by Alex Scarrow
‘Oh, stop that!’ barked John with his best go at heroic bravado. ‘Save what you have left for the fighting, men.’
‘Sire,’ said Liam, ‘you’ll be a target, so you will.’
He could see how pale John looked, trembling inside his mail.
‘Then,’ said John, running a tongue along his dry lips, ‘then I shall just have to keep moving, won’t I?’
A distant horn sounded again and Liam saw the women and children moving among Richard’s men scramble at double speed away from the front line towards the tents and marquees on the hillside in front of them. Almost immediately the flitting of dark arrows resumed, peppering the clear sky, and the men fifty yards away reformed their lines in preparation for the renewed assault on Nottingham.
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Maddy and Adam stared at the monitor while Sal helped Becks and Cabot ready themselves for transport back to 1194.
‘What do you mean, you can’t use Becks’s time-stamp?’ asked Maddy.
› There appears to me too much instability to lock on to a reliable window.
‘What does that mean?’
› Reality is fluctuating unreliably between two preferred states.
‘It can’t make its mind up,’ said Adam.
› That is a fair analogy.
‘Well … what? Do we wait? Do we risk it?’
› We can risk sending them back using Becks’s time-stamp, but I cannot anticipate the result of that.
Maddy balled her fist on the desk. ‘OK, then … Well, how big is this instability?’
› Please restate the question.
‘How … far, how much time is affected by it? What I mean is … is it regionalized? Like a storm or something?’
› The fluctuating timelines appear to branch from between seven and nine hours before Becks’s return time-stamp.
Maddy turned round towards the water tube. Becks was just about to climb the stepladder to get into the water.
‘Becks! What happened seven hours before you left 1194?’
Becks stopped, consulted her memory. ‘Precisely seven hours? I was walking along a stone passage.’
Maddy flapped her hands impatiently. ‘Or thereabouts. Anything significant?’
‘Six hours and forty-three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I scaled the outer wall of the city of Nottingham.’
‘Go back a bit.’
Becks tilted her head. ‘Seven hours and three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was saying to Liam and Bob that “I would be fine”.’
‘Oh come on! Go back more. Something significant!’
Becks spooled memories silently for a moment, then finally her eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘At eight hours and fifty-six minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was speaking with John.’
‘What the hell did you say to him? Exactly!’
Her eyelids fluttered. ‘… A man must find at least one moment in time to make a stand for himself … or live a life — burning in the flames of regret.’
Maddy looked to Adam.
He shrugged. ‘It’s very poetic.’
› Checking quotation database. Just a moment …
She turned back to Becks. ‘You think that’s, like, changed history somehow?’
‘I believe it may have inspired him,’ Becks replied. ‘John was considering immediate surrender to his brother. However, correct history shows he held out for five days. I decided he needed … encouragement.’
Maddy sighed. ‘Well guess what? Looks like it worked.’
› Quotation source: Rock band — EssZed. Lyrics to song.
‘Yuh, thanks, Bob. So — ’ she turned back to Becks — ‘you think maybe saying that quote to — ’
‘I also offered myself to him.’
Sal’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean …?’
Becks looked down at her. ‘Marriage.’
‘If he … what? Showed you he was a big tough man?’ said Maddy. ‘If he stood up to his brother?’
‘Affirmative.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh well, looks like you really encouraged him all right.’ She turned back to the monitor. ‘Bob … what competing histories are we getting out of this?’
› No information. The fluctuation is too rapid to generate timelines.
‘That’s why we’re not getting time waves?’ said Adam.
› Correct. However, this oscillating status is unstable and dangerous.
‘Dangerous?’ Maddy pushed up her glasses. ‘What’s that mean exactly?’
› It is a stress factor on the reality wall.
Adam looked at her. ‘The reality wall?’
‘What separates us from chaos space,’ she replied quickly. ‘Bob … then what are we supposed to do?’
› The instability may settle itself. Or it may increase in severity.
‘And if it does do that — if it gets worse?’
› No information.
‘No information?’ she howled, exasperated. ‘Well … But look, it’s not a good thing, right?’
› Not a good thing. There are several essays on chaos space written by R. Waldstein and E. Chan in my database.
‘Can you sum them up?’
› Chaos space is a dimension where the laws of quantum physics are contradicted. Theoretically, the effect on normal dimensions would be their complete destruction.
‘What does that mean? Like, all of Earth … destroyed?’
› Negative. Everything.
‘Ev- everything?’
› The entire universe.
Maddy suddenly felt light-headed and short of breath. ‘Oh crud. Oh my God! We’ve … we’ve really messed up.’ Her hands scrambled across the clutter on the desk for her inhaler. ‘We’ve — ’
‘Maddy.’ Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maddy, come on, calm … don’t lose it.’
She found the inhaler and pulled hard on it several times. She doubled over on her seat, her head between her knees, the wheezing rasp of her contracting throat sounding like a blacksmith’s bellows.
Sal was over beside her, an arm across her shoulders. ‘Maddy? You OK?’
She shook her head. ‘Second …’ she wheezed. ‘Gimme … a … second …’
Adam looked down at her. ‘This is all going wrong, isn’t it? This organization of yours, it’s — ’
‘We’re still learning,’ Sal snapped defensively. ‘We’ve been in worse situations.’ She bent down and stroked the hair out of Maddy’s face. ‘Right, Maddy? We’ve got out of worse things?’
Maddy pulled again on her inhaler, then lifted her face. ‘Yuh …’ Still wheezing. ‘Yeah,’ she said again. ‘Bob?’
› Yes, Maddy.
‘Becks and Cabot have to go back with the Grail, like right now! Find us the best window you can — as close to the castle as you can.’
› Affirmative. Searching.
‘But it’s unstable, isn’t it?’ said Adam. ‘Your computer was saying there’s a risk of sending them — ’
‘There’s always a freakin’ risk,’ Maddy uttered wearily. She pulled herself up off her elbows and faced the desk again. ‘Bob? Come on … give me something!’
› Just a moment … Searching.
She checked their displacement machine had charge enough. It looked good. She turned to Sal. ‘Get them in the water, Sal. Go get them ready!’
Sal nodded and rushed over to the perspex tube.
‘If it’s unstable, what could happen to them?’ asked Adam.
‘They could end up turned inside out and looking like a bowl of lasagne,’ she replied.
‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked.’
‘Or worse.’
Adam pulled a face. ‘Worse! How could you get worse than that?’
She lowered her voice. ‘They could end up stuck in chaos.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Tell me, do you believe in Hell?’
He shook his head. ‘You kidding? I — no … of course not. It’s an invention of the Catholic Churc
h. Just a load of old religious mumbo-jumbo.’
‘That’s what I used to think. But, you know … I wonder. Is it?’
The dark dialogue box on the screen in front of them suddenly flickered with the movement of computer-Bob’s cursor.
› I have a candidate time-stamp that is currently holding a solid state.
‘How long will it last?’
› There is no information how long it will last. Perhaps only seconds.
‘Activate a ten-second countdown. NOW!’
› Affirmative.
She turned to see Becks splosh into the water, the Grail once more in its box, the box sealed in a plastic Ziploc bag. Cabot was standing at the top of the stepladder and regarding the chilled water at his toes. ‘But, please, young lady … why do we have to get into …?’
‘JUST GET HIM IN!’ shouted Maddy above the growing hum of energy building up for a release.
Sal climbed up the steps of the ladder. ‘Mr Cabot, you have to get in the water … please!’
She spun round to see the countdown on the screen.
Four … three … two …
‘PUSH HIM IN!’
Sal nodded and threw her weight behind a hard shove against the monk’s thighs. He teetered for a moment, arms cartwheeling for balance, before he toppled forward into the tube, sending a small tidal wave of water splashing over the side and on to the floor. The stepladder wobbled under Sal’s sudden lurching movement and tipped back against the brick wall, the legs sliding along the concrete floor, dumping her on to a storage shelf full of cables and toolboxes that cascaded down and clattered along with her to the ground just as the displacement machine discharged its energy. The perspex tube flexed violently and thudded with a boom as the water, Cabot and Becks vanished back into the twelfth century.
As Sal rolled on the floor among spools of cable and yelping from a sprained wrist, and the echo of the flexing boom bounced around their archway, slowly fading, Maddy could only wonder how it was that mankind — perhaps even the whole universe — had ended up resting its fate in the hands of an amateur little outfit like theirs.
CHAPTER 81
1194, Nottingham
They landed within the keep’s outer bailey, the splash of thirty gallons of water echoing off the tall stone walls. Cabot landed heavily on his side, grunting at the impact on hard cobblestone. Becks landed on her feet, poised and ready for action.
The keep itself was devoid of any activity. A pair of soldiers manning the gatehouse emerged from the cool shadow of the archway to find out what the noise was all about. They gazed in bemusement at the old monk and the woman in the leather corset and dark woollen tights.
‘Where is the Earl of Cornwall?’
‘Not ’ere, love, e’s fightin’,’ one of them answered, and then suddenly it occurred to him they might not have his best interests in mind. ‘’Ere! Ye be spies?’ he barked at them. ‘Ye stop roight there!’
Becks calmly handed Cabot the box as he got to his feet and approached the soldiers open-handed and with the most alluring smile she could conjure up.
‘Let me explain,’ she started to say.
Ten seconds later, both men were on their backs, one of them out cold, the other with a broken wrist. Becks tossed Cabot one of their swords as they jogged out of the keep through the open gatehouse, crossing the bridge over the river and following the main dry-rutted track through the centre of Nottingham towards the marketplace, towards the noise of a raging battle in progress.
The marketplace was filled with the squirming, howling wounded: men and boys missing limbs, heads and faces split open, puckered and purple wounds that were clearly mortal. Children with water and bloodstained rags moved among them providing what comfort they could, ignoring the occasional arrows that dropped down into the square and clattered on stone slabs or thudded and embedded themselves into the earth.
Up ahead, to the right of the city’s gatehouse, a seventy-five-foot-wide breach in the wall was plugged with a rising sea of struggling humanity. Soldiers and civilians, men old and young, even some women, pressed into one enormous writhing scrum. On the walls either side, she saw soldiers and citizens firing arrows, children hurling stones down at the attackers outside — a city-wide attempt to defend themselves. And a convincing job they seemed to be doing of it thus far. The sun was well past midday in the sky and halfway into the afternoon.
She realized the fluctuating timelines were stemming from this struggle that could go either way. Even though Richard’s army was far greater than the number of people in Nottingham, their motivation to fight would be entirely mercenary.
On the other hand, the people of Nottingham were fighting for their very lives. If they could hold those soldiers in the breach long enough, if the battle were to spill into another day, and another day … quite possibly the assembled nobles with their men-at-arms might begin to stand down, their selfish allegiances to the king softening.
She scanned the front line of the fighting and quickly spotted the silhouette of Bob, head and shoulders taller than anyone else.
She took the wooden box from Cabot and tucked it under one arm. ‘Stay close to me,’ she commanded him before picking her way through the marketplace carpeted with the dead and the dying, arrow stems sprouting from the dirt like freshly grown weeds.
She clambered up the incline of rubble, forcefully barging aside tired men from her path, scanning faces, on both sides: looking for Liam, looking for John. She collared a garrison soldier clambering downhill, blood-soaked and exhausted. ‘Where is the Earl of Cornwall?’
He shook his head and she realized that over the din of roaring voices and the clatter and ring of blades on shields he could not hear her.
‘WHERE IS JOHN?’ she bellowed directly into his ear.
The man pointed a shaking finger uphill. ‘He fights alongside us!’
Becks pushed past him, her feet finding a soft carpet of bodies now that shuddered and twisted underfoot. Above the din she could hear the bass notes of Bob’s voice, a deep roaring anger that seemed to fill the entire space of the breach, like an echo of whale song or the trumpeting of some enraged elephant.
She picked out his head and shoulders again — slow, shuddering, sweeping movements that told her he was fast on his way to becoming a spent force now, exhausted from exertion, or loss of blood — quite probably both.
She was nearly at the crest of the small hill of debris and bodies when she heard the sharp peal of a distant horn above the cacophony.
The clatter and ring of blades almost immediately ceased as both sides of the struggle on the mound halted their melee and disengaged, weary catcalls and taunts being exchanged as the men of Richard’s army withdrew to take another water break.
Becks took advantage of the lull in the fight to push her way up the last few yards.
‘Bob!’ she said.
He turned slowly. His eyes flickered recognition, perhaps even relief. ‘Becks.’
‘I need to locate John and Liam.’
Before Bob could point them out, Liam’s voice rang out. ‘Becks!’
She turned to see him squeeze past some bloody and grimy men descending the slope to get to the water-bearers. He stepped awkwardly over several entangled bodies and then with a careless relief swung his arms round her.
‘I thought we’d lost you, so I did!’ He lowered his voice. ‘We thought you’d open a window directly after you left!’
She nodded. ‘There were difficulties. This battle is causing instability.’ She regarded the thick carpet of bodies beyond the city wall. ‘You are doing too well.’
Liam snorted humourlessly. ‘Too well? You’ve got to be joking. One more push and they’ll be through for sure.’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps not. The light is failing and fighting will cease for the day. Another day will weaken the attacker’s resolve and strengthen the defender’s morale.’ She caught a glimpse of John, looking exhausted and drenched with sweat beneath the weight of his mail
and helmet, and smeared with drying blood. He was talking animatedly with some of the other defenders, high on the adrenaline rush, sharing the water with them.
John is in danger of becoming an inspiring leader.
She tipped her head his way. ‘He is becoming strong.’
Liam followed her gaze and understood what she was saying. ‘This — this fight, it’s changing him, isn’t it? Changing his destiny.’
She nodded. ‘It is causing contamination.’
He noticed the box clasped under her arm. ‘You’ve brought it back. Does that mean …?’
She finished his thought. ‘Yes. It is safe to pass on to Richard. He will get nothing from it.’
Liam could hear Cabot talking to John now, the old friends embracing. Then the monk gestured up to the top of the mound towards Becks. Liam saw John’s face suddenly crease with relief and joy. They made their way up to join them.
‘My lady,’ gasped John, breathless.
Liam and Bob silently looked on in admiration as Becks swiftly changed her manner. ‘Sire,’ she replied softly, with a tender restrained smile that lingered just for him.
‘Sire,’ cut in Cabot, ‘Lady Rebecca has it right there.’ He was careful not to say Grail in case the word carried down the slope to the others. ‘You can now make terms with King Richard.’
John sneered. ‘I shall not bow down to him … to that animal. Never again!’
Becks reached a hand to his face and stroked his cheek. ‘My dear … you have shown your honour today, shown courage. You have been strong.’
‘The king will respect that,’ said Cabot. ‘Ye gave him a good fight, Sire.’
John spat a mouthful of thick phlegm at the ground. ‘I would sooner cut off his hand than kiss his royal ring!’
‘You have done what was necessary,’ whispered Becks. ‘Now you should make peace with your brother — ’
‘Or you’ll risk dividing this country with a war, Sire!’ said Cabot.
John’s eyes studied them both, then he nodded at Liam. ‘What do you say, Sheriff? You have led well here; I would trust your council as well.’
Liam wiped grime and sweat from his forehead. ‘I think they’re right, Sire.’ He pressed his lips together. ‘Nobody else needs to die here today.’ He glanced at the box. ‘And you can parlay reasonable terms now, Sire.’