The Copper Sign (39 page)

“How are you doing, little one?” Poulet patted Ellen’s shoulder. “You look magnificent!”

“Thanks, Poulet, I’m doing fine. And Claire, do you have any news about her?”

Poulet was Claire’s uncle. He had once visited his niece when Ellen was still working with her. She was his only living relative, and even though the trip was long and very strenuous for him, he still went to see her from time to time.

“The miller’s son was here recently. Claire is probably doing better now, but the boy…” Poulet shook his oversized head sadly.

“What was wrong with her? Was she sick? And how about Jacques, how is he? Has he been acting foolishly?”

“He died, got a fever and a cough and simply couldn’t get over it. Her first child with Guiot was stillborn, and then the problem with Jacques. Claire was despondent, but I hear now she has another little one on the way.” Poulet sighed. “Yes, that’s the way of the world. Birth and death, death and birth, that’s the way things go.”

“Poor Jacques!” Ellen said, dismayed. “But it will be easier for her because she is expecting another child. This time everything will surely work out. I’ll pray for her.” Ellen tried to put on a confident smile.

Poulet now looked at Madeleine, who was standing next to Jean. She was staring at a butterfly made of thin wood hanging down from the ceiling on a barely visible thread. She was as fascinated as a little child watching it move back and forth in the gentle breeze. No child who came into his shop could ever resist the sight, but the girl in Ellen’s group was no child. Poulet took Ellen by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye.

“Let’s have another look at you. You’re prettier, softer…you’re in love!” He grinned mischievously and pinched her on the nose. Then he turned away from her and to his stock of wood. “So you’re making scabbards again.” He grinned. “And you want to make a handle as well?”

“I naturally never expected I’d get the best seasoned wood for it.” Ellen beamed at Poulet, blinking her eyes coquettishly.

“Well, if you make eyes at me like that, I’ll look in my treasure chest and see what I can do for you.” He hauled his heavy frame to a box in the corner of the shop. “If you take pear wood for the sheath, would you like it also for the handle, or would you rather have cherry or ash?”

“You know your wood better than anyone. Just pick out a good piece for me that is also something I can afford, and I’ll leave it up to you what kind of wood it is.”

He nodded and rummaged in the box until he found something. “Here, this is wonderful! Bone dry and it won’t split. What do you think? Are the size and thickness all right?” He limped back to Ellen and handed her the piece of wood. While she was examining it, he picked out two thin sheets of wood, the kind that scabbard makers bought from him. The quality of his wood was known far and wide. All the tradespeople in the area bought their supplies from him, and he always had a good supply of these wooden sheets in stock.

“You are right, this piece is exactly what I need! Cherry,” she said to Jean, holding the wood under his nose. “Can you saw it through for me?” she asked Poulet.

He clamped the wood into a vise, took a saw, placed it in the middle, and asked Ellen, “Like this?”

She nodded, and Poulet sawed the piece of wood lengthwise.

“Anything else you need, dear?”

His eyes sparkled, and Jean thought he must be at least as good at business as he was at carpentry.

“I don’t think so,” Ellen replied, but she hesitated for a moment.

Poulet handed her the two half pieces of wood and the sheets for the scabbards, and named his price.

Jean looked at Ellen angrily.

“Fine, you know the fellow, but even if he were the official supplier to the king his prices would still be too high. He acts as if you’re not buying wood, but gold. The whole forest is full of wood—you only have to go and get it,” he said excitedly.

Poulet grinned. “Nice fellow.”

Jean looked at him, irritated.

“He has no idea about prices and even less about wood.” She sighed, knowing that Poulet had given her a special price as a friend.

Jean would have found any price too high, however, because he had no idea how important it was to use seasoned wood and how costly it was to make sheets of wood for scabbards.

“Someday he’ll be a real success, and so will you if you listen to him.” Poulet lowered his price a little. “Are you happy now, young man?”

Jean turned red. He nodded and was annoyed when Poulet and Ellen roared with laughter.

“Here, you can whittle something nice from this piece of ash wood.” Poulet handed Jean a long, gnarled piece of wood.

“Thank you,” Jean mumbled defiantly, without looking him in the eye.

“When you see Claire again, embrace her for me and tell her I am praying for Jacques and the child that she is expecting. And say hello to Guiot for me also, will you?”

“Naturally, my dear, I’ll do that. Take care of yourself.” Before they parted, Poulet once again took Ellen in his arms.

Jean followed her silently until they had left the village.

“You made fun of me and laughed, and I didn’t think that was funny at all. In any case, your strange friend lowered his price, so you see how right I was. It was too expensive,” he fumed.

“I don’t see it quite that way. He seems to be a better friend than I realized. Don’t be silly, Jean. Poulet is an honest carpenter, and if he weren’t he wouldn’t have so many customers that he can make a good living from it even if he’s a cripple. And he also gave you a nice piece of wood.”

“Bah, a gnarled, leftover piece like that is something you can pick up from the ground in any forest,” Jean objected.

“It’s a really good piece for carving because it’s really dry. What you find in the forest is worthless as long as it’s fresh. Young, green wood can’t be carved easily as it frays and rips as it dries. And older wood from the forest is usually rotten or falls apart easily. Poulet never lets anyone pick out the wood for him. His assistant and apprentices just cut the trees he tells them to. Then they bring the wood to his shed, where it has to stay for one or two years until it has dried out. And only then does he make the sheets of wood from it like the one I bought. Believe me, it is good wood!”

“Hm,” Jean grumbled. He didn’t like having to admit that he was perhaps wrong about Poulet. “What is the matter with him? I mean with his legs?” he asked.

Ellen shrugged. “I have no idea. The word is that he was a handsome fellow when he was young, even if that’s hard to imagine when you look at him now.”

Jean thought about Poulet’s head, which was much too large and seemed to sit right on his shoulders with no hint of a neck in between. Even now, in his mind’s eye, he could see Poulet standing before him and could only shake his head.
They say he used to be handsome? Completely impossible.

They wandered on from one village to another and enjoyed the splendid autumn with its warm, low-lying sun and the colorful leaves. Only as it got dark did it start to become cold and damp, and they had to look for a safe place to camp and make a fire. Madeleine sang lullabies, and her clear, bright voice transformed the words into elf-like melodies. Tears welled up in Ellen’s eyes as she worked on the two pieces of cherry wood. She placed one of the halves on the tang and, using the knife that Osmond had given her as a child, scratched the exact outlines of the metal into the wood. When Madeleine had finished, Ellen wiped her eyes with her sleeve, made sure that both pieces would fit together exactly, and then scratched the outline of the tang into the other half. Carefully she began to hollow out the wood. She used the knife every day to cut bread, bacon, or onions, or to cut string, clean her fingernails, shape wood for the spit or, as today, to whittle. Sometimes a wave of melancholy would come over her. She thought of Osmond and her siblings, Simon, and Aelfgiva—was the good old woman still alive?

Ellen was trying to think how many years it had been since she left Orford. “Must be ten or eleven years,” she murmured.

“Who?” Jean asked, curious, and decided to do some whittling himself. He took the knife that Ellen had made for him a few months ago from some leftover pieces of iron and began hesitantly.

“Not
who
, but
what
.”

“What?”

“I have been trying to figure out how long I have been away from home. I think it must be some ten or eleven years,” she answered, a bit irritated.

“Oh, I see,” Jean said, somewhat bored, and went back to working on his piece of wood. Whenever she thought of her family, Ellen felt an unpleasant burning in the pit of her stomach, and so she tried to think about something else.

“You have to hold the knife flatter,” she snapped at Jean somewhat harshly, and he looked up, surprised. “Like this, see?” Ellen said, showing him how to hold the knife in his hand. “And always away from your body or you can hurt yourself badly.” Only now did she notice a strange, glassy look in his eyes. “What’s the matter?” she was about to ask when he suddenly began speaking in a thin voice:

“My father often carved wooden figures in the evening.” He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “I ought to know how to hold a knife—he showed me, but I don’t remember anymore. My memory is all a blur.”

Ellen looked at him sympathetically. “That’s also a long time ago,” she said, patting him on the head.

“Their faces, they are all gone.”

“Whose faces, Jean?”

“Those of my parents and my little brother. When I think of them and try to picture them, I see only blood, my father’s intestines pouring out of his dead body, and my mother’s twisted, contorted limbs. I can’t even remember the color of her eyes or her hair.” Jean cried softly.

Ellen could only guess how dreadful he felt. Her homesickness suddenly appeared so foolish compared with the loneliness Jean and Madeleine had to feel. They had lost everything and no longer had a home to which they could return someday. They didn’t even know where their village was. If they didn’t happen to come through the area someday by chance, as Jean had hoped for so many years, they would never find it again. Perhaps the village had not been rebuilt at all, since all the inhabitants had died. Ellen stood up, sat down behind Jean and Madeleine, and took them in her arms. She rocked the two like little children, trying to console them.

“I’m so happy we met you. I have always tried to watch out for her,” Jean said softly.

Madeleine was silent in Ellen’s comforting embrace.

“But I have never had anyone—for myself, I mean, someone to take care of me. Do you understand?” He stared into the flickering light of the fire and avoided looking at Ellen.

From the side she could see tears sparkling in his eyes.

Madeleine had closed hers and was quiet, as if asleep.

“We’ll stay together always, I promise!” Deeply moved, Ellen pulled the two even closer to her.

Jean shook his head sadly. “Someday a man will come along, I mean not this Sir William…” There was a touch of disparagement in his voice.

“Jean!” Ellen was appalled, and blushed. “What do you mean by that?”

“I know you are in love with him.”

“Whatever made you think that?” Ellen felt caught.

“Oh, even a blind man can see that. The way you adore him. Maybe he likes you, too, but he is the tutor of our Young King, and you are only a girl who wants to be a smith. You have nothing in common.”

Ellen’s stomach cramped up. Jean wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t known already for a long time, but it hurt just the same. Naturally, there would never be a future together for her and William. She took a deep breath. Jean’s voice seemed to be coming from far away.

“Someday he will marry a noblewoman, and you will hopefully marry a decent craftsman, if there is one who will take such a stubborn woman,” he added with an embarrassed grin.

“There you are being so fresh again!” Ellen raised her hand with the knife still in it and threatened him, laughing, even though her heart was still as heavy as stone. She thought of Jocelyn, his terrible death, and how unjust the world was.

“If the day ever comes that you marry, we will just be a burden to you,” Jean said softly, lowering his eyes so that Ellen wouldn’t see that he was again fighting with tears.

“Don’t talk such nonsense. We’ll stay together,” Ellen added emphatically. “Now that’s enough, I don’t want to hear any more of this.”

During the night Ellen dreamed of England and awakened the next morning well rested and in a good mood that lasted all day. At noon they stopped at a farmer’s house and bought a goat-skin that Ellen needed for the scabbard of her sword. Jean again showed how skillful he was in bargaining, and they even had a little money left over to buy some goat meat.

“I still need glue for the scabbard,” Ellen stated, and had trouble chewing the strong, tough meat.

“Couldn’t you have bought that from your friend the carpenter?” Jean said, giving Ellen a sidelong glance.

“I could have but didn’t want to. Poulet’s wood is of excellent quality, but his glue was no longer completely fresh.”

“How do you even know that?” Jean asked, clearly astonished.

“I smelled it. I know all about glue. I could even make my own, but that’s time-consuming. If bone lime is stirred for longer than three or four days, it begins to smell. And Poulet’s glue pot had a rather strong smell. Maybe the assistant is too lazy to prepare the glue regularly. I could have bought granulated glue from him, but I would rather get it freshly prepared. In any case, it’s best to buy it just when you need it. It’s somewhat expensive, but I know then at least that it will really hold, and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

Jean grinned. “I guess so! Years ago I worked for a shield maker whose son had diarrhea, and nothing seemed to help. Shield makers need a lot of glue. He makes some regularly, and you should look around at the next tournament to see if you can buy some from him. Whether it’s any good, of course, is something I can’t tell you.”