John Schettler - Anvil of Fate

“Well…” Robert thought for a moment. “England is being converted to Christianity by St. Gregory the Great and the Benedictines as the century opens… The plague reaches Italy in 701… The Arabs cross at Gibraltar in 711, and they sack Constantinople some years later… There’s a lot of petty squabbling when Pippin the Fat dies a few years later—that’s Charles Martel’s father by Alpaida.”

“What kind of squabbling?”

“Eh? Charles was a bastard, you see, the illegitimate son of Pippin, who had been married to a wealthy woman named Plectrude, but later he took Alpaida as consort. It was Alpaida who gave birth to Charles, and upon Pippin’s death Plectrude and her clan claimed succession should remain with her bloodline, with Pippin’s grandson Theodwald. Pippin had two legitimate sons, but they were both dead, one killed the very year Pippin himself died, assassinated, if I may say—Grimwald, the father of this young Theo, also illegitimate.”

Paul raised an eyebrow at that. “Go on professor. This is starting to sound suspicious. Sounds like the succession was shaping up as a battle between two bastards!”

“Little Theo was just a boy, and uncle Charles was a young strapping man in his twenties when Pippin died… Alpaida’s family supported his succession, and he became the Mayor of the Palace and de facto ruler of the Franks soon after, his brother by Plectrude having been eliminated the very year Pippin died. This was in 714.”

“Anything significant in the year 705? Kelly? What do these lost sheep of yours find?”

“Well here’s a new card in the deck,” said Kelly. “Golems report that Pippin’s legitimate son, Grimwald took the throne after his death. He was already in office as Mayor of the Palace since the year 695.”

“He doesn’t die? That’s a big variation,” said Maeve. “What does the RAM Bank say about Grimwald, Robert?”

“He was assassinated,” said the professor after keying in a search. “On his way to visit his ailing father and pay his respects to the shrine of St. Lambert in Liège, actually called the village of Leodium back then, an old Roman settlement, but the entire city eventually grew up around this shrine. He was planning to visit the tomb of St. Lambert there, in the year 714. From there he was going to call upon his dying father.”

“Pious fellow, was he?” Paul tapped his chin.

“He was killed by a man named Rantgar,” Robert added. “Not much else on him, I’m afraid.”

“No mention of him here either,” said Kelly.

“Come on, throw some keywords together, people,” Paul urged. “What’s the common thread linking all these events and people.”

Maeve was at a history terminal as well, and they were all typing furiously. Paul began pacing, his eye on the wall chronometer, his mind ever aware of the distant thrum of the Arch. They should be well into their final mission planning by now, and here they were off on another branch of the history, years before their planned breaching point.

“I’ve got something!” said Maeve. “I threw together a whole salad bowl: Charles, Grimwald, Pippin, Plectrude, Alpaida, Lambert, Tours, Rantgar. And I threw in the dates 705 and 714 to boot. Listen to this! The trouble doesn’t start in 714. It starts with St. Lambert…”

She began to read: “After seven years in exile at the new Abbey of Stavelot, Bishop Lambert returned, having the favor of Pippin for a time, until he, being inflamed by the zeal of religion, roundly condemned the affair of Pippin and Alpaida as scandalous.’ Coincidentally, this Bishop Lambert was somehow related to Plectrude, or at the very least enlisted by her to reprove Pippin’s infidelity.”

“Sounds like a nice family squabble,” said Paul.

“It gets better,” Maeve continued. “Reproved and disgraced by the prominent bishop, Alpaida appealed to her brother Dodo and, in the complicated political struggle that evolved, Dodo is said to have led the plot to murder Lambert out of revenge, on his estate, the Gallo-Roman villa that has since become the city Liège.”

“Looks like Lambert and Plectrude were hammer and tongs with Alpaida and her family,” said Paul.

“It appears so,” she continued. “Now here’s where it gets interesting. All this happened in the year 705.”

“That’s the demarcation cell now,” said Kelly. “We have good solid green through most of that year, but it starts to wane around September of 705.”

Maeve went on: “A cult quickly grew up around Lambert, seeing his death as martyrdom. It was largely pushed by his successor, the Bishop Hubert, who had his remains returned to the place where he was killed and enshrined there. This shrine soon became a chapel, and then eventually a cathedral that became the center of Liège. It was to this very chapel that Grimwald was bound when he was assassinated by an ‘impious wretch’ named Rantgar. Just as Robert said.”

“But the Golems say he lives and consolidates power in 714?” Paul’s eyes sharpened. “Then it looks like Plectrude’s side wins the battle of succession in the altered timeline, and the bastard Charles is thwarted. I agree, Maeve, this is important. It’s critical. How did we miss it earlier?”

“The Battle of Tours still took place,” Nordhausen put in. “Didn’t you say Charles was there earlier, Kelly?”

“Yes, he was there, but seems to drop out of the history after that.”

“We assumed he was killed, then,” said Paul “but we didn’t read much of that altered history in the Golem reports. We just fixated on the battle.”

“The Kelly chimed in with this story about the scribe carving that period of the history,” said Robert. “He’s the one who insisted the stela they found at Rosetta was a reference to the Battle of Tours, and it certainly seems that way after translating it.”

“Damn,” said Paul. “We just assumed Charles was in charge all along. Isn’t that what you said, Robert? You told us that after the Moors defeated Odo he went to Charles for aid and support.”

“Well he did!” Nordhausen complained. “In our history.”

“Not in the Golem reports,” said Kelly. “He beseeches Grimwald for aid, and is made to pledge his fealty in return.”

“Good Lord,” said Paul. “Did we miss this or has something changed? Kelly, do you have a log showing what this data looked like a couple hours back.”

“Sure, he said. It’s a layered database. I can call up a time stamped report for you.” He looked at the clock. “I’ll make it two hours back.”

They examined the year 705 in that data and found it solid green. Nothing had changed until late in the year 732, and it seemed to confirm Paul’s worst suspicions.

“Then we’re at war , my friends. Time war. Our adversaries must still be operating even as we speak. It’s clear that they initiated yet another operation aimed at the year 705.”

“Or perhaps that was their target year all along,” said Kelly. “There’s a bit of a lag while the Golems search and sift available data. But it’s clear that we’ve been barking up the proverbial wrong tree here.”

“We just assumed Charles was a Prime and couldn’t be meddled with, and that he was leading the army that met Abdul Rahman at Tours. But this is indicating that he never took office as Mayor of the Palace when his father Pippin died. His brother Grimwald was in charge! He would have led the army at Tours. We jumped to conclusions too quickly, assuming Tours was the critical point on the Meridian. But it’s obvious that they found some other way to influence the outcome of the battle, much earlier in the time line.”

They all looked at one another, and Paul discerned a mix of frustration, embarrassment and anxiety in their eyes. History was a labyrinth of possibility, and they all seemed like so many blind mice trying to find their way through the maze, blunting their noses on every obstacle and corner they found.