The Second Sleep

by Robert Harris

  ‘Leave it!’ ordered the bishop. The chief sheriff trained his pistol on Hancock, who drew his hand back quickly. ‘This is as far as you will be permitted to go – and too far it is already! I alone will inspect the chamber and judge what is fit to be removed, and then it will be sealed and buried for ever. I believe we will copy your method, Captain, and use blasting powder to do the job. After that, you will all stand trial in Exeter for heresy. And this time, Dr Shadwell, there will be no leniency.’ He half turned and raised his hand. ‘Where is Mr Quycke?’

  Quycke said, ‘Here, my lord.’

  ‘Step out of the shadows, Mr Quycke, and show yourself to your friends.’

  Reluctantly, Shadwell’s secretary came forward. He still made no attempt to look them in the eyes. The bishop rested his hand upon his shoulder. ‘Did you never ask yourself, Shadwell, why this true penitent was released from jail after one year, while the other officers of your society served five or more?’

  Shadwell was examining Quycke with a look of disappointment as much as disgust, as if his secretary were some object dug out of the ground that he had believed was valuable but had proved to be worthless.

  ‘I shall tell you why,’ continued the bishop. ‘In return for his freedom, he agreed to swear an oath of loyalty and return to the true path. For eight years he has worked for me, keeping me informed of the wickedness and folly of your obsession.’

  Shadwell continued to stare at Quycke. His breath was wheezing. With a shaky hand he reached up and took off his cap. He pushed up his hair to show the bishop the H branded on his forehead. Pole drew back slightly.

  ‘An obsession with the ancients, as you call it – inscribed upon my flesh, according to your orders – is your sin as much as mine. The difference is, I wear it proudly. “Wickedness and folly?” You kept my books, my lord. You did not burn them as you told me. You are a hypocrite.’

  ‘Show respect!’ The chief sheriff took a pace towards Shadwell and raised his hand to strike him again, but the bishop waved him back.

  ‘One does not burn knowledge! That is a show for the common folk. One hides knowledge – one keeps it close. The libraries of the Church hold truths you cannot dream of, Shadwell. No, of course I did not burn your books. I sent them to an old colleague for safe keeping. I believed he could be trusted. That proved an error. But it was of no consequence: Quycke here sent me a copy of the letter Lacy wrote you. I saw it two days before you did. I let you come to Axford in the hope you would lead me here. And so you have. Why else do you think you were granted bail except by my instruction? And now I shall know the truth of this place, and you will not. So which of us in the end has proved the more successful scholar?’ He smiled and glanced at the ceiling. A narrow waterfall of soil and water was pouring through the crack. His face became serious. He beckoned to the chief sheriff. ‘Take them up and bind them.’

  Fairfax said, ‘You had Father Lacy killed! If we stand trial, I shall expose you as a murderer!’

  The bishop regarded him with contempt. ‘I sent you to bury Lacy, thinking you a young, ambitious fool who would do as he was told. But you are an even greater fool than I thought if you believe I would countenance the murder of a priest.’

  Quycke said, ‘There was no murder. It’s true I followed Lacy from the church to the Devil’s Chair. He saw me, ran and fell. That’s all there was – I swear it.’ He looked hopelessly at Shadwell. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. God knows, I always loved you. I begged you not to leave Wilton. I never believed—’

  He stopped. From somewhere above ground came a loud rumbling. Fairfax thought at first it must be another thunderstorm. The floor shook.

  Hancock said, ‘That’s a mudslide.’

  The rumble grew louder. What followed seemed to happen slowly. Bishop Pole looked up at the widening crack and began to back away, all the while staring at the roof, transfixed by it, then turned and pushed his way between the sheriffs and seized the ladder. The moment he put his foot on the first rung, the floor gave way and he dropped out of sight without a cry. Or perhaps he did shout out and the sound was lost in the roaring wall of mud and noise and concrete that was travelling across the room. Fairfax felt himself grabbed from behind. He saw the sheriffs go down first; then Hancock, Quycke and Shadwell crushed. He toppled backwards, pulled by Sarah. Their combined weight struck the metal door, and together they fell sprawling over the threshold. He landed heavily on top of her. Burning pitch seared his skin. An instant later, the roof of the antechamber collapsed.

  The entire hillside seemed to pass above their heads – a terrible, deafening grinding noise like the mills of God – and even when the avalanche ceased, the silence that followed was punctuated by muffled crashes and implosions as various pockets of space yielded to the weight. Fairfax could feel Sarah beneath him. She was not moving. At any moment he was sure the roof would cave in and pulp them. He hoped his body would give her some protection. He kept his eyes shut and tried to remember the commination, but could not get beyond the first line – O most mighty God and merciful Father, who has compassion on all men – which he repeated endlessly in his head. After a minute, when the banging and thudding seemed finally to have stopped, he opened his eyes. The dust was thick as smoke, swirling orange in the light of the torch that lay nearby.

  ‘Sarah?’ His mouth tasted of concrete and chemical. He lifted himself off her and put his hand to her face. She moaned. He picked up the torch. Her skin and hair were streaked with dust. There was a darkness spread around her like a shadow. He put his hand gently beneath her head. His fingers came away sticky with blood. He bent and kissed her forehead. Her eyes opened. He smoothed her hair. She tried to speak. He put his finger on her lips. ‘Hush.’ He laid down the torch, stood, took off his cassock and folded it. He lifted her head again and rested it on the pillow. ‘I shall find a way out for us.’ He felt a feeble pressure as she squeezed his fingers. ‘Lie still. I shall not leave you.’

  He took up the torch and stood. Her feet were close to the door. Beyond it was a solid and compacted mass of concrete, rock and debris. He flourished the light across it, then turned and tried to peer into the room. It was hard to make out anything through the fog of dust. The light seemed to reflect off it rather than penetrate it. He ran his hand along the wall. It was covered in crude drawings, executed mostly in the same colours as the hands in the antechamber – red and brown, with streaks of white and black. Human figures, buildings, faces, diagrams of strange devices. Arrows led from one illustration to another.

  He felt his way along the wall, not bothering to examine it, looking for another entrance. He tried to count his paces. Three, four, five … The tenth brought him to a corner. The chamber was tiny. A storeroom perhaps. He turned along the adjoining wall. The drawings continued. In the far corner he found a second metal door, identical to the first, with a wheel for a handle. He set down the torch and tried to turn it, but it would not yield, however hard he tried. He needed a tool to use as a lever.

  He turned away towards the centre of the room and trod on something. He stooped to pick it up. A device with the symbol of the bitten apple, but larger, heavier, although still thinner than the width of a finger. It opened like a book. A pane of glass on one side; on the other, squares of black plastic, each inlaid with a letter of the alphabet. They made a curious pattering sound when he pressed them. There were other devices scattered around the floor. Dozens of them, he saw, now that he passed his torch across them – some similar to the one in Lacy’s collection, others of an entirely different design. There were boxes of metal and plastic, glass screens, smooth white plastic objects with steel bases that seemed designed to fit in the palm … Now that he inspected them more closely they seemed to have been arranged deliberately in a star-like pattern, radiating out from a white steel box, about the size of a man, that rested on a platform in the centre of the room. It was deeper than a coffin – perhaps three feet – but a sarcophagus was the function it served, he was sure. The lid was heavy, hinged alon
g one side, but it lifted easily – dangling threads – and by some function of the mechanism he could not determine, it stayed open. Inside was a mummified figure, its hands folded across its chest, the features of the face just discernible – a noble face, with strong cheekbones and nose, and a wide brow. There was even still some long grey hair. He lowered the lid.

  The dust had started to settle. He could see now what this was. A burial chamber, as Shadwell had predicted, with the technology of the ancients arranged around it in tribute, as if to accompany the dead man into the next world. There was no tool anywhere that could open the door. The devices were too flimsy to have any practical use. Without the secret power of electricity to bring them to life, they were as dead as the man they honoured. The flint tools of the Stone Age had more value.

  He went back to the wall.

  The paintings were arranged to tell a story, he saw now, that seemed to start in the corner by the closed door, with a sequence of drawings of a heavenly body, a planet – the Earth, presumably – brightly girdled by lines of light. In the second drawing, the lights had halved in number. In the third, they had halved again. By the seventh, the planet was in darkness and was depicted held in the claws of the Beast of the Apocalypse, with its seven heads and ten crowned horns. Then came a picture of one of the bitten-apple devices, its screen blank, followed by another with a skull-like face drawn on it, hands pressed to its cheeks, eyes and mouth both wide with horror. A long, straggling column of people ran along the remainder of the wall – shadowy, hunched figures, winding in an endless procession – accompanied by smaller illustrations of incidents that seemed to have occurred on the journey. Buildings with flames pouring from the windows. Wheeled vehicles resting on their roofs. A flying machine, like the one he had seen the children playing with in The Piggeries, ploughed into the earth. Scenes of rape and fighting. Hangings. Piles of corpses burning.

  He turned away.

  On the opposite wall he recognised a drawing of the Devil’s Chair, and another of the stone church tower in Addicott St George, and the yellow plastic shell outside the smithy. And then a curious, chilling picture, of a group of twenty captives with their arms bound behind them, yoked in a line at the neck. The centrepiece of the saga was a large drawing of a man’s face, with MORGENSTERN written beneath it and heavenly rays shooting from his head. Grouped around it like disciples were other, smaller faces, captioned KIEFER, FISCHER, SINGH. He studied them. A memory stirred. They were like the images of the obscure saints in the nave of St George’s. And the names – Keefer, Fisher, Singer – they still lived in the valley. Gann the blacksmith – was that name a corruption also? Was he a descendant of Morgenstern himself?

  He saw the truth then, at the last. It was not the refugees from London who had been massacred against the wall of the tower. It was the villagers. The colonists had taken their land to survive. And then this place, no longer needed, had been turned into a shrine to the founder. Not at the time, he sensed, but perhaps later, during the hundred and fifty years of lawlessness, the Dark Age, when the old knowledge had been lost and superstition had taken its place. A sacred spot, its origins lost in vanished memory, that no one went near.

  He swayed and almost lost his footing. He was beginning to feel dizzy. His thoughts were strangely disordered. He guessed they must be running out of air. He went back to where Sarah was lying. He propped the torch against the wall, and got down beside her. She was still awake. She smiled at him. He kissed her and took her in his arms. The light of the torch was burning very feebly now, he noticed: a pale yellow glow. Nevertheless, he felt no fear, just a great drift of peace and well-being.

  He said, ‘There is a door. We will go through it in the morning.’

  He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against hers. The torch guttered and flared briefly, and went out while they slept.

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  Copyright © Canal K 2019

  Jacket illustration derived from images supplied courtesy of Getty Images and Alamy Images

  Robert Harris has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson in 2019

  www.penguin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473558786