The Well at the World's End: A Tale

  CHAPTER 27

  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 nightbefore, and even a good way back about the road they had riddenyesterday, but found no tidings. And Ralph said to himself that thiswas 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 thatsudden madness in him; but was presently of better cheer than he hadbeen yet. He rode beside Clement; they went downhill speedily, and thewilderness began to better, and there was grass at whiles, and busheshere and there. A little after noon they came out of a pass cleft deepthrough the rocks by a swift stream which had once been far greaterthan then, and climbed up a steep ridge that lay across the road, andlooking down from the top of it, beheld the open country again. Butthis was otherwise from what they had beheld from the mountain's browabove Cheaping Knowe. For thence the mountains beyond Whiteness, eventhose that they had just ridden, were clear to be seen like the wall ofthe plain country. But here, looking adown, the land below them seemedbut a great spreading plain with no hills rising from it, save that faraway they could see a certain break in it, and amidst that, somethingthat was brighter than the face of the land elsewhere. Clement toldRalph that this was Goldburg and that it was built on a gathering ofhills, 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 thatGoldburg was an exceeding fair town to behold; that the lord who hadbuilt it had brought from over the mountains masons and wood-wrightsand artificers of all kinds, that they might make it as fair as mightbe, and that he spared on it neither wealth nor toil nor pains. For insooth he deemed that he should find the Well at the World's End, anddrink thereof, and live long and young and fair past all record;therefore had he builded this city, to be the house and home of hislong-enduring joyance.

  Now some said that he had found the Well, and drank thereof; othersnaysaid that; but all deemed that they knew how that Goldburg was notdone building ere that lord was slain in a tumult, and that what wasthen undone was cobbled up after the uncomely fashion of the townsthereabout.

  Clement said moreover that, this happy lord dead, things had not goneso well there as had been looked for. Forsooth it had been that lord'swill and meaning that all folks in Goldburg should thrive, both thosewho wrought and those for whom they wrought. But it went not so, butthere were many poor folk there, and few wealthy.

  Again said Clement that though the tillers and toilers of Goldburg werenot for the most part mere thralls and chattels, as in the lands beyondthe mountains behind them, yet were they little more thriving for thatcause; whereas they belonged not to a master, who must at worst feedthem, and to no manor, whose acres they might till for theirlivelihood, and on whose pastures they might feed their cattle; nor hadthey any to help or sustain them against the oppressor and the violentman; so that they toiled and swinked and died with none heeding them,save they that had the work of their hands good cheap; and theyforsooth heeded them less than their draught beasts whom they mustneeds buy with money, and whose bellies they must needs fill; whereasthese poor wretches were slaves without a price, and if one diedanother took his place on the chance that thereby he might escapepresent death by hunger, for there was a great many of them.