In High Places

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.

Annette felt like sighing, too. "Europe was all set to take off. It did in the home timeline—all the explorations, and the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Here—"

"Everybody died," Mom said. That wasn't how Annette had intended to go on, which didn't mean it wasn't true.

"No Scientific Revolution anywhere but in Europe in this alternate, either," Dad said. "The Muslim world knows some things the Europeans—what's left of them—don't, but the Muslims don't know how much they didn't know before the plagues."

"Thomas Aquinas and al-Ghazzali," Annette said. Her father nodded. They'd drilled that one into the Kleins in their briefings. In the home timeline and here, the Christian saint and the Muslim holy man had asked the same question—was scientific research compatible with religion?

Aquinas had said yes. He said there could be no conflict between religion and science. All knowledge, to him, was one. He made Aristotle's logic fit inside the Christian faith. In the home timeline, that helped pave the way for the Scientific Revolution.

Al-Ghazzali had believed just the opposite. He thought scientific research undermined faith, and he thought faith was more important. In the home timeline, Aquinas' view dominated western Christianity. Al-Ghazzali's prevailed in Islam.

Al-Ghazzali's ideas prevailed in Islam in this alternate, too. If anything, the Great Black Deaths here had only made those ideas stronger. If God could do such a thing, how could any man hope to understand Him or His works? Muslims in this alternate feared and distrusted science. They clung to religion, and they clung to it hard.

The irony was, al-Ghazzali was right about whether science undermined faith. St. Thomas Aquinas was wrong. Studying science did weaken belief in God and in traditional religion. A lot of experience in the home timeline and in alternates with breakpoints more recent than this one's showed as much.

That studying science could also lead to a richer, healthier, more comfortable and more knowledgeable life on earth . . . was beside the point if you thought religion the be-all and end-all. Just about everyone in this alternate felt that way. Some people in the home timeline still did, too. Every so often, they used the products of science—explosives, radioactives, tailored viruses— to try to make their point.

"By the time Western Europe got its people back, it wasn't the same kind of place any more," Mother said.

Europe had needed more than two hundred years to get back to where it had been before the plagues came. It never took off, the way it had in the home timeline. That was partly because Muslims had reconquered Spain and Portugal and reoccupied Italy. It was also partly because of the Second Son and the Final Testament. Henri's take on Christianity wasn't as hostile to science as Islam was. But Aquinas' certainty that science and God went hand in hand was one more plague victim in this alternate.

"I wonder why China didn't do it," Annette mused.

In this alternate, the Manchus still ruled China. No pressure from Europe had weakened their dynasty there. China was the biggest, strongest, richest country in the world. But it wasn't much further along than it had been at the breakpoint, either. Some Emperors favored scholarship, some didn't. The ones who didn't tore down what the ones who did had built. In this alternate as in the home timeline, great Chinese junks under Zheng He had visited Arabia and East Africa in the 1410s. They'd taken Chinese porcelain to Africa and a giraffe back to China. But no Chinese ships had made the journey again in all the centuries since. Trade stayed in the hands of Arab and Indian and Malay middlemen.

Scholars in the home timeline still argued about why things turned out this way. They would go on arguing, too, till they knew a lot more—and probably even after they knew more. Arguing, testing ideas against evidence, moved scholarship ahead.

"China has always been very good at how," Dad said. "It hasn't been so good at why. Being good at how will make you more comfortable in the short run. In the long run, finding out why things work the way they do makes for bigger changes."

"Some people say you need to believe in one god first, before you can believe there's one why behind everything," Mom added. "If you explain things by saying they happen because this imp is fighting with that spirit, how are you going to look deeper?"

"So you think that's true?" Annette asked.

"I don't know. It can't be the whole answer—I'm sure of that," her mother replied. "But it may be part."

It seemed neat and clean and logical. Of course, plenty of things that seemed neat and clean and logical were also wrong. "I'll be studying all this stuff when I get to college, won't I?" Annette said.

"You'd better believe it," Mom said. Dad nodded.

So did Annette. Travel across timelines was the biggest thing that had happened to people since the discovery of the New World, maybe since the discovery of writing and the wheel. As far as Annette was concerned, anybody who didn't want to get involved with it probably would have thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world or that wheels ought to be square. If seeing all the different ways things might have turned out didn't interest you, odds were you didn't have a pulse.

And the home timeline needed the alternates, too. They had all the things the home timeline was running out of when Gal-braith and Hester discovered crosstime travel. Trade for a little here, trade for a little there—the alternates would never miss it. Sink oil wells in a world where men had never evolved, and you could take whatever you needed.

Not everything was perfect. When was it ever? Some diseases had reached the home timeline. These days, biotech usually blunted them in a hurry. People who didn't work for Crosstime Traffic often complained the company had too much power. Annette thought they would have grumbled the same way about scribes back when writing was new. CT had to be the most closely watched company in the history of the world. The early days had seen a few scandals—again, nothing was perfect. But nobody's found any trouble like that for as long as she'd been alive.

"College," she murmured.

Her father chuckled. "Seems far away, doesn't it, when you're in a world where you get sick because your humors go out of whack, where they've forgotten what the Romans used to know about plumbing, and where they've got markets to sell human beings just like we've got markets to sell beans and watermelons?"

"Markets to sell human beings. Slave markets." Annette's mouth twisted. She'd seen one of those markets, down in Marseille. She understood that people in this alternate needed other people to do their work for them. They didn't have machines, the way the home timeline did. Even if she understood that, the idea of slavery gave her the cold horrors. To sell people like beans, to use them—or use them up—like farm animals . . . The day was cool, but that wasn't why she shivered.

Mom understood. She reached out and set a hand on Annette's shoulder. "It's a nasty business," she said. "Our hands are clean of that, anyhow."

"They'd better be!" Annette exclaimed. "We shouldn't just sit back and watch it, though. We ought to try to stamp it out."

"Where we can, we do," Dad said. "In an alternate like this, it's not easy. People here don't think slavery's wrong. They think it's natural. And it helps make the wheels go round. Sooner or later, the time will come when that's not so. But it hasn't got here yet."

To Annette, sooner or later might as well have been forever. To anybody in this alternate who was bought and sold like a bushel of beans, sooner or later was much too late. She could understand what Dad was driving at. Even in the home timeline, people hadn't started questioning slavery till the eighteenth century. Nobody—except maybe the slaves—questioned it here. Annette's heart said that was wrong, that was wicked, that needed to be changed yesterday—if not sooner.

It wouldn't happen. She knew that, too. Crosstime Traffic had way too many other more urgent things to worry about. Too bad, she thought. Oh, too bad!

Jacques worked hard on his pike drill. He wished he were a musketeer. But he was big and strong. That helped him most of the time, but it didn't help make his wish come true. Size and strength counted for more with a pike than they did with a musket. Jacques didn't suppose he could blame Duke Raoul for making sure the men best suited to the pike were the ones who used it.

His target was a post driven into the ground. He lunged, withdrew, lunged again. The gleaming iron head of the pike tapped the post at what would have been belly height. He imagined the post was one of King Abdallah's men, a bearded infidel screaming, "Allahu akbar!" He'd scream, all right, when the spearhead went home. Jacques stretched forward and lunged again.

"That's very smooth," a dry voice said from behind him.

Jacques whirled. There stood Duke Raoul. He was a little gamecock of a man, short and skinny but tough. He had a long face, a scarred cheek, a pointed chin beard going from seal-brown to gray, and the coldest blue eyes Jacques had ever run into. Those eyes saw everything that went on in Paris, and almost everything that went on in the Kingdom of Versailles. They even saw the pike drill of a no-account young soldier.

"I thank you, your Grace. I thank you kindly," Jacques said.

"If you bend your back leg a little more, you'll be able to extend the lunge," the duke said. "Let me show you." He took the pike from Jacques. He might not have been big, but he was plenty strong—he handled the sixteen-foot shaft like a toothpick.

Raoul went through the same drill as Jacques had. Watching him, Jacques was much less pleased with his own performance. Oh, he wasn't bad. But Duke Raoul was supple as a dancer, quick as a serpent. Jacques wouldn't have wanted to face him across a battle line.

After just enough work to break a sweat, the duke straightened and handed back the pike. "Here—run through it again," he said. "Remember that back leg. It really does make a difference."

"I'll try, sir." Jacques did his best. He still felt clumsy and slow next to Raoul. And he had to think about that back leg now.

Thinking was bad on a battlefield. It cost time. You needed to do, on the instant. Speed counted for so much. But he did see he could extend the lunge that way. Reach counted, too.

Duke Raoul was nodding. "Not bad. You were trying to bend that leg. I noticed. Now you've got to keep doing it till it turns into a habit."

"Yes, sir. I was just thinking the same thing. I don't want to have to try to remember it if I'm out there fighting."

"Don't blame you. I wouldn't, either. But keep practicing— it'll stick. 'Patience is rewarded. The fool shows his folly and gives way before the end.' So Henri said, and I'm sure He's right." Duke Raoul paused. Then he changed the subject even faster than he'd shifted the pike: "Tell me—what do you think of the traders from Marseille you were talking with the other day?"

How did Raoul know about Muhammad al-Marsawi and his wife and daughter? Jacques hadn't said anything about them. Had the boatman talked to the duke? Did Raoul have spies in the market square? "What do I think, your Grace?" Jacques echoed. "I wonder if the daughter is pretty." At the least, an answer like that bought him time.

It made Raoul laugh. "That I can't tell you. I don't know anybody who's seen her without her veil. You don't want to mess with things like that. Offend a woman from King Abdallah's country and we're liable to have a war on our hands." A clear warning note rang in his voice.

"Oh, I know, your Grace," Jacques said quickly. He didn't want the duke to think he was stupid enough to do something like that.

"All right. Good." Raoul stroked that neat, pointed beard. With his clever face and cold eyes, it made him look a little like the Devil. Jacques couldn't imagine anyone, not even King Charles, having the nerve to come out and say that to Raoul. After the pause for thought, the nobleman went on, "Did you notice anything . . . odd about those Muslims?"

"Odd?" Jacques scratched his head. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir. They did seem to be clever people—not just Muhammad but his wife and daughter as well."

"Yes, I've heard that from others as well. I've said it myself, in fact—I've met them." Duke Raoul paused again. "How many other women from down south do you know—or know of—who have much of anything to say in public? They're rich, too, these traders, or at least a long way from poor. Did they have any slaves or servants with them?"

"Not that I saw." Jacques did some more scratching, and hoped he wasn't lousy again. "That is funny, isn't it?"

"Well, I've never heard of any other Muslims with goods as fine as theirs who didn't," the duke said. "I don't know what it means. I can't swear it means anything. But when you find something that doesn't fit in with the rest of what you've seen over the years, you start wondering why it doesn't."

He'd had many more years than Jacques to form patterns like that in his mind. For the first time, Jacques began to see getting some wrinkles and some gray in your hair might have advantages. Did they make up for bad teeth and sore joints and all the other ills of age? Not as far as he could see, but they might be there even so.

"Another thing," Raoul said. "Did they speak French while you were around?"

Jacques had to think about it. "Yes, they did," he answered after a moment. "I know some Arabic, but not a whole lot."

"Good you know some," Raoul told him. "How did the traders sound to you?"

"I don't know." Now Jacques was lost. "Like people speaking French. How are they supposed to sound?"

"Like this, the way most people from down in the south sound." Duke Raoul talked through his nose, as French-speakers from the south did. He was a good mimic. And he'd noticed what Jacques had missed—those traders didn't talk like that. He went back to his usual way of speaking to say, "If you listen to them, you'd think they came from Paris, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, your Grace, you would," Jacques agreed. "What can that mean?"

"I don't know, any more than you do," the duke said. "But I'd like to find out. How would you like to give me a hand?"

"Me?" Jacques almost dropped the pike. "What do I have to do?"

"Well, they're going back to Marseille soon. They won't travel by themselves, not unless they're idiots—and they aren't. They'll go in a group, with other southbound traders," Raoul said. Jacques nodded. That was how things worked, all right— numbers brought safety. The duke pointed a scarred forefinger at him. "How would you like to be a guard in that company?"

Jacques bowed. "Whatever you want me to do, your Grace, you know I'll do it." You had to talk that way around Duke Raoul. If he thought you didn't want to do something he told you to do, he wouldn't tell you to do anything—and you'd never move up if he ignored you. Jacques wanted to move up, and winning the duke's favor was a good way to do it. Besides, he really did want to do this. Raoul had made him curious. "How can I serve you best?" he asked.

"Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut," Raoul answered bluntly. "Think you can manage that? Some people can't. If you're one of them, say so now. I won't hold it against you—I'll be glad you're honest. You'll get other chances, I promise. But if you go along and you mess things up by blabbing ... I won't like that a bit."

He had ways, painful ones, of making his dislike felt. Jacques gulped a little, but he managed a nod. "I don't talk out of turn, sir," he said.

"Well, I hadn't heard that you did," the duke said. "If I had, I wouldn't have offered this to you. We'll see what happens, then. Don't make it obvious you're snooping, either. If you do, you won't learn anything worth having. Do you read and write?"

"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.

"Let's go," Mom said. "I want to head back to the south as soon as we can. This caravan has taken too long coming together."

"It's here now," Dad said, "^fwe have everything out of the room, let's load the mules and get on our horses and be on our way."

Annette was ready to go. Back to Marseille, back to the home timeline, back to the United States . . . Fieldwork was an adventure, but going off to college would be an adventure, too. And the dorms, unlike this inn, would have showers and computers and fasartas, and wouldn't have bugs. There was something to be said for adventures that didn't smell bad.

The innkeeper met his departing guests in the stables. He wasn't fat and jolly, the way innkeepers were supposed to be. He was scrawny and looked like a man who worried all the time. He had a pinched mouth and deep lines between his eyes. He also had horrible bad breath. In the home timeline, a dentist would have fixed his troubles long ago. Here, all you could do with a rotting tooth was pull it. They had no anesthetics but wine and opium. You went to the dentist as a last resort.

He bowed and made the sign of the wheel. "May the roads be fair for you. May God watch over you. May your travels bring you back to my inn once more," he said in pretty good Arabic. Annette was sure he meant the last part. Her father had paid him well.

"It will be as God wills," Dad said, which sounded impressive and meant exactly nothing. Then he asked a question that did mean something: "Have you heard any news of how the roads are?" He didn't mean whether they were muddy or dry. That would change with the weather. He meant whether bandits had been raiding lately.

"What news I have is good," the innkeeper said. "King Abdallah is supposed to have smashed Tariq's band of thieves. If that is true, they will not trouble you on your way home."

"May it be so!" Dad sounded as if he meant it, and he did mean it. The Kleins were at risk till they got back to Marseille. Dad had the disguised pistol. He also had a radio that looked like a set of worry beads. If they got in trouble, they could let the Crosstime Traffic people in Marseille know what had happened. But help couldn't reach them faster than the speed of a galloping horse, and that might not be fast enough.

After exchanging one more set of bows with the innkeeper, Dad led the horses and mules through the winding streets of Paris to the riverside market square where the caravan was assembling. Shopkeepers popped out of their stores to try to sell him medicines or brass candlesticks or carved wooden figurines or bullet molds or whatever else they had for their stock in trade. He waved them all away. "Next time, my friends, next time," he said in French, again and again. That was as polite a way as Annette could imagine to tell them to get lost.

Merchants and pack animals swarmed in the market square. The chaos and the noise and the smell were very bad. People shouted and swore in half a dozen languages. Muslims in flowing robes made broad, sweeping gestures. Traders from the Kingdom of Versailles got excited over trifles, much as Frenchmen might have done in the home timeline. Men from the Germanies wore tight breeches and brimless round caps. They stood with their arms folded across their chests and waited for things to get moving. A couple of Englishmen wore breeches like the Germans but had on flat, broad-brimmed hats that looked like leather pancakes.

Listening to them, Annette could follow their brand of English about half the time. Chaucer had lived in this alternate, too, and had written, though the plague killed him here before he started The Canterbury Tales. The merchants' English was a lot like his—German with a French overlay. It didn't have most of the layers of vocabulary that had come afterwards in the home timeline. In this alternate, England had never been a great power. The British Isles were a backwater in Europe, which was a backwater in the world. Scotland was still independent here. Ireland held hah0 a dozen little kingdoms that fought among themselves all the time.

"What dost tha mean, tha great gowk?" one of the Englishmen shouted at another. Annette wondered what a gowk was. Nothing good, plainly. Maybe she would have done better with this dialect if she'd grown up in Yorkshire or somewhere like that.

The merchants chatted about what they'd bought and what they'd sold and the prices they'd got. They argued about who would go where in the southbound caravan. Nothing got settled in a hurry. A lot of them took squabbling over such things as a game. Haggling over prices was a game here, too. You had to play along, or the locals would think you were peculiar. It wasted a lot of time, but then, so did sitting in front of a TV screen. People who didn't find one way or another to waste time probably weren't human.

While the traders talked and bickered, the men who would guard them on the way south stood around and waited. Some of the guards would be mounted when the caravan finally got moving. They had big, clumsy matchlock pistols in holsters on their belts, and spares tucked into their boot tops. Dad's was made to look like theirs. Unlike his, the locals' were single-shot muzzle-loaders. Reloading a pistol like that on horseback was as near impossible as made no difference. That was why they all carried more than one.

Musketeers had matchlocks, too, but longer ones that would fire farther. They would march on foot. They wore iron back-and-breasts—most of them had light linen surcoats on over them— and high-crested helmets. Feathers or plumes of horsehair topped some of the helms. They marked sergeants and officers.

Pikemen wore similar armor. They and the musketeers looked a lot like Spanish conquistadors from the home timeline. No conquistadors in this alternate—the plague had left Spain almost empty. The pikemen were careful to keep their long spears upright. They could have snarled traffic even worse than it was already if they'd let the pikes drop to the horizontal.

Pikemen, musketeers, and cavalrymen all wore swords along with their main weapons. If a spearshaft broke, if they couldn't reload a matchlock fast enough, they could still defend themselves. Even in the home timeline, officers sometimes wore ceremonial swords to this day. These, though, weren't ceremonial blades. Their leather-wrapped hilts were plain and businesslike, and bore dark sweat stains that said they'd seen use.

One of the pikemen looked familiar to Annette. She needed a moment to figure out why, because he hadn't worn a helmet the last time she saw him. She nudged her mother. "Look," she said. "That's the fellow we were talking with here the other day."

Her mother looked that way. "Why, so it is," she said. "We'll have to watch what we say when he's around. His Arabic isn't bad." Her gaze sharpened. "I wonder if that's why he's along. It seems like something Duke Raoul would do."

"Spy on Muslim merchants, you mean?" Annette asked.

"Maybe," Mom said. "Maybe just spy on us. We come from a lot farther away than Marseille, after all. Even though we try our best to fit in, even though we speak the languages perfectly, we're strangers here. Maybe it shows enough to make the locals wonder. I hope not, but maybe."

The pikeman—Jacques, his name was—noticed Annette and her mother looking in his direction. He nodded back at them. His smile, Annette suspected, was aimed at her in particular. She pretended not to notice it. The trip south could get complicated all kinds of ways.