The Gawain Legacy

by Jon Mackley

  ‘Maybe,’ Will said. ‘But I’m tired of running. They’ll probably question me first, but I won’t tell them where the manuscript is.’

  ‘No,’ Lara scowled, ‘You’ll tell them I’ve got it and they’ll be looking for me instead. That’s your way.’

  He couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘They made a promise they couldn’t keep, Lara; I wanted to believe them.’

  She watched as Will turned and left; and flinched as he shut the door. She wanted to say something, but that would have been the Lara from before they had gone to the Église Saint-Pierre. Instead, she steeled herself, picking up the holdall. It was a worthless gesture. She felt empty. How could she try to explain her feelings to him, when she couldn’t even explain them to herself?

  Inside the station, she quickly scanned the timetables for the next train to London. It would arrive in ten minutes. Will had kept things tight so she would spend as little time lingering as possible.

  And as she walked through the ticket barriers down to the platform, she wondered if this was how Will had come into possession of the manuscript in the first place: that he had unwittingly assisted someone, who had then laid down their life, so that he might go free. Perhaps, this was Will’s way of returning a favour, and repaying a debt about which she knew nothing. Perhaps this was why Will had always seemed to be on edge.

  She realised she was perspiring in spite of the cold. She was constantly looking over her shoulder, expecting to see someone in a trench coat appear at any moment. And who was the man with the glasses? One of Marsh’s minions, or a superior?

  She kept walking around the platform as she waited for the train, never stopping in one place for more than a couple of minutes. She unzipped her holdall. Her purse was lying on top of her folded clothes. The train ticket was in one of the credit card slots. She took out a couple of coins for the drinks machine – she didn’t need a drink, but it was something to take her mind off things. She also picked up a magazine from the newspaper vendor.

  Soon, she was sitting on the train and the lights of Bath faded behind her. She ventured up to the buffet car to buy a coffee, hoping to keep herself awake. Only then did she realise her purse was thick with money. She also saw a piece of paper: a note from Will. She hurried back to her seat to read it.

  Lara,

  I sent the manuscript to my sister. You can go to her if you want to follow the trail to the end.

  Don’t let it fall into the wrong hands. If you worked out the clues in the Église Saint-Pierre, then you’ll know you’re close to the end of the trail. Together we found four locations. The poet emphasises the number five.

  I don’t blame you for hating me for what I did. I had no choice.

  W

  He had included an address at the bottom of the message: Home Forest House, Home Forest. In an additional note, Will had recommended travelling to Amersham and suggested taking a taxi from there to Home Forest House.

  There was still the complication that, although she knew how to break the last code, she didn’t know where that last code would be found without searching through the manuscript itself, which would only remind her of Will and his betrayal.

  But when she closed her eyes, she knew she’d go directly to Home Forest, because she wanted to know what the poet had gone to such great lengths to conceal. It didn’t matter what she thought of Will: she realised that, like him, she was becoming obsessed with the code. She scowled. She was becoming like him in too many ways.

  The train rattled along the tracks and she let her thoughts wander as they approached London. The station clock read that it was approaching half-past ten at night. Her body clock was completely out of synchrony. She wanted to believe that this was because of her captivity, but part of her knew it was something to do with the drugs that she had been forced to take. They’d altered her perception of time, forcing her to amend her preconceptions.

  She flicked through the magazine, but couldn’t really focus on the pictures, let alone the words. She tucked it back into her holdall as the train approached Paddington.

  Stepping off the train, she glanced around cautiously, wondering if she would see anyone following her. She went down to the underground and took the Bakerloo line to Marylebone, then bought a ticket for Amersham.

  She sat down, looking at her watch every few minutes. There were a few other people on the platform. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her: a weary commuter read a newspaper; there was a teenager wearing a hoodie; a tired-looking, middle-aged woman.

  When the train arrived, she picked a carriage with quite a few people, hoping she might blend in with the crowd. She was anxious about travelling through London, especially at night.

  Come on, she chided herself. How old do you think you are? She had been willing to run away from a marriage, now she was running again.

  But running had been a lot more fun when Will had been around.

  She stopped, her heart fluttered. How could she think of Will in anything but the most negative of terms? It didn’t matter that he’d tried to make amends. More to the point, she wasn’t convinced he could make amends. This could be another betrayal.

  And, it was he who’d got her into this situation in the first place.

  She chewed her lips, fighting confused emotions. She had cared about him once and now she was condemning him. She wanted to understand why he had done what he had done. Judging him without understanding was the attitude she’d have expected from her father, or worse still, from Michael.

  Suddenly, she felt sick. Was she turning into the same kind of person as them?

  Gradually, the number of people in the carriage grew less and less. She regarded the last man suspiciously as he folded up the newspaper he’d been reading all through the train journey, and walked to the same door at which she stood waiting for the train to stop. But once out of the station, he hurried along in a different direction, paying Lara no attention whatsoever.

  A lone taxi waited outside the station. The driver regarded her blankly as she asked him to take her to Home Forest and, as she was unable to offer any clue as to where it might be, he grudgingly pulled out a road map. It took both of them a couple of minutes to find the small hamlet of only a few houses. It was no more than six miles to Home Forest, but Lara had been unprepared for the London prices and she blanched when she watched the meter rising.

  The hamlet had no street lights. The taxi headlights had flashed across an innocuous street sign. The driver pulled up at the end of a long drive which led into wooded grounds. As Lara walked slowly into deeper darkness, she couldn’t make out the shape of the building itself. Her footsteps echoed around the driveway in the silence. It was unsettling. Lara wanted to run before she disturbed anyone. She had expected to hear dogs barking at any moment, warning the owner of her presence, but there was no sound, save the wind blowing through the trees. There was no distant hum of traffic and, even though Lara should have been comforted by that silence, it only succeeded in further unnerving her.

  She hesitated at the front door. Who, or what, was waiting on the other side? This could just as easily be another trap. Will was a master of deception and could be telling her once again what she wanted to hear. But a part of her believed Will was genuinely contrite, that he would have done anything to make amends for his betrayal.

  As if watching herself in a dream, her fingers closed around the heavy iron-ringed door knocker, lifted it and let it fall. It thudded once, sounding like a gunshot in the night.

  She waited in silence, torn between running and staying. The moon passed from behind a cloud, picking out the features of a lion holding the door-knocker in its mouth. She saw the house was a mock Tudor style.

  An outside light turned on and Lara was dazzled by the glare. A woman, who was taller than Lara, dressed in a striped rugby shirt and blue jeans opened the door. She did not greet Lara immediately, as she had expected, but instead regarded her with an expressionless face, before slowly nodding. ‘You’re Lara, righ
t?’ she said. It was all Lara could do to force a nod. ‘I’m Olivia Simmons. Will told me to expect you.’ She stepped back, allowing Lara to cross the threshold. She was shivering, still fearing a trap.

  But there was something about Olivia that made deception seem impossible. Her welcome had not been false. Instead, her expression was the confusion of someone who’d been asked a favour, but told not to ask any questions.

  She led Lara down a corridor decorated with an abundance of plants, and into a large, palatial kitchen. ‘I didn’t know if you would come,’ Olivia was saying, as she flipped on a kettle. ‘Will wasn’t very specific.’

  Lara stopped by the kitchen table, still clinging to her holdall. ‘I need to ask you something.’ Her voice sounded distant. ‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’

  ‘The same reason I know you are who you say you are. It’s an uncommon practice in this cynical generation, but it’s called trust.’

  Lara dropped her eyes, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’

  Olivia grinned. ‘Don’t be so silly. You had a right to ask. If anything, I should apologise. I forget not everyone has the same sense of humour as me. I had an advantage, Will described you in his letter. I thought he was waxing lyrical about you.’ Olivia stepped toward her. Lara backed away. Olivia raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you like me to take your coat? I’d like you to stay.’

  Lara stumbled over her words. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, flustered. ‘It’s … after all I’ve been through …’

  ‘You’re fragile,’ Olivia finished.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘I don’t have to know. I can see it in you.’ She walked over to the work surface. ‘Is coffee okay?’

  Lara nodded. She let the holdall fall on the floor and shrugged off her coat before sitting down on a rustic chair. Olivia returned with two mugs, a jug of cream, a bowl of sugar and a plate of biscuits, as if she had been expecting visitors. She sat down opposite Lara at the old farmhouse table.

  ‘Will sent me a manuscript. He didn’t tell me much about it. It’s in a foreign language to me. He said I should only give it to you; you’d know what to do with it.’ Olivia stopped speaking. Her eyes became far away and her jaw tensed. Eventually she spoke again. ‘Is Will all right? Her voice was distant. ‘I mean, he’s not in any kind of trouble, is he?’

  Lara tried to avoid Olivia’s gaze. ‘There’s trouble,’ she admitted. ‘I just don’t know how much.’

  Olivia sighed. ‘I’ve been worried about him. After our parents died, he was the only family I had left. And then his wife died and he went missing and …’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Lara interrupted, her voice filled with disbelief. ‘His wife? He was married to Janet? The newspapers said she was Janet Rose.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘She always used her maiden name. Didn’t he tell you about her?’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I bet he didn’t tell you about his son either?’

  Lara shook her head. She suddenly realised she was standing on a precipice of what she knew, or didn’t know, about Will.

  ‘Roger was Will and Janet’s only child. Will absolutely adored him.’

  I was adored once, Lara thought.

  Olivia smiled sadly. ‘We’d had this big joke that it was the only way our line was going to continue since my divorce.’ She looked uncertain. ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this.’

  ‘Please,’ Lara said. ‘I need to understand.’

  Olivia swallowed painfully. ‘When Roger died …’

  ‘He died …?’ Lara managed to gasp.

  ‘Will never spoke about this … Janet found out he’d cut himself on holiday. Roger was a brave little soldier. Didn’t tell anyone … and he died. Tetanus.’

  Lara nodded, fighting back the tears that Will couldn’t cry. She imagined Will and Janet sitting helplessly by the bedside, helpless to do anything except to watch him die. She wondered if Janet had blamed him for their son’s death, and that had been the wedge which had forced them apart, and when he had tried to reconcile the relationship, Janet had driven away, blinded by anger and grief.

  But Olivia was continuing. ‘The grief was too much for Will. He withdrew into himself. He actually left Janet for a few days while he tried to sort his head out. And she went to get him.’

  ‘And she never arrived?’

  Olivia nodded slowly. ‘She went to bring him back safely and then … his guilt was suddenly multiplied. He tried to sort himself out, God knows he did, but it was too much … and he was drinking … and then he just vanished. The next thing I know it’s a year later and this parcel turns up.’ She paused for a moment of sad indecision. ‘He hurt you, didn’t he? He hurt you so very badly.’ Lara didn’t answer. A lump had formed in her throat. ‘I don’t know what’s happened between you and him,’ Olivia continued. ‘It’s none of my business. And I don’t expect you to swallow this, because it’s like I’m defending my brother. But Will rarely does anything without a reason and most of the time only he knows that reason. So please don’t judge him too harshly.’

  Lara didn’t know what to say. She thought Olivia would understand if Lara told everything. She would probably have given impartial advice. But Will was the only family Olivia had. She couldn’t tarnish his memory. So she said nothing and hoped Olivia would not infer too much from her silence.

  Lara cleared her throat, feeling uncomfortable. But Olivia understood the hint. ‘How silly,’ she said softly. ‘You want the manuscript? Wait a moment, I’ll fetch it.’ She stood up quickly, leaving Lara to stare around the kitchen with tired eyes. At one end, a back door opened into a conservatory. Beyond, she saw ferns, Japanese maples, bamboos and anemones – something that could have been part of another continent, or another time. For a moment, she forgot everything. As she stared, she would have sworn that, if plants had the possibility of a human ego, then these would have been delighting in the attention. The leaves seemed to expand in a floral embrace. Then she realised she was not looking at them across the room, but across time. If she had concentrated, she could have seen these plants when they were tiny seedlings, watched them as they yielded their first leaves, and then as they became the dense foliage she saw in front of her.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She was suddenly startled by Olivia’s voice next to her. She hadn’t heard Olivia returning and now her intimacy with the plants seemed taboo. ‘I was just admiring your collection,’ Lara said, by means of an apology.

  ‘They are lovely, aren’t they,’ Olivia said. ‘I’m lucky with that conservatory. It seems to let in the right amount of light for that kind of plant. Perhaps when it’s lighter, you’d like to see round the grounds and some of the flowers there.’ Lara nodded eagerly. ‘Anyway,’ Olivia said. ‘Here it is.’ She handed Lara a Jiffy envelope. Lara took the package uncertainly. She tipped it and the manuscript slipped into her hands. She scanned the pages cautiously. It was the first time she’d touched it without Will present. She held a small piece of history in her hands and she could follow the trail on her own if she chose. She was humbled by the enormous responsibility.

  Olivia was speaking again, unmoved by the momentous occasion. ‘You’ve got to excuse me. I need to get some sleep. You’re welcome to stay up if you want, Mi casa es su casa and all that, but I’ll show you where your room is.’

  Lara nodded and followed her into a wide hall with a galleried landing. As she started up the stairs, even though she felt the weights of exhaustion crushing her, she was going to spend as much time with the manuscript as possible. Olivia stepped back and took her holdall from her. Lara smiled weakly. ‘I understand Will’s interest in Twelfth Night now.’

  Olivia reached the top of the stairs. ‘Olivia: the mourning queen. Look but don’t expect to touch.’ She grinned back. ‘Will can thank his lucky stars he wasn’t called “Sebastian” or “Orsino” – the great bear!’ She tapped a photograph of Charlton Heston at the top of the stairs. There was a handwritten message in the corner: To Slix, Happy Birthday, love
, Chuck Heston. ‘Will never calls me Olivia. He belongs to an age when everyone called me Slix.’ She led Lara along the corridor, without explaining why Will used that name, and showed her into a lavish bedroom, the walls painted with pastel colours and the furniture stained mahogany. A large double bed was in the middle of the room and the far wall was made up of mirrored cupboards.

  ‘I hope you’ll be very comfortable here,’ Olivia said.

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Lara replied with a grateful smile, noticing Olivia had laid out tea and coffee-making facilities, as though Lara was staying in a bed and breakfast. She wished Olivia goodnight and closed the door behind her. She lay down on the bed and opened the manuscript. It took a second to become accustomed to the unfamiliar handwriting, but she was soon able to focus on it. ‘Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye, þe borᵹ brittened and brent to brondez and askes …’ She read the manuscript out loud, listening to the musical flow of the alliteration. ‘That’s it,’ she said, scaring herself with her sudden shout. The alliteration was the code for which she had been looking. But the poet was too shrewd to start at the beginning of the text. She had to find the starting point of the code, a place that would have been obvious to someone who understood the way the poet’s mind worked.

  She worked late into the night, trying to piece together the codes from half-memories of conversations with Will, she tried to remember his potted history of the manuscript; but her mind was fogged and eventually she was forced to surrender.

  She lay in a reluctant sleep, seized by a longing to break that code once and for all; and frustrated that her body was confined by its physical limits.

  Her dreams were tormented and twisted, calls from the depths of insanity demanding her attention. She struggled to hold on to sanity and reason, but felt herself slipping away, falling through a clinging mist. She saw nothing and felt no change sweeping over her. Yet her mind was free and the useless clutter of the world was no longer shouting at her. The paths of time had ceased their continual flow and, instead of seeing a relentless river, Lara realised time had become a wide pool through which every instant passed simultaneously.