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.