Geoff didn’t notice that he was being followed everywhere by a small shadow. After a while, he was also being followed by a larger shadow that stopped every now and again to scold the small shadow.
The children were still arguing about whether Geoff was a fairy. His skin wasn’t that dark, they agreed, but it was certainly the wrong colour.
“And his nose is a bit squashed,” the boy said, firmly. “He’s a fairy.”
“Only a little bit,” his sister argued.
The argument then turned to the rest of the party. If he’s a fairy, were the others fairies? The very pale woman looked like a fairy, they agreed. The hair like spun gold, the white and pink skin, the clear eyes. A grumpy fairy.
“Maybe she’s a demon,” suggested Bona. “Or maybe she lives underground, like those green children.”
“What green children? You mean like the baby who turned green?”
“That pilgrim told us. The tall skinny one who told us lots of stories of relics. Just before Advent. Don’t you remember? He was very boring until he started songs and stories. His singing was very bad, but his stories were good. Don’t you remember?”
“No. You’re telling lies. That’s bad. You’ll have to confess.”
“Stop talking about things like that. I don’t want to hear. Anyhow, the pretty one isn’t green. She must be a fairy.”
“She never looks happy. Fairies are happy, aren’t they?”
“I like her when she sings.”
“Me too,” his sister confessed. “She’s a lot better than the tall man.”
“I remember him! He had red hair! And tall as that tree! He was funny! If we trick him again, can we get him to scare us again? Do you think?”
This led to the two children sneaking out at night. Sylvia’s singing was one lure. The lights from the caves were another, and the interesting noises and strange words. It was otherworld and wonderful.
* * *
“Watch out for fur,” said Ben.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. If Sylvia’s wolf is local, there might be some around.”
“Reconstructing ancient wolves from their DNA and then they kill us all?”
“Hardly. We’ll know a little more, is all. The paths that dogs and their ancestors have travelled, for instance. Breeds, distribution, extinction, genetic variation.”
“You don’t sound hopeful.”
“I’m not. I’m not expecting to see any more until winter. They’ll be hungry then, and probably more dangerous.”
Artemisia chose this moment to upset both Ben and Geoff. “Wolves were killed off quite intentionally in England in the thirteenth century. They’re probably rare as hen’s teeth here and now. Except in the mountains. Sylvia is endangering a dying population.” After that nice bit of work, the second half of which she had made up on the spot, Artemisia visited Mac.
Artemisia was admiring her new boots. She was a bit reluctant in the admiration, just as she had been a little diffident when Guilhem triumphantly handed them over. The boots came up to the bottom of her calves, laced at the side with flat leather straps. The lacing started at the ankle. The toes were closed - in fact, the whole boot was closed - and slightly pointed. Artemisia took them to Cormac to show off, since he knew costume. She wanted someone to appreciate them. They were strange and alien and wonderful, boots from an actual medieval cordwainer, made just for her. She wanted to be intimidated. Cormac would share the wonder and help her forget the strangeness.
“Very nice workmanship,” commented Cormac. “Very nice indeed.”
“They’re a bit like leather ugg-boots.” Artemisia was dubious. If she had been a textiles expert or an archaeologist she might be able to think more useful thoughts. Ugg-boots were not her area of expertise.
“Comfortable. Keeps you warm and dry. Very practical. Look at those calfskin uppers. Very nice.”
“I guess. I feel bad about them.”
“At least you won’t have to rub that stuff Doc likes on all your bruises.”
“’Tis true - my bruises will be entirely different in shape and colour and she will find entirely new stuff for me to rub on.”
* * *
It was a beautiful day. Hot and languorous, and the sort of day when bees buzz and the scent of lavender makes the rosemary and thyme faint with envy. Ben had covered his turf and collected specimens that needed collecting (one) and recorded everything that needed recording and he wasn’t ready to return.
He checked that he was out of sight of everything and everyone. He put his knapsack full of equipment under his head, and lay his head on its knobbledness. There would be one of those flash storms later in the day, and he wanted to breathe the air while it was still lazy. As the warmth unravelled the tension from his muscles, his right hand let a half-eaten scavenged fruit slide to the ground. Wild harvesting was second nature to him. So was drowsing in the sun.
He woke up as the wind shifted, and returned to the caves just before the storm hit.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The System is Dynamic
The town was divided. The abbey had demanded that Fiz and his friends stop their depredations of their garden. The abbot had said the two boys should enter the monastery, start the path to monkdom, and learn discipline.
Sibilla and Berta were especially divided. Sibilla thought it was a bad idea, while Berta championed the safety of her dyes. Neither of them, however, wanted to support the abbot, so they aired their differences with each other and didn’t talk for three days.
In the end, Fiz’s accomplice in crime was sent to Aniane then to one of Aniane’s satellite villages. Not even Saint-Jean de-Fos.
Fiz was alone.
* * *
“Better dead than living defeated,” Guilhem was explaining to Artemisia. He was trying to make it clear why he was the only person she should have dealings with and why her people should avoid the village. She had no problems with this and decided to make a joke. One about zombies and rock bands, about which Guilhem would not know. It amused her.
“You are the Living Dead,” she opined.
“It’s true,” he reflected, sadly.
Artemisia felt guilty at her sorry little attempt at a joke. Guilhem misunderstood her silence and tried to explain further.
She didn’t really understand everything he had iterated, but it was pretty certain he was talking about life choices. If he had joined the king’s household as he had been offered (which king? Why would any king want him?) then he would have a good future working with supplies and organisation. He would develop… something. Honourably. Or he would develop honour. It was not clear. But he was not good at these things. His mind was too simple. Yet he was good at fighting and at war.
He was angry (this she was certain about) because he was not given honours or notice for the work he did. Only castigated for the single wrong he had done.
Just like a knight in a tale of King Arthur and his court, Artemisia had said.
“Yes,” Guilhem had vehemently agreed. Then Artemisia had regretted making the link in Guilhem’s mind, because the knight in the Arthurian tale inevitably found his richness and honour with the help of a fairy. She had tried to divert his thoughts.
“What will help you regain honour?” she asked.
“The king wants me to agree with him. My uncle supports him,” Guilhem was more than angry about this. With his anger his speech sped up and Artemisia understood very little. Guilhem was listing and describing at a rattling pace. Some words shone: war, peers, command. Most she missed entirely. Still, what she had gleaned was important. Guilhem wasn’t local. He was here for a kind of thinking time. And a king was involved.
If there was a king involved then Guilhem might be far too close to the centre of events for comfort. Not a solitary do-nothing on the outer edges of society. Artemisia was worried. She needed to find out more.
* * *
Guilhem found himself the unhappy accepter of yet another letter from the Com
manderie. A gros it cost him, each time Bernat wrote. The knight had better things to do with his money than read Bernat’s thoughts, turned elegant by Bernat’s assistant.
The letter was, for a miracle, full of good news. More of Guilhem’s rents had made it safely into the Templar coffers. He planned a spending spree, instantly. He couldn’t leave to collect the money for a few days, but those monies would spend well whenever they were received.
* * *
Guilhem had cached himself and Artemisia out of sight and they watched pilgrims. The young man was teaching his new friend how to identify the rank of a person by their horse.
It was a slow explanation on a slow day and was peppered by silences and by noises from the valley below and by small confidences that Guilhem made, almost out of nowhere. Artemisia had trouble understanding the comments that came out of the blue, but she tried to follow.
She understood that he missed his horses. Guilhem could see that understanding on Artemisia’s expressive face. “I only have the one riding animal with me,” he said. “And even that horse is small and low to the ground.”
He missed the view and the sense of being above the world that his big battle steed gave. As he explained this, he saw that Artemisia didn’t understand. He didn’t care. It was safe to tell her. Safe to regret. Safe to miss his horses.
Even the horse with him was chosen for its capacity to be ridden hard, not because it was a pleasure to ride, but because it could cross mountain passes if it had to. He said this slowly, but with an almost-comical despite, as if he hated himself for his horses. Then his tone lightened and Artemisia could hear love in his voice. “When I was young, I had a black horse. A horse as black as ink.”
Artemisia thought about his words. ‘Enfances’ didn’t mean young, really, but possibly his teens, or when he was a young knight. Guilhem sometimes used very ambiguous language.
She caught herself and picked up on the last part of a story of a trick that Guilhem had played with this black horse, using his friends’ association of black horses with the devil. She wanted to ask him to tell the story again so that she knew she understood it, but she was overcome by shyness. There was something intimate about being half-hidden on the hillside with this knight.
Fortunately, Guilhem didn’t notice the intimacy or Artemisia’s hesitancy. He told her about his Great Horse and how he had left it behind in his exile, but that it cost the same as the keep for two of his local household, even though it was so far away and he couldn’t so much as exercise it.
* * *
Artemisia needed more paper. To her annoyance, Mac told her she needed permission.
“We’re not running out,” he said apologetically, “but Luke wants to cut down what gets carried back, so he says that no-one can get paper without permission. If we don’t use it, it can be burned, he says. We spent half yesterday working out how to diminish the quantity of material to be returned home, then the other half on checks to make sure nothing’s left behind. Me and Geoff and Sylvia and Pauline - we’re the rubbish collectors.”
More and more, the systems and processes ground Artemisia down. Everyone was feeling something from the closeness. Jokes that Mac and Geoff shared shredded Sylvia’s nerves. Pauline’s self-righteous sniffs sent Ben marching outside in search of air. Little things frazzled.
Little things also reassured, Artemisia realised, when she found Sylvia (source of her permission to write) giggling over a silly joke. Pauline was obviously the one who had told the silly joke and it was obviously about men because of the teenage air the two wore. Artemisia smiled at both of them.
She obtained her permission and was about to ask if she could join them for a cup of tea. Luke came in at that point, bearlike and magisterial and so Artemisia beat a hasty retreat. She never knew how to handle the bizarre silences caused by Luke drawing on the table and pretending to be human. She admired Pauline for taking it in her stride, but she returned to Mac.
“One notepad I’m allowed – ‘you enter it in under B5 on the stationery allocations’, Sylvia said, then I show her my goods so that she knows you gave me the right thing.”
“Those words are honey to my ears,” said Mac, “especially the trust the honourable Dr Smith dedicates to us,” and gave her the paper.
The kitchen remained clear of more than Artemisia. Of the team, only Geoff came in, got what he needed, and paid no attention to the select group at the table. He probably ignored the cool kids at high school, too, Artemisia thought, enviously, returned to show the paper to Sylvia.
Pauline was making conversation.
“I calculate,” Theo said, patiently, “to minimise uncertainty.”
“And since you can’t eradicate it, we signed our waivers.” Pauline gave her best try-hard smile.
“Time evolution is in continuous transformation. We currently don’t know any way of eliminating that uncertainty entirely. It’s that dynamism that makes everything so very exciting. The system is dynamic. It changes constantly. In that change lies our future.”
“Your big project?”
“Absolutely. Beyond the singularity. It would have been easier if we had gone further back in time, of course. We’re only getting marginal information.”
“Why didn’t we? I never understood why we came here.”
Theo nodded, “You just came. A good soldier.”
“I’ve always been that,” said Pauline softly.
“We can’t go further back yet. We need better data for delta T.”
“Sylvia’s observations?”
“Sylvia’s observations and modelling. From here, we will be able to convert Terrestrial Dynamic Time to Universal Time. Our work opens many doors.” Theo’s explanation was only taking a small amount of his attention. All the while he spoke, his right hand drew on the table, sketching and thinking and rubbing out and rethinking. His deep brain changed reality even as he gave the doctor an impromptu lecture. He missed his students.
“Why here, then? Why the middle of nowhere in the south of France?”
“The sex factor,” said Theo, unexpectedly. “France, the Middle Ages. Templars, Holy Grails. And because the French Government has studied this region, so we can collect parallel data and our minor projects have more staying power. Plus the French Government has underwritten a part of our journey. The sex factor of being Australian. You know” he said, struck by a thought. He would never complete his thought, for the kitchen was invaded by Ben and Tony. Not only they were an unlikely duo, but their enthusiasm filled the room and crowded Theo’s formulae out of existence.
“We collected too many specimens,” said Tony, unapologetically.
“That wasn’t quite how it happened,” said Ben, and put piles of plants on the table, crowding Theo’s formulae even more. “But it’s as good an explanation as any.”
Tony smiled. “Wild rocket,” his deep voice enumerated, with love, “And wild cress and three varieties of wild chicory and salsify and purslane. Kitchen plants.”
“I don’t know how to cook them,” said Pauline helplessly.
“We asked Artemisia on the way through. She says she has a Languedoc cookbook on her thumb drive. She had it with her when she was recruited.” Tony looked so radiant that Pauline made salads and sandwiches and a salsify fry-up, just to keep the look on his face. It’s good for our health, she justified her unaccustomedly gourmet cuisine.
* * *
The summer was one of fire. The summer was one of a thousand insects.
Finally, the fire cleared sufficiently and observations were better. The scent of the smoke was all wrong, thought Artemisia — no Australia in this air. Where was the sharpness of the eucalyptus burning?
“Can I borrow you tonight?” Geoff had asked.
“I beg your pardon,” was her elegant reply.
“I need to do some measurements. Sylvia doesn’t have any observations due and isn’t going to play with her full moon photography stuff until later, and a second set of hands would help.”<
br />
“Sure. Just tell me a time and help me up the ladder.”
The measurements weren’t complicated. Nor did they take that long. Artemisia suspected Geoff invented the need, especially when she found herself sitting down on a comfortable rock, very close to him. She wanted to say to Lucia, “Possibly need a chaperone.” But Lucia wasn’t there. She banished that thought. Lucia was alive: she had to be.
“This isn’t Sylvia’s favourite spot, is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“That would be that big boulder over there,” Geoff pointed to a dark silhouette. The stars were very bright. “No-one can hear us from here.”
“You checked,” mocked Artemisia.
“Mac checked, when we fixed things for Sylvia.”
Artemisia found herself caught up in a flurry of giggles. Geoff waited quietly until she calmed down. “You two are so bad,” she finally said. For a while they just shared the stars. “Tell me about these stars,” Artemisia commanded.
Geoff pointed to Hercules directly above and to Andromeda near the horizon to the north. The planets were bunched awkwardly in the southwest, and in the south proper was the moon. The air was full of movement and made the space seem friendly and gentle.
It was Geoff who broke the silence the second time. “I wish I understood what you did and why it’s so important to you.”
“You know,” answered Artemisia, in the tone that suggested that she didn’t expect to be listened to. “We’re looking at the sky differently to the people down in the valley.”
“They think it’s a flat earth?”
“That’s a furphy.” Artemisia sighed. “I spend half my teaching life telling students that what they think they know about the Middle Ages is wrong. Then I spend half of the other half helping them find the right questions so that they know what to ask. And then I come here and spend half my life being told by scientists that the people in the Middle Ages are irrelevant.”
Geoff stretched out and stood up. “Let’s look at the sky and you tell me about the cosmos.”
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