He sat down on the nearest fixed lump and looked around. No-one could see him from here. Not the people from the village, not the people from under the hill. He took out his water bottle and swigged. Then he put his backpack on the ground, stretched out next to it, and watched the sky flow past.
If anyone had asked, he would have claimed to be collecting data. He listened to birds and the noises in the brush. He kept a weather eye on the kermes oak whose spiky branches floated at the edge of his vision. He would have told anyone this, if they had asked. No-one asked and so he lay there, eyes half-shut, at peace with the world.
Ants crawled across him on their way to work. Birds twittered and cooed and called. Ben stopped naming the birds and thinking about the ecosystem. He let everything flow over him.
Eventually, his nemesis arrived. His nemesis took the form of boots stamping through the undergrowth. Soft boots. Medieval boots. Still, the stamping was heavy. It was Mac.
“Stop following me!” Mac’s voice caught on the kermes oak as he turned to face behind him.
What Mac was doing out here and who followed him was a mystery. Why he had boots was less of a mystery. Mac had brought all his own equipment. He hadn’t trusted the expedition to outfit him. Ben was tempted by much of Mac’s specialist equipment, being the same size. Mac was the only member of the party who had boots. Ben carefully put this thought and Mac’s boots far from his conscious mind. Bad enough that Mac was disturbing his equilibrium.
Ben didn’t have to find a hiding place, however - he could stay where he was. He pulled out his notebook and pretended to be hard at work.
“Hi, Ben,” Mac’s voice was definitely in his direction this time. Damn. “Mind if I join you?”
“I’m working,” Ben said, pointedly.
“Yeah, I know. But I need to talk with you...”
“Let’s go back, then.”
Mac shook his head and sat down. “Won’t take a mo. Just gotta warn you about Pauline. She keeps sticking her nose in my workshop. Wants stuff.”
“So stop her.”
“I will, mate, but I’m giving you fair warning. Like I gave them kids.”
“Kids?” Ben had trouble keeping up with Cormac’s leaps sometimes.
“Let’s babble for a tick. You’ll see for yourself.”
“Fine, let me tell you what I was doing,” and Ben invented a rather fine tissue of lies that had nothing to do with the landscape anywhere within a hundred miles. He even waved a hand mildly at “that eucalyptus over there” and found Cormac nodding enthusiastically. “Mac,” he started to say, “This is France, it’s the Middle Ages. There are no gum”
Mac leaped up from his piece of ground, made beast-hands and shouted, “Boo!” at a bush. The bush giggled. Mac slid on the same surface that had defeated Ben and fell in a heap. The bush giggled some more, and then two children ran out of it, heading for the village.
“That sorted them,” Mac said. He picked himself up, brushed himself off, waved goodbye and started back toward the cave.
Ben shook himself off and wandered into the hills. Now that Mac had seen him, he might as well work. This led to Luke making an announcement.
“Ben has found something that may or may not be wolf scat. It has hair and bone chips. No going into the hills alone.” Mostly, Luke’s announcement was ignored and the samples were consigned to the sample bin. Wolves were rare in modern times, even in the garrigue.
“Aren’t you worried?” Pauline asked Ben.
“They might come down during winter,” he said, “If they’re hungry. I can’t see any problems coming into summer.”
* * *
The day was hot and still. A woman sat on a steep step, folding and twisting supple willow into a basket, her clothes loosened and her body angled to catch the least breeze.
That woman was Sibilla, luxuriating in the heat. When she noticed Guilhem watching, she gave him her secret smile, the one that caused him to walk over and stand close. He would not have done this if he had known that Sibilla was responsible for the rest of the village keeping its distance.
“The people under the hill?” she had said, the day before, the week before, whenever she had an ear, “They’re ghosts.” This meant that Guilhem, as intermediary, had special secret knowledge. And that knowledge meant that Guilhem, in his turn, heard the swish of cloth as people turned away. He thought that this was a sign of respect, but the way that the procurators and syndics were treated wasn’t as distant.
He stood near Sibilla, leaning into her warmth.
Guilhem-the-smith had been roped-in by the syndic named to handle Louis. The good priest had interfered with forage rights and stopped Sibilla from gathering willows for basket-making. Louis was a repeat offender, having recently denied the smith himself water access for their animals. The priest ought to be someone who worked for the common good. He didn’t. And the villagers never quite said this aloud, ever, just as the subject of the monastic lands never came up and were never the subject of a dispute even when the dispute was tearing families in pieces.
“I can’t do anything,” Guilhem-the-smith pointed out. “I’m not free of bias in this matter. Besides, it’s the priest. Isn’t this why we have a public notary?”
The public notary also worked for the abbey. The combination of a written decision on rights and of the abbot knowing that Louis was causing a fuss again would quieten things down for a bit. And so the matter was settled even before the sun had moved enough to force Sibilla inside. Or the matter was not settled (merely postponed), the way that the access to the deep clefts and their water and good soil was never settled. The way villagers even without a claim in the world sought to pretend ownership of land at Saint-Jean-de-Fos, because everyone knew that the grapes tasted better down there.
* * *
Ben moved between all groups. Mac and Geoff were buddies, and Ben sometimes joined them. Tony was alone. Pauline, it seemed, understood Sylvia’s loneliness. In return, Pauline defended Sylvia against all comers and all potential threats. They made a little coterie of two. Artemisia wanted to draw a diagram.
There were no other women and Artemisia wasn’t used to chatting casually with men. That let’s-not-forget-home-values upbringing. She’d forgotten how lonely life could be without a girlfriend. Or a sister. At that moment she would have sold her soul to find out what was happening with her sister.
Meanwhile, Sylvia had problems bigger than Pauline’s shoulder could bear.
* * *
“Sylvia has a headache,” Mac observed. “Don’t go in.”
“Sylvia is a headache,” Geoff observed. “All I want is a glass of water.”
“If I stay out, will that be OK?” Appeasement was uppermost in Artemisia’s thoughts.
“You wanted a cuppa,” objected Geoff.
“I can manage.” Artemisia was not going to be the one who set Sylvia off.
“What’s going on?” Prince Valiant’s voice sounded.
“Ben! Our man!”
“Mac, what are you up to?”
Cormac looked entirely innocent. “Not me. Just a small problem.”
“Sylvia has another headache,” explained Geoff.
“In the kitchen,” explained Artemisia.
“And everyone who goes in there is intruding upon her pain?” Ben was not amused. “This is the third time. Is it going to be a regular occurrence?”
“Not if you find a solution,” said Mac, brightly.
“A gentle solution,” added Artemisia.
“Leave it to me.” His jaws firmly clenched, Ben went straight to Luke’s office. Artemisia swore she could almost hear the sound of raised voices. A few minutes later, he was out of there, looking harrowed. “You all owe me,” he said, briefly, and then went into the kitchen.
He and Pauline came out, nursing the ailing Sylvia. They whisked her through the workroom and into the lounge. A moment later he came out, looking very tired.
“The kitchen is ours. Now I need a cup of somet
hing, too. Sylvia has Luke’s chair and some very strong painkillers and the whole of Doc’s attention.”
“And next time?” Geoff’s voice was not its usual warm self.
“Next time she can go straight into the common room. We can do without that more than we can do without the kitchen.”
“The rest of us have beds to be sick in.”
“Leave it, Mac,” Artemisia wasn’t interested in more fuss. “Limestone echoes strangely - the bedroom may be too much for someone in pain. I wouldn’t wish a migraine on my worst enemy.” She walked towards the kitchen, wondering if she could steal the good coffee and enrich it with something stronger.
Geoff walked beside her, whispering in her ear, “Even if your worst enemy is a bitch?”
Artemisia stopped suddenly and looked up at him in surprise.
* * *
The ribbon-laden bush looked festive and fluttering as the wind merrily blew the silk. Artemisia watched this and remained very quiet. Thus she found herself the surprised recipient of Guilhem’s confidence.
“I am lonely,” he said.
Everyone in the little rift between the hills spoke romans, he said. He spoke romans, but also good French — he didn’t belong. Knights were excluded from the village doings because the castle looked to the abbey and he was excluded from the castle because it was a nothing-place. It was managed by the abbey and linked to the town and had little of the castle management he knew and the men there were unfriendly. His status was too great for him to be called on legally and he did what he could to protect the back roads, but it wasn’t his role and he knew it. He would rather pay taxes than be so alone in the village.
Guilhem’s mood shifted. “I miss those of my kind,” he admitted. “I miss training with my gens.”
“You sound like Richard I,” Artemisia admitted.
“How is that?”
“You share the mood of his rotrouenge.”
Guilhem said, “I do not know this rotrouenge.”
Artemisia sang him the first verse of Richard’s Ja nus on pris. She loved the song even as she thought the words were of someone fundamentally unlikeable. Maybe Sylvia was Richard’s reincarnation?
Never has one captured explained his situation
clearly unless he has spoken with sadness;
But for comfort he can make a song.
I have many friends, but their gifts are poor;
Shamed they are, if through lack of ransom
I am two winters imprisoned.
Artemisia gave herself a mental pat on the back for remembering the words and the music and for singing on key. Dr Murray would be so proud of her. Or maybe he would laugh. Either way, he’d be happy. Her voice was its usual small faded self. It was better than her sister’s voice. Lucia sounded very much like Tweety Bird when she tried to sing. Tweety Bird on dope.
Guilhem listened with great courtesy and then sighed and said, “Just like that. My duties have been paid in coin by those who want to keep me distant. My family and my peers do not come to my aid. I am alone.”
While she sang, Artemisia reflected that Guilhem was somewhat of a loner by nature, and that this was a time and place where being alone was a bad, bad thing. His personality might not help. He wanted the support, but he really didn’t act like a team player. He and Sylvia should swap places, she thought, meanly. This is when she realised that she still disliked Sylvia. How many more months do I have to put up with her? And, fairly, how many more months does she have to put up with me?
“At least,” she said, tentatively, “at least you have time. If you are alone, you have time to find friends; if you are without your people then it is only time before you are with them again. You have time.”
“Only time,” echoed Guilhem. “Yes, I have time.”
After the song, after the agreement, after Artemisia’s wise words, came a silence. Artemisia was still lost in her thoughts.
“One moment.” Guilhem held up his hand to emphasise this. “If you would please sit down on that rock?”
Artemisia sat. Guilhem produced some coarse parchment and a lead. He made her hold her feet out, one at a time. He would not brook refusal. His hands were intrusive as he drew the line of her feet on the parchment and made measurements and, apparently in error, gently stroked her ankle.
Guilhem explained the measurements by saying, “One good deed deserves another. You restored my book to me, and your feet are too soft for this hard land.” She had never felt so unsettled by a shoe measurement in her life.
Artemisia was saved from finding a reply by a hail from a hill.
“Not a good thing,” said Guilhem. “That stretch of ground is visible from the village.”
“I’ll warn them,” said Artemisia, and made what she thought of as her courtoisies and then her escape.
She didn’t know what to think of being measured for shoes. It was very intimate. It was one thing to pontificate on what people did from the safety of the twenty-first century. It was another thing to risk being thought of as a woman of low repute by a man who might or might not be dangerous.
She would wear a wimple from now on. The veil had been based on her careful reading of the clothes the fairies wore in all the Arthurian romances. She had quite a few Arthurian romances in her strange library, and she had examined them very closely. They might have used sweet veils and those same light veils might be perfect for this climate, but she wasn’t sure if that was right, even for a woman of rank. Sensibility above comfort. She would miss her pretty veil. She would miss the wind in her hair. She would sweat. But she wouldn’t have to worry about Guilhem’s hands lightly tantalising her ankle.
“Join us,” said Ben. “We’re mapping straight onto the hand-helds and could use your help.”
“Guilhem says not to stand on that hill. You can be seen from town.”
“All this creeping around,” said Mac.
“I know,” Artemisia was torn between twinkling at him and being sympathetic. “It’s positively unheroic.”
“We need to move on anyway. The goal for today is to map two hundred metres over there,” Ben’s arm waved vaguely. “That should take us out of line of sight.”
“What are we mapping and why two hundred metres? And isn’t it all impossibly steep over there?”
Ben ignored the latter question. “I want to illustrate the transition between garrigue and forest. Make close comparisons with the modern treeline.”
“Three hands are better than one, then.”
“Indeed. I brought you your very own hand-held. We’ve got a fair way to walk, so we’d better get moving. I’ll tell you what to look for as we march.”
“Quick MARCH!” shouted Mac, joyously and ironically, as the three clambered slowly away from the town.
* * *
That night, Artemisia did a quick and somewhat dirty translation of Richard’s rotrouenge and posted it to the bulletin board. Maybe it would tempt the others into actually learning one of the languages of the country they were visiting? It didn’t matter that Richard had been dead for a hundred and six years and that the language had moved on. The song haunted her.
And, of course, she was rather worried that she was the only one of the team able to talk to the people of the region. She was being honest with herself, even she could only really talk to the well-born, and her language was faulty and slow. It wasn’t safe. There was no backup should something happen to her.
Still, Richard’s song was beautiful, and his words showed that he was a self-centred whinger. Translating the rhyme was earning her keep. Sort of. And if her fellow team-members couldn’t handle concepts like a ‘raison’ then they could ask. Maybe learn something. That’d be a change.
Never has one captured explained his situation
clearly unless he has spoken with sadness;
But for comfort he can make a song.
I have many friends, but their gifts are poor;
Shamed they are, if through lack of ransom
&n
bsp; I am two winters imprisoned.
They know well, my men and my barons,
English, Norman, Poitevin and Gascon,
that I have never had such a poor companion
Who I would ever leave in prison due to lack of money.
I do not say this with any reproach;
But I am still imprisoned.
Now I know well and with certainty
That the dead and the imprisoned has neither friend nor family,
This gives me sorrow for myself, but even more for my people,
Who after my death will have so much reproach,
If I am imprisoned long.
It is no wonder that I have a sad heart,
When my lord makes my land suffer.
If he would remember our oath
That we made together,
I know well in truth that for such a long time
I would not be imprisoned.
They know well, the Angevins and the Touraines,
Those knights who are rich and well
That I am burdened far from them in the hands of another.
They loved me greatly, but now, not at all.
They do not see grand feats of arms on the land
While I am imprisoned.
My companions whom I have loved and whom I love,
Of Caheu, and of Percherain,
Tell me, song, why they are not true:
Never has my heart been false or fitful towards them.
If they go to war against me, they will be truly lowly/villainous
While I am imprisoned.
Countess sister, your great renown
Be defended and protected by those to whom I complain
And for whom I am imprisoned.
I do not speak of that one from Chartrain,
The mother of Louis.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Badass and Baggage
Sylvia was communing with a cat. She had taken the camera out with intent to commit topographical analysis. Her rock sampling was finished, despite the idiot rules Theo had instituted that restricted her movements. She could demonstrate what was happening through pictures, through simple tests and through rock samples. She had cleared the places she wanted to go and asked for proper permission. She was ready for anything. Including and especially a cat.
Langue[dot]doc 1305 Page 15