His puzzled expression returned. They’d given him bird DNA, she thought, and somewhere in his mind he expects to fly, he knows instinctively how it would feel. She felt a sudden frisson of sorrow, of desolation.
They were too high-handed, those people in the company. They meddled in people’s lives, not just in the past but in their own present. They’d changed so many things they thought they were gods, that they could do whatever they liked. Whose human DNA had they used to create their angel? Had they even asked his permission beforehand?
She remembered Meret, that first time they had met, at the cemetery in Knossos. “Say you started by helping people, preventing a war,” she had said. “And then, little by little, you saw ways you could help yourself, get some more power and resources for you and your friends.”
Even she and Franny and Zach had laughed at the time-bound, had felt themselves superior to people mired in history. What must it be like for the company, for a group able to influence anything they wanted, anywhere in time?
Her thoughts brought her back to Core again. Was the company wrong to meddle in history like this? She wished she’d had more time with Meret, that she’d been able to learn more.
The man had stopped trying to fly. He’d found a package of food Charles had left, wrapped in cloth, and was trying to put the whole thing in his mouth.
“No, wait a minute,” she said, taking the package away from him. She opened it and held out a piece of beef. He pecked at it quickly, like a bird, and when he finished he smiled at her, clearly asking for more.
CHARLES WAS IN A good mood when they came back from the banquet. “We’re having supper with the viscount tonight,” he said. He paced back and forth in the small room, while the others sat on the bed. “So here’s what we’ll do. We’re going to create a sort of theater for him, one where each of you will play a part. I’ll be outside the dining hall for most of it, setting the stage, so you’ll have to engage him in conversation. Are you with me so far?”
What did he think? It wasn’t like his instructions were hard to understand. Though she didn’t know what she could say to a viscount; it was difficult enough just talking to ordinary people. Well, at least Franny would be there, and she seemed to have no trouble coming up with conversation. She nodded along with everyone else.
“All right, good,” Charles said. “We’ll do some role-playing first—I’ll be Trencavel. Talk to me.”
They played through various scenarios, each of them suggesting different topics of conversation, and then Charles said it was time to leave. He looked around for the winged man and found him sitting on the bed, gazing out at them placidly.
Charles threw the blanket over him and herded him toward the door. “Come along, all of you,” he said.
“Wait,” Ann said. “Why are we doing all of this? What’s going to happen?”
“Don’t worry about that. I want you to react naturally, just like the viscount.”
“Well, but that man’s supposed to be an angel, right? That’s what you want Trencavel to think, anyway. So you want him to have some kind of religious experience, make him think he’s seen a miracle.”
“That’s right. Now come on—we have to get there before he does.” He picked up the sack holding his lute.
They left their rooms, the winged man shrouded—like a corpse, she couldn’t help thinking. Why did it bother her so much, that they were about to deceive Trencavel this way? Was it that religion was such a personal thing, that she thought people should make up their own minds, not be tricked into some belief or other? What if the company had shown her an angel with no explanation—wouldn’t she think she’d had a true religious experience?
Or was it something to do with her earlier thought, that the company was playing god to these unsuspecting people? That they’d grown so strong they were just using their power for power’s sake?
“How did they create him?” she asked. “The angel?”
“How should I know?” Charles said. “I’m not a bioengineer.”
They reached the smaller banquet hall and went inside. A door connected with another room, and Charles slipped through it, pulling the angel along with him. “Don’t sit down until he comes,” he called back to them.
“Well, I know that,” Ann said quietly to Franny. They went to the chairs and stood behind them.
The viscount and his wife came in soon after. “Where’s Charles?” he asked.
“He’s getting some music ready,” Franny said, giving him the answer they’d rehearsed. “He wants it to be a surprise.”
“A surprise?” Trencavel said. He rubbed his hands together and grinned benignly at the people around him. “Good. I like surprises, don’t I?”
He and Viscountess Agnes took their seats, and the rest of them followed. Then, unexpectedly, another woman came into the banquet hall and sat next to the viscount.
“This is my cousin, Maheut,” he said.
Maheut was wearing a simple black gown, with a black kerchief over her hair. “She thinks she’s perfect,” Trencavel said, winking at her.
“Don’t listen to him,” Maheut said, smiling. “I’m a Bonhomme. Or I suppose you could say a Bonnefemme.”
A Cathar, a heretic. The viscount must have a great deal of confidence in them, to trust them with such a dangerous family secret.
“One of the Perfecti, though,” Trencavel said. “As I said, perfect. Though don’t worry, cousin—I’ve instructed the kitchen to make food you can eat.”
Trencavel clapped his hands and a serving girl came in, carrying a heavy platter. She had come through a different door than the one Charles was hiding behind, Ann noticed. Well, of course—Charles would have scouted everything out first, found the best place to conceal himself.
“Swans, to begin with,” Trencavel said. The girl brought the platter around to him, and he speared one of the slices eagerly with his knife. Another girl appeared with a platter of fish, which she carried over to Maheut. They began to eat—all except Maheut, who paused to say a prayer over her food first.
There was silence for a while, and then Maheut looked across the table at Franny. “You look as if you have some questions,” she said. “It’s all right—I won’t be offended by anything you say.”
“Watch out—she wants to convert you,” Trencavel said.
“We don’t convert people,” Maheut said. “We simply tell them what we believe, and let them decide for themselves.”
“Well, all right,” Franny said. “Isn’t it hard to—well, to give everything up the way you have? Don’t you want to eat meat sometimes, and drink wine, and get married?”
“Are you married?” Maheut asked her.
Franny looked startled. She was single according to her cover story; no husband would let his wife run free all over Europe. “No,” she said.
Maheut shook her head. “I thought you were, for some reason. Still, you must know that a great many marriages are unhappy. Especially among noble-born men and women— their marriages are arranged by their fathers, to make alliances between families. That’s why so many of them enjoy your songs, the ones about falling in love, and lying with anyone you desire.”
She took a sip from the cup in front of her; unlike the others, who were drinking wine, she had been given only water. “I think that’s the question you really want to ask, about lying with a man. And yes, I do miss it, very much sometimes. But I know that it was the false god of this world who invented all of that, to snare us, to make us desire carnality and forget about the soul.”
Professor Strickland had discussed this, of course. And yet Ann, who had never had any religious inclinations before she had gone traveling in time, who felt reverence for no one except possibly an ancient forgotten goddess, was shocked to hear the god that most people worshipped described in such negative terms.
“But don’t you think—”
Franny stopped. Music came from somewhere, not lutes or drums but sounds the viscount and his family had never hear
d in their lives. A rising and falling wail like a theremin, that spooky wind that blew through a thousand horror movies. The worst kind of cliché, Ann thought—though of course it would not be a cliché for the viscount, or any of the people in this tace.
“By our Lady!” Trencavel said. “What—what in heaven’s name is that?”
The winged man came into the room, wearing only his hose. A light shone around him, making his fair hair glow like a halo. His amber eyes were shot with gold.
The viscountess uttered a small scream and put her hands to her mouth. The viscount scraped back his chair and started to stand, then sat back down. Even Maheut, who had seemed unflappable, looked startled.
The music changed, to a soft chorus of soprano voices. “There is a higher world than this one,” another voice said. It was Charles speaking, of course; the angel could not talk. Still, everyone stared raptly at the winged man standing in front of them. “One not mired in falsehood, in material things. You must change your life. You must turn to the true god. The god who sits above this world, who—”
The serving girl came into the room, carrying a ceramic bowl of fruit. She gaped at the angel, her eyes wide, then dropped the bowl and fell to her knees. The bowl smashed against the stone floor. The angel froze, his eyes filled with terror, and then fled into the hallway.
CHARLES SWORE LOUDLY FROM the next room. The music stopped. Charles rushed through the banquet hall and outside, following the angel. “What was that, man?” the viscount asked.
“Come on—we have to find him,” Charles called back.
They all hurried out into the hallway, then split up in different directions. Ann found herself sprinting through rooms and corridors, looking around frantically, her mind replaying the scene in the banquet hall. Had they failed their assignment? Clearly Charles had wanted Trencavel to become a Cathar (though why?), but would he believe he had been visited by an angel? Or would he realize that Charles had tricked him?
The banquet hall. She remembered the winged man eating from her hand, taking tiny bites like a bird. A servant was heading toward her; she stopped him and asked the way to the kitchen.
It turned out to be a long way from the smaller banquet hall, a long way from nearly everything. They’d built it at a distance to keep fires from spreading into the heart of the castle, she remembered that from her lessons. Finally she saw the small arched hallway the servant had described, and she ran down it, breathing hard, and turned into the final doorway.
The angel stood there, calmly pecking at a chicken set out on a table. All of the kitchen servants were on their knees, watching him, their eyes wide with wonder. The serving girl was among them—so that was how he had found the kitchen, Ann thought, by following her. Someone was muttering a prayer.
Ann went toward him and grasped him by the arm. “Come along,” she said.
He continued to eat, ignoring her. She broke off a chicken wing and held it out to him, and he followed it uncomplaining, out of the kitchen and down the hallway.
There was no one nearby, but she could not imagine that they could make their way through the castle without drawing attention. She hurried into one of the rooms, still holding his arm, and grabbed a blanket and draped it over his wings.
He ignored this and continued to peck at the chicken. When he was finished he pulled away from her, back toward the kitchen. “This way,” she said, forcing him forward, trying not to become angry at him. She held onto the pity she had felt, the anger at what had been done to him.
He stopped pulling and became docile again. Probably he couldn’t keep anything in his mind for very long, she thought.
She got lost more than once on the way back, but she kept going without asking for directions, thinking that the fewer people who noticed them the better. Finally, after a long time of wandering through the castle, she found their rooms.
They were the first ones back. The angel dropped to one of the beds as soon as they were inside and fell asleep a moment later. She was tempted to lie down as well, but she had to keep an eye on him, at least until the others returned. As she watched he made an attempt to turn over, but he was stopped by the bulk of his wings and had to roll back on his stomach.
A moment later the door opened and Charles entered, carrying the sack with his lute. “Where did you find him?” he asked.
No “Well done,” or “Good for you,” she thought. Why was the company so stingy with its praise?
“In the kitchen.”
“Ah. That makes sense. Well—thank you.”
He seemed to begrudge her the words, as though he had a limited supply of gratitude and was afraid it would run out. Still, at least he had said it. “You’re welcome,” she said.
The angel tried to turn over again, then whimpered softly and fell back on his stomach. “Poor guy,” she said.
Charles looked puzzled, no doubt wondering why it bothered her. “Well, we aren’t finished here, I’m afraid. We have to get him back to the company right away, before someone spots him.”
He glanced around the room without taking any of it in. “Where were the others, did you see them?”
She shook her head.
“We can’t wait for them. I’ll leave them a note—” He looked around again, then seemed to realize that they didn’t have any pens or paper. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s go.”
He woke up the angel and threw the blanket over his wings, then picked up his sack. The door opened and Franny and Jerry came in.
“Hey—where was he?” Franny said, seeing the winged man.
“Never mind that,” Charles said. “We have to get to the key.”
“What about the viscount?” Ann asked. “Shouldn’t we get back to the banquet?”
“It’s best to leave him alone for now, to think about what just happened.”
They hurried out of the castle and down to the gates, then back along the Roman road. As they went Charles told the others how Ann had found the winged man.
Finally they reached the grove. Charles handed the angel over to Ann, then knelt in the dirt and began to dig. He found nothing in his first few handfuls, and he frowned and dug faster.
“Are you sure that’s where you buried it?” Franny asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” he said.
The rest of them went to dig alongside him, but none of them found the key. Charles sat back on his heels and looked around him, studying the trees and the road.
“We align the key with various landmarks,” he said. “I used that branch there, and this stone … It should be right here.”
“I thought I heard someone watching us that time, remember?” Ann said. “Maybe they took it after we left.”
Charles said nothing. He returned to the hole he had made and dug a while longer. Now what? Were they trapped here? No, wait—he still had the computer as a backup. “You can send a message to the company, right?” she asked.
Charles stood up again and brushed his hands together. “That’s right.” He opened the sack and brought out his computer.
“I was wondering why you were still carrying your lute,” Franny said, laughing.
He ignored her, unrolling the computer and placing the keyboard on the ground, then typing for several minutes. “You’re going to have to stand back,” he said finally. “You don’t want to be caught up along with him.”
Ann let go of the angel, and they all moved a few feet away. “Here we go,” Charles said. “Close your eyes.”
Once again Ann kept her eyes open, and once again she was swept by a feeling of wrongness, of strange colors and unnatural geometries. Something doesn’t want people to travel in time, she thought. Then a vortex of color reached out for the angel, and he was gone.
“All right then,” Charles said.
His voice seemed to come from a long way away. Ann was still staring at the void where the angel had been, and she forced herself to look away. Charles rolled up the computer and headed for the road.
&nbs
p; “Wait a minute,” Ann said, hurrying after him. “What about the key? We need to get it back, right?”
“Well, I’d like to find it,” Charles said. “I have to take it inside the walls, for one thing—the crusaders will get here in about a week. But it doesn’t matter all that much.”
“Really? But what if—if some archaeologist digs it up years later, and wonders where it came from?”
“That happens less often than you might think. The Law of Conservation of History. And even if they do find it, they’ll just assume that someone made a mistake, that it came from a higher stratum, a later one.” He paused, then said, “Still, keep your ears open, and if you hear something let me know. People who find things like that tend to talk about them.”
“Can they use it?” Franny asked. “Turn it on somehow?”
Charles laughed. “One of the timebound? Can you imagine Trencavel learning how to travel in time? No, it’s safeguarded against them.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“What’s going to happen to the angel?” Ann asked.
“How should I know?” Charles said. “He’ll be used on another assignment, maybe. Probably.”
“Why didn’t we go back with him? Is there more to our assignment?”
Charles looked up and down the road but it was deserted; nearly everyone had gone behind the walls of the city. “Yes, there’s more,” he said. “We have to make sure the viscount has a conversion experience, that he becomes a Cathar. And if we can’t be certain of him we’ll have to stay here until August, to see if—”
“Why?” Ann said.
“What?”
“Why do we want Trencavel to convert? What happens if he does?”
Charles stopped. “Don’t you listen to anything we say?” he said. “We can’t know that. We have to finish out our assignment with no knowledge of the consequences, otherwise it might influence our actions. They’ll answer all your questions when you get back.”
“Well, but they don’t, not always,” she said, remembering what Gregory had told them, that the company had never explained why he had cut that axle during the Spanish Inquisition.
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