Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [284]
“You like the building?”
An elderly man with a broad, receding forehead and a hooked nose was standing there, gazing down at him curiously. Osmund wondered who he was.
“It’s so,” he hesitated: “so simple,” he said honestly.
To his surprise, the old man smiled.
“The best things always are. You see those windows: note how there is an absence of any but the simplest tracery. Across the Channel you will find the most elaborate patterns of masonry appearing in windows, and in the vaults,” he added. “But I dislike all that. It’s not Sarum,” he smiled, “not Sarum at all.”
“I think it must be the greatest cathedral in the world,” Osmund said.
The designer laughed.
“Oh no. The cathedral of Amiens in France,” he went on cheerfully, “is twice the volume of our church. But if you stand inside both, you will never be able to tell. And why? Because the proportions are perfect. See,” he became enthusiastic, “these piers of Purbeck marble that support the vaults: the marble is so hard that we can make them thin. And where the transepts cross at the centre, the four great columns at the corners of the crossing – there we have built huge pillars whose columns will fly straight up, with no intervening capitals from floor to vaulting in a single unbroken line. Simple nests of columns. Pure line. They soar.”
It was obvious to Osmund now who the old man must be. He was astonished that such a great man should speak to him.
Canon Elias de Dereham gave him a friendly look. “And are you a mason, young man?”
“No sir,” he answered modestly. “But I hope to be.”
“Can you carve?”
He knew that he could carve in wood. He was sure he would in stone.
“Yes,” he replied unhesitatingly.
The old man nodded, and then moved on.
It was two days later that one of the masons came up to him when he was working and began to question him.
“You wish to be a mason?”
He nodded.
“If you wish to join our guild and learn the mysteries of the mason’s craft, you must serve our apprentice until we decide you are worthy.”
The masons’ guild was still a fairly informal organisation, but he knew that usually a boy apprentice might have to serve as long as seven years before being admitted as a journeyman mason. He bowed his head.
“Very well,” the man said briskly. “See Bartholomew. He’ll be your mentor.” And he walked away.
And from that moment Osmund knew that his life as a proper mason had begun.
Bartholomew was an apprentice only two years older than himself: a pale, surly young fellow with a shock of dark hair, already thinning, that fell over his face, and a large, running boil on the right side of his neck. He greeted Osmund without enthusiasm, but told him he might work beside him in future and learn the beginnings of his craft.
The next day Robert the master mason came to him too, asked him a few questions about himself, and then gave him a curt nod.
“Learn from Bartholomew,” he ordered.
There was so much to learn. His surly mentor showed him how to turn his chisel, and explained to him the properties of the different kinds of stone.
He also showed him the many activities that went into the building, each of them with their own particular workshop.
It was a world full of wonder. He saw the great drawing board of the head mason, where, with compasses and set squares, he drew the designs for each part of the building on a linen sheet. He was surprised to see that the pencil he used was not made of lead, but of silver.
“Silver leaves a black line on linen,” Bartholomew informed him curtly. He had not known.
He learned to understand the work of the joiners and carpenters who not only fashioned the supports for the roofs, but who organised the scaffolding as well. He saw the huge saw pit and the waiting piles of timber from the nearby forest of Clarendon.
On the north-east side of the close, by the gate to the bishop’s palace grounds, he visited the glaziers, who were already preparing the huge quantities of stained glass that would be required – first painting and then firing the glass in their kilns. He smiled in delight