by Alex Scarrow
While, in his possession, in his oak campaign chest … was the key to unlocking the words of the Lord: the other half of the Grail. A small square of worn leather.
‘Sire?’
A shrill, tremulous voice like the cry of a seagull cut into his thoughts, like fingernails down a board. Irritated, he turned to see a young squire, little more than a pageboy in silks, several yards away, kneeling in the shingle and looking down at his own feet, not daring to make eye contact.
‘The lords are asking … uh … w-when it is ye p-plan to set sail?’ the young man asked nervously.
Richard’s broad face creased with amusement. It was funny how nervous men became in his presence. They stumbled over their words; their voices rose in pitch until they sounded like women; they fidgeted and scratched and shuffled; their cheeks flushed crimson. It was as if they too sensed the energy of destiny burning inside him. As if they understood that soon King Richard would govern an empire larger than Rome had ever known. And he would rule it with the rigid discipline and firmness of a father.
Because God wills it.
‘We shall set sail this morning on the tide,’ he replied slowly.
The young squire nodded and began to back away.
‘And, boy?’ Richard called out to him.
He stopped. ‘Yes, Sire?’
‘Bark at me like that again and I shall gouge the tongue from your mouth with the tip of my sword.’
The squire’s face paled. He nodded silently, not daring to speak again.
Richard watched him back away to a respectful distance, then turn and run towards the tents with the news. He turned back to look at the Channel and smiled. The weather for the crossing was good. The breeze freshening.
Because God wills it.
CHAPTER 44
1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
The sunlight warmed Liam’s face. He closed his eyes, savoured its heat and listened contentedly to the sounds of Nottingham stirring to life: the tac-tac-tac of someone chopping firewood, the bray of a donkey, the bustle of market vendors setting up for the day, the bark of a dog setting off a dozen others. All these sounds echoed across the cluttered shack rooftops of the town and up towards the castle keep.
A flight of swallows swooped past Liam’s narrow window and he opened his eyes to watch them dive and chase each other. His gaze shifted across the warm summer shimmer of the walled town towards the spread of fields outside. All of them now being worked, striped with thick lines of barley and wheat.
Someone, somewhere below was singing. A distant female voice that seemed to share his contentment.
I could live here forever.
He sighed. He could, really, he could. He could abandon the mission. He could abandon Bob and Becks, let them return home without him and he could remain here in Nottingham as the sheriff. As long as he preserved history as it was, no one would need to come for him, would they? He could live out his natural life here, lord of all he surveyed.
A lovely dream.
One he could happily indulge all day. But, he sighed, there were matters to attend to.
Down below, in the flagstoned bailey, he could see soldiers being drilled. Eddie, working the new recruits. Bob was down there with him, demonstrating the on-guard position, a longsword glinting in the sunlight, above the coarse mop of his dark hair.
Liam stepped away from the window and finished dressing himself. A pageboy brought him a tray of freshly baked bread and honey, and a flagon of watered-down wine. Ten minutes later he emerged from the dark interior of the keep into the courtyard and watched the soldiers drilling for a while.
Finding men willing to join the guard and replenish the garrison had been nigh on impossible five months ago. The people of Nottingham would have turned on any young man foolish enough to announce he planned to offer his services to the sheriff. But that was before Liam had opened the doors of the castle’s storehouse and offered loaves baked fresh from the contents of their granary. Word got around the town’s starving folk, barely managing on nettle stews and pottages made from rotting vegetables, and that simple gesture on day one of Liam’s role as sheriff had put an end to the nightly riots.
Eddie spotted Liam standing and watching. ‘Good morning, sire!’ he called out.
Liam nodded and waved. ‘Morning, Eddie. Your lads are looking good.’
Several of the men drilling turned and knuckled their foreheads politely. Smiles and nods from recruits old and young alike.
Liam, Cabot and Bob had taken inventory of the castle and found food stores enough for the garrison to feed on generously six months or more. Shared out carefully with the townspeople, there’d been enough for a month. Liam had then decreed that the King’s forests were free for all to find food and game in, to forage for wild-growing shoots, nuts and berries, for the immediate future. A popular measure that ensured a steady supply of food into the town’s market every day. Satisfied that support for the revolt within Nottingham had been averted, Cabot had soon returned to Kirklees to oversee his priory.
Barely a week after they’d taken over from the previous sheriff, Liam and Bob were able to mount a few cautious patrols beyond Nottingham’s walls, which was timely. With spring arriving, the fields beyond needed to be worked if the people were going to feed themselves.
Seeing Liam, Bob disengaged from his class of recruits and ordered them to stand easy. They lowered their heavy swords and shields with sighs of relief as he walked through them towards Liam.
‘Sheriff,’ he greeted Liam formally.
Liam beckoned Bob to walk with him around the edge of the bailey, out of earshot so they could talk freely. ‘Bob,’ he said quietly, ‘how much mission time have we got left?’
‘Twenty-four days, nineteen hours and forty-three minutes of mission time remain.’
Liam nodded, thoughtfully stroking the thin tufts of downy dark hair that had sprouted along his jaw in the last few months. ‘We have, what? Less than four weeks left?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Both you and Becks will need to return.’
Bob nodded. ‘Our mission countdown needs to be reset.’
Six months: a safety measure. Hard-coded into them both was a self-destruct command. The tiny mass of circuitry inside their skulls would fry itself. It meant computer technology from the 2050s was never going to fall into the hands of somebody from an earlier time, nor could a killing machine like Bob ever become reconditioned or reprogrammed to be used by some tyrant. If the support units failed to return and have their mission clocks reset, a tiny puff of burnt-out circuitry would leave Bob and Becks nothing more than dribbling village idiots.
‘I think I should take a trip out to see Mr Cabot. We’ll need to leave a message for Maddy. Let her know we’re getting on top of things.’
Bob grunted an affirmative.
They’d need to set up a return window so that both support units could be returned and reset. It would also be an opportunity for him to update Maddy fully. From where Liam was standing, it appeared support for the peasants’ rebellion had ebbed away. The people of Nottingham at least seemed content to go about their business. The poor and hungry of the surrounding towns and villages would surely soon follow their lead, once the harvest was gathered and food could be distributed more widely. If history was back on track – and it looked that way – then he and Bob could proceed with the rest of their mission: to comb those woods he could see on the horizon, for the hooded bandit and his dwindling band of followers … and hopefully retrieve the Grail from them.
Truth was that mob of bandits, whether led by some hooded figure or not, appeared to be operating further away now that Nottingham and the surrounding area was back under some semblance of order. The farms were now regularly patrolled by their raw recruits, and the daily sight of a column of one hundred men in chain mail appeared to have been enough of a disincentive to those villains that no crops had been flamed or ruined so far this year.
This time last year,
Liam had learned from Cabot, they’d been raiding every farm they’d come across – the workers killed, animals butchered or stolen, fields left in flames. And a summer had passed in which little food could be set aside for the winter. The previous sheriff had done nothing to prepare for the inevitable famine, except, of course, to ensure his own castle was well stocked.
Liam had been stunned at how much the simple gesture of offering bread to the poor and starving of the town had achieved, ending the riots with one stroke. These hardy people were prepared to endure endless hardship and sacrifice and even offer their unfailing loyalty … so long as their noble-born masters treated them like human beings.
A simple idea for a poor lad from Cork, born in the year 1896, to understand; almost impossible for these French-born lords and barons to comprehend, though – most of whom didn’t even bother to speak the same language as the peasants they ruled over.
What a difference five months has made.
Liam realized, once again, how there was a bewildering one-sidedness to things. He and Bob had arrived back in 1194 at the beginning of January, a cold desolate month of dark grey days. Now it was June. Winter had ended, spring had been and gone, and summer appeared to have arrived early, the trees already thick and green with budding leaves. But for Maddy and Sal, he imagined only half an hour or an hour would have passed; the time it took to recharge the displacement machine.
He shook his head.
‘What is the matter, Liam?’
‘I just realized something.’
‘What?’
‘I’m ageing faster than the other two.’
‘Maddy and Sal?’
‘Aye.’
‘That is correct. For you much more time has passed.’
He tutted. ‘But that’s not fair, is it? We keep doing long missions like this … I could end up an old codger while they’re still bleedin’ teenagers.’
Bob looked at him, uncertain how to respond. ‘It is an unavoidable consequence of time travel, Liam.’
He sighed. ‘Ahh well, I suppose I agreed to this kind of thing when I let that old man Foster take me.’
They walked in silence for a while, the walls echoing with the clank and rasp of Eddie’s recruits drilling.
‘We have another tax collection organized for today, don’t we?’
‘Affirmative.’
Half a dozen of the nearest nobles’ estates had been paid a visit by Bob, Liam and half the castle’s garrison. Each time they’d returned with wagons loaded with grain and a tithe of coins. The nobles and barons all pleaded poverty when they turned up outside their walled keeps, all claiming that John’s taxes had left them destitute and starving, but it was surprising how well fed they and their household servants all seemed to be, and how well stocked their granaries were. Meanwhile their tenant farmers beyond the walls looked as much like scarecrows as the people of Nottingham had last winter.
‘We’ll do the visits first, then you can return with the loot, but I need to go on to Kirklees.’
Bob stopped. ‘You should not travel without an escort, Liam. There are still bandits in the forest.’
‘I know … I know. I’ll take some men with me, I promise. On horseback we should make it before nightfall; we can stay at the priory and return early tomorrow. I just think it’s time to update the others, and make sure Becks is ready to come back. Her mission clock is ticking down too.’
‘Affirmative.’
Eddie called out and his men ceased drilling. Liam watched the recruits at rest; a pair of young women moved among them with water butts strung from poles across their shoulders. They served the hot and thirsty men ladles of water that they drank and splashed across their sweaty faces.
‘I wonder,’ said Liam, ‘I wonder how she’s doing?’
CHAPTER 45
1194, Oxford Castle, Oxford
‘Have I told you, Lady Rebecca … have I told you how beautiful your eyes are?’ John cooed from her lap. He looked up at her, a blissful smile stretched across his face. ‘Have I, my dear?’
Becks nodded and smiled down at him faintly. ‘One hundred and twenty-seven times, Sire,’ she replied matter-of-factly as she gently stroked his cheek.
He laughed. ‘You are so … so precise!’ He sat up suddenly and looked at her intently. ‘That is why, I think, I have fallen so in love with you. You are not like all the other women I have known … feather-headed moo-cows who think of nothing but poems and silly frivolities. You are …’ He frowned, struggling to find the right words. ‘You are so very different!’
She nodded slowly, carefully weighing up what was the most appropriate thing to say back to him.
Response Candidates:
1. I thank you for your kind words, Sire. (78% relevance)
2. I wish to be different for you, my love. (21% relevance)
3. I am different, Sire. I am a combat unit from the year 2056. (1% relevance)
She giggled shyly, a gesture she’d observed other women use all the time in response to flirtatious flattery. ‘I thank you for your kind words, Sire.’
He frowned. Mock serious. ‘Sire? Sire? You must call me John, my dear. Please. In fact I am yours to call whatever you wish!’
She nodded. ‘Then I shall call you John.’
He smiled dreamily and collapsed back, his head cradled in her lap once more. ‘I have never felt so content,’ he murmured, his eyes closing as she stroked his troubled brow. ‘Never in my miserable life, not even with so many things to vex me – troublesome barons, no money, unrest, troubles, troubles, troubles …’ He continued, she pretending to listen, nodding at what she calculated were the right moments, but the cognitive part of her mind was busy elsewhere.
[Mission time remaining: 588 hours 56 minutes]
Time was running out. Another three weeks and she would have to return to 2001. If frustration had been an emotion she could emulate, she supposed she’d be feeling it now. Just over five months of this, simulating love-play with the Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester. That first night he’d visited her room unannounced, expecting her to surrender herself to him … she had miscalculated the response and thrown him to the floor. That was the night, he later admitted, that he’d fallen head over heels – literally – in love with her.
At first, she’d been uncertain how effective and convincing her responses were going to be to his overtures, his poems, his breast-beating declarations of utter infatuation. But then one of the household maids had spotted her awkwardness and taken her to one side. An older woman, with a lifetime of experience to offer her, she listened intently. The maid gave Becks advice on how best to respond to all the things John was likely to say, how best to please him.
She’d wondered how exactly to translate the nugget of advice into a practical behavioural response strategy. Cross-referencing it with modern language idioms, she concluded the old lady meant: Play hard to get.
Which was the tactical solution she’d decided to adopt. And it appeared to have worked. John, to use another modern expression, ‘was like putty in her hands’. Like a fawning puppy. She understood that gave her some degree of leverage; that she could ask favours of John that no one else would dare to ask. But a part of her AI understood human behaviour enough to know that to ask him too much about the thing she wished to know more about was to invite his suspicion.
This thing, of course, was the Treyarch Confession.
In the last five months, she had chosen to raise the subject less than half a dozen times. On each occasion she’d only asked after ensuring John had consumed enough wine to render him insensibly drunk.
His rambling replies had yielded some useful information.
The Confession was something that his older brother, Richard, had come across as a much younger man, back when the sons of Henry II were all still boys and living at Beaumont Palace. It was apparent that John was not lying when he said he had no idea how the document found its way into the royal library, but that somehow his father had acquired it
.
According to John, throughout his childhood he had memories of how his father guarded it carefully and read it frequently. It became an obsession of his older brother Richard, an obsession to find out what mysterious story was contained in this Confession. And one day, when he was merely twelve years of age, Richard finally discovered the Confession hidden carefully in his father’s library of scrolls, parchments and manuscripts.
And it changed him.
As John muttered on about love, in her lap, Becks replayed in her mind the audio file of the last occasion they’d spoken about the Confession. He’d been lying by the fire as it roared and crackled from a fresh log, his voice thick with drunkenness, his words slurred.
‘Overnight it seemed … Richard was utterly transformed. He was still an awful bully. But now … now he was a bully with a singular vision of destiny. He said he would take Father’s kingdom and make it an empire. That God had shown him the way he would do it. I know … I know this is why the stupid fool went to the Holy Land. As soon as Father and our oldest brother Geoffrey died and Richard became king … that’s the first thing he did – launch his bloody crusade.’
Becks heard her own voice. ‘God showed him the way he would do it?’
‘Yes … yes … it was in that wretched Confession, wasn’t it? The Grail story, you see? It was all in there. It was what turned him into the crazy man … what’s made him so, so very dangerous.’
‘Is the Confession still in the royal library?’
‘I … I … would not know, nor care to know. It … I suppose Richard would consider Oxford the safest place for it to be kept. But, please … enough of that madman, my dear … I’m getting stomach pains thinking about him.’
A pause. ‘You fear him?’
Another pause. A long one. Then finally …
