While the Archbishop sought to control the spirit of the invention, the men who lived by the hammer and the loom were more concerned with the belly.
The introduction of the new looms—automated by a clever system of gears connected to a water wheel—had tripled the output of the manor's wool. For Thomas, it was progress; for the Weaver's Guild in the neighboring town of Oakhaven, it was a declaration of war.
Thomas was in the schoolhouse, watching Diccon help a younger girl solve a division problem, when the gates of the manor groaned. A group of twelve men, dressed in the heavy, formal tunics of master craftsmen, marched into the courtyard. They didn't come with swords, but with the heavy, lead-sealed scrolls of royal charters.
"Lord Thomas!" the leader shouted. He was a man with shoulders as broad as a door and hands stained permanently indigo. "I am Master Cerdic of the Oakhaven Weavers. We have come to inspect the heresy you have installed in your barns."
Thomas stepped out into the sunlight, Victoria appearing at the top of the keep's stairs. The atmosphere in the courtyard shifted instantly from the hum of industry to the static of a standoff.
"There is no heresy here, Master Cerdic," Thomas said, his voice calm. "Only efficiency. We are making more cloth, which means more people can afford to be warm this winter."
"Efficiency is a word for thieves!" Cerdic spat, stepping forward. He held up a piece of the manor's new cloth. It was fine, uniform, and lacked the small, character-defining flaws of hand-woven wool. "You are flooding the market with this... ghost-work. My men spend sixteen hours a day at the loom to put bread on the table. You use a wheel and some wooden teeth to do the work of twenty masters. You are stealing the craft!"
"I am evolving the craft," Thomas countered. "The world is changing, Cerdic. Would you rather your sons spend their lives hunched over a frame until their backs break, or would you rather they learn to build the machines that do the work for them?"
"I'd rather they eat!" Cerdic roared. Behind him, his men muttered darkly. One of them held a heavy mallet, his eyes fixed on the door of the barn where the looms clattered. "The King's charter gives the Guild the sole right to regulate the weaving of wool in this province. Your machines are a violation of that law. We have the right to dismantle them."
Victoria descended the stairs, her silk skirts hissing against the stone. "The King's charter also grants the Lord of this manor the right to manage his own lands as he sees fit," she said, her voice like a cold blade. "If you touch a single gear in that barn, Master Cerdic, you are not 'regulating a craft.' You are committing a crime against this household."
The tension was a physical weight. Thomas felt the phone in his pocket—a 30% charge now—vibrate softly. He ignored it. He was looking at Cerdic's hands. They were gnarled, the joints swollen from decades of repetitive labor. He saw the pride in the man, but also the desperation.
"Cerdic," Thomas said, softening his tone. "I don't want to destroy the Guild. I want to hire it."
Cerdic blinked, his anger momentarily derailed. "Hire us? To do what? Watch your wheels spin?"
"To run the factories," Thomas said, using the modern word without thinking. "The machines are fast, but they are stupid. They break. They need eyes that understand the tension of the thread and the quality of the fleece. I will pay your men a master's wage to oversee the production here. We will produce ten times the cloth, and the Guild will take a percentage of every yard sold. You won't be weavers anymore. You'll be engineers."
The Guild members looked at each other. The word 'engineer' was foreign, but 'percentage of every yard' was a language they understood perfectly.
"You speak in riddles and promises," Cerdic said, though he didn't lower the mallet. "Why should we trust a lord who hides behind miracles and iron hearts?"
"Because," Thomas said, stepping closer, "the Archbishop has already seen the machine. He has sanctioned it. If you fight me, you are fighting the Church. If you join me, you are the first men in the kingdom to own the future."
Cerdic looked at the barn, then back at Thomas. "We need to see them. The wheels. We need to know if they truly have the 'ghosts' in them."
Thomas gestured toward the barn. As the Guild members filed in, their anger replaced by a wary, professional curiosity, Thomas felt a hand on his arm. Victoria was looking at him, her expression unreadable.
"You are buying them," she whispered.
"I'm co-opting them," Thomas replied. "If I fight the Guilds, they'll burn the valley down. If I make them the masters of the new technology, they'll protect it as fiercely as I do."
He stepped into the shadows of the keep and pulled out his phone. A new message had arrived.
Mom: Sent a photo.
It was a picture of an old, hand-knit sweater he had forgotten he even owned. It was lumpy, a bit itchy, and made with a love that no machine could ever replicate.
Mom: Found this in the attic. Remember when I made this for your camping trip? It's a bit moth-eaten, but it still smells like home. Hope you're staying warm.
Thomas looked at the photo, then at the industrial clatter of his new looms. He felt a sharp, hollow ache in his chest. He was building a world of efficiency and mass production, a world that would eventually lead to the fast-fashion and soulless factories of 2026.
He was bringing the progress, but he was also bringing the cost.
"I'm staying warm, Mom," he whispered to the dead air.
He walked into the barn. Cerdic was standing in front of a loom, his Indigo-stained fingers tracing the path of the mechanized shuttle. The man looked terrified and enchanted all at once.
"It moves... like it's alive," Cerdic breathed.
"It's just a machine, Master Cerdic," Thomas said, standing beside him. "But the hands that guide it... those are still yours."
The pushback had been averted for now, but as Thomas watched the Guild masters whisper, he knew he had just traded a physical battle for a political one. He had invited the wolves into the den, and he would have to make sure they stayed fed.