The Fellowship Comes to Whiteness

Two days thereafter the chapmen having done with their matters in Cheaping Knowe, whereas they must needs keep some of their wares for other places, and especially for Goldburg, they dight them to be gone and rode out a-gates of a mid-morning with banners displayed.

It was some fifty miles thence to Whiteness, which lay close underneath the mountains, and was, as it were, the door of the passes whereby men rode to Goldburg.  The land which they passed through was fair, both of tillage and pasture, with much cattle therein.  Everywhere they saw men and women working afield, but no houses of worthy yeomen or vavassors, or cots of good husbandmen.  Here and there was a castle or strong-house, and here and there long rows of ugly hovels, or whiles houses, big tall and long, but exceeding foul and ill-favoured, such as Ralph had not yet seen the like of.  And when he asked of Clement concerning all this, he said:  “It is as I have told thee, that here be no freemen who work afield, nay, nor villeins either.  All those whom ye have seen working have been bought and sold like to those whom we saw standing on the Stone in the market of Cheaping Knowe, or else were born of such cattle, and each one of them can be bought and sold again, and they work not save under the whip.  And as for those hovels and the long and foul houses, they are the stables wherein this kind of cattle is harboured.”

Then Ralph’s heart sank, and he said:  “Master Clement, I prithee tell me; were it possible that the damsel whom I seek may be come to such a pass as one of these?” “Nay,” quoth Clement, “that is little like to be; such goodly wares are kept for the adornment of great men’s houses.  True it is that whiles the house-thralls be sent into the fields for their punishment; yet not such as she, unless the master be wholly wearied of them, or if their wrath outrun their wits; for it is more to the master’s profit to chastise them at home; so keep a good heart I bid thee, and maybe we shall have tidings at Whiteness.”

So Ralph refrained his anxious heart, though forsooth his thought was much upon the damsel and of how she was faring.

It was not till the third day at sunset that they came to Whiteness; for on the last day of their riding they came amongst the confused hills that lay before the great mountains, which were now often hidden from their sight; but whenever they appeared through the openings of the near hills, they seemed very great and terrible; dark and bare and stony; and Clement said that they were little better than they looked from afar.  As to Whiteness, they saw it a long way off, as it lay on a long ridge at the end of a valley:  and so long was the ridge, that behind it was nothing green; naught but the huge and bare mountains.  The westering sun fell upon its walls and its houses, so that it looked white indeed against those great cliffs and crags; though, said Clement,