TWO TALK OF THE DAYS TO COME
"Brother," said John Ball, "how deemest thou of our adventure? I do
not ask thee if thou thinkest we are right to play the play like men,
but whether playing like men we shall fail like men."
"Why dost thou ask me?" said I; "how much further than beyond this
church can I see?" "Far further," quoth he, "for I wot that thou art a
scholar and hast read books; and withal, in some way that I cannot
name, thou knowest more than we; as though with thee the world had
lived longer than with us. Hide not, therefore, what thou hast in
thine heart, for I think after this night I shall see thee no more,
until we meet in the heavenly Fellowship."
"Friend," I said, "ask me what thou wilt; or rather ask thou the years
to come to tell thee some little of their tale; and yet methinks thou
thyself mayest have some deeming thereof."
He raised himself on the elbow of the stall and looked me full in the
face, and said to me: "Is it so after all that thou art no man in the
flesh, but art sent to me by the Master of the Fellowship, and the
King's Son of Heaven, to tell me what shall be? If that be so tell me
straight out, since I had some deeming hereof before; whereas thy
speech is like ours and yet unlike, and thy face hath something in it
which is not after the fashion of our day. And yet take heed, if thou
art such an one, I fear thee not, nay, nor him that sent thee; nor for
thy bidding, nor for his, will I turn back from London Bridge but will
press on, for I do what is meet and right."
"Nay," said I, "did I not tell thee e'en now that I knew life but not
death? I am not dead; and as to who hath sent me, I say not that I am
come by my own will; for I know not; yet also I know not the will that
hath sent me hither. And this I say to thee, moreover, that if I know
more than thou, I do far less; therefore thou art my captain and I thy
minstrel."
He sighed as one from whom a weight had been lifted, and said: "Well,
then, since thou art alive on the earth and a man like myself, tell me
how deemest thou of our adventure: shall we come to London, and how
shall we fare there?"
Said I, "What shall hinder you to come to London, and to fare there as
ye will? For be sure that the Fellowship in Essex shall not fail you;
nor shall the Londoners who hate the king's uncles withstand you; nor
hath the Court any great force to meet you in the field; ye shall cast
fear and trembling into their hearts."
"Even so, I thought," said he; "but afterwards what shall betide?"
Said I, "It grieves my heart to say that which I think. Yet hearken;
many a man's son shall die who is now alive and happy, and if the
soldiers be slain, and of them most not on the field, but by the
lawyers, how shall the captains escape? Surely thou goest to thy
death."
He smiled very sweetly, yet proudly, as he said: "Yea, the road is
long, but the end cometh at last. Friend, many a day have I been
dying; for my sister, with whom I have played and been merry in the
autumn tide about the edges of the stubble-fields; and we gathered the
nuts and bramble-berries there, and started thence the missel-thrush,
and wondered at his voice and thought him big; and the sparrow-hawk
wheeled and turned over the hedges and the weasel ran across the path,
and the sound of the sheep-bells came to us from the downs as we sat
happy on the grass; and she is dead and gone from the earth, for she
pined from famine after the years of the great sickness; and my brother
was slain in the French wars, and none thanked him for dying save he
that stripped him of his gear; and my unwedded wife with whom I dwelt
in love after I had taken the tonsure, and all men said she was good
and fair, and true she was and lovely; she also is dead and gone from
the earth; and why should I abide save for the deeds of the flesh which
must be done? Truly, friend, this is but an old tale that men must
die; and I will tell thee another, to wit, that they live: and I live
now and shall live. Tell me then what shall befall."
Somehow I could not heed him as a living man as much as I had done, and
the voice that came from me seemed less of me as I answered:
"These men are strong and valiant as any that have been or shall be,
and good fellows also and kindly; but they are simple, and see no great
way before their own noses. The victory shall they have and shall not
know what to do with it; they shall fight and overcome, because of
their lack of knowledge, and because of their lack of knowledge shall
they be cozened and betrayed when their captains are slain, and all
shall come to nought by seeming; and the king's uncles shall prevail,
that both they and the king may come to the shame that is appointed for
them. And yet when the lords have vanquished, and all England lieth
under them again, yet shall their victory be fruitless; for the free
men that hold unfree lands shall they not bring under the collar again,
and villeinage shall slip from their hands, till there be, and not long
after ye are dead, but few unfree men in England; so that your lives
and your deaths both shall bear fruit."
"Said I not," quoth John Ball, "that thou wert a sending from other
times? Good is thy message, for the land shall be free. Tell on now."
He spoke eagerly, and I went on somewhat sadly: "The times shall
better, though the king and lords shall worsen, the Gilds of Craft
shall wax and become mightier; more recourse shall there be of foreign
merchants. There shall be plenty in the land and not famine. Where a
man now earneth two pennies he shall earn three."
"Yea," said he, "then shall those that labour become strong and
stronger, and so soon shall it come about that all men shall work and
none make to work, and so shall none be robbed, and at last shall all
men labour and live and be happy, and have the goods of the earth
without money and without price."
"Yea," said I, "that shall indeed come to pass, but not yet for a
while, and belike a long while."
And I sat for long without speaking, and the church grew darker as the
moon waned yet more.
Then I said: "Bethink thee that these men shall yet have masters over
them, who have at hand many a law and custom for the behoof of masters,
and being masters can make yet more laws in the same behoof; and they
shall suffer poor people to thrive just so long as their thriving shall
profit the mastership and no longer; and so shall it be in those days I
tell of; for there shall be king and lords and knights and squires
still, with servants to do their bidding, and make honest men afraid;
and all these will make nothing and eat much as aforetime, and the more
that is made in the land the more shall they crave."
"Yea," said he, "that wot I well, that these are of the kin of the
daughters of the horse-leech; but how shall they slake their greed,
seeing that as thou sayest villeinage shall be gone? Belike their men
shall pay them quit-rents and do them service, as free men may, but all
this according to law and not beyond it; so that though the workers
shall be richer than they now be, the lords shall be no richer, and so
all shall be on the road to being free and equal."
Said I, "Look you, friend; aforetime the lords, for the most part, held
the land and all that was on it, and the men that were on it worked for
them as their horses worked, and after they were fed and housed all was
the lords'; but in the time to come the lords shall see their men
thriving on the land and shall say once more, 'These men have more than
they need, why have we not the surplus since we are their lords?'
Moreover, in those days shall betide much chaffering for wares between
man and man, and country and country; and the lords shall note that if
there were less corn and less men on their lands there would be more
sheep, that is to say more wool for chaffer, and that thereof they
should have abundantly more than aforetime; since all the land they
own, and it pays them quit-rent or service, save here and there a croft
or a close of a yeoman; and all this might grow wool for them to sell
to the Easterlings. Then shall England see a new thing, for whereas
hitherto men have lived on the land and by it, the land shall no longer
need them, but many sheep and a few shepherds shall make wool grow to
be sold for money to the Easterlings, and that money shall the lords
pouch: for, look you, they shall set the lawyers a-work and the strong
hand moreover, and the land they shall take to themselves and their
sheep; and except for these lords of land few shall be the free men
that shall hold a rood of land whom the word of their lord may not turn
adrift straightway."
"How mean you?" said John Ball: "shall all men be villeins again?"
"Nay," said I, "there shall be no villeins in England."
"Surely then," said he, "it shall be worse, and all men save a few
shall be thralls to be bought and sold at the cross."
"Good friend," said I, "it shall not be so; all men shall be free even
as ye would have it; yet, as I say, few indeed shall have so much land
as they can stand upon save by buying such a grace of their masters."
"And now," said he, "I wot not what thou sayest. I know a thrall, and
he is his master's every hour, and never his own; and a villein I know,
and whiles he is his own and whiles his lord's; and I know a free man,
and he is his own always; but how shall he be his own if he have nought
whereby to make his livelihood? Or shall he be a thief and take from
others? Then is he an outlaw. Wonderful is this thou tellest of a free
man with nought whereby to live!"
"Yet so it shall be," said I, "and by such free men shall all wares be
made."
"Nay, that cannot be; thou art talking riddles," said he; "for how
shall a woodwright make a chest without the wood and the tools?"
Said I, "He must needs buy leave to labour of them that own all things
except himself and such as himself."
"Yea, but wherewith shall he buy it?" said John Ball. "What hath he
except himself?"
"With himself then shall he buy it," quoth I, "with his body and the
power of labour that lieth therein; with the price of his labour shall
he buy leave to labour."
"Riddles again!" said he; "how can he sell his labour for aught else
but his daily bread? He must win by his labour meat and drink and
clothing and housing! Can he sell his labour twice over?"
"Not so," said I, "but this shall he do belike; he shall sell himself,
that is the labour that is in him, to the master that suffers him to
work, and that master shall give to him from out of the wares he maketh
enough to keep him alive, and to beget children and nourish them till
they be old enough to be sold like himself, and the residue shall the
rich man keep to himself."
John Ball laughed aloud, and said: "Well, I perceive we are not yet
out of the land of riddles. The man may well do what thou sayest and
live, but he may not do it and live a free man."
"Thou sayest sooth," said I.