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fredbassettTitle : Death and the Maiden, Part 3
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia/Nick, Stephen/Ryan, Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 21,221, divided into in 8 parts.
Summary : Dinosaurs are not the only things to come through the anomalies.
A/N : This series is early in my main ‘verse, not long after the events of The Devil’s Crowll. It arose nearly three years ago out of a chat with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
steamshovelmama. I owe an absolutely huge debt of gratitude to aelfgyfu_mead as her assistance with Middle English made this story possible. I am also grateful to talliw for information on clothing and shoes. And as ever, thanks are due to lukadreaming for her beta help.
The sound of her Jack Russell terrier barking in the back garden drew Eileen Allen’s attention away from the pot of chicken soup simmering on her cooking range. The dog was making enough noise to wake the dead, but the postman had already been and she wasn’t expecting any visitors.
“Patch!” The dog ignored her and continued barking. “Patch!” With a sigh, Eileen set the wooden spoon across the top of the pan and went towards the open back door.
Patch’s barking was becoming frantic. The cottage was some distance from the nearest neighbours so fortunately there was no one to disturb, but she didn’t want the dog to get into bad habits, and besides, he might have got wind of a fox in the vicinity of the chicken run. She grabbed her blackthorn walking stick from its place by the door and hobbled outside, cursing her arthritic knees.
The chickens were scratching around in their pen, pecking at the corn she’d thrown to them earlier but there was no sign of Patch. She opened her mouth to call the dog when a hand closed around her neck at the same time as the walking stick was snatched from her hand.
Eileen’s scream was abruptly choked off in her throat. Filthy hands spun her round and pushed her back into the kitchen. Her feet slipped on the flagged floor and she started to fall.
Her scream echoed loudly around the white-washed stone walls of the cottage.
* * * * *
“Well?” Lester raised one eyebrow.
“Dr Fielding has agreed to treat two of the men here,” said Claudia. “He’ll be over later when he’s finished his shift at the hospital. I don’t think that will be a problem. The two we’ve got here weren’t the ones who attacked us. I’m not even convinced they had anything to do with them.” She had played the events of the attack over and over in her mind and she was now convinced that the two men being held at the hotel had been equally startled when the arrows had started flying.
“How’s Richards?”
“We brought him back with us. Simon Fielding says he’ll be fine, but he’ll be off active duty for a few weeks. He had to cut the arrowheads out of him. The points were barbed.
“How very uncivilised,” sniffed Lester. “Did Fielding buy the illegal immigrant story?”
“Of course he didn’t, James. The man’s not an idiot. As he told me himself, he was born and brought up around here.”
“Ah, yes, the great conspiracy of locals. I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.”
Claudia nodded. Lester was right: only the understandable desire of most people in the area not to be turned into some sort of freak-show stood between them and the tabloid newspapers. The number of wild boar on the loose in the forest provided a convenient scapegoat for all manner of strange animal sightings and fortunately no more gorgonopsids had seen fit to come day-tripping, so it hadn’t been too difficult to keep matters out of the hands of the press.
Mary Mitchell appeared in the doorway, holding a tray of sandwiches. “What’s the diagnosis, Claudia?”
“What Ditzy expected,” said Claudia heavily. “I’m sorry, Mary, we don’t make life easy for you, do we? The good news is that the risk of cross-infection is slight as long as we take all proper precautions. Dr Fielding gave us a supply of surgical masks to cut down on the risk of airborne infection, and he’ll be giving everyone a course of antibiotics later.”
Mary Mitchell smiled. “Then there’s nothing to panic about, is there? Have something to eat, both of you. Jon and his group have just arrived back. Nick’s talking to them now, but it doesn’t look like they’ve found anything. They’ll be heading back out to cover some more ground in half an hour. The weather forecast is predicting heavy rain, so that should keep most people indoors.”
“Excellent,” said Claudia, conscious of the fact that she was starting to use her best jolly hockey sticks voice rather frequently at the moment.
“Can I take them some more food? They wolfed down the cheese and bread I took out there before you went to the hospital and they don’t look like they’ve had much to eat recently.”
Lester opened his mouth, probably to refuse the request, but Claudia forestalled him. “Yes, of course. What did you have in mind?”
“There’s some roast chicken left over from last night, and I’ve baked some more bread. Best keep it simple, I think.”
“Don’t make them too comfortable,” muttered Lester. “They might want to stay.”
“They might have no choice,” said Claudia acerbically, surprising herself by feeling a flash of sympathy for the men. Two of the men might have attacked her and Nick and injured Blade, but they were still trapped out of their own time, sick and almost certainly afraid. She ate one of the sandwiches Mary had brought and reached a decision. “We need to try to communicate with them, James.”
“And how do you propose we do that? Look up interpreters in the Yellow Pages? Hold up flash cards? Play charades?”
“I intend to do what I’m good at and improvise.” With that, Claudia swept out of the room, enjoying the feeling of having caught James Lester on the hop for once. She heard him make an irritated noise before he followed her.
The containment pens were located in a large barn behind the hotel. Five stainless steel cages of varying sizes were securely fixed to a white tiled floor. Only one of the smaller pens was occupied at the moment. The two men were crouched in one corner, sitting on blankets. One of the men was coughing loudly; the other stared around him, fear and anger warring for dominance in his eyes.
Ditzy and Finn were stationed in the barn, both wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths. Connor was sitting cross-legged on the floor, also wearing a mask, busily making notes on his laptop. It was their first encounter with any other human beings from their past, and the young man clearly wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for research.
The medic didn’t look surprised to see Claudia. He simply handed her and Lester masks and told them not to get too close.
“How are they?” she asked.
“I’m certain the one who’s coughing is infected. The other one almost certainly is as well,” said Ditzy. “But there’s a good chance they’ll respond to the streptomycin.”
“With proper treatment, the mortality rate is only about 14%,” said Connor brightly. He’d clearly been looking up plague.
“Connor, are you connected to the internet here?” Claudia asked, hoping the answer was going to be yes.
He nodded. “Jim’s got a booster on his wi-fi signal.”
“Good. Can you go on line and find something called the Middle English Compendium, please.”
Connor’s eyes went wide with surprise. “We’re going to try to talk to them?” His fingers started to fly over the keyboard. “Cool.”
“I did English at university before I changed to read law. One of my tutors was obsessed with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’m not sure how much I remember, but I’m prepared to give it a go. We need to convince them we’re here to help, don’t you agree, Lieutenant?”
“It won’t do any harm, ma’am,” said Ditzy. “We’re going to need to get close to them when Si Fielding gets here, and if we can do it without sedating them, it’ll help.”
“How close can I get without wearing a mask?”
“Not a good idea,” Ditzy said firmly. “Not the way matey over there is coughing.”
The mask would prevent the men watching her lips when she spoke, but she’d just have to do her best. She stepped forward, just as Nick appeared in the doorway.
“Stephen has radioed in,” he announced, without preamble. “They’ve found some tracks. I’m going out there with Lyle and his men.”
The professor glared at Ditzy, clearly daring him to argue, but all the medic did was roll his eyes and mutter, “On your own head be it, sir.”
Claudia turned around, the small mask dangling from her hand. “Be careful, Nick.”
He glanced from her to the caged men. “Be careful yourself, Claudia Brown.”
She smiled and pulled the mask over her head, settling it over her nose and mouth, then turned back to the two captives. One of them was muttering under his breath to his companion and staring at her in undisguised amazement. She took a couple of steps forward, until Ditzy’s hand on her arm told her she’d gone close enough. She was pretty sure she’d caught words she recognised as ‘curse’ and ‘hell’ but her university days were long past, and Middle English had never been something she’d taken a particular interest in. In spite of that she was determined to try to establish communication. They were dealing with men, not animals, and she didn’t want anyone – least of all Sir James Lester – to forget that.
She was certain now that neither of these men had actually tried to harm her. At first she’d looked no further than their ragged beards and equally ragged clothing and had not distinguished between any of them, but at that point she’d been shocked and frightened and hadn’t been thinking clearly. There was now a very distinct possibility that neither of these men were guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The older of the two stared at her, his face expressionless.
“Connor,” she said quietly. “I think the dictionary on that site allows you to look words up. I want to know what ‘help’ is.”
She heard the click of the keyboard, and then Connor announced, “Bugger, it looks like this thing only goes from Middle English to Modern English. Hang on a minute; let me have a fiddle about…”
Claudia stepped back to look over Connor's shoulder and watch him. The dictionary hadn’t existed in her student days, but she come across it a few years ago and had been interested enough to have played around with it for a while for old time’s sake. It wasn’t exactly user-friendly, but it did allow the user to look up by definition, which was exactly what she needed. “I know that 'we' was the same word," she said, as much to remind herself as to talk to Connor. “It was just pronounced ‘way’. But I don't know ‘help.’”
He typed in ‘help’.
“Abobbed?” he read off the screen, obviously confused.
“No, that's a noun...” Claudia began, but he was already clicking on the word.
“Blind man's bluff?” Connor read out in amazement. “I thought we wanted to talk to them not play games with them?”
Claudia shook her head in frustration. That was the problem she remembered. It threw up quite the oddest things at time. She felt like she was groping in the dark for something just out of reach. “It lets you look up parts of speech, as well, I think. Let's try ‘help’ and ‘verb.’”
It took them a few minutes to get the search right; the Middle English Compendium seemed to have been designed only for use by people who already knew Middle English, and that wasn’t too much use for what they were trying to do. Eventually they did find a useful verb, the word ‘helpen’.
“I could have made that up without all this faffing around,” Connor muttered, obviously unimpressed.
“Right,” Claudia said quietly. “So ‘we helpen’? Damn it, I need an auxiliary verb! What about ‘want’?” She was getting frustrated now, racking her brains for words that hovered just on the edge of her memory. She might not have enjoyed this sort of thing at university, but she had been good at it, that was what mattered.
Connor was flicking rapidly from page to page in the compendium, trying to get the hang of how the site worked.
A few minutes later, she went closer to the two filthy captives and said, doing her best to remember what the Canterbury Tales had sounded like read out loud, “We wille helpen yow,” although it came out more like ‘way willeh helpen yow.’ The people of that time had pronounced nearly all the letters, she did remember that much from her lectures.
That made the man's head snap up; for the first time he’d obviously heard something that made sense to him. He stared hard at her and spat the words, “Helpestow me?” with a glare. “I nille thine help. Thu holpest me and min kin...” He put his had protectively on the younger man’s shoulder.
Connor just sat there with his mouth hanging open but Claudia had worked in the Civil Service long enough to recognise sarcasm when she heard it, regardless of the language it was couched in.
Claudia interpreted for the benefit of Lester and the others. “He said, ‘You want to help me? I don't want your help. You helped me and my kin,’ but I think he’s being sarcastic, and then I'm not too sure about the rest.”
“Does tordes mean turds?” Connor hazarded with a grin.
Claudia sighed. Trust him to have picked that one up. “Probably,” she confirmed.
“I don't think he likes you much,” Connor observed, grinning. “But don’t take it personally. He probably thinks you’re a witch or something, dressed like that.”
Claudia took a deep breath and got ready to try again. “Here, let me use the computer for a minute.” It actually took her several minutes, and various different types of search but eventually she came up with a list of words she could use. She just hoped she had the conjugations and inflections correct, or at least understandable.
“Ye aren sik,” she said slowly, doing him the courtesy of using the formal you even if he wouldn't grant her the same. “Youre frendes and kin arn sik.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “We be sik?” he asked, emphasising the verb.
“Is he correcting your grammar?” Connor asked with delighted incredulity.
“Yes, Connor, he is correcting my grammar, though I’m damned if I know why, because they didn't even have standard grammar in his day!” Claudia exploded.
The man flinched and so did Connor.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said to both of them, before taking possession of the laptop again. “I…I,” she corrected her pronunciation from ‘eye’ to ‘ee’ and started again. “I repente…” She had no idea how to say what she wanted to apologise for, so she just left it at that and hoped he understood. “Yow… ye aren… ye be sik,” she tried again.
“Ye,” he said, and it took her a moment to realise that he was saying ‘yes’ and not ‘you.’ The note of sarcasm in his voice had actually helped that time. “We han the pestilence. We moten dien.” The sarcasm died abruptly like the flame of a match in a stiff breeze.
From Connor's soft gasp, Claudia knew he didn't need a translation.
“We wille helpen yow.”
“Ye moten dien als siker as we,” he muttered.
“No!” Claudia insisted. “None of us will die!”
He frowned at her.
She tried again in Middle English, consulting the list of words she had just made. “We ne shulen dien. Ye ne shulen dien.”
His forehead wrinkled, and she couldn't tell if it was from disbelief or from the effort of interpreting her somewhat dubious Middle English.
“We kan curen… yow,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “We… have… medicine. Oh, hell, that's modern again.”
“Medicine?” the man repeated. “Ye han medicine?” His pronunciation was different, but the sense was clear.
“Yes,” Claudia said. “I mean yea.”
“Yis?” the man hazarded.
“Yis,” she said, more confidently, taken her cue from him.
“Medicine ne kan curen this pestilence,” he said, but even so a note of hope remained in his voice.
“Oure… medicine… kan. We… we ne wille… we nille dien.” She met his eyes, willing him to understand her. “Ye nille dien.”
“I nyl dien, ac I mot dien,” he said, sadness clearly written on his filthy face.
Claudia stared at him in confusion. “I will not die, but I must die?” she queried. “That doesn't make any sense.”
“I nyl dien,” he repeated, speaking slowly and clearly.
“I can't find… wait, here it is,” Connor said, in triumph. “Nille, from ne wille… oh.”
“What?” Claudia was back looking over his shoulder again.
“He says he doesn't want to die. ‘Will’ doesn't seem to mean what our ‘will’ means. It means ‘want, desire to.’” Connor stared at the man, compassion in his dark eyes. “You won’t die, mate. Not if we have anything to do with it.”
Claudia squeezed Connor’s shoulder. “No one’s going to die.” She smiled at the men, even though her facial expression was hidden behind the surgical mask and repeated firmly, “Ye nille dien.”
The man put his arm around his companion’s shoulders again as another burst of coughing racked the other man’s slight frame. He held Claudia’s gaze, but for the first time there was the hint of a smile on his weary face.
And when Mary Mitchell brought out a pile of cold chicken and bread on paper plates, Claudia insisted on handing the food to the men herself, in spite of Ditzy’s protests.
She didn’t quite catch the man’s muttered words, but it sounded very much like he was thanking her. She drew the mask away from her face and smiled. That at least would need no translation.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 15
Characters : Claudia/Nick, Stephen/Ryan, Lester, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 21,221, divided into in 8 parts.
Summary : Dinosaurs are not the only things to come through the anomalies.
A/N : This series is early in my main ‘verse, not long after the events of The Devil’s Crowll. It arose nearly three years ago out of a chat with
steamshovelmama. I owe an absolutely huge debt of gratitude to aelfgyfu_mead as her assistance with Middle English made this story possible. I am also grateful to talliw for information on clothing and shoes. And as ever, thanks are due to lukadreaming for her beta help. The sound of her Jack Russell terrier barking in the back garden drew Eileen Allen’s attention away from the pot of chicken soup simmering on her cooking range. The dog was making enough noise to wake the dead, but the postman had already been and she wasn’t expecting any visitors.
“Patch!” The dog ignored her and continued barking. “Patch!” With a sigh, Eileen set the wooden spoon across the top of the pan and went towards the open back door.
Patch’s barking was becoming frantic. The cottage was some distance from the nearest neighbours so fortunately there was no one to disturb, but she didn’t want the dog to get into bad habits, and besides, he might have got wind of a fox in the vicinity of the chicken run. She grabbed her blackthorn walking stick from its place by the door and hobbled outside, cursing her arthritic knees.
The chickens were scratching around in their pen, pecking at the corn she’d thrown to them earlier but there was no sign of Patch. She opened her mouth to call the dog when a hand closed around her neck at the same time as the walking stick was snatched from her hand.
Eileen’s scream was abruptly choked off in her throat. Filthy hands spun her round and pushed her back into the kitchen. Her feet slipped on the flagged floor and she started to fall.
Her scream echoed loudly around the white-washed stone walls of the cottage.
* * * * *
“Well?” Lester raised one eyebrow.
“Dr Fielding has agreed to treat two of the men here,” said Claudia. “He’ll be over later when he’s finished his shift at the hospital. I don’t think that will be a problem. The two we’ve got here weren’t the ones who attacked us. I’m not even convinced they had anything to do with them.” She had played the events of the attack over and over in her mind and she was now convinced that the two men being held at the hotel had been equally startled when the arrows had started flying.
“How’s Richards?”
“We brought him back with us. Simon Fielding says he’ll be fine, but he’ll be off active duty for a few weeks. He had to cut the arrowheads out of him. The points were barbed.
“How very uncivilised,” sniffed Lester. “Did Fielding buy the illegal immigrant story?”
“Of course he didn’t, James. The man’s not an idiot. As he told me himself, he was born and brought up around here.”
“Ah, yes, the great conspiracy of locals. I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies.”
Claudia nodded. Lester was right: only the understandable desire of most people in the area not to be turned into some sort of freak-show stood between them and the tabloid newspapers. The number of wild boar on the loose in the forest provided a convenient scapegoat for all manner of strange animal sightings and fortunately no more gorgonopsids had seen fit to come day-tripping, so it hadn’t been too difficult to keep matters out of the hands of the press.
Mary Mitchell appeared in the doorway, holding a tray of sandwiches. “What’s the diagnosis, Claudia?”
“What Ditzy expected,” said Claudia heavily. “I’m sorry, Mary, we don’t make life easy for you, do we? The good news is that the risk of cross-infection is slight as long as we take all proper precautions. Dr Fielding gave us a supply of surgical masks to cut down on the risk of airborne infection, and he’ll be giving everyone a course of antibiotics later.”
Mary Mitchell smiled. “Then there’s nothing to panic about, is there? Have something to eat, both of you. Jon and his group have just arrived back. Nick’s talking to them now, but it doesn’t look like they’ve found anything. They’ll be heading back out to cover some more ground in half an hour. The weather forecast is predicting heavy rain, so that should keep most people indoors.”
“Excellent,” said Claudia, conscious of the fact that she was starting to use her best jolly hockey sticks voice rather frequently at the moment.
“Can I take them some more food? They wolfed down the cheese and bread I took out there before you went to the hospital and they don’t look like they’ve had much to eat recently.”
Lester opened his mouth, probably to refuse the request, but Claudia forestalled him. “Yes, of course. What did you have in mind?”
“There’s some roast chicken left over from last night, and I’ve baked some more bread. Best keep it simple, I think.”
“Don’t make them too comfortable,” muttered Lester. “They might want to stay.”
“They might have no choice,” said Claudia acerbically, surprising herself by feeling a flash of sympathy for the men. Two of the men might have attacked her and Nick and injured Blade, but they were still trapped out of their own time, sick and almost certainly afraid. She ate one of the sandwiches Mary had brought and reached a decision. “We need to try to communicate with them, James.”
“And how do you propose we do that? Look up interpreters in the Yellow Pages? Hold up flash cards? Play charades?”
“I intend to do what I’m good at and improvise.” With that, Claudia swept out of the room, enjoying the feeling of having caught James Lester on the hop for once. She heard him make an irritated noise before he followed her.
The containment pens were located in a large barn behind the hotel. Five stainless steel cages of varying sizes were securely fixed to a white tiled floor. Only one of the smaller pens was occupied at the moment. The two men were crouched in one corner, sitting on blankets. One of the men was coughing loudly; the other stared around him, fear and anger warring for dominance in his eyes.
Ditzy and Finn were stationed in the barn, both wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths. Connor was sitting cross-legged on the floor, also wearing a mask, busily making notes on his laptop. It was their first encounter with any other human beings from their past, and the young man clearly wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for research.
The medic didn’t look surprised to see Claudia. He simply handed her and Lester masks and told them not to get too close.
“How are they?” she asked.
“I’m certain the one who’s coughing is infected. The other one almost certainly is as well,” said Ditzy. “But there’s a good chance they’ll respond to the streptomycin.”
“With proper treatment, the mortality rate is only about 14%,” said Connor brightly. He’d clearly been looking up plague.
“Connor, are you connected to the internet here?” Claudia asked, hoping the answer was going to be yes.
He nodded. “Jim’s got a booster on his wi-fi signal.”
“Good. Can you go on line and find something called the Middle English Compendium, please.”
Connor’s eyes went wide with surprise. “We’re going to try to talk to them?” His fingers started to fly over the keyboard. “Cool.”
“I did English at university before I changed to read law. One of my tutors was obsessed with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’m not sure how much I remember, but I’m prepared to give it a go. We need to convince them we’re here to help, don’t you agree, Lieutenant?”
“It won’t do any harm, ma’am,” said Ditzy. “We’re going to need to get close to them when Si Fielding gets here, and if we can do it without sedating them, it’ll help.”
“How close can I get without wearing a mask?”
“Not a good idea,” Ditzy said firmly. “Not the way matey over there is coughing.”
The mask would prevent the men watching her lips when she spoke, but she’d just have to do her best. She stepped forward, just as Nick appeared in the doorway.
“Stephen has radioed in,” he announced, without preamble. “They’ve found some tracks. I’m going out there with Lyle and his men.”
The professor glared at Ditzy, clearly daring him to argue, but all the medic did was roll his eyes and mutter, “On your own head be it, sir.”
Claudia turned around, the small mask dangling from her hand. “Be careful, Nick.”
He glanced from her to the caged men. “Be careful yourself, Claudia Brown.”
She smiled and pulled the mask over her head, settling it over her nose and mouth, then turned back to the two captives. One of them was muttering under his breath to his companion and staring at her in undisguised amazement. She took a couple of steps forward, until Ditzy’s hand on her arm told her she’d gone close enough. She was pretty sure she’d caught words she recognised as ‘curse’ and ‘hell’ but her university days were long past, and Middle English had never been something she’d taken a particular interest in. In spite of that she was determined to try to establish communication. They were dealing with men, not animals, and she didn’t want anyone – least of all Sir James Lester – to forget that.
She was certain now that neither of these men had actually tried to harm her. At first she’d looked no further than their ragged beards and equally ragged clothing and had not distinguished between any of them, but at that point she’d been shocked and frightened and hadn’t been thinking clearly. There was now a very distinct possibility that neither of these men were guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The older of the two stared at her, his face expressionless.
“Connor,” she said quietly. “I think the dictionary on that site allows you to look words up. I want to know what ‘help’ is.”
She heard the click of the keyboard, and then Connor announced, “Bugger, it looks like this thing only goes from Middle English to Modern English. Hang on a minute; let me have a fiddle about…”
Claudia stepped back to look over Connor's shoulder and watch him. The dictionary hadn’t existed in her student days, but she come across it a few years ago and had been interested enough to have played around with it for a while for old time’s sake. It wasn’t exactly user-friendly, but it did allow the user to look up by definition, which was exactly what she needed. “I know that 'we' was the same word," she said, as much to remind herself as to talk to Connor. “It was just pronounced ‘way’. But I don't know ‘help.’”
He typed in ‘help’.
“Abobbed?” he read off the screen, obviously confused.
“No, that's a noun...” Claudia began, but he was already clicking on the word.
“Blind man's bluff?” Connor read out in amazement. “I thought we wanted to talk to them not play games with them?”
Claudia shook her head in frustration. That was the problem she remembered. It threw up quite the oddest things at time. She felt like she was groping in the dark for something just out of reach. “It lets you look up parts of speech, as well, I think. Let's try ‘help’ and ‘verb.’”
It took them a few minutes to get the search right; the Middle English Compendium seemed to have been designed only for use by people who already knew Middle English, and that wasn’t too much use for what they were trying to do. Eventually they did find a useful verb, the word ‘helpen’.
“I could have made that up without all this faffing around,” Connor muttered, obviously unimpressed.
“Right,” Claudia said quietly. “So ‘we helpen’? Damn it, I need an auxiliary verb! What about ‘want’?” She was getting frustrated now, racking her brains for words that hovered just on the edge of her memory. She might not have enjoyed this sort of thing at university, but she had been good at it, that was what mattered.
Connor was flicking rapidly from page to page in the compendium, trying to get the hang of how the site worked.
A few minutes later, she went closer to the two filthy captives and said, doing her best to remember what the Canterbury Tales had sounded like read out loud, “We wille helpen yow,” although it came out more like ‘way willeh helpen yow.’ The people of that time had pronounced nearly all the letters, she did remember that much from her lectures.
That made the man's head snap up; for the first time he’d obviously heard something that made sense to him. He stared hard at her and spat the words, “Helpestow me?” with a glare. “I nille thine help. Thu holpest me and min kin...” He put his had protectively on the younger man’s shoulder.
Connor just sat there with his mouth hanging open but Claudia had worked in the Civil Service long enough to recognise sarcasm when she heard it, regardless of the language it was couched in.
Claudia interpreted for the benefit of Lester and the others. “He said, ‘You want to help me? I don't want your help. You helped me and my kin,’ but I think he’s being sarcastic, and then I'm not too sure about the rest.”
“Does tordes mean turds?” Connor hazarded with a grin.
Claudia sighed. Trust him to have picked that one up. “Probably,” she confirmed.
“I don't think he likes you much,” Connor observed, grinning. “But don’t take it personally. He probably thinks you’re a witch or something, dressed like that.”
Claudia took a deep breath and got ready to try again. “Here, let me use the computer for a minute.” It actually took her several minutes, and various different types of search but eventually she came up with a list of words she could use. She just hoped she had the conjugations and inflections correct, or at least understandable.
“Ye aren sik,” she said slowly, doing him the courtesy of using the formal you even if he wouldn't grant her the same. “Youre frendes and kin arn sik.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “We be sik?” he asked, emphasising the verb.
“Is he correcting your grammar?” Connor asked with delighted incredulity.
“Yes, Connor, he is correcting my grammar, though I’m damned if I know why, because they didn't even have standard grammar in his day!” Claudia exploded.
The man flinched and so did Connor.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said to both of them, before taking possession of the laptop again. “I…I,” she corrected her pronunciation from ‘eye’ to ‘ee’ and started again. “I repente…” She had no idea how to say what she wanted to apologise for, so she just left it at that and hoped he understood. “Yow… ye aren… ye be sik,” she tried again.
“Ye,” he said, and it took her a moment to realise that he was saying ‘yes’ and not ‘you.’ The note of sarcasm in his voice had actually helped that time. “We han the pestilence. We moten dien.” The sarcasm died abruptly like the flame of a match in a stiff breeze.
From Connor's soft gasp, Claudia knew he didn't need a translation.
“We wille helpen yow.”
“Ye moten dien als siker as we,” he muttered.
“No!” Claudia insisted. “None of us will die!”
He frowned at her.
She tried again in Middle English, consulting the list of words she had just made. “We ne shulen dien. Ye ne shulen dien.”
His forehead wrinkled, and she couldn't tell if it was from disbelief or from the effort of interpreting her somewhat dubious Middle English.
“We kan curen… yow,” she said, slowly and deliberately. “We… have… medicine. Oh, hell, that's modern again.”
“Medicine?” the man repeated. “Ye han medicine?” His pronunciation was different, but the sense was clear.
“Yes,” Claudia said. “I mean yea.”
“Yis?” the man hazarded.
“Yis,” she said, more confidently, taken her cue from him.
“Medicine ne kan curen this pestilence,” he said, but even so a note of hope remained in his voice.
“Oure… medicine… kan. We… we ne wille… we nille dien.” She met his eyes, willing him to understand her. “Ye nille dien.”
“I nyl dien, ac I mot dien,” he said, sadness clearly written on his filthy face.
Claudia stared at him in confusion. “I will not die, but I must die?” she queried. “That doesn't make any sense.”
“I nyl dien,” he repeated, speaking slowly and clearly.
“I can't find… wait, here it is,” Connor said, in triumph. “Nille, from ne wille… oh.”
“What?” Claudia was back looking over his shoulder again.
“He says he doesn't want to die. ‘Will’ doesn't seem to mean what our ‘will’ means. It means ‘want, desire to.’” Connor stared at the man, compassion in his dark eyes. “You won’t die, mate. Not if we have anything to do with it.”
Claudia squeezed Connor’s shoulder. “No one’s going to die.” She smiled at the men, even though her facial expression was hidden behind the surgical mask and repeated firmly, “Ye nille dien.”
The man put his arm around his companion’s shoulders again as another burst of coughing racked the other man’s slight frame. He held Claudia’s gaze, but for the first time there was the hint of a smile on his weary face.
And when Mary Mitchell brought out a pile of cold chicken and bread on paper plates, Claudia insisted on handing the food to the men herself, in spite of Ditzy’s protests.
She didn’t quite catch the man’s muttered words, but it sounded very much like he was thanking her. She drew the mask away from her face and smiled. That at least would need no translation.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 06:01 pm (UTC)I think I'd have cried trying to work out all that middle English thought, so major kudos on all that! It's a detail that just adds another level of realism too it.
Excellent all around!
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Date: 2011-09-09 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 06:34 pm (UTC)Loving this!
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Date: 2011-09-09 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:29 pm (UTC)In the later parts I did a few bits from scratch, but it took hours, although to my amazement I did get some of it right, but only through diligent literature searches in the Compendium.
It proved to me that sustaining anything more with languages is impossible for someone of my meagre skills.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:41 pm (UTC)So vivid.
Nice conclusion too
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Date: 2011-09-09 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:56 pm (UTC)And appaluse for working out all that middle english! (I tried once for a book and it drove me crazy!)
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Date: 2011-09-09 08:31 pm (UTC)The Compendium is nightmarish to use.
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Date: 2011-09-09 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 09:18 pm (UTC)“There’s some roast chicken left over from last night, and I’ve baked some more bread. Best keep it simple, I think.”
“Don’t make them too comfortable,” muttered Lester. “They might want to stay.”
Oh Lester! LOL. Perfect.
They're bloody lucky to have Si Fielding!
I'm really enjoying this so much.
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Date: 2011-09-09 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 01:39 am (UTC)Poor Eileen - and I hope Patch is OK!
////“Is he correcting your grammar?” Connor asked with delighted incredulity.////
LOL. Love them trying to communicate. Very eye-opening. Your & aelfgyfu_mead's dedication has paid off in spades.
Great Claudia POV
no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 02:18 am (UTC)tell the difference between her attackers and these poor travelers. The fact that she took the time to try to communicate to them in their own language to assure them they wouldn't die was so Claudia and Connor was a added bonus*G*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 07:58 am (UTC)ROFL
I love this sort of remarks.
The chapter was wonderful. It was fun to work out the words for myself. It was easier than expected. Maybe because I'm used to dealing with text written in Old High German and Middle High German thanks to my hobby.
By the way pronouncing the letters is easier to understand for a non-native speaker generally.:)
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Date: 2011-09-10 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-11 09:25 pm (UTC)This is excellent, I'm really enjoying it.
Haven't read much that focuses on Claudia as a main character, and she's really rather brilliant.
The Middle English is fascinating to read.
Absolutely fab!
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Date: 2011-09-11 09:33 pm (UTC)It's been nice to use Claudia in this. I do enjoy her POV.
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Date: 2011-09-12 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 07:18 am (UTC)“Is he correcting your grammar?” Connor asked with delighted incredulity.
“Yes, Connor, he is correcting my grammar, though I’m damned if I know why, because they didn't even have standard grammar in his day!” Claudia exploded.
Sporfle!
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Date: 2011-09-16 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-17 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-12 01:15 am (UTC)I do admire her get on with it and get it done attitude, and although its been a while since I studied middle english, it was fun working my way through it. And I knew 'helpen' before they found it! Can't figure out why, but apparently I read it somewhere else and it stuck...
no subject
Date: 2012-11-12 05:05 am (UTC)