London - Edward Rutherfurd [198]
Inside the Guildhall on a cold November morning, with Barnikel and Mabel beside him as supporters, Adam Ducket faced the mayor and aldermen of London. And also his accuser: Silversleeves.
The last ten days had been like a bewildering dream. The accusation had come from nowhere, from a man he scarcely knew, even by sight. He was not even accused of a crime. It was more incomprehensible than that. “They say I’m not who I think I am,” he told Mabel, “and I can’t prove it.”
He had tried. He had ridden down to the hamlet near Windsor the very day after hearing the accusation. But to his astonishment, the distant cousins he had never visited before, and the landlord’s steward, confirmed his guilt. “If only my mother were still alive. Maybe she could have told me something,” he cried. But no one could help him.
Silversleeves had begun. Thin, stooped, and an object of ridicule he might be; but now, entirely in his element, he became strangely impressive. “The accusation, Mayor and Aldermen, is very simple,” he declared. “Before you stands one Adam Ducket, fishmonger and supposed citizen of London. My duty today is to tell you that I have discovered he is an impostor. Adam Ducket he is. But a citizen of this noble commune,” he used the word with a deep bow of respect, “he may not be. For Adam Ducket is not a freeman. He is a serf.”
The great men of London sighed wearily. “Give us your proof,” they said.
They were by no means uncommon, these accusations of serfdom, and they were heard by the London courts for many generations. True, in theory, a serf might run away and live in a town, unclaimed, for a year and a day: at which point he became free. But such runaways were not common, and were likely to be treated as vagabonds unless they had money. Besides, the freemen of London had their own families to employ, their own guilds to protect. They were a proud community. And one thing – custom was very clear on this – which the freemen of London would not tolerate was the presence of servile men amongst the citizenry. “We are barons,” they said, “not runaway serfs.” As for an actual serf trying to masquerade as a citizen – it was unthinkable.
Nonetheless, the men sitting in judgment sensed that there was probably some game of personal vengeance here, and they were cautious. “Your proof,” the mayor warned, “had better be good.”
It was. In quick order Silversleeves produced Adam’s cousins whom he had brought up from Windsor. Then the estate steward. Both swore that Adam held the strips of land, which his father before and his forebears had held, not by rent, but by servile labour service. “Just,” his father’s cousin declared, “like us.”
In a way, they were telling the truth. For as the years of Adam’s childhood had passed, neither he nor his mother had bothered about the place, and his cousins had fallen into the habit of paying the rent for Adam’s land in labour instead of cash and then keeping all the modest profits for themselves. Ever since the steward had been there, which was now twelve years, he had known that Adam’s strips owed labour service, which his cousins provided for him. Therefore, even though he was living in London, he was still in this matter a serf. It was obscure, it was highly technical, but in the feudal world it was such technicalities that mattered.
“I was told I had cousins who were serfs, but that we were always free,” the young man protested. And indeed, on his visit to the hamlet he might have found one old man who could have testified to that effect – except that he had died the week before.
Now Silversleeves produced his masterstroke. It had suddenly occurred to him a few days before.