Part 11 (1/2)
The place had grown hateful to Philip and he made ready to go. For him in his recalcitrancy there was only a younger son's portion, the little seigneury of Eaucourt, which had been his mother's. The good Aimery would have increased the inheritance, but Philip would have none of it.
He had made his choice, and to ease his conscience must abide strictly by the consequences. Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn happily to the trifling of his Italian friends. There was a tragic greatness about such as his grandmother, a salt of n.o.bility which was lacking among the mellow Florentines. Truth, it seemed to him, lay neither with the old Church nor the New Learning, and not by either way could he reach the desire of his heart.
Aimery bade him a reluctant farewell. ”If you will not keep me company here, I go to the wars. At Beaumanoir I grow fat. Ugh, this business of dying chills me.” And then with a very red face he held out a gold ring. ”Take it, Philip. She cherished it, and you were her favourite and should wear it. G.o.d knows I have enough.”
Likewise he presented him with a little vellum-bound book. ”I found this yesterday, and you being the scholar among us should have it. See, the grandmother's name is written within.”
It was a bright May morning when Philip, attended by only two lackeys as became a poor man, rode over the bridge of Canche with eyes turned southward. In the green singing world the pall lifted from his spirits.
The earth which G.o.d had made was a.s.suredly bigger and better than man's philosophies. ”It would appear,” he told himself, ”that like the younger son in the tale, I am setting out to look for fortune.”
At an inn in the city of Orleans he examined his brother's gift. It was a volume of careful ma.n.u.script, ent.i.tled Imago Mundi, and bearing the name of one Pierre d'Ailly, who had been Bishop of Cambray when the Countess Catherine was a child. He opened it and read of many marvels--how that the world was round, as Pythagoras held, so that if a man travelled west he would come in time to Asia where the sun rose.
Philip brooded over the queer pages, letting his fancy run free, for he had been so wrapped up in the mysteries of man's soul that he had forgotten the mysteries of the earth which is that soul's place of pilgrimage. He read of cities with silver walls and golden towers waiting on the discoverer, and of a river on whose banks ”virescit sylva vitae.” And at that phrase he fell to dreaming of his childhood, and a pleasant unrest stirred in his heart. ”Aimery has given me a precious viatic.u.m,” he said.
He travelled by slow stages into Italy, for he had no cause for haste.
At Pavia he wandered listlessly among the lecture halls. What had once seemed to him the fine gold of eloquence was now only leaden rhetoric.
In his lodging at Florence he handled once again his treasures--his books from Ficino's press; his ma.n.u.scripts, some from Byzantium yellow with age, some on clean white vellum new copied by his order; his busts and gems and intaglios. What had become of that fervour with which he had been used to gaze on them? What of that delicious world into which, with drawn curtains and a clear lamp, he could retire at will? The brightness had died in the air.
He found his friends very full of quarrels. There was a mighty feud between two of them on the respective merits of Cicero and Quintilian as lawgivers in grammar, and the air was thick with libels. Another pair wrangled in public over the pre-eminence of Scipio and Julius Caesar; others on narrow points of Latinity. There was a feud among the Platonists on a matter of interpretation, in which already stilettos had been drawn. More bitter still was the strife about mistresses--kitchen-wenches and courtesans, where one scholar stole shamelessly from the other and decked with names like Les.h.i.+a and Erinna.... Philip sickened at what he had before tolerated, for he had brought back with him from the north a quickened sense of sin. Maybe the Bishop of Beauvais had been right. What virtue was there in this new knowledge if its prophets were apes and satyrs! Not here grew the Wood of Life. Priapus did not haunt its green fringes.
His mind turned towards Venice. There the sea was, and there men dwelt with eyes turned to s.p.a.cious and honourable quests, not to monkish h.e.l.ls and heavens or inward to unclean hearts. And in Venice in a tavern off the Merceria he spoke with destiny.
It was a warm evening, and, having dined early, he sought the balcony which overlooked the ca.n.a.l. It was empty but for one man who sat at a table with a spread of papers before him on which he was intently engaged. Philip bade him good evening, and a face was raised which promptly took his fancy. The stranger wore a shabby grey doublet, but he had no air of poverty, for round his neck hung a ma.s.sive chain of gold, and his broad belt held a richly chased dagger. He had unbuckled his sword, and it lay on the table holding down certain vagrant papers which fluttered in the evening wind. His face was hard and red like sandstone, and around his eyes were a mult.i.tude of fine wrinkles. It was these eyes that arrested Philip. They were of a pale brown as if bleached by weather and gazing over vast s.p.a.ces; cool and quiet and friendly, but with a fire burning at the back of them. The man a.s.sessed Philip at a glance, and then, as if liking what he found in him, smiled so that white furrows appeared in his tanned cheeks. With a motion of his hand he swept aside his papers and beckoned the other to sit with him. He called on the drawer to bring a flask of Cyprus.
”I was about to have my evening draught,” he said. ”Will you honour me with your company, sir?”
The voice was so pleasant that Philip, who was in a mood to shun talk, could not refuse. He sat down by the board, and moved aside a paper to make room for the wine. He noticed that it was a map.
The Bishop of Cambray had made him curious about such things. He drew it to him, and saw that it was a copy of Andrea Bianco's chart, drawn nearly half a century before, showing the Atlantic Sea with a maze of islands stretching westwards.
The other shook his head. ”A poor thing and out of date. Here,” and he plucked a sheet from below the rest, ”here is a better, which Fra Mauro of this city drew for the great prince, Henry of Portugal.”
Philip looked at the map, which showed a misshapen sprawling Africa, but with a clear ocean way round the south of it. His interest quickened. He peered at the queer shapes in the dimming light.
”Then there is a way to the Indies by sea?”
”Beyond doubt. I myself have turned the b.u.t.t of Africa.... If these matters interest you? But the thought of that dry land has given me an African thirst. He, drawer!”
He filled his gla.s.s from a fresh bottle. ”'Twas in June four years back.
I was in command of a caravel in the expedition of Diaz. The court of Lisbon had a fit of cold ague and we sailed with little goodwill; therefore it was our business to confound the doubters or perish.
Already our seamen had reached the mouth of that mighty river they called the Congo, and clearly the b.u.t.t of Africa could not be distant.
We had the course of Cam and Behaim to guide us thus far, but after that was the darkness.”
The man's face had the intent look of one who remembers with pa.s.sion.
He told of the struggle to cross the Guinea Deep instead of hugging the sh.o.r.e; of blue idle days of calm when magic fish flew aboard and Leviathan wallowed so near that the caravels were all but overwhelmed by the wave of him; of a storm which swept the decks and washed away the Virgin on the bows of the Admiral's s.h.i.+p; of landfall at last in a place where the forests were knee deep in a muddy sea, strange forests where the branches twined like snakes; of a going ash.o.r.e at a river mouth full of toothed serpents and giant apes, and of a fight with Behemoth among the reeds. Then a second storm blowing from the east had flung them seaward, and for weeks they were out of sight of land, steering by strange stars. They had their magnets and astrolabes, but it was a new world they had entered, and they trusted G.o.d rather than their wits. At last they turned eastward.
”What distance before the turn?” Philip asked.