Gemini - Dorothy Dunnett [44]
That was when Nicholas last saw him. But an aptitude for organising and detail spills over into other things, if the owner is good enough. Masons need to manage money, and men, and to quantify and import materials. Masons often become perforce their own merchants and dealers and shippers, and the stone and iron and timber, the gunpowder they import for their quarrying are all useful for other things. Good masons make cannon balls and gun-carriages and build and fortify castles. The change in Big Tam Cochrane was not a physical one: it was the overlay of satisfaction and confidence which comes to a man who is extended as he was meant to be extended. And all his enthusiasm, his earnestness, his attention to detail were still there underneath. Nicholas envied him.
It was time he joined the others below. When Cochrane reappeared, Nicholas thought he had come to collect him. Instead, the mason banged noisily past him and shouted into the gloom of the opposite corner. ‘Willie! Are ye no done yet, man! Look who’s here!’
Nicholas stood where he was. There was a screen at the end of the Lady Chapel. He could hear a mutter from beyond, and then a light appeared: a lamp, borne by a stranger with a willing expression. He was introduced, but did not shake hands. The man’s fingers were covered with charcoal. ‘Willie!’ bawled Cochrane. His voice, for a big man, was not deep.
‘I hear you,’ said the man he was calling, and came sulkily out from the same place.
His hair had turned grey: that was the first thing about him. It was no tidier: heaped round his large-boned, lugubrious face with its lips as flexible as two springs. His eyes were angry. In his arms were a rebec, a recorder and a set of bagpipes, and round his shoulder was slung a small drum. There was a glint from something stuck in his shirt cords: a whistle.
Nicholas said, ‘I stayed away because I found someone much better than you. Better voice, better pieces, and a damn sight better on the drums, which wouldn’t be difficult. Are you playing in churches for halfpennies, now?’
Cochrane said, grinning, ‘See our model. We want some angels with instruments up on one of those capitals. About there. He’s got a portable organ.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Nicholas said. ‘You don’t have to go home all the time. Are you sore with me?’
‘Yes,’ said Willie Roger. He was the King’s master musician. He had taught Nicholas all he knew about music and, more than anyone else, was liable to have been hurt when Nicholas left. Roger said, ‘How long are you here for?’ The instruments winked all about him.
‘For quite a long time,’ Nicholas said. ‘Which is just as well, because you need a porter or you’re going to dent all that bloody brass. Give me your organ.’
‘You bastard,’ said Whistle Willie; and laughed.
Down in the Sacristy, it was about as good as it could be, but necessary to tear himself, hoarse, away from the talk and the laughter to fulfil his obligations to the folk in the cabins. They offered him a bed in the church but, when he explained, they elected to come with him instead, and walk to the village, bearing lanterns, with Willie playing his pipes in the lead (Cibalala du riaus du riaus/Cibalala durie!). All the builders turned out at the noise, and were both flattered and flustered to find the master mason and his team among their guests for the evening. Then they found they had brought their own food and