Chapter 2: Post Meridiem
Lunch ended, and the ostensible servants and masters of the Grail War returned to shopping. They next perused some of the larger department stores. While some amount of clothes shopping continued, whenever someone passed something promising, for the most part they were focused on buying housewares. The apartments had only been furnished with the barest necessities, and only at the last minute. So this meant that everything was a bit awkward to use at home, and nothing quite felt like it belonged to the residents.
Once you pushed past the ever more racks of clothing, they arrived amongst the linens, piles of fluffy towels and bedsheets fit for royalty. Any of them would have been fine, perhaps more fine than anything Artoria had in her first life, but now Saber had the task of choosing between them.
Rin was saying something about the virtues of cotton and the vices of satin, that mostly just passed in one ear and out the other. God, she wished that Gwen was here, she always knew what to do about these things. Gwen was a real human, in so many of the ways Artoria was not, could not allow herself to be. She missed Gwen so much, but she was gone, all of it gone, and Artoria the lonely warrior who must play at the end.
"Saber, do you see anything you like?" Rin snapped Saber's mind back to the present.
Saber stared at the sheets; one set was labelled "KING", and the other was labelled "QUEEN". It felt like some sort of trap. And another one was labelled "TWIN"! How did she guess!? There was only one thing to do, which was to feign ignorance, for any choice might give something away.[1]
"Nothing in particular."
"I think these would go well with the quilt you liked, if you don't mind a feminine colour." They were pink, so apparently light red is a feminine colour in this age?[2]
Within a few minutes, she figured out that it was simply the size of the bed for which the sheets were fitted, and had nothing to do with the occupant. Apparently she had a "full size" bed, which happily avoided any need to take a stance on the above issue. And, perhaps, having feminine bedding would not be so bad.
Soon, they perused other housewares, looking to stock their kitchens with worthy equipment. Shirou seemed to get a second wind at this part of the trip, as he was finally in his element. Even Archer took more interest. But to disprove the rule that cooking was men's work in this world, Souichirou was his usual laconic self, and Grahame too seemed to delegate to his wife in this affair.
Shirou bought for himself the bare essentials, and a bit more. A rice cooker was one such necessity to him, though not immediately provided by Cassiopée in this foreign land of Canada. Of course, metal spatulas for flipping, rubber spatulas for scraping, and wooden spoons for stirring all made the cut. And, he was immediately enamoured by a large, flat cast-iron griddle (or was it a grille or a grail?), thinking about all manner of exotic foods he could cook on it, from hamburgs to omerice, whatever they were.
It was at this point that Shirou Emiya became well and truly encumbered with baggage, weighed down by iron, that he consented to let Saber carry some of the load.
Turning into the main corridor between the stores, they were on their way back home, until Rider was distracted by a book store named Indigo. "Oh, wow, look at all of those books! Can we take a quick look at this merchant as well?"
"I don't see why not," Cassiopée said, "Let me know if there's anything you want."
"I will enter as well," Artoria declared.
Grahame sat down on a wooden bench outside the store. "I think I'll sit this one out. I can watch your stuff if you like." Shopping for clothes, even with models of femininity like these, was fun for a bit but turned to boredom after the first hour, and exhaustion by the second. How women were energized by the affair was beyond him. At least he got a couple of costume ideas to take back the art team on Monday.
Shirou Emiya set down his burden next to Grahame, saying, "Thanks." Anon, Archer did the same.
Looking at the pile of bags the two had been carrying all day long on behalf of Rin and Sakura (and probably Rider as well), he replied, "I'm not carrying all of this back, you know."
"I know."
Inside was a fairly large bookstore at the heart of a bilingual city, and therefore sat a wide variety of books in both French and English. As both languages were included in the gift to the displacees, they could read any of the books here.
In theory, that is. Rider picked up a book on Physics, and found it wasn't what she was expecting at all, and had lots of funny symbols and theorems she didn't understand. She replaced the book, and decided to look elsewhere.
Saber started to look around, not entirely sure what she was looking for, but not willing to give up a chance of knowledge. Whether that came from a book or from observing the others, she wasn't sure yet.
It didn't take long until she heard a bit of a squee from just down the aisle, a few shelves over. Saber did not take Caster to be the excitable girl, but there she was, declaring, "Look at all of these volumes on Greek philosophers. I simply must have them!" Her master and virtual shadow, Souichirou, seemed to approve of her choice? Saber couldn't quite tell, he was so hard to read.
Rider turned the corner to look, her arms already holding a whole stack of books that she desired under her left arm. "Oh, are there any good ones?"
"Plenty!" But Caster too was curious, and turned to look over Rider's stack of books. "I see, a bunch of trashy romance novels. Can you even read or are you just picking things at random?"
Rider took a step back and stood up straight, "Of course I can read, I am no slave! Do I not deserve some romance?"[3]
"Oh Medusa, I didn't mean it that way!"
Rider, for her part, just turned her back and strode away.
"A woman of passions, indeed." Caster muttered to herself, disdainfully.
Saber, who had watched the exchange quietly, was quite intrigued by what she had overheard. She now knew the identity of two of the Servants — and she knew their stories. In her time, bards still told the tale of Perseus who slew the monstrous Medusa, and used her severed head to petrify a sea monster.
Artoria, too, knew something of the voyages of the Argo Navis, and how Medea had betrayed her kin to help Jason take the Golden Fleece back to Greece. She had even once seen a manuscript specifically about Medea, but the imported papyrus on which it was written was falling apart, too fragile to read. Not enough time or money to copy it to vellum and save civilization, as the invaders pillaged the libraries and holy places. That decaying manuscript was her kingdom in a nutshell, wasn't it?
"Can't find what you're looking for?" Medea asked. She had noticed the blonde's frown as she stared vacantly at a bookshelf.
"No, I haven't found it yet." Saber had, in fact, achieved her goal for the day, which was the observation of her potential opponents. Without so much as a crossed blade, she had found out their identities and more. So why did it feel so empty? "I don't think I know what I'm looking for."
A deeper voice behind her said, "Perhaps you'd be interested in a history book?"
The letters on the cover read "A Brief History of England", below which was an image of an embroidered boat. Even if it was brief, it was still a thicker book than many in the bookstore.
She glared at him for a good half a minute, his smug face feigning disinterest the entire time. "I suppose I might be interested. Thank you." She did have a morbid curiosity about the future of the country, but there were two problems. The first was that the title gave the ending away, with the simple word, England. Having seen the ending in person, it was no surprise that those twisted Angles had won.[4]
The other concern was more immediate: Archer knew exactly who Artoria was, and didn't mind letting her know he knew. In fact, he knew a lot of things, things Artoria didn't know.
Since Artoria had no connection to the Grail in this world, she no longer unconsciously had knowledge about the modern world. She knew this thing she held, with bound pages, was called a book. It was made out of paper — which was not the same thing as papyrus, because that was a different word, it was made from something else. Books came from a "press", but she had no idea what that was. She guessed they must impress something to make these perfect little letterforms.
Yet she could perfectly remember things about high voltage power lines, because she had walked on them during the previous Grail War, and touching between two lines would unleash a lethal dose of lightning in the body. Useful in combat, completely esoteric in daily life.
Saber, Caster, and Rider were like immigrants in a strange land, but Archer had spent the day navigating like a native. With his new clothes, he even looked like a native. Among all of the strange electrical appliances, he had no problem selecting what he wanted for cooking. He had simply nodded his head when the landlady explained the local "recycling" policy.[5]
Saber weaved her way aimlessly through the book store, knowing she needed knowledge, but with no idea what that knowledge should be. Eventually she found her way to the religious books section, and found a simple but attractively bound volume with gold-leafed page edges. The letters on the cover read "THE HOLY BIBLE".
She flipped through it, and scanned forward to the Gospels. And there, in strangely-uniform, red letters, were the words of Jesus, translated to English: "It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even in the second or third watch of the night." Christ could still reach her here, across millennia and across universes. And he could even reach the Saxons and Angles, enough to have this wonderful translation.[6]
She could not refuse the call, the serendipitous passage of the Holy Spirit, and resolved to purchase the book.
The Bible was, somehow, priced lower than some of her new garments. That could only be a good thing. Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her; Artoria turned to face the one sneaking up on her.
"Oh, is that a book on the gods of this area?" Medea asked casually.
"Um... One God, yes."
"I was just thinking it would be a good idea to make a few sacrifices while we're in their lands. We could do it together," she offered.
Saber glared at Caster, then spoke, "I will do no such thing."
Caster took it in stride, giggling at the response. "So serious, Saber! I guess we'll have to see whose offerings are better, shall we?"
Saber turned her back on Caster, whom she knew was bound to not harm her. How could Saber share the Good News with someone who died before it happened? It would be best for the Grail War not to tell her, to keep her advantage when the fighting resumed. And what was one more sin before that prize?
Saber focused on her goal again, and eventually found a shelf with stories from Greek mythology. They didn't have as large of a selection as she expected — not even a copy of Homer's Margites. She selected a more serious volume from among the choices with an overview of Greek mythology, and a slim paperback volume of Euripedes' Medea, translated into French. Even while the truce held in this universe, Artoria could arm herself with knowledge, knowledge that could bring victory and the Holy Grail.
She brought those four volumes up to the shopkeeper, and watched as he used the strange device, a cash register, to recall the prices. Cassiopée paid for Saber's selections separately, as it took another quarter hour for the other two women to finish their shopping.
Caster selected an eclectic pile of religious and philosophical tomes. And when Rider brought up her two stacks, nearly as tall as herself and composed of mostly paperbacks, Cassiopée made her return an entire stack, despite her assurances that "It's okay, Emiya can carry it." Archer simply bought a tourist guide for Montreal. Sakura, for her part, only picked up a couple of volumes of a heroic manga to give to someone special; despite the somewhat questionable translations, she thought Shirou might like to finish the series.
That was the last stop of the trip, as people were sufficiently loaded down and tired that it was time to call it a day. Grahame offered to run ahead and return with a car, but the kids were young and strong, and didn't mind carrying their books, clothes, and appliances for a kilometre. And so they returned, an exhausted but happy party, to Appartements Mont-Royal Sud, with a cool wind at their backs.
Eager to try out his new cast iron griddle, Shirou was cooking for everyone, once again. Well, not everyone in the complex: Cassiopée and her husband were exhausted from dealing with everyone, and wanted the remainder of the weekend to themselves. And Medea and Souichirou were in that phase of their relationship where they were courting intensely, and it was better off for everyone that they spent the evening as a lone pair. It seemed that Sakura and Shirou had a long-standing tradition of dining together, and Rin pushed her way in, and Sakura offered Emiya's cooking to Medusa.
Archer didn't usually attend. There was something between Shirou and Archer, a strange distance. At first, Saber had put it down to a healthy distrust between a servant and another master, but neither Archer nor Shirou treated anyone else with antipathy. It was just one of those things, where people just take an instant dislike to each other. There was something else, something that bothered her about the situation, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.[7]
Today, instead of everyone having a lively chat while he cooked, they were too busy setting up their own apartments, which meant that he was alone with Saber when he said, "Oh shoot, I didn't pick up mayonnaise when we were shopping. Do you think you can pick some up from the supermarket?"
"Of course, master."
With a bit of trepidation, he said, "If it's not too — oh, you'll be fine." After spending the entire day shopping, surely she'd be fine on her own — even if it felt as if he were asking her to appear on an episode My First Errand.[8]
"Kewpie brand if they have it, but otherwise any mayonnaise will do."
"Understood."
"And it's called okonomiyaki because you can add what you like, so if you see something you want to add, just pick it up."
"All right, I'll be off," she declared, seeing a last glimpse of Shirou chopping cabbage as she stepped out the door.
Saber was not quite as clueless as Shirou imagined. The world here in Montreal, it was a lot like what she had seen in her time in the past Grail War, but she was so singularly focused on her goal, and ever under threat of attack, she hadn't taken the time to truly understand the world then. Here, all she had was time.
The most glaring thing was that this world was rich, almost unimaginably rich. Far, far richer than even Rome itself in the days of Caesar Augustus, in that legendary time before the third century. They had all gone shopping in a department store, which was like a vast warehouse of new clothing, already sewn, prêt-à-porter, with racks and racks of variety. A single rack of silk dresses would be a king's ransom, a rack of the woollens might pay a knight's retainer for a year, even longer. Yet it was all just sitting out, as fruit might be in a marketplace.
They lived about a city block from two different markets, so she set out for the larger of the two, wearing her new white blouse with ribbon tie, and long blue skirt (Cassiopée had said something about this outfit being Fate, whatever that meant). She turned the corner towards the door, which slid open as if by magic, beckoning her into yet another luxurious space.
The market, like many here, was a vast enclosed building, filled to the brim with exotic fruits and foodstuffs, many she had never seen before, so she didn't understand exactly what they were. They seemed to have different sorts of foods than in Japan. But the one thing that she could understand of how rich they were was the huge amount of meat.[9]
Setting aside the packaging with the stretchy glass-stuff on the outside, which she still didn't know much about, it was clear that most people could afford to eat meat every day. The prices she could read, and for hog, ox, or lamb the prices were barely more than for cereals![10]
She couldn't resist picking up a package of pork belly.
She turned into an aisle, and found stacks of metal cylinders, each labelled with the name of different foods. Britannia's trade had always hinged on her mines of tin, and on its value it brought wealth and exotic items from all over the world. But here, tin was so plentiful that they used it to preserve vegetables. Which was itself amazing.[11]
A can of peas couldn't hurt, right? She knew what they were.
Another aisle to walk down, and this one had the condiments. Saber found the section with mayonnaise, but not the brand he was looking for, so she picked one and hoped for the best. She then turned down another aisle, and found a section labelled "Asian Foods", and saw a Kewpie Mayonnaise there. How odd. She picked up a squeeze bottle, and retraced her steps to return the other jar of mayo to its proper place.
Backwards and forwards, Artoria ran the labyrinth of this oddly quiet market square in a strange luxury world. Myrddin would have loved it here, she knew. He had always had an open mind which could handle the impossible with aplomb, at the moments she felt the most lost.[12]
The masters were mostly familiar with this otherworld and time, only occasionally tripping up on new things. They made mistakes of courtesy in a foreign land as well – at least Artoria was much better in diplomacy. Keeping her mouth shut was the most important way to keep out of trouble, and eventually the young masters would learn that skill.
Her own master, Shirou Emiya, struck her as pleasant and kind, if annoyingly naïve. He seemed to want to treat Artoria, King of the Britons, as a maiden in need of protection. In fairness, she had not yet told him her identity, but was Saber not the strongest martial-classed servant?[13]
She was no fool, simply ignorant of her new surroundings.
Still, he was not a person who she wished to upset. When the Grail War resumed – if the Grail War resumed? — she would need his aid, and he would need hers. He meant well, even if he was insolent to a king like her. But of course, she owed him fealty now, did she not? Certainly, a bit of that behaviour was tolerable, even expected. A marginal improvement over Emiya's adoptive father, though exactly how the personality apple fell from that particular tree she didn't quite understand.
The other servants, well, they seemed to cope with the change of life better than she. How it was that Caster and Rider — Medea and Medusa — seemed to be taking to this new world like fish to water was beyond Artoria's ken. Unless it was some elaborate ruse, they seemed to be actually enjoying themselves, taking to their new worlds with great gusto.
Saber glanced at the produce, but a lot of it was quite bewildering to her. For instance, the dragon fruit — how did they get them from dragons? She did decide to pick up a couple of apples, knowing that they would be in season, and placed them in a plastic bag, which was frustratingly hard to open.
She came across a pile of strange, pitted, oblong brown things, a kind of ugly root vegetable. She read the sign and discovered that they were the natural, uncooked form of potatoes. Now that reminded her, did they have any of those potato chips here?
Indeed they did. And in how many flavours? Salt & vinegar, cheese & onion, they all sounded delicious. Artoria couldn't make up her mind — she wanted to try them all — so she picked up a few bags of chips, stuffing her arms in the process. By now, she really wished she had picked up one of those hand-baskets as the front of the store, back when she was only coming in for one thing.
Laden with a bulky but light burden, it reminded her that she really should get going. Shirou was waiting for her, after all. As the store's clerk made her device go boop for every item, Artoria reflected on what strange impulse had come over her. The thing is, as a king, if you don't check your own impulses, no one else will check them for you, until it's too late.
To be honest to herself, she wanted to try every single food in here, to indulge in the wild variety and excess of this particular future. But at the same time, there was the fear of the unknown, the desire to keep to the comforts of the familiar. To keep herself apart from decadence, and dedicated to her duty. But with that smallest bit of familiarity with potato chips from lunch, here she was, carrying four bags back to the apartment.
She returned to the apartment, greeted Sakura who had already come over to help, and held out the mayonnaise for Shirou to take. "I have retrieved it, Shirou."
"Thanks." Tonight's chef was surprised when he glanced over to the shopping bags in her other hand, blurting, "What are all of those?"
"Reconnaissance, master."
Dinner passed in its typical noisy manner. It was strange how close the participants of the Grail War were. They all knew each other beforehand, the masters did. And there were undercurrents, mostly the usual ones between young men and women of that age, but something more strange between Sakura and Rin – not like love rivals at all – like they would force themselves to keep to a distance, but occasionally slip up and be familiar. Perhaps it was the twisted nature of the Grail War that kept them apart?
Emiya had managed to make use of the peas Saber had bought, adding them to the her okonomiyaki, since the dish was supposed to be made as one likes it. Archer may always talk about how his master is superior, but in the kitchen, none were Shirou's equal.
After dinner, everyone split up fairly quickly, still busy with setting up their own apartments, and distributing their shopping into its new home. It was while folding her new clothes, removing the tags, that Saber decided to tell Shirou who she is, her true identity. As much as she wanted to be nameless, forgotten to history, perhaps it would be useful for him to know. Since Archer already knew the secret, simply it wouldn't do to have her own Master left out of the loop.
But not tonight. Tonight, she was too tired to handle something so sensitive. Artoria was exhausted by the activity of the day, but her mind was still turning from all of the novelty. And of course, she had no need to force herself to sleep, as no battle awaited her in the morning. She flipped on a desk lamp, and decided to partake in one of the luxuries of the modern world, reading at night. But which book to choose? The Bible called to her, but she knew those stories, many by heart, and there was no urgent need to research her opponents.
And so Artoria's curiosity got the best of her, and she opened the book on the history of England first. The last pages were printed on thicker paper, so she looked at them first, and they had a series of maps of Britain. She had never before seen navigational charts of her realm so detailed and accurate, even up to the far islands of the Caledonians. Just staring at it, she understood a little more of her own life.
Of course, all of the names printed there were funny, like how her court in Camulodunum had somehow gotten the goofy name of "Colchester".[14]
The Angles had settled in the East, in Anglia, while the Saxons took the southern coast from Wessex to Essex.
The only place where the names weren't all wrong was in the far west, in the land labelled Wales. She tensed up when she read that — she knew enough Germanic, if only from the screams of the battlefield and the stories of the escaping villagers — to know what they called foreigners.
How dare they! They still called the people "walish", or "Welsh", in their own native land, all this time later.[15]
Had the Angles no shame? Or had they never developed any since then? She stood up at once with nervous energy, paced around her mostly bare apartment for a moment, then sat back down on her bed after deciding she had no idea what to do about it.
And then, she realized whom she was really angry with. Centuries, a millennium of persecution, of marginalization for the Britons, of being foreigners in their own homes — and it was all her own fault. Because she hadn't been good enough. She hadn't seen the danger until it was too late. She let Morgan trick her, and handled Mordred all wrong. Let her feelings for Gwen and Lancelot fall to lust.
And most of all, worst of all, Artoria once had the pride to think she could be king. To take from God His choice of monarch, and choose herself instead. She let herself be too human, even tried to be human while being a king, and that could never be done.
And those other Heroic Spirits were acting so cheerful in the day, as if being in a new universe, outside of a Grail War, was the solution to all of their problems. Perhaps it was. But for Artoria, the Grail was her only hope, for even in this universe, she had ruined everything. She broke her holy oath to protect her people, and they were still paying the price, all this time later. All of those thousands, millions – if you count the other universes, maybe billions — of her people: subjugated, killed, raped, impoverished, enslaved, and still low class in their own lands, because she was never good enough.
The weight of sin from that was too much to bear, and Artoria broke out in tears, sobbing alone in her room. She recited the names of her friends and retainers, whispering an apology to each in turn, "... Sorry Gawain. Sorry Galahad. ..." She continued in this way until her voice was hoarse from crying, and then the silence of her apartment returned.
In a few minutes, she got up off the bed, washed her face, and decided she had quite enough of reading, and turned off the light. As she slipped between the sheets, she reflected on what a pity party she had thrown, and how unbecoming of royalty it was, even when alone. Of course, she never should have become king, so why hate herself for her unsightly self-pity when she could hate herself for her impudent ambition? Without a quest to occupy her mind, Artoria's thoughts continued like this, anchorless, chasing herself in circles, until she finally fell asleep.
Lunch ended, and the ostensible servants and masters of the Grail War returned to shopping. They next perused some of the larger department stores. While some amount of clothes shopping continued, whenever someone passed something promising, for the most part they were focused on buying housewares. The apartments had only been furnished with the barest necessities, and only at the last minute. So this meant that everything was a bit awkward to use at home, and nothing quite felt like it belonged to the residents.
Once you pushed past the ever more racks of clothing, they arrived amongst the linens, piles of fluffy towels and bedsheets fit for royalty. Any of them would have been fine, perhaps more fine than anything Artoria had in her first life, but now Saber had the task of choosing between them.
Rin was saying something about the virtues of cotton and the vices of satin, that mostly just passed in one ear and out the other. God, she wished that Gwen was here, she always knew what to do about these things. Gwen was a real human, in so many of the ways Artoria was not, could not allow herself to be. She missed Gwen so much, but she was gone, all of it gone, and Artoria the lonely warrior who must play at the end.
"Saber, do you see anything you like?" Rin snapped Saber's mind back to the present.
Saber stared at the sheets; one set was labelled "KING", and the other was labelled "QUEEN". It felt like some sort of trap. And another one was labelled "TWIN"! How did she guess!? There was only one thing to do, which was to feign ignorance, for any choice might give something away.[1]
"Nothing in particular."
"I think these would go well with the quilt you liked, if you don't mind a feminine colour." They were pink, so apparently light red is a feminine colour in this age?[2]
Within a few minutes, she figured out that it was simply the size of the bed for which the sheets were fitted, and had nothing to do with the occupant. Apparently she had a "full size" bed, which happily avoided any need to take a stance on the above issue. And, perhaps, having feminine bedding would not be so bad.
Soon, they perused other housewares, looking to stock their kitchens with worthy equipment. Shirou seemed to get a second wind at this part of the trip, as he was finally in his element. Even Archer took more interest. But to disprove the rule that cooking was men's work in this world, Souichirou was his usual laconic self, and Grahame too seemed to delegate to his wife in this affair.
Shirou bought for himself the bare essentials, and a bit more. A rice cooker was one such necessity to him, though not immediately provided by Cassiopée in this foreign land of Canada. Of course, metal spatulas for flipping, rubber spatulas for scraping, and wooden spoons for stirring all made the cut. And, he was immediately enamoured by a large, flat cast-iron griddle (or was it a grille or a grail?), thinking about all manner of exotic foods he could cook on it, from hamburgs to omerice, whatever they were.
It was at this point that Shirou Emiya became well and truly encumbered with baggage, weighed down by iron, that he consented to let Saber carry some of the load.
Turning into the main corridor between the stores, they were on their way back home, until Rider was distracted by a book store named Indigo. "Oh, wow, look at all of those books! Can we take a quick look at this merchant as well?"
"I don't see why not," Cassiopée said, "Let me know if there's anything you want."
"I will enter as well," Artoria declared.
Grahame sat down on a wooden bench outside the store. "I think I'll sit this one out. I can watch your stuff if you like." Shopping for clothes, even with models of femininity like these, was fun for a bit but turned to boredom after the first hour, and exhaustion by the second. How women were energized by the affair was beyond him. At least he got a couple of costume ideas to take back the art team on Monday.
Shirou Emiya set down his burden next to Grahame, saying, "Thanks." Anon, Archer did the same.
Looking at the pile of bags the two had been carrying all day long on behalf of Rin and Sakura (and probably Rider as well), he replied, "I'm not carrying all of this back, you know."
"I know."
Inside was a fairly large bookstore at the heart of a bilingual city, and therefore sat a wide variety of books in both French and English. As both languages were included in the gift to the displacees, they could read any of the books here.
In theory, that is. Rider picked up a book on Physics, and found it wasn't what she was expecting at all, and had lots of funny symbols and theorems she didn't understand. She replaced the book, and decided to look elsewhere.
Saber started to look around, not entirely sure what she was looking for, but not willing to give up a chance of knowledge. Whether that came from a book or from observing the others, she wasn't sure yet.
It didn't take long until she heard a bit of a squee from just down the aisle, a few shelves over. Saber did not take Caster to be the excitable girl, but there she was, declaring, "Look at all of these volumes on Greek philosophers. I simply must have them!" Her master and virtual shadow, Souichirou, seemed to approve of her choice? Saber couldn't quite tell, he was so hard to read.
Rider turned the corner to look, her arms already holding a whole stack of books that she desired under her left arm. "Oh, are there any good ones?"
"Plenty!" But Caster too was curious, and turned to look over Rider's stack of books. "I see, a bunch of trashy romance novels. Can you even read or are you just picking things at random?"
Rider took a step back and stood up straight, "Of course I can read, I am no slave! Do I not deserve some romance?"[3]
"Oh Medusa, I didn't mean it that way!"
Rider, for her part, just turned her back and strode away.
"A woman of passions, indeed." Caster muttered to herself, disdainfully.
Saber, who had watched the exchange quietly, was quite intrigued by what she had overheard. She now knew the identity of two of the Servants — and she knew their stories. In her time, bards still told the tale of Perseus who slew the monstrous Medusa, and used her severed head to petrify a sea monster.
Artoria, too, knew something of the voyages of the Argo Navis, and how Medea had betrayed her kin to help Jason take the Golden Fleece back to Greece. She had even once seen a manuscript specifically about Medea, but the imported papyrus on which it was written was falling apart, too fragile to read. Not enough time or money to copy it to vellum and save civilization, as the invaders pillaged the libraries and holy places. That decaying manuscript was her kingdom in a nutshell, wasn't it?
"Can't find what you're looking for?" Medea asked. She had noticed the blonde's frown as she stared vacantly at a bookshelf.
"No, I haven't found it yet." Saber had, in fact, achieved her goal for the day, which was the observation of her potential opponents. Without so much as a crossed blade, she had found out their identities and more. So why did it feel so empty? "I don't think I know what I'm looking for."
A deeper voice behind her said, "Perhaps you'd be interested in a history book?"
The letters on the cover read "A Brief History of England", below which was an image of an embroidered boat. Even if it was brief, it was still a thicker book than many in the bookstore.
She glared at him for a good half a minute, his smug face feigning disinterest the entire time. "I suppose I might be interested. Thank you." She did have a morbid curiosity about the future of the country, but there were two problems. The first was that the title gave the ending away, with the simple word, England. Having seen the ending in person, it was no surprise that those twisted Angles had won.[4]
The other concern was more immediate: Archer knew exactly who Artoria was, and didn't mind letting her know he knew. In fact, he knew a lot of things, things Artoria didn't know.
Since Artoria had no connection to the Grail in this world, she no longer unconsciously had knowledge about the modern world. She knew this thing she held, with bound pages, was called a book. It was made out of paper — which was not the same thing as papyrus, because that was a different word, it was made from something else. Books came from a "press", but she had no idea what that was. She guessed they must impress something to make these perfect little letterforms.
Yet she could perfectly remember things about high voltage power lines, because she had walked on them during the previous Grail War, and touching between two lines would unleash a lethal dose of lightning in the body. Useful in combat, completely esoteric in daily life.
Saber, Caster, and Rider were like immigrants in a strange land, but Archer had spent the day navigating like a native. With his new clothes, he even looked like a native. Among all of the strange electrical appliances, he had no problem selecting what he wanted for cooking. He had simply nodded his head when the landlady explained the local "recycling" policy.[5]
Saber weaved her way aimlessly through the book store, knowing she needed knowledge, but with no idea what that knowledge should be. Eventually she found her way to the religious books section, and found a simple but attractively bound volume with gold-leafed page edges. The letters on the cover read "THE HOLY BIBLE".
She flipped through it, and scanned forward to the Gospels. And there, in strangely-uniform, red letters, were the words of Jesus, translated to English: "It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even in the second or third watch of the night." Christ could still reach her here, across millennia and across universes. And he could even reach the Saxons and Angles, enough to have this wonderful translation.[6]
She could not refuse the call, the serendipitous passage of the Holy Spirit, and resolved to purchase the book.
The Bible was, somehow, priced lower than some of her new garments. That could only be a good thing. Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her; Artoria turned to face the one sneaking up on her.
"Oh, is that a book on the gods of this area?" Medea asked casually.
"Um... One God, yes."
"I was just thinking it would be a good idea to make a few sacrifices while we're in their lands. We could do it together," she offered.
Saber glared at Caster, then spoke, "I will do no such thing."
Caster took it in stride, giggling at the response. "So serious, Saber! I guess we'll have to see whose offerings are better, shall we?"
Saber turned her back on Caster, whom she knew was bound to not harm her. How could Saber share the Good News with someone who died before it happened? It would be best for the Grail War not to tell her, to keep her advantage when the fighting resumed. And what was one more sin before that prize?
Saber focused on her goal again, and eventually found a shelf with stories from Greek mythology. They didn't have as large of a selection as she expected — not even a copy of Homer's Margites. She selected a more serious volume from among the choices with an overview of Greek mythology, and a slim paperback volume of Euripedes' Medea, translated into French. Even while the truce held in this universe, Artoria could arm herself with knowledge, knowledge that could bring victory and the Holy Grail.
She brought those four volumes up to the shopkeeper, and watched as he used the strange device, a cash register, to recall the prices. Cassiopée paid for Saber's selections separately, as it took another quarter hour for the other two women to finish their shopping.
Caster selected an eclectic pile of religious and philosophical tomes. And when Rider brought up her two stacks, nearly as tall as herself and composed of mostly paperbacks, Cassiopée made her return an entire stack, despite her assurances that "It's okay, Emiya can carry it." Archer simply bought a tourist guide for Montreal. Sakura, for her part, only picked up a couple of volumes of a heroic manga to give to someone special; despite the somewhat questionable translations, she thought Shirou might like to finish the series.
That was the last stop of the trip, as people were sufficiently loaded down and tired that it was time to call it a day. Grahame offered to run ahead and return with a car, but the kids were young and strong, and didn't mind carrying their books, clothes, and appliances for a kilometre. And so they returned, an exhausted but happy party, to Appartements Mont-Royal Sud, with a cool wind at their backs.
Eager to try out his new cast iron griddle, Shirou was cooking for everyone, once again. Well, not everyone in the complex: Cassiopée and her husband were exhausted from dealing with everyone, and wanted the remainder of the weekend to themselves. And Medea and Souichirou were in that phase of their relationship where they were courting intensely, and it was better off for everyone that they spent the evening as a lone pair. It seemed that Sakura and Shirou had a long-standing tradition of dining together, and Rin pushed her way in, and Sakura offered Emiya's cooking to Medusa.
Archer didn't usually attend. There was something between Shirou and Archer, a strange distance. At first, Saber had put it down to a healthy distrust between a servant and another master, but neither Archer nor Shirou treated anyone else with antipathy. It was just one of those things, where people just take an instant dislike to each other. There was something else, something that bothered her about the situation, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.[7]
Today, instead of everyone having a lively chat while he cooked, they were too busy setting up their own apartments, which meant that he was alone with Saber when he said, "Oh shoot, I didn't pick up mayonnaise when we were shopping. Do you think you can pick some up from the supermarket?"
"Of course, master."
With a bit of trepidation, he said, "If it's not too — oh, you'll be fine." After spending the entire day shopping, surely she'd be fine on her own — even if it felt as if he were asking her to appear on an episode My First Errand.[8]
"Kewpie brand if they have it, but otherwise any mayonnaise will do."
"Understood."
"And it's called okonomiyaki because you can add what you like, so if you see something you want to add, just pick it up."
"All right, I'll be off," she declared, seeing a last glimpse of Shirou chopping cabbage as she stepped out the door.
Saber was not quite as clueless as Shirou imagined. The world here in Montreal, it was a lot like what she had seen in her time in the past Grail War, but she was so singularly focused on her goal, and ever under threat of attack, she hadn't taken the time to truly understand the world then. Here, all she had was time.
The most glaring thing was that this world was rich, almost unimaginably rich. Far, far richer than even Rome itself in the days of Caesar Augustus, in that legendary time before the third century. They had all gone shopping in a department store, which was like a vast warehouse of new clothing, already sewn, prêt-à-porter, with racks and racks of variety. A single rack of silk dresses would be a king's ransom, a rack of the woollens might pay a knight's retainer for a year, even longer. Yet it was all just sitting out, as fruit might be in a marketplace.
They lived about a city block from two different markets, so she set out for the larger of the two, wearing her new white blouse with ribbon tie, and long blue skirt (Cassiopée had said something about this outfit being Fate, whatever that meant). She turned the corner towards the door, which slid open as if by magic, beckoning her into yet another luxurious space.
The market, like many here, was a vast enclosed building, filled to the brim with exotic fruits and foodstuffs, many she had never seen before, so she didn't understand exactly what they were. They seemed to have different sorts of foods than in Japan. But the one thing that she could understand of how rich they were was the huge amount of meat.[9]
Setting aside the packaging with the stretchy glass-stuff on the outside, which she still didn't know much about, it was clear that most people could afford to eat meat every day. The prices she could read, and for hog, ox, or lamb the prices were barely more than for cereals![10]
She couldn't resist picking up a package of pork belly.
She turned into an aisle, and found stacks of metal cylinders, each labelled with the name of different foods. Britannia's trade had always hinged on her mines of tin, and on its value it brought wealth and exotic items from all over the world. But here, tin was so plentiful that they used it to preserve vegetables. Which was itself amazing.[11]
A can of peas couldn't hurt, right? She knew what they were.
Another aisle to walk down, and this one had the condiments. Saber found the section with mayonnaise, but not the brand he was looking for, so she picked one and hoped for the best. She then turned down another aisle, and found a section labelled "Asian Foods", and saw a Kewpie Mayonnaise there. How odd. She picked up a squeeze bottle, and retraced her steps to return the other jar of mayo to its proper place.
Backwards and forwards, Artoria ran the labyrinth of this oddly quiet market square in a strange luxury world. Myrddin would have loved it here, she knew. He had always had an open mind which could handle the impossible with aplomb, at the moments she felt the most lost.[12]
The masters were mostly familiar with this otherworld and time, only occasionally tripping up on new things. They made mistakes of courtesy in a foreign land as well – at least Artoria was much better in diplomacy. Keeping her mouth shut was the most important way to keep out of trouble, and eventually the young masters would learn that skill.
Her own master, Shirou Emiya, struck her as pleasant and kind, if annoyingly naïve. He seemed to want to treat Artoria, King of the Britons, as a maiden in need of protection. In fairness, she had not yet told him her identity, but was Saber not the strongest martial-classed servant?[13]
She was no fool, simply ignorant of her new surroundings.
Still, he was not a person who she wished to upset. When the Grail War resumed – if the Grail War resumed? — she would need his aid, and he would need hers. He meant well, even if he was insolent to a king like her. But of course, she owed him fealty now, did she not? Certainly, a bit of that behaviour was tolerable, even expected. A marginal improvement over Emiya's adoptive father, though exactly how the personality apple fell from that particular tree she didn't quite understand.
The other servants, well, they seemed to cope with the change of life better than she. How it was that Caster and Rider — Medea and Medusa — seemed to be taking to this new world like fish to water was beyond Artoria's ken. Unless it was some elaborate ruse, they seemed to be actually enjoying themselves, taking to their new worlds with great gusto.
Saber glanced at the produce, but a lot of it was quite bewildering to her. For instance, the dragon fruit — how did they get them from dragons? She did decide to pick up a couple of apples, knowing that they would be in season, and placed them in a plastic bag, which was frustratingly hard to open.
She came across a pile of strange, pitted, oblong brown things, a kind of ugly root vegetable. She read the sign and discovered that they were the natural, uncooked form of potatoes. Now that reminded her, did they have any of those potato chips here?
Indeed they did. And in how many flavours? Salt & vinegar, cheese & onion, they all sounded delicious. Artoria couldn't make up her mind — she wanted to try them all — so she picked up a few bags of chips, stuffing her arms in the process. By now, she really wished she had picked up one of those hand-baskets as the front of the store, back when she was only coming in for one thing.
Laden with a bulky but light burden, it reminded her that she really should get going. Shirou was waiting for her, after all. As the store's clerk made her device go boop for every item, Artoria reflected on what strange impulse had come over her. The thing is, as a king, if you don't check your own impulses, no one else will check them for you, until it's too late.
To be honest to herself, she wanted to try every single food in here, to indulge in the wild variety and excess of this particular future. But at the same time, there was the fear of the unknown, the desire to keep to the comforts of the familiar. To keep herself apart from decadence, and dedicated to her duty. But with that smallest bit of familiarity with potato chips from lunch, here she was, carrying four bags back to the apartment.
She returned to the apartment, greeted Sakura who had already come over to help, and held out the mayonnaise for Shirou to take. "I have retrieved it, Shirou."
"Thanks." Tonight's chef was surprised when he glanced over to the shopping bags in her other hand, blurting, "What are all of those?"
"Reconnaissance, master."
Dinner passed in its typical noisy manner. It was strange how close the participants of the Grail War were. They all knew each other beforehand, the masters did. And there were undercurrents, mostly the usual ones between young men and women of that age, but something more strange between Sakura and Rin – not like love rivals at all – like they would force themselves to keep to a distance, but occasionally slip up and be familiar. Perhaps it was the twisted nature of the Grail War that kept them apart?
Emiya had managed to make use of the peas Saber had bought, adding them to the her okonomiyaki, since the dish was supposed to be made as one likes it. Archer may always talk about how his master is superior, but in the kitchen, none were Shirou's equal.
After dinner, everyone split up fairly quickly, still busy with setting up their own apartments, and distributing their shopping into its new home. It was while folding her new clothes, removing the tags, that Saber decided to tell Shirou who she is, her true identity. As much as she wanted to be nameless, forgotten to history, perhaps it would be useful for him to know. Since Archer already knew the secret, simply it wouldn't do to have her own Master left out of the loop.
But not tonight. Tonight, she was too tired to handle something so sensitive. Artoria was exhausted by the activity of the day, but her mind was still turning from all of the novelty. And of course, she had no need to force herself to sleep, as no battle awaited her in the morning. She flipped on a desk lamp, and decided to partake in one of the luxuries of the modern world, reading at night. But which book to choose? The Bible called to her, but she knew those stories, many by heart, and there was no urgent need to research her opponents.
And so Artoria's curiosity got the best of her, and she opened the book on the history of England first. The last pages were printed on thicker paper, so she looked at them first, and they had a series of maps of Britain. She had never before seen navigational charts of her realm so detailed and accurate, even up to the far islands of the Caledonians. Just staring at it, she understood a little more of her own life.
Of course, all of the names printed there were funny, like how her court in Camulodunum had somehow gotten the goofy name of "Colchester".[14]
The Angles had settled in the East, in Anglia, while the Saxons took the southern coast from Wessex to Essex.
The only place where the names weren't all wrong was in the far west, in the land labelled Wales. She tensed up when she read that — she knew enough Germanic, if only from the screams of the battlefield and the stories of the escaping villagers — to know what they called foreigners.
How dare they! They still called the people "walish", or "Welsh", in their own native land, all this time later.[15]
Had the Angles no shame? Or had they never developed any since then? She stood up at once with nervous energy, paced around her mostly bare apartment for a moment, then sat back down on her bed after deciding she had no idea what to do about it.
And then, she realized whom she was really angry with. Centuries, a millennium of persecution, of marginalization for the Britons, of being foreigners in their own homes — and it was all her own fault. Because she hadn't been good enough. She hadn't seen the danger until it was too late. She let Morgan trick her, and handled Mordred all wrong. Let her feelings for Gwen and Lancelot fall to lust.
And most of all, worst of all, Artoria once had the pride to think she could be king. To take from God His choice of monarch, and choose herself instead. She let herself be too human, even tried to be human while being a king, and that could never be done.
And those other Heroic Spirits were acting so cheerful in the day, as if being in a new universe, outside of a Grail War, was the solution to all of their problems. Perhaps it was. But for Artoria, the Grail was her only hope, for even in this universe, she had ruined everything. She broke her holy oath to protect her people, and they were still paying the price, all this time later. All of those thousands, millions – if you count the other universes, maybe billions — of her people: subjugated, killed, raped, impoverished, enslaved, and still low class in their own lands, because she was never good enough.
The weight of sin from that was too much to bear, and Artoria broke out in tears, sobbing alone in her room. She recited the names of her friends and retainers, whispering an apology to each in turn, "... Sorry Gawain. Sorry Galahad. ..." She continued in this way until her voice was hoarse from crying, and then the silence of her apartment returned.
In a few minutes, she got up off the bed, washed her face, and decided she had quite enough of reading, and turned off the light. As she slipped between the sheets, she reflected on what a pity party she had thrown, and how unbecoming of royalty it was, even when alone. Of course, she never should have become king, so why hate herself for her unsightly self-pity when she could hate herself for her impudent ambition? Without a quest to occupy her mind, Artoria's thoughts continued like this, anchorless, chasing herself in circles, until she finally fell asleep.
- BL: I'm not sure that we'll be keeping the FSN idea that Mordred is Artoria's clone, but I couldn't resist extending the joke here.
- RMS: "Pink=girls, Blue=boys" is a relatively new convention that was only solidified in the 1940s, believe it or not — as the result of a marketing campaign designed to boost the sales of baby clothes. Before that, red and its shades were considered a "masculine" color (because of associations with aggression, fire and blood), while blue was considered more "delicate", calming and feminine.
- BL: I don't get the impression that female literacy was common even among citizens in ancient Greece, but canon says she loves books, so here we are. Rider is responding to the subtext anyway.
- BL: Though it was not the Angles, but the West Saxon kingdom, conveniently named Wessex, which ultimately unified England and formed the current state.
- RK: Which on the Island of Montreal is "anything you paid a deposit on goes back to the store you bought it at, everything else that's recyclable goes into the same recycling bin" — much easier than Japan's system.
- BL: Artoria entirely missed those centuries where Christians argued about whether or not to translate the Bible, as she lived mere decades after St. Jerome produced the Vulgate, a Latin translation from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek sources. Thinking about how to write a fifth century Christian means unwinding a lot of my own assumptions about the faith.
- BL: One of the fun things of anime as a medium is that you can do things like hide a character's identity, because a face is only a few lines anyway, and everyone looks similar in a particular art style. But a person in real life really ought to notice how some people look more alike than others.
- RK: A literal translation of "Hajimete no Otsukai", although Nippon TV prefers the English title "Old Enough!"
- BL: Near the end of the Cold War, a couple of Russians were able to come over to the US to join our hockey teams. Soon after arriving, they were talking to each other on the phone. "I went to the grocery store today, and it was full of meat! Someone must have made a mistake and sent too much to the butcher. Of course, I purchased all I could carry." The other player replied, "Comrade, you would not believe it, but the exact same thing happened here!"
- BL: Artoria means cereals as in grains, but honestly boxes of American breakfast cereals are priced similar to or often greater than raw meat on the basis of weight.
- BL: The cross-Channel trade in wool and woollen fabrics didn't really boom until the medieval period. I assume some happened in the Roman era, but Britain was far more forested (i.e. less grazed) in this period.
- BL: I struggled a little here on the characterization of Merlin, as depending on which version of the legend, he's a learned astronomer or otherwise a wild man of the woods. I guess we're going with the former, for the most part. Incidentally, we're essentially ignoring the Fate expanded/universe, and just going with characterization from the original three Fate stay/night story-lines plus traditional legends. I mean, it's one thing to imagine that Arthur could be a woman in a society only four centuries removed from Boudica, but quite another to imagine a female Roman emperor at the heart of the very masculine Latin culture. (And on the topic of female Roman not-emperors, I really wish someone would scanlate the Anna Komnene manga.)
- BL: An aside that came up in my research: "character" classes of warriors could have been an idea familiar to Artoria prior to being summoned, since Roman games had highly specialized types of gladiators. One of the fighter classes was a scissor, who had a pair of long blades — somehow Kill la Kill seems less insane now. Perhaps the summoning magic of the Grail works because Jungian archetypes are real?
- BL: Camulodunum, basically "Fort Camulos", was named after the native god Camulos — whom we know nearly nothing about. The Wikipedia page for Rancho Camulos, up the street from my house, is many many times longer than anything we know about Camulos. However, it's linguistically "close enough" to be a potential site of Camelot, perhaps one lost to the invaders meaning a retreat to Tintagel in the west.
- BL: The Welsh are one of a group of people who took on the Germanic exonym for "foreigner" as the name for themselves, along with the Walloons (Belgium), Welsch (Switzerland), Wallachians/Vlachs (Romania). More at wikipedia:*Walhaz. There has been some debate over it, like many exonyms, but it feels far more immediate to Artoria, and she's jumping to some conclusions here. Indeed, if she thought about it in English, she would note that the modern English word "foreigner" sounds much closer to foranus and foras from Latin (because something happened around about 1066).
--
Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Boycotting all products from the USA as long as that country's leader continues to threaten to annex my native country.
Government of Canada: How to immigrate to Canada
Government of Canada: Claiming refugee protection (asylum) from within Canada
Rob Kelk
Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
Boycotting all products from the USA as long as that country's leader continues to threaten to annex my native country.
Government of Canada: How to immigrate to Canada
Government of Canada: Claiming refugee protection (asylum) from within Canada