Quest of Hope(45)

Lukas turned to the boys. “Lads, if you love this woman you shall ne’er speak of what you see.”

Heinrich stepped forward. “Brother, we would die before we’d see her harmed. We shall say nothing of it … but … what is this?”

Lukas had forgotten that the uneducated peasant boys had never seen such a thing. To them it was a wonder, and they were drawn to it like bees to blooms. The monk looked at Emma and she smiled. It would be good for them, she thought; it would be good for them to know of things beyond their world.

Emma laid a hand on Heinrich’s shoulder and led him to her table. Richard crowded close and Ingly looked on while Lukas kept a nervous watch at the door. “As a young girl, boys, I was privileged to learn a trade from an aged monk in Quedlinburg. Some said he had lost his mind, others that he had an untoward eye for the sisters! But I thought him to be the kindest, most caring man I had ever known. He grumbled that the scribes ought not be the keepers of color. He thought color to be the gift of God for it is the product of light. Do you understand?”

The boys shrugged. Lukas moved closer. She continued. “Color, lads, is only present when there is light—it is the sun’s fruit. That is why I love my flowers and my butterflies as I do. When there is no light, there are but shades of gray.” She looked into Lukas’s face. “And many would deny us even that! They would that you see only the black of the letter or the white of the page. They would deny you both color and shade, for in their own blindness they would keep you from the light.”

Lukas nodded, for he understood of what she spoke.

“Boys,” she continued, “listen well and remember this: there is blackness and there is white, but there are also shades and more. When truth is present, light is present, and when light shines, shades and color are born. Live your life in truth, look always for the light—it is the source of hope! Live in color! Dance waist deep in flowers, lads, and let butterflies float above your heads; let sweet aromas fill your nose, and turn your face toward the sun like the tender buds of spring.” She looked sadly at Heinrich. That cursed vow, she thought, that vow from the Pit!

The room was quiet and Emma looked at the faces staring at her. “So, enough of m’thoughts; you’ve more interest in that.” She pointed to her work. “I was secretly trained by Brother Vigilius in the arts of the scribe, beginning with stretching and scraping the skins. He preferred to use the skins of calves, though this one is from a piebald goat … can you see the brown shades?”

The boys nodded, spellbound and excited.

Emma continued. “Calves and some goats yield a finer skin, called vellum, but skins from sheep make what we know as parchment. He then showed me how to stitch the ‘quires,’ or the gatherings of folded pages that are later sewn together for the final book. Of course, this was a bit tricky, for he insisted the parchment be folded and stitched so that the hair-sides always face each other, and flesh faces flesh.

“Then came a most important part. I was taught how to rule the pages with a stylus and was beaten each time I cut through the parchment! Now I use a lead stick to make the lines. I needed to learn to make them straight and to draw a grid of proper proportion so the letters would be even and pleasing to the eye.”

Richard was bored. “So what of this one?”

Emma chuckled. “Ah, good lad, patience! I then needed to learn of inkmaking and pens! Vigilius said the best quills were from the goose, though I have used the feathers of crows and ravens. It is the left wing of the bird that offers the quill bending to the right and this is what is best for right-handed scribes. I—being under some curse I am told—am left-handed, which is why, dear Richard, your wager proved so timely for me. The quills you… won … were from the right wing of the bird, a most unusual find!”

Lukas started. The abbey’s left-handed scribe had commissioned quills some years back—quills that had never arrived.

Emma continued her lesson. “I take my quill and dip it into my inkhorn. The black ink I have is good, gall ink, and is made from copperas, which comes from the earth, and gums and oak apples. Heinrich, you’ve helped me pick oak apples before. They are the tumors the wasps make in oak buds. 1 also have red ink, which is made from vermilion mixed with egg whites, or with certain woods and urine. But my joy, dear friends, is in the illumination!”

Lukas marveled. “I was amazed that you were a scribe, but now you say you are an illuminator?”

Emma blushed.

“By the saints!” Lukas exclaimed. “This is wonderful. A peasant woman illuminating psalms and prayer books for the unsuspecting! Boys, see the large letter at the start of the page?”