Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  This was still the country of heroes, even if the time team was the opposite of heroic. Maybe heroes would do the trick. They wouldn’t read it now, but if they read it later, maybe it would work. When boredom struck, she might be able to make her strike. Maybe when someone was ready to realise that the world outside was real, her briefings would be there, ready to lead them into an understanding of it. Maybe.

  “Historical briefing (file from Artemisia Wormwood). William was a great hero…” she began. It made her happy to state the obvious right up front.

  * * *

  William was a great hero. He was Charlemagne’s kin. It was thanks to him that the invaders were driven back beyond the Pyrenees and also thanks to him that Charles’ son, Louis, ascended the throne after Charles’ death. He won himself a pagan bride and many pagan cities. In fact, he won bride and city and the name he is known by all at once, when he entered the city of Orange.

  In real life, he was known by many names. William of Gellone, the second Count of Toulouse - the different names and titles reflected the man himself. He was larger than life, but at the same time he was a real person. He was Guillaume al corb nez; he was Fierebrace; he was the most famous Guilhem from the South. He was one of France’s greatest heroes.

  He lived from sometime in the eighth century and died early in the ninth. While he was Charlemagne’s cousin, he was also one of his trusted leaders. He fought many battles and was key to Charlemagne’s expansionist policies. In 803, he took Barcelona from its Moslem rulers and cemented himself in the popular mind as the hero who fought for Christian Europe.

  In 804 he founded our monastery, at a place called Gellone. This is where he retired and this is where he died, on 28 May. It is he who the tourists visit, his bones and a piece of the One True Cross that he brought here. In the modern monastery, both his bones and the cross are backlit and glow in the dark. I have pictures, if you want to see them. I doubt they are backlit right now.

  * * *

  Additional historical briefing (file from Artemisia Wormwood)

  You asked for one fact about William, since a complete briefing takes many hours for scientists to read and scientists are lacking in hours. Your one fact is “The story of his cousin’s mother’s life was a famous romance. Charlemagne’s mother was known as Bertha Big Foot and her husband was Pippin the Short.”

  The team read this briefing. Artemisia knew this when she heard Ben referring to Charlemagne’s father as ‘the hobbit emperor who married the abominable snowwoman’. Not even Sylvia had questioned Ben’s description.

  She also sent Luke the first part of a briefing on the Templars. He thanked her, but didn’t notice that it was only part one. She wondered if he had read it at all. The Templars are here, she thought. In this place. Knights militant; knights dangerous. This cannot be good.

  Then she scolded herself for exaggeration. One Templar didn’t make a tempest. Or even a crusade. As long as the team kept avoiding the locals, it would all be fine. No-one would even know they were there. No-one, except the owner of that book. Tomorrow I’ll try at dawn. Maybe he’s an early bird.

  While Artemisia flagellated herself over not knowing if it was Templar singular or if there was a group of them or if they were even a concern, while she looked vainly through her antiquated reference library, trying to answer her own questions, one of the other team members demonstrated a different way of looking at things.

  “Templars,” Pauline said, to Sylvia, when they shared a coffee break. “I know about them.”

  “You do?” Sylvia was willing to listen, though not to be impressed. Pauline’s qualifications were in medicine, after all. Still, she was a nicer human being than Artemisia, and she always gave Sylvia the best coffee and she always had an interesting take on things.

  “You know - the Da Vinci Code, Holy Blood, Holy Grail?”

  “Oh!” Sylvia’s face lit up. “Those were the Templars?”

  “They were. Framed and tortured and murdered. They had the biggest hidden treasure in Europe.”

  “That’s why that book was so nice?”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “We should keep an eye out.”

  “We can glean stuff. That path those pilgrims travel? I bet there are more Templar treasures.”

  “Are we allowed?” Pauline sounded as if she was just waiting for permission.

  “If we’re careful, I don’t see that there’s a problem.”

  “And you’re in charge of day-to-day stuff.”

  “Everything except scheduling.” Sylvia looked as if she had swallowed precisely enough cream.

  “Templars,” breathed Pauline, her face dreamy.

  “Templars.” Sylvia nodded, in complete agreement.

  * * *

  This is how the team discovered the End of the World and its precarious paths. There was a flat track where people could be found and there were the safer goat trails and the sheep trails and the hill ways which were hard to discern and even harder to walk. Around and under all the paths were the many shades of white and cream and brown that comprised the limestone, whether cliff or rock face or simple slope. And around and wedged into that, always, was verdant green.

  They didn’t find Templar treasure at the end of the world, but they found bits and bobs from time to time and they were well clear of the town, so Artemisia couldn’t complain. Gleanings were slow, however, and usually meagre and every now and again Sylvia or Pauline would look around impatiently. Wanting more. Expecting better.

  One or other of them would bring the subject of gleanings up at mealtimes, sounding Artemisia out on the value of this or that. Sometimes it was obvious that they were making things up, inventing from an insufficient knowledge of the place or time (Artemisia’s personal favourite was the faceted diamond necklace Pauline apparently coveted, at a period when there was no way of faceting diamonds). At other times, Artemisia would look across the table sharply, wondering if they had found something and left it, or had hidden it somewhere in the caves, or had simply seen a covetable object in a traveller’s possession.

  She talked about the importance of the everyday and ordinary in the process of discovery. If the team understood that, maybe they would be less tempted by the sort of stuff that would get everyone into trouble. They were scientists, after all, and surely understood knowledge and its acquisition. Leavings of used-up old clothing and broken combs were less dangerous on so many levels.

  Not that there were vast amounts of anything, really. People saved up their findings to show them off, all at once, in visits to the bin because, really, despite the big talk, they were not common. Not a lot of litterbugs in this place and time. Which didn’t stop the time team members talking as if stuff of value was lying around everywhere.

  While asking Artemisia for her advice, Sylvia would turn attention back to herself at every opportunity. The discoveries were about her. The work was her work. The knowledge was the knowledge she needed. Artemisia wondered how Pauline tolerated this. Even Tony was unperturbed by Sylvia having turned up one day to help with his digging. Artemisia was puzzled, not only by Sylvia herself, but by everyone else’s acceptance of her behaviour.

  * * *

  Sibilla and Berta were sitting on the lowest wall of the vineyards just outside town. It was terracing to protect the vineyards, nothing more, but that carefully constructed drystone artefact was the perfect place for two women to kick their heels, hidden by shrubbery.

  Berta noticed that one of the hillfolk was an older woman. She disliked her on sight. That woman had greedy eyes and a grasping right hand. She was trawling the path, their path, for lost objects. Also, she walked as if this land were hers. Which it wasn’t. Every morsel of land for miles either had clear ownership or was undertaking dispute resolution. There was no space for strangers. If that woman, with her white hair and her taking ways, would remain under the hill, then Berta wouldn’t feel so aggravated, but here she was, causing waves. Yes, Berta hated her.

 
; Sibilla’s voice communicated to Berta constantly. It informed Berta of exactly what she was seeing and why her gaze was not upon the strange gleaners. “He’s rather nice,” she whispered, her right hand fiddling with her belt clasp. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Guilhem, training on that spot where the main path met the stream. The combination of path and stream and edge of field gave the knight more space and less stone underfoot than anywhere else.

  “He’s rather young,” answered Berta, absent-minded, her gaze still on Pauline. Pauline and Sylvia had seen the knight, however, and were soon out of sight.

  Guilhem was trying to gentle the edge of his unhappiness with much physical effort. It wasn’t real training, but it was better than the work he had put in with those at the castle the day before. They didn’t know and they didn’t care. Guilhem had given up on his driving need to survey the route from the Cevennes. The town can defend itself, he admitted, bitterly. I have no function here.

  * * *

  “However did his girlfriend let him go? Why is he even here?” Sylvia whispered to Pauline, as they watched Geoff walk past half-naked. Every day he did this. Walked from the showers to his bedroom to get changed. The others either dressed in the showers or wore some sort of covering back to their rooms. Geoff never bothered. He was cold (the coolness of the caverns froze his blood, he claimed) but he still walked back near-naked to his cubicle after his shower, slapping himself to stay warm. He was quite beautiful now that his hair was growing back, and entirely unconcerned about nakedness or possible audience.

  “She was a stupid girl,” said Pauline, her gentle dusky voice making the words condemnatory.

  * * *

  Tony had persuaded Mac into creating better soil using a whole new method. Mac hadn’t taken much convincing. All Tony had to do was look helpless and use the magic word.

  “Better soil through explosions,” Mac rubbed his hands, gleefully. “I didn’t know it was possible. ANF will do it. Let me find you some ammonium nitrate and fuel.” Tony had no idea, himself. He wanted something, however, and obviously stealing good soil from the farming land below was not going to get Luke’s approval.

  Tony was careless of his physical self and Mac was far too keen to make big bangs. Mac caught Tony sitting on the sack of ammonium nitrate, simply because it was the right height.

  “You’re sitting on an explosive substance,” he said. Tony stood up in a great hurry. “Just kidding. It’s your fertiliser until I add the diesel.” They both had a fine time and made a great deal of noise.

  Luke called the culprits into a meeting with Sylvia and Ben. He read them all the riot act - noise and the locals were the substance of it. Keeping their imprint small. Not being idiots. Mac was too happy and Tony was considering how to use the side product of the explosion to change his soil in two of his plots and neither of them paid much attention. Sylvia, of course, disowned it all. “If they can’t use proper procedure” and Ben was strangely silent. His eyes slatted nearly shut as he thought about the explosive. When Luke’s temper was all blown out, Ben went to Tony’s garden and assessed the situation.

  * * *

  Artemisia and Geoff were alone in the office area. Everyone else had found excuses to leave the claustrophobia behind. Artemisia found herself choosing between the caves with Geoff or the possibility of running into Sylvia in the very limited outdoors they had available that day.

  “You ought to have sad eyes, you know,” she murmured to Geoff, surprising herself.

  “Why?” His gaze connected suddenly, viscerally. It was as if he had seen her before, but not noticed. That gaze was amused, interested, complicated - anything but unhappy.

  “Those big brown eyes. Tragic.”

  “You’ve got big brown eyes, too.”

  “Mine are Italian. We left tragedy behind a generation and a half ago, in a little Italian village with nothing to its name except saints and good cooking.”

  “I’m Islander,” Geoff volunteered. “I’m supposed to be joyous. Stereotypes tell me so.”

  “And sing hymns.”

  “Only if you’re desperate.”

  * * *

  6 May (Ascension Day)

  Sibilla was in the mood to be virtuous. Her church of choice was Saint-Barthelmy, boldly, to celebrate, wearing purity like a badge. She was watched the whole time - not even the hymns could hide the looks she was given. Symbolism upon symbolism. A moment out of time.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Colonising

  Mac was showing Geoff some of his stuff. They were using the common room with the chairs pushed right over the edge of the wire mesh. The chairs tilted dangerously. Each man held a wooden sword.

  “These are practice weapons,” Mac explained.

  “So I don’t get to kill you yet?”

  “Later,” promised Mac. “Though I’m pretty sure I could kill you, even with these, if I really wanted to.”

  “Then don’t really want to,” said Geoff. “I’m far too pretty to die. Now tell me what I’m doing with this.”

  “You’re learning the basic sword guards. There are four.”

  “And remind me why we’re avoiding the good doctor-historian?”

  “Because the manual my group uses is German and later, and Artemisia would tell me that. In detail. And I know it already.”

  “You mean it hasn’t been written yet? That’s just wrong.”

  “Shut up.”

  Before Geoff could say another word, a cry came from the kitchen.

  “Weevils! In the flour!!”

  This sounded promising, so Mac collected the swords and the four basic guards were postponed until another occasion. Weevils were in the flour and Artemisia was sitting at the kitchen table, watching Pauline squirm as she stared in horror as the flour gently shifted before her eyes.

  “Get rid of it,” Pauline said to Mac. “I shall make the food we have last the distance,” she promised, valiantly, her eyes still disturbed by the crawling flour.

  “D’you want me to clean the tub and stuff, too?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Mac did that first in his workroom, then went to get fresh flour. Geoff tagged along for the ride.

  “So much stuff!” he said.

  “Don’t tell Doc,” Cormac confided, “But we didn’t use much flour when we set up. No time for cooking. Made pancakes twice.”

  “So those weevils are your fault.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And there isn’t a food problem.”

  “No.

  “And we’re not going to tell Doc?”

  “Too right.”

  Geoff looked around at the impossibly crowded storeroom. “Of course, she could walk in here and see for herself.”

  “She won’t.”

  “What’s this hole - last night’s dinner?”

  “It leads where I keep the dangerous stuff. Stay out of there. It’s also my secret escape to freedom and the outside world. Where I lose myself when Theo hollers.”

  Geoff sighed in envy. Theo was very demanding for someone so apparently abstracted. When Mac couldn’t be found, he was the one roped in to find and fix things and say “There, there.” Harvey had warned him that Theo was needy - “Won’t make sexual advances,” he had been told. “He has a partner. Also, he’s careful about not exploiting power differentials - aware, professional. But he might try to get your attention from time to time.”

  Artemisia saw them lose themselves in the storeroom and repressed a sigh. She had been excluded from the kitchen until the crisis was over and was feeling unnoticed and rebellious and rather childish. Sylvia kept walking back and forth, fluffed with her own importance. Sylvia made her feel childish, just by walking past.

  Artemisia had found some erasable crayons in one of Cormac’s stashes and had been using them on one of the portable whiteboards - they helped her think - she had always done her outlining on paper and had been missing it. Her writing had been missing it, too, she realised. At least, they helped her
think - until Sylvia looked down on what she was doing and sniffed.

  Sylvia had brought enough makeup so that she could look beautiful and charming every single day of the two hundred and seventy odd they would be together. Artemisia hadn’t brought any makeup. Not even a lipstick. Sylvia walked with her own aplomb, even with her haircut growing out. Artemisia slumped into her chair and wondered if it was too late to learn deportment. It was: far too late. She slumped out of her chair and decided to go for a walk.

  She meandered around the caves, admiring the rocks and the shadows and the cold that underlay it all. When she found herself next to a particularly favourable blank stalactite, large and curved and hardly rippled at all, she realised she still had the erasable crayon in her hand. She wanted to draw a funny face. She wanted to dream about how it would be interpreted over the centuries. The blue crayon came closer and closer to the rock as she formulated theories about how the drawing would be thought of - devil worship, an odd manifestation of ancient belief, early graffiti?

  Unfortunately for her, Ben Konig had returned from checking in his latest batch samples. They were safely in cold storage and he felt satisfied enough to give Artemisia an evil look. Being excluded from weevils didn’t worry him at all. She pulled her crayon back as if she were a schoolgirl. Still a schoolgirl. Ben looked at her, disapprovingly.

  “Do you know how many people we’ve upset by coming here?” Artemisia was determined to spill her emotions on Ben Konig, the species diversity expert. That’s how she always thought of him - “Ben Konig, the species diversity expert.” It was her little way of not trusting, not letting him and his smile and his lies get close.

  At that moment in his very long day, Ben Konig would have chatted with a cave bear if one had existed and if that cave bear had been willing to talk. The night before, Ben had argued very loudly with Luke about having a copy of the interim results to check to see if anything more could be done to meet the French Government’s list of outcomes. This had the salutary effect of reminding the other scientists that he had entirely the wrong loyalties.