The gravediggers set to work. It was the same work they would have been doing preparing the roadbed. The dead slave would never get out of this bed once they laid him in it, though.
Jacques eyed the guard. The man seemed vicious but not stupid. The slaves needed to see they couldn't hope to get away with rising up. But if he hadn't let them pray over the dead body, that might have given them reason to rise whether they had hope or not. Reluctantly, Jacques decided the men in the mottled tunics and trousers knew what they were doing. Too bad, he thought. He would rather have had a bunch of bungling idiots watching him.
Even for three men, digging a grave took a while. When the hole was big enough and deep enough, they dragged the dead man over and slid him down into it. That shoveler murmured prayers in Arabic. All the Muslims paused and lowered their heads in respect. The guards rolled their eyes, but they didn't complain out loud.
Thud-thump! Dirt falling on a body made a dreadfully final sound. The gravediggers filled in the hole, compacting the dirt with their shovels. Then they took some of the stones the crew behind them were using to fill in the roadbed. They tamped those down on top of the grave, too, so wolves or foxes or wolverines would have a harder time digging in. Again, the guards let them doit.
That could have happened to me. A chill ran through Jacques in spite of the heat of the day. If somebody thumped him, he knew he might lose his temper and go after his tormentor. And if he did, he would lie dead moments later. He would go into the ground without even the proper last rites. As far as he knew, he was the only Christian here. If he died without confession, without forgiveness, where else could he go but straight to hell?
But if anybody treated him like a lumpish farm animal, if he snapped and hit back without even thinking . . .
Did all slaves feel this way all the time? Jacques hadn't, not up till now. That other death made him feel the possibility of his own in a way he never had before. He was close to the edge of doing murder, and just as close to being murdered on account of it.
Once the brief funeral was over, the roadbuilding gang went back to work. The guards didn't even have to order the slaves into action. They just fell to, as if they had nothing else to do with their time. Jacques found that he wasn't sorry to be swinging the pick again. The harder he worked, the less he had to think about what had happened there that afternoon.
Along with the rest of the gang, he tramped back to the manor for supper. After he ate, his time was his own. He usually did what the rest of the roadbuilders did: he went straight to sleep. Sometimes, when he had more spirit than usual, he would wash a little before falling into bed. The Muslims washed a little more often than he did. So did the men whose language was all sneezes and snorts. The ones who spoke the language that sounded a little like Arabic washed less often. To him, it didn't make much difference one way or the other.
This evening, though, he walked in the courtyard with Khadija. He was glad she wasn't too tired to come walking with him. In a low voice, he told her what had happened. He spoke French, hoping no one else here understood it.
"That poor fool," she said in the same language when he finished. "Oh, that poor, brave fool."
"The musket wouldn't even shoot for him," Jacques said bitterly. "Are these people evil wizards with spells on their weapons?"
Khadija shook her head. "No, no, no. It's only a trick that poor slave didn't know. I do know about these muskets." How did she know? The same way she knew about transposition chambers? How was that? Jacques didn't even have the chance to ask, for she went on, "They have a little lever on the side that clicks back and forth." She showed him what she meant with a stiff forefinger. "It's called the 'safety.' When it's in one place, the musket can't shoot even if someone pulls the trigger. It can't go off by accident, either. You have to move the safety to the other place before the musket will work. The slave wouldn't have known about that."
"I sure didn't. I never thought of such a thing." Jacques scratched his head. "It's a good idea, though, isn't it? With a gun that spits so many bullets, you don't want it spitting them by mistake."
"That's why they have the safety." Khadija cocked her head to one side, studying him as daylight leaked out of the sky. "You're clever, to figure that out so fast."
"Am I?" Even to himself, Jacques sounded bleak. "But you already knew it, didn't you? How?"
Khadija stopped. She looked up at him, there in the deepening twilight. To a guard watching from the manor's outer wall, it must have seemed like a tender moment. "I'm not going to tell you that," she replied. "If you think about it, you'll probably come up with the right answer. But don't ask me if you do, because I won't tell you if it is, either."
"Why not?" Jacques didn't feel tender. He was angry. "The way you go on about this and that and the other thing, you might as well be one of these people yourself." His wave took in the whole manor—and the road and the gardens outside, too.
Khadija looked horrified. No, she looked terrified. Or was it both at once? Both at once, Jacques decided. She tried to stare in every direction at once. "I just hope to heaven they didn't hear you, or they didn't understand you if they did."
"How come?" Jacques demanded, but her fright made him lower his voice. "The way you're carrying on, you really are one of. . . ." He ran down like a water wheel whose stream dried up. Of itself, his hand shaped the sign of the wheel. "Oh, Jesus and Henri," he whispered. "You are."
She didn't answer. For a heartbeat, that puzzled him. Then he remembered she'd told him she wouldn't. She'd also told him he could figure out what the truth was. Well, he had, all right, and plainly faster than she'd thought he would. Maybe he really was clever. If so, he wished he were stupid. Some things hardly seemed worth finding out.
After a moment, she said, "There's a difference between these people and me. You need to remember that."
Jacques nodded jerkily. "I'll say. They're the masters and the guards. You're a slave just like me. What bigger difference is there?"
"No, that's not what I meant," Khadija said. "The difference is, these people are outlaws. They're the worst kind of outlaws anybody's seen in a long, long time. If I could get to my . . . my duke, I guess you'd say, he'd land on them with both feet. He would, and he could—if I could let him know about this. By whatever oath you want from me, Jacques, I swear that's true." She took his hands in hers.
It must have looked like another tender moment. Jacques' head whirled, but not the way it should have around a pretty girl. If she could get away, she might be able to rescue all the slaves. That was what it boiled down to. "How do I help?" he asked.
"Well, I don't know yet," she answered. "But if I get the chance, I'll take you with me if I can. All right?"
"If it helps me get away from this place, it's better than all right," Jacques said.
Annette lay on her bed in the women's dormitory. She felt sick to her stomach, and it had nothing to do with the food slaves got here. She'd just broken about half the rules Crosstime Traffic set. And she hadn't just broken the rules. She'd thrown down the pieces and danced on them.
No matter what she'd done, and no matter what she might do, nothing she did could come close to what the slavers were doing. Remembering that helped steady her. Yes, she'd given away most of the Crosstime Traffic secret to somebody from another alternate. Well, so what? Look what these people were doing!
As if to prove as much, one of the house slaves came in and lay down on her bed. She was young and good-looking, and she'd been summoned to the master's residence. That was another thing a slaveowner could do—and a slave couldn't stop him, not unless she wanted something even worse to happen to her. There was one more charge against these people, too.