Crossing the mountains meant crossing a border, as it did in the home timeline. On the other side, the people who didn't speak Arabic spoke Catalan, the same as they did back home. It wasn't quite the same Catalan, any more than the French and the Arabic were the same. Annette could pick out a word here and there, but that was about all. She hadn't learned it through her implant or studied it on her own. She did a little better with signs, but there weren't many signs to see. Gutenberg had never been born in this alternate. No one had invented printing here.
They kept on to the south and west. They crossed the Ebro at Zaragoza. By then, lisping Castilian Spanish had replaced Catalan. Annette had an even harder time with that, especially when she heard it. The country was broad and high and rolling, hot and dry, with herds of sheep and also camels—on its way to being a desert if not quite there. The camels didn't seem out of place, even if Spain in the home timeline had none. She wanted to say something to Jacques about the camel being the sheep of the desert. But the pun worked only in English, not in French or Arabic.
Maybe that was just as well. She wondered if such a bad pun meant her wits were coming back or if she had more brain damage than she thought.
Madrid in the home timeline was an enormous city, not much smaller than Paris. In this alternate, Madrid was bigger and more important than Paris. That didn't make it an enormous city, but did make it a fair-sized one. At a guess, Annette thought it held somewhere between a quarter-million and half a million people. In an alternate without good roads, that was about as big as a city could get.
Suburbs straggled out beyond the big, thick walls that defended the city's heart. Houses showed the street nothing but walls and doors and narrow, shuttered windows. They centered on their courtyards, where only family and friends would come. The richer homes had whitewashed walls and red tile roofs. They looked a little like houses in California in the home timeline. Those houses were often called California Spanish. The weather was similar, so the colonists coming up from Mexico had brought with them what worked in their Spain.
Poorer homes weren't whitewashed. Their walls were of plain mud brick, their roofs often thatched. And hovels could be made of anything at all, which meant mostly wood and rubble. People here didn't have sheet iron and plastic.
Madrid was richer than Paris as well as being bigger. Even the suburbs outside the wall had cobblestoned streets. That made the way less dusty than it had been. Less dusty, yes—less smelly, no. Madrid had no sewers. People threw slops and garbage into the street from rich homes and poor alike. Flies buzzed. Dogs and pigs rooted through the rubbish. So did skinny children, looking for things they could use that their richer neighbors didn't want.
Annette had seen that in Paris, too. It made her sad and angry at the same time. People shouldn't have to live as scavengers off other people. But in so many alternates—and, even now, some places in the home timeline—they did.
Jacques took the scrounging children for granted. From things he'd said, he hadn't been that poor when he was a little boy, but he knew plenty of people who had. Wrinkling his nose, he said, "You forget how much a city stinks till you've been away from one for a while."
"They shouldn't smell this bad," she said. "People ought to be cleaner. They shouldn't throw trash and slops every which way."
"What are you going to do with that stuff, then? You can't just leave it in your house." Jacques sounded like someone who'd just heard something silly being reasonable. By this alternate's standards, he was.
They passed over a drawbridge and through a gate and into the walled part of Madrid. Two low, broad buildings stood side by side next to a market square. Annette and the female captives were herded into one, Jacques and the men into the other. Annette needed only a moment to realize what the buildings were— slave barracks. And that market was bound to be a slave market. Some time before very long, they were going to sell her there like a bit of mutton. And she couldn't do a thing about it.
Five
As far as Jacques was concerned, the slave barracks were just. . . barracks. They were more crowded than the ones in Paris or in Count Guillaume's fort. The beds weren't as good— thin pallets of musty straw wrapped in scratchy fabric. The food wasn't as good, either, and they didn't get as much of it. But he could sleep on his pallet, and they didn't starve him. He had nothing to do but wait. A lot of soldiering was like that, too.
He did have interesting people to wait with. Some of the men in the barracks were black as ebony, almost as black as coal. When he first saw them, he thought they were captive demons. When they found out, they thought he was an idiot. They spoke better Arabic than he did, though with an odd accent.
"We were taken in war," one of them said. "It must have been God's will, though what we did to make Him angry at us, I cannot say." He spread his hands, palms up. Those palms were pale. So were the soles of his feet. That fascinated Jacques. The black man—his name was Musa ibn Ibrahim—went on, "And what of you, stranger? Till we came here, all the men we ever saw had brown eyes and black hair, whether their skin was light or dark."
Jacques' hair was an ordinary brown, his eyes gray. He said, "Some in my kingdom have hair darker than mine, some lighter. Some have yellow hair."
"Yes, I have seen this," Musa agreed. "It is peculiar."
"Not as peculiar as a black hide," Jacques said. But Musa only thought that was funny. Everyone in his kingdom was black, and so to him people were supposed to be that way. Jacques went on, "Some people—a few—in my kingdom have hair the color of polished copper."
"This I have not seen." Musa ibn Ibrahim raised an eyebrow. It was hard to make out against his dark skin. "I think you are telling stories to see what I will believe."
"By God and Jesus and Henri, I am not," Jacques said indignantly. "Ask any of the men from the north who are here. They will tell you the same."
Musa sighed. "Who knows what a Christian oath is worth? Muhammad was the seal of prophets, so Satan must have sent this Henri."
Muslims always said that. Jacques' fists bunched. He didn't feel like hearing it now. "You take it back!" he said. He was bigger than the black man, but Musa was older and no doubt more experienced. Musa also looked ready to fight, but he didn't throw the first punch.
"Hold up, both of you," an older man said. "They whip you if you brawl. They don't want you damaging the merchandise."
"I am not merchandise," Musa ibn Ibrahim said with dignity. "I am a man."
"Well, so am I," Jacques said, "and I'm a man you insulted."
"I did not insult you. I insulted your foolish religion," Musa said.
"Same thing!" Jacques said. "Shall I tell you what Christians think of Muhammad?"
"Who cares about such ignorant opinions?" Musa said, but Jacques saw him get angry. To Jacques' surprise, Musa saw himself getting angry, too. He started to laugh. "We are in a mirror, you and I. But which of us is holding it and which the reflection?"