He told them of his long conversation with Emmerich, and how he had learned of that last note received from allies in the future. “They seemed to be in some difficulty,” he concluded. “But the note was very pointed. Just two words: Not Charles! It was then that I began to remember everything we had uncovered and discussed about the battle, and I made some rather alarming conclusions.”
When he had shared his thesis, Paul nodded his head. “Militarily, what you propose would make perfect sense. There is nothing Odo could have done by simply throwing in his lighter horsemen to reinforce Charles at a critical moment in the battle. How would they get through the throng? That sort of Cavalry is best used to surprise the enemy at the flank or rear, and unhinge the main attack by an indirect means.” He looked at Maeve, waiting for her to weigh in before he said anything more.
“It sounds reasonable to me,” she said. “But my god, the layers and layers of meaning in those lines from the stela are confounding! Every time we read them we were able to bend the words to fit the scenario we had concocted. They seemed to make perfect sense.”
“Motivation defines perception,” said Kelly. “We saw what we wanted to see, and perhaps that was all there was to it.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Paul. “It’s clear from what Robert has told us that the other side had no inkling that Odo might be the lynchpin here. They were bending all their resources at preventing Charles from taking power. Yet, in each intervention we made, the phrases from that stela did indeed make a good fit. This scribe Kelly told us about, Hamza, may have known more than we think if he carved them. My guess is that there was no single Pushpoint that could move an event of this magnitude. It took intervention at many places on the Meridian, the operation in 705 against Lambert, then in 714 involving Grimwald, and finally here at the battle in 732. It’s as if they were trying to bring down a building, and needed to blow the supports out on the lower floors first. Simply flying an airplane into it in a single operation wouldn’t do the job.”
Maeve considered things for a moment. “The horses gathered at the farm, at the ferry, and were gathered as well by Odo at the battle.”
“Loose twine everywhere!” said Robert. “And what about that last line on the stela? I remember it now, ‘For the unseen one that comes in the dusk shall unseat all….’ First we thought it was Dodo, riding at dusk to kill the Bishop Lambert. Then we drop the ‘D’ and it’s Odo, coming at dusk upon the enemy camp.”
“Possibly,” said Maeve. “But it could just as easily have been referring to a certain Professor Nordhausen, coming at dusk to the Abbey of Marmoutier!” She winked at him.
“Well, that’s an encouraging spin on the history,” said Robert with a smile.
“Speaking of that…” Kelly was pulling data from the Golem file now. “We’re getting some early returns. What was the name of that Chronicle you cited about this battle?”
“Try the Chronicles of Fredegar,” said Robert, and Kelly had a file up in a few minutes.
“Here’s a passage describing the first charge of the Muslims when they tried to break through to Charles…. ’The Muslim horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted manfully, and many fell dead on either side… The men of the North… a sea of arms that could not be moved… a wall; and drawn up in a band around their chief… with great blows of their swords they hewed down their enemy. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts of the foe.”
“Sounds like Charles’ personal guard was holding the line,” said Maeve.
“There’s more,” said Kelly. “Charles boldly drew up his battle line against them and the Warriors rush in… With Christ’s help he overturned the tents—“
“That line there!” said Robert. “That was the line I recalled when I was with the Abbot. The Continuator of the Chronicles here was buttering up the history a bit, at least I believed as much. How could Charles have overthrown the tents if he was locked in mortal combat with the Saracen heavy horsemen?”
“Right,” said Paul. The writer was ascribing the victory to Charles, and therefore every aspect of the battle was presented as his doing.”
“You’ve got that right,” said Kelly, reading again. “And Charles hastened to battle and grind them small in slaughter. The King, Abdul, having been killed, he destroyed them, driving forth the army, and he fought and won. Thus did the victor triumph over his enemies!”
“Then we did it!” Robert folded his arms, satisfied. “The Franks win the battle now! That’s from the Golems?”
“Right from the horse’s mouth,” said Kelly.
“No mention of Odo?”
“There certainly won’t be any mention of the upstart Duke,” said Maeve. “It wouldn’t be kosher. After all, Odo had gone so far as to ally himself with the enemy at one point, and remained an embittered opponent of Charles until his death three years later.”
“Damn,” said Nordhausen… “Then we’ll never know what the Abbot did, or what Odo did to change this battle. We’ll never have anything more than an assumption, an educated guess.”
“History is written by the victors and the gray priesthood of scribes they keep,” said Paul. “I’d say most of everything that ever really happened remains unknown. All we hear about is what the local powers that be decided to write down. And, as we have seen, it can often have many interpretations.”
Nordhausen knew this as well, perhaps better than any of them. He had been a member of that gray priesthood himself, devoting most of his life to the study of history, ancient languages, and long forgotten cultures. He sighed, imagining Odo where he must have sat that day, restless at the edge of the woods where his horsemen waited in reserve.
“Well, we did it,” he said again with great relief. “Or the Abbot did it, or Odo did it in the end! The only thing that matters is that the Franks win the battle. That should change everything back again, right?”
Kelly was watching the chart, noting the progression of green. It had been stuck so long on the year 732, but was now bleeding into the yellow and migrating down the Meridian. “Things are looking much better,” he said. “I think Charles is going to have his grandson Charlemagne after all!”
“Then we get it all back?” said Robert. “Christendom prevails? Columbus discovers America? We get a city called San Francisco here?”
Kelly watched as the weight of opinion from the Golem searches registered on his screen and, as he moved right to scan the centuries, the line returned to a comforting warm green, deepening in color as it went. “Looks like smooth sailing,” he said. “The Renaissance, the Reformation… It’s all clearing up. We own it all again, the good and the bad. We’ve still got Shakespeare, but Hitler shows up as well. The whole cast of characters is safe behind the curtain of history.”
“How much fuel do we have left?” asked Paul.
“What?” Kelly looked at him. “Well it looks like we’ve just got that last bit you fed into the number one backup generator. But what difference does it make now?”
“Because we still have one little problem to solve,” Paul said quietly.
Robert looked at him, unhappy. “Oh, don’t start brooding over the physics, Paul,” he said. “Give it a rest! We should go out and celebrate!”
“Oh?” said Paul flatly. “Go out where? Have you forgotten the world we came from when we arrived here last night, Robert?”
The professor frowned. “You mean to say… You’re saying—”