DODO now had a small operational group called TAST: the Tactical Archaeological Strike Team. As the name implied, they combined the skill set of traditional archaeologists (digging holes and finding stuff) with those of covert intelligence operatives—they knew how to get in and out of potentially hostile locations without drawing attention, and how to find what they were looking for in a hurry. You might not think of Normandy as a hostile location. But because of France’s ancient and secret laws banning diachronic operations, it was hostile to us. Anyway, TAST, zeroing in on a powerful GLAAMR centered on this copse of trees, had been able to carry out a couple of midnight digs and verify that it had been the homesite of the lineage of presumed witches we’d seen mentioned in various church documents. It was classic witch real estate: close enough to the village to allow commerce and social contacts but sufficiently remote to afford separation and privacy.
Erszebet was admirably on the mark: I materialized unobserved right at the copse, where the ground was mercifully dry, and after recovering from the usual disorientation, I followed the scent of woodsmoke to a hut some fifty very chilly strides away: the home of our potential KCW, Thyra of Collinet. I had landed, by design, in late afternoon in midwinter; in spite of the risk of hypothermia, I elected to arrive now because Thyra would likely be holed up in front of her fire.
As we’d come to expect, Thyra—a handsome woman of some forty years, brown hair gently greying—was not surprised by the arrival of a naked stranger, although I cannot say she was particularly pleased by it either. She grudgingly allowed me to enter her hut and warm myself by the fire. She muttered to herself.
“Pardon? Please repeat,” I said politely in Latin—the educated traveler’s language of the time.
Thyra appraised me a moment, then turned back to the fire. “I said”—now in slightly stiff Latin—“I sensed a glamour in recent days. But I did not expect somebody Sent. I cannot imagine why anyone wants to visit such a remote location.”
“Would this language be easier?” I asked in Anglo-Saxon; she gave me a confused look. “Let it be Latin, then,” I hastily amended. “Are you fluent?”
“Too fluent for the priest’s liking,” she said with a reluctant little chuckle. “If you speak slowly I can probably understand.”
I was able to convey to Thyra our proposal: namely that young men, apparent warriors, would come and stay with her from time to time, with no other purpose than to become familiar with the local language and customs. They would be disciplined and well-behaved. After a few weeks she would Home them.
“Pah,” she said, turning her attention back into the fire. “I do not like young men. Why not Send young women?”
“The men could be your house-help while they are here,” I said, looking around. “Chop firewood and bring it in. Fetch water. Fix that leak,” I added, pointing. “Is that roof-beam rotting? Do you think it’s safe to wait until spring? What kind of snow-load do you get here?”
With a dismissive wave of her hand, she grunted. “I have magic for all of that.”
“Magic can be tiring,” I said. “If the young men were here, you could rest all the time. Order them around.”
Thyra made an exaggerated expression of hmm-maybe-I-should-think-about-this-after-all, and after a moment nodded her head. “You say they are warriors?”
I nodded.
“I have no weapons for them, only some small knives and an axe for the chopping of wood.”
“They are not here to act as warriors,” I clarified. “They are here only to learn the language.”
“What if we require them to act as warriors?”
That brought me up short. “Why?” I asked. “Are you at war?”
She shook her head. “No, but there has been some concern in the village about maybe raids from boat-thugs who have been using the Dives estuary to get to the interior from the seacoast. If these young men could protect the village, this would make them more attractive guests.”
“I can’t promise protection,” I said, “since there is no guarantee they’ll be here if such an attack happens. But you must surely agree that having a strong young man around is better than not.”
Thyra shrugged. “It’s not bad,” she said. “Not as good as a strong young woman, though.”
Over the course of the next few minutes, I could see her warming to the idea, and eventually, without actually having said yes, it was clear she was amenable.
“How might you vouch for these visitors?” I asked. “Their presence will be noticed in the village.”
Thyra shrugged and gave a dismissive wave of her hand (a sort of early medieval variant of Erszebet’s body language, now I think of it) and said, “That is easy. Much trade across the Channel, there is nothing strange about cousins, friends of friends, and that sort, showing up from Britain and Ireland. I shall say my guests are such people, from such places.”
A few minutes more conversation, and she was willing to actually speak the words, “Yes, I will take them” (which put my fledgling Inner Bureaucrat at ease). She even invited me to share her meal of rabbit stew with root vegetables, and to stay the night before she Homed me the following morning.
Back at DODO HQ, I delivered my good news. Tristan and I sat at the same computer (be still my heart, I suppose) to pore over the feudal, judicial, and church chronicles of the area, seeking references to raids circa 1045. We found nothing, except one possible indirect reference to villagers who perished during altercations with bandits. It did not match Thyra’s description, nor was it chronicled officially anywhere—it was an ancillary comment in testimony given during a property dispute.
“Well, that’s good, anyhow,” said Tristan. “Probably means I won’t encounter anything while I’m there.”
I entered notes about Thyra’s dialect into the relevant linguistic databases, and sat with DORCCAD personnel, giving them sketches of the area for entry into their systems.
There was some chatter about timing, conducted over ODIN—and occasionally in person, since we tried to dine with the Odas every couple of weeks. To make a long logistical issue short, it was determined that Tristan would go back to stay with Thyra four different times, for a fortnight each time (rather than going back twice for a month each—Frank Oda determined this to be stabler with Chronotron calculations, and Erszebet agreed with him).
Tristan already knew Anglo-Saxon, and I’d been prepping him on Latin almost since we met (how can anyone with Western language interests not know Latin, FFS?). So he needed very little prep. Erszebet Sent him. Thyra had secured clothes in anticipation of his coming (he was Sent in spring).
Thyra had also already communicated to curious villagers, priests, etc. that Tristan (her supposed kinsman) would be sojourning with her for a fortnight so they might exchange news, and that he was of mixed Danish/Anglo-Saxon descent originating from a remote part of England (Tintagel—or as they called it then, Dintagel), journeying to Normandy to seek his fortune on the tourney field. This would explain why his accent was unfamiliar and why he tended to use Britannic, Cornish, and Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. Since no one in the settlement had been to that part of England, they accepted the cover story.