Timeline (38 page)

Everyone knew primitive artillery had been used at this time; archaeologists had dug up cannonballs from the site of the Battle of Poitiers. But historians believed that cannon were rare, and primarily for show — a matter of prestige. But as Chris watched the men struggling in the river to lift the cylinder and hoist it back on a cart, it was clear to him that such effort would never be wasted on a purely symbolic device. The cannon was heavy; it slowed the progress of the entire army, which surely wanted to reach the walls of La Roque by nightfall; there was no reason why the cannon could not be brought up later. The present effort could only mean the cannon would be important in the attack.

But in what way? He wondered. The walls of La Roque were ten feet thick. A cannonball would never penetrate them.

The handsome knight gave a brief salute and said, “God bring you grace and safety.”

“God bless you and grant you increase,” Chris replied, and then the knight slapped the horses on their rumps, and they were riding off, toward La Roque.

:

As they rode, Kate told him about what they had found in Marcel’s room, and about the green chapel.

“Do you know where this chapel is?” Chris said.

“Yes. I saw it on one of the survey maps. It’s about half a mile east of La Roque. There’s a path through the forest that takes you there.”

Chris sighed. “So we know where the passage is,” he said, “but André had the ceramic, and now he’s dead, which means we can’t ever leave, anyway.”

“No,” she said. “I have the ceramic.”

“You do?”

“André gave it to me, on the bridge. I think he knew he’d never get out alive. He could have run and saved himself. But he didn’t. He stayed and saved me instead.”

She started to cry softly.

Chris rode in silence, saying nothing. He remembered how Marek’s intensity had always amused the other graduate students — “Can you imagine? He really believes this chivalry shit!” — and how they had assumed his behavior was some kind of weird posturing. A role he was playing, an affectation. Because in the late twentieth century, you couldn’t seriously ask other people to think that you believed in honor and truth, and the purity of the body, the defense of women, the sanctity of true love, and all the rest of it.

But apparently, André really had believed it.

:

They moved through a nightmare landscape. The sun was weak and pale in the dust and smoke. Here there were vineyards, but all the vines were burned, leaving gnarled gnome stumps, with smoke rising into the air. The orchards, too, were black and desolate, skeletal trees. Everything had been burned.

All around them, they heard the pitiful cries of wounded soldiers. Many retreating soldiers had fallen beside the road itself. Some were still breathing; others were gray with death.

Chris had paused to take weapons from one of the dead men, when a nearby soldier raised his hand and cried pitifully, “Secors, secors!” Chris went over to him. He had an arrow embedded deep in his abdomen, and another in his chest. The soldier was in his early twenties, and he seemed to know he was dying. As he lay on his back, he looked pleadingly at Chris, saying words Chris couldn’t understand. Finally, the soldier began to point to his mouth, saying, “Aquam. Da mihi aquam.” He was thirsty; he wanted water. Chris shrugged helplessly. He had no water. The man looked angry, winced, closed his eyes, turned away. Chris moved off. Later, when they passed men crying for help, he continued on without stopping. There was nothing he could do.

They could see La Roque in the distance, standing high and impregnable atop the Dordogne cliffs. And they would reach the fortress in less than an hour.

:

In a dark corner of the church of Sainte-Mère, the handsome knight helped André Marek to his feet. He said, “Your friends have departed.”

Marek coughed, and grabbed the knight’s arm to steady himself as a wave of pain shot up his leg. The handsome knight smiled. He had captured Marek just after the explosion at the mill.

When Marek had climbed out the mill window, by sheer luck he fell into a small pool so deep that he did not hurt himself. And when he came to the surface again, he found he was still beneath the bridge. The pool produced a swirling eddy, so the current hadn’t taken him downstream.

Marek had stripped off his monk’s habit and thrown it downstream when the flour mill exploded, timbers and bodies flying in all directions. A soldier splashed into the water near him, his body turning in the eddy. Marek started to scramble up onto the bank — and a handsome knight put a sword point at his throat and beckoned for him to come forward. Marek was still wearing the maroon and gray colors of Oliver, and he began to babble in Occitan, pleading innocence, begging for mercy.

The knight said simply, “Be silent. I saw you.” He had seen Marek climb out the window, and discard his monk’s garb. He took Marek to the church, where he found Claire and Arnaut. The Archpriest was in a sullen and dangerous mood, but Claire seemed to have some ability to influence him, if only by contradiction. It was Claire who had ordered Marek to sit silently in the darkness when Chris and Kate came in. “If Arnaut can set you against the other two, he may yet spare you and your friends. If you are three united before him, he will in rage kill you all.” Claire had stage-managed the subsequent events. And all had turned out reasonably well.

So far.

Now Arnaut eyed him skeptically. “So: your friends know the location of this passage?”

“They do,” Marek said. “I swear it.”

“On your word, I have spared their lives,” Arnaut said. “Yours, and the word of this Lady, who vouches for you.” He gave a small nod to the Lady Claire, who allowed a faint smile to cross her lips.

“My Lord, you are wise,” Claire said, “for to hang one man may loosen the tongue of his friend who watches. But as often, it may harden his resolve, so that the friend takes his secret to the grave. And this secret is so important that I would your Lordship have it for certain in his grasp.”

“Then we will follow those two, and see where they lead.” He nodded to Marek. “Raimondo, see to this poor man’s mount. And provide him as escort two of your best chevaliers, as you follow behind.”

The handsome knight bowed. “My Lord, if it please you, I will accompany him myself.”

“Do so,” Arnaut said, “for there may yet be some mischief here.” And he gave the knight a significant look.

Meanwhile, Lady Claire had gone up to Marek and was pressing his hand warmly in both of hers. He felt something cool in her fingers, and realized it was a tiny dagger, barely four inches long. He said, “My Lady, I am greatly in your debt.”

“Then see you repay this debt, knight,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“I shall, as God is my witness.” He slipped the dagger under his robes.

“And I will pray to God for you, knight,” she said. She leaned over to kiss his cheek chastely. As she did, she whispered, “Your escort is Raimondo of Narbonne. He likes to cut throats. When he knows the secret, have a care he does not cut yours, and those of your friends, as well.” She stepped away, smiling.

Marek said, “Lady, you are too kind. I shall take your kind wishes to heart.”

“Good knight, God speed you safe and true.”

“Lady, you are always in my thoughts.”

“Good sir knight, I would wish—”

“Enough, enough,” Arnaut said in a disgusted voice. He turned to Raimondo. “Go now, Raimondo, for this surfeit of sentiment makes my stomach heave.”

“My Lord.” The handsome knight bowed. He led Marek to the door and out into the sunlight.

07:34:49

“I’ll tell you what the goddamn problem is,” Robert Doniger said, glaring at the visitors. “The problem is to bring the past alive. To make it real.”

There were two young men and a young woman, all slouching on the couch in his office. They were dressed entirely in black, wearing those pinch-shoulder jackets that looked like they’d shrunk in the wash. The men had long hair and the woman had a buzz cut. These were the media people that Kramer had hired. But Doniger noticed that today Kramer was sitting opposite them, subtly divorcing herself from them. He wondered if she had already seen their material.

It made Doniger irritable. He didn’t like media people anyway. And this was his second meeting with the breed today. He’d had the PR dipshits in the morning, now these dipshits.

“The problem,” he said, “is that I have thirty executives coming to hear my presentation tomorrow. The title of my presentation is ‘The Promise of the Past,’ and I have no compelling visuals to show them.”

“Got it,” one of the young men said crisply. “That was exactly our starting point here, Mr. Doniger. The client wants to bring the past alive. That’s what we set out to do. With Ms. Kramer’s help, we asked your own observers to generate sample videos for us. And we believe this material will have the compelling quality—”

“Let’s see it,” Doniger said.

“Yes, sir. Perhaps if we lowered the lights—”

“Leave the lights as they are.”

“Yes, Mr. Doniger.” The video screen on the wall came up blue as it glowed to life. While they were waiting for the image, the young man said, “The reason we like this first one is because it is a famous historical event that lasts only two minutes from start to finish. As you know, many historical events occurred very slowly, especially to modern sensibilities. This one was quick. Unfortunately, it occurred on a somewhat rainy day.”

The screen showed a gray, gloomy image, overhanging clouds. The camera panned to show some sort of gathering, shot over the heads of a large crowd. A tall man was climbing up onto a plain, unpainted wood platform.

“What’s this? A hanging?”

“No,” the media kid said. “That’s Abraham Lincoln, about to deliver the Gettysburg Address.”

“It is? Jesus, he looks like hell. He looks like a corpse. His clothes are all wrinkled. His arms stick out of his sleeves.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“And is that his voice? It’s squeaky.”

“Yes, Mr. Doniger, no one’s ever heard Lincoln’s voice before, but that is his actual—”

“Are you out of your fucking minds?”

“No, Mr. Doniger—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I can’t use this,” Doniger said. “No one wants Abraham Lincoln to sound like Betty Boop. What else have you got?”

“It’s right here, Mr. Doniger.” Unruffled, the young man changed the tapes, saying, “For the second video, we adopted a different premise. We wanted a good action sequence, but again, a famous event that everybody would know. So this is Christmas Day, 1778, on the Delaware River, where—”

“I can’t see shit,” Doniger said.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is a bit dark. It’s a night crossing. But we thought George Washington crossing the Delaware would be a good—”

“George Washington? Where is George Washington?”

“He’s right there,” the kid said, pointing to the screen.

“Where?”

“There.”

“He’s that guy huddled in the back of the boat?”

“That’s correct, and—”

“No, no, no,” Doniger said. “He has to be standing in the bow, like a general.”

“I know that’s the way the paintings portray him, but it’s not what actually happened. Here you see the real George Washington as he actually crossed the—”

“He looks seasick,” Doniger said. “You want me to show a video of George Washington looking seasick?”

“But this is reality.”

“Fuck reality,” Doniger said, throwing one of their videotapes across the room. “What’s the matter with you people? I don’t care about reality. I want something intriguing, something sexy. You’re showing me a walking corpse and a drowned rat.”

“Well, we can go back to the drawing board—”

“My talk is tomorrow,” Doniger said. “I have three major executives coming here. And I have already told them they would see something very special.” He threw up his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

Kramer cleared her throat. “What about using stills?”

“Stills?”

“Yes, Bob. You could take single frames from these videos, and that might be quite effective,” Kramer said.

“Uh-huh, yes, that would work,” the media woman said, head bobbing.

Doniger said, “Lincoln would still look wrinkled.”

“We’ll take the wrinkles out with Photoshop.”

Doniger considered that. “Maybe,” he said finally.

“Anyway,” Kramer said, “you don’t want to show them too much. Less is more.”

“All right,” Doniger said. “Make the stills up, and show them to me in an hour.”

The media people filed out. Doniger was alone with Kramer. He went behind his desk, shuffled through his presentation. Then he said, “Do you think it should be ‘The Promise of the Past,’ or ‘The Future of the Past’?”

“’The Promise of the Past,’ ” Kramer said. “Definitely ‘The Promise.’”

07:34:49

Accompanied by two knights, Marek rode in the dust of the baggage carts, moving toward the head of the column. He could not see Chris or Kate yet, but his little group was moving swiftly. He would catch up to them soon.

He looked at the knights on either side of him. Raimondo on his left, erect, in full armor, with his thin smile. On his right, a grizzled warrior in armor, clearly tough and competent. Neither man paid him much attention, so secure were they in their control over him. Especially since his hands were bound together by ropes, with a six-inch gap between the wrists.

He rode along, coughing in the dust. Eventually he managed to slip his small dagger from beneath his coat, and palm it beneath his hand as he gripped the wooden pommel of the saddle in front of him. He tried to position the knife so the gentle movement of the horse up and down would slowly fray the rope at his wrists. But this was easier said than done; the knife seemed to be always in the wrong position, and his bonds were not cut. Marek glanced at his wristband counter; it read 07:21:02. There were still more than seven hours left before the batteries ran out.

Soon they had left the riverside trail behind and started to climb the twisting road up through the village of La Roque. The village was built into the cliffs above the river, the houses almost entirely of stone, giving the town a unified, somber appearance, especially now, when every door and window was boarded shut in anticipation of war.