To Carry the Horn

Chapter 19-1

CHAPTER 19

George rode into Angharad’s work yard and dismounted. Angharad stepped out of the kitchen door and called, “Put her up in the nearest empty stall.”

He led Llamrei to the stable, into a loose box with fresh straw next to the horse Angharad had been riding this morning. He removed the saddle and saddle cloth, hanging them on a wall mount in the corridor to air out, and brushed her down lightly to make her more comfortable. Hanging the bridle on a hook outside the stall, he left her to a bit of grain and some hanging hay, with a bucket of water.

At his knock on the kitchen door, Angharad summoned him in. Cabal wagged at him from under the table and bounced up to give him a greeting. Ermengarde tumbled out of her basket with a high-pitched “yip” and wriggled over to be admired.

He hadn’t expected a cooked meal, since Angharad had been out all morning with the hunt, but clearly she’d kept something heating slowly the whole time for the kitchen smelled wonderful. “What is that?” he asked, delightedly sniffing the air.

“A rabbit stew, with apples and dried fruits. I fried up some corn cakes to dip in it which are just ready now, so come and sit down. Tour afterward.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, taking his hat off and running his fingers through his hair. He hung the hat on the back of a chair post, and she took it away to hang on a hook near the door.

“Sink’s over there, if you want to wash your hands.”

He cleaned the dirt off from the ride, looking around the tidy kitchen while he did so. The kitchen stove was providing plenty of heat.

They sat at a table across the room from the stove, surrounded by windows with a view of the Blue Ridge on a bright autumn day, and the dogs lay at their feet. The stew steamed unpretentiously in an iron casserole on a wooden trivet, a large spoon alongside, and the fried corn bread lay crisp on a platter next to it, with butter and honey for condiments.

George paused to admire the plates, sturdy stoneware with stylized game animals running along the rim. “Yours?” he asked, looking over at her.

“Yes. I wanted to see if I could blend the different sizes of animals into a rhythmic line.”

George could see what she meant; the line went from small game to large in a pleasing but unpredictable flow. It had the lively feel of Celtic art with running animals, but the stylizations were different, more natural. “I like it very much.”

He spooned some stew onto his plate and added a piece of the bread. Taking a bite while it was still warm and crunchy, he smiled. “Fried in bacon fat?”

“What else? You like fried corn cakes?”

“They’re a favorite of mine. Whenever we went camping, we brought along the makings, along with a rasher of bacon, and cooked them up in an iron skillet. We have a name for them, I wonder if you use it.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Hush puppies’ we call them, ’cause that’s what the leftovers are used for.”

She laughed delightedly, and the dogs at their feet kept an eye out for every crumb.

After lunch, Angharad offered George a tour of her workshops. She carried Ermengarde and Cabal joined them. “You’re not worried about the puppy getting into trouble?” George asked.

“Cabal will keep an eye on her if I ask him to.” And, indeed, when she put her wriggling armful down on the floor in the first large building, on the left, Cabal did his best imitation of a herding dog.

This was clearly where Angharad did her heaviest and dirtiest work. At one end wood-working and stone-carving benches with tools were covered under cloths. “I haven’t done much three-dimensional work for a while, other than clay,” she said. A woodstove in the middle of the long wall provided heat in colder weather for the entire building, but it was at the other end that George saw active work in progress.

Here there were low covered pans on work counters with various liquids, wrapped bundles that he suspected contained raw clay and other materials, and two different potters’ wheels. He could smell the distinct earthy scent of clay, catching a bit at the top and back of his mouth. Shelving along the walls held unfired pieces, still dull. Two dusty aprons hung next to the doorway, along with a basket of rags for wiping hands. A standing broom showed how the shop stayed clean.

George had never worked with clay, but he knew it was a dusty, drab, business until firing brought out the strong colors and depth of the various slips and materials. Then he turned his head to the right and saw the end wall, illuminated by some of the many windows, shining where it would catch her eye every time she entered the building. Here, away from most of the dust, were shelves of finished works.

He walked over to it and worked his way down slowly, trying to let it all sink in. There were display plates ranging from fine porcelain down to deceptively primitive forms full of what the Japanese call wabi-sabi, that quality of subtle imperfection and randomness that characterizes all material things. He looked back at Angharad. “May I handle these?”

“Of course. That’s what they’re for.” She stood by the door composedly and watched him.

He picked up a simple handle-less cup. The black slip covered the surface of the stoneware unevenly, revealing the raw texture of the material underneath. The glaze showed that variation in color that only use, age, and lots of hot water could cause. It fit the hand perfectly, with the unglazed portion touching the palm just reminding the holder that nothing is perfect.

He set it down and lifted a thin, translucent, porcelain plate. It showed a woodland scene of deer grazing before a backdrop of the Blue Ridge, painted in a naturalistic style. When he held it up to the window, he could see light glow through it around the shadow of his fingers. A light tap on the rim with a fingernail raised a faint clear chime attesting to the fineness and purity of the material. He marveled that a single artist could encompass both extremes.

As he moved along the shelves he lifted one piece after another for closer examination, shaking his head in admiration. When he reached the mid-section, he stopped. Here were statues and other medium-sized forms. The range of styles and subjects was overwhelming, from small abstract animal figures to full-sized realistic busts, some painted, some not.

He stepped back several feet and let his eye survey the whole display. He tried to see it as not just the output of one artist, but of one artist across hundreds of years, with all the time necessary to explore one style after another. He could dimly perceive a unity across the work, not just the unity of a single culture which, after all, did change over hundreds of years, but the unity of one mind, of one point of view, not inflexibly fixed but in a dialogue with the material and the subjects and its own experience playing out over endless possibilities.

He turned to Angharad. “I’d need days and days of looking at these, a few at a time, to begin to do them justice. I can’t tell you how wonderful they are. But then you obviously already know that.”

She colored faintly and looked down. George anticipated a conventional acknowledgment but she surprised him with a more personal statement. “We all like beautiful things, but I find the challenge of trying to create what I can see, and the certainty of falling short each time, to be a spur to further attempts. Each piece there is a failure to reach an impossible ideal.”

“Yes, I can understand that, but how close you must come, or they wouldn’t glow in the mind this way.”

The color rose higher on her cheeks. Why, I’ve pleased her, he thought. After all these years, she cares what a human thinks about her work. Well, good, because I meant it. He was genuinely stunned to see the lifework of an artist like this, laid out over the centuries.

She picked up Ermengarde and went outside. Putting her down in front of the stables with Cabal on guard, she pointed to a clearing behind the workshop. “The kilns,” she said. There were two of them, carefully sited in the open. “I used to have a third small one for metal work, but I’ve put that aside for now.”

Her voice became a bit distant as she thought out loud, “I’ve been considering getting into glass for some time which would mean another building.”

“Yes, please,” George said. “I’d like to see what you could do with that.”

She smiled, taken aback at the interest he was taking, but pleased nonetheless.

As she closed the door of the first workshop, Angharad was surprised at how moved she was by George’s obvious sincerity. It’s been a long time since I had an apprentice, she thought. I’ve forgotten what that feels like.

It’s become too easy to just fall into the habit of loneliness, of talking only to herself, or of keeping quiet lest she bore her rare visitors with her actual thoughts, focused on problems of composition or execution, of how to manifest some vision in recalcitrant physical materials.

I need someone I can talk to about these things, it’s been too long. Maybe it’s time to seek a new apprentice. I’ll write to Bleddyn in a few days and see if he knows of anyone.

She showed the kilns to George and spoke of doing glass next, all the while turning over the image of him, standing in the shaft of light at the end of the workshop, surrounded by colorful objects and holding the simple black cup. It would make an interesting subject for a painting, wouldn’t it?

I wouldn’t have expected someone like him to pick up the black cup first, holding it in those large hands and feeling the weight of it, its reflection of imperfection and impermanence, of life. He seems to understand that. Few do. Maybe it’s the human perspective, the short life. He’s clearly not a maker himself but he is… perceptive, I suppose, would be the right word. Unexpected, in one so young. It’s as though I keep glimpsing an old soul inside, and I forget it’s just not so.

But then, he’s no boy. He thinks before he speaks, and he sees clearly. Clearly enough that he’s beginning to see me, not my face, but me. It’s been a long time since that’s happened.

On the far side of the stable stood another workshop. When she opened the door for George, his senses were assaulted. The layout was similar, with a woodstove dividing the far long wall, opposite the entrance, but here there was painting on the right at one end, with a strong smell of oils and turpentine, and textiles to the left, with two looms, a large and a small. Everything was clean, well swept, and a blaze of color from one end to the other.

The looms were empty and covered with cloth. “More of an occasional practical craft than serious art, for me,” Angharad gestured to the textile end of the building on the left. “I haven’t got the patience for tapestry.”

The shelving, bins, and walls at both ends were painted in long irregular blocks of color which got smaller as they moved toward the middle of the building, making an abstract match for all the paintings on the right. Both watercolors and oils, many were hung not only at the narrow end, but up along both sides for almost the same length.

George was again drawn to the display walls, densely packed with completed work, little of it framed. The watercolors were mostly landscapes, but they weren’t all of the local area. There were winter scenes, almost Japanese in their spareness, with just a hint of an alpine forest that seemed somehow European. One quiet woodland scene stabbed at him, reminding him unexpectedly of his Welsh childhood.

“I’ve always admired those who can draw,” George said. “All my life I’ve had a vision I wished I could render.” He’d never told anyone this, and wasn’t sure why he was telling her, perhaps because she was still a stranger, and an artist. It was something ‘painterly’ he could offer. He still faced the painting of the Welsh woods, too shy about what he was going to say to watch her while he spoke.