A merchant came up to her father's stand. Dad had a loaf of bread handy. He dipped it in the oil and offered it to the local. The man chewed thoughtfully. "It's not butter," he said.
"No, it's not," Dad agreed. They were speaking French. The language was less perfectly polished here than in the home timeline. It also had what would have been a northern accent in Annette's world. The plagues hadn't hit so hard there, while they'd almost emptied Paris. Even all these centuries later, you could still hear that in the way people talked. This French had also borrowed many more words from Arabic than French had in the home timeline. Annette's father went on, "Where I come from, people would say it's better than butter."
The merchant bowed. "You will forgive me for saying so, m'sieu, but you are not where you came from."
"Really?" Dad raised an eyebrow and bowed back. "I never would have noticed." He and the merchant both laughed. The Klein family was based in Marseille. The transposition chamber that took them back and forth between worlds was there, too. One day soon, there was supposed to be a chamber in Paris. Annette would believe that when she saw it. Crosstime Traffic worked in so many alternates, no one of them got all the attention it should have.
She liked this Marseille better than this Paris. The weather was nicer—warmer and drier. The city was cleaner. The streets there were all cobbled, and had real gutters to get rid of some of the garbage. Marseille didn't stink as badly. And the people who lived there were a little less backward, or at least more polite about it.
This merchant seemed intent on sneering at the olive oil. "But since this is not butter, my friend, who will want to buy it? Who will want to use it?"
"More people than you can imagine, m'sieu" Annette's father said. That was truer than the merchant could imagine. Olive oil from this alternate's southern France went back to the home timeline. So did olives pickled in vinegar and brine. The locals made them just fine, and had varieties different from the ones in the world where Annette grew up. The oil and the olives both brought Crosstime Traffic good money.
The local merchant was a tougher customer. "If I buy it from you, who will buy it from me?" he asked. "It's not what people here are used to."
"Paris has some cobblestones these days," Dad remarked, seemingly out of the blue. "It didn't used to."
"Forgive me, m'sieu, but I do not see how this answers me." The merchant scratched his head. Annette was tempted to do the same thing.
Dad only smiled. "One of the reasons Paris has some cobbles is that Marseille and other cities farther south have cobbles. Is it not so?" He waited for the local trader to nod, then went on, "The Kings of Versailles want to keep up with what their neighbors do. So do the people here. One thing their neighbors do is use more olive oil than they do. A clever man, as I'm sure you are, would see that his customers remembered it while he was selling them the oil."
"It could be." The merchant, being a merchant, tried not to show he was impressed. But he was; even Annette could see as much. Nobody here thought about advertising, not on purpose. You had a product and you cried it through the streets—that was as far as things went. The local added, "You are a clever man. No wonder you are rich."
"I wish I were," Annette's father said. By this alternate's standards, anyone from the home timeline was richer than a king. Talking about that not only broke all the rules but was really stupid besides.
Laughing, the merchant said, "However you please." No one in this timeline would ever admit to being rich. Nothing else could do a better job of attracting tax collectors. Rumors of money drew them the way dead meat drew vultures. The merchant went on, "I will buy five jars from you—no more. I'll see if I can move them the way you suggest. If they do well, I'll buy more when I see you again."
He's going to try to create demand, Annette thought. The local probably didn't look at it in those terms, but that was what it amounted to. Annette's father bowed. He and the merchant haggled. When they reached a price they could both live with, they clasped hands. The merchant went off to get the money and to bring back workers to carry away the jars. Down farther south, the workers would have been slaves. Here, he probably paid them a little something. Slavery wasn't illegal in the Kingdom of Versailles, but it was uncommon.
After the merchant paid and took his olive oil, Dad let out a sigh of relief. "We'll be going home soon now," he said. Anyone who understood Arabic would think he meant going back to Marseille. They would be going back there, all right. But after that, they'd be going back to the home timeline. Before long, Annette would start her freshman year at Ohio State. Along with her high-school diploma, she'd have a year of fieldwork to her credit. She could hardly wait.
Jacques' feet hurt when he got back to Paris. He could feel every pebble in the roadway through the sole of his left boot. When he found the chance, he would have to see a cobbler and get thicker leather put on there. First things first, though. He needed to get back to Duke Raoul and let him know Count Guillaume had the message.
He paid a boatman a couple of coppers to carry him over the Seine to the right bank. The duke's castle stood there, not far from the great cathedral. Raoul—or, more likely, one of his clerks—would repay him the boatman's fee. A lot of boats went back and forth on the Seine. A good many went up and down the river, too. Moving anything heavy was much cheaper by water than by land.
The boatmen shouted and cursed at one another. None of them wanted to give way. They felt less manly when they had to. "Where will you find a cavern dark enough to hide your ugly face?" the man rowing Jacques screamed at a fellow on a barge that threatened to cut him off.
"I would rather be a dog and bay at the moon than a wretch like you," the bargeman retorted. They paid each other more compliments till the rowboat slipped past. If they'd said things like that on dry land, they both probably would have gone for their knives. On the river, they took insults for granted. If Jacques' boatman and the other fellow met in a tavern, they were more likely to laugh and to buy each other wine than to brawl.
Boats hardly ever smashed together, either. The system looked—and sounded—odd to somebody who wasn't part of it, but it worked.
"Here you are, friend," Jacques' boatman said as the boat went aground near the riverside market.
"Thanks." Jacques hopped out. Mud squelched under his feet. The boatman started waving his arms and shouting for a passenger so he could go back across the Seine. For the small fees he got, he worked hard.
People in the market were waving their arms and shouting, too. Nobody ever bought at the first price. You had to pretend you were having a fit to get the seller to lower it. Then he would pretend to have a fit so he didn't have to lower it too much.
Somebody from the south had just finished making a deal with a local merchant. Jacques knew of the merchant, but wasn't rich enough to buy from him. The local man looked pleased with himself as his followers carried off five big pottery jugs. The Arab looked pleased with himself, too. That usually meant a good bargain.
Jacques sent the Arab a suspicious stare. Any trader up from the south might be a spy. The traders who went into Muslim countries from the Kingdom of Versailles always kept their eyes and ears open. Why wouldn't southerners do the same here?
The Muslim merchant had two women with him. Were they wives? Were they daughters? Were they one of each? All Jacques could see of them were their hands and their eyes. He thought one of them couldn't be much if any older than he was, but he couldn't be sure. At least with girls from his own kingdom, you could see what they looked like. With these women, everything was a mystery. Did that make them less interesting or more? Again, he couldn't be sure.