Chapter XXI: The Good Town of Pontdebois: Aspect and Organization.
As the summer advances, Conon, his baroness, and his familiars make their annual visit to the great fair always held at this time at Pontdebois. Practically nothing except wheat, cattle, and a few like staples are ordinarily bought and sold in or around St. Aliquis. Of course, a messenger can be sent to the town for articles that are urgently needed, but, as a rule, the baron's family saves up all its important purchases until the fair, when many desirable things not ordinarily to be had in the city are put on sale. This present season the fair seems the more important because on account of the expensive fêtes Conon cannot afford to visit Paris and must make his purchases nearer home.
It is only a few leagues to Pontdebois, but messire travels with a considerable retinue—at least twenty men at arms well equipped, besides body servants for himself and his wife, and a long string of sumpter beasts to bring back the desired commodities, for the castle must really stock itself for the year. The baron hardly fears an attack by robbers so near to his own castle and to a friendly town, but he takes no chances. The best of seigneurs disclaim any responsibility for the fate of travelers who proceed by night, and one sire who controls some miles of the way has possibly a quiet understanding with certain outlaws that they may lurk in his forests and watch the roads without too much questioning, provided they refrain from outrages upon important people and make him liberal presents at Christmas and Easter.[103] In any case, a number of merchants, packmen, and other humble travelers who had gone safely as far as St. Aliquis, are glad to complete the journey in the baron's formidable company. Conon in turn gladly protects them; it adds to his prestige to approach Pontdebois with a great following.
The roads are no worse than elsewhere, yet they are abominable; trails and muddy ruts they seem most of the year, ordinarily passable only for horses and mules, although in the summer rude two-wheeled carts can bump along them. To cross the streams you must, in some places, depend on fords very dangerous in the springtime. One unfordable river, entering the Claire, is indeed crossed by a rude wooden bridge. The building of bridges is fostered by the Church. A great indulgence was proclaimed by the bishop some years ago when this bridge was constructed as a pious work, especially useful for pilgrims. Unfortunately, no one is responsible for its upkeep. It is falling into disrepair, and already is so tottering that as men pass over it they repeat those formulas, "commending their souls to God," which the Church provides for use whenever one is attempting unstable bridges.
Travelers and Inns
On the journey you meet many humble travelers obliged to trudge weary miles. There is a poor peasant seeking a farm now on a distant seigneury. He has a donkey to carry some of his household gear and one of the children. His wife is painfully carrying the youngest infant. The poor man himself staggers under a great sack. Travelers of more consequence ride horseback, with a large mail or leathern portmanteau tied on their beast's crupper. Their burdens are heavy because one often has to spend the night in abominable quarters, and consequently must, if possible, carry flint, steel, and tinder for making a fire, some kind of bedding, and very often a tent. Along the road, too, are any quantity of beggars, real or pretended cripples and other deformed persons, wandering about and living on charity; or blind men with staffs and dogs. The beggars' disguise is a favorite one for robbers. The wretches, too, who whine their, "Alms, Messire! Alms!" and hold up a wrist minus the hand, or point to where an eye has been gouged out, probably have suffered just punishments for crimes, although some of them may have mutilated themselves merely in order to work on the sympathies of the gullible.
As the party approaches Pontdebois the houses become better and closer together, and just outside the gate is a group of taverns, available for those who prefer to carouse or lodge without rather than within the city walls. Conon is on terms of hospitality with a rich burgher who has found the baron's favor profitable, and he leads his company promptly inside the gates, but many of the humbler travelers turn off to these taverns. Adela gives an aristocratic sniff of disdain as they ride past such places. They are assuredly very dirty, and from them proceeds the smell of stale wine and poor cooking. The owners, smooth, smirking men, stand by the road as travelers come in sight and begin to praise their hostelries. "Within," one of them is calling out, "are all manner of comforts, painted chambers, and soft beds packed high with white straw under soft feather mattresses. Here is your hostel for love affairs. When you retire you will fall asleep on pillows of violets, after you have washed out your mouth and rinsed your hands with rose water!"
His victims, however, will find themselves in a dirty public dining room, where men and women alike are drinking and dicing around the bare oaken tables. At night the guests will sleep in the few chambers, bed wedged by bed, or perhaps two in a bed, upon feathers anything but vermin-proof. In the rear of most inns, too, there is a garden where guests are urged to carouse with the unsavory females who haunt the establishments. The visitors will be lucky if they can get safely away without being made stupidly drunken and then robbed, or having the innkeeper seize their baggage or even their clothes on the pretense that they have not paid their reckoning.
Leaving these taverns at one side, the St. Aliquis company rides straight onward. Before it the spires and walls of Pontdebois are rising. The circuit of gray curtain walls and turrets reaches down to the Claire, on which barges are swinging, and across which stretches the solid wooden bridge which gives the Good Town its name. Above the walls you can see the gabled roofs of the more pretentious houses, the great round donjon, the civic watchtower, and, above all else, the soaring fabric and stately mass of the cathedral with the scaffolding still around its unfinished towers. Several smaller parish churches are also visible. The baron's company is obliged to halt at the gate, such is the influx and efflux of rickety carts, sumpter beasts, and persons thrusting across the drawbridge. "Way, good people," Conon's squires cry. "Way for Messire of St. Aliquis!" and at last, not without a cracking of whips to make these mechanic crowds know their betters, the party forces a path down the narrow streets.
Entering a City
A visit to Pontdebois is no real novelty to the castle folk, yet they always experience a sense of bustle and vastness upon entering. Here are eight thousand, indeed, some assert ten thousand, people, all living together in a single community.[104] How confused even the saints must be when they peer from heaven and try to number this swarm of young and old, rich and poor, masters and apprentices, packed in behind one set of walls! To tell the truth, the circuit of Pontdebois is not very great; to render the walls as defensible as possible and to save expense, the fortifications have been made to inclose the smallest circumference that will answer. As a result, the land inside is precious. Houses are wedged closely together. Streets are extraordinarily narrow. People can hardly stir without colliding with others, and about the only real breathing spaces are the market place and some open ground around the cathedral. Behind the bishop's palace, also, there is a small walled-in garden. Otherwise, it appears almost as if not one green thing could grow in Pontdebois. The contrast with the open country whence the travelers have just come is therefore startling.
Even the best of the streets are dark, tortuous, and filthy. There is almost no paving.[105] The waste water of the houses is flung from the windows. Horrid offal is thus cast out, as well as the blood and refuse from the numerous slaughterhouses. Pigs are privileged as scavengers, even in the market place. The streets are the darker because the second stories of the houses project considerably over the first, the third over the second, and also the fourth and fifth (which often exist) over those lower. Consequently, there is almost a roof formed over the lanes, cutting off rain, light and air. In the upper stories, neighbors not merely can gossip, but can actually shake hands with their friends across the street. All the thoroughfares, too, are amazingly crooked, as if everybody had once built his house where it pleased him, and afterward some kind of a bypath around it had been created! At night these twisting avenues are dark as pitch. No one can get about without a lantern, and even with one it were better, if possible, to stay at home. To prevent the easy flight of thieves, it is common to stretch many heavy chains across the streets at night. Notwithstanding, footpads often lurk in the covert of black corners.
Pontdebois has few quiet residence sections. It is a community of almost nothing but little shops and little industries—the two being often combined under one roof. The shops generally open directly into the streets, with their stalls intruding on the public way like Oriental bazaars. The streets, in fact, seem to be almost the property of the merchants. Foot passengers can barely find a passage. Carts cannot traverse the town during business hours, and Conon's company on horseback might have found itself absolutely blocked had it not chanced to arrive almost precisely at noon, when the hum and bustle very suddenly cease and the worthy folk of Pontdebois forsake their counters and benches to enjoy hearty dinners.
A Rich Burgher's House
As it is, they reach the market place just as the city hangman has finished a necessary ceremony. One Lambert, a master woolen weaver, had been caught selling adulterated and dishonestly woven cloth, contrary to the statutes of his guild. The hangman has solemnly burned the offending bolts of cloth before a jeering crowd of apprentices, while Lambert's offense has been cried out with loud voice. The man is disgraced and ruined. He will have to become again a mere wage earner, or quit the city outright. His misfortune is the choice news of the hour. The smell of the burning cloth is still in the air when Conon's party rides by the pillory and halts at the house of the rich Othon Bouchaut, who is ready to receive them.
Maître Othon is one of the principal burghers. He has grown rich by importing wares from Venice, Constantinople, and the lands of the Infidels. It is scandalous (say some nobles) how he, villein born, with hands only accustomed to hold a purse or a pen, is able to talk to a great seigneur without groveling as every good peasant ought. He and his wife even wear gold lace, pearls, and costly stuffs on fête days, as if they were nobles; and they are said actually to have broken the law forbidding non-nobles to wear furs. Very deplorable, but what can be done? Othon is so rich that he can stir up trouble even for the duke. Nothing remains but to speak him fair and accept his hospitality.
This powerful merchant's house is in the marketplace. It rises five stories high, and is built of beams filled in with laths, mortar, and stucco. On the ground floor are storerooms for costly Oriental goods, and desks where the master's clerks seem forever busy with complicated accounts. On the next are the rooms for the family, and, although without the spacious magnificence of the great hall at St. Aliquis, Adela remarks a little enviously that her host's wife enjoys many comforts and luxuries hardly known in the castle. The upper stories are full of small chambers for Othon's family, his clerks, and the younger apprentices who are learning his business. Before the front door swings the ensign of the house—a gilded mortar (in token of the powdered spices which the owner sells). The houses of Pontdebois have no numbers. The ensigns serve to identify them. One of Othon's neighbors lives at the "Crouching Cat," another at the "Tin Pot," another at the "Silver Fish," and so on all through the town.
The house of Othon also appears to be quite new, as do many others. This, however, is a doubtful sign of good fortune. Only a few years ago much of Pontdebois was burned down. The narrow streets, the thatched roofs, the absence of any means of checking a blaze save a line of buckets hastily organized, make great fires a standing menace to every city.[106] Othon complains that at any moment he may be reduced almost to beggary by the carelessness of some wretched scullery maid or tavern apprentice. He will also say that somehow in the pent-up city there is greater danger of the plague than in the country castles or even in the villages with their dungheaps. A dozen years ago Pontdebois lost a quarter of its population by an outbreak which spared neither rich nor poor, before which physicians and religious processions seemed alike helpless, and which demoralized the community before the saints mercifully halted the devastation.
The Communal Donjon
There are only a few stone houses in Pontdebois. Even the best houses of the citizens are usually of wood and mortar. Not yet have risen those magnificent stone city halls which later will be the glory of North France and Flanders. But on one side of the market place rises the communal donjon. The Good Town is like a seigneur (indeed, somewhat it is a seigneur placed in commission): it has its walls and therefore its strong citadel. The donjon forms a high, solid, square tower dominating the public square. At its summit there is always a watchman ready, at first danger of fire or attack, to boom the alarm bell. The tower itself is large enough to have good-sized rooms in its base. Nearest the ground is the council chamber where the worshipful echevins can deliberate. Above that is the archive room, where the elaborate town records are kept. Directly under the council chamber, however, is the prison, where general offenders are mewed up no more comfortably than in the abysses of St. Aliquis.
The soul of the communal donjon, however, hovers around its bells. There in the dark tower hang shrill Jacqueline, loud Carolus, and, deepest and mightiest of all, Holy Trinity, and several others. A peal of powerful bells pertains to every free town. Of course, they ring lustily and merrily on holidays; indeed, strangers to the city think they are rung too often for repose.[107] But if they all begin leaping and thundering together, that is probably a sign for a mass meeting of the citizens in the open plaza before the donjon. The magistrates may wish to harangue the populace from the balcony, just above the council room, descanting upon some public danger or deliver a peaceful explanation of some new municipal ordinance. In any case, a commune without its donjon and bells is like a ship without its rudder, and if ever Pontdebois succumbs to superior power, the first step of the conqueror will probably be to "take away the bells"—that will be the same thing as annulling the city liberties.
Pontdebois has been a Good Town with a charter of privileges for about a hundred years. As early as Charlemagne's day a village existed upon the site. The location proved good for trade, but the inhabitants, despite success in commerce and industry and increasing numbers, were for a long time mere villeins dependent upon the lord bishop of the town and region, and with no more rights than the peasants of the fields had. However, in dealing with men who were steadily becoming richer, and who were picking up strange ideas by foreign intercourse, it proved much harder to keep them content with their station than it did the run of villeins. Besides, the dukes of Quelqueparte, although very loath to grant privileges to their own villeins, were not averse to having privileges given to the subjects of such independent and unreliable vassals as the bishops of Pontdebois. Consequently, when the townspeople about A.D. 1100 began raising the cry, "Commune! Commune!" in the episcopal presence, the bishop could not look to his suzerain for much support. Indeed, it was being realized by intelligent seigneurs that granting a charter to a town often meant a great increase of wealth, so that if the lord's fiscal rights were carefully safeguarded, he was actually the gainer by an apparent cession of part of his authority. The upshot was that about A.D. 1110, when a certain bishop needed a large purse to cover his travel to the Holy Land, for a round sum the townsfolk bought from him a charter—a precious document which practically raised them out of the status of villeins and protected them against those executions and tyrannies which the run of peasants had to accept resignedly, as they did bad winters.
Charter of a Commune
This charter read in part much as follows: "I, Henri, by the grace of God Bishop of Pontdebois, make known to all present and to come, that I have established the undermentioned rules for the inhabitants of my town of Pontdebois. Every male inhabitant of said town shall pay me every year twelve deniers and a bushel of oats as the price of his dwelling; and if he desires to hold land outside the walls four deniers per year for each acre. The houses, vines, and fields may be sold and alienated at the pleasure of the holder. The dwellers in this town shall go neither to the ost (feudal levy) nor on any other expedition unless I lead the same in person. They are allowed six echevins to administer the ordinary business of the town and to assist my provost in his duties. I especially decree that no seigneur shall withdraw from this town any inhabitants for any reason, unless they are actually 'his men' or owe him arrears in taxes, etc."[108]
After securing this charter, the men of Pontdebois began to hold up their heads in a manner grievous to the neighboring nobles, and even more grievous to the wealthy clergy, for prince-bishops were often the original suzerains of the towns, and their authority was the most seriously curtailed.[109] The books are full of the wrath of the ecclesiastics over the changed situation. "'Commune!' a name new and detestable!" pungently wrote Abbot Guibert of Nogent, even when the movement was young; while Bishop Ives of Chartres assured everybody that "compacts (with city folk) are binding on no one: they are contrary to the canon law and the decision of the holy fathers." Even as recently as 1213 a synod at Paris has denounced communes as the creations of "usurers and exactors" who have set up "diabolical usages, tending to overthrow the jurisdiction of the Church."
However righteous the anger of these holy men, it has proved vain. The communes ever wax stronger, and annually some new seigneur is compelled to sell a charter or even to grant one for nothing. The kings watch complacently a movement which weakens their unruly feudatories. Sometimes the townsfolk have grown insolent and tried to defend their privileges by sheer violence. Once there was a very tyrannous bishop of Laon. He foolishly tried to cancel a charter granted the city, and boasted: "What can you expect these people to do by their commotions? If my negro boy John were to seize the most terrible of them by the nose, the fellow would not even growl. What they yesterday called a 'commune' I have forced them to give up—at least as long as I live!" The next day the yell, "Commune! Commune!" rang in the streets. A mob sacked the episcopal palace and found the bishop hiding in a cask at the bottom of the cellar. The howling populace dragged him into the street and killed him with a hatchet. Then, to add to this sacrilege upon an anointed bishop, they plundered most of the nobles who chanced to be in the town. After such deeds it is no wonder that the king went to Laon and re-established order with a strong hand. Nevertheless, some years later, a new charter was granted the town, and the succeeding bishops have had to walk warily, despite inward groanings.
Rule by Echevins and Rich Merchants
Fortunately, Pontdebois has been spared these convulsions. As a rule the local prelates have been reasonable and conciliatory. The bishop is still called "suzerain." He receives the fixed tax provided in the original agreement. He has jurisdiction over the citizens in spiritual matters, which include heresy, blasphemy, insults, and assaults upon priests and outrages to churches. Likewise much of what might be called "probate litigation"—touching the validity of marriages and children, and consequently the wills and property rights affected thereby. However, in most secular particulars the citizens have pretty complete control. They levy numerous imposts, direct taxes, tolls, and market dues; they enroll a militia to defend the walls and to take the field under their own officers and banner when the general levy of the region is called out; they pass many local ordinances; and they name their own magistrates who administer "high justice." They can even wage local wars if they have a grievance against neighboring barons, being themselves a kind of collective seigneur. The one thing they cannot do is to coin money; that is a privilege carefully reserved to the king and to the superior nobility.
Practically all these powers are exercised by the six echevins, with a higher dignitary, the mayor (maire), at their head.[110] There is little real democracy, however, in Pontdebois. The richer merchants, like Othon, and the more prosperous masters form practically an oligarchy, excluding the poor artisans and apprentices from any share in municipal affairs save that of paying taxes and listening to edicts by the magistrates. The same officers are re-elected year after year. They use the town money much as they see fit, refusing public reckoning and blandly announcing that "they render their accounts to one another." There are, therefore, certain discontented fellows who even murmur, "We 'free burghers' are worse taxed and oppressed than are Baron Conon's villeins at St. Aliquis."
Nevertheless, there is often a great desire to become even a passive citizen of Pontdebois. If you can live there unmolested for "a year and a day," you escape the jurisdiction of the lord on whose estate you have been a villein. You are protected against those outrages which are possible on even the best seigneuries. Most of all, you gain a chance to become something more than a clodhopping plowman. Perhaps your grandchildren at least will become wealthy and powerful enough to receive a baron as their guest, even as does the rich Othon.
So one may wander about the twisting streets of Pontdebois until nightfall, when the loud horns blow curfew—"cover fires." After that, the streets are deserted save for the occasional watchman rattling his iron-shod staff and calling through the darkness, "Pray for the dead!"