The Forest Laird (43 page)

“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.”

“Nonsense, Father James. No nobleman will move against the burgesses, for the simple reason that the townsmen of the burghs now generate more riches with their local industry than all the nobles together can raise from their vast estates. And so the nobility borrows from the wealthy burgesses and becomes ever more indebted to them. They cannot move against them, for they would be depriving themselves of their main source of income.

“And besides, it is already far too late for them to alter any of what I have described. All they can do now is wait, like every other living soul of us, for the changes that must surely come, for the world of Christendom will never revert to what it once was.” He stood up suddenly and shook out the skirts of his robe, rearranging them more comfortably before sitting down again. “The system under which we all live now will wither and die and be replaced by another, just as did Rome, the supposedly eternal city, and the empire it created.”

“Aye, but Rome was pagan and benighted. We are speaking here of
Christendom
, Father Lamberton. How can you—?” I paused, seeking the words to express my fear and confusion, and stooped to retrieve my cup, raising it to my mouth only to discover that it was empty, and I bent quickly and put it down again by my feet more forcefully than I intended. “How can you say such a thing, when you have barely finished saying that not one person in a hundred knows what is happening?”

The chancellor gazed at me levelly. “Fewer than that,” he said. “One in ten thousand might be closer to the truth at this time, but nevertheless, the changes are happening. You are a priest, Father. Need I remind you that in the days when our Blessed Jesus walked the earth there were not twenty men in all the world who knew Him as the Son of God? Yet there He was, and the changes He had wrought were already all in place. I believe we are experiencing something similar today. For His own good reasons, my friend, God has decided that this world must change. And therefore, change it will.”

“And what about the King? Does he know about these changes?”

“Ah, the King. King John, may God bless him, should he live and prosper and emerge the victor in his struggle with the King of England, may end up absorbing the wisdom and long-headedness of the King of France on such matters. Philip has known of it for years, since soon after he assumed the French throne. His kingdom is tiny, although it is growing constantly these days. And he is bankrupt, several times over, if one is to heed his critics. Were it not for the largesse of the Templars and their inexhaustible wealth, the realm of France would be incapable of functioning in any manner.”

He stood up again and arched his back, massaging his behind with both hands.

“Do you not find these logs supremely uncomfortable? I know they are logs, and not chairs, and I generally have little trouble with them. Then again, though, I seldom sit like this for hours at a time, and I have little padding on my bones at the best of times … and virtually none on my buttocks, where I could most use it. Will it vex you if I stand for a while?”

“Vex me? Not at all. In fact, if you wish to walk and stretch your legs I will come with you. We’ll throw some fresh logs on the fire and then walk the camp’s perimeter, checking the guards for vigilance along the way. It takes about an hour to make the circuit and we can talk as we walk. By the time we get back, the fire should be at its prime. Shall we?”

The night grew noticeably cooler once we had left the fire, and we were soon walking briskly against the chill in the air, each of us well wrapped up in our long cloaks.

“You were talking about France,” I resumed as we approached the nearest edge of the tree line around the camp and the first guard post on our route. “You say it is growing. How can that be?”

“By absorption.” He was looking at the ground ahead of him in the darkness “Philip Capet is a hard man to deny. He believes God truly wants him to consolidate under one crown the entire territory of what once was Roman Gaul. France, as you know, is but one of many duchies, and not at all the largest of them. Their names are lustrous, some of them more famous, even, than the name of France itself: Burgundy, Aquitaine, Languedoc, Flanders, Champagne, Anjou, Poitou, Picardy, Lorraine, and the rebellious Gascony, of course, currently the cause of so much grief to King Edward. All of them are in turmoil today, and Philip is determined to unite them all beneath his banners. He sees himself as King of one great entity that he has named the Nation State.”

That term meant nothing to me and I said as much, and for the ensuing part of our walk my companion held forth on the wonders of this nation state that Philip Capet dreamed of ruling. We visited two more sentries in the course of that time, but I was barely aware of them, so completely was I caught up in what I was hearing. It was a vaunting vision that my new friend described for me in sweeping words, entailing elements of politics that sounded revolutionary and impossible to me: talk of a unified state built along new and radical lines, where the state itself would become an active entity in its own governance, and the people of the state would come to think of themselves as something new—a
nation
, a single people united by ties of race, language, government, and common interests. They would forge this nation out of Philip’s dream, and in time their new creation, their new nation state, would dictate the behaviour of all of Christendom, for Christendom itself would be unable to withstand the threat posed by the united resources of the new nation state.

“It is an ambitious idea,” Lamberton said. “But I have thought much about it since the night Philip spoke of it to Duns and me, and I am not convinced it is as preposterous as once I thought. Now, in fact, I think he might achieve his goal.”

“But how can he do that, any of it, if, as you say, his treasury is bankrupt?”

Lamberton tilted his head in an unmistakable indication that he considered my point to be moot. “Edward of England’s treasury is bankrupt, too, but that has not prevented him from continuing to wage war against his Gascon rebels, or conducting an illicit campaign against this realm. Monarchs fight wars for widely differing reasons, but almost all of them
do
it—incessantly, it seems—and nothing is more ruinously expensive than conducting a war. Yet by that very token, no route to conquest and expansion or dominion is more direct or more effective than the one offered by war. A successful war results in massive riches, which, in return, defray the enormous costs incurred in waging war. It becomes a never-ending cycle.”

“Granted,” I said, nodding in agreement. “But you indicated that Philip had a new viewpoint, did you not? I interpreted that to mean he believes he can achieve this melding of all the duchies and territories where no one has done so since the days of the Caesars.”

“Aye, that is what I meant. And I believe there are several reasons why he might succeed. The first of those being that all the duchies share a common language. A common
root
language, that is. They all speak variants of the old Frankish tongue. We call it French, but many of them continue to call it by their local names—Angevin in Anjou, Poitevin in Poitiers, Oc in the Languedoc, and so on. There are regional differences, some of them profound, but fundamentally the tongue is French and they can all speak it and understand each other. Which means a newly conquered territory can be absorbed without great disruption.”

I stepped into the shadows beneath a dense stand of trees, where I hoped we would be challenged by the fourth and last of the guardsmen on duty. Lamberton followed at my heels, and within moments a voice rang out ahead of us, challenging us to stand where we were. I identified myself quickly, addressing the guardsman by name and telling him we were two priests with much to talk about and no desire to sleep, and after a brief exchange of greetings he waved us on, no doubt glad to have had the opportunity to speak with someone even for mere moments and even gladder, I was sure, to have been awake and at his post when we approached him.

“Tell me,” I asked as soon as he had fallen out of hearing behind us. “Are there burgesses in Philip’s France?”

“Heavens, yes—more than there are in Scotland, and they may even be wealthier, which means Philip’s problem there is more pronounced than ours yet is. Philip, gazing into his empty treasury and needy as he always is and ever was, is seeing the returns from his royal lands and holdings growing smaller from year to year, while more and more people are thriving without having to pay tribute, in the form of rent and revenues, to their so-called betters. Yet under the existing system he has no means of redress, other than to increase those holdings by any means available—namely, wars and conquest. But the riches of his burgesses must make him gag, because their wealth is laid out before his eyes in every town and city of his realm.”

“So how will he change that?”

“By changing the way things stand—by enacting new laws that will allow him to apply new taxes in ways that have never been seen before. He has already set his lawyers to work. He will tax merchants for the premises they own within his kingdom and for the use of the roads within his realm. He will tax them for their use of those ports and storage facilities they need in order to pursue their ventures. Rest assured, his lawyers will eventually find ways of taxing merchants for the nails that hold horseshoes in place. And in return he will offer them his royal protection—the protection of the state—against outside interference in their operations. Far more important, though, will be his offer to include them in the country’s governance.”

“Governance? To what extent?”

“To whatever extent he sees fit, though that will be subjected to his divine right to rule. But at least he is speaking of giving his merchants—his mercantile citizens—a voice for the first time. And that may be the single largest and most significant change in the coming new order. Like our burgesses, these men are commoners. The call themselves
bourgeois
in France, and it means exactly the same thing, burgh-dwellers. They have never had any voice, or any influence, in anything. But now they will. They may not speak out as loudly or as effectively as they do here in Scotland, where there is no divinely entitled monarch, but the French bourgeois will nevertheless be heard from more and more as they grow richer. Philip needs their wealth, but more than that, he needs their support. He cannot simply plunder their vaults, for they would quickly move away to a safer place where they could continue working beyond his influence, and that would be fatal to all his hopes. So he must keep them on his side. He must tax them in such a way that they will submit to his taxation, however grudgingly, and continue in their commerce. He has no choice. He will be forced to compromise, and
that
is a new phenomenon.”