Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  * * *

  Artemisia was concerned about her safety. She brought it up at a meeting, since Luke was forever agonising and asking for briefings and making no decisions.

  “Later, Artemisia,” said Ben. Sylvia backed him up. Artemisia’s concerns were silenced to benefit Ben’s political needs. He wanted back into the group, despite Luke.

  Artemisia took it back to Luke again. “Guilhem now tutoyes me but hasn’t given me permission to do the same back. This means he calls me ‘tu’ instead of ‘vous”, which is worryingly informal. He didn’t get my permission either. He just switched when we spoke, with no warning. I don’t know why and it worries me.”

  Luke said, “It’s probably nothing - you’re his friend.”

  “We don’t have the historical database to test that theory against. We have no way of knowing apart from my evaluation. I feel very unsure about why he changed. It could mean friendship, but it could mean something else and I don’t know what,” argued Artemisia.

  “Extrapolate.”

  “I did,” Artemisia pointed out, logically. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Luke extravagantly ruffled his hair, stymied, then ran his hand through his beard to assert his authority. “Collect more data. Analyse it. Until then, take precautions.”

  “Precautions?”

  “Take Cormac or Geoff with you when you go out. They’re big blokes. Mac is probably better - only does support work and has some martial arts training. We can spare him for this. Murray has a cooler head, though. If you take both, he’s in charge.”

  It was a great theory.

  Two times out of three, however, Mac had found more important work. “Luke said I had to do this,” he would say, and leave Artemisia to walk alone.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Hunt

  There was hunting in early October. There was earlier hunting than this and other hunting than this but it was in early October that Guilhem thought of the hill folk and realised they would be a problem.

  Guilhem helped the team block out the most likely places to avoid and suggested they stay underhill as much as possible, then he took himself away to hunt. It was only a little hunting, but it whetted his appetite.

  He saw himself as a dreamer and a murderer and recognised his deep belief. The Temple was tempting still (and tempting to dismiss yet again), but he realised he needed more guidance. He looked around him, but all he found was chaos. A great deal of chaos for such a small place, he thought.

  The whole valley was dealing with the aftermath of a violent storm. Trees were down and plants had been uprooted by the tumbling water.

  Guilhem’s housekeeper blamed it on a demon. He heard the voices of the town in that blame. He almost didn’t warn Artemisia, but then he felt he should. He found a morsel of soften linen paper in his big travelling chest he’d quite forgotten about and wrote a note and gave it to Tony. Tony put it in his backpack and forgot about it.

  * * *

  “Prostitutes trade outside town walls,” Guilhem said, à propos of nothing.

  “This town has only partial walls,” replied Artemisia, tartly, “And I am no prostitute.” She left her courtoisie behind and she ran to get away, leaving him bewildered and Mac hurrying after her.

  From then on, she took both Cormac and Geoff for meetings. Guilhem made no more references to prostitution or sex. He didn’t run his finger along her jaw or talk about her skin. He did however, still continued to tutoyer her. He also said, “My friends arrived this morning.” He warned Artemisia that her people should stay out of trouble and he went with his friends. It was time to hunt.

  * * *

  At hunt, Guilhem’s friends and their friends all talked interminably about fights (serious and less so) from which Guilhem had been banned. He didn’t mind. The hunt filled some of the need he had felt for jousting and a good melée.

  They hunted for boar, for it was still the season. Boar was one of the best preys - it was more dangerous and also more challenging than most other prey. It was malign. The sense of the day was disorganised, frantic, triumphant. Men, nets, dogs, hounds, beaters, horn. Lots of success. Lots of excitement.

  Philippe was impressed with Guilhem’s speed. “You came down that slope as lightly as any deer,” he said.

  The sows could and would savage a fallen man with their teeth, but boars, boars were the game of men. Wolves were even more so, but the last time Guilhem had seen a wolf, he had seen a whole pack. It was following the armies in Gascony and eating the dead. He hated wolves with all his being. Hunger chases the wolf from the wood, he thought, but what does that mean? That famine brings the wolf to the field, of course, but also that we need certain things to control the wolf within us. How do I control my wolf?

  There was one chien baut that made Guilhem think of Artemisia and her quest for understanding — beautiful, fluid in movement, intelligent. Was Artemisia as obedient as a good dog? Guilhem began to wonder, then dismissed the thought. There were more urgent matters at hand.

  A boar, Bertrand said. “We have one.” It was a good boar. It challenged everyone. Its challenge to Bertrand was irrefutable. It had spit him on its tusks and followed that by killing a horse. Then the boar itself fell.

  Guilhem found something visceral and almost sensual in the way Bertrand dipped up and down as the tusks gored through him, despite the fact that his friend was dying. The rhythm was like sex, he thought.

  At the end of the day they settled into their village of tents. The dogs were given the intestines, stomach, spleen, liver and testicle mixed with bread soaked in blood and toasted on the embers of the fire. It was the post-hunt ritual that brought everyone together and consolidated the day. The heads of the kill were already severed and the blood put aside. While the fire burned strong, the bristles were burned off the boar and then the butchery was done. After that, it was time to eat and drink.

  There were always available women at hunts like this. Men needed women at times like this. Guilhem ate; he drank; he laughed; he had sex. He honed his memory of violence. His friends saw that this hadn’t left him and they were careful with their offers. Before the hunt they had promised much.

  His place in the hierarchy depended on esteem, given his birth. He wanted it back. He craved it. That memory had also returned, of being someone with a future. With privilege. Normally he’d leave his boasts behind after the hunt. This is what he had learned. This time he carried his sense of what was owed him: he fanned the flames of his grievances. His friends had not helped him - they had made everything worse.

  The group gave gifts of deer and boar carcasses to the landowners and local bishop and then separated to make their way home.

  On his way back to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, the knight had time to think. He couldn’t imagine Artemisia hunting, not even elegantly, with a fine bird. He started to think of what he could imagine her doing. The heat of the chase ran through his veins. That moment when the boar gored Bertrand returned to his mind again and again. He imagined Artemisia naked beneath him. He smiled to himself.

  Despite the intense joy he had felt while hunting and despite his fine companions, Guilhem returned full of honour and darkness. He left with hope and trust in friendship, he reminded himself, over and over, but his friends offered him nothing except empty promises. Once they had left, he had nothing except the memory. There was no offer of employ, no pretty sister who needed a husband, no ointment for his pain.

  * * *

  Ben loved this season. Every excuse he could find, he left Luke and his opinions behind and he worked outdoors. He loved the sharp smell to the air and the dusky breeze. He worked long hours in the caves to process data and extrapolate and draft his analysis - this was the payment he made for his pleasure.

  * * *

  Guilhem noticed that Artemisia laughed with her mouth open, like a lewd woman. He started to notice other signs of lewdness and remember still more: the way she walked, the way she tilted her head to examine a flower. Every m
ove Artemisia made and had ever made was suddenly infused with sexual significance.

  He realised his fault. He took himself away to report to Bernat in the hopes that he would think chaste thoughts. At the Commanderie he felt suddenly comfortable - he was among his own kind again. As one does, he talked about what he had recently enjoyed. He started describing the hunt.

  “Templars don’t hunt,” his advisor said.

  Guilhem didn’t do him the courtesy of calling him Sire Bernat, and Bernat returned the lack of courtesy. They tolerated each other, merely.

  “Not at all?” Guilhem was dismayed. Did this order take all the dutiful joys from life and replace them with duty that contained no pleasure?

  “Lions,” said Bernat. “We hunt lions.”

  Guilhem had never seen a lion, not even on his travels. He only half believed they existed. They were not boars, or even deer. They were not what he thought of as a good hunt.

  I do not want to be a Templar, he thought. I never wanted to be a Templar. It was simply an escape my family would have accepted.

  On the way out of the Commanderie, he saw it with an evaluative gaze. He remembered remarking on it like this once before. Fortification in a place where none ought exist. Knights with no hunting to release their tension, and no women. Knights who owed no allegiance to the king, who were trained in battle and lived in the king’s land as if they owned it.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Judgements

  Artemisia had been to meet Guilhem, but he wasn’t there. She waited and waited, but he didn’t come. She decided to go home the long way. Anything to keep her out of the caves a little longer. She walked the very long way home, past the end of the world, past the small hell, almost as far as the other cave system. The small caves. The ones about which Luke had said, “Just as well we didn’t settle there,” with such joviality.

  Eventually she was ready to turn back. She was tired and had run out of goat-trail. There was nothing to return for, but the only option was to climb the hills and her legs were too tired. Emotional fatigue lost to physical and she pushed herself to gain the pilgrim path. When she reached it, she was not alone. Walking in her direction were three townsfolk.

  The townsfolk looked at her. She looked at them.

  She stepped politely aside to let them past. One of them, a woman, said, “We don’t want you. We don’t want any of you.”

  Berta decided it would be a good idea to make the message clear. She walked towards Artemisia. She meant no harm. Only to make things clear. Berta raised her fist. She re-thought the closed fist and, opening it, landed a thwack on Artemisia’s right cheek.

  The man walking alongside her raised his hand. She ran.

  She didn’t look behind. She turned back the way she had come, though she had no idea she was doing so. She ran as fast as her skirts allowed, hoping that the three weren’t following. As Artemisia stumbled uphill, the sky lost its light. She tripped and fell in the dark, lost. The rain started to pelt down. The wind blared through her.

  Eventually, she was hailed, by name. It was Guilhem.

  “I’m lost,” she said, hopelessly.

  “There are caves. We should shelter.” He supported her that final distance and soon they were out of the rain and out of the wind, and Artemisia felt safe. Her cheek stung and she was cold through and through, but she was safe.

  “You’re cold,” he said. Guilhem reverted to his mother’s tongue. “Vilaria o domna. Virtuous woman or prostitute,” he translated, trapping Artemisia. “I have considered all else and these are the only two choices. You are no fairy. You are no saint.”

  Artemisia tried to collect her wits. “I am myself. My people are not yours and my ways are not yours. I will not sleep with you. Let me go!”

  What happened next was awful. It was Artemisia’s teenage nightmare all over again. At home she would have had mace. A tough handbag. A whistle around her neck. All kinds of protections.

  Here, in 1305, she had nothing.

  * * *

  Artemisia refused to let herself think about what precisely had happened in that cave. She couldn’t forget some things: the knee in her stomach, the groping hands, the humiliation. She tried to balance that with the bruises Guilhem would have, and the bites, and the scratches. For Artemisia had refused to give in. She had fought to the best of her ability the whole time. The best of her ability was never enough. Never enough.

  When Artemisia crept back into the time team’s own caves at dawn, no-one noticed. No-one noticed when she used ten times her shower allowance. Only Geoff saw that she went back to bed straight after that shower. Only Geoff saw that she cried.

  Geoff hung outside her door, worried. He peeked in and realised that he couldn’t help her. She needed to stay in bed.

  The moment she emerged, however, he was there, pretending to be casual, but watching and making sure that she had hot drinks, that her chair was right, that she wasn’t squinting into the sun when she worked. Watching for when he could help, not being too intrusive. Worried beyond belief.

  He had not realised how much it would hurt him when Artemisia felt pain. His heart was breaking that she was suffering. But interfere he would not.

  Not until she was ready.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  In Town

  Guilhem didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he talked to himself. “This is the country,” Guilhem was full of self-reassurance. “Artemisia is not of us. I do not even need to confess this.”

  Finally he compromised. He confessed to sleeping with a fairy, to Fr Peire. After confession he hung around the village for a bit, not wanting to go home. He became vastly drunk and told every man present that he had slept with a woman from under the hill. He talked about it as a form of exorcism. He had exorcised them, as if they were demons, by sleeping with her. Alcohol was as effective as bell, book and candle, he told Sibilla and Berta. Fairies aren’t men, he told Guilhem-the-smith.

  * * *

  18 December

  Under the hills, Luke was overseeing first aid, his shoulder and his beard expressing sympathy, his hand upraised.

  Down in the village, Peire stopped to see what was going on and if anyone was in need of help. His right shoulder leaned slightly forward. Peire’s hand moved automatically to the healing gesture he knew so very well. He saw it in carvings all the time, whenever he visited the abbey. Whether it helped or not rested with God, but his parishioners undoubtedly found it comforting.

  The town had arrived at the view that the people under the hill were not fairies, despite Guilhem’s drunken claims, but were demons. This conclusion was largely the work of Fr Louis, aided and abetted by Sibilla. Sibilla might have been influenced by the fact that Guilhem had slept with a hill woman but had stopped sleeping with her.

  The town knew it had a problem. Guilhem had not told what he knew - that the strange folk from under the hill were only with them for two more weeks. When the townsfolk talked it through, they realised that Guilhem had given them surprisingly little information. Every time someone asked, he gave them different dates, though Lady Day had come up most often.

  Lady Day was insupportable. Lady Day was months away. And maybe Guilhem had invented it.

  “We know more from the children, “said Berta, “than we know from that knight.”

  Her husband added, “And from Sibilla’s inventions. In fact, we don’t know anything.”

  “We should be concerned,” Guilhem-the-smith finally agreed.

  * * *

  It was the nineteenth of December, the fourth Sunday of Advent. Even church hammered Guilhem’s sins into him hard and unrelenting. Memento nostri, Domine, in bene placito populi tui. Visita nos in salutari tuo. He needed that salvation. He thought he had been tormented before, but now, he could not face himself. He could not confess. He could not take back what he had done.

  His mind went back to his thoughts on death and exclusion. Now was the time to choose to not be excluded. He didn’t consider that death
and exclusion shared a border and that, with his actions, he was moving other people closer to that border. Other people had never been a big concern of Guilhem’s, in any case.

  He drew his seal out and looked at it. He turned it over and back. Suddenly he tossed it in the air and then he smiled. If the people under the hill could be exorcised, surely Guilhem’s actions would be right. He had been tempted and he had subdued demons. Exorcism would prove this.

  He went to talk to the priest at Saint-Laurent. Each time, a different priest. Each time, another sector of the local population. Guilhem didn’t analyse his own actions. He worked himself up and then confessed his sins, as he always had. He knew that it was this behaviour that had got him into trouble in the first place, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t want to stop it.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Consequences

  Artemisia decided that she would bear this nausea no longer. If it was a virus, then it was a virus that had gone on for too long. She went to see Pauline.

  “You’re pregnant,” Pauline said, without any drama. “Birth control works for most women, but you’re obviously an exception. You can look forward to a big family.” She paused a moment. “Or you could have a hysterectomy.” She paused another moment. “I wouldn’t have picked you,” she said. “You’ve been very circumspect. Which one is it? Tony? Ben?”

  She ignored Pauline’s prompts. “I’d better tell the father.” Artemisia worried. It could be Geoff, after all. She really hoped it was Geoff.

  “Or you could lose it. Although the fewer procedures we do at this late stage in our journey, the better.”