“What was it that caught your attention so quickly in the discourse of the King of France?”
He smiled briefly. “It is late, now—it must be close to midnight—and this simple-seeming question of yours could take much answering. Are you sure you wish to hear my response?”
“Very sure, and I am not the slightest bit tired, so if you are prepared to think and talk at this hour of night, I am more than ready to listen. Why don’t you find some wine for us while I replenish the fire?”
4
I went in search of split logs from the neighbouring fires, for we had burned up the supply closest to us. I made short work of the quest, gathering unused logs from several dead or dying fires close by, and by the time I had emptied my arms of the fourth load of plundered fuel and came back to sit down again, there was a cup of lightly watered wine waiting for me on the log that was my seat. I picked it up, tipped it slightly towards Father Lamberton in salute, and sipped at it appreciatively, finding it far more palatable than the rough, raw wine we used for Communion purposes. Lamberton sipped at his, too, then stooped and placed his cup carefully by his feet, where it would not tip over.
“Our system is broken,” he said.
“Which system?”
“There is only one.”
“You mean the Church’s system? But that is God’s own and therefore perfect and unbreakable. What other system is there?”
“The one by which the whole world lives, outside the Church. I am talking about Christendom—more accurately, about the hierarchical system by which all of Christendom is governed.”
“Strange,” I said. “The Bishop himself once described Christendom thus to me, as a vast and complex system of governance, functioning everywhere under the same principles, yet among different peoples.”
“Aye, it is, and all of it is based upon property: land, territory, possessions—wealth. Think of it: Scotland, England, France, Norway, Italia, Germany—all land and all of it owned and operating along the same lines, radiating outward from the central landholder, who may be king or prince or duke or earl or chief. Each of these—let us call them rulers—has deputies, whom we will call barons, to whom he parcels out the land he holds, in return for their services. Those barons, in their turn, split up their holdings equally among their liegemen in return for fealty, and then the liegemen parcel out their lands to knights who will support them for the privileges they receive. The knights, the lowest rank upon the social ladder, employ freemen and serfs and mesnes and bondsmen to tend and till and harvest the tiny plots of land they have within their grant, and they garner rents and fees into their own hands, portions of which they pass up the ladder.”
I nodded. “And surprisingly, when you look at it thus closely, it all works. So why would you say it is broken?”
He grinned at me then. “I can see the crack in the edifice from where I sit.”
I looked quickly around the clearing, but we were the only people there, and there was nothing else to be seen except the darkened shapes of the huts and tents beneath the trees. “What crack in which edifice?”
“Those huts. The fact that we are sitting in this sleeping village filled with outlaws, all of whom might be hanged out of hand were they unfortunate enough to be taken. That is one end of the crack, if you can perceive it. The other end is Glasgow, or Jedburgh, Berwick, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, Stirling.”
I shook my head. “Now you really have lost me.”
“I know, you and nine-and-ninety out of any hundred men to whom I might speak of it. I know what I am saying because I have thought much about it and discussed it with men like Father Duns and King Philip of France.” He grimaced, shaking his head in what I took for regret. “Our earthly world is changing rapidly, Father. The changes are not visible to everyone who looks, but to those who know exactly where to look, the signs are unmistakable. And here in Scotland, the place to look is here, and in the burghs.”
“Here and in the burghs.” I knew I sounded dull, because that was precisely how I felt. “You mean … here among the outlaws?”
“Aye, and elsewhere among the burgesses, though I will grant the burgesses may be the more important.”
The burgesses may be the more important what? I had never considered the burgesses as anything more than they appeared to be, the townspeople of our land, the merchants and manufacturers and craftsmen, the shopkeepers and traders who lived in the seaports and centres of commerce throughout Scotland. Now, however, I recalled the mystifying conversation I had had with Bishop Wishart on the same topic a year earlier, and I could see—though the comparison itself struck me as being perverse—that the burgesses were, in fact, the opposing face of the coin to Will’s outlaws; each group took great pride, albeit for widely differing reasons, in being self-sufficient and accountable to no one.