The Forest Laird

by Jack Whyte

  “It sounds as though you know the man, Father. Have you been, then, to Oxford?”

  “No.” Lamberton almost laughed at the thought. “But I do know him. I met him in Paris, when he came to debate with several of the faculty at the university, and I had the privilege of spending many pleasant hours listening to him speak, and speaking with him, during the few weeks that he remained in Paris.”

  I tried to imagine what it must be like to sit in the presence of a truly brilliant and original thinker and to drink in his words. “What a privilege, to meet and speak with such a man,” I said.

  “He impressed me greatly. But there was yet one other man I met there whose ideas stirred me even more, in some ways, than Father Duns’s, perhaps because I sensed a connection between their ideas that had not, and may not yet have, occurred to them. This second man made no attempt to formalize his ideas; he merely spoke to and from his personal convictions. Yet I was convinced, merely by listening to him on one sole occasion, that he lives by and would die for his ideas, and that they will forever direct his life.” The corner of his mouth flickered in a tiny grin. “His name, too, you will have heard.”

  “From Paris? I think not, Father. You overestimate my knowledge of the world. I doubt if I could name a single person in all the city there.”

  “Then you must expand the city to embrace the realm. I was speaking of Philip Capet.”

  “Capet?” I blinked at him in astonishment. “You met King Philip of France?”

  “I did. He came to speak with Father Duns one night when I was visiting him, and I was graciously permitted to remain with them.”

  “That surprises me. From all I have heard, Philip the Fair prefers to hold himself aloof from human contact.”

  “Aha! Then, my friend, you have been listening to people who are but repeating hearsay. All men need human contact, and there are no exceptions to that rule. Even the strictest anchorites must communicate with other men from time to time, or risk going mad. I am not saying Philip is a hearty and gregarious companion, or even that he is particularly hospitable, but he has a certain personal amiability when he chooses to display it. Yet he is a man conscious of owning a destiny. And men of destiny, I am told, are seldom easy to deal with, requiring great finesse and circumspection, even dedication, in the handling.”

  “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.

  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 d
ie 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.”

  “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?”