“To Paris, in France. This is Paris, isn’t it? Please let me finish. I seek the highest ecclesiastical authority in … these domains. Was I wrong? Is he not in the city?”
“The archcardinal?” Matiou breathed, while the expression on the guards shifted from nervous to awed.
Denison nodded vigorously. “Of course, the archcardinal.” What kind of rank was that?
Matiou looked away. Beads on his rosary clicked between his fingers. After a while that became very long to the listener, he clipped: “We shall see. Conduct yourself carefully. You will remain under observation.” His robe swirled as he swung about and departed.
Denison sank onto his pallet, wrung out. Well, he thought faintly, I’ve won a little time before they take me to the rack and thumbscrews, or whatever worse they’ve invented since the Middle Ages. Unless I’ve somehow landed—No, can’t be.
When a jailer with an armed escort brought him bread, water, and greasy stew, he inquired about the date. “St. Anton’s, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eighty” drove the last nail into the coffin for him.
From despair he drew at length a bleak determination. Something might turn up yet, rescue or—No, to think of oblivion was not only useless, it could paralyze him. Better to keep going, always ready to jump at whatever piece of luck chanced by.
Shivering through the night on his inadequate bed, he tried to lay plans. They were inevitably tentative. What he must do was get the protection of the big boss, the dictator, the—whatever an archcardinal was. That meant convincing the man he was not dangerous but, instead, potentially valuable, or at any rate interesting. He could not reveal himself as a time traveler. The Patrol inhibition would freeze his larynx. Anyway, quite probably no one in this world could comprehend the truth. However, he could scarcely deny having appeared out of thin air, though he might claim that witnesses were confused about details. Things Matiou had let fall suggested a belief in magic, even among educated people. But he should proceed most cautiously if he tried an explanation along those lines. They had enough technology here to produce efficient-looking small arms, and doubtless artillery. The rubber pot indicated contact with the New World on a regular basis, which implied a sufficient knowledge of astronomy for navigation if nothing else—Would you believe a visitor from Mars?
Denison coughed a chuckle. Nevertheless, that kind of story looked less unpromising than others. He must feel his way forward. “First let me humbly inquire what the savants among your Sanctity’s (?) flock assume to be the case. My nation has perhaps made discoveries they have not.” Awkward communication, frequent pauses to figure out what a sentence had meant, would be immensely helpful, giving him opportunities to think and to retrieve any faux pas….
He fell into uneasy, dream-ridden sleep.
In the morning, a while after he’d received a bowl of gruel, guards accompanied by a priest took him away. What he glimpsed in an adjacent cell chilled his sweat. He was merely brought to a tiled room where a tub of hot water steamed, and told to bathe himself well. Afterward he was issued a dark set of present-day male clothes, his wrists were manacled, and he was led into an office where Brother Matiou sat behind a desk beneath a crucifix.
“Thank God and your patron saint, if you have one, that his Venerability, Albin Archcardinal Fil-Johan, Grand Duke of the Northern Provinces, graciously consents to see you,” the friar intoned.
“I do, I do.” Denison crossed himself two-handedly. “I will make many thank offerings as soon as I am able.”
“Since you are a foreigner, indeed more foreign than a pagan from Tartary or Mexique, first I shall give you some instruction, that you not squander too grossly his Venerability’s time.”
Hey, a break! Denison paid his closest heed. He sensed how shrewdly Matiou extracted nibbles of information from him in the course of the hour, but that was all right; it was a chance to rehearse and develop his story.
And at last he was brought in a closed carriage to a palace atop that hill called Montmartre in the lost world, and ushered through sumptuous corridors and up a grand staircase and past a gilt bronze door where bas-reliefs showed Biblical scenes; and he found himself in a high white room, where sunlight streamed through stained glass onto an Oriental carpet, and confronting him sat a man on a throne, in a robe of scarlet and gold.
As ordered, Denison prostrated himself. “You may be seated,” said a deep voice. The archcardinal was middle-aged but vigorous. The consciousness of power seemed engraved on his countenance. Spectacles diminished his dignity not at all. Just the same, he was clearly intrigued, prepared to question and to listen.
“I thank your Venerability.” Denison took the chair, some twenty feet from the throne. They weren’t allowing needless risks at this private audience. A bellpull hung by the prelate’s right hand.
“You may simply call me ‘lord,’”—the English word—Albin told him. “We have much to speak of, you and I.” Sternly: “Beware of attempting tricks or subtleties. There are ample grounds already for suspicion. Know, the Chief Inquisitor, the superior of that cleric you have met, urges me to order you to the flames at once, before you wreak harm. He feels a magician such as this can only be an Avenging Jew.”
Denison understood enough to breathe, “A … a what, lord?” from a throat suddenly going dry.
Albin raised his brows. “You do not know?”
“No, lord. Believe me, I am from a land so remote that—”
“Yet you know something of our language, and claim to bear a message for me.”
Yeah, I’m up against a first-class intellect. “A message of goodwill, lord, in hopes of establishing closer relations. Our knowledge of you is slight, from visions vouchsafed prophets ancient and modern. Unhappily, I suffered shipwreck. No, I am certainly not an Avenging Jew, whatever that may be.”
Albin too grasped the general intent, if not every word. His mouth tightened. “The Jews are skilled craftsmen and engineers at the very least, and it is quite possible that they also command black arts. They are descendants of those who escaped when our forefathers scoured Europe clean of their kind. They settled among the worshippers of Mahound, and now they lend their help to them. Have you not even heard that Austria has fallen to those paynim? That the heretic legions of the Russian emperor are at the gates of Berlin?”
And the Inquisition busy in western Christendom. God! I believed my twentieth century was pretty grim.
18,244 B. C.
I
Later Manse Everard thought the fact that he was chosen, and precisely where and how it happened to him, would be ironic were the coincidence not so absurd. Later yet he remembered his conversations with Guion, and wondered mightily.
But they were more distant than the stars from his mind when the summons came upon him. He and Wanda Tamberly had been sharing a vacation at the lodge the Patrol maintained in the Pleistocene Pyrenees. On this their last day, they left off skiing and climbing, nor did they flit north to seek out the magnificent wildlife of a glacial era, nor call on any of the nearby Crô-Magnon settlements to enjoy picturesque hospitality. They simply went for a long walk on easy trails, looked at mountain scenery, said little, were aware of much.
Sunset washed gold across white peaks and ridges. The lodge stood at no great altitude, but snowline was lower than in the birthtime of these two. Timberline was also; around them reached alpine meadow, intensely green, flecked with small summer flowers. A little way upslope, several ibex lifted horns and watched them, alertly but without fear. The sky, greenish in the west, deepening through azure overhead to purple in the east, was full of homebound wings. Cries drifted down through silence and gathering chill. Human hunters had made scant mark thus far; they were almost in balance with nature, like wolf and cave lion. The air tasted of purity.