Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

  My “smile” scares children. Maybe I should call it something else.

  † † †

  One by one, or in pairs, our creditors come and collect their silver, their wine, grain and wool. And I don’t let one penny go astray. For if I am to have little pleasure in this life (this seems to be my lot), at the very least I can make sure this cursed work is done well.

  Around four to six weeks a year, I am so blessed as to be able to leave the Treasury, mount a horse, and travel through the surrounding countryside, accompanied by two clerks and six heavily-armed mercenary brutes. Conversation is limited on such journeys, and so I pass the time in contemplation of the tasks in hand, which are usually to find, humiliate and imprison those who would cheat His Grace out of his dues. Here I am like a bloodhound, searching in every crevice, and, generally speaking I do manage to fish out the malingerers from their boltholes, find the hidden grain, wine and livestock which has been “forgotten” in some forest barn, and protect and amplify His Grace’s substantial income.

  I wish, sometimes, that there were just one person, just one, who could understand what it is I do for His Grace. I have thought about this, and the Jew Rosheimer could maybe understand, he with his hundred debtors and his profits sunk into speculations on a dozen Rhine boats and their cargoes to Mayenz, to Cologne, to Bruges and Antwerp. Or maybe Wolfram, the boat owner himself, who tries to buy cheap Here and sell dear There along the Rhine, the Elbe, the Rhône and Saône. They both must keep complex account ledgers, must make intricate calculations.

  But why would I talk to them? A scheming Jew and a tiresome Swiss midget?

  And in any case, my Lord Bishop’s Enterprise dwarfs theirs like Leviathan a herring. His debtors are legion; the peasants, the shepherds, the goatherds, the hemp-carders, the innkeepers, the estates, the convents and their lands, the vintners, the farmers, the Damned and the Saved, they all must pay taxes to the Bishop.

  And on the debit side, the pennies, the shillings and the marks flow outwards to our so-called friends and allies in Rome (some of whom are, apparently, canons of our cathedral, though they have never been North of Florence), to our vassals the once-warring Lords of Alsace (whose loyalty is for sale to the highest bidder), to our canons (more than half live elsewhere), to our churches (more than half need new rooves) and to our priests (more than half are living in sin, or are heretics, or both).

  And so the gold flows in, and the gold flows out, and it is my Holy Task to make sure, as sure as the Devil is a Dutchman, that more gold flows In than Out.

  † † †

  There are many things that I detest in this world, and not many things I love. But I think it is clear that the thing that I detest the most of all is that Bottomless Hole that gapes not fifty paces from my Counting Table: the Cathedral. A constant river of silver and gold flows into that damned hole, providing the wages of the idle, and paying quarrymen, foresters and glaziers for their so-called labour.

  How I hate that pile of stones, surrounded by chattering, banging, shouting, clanging workmen who saunter around beneath my windows. On a hot summer’s day when the shutters must be opened, I can hardly hear myself think! And the work never ends! Now, for some unknown reason, the foundations are being refitted for a new nave, and of course it is I who must find, from somewhere, five hundred extra marks!

  So, this year, on my rounds of Debt Enforcement, I am more assiduous than ever at chasing every penny, every sou. I—let it be known—am the Living Reason why the masons and mortar mixers of Hagenburg can sink a pitcher of wine of a Saturday. It is I alone who keeps the Bishop’s revenues in the positive.

  One can maybe imagine, therefore, my vexation upon returning to Hagenburg to find two things. One: His Grace the Bishop awaiting me, in person, in my Counting Room. And Two: with him, some zealous-eyed youth from one of the minor Houses of Alsace, his name Achim von Esinbach.

  And the two of them telling me that they have New Plans for the Cathedral of Our Lady. And that even one thousand marks will not be enough. Not nearly enough.

  † † †

  It is doubtlessly true that the penny-pinching nature of my Work has made me jaded and bitter, but I am not insensitive to Beauty. And certainly, my Counting Table has never borne a parchment so Glorious as it does now. There, where habitually there are decked ledgers and accounts and tarnished coins, now lies unfurled a drawing, in full, resplendent colour, of a Cathedral seen from its Western side. A Cathedral in the new style of which I have heard so much: elegant, geometrical and rising to a height that seems to defy the heavens. A Cathedral, let it be clearly stated, of breathtaking Beauty.

  And, no doubt, of equally breathtaking Expense.

  The Draughtsman of this shamelessly extravagant and exquisite vision is the aforementioned Achim von Esinbach, a young nobleman who has recently returned from the University of Paris, and from the chantiers of Reims, Chartres and Troyes bearing in his heart this vision, and in his hands, this parchment. Somehow he has managed to obtain an audience with the Bishop, and, in my Absence, has peddled his lavish dream to my Lord.

  “Do not be so shocked, Eugenius,” says his Grace, insouciant and amused. “If they can build such wonders in Paris and the Champagne, then surely we can build one here in the Alsace too.”

  “The Bishop of Metz is starting to build one,” adds von Esinbach.

  The Bishop of Metz. Our neighbour and our Bishop’s greatest rival. And now, all becomes clear. If Metz will have a French Cathedral, then Hagenburg must surely have one too.

  “Here, My Lord Canon,” says Achim von Esinbach, and turns the vellum on my counting table so that I may see it properly. “Look. And take your time.”

  And so I look. And I see tiers of statues, arraigned like the Blessèd in Paradise: Kings, apostles, desert prophets, Saints. I see the Virgin, hands clasped in prayer between the two huge portals. I see a Rose Window of intense, beauteous colours, like a sunflower, like a rainbow.

  It all swims before me, beautiful, moving and strange, every one of its thousand stones and statues representing for me a bright rill of coinage that must be found from somewhere. I turn my gaze on its Architect, the young von Esinbach, and see a young man trapped in his own fervour. His eyes avoid me, blinking and jumping to every corner of the room, his hands clasping at each other, nervously twitching. He is taut and tense, like the string on a viol.

  I sigh, audibly.

  And the Bishop laughs. “I know it will be a drain on our resources, Eugenius. But what price the Glory of God? I have made my decision. Now that I have seen Master Achim’s designs, my eyes will see nothing else.”

  But he is not usually so precipitous, my Lord and Master. And so as I sit and calculate, I study his face and see a careworn, early-ageing man. His eyes are the troubled brown of the Vogesen rivers, his cheeks sag with good sustenance, poorly digested. His nose blooms with the colouration of the local wine. For a warrior, the face is too kindly, too open. And for a Lord, it is too weary.

  And so I understand now. He is searching for a Legacy to bequeath to his Diocese and to his City. An Epitaph.

  He notices my scrutiny and raises his eyebrows, which rise into questioning points, like wings. “What are you thinking, Eugenius?”

  What am I thinking? I am thinking that for eleven years and two months and thirteen days I have protected the fiduciary balance of this Diocese with acuity and cunning. But now I have been outmanoeuvred by this dreamer von Esinbach, and his roll of cursèd vellum.

  ANNO

  1230

  A DEVIL’S SHILLING

  (ANNO 1230. RETTICH SCHÄFFER II)

  His days begin before dawn. Rettich is nearly always the first to wake, and lies in his bunk, surrounded by the breath of his apprentice brothers. From outside their tent he can hear the Cathedral Schoolboys chatting on their way to prayers, he can hear the soft chant of the choir greeting the Lord of the New Day, he ca
n hear the first stall-keepers unlocking the chains and sweeping the grounds, preparing for trade. And then when the first light is seen in the sky, the long, deep bell sounds.

  Rettich staggers outside, pulling his coat around him. The Cathedral hulks in the gloom. Towards the sunrise, it is full-grown, complete and towering, with the carved portals that had once made him cry. Then, after the Crossing, the old nave has been taken down, and it is here that they are building. Building a new Nave that will soar the height of three tall trees above the Rhine plain. Slowly they will build towards the sunset, to where the old frontage and portals still stand. And then they will rebuild these, and thereupon will set proud towers and pinnacles that will touch the clouds.

  And no-one knows how long it will take them.

  Rettich, beating and crossing his arms on his chest against the cold, walks over to the latrine hut, takes the wooden cover from the bucket, and squats to relieve himself. Latrine duty is the worst of all duties, and it falls to him on the day after Sunday. Then it is he who must carry the full buckets to the cesspits. God forbid he should stumble or knock the buckets against his knees. For then the foul liquid slops out against him, and he must wash his breeches and sit half-naked until they dry. He has but one pair of breeches; all his money is saved to pay his debt to Rosheimer. There is no spare penny for luxuries.

  The sun rises, and shadows spread across the Cathedral Square. Lauds and Prime have finished. The schoolboys rush out and play for a few brief minutes before lessons begin. The hawkers start their calls, the stalls are open, the town is awake.

  Rettich goes to the Stone-cutters’ Lodge, he takes the key from the Clerk, unlocks the tool chest, lays out the Masters’ tools on the table. He goes to the back of the Chapterhouse Refectory and waits with the other apprentices; the Masons’, the Carpenters’, the Blacksmiths’, the Ropers’, the Mortarers’, one of each.

  The back door opens and the baskets are given out by the Cellarer’s Boy. Rushing across the cobbles to keep the bread still warm, the apprentices run to their masters. In the Lodge, Rettich lays out the loaves by the tools. One small loaf for each Master and Companion, laid on a piece of cloth beside their chisels and hammers. He pours out mugs of ale and water. The masters come and eat, sitting on their stools. It is a silent time, there is not much talking. One of them brings cheese, and shares it out amongst his fellows. A piece of sausage. An apple.

  One large loaf is for the boys. Rettich comes out to the Lodge steps, shares it out between them, cutting with his large knife, making the slices as even as possible. The apprentices offer a brief prayer of thanks, and start to eat. In a short time, their breakfast is over.

  Then work can begin.

  † † †

  From Hagenburg one climbs slowly towards the Vogesen Hills, passing through fields and vineyards, until suddenly the road disappears behind a bluff. This is the first cliff of the Kron Valley, a mighty seam of purplish-brown sandstone. The road runs beside the river, and above its banks, the quarrymen work.

  For the first weeks, Rettich was sent here, to see how the raw stone is cut. How the quarrymen search the stone for a fault, and, finding one, chisel out a hole, and then force in their wedges, until the impossible happens, and the stone breaks. How then, with two-men saws, lubricated with water, they carve the stone into blocks. Impossible work, to cut solid stone! It seems that nothing is happening, that the saw is never cutting deeper, but come back at the end of the day, and the saw has cut the span of a hand.

  Then, when the block of stone is cut, the ropers come and check the hawsers, and the winch is lifted, a beam poised on a frame made of mighty trunks, and with a team of men pulling on the windlasses, the block is raised and swung out onto the waiting oxen cart.

  It will take them two days to carry the stone back to the Cathedral Site in Hagenburg.

  The quarrymen work like oxen themselves, like beasts. They come from the nearby villages, and are paid by the block of stone, by the measurement. The stone dust gets into their lungs, and they cough like crones. By thirty summers, they are too ill to continue. The Quarrymaster oversees them, orders them around, hardly lifts a hand to do a thing, and earns thrice what they do. And the Kronthal family, who own the land where the sandstone grows, are rich as Croesus.

  In the quarry, there is an atmosphere of brutish, undervalued work. Rettich is ordered around like a Saracen’s slave, even kicked like a dog. Fetch water. Heat the soup. Feed the oxen. Light the fire. Carry the rubble. Sharpen the saws and axes. Shut your mouth, you talk too much.

  It is a hard apprenticeship. He begins to hate the cold stone. It seems to him it doesn’t want to be cut, to be prised from the earth with painful hammer blows. It is not warm like wood, not giving. It is obdurate, it is angry, rebellious.

  He sleeps in a barn by the river, and wishes he had never left Lenzenbach. If this is freedom, he thinks, then let me return to my serfdom.

  Bruised from beatings, his hair thick with scaly, glistening dust, his five weeks come to an end. He will travel with the oxen back to Hagenburg. On the way, he will lay stones under the wheels when the road is uneven, will water and feed the oxen, will sleep in the cart, and on the morning of the second day, will once again be under the shadow of the Cathedral.

  He arrives at noon. The Masons and Stonecutters line up to see his homecoming. They see his sour face, and laugh.

  “Rettichle! Rettichle! You survived!”

  They run at him, and gather him up, carry him on their shoulders. They canter through the market, singing and laughing.

  And from the quay, they throw him in the shallows of the river.

  “And now you’re clean!”

  Gasping, soaked, happy, he has survived his second baptism. He is now, truly, an Apprentice in the Brotherhood of Stone-cutters.

  † † †

  Rettich’s Master is Giselbert, a beak-nosed Burgundian recruited by Achim von Esinbach from the chantier of Chartres, white-haired, stooping. He pretends to be severe, but even when berating his shepherd apprentice in his ridiculously accented German, his eyes are smiling.

  One day a week, he allows Rettich behind the heavy Lodge curtain. Access to the Mysteries of Stone.

  As Rettich enters the sculptors’ workspace, Giselbert holds his bony finger to his lips. Silence. He gestures to a stool. Rettich sits. Giselbert closes the curtain, so that the Mysteries should be preserved.

  Sunlight floods through the high window and strikes the Blind Woman on the circular wooden plinth. Giselbert pulls at a rope and rotates the woman a quarter turn, so that her lithe body is turned sideways to the light, the sun warming her raised hip, her slender waist. Below the belt that gently pulls her robe around her graceful form, she is not yet realised. Below the waist, she is still a Block Of Stone.

  From her height, she looks down upon the seated apprentice. Her eyes are blindfolded, her mouth is drawn in sadness. Her right hand carries a broken spear, from her left hand, a stone tablet is falling. She is the Old Covenant, she is the Synagogue. Blinded, broken, in darkness, unaccepting of the Truth and the Light.

  Her sister, the Church, stands nearby, fully completed, Her eyes are open, her richly curled hair carries a Crown. In her right hand, the Cross, in her left, the Grail. Her seeing eyes stare into a bright future.

  Giselbert takes his finest chisel, his lightest hammer. He winks at Rettich, and stands at the feet of Synagogue. Poises the chisel at her upper thigh. Starts to cut the falling fold of her dress, making lightest fabric of heaviest stone.

  The obdurate sandstone, cracked and sawn from the reluctant cliff, strained over by brutish embruted men, borne by struggling oxen, gives itself sweetly to his Master’s hands.

  † † †

  The unfinished walls of the Cathedral are now covered with dung and straw, protection against the envious ice. Winter wants to creep her fingers in the cracks and wreck the work that summe
r hands have wrought. Achim, Landolt, the Werkmeister Alenard, take turns surveying the site, checking the coverings, peering at the smooth mortar between the blocks, holding a plumb-line to the verticals, praying that the foundations will not subside, that the Earth will willingly shoulder the new Weight they are asking her to carry.

  Most of the workers have been sent home for the worst of the winter. Wrapping spare clothes and tools into a bundle and shouldering their packs, they set off, dun figures on mud-caked roads, heading for their villages in the Vogesen, the Rhine Plain, the Schwarzwald. At home they will lie in hammocks, crack nuts by the fire, tell City stories to the village girls to make them blush. Some have children waiting by those distant hearths, unseen these last eight months, now grown big and strange. In the village doorways, the hatted shadow, the Son and Father returned. A pretty purse of silver jangles in his homesick hands.

  In Hagenburg, at the site, the new apprentice Rettich stays on with a handful of stonecutters, masons and carpenters. He will be their factotum and errand boy, eager for even the most menial chore. In exchange, he is accepted into their inner circle, hovering in the corners of the draughty lodge, party to all their jokes and deliberations.

  Brother Alenard the Works Master looks up from the designs and sighs. He has been copying, in his precise hand, from Achim von Esinbach’s etchings. “When will we get the damned glass?”