The Shield of Time (45 page)

“Huh?”

“Oh, you’ve done fine, but—”

Indignation flared. “But you mean that now I should sit twiddling my thumbs when I’m not chewing the nails off them. Well, you pull that self-satisfaction out of your ears, Manson Everard, and listen to me.”

He did. Never mind if Novak was disconcerted. She had a point or two to make, and they were valid. What knowledge she needed could readily be instilled. The more basic knowledge, of how to deal with people and danger, could not be; but she already had it, in her experience and her genes. Besides, the Patrol’s orphans needed every able campaigner they could find.

In his private chamber the silk merchant Geoffrey of Jovigny received two visitors. They were a huge man, well clad, and a tall, fair-haired young woman who, though decently quiet in public, looked about her with a boldness well-nigh brazen. The apprentices were astounded when they learned she would sleep with the children.

Otherwise these callers drew less heed than they would ordinarily have done, for Palermo seethed with tidings. Each newcomer brought a new story. At the end of October King Roger met disaster at Rignano and barely, by aid of the saints, escaped the battlefield. At once he rebounded, laid fresh siege to Naples, won back Benevento and Monte Cassino, forced his enemy Abbot Wibald out of Italy, and got a clerical friend elected to head the great abbey. Now only Apulia held out against him, and it seemed he might actually become arbitrator between the rival Popes. Sicily rejoiced.

In the paneled room upstairs, Everard, Tamberly, and Volstrup sat as bleak as the December day outside.

“We’ve come to you,” the Unattached agent said, “because what the databases know about you suggests you’re the best man available for a certain mission.”

Volstrup blinked above his winecup. “I? Sir, with respect, jokes are inappropriate when we have gone immediately from one crisis to a second, equally desperate one.” He alone in the city had experienced Everard’s previous visit; in the course of that salvage operation he had twice been brought downtime for consultation.

Everard grinned on the left side of his mouth. “No derring-do required, I hope. What I have in mind involves some travel under medieval conditions, but mainly we need a person quick-witted, tactful, and intimately acquainted with this milieu. Before explaining, though—because it may turn out my scheme is impractical—I want to pick your brains, ask a lot of questions, invite your ideas. You have done very well by the Patrol over the years, handling affairs day by day and laying the groundwork for the expansion of this post.”—when Sicily entered its golden age and drew many time travelers—out of a future that had again ceased to be. “You did better yet during the last crunch.”

“Thank you. Er, Mademoiselle … Tamberly?”

“I think I’ll mostly sit and listen,” the woman said. “I’m still trying to sort out the encyclopedia that’s been pumped into me.”

“We really have only a handful of people who know the period well,” Everard continued. “I mean this part of the Mediterranean world at just this time. Agents in China or Persia or even England don’t do us a lot of good, and they have their work cut out for them already, maintaining their stations under present conditions. Of our knowledgeable personnel, some are not qualified to conduct investigations in the field, where anything can happen. For instance, a man could be a fine, reliable traffic control officer but lack the, um, touch of Sherlock Holmes necessary.” Volstrup smiled the least bit, showing he caught the reference. “We have to take anyone we think may be suitable, whether formally rated for that
kind of task or not. But first, as I said, I’d like to inquire of you.”

“By all means,” Volstrup replied, barely audible. In the gloom his nutcracker face showed pale. Outside, wind whooped and a dash of rain blew from wolf-gray heaven.

“When word went around about our failure, you got busy on your own initiative, communicating with other agents and making mnemonic arrangements for yourself,” Everard stated. “That gives reason to ask much more of you. I take it your aim was to assemble a detailed picture of events, hoping that might help to locate the new trouble point.”

Volstrup nodded. “Yes, sir. Not that I deluded myself I could solve the problem. Nor, I confess, was my motive really unselfish. I craved … orientation.” They saw him shudder beneath his robe. “This, this uprooting of reality, it leaves us so cold and alone.”

“It does that,” Tamberly whispered.

“Well, you were a medievalist to start with, before the Patrol recruited you,” Everard said. He kept his voice and manner methodical, downright stodgy. Nerves were strained thin enough as was. “You must have gotten the original history well into your head.”

“Rather well,” Volstrup answered. “But although countless snippets of fact had passed before my eyes, most had long since dropped from memory. What reason would there ordinarily be to stay aware that, oh, the battle of Rignano took place on the thirtieth of October 1137 or that the baptismal name of Pope Innocent III was Lotario de Conti di Segni? Yet any such tiny datum might prove crucial to us, when the databases we have left are limited. I requested a psychotechnician be sent here to give me total recollection.” He grimaced; neither the process nor the result were pleasant. It took a while afterward to return to normal. “And I compared notes with various colleagues, exchanging information and ideas. That is all. I was preparing a full report when you arrived.”

“We’ll take it from you in person,” Everard said. “We haven’t got lifespan to squander. What you’ve passed on indicates you’ve found a better clue than anybody else, but it isn’t clear what. Tell me.”

Volstrup’s hand trembled a little as he sipped from his cup. “It is surely clear to everyone,” he replied. “Pope Honorius III was succeeded directly by Celestine IV.”

Everard nodded. “That’s the big, blatant thing. But I gather you have a notion as to what may have brought it about.”

Tamberly stirred on her stool. “Excuse me,” she said. “I am still groping around in a jungle of names and dates. If I stop to think, I can put them in order, but what they signify isn’t necessarily plain. Would you mind briefing me?”

Everard reached to squeeze her hand—maybe that encouraged him more than her—and himself took a throat-warming drink. “You can do it better,” he said to Volstrup.

As he talked, the dry little man gained confidence, vigor. This history was his love, after all.

“Let me begin at the present moment. Events seem to proceed much as they ought, perhaps identically, for decades to come. The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI acquires Sicily through marriage, the claim being enforced by his army, in 1194. That same year his son and heir Frederick II is born. Innocent III becomes Pope in 1198. He is one of the strongest men ever to sit on the throne of St. Peter—and in many respects, although it isn’t entirely his fault, one of the most sinister. It will be written of him that his was the distinction of presiding over the destruction of three distinct civilizations. In his reign, the Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople; and although the Eastern Empire eventually gets back a Greek ruler of Orthodox faith, it is thereafter a shell. He proclaims the Albigensian Crusade, which will put an end to the brilliant culture that has arisen in Provence. His long contest with Frederick II, Church against state, fatally under
mines this diverse, tolerant Norman Sicilian society in which we sit talking today.

“He dies in 1216. Honorius III follows, also an energetic and determined man. He prosecutes the war on the Albigenses and plays a role in much politics elsewhere, but does seem to reach a settlement with Frederick. However, that agreement is breaking down when Honorius dies in 1227.

“Gregory IX should have succeeded him, reigning till 1241. Celestine IV should then be elected but die the same year, before he can be consecrated. Innocent IV should thereupon become the next Pope, who carries on the struggle against Frederick.

“Instead, we have no Gregory. Celestine follows Honorius directly. He is weak, leadership falters among the anti-Imperialists, and at last Frederick triumphs. The following Pope is his puppet.”

Volstrup moistened his gullet again. The wind sobbed.

“I see,” Tamberly murmured. “Yes, that gives me a little perspective on what I’ve learned. So Pope Gregory is the missing element?”

“Evidently,” Everard said. “He didn’t finish the feud with Frederick, in our history; but he waged it for fourteen years, never letting up, and that made the difference. A hard old son of a bitch. He founded the Inquisition.”

“Regularized it, at least,” Volstrup added in his professorish fashion. Habit took over; he likewise fell into the past tense. “The thirteenth century was the century in which medieval society lost its earlier measures of freedom, tolerance, and social mobility. Heretics were burned, Jews were herded into ghettos when they were not massacred or expelled, peasants who dared to claim some rights suffered a similar fate. And yet … that is our history.”

“Which led to the Renaissance,” Everard interjected brusquely. “I doubt we’d prefer the world that’s now ahead of us. But you—you’ve tracked down what’s happened—what will happen—to Pope Gregory?”

“I have only some hints and some thoughts,” Volstrup demurred.

“Well, spit ‘em out!”

Volstrup looked toward Tamberly.
She’s a lot more ornamental than I am,
Everard reflected. As much to her as to the man, Volstrup said:

“The chronicles tell us little about his origins. They describe him as already old when he assumed the tiara, and living on to a great age, active until the end. But they give no birth date. Later authorities made estimates differing by some twenty-five years. Hitherto, with all else it had to do, the Patrol saw no reason to ascertain the facts. It probably never occurred to anyone—myself included, of course.

“We have known merely that he was christened Ugolino Conti de Segni and was a nobleman in the city of Anagni, probably a kinsman of Innocent III.”

Conti!
speared through Everard.
Anagni!

“What is it, Manse?” asked Tamberly.

“A notion,” the Patrolman mumbled. “Go on, please.”

Volstrup shrugged. “Well,” he said, “my idea was that we might begin by finding his origins, and for that purpose I instituted inquiries. Nobody could identify any such birth. Therefore, in this world, it most likely never took place. I did turn up a fact, buried in an incidental memory of something that one of our agents happened once to have heard. This agent is to be active during Gregory’s reign. He chanced to be taking a holiday in the farther past and—At any rate, with the help of mnemotechnics, he retrieved the year of Gregory’s birth, and the parentage. It was as far downtime as certain historians later assigned it, in 1147 in Anagni. Therefore this Pope lived well into his nineties. His father’s name was Bartolommeo and his mother was Ilaria, of the Gaetano family.” He paused. “That is what I have to offer. I fear you have come to me for very little gain.”

Everard stared before him, into shadows. Rain hissed down the walls. Chill sneaked beneath clothing. “No,”
he breathed, “you may have hit on the exact thing we need.”

He shook himself. “We have to learn more. Just what went on. That needs an operative or two who can work themselves into the scene. I expected this, and thought of you, though I didn’t know till now exactly where and when we’d want to send our scouts. They should be able to carry it off without getting into trouble. They should. I think”—
I’m afraid, Wanda
—“the pair of you are the logical choice.”

“I beg your pardon?” choked Volstrup.

Tamberly sprang to her feet. “Manse, you mean it, you really do!” she jubilated.

He rose also, heavily. “I figure two will have a better chance of learning something than one, especially if they go at it from both the male and the female sides.”

“But what about you?”

“With luck, you’ll find us some necessary evidence, but it won’t be sufficient. A negative can’t be. Gregory was never born, or he died young, or whatever it was. That’s for you to discover. To understand what came of that—whether it was the unique factor—I aim to work uptime of you, when Frederick’s breaking the Church to his will.”

To Anagni came a hired courier from Rome early in September. He bore a letter for Cencio de Conti or, if the gentleman be deceased or absent, whoever now headed that noble house in those parts. Albeit age was telling somewhat upon him, Cencio was there for a cleric to read the message aloud. He followed the Latin readily enough: It was not so very remote from his native dialect; and, besides religious services, men of his family rather frequently listened to recitals of the warlike or lyrical classics.

A Flemish gentleman and his lady, homebound from pilgrimage to the Holy Land, sent respects. They were kinfolk. True, the relationship was distant. Some fifty years ago a knight visiting Rome had become acquainted, asked for the hand of a daughter of the Conti, wedded her and taken her home to Flanders. (The profit was small but mutual. She was a younger child who might well otherwise have gone into a convent, thus her dowry need not be large. On either side there was some prestige in having a connection across a great distance,
and there might prove to be some advantage, now when politics and commerce were beginning to move in earnest across Europe. The story went that it had, moreover, been a love match.) Little if any word had since crossed the Alps in either direction. Chancing to get this opportunity, the travelers felt it behooved them to offer to bring what scanty news they could. They prayed pardon in advance for their unimpressiveness, should they be invited. All their attendants had been lost along the way, to disease, affray, and at last desertion; belike tales of libertine Sicily had lured that rogue from them. Perhaps the Conti could, of their kindness, help them engage reliable servants for the rest of the journey.

Cencio dictated an immediate reply—in vernacular, which the priest Latinized. The strangers would be welcome indeed. They must for their part forgive a certain uproar. His son, Sir Lorenzo, was soon to marry Ilaria di Gaetani, and preparations for the festivities were especially chaotic in these difficult times. Nevertheless he urged them to come at once and remain for the wedding. He dispatched the letter with several lackeys and two men-at-arms, in order that his guests might fare in such style as would shame neither them nor him.