He handed the candle back to Saleem, saying, ‘Wait here. I’m going to check something.’
Both Saleem and Elizabeth protested, but he ignored them, clambered over the crouching villagers and ducked back into the first chamber. He dashed across to the entrance, pressed himself against the wall and peered round the edge. A fiery blizzard raged outside. The sky seethed with sparks and flashes. Squalls of round shot flickered in the dark. Ahead of him, a minaret toppled over as balls battered it.
It was like a vision of hell.
There was nowhere nearby to take shelter, and he and the others couldn’t risk searching further afield. It was too dangerous.
He darted back to the others and crouched down beside Elizabeth again.
‘We’ll stay here,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Best place for us at the moment.’
Elizabeth nodded, and a few of the villagers muttered amongst themselves.
Then a series of balls smashed in rapid succession into the slab overhead. It was as if a giant were stomping on the roof. The stone groaned and the central crack yawned. A cloud of dust poured down and several people burst into fits of coughing.
Jack wiped the grit from his eyes. He shot a look at Sonali, who was crouching beside Kanvar and looking around like a cornered cat.
Thump.
Another ball struck the roof, loosening more dust. Most of the villagers were whimpering or praying now.
Thump.
The crack was getting dangerously wide now.
Thump.
The candle went out and someone started screaming. Jack grasped Elizabeth. Held her tight. Should he tell them all to flee now? Should they run out into the storm of metal and fire and take their chances?
He would wait for another few moments and pray that the roof would hold.
If he were crushed to death, at least he was with his family. At least they were together.
Thump.
23
The man moaned, sobbed and clutched at the edge of the makeshift stretcher as Jack and Godwin carried him. Blood and dirt speckled his face, his hair was matted with what looked like innards and his torso was peppered with bullet wounds. The balls had ripped through his tunic and now dried blood encrusted most of his clothing. A shell must have exploded near to him and showered him with metal.
The pain seemed to come in waves. At times he lay still and quiet, but then he would shudder, gnash his teeth and cry out like one of the damned in hell.
Jack said a Hail Mary in his head.
Godwin, holding the other end of the stretcher, glanced back at the injured man at one point. But Jack muttered at his son-in-law to keep looking straight ahead and to walk faster. They had to get to the temporary hospital as quickly as they could.
Jack’s eyes stung and his head felt as though it were in a vice. He’d barely slept during the night. Even when the bombardment had finally subsided, he’d found it impossible to rest. He’d lain in the dark, listening to the others snoring, and wondered how in the world he was going to keep his family safe.
Dawn had revealed a scene of devastation. Much of the stonework inside the fortress had been smashed to piles of rubble. Fires smouldered where carts, supplies, tents and trees had been set alight. The smell of soot and burnt flesh drifted across the ruins.
Jack and the others from Folly Brook had gone to work straight away, hunting for those wounded who were still alive. Jack and Godwin had fashioned a stretcher from pieces of a broken wagon. Then they’d discovered the injured man lying beside a shell crater.
Now the large hall that housed the hospital appeared before them. The building had survived the onslaught during the night, but there were several gaping holes in its walls where the masonry had crumbled away long ago. People were carrying the wounded in through the various openings. Others limped into the hall, clutching themselves where they’d been injured.
Jack and Godwin carried the wounded man through what must once have been the building’s main entrance. Inside, a scene of carnage confronted them. The wounded lay writhing on sacks on the floor. A man near the entryway was covered in blood, bellowing at the top of his voice and bashing his fist on the ground in agony. A woman lay next to him. She was covered in weeping burns and was trembling silently. Jack swallowed back vomit when he saw a small boy with both of his legs blown off.
Flies buzzed throughout the chamber, collecting around wounds and puddles of blood. Several people, including monks and friars, were nursing the injured as best they could. But clearly there was little they could do. It was unlikely any of them had been trained in Rajthanan medicine, and they had few supplies or pieces of equipment.
A monk in black robes bustled across to Jack and Godwin. As the man stepped into a shaft of milky light, Jack saw that it was Brother Michael from Clun Abbey.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Jack said.
Michael looked dazed for a moment, as if he’d lost his mind, but then his eyes focused on Jack. ‘Ah. You live.’ His gaze flicked down to the man on the stretcher. He motioned to a corner of the hall. ‘Put him over there. We will do what we can for him.’
Jack squinted past Michael, looking for Kanvar. The Sikh had headed to the hospital first thing that morning, saying he would use his healing power to save as many as he could. But Jack saw no sign of him now.
‘Is Kanvar here?’ Jack asked. ‘The Indian with the beard.’
‘He was here for a moment,’ Michael replied. ‘But then he left. He said he had to prepare himself for something. I heard he’s over by the west wall. Someone saw him wandering about and raving.’
Jack frowned. Wandering and raving? Even for Kanvar that sounded strange.
After putting the injured man down, Jack left Godwin behind and set off on his own to find Kanvar. It was an overcast day and the clouds were motionless in the sky. He half expected to see a round shot whisk overhead or a fireball come screaming towards the earth. But, for the moment, the enemy had stopped firing.
Why wasn’t Kanvar at the hospital? Why wasn’t he using his healing power?
Jack wished he himself had some power with which he could treat the wounded. But the one healing yantra he knew, Great Health, could only be used once in a lifetime – and even then, you could only use it to cure yourself.
What the rebels really needed were Rajthanan doctors and medical siddhas. And there was no chance of any of those coming to the rebels’ aid.
Jack found Kanvar in a courtyard on the west side of the fortress. The Sikh was sitting meditating in the shade of a hunched oak tree.
As Jack walked across the grass, he passed into a powerful stream. The grainy sattva coursed around him and the sweet incense tickled his nose. This was the only stream he’d come across so far inside the fortress.
Kanvar stirred and opened his eyes as Jack crouched down beside him.
‘You all right?’ Jack asked. ‘Someone said you were walking around like a madman.’
Kanvar frowned. ‘I do not understand why someone would say that. I was pacing about, but I was taking some measurements. Perhaps that is what this person saw.’
Jack snorted. The people in the fortress were likely to see almost anything Kanvar did as strange. ‘What about your healing power?’
Kanvar put his hand to his forehead. ‘I am preparing to use it. I must meditate for several hours. Sadly, though, I will only be able to treat one person per day at the most. That is, if I even survive myself.’
‘You sure you want to do this?’
‘I must help as best I can.’
‘All right. I’ll leave you to meditate in that case.’
‘Wait.’ Kanvar’s eyes widened. ‘I am glad you are here. This morning I made a discovery which should interest you.’
‘What?’
Kanvar stared into the distance. ‘You are, at this moment, in the Great Yantra.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. The stream you are sitting in, if my calculations are correct, is within the yantra.’
Jack felt a flash of irritation. ‘This is just a few hours from Folly Brook. You said the nearest point of the yantra was in Staffordshire.’
‘That is what I believed. But when I met Takhat, we swapped the results of our surveys. I copied what Takhat had discovered onto my own map. I hadn’t had a chance to study the map in detail until we got to this fortress. I started examining it yesterday, and then again this morning. And I now believe the Great Yantra covers a different area from what we Sikhs previously thought. I will show you.’
Kanvar reached into his satchel and unfurled a large chart. The wind tugged at one of the corners, and he placed a rock on the paper to hold it down.
The first thing Jack noticed was that a wide area of this map had few markings on it at all. Expanses around the edges were plain white.
‘This is a map of Britain and Ireland.’ Kanvar splayed his fingers over the central part of the chart, which was covered in the usual cryptic lines and squiggles.
He then waved his hand over a portion of the central area. ‘This region is Scotland.’ He pressed his finger on a large blue dot. ‘Here is the centre, which you helpfully found for us.’ He swept his fingers in a circle. ‘And here are the markings of the Great Yantra itself.’
Jack noted the numerous blue lines that represented the sattva streams. ‘It’s not as complicated as I thought it would be.’
‘No. As far as we have been able to tell, the design is not, in fact, as detailed as some yantras.’
Jack studied the map more closely. A strange feeling was creeping up on him, but he couldn’t tell why. He had that odd sense of unreality he’d noted previously when Kanvar had explained the secrets of sattva.
‘Now, here is the meeting point in Staffordshire.’ Kanvar pointed to a blue dot towards the bottom of the map. ‘You see some lines here that indicate where we Sikhs believed the edge of the yantra lay. But when I looked at this more closely, I came to see that, given Takhat’s discoveries and the location of the centre in Scotland, it would make more sense if the edge ran along this axis.’ He drew a line with his finger further down the chart. ‘And, in that case, the edge would run directly through the fortress, exactly where we are sitting now.’ He jabbed a point on the map with his finger.
Jack rubbed his eyes. He thought he understood what Kanvar was saying. But this seemed less interesting to him now. Instead, he was transfixed by the incomplete drawing of the Great Yantra. There was something about it that was almost familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. His eyes flickered over the chart, from Shropshire all the way up to Scotland and beyond.
He was surprised to see the blue lines extending up into the white space towards the top of the map. ‘What is all this empty space?’
‘That is the sea.’
‘The streams run across the sea?’
‘Oh yes. They run everywhere.’
Jack sat back. He hadn’t considered this. But of course, if the streams could stretch over the ground, why not the sea? ‘How do you map those, then?’
‘By boat. It is difficult but possible. However, we’ve had to do less than you might think. You see, the design of the yantra is symmetrical. The pattern in one quarter is repeated in the other quarters.’
Jack stared at the map. The blue lines of the yantra seemed brighter and more vivid. He could see what Kanvar meant now – the design did seem to repeat itself.
‘Almost all yantras are symmetrical to some degree,’ Kanvar continued. ‘The Great Yantra especially so. This has made our task much simpler … are you all right?’
Jack could well understand why Kanvar had asked him this question, because he was blinking furiously and trembling.
He’d seen something that couldn’t be. Could not be true.
And yet there it was.
The blue lines representing the sattva streams seemed to glow with an unnatural fire and brand themselves on the back of his eyes.
‘I know what the full design is,’ he said.
Kanvar’s forehead bunched into a frown. ‘I do not think that could be possible.’
Jack pressed the paper with a shaking finger. ‘I know it sounds crazy. But I do. I’m sure of it.’
‘Jack, are you feeling well—’
‘It’s the Celtic cross necklace. The one Katelin always wore.’
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
‘Listen.’ Jack grasped Kanvar’s tunic at the collar. Kanvar jumped and looked alarmed, but Jack continued gripping him. He knew he was sounding like a madman. But he couldn’t help it, because he was caught up in a whirlwind now. ‘I’ve seen the design of the Great Yantra before. Many times. It’s exactly the same as the necklace my wife used to wear. She gave it to me, and now I’ve given it to Elizabeth.’
Kanvar swallowed. ‘You are certain of this?’
‘Yes!’ Jack realised he was getting carried away. Perhaps he really was going mad. He let go of Kanvar, who straightened his tunic again.
‘Look here.’ Jack pointed at the map. ‘It was when you told me the pattern repeats that I finally got it. See these two marks here.’ He ran his fingers along two wide blue lines that stretched up towards the centre of the design. ‘That’s the bottom arm of the cross.’ He gestured to the right side of the map. ‘And here is another arm.’
‘Yes, I know these.’ Kanvar leant over the map. ‘Those are what we Sikhs have referred to as the spokes. They reach out to the edge of the great wheel and then run towards the centre.’
‘Exactly. They form a cross. All leading to that point in Scotland.’
Kanvar licked his lips. ‘But a cross is not a circle. All the yantras are circular in design.’
Jack grinned. ‘That’s what confused me at first. The thing is, we’re not talking about any cross – it’s what we call a Celtic cross. It’s an ancient design. A cross inside a circle.’ He moved his finger around the edge of the yantra. ‘You see … that’s the edge, as you call it. That’s the outer rim of the circle. And there inside is the cross, all four arms leading into the centre.’
Kanvar stared hard at the chart. He was completely still and his eyes didn’t blink, although his pupils darted this way and that across the blue markings. ‘I see what you mean. It is like a cross. We Sikhs have been describing it as a wheel, but a cross makes sense too.’ He looked up at Jack. ‘Extraordinary. You are certain the necklace matches this design exactly? In every detail?’
‘Aye, I’m sure.’
‘Incredible.’ Kanvar stared into space for a long time, muttering to himself. Finally, he said, ‘You must show me this necklace at once.’
‘Right. Let’s find Elizabeth. She should be back at the camp.’
Kanvar swept up his map and packed it away in his satchel. Then he and Jack marched back through the ruins.
Jack felt filled with a strange fire, as if a djinn had seized hold of him. The world about him looked sharp and distinct. Despite the cloudy day, the colours seemed bright.
Could it really be true that Katelin’s necklace was moulded into the shape of the Great Yantra? It seemed impossible, but there was no other explanation for what he’d seen.
And did this mean that they now had the power and could use it to fight the Rajthanans? He felt giddy at the thought.
Then he heard a shrill whistling in the distance and his skin rippled. It sounded like round shot.
A second later, he heard a series of cracks and rumbles as several guns were fired.
It was starting again.
He glanced at Kanvar and, without either of them saying a word, they began running across the broken stonework. All around them, people were hunting feverishly for cover. Everyone knew what was in store for them now and wasted no time in finding shelter.
The grumble of the guns grew louder. When Jack looked towards the east, he spotted the dark specks of round shot swarming over the wall. The white smoke of the rebels’ guns billowed across the battlements.
The firefight was growing
hotter. He and Kanvar had to get back to the Folly Brook camp quickly.
A round shot shrieked out of the sky and slammed into the ground ahead of Jack. Another swung down from the left and smacked a pillar in half.
Jack and Kanvar clambered over piles of rubble, ducked through archways and charged across courtyards. More balls hailed down around them, clipping stonework, shredding trees and punching holes in buildings.
As they ran alongside a low, crumbling wall, Jack heard a familiar screech. When he looked up, he saw a shell plummeting towards him and Kanvar. It was already so close he could clearly see the black ball and the fizzing fuse. Blots of smoke trailed behind it.
For a second, the shell seemed to hang in the air – as if time had stopped. But then it smashed into the ground behind the wall, spitting up a puff of dust.
Jack’s heart bashed in his chest. He knew the shell could detonate at any moment, and he mustn’t be near it when it did. Both he and Kanvar charged forward, skidding on the shattered stones.
Jack felt as though he were wading through mud. Every step he took seemed intolerably slow. Why was it taking him so long to get away? Why couldn’t he move faster?
Then he heard a cry behind him. He spun round and saw that Kanvar had tripped over and was now on all fours on the ground.
Jack’s heart pounded. He shouted at Kanvar to get up.
Kanvar leapt to his feet and was about to run when the shell exploded. He was wiped out by a screaming wall of metal, stone and dust. Shell fragments whistled through the air. Jack flung himself to the ground, hands over his head in a vain effort to protect himself.
He lay still for a moment, panting heavily, heart racing. His ears rang so loudly he was deafened for a moment, but then his hearing returned.
He was still breathing. He was still alive.
He jumped to his feet again and saw a huge bulb of dust roiling before him. But there was no sign of Kanvar.
Christ.
He charged into the dust, coughing and spitting grit from his mouth. He scoured the rubble and finally spotted Kanvar lying half buried under the broken masonry that was all that remained of the wall.
The War of the Grail Page 24
