by Jon Mackley
‘Miss Halpin, you are giving a very narrow-minded view of the timelines. From each moment there is an infinite amount of possibilities. We live in only one of them.’
‘And what about if I went back and killed you as a child? How would you then have developed the serum to give me the ability to send me back in time?’
Marsh feigned a yawn. ‘That old chestnut, the temporal paradox. History would have corrected itself. Paradoxes are healed, however the greatest changes can still be performed.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Lara said, her words raw and angry. ‘I’ve had no flash-backs beyond my over-active imagination, and even if it were possible, don’t count on my co-operation.’
‘Have you finished?’ Marsh asked.
‘No,’ Lara said. ‘I want to be able to shower. I want sanitary towels, aspirin and plenty of water.’ She glared at him. ‘And I want chocolate. Lots of it.’
Marsh sighed. He waited until she calmed down. ‘All these things can be arranged,’ he said. ‘But only when you have done something for us first.’ He took his glasses and cleaned them, slowly and meticulously. ‘Now then, let us look at your friend Will. Was it he or you who broke the codes of the poem?’
Lara smiled sarcastically. ‘He did it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘It means she’s being a stubborn cow, and hiding behind Shakespeare’s quotations,’ said a voice at the door.
Lara turned. Her heart leapt with joy when she saw Will standing there.
Marsh turned. ‘You should not be here,’ he said. There was a threatening undercurrent to his voice.
Lara’s relief at her rescue suddenly changed to horror as Will did not stride forward to release her but instead stood his ground. ‘She’ll tell you nothing, not without coercion,’ he said coldly. ‘She has a small talent for keeping things to herself.’
Pieces of a jigsaw slotted together. Realisation was a bitter pill. ‘You’ve been working with them all along.’
‘Got it in one,’ Will said with a nasty smile. ‘I’ve been on the payroll of these people for a long time. We didn’t need to find out the secrets of the Gawain manuscript, we just wanted to see how you reacted to an empathy with the past.’
‘So when you were acting as a diversion, letting me go on ahead, you were actually feeding them information?’
‘Right again,’ Will said. ‘By the time you’d got us to Avignon and found the clue in the Palais, you’d shown enough potential to start the next part of the experiment.’
‘Bastard!’ Lara locked his eyes in open warfare. ‘And I thought you cared about me.’
Will’s shoulders tensed. His face filled with contempt. Then he leaned towards Marsh conspiratorially: ‘We’ve got enough. She’s a valuable subject. Hit her with it.’
Marsh moved towards her. Like a magician performing a sleight-of-hand trick, he produced a syringe from nowhere. In her fear, Lara discovered a new source of strength of which she’d never previously been aware. She leapt from the bed.
Will caught her by the gown. His hands were no longer strong and protecting, but brutal and violent. He forced her back to the bed and pinned her against the mattress.
Marsh loomed over her. ‘There is nothing to worry about, Lara. This is a kind of BCG injection. It is the same serum you received a decade ago. This will just enhance the brain pathways, so you get a clearer vision of the past.’
Lara writhed on the bed, but couldn’t break herself free from Will’s grip. ‘Stop struggling,’ Will hissed at her. His hand closed over her throat. ‘Stop struggling or I’ll squeeze you till you burst.’ She managed to hack in her throat and spit the phlegm at him. He did not flinch when it hit him on the chest, instead he watched it impassively as it dripped back down on to the hospital gown.
She thrashed again as Marsh rolled up her sleeve, but the pressure from Will was too great. Suddenly, her strength drained from her. Fighting against them was useless.
‘You’d better hope this fries my brains,’ she growled at Will. “Cause when I get free, I’m going to kill you.’
The needle slid into her vein. Tears sprang to her eyes. Then it was all over. She felt a burst of adrenalin, then with a palpitating heart, she slipped into darkness.
13
She was falling through a void. Her muscles had frozen: her voice had solidified in her throat. There was no light, no sound, not even the wind against her face as she fell. Then, like light at the end of the tunnel, she saw a pinprick of eternity.
I’m dead, she tried to say, but her vocal muscles were long gone. She focused on the circle of light. From this distance, she couldn’t see if it was coloured white, or red, wondering if she would be going up … or down.
Her vision swam again. Her pupils dilated, as the pinprick shifted and shimmied in front of her. It’s like being an angel, her mind whispered to her. It’s like being pure light, infinite, no physical boundaries to hinder me. The only limitation is my own imagination.
Her mind drifted, floating through an ethereal plane. The pinprick of light expanded into a slim taper of white. She felt neither warm nor cold. The light danced in front of her eyes, like fireflies trapped in a jar. It expanded, becoming a burning, hazy glow. It increased in intensity, increased from discomfort to pain. She tried to turn away, but the light was overwhelming, engulfing. Then sound burst around her, the sound of violent but indistinguishable voices.
Her body froze. It twisted in agony, agony stemming from the biceps on her left arm. The sound exploded again, playing through her memory like a stuck record. Gradually her mind was restricted by the confines of the brain.
‘She is waking,’ the voice said. It was the voice of Eric Marsh, but it was muffled and contorted, playing at a slow speed. Time, as she knew it, had slowed to a crawl.
But when she thought about what Marsh had said, she heard him speaking again. ‘She is waking.’ So, in this dream state, time was hers to control. The record, which had been stuck at her point of consciousness, could be sent back. She saw time was like a river flowing from its estuary to its source; ashes turning to wood or coal.
At her command, she heard Will asking, ‘Is she going to be all right?’
She saw Marsh walking across the room, shrugging. ‘Does it matter? There are more subjects after her.’ He placed a hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘She is waking.’
Time rolled back, and further back, like raindrops rising to the sky, and becoming clouds; like mighty oaks diminishing into small acorns. The strips of white, she realised, were the light, prising her eyes open. For a moment, she couldn’t discern the shapes within the room: the chamber was a grey miasma of twilight. Then she heard a voice, stating, ‘You shouldn’t be ‘ere, Miss’; and the sterility of the room had become a large storage area, and the man who spoke was a uniformed soldier, grimy with sweat, his hands firmly fixed around a large ammunition shell.
Back, and further back, like a film in reverse, clock hands travelling anti-clockwise, numbers decreasing, elderly people becoming tiny babies, back and further back. She was no longer in Bath; her body was not restricted to one location.
She saw wide fields being ploughed, as men urged on great oxen to pull an iron farming frame. The ground was furrowed. Crows cawed and picked at worms in the overturned soil.
She saw a jaundiced timber-framed hall; outside steps led to the first floor. A tall man sat inside. His blue eyes were warm and brilliant with intelligence. The dark room was lit by candles flickering in a breeze. He was hunched over a small desk, scratching a quill against vellum. The air was thick with tallow. The man glanced up, not turning, but looking at her reflection in the window. He nodded an acknowledgement, took a moment to pause and to stroke his grey beard. Then he turned back to his work, undisturbed by the distraction, as if she was expected. She squinted at the page in the candlelight; a huge illuminated letter covered a corner, a large capital S in a box, with the flourish
extending to the end of the folio. His eyes narrowed in concentration. He spoke aloud as he composed the first lines in heavy downstrokes and lighter upstrokes: Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye, I-wysse. ‘Old codes,’ the man said in an unfamiliar accent. He looked into the glass again, gazing at her as he spoke, tapping the manuscript. ‘Codes you should understand. But the times are changing, and so must the alpha-beta.’
Lara felt her grip on reality slipping. ‘What does it mean?’ she said hurriedly.
The man shook his head, and gave an enigmatic smile. His eyes twinkled merrily. ‘You already know.’
As if trying to swim against a current, she was swept away. She was being dragged forward. The acorn had fallen from the tree and produced a mighty oak. The river had reached its estuary. Lara refrained from opening her eyes, as she heard Will speaking: ‘Is she going to be all right?’
Marsh’s voice was distant, but she heard him stepping forward. ‘Does it matter? There are plenty more subjects after her.’ Pause. ‘Hush. She is waking.’
The pretence was impossible to maintain. Her eyes fluttered open, she tried to shield them from the glare of the overhead lighting. Her temples were thumping with an unholy hangover. She fixed her eyes on Marsh. ‘I want aspirin, now!’ The words exhausted her. Her jaw slackened. Her limbs felt like they were tied to the bed, her body was saturated in sweat. The cramps were now crippling her. She closed her eyes, but all she saw were purple explosions of pain: not the pinprick of light, not eternity. When she opened her eyes again Marsh was looming over her. ‘Aspirin,’ she managed to hiss.
Marsh simply said, ‘Not until you tell me what you saw.’
Lara’s eyes squeezed shut. Sweat dribbled into them. The salt stung, but she didn’t have the strength to wipe it away. ‘Nothing,’ she said, and the words were like sandpaper against the back of her throat. She half opened her eyes, to see silent conversations taking place between Marsh and Will.
‘I’ll get the aspirin,’ Will said. He turned swiftly and left. Lara tried to unwind, in spite of her pain, but knew the men had been messing with her brain; most of the pain was psychosomatic. The aspirin would exorcise the pain demon from her mind.
Lara’s heart sank as she watched Will leave. Part of it was the pain of his betrayal; part of it was loneliness after the love they had made between them.
Then Marsh was standing in front of her again. ‘Well, Lara, will you speak to me now your lover has gone?’ He tapped his foot impatiently. ‘There are things to discuss.’
She breathed in the stale air. Her eyes closed as the room began to spin again. Her head fell back into the pillow. She hoped that time would pass.
When she opened her eyes, Marsh hadn’t moved. Will hadn’t returned, the pain was still in her head. Any courtesy that Marsh had initially shown was gone. His eyes blazed with impatient temper and his hands wrung together with rage. ‘What did you see?’ he snapped and then without waiting for an answer, ‘Where is the manuscript? Will tells me it was not where he left it. He said you had stolen it.’
‘Then Will is a bloody liar,’ Lara said with as much venom as she could muster. Her efforts sounded feeble. ‘He never let the manuscript go. It was always in his pocket.’
Marsh appeared to consider this. ‘I shall investigate that. If you’re lying there will be serious consequences.’
‘Spare me the macho talk,’ Lara said, her voice wheezing like a lifelong smoker. Suddenly, any hope suddenly drained from her. Her vision of the future, any future, was empty. Within the last hours, everything she had believed, everything she had wanted, had been torn away from her. She was walking down that same pathway to oblivion as Will had, when she had first seen him on the railway lines. Facing such bleakness, a part of her wished the drug had fried her brain. At least then it would be over. They could have dissected her brain while she was still alive and thrown her still-living body into an incinerator. She would become another missing person. Vanished, having escaped from her abusive husband.
This is how Will felt.
But at the same time that thought crossed her mind, she knew it wasn’t true. Will hadn’t been suicidal. It had been a means to get to her.
She was sinking in horrible realisation. Nothing he’d said had been true. Janet’s death, losing his job, wandering aimlessly until he accidentally found this place; it was all lies to let her hear what he thought she wanted to hear so she would pity him, travel with him … even love him.
She closed her eyes, hiding her face like a wounded animal, so Marsh wouldn’t see her tears.
She didn’t stir when Will appeared a few minutes later. She heard the thud of a plastic beaker on a solid surface and the rustle of foil as a couple of tablets were pushed out of a packet. They could have been a brand name, or illegal drugs, or a placebo for all she cared. She had become used to the pain and, although she was attacked by the occasional sharp stabbing, it had mostly reduced to a dull throbbing.
‘She is faking,’ Marsh said with an indignant snort. ‘This is a waste of time. We need to know what she saw. I am running out of patience.’
She instinctively knew Will was standing over her. This time, she didn’t feel safe as she had when he had watched over her on the barge.
‘Give me some time with her,’ Will said. There was strength in his voice. She opened her eyes. He smiled. It was the same smile he had used on her before. He had a malicious look in his eyes when he spoke to Marsh. ‘I might get some answers out of her.’
‘She does not have long to cooperate,’ Marsh said. He strode away, then turned back. ‘Find out where the manuscript is.’ He left, slamming the door behind him.
Will pulled the chair to her bedside and sat down next to her. Lara glowered at him. ‘I’m less likely to tell you anything.’
‘I thought you’d say that,’ Will said earnestly. There was sadness in his eyes. ‘You probably won’t ever understand or even accept why I did what I did, but hear me out.’
Lara sat up in bed. She reached for the tablets and the water. Will leaned over to help her. She snatched them away, unwilling to accept his help in any way. She took the tablets and gulped down the water. Her jaw set as she waited for him to speak. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s hear your reasons.’
Will seemed to be caught off guard. Clearly, he hadn’t thought she would agree to hearing his explanation. He stumbled over the first words. ‘There’s a lot I’ve said that hasn’t been true, but there are some things …’
Lara shot him a pained expression. ‘Spare me this much, Will. I’m not interested in you saying, “Poor little me, this is really the reason I suffered.” The only truth you told me was that you’d stop at nothing to get your hands on the secrets, and I helped you. I can’t believe I helped you on your way.’
‘You’ll never know how true that is,’ Will said. ‘But I don’t suppose you want to know why.’
Lara shook her head. ‘How long have you been working for them, Will? Marsh trusts you with me. He doesn’t think we’re going to be planning an escape.’
‘They had me over a barrel,’ Will said softly. ‘The bit about wandering and accidentally finding my way in here and finding the manuscript … that was true. They caught me and they interrogated me.’ His voice had become hollow, his eyes became distant as if the memories of his ordeals were too much for him to bear.
Lara’s voice was just as forlorn. ‘If you’re trying to scare me, it won’t work.’
‘Just answer their questions now, Lara. They’ve never heard of the Geneva Convention here. They don’t just ask questions …’
Her face filled with disgust, and shame burned his face. ‘I don’t know how long it took them to realise I wasn’t a spy. They were like children, asking the same question over and over until they got the answer they wanted. And then they explained to me the seriousness of the situation. I’d seen things I shouldn’t have. But they were willing to overlook this, if I helped them to follow you. Gain your trust, find
out how much the drug had affected you.’ He sat back in his chair, and closed his eyes. ‘Besides, they gave me a couple of major incentives, one of which was that I got time studying the Gawain manuscript.’
Lara fixed cold eyes on him. ‘How many people did you have to sell out just to stay close to that damn book?’
Will said nothing for a while. His eyes fell to the floor. ‘They’d been following you for years,’ he said eventually. ‘If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else. It would have been so easy, just to look away, to not have made friends with you.’ His voice dropped again. ‘Not to have fallen in love with you.’
‘Oh, spare me,’ Lara said in sour mockery. ‘I’m not falling for that one. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have let them stick that needle into me. You don’t know that the serum wouldn’t have fried my brains.’ Her lip curled. ‘And even if it had worked, supposing there was some truth in what Marsh was saying, what if I had stepped back in time? Supposing I hadn’t been able to come back?’ She shook her head. ‘This is a ridiculous, childish fantasy. We all dream about going back in time and seeing what life was like. But it’s not possible. Time is a constant. You can’t get on and off it, like a bus. You can’t decide on the passengers.’
Will’s face fell. ‘I suppose nothing I say or do will make you believe … in me.’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Then I have nothing to lose by telling you one thing. I think there are other people looking for the Gawain manuscript. The manuscript, not you. At least one group. Maybe more. I don’t know who they are. I’m sure I saw someone in Chester and again in Avignon. They were following us, Lara, just not going to make a move until they saw where we led them. I think this is something big, Lara. It wasn’t just Marsh, there was someone else.’
