The Copper Sign (27 page)

“And what now?” Impatiently she handed the dish to Jocelyn.

The goldsmith took the little clay bottle and dripped some yellowish liquid evenly over the powder until it was wet.

“Urine?” she asked, with a grin.

Jocelyn nodded. “But not too much—the powder mustn’t stick together. The gold strips also need to be sprinkled with urine. Then we’ll put them in a dish with the mixture so they form layers but do not touch each other.” He placed the second dish on top as a cover and filled the space between the two vessels with clay. “That must dry now, and then we place it in the cementation oven.”

He set the dishes down on four stones of similar size that he had set up in a circle inside the oven and lit a wood fire under it. Smoke poured from the holes in the upper part of the oven made of stone and clay.

“The fire must burn a whole day and night, and the dishes must all be subject to the same heat so the gold doesn’t melt,” Jocelyn declared as they were finishing up.

“And what do we do next?” Ellen’s enthusiasm was far from satisfied.

“Oh, we still have a lot to do before the gold is ready tomorrow. First we have to make some brass brushes. We’ll need them later to polish the gilding.” He started searching through the cabinet and only now noticed that it was beginning to get dark. “It’s late.”

Ellen stood very close to Jocelyn.

“We’ll pick up our work tomorrow.” He breathed in her fragrance. “I…” he began.

“Yes?”

“I enjoy working with you, Ellen.”

“I like working with you as well, master.”

Her voice sounded soft, almost tender.

“Please call me Jocelyn.” He couldn’t make out whether she was nodding. “Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Good night, Ellen, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jocelyn’s voice was trembling.

“Good night, Jocelyn.”

The next day when Ellen arrived at the goldsmith’s shop she found Jocelyn stirring the fire in the cementation oven.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I had to keep an eye on the fire.” Jocelyn smiled wearily.

Ellen noticed again what a warm feeling his smile evoked in her, and she blushed. “Just tell me how to make the brass brushes, and then you can rest a bit while I tend to it and also keep an eye on the fire. What do you think?”

Jocelyn nodded and explained to Ellen what she had to do. “You know where the lead is, don’t you?”

“Certainly, Jocelyn, take a little rest and I’ll wake you up when the gold strips are ready.”

“Good, I’ll sit in the corner and rest for a little while, and if you have any questions, just shake me.”

Ellen gave him a disapproving look.

“Why don’t you go to your room?” she asked, shaking her head. He had to know she could manage by herself.

Jocelyn smiled. No one had such an impish smile as he did. “Because I’d like to be with you,” he replied and settled down on a crate nearby in the corner.

His response passed over Ellen like a warm wave.

Jocelyn sat down and fell asleep at once, his chest rising and falling regularly.

Ellen couldn’t stop looking at him. Even while he was asleep he had a little smile on his face.

After she was finished with the brass brushes and had cleaned up everything, she looked outside. It was still light, but darkness would be coming soon. Surely it was advisable to wake Jocelyn now. She walked over to him and looked at him more closely. He was sleeping so peacefully, like a child. She touched his cheek, caressing it gently.

Jocelyn mumbled contentedly but didn’t open his eyes. Ellen bent down to him and whispered, “Wake up.” Her lips touched his ear. She inhaled the fragrance around his neck and closed her eyes.

Jocelyn turned his head toward her, and their faces touched.

Ellen suddenly felt weak and shaky in the knees.

“What I wouldn’t give to be awakened every morning like that,” he mumbled.

Ellen blushed and became nervous. “It’s time. I think the gold is ready,” she said much too loudly and stood up again. Every muscle in her body was tense, and yet she was afraid she couldn’t move a single step.

Jocelyn sat up and had a good stretch. His eyes were sparkling like stars.

Jocelyn was happy with the purified gold and placed a melting dish on the fire in order to prepare the gold amalgam. He cut the precious metal up into little pieces, added eight times that amount of quicksilver, and then put the mix into the red-hot dish, holding it as far from himself as possible.

“Quicksilver can make you sick,” he explained. “The vapor is bad for your stomach. My master claimed that wine along with garlic or pepper was good for that, but that didn’t help him—he turned pale and thin, and then he lost his mind.” Jocelyn drew little circles in the air near his temple with his index finger. “He wasn’t very old when he died, but toward the end all that was left of him was a bundle of misery with saliva running down his mouth. I’m certain the quicksilver had something to do with that.” Jocelyn looked at Ellen as he moved the dish back and forth.

After the gold and quicksilver were mixed as thoroughly as possible, he poured the mixture into a dish of water and washed the remaining quicksilver from the amalgam. He would use the water with the remnants of the quicksilver in order to make the quicksilver water. Jocelyn dried the gold with a clean cloth. Since he did not want to immediately apply the paste-like gold, he separated it into several equal quantities and stuffed it into the quills of goose feathers.

Ellen’s cheeks glowed with excitement, and this almost drove him out of his mind.

He thoroughly removed the quicksilver sticking to his hands with ashes and water.

“And what do we do now?” Ellen sighed, looking at him wide-eyed.

Jocelyn grinned.

“The quicksilver water!” they said in unison, and laughed. They were standing very close together.

Ellen felt the warmth of his body. He smelled of smoke and fresh rosemary. She looked into his eyes until she thought she would lose herself in them, and the trembling in her abdomen soon spread to her entire body. They stood there like that for a long while. The question kept running through her mind:
Why doesn’t he kiss me?
but then the magic of the moment passed.

“Here’s one more thing we need,” Jocelyn exclaimed as he busily picked up the tartar and rubbed it. “You put tartar and salt together in the melting dish along with the water we used earlier in washing the amalgam. Then we add a little quicksilver and warm it all up.” Jocelyn stirred the quicksilver water and held it over the fire. “Get the bristle bundle that you made and give me a linen rag.”

Ellen handed him what he asked for.

Jocelyn heated the altar vessel for a moment, dipped one of the bristle bundles into the warm mixture, and used it to rub in the quicksilver water, until all the places even down to the last recess were turned white. After the quicking of the entire vessel, Jocelyn took a pointed knife out of a leather cup, used it to fetch the gold amalgam from the quills of the feather, applied it carefully in little bits with a copper spatula, and distributed the gold evenly with a dampened bristle brush. Again and again he warmed up the dish until the gilding amalgam was warm, then spread it out again with the bristle brush. It took a long time to apply the gold evenly. Jocelyn repeated this process three times, and Ellen carefully watched everything he did. He kept warming and brushing the vessel until the plating was yellow. “The heat disperses the quicksilver, and what remains is the gold adhering to the silver,” he explained. “And now we’ll let the vessel cool. Will you bring me the other brushes?”

Ellen went to fetch the brass brushes while turning over in her mind again and again all the steps to be performed. “But why do you need the brushes now?”

“Look closely at the gilding. What do you notice?”

Ellen observed the vessel carefully. It looked yellow, like gold, but was dull. “It has no shine.”

Jocelyn smiled at her. “And so now we’ll polish it! Let’s begin with the stand. Take the brass brush and set the stand in some water, then polish it with the brush until it shines.”

“But won’t I scratch it?” Ellen objected.

Jocelyn looked at her intently. “Don’t you trust me?”

Ellen lowered her eyes in shame. Of course she trusted him—she trusted him completely! And so she began to polish.

It was getting dark already, and Jocelyn lit two candles. Wax candles were expensive, but their flame burned more evenly than that of tallow candles. Moreover, the smoke from the tallow stung your eyes and made them tear up, making it harder to work. The light from the candles cast long shadows over Jocelyn’s face, accenting his high cheekbones.

Ellen tried to concentrate on the stand of the vessel. “Look how it shines!” she exclaimed joyously after she had polished every spot.

Jocelyn only nodded. “Now you must heat it up again until it turns reddish yellow, then take it out and cool it down in the water.”

Ellen did what he asked, and finally the foot of the altar vessel assumed the desired color.

“But now it doesn’t shine anymore!” she said, giving Jocelyn a disappointed look.

“Cool it off and polish it again,” he replied bluntly, and seemed to enjoy Ellen’s disappointment.

And so Ellen polished it again, and indeed the foot now shone even more. Proudly she looked at the successful work.

“Now let’s color the gold so that it looks even more beautiful and shiny. Tomorrow you can continue on your own.”

“What do you mean by ‘color’? How do we do that?” Ellen asked reluctantly.

“We need atramentum,” Jocelyn explained, without answering her question. “When you heat it, it melts and becomes solid,” he explained. When the atramentum solidified, he took it from the dish and shoved it directly under the coals. “And here, in the fire, it burns. As soon as it becomes red we must take it out.”

After taking it from the fire to cool, he looked at Ellen so intently that her heart began to pound wildly.

Then he turned away, took a wooden dish, and crushed the atramentum in it with an iron hammer. “A third part salt, and a little bit more of our goldwater.” Jocelyn grinned, fetched the clay flask with the urine, mixed the ingredients into a paste, and brushed them onto the stand of the vessel with a feather.

“I didn’t think gilding took so long,” Ellen grumbled.

Jocelyn nodded, placed the anointed stand on the fire until the coating dried and a wisp of smoke arose, and then he washed it off with water and cleaned it carefully with the remaining bundle of pig bristles. “So now, for the last time, heat it and let it cool in a linen cloth, and tomorrow you’ll see how beautiful the gilding looks. You will be astonished.”

After everything was finished and the workshop cleaned up, it was almost dark. Ellen was about to leave when Jocelyn came up to her and gently brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead. “You look tired,” he murmured tenderly, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. Then he raised her chin and kissed her tenderly on the mouth.

Ellen closed her eyes and opened her lips a bit, but he moved back.

“Until tomorrow,” he said with a warm smile, looking deep into her eyes.

Ellen headed toward home, deeply agitated, her heart galloping like a warhorse.

The next day she could barely wait for the morning and her work at the smithy to end. She was so excited that she couldn’t eat a bite for lunch, so she ran straight to Jocelyn’s shop. “Show me the gilding,” she said, still out of breath, but the gilding wasn’t the real cause of her impatience.

Jocelyn greeted her good-naturedly as always, but without even a trace of affection.

Ellen could hardly stand being close to him all afternoon without him staring at her longingly and affectionately. She began to worry seriously whether she had acted wrongly the evening before for not responding to his kiss with a slap in the face. Maybe Jocelyn now believed she was frivolous and for this reason he despised her. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said, and choking back tears ran out to the latrine in the yard and leaned against the board wall, sobbing.

It took her a while to calm down; then she wiped the tears away and resolved to get control of herself. Who in the world did she think she was? A goldsmith? How could she ever have believed, even for a moment, that he…he was probably just making fun of her and didn’t mean anything with his kiss. When she returned to the shop, Jocelyn had started on something else and spoke with her without looking up.

“Just continue, as we discussed, Ellen. If you have a problem, ask me.”

Ellen sat down. The vessel needed to be polished and colored, and she tried to remember each step before she did anything, trying not to ask any questions.

“It’s not even five years since my master died,” he said suddenly, looking around the room, “and this was his house. His workshop, not mine.” Jocelyn hesitated for a moment—it didn’t seem easy for him to talk about it. “When he was alive, my master’s wife was always chasing me. I naturally rebuffed her, not only because she was old—she could just as well have been young and beautiful. She was my master’s wife. Never in my life would I have…” Jocelyn stopped, then got up to fetch another tool. “After the master died, I had to decide. Either I could stay an apprentice all my life, or I could accept the proposal from my master’s wife: marry her and I would be master of my own workshop. I married her.” Jocelyn sat down again.

Ellen remained silent and couldn’t understand why he had told her all that. Didn’t he know what she felt? Didn’t he sense the pain he caused her when he spoke of another woman? Or did he perhaps want to hurt her and make her understand that he didn’t want her because she wouldn’t bring any money to the marriage?

“She has been dead for almost two years now, so the mourning period is long past and there is no reason why I couldn’t marry again.”