Langue[dot]doc 1305

by Gillian Polack

  There would not be much coin, he realised. He would still go. He would collect it to prove to his aunt that he would jump when she asked him to, so that Bernat could send another report home. His real income came from elsewhere. Far removed from his aunt.

  As he got closer to Pézenas, he became more and more nervous. Had Bernat’s previous report been good enough so that she would reward him with enough money in which he could live according to his rank and worth? Or would she send him a pittance along with a message, as she had in Gascony? What would he do if she found an excuse to keep a larger proportion of his income? Would he be forced to pretend to live off the tiny parcels of non-contiguous land that were his holdings near Saint-Guilhem? Would he be forced to manage that land himself and squeeze an income from it? Would he have to solve the three outstanding legal claims?

  Would she invoke his uncle’s name? That was the worst possibility of all. For all his cousin’s vast power, it was his uncle of whom Guilhem was terrified. He wished the journey were over and he was in Pézenas and knew what his relatives thought. He knew his fear was wrong. He was an adult and a knight. But the memories of childhood lay more heavily on him than the memories of war.

  * * *

  The day glowered. While the cave was oppressive with the sky low and dark and the air thick, outside was worse.

  Mac dealt with the weather by becoming more practical. Their in-house handyman decided it was time to call each and every expedition member into the kitchen and to work out their needs, over coffee and cake. Artemisia wondered if this was Mac’s way of ensuring that Pauline baked and that he obtained the lion’s share of the baking. She wouldn’t put it beyond him.

  It was all straightforward. Mac made two lists - one for collection after breakfast the next day and another for requisition through the next datastream. It was too straightforward. He had to be doing it for the cake. Not that it didn’t have to be done, but to take most of the day, in the kitchen? She noticed that all the cake-eaters of the group took much longer to sort their needs out. She noticed this because she, herself, was bored to tears. You’d think one became used to boredom, she thought.

  The next day was as bad. Artemisia listened, with fascination, to Mac’s breakfast announcement.

  “Today I want everything you have that’s broken. Bring stuff to the stores area as soon as you can. This morning. No excuses.” Mac was enjoying bossing his bosses.

  Later in the day, Luke paid a visit to Mac’s workshop. “Hard at work, McGyver? If you wouldn’t mind taking a moment and mending one of my whiteboards…”

  “You broke a whiteboard?” Cormac was polite to Luke’s face, but inwardly he was swearing full revenge. He hated that nickname. Hated it.

  “Some indentations. I was a bit emotional.”

  “Indentations?” despite himself, Cormac was fascinated.

  “Holes, then.”

  “Give me a few minutes and I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  Friends kiss, Artemisia knew. Modern Australians didn’t. Not unless forced. And even then, it was awkward. What was more awkward is that Old French texts were full of references to making salutations then kissing. But how did one kiss and why, and would kissing make Guilhem move from stranger to friend to something more worrying? She was jumpy about men.

  She took the easy way out. “It is normal among your people to welcome and kiss. I have read this. My people have a different courtoisie. We do not touch, except the hands and maybe a touch, so,” she tapped her own shoulder in explanation. “Do we observe your courtoisie or mine?”

  The approach worked. Guilhem stopped in his tracks and assessed her alienness. Artemisia hoped that admitting literacy would help. “How do you touch hands?” he asked.

  Artemisia held out her hand and when Guilhem held his out, she shook it. Guilhem laughed. “This shall we do. It amuses me.”

  “Thank you for being amused,” said Artemisia dryly.

  Guilhem laughed again. “Now you must learn something of my world.”

  “I would like...”Artemisia paused, suddenly concerned. Guilhem nodded, so she continued, “To learn the language of the people who live in the town. Just a little.”

  “Not more French?”

  “Also French. We will speak French, and I will learn when we speak. Will I not?”

  “Some words only. You do not need anything but French.” Artemisia wondered why his caution. Who was this young man? He didn’t talk about himself.

  In the end, the words and phrases he gave were few. They included detras lo castel - below the castle; for a lo portail - outside the entrance; she computerised them when she returned to the caves, knowing she had added precisely nothing to the sum of human knowledge in the twenty-first century. She had also discovered, as Guilhem relaxed a little, that the people of this region were regarded as unreliable, full of vice and traitors.

  “I wish we were drunk as Gascon knights,” he said. “It is better than being of the line of Charlemagne with the character of Ganelon.”

  Artemisia wrote ‘drunk as Gascon knights’ down too. It was a very good phrase. Guilhem had more than a little of the drama queen about him. He also liked his historical references. And his sayings.

  He was no peasant. Not in any way. She wondered why it was so important to her that he not be a knight. She kept looking for other possibilities. Something about him? Something about her expectation of knighthood? Or maybe he was a wealthy landowner who happened to carry a sword. Not everyone was a knight and this was the country, swords couldn’t be that uncommon. Or could they? She needed to check this up in the reference library. She didn’t know much about arms or about the rules for carrying them.

  As she left Guilhem, she used a carefully prepared phrase, straight from the Song of Roland: Go with Jesus’ leave and with mine. She didn’t know if it was right, but it did the job. Well, her new-discovered knight didn’t come charging at her with that sword.

  When she walked into the coolness of the cave, with its steady artificial light, she found it strange, as if she had moved from a large movie set to a confined and crammed and cabined reality. It had been easier to make the transition when there were no people outside.

  It didn’t help that she walked right into a jazz track. The track was the one she and Cormac had labelled ‘summer insanity’. At least it wasn’t the opium effect or bebop. She was certain that Geoff’s six hours of music were played by amateur bands and one day she would ask who so that she could avoid hearing them ever again. Today however, it made everything seem tight and modern and too, too small.

  Artemisia hid herself behind a briefing note on the languages of 1305 and how they worked to structure cultural constructs until it was time for the meeting.

  * * *

  The main feature of the meeting that evening was supposed to be Artemisia’s report on the meeting with Guilhem. Sylvia reported her results first, then Tony complained about the poor soil. By the time they got to Artemisia, she had two minutes before dinner. Artemisia wanted to feel aggrieved but really she was relieved.

  Sylvia was polite but dismissive, and that was what got Artemisia’s goat: she’d got Sylvia out of a hole and Sylvia should have at least listened. Obviously Artemisia was a person of no importance. Well, she’d been that before. And it was only for nine months. Less, now.

  She didn’t have to like it, merely to endure.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Interpretations

  “The parishioners from Saint-Laurent are idiots,” Guilhem-the-blacksmith said, largely to fill in time. He was having a quiet afternoon and the priest was bored to tears and gossip was a useful diversion.

  “I thought you went to Saint-Laurent yourself? I see you there, all the time. In fact, I was entirely certain that you were one of my parishioners.”

  Guilhem busied his hands for a moment, making sure that he didn’t catch Peire’s eyes. When his hands were more fully occupied with his work he said, “Oh, yes, but I don’t take
sides. There are a few of us who remain even-handed.”

  “Because horses from both parishes still need shoeing? Because pots need mending and tines need sharpening?”

  “Precisely.”

  “So what have your non-parishioners done?”

  “They won’t stop talking. They say stupid things.”

  “Like what?”

  “One of the monks at the abbey had a waking vision.”

  “I bet I know which monk.”

  “We all know which monk.”

  “He’s not very bright.”

  “But he thinks he’s very holy.”

  The two men bowed their heads in quiet agreement.

  “What did he see?” Peire finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Guilhem-the-other. “I only know what everyone said he saw.”

  “What did everyone say he saw, then?”

  “One of the people who live under the hill, clad in white garments, walking alone.”

  “As if they were dead.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Who has been suggesting violence?”

  “You know who. The usuals. From the castle. They’d beat up pilgrims, if they dared. They gave Brother Benedict a headache and many bruises just last week.”

  “Indeed. Then I believe this vision is real. It simply needs a bit of interpretation.”

  “What interpretation do you offer?”

  “That if those strangers were to die at the hands of the louts of Saint-Laurent or the castle or even by the fools of Saint-Barthelmy, the dead would roam the hills,” and he gestured up and out and across, covering the mountains and the valleys and the fair stream Verdus and the great river below, “and would haunt us forever.”

  “Especially if the death were violent?”

  “Especially if the death were violent.”

  “It’s well known,” said the blacksmith, “That sudden and violent and premature deaths are the most important cause of hauntings.”

  “And it would be a terrible thing if our beautiful country were haunted.”

  The smith and the priest bowed their heads in quiet agreement again.

  Meanwhile, Bona was explaining to her brother that she was trying to be as good as her name suggested, really, but that it was impossible and she couldn’t breathe and they needed to leave Saint-Guilhem. “Everyone wants me to grow up,” she complained. “I shall be grown up in Montpellier. I shall be an apprentice and learn my craft and not run barefoot on the hills.”

  “We can run barefoot now?” suggested her brother, hopefully. “Find the funny people and look at them for a bit?”

  “Yes! Or we could look for the cat.”

  “Our cat never stays where it should. Just like you.”

  “I’m good,” said Bona, stubbornly. “Just not… not…”

  “I have my pipe,” her brother said, with a rush. “We can play music under an olive tree and call the cat.” His fingers clutched possessively around the tiny bone flute with its three finger holes.

  “Yes! Let’s go!”

  * * *

  Guilhem wasn’t very good at public observance. Being seen to be obedient made him grudging and he hated being grudging. It didn’t fit with his view of himself or with his view of his family.

  This unhappiness with public display of belief didn’t stop him from doing his Matins and Prime readings from his Book of Hours every day when he awakened. He could do it from memory, but he loved to read it from his book and treasured holding it again. He wondered, idly, if the book were his missing soul. If he had been saved by its appearance.

  His unhappiness didn’t stop him from reciting the Office of the Dead every single day. He had started halfway to Jerusalem and none of his experiences since then had encouraged him to stop. Guilhem felt his mortality every moment of every day. He would be judged and his heart and soul would both be found wanting. This he knew.

  When Artemisia walked past and he was reading the Office, however, he shared it with her. Then they talked about Ora pro nobis. There were things Artemisia knew - like death and shame. She knew, like him, the need for God’s help.

  Guilhem was looking at Artemisia’s bare foot, sticking out from under her dress. Artemisia looked at her toes peeking out and wondered what the right sitting position would be on a rock for someone of good upbringing. This sort of thing never made it into modern studies. This was probably because the only source for it was watching real people, and the only real person any of them could watch was this young knight. She sighed in frustration.

  “You have no shoes,” Guilhem said.

  Was that all? “They brought shoes for me, but they do not fit. I chose to wear no shoes.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Better bare feet than pain. You have no cordwainer?”

  “Not with us. No shoes for me until I go home.”

  Guilhem frowned.

  * * *

  “OK,” Sylvia said to the assembled masses, without preamble. “I’ve decided that the best way of doing the first report is if you all give me your data and I process it.”

  “It’s a lot of work,” said Geoff, surprised.

  “I’m happy to do it,” Sylvia said, firmly. Sylvia Smith had been taught by her mentor that it was very important to have control of reporting. That the way one was seen in the distant future was through reports. One could be caught out or misrepresented so easily and it could make a big difference to access to funding and advancement of projects. It could mean staffing and publication. It could mean the difference between an untenured teaching job in a two-year U.S. community college, and a career. Sylvia therefore called for reports, as Luke had vaguely asked, and she put them together herself, adding explanations and contexts wherever necessary.

  She couldn’t control what went into each person’s personal input, but the group report was hers. Luke had to approve it, but as long as she didn’t contradict anything he thought he knew, she would be fine. Sylvia didn’t see this as unprofessional: she had been taught, in fact, that it was part of the job.

  It was Sylvia, therefore, who documented Artemisia’s meeting with Guilhem. She reported that Artemisia had to return a valuable item to a villager. She did not indicate how the valuable item had been separated from the villager in the first place. It wasn’t that she was trying to hide her culpability; it was of no relevance to the twenty-first century.

  Artemisia had to write her section of the report, but there was nothing new to write about. She explained the book’s return from her viewpoint, and then analysed Guilhem’s language and gave examples.

  She suspected that people were still squirreling material under their beds. She had no idea why, when the technical folk would see it all and measure it all at the other end. One would have to have extraordinary reasons and a great deal of assistance from other team members to avoid scrutiny. Or maybe limit the smuggling to one’s backpack. She went through the specimen tub with a fierce frown, trying to find something useful to say. In the end, her note to herself said, “The stuff of daily life remains remarkably constant: dishes and towels. Clothes and accessories. Equipment for animals and for farming. It’s the stuff of the afterlife that has changed.” She wrote this up so that it took twenty pages, lavishly illustrated with examples from the samples.

  What a waste of time, she thought. An archaeologist would have got so much more out of these stolen goods than I did. But no, the expedition didn’t run to archaeologists. She wondered, nastily, if Harvey would even know what an archaeologist was if one bit him on the behind.

  Most of the reporting and the putting in shape was straightforward, as Sylvia explained at length. When Sylvia took a break to speak, it was as if the world took a breath with her. Words emerged with a sense of excitement, of something special happening. Thus the most ordinary aspects of daily life were infused with the sense of something extraordinary, and most of the team accepted that Sylvia was worth their attention, simply because of the way she spoke. She used this - possibly unwitt
ingly, definitely unashamedly - to get work done.

  She described that she had had trouble getting research material from Tony because somehow he never quite realised she was demanding material from him. This time she said, “I need this by tomorrow,” and he asked, “What do you need?” and she spelled it out and he provided it on the spot - he had been doing his documentation as he worked and it was all ready. She made a note, however, that he required specific and direct instructions. That talking to the group and explaining something meant that his brain said, “Not for me.” She found this annoying because it meant that Tony’s reports weren’t in quite as early and the whole package wouldn’t be quite perfect. It was important that it be perfect. This, too, her mentor had taught her. Looks count.

  In the interest of looks, she set up the reports to make it quite clear that she had put everything together. This was despite the fact that the others all input their own information and Artemisia and Geoff had helped her set up her systems and massage the material into shape. Again, it was not something she processed - it was simply a part of her work habits. If Guilhem were there, he would have used a proverb, “No-one can serve two lords.” One of Sylvia’s lords was herself and the other was Luke.

  Guilhem could equally have said that about Ben Konig. At this moment, the needs of Ben’s two lords dovetailed. Luke was happy with Ben and Ben’s report to the French Government was going nicely. They were both anticipating ticks on their records when their own respective lords read the report, back in the twenty-first century. They weren’t that worried about reporting, in fact, given that the databurst wouldn’t contain anything problematic.

  “The records are depressing,” Ben said to Sylvia. It was his way of apologising for not having finished his background work. Unlike Tony, he had heard. He had simply not finished.

  “Why?”

  “There’s a bad decade from 1310. Lots of suffering.”

  “Like the Plague?” Sylvia was intent on being helpful.

  “The land suffered. Plants and animals hurt.”