The Copper Sign (26 page)

Michel became a smith because his father had been a smith, and his father’s father before that. He had little passion for or pride in his work, and yet he was good enough to have regular customers who were happy with him. He could have provided very well for his family and also could have taken on a striker and a journeyman if he hadn’t spent every free moment playing dice in the tavern, where he was relieved of most of his money.

Marie accepted her fate because she didn’t know of any other way to live. Michel didn’t beat her as long as she kept her mouth shut, and that was enough for her.

Ellen wiped her forehead with her hand. The summer was hot and sticky. Warm air gathered under the roof of the shop, making it difficult to breathe. She had been working for Michel for a full three months, and more and more frequently now he would disappear in the afternoon to play dice in the tavern. The journeymen in the other smithies made fun of him because he left the running of his workshop to a woman. They were suspicious and jealous of Ellen and afraid she would get too personal with their masters.

Ellen wondered if she should even remain in Beauvais. July was a good month to be on the road, and perhaps it would be better to tie up her bundle of things and exchange the anvil for a walking stick. As she was mulling this over, a tall, slender man, someone she had never seen before, entered the workshop. He appeared to be about thirty years of age and had warm, brown eyes and a full head of wavy brown hair.

“Isn’t Michel here?” he asked, with a slightly furrowed brow.

“Sorry, for the moment you’ll have to settle for me. What can I do for you?”

Judging from the deepening frown on his face, it was clear he wasn’t happy at all having to deal with a woman who was a complete stranger rather than with the master. In spite of his hesitancy, he seemed to be a likeable person.

“Please tell me why you are here,” Ellen said, approaching him. “You can be sure I’ll be able to assist you just as well as the master himself, or he wouldn’t allow me to work here in his workshop on my own.”

“I need a few tools. My name is Jocelyn, Faber Aurifex.”

A goldsmith! Ellen was delighted and closely examined the broken tool he handed her.

“The burin cannot be repaired. I will have to make a new one. What else do you need?”

“A little hammer,” he replied, surprised at how well Ellen understood these things.

“What weight do you need? And the face? What size do you need? Domed or flat?” Ellen asked, in a matter-of-fact fashion.

The goldsmith gave her the specifications, and Ellen nodded. “The two items can be ready in five days, but unfortunately no sooner.”

“Good,” he said, but didn’t seem ready to leave yet.

Ellen smiled at him, and Jocelyn cleared his throat.

Suddenly the door to the shop flew open, and Michel entered. He smelled of beer and appeared to be in a bad temper, probably having once again gambled away all his money. “What are you doing here, Jocelyn? Are you trying to take my Ellen away from me?” he asked the goldsmith.

Jocelyn looked Michel up and down as if he were out of his mind. “I placed an order for some tools,” he said coolly.

Michel’s face brightened. “Well, if that’s the case, Master Jocelyn, Ellen will make them for you. She loves this work,” he said, with a hoarse laugh.

“Well, I was just about to ask Master Jocelyn if he could take me on two days a week as an assistant,” Ellen said. “You know, Michel, we agreed on that right from the start.”

Jocelyn looked at Ellen in surprise, and frowned.

Michel shrieked and laughed hysterically. “Yes, Jocelyn, just look at her hands! They are exactly the right thing for the kind of fine trade you do.” He grabbed Ellen’s soiled right hand and held it up to Jocelyn’s face.

Jocelyn was clearly put off by the behavior of the drunken smith. He politely took Ellen’s hand and examined it. The blood blisters on her palms were gone, and they were in fact a little more delicate than those of an ordinary smith.

“I’ll admit, there are quite a few calluses, but…” He gave Ellen such a searching gaze that she almost lost her breath. “As soon as you have finished the tool, bring it to me. If I’m satisfied, I’ll give you a try.” Jocelyn gently let go of her hand.

Long after he had released her hand, it seemed to Ellen that she could still feel his warm, soft fingers. “In five days, then,” she said in an undertone.

Jocelyn nodded his agreement. “In five days!” Then he turned toward Michel, said good-bye in a cool tone, and left.

“Don’t forget, you must first finish the order for the baker,” Michel grumbled.

“I know, I can do that, don’t worry.”

Ellen got right to work on the baker’s order so she could start as soon as possible making the tools for the goldsmith. She wanted to do an especially good job for him. The burin needed to be pointed, sharp, and above all very hard. Finally she would be able to use more of her knowledge than she ever did just making simple tools!

Ellen enjoyed the work for the goldsmith and a few days later began tempering the burin and the face of the hammer’s head. She half filled a little trough she had found in the shop with water she had fetched from a spring in the forest, adding a bit of urine from her chamber pot. On the bottom of the trough she placed a stone that Donovan had given her. He swore by its magic powers as well as by the ancient sayings he had taught her and that she murmured quietly to herself every time she worked at tempering metal.

Michel eyed her mixture suspiciously, smelled it, and fondled her posterior. Ellen hissed in his ear: “I would rather have used the blood of dwarfs—it’s very cold, as everyone knows, but I use it only for special swords because it’s hard to come by.”

The hair on the back of Michel’s neck stood on end, and Ellen reveled in his fear. From now on, with a little luck, he wouldn’t try laying hands on her again.

When the hammer and the burin for the goldsmith were finished and Ellen was ready to deliver them, she asked Michel how to get to the goldsmith’s shop. He didn’t mind explaining it to her, as the whole matter of the dwarf’s blood had made him think.

Jocelyn looked surprised when Ellen entered his workshop.

“You’ll need more?” His rather hostile question seemed more like a statement.

“I’ll need more what?” Ellen didn’t understand.

“Time to finish, of course.” Jocelyn frowned. It was the afternoon of the fifth day, and he thought she was coming to ask for an extension. Michel never finished his work in the agreed time, so Jocelyn expected the same of Ellen.

“I said five days,” she replied pointedly.

“Then you still have time until this evening. Why are you standing around here?” Jocelyn answered angrily. He had no desire to grant an extension again.

Ellen laughed because now she finally understood what he meant.

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, a bit more irritated, and then he saw that she was unpacking the two tools and handing them to him.

Jocelyn examined them carefully.

“Please give me a chance. I learn quickly and am skilled,” Ellen pleaded while he tried out the new burin.

“Good, very good. I must say this is the best work I’ve seen for a long time,” he mumbled, impressed, and gave her a much friendlier look now. “Michel is not a bad smith, but if you really made these tools by yourself, you know more than he does.”

“Please try me. I’d like to learn and to work for you, just as a helper,” Ellen insisted.

“Let’s do that. Have a seat here at the table, and I’ll show you how the burin is used. If you are good at this, then we’ll see.”

In the last few days, Ellen had been thinking a lot about what to expect if she worked for Jocelyn. Money to advance her plans for the future? She couldn’t really expect the goldsmith to take on an inexperienced girl like her, teach her, and then also pay her for it. No, it couldn’t be a question of money—what she wanted was to learn how to decorate her own swords someday. Ever since she had learned how to make scabbards, she had dreamed of making swords all by herself instead of having to hand them over to other tradespeople who would then do the decoration, the handle, and the scabbard. The goldsmith’s work was the most costly part, so she would be able to make a better profit on her swords once she was able to do the work herself. It didn’t matter if Michel believed that all she wanted was to make money assisting Jocelyn, but she’d have to confide the truth to the goldsmith if he asked.

Ellen worked calmly and with concentration until it got dark. Jocelyn kept coming to look at her work and gave her directions. She was extremely skillful and seemed to learn much faster than other apprentices.

“If you want me to teach you, you must come every afternoon. I won’t ask for a premium for the training, but I also cannot pay you anything. Will you agree to that?”

“Every afternoon?” Ellen looked at the goldsmith hesitantly. “I’m not sure I can do that. I’ll have to speak with Michel, because I receive room and board there.”

“If I know Michel, he certainly doesn’t pay you very much.”

Ellen nodded.

“Then whether he wants to or not he’ll have to agree if you just insist. He can’t replace you, believe me.”

Ellen still didn’t look convinced.

“Michel would have promised me the tool in ten days and wouldn’t get around to delivering it for two weeks.” Jocelyn grinned and winked at her. “You’ll see, he’ll give in.”

Jocelyn was right. Michel knew just how lucky he was to have Ellen, and in order not to lose her completely he agreed, though not without grumbling, that she could work at his smithy in the morning and go to Jocelyn’s shop in the afternoon.

And so Ellen stayed in Beauvais, where every day she gulped down Marie’s lunch as fast as possible and then hurried off to the goldsmith’s. Without ever complaining, she rose before sunrise and worked until sunset like a person possessed.

Only on Sunday did she have a little time to visit Nestor. She had found a good place for her horse in a newly founded convent, and as long as Ellen didn’t need the pony, the nuns could use it and in return feed and care for it.

A year had passed since she had first taken the job at Michel’s smithy. She still worked every afternoon for Jocelyn and ever since Easter time even received a denarius for it from time to time. Ellen was hurrying along toward the goldsmith’s shop. She was so excited that she didn’t even notice the beautiful blue sky and the pleasantly warm July sunshine. Jocelyn had been working for some time on an altar vessel for the nunnery in which Nestor was boarded. Since the nuns were not very wealthy, he had made the vessel out of silver and was planning on gilding it.

Jocelyn jumped as Ellen, beaming broadly, came rushing into his shop.

“I’m here, we can start the gilding,” she announced expectantly, without even first saying hello.

“Slow down! That takes a while,” Jocelyn laughed.

He didn’t know what there was about her that he found so attractive—was it her enthusiasm for the craft, her skill, or her unusual, rather austere beauty? Ellen was unaware that sometimes he watched her as she worked and carefully studied her face, which looked so concentrated, especially when she was engaged in fine, detailed work.

“Can’t we begin today?” Ellen asked, disappointed.

How beautiful she was! Already after the first week he had been crazy about her but had never allowed it to show.

“If it were so simple then anyone could do it, but gilding is a very lengthy and difficult procedure and requires a lot of preparation. First we need to put together some tools.” Jocelyn sighed and deliberated a moment. “Have a look in the small drawer in that closet, where you’ll find a whole bundle of pig bristles. We’ll wrap them in iron wire and make four brushes from them, each about the width of a finger. We need two of them for quicking the vessel and two for gilding it.”

“What does quicking mean?” Ellen asked with interest as she skillfully bundled the bristles.

“We must prepare the silver so that the gold will adhere to it. To do that, we apply a liquid that the Faber Aurifex calls quicksilver water.”

“And where do we get that?”

“We have to make it ourselves, but first we have to prepare the amalgam, and for that we must first purify the gold we intend to use.”

Ellen sighed impatiently at hearing all the steps necessary for preparation.

But Jocelyn remained calm. “The most important thing in the gilding process is the purity of the gold. Don’t forget that, because otherwise nothing will come of it. In order to remove copper, silver, and other impurities from the gold, we must cement it. Basically, that’s nothing but a rather time-consuming heating of the gold with an agent called cement, which we have to make ourselves, as well.”

Even though Ellen had not yet understood it all, she nodded.

“You’ll see in a moment,” Jocelyn said. The little, pensive frown on her face looked absolutely adorable, he thought.

“I have cut the gold we are going to use into strips of equal length. Do you see?”

Ellen examined the pieces and tried to estimate the thickness, length, and breadth as well as the distance between the holes he had bored into them.

Jocelyn smiled at her conscientiousness, a trait he admired so much in her. “Hand me the melting dishes on the table, and the little dish with the red powder, too. Oh, yes, I’ll go and get the salt as well,” Jocelyn said as he entered his bedroom and returned with a glazed clay flask.

“And now?” Ellen asked eagerly.

“The red powder is crushed clay baked in the oven. We need all of it and will mix it with an equal portion of salt.”

Ellen took the powder and weighed it. At first, weighing had not been easy. It took a bit of intuition and above all reckoning, so she had practiced every free evening for weeks.