The Copper Sign (38 page)

“But why do you need the clay at all? Couldn’t you just do the quenching without it?”

“Certainly I could, if I was making something other than a sword! You have to understand that we don’t just want to harden the iron—we want an elastic blade and sharp cutting edges. That’s why the middle of the blade must be quenched less than the cutting edges. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had to make the blade core from softer material in the first place, right?”

“But you also put clay on the cutting edges!”

“Yes, but only a thin layer. It protects the blade from too much heat and at the same time makes the quenching less abrupt. In this way, there is less danger of the blade becoming brittle.”

“And then splintering!”

“Right, Jean! After the first layer of clay has dried, I’ll apply other layers, but only in the middle.”

On the day of the new moon, Ellen awoke with stomach cramps and was afraid that her unclean days could destroy her plans to harden the sword. The unclean days were the worst possible time to undertake such a serious task. During this period, women were even forbidden to help with such everyday tasks as brewing beer or baking bread. Fortunately, the pains in her belly were due only to the excitement, and other symptoms did not appear.

After work, Ellen raked the fire again, placed the clay-covered blade in the fire, and prepared the trough for the quenching. At the bottom of the long vessel she placed a stone and mumbled some secret formula of which Jean understood not a word.

He had stepped back into a corner, as Ellen had instructed him to do.

“If you want to watch the quenching, you must be out of sight—you mustn’t talk or ask questions or distract me,” she had warned him.

Jean clenched his fists in excitement.

The cutting edges of the blade had an orange glow as Ellen took the sword from the fire, dipped it into the trough, and then moved it back and forth to allow it to cool down uniformly.

The water hissed and bubbled as the hot blade slid into the water.

Ellen whispered a counting rhyme she had learned from Donovan. When she reached seven, the blade had to be removed from the water in order to preserve sufficient remaining heat. Ellen listened carefully to the hissing and bubbling. There was no crackling sound that could have indicated something had gone wrong. Anxiously she pulled the sword out of the trough. Now the clay coating could be easily removed. Holding her breath, she checked every inch, but there was no visible flaw. With relief she proceeded to the next step. The quality of the sword would now depend on the sharpening and polishing. She wiped the drops of sweat from her brow and looked over at Jean, who was still standing motionless in a corner. “You can come out now, everything went smoothly. Did you pay close attention?”

“I hardly dared to breathe, it was so exciting.”

“That’s how I felt!” Ellen looked at Jean, smiled with relief, and brushed away a strand of hair from her temple.

“Now I’ll finally be able to sleep peacefully again. Come, let’s close up, I’m exhausted.”

“So am I. I’m dog tired even though I haven’t lifted a finger. Here, I brought along a pinewood chip we can light to help us find our way. We’ll need that tonight or we might find ourselves bedding down in some stranger’s tent.”

The next morning Ellen noticed Madeleine again playing with a silver coin she was holding in her hand.

“Did you get that from the same knight as the last time?” Ellen asked. She had a warm feeling of anticipation, but Madeleine did not answer.

“I think he’s in love with you! He had huge eyes when he asked about you,” Madeleine said.

“William!” Ellen whispered. “Where is he?” she asked.

Madeleine beamed at her but said only, “He’s very good-looking,” and then turned her attention again to the coin.

Full of anticipation, Ellen left for the smithy. If William had arrived, he would certainly be looking for her there. All day long she felt a tingling in her stomach. But William didn’t come, and she was so disappointed that she didn’t even work on Athanor. When another day passed and he still hadn’t come, she inquired about the Young King, but no one had seen either him or his retinue.

Who knows where Madeleine got the coin?
She put aside all these disturbing thoughts and again concentrated only on her work on Athanor. She measured the length of the blade and calculated the best proportions for the cross guard. Then she started to work on the iron remainder that had been forged several times, folded it again with Jean’s help, and cut it into two pieces. One was for the cross guard, the other for the pommel. She forged a rod about the width of a finger and the length of about eight inches. The cross guard would later be slid over the tang down to the blade and therefore had to have a slit through the middle. Ellen had to make sure the opening was not too wide so that the cross guard did not wobble later. To make certain that the hole was just the right size, Ellen made an iron drift with the measurements of the tang.

“Ah, there you are,” she said, greeting Jean with a smile. He was later than usual and looked unhappy. “What’s the matter?” Ellen placed her hand on his shoulder, but he only shook his head morosely. There was no point in pressing him any further if he didn’t want to talk. He would come around on his own when he was ready to tell what was bothering him.

Jean tried to put on a friendlier face. “Can I help you?”

“I couldn’t get along any further without you,” Ellen said, with a friendly glance. “Will you hold the workpiece for me again?”

Jean nodded and tied on an apron.

“There won’t be any sparks flying today,” she promised, in the hope of cheering him up a bit. “Here, hold the cross guard with the wolf jaw tongs when I’m finished.” In order to drive the drift through the bar at the right place, Ellen measured the middle of the bar and used a chisel to make a thin slit.

“It does indeed look like a wolf’s jaw,” Jean said, examining the tongs and pointing at the notches along the side. “Like teeth,” he said.

“The important thing is that you remember the name. Take the cross guard and put it in the fire.”

Ellen had decided on a simple, unadorned shape. The cross guard was a little wider in the middle and narrower at the ends.

Jean removed it from the fire and was astonished to see how clearly visible the marked place was while the piece was glowing hot.

The drift seemed to slide into the slot almost on its own. With just a few blows of the hammer, Ellen drove it through the bar.

“The cross guard need not be hardened—just put it down on the edge of the hearth. I’m going to start today with thorough polishing of the blade, but I won’t need any help with that. Go back to the tent and look after Madeleine. I do think we have left her alone too much recently.”

Jean nodded and set out for home. Ellen was turning Pierre’s big grindstone with the foot pedal in order to pre-grind the blade. She constantly poured water onto the blade and kept checking the result. When she was satisfied for the time being with the sharpening, she wrapped the blade in a cloth and returned to the tent also.

Jean and Madeleine were still awake.

“We left something for you.” Jean pointed to a pigeon breast and some porridge with onions and almonds that Madeleine had prepared.

“Mm, wonderful, I’m really hungry!” Ellen devoured the tender pigeon breast and the tasty porridge. “Madeleine, that was delicious!” She looked over at Jean. “Did you get the pigeon with your slingshot?” she asked as she ate. “What in the world would I do without you?” She put her arms around them both.

“You would probably starve to death.” Jean tried to smile, but somehow he still seemed depressed.

“You work too much,” said Madeleine, stroking Ellen’s hair sleepily. Then she sat down again in her corner where Greybeard was happily chewing on a bone.

“You must think I am impossible. All I do is work and spend most of what I earn for Athanor. Jean works half the night to help me, and as for me, what do I do for you?” Ellen looked at first one, then the other of them, dejectedly.

“You’ll have your chance to help. Sometimes debts are paid in roundabout ways.” Coming from Madeleine, these words seemed strange. Rarely did she think so clearly. But the spark that flared up in her so quickly also faded fast, and she sat there like a naïve child, dreamily fondling her silver coin. Ellen reached for the leather pouch with the polishing stones she would need soon for the blade. The pouch felt oddly wet.

“Greybeard!” she exclaimed, horrified. The leather drawstrings were chewed to pieces. “You impossible creature! Oh Lord, you have destroyed my stones!”

Ellen had paid a small fortune for the polishing stones. Some of them were so delicate that they could easily crumble. Carefully she opened the pouch and shook them out into her hand. Only the finest one had crumbled on one side, but all the rest were undamaged. Carefully she slipped the polishing stones and the stone dust back into the pouch. “God help you,” she scolded the pup, “if I catch you again.”

The culprit laid back his ears contritely and looked like a guilty conscience in the flesh.

“If I were you, I’d carry my purse around with me. If he found it half as tasty as this here, he will try it again.” Jean smirked and pointed to his left shoe. The tip was completely bitten off, and all that remained of one side was a frayed hole.

“You! Don’t you dare!” cried Ellen, shaking her fist at the dog.

“It’s just that he’s young and looking for something to do,” said Jean, trying to defend him. “You can’t really hold it against him.”

“Why can’t he just keep an eye on our things instead of destroying them!” Ellen seemed to calm down a bit, but just that same night she had a dream in which she had her own smithy with assistants and apprentices, and where Greybeard went wild and broke everything.

In the evening before they were to leave, Ellen overheard Pierre talking with Armelle about her.

“I know she’s a thorn in your side, but this will make you feel better,” he whispered to his wife, watching how her eyes got bigger and bigger as he counted out the money he had made and put it in her hand.

“But that’s much more than you ever made before,” she said, overjoyed.

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “She brings in four times more than what I pay her. And now she is paying for using my smithy in the evening for her own work. That was the best deal of my life. This brings us closer to our goal…” Pierre lowered his voice to a whisper, and Ellen couldn’t hear the rest. But she had heard enough. If she really brought in so much money for him, she had to see what she could do to raise her own pay. She pondered what to do.

As they were leaving the next morning, Pierre came to where their tent site had been. Jean had risen early, taken the tent down, folded it up, and tied it firmly onto Nestor’s back. “We’ll meet again at the tournament in Compiègne!” Pierre said to Ellen, as usual.

This was her chance! “Oh, master, I thought I might stay in Compiègne to work for a smith I know from before,” Ellen said, trying to look innocent. His face turned pale.

“But you can’t just simply…you are leaving me?” he asked, taken by surprise.

“I didn’t know you attached such importance to my work.” Ellen tried to look surprised.

“But I do!” Pierre responded in a rasping voice.

“Well, if you would pay me more, maybe I could stay.”

“So it’s only a question of money?” he asked suspiciously.

“The sword is expensive,” she tried to explain, shrugging her shoulders.

Pierre groaned. “All right, then, half more,” he ventured.

Ellen shook her head. “Double,” she said with determination, and managed to speak in a calm voice. That was almost as much as a male journeyman would receive. Pierre looked at her in astonishment. He was probably considering whether it was worth it, Ellen thought, and she was seized with fear—what if he said no?

“I guess I’ll have to,” he grumbled. “Otherwise you won’t give me any peace. That’s what I get for being so kind.” Thereupon he turned sullenly and stomped away.

Ellen jumped for joy after he left. Even though it was Sunday, she had helped to pack all the tools, the anvil, the whetstone, and the large bellows onto Pierre’s cart, without getting paid even a penny for her efforts. But she herself had paid for every day she had worked on Athanor in his smithy. There was really no reason for her to have a guilty conscience.

On the way to Compiègne they passed through a broad, green valley of beautiful fruit trees, then a huge, dark forest of firs. After two days they arrived at a larger village.

On one of the houses hung an iron square with a carpenter’s plane dangling down from it to indicate this was a carpenter’s shop.

“I still need a few things for Athanor,” Ellen said as she headed toward the shop and opened the door.

“Greetings, master!” Ellen made a slight bow and tried to put on a cheerful face, but Jean, who followed her, looked rather glum just in case she wanted to buy something he would have to haggle over.

The carpenter sat at a large worktable. In front of him, woodcutting tools and pieces of wood were piled so high that only his head peered out from behind them. He squinted suspiciously and eyed the two strangers from head to toe. “What do you want?”

“I need two thin sheets of wood for a sword scabbard, preferably well-seasoned pear wood, and also a good, dry piece for a hilt.”

The carpenter looked at Ellen inquisitively. “I know you from somewhere,” he mumbled, staring at her.

Now Ellen looked at him more closely. “Poulet!” she cried excitedly.

“Ellenweore!” The carpenter rose from his chair, limped toward her, and embraced her warmly.

When Jean saw him standing there, he understood how he got the nickname “Poulet,” or “Chicken” in French. He walked hunched over, as if the weight of his corpulent frame was pulling him forward. His apron just barely reached beyond his backside and below that two beefy thighs in tight chausses peered forth. They were fat and round as far down as the knees, but below that tapered down to skinny shanks, just like the bones on a chicken. His scrawny calves seemed barely able to bear his weight. Jean wondered how a carpenter who barely got out of his seat could somehow survive. Nevertheless, he seemed to be doing well. On the table lay several projects he had started, and the two apprentices in the shop obviously had plenty to do.