Time Riders

by Alex Scarrow

  She hushed as a castle servant passed them in the small dark hallway. She beckoned Liam to follow her until she found a low wooden door on their left and stepped inside. They were in a small pantry; it was empty, save for several shelves laden with clay pots of preserves.

  Liam reached out and grabbed her arms. ‘It’s good to see you again, Becks! Me and Bob were becoming worried about you, so we were.’

  ‘I have been in no danger,’ she replied calmly, with a hint of a smile for him. But then it was gone. More pressing matters to attend to. ‘John does not have the will or the courage to stand up to Richard. But my history database shows this siege does take place. That John does make a stand against him. Nottingham holds out for a week.’

  ‘That needs to happen, then, right? To ensure history is back to where it was?’

  She nodded.

  ‘What about the Grail?’ said Liam. ‘Richard isn’t meant to get his hands on it, is he?’

  ‘There is no information on that in my files. This would indicate –’

  ‘That the Grail vanished. Ended up getting lost.’

  ‘Affirmative.’ She cocked her head, considering a suggestion. ‘We could destroy it.’

  Liam shook his head. ‘No – no, I think there’s much more than we thought in there. Not just this word Pandora … there’s some sort of prophecy about the future.’

  ‘Prophecy?’

  Liam told her everything he could remember Locke telling him. He told her about the robot he came back with, about the Templars who’d sent him. He talked uninterrupted for what seemed like ages. Finally, describing Bob chasing Locke off into the woods and retrieving the box. She now knew everything he did.

  ‘Then there may be strategically important information we can retrieve by decoding this document,’ she said calmly, gazing at the wooden box in Liam’s hands.

  ‘Exactly … and the only way to do it is using this grille thing out there, in King Richard’s possession.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I believe there is another factor involved.’

  Liam frowned. This was already confusing enough for him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  She reached under the layers of her gown, fumbling awkwardly for a few moments before pulling out a scroll of parchment. It was flattened and creased. He didn’t dare ask where that had been wedged.

  ‘This is a document known as the Treyarch Confession,’ she said. ‘This is an account of the discovery of a scroll dating back to –’

  ‘Bible times?’ cut in Liam. He remembered Cabot’s description of it months ago.

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘That is irrelevant information. I have scanned the text of this and analysed the content.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I calculate a fifty-seven per cent probability that the Treyarch Confession is the correct key for decoding the Grail.’

  ‘What?’ He looked at the creased and tattered parchment in her hands. ‘That’s the key?’

  ‘Fifty-seven per cent probability that it is. Correct.’

  ‘So what’s King Richard got then?’

  ‘A piece of worn leather with holes cut into it.’

  ‘Why? What makes you think that this is the real thing?’

  She carefully unrolled the parchment until finally it was spread almost two yards along the stone floor. She pointed to illustrations in the margins on both sides of the text. ‘These decorative illustrations are common for the time. Typically they mirror the theme or message of the text. Observe,’ she said, moving her finger down one margin. ‘These illustrations are just simple geometric patterns. They have no discernible symbolism or meaning.’

  ‘They’re there just to make it look nice?’

  ‘Correct.’

  Liam noted the patterns were intermittent; a dense and intricate block of cross-hatching and swirls about two inches high and wide, located every ten or eleven inches down the margin on either side.

  ‘The patterns are identical,’ Becks said. Liam looked more closely. Yes, they were. Line for line, curl for curl – the same ornate pattern.

  Becks’s finger moved down the scroll and finally stopped. ‘Except these four.’ She pointed them out, two on each side. Liam struggled to see the difference by the guttering candlelight. His eyes strained as he studied them, again comparing lines and curves.

  ‘Look very closely,’ said Becks, pointing to a faint pen-stroke amid the pattern. The slightest hint of a minute cruciform easily lost amid the confusion of elaborate ink swirls. She pointed to another of the four. Again, the hint of a cross in a different location within the pattern. And then the other two. ‘The cross appears only in these four blocks of pattern.’

  He looked at her. ‘So?’

  Her brows knotted momentarily, perhaps a flickering learned gesture of impatience. ‘Each cross could indicate a corner.’

  He looked back down at the parchment. She was, of course, right. ‘Four corners …?’

  ‘Four corners of a box.’

  He looked back down again.

  She continued. ‘I calculate with reasonable probability that this is an instruction on how to build a cardan grille to decode the Grail. The corners of the template would line up with the four crosses.’ She pointed at the handwritten text that would be framed by all four markers. ‘And some of the letters of the text within the template area should be identifiable as “window candidates”.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You would mark where the letter was on the template, and cut out a small square of the template around it, thus creating a window.’

  ‘Ahh! I see,’ Liam grinned. ‘And you cut out all these little windows, and then you lay out this template on the rolled-out Grail and …’

  ‘Correct.’ She nodded. ‘Making sure you line the template up with similar corner markers. And the letters you see through the windows that you have cut out, spell the hidden message.’

  ‘That’s – that’s genius, that is! You could be right!’ He got up off his haunches and started to look around for something they could use. ‘We could make our own grille right here! Right now!’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We do not know which letters are the window candidates.’

  Liam’s excitement vanished with a sigh. He’d assumed she’d already identified which were the ones.

  ‘On several occasions this document switches from Old English to another language. As you can see, it does so within the area marked out by the crosses.’ She pointed out the change of language to him. ‘I do not have this language file in my database. We have to presume there would be clues within this text to identify which letters are the window candidates.’

  Liam scratched at his chin. ‘Would Bob know this language?’

  ‘No. We had the same files downloaded before the mission.’

  Liam looked at it; he recognized some of the letters from the alphabet, but there were others that were totally alien to him. ‘Well … this is no good.’ He slumped back down again on the cold stone floor.

  ‘Suggestion.’

  ‘What?’

  She began to roll the Treyarch Confession up carefully. Finally, gathered up, it disappeared again under the folds of her long dress.

  ‘Oh, hang on,’ said Liam, realizing what she was thinking.

  ‘You can’t take it to Kirklees, Becks! We’re surrounded by Richard’s army. It could end up falling into Richard’s hands.’

  Becks reached for the candle flickering on the floor between them. ‘Then the alternative is that we burn both documents. Before Nottingham falls to King Richard. What is your decision, Liam O’Connor?’

  CHAPTER 69

  1194, Nottingham

  Becks managed to pick her way through the picket lines of soldiers. Not too difficult. The few men on guard duty were too busy discussing how they were going to
spend their share of the spoils once Nottingham had fallen. Rumour was, King Richard was going to turn a blind eye to any looting or pillaging in the immediate aftermath, just as if this was a siege taking place in the corner of some foreign country.

  Towards the rear of the camp she found the assembled carts of the baggage train and, tethered nearby in a temporarily erected corral, the horses. She picked one, untied it, led it quietly out and was cantering away up the track towards the nearby forests before the mead-soaked old boy dozing instead of watching over the animals registered they’d become restless and that one of them had in fact gone missing.

  The canter became a carefree gallop along the dirt track leading up to the brow of the hill overlooking Nottingham. She took the north-east route through the forest, partially following Liam’s directions, partially relying on the precise coordinates in her head.

  Liam had warned her to be wary of bandits, but the forest presented no threats to her; the shabby band of villains Liam had mentioned, Locke’s people, had either disbanded and gone home or disappeared deeper into the woods in an attempt to evade any punitive raids Richard might decide to unleash.

  Through several hours of night she covered winding miles of nothing more than the hissing of trees stirred by a lively breeze and hooting birds until finally, just as her silicon mind indicated she would, she caught sight of the dark and low form of the outbuildings of the priory.

  Sébastien Cabot was awake in an instant. His soldier’s instinct to reach for the dagger hidden under his straw mattress kicked in, only to be stopped by the lightning-quick grasp of a firm hand round his wrist.

  From the slither of moonlight stealing through the narrow window into his bare room he could see just the dark outline of someone leaning over him. ‘Who – who is …?’ he blustered, his voice still thick with sleep.

  ‘This is Lady Rebecca,’ she whispered.

  Cabot struggled to sit up. The wooden frame beneath his mattress creaked. ‘Good grief! What are ye doing here? The other monks –’

  Her hand smothered his mouth and pushed his head down heavily against the mattress with a soft thud. ‘Be quiet and listen!’ Her hand remained clamped over his lips until he finally nodded. She lifted her hand and he sucked in a much-needed breath.

  ‘I have obtained the Grail document,’ she said without any preamble.

  ‘WHAT? MY GO–!’ His voice bounced off the stone walls of his room.

  Her hand clamped his mouth firmly again. Above the back of her slender hand and the bulbous end of his florid pockmarked nose, she noted the wide rolling whites of his eyes. For a moment she considered how expressive human eyes could be; just those alone seemed to be able to communicate a whole language of emotions. Cabot, for example, right now appeared to be communicating an emotion akin to profound shock. She made a note to try rolling her eyes like that sometime.

  ‘I also have the Treyarch Confession,’ she added, her hand remaining over his mouth as he grunted and struggled. ‘I will need your assistance in translating a section of the Treyarch Confession.’ She waited a few moments for that request to settle in and for Cabot to stop making that muffled mewling noise beneath her firmly clamped palm. When she was sure he wasn’t going to blurt out loudly again, she slowly lifted her hand. ‘Will you assist?’

  Cabot gasped for air again, sucking in breath through his mouth. After a few seconds he managed to talk in a hoarse whisper. ‘Ye … ye have them both?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Here? Right here with ye?’

  ‘Yes. Will you assist me?’

  ‘Good Lord! I – I …’ Cabot struggled to frame an answer. Becks once more hushed him, this time with a finger pressed against his whisker-lined lips.

  ‘We will discuss this further in your graveyard,’ she said. ‘Put clothes on now. I will see you there in five minutes.’ She let go of his wrist and got up. ‘And bring a candle.’

  He picked his way through weeds and brambles that scratched at his bare ankles below the coarse hem of his robe. By the scudding light of the moon he spotted the dark outline of Lady Rebecca standing perfectly still beside a gravestone.

  ‘My lady?’ he called softly.

  ‘Here,’ she replied.

  He joined her. ‘Ye … Last I heard, ye were in Oxford.’

  ‘John has relocated to Nottingham. King Richard has come north with an army.’

  ‘Yes … yes, the county is full of this news. But – the Grail? How did ye find – where was –?’

  ‘The Grail was recovered from the bandit known as “Hood” earlier today,’ she replied quickly, as if answering the question was valuable time wasted.

  ‘How did they manage to find him?’

  ‘That is unimportant. The Grail document can only be decoded with the correct cardan grille,’ she said, reaching into the folds of her dark robe.

  She saw the whites of Cabot’s wide and round eyes again. ‘Ye have it?’ he asked. ‘Don’t tell me ye have stolen it from King Richard?’

  She ignored his question and calmly pulled out the Treyarch. ‘This document is written in Latin and Norman French,’ she began, ‘but there is one passage written in a language I have no data on. Your assistance is required to identify the language.’

  She carefully started to unroll the parchment. ‘You may light your candle now if there is inadequate light for you to see.’

  Cabot shook his head impatiently. ‘’Tis not necessary. The moon is enough. Please … continue.’

  She resumed, turning the wooden spindle and spreading out the long curled sheet of parchment on the ground. By the moon’s wan light the pale parchment seemed to almost glow, the dark spider-lines of ink across it every bit as clear and legible as they needed to be.

  ‘The unidentifiable language is located here,’ said Becks, pointing to a passage three-quarters of the way down the scroll. She put rocks out along the edge of the parchment to stop it curling up again and then leaned back so that her shadow didn’t fall across it.

  Cabot squatted down and inspected the writing closely. ‘This here,’ he said, running his fingers along the curls of writing, ‘’tis a form of Gaelic, I believe.’

  ‘You know this language?’

  He grimaced. ‘I know some words of it. And there are many forms of this language. I could perhaps translate this for ye if I had some time – and a library of other Gaelic works to compare to.’

  She cocked her head and her eyebrows locked in concentration for a moment. After a minute of silent consideration she nodded slowly. A decision silently made. ‘The contamination risk is acceptable for the moment,’ she uttered.

  ‘What is that, my lady?’

  Again she ignored him. ‘You will come with me, please,’ she said.

  ‘Where to?’

  She got to her feet and began foraging among the tall weeds around the gravestone until she finally found what she was after: a long lumber nail. She crouched down in front of the gravestone and began scratching deep lines into the stone.

  ‘What are ye doing?’

  ‘Communicating.’

  She carried on in silence, nothing but the sound of scraping and scratching and stone grit tumbling to the ground. ‘I am requesting an immediate portal.’

  ‘What is this? What are ye up to?’ asked Cabot once again.

  She turned to look up at him impatiently. ‘You are coming with me.’

  ‘Coming with ye? Where to?’

  ‘The future.’

  CHAPTER 70

  2001, New York

  Sal looked at them both. ‘Jahulla! That was one,’ she said. ‘Another one. Did you feel it?’ The other two looked at each other. Maddy quickly got up from the table and went over towards the bank of computer monitors.

  She sat down at the desk and downloaded the image again from the still-connected drive outside. As it flickered open on the screen, Sal leaned over and traced a finger along the faint new lines on the photograph. ‘There’s another message on your gravestone.’ />
  Adam scribbled down the pigpen glyphs on to a pad of paper.

  The girls watched him impatiently as he checked each symbol against the table he’d drawn up on the page of writing paper earlier. ‘Well?’

  ‘Just hang on!’ His eyes narrowed as he double-checked some of the symbols on the new row that had appeared on his photograph. There were faint lines there, lines that might not have been part of the original carving, and lines lost to nearly a millennium of weathering. He looked down at the page of letters he’d deciphered and realized there were mistakes in there.

  ‘First word is extraction,’ said Sal.

  Maddy nodded. ‘The rest is a time-stamp. Twelve numbers, the first four a time, the last eight a date.’

  Sal grabbed a pen and quickly scribbled the nearly-words as numbers: 0445 13061194.

  Maddy checked her numbers against what Adam had decoded. ‘Yes … yes, OK. Quarter to five in the morning, 13th June 1194. Right?’ She looked at the webcam. ‘You get that, Bob?’

  > Affirmative. I have been listening. Date stamp: 04:45, 13 June 1194.

  ‘There’re no geo-coordinates, though,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Same coordinates as last time, then,’ said Sal.

  Maddy tapped a pen against her lips. ‘Yeah. You get that, Bob?’

  > Affirmative. Same geo-placement coordinates.

  She leaned back in her chair and glanced round Adam at the rack of equipment beside the empty perspex tube. The charge display showed a full line of green LEDs. ‘All right, we’ve got enough juice on the board to open it up, Bob.’

  > Affirmative. Activating density probe.

  1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire

  Cabot looked around the field. Although the sun had yet to climb into view, the peach-stained sky was light now, a sky that would soon be a deep blue and cloudless – another hot summer’s day.

  ‘Why, pray, are we standing in this field?’

  Becks raised a finger. ‘Just a moment.’