Timeline. Part 29

"But-"

"In a minute."

For the first time, Marek felt a twinge of uncertainty. Until now, nothing he had seen in this world had seemed out of place, or unexpected. The monastery was just as he had expected. The peasants in the fields were as he had expected. The tournament being set up was as he had pictured it. And when he entered the town of Castelgard, he again found it exactly as he had thought it would be. Kate had been appalled by the butcher on the cobblestones, and the stench of the tanner's vats, but Marek was not. It was all as he had imagined it, years ago.

But not this, he thought, watching the knights fight.

It was so fast! The swordplay was so swift and continuous, attempting to slash with both downswing and backswing, so that it looked more like fencing than sword fighting. The clangs of impact came only a second or two apart. And the fight proceeded without hesitation or pause. The swordplay was so swift and continuous, attempting to slash with both downswing and backswing, so that it looked more like fencing than sword fighting. The clangs of impact came only a second or two apart. And the fight proceeded without hesitation or pause.

Marek had always imagined these fights as taking place in slow motion: ungainly armored men wielding swords so heavy that each swing was an effort, carrying dangerous momentum and requiring time to recover and reset before the next swing. He had read accounts of how exhausted men were after battle, and he had a.s.sumed it was the result of the extended effort of slow fights, encased in steel.

These warriors were big and powerful in every way. Their horses were enormous, and they themselves appeared to be six feet or more, and extremely strong.

Marek had never been fooled by the small size of the armor in museum display cases-he knew that any armor that found its way into a museum was ceremonial and had never been worn in anything more hazardous than a medieval parade. Marek also suspected, though he could not prove it, that much of the surviving armor-highly decorated, chiseled and chased-was intended only for display, and had been made at three-quarter scale, the better to show the delicacy of the craftsmen's designs.

Genuine battle armor never survived. And he had read enough accounts to know that the most celebrated warriors of medieval times were invariably big men-tall, muscular and unusually strong. They were from the n.o.bility; they were better fed; and they were big. He had read how they trained, and how they delighted in performing feats of strength for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the ladies.

And yet, somehow, he had never imagined anything remotely like this. These men fought furiously, swiftly and continuously-and it looked as if they could go all day. Neither gave the least indication of fatigue; if anything, they seemed to be enjoying their exertions.

As he watched their aggressiveness and speed, Marek realized that left to his own devices, this was exactly the way he himself would choose to fight-quickly, with the conditioning and reserves of stamina to wear down an opponent. He had only imagined a slower fighting style from an unconscious a.s.sumption that men in the past were weaker or slower or less imaginative than he was, as a modern man.

Marek knew this a.s.sumption of superiority was a difficulty faced by every historian. He just hadn't thought he was guilty of it.

But clearly, he was.

It took him a while to realize, through the shouting of the crowd, that the combatants were in such superb physical condition that they could expend breath shouting as they fought; they hurled a stream of taunts and insults at each other between blows.

And then he saw that their swords were not blunted, that they were swinging real battle swords, with razor-sharp edges. Yet they clearly intended each other no harm; this was just an amusing warm-up to the coming tournament. Their cheerful, casual approach to deadly hazard was almost as unnerving as the speed and intensity with which they fought.

The battle continued for another ten minutes, until one mighty swing unhorsed one knight. He fell to the ground but immediately jumped up laughing, as easily as if he were wearing no armor. Money changed hands. There were cries of "Again! Again!" A fistfight broke out among the liveried boys. The two knights walked off, arm in arm, toward the inn.

Marek heard Kate say, "Andre...."

He turned slowly toward her.

"Andre, is everything all right?"

"Everything is fine," he said. "But I have a lot to learn."

They walked down the castle drawbridge, approaching the guards. He felt Kate tense alongside him. "What do we do? What do we say?"

"Don't worry. I speak Occitan."

But as they came closer, another fight broke out on the field beyond the moat, and the guards watched it. They were entirely preoccupied as Marek and Kate pa.s.sed through the stone arch and entered the castle courtyard.

"We just walked in," Kate said, surprised. She looked around the courtyard. "Now what?"

It was freezing, Chris thought. He sat naked, except for his undershorts, on a stool in Sir Daniel's small apartment. Beside him was a basin of steaming water, and a hand cloth for was.h.i.+ng. The boy had brought the basin of water up from the kitchen, carrying it as if it were gold; his manner indicated that it was a sign of favor to be treated to hot water.

Chris had dutifully scrubbed himself, refusing the boy's offers of a.s.sistance. The bowl was small, and the water soon black. But eventually he'd managed to sc.r.a.pe the mud from beneath his fingernails, off his body and even off his face, with the aid of a tiny metal mirror the boy handed him.

Finally, he p.r.o.nounced himself satisfied. But the boy, with a look of distress, said, "Master Christopher, you are not clean. you are not clean." And he insisted on doing the rest.

So Chris sat s.h.i.+vering on his wooden stool while the boy scrubbed him for what seemed like an hour. Chris was perplexed; he'd always thought that medieval people were dirty and smelly, immersed in the filth of the age. Yet these people seemed to make a fetish of cleanliness. Everyone he saw in the castle was clean, and there were no odors.

Even the toilet, which the boy insisted he use before bathing, was not as awful as Chris had expected. Located behind a wooden door in the bedroom, it was a narrow closet, fitted with a stone seat above a basin that drained into a pipe. Apparently, waste flowed down to the ground floor of the castle, where it was removed daily. The boy explained that each morning a servant flushed the pipe with scented water, then placed a fresh bouquet of sweet-smelling herbs in a clip on the wall. So the odor was not objectionable. In fact, he thought ruefully, he'd smelled much worse in airplane toilets.

And to top it all, these people wiped themselves with strips of white linen! No, he thought, things were not as he had expected.

One advantage of being forced to sit there was that he was able to try speaking to the boy. The boy was tolerant, and replied slowly to Chris, as if to an idiot. But this enabled Chris to hear him before the earpiece translation, and he quickly discovered that imitation helped; if he overcame his embarra.s.sment and employed the archaic phrases he had read in texts-many of which the young boy himself used-then the boy understood him much more easily. So Chris gradually fell to saying "Methinks" instead of "I think," and "an" instead of "if," and "for sooth" instead of "in truth." And with each small change, the boy seemed to understand him better.

Chris was still sitting on the stool when Sir Daniel entered the room. He brought neatly folded clothes, rich and expensive-looking. He placed them on the bed.

"So, Christopher of Hewes. You have involved yourself with our clever beauty."

"She hath saved mine life." He p.r.o.nounced it say-ved say-ved. And Sir Daniel seemed to understand.

"I hope it will not cause you trouble."

"Trouble?"

Sir Daniel sighed. "She tells me, friend Chris, that you are gentle, yet not a knight. You are a squire?"

"In sooth, yes."

"A very old old squire," Sir Daniel said. "What is your training at arms?" squire," Sir Daniel said. "What is your training at arms?"

"My training at arms ..." Chris frowned. "Well, I have, uh-"

"Have you any at all? Speak plain: What is your training?"

Chris decided he had better tell the truth. "In sooth, I am-I mean, trained-in my studies-as a scholar."

"A scholar?" The old man shook his head, incomprehending. "Escolie? Esne discipulus? Studesne sub magistro?" "Escolie? Esne discipulus? Studesne sub magistro?" You study under a master? You study under a master?

"Ita est." Even so. Even so.

"Ubi?" Where? Where?

"Uh ... at, uh, Oxford."

"Oxford?" Sir Daniel snorted. "Then you have no business here, with such as my Lady. Believe me when I say this is no place for a scolere scolere. Let me tell you how your circ.u.mstances now lie."

"Lord Oliver needs money to pay his soldiers, and he has plundered all he can from the nearby towns. So now he presses Claire to marry, that he may gain his fee. Guy de Malegant has tendered a handsome offer, very pleasing to Lord Oliver. But Guy is not wealthy, and he cannot make good on his fee unless he mortgages part of my Lady's holdings. To this she will not accede. Many believe that Lord Oliver and Guy have long since made a private agreement-one to sell the Lady Claire, the other to sell her lands."

Chris said nothing.

"There is a further impediment to the match. Claire despises Malegant, whom she suspects had a hand in her husband's death. Guy was in attendance of Geoffrey at the time of his death. Everyone was surprised by the suddenness of his departure from this world. Geoffrey was a young and vigorous knight. Although his wounds were serious, he made steady recovery. No one knows the truth of that day, yet there are rumors-many rumors-of poison."

"I see," Chris said.

"Do you? I doubt it. For consider: my Lady might as well be a prisoner of Lord Oliver in this castle. She may herself slip out, but she cannot secretly remove her entire retinue. If she secretly departs and returns to England-which is her wish-Lord Oliver will take his revenge against me, and others of her household. She knows this, and so she must stay.

"Lord Oliver wishes her to marry, and my Lady devises stratagems to postpone it. It is true she is clever. But Lord Oliver is not a patient man, and he will force the matter soon. Now, her only hope lies there." Sir Daniel walked over and pointed out the window.

Chris came to the window and looked.

From this high window, he saw a view over the courtyard, and the battlements of the outer castle wall. Beyond he saw the roofs of the town, then the town wall, with guards walking the parapets. Then fields and countryside stretching off into the distance.

Chris looked at Sir Daniel questioningly.

Sir Daniel said, "There, my scolere scolere. The fires."

He was pointing in the far distance. Squinting, Chris could just make out faint columns of smoke disappearing into the blue haze. It was at the limit of what he could see.

"That is the company of Arnaut de Cervole," Sir Daniel said. "They are encamped no more than fifteen miles distant. They will reach here in a day-two days at most. All know it."

"And Sir Oliver?"

"He knows his battle with Arnaut will be fierce."

"And yet he holds a tournament-"

"That is a matter of his honor," Sir Daniel said. "His p.r.i.c.kly honor. Certes, he would disband it, if he could. But he does not dare. And herein lies your hazard."

"My hazard?"

Sir Daniel sighed. He began pacing. "Dress you now, to meet my Lord Oliver in proper fas.h.i.+on. I shall try to avert the coming disaster."

The old man turned and walked out of the room. Chris looked at the boy. He had stopped scrubbing.

"What disaster?" he said.

33:12:51.

It was a peculiarity of medieval scholars.h.i.+p in the twentieth century that there was not a single contemporary picture that showed what the interior of a fourteenth-century castle looked like. Not a painting, or an illuminated ma.n.u.script image, or a notebook sketch-there was nothing at all from that time. The earliest images of fourteenth-century life had actually been made in the fifteenth century, and the interiors-and food, and costumes-they portrayed were correct for the fifteenth century, not the fourteenth.

As a result, no modern scholar knew what furniture was used, how walls were decorated, or how people dressed and behaved. The absence of information was so complete that when the apartments of King Edward I were excavated in the Tower of London, the reconstructed walls had to be left as exposed plaster, because no one could say what decorations might have been there.

This was also why artists' reconstructions of the fourteenth century tended to show bleak interiors, rooms with bare walls and few furnis.h.i.+ngs-perhaps a chair, or a chest-but not much else. The very absence of contemporary imagery was taken to imply a spa.r.s.eness to life at that time.

All this flashed through Kate Erickson's mind as she entered the great hall of Castelgard. What she was about to see, no historian had ever seen before. She walked in, slipping through the crowd, following Marek. And she stared, stunned by the richness and the chaos displayed before her.

The great hall sparkled like an enormous jewel. Sunlight streamed through high windows onto walls that gleamed with tapestries laced with gold, so that reflections danced on the red-and-gold-painted ceiling. One side of the room was hung with a vast patterned cloth: silver fleurs-de-lis on a background of deep blue. On the opposite wall, a tapestry depicting a battle: knights fighting in full regalia, their armor silver, their surcoats blue and white, red and gold; their fluttering banners threaded with gold.

At the end of the room stood a huge ornate fireplace, large enough for a person to walk into without ducking, its carved mantelpiece gilded and s.h.i.+mmering. In front of the fire stood a huge wicker screen, also gilded. And above the mantel hung a patterned tapestry of swans flying on a field of lacy red and gold flowers.

The room was inherently elegant, richly and beautifully executed-and rather feminine, to modern eyes. Its beauty and refinement stood in marked contrast to the behavior of the people in the room, which was noisy, boisterous, crude.

In front of the fire was laid the high table, draped in white linen, with dishes of gold, all heaped high with food. Little dogs scampered across the table, helping themselves to the food as they liked-until the man in the center of the table swatted them away with a curse.

Lord Oliver de Vannes was about thirty, with small eyes set in a fleshy, dissolute face. His mouth was permanently turned down in a sneer; he tended to keep his lips tight, since he was missing several teeth. His clothes were as ornate as the room: a robe of blue and gold, with a high-necked gold collar, and a fur hat. His necklace consisted of blue stones each the size of a robin's egg. He wore rings on several fingers, huge oval gems in heavy gold settings. He stabbed with his knife at food and ate noisily, grunting to his companions.

But despite the elegant accoutrements, the impression he conveyed was of a dangerous petulance-his red-rimmed eyes darted around the room as he ate, alert to any insult, spoiling for a fight. He was edgy and quick to strike; when one of the little dogs came back to eat again, Oliver unhesitatingly jabbed it in its rear with the point of his knife; the animal jumped off and ran yelping and bleeding from the room.

Lord Oliver laughed, wiped the dog's blood off the tip of his blade, and continued to eat.

The men seated at his table shared the joke. From the look of them, they were all soldiers, Oliver's contemporaries, and all were elegantly dressed-though none matched the finery of their leader. And three or four women, young, pretty and bawdy, in tight-fitting dresses and with loose, wanton hair, giggling as their hands groped beneath the table, completed the scene.

Kate stared, and a word came unbidden to her mind: warlord warlord. This was a medieval warlord, sitting with his soldiers and their prost.i.tutes in the castle he had captured.

A wooden staff banged on the floor, and a herald cried, "My Lord! Magister Edward de Johnes!" Turning, she saw Johnston shoved through the crowd, toward the table at the front.

Lord Oliver looked up, wiping gravy from his jowls with the back of his hand. "I bid you welcome, Magister Edwardus. Though I do not know if you are Magister or magicien magicien."

"Lord Oliver," the Professor said, speaking in Occitan. He gave a slight nod of the head.

"Magister, why so cool," Oliver said, pretending to pout. "You wound me, you do. What have I done to deserve this reserve? Are you displeased I brought you from the monastery? You shall eat as well here, I a.s.sure you. Better. Anywise, the Abbot has no need of you-and I do."

Johnston stood erect, and did not speak.

"You have nothing to say?" Oliver said, glaring at Johnston. His face darkened. "That will change," "That will change," he growled. he growled.

Johnston remained unmoving, silent.

The moment pa.s.sed. Lord Oliver seemed to collect himself. He smiled blandly. "But come, come, let us not quarrel. With all courtesy and respect, I seek your counsel," Oliver said. "You are wise, and I have much need of wisdom-so these worthies tell me." Guffaws at the table. "And I am told you can see the future."

"No man sees that," Johnston said.

"Oh so? I think you do, Magister. And I pray you, see your own. I would not see a man of your distinction suffer much. Know you how your namesake, our late king, Edward the Foolish, met his end? I see by your face that you do. Yet you were not among those present in the castle. And I was." He smiled grimly and sat back in his chair. "There was never a mark upon his body."

Johnston nodded slowly. "His screams could be heard for miles."

Kate looked questioningly to Marek, who whispered, "They're talking about Edward II of England. He was imprisoned and killed. His captors didn't want any sign of foul play, so they stuck a tube up his r.e.c.t.u.m and inserted a red-hot poker into his bowels until he died."

Kate s.h.i.+vered.