CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It turned out that many of the newest Redwallers shared Captain Choock's somewhat jaded attitude toward Trelayne's glassblowing skills; as with the Northland shrews, they'd shared Salamandastron with the marten craftsbeast for an entire season or two (depending on just when their former searat masters had delivered them to the mountain fortress), and thus had had plenty of opportunity to seek out and observe his talents in action if they'd been so inclined. For those same reasons, Lieutenant Custis and his Gawtrybe elected to sit out the glassmaking demonstration, feeling that the front row seats ought to be reserved for the Abbeybeasts who'd never witnessed such feats before.
All of the Abbey youngsters sat closest to the center of activity, arrayed on the grass in a ring around Trelayne's work area, where their proximity afforded them a good view of the proceedings without placing them so close that they might be imperiled by molten glass should anything go awry. Foremost among them was Pirkko, who'd agonized between setting out with his father and the rest of the Guosim on their raft-building expedition to the River Moss and remaining behind to witness this show. In the end, his choice wasn't that hard after all; he'd seen his fellow shrews chop down trees and hollow out logboats many times, but he'd never before seen a glassblower at work.
Also seated amidst the youngsters was Vanessa, who'd successfully eluded Maura and Smallert's attempts to corral her in the wake of her Abbot-slapping incident. Now, seeing that she'd settled down and presented no immediate nuisance to anybeast, seemingly as rapt as any of her companions for the start of Trelayne's labors, her wardens were content to leave her alone until her next unruly spell demanded attention. Their relief was shared by Cyril, who descended from his bellringing duties to find no hyperactive, overly-amorous mousemaid waiting to pester him - and with her now safely ensconced between her "fellow" youngsters, the older mouse brother felt he could relax a bit in his own assigned observation of the affected Abbess.
All four of the toddler leverets had a place in the nearer circle as well, attended by their mothers Melanie, Givadon, Mizagelle and Florissant, none of whom minded sitting on the grass if it meant giving their precocious offspring an up-close view of the upcoming demonstration. Beyond the toddlers and youngbeasts sat a great many other Redwallers on chairs and benches, and back behind them an even larger number of Abbeybeasts - mostly the taller ones like hares and otters - satisfied themselves with standing to partake in this entertainment. And up on the walltop, the ramparts nearest this part of the grounds were crowded as well, their occupants happy to look on from a lofty if more distant remove. Some of the Sparra joined them, perched upon the crenelated battlements to see for themselves what this renowned glassblower had in store.
And then Trelayne was ready to begin. Some time before, Kyslith had shifted the bellows to a different opening in the furnace tower, where its pumped winds would maintain the heat at a slightly lower intensity and allow the white hot glass to cool somewhat to its more workable red-hot state and stabilize there. A bench had been set up within easy reach of the oven, upon which lay all the various tools and implements used in the blowing and shaping process. Trelayne himself stood outfitted in his heavy work apron, and wore a pair of thick gloves running nearly up to his elbows; these protective garments were crucial, since these extreme temperatures could instantly singe the fur and blister the flesh of a careless glassblower.
The marten took up one of his clay blowpipes and thrust it down through the top of the brick oven into to crucible of now red-glowing glass, swirling it through the viscid mixture like he was gathering up honey. Once an adequate amount had accumulated upon the end of the long pipe, he withdrew it and held it aloft for everybeast to behold the bulbous swelling of molten red glass adhered to its far end.
"Ooo! Glowee!" Chevelle exclaimed with glee from his spot on Mizagelle's lap, his tiny paw pointing toward the heated glob.
Trelayne smiled and winked at the enthusiastic leveret, then turned and rolled the egg of molten glass upon a flat marble slab atop his workbench, cooling it slightly without greatly altering its shape. Then, raising the pipe to his lips, he blew steadily into the hollow clay tube, slowly inflating the sample of captured glass outward into a larger bubble. He paused between puffs to slowly rotate the pipe, which helped keep the budding piece of glassware well-balanced and symmetrical. The ring of youngsters sat enraptured by this transformation, so unlike anything they'd ever witnessed before. Indeed, the adults in Trelayne's audience were nearly as entranced, most of them seeing this technique for the very first time in their lives.
Expanding his nascent project to the desired dimensions, Trelayne lowered the glass bubble back down into the oven and held it there for some time to keep the material sufficiently heated. Withdrawing it again when he judged it was ready, the marten picked up a wood paddle and began shaping it, applying flat side and soft edge to the glass globe in strategic spots as he spun it some more, his well-practiced expertise and deft touch coaxing from the viscous mass a form which had hitherto existed only in his imagination. Achieving the final shape he sought, Trelayne laid down the paddle and took up another implement resembling a short, narrow club and used it to poke a hole into the end of the piece and then spun the pipe a few last times, keeping the club in place to widen the mouth he'd made. Before the Abbeybeast's amazed eyes, the featureless sphere was transformed into an ornate vase, with flared lip and graceful lines.
"And that's how it's done," Trelayne declared, clipping the completed vase free from the blowpipe with a large pair of specialized shears and repositioning it on an iron rod. "Now we'll place the finished piece in the lehr - that's this side chamber I've had built into the main furnace - for our work to properly anneal at the right temperatures, to prevent it from cracking. Kyslith and I will probably need to keep this fire going well into evening, to keep the annealing chamber hot enough for this purpose. Now then, seeing as I've graced Redwall with a fine new vessel which will hopefully last for many seasons before it's chipped or shattered, what shall I make for you next?"
"How big can y' make sumpthin'?" Pirkko asked, his tone almost a challenge. "How big a ball?"
"Hmm. Well, if you're looking for size over artistry, I'd be willing to show you. In fact, would you like to see how I manufactured the weapons globes for Lord Urthblood to use in his war against the searats?"
"Not hardly!" Colonel Clewiston called out from the front row of those standing some way back, but the Long Patrol commander was drowned out by the enthusiastic cheers of assent from the upfront Abbey youngsters - including his own son Lysander.
"Yay, yah! Do it! Do it!"
"Very well then." Taking up a fresh blowpipe, Trelayne once again dipped it into the crucible to gather up a paw-sized globule of the molten glass, withdrew it and rolled it on the marble marver, and exhaled into the pipe to expand the pliant mass. But this time he stopped his blowing well before the globe was fully inflated and immersed the whole thing back into the cauldron once more to pick up another thick layer of molten glass around it. Repeating this step several more times, dipping and rolling and blowing and then dipping again, the marten soon had gathered a prodigious quantity of the semi-liquid material onto the tip of his pipe, so much that the audience thought it must surely fall off, or break the clay pipe with its weight.
But Trelayne knew his craft well, and possessed an uncanny sense about the limits and tolerances of his tools and materials. The multi-dipped globe stayed firmly affixed to the end of the pipe as he withdrew it for the final time, rolled it, and commenced blowing into it and spinning it. The globe, already nearly the size of his head, expanded further, and further still, until the Redwallers were sure it must burst or collapse. Combining puffed exhalations with twirls of the pipe, Trelayne soon had created a sheer glass sphere almost half the size of a water barrel, a crystalline soap bubble of impossible dimensions.
Inflating it as much as he felt he safely could, the triumphant marten held the blowpipe straight up over his head so that the cooling glass globe hung there above him like a fairy lantern shimmering in the sun's rays. He appreciated just how fragile it was at this point, what it could safely withstand and what it couldn't, and knew that this flamboyant gesture fell within the allowable limits. He also knew, however, that this endeavor left him with something of a dilemma and presented its own set of challenges.
Lowering the globe, he addressed the onlookers. "Of course, making this so large also stretches the material very thin, so it is most delicate and fragile. None of the weapons globes I crafted for Lord Urthblood were ever quite so large as this, for that very reason; the weight of the fluid within would have been more than they could safely bear, not to mention that even if I could have made globes this big thick enough to be filled, they would have been far too heavy for our gulls to carry to their targets. As for this one, I'm afraid I've gone and gotten myself into a bit of a fix with it, because it's far too big to place in my lehr chamber here, and it does need to be annealed at a fairly high temperature, or else it's almost sure to crack. Might I impose upon Friar Hugh to find space for it in one of his larger ovens, where it can stay until evening?"
Abbot Geoff, seated in the first row behind the Abbey youths, said, "I'm not so sure how our good Friar will take such a request, Master Trelayne. With so many mouths to feed these days, he's had his ovens turning out breads and pastries almost nonstop, so he might be reluctant to yield so much baking space to ... well, that." Geoff nodded toward the giant glass ornament.
"Well, we can but ask." Trelayne looked to the rest of his audience. "Might I solicit a volunteer to kindly run this over to the kitchens for me, since I dare not leave my workplace unattended for that long?"
Several of the front row youngbeasts jumped at the chance, with Pirkko, Droge and Budsock each straining forward with waving paws and eager shouts of, "Ooo! Me! Me!"
Trelayne's brow furrowed theatrically. "Hmm ... much as I would love to pick one of you, I daresay we'll need somebeast bigger and more surepawed for this task ... "
Montybank gamely stepped forward to offer his services as runner for the marten. "Aye, I'll ferry that vast bubble for ye. Aught I oughta know 'bout handlin' it in any special way?"
"Not really," Trelayne answered as he passed the globe pipe-first to the otter, who took it with exceeding care. "I mean, nothing you're not likely to figure out on your own. Just don't bump it against anything, obviously. By the time you get this to the kitchens, it should have solidified enough that you can just lay it flat in the oven, blowpipe and all. Just take care not to let anybeast touch it, for it will still be quite hot. And Friar Hugh might not wish to bake anything in the same oven with it, in case it should shatter for any reason."
Gallatin, hearing this from several rows back, turned to Clewiston and grunted, "Huh, maybe that's their bally plan - lace our tuck with glass shards, kill us all that way."
"In that case, we'll just hafta have these Gawtrybe chappies act as our jolly food tasters, don'tcha agree, 'tenant?"
Trelayne, quickly negating the hares' suspicious speculation, hastily added, "Of course, the oven housing this will need to be kept quite a bit hotter than any baking temperature, so the Friar isn't likely to be baking anything in with it anyway."
As Monty sauntered off with the overlarge globe, the sword of Martin slapping at his thigh as he walked, Trelayne's assistant Kyslith peered down into the glassmaking furnace. "We've not much left, sir, " the fox said. "You used up so much making that last sphere ... "
"Well, this was never meant to be any kind of all-day affair anyway. I'm sure I can collect enough for one more modest effort." The marten turned to the Abbeybeasts before him. "This will be my last piece of the afternoon. What shall it be?"
"Another bubble!" Budsock burst out. "An even bigger one!"
Trelayne shook his head, sharing what he and his assistant had just discussed between them. "I'm afraid there's not nearly enough glass remaining for anything nearly so grand. It shall have to be something quite a bit smaller."
"A little bubble!" Droge suggested.
The glassmaker smiled. "But I only just made a bubble. Wouldn't you prefer something different?"
"Anuvvah vaze!' Faylona weighed in from Givadon's lap.
"Well, I already made one of those too. How about a cup, or a small bowl?"
"Booor-ing!" Pirkko said, rolling his eyes at such a pedestrian suggestion.
Geoff turned to the young shrew and said sharply, "Mind your manners, Pirkko, and show our guest the proper respect!"
Pirkko scoffed. "You ain't my pa, an' I'm not a Redwaller!"
"Maybe he's not your pa," Maura warned, suddenly looming over Pirkko's shoulder where she'd not been a moment before, "but Log-a-Log put us in charge of you while he's away ... and I don't care very much for what I'm hearing from you."
The shrew lad swallowed. "Uh, sorry, Master Trelayne!"
"Much better," Maura said, resuming her seat.
"I know!" Trelayne lit up. "How about a small sculpture? A figurine, that can be placed on a desk or a table, or a windowsill ... "
"Make ee H'Abbey!" Gubkin called out.
"Hmm - I think that would be a bit ambitious for such a small piece, wouldn't you say? We should scale down our thinking just a bit, don't you agree?"
"Make just the belltower!" Droge suggested.
Trelayne glanced over his shoulder toward the distant edifice, standing tall and narrow apart from the main Abbey. "Hmm - I could make that work, I suppose ... " He turned back to the youngsters. "But I was thinking, rather than something, why don't I make somebeast?"
All the intent and eager eyes went wide at this. They'd not stopped to consider that Trelayne might apply his skill toward crafting the likeness of an actual creature, and they were quick to voice their enthusiasm. "Yes, yes! A beast! A beast!"
The marten smiled again. "A beast it is! Now, who shall it be?"
"Me!" Pirkko cried. "Make me!"
"No, me, me!" Budsock implored.
"No, do me!" Droge urged.
Pirkko gazed at his hedgehog playmate. "He can't do you, Drogey - you've got too many spikes!"
"Oh yeah? Well, your fur's all spiky too, so he can't do you either!"
"Oh, you'd be surprised what I can do," Trelayne told the squabbling friends serenely. "But it would hardly be fair for me to do one of you and not any of the others. Perhaps there's another among us here we could all agree on?"
"My da, my da!" Chevelle squealed from Mizagelle's lap. "Do Browddah!"
"No, my da!" Troyall challenged. "He da 'tennent!"
"Do Muvva Maura!"
"Do Brother Winokur!"
"Alexander!"
"Skipper Monty!"
"HighwingHighwingHighwing!"
"Burr hurr, do ee Foremoler, boi okey!"
Kyslith looked to Trelayne. "We'd better settle on something soon, sir, or I'll have to feed the fire and work the bellows some more to keep it from cooling off too much ... "
"Not to worry, Kyslith. Remember, I made sure to use the soda lime mixture? It will stay workable down to considerably lower temperatures."
Geoff stood. "If I may be so bold, Master Trelayne, there can be but one beast you can make, if you are limited to just a single one. It must be our founder and guardian, Martin the Warrior!"
This proposal met with instant acclaim and approval from young and old alike. "Martin! Martin! Martin!"
"It seems to be unanimous," Trelayne chuckled. "My commendation on a fine and wise choice. I usually prefer to work from live models for such pieces, although I did craft the memorial for Machus at Salamandastron entirely from memory, as I'll have to do again at Foxguard for my second statue of him."
"Would you like to take a moment to go inside and study our tapestry?" Geoff asked. "That's the best reference of Martin we have at Redwall."
Trelayne flashed him a mischievous smile. "Oh, I don't think that will be necessary, Abbot. Not for what I have in mind."
Dipping into his furnace crucible one last time with a third clay blowpipe, the marten gathered up what he could from the nearly-empty cauldron, and withdrew the pipe to reveal a fist-sized glob of molten glass accumulated around its tip. This time, instead of blowing extensively on the pipe to significantly enlarge the globule, he simply gave it a couple of light puffs after rolling it on the marver and then began working it with a pair of multipurpose forceps and several other shaping tools, rolling and picking and patting and prodding the glass under his gaze like it was a living thing being given form by his will. The watchers saw the figurine emerge from the red-glowing raw material before their very eyes - the protruding cups of the ears, the elongated snout, the narrowing at the neck, the squared and proud shoulders - but every time they thought he must surely be finished, Trelayne applied himself to the sculpture anew, coaxing additional details out of the cooling glass and imposing new textures into its surface. In one particularly astonishing flourish, he even drew threadlike whiskers out from either side of the snout, getting them to stand out straight from the face as they instantly stiffened. Clearly, this would be no ordinary work of glassware.
And, equally clearly, it became plainly obvious long before the figurine was completed that Trelayne had chosen not Martin the Warrior as his subject, but another mouse much closer to paw.
The marten deftly clipped the figurine free from the blowpipe with his shears, setting it upon its solidifying base atop the marver on his work table, where everybeast could see it.
"I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of choosing my own subject," Trelayne said with a smile, "but you've been such a good host to me here, I felt the honor should go to you."
If anybeast, even the youngsters, was disappointed at not getting the expected founding Warrior, they were too captivated by what this artist had given them instead to even think of complaining. The pose was perfect, the translucent head raised not so high as to suggest arrogance nor so low as to convey a spirit easily cowed, sleeved paws crossed serenely over the modest belly ... Trelayne's labors of mere moments had effortlessly created a miniature avatar of a specific beast, capturing not only this likeness but the essence and personality as well.
Dozens of Redwallers crowded around the workbench, marvelling at the tiny sculpture there. Maura joined many others in glancing from the artwork to Geoff and back again for comparison. "Well, that's just ... uncanny. There's no other word for it. It looks exactly like you, Abbot. The ears, the contours of the face, even the slight smile that we've all seen you wear many times ... why, Master Trelayne even managed to include the spectacles on your snout!"
"No pink nose though," Alexander jibed.
Geoff ignored his old squirrel friend's comment, too engrossed and overcome by this honor to spare a scowl or snide reprimand to any ridiculer. "Why, it's ... it's ... well, I was going to say it's like looking in a mirror, except it's not, because it's so small and all the same color, but still! Uncanny is right, Maura! I'm just ... I don't know what to say, Trelayne."
"I think you just did." The marten gingerly took up the glass Abbot in his heavy gloves. "Now to put this in the annealing chamber along with our earlier vase, so that it can harden and cool properly without any cracks or defects ... "
Vanessa, crouched all this time at the forefront of the onlookers with an array of emotions flashing across her face - none of them rapturous or delighted - suddenly jumped up and swatted hard at the marten's cradling paws. "That's not me!" she angrily declared.
As the mortified Abbeybeasts looked on, the fragile likeness of Geoff flew out of Trelayne's tenuous grasp and smashed against the side of the stone furnace, shattering into a hundred glinting shards.
For many long moments, everybeast simply sat or stood in shocked disbelief, horrified by the wanton act of senseless destruction they'd just witnessed. Then a couple of the leverets began to cry, while other youngbeasts whimpered or shouted their excitable, youthful outrage. But most affected of all were Geoff, who stood biting a quivering lip to stifle any more unseemly a reaction to seeing this most significant and meaningful gift reduced to glittery wreckage, and Trelayne himself, who stared at his destroyed effort as if in a trance. It was the marten who recovered first, shaking himself from his stunned stupor. "Well, I suppose I could re-melt the shards and see if I can make it over again ... "
Maura grabbed the Abbess roughly by the arm, sparing her no gentleness. "Vanessa, how could you?! That was a gift for our Abbot, and our guest Master Trelayne worked very hard on it ... "
"Naw, he didn't," Vanessa retorted, wholly unapologetic. "Had it done in no time ... hardly worked on it at all!"
"That doesn't matter!" the Badger Mother fumed, dragging Vanessa away from the gathering toward the Abbey. "If you're going to act like the most hurtful, irresponsible, uncaring brat these walls have ever seen, you'll earn yourself the same discipline any other misbehaving whelp would get from me. You've made some of our babes cry, so now I'll give you something to cry about!"
This stirred Geoff from his piteous introspection, and he started after the Badgermum. "Maura, no! She didn't know what she was doing!"
She paused, but remained livid. "Oh, I think she knew exactly what she was doing." Maura glared down at the struggling mousemaid in her grip. "Destroying that marvelous figurine, just because it wasn't of you!"
"He said he was gonna make Martin!" Vanessa protested.
"Well, he didn't make Martin, and he didn't make you! He made our dear Abbot, and a splendid job he did of it ... and a splendid job you did of wrecking his work, and spoiling this day for all of us! I've never taken a strap to you before, but if this doesn't warrant it, I don't know what does!"
"Maura, I must insist you stop this!" Geoff reiterated. "This incident is part of her condition, and any physical mistreatment now might only make it worse."
"That excuse is wearing pretty thin, Geoff. What will she have to do to warrant punishment? Seriously hurt somebeast?"
"Nevertheless, you are not to lay a paw on her. Do I make myself clear?"
Maura chewed on her gorge, clearly unhappy with this mandate. "Clearly ... Abbot."
Vanessa scowled up at her captor with unabashed impudence. "You heard 'im! Now, lemme go!"
"Oh, no you don't," Maura growled, resuming her march toward the Abbey building. "If you're not responsible for your actions, then clearly you're unwell, and need to be in the Infirmary - which is where you'll stay, even if I have to lock you in there!"
Seated away from this fracas, Smallert turned to Cyril and remarked, "Sure glad she t'weren't under our watch when she went an' done that. Wouldn'ta lived it down all season!"
"Yeah," Cyril agreed glumly, hardly buoyed by this observation; he'd been as shaken as anybeast by Vanessa's display. "Lucky us."
As Maura dragged away the protesting former Abbess, Geoff turned back to Trelayne, who'd stooped to help Kyslith pick up the warm fragments from the grass around the base of the furnace. "I'm so sorry, my friend. Nobeast's generosity should be treated so shabbily, or with such utter disrespect. I simply can't imagine what got into her ... "
"It's not your fault, Abbot. We all know your Abbess has ... issues. Her plight must be most trying for all of you."
"More than you can possibly know."
"Mista Tree-lane?" the mouse lad Francy tremulously inquired. "Can you make beasts inta glass?"
"Well, in a way, I guess you could say that's what I just did, with your Abbot."
"No, I meant, couldja actually turn a real live beast inta glass? An' what would happen to 'em if they shattered? Would they be dead?"
Trelayne smiled. "No, I can't turn living creatures into glass. Nobeast can. That would be magic. Whatever gave you an idea like that?"
Francy thumbed a paw toward his fellow mouse Berkkle, one of the few new slaves who'd elected to witness this demonstration. "Berk says you c'n do things like that."
"Oh? I can't imagine where he might've gotten such a bizarre notion."
"Well," Berkkle said, "you can make a mix that fizzles away a beast to nothing. Lord Urthblood used it in his war with the searats. I heard soldiers at Salamandastron talk about it lots of times."
Geoff ruffled Berkkle's headfur, thinking the mousechild referred to the oil-filled glass globes of Trelayne's that Urthblood had used to set Tratton's ships alight, and not a far more insidious weapon. "Oh, what young ears will pick up when nobeast thinks they're listening!"
"Um, yes, indeed." Trelayne poked at the fragments he'd gathered up. "I suppose I should see if I can salvage anything from this ... "
Suddenly the sparrow Sourbill swept low over the assemblage, cawing out, "Otters! Otters! Ottersback, ottersback, fromeast, fromeast!"
"Well, nice of them to wait until after you were finished, friend Trelayne," Geoff chuckled as Sourbill winged off to perch upon the east battlements, where many of his fellow Sparra now joined him to observe this homecoming by Redwall's waterbeasts. "I suppose we'd best go receive them, and see how they fared. I'll leave you to whatever you need to do to wrap things up here, Trelayne. And, in spite of that unfortunate incident at the end ... thank you for sharing your talents with us this day."
"It was my pleasure, Abbot."
Geoff and the other Abbey leaders bustled off toward the east wallgate, leaving Trelayne staring down into his gloved paw, picking over the fragments of a broken glass dream.
