Kate explained that in the 1950s, the city was finally going to tear the old quarter down and put up modern housing. "Andre Malraux stopped it. He convinced the French government to put aside funds for restoration. People thought he was crazy. Now, Sarlat's the most accurate medieval town in France, and one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country."
"It's nice," the woman said, vaguely. Suddenly, both men returned to the table together, sat down, and put their phones in their pockets with an air of finality.
"What happened?" Kate said.
"Market closed," one explained. "So. You were saying about Castelgard. What's so special about it?"
Marek said, "We were discussing the fact that it's never been excavated before. But it's also important to us because Castelgard is a typical fourteenth-century walled town. The town is older than that, but between 1300 and 1400 most of its structures were built, or modified, for greater defense: thicker walls, concentric walls, more complicated moats and gates."
"This is when? The Dark Ages?" one of the men said, pouring wine.
"No," Marek said. "Technically, it's the High Middle Ages."
"Not as high as I'm going to be," the man said. "So what comes before that, the Low Middle Ages?"
"That's right," Marek said.
"Hey," the man said, raising his wineglass. "Right the first time!"
Starting around 40 B.C., Europe had been ruled by Rome. The region of France where they now were, Aquitaine, was originally the Roman colony of Aquitania. All across Europe, the Romans built roads, supervised trade, and maintained law and order. Europe prospered.
Then, around A.D. 400, Rome began to withdraw its soldiers and abandon its garrisons. After the empire collapsed, Europe sank into lawlessness, which lasted for the next five hundred years. Population fell, trade died, towns shrank. The countryside was invaded by barbarian hordes: Goths and Vandals, Huns and Vikings. That dark period was the Low Middle Ages.
"But toward the last millennium - I mean A.D. 1000 - things began to get better," Marek said. "A new organization coalesced that we call the feudal system - although back then, people never used that word."
Under feudalism, powerful lords provided local order. The new system worked. Agriculture improved. Trade and cities flourished. By A.D. 1200, Europe was thriving again, with a larger population than it had had during the Roman Empire. "So the year 1200 is the beginning of the High Middle Ages - a time of growth, when culture flourished."
The Americans were skeptical. "If it was so great, why was everybody building more defenses?"
"Because of the Hundred Years War," Marek said, "which was fought between England and France."
"What was it, a religious war?"
"No," Marek said. "Religion had nothing to do with it. Everyone at the time was Catholic."
"Really? What about the Protestants?"
"There were no Protestants."
"Where were they?"
Marek said, "They hadn't invented themselves yet."
"Really? Then what was the war about?"
"Sovereignty," Marek said. "It was about the fact that England owned a large part of France."
One of the men frowned skeptically. "What are you telling me? England used to own France?"
Marek sighed.
He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials - people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it.
Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered, and that anything that had occurred earlier could be safely ignored. The modern world was compelling and new, and the past had no bearing on it. Studying history was as pointless as learning Morse code, or how to drive a horse-drawn wagon. And the medieval period - all those knights in clanking armor and ladies in gowns and pointy hats - was so obviously irrelevant as to be beneath consideration.
Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation-states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times. These stockbrokers owed the very notion of a market economy to the Middle Ages. And if they didn't know that, then they didn't know the basic facts of who they were. Why they did what they did. Where they had come from.
Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.
The stock trader continued, pushing in the stubborn way that some people did when confronted with their own ignorance: "Really? England used to own part of France? That doesn't make any sense. The English and French have always hated each other."
"Not always," Marek said. "This was six hundred years ago. It was a completely different world. The English and French were much closer then. Ever since soldiers from Normandy conquered England in 1066, all the English nobility were basically French. They spoke French, ate French food, followed French fashions. It wasn't surprising they owned French territory. Here in the south, they had ruled Aquitaine for more than a century."
"So? What was the war about? The French decided they wanted it all for themselves?"
"More or less, yes."
"Figures," the man said, with a knowing nod.
Marek lectured on. Chris passed the time trying to catch Kate's eye. Here in candlelight, the angles of her face, which looked hard, even tough, in sunlight, were softened. He found her unexpectedly attractive.