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Chapter 31 - The Scholar's Consternation

"This is ridiculous," Pierrette mumbled. "I just had a bath." Instead of entering the pool, she sat at its edge, and trailed a finger in the water. Ripples spread in expanding circles. When they reached the far edges, they rebounded, creating complex patterns that drew her eyes as she tried to follow them. "This," she murmured, "is how it all began. Perhaps now I will have some time for myself, for my studies."

She drew a mental picture of the fane as it would be, centuries hence, with benches along the walls and heavy, ornate doors. She pictured marble columns; dim, magnificent arcades where now was the dust of the Roman camp. "Mondradd in Mon," she said softly, and let the sinuous, sparkling wavelets in the pool draw her in. "Borabd orá . . ."

* * *

A touch of vermilion caught her eye. It was a water jug. It had not been there moments ago, but it had been the first time she had entered the fane. Now the doors were again shiny with thick varnish, and the mortar between the stones was old and sooty gray. She was home—or as near to it as she was likely to get, in a world out of joint, where Tiberius Gracchus had never governed Provence, and gods of fire and storm had fought among mortal men.

She pushed the door open. A tremendous clatter ensued as brass pots and other impedimenta fell to the paving. Something caught, and the door remained mostly closed. "Master! Wake up! Someone—something is trying to get out!"

"Eh?" Ibn Saul sounded groggy. "Well then, stop pushing on the door, and let it emerge."

"It can't be him! It's been too long. What if it's . . . What if it's . . ."

Pierrette picked up the empty water jar and held it to her face. "Lovi! Open the door, or face my wrath!" Her words sounded hollow—the voice, perhaps, of a fantôme, if fantômes had voices.

"Master!" the apprentice squeaked.

"It is Piers," the scholar said. "Now let him out." There was the sound of a scuffle, and the door opened when Pierrette pushed.

Pierrette—now Piers—stepped out into the echoing, vaulted hallway of the Roman bath. "Good evening, Master ibn Saul. Or is it morning? I can't tell, in here."

"It is midday, I think. Well? You must have found that tunnel hidden under the pool, and it must have gone somewhere, because you been gone long enough to have starved, otherwise. But did you find the gold? Where is it?"

Tunnel? Gold? For a moment, Pierrette was confused. Then she understood: history had indeed been changed, and in this new version of it, her purpose in shutting herself in the fane had been entirely different. But she could not explain that all in a breath. "I found no gold, Master ibn Saul. We must sit down and talk, and I will tell you what I did find." She patted the rolled-up manuscript. "I think you will deem it treasure enough. Of course, if you'd rather sell it for gold . . ."

"Let me see it!"

"Here?" Pierrette looked around. There—strewn with the pots and other articles that had made such a clatter—was a pallet, and Lovi's blanket. At the other door was another, ibn Saul's. A brazier overflowing with dead coals stood halfway between. A heap of several weeks' ashes and trash completed the signs of the two men's occupancy. "Shouldn't we find somewhere . . . perhaps an inn?"

Ibn Saul eyed the roll of vellums greedily. "Lovi! Pack up our things. We are moving to the inn." When Pierrette made no move to help him, the boy's sour countenance turned quite surly—but he remembered his master's promise of a good meal at the inn, even if ibn Saul did not, and he gathered up their belongings with great alacrity.

* * *

The inn was perhaps ordinary, but to Pierrette everything was strange—and dirty. The Romans had been fastidious, personally and officially, and their camp had been free of refuse, though the unpaved viae were muddy or dusty by turn. And they bathed. Entremont had also been clean—and of course there had been soap. Why hadn't she thought to bring some of that wondrous Gallic invention back? Would she, remembering that the ingredients were basically olive oil and wood lye, be able to duplicate it?

She wrinkled her nose at the stink of the room they were offered. "Don't you shovel the filth from the corners of this chamber once every year?" she asked the innkeeper. "And isn't it nearly time for it?" He seemed to find nothing wrong with the spillage from countless chamberpots, or the food scraps that had obviously passed through the intestinal tracts of some very large rats, but when ibn Saul waved a small coin the warm color of gold, he sent his two daughters for brooms and buckets of water.

In the meantime, Pierrette quietly whispered a spell that dealt with the purity of water, the cleansing nature of mushrooms in good soil, and the clarity of sunlight. It failed to have any discernible effect; thus she was convinced that this world was not really much different from the one she had originated in. She was back—and she felt the first real stirrings of regret for what she had left behind.

Ibn Saul, at Lovi's prompting, remembered his promise about a good meal. They adjourned to the common room while the daughters swept and splashed. "Now," said the scholar once they were seated in a corner lit by a small unglazed window, "that manuscript."

"But Master ibn Saul—don't you also have a written account for me?"

"What? I don't believe I do."

"Then it is true. The world has really changed," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Read this. It will explain." She plucked the binding loose, and smoothed pages in front of him. He began to read.

"But . . . this is in my own hand! Where did you get this?"

"Read on, master." He did so. His eyebrows lifted, first momentarily, then frequently, and by the time he turned the third page, they stayed up, and his eyes remained wide in an expression of frozen surprise. Food arrived, but only Lovi noticed it, or partook. Ibn Saul continued to read, and Pierrette watched him, following his progress by his twitches, murmurs of surprise and amazement, and shakes of his head. At last he set the final page aside.

"This is true?" he asked. "You swear it?"

"Ask yourself that, master. Is it in your own hand indeed? And is there a description of something only you could know, that no one else could write down?"

"It is as you say. But there are no fantômes, and the historic summary of events is all wrong. Things did not happen like that."

"But surely they did—you would not lie to yourself, would you? Our experiment—even though you don't remember it—was a success. History has been changed, and the only reason this manuscript exists now is because it was not here, to be changed along with everything else."

"I must think on this," the scholar mumbled. "There must be another explanation."

"I'm sure you can devise one, or several—but in the end, you'll reach only one conclusion."

"That remains to be seen," he replied. Pierrette fell abruptly uneasy. The scholar had a clever mind. Could he rationalize away the evidence his own eyes showed him, written in his own hand? But on the other hand, did that matter? She knew what really had transpired, and if there were no fantômes, no gray, encroaching unreality, no nightmare empire without Rome, without imperial Christianity or its successors, then she had indeed won, and what the scholar believed was of little import. She gathered up the pages.

"What are you doing?" asked ibn Saul. "Give those to me."

"You may read them again—in Anselm's keep, in his library. Until then, I'll keep them safe."

"But I wrote them. They are mine."

She pointed to the top of the first page:

This is a true copy of an account by Muhammad abd' Ullah ibn Saul, given into the hands of Piers, apprentice to the mage Anselm, for his library.

* * *

"You see? The original is yours. This copy is not."

"But that's not fair! If the original is lost, or . . . or if it . . . never . . . existed . . ." his words petered out in breathless silence. The conclusion he did not want to reach had—almost—issued from his own lips.

"Either way," Pierrette said, "this one must go to Anselm's library, and I must go to bed. I have much to sleep on. I hope it will not be lumpy."

* * *

The three of them shared a bed wide enough for four, but though Pierrette's portion of it was soft, ibn Saul, in the middle, seemed to find lumps aplenty. They were mostly figurative—the ruts, rocks, and potholes his sleeping mind encountered on its journey through a realm where reality was fragile, and the essence of a life could change without the knowledge or consent of he who lived it.

Ibn Saul's tossing kept Pierrette from sleeping, and Lovi also. Morning did not come too soon for any of them. Ibn Saul sent Lovi for their donkey, while he and Pierrette sipped pear cider on a terrace shaded by leafy vines. They did not speak of manuscripts, experiments, or changed histories, only of their plans for the new day. Of course ibn Saul and Lovi would return by the southerly road to Massalia. But Pierrette? The city was out of her way unless she found someone with a boat to sail her to Citharista—and there were promises she had made to herself that dictated a different route.

Without a beast of burden, she could only carry a few things—a loaf of bread and some cheese, her sagus, which would serve for a blanket and a bed, the manuscript, and the clothing and jewelry Belisama had given her. She fingered the serpent's egg that hung from her neck. It was warmer than her skin, as if the hot rage of its inhabitant perfused the blue-and-red-veined glass.

"You should be grateful, dryade," she murmured. "I know men who would be happy to lie between my breasts."

Belisama. That was one of her promises: she would return to the cave in the mountainside. What—who—might she find there? And what of Cerdos and Ferdiad—and poor Gustave, her abandoned donkey with his skeptical eyes? Yes, her route lay eastward out of Aquae Sextiae, along the scarp of the Holy Mountain, across the ridges and valleys, and at last, home.

"Will you visit me in Citharista, Master ibn Saul?"

"Since you will not give me that manuscript, I must—but I would anyway, for the chance to drink your master's wine, instead of watching mine flow down his gullet like Rhodanus down its valley."

"Then good-bye," she said.

When she picked up her sagus, she found something that gladdened her heart, heavy from too many "good-byes" in all too short a time, even though they were centuries apart. There on her cloak lay a single white feather, a downy tuft no larger than the first joint of her little finger. "Guihen?" she whispered, looking around herself. No one answered. Was it indeed a chicken's feather, or a gull's, or even a rock dove's? Still, when she departed, her step was light.

 

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