He spoke some Arabic and followed more. He wasn't fluent, but he could make himself understood. Anyone who spent a lot of time along the border picked up bits and pieces of the language they used on the other side. Plenty of King Abdallah's men knew fragments of French. The merchant was as smooth in it as if it were his birthspeech. For all Jacques knew, it was. Some who'd been born Christian followed Islam now. Some who'd been born Muslim now reverenced Jesus and Henri, too, but not so many.
"We'll be going home soon," the trader said in Arabic. The younger woman and the older one both exclaimed in pleasure. They didn't want to stay here, any more than Jacques would have wanted to live in their country.
Bowing to them, Jacques said, "May God give you a safe journey," in their language.
They all exclaimed. Jacques couldn't hide his smile. Muslims were often surprised when they ran into a Christian who knew Arabic. Some of them couldn't have been more surprised if their horses had started talking. To be fair, this fellow didn't seem like that. "The Prophet's peace upon you," he said, and then, "Unless I am mistaken, you will be coming home from a journey."
How did he know that? Jacques looked down at himself. It probably wasn't hard to figure out. He was splashed with mud up past his knees. His boots were wet—he'd had to ford a creek. His clothes were grimy. His hair probably stuck out in all directions, too. He ran his fingers through it, not that that would do much good. "Yes, you're right," he said—why not admit it?
"Where have you come from, and what is the news?" the merchant asked, switching from Arabic to his flawless French.
And Jacques started to tell him. Doing it would have been easier and more natural in his own language. But then he remembered the thought he'd had before. A merchant who was only a merchant might ask a question like that. So might a merchant who was also a spy. Sticking to Arabic—he wanted to practice—Jacques answered, "Not much news, I fear—not for a great lord like yourself. A long, dull way here." He pretended to yawn. Then he yawned for real—he truly was tired.
"He speaks very well," the younger (he thought) veiled woman said to the older.
Jacques knew better than to come right out and say something to her. He would have been too familiar if he had. He spoke to the merchant instead: "Your . . . daughter gives me too much credit." He put a question in his voice, since he wasn't sure the woman was a daughter.
But the Arab merchant smiled and nodded, so he'd guessed right. The man said, "No, Khadija is always pleased to hear our speech. And she does not praise beyond what you deserve, for you speak very clearly. You are easy to understand." He bowed.
So did Jacques. He knew Arabs praised more freely than people from his own kingdom. That was one of the things that made them hard to trust. Even more than Jesus, Henri taught that men should be modest, because most of them had plenty to be modest about. Jacques said, "Tell your daughter I thank her for troubling to understand my words."
The older woman—Khadija's mother?—started to laugh. "We had better watch this one," she said. "He has a flatterer's tongue."
If she hadn't laughed, Jacques would have thought she was angry. As things were, he took a chance and bowed to her, more deeply than he had to the merchant. "How can the truth be flattery?" he asked.
All three Arabs laughed then. Khadija said, "You were right, Father. He is as smooth and slick as the oil you sell." In a different tone of voice, that would have been an insult. The way she said it, it sounded more like one friend teasing another.
He went on chatting with them, not about things that could matter to a spy, just passing the time of day the way he would have with friends. He had to remind himself he needed to report to Duke Raoul. He wasn't late enough to make the duke wonder where he'd been, but he would be if he hung around the market square much longer.
All the way to the castle, he wondered what Khadija looked like. Was she pretty? He had no way to know. He'd just seen her eyes and her hands. But he liked her, and so he thought she was.
Two
The innkeeper thought Annette and her family were odd because they had no servants or slaves. They couldn't hire locals, not without showing them things they shouldn't see. And there weren't enough people from Crosstime Traffic here to play the role. This alternate hadn't been opened for long. People from the home timeline still had a lot to learn here.
Back home, people said Crosstime Traffic was spread too thin. When Annette was in the home timeline, she'd said the same thing. People had known how to travel from one alternate world to another for only about fifty years. They had so many to explore, so many to examine, so many to exploit. Without food and energy from the alternates, the home timeline probably would have collapsed by now. But there was so much to do. And even though Crosstime Traffic had become far and away the biggest corporation in the world, there weren't enough people to do it all in a hurry.
So if the innkeeper scratched his head and muttered to himself . . . then he did, that was all. It didn't matter if he thought the Kleins were peculiar. If he thought they were peculiar because they didn't belong to this alternate . . . that would matter. But he didn't. He had no reason to. Some people drank only water. Some people fed their dogs better than they fed themselves. He thought they were peculiar like that—strange, yes, but harmless.
Dad took a big brass key off his belt to open their room. The big brass lock on the door looked just like the ones they made here. No local burglar could hope to beat it, though. It was brass only on the outside, case-hardened twenty-first century steel within. Dad's key had a microchip that shook hands with one inside the lock. Without that handshake, the lock wouldn't open, period—exclamation point, even. The same kind of lock secured the shutters over the windows.
After they went inside, Dad used another lock and a stout wooden bar to make sure the door stayed closed. He plopped himself down on one of the stools in the room—-only nobles here sat on chairs with backs. "Whew! It will be so good to head for home," he said in Arabic.
"Oh, yes," Annette held her nose. "I can't wait to get back to air that doesn't stink."
"People back there complain about pollution." Her mother had to use the Arabic word that usually meant a religious offense. No one here worried about polluting the environment, or even knew such a thing was possible. People just wanted to take what was there to be taken. Mom went on, "The home timeline has to be careful, too. I understand that. But anybody who's ever smelled a low-tech alternate will tell you there's pollution, and then there's pollution." As Annette had, she held her nose.
"Even getting back to Marseille will be good," Dad said. "I didn't think we'd land in any trouble up here, and we haven't, but it could have been bad trouble if we did. We're a long way from anybody who could give us a hand."
Staying inconspicuous made things harder. They couldn't carry assault rifles here. They couldn't drive an SUV between Marseille and Paris. Actually, that might have been just as well. What passed for roads here would have murdered any car's shocks in nothing flat. They traveled on foot, on horseback, and by boat. Dad had an automatic pistol, but it was disguised like the locks. It looked like one of the big, clumsy weapons the locals used. And it was for the worst emergencies only.
Mom sighed. "This poor alternate. Since the plagues, it's had nothing but bad luck."
"As long as we don't catch it," Annette said.
"You can say that again." Dad bent and knocked on the leg of his stool. They knocked on wood for luck here, the same as they did in the home timeline. A surprising number of small things were the same. All the big things were different.