"I read some. I've picked it up on my own, mostly. I might be able to write my name. Past that—" Jacques shrugged. He'd never needed to write before. Now maybe he did. He went on, "I read some French, I should have said. I can't make head nor tail of the funny squiggles the Muslims use."
"All right. Don't let it worry you. If you want to, after you come back I'll have someone teach you more. It comes in handy all kinds of ways."
"Thanks, your Grace. I'd like that." Jacques bowed again. "I'll never make a scholar, but I like to learn things."
"That's a fair start for a spy. Of course, it's also a fair start for a gossipy old granny." Even when Duke Raoul praised you, he liked to jab you with a pin, too. He smiled a crooked smile at Jacques. "And if you do get too snoopy, maybe Muhammad there will think you're trying to see under Khadija's veil, eh? And maybe he'll be right, too." He nudged Jacques with his elbow and strode off whistling a bawdy tune.
Jacques stared after him. Raoul wasn't wrong—he wouldn't mind finding out what Khadija looked like. That wasn't why he stared, though. He understood why the duke knew Muhammad al-Marsawi's name. The merchant was wealthy, and Raoul was interested in him. But that Raoul also had Muhammad's daughter's name on the tip of his tongue . . . She was just a girl. Jacques wouldn't have thought she was important enough to stick in a duke's mind. But Raoul kept track of all kinds of things. That was part—a big part—of what made him what he was.
The pikeman practicing next to Jacques sent him a jealous glance. "His Grace spent a lot of time with you," the man said. He was probably twice Jacques' age. Though short, he was broad-shouldered and strong. He made a good enough soldier, but no one would promote him to sergeant if he lived to be a hundred.
Since Jacques didn't want trouble from him, he tried to shrug it off. "He wanted to know about. . . some things I saw on my way up from Count Guillaume's fortress." Everybody knew he'd been there. He'd almost talked about Muhammad and Khadija. But hadn't Raoul told him to keep his mouth shut? If he didn't, the duke might—likely would—hear about it.
"He spent a lot of time," the older man repeated. "I've fought for him since you were born, and he's never spent that kind of time with me."
"Duke Raoul does as he pleases," Jacques said. The other pikeman couldn't very well argue with that. There were ways to get the duke to notice you. Jacques had found one—he'd done well at what Raoul told him to do, and he'd dealt with people Raoul found interesting. If you made a big enough mistake, that would make the duke notice you, too. Afterwards, you'd wish it hadn't, but it would. Jacques feared the other pikeman would draw the Duke of Paris' eye that way, if he ever did.
Caravan guard! That was something. It beat carrying messages back and forth. And he'd get a chance to see what the Muslims' country was like. People in the Kingdom of Versailles were jealous of their southern neighbors. The Muslims were richer. People said they were smarter. They lived more comfortable lives. Paris tried to be like Marseille. No one had ever heard of Marseille trying to be like Paris.
All at once, Jacques wished he hadn't let Muhammad al-Marsawi and his family know he understood Arabic. Now they would be on their guard around him. If they'd thought he only spoke French, they might not have watched what they said in their own language. But he'd wanted to show off. He'd wanted to impress the merchant—and the merchant's daughter. He hadn't worried about what might come of that.
Duke Raoul would have. Jacques was sure of it. The duke always thought before he did things. He was as clever as any Arab. Jacques wished he could be like that. He'd never be a duke, of course—he didn't have the blood. But he might make a captain, or even a colonel. And if he made colonel, his children, when he had them, could marry into the nobility. Oh, snobs would sniff, but they could do it. And his grandchildren might be nobles themselves. If you were going to rise in the Kingdom of Versailles, that was how you went about it.
Jacques laughed at himself. Here he was, seventeen years old, not even a sergeant, and dreaming of being a captain or a colonel. Dreaming higher than that, in fact—dreaming as high as any man in this kingdom could dream. If Raoul found out he wanted his grandchildren to be nobles, what would the duke do?
That was a scary thought. Or was it? Wouldn't Raoul grin and wink and nudge him and whisper, "Good luck"? Somewhere two or three hundred years ago, hadn't one of Raoul's many-times-great-grandfathers gone and done what Jacques dreamt of now? Sure he had. Noble families, except the king's, hadn't come down from before the days of the Great Black Deaths. They had their start in the newer days, the days of Henri, the days of the Final Testament.
Muslims sneered at Christians for following Henri. They said Muhammad was the last man through whom God spoke.
Jacques made the sign of the wheel over his heart. He didn't care what Muslims thought. He knew what he believed.
But he didn't like the idea of Muhammad al-Marsawi laughing at him because of his religion. And he really didn't like the idea of Khadija laughing at him because of it. He didn't know what he could do about that, short of converting.
Christians did, every now and then. The Kingdom of Berry had been all Christian once. Little by little, the people there were giving up their faith. Some wanted to escape the higher taxes Christians had to pay in a Muslim kingdom. Others, though, others decided God was on the Muslims' side. Didn't their wealth and power show that? Lots of people must have thought so, because Berry didn't have many Christians left in it these days.
Things were different here in the Kingdom of Versailles. The only mosques here were for traders up from the south. If you converted to Islam, you couldn't even stay and pay extra taxes. You had to leave the kingdom. Except for the clothes on your back, you couldn't take your property with you, either.
In spite of that, people did convert and go into exile. Not a flood of them, but a slow, steady trickle. Some thought they had a better chance of getting rich down in the Muslim lands. Others, again, really believed in what they were doing. They had to, or they wouldn't have put themselves to so much trouble.
Jacques didn't like the idea that his kingdom and the other Christian kingdoms to the north and east were the Muslims' poor, backward cousins. One of these days, we'll know as much as they do, he thought. One of these days, we'll be as rich as they are. And then . . . And then they'd better look out, because we'll have a lot of paying back to do.
He lunged with the pike one more time. It was perfect. Duke Raoul would have been proud of him.
"Are we ready?" Dad asked for what had to be the twentieth time.
Mom finally lost patience with him. "I don't know about you," she said, a certain edge in her voice, "but I am."
The sarcasm didn't faze him. When he was in one of these moods, nothing fazed him. He just turned to Annette and said, "And you, Khadija? Are you ready?"
"Yes, my father," she answered. Her mother snapped back at Dad. Annette mostly didn't. Life was too short. She let him work the jumpiness out of his system.
"Are you sure?" he persisted. "You have everything you will need to take back to Marseille?"
"Yes, my father," Annette said again. Now, whether she wanted it to or not, a certain edge found its way into her voice. The room they were staying in, like any room in any inn in this alternate, held no more furniture than it had to. It had beds, stools, a chest that now stood open. Nobody could have much doubt about whether her stuff was packed. Dad ... got the fidgets.
"God be praised!" he said now. He let it go at that, a sign that this case wouldn't be so bad as some of the ones Annette had seen him have.