He laughed again. “And why should he care? A man’s allowed to look at a woman.”
Of course he was. All the veneer of chivalry had been stripped away, his true purpose laid bare. He could do whatever he liked to her.
“Are you immortal?” he asked her.
She bent her head to the food in front of her and said nothing. Perhaps if he thought she was immortal he would leave her alone.
“Don’t think you’re too good to talk to me,” he said.
“Stop staring at me and I’ll talk.”
He laughed again and started to eat. The servants had brought them the ubiquitous broth, but this time it seemed mostly water, with only a faint ghostly taste of meat beneath that.
Now she could see a low cot on either side of the room. She finished the broth and went to one of them to lie down. Peire Raimon took the other one, then leaned over and blew out the candles.
She nearly protested, not wanting to be alone in the dark with him. Then she realized that he was trying to conserve the candles, and she said nothing.
The room continued to smell of whatever they had made the candles out of, mutton fat, she thought. And she could smell her gown too, the sweat of whoever had worn it last.
That soon faded, though, and she thought of Peire Raimon’s taunt to her. “You’ll be here forever,” he had said. But she had to get to the walls, back to the defense of the city. What if he was right, what if they never let her go?
She had programmed the machine to bring her back in ten days. Seven days, now. She nearly laughed. Peire Raimon already thought she was uncanny—what would he do if she disappeared before his eyes?
But if she stayed here she would lose her only chance. Montfort would live, and her own time would be condemned to the timeline she had seen, to men with more power than anyone should be trusted with.
SHE WOKE WITH AN urgent need to use the chamber pot. She slipped out of her cot as quietly as she could, hoping that Peire Raimon was still asleep. He opened his eyes and watched her sleepily, then, realizing what she was doing, turned his head away to give her privacy.
Servants brought them breakfast soon after. She spent the rest of the day pacing back and forth in the room, measuring it with her footsteps. Ten paces one way, twelve the other. Peire Raimon asked her what she was doing but she felt too impatient to answer him, too anxious about what was happening out in the city without her.
The minutes crawled by. Then suddenly it was evening again, and the servants brought more food and light for their candles, and carried out the chamber pot. Another day lost, she thought as she dropped onto her cot.
The next day she found a twig in the corner of the room and used some mud to make a calendar on the wall. Four days gone, six to go.
“What are you counting?” Peire Raimon asked when he saw it. “And why four marks? You’ve only been here two days.”
She said nothing.
The days continued to pass. She marked five days on the wall, then six, then seven. Every day she would ask the servants if she could talk to Raimond, and every day they told her that the count was busy with the war.
Finally, on the eighth day, she heard noise outside her room. Raimond came in, and with him Lady Agnes, the viscountess of Trencavel.
“My lord,” Peire Raimon said, dropping to his knees. “My lady.”
Were he and Agnes still lovers? Would they collude together, against her? She went to her knees, and by the time she rose Peire Raimon was already talking to the viscountess.
“Do you remember Ann, my lady?” he said. “She was a trobairitz with Charles, the man from the Rhineland, during the siege of Carcassonne. And she hasn’t changed at all since then, not in nine years.”
Lady Agnes studied her. Ann held her breath. “I can’t remember,” she said finally. “It was a hard time—I don’t like to think about it. And of course my fool husband only made it worse, becoming a Cathar.”
“Look at her,” Peire Raimon said urgently. He mentioned the titles of the songs they had sung, then hummed “I Dare to Claim.” “Don’t you remember Charles? He tried to pay court to you.”
“I—I think so. Maybe.”
“There you go, my lord,” Peire Raimon said to the count.
“My lord,” Ann said. “I haven’t done anything. It isn’t a crime to have a young-looking face. And Lady Agnes isn’t even sure if she remembers me.”
Lord Raimond sighed. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’ll talk to Agnes later, see what she says.”
“I’ve been a help to you on the walls,” Ann said. “Let me go, and I’ll fight for you again.”
“And why is she here, fighting with us?” Peire Raimon said. “She isn’t even from Toulouse.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I hate Montfort as much as anyone.”
“Yes, why shouldn’t she?” Lord Raimond said. “Doesn’t all the world hate Montfort?”
Ann tried not to grin. She had won one round, at least.
But the count didn’t return the next day, when the marks on the wall stood at nine. She resigned herself to the idea that he wouldn’t make it back in time, that she would simply vanish from the room. It was too bad, she thought, that she wouldn’t be able to see Peire Raimon’s face when she disappeared.
The next day, though, one of the serving women stopped to talk to her. “Are you the woman they talk about?” she asked Ann, handing her her broth. “The one who doesn’t age?”
Peire Raimon looked at the woman quickly. “No, of course not,” Ann said. “It’s this idiot here who thinks so.”
“She doesn’t,” Peire Raimon said. “I remember her from nine years ago, in Carcassonne, and then—”
“Maybe you just have a terrible memory,” Ann said.
She had grown very tired of Peire Raimon’s company, these past seven days. He had stopped staring at her—chastened, perhaps, by the thought that she could truly be a witch—but he had only one topic of conversation, the fact that she hadn’t grown older. At least, she thought, he hadn’t attacked her. Maybe the songs he sang had made him slightly more courteous, as Azelaïs had said, or maybe he’d always respected women more than the other men in this tace.
“My religion speaks of a saint that never ages,” the woman said.
What religion was that? Was the woman a Cathar? But Ann could not remember anyone like that among the Cathars. “What saint?” she asked.
“Her name is lost. She goes out among women and eases their hearts.”
Cor, the woman had said, the Languedoc word for heart. Ann’s own heart began to beat faster. “I know who you mean,” she said. She lowered her voice. Peire Raimon had already stopped listening, though, apparently not interested in women’s religion. “Is her name Mara? My heart is eased by her as well.”
“A friend of Mara’s. She met another one of Mara’s friends in the long-ago time, and then met her again twenty-five years later, and she looked exactly the same.”
Good lord—the woman was talking about her and Olympia, in Alexandria. She was a saint, a legend, her story miraculous enough to have survived for nearly a millennium. It was an extraordinary feeling; something she had done had mattered.
“I’ll come back for you,” the woman said, whispering. “Be ready.”
“I need to leave today,” Ann said in the same low voice. “I have to—to do something for Core.”
“Today? It’s best to take you out at night.”
“Please. It’s important.”
“I’ll try,” the woman said. “I’m Hermesende, by the way.”
She left. Ann heard the sound of the bar drawn across the doorway. Peire Raimon sat on his cot and slurped his broth, seeming unconcerned.
She had expected to spend the rest of the day nervously awaiting Hermesende’s return, but instead she felt surprisingly calm, almost fatalistic. Whatever happened had already occurred, was already history to the people in her own tace. Hermesende would come or she wouldn’t; Ann could do nothing about i
t either way.
Sometime later the door opened and Hermesende bustled inside. “Come along,” she said to Ann. “The count wants to see you.”
Peire Raimon looked up at that. “Ah, he’s finally taking an interest. Is he going to burn her?”
“That’s for him to say,” Hermesende said. Her tone was so matter-of-fact that for a moment Ann thought she was truly about to be killed. Then she caught the woman’s expression, saw her grin.
They left the room. There were no guards outside; everyone was probably needed on the wall. They raced through the castle, and then out into the city.
“I have to get to the walls,” Ann said.
“All right,” Hermesende said. “Should I leave you, then?”
Her voice sounded strange, different from anything Ann had ever heard. She seemed awed, wondering perhaps if Ann was the woman in the story, if she might be immortal. No one had ever addressed Ann in that tone, or anything remotely like it.
“Come along if you like,” she said.
As they came closer she heard the boom of boulders hitting the walls, the skirl of trumpets, the sounds of shrieks and war cries. A company of men carrying knives and swords passed them, heading toward another part of the wall. One of them turned to stare at her as they went by.
“Look—it’s her!” he shouted. “The woman the count arrested—the witch!”
He broke away from the others and hurried after her. She started to run, but when she turned to look she saw that he was closer now, gaining on her. He raised his sword, slashed out at her. The sword whistled as it cut the air.
She looked away, pushed herself to run faster. She heard him behind her, hurrying even closer, and then felt a line of pure pain down her upper arm. She cried aloud.
They were close to the company of women now. “Shoot him!” Hermesende shouted. “He’s a spy—he’s trying to kill us!”
One of the women on the battlements turned and pointed her bow at the man. The next moment Ann saw an arrow protruding from his chest, and he fell back against the wall.
“Lady!” Ann said, panting. “That was close. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Hermesende said.
The catapult she had read about had finally arrived, Ann saw, and had been set up next to the wall. As she watched the arm flung upward, and a boulder flew out over the crusaders’ camp. “Nothing!” a woman on the wall shouted, and the woman operating the catapult swore.
The pain on her arm blazed up, and she forced herself to look at it. Bright red blood dripped from a long line scored in her flesh. She felt an instant of nausea and fought against it, forced herself to stay upright.
“I can put a bandage on that,” a woman at the catapult said.
That was all she needed, a dirty bandage infecting the wound. “No, it’s all right,” she said. She blotted it with her gown. “Can I help with anything?”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I need to take a break—I’ve been here all day. Do you think you can load the catapult?”
Ann nodded. She bent down for one of the boulders, hearing as she did so Sam’s voice telling her how to pick up the computers. “Lift with your legs, not with your back,” he’d said.
Even so, she couldn’t seem to manage it. She had lost a lot of blood, and she was starting to feel dizzy again.
Hermesende took hold of the other side, and they lifted it together. Women began to sing, a bawdy song about the love of the two catapults for each other, their yearning for the others’ touch.
“It’s him!” someone called from the battlements. “The devil Montfort!”
The boulder slipped from her hands. Her vision turned gray, then black, not from the wound, she realized, but from time sickness. She was about to be recalled to her own tace.
“Up!” Hermesende called. “Put your heart into it!”
She made one final attempt to lift the boulder. “For Meret,” Ann said. She could barely hear her own voice. “For Kore.”
“What—what’s happening to her?” someone asked.
Someone else said something, but the words pulsed in and out of her hearing. “Drop it!” Hermesende said, and she heard the boulder thump into the cradle.
“For—” someone said.
The word extended through time, became meaningless. She doubled over with nausea. A spear of light stabbed her eyes.
HER KNEES HIT A hard metal floor. She struggled to open her eyes and saw that she was on the small launch pad. She knew where she was, then, but when was she? She had programmed the computer to take her back to her own time, but she had had very little time in which to work. Had she returned to 2327, or, even worse, become lost in time somewhere?
She stood shakily and went over to the computer. 2014, it said. She’d done it.
She wanted to sit down, put her head in her hands, but she knew she had to keep going. She wiped the blood from her arm, then noticed a few drops on the floor and bent to wipe those too. The drops were small but dangerous; to the company, with their sophisticated devices, they would practically shout her DNA from the floor.
Her vision faded when she stood up. She reached out to hold onto something but there was nothing there and she fell again, this time with a hard thump. Great, she thought. If they hadn’t known she was here they certainly knew it now.
She stood, wiped her wound again. Then she gathered her gown around her and stepped off the platform. No way to prepare for this, she thought, and went out into the larger room.
Only a few people turned from their workstations to look at her. “You’ve been in the wars,” one of them said.
You have no idea, she thought. She nodded, not wanting him to hear her voice.
She was still worried about what tace she had come to. She could have messed up somehow, skipped a step or added one; the computer might have shown her the date she had programmed while taking her somewhere else. She studied the people in the room, but the clothing here told her nothing; the colors were still as bright and clashing as before. She hurried through the room, looking around quickly for Silas and Zarifa, or else Elias and Da Silva.
“I’d get to the infirmary before I went for debriefing,” someone else said.
She nodded again. She stepped out of the room and headed to the elevator. It was only as she got there that she realized she didn’t have the thumb drive that served as its key. She remembered putting it in her purse when she got to 1218, which meant that Simon de Montfort had it now. Had it then. She leaned against the wall, trying to clear her mind, trying to think.
Someone came up behind her. Ann turned, saw a man pressing the button for the elevator. “I lost my key on my go,” she said.
The man frowned. “Did you report it?” he asked.
“I’m going to do that now.” She hesitated. “Did you—did you feel a timequake here?”
He shook his head. The elevator came and they got on. He inserted his key and entered the code numbers, then pushed the button for the first floor. Then he turned back to the pad and pressed three as well.
“Go see the administrator,” he said.
She was so tired; all she wanted to do was lie down somewhere. But when the elevator stopped at the third floor the man watched her closely until she got out. She headed slowly for the stairs.
What did it mean that they hadn’t felt a timequake? Maybe they would only feel it at the place she left from, at the headwaters. Or maybe she hadn’t changed anything, maybe everything was exactly as she left it.
She passed the room that supplied their costumes. Should she go inside, find something closer to her own tace? No, better to get out of here as quickly as possible, to take her chances with the gown.
She headed down the stairs and came out on the first floor. The receptionist frowned at her. “Where’s your street clothes?” she asked.
“It’s an emergency,” Ann said.
To her relief the woman buzzed her out, and she headed for the front door. This was the important test, more so than the d
ate on the computer, she thought. Was there a dome overhead, or would she see the clear sky, and shadows on the ground?
She glanced up and saw the sky—though it was not the blue she remembered from 1218 but overcast, filthy. Still, her relief returned, this time nearly overpowering her. She had come back to her own time, thank the Lady.
She had left her own tace on July 17, but had programmed the machine to return her to July 7, so the company would not be searching for her yet. It gave her some breathing space, but it also meant that she had to keep away from her own apartment, to take care that she didn’t cross timelines with herself.
But had she written the code correctly? She needed a newspaper, a computer, something with a date.
She went through the parking lot and headed away from the factories and warehouses that surrounded the company. A while later she started passing more office buildings and street malls, and more people as well. Some of the people stared at her, clearly wondering what she was doing dressed in clothing from centuries ago.
She sat down on a low concrete wall and examined her wound. It had dried to almost the same color as the gown. Now what? she thought. Her mind was muddled; she could not seem to come up with a plan, could only manage one step at a time. Had the wound gotten infected after all?
All right, then. The first thing she had to do was go to a pharmacy.
She stood up. She had no money, which complicated things. No transactions with a friendly pharmacist—and no bus rides, no restaurants, no hotels.
Still, she’d rarely had much money; her situation wasn’t all that different from other times in her life. She’d spotted a pharmacy in one of the malls and headed toward it. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to steal something.
But it was the first time she’d tried to steal something while dressed in clothing from the middle ages. Everyone stared at her—the cashiers, the pharmacists, the customers browsing in the aisles. Someone headed in her direction, all set to ask if she needed help, and she hurried away.
She felt exhausted. She sat at a table outside a coffee shop, ready to jump back up if anyone complained. Her wound had opened up again, she saw. How much blood had she lost? How bad was her time sickness?
Weighing Shadows Page 29
