Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

Geoff Murray had been sprung. He had gone out illegally, as he had many times before. This time, however, he was unable to hide his venture into the open. He had been kicked in a delicate place by a sheep and had needed Pauline’s gentle attentions.

  Pauline asked “What were you doing to it?”

  Naturally, this led to a spate of smutty jokes at Geoff’s expense. “How could it not?” Artemisia said, unsympathetically and privately.

  “You’re cruel,” Geoff said. “Very cruel. I don’t like you anymore.”

  “Tough,” Artemisia replied, and kissed him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Very Big Children

  The whole team had become stir crazy (again) so Luke gave them permission for limited movement. They all crept out of hiding (except Geoff, who was still suffering punishment) and were watching a traffic jam of pack files in the narrow back path leading to the castle. The children were watching them watching the traffic jam, and soon all attention was on the two little figures, looking across the valley so very seriously.

  “Why are they there?” wondered Sylvia.

  “They’re looking at us so intently,” muttered Pauline.

  “They’re monsters,” invented Mac, cheerfully, “disguised as children. They will murder us in our beds. Only Geoff and Luke are safe.”

  “Why are Geoff and Luke?” Artemisia asked.

  “Because they’re not here. Their molecules haven’t been memorised by that still and intent gaze.”

  They spent an hour happily telling each other stories about the children. As the hour progressed, the group wriggled out of hiding and ended up in the open. Only Artemisia remained sheltered. As the hour progressed, Sylvia managed to exclude Artemisia more and more from the telling. As the hour progressed, Ben became more and more confident. Storytelling gave him back some sense of his legitimacy.

  At the end of the hour, the group was scattered by Guilhem, striding angrily into their little cluster of tales and waving his sword. Artemisia hung back a little when he caught her eye and motioned her to stay.

  “They are children, all,” he said.

  “Some very big children, indeed,” she agreed.

  * * *

  Guilhem suffered from a small land dispute. It was only a tiny one, but it made him feel very lacking in authority. No matter whom he asked, he was unable to find anyone willing to represent him. Not only did this mean that the dispute was impossible to resolve but, more importantly, he felt that this was a strong indication that he still didn’t belong.

  He hated not having a place in the local community. He went to the abbey church for solace and found himself standing next to Guilhem-the-smith.

  When Guilhem-the-smith stood in front of the reliquary in prayer, his hands were clasped worshipfully. This was the big man’s pretence at gazing at the saint in reverence and joy. In truth, all he wanted was peace and quiet. Reverence and joy could come later. Next to him, Guilhem displayed almost the same gestures, but his emotions were perfect. These were the bones of his saint. His distant kin. This was Guilhem’s place. This was Guilhem’s moment. He was in awe.

  * * *

  Despite his German name, Luke had Irish eyes (from his mother’s side of the family, Artemisia presumed). They were hooded and expressive, sometimes laughing, sometimes sympathetic and sometimes so damned condescending. Right now those patronising eyes were looking down his long nose and speckled beard and contriving to make Artemisia feel like dirt.

  Mac was in trouble again. Except that it was not Mac who was in trouble. Mac had set up a rather complicated practical joke to entertain those children, using Badass and Tony’s goat. Luke was standing over Artemisia, who was huddled in one of the cane chairs. Luke was methodically listing all the sins Artemisia had committed in letting Mac do what Mac always did. He gave her no chance to speak. He simply perorated and, when he was finished, he turned on his heel and went back to his office.

  Ben sat paralysed behind his computer throughout the whole episode. He watched Luke treat Artemisia as if she was a waste of space and was unable to do anything. He had played the historian off the others one time too many, and now Artemisia was fixed in the role of scapegoat.

  For the next few days, Luke’s lowering look when Artemisia passed was supposed to indicate to the historian that she was at fault. She didn’t discourage the children enough and she was the one with the local language. The fact that she had the wrong language was something Luke was too uptight to consider: besides, he needed a scapegoat. This was the same reasoning that led to him delegating all database maintenance to Sylvia. Luke had ideas and expected the world would conform.

  Ben saw this play and replay and he noticed how, each time, Artemisia took more weight on her shoulders. Her big eyes started to look always shadowed. He thought of his own behaviour ever since they had arrived in 1305 and felt that this recent hurt was his fault. He had set Artemisia up for it. Ben cracked. He asked to see Luke, privately.

  There was another of those explosive arguments that led to the rest of the team being excluded from the workspace. Instead of leading nowhere this time, however, it led to another confrontation concerning Ben’s Jewishness. Ben felt like dirt by the end of it, just like Artemisia.

  Ben responded by walking out of the cave system and into the sunlight. He went down to a terraced vineyard where his farmer-friend was working alone and he helped harvest. The two didn’t talk. They just worked their way down the vines, neatly plucking and basketting and preparing for vintage. He had to use a small knife, while his co-worker used a special hook, but apart from that they worked in harmony, parallel along the rows of vines.

  * * *

  Mac was trying to tell Artemisia how to dress properly. Artemisia was trying to be patient. Finally she said, “I appreciate that this is how your friends dress, but it’s not how the townsfolk here wear the clothes.”

  “I don’t know how the townsfolk here wear the clothes,” Mac’s tone was vicious and mocking. “You never go over there when we’re outside.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake!” Artemisia was used to Mac as an ally and was losing patience. He had said three times that he knew more than she and now he wanted to do her job. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just tired of being cooped up.

  “I’m beginning to think that Sylvia was right - you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I’m hamstrung,” Artemisia said. “But if you want to help with my research, I’ll do what I can. You’ve got a good eye.” And no real understanding of the period and place at all, Artemisia wanted to add. He could learn that, though. She could meet his needs and still do her job.

  * * *

  Ben had stolen some time to help his farming friend. He loved the silence and the work and the sun and the company. Ben was set to repairing a small patch of unstable drywall. At first the farmer watched and helped, but when it was obvious Ben had learned enough, he went back to his other work.

  They had worked quietly for a while when Ben heard a cry. He dropped the rock he was about to place and leaped over the wall. Guilhem-the-silent had cut his leg while sharpening a knife. It was a deep cut, so Ben bound it quickly, stopping the bleeding. He then carried the farmer home before he cleaned the wound properly and bound it again. As far as he was concerned, the incident was over, especially when, a few days later, he saw his friend in the field again. Obviously the cut was healing cleanly.

  Not a word was spoken between Ben and the local at any stage, leading Ben to say, misleadingly, at a later date when another visit to the town wall by Pauline had led to yet another inquisition by Luke, “I have never spoken to anyone from this time zone.” No-one believed him, because he had lied so often about other things. Ben had the self-satisfaction, however, of being a truth-teller while hiding a very dangerous reality.

  * * *

  “Artemisia!”

  The woman in question looked up. “You don’t need to shout, I’m right here.”

  “The others are outside.”

/>   “I know. It’s one of Sylvia’s things. I don’t know what. It’s just the scientists, though. Sylvia’s explaining her magic breakthrough that means other people can travel further back in time.”

  “Not me! I wasn’t there,” Geoff had a very big grin.

  “I bet you crawled up a cliff-face to avoid them, too.”

  “Too right. Even Luke was clustered on that bloody hillside, and no-one looked happy.”

  “So you knew I was alone in here when you walked through that big entrance, shouting?”

  “My powers of deduction are beyond awesome.”

  “So are mine,” said Artemisia, sarcastically. “What do you want?”

  Geoff laughed. “A book. I want a book.”

  “I thought you could find them yourself?”

  “You’re in a mood today.”

  “I’m stuck inside, doing Sylvia’s paperwork, while she’s taking everyone on an excursion to a place that’s within sight of the village to explain her discovery of wonder. And Luke scolded me as if I were five bloody years old when I explained this to them. It gives him the tools to change reality and he wants to celebrate.”

  “Poor Cassandra,” Geoff’s words mocked, but his tone was sympathetic.

  “You want something special to read, or just anything?”

  “Something special.”

  “I’ll email you a link,” she promised. “And I’d better get on with this data entry, because otherwise I’ll not get to do anything interesting all day.”

  “You’re a mate.”

  “And you’re an idiot - but a nice one.” In view of his nice idiocy, she emailed him the link to Tristram Shandy.

  * * *

  There was an informal meeting in the square outside the abbey. The strangers were causing distress again. They had not taken any valuables or done any harm, but four of them looked at the good folk of Saint-Guilhem as if they were objects, not saying anything, and not even nodding. They had eyed them up and down as if they were objects.

  It was disturbing.

  Guilhem-the-smith pointed to the conversations the knight had with one woman who spoke their tongue. The others, he said, were probably stupid. And there was the matter of Guilhem-the-silent, he pointed out. A wound was healing very nicely when he might, if the stranger had not been there, have bled to death in his own field.

  Nevertheless, said the assembled crowd. This meant that Guilhem was designated to deliver another scolding. He put a ribbon on the bush and returned the next day, as usual.

  Artemisia was glad that Mac was there (for research purposes, he had claimed, when he had agreed to accompany her) when she saw the look on Guilhem’s face. She suspected that the rest of the team had been doing things they should not. She was right to be unsettled, for Guilhem was short at first. They soon got that over with and Artemisia promised to relay the scolding. Their shoulders relaxed and they smiled at each other.

  Now that the crisis was past, Cormac wanted to exert the rights he now perceived himself as having and to talk with Guilhem. Cormac demanded, “Tell him to tell me all about fighting and battles.”

  Artemisia patiently translated. “He asks if you would tell him about wars, about battle, about fighting.”

  Guilhem’s reply was straightforward “I will not. It is not his concern or yours.”

  Artemisia admitted, “They like it if I know, but I’d rather know the stories of saints and tales of heroes.”

  “What are you saying?” Mac shot the words into the silence, before Artemisia could switch from one language to another.

  “I can’t hold a bloody three way conversation in two languages, one of which is dead,” Artemisia turned to him, exasperated.

  “Then I might as well go,” said Cormac.

  And this is how Artemisia came to meet with Guilhem with no chaperone again. Mac wasn’t interested any more. He had never really thought it as his job - he had been along for the history and the clothing and the exoticism.

  Artemisia felt as if she had asked too much and not given enough. Just like my family. Everyone does this, eventually, she thought, except Lucia. At least we solved the flirtation stuff before I lost my chaperone.

  Indeed Guilhem was behaving like a perfect gentleman, every time they met. Even today’s conversation was reassuring. “The poems say much about women.” He looked at Artemisia and laughed and wondered how she would interpret this. He liked pushing at Artemisia, seeing how she reacted. He still wasn’t certain if he read her correctly and if he understood where she belonged. She wasn’t of his people and he thought that, if he tried hard enough, he could place her, know who she was and how she fitted in his world. He had done this on his travels and it worked - it took time and patience, but eventually station and family showed themselves. Everyone had a place in the world, after all.

  “I prefer saints’ lives,” Artemisia answered with huffy dignity. She had taken the meaning he had intended and she did not like it, not one bit.

  “I thought you might,” he said, smugly.

  “Why?”

  “You hold your skirts in such a way.”

  Artemisia looked down at the way her hands gripped her long dress for security. She was still not comfortable wearing it. How many months would it be before she could walk these hills in this garb and not feel as if she were part of a costume drama? Then her mind flitted and she wondered for a moment’s moment what it would be like to sleep with someone so very long dead. She knew she never would. Some parts of one’s upbringing stuck, even if one’s family didn’t believe it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  They Had Buildings in the Middle Ages

  Mac was looking at the calendar. “Murray,” he called out across the workspace, “Come over here.”

  Geoff obliged. “What is it?”

  “Time to do the water-flow thing. Need to check our footprint again.”

  “A bit past time, isn’t it? I’ll clear it with Luke and Sylvia.”

  “Can we use red dye this time?”

  “No. I’ll check with Artemisia, too, to be safe.”

  “Check with Sylvia first. She might not want Artemisia involved.”

  Geoff sighed. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Reduces the number of permissions,” Cormac was, as ever, unrepentant. “Can’t complain about that.”

  The water ran red and Mac was jubilant. Geoff realised too late that Mac had switched the dye. He blamed himself for not supervising Mac more closely. At least only we know about it, he reassured himself, half-heartedly.

  Artemisia heard about it from a very scared Guilhem. He had been walked around seven different spots, along with the two priests, the abbot and Guilhem-the-smith. “Tell me it is your people, and not a curse,” he said.

  Artemisia found out about the dye and received the crash course in maps and the paths of underground water she had missed earlier and pointed out the places that Guilhem had seen the water.

  No-one was happy.

  * * *

  “What about the novel?”

  “I liked it,” he said.

  “Don’t sound surprised,” Artemisia twinkled, although she tried to hide it.

  “I wasn’t expecting it to be funny,” he defended himself bravely against her twinkle.

  “I like the curse best,” said Artemisia. “It’s when the Middle Ages meets Sterne and Sterne wins.”

  “Of course you like that,” nodded Geoff.

  “You don’t remember the section!”

  Geoff laughed. “I do. In fact, I bookmarked it.” And he opened the file and went straight to the section and proceeded to read the whole thing aloud:

  ‘By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight
of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with the holy and elect of God, — May he’ (Obadiah) ‘be damn’d’ (for tying these knots) —’

  It went on for pages. When Geoff read out uncle Toby’s interpolations, his voice took on a particular relish. “Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,” he said, “but nothing to this. For my own part I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.”

  It was a very long curse, and a very effective one. At the end of it they looked at each other, satisfied with the reading and with the curse and with each other.

  * * *

  4 October (St Francis)

  The green and cream and brown and rushing water were stained with colour. The broom and cyclamen were both blooming. Only a few souls of Saint-Guilhem noticed the brightness on the hills. The eyes of the others were turned to the skies. The birds were still migrating.

  “So late,” worried Peire to Guilhem-the-smith.

  “Why are they still doing that?” Berta said to Sibilla.

  The flocks overhead added to the town’s disquiet. They weren’t, however, the source of it.

  * * *

  Sylvia loved being near the curtain wall that divided the pilgrim path from the main street of Saint-Guilhem. She originally explained it to herself as it being outside the town, but she had ceased explaining it to anyone. She walked past houses and past gardens and past the cemetery to get there. She would sit down by the wall and watch the goings on. It was like a play, enacted in a strange language, just for her benefit.

  Her steady gaze and her refusal to engage in conversation (not even a greeting or a nod) annoyed the townsfolk more than anything else the hillfolk had done. The woman sat there, head indecently uncovered, arms crossed, looking at them as if they were… they didn’t know. All they knew was that they hated it.

  “It makes my skin crawl,” said Sibilla.

  “We could kill her,” suggested Fiz, hopefully.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Guilhem-the-smith. He called upon Guilhem-the-knight.