Invader iarit-6 Page 3

  “I do not see an ax or any other tool to use,” said Ishihara, looking around the small pile of wood that was already cut.

  Jane looked around the hut. “I can see some axes just inside the door here.”

  Ishihara leaned inside, picked up a long-handled ax, and carried it to the uncut wood. Without a word, he picked up an unsplit log and began to split it. The shepherd watched him for a moment, then walked to the doorway. He picked up another ax and joined Ishihara.

  “I guess he figures if he can’t tend the sheep, he might as well get something done,” said Wayne.

  The peasant woman stood over Jane and spoke. From her tone and facial expression, Jane felt she was asking a question, but none of her words meant anything to Jane. All Jane could do was shrug helplessly.

  “Ygerna.” The woman pointed to herself. “Oh-your name is Ygerna?” Jane touched her own chest with her finger. “ Jane.”

  “Jane.”

  “Yes.” Jane nodded, smiling.

  Her hostess knelt and patted her own leg where Jane had indicated her leg was sore. She spoke again, asking the same question as before. When Jane shrugged apologetically, Ygerna stood up and went outside.

  “Would they object if I came in out of the rain?” Wayne asked. “I don’t want to mess up a good situation, but I guess they do have the idea that you’re important and we’re your servants.”

  “I think you’re right.” Jane smiled. “Come on in. We’ll see what she does. As long as we’re considerate, I think we’ll be all right.”

  Wayne came inside the hut. He squatted down across the doorway from Jane.

  The children stared at both of them, whispering among themselves, but they focused most of their attention on Jane’s Chinese robe.

  Ygerna bustled back inside, holding what appeared to be two handfuls of mud, grass, and other plants. She carried this mixture to the back of the hut, where she knelt with her back to Jane. Her children gathered around her, watching to see what she was going to do.

  As Ygerna knelt in front of a narrow brick fireplace on the far side from the door, Jane looked around the hut for the first time. A portion of the hut had been sectioned off by a curtain hanging from the ceiling. Since she could see small sleeping pallets on the near side of the fireplace, she guessed that the curtain hid their parents’ pallet. One rough wooden table stood in the center of the room, with wooden stools around it. Above the fire, a small metal door was inset into the chimney. Ygerna poured water from an earthenware pitcher into a metal pot and hung it on a hook over the fire.

  A few minutes later, Ygerna stirred the mud packs into the steaming, small metal pot. Then she carried the pot to Jane and knelt at her feet. Her children followed her but hung back slightly, still watching with fascination.

  Ygerna gently moved Jane’s robe back over the leg Jane had pretended was hurting her. Carefully, Ygerna slipped the leg of Jane’s trousers up. As Jane watched in silence, Ygerna straightened her leg slightly and then began to smear the mud poultice on it. Jane realized that the purpose of this treatment, aside from any superstition the culture might have, was to apply and hold the heat against her injury.

  Feeling trapped, Jane said nothing. When Ygerna looked up and asked her another unintelligible question, Jane nodded and smiled appreciatively. Over Ygerna’s shoulder, Wayne caught Jane’s eye and smiled with amusement.

  When Ygerna had finished, she quietly lifted the pot and carried it outside. She dumped the remaining mud onto the ground and set down the pot to catch rainwater. Then, catching the drizzle on her hands, she wiped them off.

  Ishihara and Ygerna’s husband continued to chop and split wood rhythmically.

  Ygerna called out to her husband, who stopped swinging his ax and turned to look at her. They spoke briefly, then he nodded and brought his ax back to the hut. Leaving it inside the doorway, he walked back toward his flock of sheep. The dog that had remained at the hut trotted after him.

  “I guess they decided we’re okay,” said Wayne, looking out the doorway.

  Ygerna walked back inside the hut and knelt by the fire again.

  Ishihara paused and turned to speak to Wayne and Jane. “I have made a small amount of rudimentary progress communicating with Emrys.”

  “Is that his name?” Jane asked. “Hers is Ygerna. That’s all I’ve learned.”

  “Yes, he is named Emrys. He knows a few Latin words and phrases after all. When I first spoke to him, he kept that a secret, but he has opened up now. His limited Latin facilitated our communication. I now know a few words and phrases in his own language.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing now?” Wayne nodded toward Emrys as he hiked up the slope toward his flock of sheep. “Where’s he going?”

  “I believe Ygerna told him to bring back a sheep to slaughter for dinner,” said Ishihara. “We must wait and see what he does to know if I understood their conversation correctly.”

  Jane looked up the hill sharply. “Then we’ve made a change in their lives-a big one. Every one of their sheep must be valuable to them.”

  “Your apparent status as a lady has made the sacrifice worthwhile, I believe,” said Ishihara.

  “Hold it,” said Wayne. “We can’t possibly eat a whole sheep, even the whole bunch of us.”

  “His family can eat the rest, or sell it,” said Jane. “But maybe we should move on tomorrow morning. We could be much too disruptive to this family.”

  “We still have no money to buy food elsewhere,” said Ishihara.

  “I don’t think we’re going to do any real damage,” said Wayne. “This kind of thing isn’t likely to change history. Come on, Jane-one sheep?”

  “We should be careful, at least,” said Jane. “As Hunter keeps saying, no one knows where the threshold of change lies. What if some descendants of Emrys and Ygerna are important at some point in English history? Or even on the world stage someday, even centuries later? And what if we disrupt their immediate family in some way that alters their health or survival?”

  “You have a point,” said Ishihara. “However, if we can return the value of their sacrifice, we lower the likelihood of changing their lives because of the sheep.”

  “What do you mean?” Wayne asked.

  “I will cut as much wood as I can without revealing that I am not human. This will save Emrys from the chore. If we can help in other ways, I suggest we do so.”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “You were right,” said Jane. “Look.”

  Up on the hill, the dog Emrys had taken with him had cut one sheep out of the flock. Emrys had already started back and the dog was herding the single sheep back down the slope with him. Emrys’s son and the other dog had moved behind him and prevented the rest of the flock from following.

  A metallic squeak sounded in the hut. Jane turned and saw Ygerna open the small metal door in the chimney over the fire. Using a cloth to protect her hands, Ygerna pulled out a loaf of bread in a pan. She set it down on the hearth and closed the oven door.

  When Emrys arrived with the sheep, he took it behind the hut. Jane felt relieved. Butchering sheep would be normal for him, but she did not want to watch. Ishihara continued to cut and split logs.

  Jane sat patiently, glad to be out of the drizzle and relieved that they would be fed and, she felt certain, given shelter for the night. On the other hand, the realization that she was trapped with Wayne and Ishihara for at least several more days finally sank in. Even when Hunter arrived, she might not be able to get away immediately. Surviving in this time without money to spend would require genuine effort.

  Ygerna kneaded more bread dough and put it in the bread pan. While it rose she went outside and around to the back. Her children trailed after her, but Wayne and Jane stayed inside the hut.

  After a few minutes Ygerna came back inside, carrying a large cut of mutton. She knelt again at the hearth and began cutting it into smaller pieces with a large knife. Outside the hut again, she filled a large cookpot with water from a
cistern and carried it back to the fire. She hung the pot over the fire and dropped the chunks of mutton into the water. In a few minutes, the water began to boil.

  “Smells horrible,” Wayne whispered.

  “The meat can’t be bad,” said Jane quietly. “It’s really fresh. Maybe mutton always smells like that. I’ve never had any.”

  With effort, Emrys carried a large, bulging cloth bag to a tree and threw a rope over a low-hanging branch. From the size of the burden and the blood soaking the bag, Jane saw that it held the sheep carcass. He hoisted the bag into the air, high enough to keep the dogs away from it.

  Jane understood that the cool temperature would preserve it for a while. It still looked like too much meat for his family alone to eat before it spoiled. Obviously, he had the same problem every time he slaughtered a sheep, so he would have some normal routine to avoid wasting the meat. She wondered what it would be.

  4

  The drizzle continued through the afternoon. As the day cooled, the wind came up and the drizzle turned to rain. Emrys called for his son to bring the flock back to a small pen behind the hut. Then the boy joined the family inside. Ishihara went on chopping wood.

  Emrys started to close the door of the hut against the rain. With a questioning glance at Jane, he paused to point to Ishihara.

  “Ishihara, come in,” Jane said in English. “If you were human, you’d be exhausted by now.”

  “Of course.” Ishihara brought his ax, stopping to wipe the mud from his feet on a patch of grass before he came inside the hut. Then he dried the ax blade on a rag that hung on a hook next to the other ax.

  Just as Emrys closed the door, Jane saw that Ishihara had stacked more new firewood than Emrys had cut and split before they arrived.

  Once Emrys had closed the door, the fire warmed the hut quickly. Ygerna ladled chunks of boiled mutton onto wooden plates that already held pieces of bread. She took one first to Jane, then served her supposed servants. Emrys received his dinner next, followed by Ygerna and the children.

  By now Jane was very hungry. She did not really like the mutton, but she knew that Emrys and Ygerna had sacrificed a sheep for their benefit, so she ate it all. The bread, chewy and dense, tasted better than it looked. After everyone had eaten, Ygerna served some sort of herbal tea in wooden cups.

  Jane and Wayne did not speak. However, Ishihara pointed to objects around the hut and asked the children to tell him what they were called. Sometimes Emrys and Ygerna, laughing, helped them.

  “Ishihara seems to be learning to speak with them quickly,” said Jane. “I guess his knowledge of Latin helps, but I wonder how thoroughly he can pick up their native language.”

  “He does very well,” said Wayne. “He learned rudimentary Chinese quickly because he can apply linguistic principles from the languages he knows to a new language.”

  “I see.” Jane nodded. Since Ishihara had no memory lapses of the kind humans routinely had in the learning process, once he learned patterns and vocabulary, he immediately possessed full use of them.

  Ishihara turned to Wayne. “They want to know where we came from. What shall I say?”

  “We have to justify our Chinese clothing,” said Jane. “That is, we have to explain why it’s different. I doubt they ever heard of China.”

  “Maybe you can just tell them we came by ship across the Channel,” said Wayne.

  “That’s it,” said Jane. “Tell them we were shipwrecked by a storm.”

  “I understand,” said Ishihara. “This will explain why we have no belongings or money.”

  “Yeah,” said Wayne. “It’s perfect. That’s why a lady with servants could be broke.”

  Ishihara spoke to their hosts, including the children, in short phrases sprinkled with Latin. Ygerna, in particular, asked more questions. Finally she and Emrys both nodded in understanding.

  For the night, Jane was given the children’s sleeping pallets. The children moved behind the curtain with their parents. Emrys gave Wayne and Ishihara clean wool blankets to roll up in on the floor.

  Jane bundled up on the sleeping pallet. The hut remained warm and cozy from the fire. She fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof.

  In the morning, Jane awoke to the sound of the children talking and giggling. Ygerna hustled them outside; when Jane opened her eyes, she saw through the open doorway that the rain had stopped, though gray clouds still covered the sky. Under her blanket, she carefully arranged her robe in its proper position, then got up to find the out house.

  Outside, Wayne was splashing water on his face at the cistern. Ishihara had already begun to chop wood again. The air was cool and brisk.

  When Jane returned to the hut, Ygerna was stirring a pot of hot porridge over the fire. She served wooden bowls of the thick porridge to everyone around the table. Jane called in Ishihara, in order to continue his masquerade as a human.

  “Now what do we do?” Wayne asked quietly in English. “Are we going to have to leave now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jane. “Maybe we shouldn’t put too much burden on one family.”

  “Should I ask?” Ishihara asked.

  “We should be careful how we phrase the question,” said Jane. “We don’t want to insult them.”

  “They probably assume we want to get on the road to our ultimate destination,” said Wayne. “They heard last night that we were shipwrecked and left with nothing, but we still must have been going somewhere.”

  “Good point,” said Jane. “So where are we going? We’d better have our story straight.”

  Ygema and Emrys listened curiously, watching them as they all ate.

  “I only know the year and our location,” said Wayne. “I have no idea what’s going on in history now. Where could we have been going? Maybe London?”

  “I can’t help,” said Jane. “This is why Hunter keeps hiring historians to take with him.”

  “I have some rudimentary history of this time, but no more,” said Ishihara. “The Romans settled London several centuries ago under the name Londinium, but it’s a long way from here. We can’t actually go there if we’re going to find MC 6 in this area.”

  “We better say we were coming to this area all along,” said Jane. “That will explain why we won’t go very far. But we don’t know where we are, do we?”

  “On the modern map, yes,” said Ishihara. “But I know very little about significant locations in this time.”

  “Ask Emrys,” said Jane.

  “What’s that going to accomplish?” Wayne snickered. “He already knows we’re lost.”

  “Exactly. And no matter what he says, we’ll tell him this is our destination.”

  “Of course,” said Ishihara. He turned to Emrys and spoke briefly in a mixture of Latin and British. Then he switched back to English. “The village on top of the highest hill is Cadbury. The hill itself is called Cadbury Tor. This is the home of a man named Artorius Riothamus.”

  “Cadbury what?” Wayne asked.

  “Tor. It means a high hill in the local language.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is MC 6 going to show up there?” Jane asked.

  “I believe so,” said Wayne. “These component robots have been continually drawn to people of power in the hope, I judge, of influencing them to do less harm to the humans within their power.”

  “Then Cadbury Tor really is our destination,” said Wayne. “Tell him that.”

  “And add that we cannot pay for lodging because of the shipwreck,” Jane added.

  Ishihara spoke to Emrys again. The shepherd responded, nodding, and gestured outside. He grinned and gave Ishihara a friendly slap on the shoulder.

  “He has complimented my ability to cut firewood,” said Ishihara.

  Jane smiled, struggling to suppress a laugh.

  “Emrys wants to go to Cadbury today to sell the rest of the sheep carcass and some of the extra firewood I have cut. He says he knows that this ‘humble hut,’ as he calls it, is not good enough for a la
dy such as Jane, but he has thanked me for the labor I have saved him.”

  “Do you think we could stay here another night, if necessary?” Wayne asked.

  “I think if we expressed interest, and I continue to cut wood for him or find other ways to help him, we would be welcome,” said Ishihara.

  Jane was relieved to hear that, but said nothing.

  “Good,” said Wayne. “Tell him we’ll be happy to go to Cadbury with him. If we can’t find a place to stay there, then we can talk to him about coming back.”

  “Tell Ygerna that my leg is well, and thank her for the mud poultice,” said Jane. “Otherwise, I’ll have to fake a limp all day.”

  Ishihara spoke again to Emrys and Ygerna. After breakfast, Emrys sent his eldest son out again with their dogs to take the flock for the day. Then, at Emrys’s direction, Ishihara helped him load firewood and the bagged sheep carcass into the donkey cart.

  Jane looked around the countryside in the brisk morning air. Shepherds led their flocks out again in the distance. Smoke rose from the other huts. Life here, at least today, appeared calm and stable.

  While Emrys hitched the donkey, Ygerna and the younger children came out to watch with Jane and Wayne. She pointed to the cart and spoke sharply to Emrys.

  He nodded and spoke to Ishihara, who began rearranging the wood in the cart.

  “What’s wrong?” Wayne asked quietly. “What does Ygerna want?”

  “She told Emrys we must see that the lady can ride in the cart,” said Ishihara. “I will form a seat for her with the wood.”

  When the cart was ready, Ishihara lifted Jane into the cart. She found her footing on the uneven firewood and sat down. Once she had settled into the seat he had made, she found that it was actually comfortable.

  The sheep carcass lay in the front, near her feet. She was glad Emrys had put it in the cloth bag. From her high seat on the cart, she looked down at Wayne and Ishihara.

  Ishihara turned to Wayne. “Emrys has room for one more next to him on the driver’s bench. I will walk, of course.”