“You weren’t talking about people. My bad.”
“It’s good we didn’t get here a few years later.” Konig was determinedly morose. “Heat from 1310. Floods in 1315. Crop failure 1316. The worst decade in 150 years. The indices are simply fabulous.”
“And after 1350 it was all bad,” Artemisia added helpfully.
“You’ve read the records.” For a moment Ben saw a kindred soul and there was a spark as he looked at Artemisia.
“No,” said Artemisia. “I know the politics. Politics reflect the way the land hurts.”
Ben’s little spark turned into a flame. “Show me!” And Sylvia’s report was forgotten.
There were two results from this little moment. The first was that Sylvia’s somewhat negative neutrality about Artemisia turned into active dislike. The second was that Ben enlisted Mac and Artemisia as fieldworkers to help document species diversity. He wanted to test Artemisia’s statement about politics reflecting the state of the natural environment. He wanted to widen his information base.
The immediate consequence, however, was that Sylvia pulled all the workthreads back towards her. She called meeting after meeting to explain and go through the records and make sure that they would be ready to go in time. In time, Artemisia thought, sourly as she sat through more useless agonising. A joke! Just like these meetings. She was sour because her work didn’t count in Sylvia’s eyes and yet she was still forced to sit and to listen.
* * *
Once upon a time, the castle on the hill was called Géant. Not in the Middle Ages (Artemisia would have explained, if anyone had been listening) but later. The castle was called Géant because it was inhabited by the evil giant Gellone. Giants were all evil in those days, remnants of the offspring of men and demons from the time before the Flood. Artemisia thought about the story and about William and about the Giant who lived in the castle called Giant and she looked back through her database until she found a reference to it. Then she wrote a briefing. She kept the briefing short, as instructed.
The story goes that there was a fight between Gellone the giant and William, and William won. It says so in the Guide pittoresque from 1837. I can email you the details if you want.
Sylvia had obviously read the briefing almost the moment Artemisia had posted it, for there she was, standing behind Artemisia, a smidgeon too close, her index finger pointing accusingly at the screen. “Very helpful,” said Sylvia, with sarcasm. “You’ve already told us.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Artemisia politely, taking the wind right out of Sylvia’s sails.
“I’m not putting it in the report home.” The scientist made one of her pretty pouts, pivoted and went back to her own desk. Artemisia wondered what other information she could repeat, just to annoy Sylvia. Everyone needed a hobby.
* * *
“I thought…” Artemisia didn’t know how to say it. The ribbon had gone unexpectedly and she had hung around to see what would happen, mostly out of boredom.
Guilhem laughed and explained slowly that his horse had cast a shoe. He had come to check in case Artemisia had visited, and was on his way out. About an hour, then, Artemisia estimated. She had no idea how to ask. Clocks had been invented, but did that mean Guilhem counted time in hours, or not? “When do you leave?” was what came out of her mouth. She wanted to bite her tongue.
“In a little,” said Guilhem, amused. “Perhaps I could ask some questions this time?”
“Of course,” said Artemisia, uncertainly.
“I shall speak slowly.”
“Good.”
“The tall man with dark hair and copper skin…”
“Yes?”
“He is an Ethiop?”
Artemisia’s day was suddenly merrier. She was entertained by the thought of Geoff as an Ethiop. “No,” she admitted, regretfully. “He is from a lot further away. Terra Australis.”
“Ah,” said Guilhem, “the Antipodes.”
“Indeed. His skin is dark from the Languedocien sun.”
“And he has made no pact with the Devil?”
“None of our people have anything to do with the Devil. We’re from a very long distance. Our ways are not your ways, but we are good Christians.” Some of us were, once, she corrected herself mentally, hoping that her lies wouldn’t haunt her.
“Not even Cathar,” Guilhem sounded disappointed.
“I thought there were no more Cathars.” Artemisia was excited. Was there a popular understanding of Cathar survival? Would this lead into the Inquisition’s efforts a few years from now?
“I believe so,” Guilhem dismissed Artemisia’s hope with a wave of his hand. “I merely asked.”
“I have never met a Cathar,” admitted Artemisia, wistfully.
“Nor have I. I have met the worshippers of Mohammed, and I have met many, many Jews, but the Cathars are gone.”
“Sad.”
“Maybe.” The sun shone down on the two of them, as it would shine no longer on the Cathars. Eventually Guilhem volunteered, “There are Jews in Lodève and in Béziers and in Pézenas and in Montpellier. They look ordinary. I threw stones at one, one Easter, but it drew blood and I stopped.” What an odd little confession.
“There are no Jews here?”
“Not in William’s town. Only good Catholics here, since the very beginning.”
“The bones keep them away?”
“Or the abbot.” Artemisia was surprised at Guilhem’s cynicism.
A thought struck her. “Geoff,” she said, “the tall one. He is like Rainouart.”
“Who became a good Christian. A hero. Not skilled at arms. Not very clever.”
(Artemisia repeated this to Geoff later and he found it very amusing. “Grandma would love to know I’m a good Christian,” he said. “She already knows I’m not very bright.”)
“I’m told that the Devil leads all non-Christians,” Guilhem said, still conversational, still keeping his speech slow.
“Who tells you this?”
“The priest at Saint-Barthelmy, Father Louis.”
“Ah,” said Artemisia. “He sent you to ask.” She was relieved that she had lied. The sunlight occupied the space between their speech.
“And so I have done. You may ask me something now,” Guilhem filled in that space.
“Processionals,” Artemisia heard the word emerge from her lips and smiled. She needed to know, even if the rest of the team didn’t even know what one was and how they might affect everyone’s work. “I would like to know the days and the paths they travel.”
“You wish to attend?” Guilhem didn’t like this thought.
“I wish I could,” said Artemisia, with honesty. “What I wish to do is keep my friends away from them.”
“You would know the days,” his voice was stiff.
“My year is not your year. We celebrate different saints. Allow me to help us respect this place and these people.”
After this Guilhem explained to Artemisia only that he would be away for a little. “I will not have your shoes this time. I am sorry for the delay — nothing happens the way I plan it. When I return, you will know.” He gestured to the bush. “Until then,” Guilhem suggested, “you should stay away from the village. Try to keep your friends from misbehaving?”
“Try? Yes, I can try.”
The two laughed, united in sarcasm.
Chapter Eighteen
Ethics
Ben was teaching Cormac how to observe. They had wedged themselves comfortably into a limestone cleft, looking down over the hills with their groves and their deep runnels from water and their pale houses. The lower they looked, the more green it was. Up high, it was windswept and exposed and bare rock.
“This is a shaped landscape,” he explained. “Olives, grapes and the crops over the river. Sheep and goats and charcoal.”
“The briefing said that. It’s the Middle Ages.” Cormac was being intentionally dense. Ben was playing the carry-on-regardless game.
“I know. But already. We s
hould have come two thousand years ago. Or ten thousand. Before forest was turned into garrigue.”
“Medieval Warm Period,” said Luke, passing. “Very important for climate research. You said so.”
“Shut up,” Ben whispered. He picked himself up very quickly, but Cormac sported a big grin.
“I won’t tell anyone you said that,” he promised.
“If you don’t, I’ll write you a list of things to watch for. On paper.” Ben knew that Cormac was in love with lists, and had been left out when the paper rations were allocated.
“I never knew I’d be so bloody happy to see a piece of paper.”
“What will you do with the blank parts?” Artemisia walked by at that moment and couldn’t help but ask.
“Write rude limericks.”
The three smiled. Konig felt that a crisis had been averted. Smith wasn’t the sort of man who’d care much about disrespect. He was, in fact, more the type who would deliver it. He attached some blank sheets to his list, however, as a bit of a thank-you. He had paper, after all, and Mac had none.
* * *
Tony had become firm friends with an elegant ginger cat that had found his hidden garden. The cat mostly slept under a bushy plant near the south edge of Tony’s patch. He would tickle it under the chin on his way past, and rub a leaf or two of the herb. When it bloomed, the flowers would look like clusters of thin tubes with a little bell at the end. He pictured it in his mind’s eye. Badasse frutescens, he murmured every time. It smelled like a very faintly acrid sweetpea, delicate and interesting.
One day, he realised he was naming the cat as well as the plant. He never thought to tell the others that the little ginger cat shared his work, or that it was called Badass, although it slipped out once when Cormac was helping him.
They had a very amicable relationship, the cat and the scientist. Tony liked the babble of voices in the background - he just didn’t like words - so Badass’s loquacity suited him perfectly. As well as talking, Badass would investigate. Tony was his and Tony’s garden was his and Tony’s garden equipment was his and it all needed inspecting.
It was when Badass introduced his friend to Tony that things became more interesting. The goat was a dirty cream, slender and shaggy and muscular, with an inquisitive face and a hungry mien. Tony was not expecting a goat to stick his nose into the garden. It was eating something. That something was definitely not plant material.
Flustered, Tony chased the animal. He chased it from his level horticultural zone to the rocky slope. The goat jumped a small jump to get over a rock and so did Tony. The goat nimbly landed on the uneven ground below and looked back. Tony slid down the rough slope and fell on his trowel. He cut himself. He looked down at his leg and wondered why it wasn’t bleeding more. He wasn’t worried about it. He was worried about the goat.
Tony saw that his ball of twine was next to the trowel. He grabbed it and chased the goat again. He caught the wiry animal and tied some of the string around its neck. He dragged the goat to the caves and presented it to Pauline.
“I have a problem,” he said.
Pauline was full of organised calm. “Let’s get that goat out and I’ll take care of your damage. Geoff! Goat! Now!”
“No,” said Tony, quiet and very stubborn. “The goat needs help. Might have eaten something.”
“Goats always eat things,” said Geoff. “My cousin breeds them and they win ribbons and then eat their own ribbons.”
“You need to look at it,” Tony was becoming upset.
“Give me the string,” said Geoff. “I’ll take it outside and check it and we’ll wait for you there. How does that sound?”
Tony nodded. Geoff coaxed the animal through the caverns, trying to prevent it from investigating and eating and getting into more trouble. How Tony had brought it this far was a mystery.
When the goat was out of sight, Tony sat down and held out his leg for Pauline to look at. She shook her head, but brought her supplies into the kitchen and cleaned and stitched and bandaged. She didn’t scold him. She never tut-tutted. She simply dealt with the wound, patted Tony on the head and sent him outside to check the goat.
Geoff was persuading it to trim the grass near the front door and they were both happy as larks.
Back in the kitchen, Pauline hardly had time to clean the last of the mess when Luke arrived, needing clean white surface, coffee, and someone who was willing to listen to him mutter. She and Luke had become good friends, and she was happy to be there for him. She felt safe, and treasured. Pauline brought out chocolate biscuits and put one next to Luke’s cup. He didn’t notice, but ate it anyway.
Luke was certain that he was the centre of whatever in-group the caverns aspired to. Pauline felt likewise, because she fed people, because she was implicit in the private conversations and the politics, and because of Sylvia. They were both very well self-satisfied, which showed in their interactions, all the time, how Luke accepted treats and how Pauline ensured he was given them. She also ensured that Sylvia was treated well. When that scientist came into the kitchen in search of Luke, Pauline was ready with coffee and a biscuit.
Artemisia, on the other hand, was so used to a lukewarm reception that she walked in, saw who was there, and walked out again. Ben, a few minutes later, simply put his notepad on the table, sat down and got on with his work. He saw the exclusion zone, but he intended to destroy it. After a few minutes he set to work.
“Excuse me, Luke, Sylvia, I’ve got a couple of questions.”
Before she could answer, Mac marched from the direction of his workroom, his hands full of items he was working on and he, in turn, interrupted Ben who had interrupted Sylvia. Mac only had a moment before Tony drifted out of his usual reverie with a cogent question for their leader. Luke was looking harassed.
Pauline leapt into protect her people. “Stop this, at once!” she said. “Sylvia and Luke were talking about something important.”
Luke, freed from all of them while Pauline started a good scold, picked himself up, took himself to his office, and put up a Do Not Disturb sign.
* * *
Guilhem and Peire looked steadfastly at the carving of Christ docent. Peire loved that carving, while Guilhem loved the craft within it. Neither of them loved being here, in the abbey, waiting for an opinion from on high, or from Abbot Bernard, depending on whether God or Bernard felt like giving an opinion that day.
No-one knew what the abbot thought about the denizens of underground. They weren’t even sure that today’s pronouncement would be about the hill-dwellers. Guilhem wondered if he would be given another set of penalties — he had taken to assuming that, since life dished him out so very many. For Peire, the fact of the pronouncement was crucial: each decision the abbot made kept the village a village. A little more independence and Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert would become a town. A town in the abbey’s shadow, always, but a town. And so the two studied Christ as if his long face were all they needed in their lives.
Long men with bony faces were carved into the abbey. Their grace and strength perpetually reminded dumpy monks of what they never could be. The carvings for heretics were a perpetual reminder to the monks of what they never should be. The interior abbey was a place of great beauty that served to perpetually humiliate its inhabitants and make them feel small in the eyes of God and of those long-boned carvings with their flowing robes.
Bernard emulated these statues and said nothing of import that day, but he said it gracefully. The villagers and country people are full of wild beliefs, he said, and needed to be reminded of God.
A while later, Peire found himself sitting at the edge of the Verdus with Guilhem-the-smith, the stone beneath them warmed by the sun, the tumbling water downstream almost swallowed by the moss and the sheet that had somehow escaped the hold of one of the women, washing nearby. They were sharing wine (almost the last of the previous year’s vintage — a fine drop) and talking slowly.
“The Saint-Barthelmy folk have been talking to me,”
said the smith, eventually.
“What is it this time?” Peire tried to not to sound long-suffering.
“The strangers. Father Louis gives them no guidance, they tell me.”
“And they don’t want to be seen near Saint-Laurent so they come to you to ask me. It must be serious.”
“No more serious than your parishioners announcing yet again that it’s Saint-Barthelmy’s problem.”
“Because of course, they are closer to the strangers.”
“Of course. Saint-Laurent protects us from travellers from Aniane, after all.” The smith was being ironic. Aniane was full of cousins and friends. Just like the tall walls that sheltered this spot in the centre of the town.
“I think it might be the castle’s problem,” suggested Peire, tentatively.
“I’ve already tried that. The abbot told the castle that we were telling stories and embroidering the landscape — there are no strangers under that hill.”
“How did he come to that conclusion?”
“No evidence of transgression,” Guilhem-the-smith was obviously quoting. “No-one that the monks have seen.”
“They don’t really transgress,” said Peire, with his habitual mildness. “The missing items were dropped by the path or lost in the fields. And no-one has ever died from the looks of curious strangers.”
“Indeed, the knight says that his contact tells them to refrain from coming too close. She has returned valuable items.”
“Nevertheless, we possibly should think about action.”
“Possibly.” The three women looked up from their washing and the boys looked across from their game of chance. For a moment, the only sound was that of the stream. “But not yet.”
“We will tell the knight, I think.”
“These strangers cannot be expected to know our law when those idiots gambling around the corner do not.”
“We are not idiots!” Fiz called out.
* * *
“Our ethics are fucked.” Ben gave up on convincing anyone and shoved his keyboard away. Filling in all the regulation forms suddenly felt futile. Artemisia had a way of saying things that changed realities if you listened for too long.
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