprise however, Osmund put the matter out of his thoughts.
It was a week later when he saw her again. This time she was loitering by the west door, presumably waiting for her father and after a little while, out of idle curiosity, Osmund strolled over – ostensibly to look at a statue that was about to be installed in its niche in the west front – and inspected her.
She was indeed an unlikely child for Bartholomew; although, as he surreptitiously inspected her, he remembered being told that the tall mason with the weeping sore had beeen lucky in finding a pretty wife. Obviously the girl took after her mother. Although he did not want to pay her too much attention, his sculptor’s eye noted that under her cotte there was a slim but well-formed body. The torso, he judged, was a little longer than the legs and there was a hint of fullness about the waist that was not unpleasing. Her eyes were light blue; her skin was pale but, unlike in Bartholomew’s, he could detect no flaws. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a braid on each side of her face and then hung loose to halfway down her back. As the sunlight caught it he noticed that her hair had a tinge of red.
It was a habit with Osmund to look at any face that interested him to ask himself how he would sculpt it and he observed her expression carefully. Was her character, despite her different appearance, perhaps like her father’s? Superficially it was a simple, oval face with a sweet and innocent expression; yet he thought he detected something in the set of her eyes and the play of her lips that was – he tried to place it – feline perhaps, or even lecherous. He grinned to himself at his own imagination; it was probably playing tricks with him; and a few moments later returned to his work and forgot about her.
The months of April and May were busy. Two years ago the last bishop, Giles de Bridport, had died and Osmund had designed a tomb for the respected prelate that had particularly pleased him. Above the simple raised slab with its effigy, he had decided to erect a little monument with two arches on each side. It was a borrowed design, an exact copy of one of the little wooden shrines that were used to hold the relics of saints, and it had allowed him, in the elaborately carved detail depicting scenes from the bishop’s life, to show once again how stone could be carved like wood. As he now put the finishing touches to this little masterpiece, he was often in the main body of the church, and several times he saw the girl passing through on her way to see her father. Sometimes she would glance at him shyly as she passed, but usually he pretended to take no notice. Once or twice however, when she did not know he was looking, he found himself staring at her for long moments before resuming his work.
It was in the month of June, when the intricate labour on the tomb was completed, that he was introduced to the great new project that was to be his life’s greatest masterpiece.
It began with a summons to the quarters of Robert the chief mason.
There he found two other master masons, one who had come from London, the other from France, both men whose work he respected deeply. Robert himself, who had succeeded the great Nicholas of Ely many years ago, was now a grey-haired man. He welcomed them politely.
“You’re the best three masons,” he said without flattery. “And I have a big project for you.”
And without more ado he spread several large plans on parchment on the table before them.
“It’s the chapter house,” he began.
The chapter house, one of the greatest glories of the cathedral, was closely modelled upon the chapter at Henry III’s new church of Westminster Abbey. It was magnificent. Like Westminster, it consisted of a single high chamber with eight sides. It was fifty-six feet across and at its centre a single slender pillar rose elegantly some thirty feet before it spread out like a palm tree or a flower to form the ribs of the simple vaulting. In character with the rest of the cathedral, it was a pure, almost understated building. Years ago when Osmund had first inspected the design, it was the plans for each wall that amazed him.
“Why, they are all window!” he cried.
He was right. Each window, divided into four lights and supporting in its arch a tracery pattern in the form of a simple rose, took up the entire face of each wall from the height of about ten feet to the vaulting. The only masonry in the upper wall was therefore the solid cluster of pillars at each of the eight corners. Now it was nearing completion.
“It will be,” Osmund searched for a description, “just a container for light: an eight-sided barrel of light.”
Robert smiled.
“It will. That’s it exactly. But it’s the entrance and the lower part of the wall I want you to look at now.”
From the cloisters one entered a broad, almost square vestibule, and from there a handsome arch led directly into the octagon itself. Around the lower wall of the octagon was a running stone seat and behind it an arcade of little arches, five to each wall, each arch marking the place at which one of the church dignitaries would sit.
“Now there, in the big arch at the entrance, and there,” Robert indicated the lower walls of the octagon, “we have important plans.” And while the three men bent attentively over the plans he went through every detail.
The design that the dean and chapter had approved was elaborate. Within the broad arch at the entrance there were to be seven niches on each side, set and angled one on top of the other along the curved line of the arch and meeting at its point. In each of these narrow niches was to be a pair of almost free standing statues – a woman in free-flowing robes, who would represent one of the fourteen virtues, and at her feet, sinking submissively, the corresponding vice. Thus Justice would subdue Injustice, Patience Anger, Humility banish Pride. It was a fine conception, and a daunting technical challenge.
But it was the design for the inside of the chapter house that captured Osmund’s imagination still more.
For above the stone seats, in the spandrels between the little arches there were to be a series of delicate reliefs depicting biblical scenes, from the creation of the world to the delivery of the Ten Commandments.
“There are to be sixty scenes,” Robert told them. “They’re broken down into groups as follows: The Creation, the expulsion from Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah, Tower of Babel, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses.” He looked at the three men. “I want you to submit designs. Divide the work up as you like. Then we can discuss the matter again.”
As they left, Osmund said a silent prayer, and it was answered soon afterwards when both his companions told him that they were more interested in the fully sculptured figures in the arch than the low reliefs in the chapter house. Reliefs, it seemed to them, were work for lesser hands. Osmund bowed submissively.
“Then I will design the reliefs,” he said with a serious face, but a heart full of joy.
And he was still more excited when, at his discussion with Robert a few days later, the chief mason gave him further guidance.
“The effect that the dean and the chapter want is something like this,” he explained. And he produced two beautifully illustrated manuscripts, one a psalter, the other a romance, which contained flowing and expressive drawings neatly set into the irregular spaces around the text. “Could you manage something like that?”
As Osmund gazed at them he trembled. For what he was being asked to do was not to produce the usual, static figures and heads that he had already perfected, but fluid, flowing pictures in stone, full of movement and life. It was beyond anything he had ever attempted before and he knew that, more than anything else in the world, he wanted to try.
“Give me a few weeks,” he said, “and I can do it.”
But while his two colleagues were progressing rapidly with their work on the statues of the virtues and vices, he could not seem to produce anything that quite satisfied him. Each time Robert asked him for his designs, he put him off until at the end of July the master mason had to warn him:
“The canons are growing impatient, Osmund. If you cannot produce the designs, I must give the work to someone else.”
“One more month,” the perfectionist mason pleaded.
And he returned to the task feverishly.
For days on end, he would think of nothing else, hardly noticing the other masons, or even his wife and children as he went to and from his work in a sort of daze. Sometimes he thought he could see them – all sixty scenes – laid out in perfect order before him; but as he tried to sketch what he saw, or tried to carve even one of the scenes with chisel on a slab of chalk, the vision would mysteriously vanish. Such a thing had never happened to him before and he could not account for it. When this had occurred, he would walk disconsolately home, or make his way quietly to the cool chapel at the east end of the choir where he would fall to his knees and pray: “Blessed Mary, Mother of God, give me strength to do this great work.”
How difficult it was. Sometimes, as he whispered his prayers it seemed to him that his low, pleading voice was lost in the deep shadows of the church and returned to him, unanswered, from its high walls. At other times, though no clear vision appeared, he would feel a sense of calmness and return to his workbench to try once again to make the carvings come alive. And even though the work was slow to take shape, he knew he must have faith and comforted himself by remembering the words from the gospel that he had heard the preachers utter so many times before: “If the son asks the father for bread, shall his father give him a stone?” Surely God would not now deny him the ability to do His work, he reasoned. Surely not, but then again, the work would obstinately refuse to take shape and he would cry out in despair:
“Why, why will this stone not take shape for me?”
He was in this unhappy frame of mind one hot August morning as he walked from Avonsford into the new city. He had chosen a different route that day, taking the little path along the river bank instead of the road above, hoping that perhaps the cool river waters and the stately swans might calm his unsettled mind, and he was walking meditatively when a little ahead of him he heard the sound of children’s voices laughing and shouting. There was, he knew, a large pond by a bend in the river just ahead where the children from the nearby village liked to swim and play, and thinking nothing of it, he continued towards them. A few moments later he came to a clump of reeds beside the path and as he glanced through them he saw the children in the river beyond. There were half a dozen of them, splashing gaily in the water, and as he looked at them, he stopped in his tracks and stared. But it was not the children that his eyes were fixed upon.
In the middle of the group was Bartholomew’s daughter, and now, just as he caught sight of her, she rose and slipped out of the water on to the bank.
Like the children, she was naked.
Her body was just as he had imagined: the small breasts and gently rounded hips were as perfectly formed as one of the Greek statues he had seen at Winchester. Her legs were a little shorter than her body. The water dripped from her pale, flawless skin onto the river bank and her hair, now a dark reddish gold, hung in glistening wet tresses down her back. For a moment, she turned and, staring directly at the clump of reeds in front of him, she seemed to smile. Could she see him? He did not think so, but even if she had been able to, he could not at that moment have moved as he stared back between the reeds at her firm young body and the tips of her breasts. He was transfixed.
She turned in the sunlight and, laughing at something – he did not know what – ran over to where her clothes were lying.
Suddenly, blushing in furious confusion at what he had seen and at the thought that she might have caught sight of him – the dignified master mason – peeping at her through the reeds like a boy, he stumbled back up the path the way that he had come, and cut across to the road above.
By the time he reached the city, he had put the incident from his mind. Or so he thought.
But the damage was done. Try as he might to suppress it, the tantalising vision of the girl would not leave his mind: all that day she rose up constantly before his eyes, haunting in her loveliness, tempting him, even in the middle of his work, to sudden thoughts of lust. And the image returned, several times, in the following days.
Not only the thought of her body, but the idea that she might have noticed him preyed on his mind; when, a week later, he saw her once again standing quietly by the west door, something compelled him to go over and speak to her.
He walked towards her slowly, trying to look dignified and unconcerned, pausing as though by a casual impulse and looking at her coolly.
“You are Bartholomew’s daughter?”
He had expected her to look down modestly as she replied; but instead she stared at him curiously.
“Yes.”
“And what is your name?”
“Cristina.”
For a moment he wondered what to say.
“Does your father know you are here?” he asked, as though he meant to send one of the junior masons to fetch him.
“Yes.”
Still she was staring at him. Was there a flicker of amusement in her eyes? Had she seen him after all, and was she sharing the secret with him? There seemed to be a hint of complicity in her look.
He felt himself beginning to blush before the girl’s steady gaze. He gave her a curt nod and turned away quickly to hide his confusion. As he walked away, he felt sure she was watching him, but when he got back to the place where he had been working and turned, he saw that she had vanished.
And it was from then, for no reason he could understand, that instead of slowly disappearing, the little mason’s obsession with the girl began to grow. Day after day, he seemed to see her wherever he went. Every time he caught sight of a fair-haired girl, it made him start. He would look up from his work and think he saw her in the nave or by the cloisters. His eyes would search for her in the close. Her presence seemed to fill the air wherever he was, at his work, in the town, even in the valley or at home; now, instead of being absorbed in the chapter house carvings, he could hardly concentrate on his work.
It grew worse. He knew that Bartholomew’s lodgings lay in the chequer just north east of the market place, taking up half a house in a row where tuckers fulled and sheared cloth in a series of small workshops and hung it out on tenting racks to dry in the allotments behind their houses. He started to walk home by this circuitous route each evening now, often pausing on some excuse to speak to one of the clothworkers who lived there, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the girl. He knew it was absurd, but he could not help himself.
Occasionally she did pass by. But then, he would give her a curt nod accompanied by a frown of disapproval with which he hoped to mask his true feelings, before burying his head in his work.
The obsession followed him home. Several times he snapped at his wife for no apparent reason; some evenings he could hardly eat, but toyed with his food irritably. His wife was not concerned. They had lived together peacefully for so many years – with neither affection nor dislike – that she had grown skilled at reading his moods almost before they appeared. To each mood she had learned to ascribe a cause – not by instinct or insight but by simple trial and error – and so now she quieted the children and told them in her cool and placid way, “Your father’s angry because his work is not going well.” And so Osmund kept his torment secret.
Sometimes when he was alone with his wife at night, his mind was so full of the gi
rl that he would turn from her irritably, shroud himself in silence and ignore her. Then Cristina would dance before him in his imagination. At other times, he would find himself so aroused by his thoughts of the girl that he would suddenly transfer his accumulated lust on to his wife and she would find herself driven before it and savagely used until she was gasping and sweating as he made love to her with an unexpected eagerness and power.
Somehow he managed to continue his work and at the start of September he showed his plans for the chapter house to Robert. He was still not satisfied with them himself, but after a few alterations the canons accepted them and told him to begin work. Some of the scenes he had designed did please him – the voyage of Noah’s ark which he had cleverly depicted with eight tiny arched windows out of which animal heads were looking, the building of the great tower of Babel, and the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, a riot of castle walls and towers tumbling down on top of each other in a crazy pattern that made him smile. But many of the other scenes disappointed him; the human figures lacked the life and movement that he wanted, and although the canons were satisfied, he would shake his head irritably as he stared at the wooden stiffness of his designs and mutter in exasperation: “It’s that girl. She is a curse to me. If only I could put her out of my mind.” Then he would rage against himself for his weakness and cry: “But the fault is mine, miserable sinner that I am.”
Yet the more he railed against himself in this way, the worse his infatuation became.
As the end of September approached he knew that he must somehow break the spell. He stopped his walks by Bartholomew’s house, and whenever the girl came into his mind, he forced himself to concentrate on something else. For a few days it would work, and Osmund would go about his business proudly; but then, just when he was not expecting it, she would appear again in the cathedral, or in the street as he made his way out of the town, and despite his new self-discipline, the feelings would return, even more sharply than before, and he would go once more to the chapel, fall on his knees and, in desperation pray: “God preserve my soul from sin.”