The Shield of Time Read online

  His party rode through such a preserve toward Foggia, his most beloved city. At their backs the sun cast long yellow beams and blue shadows through air still warm, still full of earth odors. Ahead of them gleamed the walls, turrets, towers, spires of the city; glass and gilt flung light at their eyes. Loud from yonder, faint from chapels strewn across the countryside, bells pealed for vespers.

  The peacefulness struck at Everard as he remembered another scene not very far from here. But the dead of Rignano lay a hundred and eight years in the past. None but he and Karel Novak were alive to remember the pain, and they had overleaped the generations between.

  He pulled his mind back to the business on hand. Neither Frederick (Friedrich, Fridericus, Federigo … depending on where you were in his vast domains) nor his followers were paying the call to prayer any heed. The nobles among them chatted blithely with each other, they and their horses little tired after outdoor hours. Their garb was a rainbow medley. Tiny bells jingled as if in cheerful mockery on the jesses of the falcons that, hooded, perched on their wrists. Masked, too, to preserve fair complexions, were the ladies; it lent itself to an especially piquant style of flirtatiousness. Behind trailed the attendants. Game dangled at saddlebows, partridge, woodcock, heron, hare. Slung across rumps were the hampers and the costly glass bottles that had carried refreshment.

  “Well, Munan,” said the emperor, “what think you of the sport in Sicily?” Courteous as well as jovial, he spoke in German—Low Franconian, at that—which his guest knew. Otherwise they had only Latin in common, except for what scraps of Italian an Icelander might have acquired along the way.

  Everard reminded himself that “Sicily” meant not just the island but the Regno, the southern part of the mainland, which Roger II defined by the sword in the previous century. “It is most impressive, your Grace,” he replied with care. That was the current form of address for the mightiest man this side of China. “Of course, as everybody saw today, though they were too well-bred to laugh aloud, we have few chances to fly birds in my unhappy motherland. What little chase I hitherto witnessed on the Continent was after deer.”

  “Ah, let those for whom it is good enough practice their venery,” gibed Frederick. He used the Latinate word so he could add a pun: “I mean the kind where one pursues beasts with horns. The other kind is too good for them, albeit horns are also often seen in that pastime.”

  Turning earnest: “But falconry, now, it is more than amusement, it is high art and science.”

  “I have heard of your Grace’s book on the subject, and hope to read it.”

  “I will order a copy given you.” Frederick glanced at the Greenland falcon he himself bore. “If you could bring me this over sea and land in prime condition, then you have an inborn gift, and such should never be let lie fallow. You shall practice.”

  “Your Grace honors me beyond my worth. I fear the bird didn’t perform as well as some.”

  “He needs further training, yes. It shall be my pleasure, if time allows.” Everard noted that Frederick did not say “God” as a medieval man ordinarily would.

  Actually the bird was from the Patrol’s ranch in pre-Indian North America. Falcons were an excellent, ice-breaking gift in a number of milieus, provided you didn’t present one to somebody whose rank didn’t entitle him to that particular kind. Everard had merely needed to nurse it along from that point in the hills where the time-cycle let him and Novak off.

  Involuntarily, he looked back west. Jack Hall waited yonder, in a dell to which it seemed people rarely strayed. A radioed word would fetch him on the instant. No matter if his appearance was public. This was no longer the history the Patrol sought to guard, it was one to overthrow.

  If that could be done…. Yes, certainly it could, easily, by a few revelations and actions; but what would come of them was unforeseeable. Better to stay as cautious as possible. Stick with the devil you somewhat knew, till you found out whence he sprang.

  Thus Everard made his reconnaissance in 1245. The choice was not entirely arbitrary. It was five years before Frederick’s death—in the lost world. In this one, the emperor, less stressed, would not succumb untimely to a gastrointestinal ailment, and thereby bring all Hohenstaufen hopes to the ground. A quick preliminary scouting revealed that he was in Foggia most of that summer and that things were going smoothly for him, his grand designs advancing almost without hindrance.

  You could anticipate that he would welcome Munan Eyvindsson. Frederick’s curiosity was universal; it had led him to experiments on animals and, rumor said, human vivisection. Icelanders, no matter how remote, obscure, and miserable, possessed a unique heritage. (Everard had gained familiarity with it on a mission to the viking era. Today Scandinavians were long since Christianized, but Iceland preserved lore elsewhere forgotten.) Admittedly, Munan was an outlaw. However, that meant simply that his enemies had maneuvered the Althing into passing sentence on him: for five years anybody who could manage it was free to kill him without legal penalty. The republic was going under in a maelstrom of feuds between its great families; soon it would submit to the Norwegian crown.

  Like others in his position who could afford to, Munan went abroad for the term of his outlawry. Landing in Denmark, he bought horses and hired a manservant cum bodyguard—Karel, a Bohemian mercenary on the beach. They fared south leisurely and safely. Frederick’s peace lay heavy upon the Empire. Munan’s first goal was Rome, but the pilgrimage was not his first interest, and afterward he sought his real dream, to meet the man called stupor mundi, “the amazement of the world.”

  Not just the gift he brought caught the emperor’s fancy. Still more did the sagas he could relate, the Eddic and skaldic poems. “You open another whole universe!” Frederick exulted. It was no small compliment from a lord to whose court came scholars of Spain and Damascus, as diverse as the astrologer Michael Scot and the mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa, he who introduced Arabic numerals into Europe. “You must abide for a time with us.” That was ten days ago.

  Spite cut through drifting memories. “Does the bold Sir Munan fear pursuit, this far from home? He must truly have wronged someone if he does.”

  Piero della Vigna said it, at Frederick’s right side. He was middle-aged, defiant of fashion in his grizzled beard and plain garb; but the eyes were luminous with an intellect equal to that of his master. Humanist, Latin stylist, jurist, counselor, lately chancellor, he was more than the emperor’s man Friday, he was his most intimate friend in a court aswarm with sycophants.

  Startled, Everard lied, “I thought I heard a noise.” Inwardly: I’ve noticed this guy glower. What’s bugging him? He can’t be afraid I’ll shove him aside in the imperial favor.

  Piero pounced. “Ha, you understand me remarkably well.”

  Everard swore at himself. That bastard used Italian. I forgot I’m a newly arrived foreigner. He forced a smile. “Why, naturally I’ve gained some knowledge of the tongues I’ve heard. That doesn’t mean I’d offend his Grace’s ears by trying to speak them in his presence.” Maliciously: “I pray the signor’s pardon. Let me put that into Latin for you.”

  Piero made a dismissing gesture. “I followed.” Of course so active a mind would learn German, hog-language though he doubtless considered it. Vernaculars were steadily gaining both political and cultural importance. “You gave a different impression erenow.”

  “I am sorry if I was misunderstood.”

  Piero looked elsewhere and fell silent, brooding. Does he think I may be a spy? For whom? As far as we’ve been able to find out, Frederick doesn’t have any enemies left worth fussing over. Oh, the French king is surely concerned—

  The emperor laughed. “Do you suppose our visitor means to disarm us, Piero?” he gibed. He could be a little cruel, or more than a little, even to those who stood him closest. “Set your heart at ease. I cannot see how good Munan could be in anyone’s pay, yea, not though that anyone be Giacomo de Mora.”

  Realization sank into Everard. That’s it. Pie
ro’s worried sick about Sir Giacomo, who has in fact taken more interest in me than would have been expected. If Giacomo has not actually planted me here, Piero fears, then maybe he’s thought of some way to make a tool of me against his rival Somebody in Piero’s position is apt to see shadows in every corner.

  Pity followed. What was this man’s fate in this history? Would he “once more” fall a few years hence, accused of conspiracy against his lord, and be blinded, and dash his brains out against a stone wall? Would the future forget him and instead remember Giacomo de Mora, whose name was not in any chronicle known to the Patrol?

  Yeah, these intrigues are like dancing on nitroglycerine. Maybe I ought to shy clear of Giacomo, too. And yet … how better might I pick up a clue to what went wrong, than from Frederick’s brilliant military leader and diplomat? Who’s got a wider and shrewder knowledge of this world? If he’s chosen to cultivate me when he’s not busy and the emperor is, I should accept the honor with due fulsomeness.

  Odd that he made some excuse and didn’t come along today—

  Hoofs clopped. The party had reached a main road. Frederick spurred his horse and, for a moment, drew well ahead of the rest. His hair tossed auburn-gold from beneath a feathered cap. The low sunlight made a halo of it. Yes, he was getting bald, and the trim, medium-sized frame was putting on weight, and lines were deep in the clean-shaven face. (It was a Germanic face, taking more after his grandfather Frederick Barbarossa than his grandfather Roger II.) Nevertheless, for that instant, he looked somewhat like a god.

  Peasants still at work in a nearby field bowed clumsily to him. So did a monk trudging toward the city. It was more than awe before power. There had always, also in Everard’s history, been an aura of the supernatural about this ruler. Despite his struggle with the Church, many folk—no few Franciscans, especially—saw him as a mystic figure, a redeemer and reformer of the mundane world, Heaven-sent. Many others saw in him the Antichrist. But that seemed past. In this world, the war between him and the Popes was over, and he had prevailed.

  At a ringing canter, the falconers neared the city. Its main gate stood open yet, to be closed an hour after sundown. There was no need for that, no threat, but so the emperor commanded, here and throughout his lands. Traffic must move at certain times, commerce proceed according to regulation. The gate had little about it of the grace and exuberance of Palermo, where Frederick spent his boyhood. Like buildings he had ordered raised elsewhere, strongholds and administrative centers, it was massive, starkly foursquare. Above it a banner rippled in the evening breeze, an eagle on a golden field, the emblem of the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

  Not for the first time since he came here, Everard wondered how much of this his history had known. Little remained in the twentieth century, his twentieth century, and the survivors of the Patrol had an overwhelming task already without studying architectural developments. Maybe this wasn’t very different from the “original” medieval Foggia. Or maybe it was. A lot would depend on how soon events had veered off track.

  Strictly speaking, that happened about a hundred years ago, when Pope Gregory IX failed to be born—unless it was later, when he died young or did not take holy orders or whatever went amiss. But changes in time don’t spread outward on any simple wave front. They’re an infinitely complicated interplay of quantum functions, way over this poor head of mine.

  The tiniest alteration could conceivably annul an entire future, if the event concerned was crucial. There should theoretically be countless such; but hardly ever were they felt. It was as if the time-flow protected itself, passed around them without losing its proper direction and shape. Sometimes you did get odd little eddies—and here one of them had grown to monstrousness—

  Yet change must needs spread in chains of cause and effect. Who outside the immediate vicinity would ever even hear what went on, or did not go on, in a couple of families of Anagni? It would take a long time for the consequences of that to reach far. Meanwhile the rest of the world moved onward untouched.

  So Constance, daughter of King Roger II, was born after her father’s death. She was over thirty when she married Barbarossa’s younger son, and nine more years went by before she bore to him Frederick, in 1194. Her husband became the Emperor Henry VI, who had gotten the crown of Sicily through the marriage, and who died soon after this birth. Frederick inherited that glamorous hybrid kingdom. He grew up among its plots and tumults, the ward of Pope Innocent III, who arranged his first marriage and maneuvered for a German coalition to hail him supreme king in 1211, because Otto VI had been giving the Church intolerable trouble. By 1220 Frederick was everywhere triumphant and the new Pope, Honorius III, consecrated him Holy Roman Emperor.

  Nevertheless, relations with him had long been worsening. He neglected or disowned promise after promise; only in his persecution of heretics did he seem to proceed with any regard to Mother Church. Most conspicuously, time after time he postponed fulfillment of his vow to go on crusade, while he put down revolts and secured his own power. Honorius died in 1227—Yeah. As far as we can find out, with what skimpy resources we’ve got left, things went pretty much the same up till then. Frederick, a widower, married Iolande in 1225, daughter of the titular King of Jerusalem, uh-huh, just as he was supposed to. A smart bit of groundwork for the recovery of that real estate from the paynim. Except that he kept putting the job off, he tried instead to assert his authority over Lombardy by force. And then in 1227 Honorius died.

  And the next Pope was not Gregory IX, he was Celestine IV, and after that the world became less and less what it ought to have been.

  “Hail!” roared the sentries. They lifted their pikes on high. For a moment the bright hues of the falconers dimmed in the tunnellike gateway. Echoes rolled off stone. They came forth onto the lists, the broad, smoothly paved open space under the wall, beyond which reared the buildings of the city. Above roofs Everard glimpsed cathedral towers. Somehow, against the eastern sky, they looked somber, as if night were already drawing down over them.

  A well-clad man with an attendant waited beyond the gate. Judging by the restlessness of their horses, they had been there for a considerable time. Everard recognized the courtier, who brought his mount close and made salutation.

  “Your Grace, forgive my intrusion,” he said. “I believed you would desire to know at once. This day did word come. The ambassador from Baghdad landed yesterday at Bari. He and his train were to start hither at dawn.”

  “Hellfire!” exclaimed Frederick. “Then they’ll arrive tomorrow. I know how Arabs ride.” He glanced about. “I regret the festivity planned for eventide must be stricken,” he told the party. “I will be too occupied making ready.”

  Piero della Vigna raised his brows. “Indeed, sire?” he wondered. “Need we show them great honor? Yon Caliphate is but a wretched husk of ancient greatness.”

  “The more need for me to nurse it back to strength, an ally on that flank,” the emperor replied. “Come!” He, his chancellor, and the courtier clattered off.

  The disappointed revelers went their separate ways by ones and twos and threes, chattering about what this might portend. Some lived at the palace and followed their sovereign more slowly. Everard would too. However, he dawdled and went roundabout, preferring to ride alone so he could think.

  The significance—Hm. Maybe Fred, or his successor, really will get the Near East bulwarked and stop the Mongols when they invade there. Wouldn’t that be a sockdolager?

  The past ran on through the Patrolman’s head, but now it was not his world’s, it was the course of this world that ought not to be, as inadequately charted by him and his few helpers.

  Mild, in frail health, Pope Celestine was no Gregory, to excommunicate the emperor when the crusade was postponed yet again. In Everard’s world, Frederick had, at last, sailed regardless, and proceeded actually to regain Jerusalem, not by fighting but by shrewd bargaining. In this present history, he had not then needed to crown himself its king; the Church anointed him, which gave im
mense leverage that he well knew how to apply. He suppressed and supplanted such enemies as John Ibelin of Cyprus and cemented firm agreements with the Muslim rulers of Egypt, Damascus, and Iconium. Given that network throughout the region, the Byzantines had no prospect of overthrowing their hated Latin overlords—who must more and more fit themselves to the wishes of the Holy Roman Emperor.

  Meanwhile, in Germany, Frederick’s heir apparent Henry revolted; in this world, too, the father put down the rebellion and confined the son for the rest of a short life. Likewise, in this world poor little Queen Iolande died young, of neglect and heartbreak. However, without a temporarily conciliated Pope Gregory to arrange it, Frederick’s third marriage was not to Isabella of England but to a daughter of the Aragonese royal house.

  His breach with Celestine occurred when he, freed from other tasks, took his armies into Lombardy and ruthlessly brought it under himself. Thereupon, in contempt of all pledges, he seized Sardinia and married his son Enzio to its queen. Seeing the papal states thus caught in a vise, even Celestine had then no choice but to excommunicate him. Frederick and his merry men ignored the ban. In the course of the next several years they overran central Italy.

  Thus he was able to send a mighty force against the Mongols when they struck into Europe, and in 1241 inflict resounding defeats on them. When Celestine died that same year, the “savior of Christendom” easily got a puppet of his elected Pope as Lucius IV.

  He had annexed those parts of Poland where his armies met the Mongols. Aided by him, whose tool they had become, the Teutonic Knights were in process of conquering Lithuania. Negotiations for a dynastic marriage were under way in Hungary—What’s next? Who is?

  “I beg your pardon!” Everard reined in his horse, hard. Lost in thought, passing through a narrow lane where gloom gathered thick, he had almost ridden down a man afoot. “I didn’t see you. Are you all right?” Here he dared be fluent in the local Italian. He must, for decency’s sake.