The End of the World is Nigh

by Tony Moyle

  Nostradamus was a constant tinkerer. In the five years that preceded the first edition’s publication several later editions had been produced, each with additional quatrains and content that had not been contained in the original. Sometimes it was completely new material, but often he’d rewrite some of his older prophecies in order to update predictions that had not been altogether accurate.

  Ally ran a finger across the page, stopping occasionally to get a feel for the paper and the ink. She leant over so her face was just above the text and drew in the smell, eyes closed all the time.

  “What do you think?” asked Salvador.

  “The book is old. No question,” replied Ally unemotionally. “The typeface is raised slightly above the page, which means it was printed on movable boards. The paper quality is typical of that used during the mid-fifteen hundreds, when each piece was fabricated by hand. The fact that this copy was found in Lyon, where most of Nostradamus’s printing was done, is another positive sign.”

  “So it’s genuine!” shouted Salvador gleefully.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Ally’s life revolved around finding and transcribing pieces of rare literature. It was the only reason she got up in the morning and why sometimes she worked deep into the early hours. But then again there really wasn’t much else in her life to stimulate her. She wasn’t incapable of getting excited, it was just so rare for something this old to be discovered that she’d learnt to harbour a robust level of cynicism. If this was real, however, it would be a whole different ball game. The room wouldn’t be big enough for her cartwheels.

  She took a notepad and pen out of her black leather briefcase and started to work through the new verse at the bottom of the preface. As with much of Nostradamus’s later work it was written in French rather than Latin, which few laymen of the period would have been able to read. It wasn’t modern French, though. It was written in one of the many unique dialects of the time. Fortunately she knew them all. That is of course if the printer had managed to re-create exactly what the authors were attempting to say. As she quickly translated the prophecy, Salvador watched to see if it matched the one currently doing the online rounds that he’d already read.

  After a few scraggly versions were scratched through with her pen as she tried to make sense of a warning written halfway through the last millennium, she settled on a final version, which she wrote out beautifully in fountain pen on a crisp, fresh piece of paper. She handed it to the Director who read it out loud.

  In the eleventh month of the second millennium

  Under a blood moon the kingdoms of God shall fall

  to cold winds carried by birds and beasts,

  and very brightly the men of the mountain will burn.

  “This isn’t the same translation I’ve seen on the internet,” added Salvador disappointedly, handing the piece of paper back to Ally.

  “No, it wouldn’t be, would it? Whoever did that one is obviously not a linguistic genius, are they?”

  “But your translation is even more worrying. The other one didn’t make it clear how little time we had left. It just said it would be a Tuesday.”

  “It’s a Tuesday tomorrow, maybe it will happen then!” replied Ally scornfully.

  “Let’s hope not,” replied Salvador, forcing a weak smile through his immaculately whitened teeth. “What do you think it means?”

  “If you’re asking for my initial conclusions, and I’d need more time to study it properly, I’d say it’s predicting the end of the world of man as a result of some form of virus, probably a bird or pig flu pandemic, sometime around November. Which is fine. I don’t like Christmas much anyway,” replied Ally with a straight face.

  “I take it this warning does not concern you?”

  “Of course it doesn’t, you silly little man. You’re interpreting the verse to validate the assumptions of what you already believe is going to happen. But it’s an interpretation of a verse written in a time very different from our own. The people of the world have been predicting the imminent apocalypse since the dawn of civilisation and yet we’re all still here, aren’t we?”

  “The Oblivion Doctrine don’t appear to agree with you. They seem determined to tell people that the end of world is coming.”

  “Then we must work hard to convince people otherwise, mustn’t we?”

  “At least it proves one thing,” said Salvador.

  “Really, what?” asked Ally.

  “That the book is genuine.”

  “The book might be, but the prophecy isn’t.”

  “I’m not with you. How can that be?”

  “Because this verse wasn’t written by Nostradamus.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m an expert on the subject and you’re just a second-rate museum guide.”

  “Madam, I’ve had just about enough of your attitude, I’m not just…”

  “Oh do stop whining. I know this is not the work of Nostradamus because he was not keen on detail and stylistically this is not typical of his work.”

  “Then if the book is old, and the prophecy was printed at the same time as the book, who wrote it?”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to find out before the world descends into paranoia. But first I think more coffee is in order. It’s not Tuesday yet after all.”

  - Chapter 2 -

  The Uninvited Guest

  Unless you were one of the fortunate few who had either money, power or both, sixteenth-century France wasn’t for the faint-hearted. Even the few thousand who counted themselves amongst the nobility were still incapable of avoiding the often fatal consequences of an almost non-existent healthcare system, a high infant mortality rate and regular bouts of the plague. But at least they, unlike the vast majority of the population, didn’t live in a hole.

  And not just any hole.

  The dirtiest, most soul-crushing and endlessly horrific hole imaginable. Its daily jeopardies included vermin the size of dogs, exposure to bone-freezing spells of cold weather, an almost complete lack of anything truly edible, and the constant persecution by rich people. Most people called it existence. And just a few of them pulled it off.

  Everyone, other than the nobility, lived in poverty. Those that couldn’t afford poverty had to be content with squalor. Natural selection in all its glory, albeit somewhat unnaturally manipulated by those with qualifications or title. In sixteenth-century France the population was simply defined by where someone was born and who they were born to. That was the class system. No middle class, upper-middle class or lower-upper class. Society didn’t care whether you were intelligent, or brave, or wise, or good-looking, or amusing, or talented. The only category that mattered was whether you were rich or poor. There was some social mobility, though. It mainly happened when the rich rounded up the poor to march them hundreds of miles to kill some equally poor and oppressed foreign people.

  This was generally for no other reason than France’s rich people didn’t like the Italian rich people because they wore elaborately coloured trousers and had a different view on what form of praise God wanted. This was usually justification enough to slaughter large quantities of poor people as swiftly as the plague managed it, but without quite so much mess. Except in winter, that was. Not even rich people enjoyed watching peasants die in the snow.

  Wars have always been rubbish. Unless of course your team was winning and you happened to be a very long way away with access to a telescope, which sadly Galileo wouldn’t invent for at least another thirty years. If you did have the misfortune of being deeply entrenched in the middle of one, wars had the popular effect of leaving most of its participants with missing limbs or heads that never again looked good in hats.

  Interestingly, though, war was about the only time when the rich and poor participated in the same activity for the same purpose. The rich of course were intent on riding out in front of the masses to demonstrate that they were much better people than them, although even that didn’
t stop rich people getting killed. Avoidance of death was increased, though, by having a greater access to horses and something they liked to call armour. Poor people were a commodity, a statistic and the more of it you had the greater your chances of winning. And however many you had, it was always far too many to lavish expensive and limited protection on. Armour for the masses was made from straw, or if you were really lucky, mud. Mud was not a highly effective deterrent to a well-fired arrow but it did make excellent camouflage.

  Regular wars were just one of the reasons why life expectancy for the poor during the middle of the last millennium was on average thirty years of age. It wasn’t all bad news, though. If, by some miracle, you reached your twenty-first birthday you had a fifty percent chance of reaching your sixtieth. Most people avoided it on account of life being long enough as it was, and there was very little improvement to look forward to in old age. The concept of retirement would eventually come about a hundred years later when someone invented golf. Even then not everyone agreed it improved things.

  The main threats to life for the average French peasant were the four horsemen. They marched abreast through the increasingly deserted fields of the countryside and, as if annoyed at taking a wrong turn, sped up towards the saturated hubbub of the growing cities. If plague, death, pestilence and war didn’t get you, then frankly you weren’t trying hard enough.

  Cold was on the waiting list as a possible fifth horseman, as soon as the recruitment department assessed its application. The period in question was often referred to as Europe’s mini-ice age as temperatures plummeted and harvests failed. As a result migration from country existence to urban life swelled the populations of France’s largest cities, unintentionally providing the perfect breeding ground for illness and disease. Cities weren’t all bad, though. There was plenty of entertainment.

  The Renaissance, right?

  Not quite.

  The Enlightenment had gone largely unnoticed by the masses who were more concerned with what they might find edible enough to put in their mouths and less bothered with what might feed their minds. The development of art, poetry, philosophy and architecture did little to put food inside bellies. And anyway a good execution was quicker and less taxing on the brain cells.

  When disappointment, death and disaster lurked around every corner it’s unsurprising that the common man believed that the end of the world was imminent. What other conclusion could you make? Catholicism, still the predominant religious standard even against the rising tide of the new Protestant movement, was just another weapon to punish the follies of the poor. Every Sunday they were told, and believed, that their predicament was no one’s fault but their own. If only the poor could read they might have challenged this notion. But no one wanted to teach them in case they read something they shouldn’t and realised that the whole system was a con to keep rich people affluent and poor people muddy.

  Instead they received their information from those that could: priests, scholars and seers. What they heard they believed wholeheartedly because they had nothing to compare it with. After all, why would rich people lie? They were rich because they were better people, weren’t they? Conveniently this was precisely what rich folk wanted them to think.

  If the only messages you ever heard were carefully selected for you, were almost always terrifying and happened to back up your own experiences of hunger, famine, cold, death, destruction and war, it wasn’t much of a leap to believe that anytime soon someone or something was going to descend from the heavens to smite you down. It was a logical belief system. And hopefully it would happen soon. It couldn’t be any worse than life.

  What made less sense was how many of the rich and powerful also believed the end was upon them. Just because you could read didn’t grant you the gift of wisdom. This was a time of God, and whichever version you currently supported it was clear that He, She or It was far more powerful than you were, even if you owned half a prefecture and more gold than an Inca king. The reverse was also true. There were some who possessed wisdom and skill at odds to the side of the class divide that fate had dumped them.

  And very occasionally one of them would refuse to accept that the divide was even there at all.

  Education might be the divine right of the rich and powerful, but intelligence was not. If you were smart enough, cunning enough, driven enough and ready to take your chances when the rare opportunities presented themselves, escape from poverty was possible. Just.

  *****

  The parties of Claude de Savoie were the stuff of legend. They were frequent, decadent and exclusive. A powerful man like Claude collected only the most regent, the most important and the most corruptible elites that France and its allies had to offer for his gatherings. But these infamous banquets weren’t only about the rich gorging on the finest foods of the Kingdom, although that was a happy coincidence. They were much more than that.

  These were functional events: meetings to debate the issues of the day when the alternative option would take several months back and forward by post. They celebrated weddings, births, deaths and victory in battle. And they were statements designed to demonstrate your own social standing and power. And of all the places to prove that power there was nowhere more impressive than Marseille.

  Marseille had not always been French. It was Europe’s mongrel city. Its eclectic history had been moulded by Greek, Turkish, Roman and French rulers and its inhabitants were an unruly bunch with a variety of views and sympathies. It had a reputation for being a rebellious place that took great stock in ardently disagreeing with anything mainstream. The ruling classes changed here at regular intervals and it became confusing to remember all the different rules. Just as the population got used to one regime a flotilla of ships would land packed with heavily accented men sporting floppy moustaches. And then everything would change.

  The threat was never far away. The Holy Roman Empire was no more than a beach cove along the coastline, and the French desperately clung to a fragile alliance with the Ottoman Empire like a castaway grapples driftwood. At any moment the balance might tip and rich and poor alike would have to start all over again. In an attempt to annoy any would-be ruler, a collective and unconscious decision rippled through their culture to do things in their own inimitable way. Whatever people thought of it, belligerence worked.

  The city’s beating heart was the port. It was an important gateway to world trade and a source of envy for France’s neighbours in Genoa, who sought both financial superiority and the ability to disrupt their enemy’s chances of obtaining it for themselves. To this end the port had been heavily fortified to ward off those who might try. At the entrance of the port the crystal-blue waters of the Mediterranean lapped at the feet of the ominous Maubert Tower, which loomed above all other buildings in the city. Standing on its summit offered in one direction a clear view of any dangers that might approach by sea, and to the other the foothills of Provence. It acted as a warning to invaders, a lookout, and a marvellously ostentatious location for tonight’s party. It was here, above all of Claude’s many seats of power, that he liked to show off.

  In Claude’s opinion excessive indulgence was just part and parcel of being the Grand Seneschal of Provence. The title wasn’t a democratically elected one, it was an administrative position passed down to him on orders of the King. Claude had first ascended to the position at the tender age of thirteen when his father, René, a renowned shipbuilder and affectionately known as the ‘Grand Bastard of Savoy’, died from the injuries he sustained at the Battle of Pavia. Now a sprightly fifty-four-year-old, Claude was going to make the most of what time he had left. Which meant partying. And tonight’s celebration was of particular importance.

  It was during this party that Claude would announce the wedding of his only daughter, Annabelle, to the suave and powerful Jacques de Saluces, Lord of Cardé. There was only one unknown factor that might take the gloss off the evening. No one had told Annabelle.

  Within the nobility marriages were
arranged strategically. A wedding between warring factions could strengthen a Kingdom’s power and surreptitiously gain new territory through stealth. Love or affection rarely featured in the equation and the women of the court had no choice in the matter. But this was Marseille and they enjoyed being difficult.

  Annabelle was a feisty woman in her early twenties with auburn hair and a kind, unblemished face that would make an ideal prize for any nobleman. She was known to enjoy the attention of men, but not just any men. She liked those with a rebellious streak, who lacked conformity and were able to open her eyes to the amazing new cultural and religious ideas that were spreading like a virus through the continent of Europe. She was tired of blue-blooded stiffs whose only idea of a good time was to go hunting for days, only to return to have the heads of their victims mounted on slabs of wood and hoisted on the wall as icebreakers for their next banquet. She wanted more from life than to act as walking womb to future heirs or a thing of beauty to be shown off in front of others.

  Nevertheless, she would have little say in the matter. If her father wanted her to marry, then marry she would. But when it did happen she wasn’t going quietly. It would come around sooner than she imagined.

  A flock of feather-hatted noblemen, and an equally sizeable pack of their cronies, had been invited to celebrate the impending announcement, and amongst their number was one Philibert Montmorency. His illustrious name alone was enough to warrant an invite, even though in reality he didn’t have one. The Montmorency family had for generations been powerful members of the King’s court and if one of them decided to invite themselves to your banquet it was wise to accept.