by Alex Scarrow
Maddy cocked a finger, inviting him to lean over. ‘Well, come on and take a closer look, Mr Cabot. See what you can figure out.’
Cabot pulled himself up out of his chair and joined them over the document, rolled out and spread flat along the table and almost as long. A steadily burning light in a small wire cage dangled from the arched brick roof just above them. He wondered what made it glow so steadily. It was certainly no flame.
He turned his attention to the elaborate curls and flourishes of handwriting before him. By contrast to the feeble flickering candlelight the priory’s monks worked to after dark, this steady light let him see as if the table was standing outside in a field in the middle of a bright summer’s day.
‘This,’ he began, moving a leathery old finger along the first lines of text, ‘this I believe ’tis a form of Irish Gaelic.’ His finger traced the words, his lips moving in silence for a while.
‘I tell ye, ’tis hard to read, but … I think this first line is a prayer of silence. Be thy true a servant, or perchance that reads … to help?’ Cabot growled with frustration. ‘Seek ye notin … matters of truth of … or ’tis some other meaning. Take not matters of light … Achh! My Gaelic is too poor to read this.’
‘What do you think that’s supposed to mean?’ asked Sal. ‘Matters of truth?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘Just a bunch of weird voodoo crock.’ She looked at Cabot. ‘Is there some hidden meaning in there that we’re supposed to get? Like … is it cryptic or something?’
He shook his head. ‘’Tis as close as I can understand it. The rest is beyond me.’
They stared at the swirls and strokes of letters, a meaningless jumble of accented and contorted Latin letters.
‘Maybe it’s not actually meant to mean anything,’ said Adam. The others looked at him. ‘Maybe it’s not the words themselves that are the clue, but how they’re written? Cabot?’
The old man shrugged. He studied it in silence for a while. ‘My knowledge is poor, ye understand? ’Tis been a long while …’ He hesitated a moment.
‘What?’ asked Maddy. ‘What is it?’
He shook his head. ‘’Tis poorly written. This man, Treyarch, was clearly no scribe.’
‘What do you mean?’
Cabot pointed to one of the words in the sentence he’d loosely translated. ‘This letter is wrong. ’Tis written upside down.’
Adam hunched closer to it, his nose almost touching the yellowed parchment. ‘I wonder …’ he whispered to himself.
‘Wonder what? Adam?’
He looked up at them. ‘You got a decent digital camera?’
‘I’ve got my iPhone,’ replied Maddy.
‘What’s that?’
Of course, she smiled. 2001 … they’re still a twinkle in the eye of some Apple designer.
‘It’s just my cell, it’s got a built-in camera.’ She went over to the computer desk and returned with it a moment later.
‘Get a decent image of all of the text between these corner markers,’ said Adam.
She climbed up on to one of the armchairs to get a good bird’s-eye view of the scroll, then snapped several images. ‘What now?’
‘Photoshop,’ said Adam, pointing back towards the bank of computer monitors.
A minute later and Maddy had downloaded the four images she’d taken of the Confession on to one of the computers and they were looking at them within the image-editing software. Cabot’s eyes were comically round with wonder as he stared at the dozen glowing monitors.
‘So,’ said Adam, clicking on a dropdown menu. ‘I’m going to lighten these images up a little.’ He selected the clearest of the four images, and tweaked its brightness. The rich yellow of the parchment became a lighter vanilla, and the black ink became a deep blue.
‘Thing is,’ continued Adam, ‘when using a grille, you place it down on the blank parchment with the windows already cut out, and then you write each letter of your message on the little windows of parchment you can see. Then, when you’re done, you let the ink dry first before removing the grille, so you don’t smudge it. That would give the game away, right? Only certain letters being smudged?’
The others nodded. Made sense.
‘So, what you have then is a page of isolated letters … you write the rest of some meaningless or innocent-sounding message that incorporates those letters.’
He clicked on a menu and pulled another dropdown of editing options. ‘But quite often, in between these two stages, you might be writing with a different pot of ink.’
‘It’s the same colour,’ said Maddy, pointing at the image on-screen. ‘It’s black … well, dark blue now you’ve lightened it.’
‘Every pot of ink is slightly different. You made your own ink back then.’
Cabot nodded. ‘This is right.’
‘It’s home-made ink, not factory made. Every time you make it, it’s ever so slightly different. To our eyes, yes, it’s all black ink, but in Photoshop, just one variation of the RGB value …’
‘RGB?’
‘Red, Green, Blue — essentially, tone … hue,’ said Adam, ‘and we can separate it out. Exaggerate it enough to see.’ Adam zoomed in close on the writing, then selected another menu option producing a slide bar. The mouse cursor dragged the slide marker and moved it slowly along the horizontal bar. The image started shifting tone, the paper easing from vanilla to amber to pink. And the ink sliding from a deep blue to a deep green to a deep ochre.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Maddy.
The upside-down letter that Cabot had identified was a slightly yellower ochre than the rest.
‘Zoom out,’ she said quickly. Adam did so, pulling out until the whole of the captured section of text was on the screen. Among the page, several hundred characters stood out distinctly from the rest — as distinct as minstrels at a banquet.
CHAPTER 73
1194, Nottingham
John struggled with great difficulty to keep the trembling to a minimum. He knew his nervous tic must be showing: that slight jerk of his head now and then, the impulsive stroking of his chin. No way of hiding that. But the rest of him was hidden beneath flowing robes. Richard would know he was terrified of him, but the other barons, earls and dukes were only going to see him from afar.
His sheriff, the very strange Liam of Connor, and his even stranger squire, Bob, walked with him along the dusty track leading out through the gates of Nottingham towards the small burgundy-coloured tent erected on its own in the middle of no man’s land.
He waits in there.
Beyond the tent, Richard’s army stood in battle lines, a row of six gigantic catapults behind earthworks, ready to bombard the walls of the city. An endless sea of glinting helmets and chain mail, pikes and pennants watching silently as they approached.
‘Relax, Sire,’ whispered his sheriff. ‘Remember, you have in your possession … the thing that this is all about. Right?’
John’s head nodded quickly. A good man, this sheriff. He offered Liam a faint flickering smile as they came to a halt outside the tent’s portico. Two soldiers were standing guard outside.
‘Only him,’ one of them growled insolently. No reference to John’s titles, no honorifics.
John gently tapped the sheriff and his large one-armed man to indicate they should stay where they were and stepped forward towards the tent’s entrance.
He pushed aside a drape of heavy velvet and entered the cool dim interior of the tent.
He saw a small wooden table with a flagon and two cups on it, two collapsible campaign chairs of oak and leather and Richard sprawled casually in one of them.
‘So, my little brother, you dared to come out to see me yourself, instead of sending a lackey.’
John nodded. ‘Y-yes.’ He hated the strangled warbling in his voice. He sounded like a woman beside the deep masculine growl of Richard’s drawl.
Richard snorted laughter. ‘You better sit before you collapse.’
John obediently settled into the oth
er of the two chairs.
Richard sat forward, the chair creaking under the weight of the man in his chain mail and armour plating. ‘I’m ready for a fight, little brother. Are you?’
‘I — yes — I’m …’
Richard laughed again. ‘Ha! You little runt. You couldn’t fight your way off a nursemaid’s teat!’ He picked up the flagon and poured some watered-down wine into his cup. ‘But I am not here to punish you this day.’ He emptied the cup with one swig, spilling wine down his thick blond beard.
‘Now, I’ve been hearing rumours, since landing on these Godforsaken shores, that something very precious to me has been lost by you. You know what I’m talking of, don’t you?’
John nodded. Although whether it stood out as a nod instead of another involuntary tic, he wasn’t sure.
‘I know you are a fool, dear brother, but not that much of a fool to lose it. So … I can only presume this is a fiction.’ Richard smiled for the first time. A cold smile that meant absolutely nothing. ‘It seems you have grown a backbone after all. This is your attempt to bargain with me, eh?’
John could see that smile wavering. He could see it turn into a snarl in a heartbeat, a snarl, a sudden whiplash of movement and a blade sunk deep into his throat. Richard could do that and not think twice of the consequences.
Be very careful.
‘I … I have it, brother.’
‘Excellent! Of course you do. And now, I thank you for keeping it safe these last two years. You will hand it over to me and perhaps — perhaps — I will overlook your reluctance to pay my ransom. I will overlook your many attempts to undermine my authority while I have been away fighting for Christendom.’
John felt his legs trembling beneath his robes, felt his bladder loosen, his stomach flip and churn.
Be strong.
‘It is safe, Richard. I–I shall …’
‘You shall what?’
John swallowed drily. ‘I shall h-hold on to it for n-now.’
The smile froze on Richard’s face. He reached for the flagon and topped his cup up again. ‘Your pitiful attempt at defiance is almost amusing. But I have no time for that now.’
‘I am s-serious, brother,’ John uttered, the words stumbling out of his mouth like a drunkard from an inn at closing time.
Richard’s eyes narrowed. ‘I … I … I am s … s … serious, b … b … brother,’ he mimicked cruelly in a shrill, high pitch. ‘I will not be bargained with by you, you pitiful woman!’ He shook his head at the very thought of that. ‘You are a child, a baby. You always have been. You play at being king while I have been away. And now you dare — you dare to play with this?’
‘It is just a scroll of words,’ said John. ‘It means nothing.’ But almost the moment he said it, he regretted it. He expected his brother to leap off his chair, to slap his face with the hard back of his hand. But instead Richard’s response was measured, calm.
‘It is God’s instructions … instructions meant for me and me alone.’
John looked at his eyes. They glistened with a frightening sense of glee, purpose.
‘You stand in the way of the Lord’s intentions, brother. A very dangerous place to be.’
John took a deep breath, steadying the churning in his stomach, hopefully steadying the unfortunate tremor in his voice. ‘Disband your nobles and their men, leave Nottingham … and I shall g-give you the Grail.’
‘No.’ Richard looked down at the ground. ‘These are the choices I present to you. Surrender the Grail immediately, and I shall consider some leniency. I am, after all, known for my mercy. If I have to take Nottingham to obtain it, I will have your head.’
‘Attack the city and — and I shall burn it before you get to m-me.’
Dark hooded eyes settled on him for a long while. ‘Then, dear brother, you will know the agony of a witch’s fire before I have you opened up and quartered. You will see your own heart in my hand before your head comes off.’
God help me.
John stood up. ‘I am leaving. We are done!’
Richard remained seated. ‘Then you will die very badly, brother.’
John pushed his way past the velvet drapes, cursing as his robes tangled with it and he stumbled awkwardly out into the open, Richard’s raised voice following him.
‘If you burn it, you fool … you will die badly!’
CHAPTER 74
2001, New York
‘But those letters, they don’t spell anything!’ said Maddy. ‘They’re just a bunch of weird Celtic squiggles.’
Adam was looking around her messy desk for something. ‘It’s not the letters we want — just where they are on the page. Have you got any cardboard?’
Normally there were half a dozen pizza boxes lying around, but she’d binned a whole bunch of them the other day. ‘Uh? What do you want cardboard for?’
Sal looked around at the filing cabinet to the right of the computer table. Liam had left a breakfast bowl up there and, being the scruffy shadd-yah he was, the box of Rice Krispies. She reached for it.
‘This any good?’
Adam grabbed it. ‘Yeah. Scissors?’
Both girls shook their heads.
‘This isn’t a freakin’ craft store,’ said Maddy.
‘I need to cut out windows,’ said Adam. ‘Have you got anything? A penknife?’
Cabot reached into the folds of his monk’s habit and pulled out a small knife. ‘Would this do?’
‘Perfect.’
Adam grabbed the knife from him. He pulled the bag of Krispies out and then began to hack at the cereal box. Maddy frowned. ‘You gonna make something you saw on Sesame Street?’
Adam ignored the jibe and pointed at the computer screen. ‘Make a note of those stand-out letters.’ He took his cardboard box and Cabot’s knife across to the kitchen table where the Treyarch was still stretched out under the glare of the overhead light.
He finished cutting one side of the cereal box out and laid it gawdy, print-side down on the parchment, carefully lining up the ragged corners of the cardboard with the corners of the margin illuminations.
‘Too big,’ he muttered. He began trimming one side. Cursing as Cabot’s serrated blade chewed at the flimsy cardboard, leaving a rough, uneven, shredded edge.
Sal, Cabot and Becks joined him.
‘This’ll be no good for cutting out the windows,’ he said. ‘I need a modelling knife or something. The cardboard’s just shredding up.’
Sal looked down at the parchment. ‘Why not just cut the letters out of this Treyarch thing?’
Adam looked at the ragged wobbling scrap of cardboard in his hand, then down at the unravelled scroll. ‘Yeah, why not.’
Cabot’s eyes grew round. ‘But — but … ’tis a valuable account from the First Crusade!’
‘No,’ said Adam, ‘it’s a cardan grille in disguise. That’s all it is. That’s why it was written. It’s the real key to that,’ he said, gesturing at the wooden box perched on the end of the table.
Maddy rushed over with a sheet of paper in her hand. ‘I printed it out.’ She laid it down on the table, the highlighted characters still just about discernible from the rest of the text. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘this first line … it’s this character that’s highlighted,’ she said, pointing to the upside-down Gaelic symbol Cabot had noted minutes earlier.
Adam took the knife, and carefully dug its sharp tip into the parchment and the wooden table beneath.
‘What if we’re wrong?’ said Maddy. ‘What if it’s something else? You’re about to cut holes in this thing, and, like, there’s only this one copy!’
Adam hesitated a moment. ‘Ahh … true.’ He blew air through his teeth.
She looked down at the printout. ‘But looking at that …’
He nodded. ‘Exactly. Those letters are different ink. There’s only one reason you’d write certain letters out of order like that.’
‘Yeah …’ she shrugged. ‘Ahh heck — go for it, then.’
As Adam
began cautiously cutting the first character out of the stiff parchment, Cabot absentmindedly crossed himself with the tips of his fingers and muttered an apology in Latin to God above.
CHAPTER 75
1194, Nottingham
Liam and the soldiers standing alongside him ducked again at the warning shout from the gatehouse. Half a dozen rounded boulders the size of mead barrels came hurtling over the top of the city wall and with a clearly audible whistle arced downwards into the market square.
One landed with a heavy thud that he felt vibrate through the ground. It sent up a mushroom cloud of dust and airborne soil and chicken droppings. The others found market stalls and the wooden shacks that surrounded the thoroughfare, shattering them like eggshell.
‘Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary!’
Bob stood beside him, calmly evaluating the paths the boulders had taken. ‘Information: they are adjusting their angles of trajectory.’ He pointed towards a section of wall twenty yards to the right of the city’s main gatehouse. ‘They are aiming for that. The wall there is weak.’
Liam could see a faint discoloration to the section of wall, as if different stone had been used there to patch up an age-old breach.
The first few volleys had overshot the wall and disappeared among the jumble of slate and wood rooftops in the middle of Nottingham, sending up plumes of dust and smoke into the cloudless blue sky. A fire had been started in among that somewhere; and the darker column of smoke, growing thicker, suggested it was beginning to take hold and spread.
Liam could feel the nervous darting eyes of hundreds of the town’s people on him; looking to their young sheriff to issue his orders.
Oh just great. Fantastic. I’ve never commanded the defence of a siege before.
‘Suggestion.’
Liam leaned closer to Bob. ‘Yes please … I’ve got no idea what to do, so help me.’
‘The wall will fail there,’ he said, pointing towards the discoloured section. ‘We will need to concentrate the garrison where the breach will be.’
