Clement Tells of Goldburg
Now when it was morning he rose early and roused Bull and the captain,
and they searched in divers places where they had not been the night
before, and even a good way back about the road they had ridden
yesterday, but found no tidings. And Ralph said to himself that this
was naught but what he had looked for after that vision of the night.
So he rode with his fellows somewhat shamefaced that they had seen that
sudden madness in him; but was presently of better cheer than he had
been yet. He rode beside Clement; they went downhill speedily, and the
wilderness began to better, and there was grass at whiles, and bushes
here and there. A little after noon they came out of a pass cleft deep
through the rocks by a swift stream which had once been far greater
than then, and climbed up a steep ridge that lay across the road, and
looking down from the top of it, beheld the open country again. But
this was otherwise from what they had beheld from the mountain's brow
above Cheaping Knowe. For thence the mountains beyond Whiteness, even
those that they had just ridden, were clear to be seen like the wall of
the plain country. But here, looking adown, the land below them seemed
but a great spreading plain with no hills rising from it, save that far
away they could see a certain break in it, and amidst that, something
that was brighter than the face of the land elsewhere. Clement told
Ralph that this was Goldburg and that it was built on a gathering of
hills, not great, but going up steep from the plain. And the plain,
said he, was not so wholly flat and even as it looked from up there,
but swelled at whiles into downs and low hills. He told him that
Goldburg was an exceeding fair town to behold; that the lord who had
built it had brought from over the mountains masons and wood-wrights
and artificers of all kinds, that they might make it as fair as might
be, and that he spared on it neither wealth nor toil nor pains. For in
sooth he deemed that he should find the Well at the World's End, and
drink thereof, and live long and young and fair past all record;
therefore had he builded this city, to be the house and home of his
long-enduring joyance.
Now some said that he had found the Well, and drank thereof; others
naysaid that; but all deemed that they knew how that Goldburg was not
done building ere that lord was slain in a tumult, and that what was
then undone was cobbled up after the uncomely fashion of the towns
thereabout.
Clement said moreover that, this happy lord dead, things had not gone
so well there as had been looked for. Forsooth it had been that lord's
will and meaning that all folks in Goldburg should thrive, both those
who wrought and those for whom they wrought. But it went not so, but
there were many poor folk there, and few wealthy.
Again said Clement that though the tillers and toilers of Goldburg were
not for the most part mere thralls and chattels, as in the lands beyond
the mountains behind them, yet were they little more thriving for that
cause; whereas they belonged not to a master, who must at worst feed
them, and to no manor, whose acres they might till for their
livelihood, and on whose pastures they might feed their cattle; nor had
they any to help or sustain them against the oppressor and the violent
man; so that they toiled and swinked and died with none heeding them,
save they that had the work of their hands good cheap; and they
forsooth heeded them less than their draught beasts whom they must
needs buy with money, and whose bellies they must needs fill; whereas
these poor wretches were slaves without a price, and if one died
another took his place on the chance that thereby he might escape
present death by hunger, for there was a great many of them.