27:27:22
For the last forty minutes, they had been scrambling up through the forest northeast of Castelgard. At last, they came to the top of the hill, the highest point in the area, and they could pause to catch their breath and look down.
“Oh my God,” Kate said, staring.
They looked down on the river, and the monastery on the opposite side. But their attention was drawn to the forbidding castle high above the monastery: the fortress of La Roque. It was enormous! In the deepening blue of evening, the castle glowed with light from a hundred windows and from torches along the battlements. But despite the glowing lights, the fortress was ominous. The outer walls were black above the still waters of the moat. Inside was another complete set of walls, with many round towers, and at the center of the complex, the actual castle, with its own great hall, and a dark rectangular tower, rising more than a hundred feet into the air.
Marek said to Kate, “Does it look like modern La Roque?”
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head. “This thing is gigantic. The modern castle has only one outer wall. This one has two: an additional ring wall that is no longer there.”
“So far as I know,” Marek said, “nobody ever captured it by force.”
“You can see why,” Chris said. “Look how it’s sited.”
On the east and south side, the fortress was built atop a limestone cliff, a sheer drop of five hundred feet to the Dordogne below. On the west, where the cliff was less vertical, the stone houses of the town climbed up toward the castle, but anyone following the road through the town would end up facing a broad moat and several drawbridges. On the north, the land sloped more gently away, but all the trees on the north had been cut down, leaving an exposed plain without cover—a suicidal approach for any army.
Marek pointed. “Look there,” he said.
:
In the twilight, a party of soldiers approached the castle on a dirt road from the west. Two knights in the lead held torches, and by that light they could just barely discern Sir Oliver, Sir Guy, the Professor, and the rest of Oliver’s knights bringing up the rear, in two columns. The figures were so far away that they really recognized them by body shape and posture. But Chris, at least, had no doubt what he was seeing.
He sighed as he watched the riders cross a drawbridge over a moat and pass through a large gatehouse with half-round twin towers—a so-called double-D gate, because the towers looked like twin D’s when seen from above. Soldiers atop the towers watched the riders as they passed through.
Beyond the gatehouse, the riders entered another enclosed courtyard. Here, many long wooden buildings had been erected. “That’s where the troops are garrisoned,” Kate said.
The party rode across this inner courtyard, crossed a second moat over a second drawbridge, passing through a second gatehouse with even larger twin towers: thirty feet high, and glowing with light from dozens of arrow slits.
Only then did they dismount, in the innermost court of the castle. The Professor was led by Oliver toward the great hall; they disappeared inside.
:
Kate said, “The Professor said that if we were separated, we should go to the monastery and find Brother Marcel, who has the key. I assume he meant the key to the secret passage.”
Marek nodded. “And that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll be dark soon. Then we can go.”
Chris looked down the hill. In the gloom, he could see small bands of soldiers in the fields, all the way down to the river’s edge. They would have to make their way past all those soldiers. “You want to go to the monastery tonight?”
Marek nodded. “However dangerous it looks now,” he said, “tomorrow morning, it will be worse.”
26:12:01
There was no moon. The sky was black and filled with stars, with the occasional drifting cloud. Marek led them down the hill and past the burning town of Castelgard, into a dark landscape. Chris was surprised to find that once his eyes adjusted, he could actually see quite well by starlight. Probably because there was no air pollution, he thought. He remembered reading that in earlier centuries, people could see the planet Venus during the day as we can now see the moon. Of course, that had been impossible for hundreds of years.
He was also surprised by the utter silence of the night. The loudest sound they heard was their feet moving through the grass and past the scrubby bushes.
“We’ll go to the path,” Marek whispered. “Then down to the river.”
Their progress was slow. Frequently, Marek paused, crouching down to listen for two or three minutes before moving on. Almost an hour passed before they came within sight of the dirt path that ran from the town to the river. It was a pale streak against the darker grass and foliage that surrounded it.
Here Marek paused. The silence around them was complete. He heard only the faint sound of the wind. Chris felt impatient to get started. After a full minute of waiting, he started to get up.
Marek pushed him down.
He held his finger to his lips.
Chris listened. It was more than wind, he realized. There was also the sound of men whispering. He strained to hear. There was a quiet cough, somewhere ahead. Then another cough, closer, on their side of the road.
Marek pointed, left and right. Chris saw a faint silver glint—armor in starlight—among the bushes opposite the path.
And he heard rustling closer by.
It was an ambush, soldiers waiting on both sides of the path.
Marek pointed back the way they had come. Quietly, they moved away from the path.
:
“Where now?” Chris whispered.
“We’ll stay away from the path. Go east to the river. That way.” Marek pointed, and they set out.
Chris felt on edge now, straining to hear the slightest sound. Their own footsteps were so loud, they masked any other sound. He understood now why Marek had stopped so often. It was the only way to be sure.
They went back two hundred yards from the path, then headed down to the river, moving between the fields of cleared land. Even though it was nearly black, Chris felt exposed. The fields were walled in low stone, so they had a slight cover. But he was still uneasy, and he gave a sigh of relief when they moved back into uncleared shrub land, darker in th night.
:
This silent, black world was entirely alien to him, yet he quickly adjusted to it. Danger lay in the tiniest movements, in sounds that were almost inaudible. Chris moved in a crouch, tense, testing each footstep before applying full weight, his head constantly turning left and right, left and right.
He felt like an animal, and he thought of the way Marek had bared his teeth before the attack in the room, like some kind of ape. He looked over at Kate and saw that she, too, was crouched and tense as she moved forward.
For some reason, he found himself thinking of the seminar room on the second floor of the Peabody, back at Yale, with the cream-colored walls and the polished dark-wood trim, and of the arguments among the graduate students sitting around the long table: whether processual archaeology was primarily historical or primarily archaeological, whether formalist criteria outweighed objectivist criteria, whether derivationist doctrine concealed normative commitment.
It was no wonder they argued. The issues were pure abstractions, consisting of nothing but thin air—and hot air. Their empty debates could never be resolved; the questions could never be answered. Yet there had been so much intensity, so much passion in those debates. Where had it come from? Who cared? He couldn’t quite remember now why it had been so important.
The academic world seemed to be receding into the distance, vague and gray in memory, as he made his way down the dark hillside toward the river. Yet however frightened he was on this night, however tense and at risk of his life, it was entirely real in some way that was reassuring, even exhilarating, and—
He heard a twig snap, and he froze.
Marek and Kate froze, too.
They heard soft rustling in
the brush to the left, and a low snort. They stayed motionless. Marek gripped his sword.
And the small dark shape of a wild pig snuffled past them.
“Should have killed it,” Marek whispered. “I’m hungry.”
They started to continue forward, but then Chris realized that they were not the ones who had frightened the pig. Because now they heard, unmistakably, the sound of many running feet. Rustling, crashing in the underbrush. Coming toward them.
:
Marek frowned.
He could see enough in the darkness to catch glimpses of metal armor now and again. There must be seven or eight soldiers, moving hastily east, then dropping down, hiding in the brush again, becoming silent.
What the hell was going on?
These soldiers had been back at the dirt path, waiting for them. Now the soldiers had moved east, and were waiting for them again.
How?
He looked at Kate, crouched beside him, but she just looked frightened.
Chris, also crouching, tapped Marek on the shoulder. Chris shook his head, then pointed deliberately to his own ear.
Marek nodded, listened. At first he heard nothing but the wind. Puzzled, he looked back at Chris, who made a distinct tapping motion against the side of his head, by his ear.
He was saying, Turn on your earpiece.
Marek tapped his ear.
After a brief crackle as the sound came on, he heard nothing. He shrugged at Chris, who held up his flat palms: Wait. Marek waited. Only after a few moments of quiet listening did he become aware of the soft, regular sound of a person breathing.
He looked at Kate and held his finger to his lips. She nodded. He looked at Chris. He nodded, too. They both understood. Make no noise at all.
Again, Marek listened intently. He still heard the sound of quiet breathing in his earpiece.
But it wasn’t coming from any of them.
Someone else.
:
Chris whispered, “André. This is too dangerous. Let’s not cross the river tonight.”
“Right,” Marek whispered. “We’ll go back to Castelgard and hide out for the night outside the walls.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Let’s go.”
In the darkness, they nodded to each other, then they deliberately tapped their ears, turning their earpieces off.
And they crouched down to wait.
In a few moments, they heard the soldiers start to move, once again running through the underbrush. This time, they were going up the hill—back toward Castelgard.
They waited another five or six minutes. And then they headed down the hill, away from Castelgard.
:
It was Chris who had put it all together. Climbing down the hillside in the night, he had brushed a mosquito away from his ear, and the movement had inadvertently turned his earpiece on; not long afterward, he had heard someone sneeze.
And none of them had sneezed.
A few moments later, they had come upon the pig, and by then he was hearing someone panting with exertion. While Kate and Marek, in the darkness beside him, were not moving at all.
That was when he realized for certain that someone else had an earpiece—and thinking it over now, he had a pretty good idea where it had come from. Gomez. Somebody must have taken it from Gomez’s severed head. The only problem with that idea was—
Marek nudged him. Pointed ahead.
Kate gave the thumbs-up sign and grinned.
:
Broad and flat, the river rippled and gurgled in the night. The Dordogne was wide at this point; they could barely see the far shore, a line of dark trees and dense undergrowth. They saw no sign of movement. Looking upstream, Chris could just make out the dark outline of the mill bridge. He knew the mill would be closed up at night; millers could work only during daylight hours, because even a candle risked causing an explosion in the dusty air.
Marek touched Chris on the arm, then pointed toward the opposite bank. Chris shrugged; he saw nothing.
Marek pointed again.
Squinting, Chris could barely discern four wisps of pale smoke rising into the sky. But if they came from fires, why was there no light?
Following the riverbank, they moved upstream, and eventually came upon a boat tied to the shore. It thunked against rocks in the current. Marek looked toward the opposite shore. They were now some distance from the smoke.
He pointed to the boat. Did they want to risk it?
The alternative, Chris knew, was to swim the river. The night was chilly; he didn’t want to get wet. He pointed to the boat and nodded.
Kate nodded.
They climbed aboard, and Marek rowed them quietly across the Dordogne.
:
Sitting next to Chris, Kate found herself thinking of their conversation while crossing the river a few days earlier. How many days had it been? It must be only two days ago, she realized. But it seemed like weeks to her.
She squinted at the far shore, looking for any movement. Their boat would be a dark shape on dark water against a dark hill, but they would still be visible if anyone was looking.
But apparently no one was. The shore was closer now, and then with a hiss the boat moved into the grass along the banks and crunched to a soft stop. They climbed out. They saw a narrow dirt path that followed the edge of the river. Marek held his fingers to his lips, and started down the path. He was going toward the smoke.
They followed cautiously.
A few minutes later, they had their answer. There were four fires, placed at intervals along the riverbank. The flames were surrounded by pieces of broken armor atop mounds of earth, so that only the smoke was visible.
But there were no soldiers.
Marek whispered. “Old trick. Fires give false position.”
Kate wasn’t quite sure what the “old trick” was meant to accomplish. Perhaps to indicate greater strength, greater numbers, than you really had. Marek led them past the row of untended fires, toward several others ranged farther along the riverbank. They were close to the water, hearing the gurgling of the river. As they came to the last fire, Marek abruptly spun on his heel and dropped to the ground. Kate and Chris dropped, too, and then they heard voices, singing a repetitive drinking song; the lyrics were something about “Ale makes a man slumber by fire, ale makes a man wallow in mire. . ..”
It went on interminably. Listening to the lyrics, she thought: This is “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” And sure enough, as she raised her head to look, she saw half a dozen soldiers in green and black sitting around a fire, drinking and singing loudly. Perhaps they had been ordered to make enough noise to justify all the fires.
Marek pointed for them to go back, and when they had moved a distance away, he led them off to the left, away from the river. They left behind the cover of trees that lined the river, then were again slipping through open, cleared fields. She realized that these were the same fields where she had been that morning. And sure enough, now she could see on the left faint yellow lights in the upper windows of the monastery as some of the monks worked late. And the dark outlines of thatched farm huts, directly ahead.
Chris pointed toward the monastery. Why weren’t they going there?
Marek made a pillow with his hands: Everybody sleeping.
Chris shrugged: So?
Marek pantomimed waking up, startled, alarmed. He seemed to mean that they would cause a commotion if they went in in the middle of the night.
Chris shrugged: So?
Marek wagged a finger: Not a good idea. He mouthed, In the morning.
Chris sighed.
Marek went past the farm huts, until he came to a burned-out farmhouse—four walls, and the black remains of timbers that had supported a thatched roof. He led them inside, through an open door that had a red streak across it. Kate could barely see it in the darkness.
Inside the hut was tall grass, and some pieces of broken crockery. Marek began rummaging through the grass, until he came up
with two clay pots with cracked rims. They looked like chamber pots to Kate. Marek set them out carefully on one burned windowsill. She whispered, “Where do we sleep?”
Marek pointed to the ground.
“Why can’t we go into the monastery?” she whispered, gesturing to the open sky above them. The night was cold. She was hungry. She wanted the comfort of an enclosed space.
“Not safe,” Marek whispered. “We sleep here.”
He lay on the ground and closed his eyes.
“Why isn’t it safe?” she said.
“Because somebody has an earpiece. And they know where we’re going.”
Chris said, “I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Not now,” Marek said without opening his eyes. “Go to sleep.”
Kate lay down, and Chris lay beside her. She pushed her back against his. It was just for warmth. It was so damn cold.
In the distance, she heard the rumble of thunder.
:
Sometime after midnight it began to rain. She felt the heavy drops on her cheeks, and she got to her feet just as the downpour started. She looked around and saw a small wooden lean-to, partially burned but still standing. She crawled under it, sitting upright, again huddling together with Chris, who had joined her. Marek came over, lay down nearby, and immediately went back to sleep. She saw raindrops spatter his cheeks, but he was snoring.
26:12:01
Half a dozen hot-air balloons were rising above the mesas in the morning sun. It was now almost eleven o’clock. One of the balloons had a zigzag pattern, which reminded Stern of a Navajo sandpainting.
“I’m sorry,” Gordon was saying. “But the answer is no. You can’t go back in the prototype, David. It’s just too dangerous.”
“Why? I thought this was all so safe. Safer than a car. What’s dangerous?”
“I told you we don’t have transcription errors—the errors that occur during rebuilding,” Gordon said. “But that’s not precisely accurate.”
“Ah.”
“Ordinarily, it’s true that we can’t find any evidence of errors. But they probably occur during every trip. They’re just too minor to detect. But like radiation exposure, transcription errors are cumulative. You can’t see them after one trip, but after ten or twenty trips, the signs start to be visible. Maybe you have a small seam like a scar in your skin. A small streak in your cornea. Or maybe you begin to have noticeable symptoms, like diabetes, or circulatory problems. Once that happens, you can’t go anymore. Because you can’t afford to have the problems get worse. That means you’ve reached your trip limit.”