As for Jacques' fellow guards ... Most of them were older men, in their twenties or thirties or even forties. To him, men in their forties were almost as old as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. That was a good age for a ruler, for someone like Duke Raoul. For a man out in the field? He had his doubts.
He needed a while to realize the older men had their doubts about him, too. They called youngsters tadpoles, and seemed to think he couldn't do anything his mother hadn't taught him. That made him furious. He needed a while to realize they thought his fury was funny. He stopped giving them the satisfaction of steaming where they could see it. They treated him better after that—he'd shown he could figure something out, anyhow.
When he left Paris, he thought he would spend most of his time spying on Muhammad al-Marsawi and his wife—and his daughter. Things didn't work like that. The caravanmaster rotated his guards three or four times a day, so nobody kept the same station too long.
Jacques didn't need long to see that that was fair. A few hours as a rear guard, eating everybody else's dust, drove home the lesson. But it meant he couldn't even get close to Muhammad and his family most of the time. At first he thought Duke Raoul would be angry at him for falling down on the job. He was hustling up to the front of the caravan so everyone else could breathe his dust for a while when he saw he was being silly. Raoul knew how caravans worked. He knew better than Jacques did, and that was for sure. So he couldn't have expected Jacques to spend every waking moment around Muhammad al-Marsawi . . . and Khadija. Marseille was a long way from Paris. / have time, he thought.
He breathed a great big sigh of relief. He didn't have to keep twisting his head to see where the Muslim trader was and what he was up to. A lot of Henri's preaching was about the patient man and what he could do. Jacques had listened to endless sermons from those verses in the Final Testament, but they hadn't made much sense to him. Now, all at once, they did.
He got his first chance to talk with Muhammad when the caravan encamped the second night out from Paris. The caravan-master had stopped in a meadow that gave the animals good grazing and the people enough room to pitch their tents. Swallows swooped overhead, hawking bugs out of the sky. A white wagtail—actually, the bird was mostly gray and black, though it had a white face—hopped in the grass. Chaffinches called from the bushes around the meadow.
"I hope you are well," Jacques said to the merchant, and then, "Do you need help with your tent?"
"I am well, thank you. May God grant that you be the same. As for this tent"—Muhammad al-Marsawi paused to drive a peg into the ground with a rock—"again, I thank you for the offer, but it is not being too troublesome right this minute."
"Good. I am glad to hear it." Jacques watched the trader drive in another peg. He suddenly understood why this man puzzled Duke Raoul. Everyone else he knew, Christian or Muslim, would have said something like, I'm not having any trouble with the tent. Jacques had no trouble understanding what Muhammad al-Marsawi meant. The trader's phrase, which gave the tent a life of its own, was more vivid than the usual way of putting things. But it wasn't anything most people would have said. How had he come to put things like that?
"Have you heard any word of bandits on the road?" the merchant asked.
Anyone traveling in a caravan might ask a question like that. Anyone might sound anxious when he asked it, too. Muhammad al-Marsawi certainly did. The trader had a pistol stuffed into his belt. Jacques thought he was as likely to shoot himself in the foot with it as he was to bring down a raider.
Hiding his scorn, Jacques answered, "As far as I know, the road is clear. Of course, I do not know everything there is to know."
"I hope you know the truth," Muhammad said. "Yes, I hope that very much. God grant it be so."
"Yes, God grant it." Jacques sketched the wheel over his heart. The trader looked away when he did it. Muslims accepted Jesus as a prophet, even if they didn't believe He was the Son of God. But they thought Satan, not God, spoke through Henri. Their Muhammad had said he was the last prophet. To them, anyone who came after him had to be a fraud. To Jacques, that only proved how ignorant they were.
Muhammad al-Marsawi coughed. "My family and I were surprised to see you here after we talked a few days ago."
Jacques' cheeks heated. What could that mean but, Why are you spying on us? The merchant might be strange, but he was smart. Well, that wasn't anything Jacques didn't already know. He said, "Duke Raoul chose me for this duty. How could I say no to my liege lord?" The last two words had to come out in French. Arabic didn't have quite the same notion—you could say master in Arabic, but not liege lord. Any superior could be a master, but a liege lord had obligations to his men in return for the duty they owed him.
"Well, anyone owes his master obedience." The trader didn't bother with the difference between the one and the other. He spoke French as well as he did Arabic, but that didn't mean he understood there was a difference. He went on, "And what do you think of this duty he gave you?"
"I like it," Jacques replied. "I get to go places I have never gone, and I get to meet people I have not met before." He bowed to Muhammad al-Marsawi. "And I get to know better people I have already met."
The trader's eyes twinkled. "Ah, but is it me you want to know better, me with my beard and with my hair going gray, or is it Khadija?"
Another blush set Jacques' face afire. "I do not wish to be a trouble," he said.
"Have I said you are?" the merchant asked. "But I am not a blind man, either."
Most Muslims, from what Jacques had seen and heard, would have been furious if a Christian looked at their daughter. Muhammad al-Marsawi didn't sound furious. He sounded . . amused? That relieved Jacques and puzzled him at the same time. He was glad the merchant didn't want to pull out that pistol and aim it at him. But why didn't Muhammad act like most other men from his kingdom?
What would Duke Raoul have to say when he heard this? Probably that it was one more piece that didn't fit in the puzzle. Why was Muhammad al-Marsawi so different? Jacques almost asked. That would have given him away, but the trader might have answered just because he was so different.
Was Khadija different, too? If she was, did that mean she wouldn't mind if Jacques got to know her better? He could hardly wait to find out.
Annette didn't like riding sidesaddle. To her, if you rode sidesaddle you were a fall waiting to happen. But women in this alternate didn't ride astride, so she was stuck. If she didn't care to ride sidesaddle, she could walk. She did a good deal of that, too—not so much as her father, but a good deal even so.
She let out a silent sigh of relief when the caravan left the Kingdom of Versailles and passed into the Kingdom of Berry. She felt safer among Muslims here than she did among this alternate's strange Christians. Western Europe here had been through a lot. It was at last starting to emerge from the new dark age the Great Black Deaths had clamped down on it. In another couple of hundred years, it might be a very lively, very exciting place, the way it had been in the home timeline between 1600 and 1700. For now, this alternate's Western Europe was still a borrower, not a creator.
At the border, the customs inspectors went easy on the Muslims and searched the Christians' goods with great care. It had been the other way around when Annette and her family entered the Kingdom of Versailles this past spring. The inspectors took away a fine bell a trader from the Germanies wanted to bring into their kingdom. He squawked in bad French and worse Arabic, but they wouldn't listen to him.