Johnston said, “Elsie, are you sure this is the road?”
“Absolutely,” Elsie Kastner said, the map open on her lap. She traced the route with her finger. “Four miles beyond Cheatham Cross to Bishop’s Vale, and one mile later, it should be up there, on the right.”
She pointed to a sloping hill with scattered oak trees.
“I don’t see anything,” Chris said, from the back seat.
Kate said, “Is the air conditioner on? I’m hot.” She was seven months pregnant, and always hot.
“Yes, it’s on,” Johnston said.
“All the way?”
Chris patted her knee reassuringly.
Johnston drove slowly, looking for a mileage marker at the side of the road. The rain diminished. They could see better. And then Elsie said, “There!”
On the top of the hill was a dark rectangle, with crumbling walls.
“That’s it?”
“That’s Eltham Castle,” she said. “What’s left of it.”
Johnston pulled the car over to the side of the road, and cut the ignition. Elsie read from her guidebook. “First built on this site by John d’Elthaim in the eleventh century, with several later additions. Notably the ruined keep from the twelfth century, and a chapel in the English Gothic style, from the fourteenth. Unrelated to Eltham Castle in London, which is from a later period.”
The rain lessened, now just scattered drops in the wind. Johnston opened the car door and got out, shrugging on his raincoat. Elsie got out on the passenger side, her documents encased in plastic. Chris ran around the car to open the door for Kate, and helped her out. They climbed over a low stone wall, and began climbing up toward the castle.
The ruin was more substantial than it had seemed from the road; high stone walls, dark with rain. There were no ceilings; the rooms were open to the sky. No one spoke as they walked through the ruins. They saw no signs, no antiquities markers, nothing at all to indicate what this place had been, or even its name. Finally Kate said, “Where is it?”
“The chapel? Over there.”
Walking around a high wall, they saw the chapel, surprisingly complete, its roof rebuilt at some time in the past. The windows were merely open arches in the stone, without glass. There was no door.
Inside the chapel, the wind blew through cracks and windows. Water dripped from the ceiling. Johnston took out a large flashlight, and shone it on the walls.
Chris said, “How did you find out about this place, Elsie?”
“In the documents, of course,” she said. “In the Troyes archives, there was a reference to a wealthy English brigand named Andrew d’Eltham who had paid a visit to the Monastery of Sainte-Mère in his later years. He brought his entire family from England, including his wife and grown sons. That started me searching.”
“Here,” Johnston said, shining his light on the floor.
They all walked over to see.
Broken tree branches and a layer of damp leaves covered the floor. Johnston was down on his hands and knees, brushing them away to expose weathered burial stones that had been set in the floor. Chris sucked in his breath when he saw the first one. It was a woman, dressed demurely in long robes, lying on her back. The carving was unmistakably the Lady Claire. Unlike many carvings, Claire was depicted with her eyes open, staring frankly at the viewer.
“Still beautiful,” Kate said, standing with her back arched, her hand pressed into her side.
“Yes,” Johnston said. “Still beautiful.”
Now the second stone was cleared away. Lying next to Claire, they saw André Marek. He, too, had his eyes open. Marek looked older, and he had a crease on the side of his face that might have been from age, or might have been a scar.
Elsie said, “According to the documents, Andrew escorted Lady Claire back to England from France, and then married her. He didn’t care about the rumors that Claire had murdered her previous husband. By all accounts he was deeply in love with his wife. They had five sons, and were inseparable all their lives.
“In his old age,” Elsie said, “the old routier settled down to a quiet life, and doted on his grandchildren. Andrew’s dying words were ‘I have chosen a good life.’ He was buried in the family chapel in Eltham, in June 1382.”
“Thirteen eighty-two,” Chris said. “He was fifty-four.”
Johnston was cleaning the rest of the stone. They saw Marek’s shield: a prancing English lion on a field of French lilies. Above the shield were words in French.
Elsie said, “His family motto, echoing Richard Lionheart, appeared above the coat of arms: Mes compaingnons cui j’amoie et cui j’aim, … Me di, chanson. “ She paused. “ ‘Companions whom I loved, and still do love, … Tell them, my song.’”
They stared at André for a long time.
Johnston touched the stone contours of Marek’s face with his fingertips. “Well,” he said finally, “at least we know what happened.”
“Do you think he was happy?” Chris said.
“Yes,” Johnston said. But he was thinking that however much Marek loved it, it could never be his world. Not really. He must have always felt a foreigner there, a person separated from his surroundings, because he had come from somewhere else.
The wind whined. A few leaves blew, scraping across the floor. The air was damp and cold. They stood silently.
“I wonder if he thought of us,” Chris said, looking at the stone face. “I wonder if he ever missed us.”
“Of course he did,” the Professor said. “Don’t you miss him?”
Chris nodded. Kate sniffled, and blew her nose.
“I do,” Johnston said.
They went back outside. They walked down the hill to the car. By now the rain had entirely stopped, but the clouds remained dark and heavy, hanging low over the distant hills.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our understanding of the medieval period has changed dramatically in the last fifty years. Although one occasionally still hears a self-important scientist speak of the Dark Ages, modern views have long since overthrown such simplicities. An age that was once thought to be static, brutal and benighted is now understood as dynamic and swiftly changing: an age where knowledge was sought and valued; where great universities were born, and learning fostered; where technology was enthusiastically advanced; where social relations were in flux; where trade was international; where the general level of violence was often less deadly than it is today. As for the old reputation of medieval times as a dark time of parochialism, religious prejudice and mass slaughter, the record of the twentieth century must lead any thoughtful observer to conclude that we are in no way superior.
In fact, the conception of a brutal medieval period was an invention of the Renaissance, whose proponents were at pains to emphasize a new spirit, even at the expense of the facts. If a benighted medieval world has proven a durable misconception, it may be because it confirms a cherished contemporary belief—that our species always moves forward to ever better and more enlightened ways of life. This belief is utter fantasy, but it dies hard. It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.
A word about time travel. While it is true that quantum teleportation has been demonstrated in laboratories around the world, the practical application of such phenomena lies in the future. The ideas presented in this book were stimulated by the speculations of David Deutsch, Kip Thorne, Paul Nahin and Charles Bennett, among others. What appears here may amuse them, but they would not take it seriously. This is a novel: time travel rests firmly in the realm of fantasy.
But the representation of the medieval world has a more substantial basis, and for it I am indebted to the work of many scholars, some of whom are identified in the bibliography that follows. Errors are mine, not theirs.
I’m grateful as well to Catherine Kanner for the illustrations, and to Brant Gordon for the computer-generated architectural renderings.
Finally, my
particular thanks to historian Bart Vranken for his invaluable insights, and for his companionship while tramping through little-known and neglected ruins of the Périgord.
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Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications. New York: Penguin, 1997. A brilliant, stimulating and very well written book. See particularly the photon interference demonstration of multiverses, on which my own text relies.
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