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Page 121 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html "You are a soldier?" "Of fortune," I said, "a fighting man, if necessary, but something of a scholar as well. I travel eastward," I added, "and the lady Safia travels to her home inShiraz ." "It is a far place." He measured me again with appraising eyes. "Do you have capital to invest? Ours is a merchant company, our goods bought and sold in common, profits shared. If you would like to join us, we can use strong men." "Would I share with the company?" "You would be one of us. Your sword must be ours, also. We will have need of swords, I believe." "And your route?" "By way ofPamplona toPau andAvignon . We go eastward but by way of the fairs." So it was that I, who had been a scholar, a geographer, and perhaps a physician, became a merchant. A merchant with a sword. 25 THE TAWNY HILLS lay like sleeping lions along the narrow track. Far ahead, leading the convoy, was theschildrake,or standard-bearer. Behind him rode six armed men, selected for their skill with weapons, and then theHansgrafhimself. The caravan was made up of nearly five hundred pack animals, mostly horses and mules but cattle also. These last would be eaten when their packs were sold or shifted to mules. They walked in pairs because the track was narrow, with armed guards along the flanks of the column. Four women accompanied them, and there were sixty-two men, hardened by constant travel and intermittent warfare. All were shareholders in the venture, and in von Gilderstern they had a very superior commander who maintained sharp discipline. If any failed to live up to standard, he was dropped at once. His goods were purchased, and he was left wherever they happened to be. That morning Gilderstern had stood with his feet planted upon the earth and stared at me, hands on hips. The stance was typical, I was to learn. "You are a Celt?" "From Armorica, inBrittany , near the sands of Brignogan." "I know the place. And the woman? She is not your wife?" "She is a lady to whom I am indebted. And she is a lady." "I assumed as much. Tell me, and no offense intended. Is she well-behaved?" "As man to man, yes. We are friends. Good friends, but no more than friends. Also," I added, "she may be of much value. She is a lady who deals in information. She was at the center of things in Córdoba until enemies caught up with her. I helped her escape as she had once helped me." Page 122 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html TheHansgrafnodded. "We go north to Montauban, then to the fairs of Flanders, back to those of the Champagne. It could be a year before we reach the sea." He glanced at me sharply. "You were ready to fight. Are you a quarrelsome man?" "I am not." "For your information, we are like a family here, in loyalty, in cooperation. All quarrels or disagreements are settled by me. At any time you are not satisfied or prove less than you need to be, we will buy you out, and you go your way. "The company protects all its members, and all trading companies stand ready to aid each other." Under gray skies we moved forward. The great fairs of Flanders and theChampagne attracted merchants from all the countries ofEurope . The honor of being the oldest fair was believed to belong to St. Denis, but there were fairs at Ypres,Lille , andBruges almost as old as St. Denis. The greatest of the Flanders fairs was atGhent . By the earliest years of the twelfth century the fairs at Bar and Troyes as well as those at Lagny and Provins were long established, and those in Champagne had become the money marts of Europe, clearinghouses for debts contracted in all Christian and many Moslem lands. Fairs lasted from three to six weeks, and it was customary for merchant caravans to travel from one fair to the next. Large fairs operated at Cambrai,Chateau-Thierry , andChalons-sur-Marne . The laws of the lands had given many unique privileges to the fairs and the merchants who attended them, all with a view toward attracting trade. Merchants doing business at the fairs operated under a specialconduit,under protection of the ruler of the land through which they traveled. A special group of armed men, the "guards of the fairs," maintained order, and a letter bearing their seal assured safety to all who bore them. No merchant traveling to or from a fair could be held for any debt contracted outside the fair, and all were free from fear of arrest for any crime dating from an earlier period. The right to play cards or roll dice on saints' days was also permitted to the people of the caravans. The greatest route was that which we were about to follow, fromProvence to the coast of Flanders, toChampagne , toCologne ,Frankfort ,Leipzig andLubeck inGermany , and then perhaps on toKiev orNovgorod , ending our trade inConstantinople . The company, the word taken from corn-pants, meaning bread-sharer, had come into being to share perils of travel at a time when the roads were beset with brigands, robber barons, and armies of warlike monks who left their monasteries to attack and pillage caravans. The first merchants had apparently been landless men, the drifters and adventurers that arise from any population in ferment. Often they were younger sons, outcasts who acquired money through local trade or were financed by officials of the church with secret loans. Some began as peddlers or hawkers in the towns, and acquiring a stock of goods, they took to the highways with others of their kind. Page 123 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html One of the merchants who rode ahead of me dropped back to talk. He was a thin, hawk-faced man from Lom-bardy named Lucca. "You have done well," he said. "Von Gilderstern is the bestHansgrafon the road. In Swabia last year he began his own fair at a river crossing, for he can smell a market as other men smell a flagon of mead. Our wealth is rarely idle, or our hands, either." Luccaglanced at me. "The word is that you are a scholar? What manner of scholar?" A fair question. What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought.Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think. "A good question," I replied, "but I am merely a seeker after knowledge, taking the world for my province, for it seems all knowledge is interrelated, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |