The Lost Prophecies

by The Medieval Murderers

  Cloke glanced down at the black-bound book where it lay neglected on the grass. The book that he’d secreted in Abel’s bag. The book that was surely part of the mysterious plan he referred to.

  ‘We?’ said Abel, finding his voice. ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘A certain group connected with the Council,’ said Cloke. ‘A private group.’

  He meant the Privy Council. More specifically, he meant those agents of the Council under the direct control of Robert Cecil. Little Cecil, recently ennobled (again) and now the Earl of Salisbury. Wrynecked Cecil who had his fingers in more pies than you could count. Crookback Cecil, who ran a network of spies and intelligencers in the name of national security. I had encountered Robert Cecil once at the time of the Essex uprising in Queen Elizabeth’s dying days. The thought of those days – and of Cecil in particular – was enough to make my guts do a little dance. I tried to keep this from showing on my face, but no doubt Cloke was accustomed to the reaction prompted by any mention of the Council.

  ‘I thought you were our friend, Thomas,’ said Abel. ‘I thought you enjoyed being in our company and attending our plays.’

  ‘I did not object to your company and I am a devotee of the playhouse. But some things are more important than friendship, Master Glaze.’

  ‘You are not even Thomas Cloke,’ I said. ‘Tell the truth – your name is not Cloke.’ Abel turned to look at me. The other man said nothing so I ploughed on, more confident in my theory. ‘The Shaws were surprised when I told them that their kinsman was a playgoer. He is not, but you are. So who are you, Master . . . ?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said the man we’d thought of as Thomas Cloke.

  ‘Is there really a Thomas Cloke?’ said Abel, and then, realizing the question was foolish (since the Shaws had willingly acknowledged Cloke as their kinsman), he asked instead: ‘What has happened to the real Cloke? Is he dead?’

  ‘Alive and well, as far as I know,’ said the man who wasn’t Cloke. ‘I took on his name as a means of getting close to Combe House. Cloke is indeed a cousin to that nest of recusants.’

  ‘But you could not get too near the house or the family, could you?’ I said. It was all becoming clear to me. I had to struggle to keep the admiration out of my voice, admiration at the neatness of the scheme concocted by the ‘private group’ of the Council. ‘For some reason you wanted to convey that item to Combe, but you had to make yourself scarce before you got there. Otherwise they would have recognized you – or not recognized you as Cloke.’

  ‘Very good, Nicholas.’

  ‘You pretended that your companions now, these gentlemen, were actually your pursuers. You put on a good act of being fearful so that when we were ambushed – and you were apparently killed – we’d accept it without question.’

  ‘Good again, Master Revill.’

  ‘So what did you use for your imaginary wound? The fatal wound?’

  ‘You recall our chat in the Knight of the Carpet? The two of you had just come offstage from playing in The Melancholy Man. You did a good death scene, Nicholas, you with your bladder of sheep’s blood and all that writhing about. Well, what did you think of my death scene, eh? The shot that rings out in the woods, the pool of blood that spreads across the chest of the victim, the way he huddles over his horse’s neck, the manner in which he falls helplessly to the ground. I used sheep’s blood too. Convincing, eh? Do you think Master Shakespeare and the other shareholders would give me a place with the King’s Men?’

  ‘No,’ said Abel. ‘There’s more to being a player than dying well.’

  ‘Sir!’

  It was the man stationed by the road. He gestured in the direction we’d come from, to the south-east. I noticed the way he addressed Cloke as ‘sir’. The other three stiffened and one of the musket-holders took a sudden interest in his weapon.

  ‘Why did you go to such lengths? What was it all about? Was it on account of that book there?’

  I asked partly out of genuine curiosity but also to distract ‘Thomas Cloke’ from whatever he planned to do with us. He spoke with great certainty and command. He was quite different from the man I’d encountered in a couple of taverns, quite different from the idle follower of the players. But he was human enough to be proud of his trickery. And the longer he talked, the greater the chance of some travellers passing.

  ‘On account of that book? No, not directly. The Armageddon Text – as they are pleased to call it – is useful to smoke out renegades and traitors. There was one such in Combe House.’

  ‘Henry Gifford?’ said Abel.

  ‘That was one of his names, but he was no more a Gifford than I am a Cloke.’

  ‘You know the priest is dead, then,’ I said.

  ‘We have heard. We did not stir far from Combe last night or this morning. We became . . . aware . . . that a man had died in the house. But he was no priest. Or if he was, it was merely a cover for worse work. Gifford was an agent for our old enemies.’

  ‘Old enemies? The Spanish? I thought we were at peace with them. A treaty was signed last year.’

  The Council man smiled slightly as if in pity at my ignorance or naivety. ‘Oh, we are at a formal peace, Nicholas. But there are elements on their side who are conspiring with sects over here . . .’

  ‘So the whole business was a means of smoking out this Gifford?’

  ‘You have hit on it. We knew that the Armageddon Text would be irresistible to Gifford . . . for reasons I do not wish to enlarge on. It smoked him out, as you said. What we could not have counted on was such a happy result after the smoking-out. That Gifford would perish in Combe House. One less of them!’

  ‘Cloke’ snapped his fingers to reinforce his last words. The man at the roadside called out in greater alarm. He unclasped his raised hand twice to show that a substantial number of travellers was moving up the road.

  ‘Now if you’ll just surrender the Armageddon Text, Abel,’ he said. ‘It is a dangerous volume, ripe for sects and factions.’

  Abel bent down to pick up the black book. It had grass stains on the wooden cover, to join the other marks of use. My friend handed it to our erstwhile companion, who said: ‘We will leave you now. You have played your part as true Englishmen, whether you meant to or not. But, Nicholas and Abel, do not enquire into this matter any further. There is a very serious threat to our land, but with the help of this black volume we shall smoke out more of the traitors.’

  The individual we’d known as Thomas Cloke vanished into the trees together with his retinue. A couple of minutes later, another large party rode past the clearing, and Abel and I remounted and trotted off in their wake. I can’t speak for Abel, but it took many miles before I stopped looking over my shoulder and grasping my reins tight. Had we seen the last of the Armageddon Text? I devoutly hoped so.

  There were a couple of sequels to our excursion at Combe House, one private and sad, the other public and terrifying.

  After Abel and I parted company, I reached Shipston on Stour in time to see my dying uncle and his wife Margaret. She was profuse in her thanks for my arrival. He, poor fellow, was scarcely in a condition to recognize me or anyone else. But he was a Revill, and a Nicholas to boot, and he was my father’s true brother. With a moist eye, I saw the likeness in his drawn face. He clutched my hand and mumbled some words before I was shooed out of the room so that a priest could administer the final rites.

  Yes, my uncle also was an adherent of the old religion. It was on account of his faith that he had fallen out with my father or vice versa. All this I had from Margaret. My father, an unforgiving man in some ways, had cut himself off from his only sibling, had never spoken to him, had never attempted to communicate with him.

  Margaret had seen my name on a playbill she had picked up in Oxford a couple of years previously. The Chamberlain’s Men, as we then were, had played Oxford at a period when plague closed the London theatres. Margaret Revill had been struck by the coincidence of names. When she showed the bill to her husband, he remark
ed that John, my father, had himself been drawn towards the stage-play world in his young days. (This was amazing to me. My father was stout in his abhorrence of the stage. But then I reflected on the way in which people’s passions can change violently to their contrary and it became less amazing.) Anyway, the coincidence of names and my father’s one-time ardour for acting had been enough for Margaret to write at her husband’s dictation a letter addressed to me at the Theatre, London. Nicholas was on his deathbed and he was eager to see his nephew, having no surviving children of his own. So even if he was not absolutely sure who I was, I hope I brought some comfort to his dying moments.

  The other event was more momentous. The cryptic lines in the Armageddon Text about parleyment and sparks and fires were a prediction of the powder-treason which caused such a stir in the land later that year. When the attempt was made to destroy parleyment, Abel and I at once remembered that verse which I had laboriously copied out and translated. We could scarcely look each other in the eye for a time, as if we were the guilty ones!

  It was said that the plot and plotters, both lay and priest, were nurtured in houses very similar to Combe. I am sure that was true. But we two humble players were less certain about the part played by the Black Book of Brân. When Abel and I did eventually talk together after the powder-treason was revealed in the November of 1605, we conversed in low tones and whispers. Like everyone else, we were outraged by the attempt to destroy our king and the members of parleyment (to say nothing of those innocents who would have been caught up in the slaughter).

  As you know, the plot was thwarted and no lives were forfeit except those of the plotters. But in our hints and whispers Abel and I couldn’t help wondering how long beforehand the authorities had been aware of the conspiracy, whether, in fact, they might have been instrumental in bringing it to a head so that it could be lanced like a boil.

  In this counter-plot against the powder-plot, it was useful to both sides to have possession of the black-bound volume, the Armageddon Text. For the plotters, the prediction of the ruin of parleyment gave validity to what they were trying to do. See, they could say, this event was foreseen hundreds of years ago by an Irish monk, divinely inspired. While for men like Robert Cecil and his agent ‘Thomas Cloke’, the existence of the book and the ‘parleyment’ verse in particular was proof of the other side’s wicked purposes and a useful means of smoking out traitors. Those who suffered were people like the Shaws, decent and honourable families who simply wanted to live and worship as they had always done. No doubt they were under special scrutiny now. My uncle too, had he survived, might have been added to the catalogue of suspects.

  But I kept this line of thinking to myself. It was not a good time to voice doubts about the activities of the Privy Council nor to express fellow feeling with adherents of the old religion. The world slipped back to black and white, as it does from time to time.

  I wondered what had happened to the Black Book of Brân. The man who wasn’t Cloke had carted it off, no doubt taking it back to London, where it might cause further mischief. I wondered too what was contained in the rest of the volume, what other disasters and catastrophes it predicted. Best not to know, I thought. If the disasters were in the past, they had already happened and the world had survived. And if Armageddon was still to come – and we are promised it will come – well, then, it would come despite anything that Nicholas Revill might do. With luck, he would not be around to see it. I shouldn’t think you would feel any different.

  ACT SIX

  March 2135

  Five hundred thirty years, then God returns to save

  His chosen, once the sinful have been purged.

  Their wicked cities flayed by burning sun and

  drowned in purging flood,

  And at the end a sun-bright fire of blood.

  I

  The news on the radio that morning was bad. Shiva listened to it as he dressed. The giant rivers carrying meltwater from the remnant Antarctic ice sheet had risen again; another metre rise in sea levels was predicted for the decade. Locally, the newscaster reported that changes in seabed currents around the drowned Sizewell B power station had brought increased radioactivity in the sea around the eastern English islands. Shiva thought ruefully that in coming to Yorkshire for his holiday he had only placed himself in a different kind of danger from that which he faced in his work. Like most English people, Shiva wore a radiation ring; Alice had given it to him, a heavy gold ring with a circle in the middle. The circle turned red if the radiation in the atmosphere approached dangerous levels. It was the usual safe dark green this morning, but he would avoid the fish tonight.

  On the windowsill he had set his foot-high copper statue of Shiva, the Indian god after whom he was named, a young man dancing inside a circle of fire, keeping the world in existence, in balance. It was a thing of beautiful symmetry, brought by an ancestor from India. Although Shiva had no religion, he liked to sit contemplating it. The face of the four-armed god was enigmatic, with a secret smile.

  There was a beeping sound from the computer on the table. Shiva frowned. The POWER OFF switch could be overridden only by an urgent official message. Hastily buttoning his kaftan, he crossed to his machine and opened it up. A single, short message in his receive-box, unsigned:

  Please attend EU Commissioner Williams at Commission HQ, Victoria Square, Birmingham, today 21.3.35 at 9 p.m. Fast motorboat arriving to collect 10 a.m. Please confirm receipt.

  Shiva hesitated, then pressed the ACKNOWLEDGE button. Ten a.m. – he had only an hour. He looked thoughtfully at the blank screen. A commissioner rather than his superintendent? And a motorboat, eating into the Commission’s petrol ration? This was something urgent.

  He walked outside. A pair of canaries took off from the bush beside the chalet. The air was crisp and clear, the heat of the day hours off. A palm-shaded walkway led past the other chalets, the rising sun glinting at an angle on their solar panels. Nearby, dwarfing the young coconut palms with its steeple, stood a square-towered Norman church. There had been a village here for a thousand years and there still was, a cluster of low earthhouses, the blades of their little windmills clacking gently in the morning breeze, chickens and skinny goats poking for food in the dusty street. The space between the chalets was closely planted with vegetable gardens; every patch of fertile ground on earth was planted now.

  A tall red-haired man, an inspector from Wales, stood in the doorway of the next chalet, cup in hand, enjoying the early cool. Shiva nodded and walked past him, down to the sea. He had spoken little to his fellow vacationers since his arrival a week ago. The hurt look Marwood gave him as he was led down from the dock kept coming back to him in the middle of conversations.

  The sea was nearby; the island was small, only a few miles across. Warm surf splashed on the rocky shore, and the water, deep and blue, stretched westwards to the Pennines. A clipper passed in the distance, tall and stately. In the far distance was a vague white blob. Shiva fixed his eyes on it. A couple of days before, he had seen, through binoculars, the twin towers of York Minster rising sixty feet from the water. Most of the high twentieth-century buildings of London had collapsed as the sea rose around them; he had seen films of the toppled steel skeletons leaning against each other, a crazy giant latticework in the water. Yet the medieval minster still stood, resisting monsoons and hurricanes.

  The Great Catastrophe of the Twenty-First Century. On the computer, the documentaries and discussion programmes were endless. Shaky footage of huge refugee boats being bombed out of the water as they crossed into European territorial waters; the migrant wars in the Alpine foothills; the mushroom clouds as Chinese missiles rained on Moscow, China’s reply to the Russian nuclear attack on the millions marching into Siberia from the flooded northern provinces. Watching these programmes, the human race endlessly scratched its great wound, assuaging guilt, perhaps, or simply seeking contact with the dead billions.

  Many cursed the people of earlier generations for their refusal
to act before the changes spiralled out of all control, and the worst, the very worst predictions of climate change came true. Scientists had warned that the great stores of methane hydrates on the seabed could erupt to the surface as the seas warmed, and in the 2040s they did, the oceans boiling, throwing millions of tons of methane into the air. Runaway chaos followed, worsened when the Antarctic icecap started to melt, destabilizing the tectonic plate on which the continent rested and causing huge earthquakes that sent hundred-mile sheets of ice sliding into the sea.

  Humanity almost died. In the catastrophe that followed, whole regions disappeared as the seas rose nearly two hundred feet. The equatorial regions grew too hot for human life, while in most of the temperate zones the unstable rains finally stopped for ever and desert took over. Great waves of people moved north; the USA invaded Canada; China invaded Siberia; southern Europe invaded northern Europe. Populations ravaged by disease and hunger sought to make lake-strewn peat bogs of melted permafrost habitable. The world’s population shrank to a hundred million, less than in biblical times.

  Now, after fifty years of stability, it was starting to rise again. In Canada and China there were advances every year in creating artificial soils for the Arctic regions; there were even experiments in laying artificial soil on the bare rock of ice-free Greenland. After years of chaos and authoritarian rule, the European Union and America had returned to democracy; even China had an elected government now, millennia of authoritarian tradition shaken out in the great flight north. Other than the three major states, a few small countries dotted the habitable regions of the earth; a residual Canada proudly maintaining its independence in Newfoundland; a relict Japan withdrawn into medieval obscurantism on Sakhalin Island. South of the equator, connected to the north by the internet but physically almost unreachable because of the unendurable heat in the tropics that made travel by boat impossible, were Patagonia and the Tasman Islands – Tasmania and New Zealand, where the surviving population of Australia had taken refuge. Everywhere, even in the refugee camps, disease was declining, and harvest failures were fewer as the climate stabilized. The seas still rose, but very slowly now; near the drowned nuclear power stations they were irradiated, but in most places to less than fatal levels. Fish stocks too were rising again in the traumatized oceans. Order had returned, as had police forces like the European Fraud Investigation Office for which Shiva worked.