Part 5 (2/2)

To Pierrette, it seemed as though every bend they rounded took them deeper into a darkening land.

Strangely, it was not exactly unfamiliar. Ordinarily, within the limited scope of most people's travel, someone might observe changes in the life surrounding himself as he climbed from deep, watered valley to wind-swept plain, and to scoured ridge-top. Rich greens gave way to dark shades, broad leaves to narrow, then to hard, p.r.i.c.kly vegetation that even goats spurned. Now Pierrette observed such changes on a grander scale, because the entire northern country was as moist as a sheltered Provencal valley, and the trees and bushes were everywhere those she had seen only in two places-the sheltering northern face of the Sainte Baume range, and the tiny vale that concealed that pool sacred toMa, the ancient G.o.ddess who had sent her on this voyage. Great beeches stood like gray, smooth sentinels where springs splashed down the banks, and delicate maples cloaked the hills. Oaks with leaves as large as her hand grew tall as pines, and spread their heavy branches wide.

But she was not comfortable with the familiarity. Here, though everything was lush, there was no sense of refuge in the verdure. Instead, with every footstep she took ash.o.r.e, she felt as though the detritus beneath her soles was soft and rotten, and if she kicked over a clod it would smell not of rich humus, but of something dead and corrupt. But she kept such impressions to herself, and even though she felt uneasy, when night fell she still made her bed at some distance from the others.

”h.e.l.lo, little witch,” said the deep, soft voice.

”Yan! I thought it was you, wielding that pole. But how . . .”

”Such a stick weighs nothing at all,” he said. ”It was no trouble for me to demonstrate my ability to wield it-and besides, I am related on my mother's side to one of the boatman's G.o.dfathers.”

”You are?”

”Well . . . Everyone has an uncle who married someone from the next village, or went off to seek his fortune in the city, or . . .”

”Whatever ruses you used, I'm glad you're still with us. I have been worried. There is something dark, something ugly, about this land. Have you felt it?”

”I have. Sleeping in the woods at night, away from the rest of you, I have . . . seen things.”

”What?” ”Dark things, mostly quite small, hiding when the moon is out, then scurrying westward when clouds cover it, as if its meager light is more than they can bear.”

”But what do they look like? Are they beasts? Do they scurry on four legs, or six, or two? Have they fur, or scales?”

”I see only shadows, not what makes them, and shadows are distorted shapes without either fur or scales. I know only that the sight of them makes my blood clot in my veins.”

”You said they were going westward. Is it always so? How can that be?”

”Whatever their goal, it is the same direction we will be taking once this river completes its great bend to the west. I hope it's not the same place we're going.”

How could it be so? mused Pierrette. Her own path led beyond the furthest point of land, beyond the last known island. Could the shadowy things cross over water? And why? When Minho had voiced the great spell that saved his kingdom from fiery destruction, he had left behind everything that was not sweet and good. If the shadows were ugly or evil, what would they want there?

But Yan Oors knew no more than she did. Perhaps as time and miles pa.s.sed, things would become clearer.

When the Liger began its long turn from north to west at last, Pierrette's discomfort lessened for a while-or perhaps she only became enured to it. Other streams joined the river, and where one broad tributary entered it, the combined flows widened it considerably. ”The next town is Noviodonnum,” said the owner of their boats. ”That is as far as I will go. I can pick up a cargo of wool, and perhaps a chest or two of tin from the mines across the sea. You'll travel more comfortably, anyway, on the broad-bottomed craft that ply these slow waters.”

”We are in the heart of the Franks' domain now,” ibn Saul told his companions privately. ”I think it wise to continue our policy of avoiding all encounters of an official nature. I have thus far not taken advantage of any of the names good Bishop Arria.n.u.s gave me, and I do not intend to do otherwise now, though there is an abbey in Noviodonnum. Just a mile beyond that town, I have been told, at the confluence with a minor river, is a traders' entrepot. We will go ash.o.r.e there.”

The entrepot, above a bank where haphazard planks and pilings const.i.tuted a wharf, was a collection of staved hovels roofed with bark. There they ran into a snag: a Viking s.h.i.+p had been seen at Fleury only a fortnight before, and no boatmen would fare downstream. Several broad boats were drawn entirely up on sh.o.r.e, as if for a long wait.

At a loss how to proceed, they made camp in a sheltered spot well away from the muddy, stinking streets and midden heap. For the first time since their portage, the donkey Gustave earned his oats, dragging their luggage thence on a rudely made sledge.

After a frugal meal, a gruel of greens and grain flavored with the last of the salted fish, ibn Saul suggested that Pierrette finish the third tale of Saint Martha.

”There isn't much to tell,” she said. ”Martha brought Gauls and Egyptian legionnaires together in thebasilica, and taught them what she knew, repeating everything she said in both Latin and Aramaic, or perhaps Egyptian. The basilica was home to administrative offices and a trading floor. It was technically the emperor's personal property, but Martha told them that while they occupied it together for a purpose not the emperor's, but G.o.d's, it was His house, and His peace was upon it. Seeing how easy it was to rub shoulders with those they had hitherto considered enemies, both Gauls and legionaries paid close attention to her words, and some were even converted right on the spot.

”As time went on, weeks and then months, others joined them, impressed how well the new Christians got along with each other, despite their barriers of language and customs. Also, once they had agreed to coexist peacefully with the Gauls, many of the legionaries revealed just how much Latin they actually knew, after twenty years in Roman service. Now that they no longer felt clannish and excluded, they were willing to use it more, to speak with their neighbors.”

Then Pierrette fell silent. When Gregorius realized she was finished, he protested. ”That's all? But what of thetarasque, the river monster?”

”Oh, that. Did I forget to say? When the Legion had first come to Egypt, it was as conquerors, under the emperor Augustus, who gave them a new emblem to commemorate their victory-one of the great crocodiles of the Nile, with an iron collar and chain at its neck. The 'monster' Martha 'subdued' was not the beast itself, but the legion whose emblem it was.”

”So the third tale is really the second one, and vice versa,” reflected ibn Saul. ”Or rather, the pagan tale and the historic one combined in the memories of people to become the middle tale, the one that they 'remember' today.”

”You could say that,” Pierrette replied equitably, ”but I'm not sure of it. Perhaps each story is true, in its own fas.h.i.+on.”

”Perhaps so. There may be historic and etymological fragments in the earliest one, and this last one is reasonable enough, as an explanation-but the second tale? It is an allegory, as you have shown.”

Pierrette knew she was not going to get the scholar to see what she saw: that the first two tales reflected the realities of their respective times, and carried underlying lessons or meanings that shaped the perceptions of teller and listener alike, while the third was flat and without value except for men like ibn Saul, for whom a loose end was an irritant, not an invitation.

Chapter 10 - An Anomalous.

Vision ”I wonder how much one of those boats would cost?” Pierrette mused. The riverboats were heavy and broad of beam, with great log keels. Each had stations for four oars or six, a long steering oar aft, and carried two poles forward that could be used to fend off or propel or, lashed, would form a kind of bipedal mast to carry a triangular sail. Of course, such a sail would be of little use going downstream, shereflected, because it could not be set to catch winds from abeam, only following breezes, and there would be few easterly winds on the Liger once its course turned westward toward the sea.

”Could the four of us manage one, without a skilled master and extra hands?” asked ibn Saul.

As Pierrette pondered that, she saw, standing in the shadow of a large oak tree, a tall figure in a broad hat, leaning on a dark, thick staff-and she modified the words she had been about to say. ”With two oars in the water, and two men ahead to watch for rocks and snags and to wield poles to fend us off them, and with a fourth man at the steering oar, it should be possible,” she said. ”We would need only to propel our craft a bit faster than the river current when we needed steering way. Most of that time, we could just drift.”

”That is one more person than we now have,” said ibn Saul, ”but I will see what can be arranged.” He got to his feet, and strode purposefully to where the boatmen lazed by their craft. The negotiations were heated-Pierrette could hear them from their camp-but the riverboat owners were backcountry people with few of the negotiating skills that the scholar had mastered in his dealings with Greeks, Moslems, Byzantines, and the barbarians of Raetia and Pannonia, on the fringes of the Frankish domain.

”It was not the cheapest of the boats,” he said later, showing it to Pierrette, ”but it shows signs of recent repairs, and perhaps it will not fall apart beneath our feet. And, too, I have found a stout fellow, braver than the rest, who will wield a pole for us. He is some distant relation to our former boatman, but he's not a regular crewman, and has business of his own downriver.

Pierrette was glad she had specified their needs just as she had, when she had spotted Yan Oors beneath the oak tree's shadow. But it was dangerous for the gaunt one to be there, even in disguise. She almost hoped the one ibn Saul had hired would be someone else, but there, beside the boat, leaning on his staff, was Yan Oors.

By noon, their dunnage was stored amids.h.i.+ps, and they pushed off. They were able to keep to the midriver channel with little effort, and to ease their heavy craft into the swiftest flow at the outside of each bend, avoiding the sandy shallows that formed at the tightest parts of the turns. Yan Oors and the husky priest worked the bow poles, and because the gaunt fellow responded only with grunts and monosyllables, Gregorius soon tired of trying to draw him out. Lovi and ibn Saul each stood at an oar, and Pierrette at the helm. There was not much work for any of them, because the current bore them swiftly, but once in a while Pierrette called for oars, so she could steer them into the proper channel to avoid some impediment in the stream ahead.

”Tomorrow,” ibn Saul grumbled, ”I will stand forward and lean on a pole. You, priest, can row.”

Fleury Abbey, famed as the seat of Theodulf, a Visigothic bishop, lay in ash and ruin, but it was not empty. The Vikings had leveled the town that had grown up around it, and had put Theodulf's villa, a few miles distant, to the torch, but now walls rose where none had been before. They were of wood, not stone, and they enclosed only a fraction of the original town, but they had twice withstood the Northmen's a.s.saults.

”If this place is to your liking,” Lovi whispered to his paramour, ”you must part from this company.”

”And will you also?” replied Gregorius, shaking his head. ”Even were this place not a ruin, I would not leave you. I have told your master the true nature of my sojourn among the Nors.e.m.e.n, which he accepted most philosophically. Now, having seen the evidence before us of their true nature, he may beless eager to try to bargain with them, and I may be allowed to remain safely obscure.”

”You could go back the way we came.”

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