Rewards and Fairies

‘Well I know it,’ said Hal.

‘They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in Eighteen hundred Sixty-one – down to the Wells. He was a Frenchy – a bad enemy he was.’

‘I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade – or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he came to be my singular good friend,’ said Hal as he put down the mallet and settled himself comfortably.

‘What might his trade have been – plasterin’?’ Mr. Springett asked.

‘Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco – fresco we call it. Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the hand in drawing. He’d take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost. Oh, Benedetto could draw, but a was a little-minded man, professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster – common tricks, all of ’em – and his one single talk was how Tom, Dick or Harry had stole this or t’other secret art from him.’

‘I know that sort,’ said Mr. Springett. ‘There’s no keeping peace or making peace with such. An’ they’re mostly born an’ bone idle.’

‘True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We two came to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a youngster then. Maybe I spoke my mind about his work.’

‘You shouldn’t never do that.’ Mr. Springett shook his head. ‘That sort lay it up against you.’

‘True enough. This Benedetto did most specially. Body o’ me, the man lived to hate me! But I always kept my eyes open on a plank or a scaffold. I was mighty glad to be shut of him when he quarrelled with his Guild foreman, and went off, nose in air, and paints under his arm. But’ – Hal leaned forward – ‘if you hate a man or a man hates you – ’

‘I know. You’re everlastin’ running acrost him,’ Mr. Springett interrupted. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He leaned out of the window, and shouted to a carter who was loading a cart with bricks.

‘Ain’t you no more sense than to heap ’em up that way?’ he said. ‘Take an’ throw a hundred of ’em off. It’s more than the team can compass. Throw ’em off, I tell you, and make another trip for what’s left over. Excuse me, sir. You was saying – ’

‘I was saying that before the end of the year I went to Bury to strengthen the lead-work in the great Abbey east window there.’

‘Now that’s just one of the things I’ve never done. But I mind there was a cheap excursion to Chichester in Eighteen hundred Seventy-nine, an’ I went an’ watched ’em leading a won’erful fine window in Chichester Cathedral. I stayed watchin’ till ’twas time for us to go back. Dunno as I had two drinks p’raps, all that day.’

Hal smiled. ‘At Bury then, sure enough, I met my enemy Benedetto. He had painted a picture in plaster on the south wall of the Refectory – a noble place for a noble thing – a picture of Jonah.’

‘Ah! Jonah an’ his whale. I’ve never been as fur as Bury. You’ve worked about a lot,’ said Mr. Springett, with his eyes on the carter below.

‘No. Not the whale. This was a picture of Jonah and the pompion that withered. But all that Benedetto had shown was a peevish greybeard huggled up in angle-edged drapery beneath a pompion on a wooden trellis. This last, being a dead thing, he’d drawn it as ’twere to the life. But fierce old Jonah, bared in the sun, angry even to death that his cold prophecy was disproven – Jonah, ashamed, and already hearing the children of Nineveh running to mock him – ah, that was what Benedetto had not drawn!’

‘He better ha’ stuck to his whale, then,’ said Mr. Springett.

‘He’d ha’ done no better with that. He draws the damp cloth off the picture, an’ shows it to me. I was a craftsman too, d’ye see?

‘“’Tis good,” I said, “but it goes no deeper than the plaster."

‘“What?” he said in a whisper.

‘“Be thy own judge, Benedetto,” I answered. “Does it go deeper than the plaster?"

‘He reeled against a piece of dry wall. “No,” he says, “and I know it. I could not hate thee more than I have done these five years, but if I live, I will try, Hal. I will try.” Then he goes away. I pitied him, but I had spoken truth. His picture went no deeper than the plaster.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Springett, who had turned quite red. ‘You was talkin’ so fast I didn’t understand what you was drivin’ at. I’ve seen men – good workmen they was – try to do more than they could do, and – and they couldn’t compass it. They knowed it, and it nigh broke their hearts like. You was in your right, o’ course, sir, to say what you thought o’ his work; but if you’ll excuse me, was you in your duty?’

‘I was wrong to say it,’ Hal replied. ‘God forgive me – I was young! He was workman enough himself to know where he failed. But it all came evens in the long run. By the same token, did ye ever hear o’ one Torrigiano – Torrisany we called him?’

‘I can’t say I ever did. Was he a Frenchy like?’

‘No, a hectoring, hard-mouthed, long-sworded Italian builder, as vain as a peacock and as strong as a bull, but, mark you, a master workman. More than that – he could get his best work out of the worst men.’

‘Which it’s a gift. I had a foreman-bricklayer like him once,’ said Mr. Springett. ‘He used to prod ’em in the back like with a pointing-trowel, and they did wonders.’

‘I’ve seen our Torrisany lay a ’prentice down with one buffet and raise him with another – to make a mason of him. I worked under him at building a chapel in London – a chapel and a tomb for the king.’

‘I never knew kings went to chapel much,’ said Mr. Springett. ‘But I always hold with a man, don’t care who he be, seein’ about his own grave before he dies. Tidn’t the sort of thing to leave to your family after the will’s read. I reckon ’twas a fine vault.’

‘None finer in England. This Torrigiano had the contract for it, as you’d say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts – England, France, Italy, the Low Countries – no odds to him so long as they knew their work, and he drove them like – like pigs at Brightling Fair. He called us English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft. If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands he’d rive it out, and tear it down before us all. “Ah, you pig – you English pig!” he’d scream in the dumb wretch’s face. “You answer me? You look at me? You think at me? Come out with me into the cloisters. I will teach you carving myself. I will gild you all over!” But when his passion had blown out, he’d slip his arm round the man’s neck, and impart knowledge worth gold. ‘Twould have done your heart good, Mus’ Springett, to see the two hundred of us – masons, jewellers, carvers, gilders, iron workers and the rest – all toiling like cock-angels, and this mad Italian hornet fleeing from one to next up and down the chapel. ‘Done your heart good, it would!’

‘I believe you,’ said Mr. Springett. ‘In Eighteen hundred Fifty-four, I mind, the railway was bein’ made into Hastin’s. There was two thousand navvies on it – all young – all strong – an’ I was one of ’em. Oh, dearie me! Excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin’ with you?’

‘Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He painted pictures on the chapel ceiling – slung from a chair. Torrigiano made us promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. None the less, I never went aloft to carve ’thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning. We were never far from each other. Benedetto ’ud sharpen his knife on his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry —wheet, wheet, wheet. I’d hear it where I hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we’d nod to each other friendly-like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto, but his hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mind the night I had finished the models for the bronze saints round the tomb; Torrigiano embraced me before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I came out. He was slavering in the porch like a mad dog.’

‘Working himself up to it?’ said Mr. Springett. ‘Did he have it in at ye that night?’

‘No, no. That time he kept his oath to Torrigiano. But I pitied him. Eh, well! Now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of myself; but after Torrisany had put his arm round my neck, I – I’ – Hal broke into a laugh – ‘I lay there was not much odds ’twixt me and a cock-sparrow in his pride.’

‘I was pretty middlin’ young once on a time,’ said Mr. Springett.

‘Then ye know that a man can’t drink and dice and dress fine, and keep company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mus’ Springett.’

‘I never held much with dressin’ up, but – you’re right! The worst mistakes I ever made they was made on a Monday morning,’ Mr. Springett answered. ‘We’ve all been one sort of fool or t’other. Mus’ Dan, Mus’ Dan, take the smallest gouge, or you’ll be spluttin’ her stern works clean out. Can’t ye see the grain of the wood don’t favour a chisel?’

‘I’ll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called Brygandyne – Bob Brygandyne – Clerk of the King’s Ships, a little, smooth, bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin’ – a won’erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made much o’ me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the bows of one of the King’s ships – the Sovereign was her name.’

‘Was she a man-of-war?’ asked Dan.

‘She was a war-ship, 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’ just about 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. He 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. “Is it 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.