Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  She would have to take the tiny book and the picture Sylvia had drawn and look for the owner tomorrow. Artemisia stopped. Realised. She was terrified. All her knowledge was going to be tested and likely fail. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready. It was already six and the sky was about to be full of sunset.

  Tonight she had another task. Artemisia didn’t like the assumptions that the rest of the team had about what historians knew and what historians did. Her role could become impossible if she didn’t clarify things. She needed to write a briefing. One that would get everyone thinking, and maybe also help them understand that her knowledge came couched with explanations and caveats and sources. She even had an excuse for this.

  * * *

  Historical Briefing 1 — an introduction (file from Artemisia Wormwood)

  Ben suggests I commit answers to your questions to internal communications. I’ll try to make this user-friendly. If you have more questions, either ask me directly or send me a note and I’ll put together a briefing on it.

  I can’t guarantee to answer everything. Even with all the resources of, say, the British Library, I couldn’t answer all your possible questions. I can answer some, and I can suggest where we might find information for others. As we work together, I hope to understand your perspectives and scientific cultures better. The briefings will be more targeted to your needs then, with your help.

  Today I want to talk about the sources of information I have available and about my own background. Three people have assumed that I’m an archaeologist or linguist like the ones you see in SF shows, who knows everything about all there is to know and is only stumped when the plot requires it. The truth is so far removed from that, it’s laughable.

  I’m a medievalist. I’m a card-carrying member of ANZAMEMS and other scholarly associations. I read several dialects of Old French, Middle English, Latin - both Classical and Medieval, various Italians, some modern Spanish, some Old Castilian, a little Old Occitan and a bit of German. I have training in the subsidiary disciplines, things like codicology, palaeography and diplomatics. I spent the last year and a bit in England, lecturing at a perfectly respectable university.

  Just because I can’t answer your questions doesn’t mean I’m incompetent. It means that I, like most academics, am a specialist. I’m not the right specialist for this region, but I’m the specialist you have. Like all specialists, I know about a very particular area. If you want to know the structure and interpretation of saints’ lives in Old French, I’m the go-to person. My doctorate was on Clemence of Barking.

  My interest in saints is how the Director found me. I was visiting Saint-Gilles and Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert and Nîmes to pay respect to Gilles and William. William is more known for his politics and his epic legends than his saint’s life, but since the best and most famous of his epic legends is in Anglo-Norman and since he actually does have a hagiographical record, I know it and so I am here. William was quite a hero and is absolutely the reason the town is what it is, both now and in our century.

  At this moment in time, he’s quite dead. Being dead doesn’t make him less important. This is the Middle Ages. Death is not the same here. I don’t mean that there are zombies: there are no zombies. There are saints. Also ghosts. The saints are the important ones. You’re already getting notes on some of the saints when their day comes round. It will help you get a feel for the medieval calendar.

  Sources

  My electronic library is quite different from yours. I don’t know if the library was intended to be more up-to-date but time was of the essence (a joke!) or resources were directed elsewhere, but the very large library you see under the History of the Region tag in your database is mostly eighteenth and nineteenth century books. There’s a lot of repetition, as several appear to plagiarise unmercifully. I had no time to collect material of my own to add to the library. You have the library and you have my thumb drive and you have my personal notebook that I carried in my backpack and that is the full extent of what I can draw on for briefings without doing live-action research.

  Questions I can’t answer at this stage

  I’ve been asked several questions that appear to have no answers in the database. One of them is how the castle is run (there appears to be no surviving documentation for the castle government in our time - we might want to observe and work it out for ourselves). Medieval mortar - you’re better off sneaking into town at night and scraping some (as I said, live-action research - I know, it’s against protocol and therefore illegal - I’m not actually suggesting you do it) than asking me about it. There may be thousands of articles written on the subject, but none of them are in our database. Modern research. This needs to be high on our requisition list. Until I have that research, I don’t have your answers. Even then, if a subject hasn’t been researched or if we don’t have that journal, I won’t be able to answer you. Human lives are so complex that there are a million questions one can ask, and modern historians aren’t necessarily asking the ones that puzzle you personally at this precise moment.

  Population: I know there were 849 people living in the town in 1837, thanks to the Guide pittoresque, portitatif et complet du voyageur en France (p. 437). This is not a reliable number for our use in any way. In the same volume that castle you see on the nice mountain round the corner was called the ‘Giant’ and was supposed to be a casualty in a fight between Gellone and William. Right now, as you know, it’s a very fine castle.

  This brings me to:

  Historical events

  By a quirk of your wonderful maths and time-travel calculations, we’re on the cusp of some dark times. I don’t know whether the civilised world we’re hiding from is safe or not.

  Until I explore our lovely library a bit further, I only know the political history as it affects Northern France and England. Expect my views to change as I learn more. Don’t be put out by this - this is pretty standard for history. If historians don’t revise things as they discover and understand more, then they’re just not doing their job. Not unlike scientists.

  Historical method is something you will no doubt get heartily sick of, but it’s important. We can’t understand things easily or absolutely. History isn’t fixed in stone, even if it’s carved in stone (a joke!). Anyway, the key things we need to be aware of, because they’re either happening or about to happen, are:

  1. North-South divide. This is the South. It’s powerful. Or it has been powerful and still makes the king a bit jumpy. This is despite the fact that there was genocide here not so long ago. I’ll get to that.

  The king in the North (Philippe the Very Pretty) doesn’t like the South, really. Philippe IV, who was often described as le Bel, rules from October 5, 1285 to November 29, 1314. His father was Philippe III. His grandfather was a saint. He has been described as a very beautiful marble statue. He’s hungry for everyone’s money. Throws all the Jews out of France next year just so that he can own what they own. Did I say his grandfather was a saint?

  2. The pope right now is Clement V. He’s the one who got rid of the Templars. Or will, in our near future and in cahoots with the beautiful Philippe (first the Jews, then the Templars - pretty much for the same reason, too - money made Phil’s world go round). How might this affect us? The Templars were very active on pilgrim routes (why they existed, as I understand it) and our little town is a part of the biggest pilgrim route of all. I might do you a bigger briefing on both the Templars and the pilgrim route one day: they’re very important.

  3. There is no such thing as an atheist. Lack of belief in God is probably defined as heresy and could get you burned alive. Also, anti-Semitism. It exists. It’s nasty. You might try to throw people out because you want their money, but without the anti-Semitism it ain’t gonna happen. Members of this party could be in serious danger if they start talking to locals. This is why I’m being sent to return that little gem of a Book of Hours. It’s not going to be safe for me, but at least I know a little more than the rest of you. We need to
know the right words and thoughts, the right mindset. Staying out of reach of people in this isolated place is for our benefit.

  All I can do is warn you: it doesn’t matter how much you think you know about this period and how human everyone looks, it could be very dangerous to break protocol. Not just dangerous in that time paradox sense. It could get one or more of us killed.

  There is rule of law here, and if any of us gets murdered it will probably be investigated. Isn’t that nice to know? It’s not lawlessness or lack of civilisation that’s the problem. It’s a fundamentally different world view. Medieval cosmology doesn’t permit atheism. And Jews are still suspected of killing Christ.

  Chapter Ten

  Children all

  Whenever there was a lull in thought, someone brought up the subject of the strangers. Their behaviour was odd and their appearance ranged from normal to very peculiar indeed. It was entertaining to watch them, but it was also a worry.

  The biggest concern was, of course, the drowning. No one said directly, “They killed one of us.” Many tussled with the idea. Were the strangers responsible? The matter was tugged about in conversations bit by bit until all its ramifications had been explored. In the end, most people realised what Guilhem-the-smith patiently repeated over and over again, that when a very young man insists on doing dangerous things, it was not unlikely that he would die doing those dangerous things.

  Berta held out.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” said Peire. Everyone was surprised into silence. He was such a careful man, and such a good priest. He never told people to not be idiots, even when they were.

  Behind Peire’s back, however, the matter was soon discussed again. His parishioners decided, and argued very strongly that it was the other half of the town that ought to take some responsibility. It ought to be a Saint-Barthelmy matter, “Since their parish abuts the end of the world.”

  Life continued.

  It was hard to believe that Berta’s husband was a cobbler, when he cobbled so seldom. Mostly he repaired or remade old shoes. He was the laziest man in the whole region, his wife thought, and most people agreed.

  He finally repaired Sibilla’s shoes. She was able to walk to church without hurting. Berta didn’t trust her husband, however, and bought herself a new pair of shoes from the cordwainer, who lived in Aniane but visited his brother in Saint-Guilhem from time to time. They were elegant and fine and a perfect fit. She walked around in them looking very smug.

  She needed all the superiority she could get, for her best friend was caught sleeping with Guilhem-the-smith’s first cousin (again). Father Louis was most unhappy, and insisted that Sibilla confess to him, in his church, even though she belonged to Saint-Laurent and Fr Peire. Everyone knew what that was about. Berta needed those new shoes.

  The whole town was in an uproar. Was Father Louis suddenly holy, or was he jealous? And when would Sibilla learn?

  “Let their priest deal with it,” said Guilhem-the-smith, tired of it all. He wanted to disown his cousin. He wanted someone else to arbitrate. He wanted, in fact, the town to have formal self-government, with properly appointed consuls - this arrangement with the abbey might be their inheritance from times of old, but it was not effective and he hated it.

  It wouldn’t change in the lifetime of the current abbot. He enjoyed his power too much. Never relinquished an iota. Never did anything, but refused to hand rights over. Even the keys to the towers required an argument, every single time. Guilhem-the-smith was so exhausted by this thought that he went to bed early.

  Guilhem missed the gossip entirely. He didn’t know anyone was talking about him because he was busy telling his household (and especially his page) that he still felt as if he were travelling.

  “Half the goods I have here are in that big travelling chest. Most of my possessions are at the other end of the country.”

  He drew sketches of two small wooden chests and a dresser, to make life less impossible and told his young man to see about ordering them, first thing in the morning. His whole household went to bed somewhat later than they should have.

  “It would be easier,” was the last word over the fire, once Guilhem had finally taken himself to bed, “if he took that travelling chest and went back the way he came.”

  * * *

  Tony was a creature of habit, so everyone watched as he broke that habit. He was hunting Cormac Smith. Konig insinuated himself into the background, fascinated. “Cormac,” Tony announced, “I like the place you found for me, but the soil is poor. I need good soil.”

  Cormac looked Tony up and down (mainly down and down, given the height differential) and explained that the soil was bad everywhere. “It’s limestone, all around us.”

  “What am I going to do?” Tony’s world was obviously destroyed.

  “We can improve the soil, using the waste from the settlement. That’s what the planners planned.”

  “But now? I need to run my trials.”

  “Let’s take a look in stores and see what we can find.” Cormac took Tony’s hand, like that of a child, and walked him into the stores area.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Traps of Responsibility

  Ben Konig was torn. He was torn between the master that was Luke and the administrator that was Sylvia, and that he had to somehow make their actions meet. He loved making mix-ups into good sense, but he wasn’t enamoured of the pressure.

  The ethics worried him, too. He’d seen Luke totally ignore discussions about the team’s effect on the period and place, and Sylvia entirely unconcerned about the effect of time travel on the people involved. Between them, they were a disaster waiting to happen. And he was the one who had been delegated to prevent it. To save everyone from Luke and Sylvia and save Luke and Sylvia from themselves.

  It had been a matter of much amusement to the Australian scientists that the French Government wouldn’t grant permissions without him. “Ethics,” he had heard Luke saying, “Like Mururoa?” That didn’t help. Knowing that he was a laughing stock for trying to follow through on policy and ethics formulations. Knowing that he didn’t really fit in with the Australians.

  Ben made it his job to keep everything operational. To seduce Sylvia into trust. To woo Luke into acceptance. To listen to everyone. He managed it all with charm and even elegance. And it hurt.

  There was no recourse inside the caves. The moment he made anyone his confidant he would turn the whole thing into a nasty ballgame. The recruitment was fucked because Mann liked academic papers more than he liked ability to work with others. Konig knew that. He knew politics. That was why it was him. Because he knew politics. Politics was supposed to save the team from self-destruction. Or from Luke. Whichever was more active at a given time.

  He had been surprised when he was asked. He was less surprised when he had met Luke and his second-in-command and assessed who they were and how they would manage things.

  Harvey had spent those last months troubleshooting the impossible, because if he hadn’t then the project would have been cancelled. They had won the international bidding war and Harvey’s career was at stake. So he turned to Ben.

  “None of the other team members has leadership skills,” said the Director. “My backup refused to go because of the physical risk. We’re all in deep shit. I need you, Ben.”

  “I know,” Harvey had said, in that impossibly warm voice, “that I’m asking something I shouldn’t ask even my worst enemy. I can’t take Mann out of the expedition. He’s a mess as leader, but he’s a genius and we need his brain at the far end. Time travel is largely untested. We’ve not sent people back before. We can’t do the big project without him and everything is secondary to that project. I can’t argue with his choice of second-in-command because he’s technically in charge. All I can do is add good people. That means you. The French Government demands a representative, and you have the language and the interests and the background. Hell, you were an ENAque! Trained by the French government, groomed for leadership and
service. If anyone can keep the expedition from imploding, it’s Ben Konig.”

  That was Ben’s real job. He did his research, but for every hour he spent on science, he spent two hours thinking through events and happenings and personalities and trying to find the best way of keeping everything in line.

  Ben didn’t mind the lies - heck, he lived with lies. Had lived with lies since his childhood. What he hated was being headmaster without authority. Konig wasn’t blind. He could see that Geoff Murray was polite around him and that Cormac Smith took forever to meet any of his requests. He could tell that without his looks he wouldn’t have Sylvia and Pauline onside.

  Artemisia was a bit of a saving grace. She was so isolated that she was willing to talk to anyone. He used her isolation - pushed at it and stretched it - because it meant that he had a place in the crowd. And he needed that place to do his job.

  He hated himself. Every time he saw her excluded from the jokes and chat, he hated himself. Every time she disappeared to her room, he hated himself.

  He would hate Harvey, too, if he could, for the Director had said, glibly, that an old friend of his had agreed to be the replacement historian. “She needs the money,” he’d said; “suits everyone.” Then Artemisia Wormwood had appeared, with those big vulnerable eyes and that vast self-awareness and he saw echoes of his own hurt inside her. He hated being the person to turn the knife. And yet… he couldn’t find another way. Harvey was not a good friend.

  Ben developed the habit of quietly slipping out of the caves when he hurt too much. He would take work with him if he could, but if he couldn’t, he would simply lie. He had as many excuses as he had stories about his ancestors, and his stock of imaginary tales about invented ancestors was vast. He did work when he was out. Even if he didn’t plan to, he worked. He identified species distribution and looked at the water and the landscape and how people fitted into that landscape. Ben Konig was a driven man.