by Alex Scarrow
John stroked his chin thoughtfully for a while. ‘But that brother of mine is a danger to this country. His endless wars — his crusades — his obsession with this — ’
‘My lord?’ Becks leaned towards him and whispered something in his ear. The expression on John’s face slowly changed as her lips moved.
‘How would you know of such things?’ John quietly replied a moment later.
She smiled at him. ‘You must trust me on this.’
He regarded her in silence for a long while. ‘Lady Rebecca … I have never before encountered someone quite so …’ He shook his head, struggling to find the right word.
‘Trust me,’ she whispered again. ‘Your time will come.’
He clamped his jaw and then finally, slowly, nodded. ‘I will speak with him, then.’
CHAPTER 82
1194, Nottingham
John noted the look of surprise on his older brother’s face as he entered the dark gloom of the tent.
‘Little brother,’ his deep voice growled with amusement, ‘you look like you have finally got your hands bloodied in battle.’
John stepped forward. He said nothing.
‘You surprise me,’ Richard laughed. ‘Finally, you seem to have outgrown your wet-nurse. I suppose, because you have at last managed to wield a sword in battle, that you consider yourself a man, uh?’ Richard’s smile turned to a sneer. ‘Hardly. You are still a snot-nosed whelp. But I will credit you with taking a first step.’
John met his stern gaze. ‘Thank you,’ he uttered flatly.
‘Now,’ Richard stood up. ‘The matter at hand. You have the Grail with you?’
John pulled the scroll from a fold in his tunic.
Richard slowly nodded. John could see the stretching pink of his lips among the thatch of blond bristles. ‘Oh yes,’ he whispered. ‘You have no idea, do you, little brother? No idea of the power this … this yard of parchment conveys?’
‘It is just words.’
Richard’s deep laugh filled the tent. ‘Just words, he says. Just words!’ He shook his head. ‘You are an imbecile. This is a message from God. A message given a thousand years ago — a message that was always intended for me. Do you not see? The wars I have fought, my crusade against the infidels … was at the Lord’s bidding. He spoke to me, told me where to find this message. And you thought to steal it from me? To use this to bargain with me?’
His face darkened. ‘I would happily cut out your tongue, little brother, pluck your eyes from their sockets and hurl your head into a field for the crows to dine on, for your daring to play with my destiny. But …’ he smiled, ‘but you have shown some spirit in fighting me today. I like that.’ He held his hand out towards John. ‘Now, give me the Grail and I will consider leniency for you.’
‘And what of the people of Nottingham?’
Richard’s thick eyebrows arched. ‘You actually care for those peasants?’
‘They fought with courage.’
‘They are no more than farm animals, little brother, beasts of burden. They fight because they are commanded to fight. No more brave than a horse that charges because its rider has kicked its flanks.’
‘I am asking for leniency for them.’
‘Their king has returned!’ Richard snapped irritably. ‘Those … those vermin dared to challenge my authority! A few hundred of their heads on spikes lining the road into Nottingham will ensure I have no more nonsense like this to deal with!’
John felt his resolve weaken. ‘But they were merely defending their homes.’
‘Give me the Grail.’
Push him not too far … he might still decide to have your head!
Richard’s outstretched fingers wriggled. ‘The Grail. Now!’
John clasped it more tightly. ‘Give me — ’
‘Give me?’ Richard’s eyes widened. ‘Give me? You say “give me”? I will give you exactly what I decide to give you! And if it is your life, then it is only because it is — because it is not wise for the common folk to see royal blood spilled!’
John could see his brother struggling to control a burning rage, a pinkness in his cheeks, a throbbing vein across his forehead.
Push him more … and he might strike your head off right now.
John felt whatever strength he’d entered the tent with, ebb quickly away.
‘I … I insist I have your word there will be no example made of them.’
Richard’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do not anger me further, little brother,’ he said quietly, ‘I have been patient enough with you.’
John quickly held the scroll towards the candle burning on the table in the centre of the tent.
‘STOP!’ yelled Richard.
‘I will burn it, brother — I will!’
Richard’s wide-eyed stare flickered from the candle to the edge of the parchment, mere inches away. His face darkened with rage, his lips twitched, his hands slowly reaching for the sword beneath his cape. Then, like sun piercing through scudding grey clouds, his demeanour changed. He suddenly laughed.
‘Good God, you’ve grown some fighting spirit!’
John held the scroll where it was.
‘So be it! You will have my word.’
‘Nottingham will not be punished?’
Richard slowly shook his head. ‘They will not.’
John felt his guts loosen. He struggled to keep a gasp of relief inside him.
‘Then you can have your piece of parchment,’ he said as calmly as he could manage. He held it out towards King Richard. Richard took it from him, unravelled several inches of it to be sure it was the Grail. He examined it in silence for a moment, before carefully rolling it up again.
‘As king, my word is of course law,’ said Richard.
‘You will honour that?’
He nodded. ‘I will. Now … kneel and kiss my hand.’
John steadied himself with a deep breath, then stooped to hold Richard’s proffered hand.
‘You are going to see, little brother, the making of one Kingdom stretching from this miserable wet island of England to Jerusalem. One Kingdom under God … under me.’
John struggled to suppress a wry smile on his own face as he pursed his lips. There’d been something about Lady Rebecca’s whispered assurance — an assurance about things yet to be — something in the way she said it that he could actually believe it to be true.
The Grail will give him nothing, John. And … you will be king in less than five years.
‘Kiss my hand!’ commanded Richard.
‘Yes … yes, of course,’ muttered John.
CHAPTER 83
2001, New York
Adam stood beside Sal and gazed out at the darkness. America, at least what they could see of it, a dark wilderness of tall cedar trees beneath a clear night sky and a crescent moon that gazed down at its own shimmering reflection on the gently rippling surface of the East River.
‘It’s like … It’s just how I imagine America must have looked before Columbus first landed,’ Adam whispered. ‘Out there somewhere, there must be tribes of Native Americans, running around, free and living just as they were back in the fifteenth century.’
Sal nodded. ‘I like it like this. No people.’
‘So … Maddy said you came from 2026?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell me, what’s it like?’
She shrugged. ‘Crowded. Busy. Noisy. At least where we lived it was.’
‘Is there any really cool … you know, technology?’
‘Like?’
‘I dunno — flying cars or something?’
Sal snorted. ‘No. It’s all rickshaws and battered old Nanos. The air’s thick with toxins and stuff. And there were the troubles in the north.’
‘Troubles?’
‘Terrorists, bombs. Things weren’t so good with Taliban-Pakistan. My father worried about what was going to happen in India. What with that and the flooding areas and migrants.’
They listened to the woods, the ca
ll of a heron, the lapping of the river up the shingle banks nearby.
‘The future doesn’t sound so great,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-uh. I remember … everything felt so … so — ’ she struggled to find a word that worked — ‘so … temporary. Like you couldn’t really get used to anything, because you knew it wasn’t going to last forever.’
‘Sheesh, that’s my future too, then. Twenty-five years from now.’ He did a quick sum. ‘I’ll be fifty-two, fifty-three then. I wonder if I’ll still be in New York?’
‘New York’s not so good,’ she replied. ‘They started evacuating parts of it.’
‘Flooding?’
‘Uh-huh. And growing crime and food riots and stuff. Like we were having in Mumbai.’
‘Jesus,’ Adam sighed. ‘You make the future sound depressing.’
‘Sorry,’ she replied softly.
‘No — not your fault, Sal. Thanks for, you know, being honest about it.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Makes you wonder why you bother doing anything if that’s how it all goes. Like, why am I bothering with my consulting job? Saving up for a retirement that sounds like, well … a nightmare.’
‘It’s only a nightmare for the poor,’ she replied. ‘For those with lots of money it’s just …’ Sal hesitated.
‘Sal? What is it?’
She looked at him. ‘I think there’s a big wave coming.’ She leaned around and ducked her head under the shutter. ‘Maddy! Time wave! Big one!’
Maddy pulled herself off the bunk and staggered bleary-eyed to join them in the doorway.
‘There it is!’ said Sal, pointing east.
A dark wall approached; like last time, rolling in from the Atlantic, looking like a mountain range advancing rapidly towards them.
‘Better come inside, so you’re not right on the edge of the concrete,’ Maddy said, pointing at the crumbling edge of the field office’s force-field effect. Adam and Sal shuffled quickly inside and crouched on the floor just inside the archway.
‘Here it comes,’ uttered Maddy. ‘Just hope this one gets us back.’
Adam watched the churning black wall approach like a tsunami, blotting out the sky, the stars, the crescent moon. ‘I wonder whether we’d be better hanging on to this,’ he said, nodding at the wilderness. ‘Given how it all goes in the future.’
‘Too late,’ said Sal.
The time wave rolled over Manhattan and the distant tall trees quivered and shook and vanished and swirled into a maelstrom of flickering possibilities. As the wave swept across the broad river, Adam thought he saw the ghostly outline of skyscrapers forming. Then, with a fresh gust of wind pushed before it, the wave was over them; a destructive tornado passing momentarily overhead, eating up reality that shouldn’t be and laying down, in its wake, reality that should.
And then as soon as it had arrived it was gone.
Outside, a cobbled street littered with plastic bags and several wheeled dustbins. And the ambient noises of New York.
Sal was the first to step out. She looked to her left, towards the river, and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘looks like we’re back home.’
Adam and Maddy joined her. Manhattan glistened, flickered, shimmered in the night; the sky punctuated with the far-off winking lights of commercial airliners coming in to JFK and LaGuardia. A distant police siren, the booming of someone’s sound system.
A Monday night in New York, still very much alive, noisy and busy, even approaching midnight.
‘I better go check our database and see if history’s properly back,’ said Maddy.
Sal and Adam watched the night in silence for a while.
‘I kind of liked Manhattan the way it just was,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Sal sadly. ‘Me too.’
CHAPTER 84
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
It was a cool morning. For a change the clear blue sky with its relentlessly hot sun was tucked away behind a skein of combed-out clouds that looked thicker towards the west.
Cabot looked out of the stable across the priory’s parched vegetable gardens. ‘Looks like rain is coming. That is good.’
Liam admired the old man’s calming air of common sense. Amid all the things that had gone on, he was so very easily able to come back to his priory, to resume a role of quiet contemplation and address the practical matters of their small order.
‘When will ye leave?’ asked Cabot.
‘Soon,’ replied Liam. ‘Bob and Becks have a device in their heads that sort of does them in if they stay in a place for too long. Time’s nearly up, isn’t it?’
Bob nodded. ‘Remaining mission time: thirty-seven hours, forty-three minutes.’
‘A window will open just before that time runs out,’ said Liam, ‘unless we signal the field office to open one up sooner.’
‘Suggestion,’ said Becks, ‘it is not necessary to communicate again. The window in thirty-seven hours will be adequate.’
‘Agreed,’ said Bob.
Liam nodded. ‘Fine, then we’re in no hurry.’
The siege at Nottingham had ended peaceably. Although the citizens of the town had been quaking in fear at what King Richard would do to them, he had surprised them all with his unexpected leniency. There’d been some grumbling among the assembled army and their controlling barons, earls and dukes, who’d all been assuming they’d get a share of the town’s loot.
John had been sent with an escort of soldiers to London. Officially ‘pardoned’ by Richard, but perhaps not entirely trusted by him. Rumour was, John was going to be kept in the Tower for an undefined period as a punishment.
Becks had been allowed to visit him one last time before he was despatched south. She said he appeared to be relieved to still have his head on his shoulders.
‘He also appears to be exhibiting a different behavioural pattern,’ she’d reported after seeing him. Liam had asked her to describe it. ‘He no longer shakes. His at-rest heart rate is within normal parameters,’ she replied coolly. Liam had laughed at that. She’d managed to take his pulse as they’d embraced one last time.
‘I believe he’d make a good king,’ Cabot had said. ‘He may not ever be a great commander of soldiers, but he has other qualities worth speaking of. Prudence. Caution. Compassion.’
Compassion? Liam wondered now.
Perhaps. History was going to judge John harshly; he was destined to be known as England’s worst king. The king unable to hold on to the French territories his much ‘braver’ older brother fought so hard to keep hold of. The king who signed the Magna Carta granting legal rights to its subjects, but only because of the pressures put on him by England’s ‘valiant’ nobles.
There was a correct history, and it seemed like they’d managed to restore it. But Liam couldn’t help wondering if this ‘correct’ history, as it was recorded in history books and encyclopedias, was a true reflection of the past. A part of him was always going to wonder if the signing of the Magna Carta — signing away the most powerful privileges of the monarch — was really the result of nobles fighting for the rights of their peasants … or whether it was, in fact, King John’s idea, a gratitude to the common people of Nottingham for fighting for him.
‘Liam.’ Becks’s voice cut through his musings.
‘Uh?’
‘Liam, Bob and I have one remaining mission task.’
Liam looked at her, at Bob. ‘What now?’
Bob answered. ‘The Voynich Manuscript dates from this time. It has yet to be written.’
‘We have to write it,’ said Becks.
His jaw sagged open. ‘Hold on! Are you — you’re saying this Voynich thing was …?’
‘Was originally written by us?’ Becks nodded. ‘Yes. It was written by us to ensure we visited this time, this place.’
Liam frowned, trying to put the circular logic together. ‘But does that mean we’ve been here before?’ He scratched at his temple where a thin plume of grey hair grew.
‘It could mean that at some
point in time one or more of us has been here before to seed the Voynich Manuscript,’ said Bob.
‘You mean one of us will come here?’
‘Correct. Since we have no knowledge of it, this has yet to happen.’
‘But … but that means deliberately altering history, right? The very thing we’re supposed to be preventing?’ His brows knitted with confusion. ‘Hang on! Does that mean those clues that the Adam fella spotted …?’
‘Those are clues that were deliberately seeded to ensure Adam Lewis alone was able to identify and decode a specific portion of the Voynich Manuscript … in order to flag our attention,’ said Bob.
‘That is now no longer required,’ Becks continued. ‘The Voynich Manuscript must be written without those coded flags.’
‘Uh? But …?’
‘We no longer need to be alerted and brought to this place,’ said Bob. He turned to Becks. ‘This is also your conclusion?’
She nodded. ‘I concur. History is corrected. It is now an unacceptable historical contaminant for any of the Voynich to be translated.’
‘So … what’re you going to write?’ asked Liam.
‘I have detailed visual records of the document. I can duplicate it as it was, but without the South American characters that originally flagged Adam Lewis’s attention.’
‘So that means — ’ Liam frowned as he worked the logic through — ‘he’ll have never known about us?’
‘Affirmative. And, of course, never have tracked us down to New York.’
‘Right.’ He looked across at Cabot, sitting on a wooden bucket, looking almost as bemused at the exchange as Liam felt. ‘And what about our good friend here, Mr Cabot?’
Cabot smiled. ‘Aye. I was wondering when ye would be considering me.’
Both Becks and Bob looked at him dispassionately.
‘No!’ said Liam. ‘You’re not going to kill him, so help me! We couldn’t have fixed this all up without the fella’s help. You’re not going to hurt him — and that’s an order to both of you!’