'I never knew kings went to chapel much,' said Mr Springett.
'But I always hold with a man - don't care who he be - seein' about his own grave before he dies. 'Tidn't the sort of thing to leave to your family after the will's read. I reckon 'twas a fine vault?'
'None finer in England. This Torrigiano had the contract for it, as you'd say. He picked master craftsmen from all parts -
England, France, Italy, the Low Countries - no odds to him so long as they knew their work, and he drove them like - like pigs at Brightling Fair. He called us English all pigs. We suffered it because he was a master in his craft. If he misliked any work that a man had done, with his own great hands he'd rive it out, and tear it down before us all. "Ah, you pig - you English pig!" he'd scream in the dumb wretch's face. "You answer me? You look at me? You think at me? Come out with me into the cloisters. I will teach you carving myself. I will gild you all over!" But when his passion had blown out, he'd slip his arm round the man's neck, and impart knowledge worth gold. 'Twould have done your heart good, Mus' Springett, to see the two hundred of us masons, jewellers, carvers, gilders, iron-workers and the rest - all toiling like cock-angels, and this mad Italian hornet fleeing one to next up and down the chapel. Done your heart good, it would!'
'I believe you,' said Mr Springett. 'In Eighteen hundred Fifty-four, I mind, the railway was bein' made into Hastin's. There was two thousand navvies on it - all young - all strong - an' I was one of 'em. Oh, dearie me! Excuse me, sir, but was your enemy workin' with you?'
'Benedetto? Be sure he was. He followed me like a lover. He painted pictures on the chapel ceiling - slung from a chair.
Torrigiano made us promise not to fight till the work should be finished. We were both master craftsmen, do ye see, and he needed us. None the less, I never went aloft to carve 'thout testing all my ropes and knots each morning. We were never far from each other. Benedetto 'ud sharpen his knife on his sole while he waited for his plaster to dry - wheet, wheet, wheet. I'd hear it where I hung chipping round a pillar-head, and we'd nod to each other friendly-like. Oh, he was a craftsman, was Benedetto, but his hate spoiled his eye and his hand. I mind the night I had finished the models for the bronze saints round the tomb; Torrigiano embraced me before all the chapel, and bade me to supper. I met Benedetto when I came out. He was slavering in the porch Like a mad dog.'
'Workin' himself up to it?' said Mr Springett. 'Did he have it in at ye that night?'
'No, no. That time he kept his oath to Torrigiano. But I pitied him. Eh, well! Now I come to my own follies. I had never thought too little of myself; but after Torrisany had put his arm round my neck, I - I' - Hal broke into a laugh - 'I lay there was not much odds 'twixt me and a cock-sparrow in his pride.'
'I was pretty middlin' young once on a time,' said Mr Springett.
'Then ye know that a man can't drink and dice and dress fine, and keep company above his station, but his work suffers for it, Mus' Springett.'
'I never held much with dressin' up, but - you're right! The worst mistakes I ever made they was made of a Monday morning,' Mr Springett answered. 'We've all been one sort of fool or t'other. Mus' Dan, Mus' Dan, take the smallest gouge, or you'll be spluttin' her stem works clean out. Can't ye see the grain of the wood don't favour a chisel?'
'I'll spare you some of my follies. But there was a man called Brygandyne - Bob Brygandyne - Clerk of the King's Ships, a little, smooth, bustling atomy, as clever as a woman to get work done for nothin' - a won'erful smooth-tongued pleader. He made much o' me, and asked me to draft him out a drawing, a piece of carved and gilt scroll-work for the bows of one of the King's Ships - the SOVEREIGN was her name.'
'Was she a man-of-war?'asked Dan.
'She was a warship, and a woman called Catherine of Castile desired the King to give her the ship for a pleasure-ship of her own.
I did not know at the time, but she'd been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper - one great heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot deep - painted and gilt.'
It must ha' justabout looked fine,' said Mr Springett.
'That's the curiosity of it. 'Twas bad - rank bad. In my conceit I must needs show it to Torrigiano, in the chapel. He straddles his legs, hunches his knife behind him, and whistles like a storm-cock through a sleet-shower. Benedetto was behind him. We were never far apart, I've told you.
'"That is pig's work," says our Master. "Swine's work. You make any more such things, even after your fine Court suppers, and you shall be sent away."
'Benedetto licks his lips like a cat. "It is so bad then, Master?" he says. "What a pity!"
'"Yes," says Torrigiano. "Scarcely you could do things so bad.
I will condescend to show."
'He talks to me then and there. No shouting, no swearing (it was too bad for that); but good, memorable counsel, bitten in slowly. Then he sets me to draft out a pair of iron gates, to take, as he said, the taste of my naughty dolphins out of my mouth. Iron's sweet stuff if you don't torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it. A week at that settled my stomach handsomely, and the Master let me put the work through the smithy, where I sweated out more of my foolish pride.'
'Good stuff is good iron,' said Mr Springett. 'I done a pair of lodge gates once in Eighteen hundred Sixty-three.'
