It was some time before they met again at the Abbey. The gold arrived safely in due season, and Simon Gastard bade it good-by, with very sour looks. It was placed in charge of Brother Basil and Tomaso, and Wilfrid, who had been a Master Potter, took his place as apprentice to a new craft. His experience as a potter helped him, however, for the processes were in some ways rather alike. At last he was ready to make the gift he intended for Edwitha.
Padraig, the young artist and scribe who was making most of their designs, drafted a pattern for the work, but Wilfrid shook his head.
“That is too fine,” he said. “Too many flowers and leaves—finikin work. Make it simpler. Every one of those lines means a separate gold thread. It will be all gold network and no flowers.”
“As you will,” Padraig answered. “It’s the man that’s to wear the cap that can say does it fit.” And he tried again.
Wilfrid himself modified the design in one or two details, for he had made pottery long enough to have ideas of his own. The enamel was to show dewberry blossoms and fruit, white and red, with green leaves, on a blue ground; the band of enamel around the gold cup was to be in little oblong sections divided by strips of ruby red. It was not like anything else they had made. It was as English as a hawthorn hedge.
Very thin and narrow strips of gold were softened in the fire until they could be bent, in and out, in a network corresponding to the outlines of the design. This was fastened to the groundwork with flour paste. Then it was heated until the gold soldered itself on. Powdered glass of the red chosen for the berries was taken up in a tiny spoon made of a quill, and ladled carefully into each minute compartment, and packed firmly down. Then it was put into a copper case with small holes in the top, smooth inside, and rough like a grater outside, to let out the hot air and keep out hot ashes. The case had a long handle, and coals were piled all around it in a wall. When it had been heated long enough to melt the glass it was taken out and set aside to cool. This took some hours. When it was cold the glass had melted and sunk into the compartment as dissolved sugar sinks in a glass. More glass was put in and packed down, and the process repeated. When no more could possibly be heaped on the jewel-like bit of ruby glass inside the tiny gold wall, the white blossoms, green leaves, blue ground, and strips of deeper red, were made in turn. Only one color was handled at a time. If the glass used in the separate layers was not quite the same shade, it gave a certain depth and changefulness of color. Overheating, haste or carelessness would ruin the whole. Only the patient, intent care of a worker who loved every step of the work would make the right Limoges enamel. This was one of the simpler processes which are still known.
The polishing was yet to be done. A goatskin was stretched smooth on a wooden table; the medallion was fixed in a piece of wax for a handle, and polished first on a smooth piece of bone and then on the goatskin. Each medallion was polished in turn until if half the work were wet and half dry the eye could detect no difference.
Alan brought his mother, Dame Cicely, to the glass-house while Wilfrid was still at work on the polishing, and after she had seen the great window they had made for the Abbey church at the King’s order, she paused to look at the enamel.
“Tha’lt wear out thy ten finger-bones, lad,” said she. “I’m pleased that my cheeses don’t have to be rubbed i’ that road. They say that women’s work’s never done, but good wheaten bread now—mix meal and leaven, and salt and water, and the batch’ll rise itself.”
“There’s no place for a hasty man in the work of making amail, mother,” drawled her son. “Nor in most other crafts, to my mind.”