The Equestrian Center outside Souillac was four miles away, and it was here that Marek trained twice a week. In the far corner of a little-used field, he had set up an odd T-shaped bar on a revolving stand. At one end of the T-bar was a padded square; at the other end, a leather teardrop that looked like a punching bag.
This was a quintain, a device so ancient that it had been drawn by monks at the edges of illuminated manuscripts a thousand years earlier. Indeed, it was from just such drawings that Marek had fashioned his own version.
Making the quintain had been simple enough; it was much more difficult to get a decent lance. This was the kind of problem Marek faced again and again in experimental history. Even the simplest and most common items from the past were impossible to reproduce in the modern world. Even when money was no object, thanks to the ITC research fund.
In medieval times, tournament lances were turned on wood lathes more than eleven feet long, which was the standard length of a jousting lance. But wood lathes of that size hardly existed anymore. After much searching, Marek located a specialty woodworking plant in northern Italy, near the Austrian border. They were able to turn out lances of pine to the dimensions he specified, but were astonished to hear he wanted an initial order of twenty. "Lances break," he told them. "I'll need a lot of them." To deal with splinters, he fitted a piece of screening to the faceplate of a football helmet. When he wore this helmet riding, he drew considerable attention. He looked like a demented beekeeper.
Eventually, Marek succumbed to modern technology, and he had his lances turned in aluminum, by a company that made baseball bats. The aluminum lances had better balance and felt more authentic to him, even though they were wrong for the period. And since splintering was no longer a problem, he could just wear a standard riding helmet.
Which was what he was wearing now.
Standing at the end of the field, he waved to Chris, who was over by the quintain. "Chris? Ready?"
Chris nodded and set the T-bar at right angles to Marek. He waved. Marek lowered his lance, and spurred his horse forward.
Training with the quintain was deceptively simple. The rider galloped toward the T-bar, attempting to strike the padded square with the tip of his lance. If he succeeded, he set the T-bar spinning, obliging him to spur his mount past before the leather bag swung around and hit him in the head. In the old days, Marek knew, the bag had been heavy enough to knock a young rider from his mount. But Marek made it just heavy enough to deliver a stinging rebuke.
On his first run, he hit the pad squarely, but he was not quick enough to avoid the bag, which boxed him on the left ear. He reined up, and trotted back. "Why don't you try one, Chris?"
"Maybe later," Chris said, repositioning the T-bar for the next run.
Once or twice in recent days, Marek had gotten Chris to try a run at the quintain. But he suspected that was only because of Chris's sudden recent interest in all aspects of horsemanship.
Marek turned his charger, reared, and charged again. When he first began, galloping full tilt toward a foot-square target had seemed absurdly difficult. Now he was getting the hang of it. He generally hit the target four out of five times.
The horse thundered ahead. He lowered his lance.
"Chris! Hallo!"
Chris turned, and waved to the girl riding up on horseback. At that moment, Marek's lance hit the pad, and the leather bag swung around, knocking Chris flat on his face.
Chris lay there, stunned, hearing peals of girlish laughter. But she quickly dismounted and helped him to his feet again. "Oh Chris, I'm sorry to laugh," she said in her elegant British accent. "It was all my fault, in any case. I oughtn't to have distracted you."
"I'm all right," he said, a little sulky. He brushed dirt from his chin and faced her, managing to smile.
As always, he was struck by her beauty, especially at this moment, her blond hair backlit in the afternoon sun so her perfect complexion seemed to glow, setting off her deep violet eyes. Sophie Rhys-Hampton was the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life. And the most intelligent. And the most accomplished. And the most seductive.
"Oh, Chris, Chris," she said, brushing his face with cool fingertips. "I really do apologize. There, now. Any better?"
Sophie was a student at Cheltenham College; twenty years old, four years younger than he. Her father, Hugh Hampton, was a London barrister; he owned the farmhouse that the project rented for the summer. Sophie had come down to stay with friends in a farmhouse nearby. One day she had come round to collect something from her father's study. Chris had seen her, and promptly walked into a tree trunk.
Which seemed to have set the tone for their relationship, he thought ruefully. She looked at him now and said, "I'm flattered I have this effect on you, Chris. But I worry for your safety." She giggled, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I called you today."
"I know, I got tied up. We had a crisis."
"A crisis? What constitutes an archaeological crisis?"
"Oh, you know. Funding hassles."
"Oh yes. That ITC bunch. From New Mexico." She made it sound like the ends of the earth. "Do you know, they asked to buy my father's farm?"
"Did they?"
"They said they needed to rent it for so many years ahead, they might as well buy it. Of course he said no."
"Of course." He smiled at her. "Dinner?"
"Oh, Chris. I can't tonight. But we can ride tomorrow. Shall we?"
"Of course."
"In the morning? Ten o'clock?"
"All right," he said. "I'll see you at ten."
"I'm not interrupting your work?"
"You know you are."
"It's quite all right to do it another day."
"No, no," he said. "Ten o'clock tomorrow."
"Done," she said, with a dazzling smile.
In fact, Sophie Hampton was almost too pretty, her figure too perfect, her manner too charming to be quite real. Marek, for one, was put off by her.
But Chris was entranced.
After she rode away, Marek charged by again. This time Chris got out of the way of the swinging quintain. When Marek trotted back, he said, "You're being jerked around, my friend."
"Maybe," Chris said. But the truth was, he didn't care.
The next day found Marek at the monastery, helping Rick Chang with the excavations into the catacombs. They had been digging here for weeks now. And it was slow going, because they kept finding human remains. Whenever they came upon bones, they stopped digging with shovels, and switched to trowels and toothbrushes.
Rick Chang was the physical anthropologist on the team. He was trained to deal with human finds; he could look at a pea-sized piece of bone and tell you whether it came from the right wrist or the left, male or female, child or adult, ancient or contemporary.
But the human remains they were finding here were puzzling. For one thing, they were all male; and some of the long bones had evidence of battle injuries. Several of the skulls showed arrow wounds. That was how most soldiers had died in the fourteenth century, from arrows. But there was no record of any battle ever fought at the monastery. At least none that they knew of.
They had just found what looked like a bit of rusted helmet when Marek's cell phone rang. It was the Professor.
"How is it going?" Marek said.
"Fine, so far."
"Did you meet with Doniger?"
"Yes. This afternoon."
"And?"
"I don't know yet."
"They still want to go forward with the reconstruction?"
"Well, I'm not sure. Things are not quite what I expected here." The Professor seemed vague, preoccupied.
"How's that?"
"I can't discuss it over the line," the Professor said. "But I wanted to tell you: I won't be calling in the next twelve hours. Probably not for the next twenty-four hours."
"Uh-huh. Okay. Everything all right?"
"Everything is fine, Andr."
Marek wasn't so sure. "Do you need aspirin?" That was one of their established code phrases, a way to ask if something was wrong, in case the other person couldn't speak freely.