Marfanor led them through a maze of long corridors, each lined with carefully wrapped paintings, vases and other precious objects until he stopped at another metal door with 11.790-793 engraved in roman numerals. The key he used to open it was even more intricate than the previous one.
He waved them in. ‘Good luck, my friend! Bon chance!’
‘Another time,’ said the colonel, shaking the man’s hand.
The door closed behind them with a thunderous clang, one that reverberated along the metal walls of the tunnel in a neverending echo. It was as if they had walked inside the barrel of an enormous gun.
‘So,’ the colonel said, blowing on his hands, ‘can we get a move on? I’m freezing.’ He pointed to a row of mannequins dressed in revolutionary costumes as if to say: ‘Help yourself.’
Josh chose a slightly torn blue velvet jacket and white, bloodstained breeches, along with a pair of muddy black boots. Near the lapel, the coat had a rosette of red, white and blue pinned over the seared edges of a bullet hole.
From his research, Josh recognised that the colonel had opted for something more militant; taking his inspiration from the ‘Sans-Culottes’ — the revolutionary army. He wore a red waistcoat, leather overcoat, red-and-white striped trousers, and a tricolour sash. Neither costume smelled as if it had been washed in decades, which he guessed was the kind of detail that kept you alive — turning up in a freshly pressed uniform in the middle of a revolution was as likely to get you killed as a powdered wig.
He looked around for some kind of weapon, but there were none, which was kind of a relief — they weren’t expecting to get into a fight on this mission.
The metal vault was long and quite dark. The lights were kept low for reasons of preservation, the colonel told him. There was a timer switch by the door, as well as a set of clockwork flashlights.
The colonel took a torch and began winding the handle until the bulb began to glow. Josh did the same, and soon they had enough light to make their way down the central aisle. The space was divided by old wooden shelving that ran along the length of the space for at least twenty metres. As far as Josh could make out, it was a vast storehouse of objects from the French Revolution. He began browsing the shelves with no real idea of what he was looking for, but knew that just one of these valuables would be able to set him and his mother up for life.
There were all manner of treasures. It was like shopping at a B&Q that had been restocked by the Antiques Roadshow. Each item was neatly wrapped in hessian or brown paper and labelled with a brass tag that had a long-date stamped into its tarnished metal. He assumed from the amount of dust surrounding them that they had been there for a very long time. Josh brushed at a few of the objects with his fingers and caught flashes of memories of dark rooms in forgotten palaces.
‘You will have to be quite selective in your choice. There are many objects here that are not relevant to our task. Try to find something with resonance that would have intersected with your target destination.’ The disembodied voice of the colonel spoke from somewhere beyond the light. It seemed distant and weak in the oppressive silence of the vault.
‘Why exactly are we doing this?’ whispered Josh. ‘I know it’s a test. But why this one? Art doesn’t really make a difference to history, does it?’
The colonel coughed. His voice sounded even further away.
‘Without art, what do you have? A bunch of books about logic and algebra? Art is the very expression of life! Of our hopes and dreams. Imagine how dull the world would be without artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Picasso. Who would help us to celebrate the beautiful complexity of life?’
There wasn’t time to celebrate as far as Josh was concerned. Art was for people who could pay their gas bills.
‘Don’t forget this was before photography. It was also one of the only ways to capture the zeitgeist,’ added the colonel, suddenly standing right next to him.
Josh had no idea what a zeitgeist was and was far too proud to ask.
He walked on a little further until he spotted a stack of letters that had been tied carefully with a red ribbon. There was something odd about them, they seemed to shimmer slightly, and he realised that unlike the rest of the shelf there was no dust on them — they’d been recently moved.
‘Ah, the diamond necklace affair,’ sighed the colonel, picking up the parcel of notes. ‘Eighty-seven point five per cent chance that this scandal was responsible for the downfall of the French monarchy and the instigation of the Revolution — I think this will do nicely.’
He handed the bundle to Josh, who immediately felt the strange prickling sensation as the timelines unwound from the surface of the paper. The black ink seemed to lift from the page as faint and sinuous moments rose like smoke, curling around his fingers. Josh began to explore the expanding matrices of the past, tentatively teasing out the knots of events. He caught glimpses of the people and places that had been involved in the affair: the woman who pretended to be the queen, the cardinal who was tricked into believing that she wanted such an extravagant necklace, and the secret room in the palace where the incriminating letters had been locked away for so many years afterwards.
He tried to pinch at a point with his thumb and forefinger, but it slipped away.
‘Take your time. You need to find a point before the room’s discovery. It was very close to the queen’s trial,’ the colonel advised gently. ‘Let the time flow — don’t snatch at it.’
Josh steadied his breathing and relaxed his mind; the line of events stretched out once more, and he followed it again until he came to the night the room was discovered. He watched the fine silver lockpicks in the rough hands of the locksmith as he worked on the secret door in the king’s apartments. Then he moved slowly backwards to a few hours before.
‘Now concentrate on that moment. Imagine yourself standing there in that room. Find something to focus on,’ the colonel whispered.
Far off, Josh could hear the cries of the crowds as they bayed for the death of another aristocrat. As he focused on the noise, he felt the floor shudder and vault fall away.
24
The Palace
[Paris, France. Date: 11.793-09-21]
The sounds of the crowd grew louder as he felt the space around him stabilise, and he found himself standing in the apartments of the King of France. Ignoring the small, lingering wave of nausea, he went to the secret door and when he touched the smooth wood, looking for a seam or hinge, he sensed the power of the history that pivoted on the objects stored within it.
There was no sign of the colonel. The baying of a rabble cursing at the top of their voices came from outside the apartments and Josh tentatively opened the door and went outside.
He followed the sound until he came to a balcony. Peering down into the ornate theatre below, he could feel the violence and hate emanating from the crowds. A woman in a torn gown was standing within a circle of very angry-looking peasants. Her wig had been thrown onto the floor and what was left of her own hair was stuck to her head in limp strands. There was blood on one side of her mouth, and one eye was nearly closed with the swelling. She sobbed silently as a grim-faced judge sat on a theatrical throne, reading out something in French from a long sheet of paper.
Josh searched the faces for any sign of the colonel. He didn’t like the thought of being alone in one of the most violent periods of French history — especially when he couldn’t speak a word of their language.
The cries of ‘Guillotine!’ needed no translation as the woman was dragged away in hysterics. The crowd parted to allow her to be escorted out by two burly guards in the red-and-blue uniforms of the Sans-Culottes. As they passed underneath his balcony, Josh saw the familiar face of the old man — the colonel was helping the woman out of the room.
Josh had read that the Tuileries Palace had been used by the Revolutionary Council as a kangaroo court for the sentencing of the aristocracy — including royalty. Their leader, Robespierre, had been a lawyer and insisted that
they should follow the rule of law when they prosecuted the gentry. His Jacobin deputies were not so bothered about justice. They were the ones that eventually brought Robespierre down and had him executed as well.
Josh visualised the floor plan of the building in his mind. Maps were something of a speciality, as if he had an internal GPS that instinctively told him the right way to go — useful when evading cops at 90mph through the back streets of London.
He moved quietly down the marble staircase, passing through the mass of onlookers who were using the stairs to get a better view of the spectacle. They were hysterical, like wild animals — spitting and screaming for blood as the prisoners were brought before the court. The crowd had become judge and jury, and the chief prosecutor was playing up to them as if it were some deadly game show. Josh had read that life had been hard for them under the king, but the hatred that was being unleashed in this room was the worst side of humanity he had ever witnessed.
Reaching the ground floor, he forced his way through the crowds towards the gilded doors that the colonel had used. He kept his head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. He had hated languages at school, and couldn’t remember anything more than ‘pardon’ and ‘merci’. His route was diverted by the surging crush of the crowd; many were drunk and only standing because of the press of bodies around them. Others were moving closer to get a better view as the names were read out. By the smell of it, no one had had a bath in months, the room was a seething mass of body odour, garlic and sour wine-breath.
The door was shut and as he went to open it a man’s arm barred his way.
‘Non!’ a voice commanded. ‘On ne passe pas!’
Josh turned to the man and made out like he needed to piss urgently. The man grunted and pointed at a door a few metres away. He was a huge, thickset brute with a low brow that made him look like a caveman. His hands were the kind that could snap your neck in an instant, certainly not the type with whom you picked a fight in the middle of a lynch mob. Josh nodded to him, and made for the other door.
The room was a jumble of requisitioned artefacts looted from the mansions of the wealthy. They had been casually dumped wherever there was space. Priceless treasures were piled on top of one another, crammed into every available nook and cranny — like the back room of a charity shop. Standing amongst the clutter, Josh became aware of the buzzing drone of flies and the distinct tang of urine in the air. As he followed the sound, he began to realise that every Ming vase, Grecian urn and silver punch bowl was brimful with a dark, pungent, straw-coloured liquid.
Josh scrambled over the clutter to the nearest window, pulled back the curtains and opened the latch just before the breath he was holding ran out. Sucking in lungfuls of fresh air, he looked out over the gardens towards the River Seine. The view reminded him of the one he’d seen in 1971. When he looked closer, he could see that it essentially it was the same — except for the lack of cars, modern art and ornamental sculptures.
Smoke was rising over the rooftops of the houses on the far banks of the river. He watched as mobs of peasants ran rampage along the streets, destroying everything in their path: it was a war zone. Though there were no police, no army, nothing but pure anarchy, pure rage and it was horrifying.
All the other doors in the room were blocked by stacks of furniture. Josh’s eyes swept the room for anything useful. It was just his luck to have picked a room with no other exits and a hoard of piss-filled treasure he couldn’t take back with him — even if he’d wanted to.
He thought about hitting the reset button on his tachyon and going back to the present, but that felt like admitting defeat and he wasn’t about to quit. Instead, he began rummaging through the drawers and boxes in search of anything that he could sell: a coin, a ring or even a silver spoon from this age would be worth a fortune back in the present, or could at least be used as a marker for a return visit.
Then he saw the swan.
The picture looked as if it had been hidden by someone who wanted to keep it safe. It was placed carefully behind a tapestry and a stack of ornate golden dishes, but there was no mistaking it — there was his mission objective, his prize. Leda and the Swan, the missing masterpiece created by Michelangelo for the Duke of Ferrara. The colonel had been correct about one thing: art did have a value — he knew this one was worth millions.
The subject was of a naked woman entwined with a swan. The sexual undertones were not lost on Josh, but he wasn’t interested in subliminal sixteenth-century porn. He just wanted to get it and get out of this madhouse.
He moved the other items aside so he could see it properly. This painting had been missing for more than three hundred years and in his time there were many collectors who would pay a fortune for it. All he had to do was follow its timeline back into the present and then take it to the right dealer, and he would be rich.
Josh slowly reached out with his hand until his fingertips brushed the paint. He could feel the lines of energy resonating just beneath the surface of the canvas; the sinuous flowering of its history rose at his touch.
Then suddenly he snatched his hand away.
The temptation to leave the colonel and claim his prize was a powerful one, but it was too easy. He had no idea what the old fool was doing next door. For all Josh knew this could be part of the test. There was a moment when he had nearly convinced himself that it would be better to just look after himself and take the path within the picture, when another cry of ‘Guillotine!’ went up from outside the door and he dismissed the idea.
The thought of spending the rest of his days looking over his shoulder for the colonel or one of his Order was not something he relished — especially if they had the power to go back into his past and wipe him out.
Josh picked up one of the golden chairs, rammed it under the door handle and sat down on it, resting his head in his hands. He needed a plan. He needed to know what was going on in the next room, but couldn’t see how he’d do that without going out of the window and facing the marauding gangs. The smell from the pots was getting worse, and the flies were starting to pay more attention to him than the festering piss buckets.
Then he had an idea — he was thinking too linearly.
25
Lost Treasure of the Bourbons
The colonel was standing amongst a desperate-looking bunch of guards as they played dice for what was left of Marie Antoinette’s jewellery. The former queen sat weeping quietly on one of the stolen sofas, her dress torn and dirty, with a ridiculous mess of a wig balanced on her head, trying to retain some dignity.
Josh was slouched in a chair at the back of the room pretending to be a drunk sleeping off the booze. A half-finished bottle of wine sat in his lap, a propaganda leaflet was screwed up in one hand and a stolen hat pulled down over his face. From beneath the tattered brim he’d saw the colonel enter with the queen, watched how the old man had protected her from the worst of the beatings from her guards.
As far as Josh could make out, they were waiting for her transport, which had been delayed by the chaos outside. The colonel was arguing with one of the other guards over her shoes when he first noticed the drunk in the corner — there had been the slightest hint of recognition, a creasing around the eyes, and then he had gone back to his disagreement.
It had taken Josh a while to get himself into the locked room. He’d gone through the timelines of the pisspots to find the moment when the guard had left his post to take a leak. It was possibly the most disgusting thing he’d ever had to do.
There was no one to be seen, and the room into which the colonel would escort the queen was empty. With nothing else to do but wait, Josh spotted a comfortable place to rest, found something that resembled food to eat, then went to sleep for a couple of hours.
The first time he awoke, the room was full of revolutionaries, all armed to the teeth. He panicked, attracting too much attention and ending with him having to use the ‘rewind’ button on his watch before getting stabbed with various sharp obje
cts.
The second time he woke slowly, keeping still to appear as though he were asleep.
For the next two hours, he watched in silence as desperate men and women of the aristocracy were dragged through the antechamber. It was a waiting room for the damned. Their desperate pleas for mercy as they went into the court would haunt him. Robespierre himself came in at one point to check a list of names with one of the men.
When the colonel finally arrived, Josh realised that he hadn’t thought his plan through. He’d been so wrapped up with how to get into the room that he hadn’t considered what the colonel was doing in there in the first place. What was keeping them here? Was he seriously trying to save the queen?
While the men were busy with the dice, the colonel went over to the lady and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and turned towards Josh. A weak smile moved across her lips as she dabbed her eyes with the corner of a lace handkerchief. It was like some kind of signal. She looked calmly at something above Josh’s head and then back at him her eyes widening a little as if to say, ‘Look up.’
Josh pretended to yawn and sat straighter in his seat. No one paid him any attention as he scratched at his neck and took a swig from the bottle. He turned his head up to look at what the queen had glanced at and saw a lamp flickering in front of the now defaced portrait of her husband Louis XVI. It was delicately balanced on the mantelpiece and teetering above a large bundle of papers and pamphlets that had been dumped in front of the fireplace.
Josh turned back to look at the colonel who was holding the hilt of his sword as if ready to draw — his thumb was marking time on the pommel and one of his feet was tapping along to an unheard tune. It was clear that he was waiting for Josh to do something.
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