“What is it, my lord?” Her question quavered in Greek. Like most Sicilians born, she got along in several languages, but today she fell back to that of her childhood. Me too, he thought. “What is happening?”
“Bad news, I fear,” he answered. “See that the children and the staff stay calm.”
Though she had become a Catholic in order to marry him, she forgot and crossed herself in Eastern wise. Just the same, he admired the steadiness that came upon her. “As my lord bids.”
It made him smile, squeeze her arm, and say, “Fear not for us, Zoe. I will see to things.”
“I know you will.” She hastened off. His gaze followed her a moment. There passed through him: If only the centuries of Muslim rule hadn’t made women of every faith so submissive, what a companion she might be. But she handled her duties well, her kinfolk remained helpful to his business, and … he couldn’t have anybody who wanted to share his secrets.
He crossed a couple of rooms still furnished in the austere, airy Islamic style, and reached the one that was his alone. It wasn’t kept locked; that might have raised suspicions of witchcraft or worse. However, a merchant naturally required confidential files, strongboxes, and occasional privacy. Barring the door behind him, he drew up a stool in front of a large ambry, sat down, and pressed the foliate pattern carved into the wood in a certain order.
A rectangle of luminance sprang forth before him. He ran tongue over dry lips and whispered in Temporal, “Give me a synopsis of King Roger’s campaign in Italy from, uh, the beginning of last month and onward.”
Text flashed. Memory supplied what had gone before. A year ago, Lothair, the old Holy Roman Emperor, had crossed the Alps to aid Pope Innocent II against Roger II, King of Capua, Apulia, and Sicily. High among their allies was Rogers brother-in-law Rainulf, Count of Avellino. They fought their way far down the Italian peninsula until at the end of August, Anno Domini 1137, they reckoned themselves victorious. Rainulf was created Duke of Apulia, to hold the South against the Sicilian. Lothair left him eight hundred knights and, feeling death nigh, started homeward. Innocent entered Rome although his rival claimant to the throne of St. Peter, Anacletus II, occupied the Castel Sant’ Angelo.
At the beginning of this October, Roger did return. He landed at Salerno and laid waste the lands that had repudiated their allegiance to him; the savagery of his vengeance was a shock even to this brutal age. At the very end of the month, he met Rainulf’s army at Rignano in northern Apulia.
There he suffered defeat. His first charge, under the captaincy of his eldest son and namesake, Duke Roger, carried the enemy before it. The second one, which he himself led, faltered and failed. Duke Rainulf, a gallant and well-beloved leader, threw his whole force against the king’s men. Panic seized them and they fled, save for three thousand whom they left slain. Roger took the remnants of them back to Salerno.
The victory availed little. Roger had other forces at his beck. They besieged Naples and regained Benevento and the great abbey on Monte Cassino. Before long, only Apulia remained to its new duke. Innocent, with his famous partisan Bernard of Clairvaux, must needs agree to let Roger mediate the dispute with Anacletus. Although the anti-Pope was on his side, the king shrewdly declared that he found the case too deep for quick decision. Let there be a further conference in Palermo.
It was never held. Emperor Lothair died in December, on his way home. In January 1138, Anacletus also slipped from life. Roger got a new Pope elected, but this one soon ended the schism by laying down his tiara. Triumphant in Rome, Innocent set about destroying the king, whom he had already excommunicated. He did not succeed. His foremost surviving ally, Rainulf, died of a fever in the spring of 1139; shortly afterward, the elder and younger Rogers ambushed the papal army and took Innocent himself prisoner.
So much for the Middle Ages, when all men were devout sons of Mother Church, gibed the Lutheran in Volstrup’s past. Immediately, shocked, he recalled: But I’ve let the record run on into the future. I sit here in early November, 1137.
That fits. So much time is just right for word to reach Roger’s capital that he did not merely suffer a reversal at Rignano, he was killed.
Then what becomes of that morrow in which he was to play so mighty a role?
He bade the text stop. For a moment he sat chilled and stinking with sweat. Resolution came. He was—he believed—the only time traveler now on the island; but he was not unique on the planet.
His was scarcely a Patrol base. He was an observer, who also gave assistance and guidance to whatever travelers might arrive. Not many did. The glory days of Norman Sicily were yet to come; and after them, events on the mainland would swallow it up. Headquarters for this entire milieu were in Rome, commencing in 1198, when Innocent III took over the Papacy. But all Europe was astir, and beyond Europe all the world. No matter how desperately thinly they were spread, Patrol agents were trying to monitor its history.
Aided occasionally by the databank, Volstrup ran his mind across the globe. At this moment, Lothair was still on his way back to Germany; strife over the succession would follow his death, becoming civil war. Louis VII had just inherited the crown of France and married Eleanor of Aquitaine; his reign would be largely a series of disastrous blunders. In England, the contest between Stephen and Matilda was growing violent. In Iberia, an ex-monk had been forced against his will to become King of Aragon, but it would lead to union with Catalonia; Alfonso VII of Castile was proclaiming himself Emperor of all Spaniards and proceeding with the reconquista. Poor Denmark, under a weakling lord, lay ravaged by pagan raiders from across the Baltic….
John II ruled ably over the East Roman Empire; he was campaigning in Asia Minor, hoping to win Antioch back from the Crusaders. The Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem was hard pressed by resurgent Muslims. Yet the Caliphate in Egypt was divided against itself, Arabia had split into a welter of petty realms, and Persia was in the throes of dynastic war.
The principalities of Kievan Russia were likewise at odds with each other. Eastward, the Muslim conquest of India had stalled while Mahmud’s family fought the Afghan princes. The Kin Tatars were conquering northern China and had established their own imperium there, while the Sung rulers hung on in the South. The feud between Taira and Minamoto clans tore Japan apart. In the Americas—
A knock sounded. Volstrup lurched to his feet and unbarred the door. Michael stood atremble. “It is true, Master Geoffrey,” the apprentice said. “King Roger and his son fell in battle at a place called Rignano, in Apulia. The bodies were not recovered. Couriers sped here from what was left of the army. They say that every part of Italy they passed through is falling away again, ready to open itself to Duke Rainulf. Master, are you ill?”
“I am grieved, of course,” Volstrup mumbled. “Go back to your work. I will rejoin you presently. We must carry on with our lives.”
Can we?
Alone again, he opened a locked coffer. Within it lay a pair of metal cylinders, smoothly tapered, about the length of his forearm. He knelt and ran fingers across the controls of one. His timecycle was concealed outside the city, but these tubes would carry messages to wherever and whenever he commanded.
If that destination exists.
He rasped his news at the recording unit. “Please inform me of the actual situation and of what I should do,” he finished. He set the goal for milieu headquarters in Rome, the time somewhat arbitrarily for this same date in 1200. By then, yonder office should be well organized and familiar with its surroundings, while not yet preoccupied with such crises and disasters as the Latin conquest of Constantinople.