Great Britain -- History -- Medieval period, 1066-1485 -- Juvenile fiction; Guilds -- Juvenile fiction; Middle Ages -- Juvenile fiction
“What's all this?” asked Master Gay. And after Wilfrid's explanation
nothing would do but that they all should go immediately to see what had
come to light. When they beheld it the younger men could not keep from
taking a hand themselves. With brooms of twigs, and potsherds, and water
from the well in Cold Harbor, they industriously swept and scraped and
washed the pavement which the men had now partly uncovered.
It was a mosaic floor of tiny blocks of red, black, yellow, white,
brown, cream and slate-blue, set in cement so strong that not an inch of
the fine even surface had warped. It was not a large pavement, and might
have been the floor of a small dining or sitting-room so placed as to
command a view of the valley. A part of one wall remained. It had been
plastered and then covered with a finer plaster which was frescoed with
a row of painted pillars against the deep marvelous red of Pompeii. The
design of the floor was not at first clear. The edge was decorated with
a conventional pattern in gray and white. The corners were cut off by
diagonal lines making an eight-sided central space. This was outlined by
a guilloche, or border of intertwining bands of brilliant colors. Inside
this again was a circle divided into alternate square and triangular
spaces with still brighter borders, containing each some bird or animal.
In the central space was a seated figure playing on a harp, while around
him were packed in a close group a lion, a ram, a bull, a goat, a crab,
fishes, and other figures. Nobody at first saw what it could be.
“If I mistake not,” said the little stout man, Martin Bouvin, at last,
“it is Sir Orpheus playing to the beasts.”
“To be sure!” cried Guy Bouverel. “Do you know books as well as
cooking-pots, O man of the oldest profession?”
Martin grinned. “I heard a song about that once,” he answered, “and I
have never forgotten it. It was a lucky song--for some folk.”
It was fortunate that at that time of year the sun does not set until
after eight o'clock, for no one could have borne to leave that pavement
without seeing the whole of it. The children, quite forgotten for once
in their lives, grubbed in the piles of earth and found bewitching
bronze lion-heads and ornamental knobs and handles, and pictured tiles.
At last they all went in to a very late supper. All the guests could be
sheltered at Wilfrid's home if the young men were satisfied to lodge in
Cold Harbor.
“It is like finding out the people who lived here when the land was
young,” said Wilfrid, his eyes very bright.
“And there were also the men who made the dewponds,” mused Master Gay.
“And there were those Druids of whom my father told me,” said Josian
wonderingly. “This is like a fairy tale, Al-an. Is York the same?”
“Brother Basil said once that our England is a land of lost kingdoms,”
Alan answered her. “I see what he meant.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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