The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  The cycle flitted a couple of yards above the mountainside, presently above goat trails and footpaths, till it reached the flatlands and rose to avoid a peasant village. Dogs might take alarm and wake sleepers. Without artificial light to choke off night vision, people saw astonishingly well after dark. Everard fixed landmarks firmly in his mind. Novak glided back down to hover above the coast road. “Let me advance you to dawn, sir,” he suggested. “There is an inn, the Cock and Bull, two kilometers west. Whoever spies you ought to suppose you spent the night there and set off early.”

  Everard whistled. “That name’s too eerily appropriate.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind.”

  Novak touched his controls. The east went pale. Everard sprang to the ground. “Good hunting, sir,” Novak bade.

  “Thanks. Auf Wiedersehen.” Machine and rider vanished. Everard set off in the direction of sunrise.

  The road was dirt, rough with ruts and holes, but winter rains had not yet: turned it into a mire. When day broke, he saw that a hint of green had begun to relieve the dustiness of plowlands, the tawniness of mountains. At a distance, to his left and ahead, shimmered the sea. After a while he made out a few sails, tiny upon it. Mariners generally fared by day, hugging coasts, and eschewed voyages of any length this late in the year. However, along Sicily you were never far from a safe harbor, and the Normans had cleared these waters of pirates.

  The countryside appeared prosperous, too. Houses and sheds clustered in the middle of fields cultivated by their tenants, cottages mostly of rammed earth below thatch roofs but well made, gaily decorated upon their whitewash. Orchards were everywhere, olive, fig, citrus, chestnut, apple, even date palms planted by the Saracens when they held this island. He passed a couple of parish churches and glimpsed, afar, massive buildings that must be a monastery, perhaps an abbey.

  As time and miles fell behind him, more and more traffic came onto the road. Mainly the people were peasants, men in smock coats and narrow trousers, women in coarse gowns hemmed well above their footgear, children in whatever, burdens on heads or shoulders or diminutive donkeys. They were mostly short, dark, vivacious, descended from aboriginal tribes, Phoenician and Greek colonists, Roman and Moorish conquerors, more recently and casually traders or warriors out of mainland Italy, Normandy, the south of France, Iberia. Doubtless many, perhaps the majority, were serfs, but nobody acted abused. They chattered, gesticulated, laughed, exploded into indignation and profanity, grew as quickly cheerful again. Others mingled, peddlers making their rounds, the occasional priest or monk telling his beads, individuals less identifiable.

  News of the king’s death had not dampened spirits. Possibly most hadn’t yet heard. In any case, such personages and such events were as a rule remote, nearly unreal, to folk who seldom went more than a day’s walk from wherever they were born. History was something to be endured, war, piracy, plague, taxes, tribute, forced labor, lives shattered without warning or meaning.

  The common man in the twentieth century was more widely, if more shallowly, aware of his world; but did he have any more say in his fate?

  Everard strode amidst a bow wave and wake of attention. At home he stood big; here he loomed, and wholly foreign. His garments were of ordinary cut and material for a wayfarer or townsman, tunic falling halfway to the knees above hose, cap trailing a long tail down his back, knife and purse at the belt, stout shoes, colors fairly subdued; but they were not quite of any regional style. In his right hand swung a staff; on his left shoulder hung a bundle of small possessions. He’d skipped shaving, beards being usual, and sported a respectable growth; but his stiff brown hair wouldn’t soon reach below his ears.

  People stared and commented. Some hailed him. He replied affably, in a thick accent, without slackening his pace. Nobody tried to detain him. That might not be safe. Besides, he seemed legitimate, a stranger who’d landed at Marsala or Trapani and was bound east on some errand, very likely a pilgrimage. One saw quite a few such.

  The sun climbed. More and more, farms gave way to estates. Across their walls he glimpsed terraces., gardens, fountains, mansions like those their builders had also raised in North Africa. Servants appeared, many of them black, a number of them eunuchs, attired in flowing robes, often sporting turbans. Real estate might have changed hands, but the new owners, like the Crusaders in the East, had soon fallen into the ways of the old.

  Everard stood aside, head uncovered, when a Norman lord went by on a bedizened stallion. The man wore European clothes, but gaudily embroidered, a golden chain around his neck and rings aglitter on both hands. His lady—astride a palfrey, skirts hiked up but leggings preserving modesty—was as flamboyant and as haughty. Behind rode a couple of body servants and four guards.

  Those were still purely Norman men-at-arms, stocky, tough, noseguards on their conical helmets, chain mail hauberks polished and oiled, straight swords at hips, kite-shaped shields at horses’ flanks.

  Later a Saracen gentleman passed with his own train. This group wasn’t armed, but in a subtler fashion it was at least as sumptuous. Unlike William in England, the Normans here had given generous terms to their defeated opponents. Although rural Muslims became serfs, most in the cities kept their property and paid taxes that were reasonable. They continued to live under their own laws, administered by their own judges. Except that their muezzins could only call publicly to prayer once a year, they were free to practice their religion as well as their trades. Their learning was eagerly sought and several held high positions at court. Others provided the shock troops of the army. Arabic words were permeating the language; “admiral,” for instance, traces back to “amir.”

  The Greek population, Orthodox Christian, enjoyed a similar tolerance. So did the Jews. Townsmen dwelt side by side, swapped goods and ideas, formed partnerships, embarked on ventures in the confidence that any gains would remain theirs. The result was material wealth and cultural brilliance, a Renaissance in miniature, the embryo of a whole new civilization.

  It wouldn’t last more than half a dozen generations all told, but its legacy would pervade the future. Or so the Patrol’s databanks related. However, they also declared that King Roger II would live another two decades, during which Sicily reached its finest flowering. Now Roger lay in whatever grave his enemies had seen fit to give him.

  Palermo drew in sight. The most splendid of its buildings did not yet grace it, but already it shone and soared behind its walls. More domes, often gorgeous with mosaic or giltwork, lifted skyward than did Catholic spires. Entering unquestioned through a gate guarded but open, Everard found streets crowded, noisy, kaleidoscopically alive—and cleaner, better smelling, than any he had trod elsewhere in medieval Europe. Though sailing season was over, craft lay close together around that inlet from the bay which in this era was the harbor: high-castled merchantmen, lateen riggers, war galleys, types from end to end of the Mediterranean and from the North. They weren’t all idled for the winter. Business went brisk, raucous, in and out of warehouses and chandleries, as it did at booths and shops everywhere.

  Following the map he had learned, the Patrolman made his way through the crowds. That wasn’t easy. He had the size and strength to force a passage but not the temperament, which most locals did. Besides, he didn’t want trouble. But damn, he was hungry and thirsty! The sun had gone low above the western range, shadows welled upward in the lanes, he’d tramped many miles.

  A laden camel squeezed between walls. Slaves bore the litters of a man who was presumably a big wheel in his guild and a woman who was presumably an expensive courtesan. Several housewives gossiped, homebound from market, baskets on their heads, small children clinging to their skirts, a baby at one breast. A Jewish rug seller, cross-legged in his stall, ceased crying his wares and made obeisance as a rabbi passed grave and gray-bearded, accompanied by two young scholars who carried books. Greek voices resounded lustily from a hole-in-the-wall tavern. A Saracen potter had stopped the wheel in his little shop and prostra
ted himself, evidently guessing this was one of the five times for prayer. A burly artisan carried his tools. Before each church, beggars implored the layfolk who went in and out; they didn’t pester the clergy. In a square a young man played a harp and sang while half a dozen others listened. They pitched coins at his feet. He wasn’t actually a troubadour, Everard supposed, but he sang in the langue d’oc of Provence and must have learned his art there, the homeland of his audience. By now French and Italian immigrants outnumbered the original Normans, whose own blood was fast being diluted.

  Everard slogged on.

  His destination lay in Al-Qasr, near the nine-gated interior wall surrounding that district of markets and souks. Passing by the great Friday Mosque, he reached a Moorish house converted to a place of business. As was usual, the owner and his people also lived there. The door stood open on a large chamber. Within, silks were displayed on tables at the front. Many of the bolts and pieces were marvels of needlework. Toward the rear, apprentices trimmed, sewed, folded. They didn’t hasten. Medieval man generally worked a long day but at a leisurely pace; and he enjoyed more free time, in the form of frequent holidays, than his twentieth-century descendants.

  Eyes lifted toward the huge newcomer. “I seek Master Geoffrey of Jovigny,” Everard announced in Norman French.

  A short, sandy-haired person who wore a richly decorated robe advanced. “I am he. How may I serve you”—his voice stumbled—“good sir?”

  “I have need to speak with you alone,” Everard said.

  Volstrup caught on at once. He’d received a message from downtime telling him to expect an agent. “Certainly. Follow me, if you please.”

  Upstairs, in the room with the cabinet that doubled as a computer and communicator, Everard admitted he was ravenous. Volstrup stepped out for a minute and returned promising refreshment. His wife brought it herself, a tray loaded with bread, goat cheese, olive oil, cured fish, dried figs and dates, wine, water to cut it. When she had left, the Patrolman attacked it like a Crusader. Meanwhile he told his host what had been going on.

  “I see,” murmured Volstrup. “What do you plan to do next?”

  “That depends on what I learn here,” Everard replied. “I want to spend a little while getting familiar with this period. You’re doubtless so used to it that you don’t realize how handicapping it is not to know all the nuances that somehow never get into the databases—the jarring little surprises—”

  Volstrup smiled. “Oh, but I well remember my early days. No matter how I had studied and trained beforehand, when I entered this country it was shockingly alien.”

  “You’ve obviously adapted well.”

  “I had the backing and help of the Patrol, of course. I could never have established myself solo.”

  “As I recall, you arrived as a man from Normandy, a younger son of a merchant, who wanted to start up his own business and had some capital from an inheritance. Right?”

  Volstrup nodded. “Yes. But the intricacies, the organizations I must deal with, official, ecclesiastical, private—and then the folkways. I thought that from my youth I had known much about the Middle Ages. I was wrong. I had never experienced them.”

  “That’s the usual reaction.” Everard was taking his time, getting acquainted, putting the other man at ease. It would expedite operations later. “You’re from nineteenth-century Denmark, is that it?”

  “Born in Copenhagen in 1864.” Everard had already noted, in the half-intuitive way one senses personalities, that Volstrup was not the Epicurean Dane common in the twentieth century. His manner was formal, a bit stiff; he gave an impression of primness. Yet the psych tests must have shown adventure in his blood, or the Patrol would never have invited him in. “I grew restless during my student days and took two years free, roaming about Europe as an itinerant worker. It was an accepted thing to do. Returning, I resumed my studies, which concentrated on the history of the Normans. I had no thought, no hope of anything more than a professorship somewhere. Then, shortly after taking my master’s degree, I was recruited.” Volstrup shivered. “But I am not important. What has happened, that is.”

  “How did you get interested in this period?”

  Volstrup smiled again while he shrugged. “Romanticism. Mine was the late Romantic era in the North, you know. And the Scandinavians who originally settled in Normandy, they were not Norwegians, as the Heimskringla claims. Personal and place names show they came, at least for the most part, from Denmark. After which they proceeded to fight and conquer from the British Isles to the Holy Land.”

  “I see.” For a silent minute, Everard ran the facts through his head.

  Robert Guiscard and his brother Roger, together with other kin, reached southern Italy in the previous century. Countrymen of theirs were already on hand, fighters against both Saracens and Byzantines. The land was in turmoil. A leader of warriors, who joined one of the factions, might come to grief when it did, or he might do very well for himself. Robert ended as Count and Duke of Apulia. Roger I became Grand Count of Sicily, with a firmer hold than that on his own territory. It helped that he had obtained a papal bull making him apostolic legate of the island; that gave him considerable power within the Church.

  Roger died in 1101. His older legitimate sons were dead before him. Thus he left the title to eight-year-old Simon, child of his last wife, half-Italian Adelaide. She, as regent, crushed a baronial revolt and, when sickness also took Simon off, handed an undiminished authority over to her younger son, Roger II. He took full mastery in 1122, and set about regaining southern Italy for the house of Hauteville. Those conquests had fallen away after Robert Guiscard’s death. The claim was resisted by Pope Honorius II, who did not care for a strong, ambitious lord as the immediate neighbor of the papal territories; by Roger’s rival relatives, Robert II of Capua and Rainulf of Avellino, Roger’s brother-in-law; and by the mainland people, among whom there stirred ideas of city autonomy and republican government.

  Pope Honorius actually preached a crusade against Roger. He must needs retract it when the army of Normans, Saracens, and Greeks from Sicily prevailed over the coalition. By the end of 1129, Naples, Capua, and the rest recognized Roger as their duke.

  To nail down his position, he needed the name of king. Honorius died early in 1130. Not for the first or last time, the medieval intermingling of religious and secular politics brought about the election of two claimants to the throne of St. Peter. Roger backed Anacletus. Innocent fled to France. Anacletus paid off his debt with a bull proclaiming Roger king of Sicily.

  War followed. Innocent’s great clerical partisan, Bernard of Clairvaux, whom the future would know as St. Bernard, denounced the “half-heathen king.” Louis VI of France, Henry I of England, and Lothair of the Holy Roman Empire supported Innocent. Led by Rainulf, southern Italy revolted anew. Strife went back and forth across that land.

  By 1134, Roger seemed to be getting on top. The prospect of a powerful Norman realm alarmed even the Greek emperor in Constantinople, who lent his aid, as did the city-states Pisa and Genoa. In February 1137 Lothair moved south with his Germans and with Innocent. Rainulf and the rebels joined them. Following a victorious campaign, in August he and the Pope invested Rainulf as Duke of Apulia. The emperor started home.

  Indomitable, Roger came back. He sacked Capua and forced Naples to acknowledge him lord. Then, at the end of October, he met Rainulf at Rignano….

  “You’ve settled in pretty well, I see,” Everard remarked.

  “I have learned to like it here,” Volstrup answered quietly. “Not everything, no. Much is gruesome. But then, that is true in every age, not so? Looking uptime after all these years, I see how many were the horrors to which we Victorians smugly closed our eyes. These are wonderful people, in their fashion. I have a good wife, fine children.” Pain crossed his face. He could never confide in them. He must in the end watch them grow old and die—at best; something worse might get them first. A Patrolman did not look into his own future or the futures of those h
e loved. “It is fascinating to watch the development. I will see the golden age of Norman Sicily.” He stopped, swallowed, and finished: “If we can correct the disaster.”

  “Right.” Everard guessed that now going straight to business would be kindest. “Have you gotten any word since your first report?”

  “Yes. I have not yet passed it on, because it is very incomplete. Better to assemble a coherent picture first, I assume.” As a matter of fact, it was not, but Everard didn’t press the point. “I never expected an … Unattached agent … so soon.”

  Volstrup straightened where he sat and forced firmness into his voice: “A band of Roger’s men who escaped from the battlefield made their way to Reggio, got a boat across the strait, and continued here. Their officer has reported at the palace. I have my paid listeners among the servants there, of course. The story is that Rainulf’s total victory, the slaying of the king and prince, was due to a young knight from Anagni, one Lorenzo de Conti. But this is mere hearsay, you understand. It is gossip that reached them after the fact, in fragments, as they straggled homeward through a country in upheaval, full of people who hated their kind. It may be worthless.”

  Everard rubbed his furry chin. “Well, it needs looking into,” he said slowly. “Something that specific ought to have some truth behind it. I’ll want to sound out the officer. You can fix that up for me, can’t you, in a plausible way? And then, if it seems this Lorenzo fellow may be the key to it all—” Again the hunter’s tingle went through his skin and along his backbone. “Then I’ll try to zero in on him.”

  1138 α A. D.

  To Anagni on its high hill, some forty miles from Rome, came a rider one crisp autumn day. Folk stared, for horse and man were uncommonly large; bearing sword and shield though at present unarmored, he was clearly of rank; a baggage mule followed on a tether; yet he fared alone. The guards at the city gate to which he came answered respectfully when he drew up and hailed them in rough Tuscan. Advised by them, he passed through and wound his way to a decent inn. There he got his gear unloaded and his beasts stabled and fed, while he took a pot of ale and a gab with the landlord. He was affable in a gusty German fashion and readily learned whatever he wanted to know. Presently he gave a coin to one of the boys and bade him carry a message to the right place: “Sir Manfred von Einbeck of Saxony sends his respects to Sir Lorenzo de Conti, the hero of Rignano, and would fain call upon him.”