The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (17 page)

"It seems built to last forever."

"The Middle Ages didn't last forever. It was a transition period between the fall of Rome and the rise of other empires."

"Do you miss the modern world?"

"Do I miss it? No, I can't truthfully say I do. This is our busiest season right now, and I'm feeling harried looking after everything, but mostly I'm content. Charlsey, on the other hand . . . Well, sometimes I feel like I've taken her away from everything she really loves: fashion and art and society."

"Had to be dragged here kicking and screaming, did she?"

Dugdale gave me an odd look. "Oh goodness, no," he said. "I would never ask Charlsey to do anything she wouldn't like to do. She was actually more enthusiastic about coming here than I was. I think the opportunity to be a titled lady was the attraction for her in the beginning, along with the amount of land. We were to be neighbors to a king! But I don't think she understood how much she'd be leaving behind."

Dugdale and I walked back to the garden without speaking. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, as was I.

Charlsey had changed into a different gown for lunch. Dugdale was wearing a long robe, belted with an elaborate dagger, and a short jacket with puff sleeves. It felt to me like we were all in costume, and it was the first time I had felt that way since I'd arrived in Albert's kingdom. Perhaps it was the way the garden was arranged, but it didn't feel far from Cambridge; and I was already wishing that our visit was over so I could get back on my horse and soak myself in those new, heavy-textured feelings that my new life evoked in me.

"You would think," said Charlsey with some asperity, "that they could pick out a chicken without having to pester me. You would think they could prepare a simple wine sauce without my having to tell them how for the fiftieth time, but they can't. You'll notice soon enough how complacent the servants are in this kingdom, Sir Jack. You can send them back to the fields and pick someone else, but it does no good for they are all the same. They would rather wait for you to tell them what to do than to just do what needs to be done."

"Alton, tell me what you think," I said. "I passed a man digging clay out of the road not far from here. He said he wanted the clay for his mill."

"Oh, that man!" said Charlsey.

"A fat fellow? Clean shaven with black, spiky hair?"

"That's him," I said.

"Thank you for telling me. The king said that if he leaves another hole in the road, he's going into the dungeon, and it's about time."

"There is simply no reasoning with some of these peasants," said Charlsey. "I would like to see that man dig up the road in Lord Hawke's fief."

"What would happen if he did that?" I asked.

"The duke would have him beaten black and blue," said Charlsey. "We've been much too lenient with that miller, Alton."

"Would Lord Hawke be within his rights to beat up that man?" I asked.

After a moment or two Dugdale said, "Lord Hawke is rather more strict that we are."

"But would he be within his rights?"

"The man will probably not get the beating because he will know better than to ask for it."

"But indulge me for a minute, Alton, if you would. I'm new here and I don't even know what the laws are."

"Well, you don't have much to learn there, because there aren't any laws."

I was amazed. "No laws?"

"There are rules," said Dugdale, "but there is no legal system as such with written statutes and all the rest of it. If something out of the ordinary comes up, we talk it over among the nobility and make a decision. Otherwise, everyone knows what the rules are. No cows in the corn. No diverting of streams. No fighting in the church. Simple, common-sense rules. They don't need to be written down."

We ate in silence. "But there must be disputes," I said finally.

Dugdale smiled wanly. "There are. All the time."

"What happens then?"

He shrugged. "That depends."

"All right. Here's an example. A man has bought and paid for a cow. The previous owner is delivering it and the cow drops dead in the road. Does the new owner get his money back?"

"Of course. Isn't it obvious that he should?"

"Okay. The cow drops dead in the new owner's barn the morning after she's delivered. Does he get his money back?"

"Probably not."

"What does probably mean? What's the rule?"

"How could you make such a rule? Let's you and I make up a rule right now: a cow is considered to be sold in fair exchange if the animal lives for two hours and forty-five minutes after the tether rope passes from hand to hand. Don't you see how absurd that is?"

"So how would a dispute get settled?"

"If people absolutely cannot come to terms, the matter can be brought before the manor court. The court meets four times a year."

"And how do decisions get made?"

"According to what his lord thinks is just and fair."

"But . . ."

"Look, Jack—may I call you Jack? It's just the three of us. Suppose a cow dies in the course of the trading that goes on between peasants all the time. It wouldn't go to the manor court. Whoever got the worst of the deal would try to do better the next time, that's all. But suppose someone passes off a sick cow on an old widow woman, a woman whose eyesight is known to be poor. If she complained to my court about that, then she would get her money back and also collect a fine from the man to teach him to be kinder to old women. That's the way I would look at it. My responsibility would be to do the best I could for the old woman, and at the same time to discourage the man from taking advantage of people. Now if there were two men who kept coming to my court with disputes about cows, I would fine them both for wasting everyone's time, and I would give some of their cows to someone who needed them more than they did. Do you begin to see?"

I wasn't sure what to think. "It's like parents deciding which child gets to play with the toy."

Dugdale laughed. "I think that's a reasonable comparison. Yes, it's the family approach to government, if you like, and it's the only way to run a kingdom like this. We can't afford a class of lawyers and lobbyists and legislators and a lot of
quid pro quo.
We have to get the harvest in. We have to keep food on the table."

Images passed through my mind of the active, happy-looking people I'd passed along the road when I rode in with Gordon, and the ringing cheers that had greeted Albert when he arrived at his castle. "Well," I said finally, "I haven't been here for long, and so far I'm impressed with what I've seen. It feels funny to think that there are no laws here, though."

"Oh, I know. We all went through the same thing when we first came up here. But just sit down and try to write some laws yourself and you'll discover that that kind of litigiousness just doesn't make any sense in this situation. We're in a little valley on the edge of nowhere, and we'd be crazy to wait around for the innocent to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and all the rest of if before we could give someone who needs it a kick in the pants."

"Like that miller who was digging in the road."

Dugdale nodded. "People have had quite enough of falling into his holes."

"So if Lord Hawke caught the miller and beat the piss out of him, that would just be the way things are around here."

Dugdale and Charlsey looked at one another, and I read confusion in their faces.

"I don't know quite what to say, Jack. Each fief is a bit different. Griswold tends to be ironic about his responsibilities and he likes to see people hash things out for themselves. I also tend to hold back and try not to be too patriarchal. Bennett, as you may have heard, is a bit of a lush, and it's hard to know how he's going to behave. But his wife is a serious woman and she can be quite severe. The king himself has probably got the best mix. His peasants know just where they stand, and they like him enormously."

I waited for him to go on, but he didn't. "You forgot somebody."

"Well, Lord Hawke is certainly a man of parts," said Dugdale. "There was a time when we couldn't possibly have done without him. Overall though, one could say that he tends to use the club where the switch would do just as well. Wouldn't you say so, my dear?"

"His peasants are very well-behaved," said Charlsey.

"That's true," said Dugdale, "but they are also too much in the shadow."

I felt chilly, though the sun was shining in the garden, and a shiver ran through my body. "Come on, Dugdale, quit being so diffident and lay it on me, would you please?"

Charlsey raised an eyebrow, but Dugdale continued. "There was an ugly incident last year during tithe collection. A soldier or two always accompanies the collector. It's a lonely job at best. Well, there was some kind of a misunderstanding, and one of the peasants was killed and another crippled. As soon as the king heard about it, he went to see what was what, and the duke told the king to mind his own business."

"I was stuffed in the dungeon for less than that," I said.

Dugdale nodded. "Yes, it's very much against the rules to get cheeky with the king. But Albert had only a small escort and the duke was surrounded by his own soldiers on his own land."

"Albert backed down?"

"Albert was very angry. He went back to his castle, and he was gathering his soldiers when a messenger came from the duke. He said he would make restitution to the peasant's family and reprimand the soldiers, but that he would regard any armed incursion by the king as an act of war."

"Did Albert let him get away with that?"

"The king replied that if the duke kept faith by making restitution to the peasants, then he, Albert, would make no reprisals as long as it never happened again."

"So Albert chickened out."

"Well, maybe it sounds like an obvious mistake to you, but that was a difficult year in many ways. The harvest was poor. Tempers were frayed. Relations between the fiefs were tense at best. No one wanted to see a war break out between the duke and the king."

"What happened then?"

"That was all there was to that. The duke made the family a gift of money and took responsibility for the mistake. There was also the implied promise that he would keep his soldiers in line, and that was very important, for this was just the worst of a long string of complaints about the way his soldiers behaved."

"But from what I hear, his soldiers are still out of control."

Dugdale sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Worse than ever?"

He nodded.

Again I felt that chilly, tingling feeling all through my body: a kind of raw excitement, a mustering of dark energies deep within my bones.
Do you still ride well? Do you still fence?
Yes, Albert, I do, and I still can't stand bullies. All of a sudden I had a longing to strap my sword back on and to feel the strange, embracing heft of my armor. Was I losing the little bit of good sense that I had? Was I looking forward to the trouble that I now distinctly felt was right around the bend?

"Enough about all that, Alton," said Charlsey. "I'm sure Sir Jack doesn't want to talk about politics all day." She looked at me for confirmation and I replied with a shrug. It was her teapot.

Dugdale was watching her with a peculiar expression. He seemed happy that she was getting a chance to be social and hold forth, but at the same time he looked concerned. She seemed like a child who was too tired to play, but having too much fun to go down for a nap.

"I noticed when I came over that bridge that you were doing some landscaping. Maybe we could ride by after lunch and take another look at it." My sly intention, of course, was to make some excuse once I was mounted, and get out of there as fast as I could.

"Thank you for noticing," said Charlsey, but a dark look passed across her face. Something in the way Dugdale shifted in his chair, also gave me the impression I'd said the wrong thing.

"I tried," Charlsey went on, "I
tried,
but our peasants didn't want to cooperate, you see. What is the use of all this land, I would say to them, if it's just left to the confusion of nature? Overgrown woods with everything every which way and no aesthetic arrangement. But I could never win their enthusiasm—never! If I asked them to transplant a tree, they did it grudgingly, and it took them forever! You can't imagine how I had to keep after them to accomplish even the little bit that I did." Her hands were opening and closing into fists in her frustration, and Dugdale was looking even more concerned. "Then King Albert asked me to forego my projects, saying that it wasn't
appropriate
to try to enroll our peasants in that kind of work. They had actually gone and complained about me to the king—
complained
about me for trying to create a little beauty amongst all this fecundity! The king said it wasn't part of their responsibility to the fief to help me develop my walks and parks. Well, what could I say to the king? And so I stopped, and they can all go to the devil before I will ever lift another finger—"

"Now, darling," said Dugdale, who had gone behind her chair and was stroking her shoulders with his long, white hands, "Sir Jack admires what you were trying to do, and I certainly appreciate all the beauty you bring into our lives. Why, look at these lovely flower gardens, and think of all the prizes you've won at the fairs."

Charlsey was looking confused now, and one of her hands went to her forehead. Then she clutched her head with both hands and let out a little scream, short and sharp. "Oh, no," she mumbled. "Oh, no."

Dugdale called one of his servants out of the house and they helped her out of her chair. "I'm
so
sorry," said Charlsey.

"Never mind, darling, let's get you into the house. These things happen. It's nobody's fault."

"Is there anything I can do?" I said, but Dugdale shook his head.

I picked at my salad and waited. It wasn't long before Dugdale came back, but it was just to say goodbye. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "but when this happens I need to stay with her. Please come see us again soon, won't you? It's very good for Charlsey to have company. What happened today was unusual. You won't be put off by it, will you?"