The Gawain Legacy

by Jon Mackley

  Then she saw a woman, beautiful as the night, demanding that Solomon sacrifice beetles in the name of Molloch, in return for sexual pleasures. He did this, not realising it was not the value of the life that was important, but the action of sacrificing to a demon. The Wisdom of Solomon was lost. He had fallen from favour from the Almighty and the demons he’d commanded broke free from the invisible chains that had shackled them. They lost the allegorical imagery that Lara had first perceived. They were nothing like the denizens Milton described with red cloak, horns and a pointy tail. These were terrible creatures from unremembered nightmares. She caught momentary flashes of a leathery hide and wings, a prehensile tail, snatching claws, snapping jaws. She saw them attacking Solomon, not to kill him, but to blind him.

  Then their eyes turned, as one, to her who now carried the ring. She saw salivating maws, some with needle-like teeth, others with teeth the size of a building. She tried to scream, but the sound froze in her throat, burned away by the desert sun. She tried to run, but the sand clawed at her, dragging her down. She screamed again and this time she found a voice for her fears. Time froze around her, and her ears were filled with the single high-pitched wail of her death cries.

  She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. She felt the ring being removed from her finger. She did not fight Tantris. She was laying on the hard flagstones in the tomb, shivering in the cold, eyes straining in the darkness. The sole light was the glowing tip of Tantris’s cigarette that had fallen to the floor. In the silence, she heard the crackling of the tobacco as it burned.

  She leaned her head into him and cried. He stroked her hair and spoke in a language she’d never heard before. The language of comfort.

  ‘You understand now, Lara,’ Tantris said, his voice was a stark contrast to the silence, even though he spoke gentle words. ‘The ring calls to you. It is too powerful for any one person to hold, the desire to try and control it is too great.’ His voice dropped. ‘Give the ring to me. There is an organisation in Ephesus who specialise in the study of magical antiquities. I promise you no Government shall have this power.’

  Will had been fumbling in the dark. He finally found the torch and turned it on. It was an explosion in the darkness. The image of the crypt burned into her retinas. She blinked, trying to clear the purple stains on her eyes. She could make out Will. He had abandoned them to their discussion and was hurriedly looking through the parchments, manuscripts and scrolls. He picked up Sir William’s testament and continued to read.

  She twisted her neck and looked up at Tantris. ‘Who are you?’ her voice was hoarse. It felt like she had been swallowing burning sands.

  ‘It’s better you don’t know,’ Tantris said quietly. ‘There are things even the Governments of the world shouldn’t know. Some avenues are better left unexplored.’

  ‘Are you a Templar or a descendant of that Order? Is that how you know these things?’

  ‘No,’ Tantris said. ‘Your poet may have misled you. The Holy Crusades were not about finding the Ring of Solomon. That was merely an added bonus. There were other reasons, darker reasons.’ His gaze became empty; for the first time she thought she saw a trace of humanity in his eyes.

  Not humanity. Fear.

  ‘The storm clouds had gathered and the Templars had to disperse them. For centuries they’ve rooted out the evil. Decades ago they finished their quest, but still they stand, watchful, in case they discover another line, yet to be … finished.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Lara said.

  Tantris shook his head. Lara wondered if he was embarrassed. ‘Nor should you. Forgive me. These are the ramblings of a nostalgic old man.’

  ‘But all these things, the ring, the demons I saw. Surely that’s just fiction. These things don’t really exist.’

  ‘Believe that if you will,’ Tantris said. ‘It is closed minded, but you’ll be kept safe with those thoughts.’ He stared into the corner of the chamber. ‘But never under estimate the power of the unknown.’ He looked at Will apologetically. ‘I need the ring, and I need to take two of the parchments. One of them is the one you’re holding.’

  Will held it close to his chest. ‘This one? No way! You can’t take the only proof we have that William de Masci wrote Gawayne. This is the first shred of evidence that’s been unearthed since the Cotton library burned down.’ She heard his voice cracking, like a witness breaking under cross-examination. ‘Don’t take this away, please.’

  Tantris smiled gently. ‘I must. The Testament of Solomon, the book that contains the detailed account of Solomon’s command over the demons, was removed from the Bible in the third century, because the Council of Nicaea knew it amounted to a tome of practical demonology. The Christian Church didn’t advocate the discussion of demons, except as allegories. It was too close to the Truth.

  ‘But Solomon was real. The demons were real. Solomon’s seal was given to the King by the Highest of Powers. God gave humans instructions on how to build other artefacts, Noah’s ark and the Ark of the Covenant – which was stored in Solomon’s Temple. But that was not the case with the ring.’ He held it up. The torchlight danced in the circle of the band of gold. Lara found herself reaching forward, dream-like, desiring it. Her left hand scrabbled around on the flagstones, searching for a loose rock, or anything else to use as a weapon.

  But with a simple conjurer’s slight-of-hand trick, the ring had vanished from Tantris’s hands. With the temptation removed, Lara realised her shoulders had dropped in relaxation.

  She felt sick to her stomach. ‘Keep it away from me,’ she said in a voice filled with self-loathing. ‘Take it.’

  ‘What’s the other manuscript?’ Will asked.

  Tantris moved to Will’s side and took a single sheet of papyrus, and read it slowly. Lara heard her heartbeat in the silence. Eventually, Tantris spoke again. ‘This is the paper which I have sought. The Apocalypse speaks of the seven Seals. Four have already been broken over the last century, this paper outlines the location of the fifth.’

  ‘The fifth seal of Revelation,’ Will whispered. ‘No wonder you wanted this place to be hidden until the time was right.’

  ‘The fifth seal promises salvation for those slain in the name of God. The fifth angel holds the key to the abyss and promises armies of scorpions across the world.’

  ‘And quy þe pentangel apendez to þat prince nobel, I am in tent yow to telle, þof tary hyt me schulde,’ Will said softly, finally understanding. ‘The text doesn’t refer to the Pentangle that Gawain had on his shield. The corruption of the spelling: Pent-angel. He’s talking about the fifth angel from Revelation.’

  ‘Now perhaps you understand why I have to take all references to the Angel and the seal with me. It is too great a secret for man to unearth. There are some things that are better left unknown.’ He crushed the cigarette underfoot. ‘Now it’s time for me to leave. Please don’t follow me.’

  Lara wanted to scream. In her mind’s eye she saw Tantris resealing the crypt with them still inside.

  But Tantris’s voice had a calming effect. Now he held the ring and the parchments, serenity bathed his face.

  ‘Just answer me one thing,’ Will said as Tantris turned away. ‘Why did the Cotton library burn down? Was it an accident or was it deliberate?’

  Tantris looked at him and the torchlight cast sinister shadows. ‘We were not responsible.’ He stared skyward for a moment, as if seeking inspiration, or listening to an answer, then he gave a long sigh. ‘But as you correctly observed, there are at least two groups looking for the trail at the end of the Gawayne manuscript. Be thankful that it was I who found you first.’ With that, he turned on his heels and left.

  *

  The footsteps retreated from them, fading away as he mounted the stairs. Moments later, it was as though Tantris had never been there.

  Will’s shoulders sagged. The light dropped lethargically, like a knight lowering his lance when he knows he is beaten. He tried to smile, but he was fighting to hold back tears
. It wasn’t so much the tears of grief or frustration. Instead, as his shoulders slumped, Lara realised this was his moment of release. He was finally allowing himself to let go now he knew the truth about Roger’s death.

  When he spoke, his voice grated in his throat; the sound of a voice that had not spoken in centuries. ‘They used me.’ There was no anger, just the disappointment of realisation. ‘They used me to use you, to see what influence they could have over short term events, to see the impact of halting the turning of the Wheel of Fortune and to see how the future might influence the past. They used the things I loved the most to get to me. Roger, Janet, you, the manuscript.’ He looked up at her. Shadows covered his face. ‘I had the secret of the Gawain manuscript in my hands. I knew what the poet wanted us to understand and it’s all been stripped away from me.’

  Lara didn’t speak. She was consumed by the sorrow that had already overwhelmed Will. Losing his wife and son had taken his torment beyond breaking point: he had followed the trail to the point of obsession because it had given him a direction in life. She nodded slowly, beginning to understand a part of her own role in his life. Will had lost his reasons to live and he had set himself the most difficult of tasks to exaggerate his feeling of failure, to give himself a motive to return to the railway lines and end everything properly. Each time she offered him a lifeline, he grabbed it, because it was all he had.

  And, now he had achieved it, they had taken it away from him and left him as nothing more than an empty husk. No more purpose. No more hope.

  She took a step towards him. Then another. She had expected him to flee, but now she saw a broken man, drained of all energy. Then her arms enfolded him. He didn’t move, didn’t return her embrace. Nor did he pull away.

  ‘You loved her so very much,’ she said. Even now, despite her efforts, she knew her words sounded insincere. ‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through,’ she admitted, ‘But I understand why you needed to cling to the hope you could call her back.’ She felt him becoming limp in her arms. ‘Forsaking all others, isn’t that what you promised?’

  Will pulled away, only a fraction, so he could look at her. He nodded gently.

  ‘What now, Will? What do you have if you don’t even have hope to hope for?’

  Now he pulled away, turned from her and glanced down at the piles of parchment and vellum. ‘Reality,’ he said eventually. ‘No matter how horrible it is, I still have reality.’

  There was no strength in his voice but, in that moment, Lara imagined the puppet master who had been controlling him had cut the strings and set him free. He slumped down against one wall and was hugging his knees to his chest. His hands were trembling. ‘Someone once said it’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. He said if you’d loved and lost, you had the advantage of having loved once.’

  ‘But then you know exactly what you’re missing,’ Lara said. ‘If you’ve never known company, you have no concept of loneliness.’

  Will’s eyes became vacant. His spirit had broken. His torment was a sphere of agony around him. It tore Lara’s heart to see him there. In that moment, she realised if she could have changed one thing in history, it would not have been to warn of an imminent assassination attempt, or impeding disasters because she knew she would have been seen as Cassandra – able to predict the future, but never believed.

  Instead she would have done anything to spare Will this suffering; her decision would change the course of time from a moment where she and Will had never met. Marsh had told her that paradoxes healed themselves. He would find a way to apprehend her without even needing to manipulate Will. She looked back at him once. She would never see him again, he would never know who she was, but at least he would be at a time before all that he loved had been taken away from him.

  Not everyone needs to lose in this, she told herself.

  She closed her eyes, and was aware of the chamber becoming insubstantial around her. Time became a shimmering pool. It became eternal instead of perpetual. Every instant of time existed in the same moment; then floated past her. It had become easier to step into the pool; easier to find the tiny droplets she needed.

  She began to wade through Will’s past.

  Like shuffling through a deck of cards, she selected a point before she had ever met him, before he had ever needed to meet her.

  At least a year ago … Olivia had told him that was when she had last seen him. Roger’s death would have been before then. How long did it take for him to be broken on the rack of grief? Two months? Six months? Was eighteen months all it took to turn a happy, successful man with all that he wanted into a wretch determined to end everything?

  There were three of them staying in the farm cottage: Will, Janet and Roger. Will appeared a decade younger. Anxiety and trauma had not taken their toll on him. Janet was a slim, pretty woman in her early twenties. She had treacle-coloured hair, tied back in a ponytail, and almond-shaped eyes. Will was exhausted after the long drive; he lay on the sofa with his eyes closed. Janet was busy unpacking and making the beds. Roger was out exploring.

  Lara took a mental step away from them, back into the main courtyard of the farmhouse. There was a square of rutted tarmac. The nearby buildings were in a state of near dereliction. Nettles and long grasses grew around them. A red battered wooden door with slats missing from it, warned in slurred white paint ‘Danger – Keep Out’. Above the places where the windows had been bricked up were huge gaps in the slating and, like a huge mound of coins in the ‘Penny Falls’ games at the seaside amusement arcades, the slates piled up against the guttering, ready to fall.

  A huge grain chute ran from this building into one of the stables. It was to this that Lara felt herself being drawn. One gate at the stable’s entrance was missing and the other hung on rusted hinges, almost hidden behind the foliage. Lara stepped over patches of clover and dandelions and on to the concrete floor. Swallows chirped overhead. She paused at the threshold, hit by the scent of the damp hay, but was surprised there was no odour of animals. Much of the stonework had been started in the fashion of a dry-stone wall, but conventional brick had replaced the places where it had fallen into disrepair.

  All she heard was the bleating of the sheep, mocking chirps of the swallows, the creaking of the roof overhead, the occasional proclamation of a cockerel and the gurgle of distant water. She saw a trailer which carried sacks of grain; here was a metal container on its side, covered in bird droppings and spilling out hay. On one side of the barn were vicious looking hooks, but the menacing gleam that they might once have had was replaced by the dull warning of the rusting metal.

  She walked past farming tools: rakes, scythes, shears and hayforks. They hung on rotted wooden pegs: it would take a little more than a strand of gossamer to break the supports and bring them crashing down on an unsuspecting innocent who happened to come this way. She made her way past sheets of iron and piles of sticks, cut down to the size of firewood. The barn had fallen into neglect. The clear sheets of corrugated plastic overhead let in light, but could not take away the sense of foreboding.

  She gazed back at the entrance, seeing only the red door and its ideograph, and the diving swallows. Occasionally the birds swooped up to the rafters, but they seemed reluctant to stay once they were aware of her presence. Were these the guardians who would take away Roger’s soul and lead him to the next life?

  When she had reached the far side of the stables, she had to step over two railway sleepers that had been used to block off the entrance to a small walkway over a stream. The sound of the water was soothing and for a moment Lara forgot the reasons why she was standing there. She crouched down, allowing her fingers to trail through the cool water. She touched her lips and the water was sweet and refreshing.

  Upstream was a tangle of foliage. She could see only a couple of metres, but, looking downstream, something about the straight path of the water and the overhanging willow branches reminded her of the tranquillity of the central aisle of t
he cathedral.

  She paused, waiting here, leaning against a rickety fence and allowing herself to relax. She smiled. She had to remember this was not her time, but at this moment, she wished it was. Eighteen months ago, she would have still been subjected to the torments from Michael. She made a rough calculation. In this time, while Will was relaxing on a farm and had no idea of the shadow of impending disaster which loomed over his future, she had been crying and begging to see her stillborn daughter. That flower of hope was crushed in one second under the violent foot of despair.

  She was distracted by the sound of a small boy running through the long grasses. This must be Roger, she thought, as he entered the stables. He wasn’t a particularly tall boy for his age, but Lara instantly warmed to him. He was wearing brand-name trainers, shorts and a white T-shirt, as he walked in. There was a spray of freckles across his nose, which would no doubt be a source of much ridicule when he was at school. His pale skin had already caught the sun and had started to peel. His eyes, the same blue as those of Will, were wide with curiosity and excitement and life.

  Lara felt nauseous. He would be dead in a matter of weeks and there was nothing she could do about it. She glanced around at the rusted hooks and the jagged shards of metal. She paled as she realised he could cut himself on any one of these things and, because he was of the age where it was important to be “strong” and “brave”, he wouldn’t tell anyone about his wound, nor tell them it had become infected, and he would die.

  She knew there was no way she could save her own daughter’s life; pleading to the doctors that the umbilical cord had wrapped around the baby’s throat and demanding a caesarean would have been dismissed as the anxieties of a woman in labour. But she could at least give Will the gift of his family by changing the past. He would never know what she had done for him. When she finally returned to her own time, she would never have met him and would probably have no recollection of how time had altered, but for this one second, she felt good about herself.