by Bill Napier
My imagination felt the rough hemp round my neck, the mariners pulling on the rope, the terrible constriction of my throat, my feet clearing the desk, my body swaying and a sea of faces seen through red as I danced...
The Turk was tapping my shoulder.
It must have been late afternoon. The table had been set and the musicians were grumbling up from the berth-hold.
'Mr Harriot requires you this instant.'
I knocked at the door and entered on his call. He was
writing and had his back to me. The cross staff was on his
desk. 'Ogilvie.'
'Sir?'
'You fail your master.'
'Sir?' I felt the noose tightening around my neck and thought I might faint.
He turned. 'Are you well, boy? You look pale.'
'I am well, sir. I just have a little sea sickness.'
'And I am neglected. Fetch me some wine.'
I took care not to show the surge of relief which went through my body. I fetched a flagon of red wine from the hold. He seemed not to notice my trembling legs and hands. I took care again this time not to spill the wine.
The evening brought a great oval of blood-red sun touching the horizon, and a sky of rapidly deepening blue, and the screeching of the musicians.
Hope, a desperate hope, began to seep into my bones. With Mr Harriot's feet safely under the dinner table, and with my fetching and carrying between great cabin and galley, I might be able to slip into his cabin and return everything to its former undisturbed state, replacing the key.
Dinner was dried beef, fresh bread, butter, honey, prunes and great quantities of ale and wine. The Turk and I were in constant movement. At the end of the first course we began to return the heavy gold plates to the galley. In the corridor I added my pile to the Turk's.
'What are you doing?' he asked in alarm.
The great cabin door was swinging to and fro with the ship. I raised a finger to my lips and opened the door to Mr Harriot's cabin.
The Turk was round-eyed and open-mouthed. 'You fool, Scotch!' he hissed. 'Are you so anxious to hang?'
I shook my head and closed the door quickly behind me. I crossed over to the chest and pulled it out. At first it was too dark to make out any detail, but light from the great cabin was shining under the door, and slowly - oh so slowly! - my eyes became used to the dark.
I pulled the cedar chest out, put the books neatly back as I had found them, turned the key in the lock, jumped over to the writing desk, put the key back in the drawer, ran towards the cabin door and stopped, frozen with horror.
Voices, on the other side of the door, Marmaduke's among them. I caught his words: 'Come and see for yourself,' and then the door handle was turning.
CHAPTER 14
I was in terror of death. But what could I do?
I shrank behind the chest, using its bulk to shield me from the sight of the men. I counted four pairs of legs, one pair belonging to the savage, Manteo.
'Be quick, StClair.' The voice was low and urgent. It belonged to Kendall, the young mathematician. 'We are running a terrible risk.'
'It was you who asked to see the evidence.' Marmaduke StClair, but this was not the carefree Marmaduke I knew from the gentlemen's cabin, full of jokes and banter. This was another Marmaduke, a man with purpose in his voice.
'Stop bickering, you fools.' I was not sure of this voice. It was harsh and distorted by tension. It might have belonged to Rowse, the parliamentarian. 'Show us the map and the relic'
To my horror, someone was bending down and pulling at the cedar chest. I shrank against the cabin wall. The chest was hauled to the middle of the floor. They only had to bend their heads to see me. But now the key was being taken from its drawer and I heard the distinctive click of the false bottom being opened.
The silence was so long that I thought I must have been seen. But then there was a rustling of paper and sounds which told me that the map was being spread out on Mr Harriot's table. Rowse was speaking. 'This is the line?'
'Yes. Seventy-seven west,' said Kendall.
'Longitudinem Dei,' StClair said.
'God's longitude indeed.' Rowse's tone was impatient, and his voice was edged with fear. 'But five leagues inland and the devil to reach, by the looks of it.'
'Richard is no fool. And he has Lane. He will succeed.' StClair too was catching the contagion of fear.
'And the relic?' It was Kendall; his voice was strained. Fear, certainly, but there was something else in his voice: avarice.
Footsteps towards Marmaduke's bunk. I could not understand what was happening. For all my terror, I could not resist poking my head out. To my astonishment, Marmaduke was sliding back a panel on the bulkhead above his berth. Then he was lifting something out very carefully. Whatever it was, it was flattish, wrapped in black cloth and clearly heavy. I shrank back under the bunk as they turned, and could not see what it was. There was a sound of cloth unwrapping. Then a gasp and someone - I think Kendall - praying quietly in Latin.
Rowse, his voice harsh, said, 'This is it?'
'This is it,' StClair was saying. 'And kissed by the Queen.'
There was another long silence.
'In God's name, gentlemen, we must succeed.'
'Aye, Kendall,' said Rowse. 'But it all ends here if Harriot walks in the door.'
'Then for God's sake let us get out of here quickly.' Kendall's voice was an agony of suspense.
There was the sound of the panel being slid back into place, and then things were being put back in the chest, the secret drawer was closed, and Manteo was down on his knees and pushing the chest back under the bunk. It came solidly up against me. He pushed harder, and then he was looking under the bed and staring straight at me. He showed no surprise, and his expression did not change at all. At that moment I believe I would have run from the ship and jumped in the ocean rather than face the fate which Grenville and the Devil would impose on me. But then the savage stood up, without a word, and the men left, leaving me trembling in the dark and trying not to weep.
Part Two
The Byzantine Cross
CHAPTER 15
Zola jumped up and skipped out of the living room. I heard her footsteps pacing up and down excitedly in the corridor. She was shouting, 'Yes! Yes!'
'A conspiracy?' I called through.
'Yes, Harry. People trying to ruin an expedition whose purpose was supposed to be a secret.' She came back into the room, head bowed and fingers steepled.
I shook my head in bewilderment. 'It has to be connected with this longitude. What's special about seventy-seven degrees west? God's longitude?'
'It rings a bell.' She put her hands on the top of her head, closed her eyes and screwed up her face.
'How did they find longitude, anyway? They had no clocks on board.'
'I know. The Harrison clocks didn't come in until the 1730s. I guess they had to rely on eclipses happening at predicted times. Get the local time of the eclipse, compare it with the time it happened in London, and you've got a time marker. But it must have been a protracted business.'
'So what were these people up to? And what the hell was in the panel?' A grandfather clock in the hallway chimed three. Suddenly I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. 'Zola, about that spare room.'
'Of course, I'm forgetting. You've been chased by thugs and questioned for murder and beaten up. I expect you want some sleep.'
I followed her up some wooden stairs. Three doors led off from a small landing and she opened one of them. There was a neat, single attic bedroom. It had a faint smell of pot-pourri.
'This okay?'
'Benissimo.' I'd have said it, and meant it, if the bed had been a pile of flea-infested straw.
Dolls from fifty countries stood side-by-side on shelves lining the little room: Inuits with little spears; American Indian girls with hunting knives; Scots with kilts; Greek men with short skirts which would have had them arrested in Leicester Square; Indian boys with turbans, all looke
d silently down on me. Feeling a bit self-conscious I threw off my clothes and slipped between the sheets. I found myself lying on a horsehair mattress, almost unobtainable in the age of tractors, but unbeatable for comfort. Headache, bruises, thugs, huge bribes, obnoxious gentry, man-eating teenagers, Elizabethan voyages - all merged into a lurid pastiche as I drifted into oblivion.
I wake suddenly.
The dolls have come alive, are pattering around the house. Am I awake?
Sense a presence.
That has to be nonsense. I don't believe in telepathy. The dolls are getting to me: fifty pairs of eyes staring at me in the dark.
A sound, on the limit of hearing. I place it in Zola's bedroom. Maybe she's getting up to go to the bathroom. Then a moan, or maybe a whimper, so muffled that I'm not sure I hear it.
I lie still as a corpse, ears straining, heart thumping in my chest.
Crash! A scream so loud that it hurts my ears. I leap out of bed and dive for the door. It's flung open as I reach it and it slams against my nose. I feel warm blood and a lot of pain. A dark shape. It might be Zola except that it hits at me, a fist connecting with my shoulder. I kick in the dark at stomach level, make contact with something soft, hurt my toes. There is an Oof! and I kick again, now with the side of my foot. I wonder if Zola is dead.
Now the man is punching in the dark. The blows are ineffective and I charge at him, using my fourteen-stone body as a battering ram. He falls backwards through the door and I hear two distinct cracks as the back of his head makes contact first with the door frame and then with the floor of the hallway. I fall on top of him. He grabs my hair and I put my thumbs in his eyes and squeeze. He shakes his head violently from side to side, panicking, but I keep finding his eyeballs. Then he changes tack and a finger jabs repeatedly at my eyes. I have to let go and roll aside, and now my assailant is on me, punching and then digging his thumbs into my neck. I try to pull his hands off but his full weight is bearing down on my throat, I can't breathe, I'm beginning to panic. I grope for his eyes, I'm beginning to see flashing lights; still his nails are digging into my Adam's apple.
Then there is a metallic clang and the man yelps like an injured dog. He lets go, staggers to his feet. There is a brief scuffle and another clang and then he is crashing noisily down the stairs, and there are footsteps along the corridor below and the front door slams shut with a bang which shakes the flat.
The lights go on and Zola is standing triumphant and angry, flushed and gasping, all teddy bears and crescent moons. She is holding a frying pan with both hands. It's bright yellow, cast-iron, and looks as if it could smash a skull. 'That beat the shit out of him.'
Zola is in the shower, wisps of steam filtering under the bathroom door. The faint hum of London traffic penetrates the double glazing.
I feel nauseous and put my head in the kitchen sink, unsure whether I'm going to vomit. The feeling passes and I turn on a tap and run my head under the cold stream. I gently pat my head dry with a towel - rubbing is too painful. I pour some water into a kettle and watch the fierce blue flames under it. I don't have the nerve to check myself in a mirror. Not just yet. I am becoming aware of pain. It comes from all over, from my head, my throat, my midriff, my nose. Especially my nose. At least the bleeding has stopped.
The shower stops and in a moment Zola appears, with a yellow towel round her body and a pink one wrapped round her head. She has a bruise on her forehead. For the first time I realise I'm dressed in nothing more than boxer shorts.
'Let's call the police,' I suggest. The kettle is coming to the boil and I search around for instant coffee and cups. My stomach is still dodgy.
Her voice is tinged with anger. 'There's something in that manuscript, Harry.'
I ask, 'Do you want the good news or the bad news first?'
She waves her hand angrily.
'They didn't get the manuscript,' I tell her. I've brought it down from my bedroom. It's on the kitchen table and I give it a reassuring pat.
'And the bad news?'
'They got my laptop. It has Ogilvie's journal on file.'
'But they don't understand what's in the journal any more than we do,' she said.
'Wrong, Zola. They must know what they're looking for.'
'So let's beat them to it.' She is rubbing her hair, carefully avoiding the bruise on her forehead, and her voice is coming from somewhere underneath the pink towel.
'Are you serious? You still want to carry on with this?'
Zola pauses, peers out from under the towel, gives me a puzzled look. 'Nothing else crossed my mind.' She plugs in a hair dryer and starts to do mysterious things with tongs. 'Can we solve this one, Harry? If I take a couple of weeks' leave .. .'
'Let's do it.' I say it casually. 'God knows what we're getting into here but I have an obligation to a client, even a teenage maneater. Look, if we're in a race, we've competition.'
'Which means they could be back. There were two of them. One waiting downstairs.'
'The next time, maybe with guns,' I suggest. I'd done guns and had had enough of them. I'd done Northern Ireland, Kosovo and the Gulf before I'd left the army, opting for the quiet life. Much like the Dominie, I suppose.
'You're still going along with that fantasy thing? That Tebbit was murdered to get at the journal?'
'Admit it, Zola. I was right again.' I'm beginning to shake all over.
She switches off the hair dryer, sits down at the kitchen table, pours milk, picks up a mug of coffee with both hands, hitches the yellow towel up an inch, gives me a sultry look. 'You're a single man, right?'
'How did you know that?'
'Nobody could live with such smugness.' She takes a sip at the coffee and sighs.
'I don't see any sign of a partner here.'
'I was married to a lovely man. We met in Venice seven years ago. We're divorced.'
'I'm not surprised. Presumably he found you impossible to live with?'
'In a way. He couldn't keep up with my sexual demands.'
I splutter into my coffee. The action sends a shooting pain up my shoulder blade and Zola chuckles gleefully. Then her smile disappears and she says, 'With guns, you think?'
'Maybe. Which is one good reason for calling the police.'
'No, Harry. They'd just hold on to the journal for six months and I don't want to live like Salman Rushdie or a Mafia informer. Our best protection is to find whatever's in Ogilvie's journal before the creeps do. Beat them at their own game. What do you think?'
'Be sensible, woman.'
She says nothing.
'We don't know who they are or what we're up against.'
Still nothing, just a steady, disconcerting stare over her coffee cup.
I think, what the hell. 'We'd better clear off.'
The subdued hum of early morning motorway traffic came in through the double glazing. The mirror showed a face more comfortable than handsome, with an eye which, although still interesting, was well on the mend. I'd had maybe two hours' sleep, but so what? I was still alive. I made my way back from the public toilet.
The smell of frying bacon drifted over from the kitchen. Zola was at a window table, dressed in black sweater and jeans and wearing the gypsy earrings from the previous evening. The journal was in front of her on the table. A lorry driver at the next table was tucking into an all-English breakfast, and a young couple with two bleary-eyed children were across the passage. Otherwise the motorway stop was empty.
'This doesn't seem right in the cold light of the morning. Why should we be fugitives?'
'We're not. We're going undercover to beat the opposition.'
Zola's statement was arguable, but it was too early in the morning. I helped myself to toast. 'By the way, where are we going?'
'Devon. I have a hideaway, my parents' holiday cottage.' Zola leaned forwards, lowering her voice. 'And I know what Harriot and the rest were up to.'
CHAPTER 16
'Okay, Harry, this is going to fry your brain. I doubt if you have the i
ntellectual capacity for it.'
'Shoot.' I thought maybe the word 'shoot' wasn't the best, but it had come out.
'Go back to the bit about the secret cycle of Doctor Dee.'
I hadn't expected Zola to drive anything ordinary, and true enough we were in a thirty-year-old classic, a Reliant Scimitar with three litres of engine powering a light, silver fibreglass body, and a dashboard like the cockpit of an aeroplane. There were little hairline cracks on the massive bonnet but the black leather seats showed no sign of sag. Not that the latent power was doing us much good: we were crawling along at a few miles an hour on a roadwork-infested M25. The smell of perfume and leather were light in the air.
I flicked back the pages. 'Okay, there's the rhyme. Something about making the "civile year with heaven agree". And something else about "Three hundred yeres, shall not remove The sun one day from this new match"...'
'Exactly. First clue. It has something to do with calendars.'
'With you so far,' I said.
'But not for much longer. Now here's the second clue. What's the connection between Thomas Harriot and John Dee?'
'They both belonged to the School of the Night.'
We were approaching the end of the roadworks. I sensed Zola scanning the road ahead, judging accelerations, looking for gaps. She said, 'I'm impressed, Harry. I didn't expect a grubby shopkeeper to know something like that.'
I said, ‘I know that some of the best minds of the day used to meet in Walter Raleigh's London pad, Durham House. People like Francis Drake the explorer, Molyneux the globe maker, Christopher Marlowe the playwright, John Dee the Queen's astronomer, Thomas Harriot the mathematician, and a few others. I know that several of these people had a private ear to the Queen. I know they were accused of being a school of atheism and blasphemy, practising strange rites, but in fact they were discussing things like the truth of the Old Testament, the Copernican theory, the new mathematics and navigation. They were dipping their foot into modern science, carving a future for global exploration and turning England into a global power. Apart from that, no, I don't know much about the School of the Night.'
