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The Forest Laird(138)



I realized that my companion had fallen silent and was staring at me, clearly waiting for me to say something in response.

“Frankly, Father,” I told him, “I find it difficult to see any connection between outlaws and burgesses.”

“And that is as it should be, at this point. But the connection is there—merely obscured for now. Think how the system works: the land being handed downward from the rulers, and the feudal services and fruits of the harvest being fed back up the various levels to sustain them. Neither of those processes takes into account the presence of the outlaws or the burgesses. That is a new development.”

“Hardly new,” I said. “There have always been outlaws.”

“Granted. But until recently they were always—always—outcasts in the truest sense, banished beyond the limits of society, shunned and condemned by everyone, and quick to die in consequence. Now, though, we have outlaws like your cousin and his followers, entire communities of them—still proscribed and banished, still condemned to execution upon capture, but organized into social groups, and widely acclaimed by their countrymen because of this unprecedented claim of theirs to what they are calling freedom, and their determination to live their lives according to their own wishes, paying fealty to no one other than the leader of their choice. That would have been inconceivable when you and I were boys, a few short years ago.”

“And to me it so remains. Do you really believe that’s what my cousin Will is saying to the world?”

The eyes gazing at me from across the fire became, quite suddenly, the grave eyes of the cathedral chancellor. “Aye, Father James, I do, because it is what he is saying. And loudly, too, if you but stop to listen.”

“Which I have evidently failed to do. But where do the burgesses fit into this vision of yours, this break in the system?”

Lamberton reached down to his feet and picked up his cup of wine, sipping at it before he answered me, and when he spoke, his voice was calm. “The system is hundreds of years old. Would you agree?”

“Of course. It grew out of the chaos left behind when the Roman Empire fell here in the West, seven or eight hundred years ago.”

“There were no burgesses one hundred years ago.”

I blinked at him. “The Bishop himself said the selfsame thing to me more than a year ago. And I find it as incomprehensible now as I did then, even though I know it to be true. But still I keep thinking there must have been burgesses of some description.”

“Oh, they were there a hundred years ago, and they lived in burghs, but they were simple traders—fishermen, merchants perhaps, not burgesses as we know them today. You see, it has only been within the past hundred years that the traders and merchants of this realm, and every other realm, have organized themselves. Before they organized, they were single traders, merchants, whatever you wish to call them. Each was responsible for amassing his own trading goods and finding his own markets, and each bore the entire cost of protecting his own interests. Then they saw the benefits of cooperation, and they began forming guilds and brotherhoods and trading associations. Soon after that, pooling their efforts and working together, they began to prosper. They amassed greater and greater profits, in greater safety and at less expense, and once that change had begun, it continued, because it was meant to be!

“But nowhere do they fit within the corpus of the system.”

“I know. I can see that now. The Bishop explained it all to me, as I said. I did not fully understand what he was talking about at the time, and I’m not sure I understand it now, but I can accept that these people are their own men. They thrive or perish by their own efforts. And they hold themselves beholden to no other because of some accident of birth. Their burghs, too, belong to no overlord. They have emerged as public lands, free of lien or debts to the nobility …”

I broke off as I realized my companion was staring at me, looking slightly baffled. “I can see you understand what I’ve been saying, Father, but it’s obvious something is troubling you about what I’ve been saying. May I ask you what it is?”

My lips had gone numb and my tongue felt wooden in my mouth, because I remembered how I had felt on hearing all this on that first occasion, when I had anticipated chaos and disaster.

“War,” I said aloud, struggling to articulate the single word.

“What?” He bent forward quickly, peering at me. “Why would you say that?”

“How could I not? What else is there to think? Bishop Wishart reacted the same way when I said as much to him, and I thought he was wrong then. And now I think you are equally wrong. You both say no one yet sees the world you describe, the crack in the edifice, but it seems clear to me that when they do, it will bring chaos. Few things have the power to unite the magnates of the noble houses into a single force, but this threatens all they are and all they stand for. They will unite to wipe out the burgesses and their towns. And they will scour the whole land, looking for those who might stand against them.”