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smackenzieAlex Bellhorn had been born in the capital city. Alex’s parents and his older sister were printmakers and still lived in the city, and his older brother had met and married a printer’s daughter in the town of Solla, where he had gone after he’d gotten his journeyman’s papers. He hadn’t wanted to complete in the city with his sister and he hadn’t wanted to go to work in his parents’ shop, so they had celebrated when he got his papers and wished him well and told him to write, and his mother would put in a good word for him with the printers guild wherever he ended up. They were a little disappointed that Alex hadn’t wanted to be a printer too, but bookbinding was a logical career move and nothing to be ashamed of. It was something he enjoyed and was good at, and if Master Damon was any judge, he’d soon be able to go before the Printers Guild and apply for membership.
The artisan professions – indeed, all the professions – were well regulated in the kingdom. The laws governing tradesmen and apprenticeships and guild memberships and the setting up of one’s own shop were so tangled as to be nearly impossible to follow, which created a great need for lawyers in all parts of the country and guaranteed that you could find a rule either encouraging or prohibiting whatever it was you wanted to do. Most of the labyrinthine laws were very specific and very arcane, to the point where it was impossible to even know what applied to your chosen profession, but there were a few that everyone knew, and a few that weren’t actual laws at all but societal rules that had been essentially codified into law from generations of use.
The guilds’ laws were, at bottom, the same – a parent sent his or her child to a guild master for an apprenticeship, where the child learned the trade and some of the business surrounding it, the master took care of the child in terms of food and clothing and shelter in exchange for what was really unpaid labor, and when he or she decided the child had learned enough and was skilled enough, the child, now an adult, was given his or her journey papers and sent out into the world. Journeymen had originally been so named because they were expected to travel somewhere else, where they would take a job with another guild master in their chosen trade, a paid job this time, aad there they would hone their skills, develop their own style, learn more about the business side of things, how to run their own shops and take care of their own apprentices and what kinds of dues and duties were expected of them from the guild. When the master deemed them ready, they presented their credentials and master work to the local guild and applied for membership. With guild membership came most of the benefits of being a professional, not the least of which was protection of one’s business anywhere in the kingdom. Guild memberships were specific to the craftsman but not the city – a master printer in the capital city could take his shop to another city and set up there, and all that was required of him was that he present himself to the local guild in his new hometown, so they could set his dues and put his name on the tradesmen’s rolls and keep an eye on his business and his work.
The guilds had been set up generations and generations ago to protect the integrity of the crafts and various other professions, and from time to time a guild master was expected to submit to the local guild to make sure he or she was still producing quality work and running an honest business. There were occasional small scandals inside guild administrations, and there was certainly competition among the guilds themselves for public notice, but on the whole, the guild system was honest and reliable, if sometimes a little too mired in bureaucratic hoo-ha, and while a goldsmith or a glassmaker or a surgeon or an alchemist who was not a guild member could indeed set up shop, and some did, very few people would go to them given a choice.
So Alex toiled away for Master Damon, who had been a senior journeyman and then a newly accepted guild member in the shop where his mother had gone after she was given her journey papers. Master Damon was older than either of Alex’s parents and his eyesight was failing, which meant he left most of the very fine detail work to Alex and to his daughter Hazel, who was almost ready to apply for guild membership and take over her father’s shop. A person could serve as a journeyman as long as he or she had been an apprentice, depending on their skill and the whims of their employer, but from what Alex had seen, Master Damon was more than fair to him and Hazel, and when he said she was ready for guild membership, she would be ready, but not overdue.
The printers’ quarter and the bookbinders’ quarter overlapped enough that they weren’t really separate neighborhoods at all, but even though they were physically close Alex didn’t see his parents or his sister much in a social sense. If people came into Master Damon’s shop looking for a good printer, Alex sent them to his sister, because she’d taken over the running of the shop not long after she was accepted into the guild, and when people came to her looking for a good bookbinder, she’d send them to him. It worked out well. Alex liked his work and liked the shop and liked Master Damon and Hazel and even Master Damon’s cat, and while he worked steadily towards getting accepted by the bookbinders guild, he wasn’t in a blazing hurry. It would happen when he was ready, and until then he would do as he was asked and make suggestions where appropriate and do his own thing when allowed, and he would take care of himself and his work and he would take care of Lowe, who could be considered his boyfriend if either of them had thought to name their relationship.
Lowe had also been born in the city, and while his mother had died, his father and his brother and his various half-siblings all still lived in the city as well, unless they were out touring the kingdom or visiting neighboring countries. Like Alex, Lowe had chosen not to follow in his parents’ footsteps in terms of profession, but unlike Alex, he had done it without their permission or even their knowledge.
Lowe’s situation was a little different from Alex’s. Lowe was a prince. His father was the king.
Lowe had walked out of the castle one day, just snuck out of the complex and into the city and made himself scarce. He was the king’s fifth child and was unlikely to ever sit on the throne, which was fine with him. He didn’t even want to be a prince. He wanted to be able to run his own life and be his own person and do whatever the hell he pleased, when he pleased, without someone watching him or having to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t embarrass the king or the kingdom, or he didn’t put himself in danger, or he didn’t put anyone else in danger. He was tired of it, tired of being treated like the king’s son at the same time he was dismissed as unimportant, and so he left.
But he quickly found that being a homeless, family-less person without marketable skills or any kind of guild-sanctioned experience in the city was harder than being a prince. He’d never served an apprenticeship that anyone would recognize, and he’d obviously never been given journeyman’s papers, and there wasn’t much need among the general population for a royal heir with a scattershot education and a good arm with a fencing sword. Lowe’s education had consisted mostly of preparing him to take ambassadorship in another country, or marry another royal heir in another royal house, or possibly take an advisory position in a council or accept some kind of job that was mostly ceremonial and intended to keep him out of trouble and, again, make sure he didn’t do anything to embarrass the royal family or put anyone in danger. He might get an estate somewhere and be sent off to run it, so he’d learned about estate administration, the basics of farming and herding and overseeing branches of the local guilds and the various professions they protected. He’d learned history and philosophy and politics, a little alchemy, a little art, a little poetry and literature and language. He knew how to dance and how to properly address a noblewoman, who he should show deference to and when, who should defer to him and when. He’d learned about religion and belief, the official state-sanctioned religion and an assortment of folk religions and who the saints were and who prayed to them and why. He’d learned he had to be tolerant of people who didn’t worship like he did. He’d learned to fence, to sit a horse, to hunt with dogs.
But very little of this translated into a way to support himself outside the royal grounds, especially in a city where every profession was protected and regulated by a guild and composed of tradesmen and artisans and professionals who were likely to pitch you out of the city on your ear if they discovered you had set up an unregulated shop and were trying to take their business.
Not that Lowe had any business skills to set up shop with. His best option, as he luckily discovered, was to set up as a freelance copyist and scribe. It was one of the few professions where the guild tolerated uncredentialed workers, because the only skill required was the ability to write legibly. Since all children were supposed to go to school for at least a few years, and since this guaranteed that pretty much everyone in the kingdom was at least basically literate, and since all you needed for freelance copy work was a small table, a stool, and a pen, it was a relatively easy business to get into. The guild still required a kind of dues, in exchange for which they issued a certificate stating that you were freelance and thus required to charge less than a guild copyist or contract writer (contract writers belonged to the lawyers guild because of the intricacies of the laws they wrote contracts to protect), but that you were legitimate and protected at least a little by the guild.
So Lowe set up a table in the portico of one of the court buildings, alongside a few other men like him, and managed to make enough money copying letters and wills and contracts and, once or twice, a series of love poems. He found a room and took advantage of his new freedom to pace the halls of the rooming house in his sock feet. He’d changed his name, and when the copyists guild came to him to take his freelance dues and write his certificate, he’d lied about where he came from, although he hadn’t had to lie about his skills, because he had lovely clear script, nice enough to win him an appointment to take the exam that would earn him the equivalent of journeyman’s papers, so he could work legitimately towards membership in the guild. It was unusual but not unheard of for copyists without any kind of work credentials to be allowed into the guild. It was more difficult than it sounded, but all they really had to do was find a shop run by a guild master to work in.
Lowe decided someone was looking out for him, because, encouraged by the guild master who had written his freelance certificate, he took some work to the copyists’ quarter, which was near the binderies and printers, and managed to find a job in a shop that specialized in formal announcements, diplomas, and official certificates. Even with all the printers and the relative ease with which they could turn out identical copies of books and broadsheets, there was still a brisk business in handwritten papers. Anything that needed to be personalized, any certificate or announcement or special contract was generally brought to a scribe instead of a printer. Fancy wedding contracts, especially among wealthy or noble families, were popular, as were certificates of accomplishment – graduation from university, acceptance into a guild, appointment to government office.
Lowe learned to copy music, learned different styles of script, learned the basic wording of formal contracts. Some of it was hard work, which he wasn’t quite used to, but he got a small sense of accomplishment from earning a salary, from being rewarded for his work instead of his bloodline. But this joy passed soon enough, and he started to wonder if the rest of his life would be spent toiling away on papers and vellums to announce other people’s accomplishments, and he started to miss some of the things he’d actually liked about being a prince – the unlimited access to pens and paper and poetry, the ability to make someone fence with him, the fact that he never had to worry about feeding himself or making sure his clothes were clean and in decent shape or that the rent in his room was paid.
He was almost thinking about maybe going back to the castle and trying to be a prince again when he met Alex. It wasn’t love at first sight, or even lust. Alex came into the copyist’s shop to find someone to help him with the design and production of a book of letters that a man had wanted bound for his wife, and the master copyist had pointed him to Lowe, as Lowe wasn’t busy right then and had a good letter-writing hand. It turned out that Lowe hadn’t gotten much work from Alex for that particular book, but it was something new for him, and the two became first friends and then lovers, and soon Lowe moved out of the rooming house and into Alex’s little apartment, and had asked the master copyist if he could possibly work on a freelance kind of basis, piece by piece as he felt like it, instead of coming to the shop every morning to take whatever jobs were lying around. The master copyist was less than thrilled but eventually agreed, and Lowe worked when he wanted to and sat around when he wanted to, and wrote poetry and walked around the city and practiced the artistic penmanship he’d learned in the shop, and was more or less a kept man. It suited him better, to have someone take care of him, and Alex didn’t mind.
words: 2501
total words: 12,536
The artisan professions – indeed, all the professions – were well regulated in the kingdom. The laws governing tradesmen and apprenticeships and guild memberships and the setting up of one’s own shop were so tangled as to be nearly impossible to follow, which created a great need for lawyers in all parts of the country and guaranteed that you could find a rule either encouraging or prohibiting whatever it was you wanted to do. Most of the labyrinthine laws were very specific and very arcane, to the point where it was impossible to even know what applied to your chosen profession, but there were a few that everyone knew, and a few that weren’t actual laws at all but societal rules that had been essentially codified into law from generations of use.
The guilds’ laws were, at bottom, the same – a parent sent his or her child to a guild master for an apprenticeship, where the child learned the trade and some of the business surrounding it, the master took care of the child in terms of food and clothing and shelter in exchange for what was really unpaid labor, and when he or she decided the child had learned enough and was skilled enough, the child, now an adult, was given his or her journey papers and sent out into the world. Journeymen had originally been so named because they were expected to travel somewhere else, where they would take a job with another guild master in their chosen trade, a paid job this time, aad there they would hone their skills, develop their own style, learn more about the business side of things, how to run their own shops and take care of their own apprentices and what kinds of dues and duties were expected of them from the guild. When the master deemed them ready, they presented their credentials and master work to the local guild and applied for membership. With guild membership came most of the benefits of being a professional, not the least of which was protection of one’s business anywhere in the kingdom. Guild memberships were specific to the craftsman but not the city – a master printer in the capital city could take his shop to another city and set up there, and all that was required of him was that he present himself to the local guild in his new hometown, so they could set his dues and put his name on the tradesmen’s rolls and keep an eye on his business and his work.
The guilds had been set up generations and generations ago to protect the integrity of the crafts and various other professions, and from time to time a guild master was expected to submit to the local guild to make sure he or she was still producing quality work and running an honest business. There were occasional small scandals inside guild administrations, and there was certainly competition among the guilds themselves for public notice, but on the whole, the guild system was honest and reliable, if sometimes a little too mired in bureaucratic hoo-ha, and while a goldsmith or a glassmaker or a surgeon or an alchemist who was not a guild member could indeed set up shop, and some did, very few people would go to them given a choice.
So Alex toiled away for Master Damon, who had been a senior journeyman and then a newly accepted guild member in the shop where his mother had gone after she was given her journey papers. Master Damon was older than either of Alex’s parents and his eyesight was failing, which meant he left most of the very fine detail work to Alex and to his daughter Hazel, who was almost ready to apply for guild membership and take over her father’s shop. A person could serve as a journeyman as long as he or she had been an apprentice, depending on their skill and the whims of their employer, but from what Alex had seen, Master Damon was more than fair to him and Hazel, and when he said she was ready for guild membership, she would be ready, but not overdue.
The printers’ quarter and the bookbinders’ quarter overlapped enough that they weren’t really separate neighborhoods at all, but even though they were physically close Alex didn’t see his parents or his sister much in a social sense. If people came into Master Damon’s shop looking for a good printer, Alex sent them to his sister, because she’d taken over the running of the shop not long after she was accepted into the guild, and when people came to her looking for a good bookbinder, she’d send them to him. It worked out well. Alex liked his work and liked the shop and liked Master Damon and Hazel and even Master Damon’s cat, and while he worked steadily towards getting accepted by the bookbinders guild, he wasn’t in a blazing hurry. It would happen when he was ready, and until then he would do as he was asked and make suggestions where appropriate and do his own thing when allowed, and he would take care of himself and his work and he would take care of Lowe, who could be considered his boyfriend if either of them had thought to name their relationship.
Lowe had also been born in the city, and while his mother had died, his father and his brother and his various half-siblings all still lived in the city as well, unless they were out touring the kingdom or visiting neighboring countries. Like Alex, Lowe had chosen not to follow in his parents’ footsteps in terms of profession, but unlike Alex, he had done it without their permission or even their knowledge.
Lowe’s situation was a little different from Alex’s. Lowe was a prince. His father was the king.
Lowe had walked out of the castle one day, just snuck out of the complex and into the city and made himself scarce. He was the king’s fifth child and was unlikely to ever sit on the throne, which was fine with him. He didn’t even want to be a prince. He wanted to be able to run his own life and be his own person and do whatever the hell he pleased, when he pleased, without someone watching him or having to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t embarrass the king or the kingdom, or he didn’t put himself in danger, or he didn’t put anyone else in danger. He was tired of it, tired of being treated like the king’s son at the same time he was dismissed as unimportant, and so he left.
But he quickly found that being a homeless, family-less person without marketable skills or any kind of guild-sanctioned experience in the city was harder than being a prince. He’d never served an apprenticeship that anyone would recognize, and he’d obviously never been given journeyman’s papers, and there wasn’t much need among the general population for a royal heir with a scattershot education and a good arm with a fencing sword. Lowe’s education had consisted mostly of preparing him to take ambassadorship in another country, or marry another royal heir in another royal house, or possibly take an advisory position in a council or accept some kind of job that was mostly ceremonial and intended to keep him out of trouble and, again, make sure he didn’t do anything to embarrass the royal family or put anyone in danger. He might get an estate somewhere and be sent off to run it, so he’d learned about estate administration, the basics of farming and herding and overseeing branches of the local guilds and the various professions they protected. He’d learned history and philosophy and politics, a little alchemy, a little art, a little poetry and literature and language. He knew how to dance and how to properly address a noblewoman, who he should show deference to and when, who should defer to him and when. He’d learned about religion and belief, the official state-sanctioned religion and an assortment of folk religions and who the saints were and who prayed to them and why. He’d learned he had to be tolerant of people who didn’t worship like he did. He’d learned to fence, to sit a horse, to hunt with dogs.
But very little of this translated into a way to support himself outside the royal grounds, especially in a city where every profession was protected and regulated by a guild and composed of tradesmen and artisans and professionals who were likely to pitch you out of the city on your ear if they discovered you had set up an unregulated shop and were trying to take their business.
Not that Lowe had any business skills to set up shop with. His best option, as he luckily discovered, was to set up as a freelance copyist and scribe. It was one of the few professions where the guild tolerated uncredentialed workers, because the only skill required was the ability to write legibly. Since all children were supposed to go to school for at least a few years, and since this guaranteed that pretty much everyone in the kingdom was at least basically literate, and since all you needed for freelance copy work was a small table, a stool, and a pen, it was a relatively easy business to get into. The guild still required a kind of dues, in exchange for which they issued a certificate stating that you were freelance and thus required to charge less than a guild copyist or contract writer (contract writers belonged to the lawyers guild because of the intricacies of the laws they wrote contracts to protect), but that you were legitimate and protected at least a little by the guild.
So Lowe set up a table in the portico of one of the court buildings, alongside a few other men like him, and managed to make enough money copying letters and wills and contracts and, once or twice, a series of love poems. He found a room and took advantage of his new freedom to pace the halls of the rooming house in his sock feet. He’d changed his name, and when the copyists guild came to him to take his freelance dues and write his certificate, he’d lied about where he came from, although he hadn’t had to lie about his skills, because he had lovely clear script, nice enough to win him an appointment to take the exam that would earn him the equivalent of journeyman’s papers, so he could work legitimately towards membership in the guild. It was unusual but not unheard of for copyists without any kind of work credentials to be allowed into the guild. It was more difficult than it sounded, but all they really had to do was find a shop run by a guild master to work in.
Lowe decided someone was looking out for him, because, encouraged by the guild master who had written his freelance certificate, he took some work to the copyists’ quarter, which was near the binderies and printers, and managed to find a job in a shop that specialized in formal announcements, diplomas, and official certificates. Even with all the printers and the relative ease with which they could turn out identical copies of books and broadsheets, there was still a brisk business in handwritten papers. Anything that needed to be personalized, any certificate or announcement or special contract was generally brought to a scribe instead of a printer. Fancy wedding contracts, especially among wealthy or noble families, were popular, as were certificates of accomplishment – graduation from university, acceptance into a guild, appointment to government office.
Lowe learned to copy music, learned different styles of script, learned the basic wording of formal contracts. Some of it was hard work, which he wasn’t quite used to, but he got a small sense of accomplishment from earning a salary, from being rewarded for his work instead of his bloodline. But this joy passed soon enough, and he started to wonder if the rest of his life would be spent toiling away on papers and vellums to announce other people’s accomplishments, and he started to miss some of the things he’d actually liked about being a prince – the unlimited access to pens and paper and poetry, the ability to make someone fence with him, the fact that he never had to worry about feeding himself or making sure his clothes were clean and in decent shape or that the rent in his room was paid.
He was almost thinking about maybe going back to the castle and trying to be a prince again when he met Alex. It wasn’t love at first sight, or even lust. Alex came into the copyist’s shop to find someone to help him with the design and production of a book of letters that a man had wanted bound for his wife, and the master copyist had pointed him to Lowe, as Lowe wasn’t busy right then and had a good letter-writing hand. It turned out that Lowe hadn’t gotten much work from Alex for that particular book, but it was something new for him, and the two became first friends and then lovers, and soon Lowe moved out of the rooming house and into Alex’s little apartment, and had asked the master copyist if he could possibly work on a freelance kind of basis, piece by piece as he felt like it, instead of coming to the shop every morning to take whatever jobs were lying around. The master copyist was less than thrilled but eventually agreed, and Lowe worked when he wanted to and sat around when he wanted to, and wrote poetry and walked around the city and practiced the artistic penmanship he’d learned in the shop, and was more or less a kept man. It suited him better, to have someone take care of him, and Alex didn’t mind.
words: 2501
total words: 12,536
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-08 05:06 pm (UTC)