Book 4, Chapter 14: Legal Matters
I sighed and put down yet another musty book. “Brin, why don’t these have tables of contents? Or indexes? References, even!”
“What are you going on about now?” Brin stopped knitting to engage my outburst, her pretty blond locks falling across her cheek. She brushed them away.
“These legal books, none of them are well organized. It’s like every author thought, ‘Gosh, I’ll just pen my thoughts here, to hell with everyone else.’ They follow no standards, even the spelling changes from book to book!”
“That’s reading for you, Cayce. Some of the histories are interesting.” She pulled a string of yarn through.
“Have you ever read the legal texts?”
“No, gods, they’re so boring. I tried to once, when it was stormy and there was nothing to do, but quickly gave up on that. Let the magistrates deal with them.”
Bechalle not only liked tapestries but was fond of books. I’d been meaning to read some of them but had just been too busy trying to survive that I hadn’t had time. As things were calming down, and I wanted to build a justifiable institution of knighthood, it was time to read.
Also, there was no internet. Had to pass the time somehow.
It was a mess. To make my case for the knighthood, I’d thought to base it on their existing legal system. They didn’t really have one. Sure, the usual ‘Don’t murder, steal, rape, keep your hands off your neighbor’s sheep, no matter how cute their wide eyes and floppy ears are,’ and so on and that was it.
I guess I’d expected a constitution or bill of rights or something, but nope. No unifying legal code. Lots of court cases, decisions made by judges handpicked by the nobles themselves, so you can guess how those cases were ruled, with a fair bit on something called ‘village law,’ which was basically law for the commoners that didn’t concern the nobles. And a bunch of rules that boiled down to protecting property and land-rent, which effectively and perpetually kept the peasantry owing the landowners.
The interests of the nobility, it seemed, is what unified their legal code. If it could be called that.
“But clearly Bechalle thought they were important. He even sorted them into war, law, history and philosophy. Well, kind of sorted them. No, ah, not really sorted. But he gathered the lot of them.”
“Probably to protect his own power by hoarding knowledge.”
“What? Ok, I get it, knowledge is power and all that, but you’re telling me he didn’t read them?”
She looked up, “Cayce . . .”
“What?”
Shook her head, blond locks falling about her ears, “Instead of me telling you, let’s work this out together. That book you’re currently reading through, how many copies do you think there are?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” I flipped to the beginning of the book. “It doesn’t say or have a front matter or anything.”
“Front matter? No, never mind. One copy, maybe two. If it’s local earldom law, just the one copy. You might have an additional copy in Breadamont and there might be one in Barclay, but probably not.”
“Ok. He’s got the only copy. I mean, I have it now, but so what?”
Brin’s blue eyes widened not with surprise or shock but the exaggeration of explaining something that everyone knows to the extremely ignorant, me, “So, when his magistrates and judges have difficulties in deciding a case, who do they have to ask? Where do they have to come to read the book?”
“Oh! Seriously? He hoarded all these just to make people come beg him for information?”
Brin clicked her mouth, turned her gaze back to knitting and said, “Light.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Didn’t you see the same with your father?”
“Uhm . . . yeah, I guess.”
“Cayce, it’s not just to lord knowledge over them, but to have learned men come discuss difficult problems with the duke. It didn’t just feed his pride – which you know he lived for – it kept him in touch with the goings on of the dukedom. Also,” she shrugged, “uncle just really enjoyed debate. Sorry,” she spat on the ground, “may he never find peace.”
I just stared at her, accepting that. A curse? It must have been a curse. I usually just cursed the bastard in my thoughts. Probably better that way, or I’d go around spitting all over the castle. “I see. Do all rulers do this?”
“Well, I thought so, but I’ve only lived here, really. And at your place. Your dad often trusted councilors to treat with the magistrates and judges, I think. Though he did hold public debates on philosophy – you know all this, already.”
“Yeah, right, ok. Philosophy.” This research or lit review or whatever it was I was doing was going to take time. But maybe I could cut down on that. “Brin, do we have scribes?”
“Of course we have scribes! What do you think we are, a manor?”
“Good. I’m going to have them go through these books, add indexes and keywords and generally organize them.”
She looked at me aghast. “The whole library?”
“Sure! Why not?”
“That’ll take years.”
“Years? How many scribes do we have?”
“Two. And four assistants. In the castle, I mean. The army has probably ten to twenty and the archbishop has more. But if you want them to, what, rewrite books? That’ll take a lot of time.”
“They can just add tables of contents and indexes, then!”
“To add to books,” Brin said, opening her hands as if opening a book, “they’d have to loose the binding, add in the new papers, and rebind it, possibly even requiring a larger spine and cover.”
“That sounds faster. They could do that.”
“It’ll still take months, years if you’re doing the whole library. And take up a lot of their time.”
“If they aren’t rewriting books, what are they doing?”
She gave me one of those looks again. I half expected her to sing me the alphabet song, starting with the letter A. “Weren’t you paying attention in Breadamont? Never mind. Daydreaming about being a soldier, knowing you. Ok, the military scribes are concerned with aiding the quartermaster. Payment and debt for soldiers, rations and housing and all that stuff, and I guess they record battles. You should really ask your generals about that. Or, wait, I think uncle, sorry, the traitor-”
“It’s fine, just call him Bechalle.”
“Him, yeah, curse his name-”
“Don’t keep spitting on the floor! I mean, thank you. It’s great to curse the man and all that, but we have to live here. Anyways, Bechalle’s fine, really, that’s what I call him when I think of him.”
“You think of him?”
“Well . . . we’re in his castle and – Brin, can we just focus here? Scribes!”
“Are you ok, Cayce?”
“Yes. Look, I have all manner of reasons to think of Bechalle. This goddamn magic, for one thing! And these tapestries, the furniture, the-”
“Maybe that’s why you’re always blowing up the furniture. Because you think of it as his.”
“Come on, really? You think I’m blowing stuff up on purpose?”
“You might not mean to do it consciously. Maybe you’re just letting the, you know, the anger out.”
“Ok, fine, alright. Can we get back to scribes now?”
“You took the castle. It’s yours. Tapestries, library, furniture and all. All yours. Anyways, why do you hate tapestries? They keep the place warm in winter.”
“On that note, why are the walls bare? Serce told me-”
“Oh, is it ‘Serce’ now? How did you get on a first name basis?”
“Brin! We’ve just been spending a lot of time together!”
“Right, right, you’re definitely not interested in him.”
“Good god! Gods, I mean. We were talking about scribes!”
“Well, what did the handsome prince say about the walls?”
I stood up at that point, making grumpy noises before saying, “They’re bare. Bare stone.”
“As in naked?”
“Lacking plaster. Wattle and daub or something.”
“Uncle, the traitor, sorry, sorry, Bechalle liked them that way.”
I stared at her, exasperated, tilted my head while leaning against the cold, stone wall, “Why would anyone want it this way? For aesthetics? I guess I can see that. It’s kind of neat to be in a castle with stone walls. Rustic and historical.”
“That bad? It’s not like these are made of rotting wood.”
“No, ok, you’re right, sorry. Not so rustic. Ok! I give up. Why are the walls bare?”
“Good Prince Serce should know this, actually. It was his people’s fault, after all. When the Laemacians stormed the castle, killing my great uncle, that’d be Bechalle’s father, they set fire to the place. It burned down, tremendously, the plaster. When Bechalle returned, he kept it this way.”
“Huh. Wouldn’t that make the stonework weaker? The fire, I mean.”
“I don’t know, it was all while I was away. Probably, he had the walls rebuilt or reinforced or whatever.”
“Thanks, Brin. That’s it. That’s what I’ll do to leave my mark on this castle. I’ll have the walls re-plastered.”
“That’ll be nice. It’ll make the castle warmer.”
“Although, if plaster is prone to fire maybe I shouldn’t do it in our rooms. I might, you know, accidentally set them ablaze.”
“What’s the phrase you use all the time, Cayce? That would suck.”
“It would, it really would.”
“And anyways, I’d have to organize all that. Or Tread. And we’re already quite at the limits of our resources, what with all the smithies you have building weapons and the enormous standing army you’re insisting on.”
“Yes, yes, ok, yes. Can we get back to scribes now? How many do we have?”
“Oh, like I said. Two in the castle, ten or so in the army. Not enough to rewrite all these books and put, what did you call it? Lists of words?”
“Indexes, tables of contents. Sure, lists. They tell you where to look for information in the book you’re reading.”
“That sounds very helpful.”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, for rewriting books, you should talk to Archbishop Ghevont. There are probably entire monasteries devoted to the practice, but mainly for religious books as you can imagine.”
“Crap, ok. Talk to the guy I just snubbed.” I felt like Prometheus’ brother, whose name I could not remember, but meant something like ‘Doesn’t think ahead, but only reacts to events.’ Maybe it was ‘Postmetheus.’
“Cayce?”
“Sorry, lost in thought there for a moment.”
“No problem. I think you need a break. Want to do something else for the rest of the afternoon?”
“The scribes, how many books can they do in a year?”
“Uh, two, I think. Yes, a scribe can do about two books a year if I remember correctly.”
“It takes them half a year to write out one book?! Why oh why does it take so long?”
“Maybe you could do it faster in that messy handwriting of yours, but scribes do their best to mimic the script of each book they’re writing. And reproduce all the drawings.”
“Oh my god – gods. Never mind then, later, I’ll organize that later, after I take over the kingdom. Retake, sorry, retake the kingdom.” What I wouldn’t give for a computer! This would be so much easier. Maybe I could invent a shorthand or something for them to work quickly, ignore the original writing, that sort of thing. Except, I didn’t know anything about shorthand, way before my time. Anyways, that was something I could worry about in the far future. Right now, I was stuck with disorganized books and a chaotic legal code that existed largely to disenfranchise commoners.
“Ok, Brin, let me ask you a question. Maybe you can save me some time. What gives the nobility the right to own land?”
“We talked about this in the bath a while back. Their armies.”
“That’s it? There’s no legal basis for the nobility?”
“Blood, it’s done by blood.”
“That really just backs up the question to why this blood and not that blood.”
“Certain bloodlines have armies.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ok, so control over violence. That’s really it?”
“Cayce, if you’re looking for legitimacy, you might want to ask the archbishop. They have an extensive library, too. Maybe they have religious proclamations about nobility.”
I shook my head. “Of course, yeah. The divine right to rule and all that. I just can’t seem to find any mention of that in any of these books.”
“My blanket is almost knitted.”
I yawned. “At least one of us is being productive.”
“Can we do something else when I finish? I’m a little bored of knitting.”
“You could be helping me search through these books.”
“I love knitting. I’ll do another blanket.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, “Why don’t you knit a tapestry?”
“Oh! That’s a great idea, Cayce. I’ll do one of your coronation party.”
“With me in the new armor?”
“No, with the elegant and handsome Gun kissing you.”
“You absolute bitch.”
She laughed, put down her needles, stood and came over, taking me by the hands, “Come on, let’s go do something else. Maybe a little riding. Time for a break!”
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