Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  “Where you prepare constantly for attack. Where you have less control.”

  “And this is why people believe we are…”

  “Yes. Truly. Yes.”

  Artemisia tried another of her farewells on him and then left. He smiled at the formality of her words. “May God - who made everything according to his will - save you and all your people.” She never understood what to say and when. It was endearing.

  Later, after Artemisia had gone, Guilhem reminded himself. Deserts aren’t places to be alone. They are places where a man is tested by God.

  Forest and desert - places for penitence, places for adventure, places where he, Guilhem, did not belong. He would still hold out, he thought, against taking those Templar oaths. Against Bernat’s blandishments. Against his temper. Even against his aunt.

  He would plant seeds concerning the wealth and danger of the Templars in the minds of certain of his cousins. That would reach back to the king, even if Philippe were not speaking to his unimportant and embarrassing and somewhat illegitimate junior relative. It would find a place to lodge in Philippe’s ever fertile brain.

  He was settled. He could escape the Templars. He just needed to slow down and to think it through. His heart required more time.

  * * *

  Artemisia had to show Guilhem a found item. It was a very pretty white plate decorated with a picture of a blue-green girl dancing amongst roses. The border was blue. The edging was decorated to look a bit like a door. The rest of the team was greedy to keep it. Artemisia wasn’t looking forward to reporting back on this meeting. Most meetings no-one wanted to hear a thing. This one, she would lay odds, they would want every word.

  There weren’t many words. Guilhem was in a hurry. He was leaving the next day for Montpellier. “Keep it,” he said, dismissively.

  “But it’s someone’s?”

  “They left Saint-Guilhem yesterday. They will be past Aniane already.” He had more important things to tell her. The town had told him precisely what to say.

  * * *

  Artemisia had a rare chance to brief the whole team. She told them, without fuss, what Guilhem had told her, that the group was perceived to be not human. “This is why Sylvia got into trouble. We’re OK if we stay away from people, but if we look as if we’re poking our nose in their business, it could get dangerous. This is not just a colourful landscape. These people are real and these people are angry and these people have given us boundaries. We’ve been put on notice.”

  * * *

  “Have you sorted out the seasons yet?” Tony was pressuring both Geoff and Ben. “I need to know. If this is a bad summer and a bad autumn, I need to know. I think it’s a bad one. I think the summer was too cold. I think the fruit is all late. But I need to know.”

  “Studies of harvest dates don’t quite get back this far,” Ben explained what Artemisia had told him, and showed her composite data from more general European information. “We think this is a bad year.”

  “We’re creating the data,” explained Geoff. “That’s one of the things I’m working on.”

  “For this locality only,” Ben said. He was right. The whole of Europe over the Middle Ages was not able to be depictured by the weather in one tiny region, caught between the coast and the mountains, in one single year.

  “That’s how science works - one step at a time.”

  “I don’t care about anything, except here,” Tony’s words were mild, but his tone was surprisingly passionate. “I need what you have that affects my crops.”

  “I’ll do you up something,” promised Geoff.

  “Thank you,” said Tony, and disappeared.

  “He said ‘Thank you’,” Geoff mouthed at Ben.

  “Today is a day of miracles,” intoned Ben. “Our saint’s life of the day says this.”

  “Which version did you read?”

  “What do you mean, which version?”

  It was as if Artemisia’s sprite self was an entity that could be forgotten.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Explosions and Desolations

  It was a morning for discoveries.

  “It’s all William,” Geoff declared. “The town, the holy saint in the abbey, the local stories.” He was stunned.

  “Even the locals are all named after him,” observed Ben. “Artemisia said this ages ago.”

  “I don’t think I was paying attention,” confessed Geoff.

  “Admiring her legs?”

  “Not her legs, no,” Geoff demurred and refused to be drawn further.

  Sylvia had given Pauline access to the personnel files. It was theoretically so that she could treat everyone, should something go wrong, but in reality it was because Pauline was bored and was not good at either self-entertainment or at being a research assistant. “You’re Jewish,” she said to Ben, accusingly.

  “Only technically.” Ben wondered if life would have been easier if he had the upbringing as well as the ancestry. He didn’t, however, and it was no use repining. Time to face the music. “And not even that, really. Just my ancestors.”

  “So your family isn’t German at all.”

  “Oh, my family is very German. My grandfather fought in the war.”

  “Your Jewish grandfather fought for the Nazis.” Artemisia was fascinated, rather than repelled.

  “Since both my grandfathers were Jewish, this must be true.” He turned back to his computer and tried to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” Pauline was furious. “Your grandfather murdered millions.”

  “No, my grandfather was a patriot. A fucking war hero.”

  “On the wrong side,” the deep angry voice speaking so softly was Luke.

  “And what can I do about it? Choose not to be born?”

  “My father,” said Luke, still with that dangerous voice, “Nearly died in a concentration camp. He had the wrong politics. Your grandfather had the wrong fucking religion and fought for Hitler. He should never have had children. His children should never have had children.”

  * * *

  Guilhem was dreaming about joining the Catalan Grand Company and fighting for Roger of Flor.

  “I know these Aragonese warriors — they’ll fight anywhere and be damned. They’ll not bother with courtesy or cleaning up. They’ll have money.” He would have to convince himself before he took that route. He needed to make some decision, however, soon. One day his time at the end of the world would be up, and if he made no choices, then he would have his family make them for him. All this was old, but the Catalan Grand Company was polished and new and brought all his previous notions back into contention. Templars. Family. Montpellier. The Aragonese. The world was getting bigger.

  * * *

  Artemisia read the words ‘le mistral, qui désole’ and couldn’t get it out of her mind. It summed up what happened inside her whenever a particular breeze blew. She didn’t know if that breeze was the mistral or something else, but it made her desolate. Maybe it was that look on Ben’s face the other day. She had never seen anyone so alone. The truth had stripped his soul.

  God, he must have been lonely as a kid, she thought. No wonder he protects himself with lies. But he had no more lies. No refuge. The wind had torn it all away. Carrying that desolation, she left the caves earlier than usual and took the long route to meet Guilhem.

  Artemisia was witness to a fight. She only saw it at a distance, but it hurt. She was in the usual spot, waiting for Guilhem and two men had come to blows. Those blows touched something deep and very bad inside, and Guilhem found her with her head in her hands.

  “It’s an argument,” Guilhem was dismissive. “The villagers will name their representatives. The disputants will make peace.”

  “I just hate violence,” Artemisia said. “Goes back to my childhood. I have no defence against it.”

  “Ah,” said Guilhem, as if he understood. He told the villagers they should continue avoiding the people under the hil
l. That he would continue to keep the people under the hill from the village. That no harm would be done by anyone or to anyone.

  The villagers argued about it, even now that they had finally agreed that the strangers were probably not demons. They agreed they were fairies, fragile and strange. And they agreed, as they had agreed three times before, four times before, a thousand times before, to keep this from both the abbey and the churches. They assumed the castle knew, through Guilhem, and Guilhem didn’t tell them differently. There were so few men at the castle, and none of them talked to Guilhem, even when he was included on a small hunt or in training.

  “They will have gone soon,” said Guilhem.

  “So much the better,” was the final agreement.

  Guilhem never told Artemisia that the fight she had witnessed was over the status of the folk under the hill. He had settled it - she had no need to know.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Hearing the Music of the Spheres

  When Luke had sung on the karaoke night, he had produced a tolerable tune. When he sang to himself, however, he was blithely tone deaf. As tone deaf as Tony.

  Geoff challenged him about it, as Luke did one of his occasional ‘I am supervising my staff’ walks past all their desks. He did this when he remembered. Most of the time he ignored what they were doing, and simply walked the walk while his brain went about its own business. This time he was humming tunelessly along to Geoff’s sound track. Geoff was amused.

  “You’re not on key,” he informed his boss, with a commendable lack of tact.

  “You mistake,” Luke said loftily. “I’m not singing to anything you can hear. I listen to the music of the spheres.”

  He knows the damnedest things, thought Artemisia. He doesn’t notice anything and then he notices everything, also. Odd man.

  * * *

  Berta wanted to be surly. The mood had taken her again. She had worked too long both before and after the holy day and her husband had not done anything. Not even housework. Instead of annoying her neighbours with her attitudes, however, she was sitting on the hillside.

  Fr Peire had caught her and correctly interpreted her mood. “Find a quiet place,” he had advised, “and listen for the music of the spheres.”

  Just out of Beta’s earshot, two others sat on the same hillside.

  “Tell me a story, then.” Artemisia found it very hard to get anything useful out of Guilhem. The young man was either mooning or sulking and he reminded her of one of the more annoying of her undergraduates.

  “I shall tell you the story of how the great William won as his bride, the pagan Oriabel, and how she converted to Christianity and became Guiborc.”

  “I know that story.” That wasn’t the only reason for moving him gently away from that particular narrative. Artemisia suspected Guilhem of thinking that she was his Guiborc. This disturbed her.

  * * *

  Mac told Artemisia over and over that Guilhem wore ravel spurs. “I want to hold one and examine it so very much,” he said. He also said that these were new technology and infinitely exciting. Artemisia failed to see why she should be interested. She was missing her saints’ lives. More, she was missing her sister.

  While Mac had been yearning for spurs, Luke had cut himself. He turned up to the kitchen, looking like a lost sheepdog. Pauline ushered him into her little clinic, and she stitched him up. When she finished, however, they started talking.

  “You never seem happy,” observed Luke.

  Pauline didn’t seem to mind his lack of tact. “I see no reason to be happy. I’m going to die, after all.”

  “Didn’t you have the health check before you came?” Luke scratched his beard in puzzlement.

  “I read those clauses three times over, you know. The ones that explained the risks. I read them twice in my daughter’s contract and once in my own.”

  “I remember. I thought it was very funny. Adamson and Adamson. Smith and Smith. You’re not going to die, however. Those bits were put in there by the French Government. They were being difficult. They also shoved Konig down our throats. Not reasonable at all.”

  “We’re travelling into death.” Pauline said this calmly, as if she was deeply accustomed to the idea and had articulated it many times to herself.

  “Why did you come then?”

  “My daughter also applied,” she was scornful. Pauline Adamson hated belabouring the obvious. “When she was called in for an interview, I had no choice. I saved her. You needed a doctor/cook more than you needed another scientist.”

  * * *

  Berta and Bona had listened to Fr Peire and had decided to live good lives and prepare for heaven. Since Berta had heard nothing on the hillside, she worried about the state of her soul.

  “Why,” Guilhem-the-smith asked his friend, “do they listen to you now?”

  “Berta is certain she will burn. She practises charity, prayer and much, much penitence to secure her place in heaven.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Guilhem-the-smith barely suppressed a smile.

  Bona was part of the austerity drive reluctantly. Her mother, however, gave her no choice. Bona missed the hills and her adventures. She became restless.

  Berta solved her problems by persuading Sylvia to sell her a relic. When she came home, she wouldn’t meet Bona’s eyes. She felt so guilty at spending the money on it that she told no-one, in fact. She thought she had taken Bona’s money from her apprenticeship stash.

  Bona noticed the missing coins from the household’s tax collection money, but had developed a cynicism towards her mother. She had not, for instance, informed her parent that her apprenticeship funds were somewhere safe because she did not trust her mother not to do something stupid like, for instance, buy a relic. Her father knew the important money was safe. Her father might not be very reliable in most things, but he was trustworthy where it counted.

  Sylvia refused to tell anyone details of her work. Ben wanted those details for his reports for the French Government. He took up Sylvia’s recalcitrance with Luke.

  His request for information failed. In fact, it backfired. Not only did Luke deny Ben access to Sylvia’s result, he cut back space for Ben’s own samples. He and Luke were again not speaking.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  A Dream of Travel and Time

  “Geoff, I need you,” Artemisia said. “I need to get away from it all.” Her gaze swept over Ben, who was hunched over his computer unhappily through to the silence that was Luke’s office.

  “I can see that,” Geoff replied. “Your eyes look tired. Why not ask Cormac?”

  “If you want me to ask Cormac, I can. Or Sylvia.”

  “I’m joking,” Geoff hastened to reassure her.

  “Not in the mood for jokes.”

  “You so need to get away from it all.”

  “I said so.” Artemisia felt grumpy. She thought she looked grumpy. “And I don’t feel it’s sensible to go out alone.”

  “So you don’t want my wonderful company?” Geoff looked down, teasingly.

  “Not if you’re in a mood. Forget it. I’ll go to my room.” She started to move off.

  “No,” he said and reached for her hand. “I promise I’ll behave.”

  And he did. Fifteen minutes later they were ensconced on a quiet piece of rocky ground; no plants, no people. Ten minutes after that, Artemisia had unwound and they were chatting away.

  “I can’t believe you and Mac both said ‘Scotty, beam me up’, Geoff.”

  “Well, we were teleported. Or beamed up.” He was smug. The sun shone on his smugness. Artemisia felt a small rush of happiness.

  “Oh, I wish I had thought of that.”

  Geoff grinned. “You would have said it too.” His child-grin made Artemisia happy again. Little wavelets of contentment.

  “I would have at least have thought it. What a wasted opportunity.”

  “Would you like a copy of my music, as atonement?”

  “Your huge jazz track?”


  “Six hours. All by my family.”

  “That explains it.”

  “There is much love in those six hours. The trumpet that’s so loud? That’s my second nephew in his high school band. And the track that’s distorted, the very modern one? That’s an illegal recording done at a very alcoholic event.”

  “Half your family are musicians?”

  “And the other half think they are.”

  “How does that fit the Islander stereotype?”

  “Easy. The music comes from the idiot Aussie side.”

  “Idiot Aussie?”

  “Official family nomenclature.”

  “Why you didn’t own up to the Anglo-Saxon side of things to Luke for his forms?”

  “He wrote us all down as WASP - I was making a point.”

  “We all did, I think. I loved how very ruffled he looked.”

  “Yeah. Especially when Tony explained his people. Classic.”

  “Poor Ben,” said Artemisia.

  “Yeah. Pauline’s a bigot and Luke wants Ben to pay for what happened to his father.”

  “I didn’t realise Pauline was a bigot.”

  “Yep. She’s careful around me mostly, and she stopped picking on Tony when he started writing notes about it, but since Luke lost it with Ben, she’s not so careful around him. Little things slip. It’s gotta hurt.”

  “Poor Ben.”

  “Yep.”

  * * *

  Guilhem was dreaming aloud to Artemisia. “If I join the Templars as Bernat suggests, I would have horses again with no effort on my part. They have rules about brothers and their horses.”

  “How many horses can you keep?”

  “One.”

  “That’s what you have now?”

  “I had. It died, remember. Now I have none. Here. In Saint-Guilhem. Only pack animals. The great Guilhem rode a pack animal after he retired here, but I am not of his age nor his stature and I will not ride one of them. I have many horses elsewhere, with my warhorse eating its head off and not doing any work.”