He went on across the plain and reached the line of trees and found the stream. It was a prairie stream, a broad, sluggish flow of crystal water between two grassy banks. Lying on his stomach to peer into the depths, he saw the flash of fishes far below him.
He took off his shoes and dangled his feet in the water and kicked a little to make the water splash, and he thought:
They know all about us. They know about our life and culture. They know about the leopard banners and how Senlac must have looked on Saturday, October 14, 1066, with the hosts of England massed upon the hilltop and the hosts of William on the plain below.
They know what makes us tick and they let us come; because they let us come, there must be some value in us.
What had the girl said, the girl who had floated to the stool and then had left with her drink still untouched? Faint amusement, she had said. You get used to it, she had said. If you don't think too much about it, you get used to it.
See me in a week, she had said. In a week you and I can talk. And she had called him Buster.
Well, maybe she had a right to call him that. He had been starry-eyed and a sort of eager beaver. And probably ignorant-smug.
They know about us, and how do they know about us?
Senlac might have been staged, but he didn't think so - there was a strange, grim reality about it that got under your skin, a crawling sort of feeling that told you it was true, that that was how it had happened and had been. That there had been no Taillefer and that a man had died with his guts dragging in the grass and that the Englishmen had cried "Ut! UT!" which might have meant almost anything at all or nothing just as well, but probably had meant "Out."
He sat there, cold and lonely, wondering how they did it. How they had made it possible for a man to punch a button and to live a scene long dead, to see the death of men who had long been dust mingled with the earth.