by Alex Scarrow
‘Madelaine?’
She turned round to see Becks standing in the opening beneath the fully raised shutter.
‘You all done?’
Becks nodded an affirmative.
‘If I lock your hard-drive partition again, what you know – what you’ve just read, it’s all gonna be safe in there, right?’
‘That is correct.’
Maddy nodded thoughtfully. No one else would know what secret message was hidden in the Grail, not even Becks herself.
She’d already made her mind up on the matter: she was going to unlock Becks’s partition with Foster present; they’d both hear what she had to say. And then together figure out what it meant, what they’d have to do about it, if anything.
‘Ready to lock that information away?’
‘Affirmative.’
She uttered the three words quietly. Becks blinked several times then cocked her head. Her voice immediately returned to its softer, more feminine tone. ‘I register thirty-seven minutes of absent data …’
Maddy raised her hand. ‘It’s OK, I’ve been talking with your alter ego.’
Becks consulted something inside her mind. ‘My code-word-locked partition?’
‘Yup.’ Maddy looked at the others. ‘You decoded the Holy Grail successfully. It’s now safely locked away in your head.’ Maddy laughed. ‘Not even you can get in there.’
Becks nodded approvingly. ‘A sensible precaution, Maddy.’
She was about to say a thank-you when she heard Sal’s voice calling out. She could just make out her small outline in the twilight, turning away from the river towards her.
‘What’s up?’ she called out.
She replied something but a sudden freshening breeze carried it away; ripples of cats’ paws danced across the mirror-smooth water towards them as a fresh breeze stirred the millpond calm.
Something’s coming our way.
Maddy looked at the sky and saw it: what looked like a rolling stormfront rushing towards them from out of the Atlantic Ocean.
‘Hurry!’ she shouted at Sal. Sal in turn beckoned the other two men to hasten after her up the shingle towards their jagged brick bunker perched among the sandy dunes.
Their feet clattered off soft sand on to the broken fragments of pavement and alleyway that had transported to this reality along with the archway, just as the black stormcloud rolled over Manhattan Island.
‘Tis the Lord’s coming,’ gasped Cabot sombrely.
‘No,’ said Sal. ‘Just a time wave.’
Among the churning black clouds crossing the river towards them, Maddy thought she saw a dozen different city skylines flicker over Manhattan: one moment, towering pointed church steeples topped with cruciforms that reached for the sky, then the next they formed into the rounded bulge of mosques and onion-shaped minarets topped with crescents.
‘My God … Do you see that?’ said Adam, his voice competing with a growing thundering boom.
Wind danced around them, stinging their cheeks with whipped-up sand as they stood in the opening to the archway watching the world in flux. And then, the wall of undulating reality was upon them.
A moment of pitch-black as the tidal wave swept over. And then it was gone.
The archway was entirely dark and lifeless, then a moment later a light winked on inside and they heard the soft chug of the generator starting up in the back room.
Outside, it was a calm evening once more; the gentle lapping of low tide punctuated by the lonely plaintive call of a solitary seagull.
Either side of her, Maddy heard both Adam and Cabot gasping. Cabot the worst of the two. ‘God help me,’ he gasped, ‘did I just witness the Devil’s work?’
‘A reality shift,’ said Becks. ‘Events in the past have changed the present.’
Maddy looked at the island of Manhattan. The lights of the fishing boats had gone. The lights of the town beyond, gone. Instead she could only make out a thick dark treeline descending down to the water’s edge. ‘There’s nothing there now!’
‘Just woods,’ said Sal.
Maddy bit her lip. ‘Becks?’
‘Yes?’
‘What on earth was going on when you left the twelfth century?’
‘King Richard was preparing to take the town of Nottingham from his brother.’
‘Oh great!’ snapped Maddy. ‘Is that, like, our fault?’
‘No,’ said Adam, ‘that actually happened.’
‘Well, something’s still wrong back then!’
‘The holy scroll thing?’ Sal pointed towards the table. ‘Maybe we hung on to it too long?’
‘Yes,’ Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. We should get it back, ASAP.’
‘But … is that right?’ said Adam. ‘Does Richard get his hands on the Holy Grail, you know, in correct history?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘I don’t know! But it sure shouldn’t be here in the twenty-first century.’
‘It goes missing. It gets lost!’ Adam stepped back towards the table. ‘That’s how this becomes the stuff of myth and legends. That’s why people ended up thinking it was the cup of Christ! It gets lost, right?’
‘Maybe we should just, you know, rip it up?’ offered Sal.
They all stared in a prolonged silence at the unrolled parchment beneath the glare of the light above it.
‘King Richard would kill his brother,’ said Cabot finally. ‘If he does not get what he’s come for.’ The old man shook his head. ‘His anger … he would kill everyone in Nottingham.’
‘That doesn’t happen,’ said Adam. ‘Not in proper history. The siege of Nottingham lasts just a few days, John surrenders and Richard forgives him.’
Cabot looked at him. ‘Ye are certain?’
‘Oh yeah. John’s forgiven. In fact he gets to be king when Richard dies several years later.’
‘Then Richard must get what he wanted,’ said Maddy. ‘The Grail. Right? He gets it, he’s a happy boy. John is forgiven.’
‘But …’ Sal glanced at the table. ‘But isn’t there some big secret in there? Some secret that makes him go and do another one of them crusades which –’
‘Which results in England’s complete financial ruin,’ cut in Adam, ‘and the invasion of the French king, Philip II.’
Maddy bit her lip with frustration. What do we do? Give it to him? Or not?
Another long silence, all eyes on her, waiting for her to make the call.
‘No.’ It was Becks who spoke finally. ‘No,’ she said again.
‘No – what?’ said Maddy impatiently.
‘King Richard will find nothing in the Grail.’
Adam suddenly grinned. ‘She’s right! Maybe it’s a – maybe it turns out to be a … a complete disappointment for him. Maybe what he ends up with is a useless scroll that he can’t decode because …’
‘Because the real grille was always the Treyarch Confession?’ said Maddy.
Adam nodded. ‘And perhaps what he has, that grille guarded by the knights in Acre, that was just a red herring. A fake.’
Maddy gave it a moment’s thought. ‘Yes! Why would there be another key? The one Richard has is no good!’
‘We should return it immediately,’ said Becks. ‘Reality is fluctuating.’
Sal nodded. ‘That last wave was really weird … like it couldn’t decide which way it wanted to go.’
‘Perchance the battle for Nottingham has begun?’ said Cabot. ‘And ’tis that the outcome of this battle hangs in the balance?’
Maddy wasn’t sure if this last time wave actually meant that. In fact she wasn’t sure what it meant, other than history was still somehow derailed. But then again … maybe the old monk was right. After all, the correct-history version of the siege of Nottingham hadn’t featured a lethal killing machine like Bob back there fighting on the side of John.
‘OK. My mind’s made up,’ she said. ‘Becks and you too, Mr Cabot – you’re taking the Grail back and you’ve got to get it to John to give to King
Richard, somehow. Make him a happy boy – happy enough to let his brother live.’
She bit her lip.
Oh crud, is this the right call?
CHAPTER 79
1194, Nottingham
Liam had managed to work his way up beside Bob again, armed with another shield and this time an axe; both home-made by some artisan blacksmith. In between ferocious swings, he’d managed to tap Bob on the shoulder and let him know he was right there and watching his flank.
In front of Bob the descending slope of rubble of the collapsed section of wall was covered in a thick carpet of mangled bodies, bludgeoned and cleaved by his swooping axe blade. Either side of them stood the defenders, now mostly the citizens of Nottingham, dotted with one or two dozen remaining men of the garrison, in their burgundy and amber tunics.
The attackers’ momentum seemed to have been stalled for the moment; the front rank of men decorated with the colours of a dozen different coats of arms began to slowly recede down the ever more cumbersome and slippery mound that led up to the breach.
Liam allowed himself a hope that the attack had faltered, that the men of Richard’s gathered army had lost heart already. But it was soon obvious that the men had been summoned by the distant call of a horn. They were retreating to take a water break.
He found himself laughing, almost hysterically.
Bob glanced at him over his shoulder. ‘What is funny?’
‘It’s like half-time at a peil Ghaelach match,’ snorted Liam. The flitting of arrows overhead ceased as if archers on both sides had agreed to a temporary truce.
He could see women and children with buckets slung on yokes over their shoulders moved swiftly among the ranks of Richard’s men as they dipped their helmets and grubby hands in and scooped and sloshed much-needed water into their mouths and on to their faces.
From behind Liam women also emerged from the market square with buckets and hides full of water, which the fighting men eagerly sipped and poured over their heads.
Of course it made sense to him. He realized how desperately hot he was under the leather and mail and, of course, he’d only fought briefly. Water, and an agreed break in the hostilities during which it could be distributed, was as much a part of the twelfth-century battlefield as anything else.
‘Bob,’ he said, rapping his knuckles on his back, ‘there’s water, you should get some while you can.’
Bob turned round. For the first time Liam saw the front of the shield strapped to the stump of his left arm. ‘Jay-zus, Bob – you seen that?’ The shield bristled arrows like a hairbrush. The enemy archers had been deliberately targeting him.
Several other arrows protruded from the front of his chest.
‘Oh boy … you need to get some of this seen to.’
‘The damage at this stage is acceptable, Liam,’ grunted Bob. ‘I am still at fifty-five per cent functioning capacity.’ His fat lips spread. ‘But you are correct … I could do with some water.’
Along with the other men, they took their turn scooping cooling handfuls of water out of the buckets being passed up to them, and it was as Bob was glugging water like a thirsty dog after a long walk that Liam heard a muted cheer rippling through the crowd gathered in the market square.
He saw bodies part respectfully and then finally, stepping on to the bottom of the mound of broken masonry, he recognized John, in heavy mail, holding a shield bearing the royal crest.
‘Sire!’ he called out.
John slowly picked his way up towards him. ‘Sheriff,’ he finally replied, winded from the exertion. He gathered his breath before speaking again. ‘’Tis hard enough walking in this, let alone climbing.’
The men of the garrison standing nearby, respectfully dropped to their knees.
‘Oh, stop that!’ barked John with his best go at heroic bravado. ‘Save what you have left for the fighting, men.’
‘Sire,’ said Liam, ‘you’ll be a target, so you will.’
He could see how pale John looked, trembling inside his mail.
‘Then,’ said John, running a tongue along his dry lips, ‘then I shall just have to keep moving, won’t I?’
A distant horn sounded again and Liam saw the women and children moving among Richard’s men scramble at double speed away from the front line towards the tents and marquees on the hillside in front of them. Almost immediately the flitting of dark arrows resumed, peppering the clear sky, and the men fifty yards away reformed their lines in preparation for the renewed assault on Nottingham.
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Maddy and Adam stared at the monitor while Sal helped Becks and Cabot ready themselves for transport back to 1194.
‘What do you mean, you can’t use Becks’s time-stamp?’ asked Maddy.
> There appears to me too much instability to lock on to a reliable window.
‘What does that mean?’
> Reality is fluctuating unreliably between two preferred states.
‘It can’t make its mind up,’ said Adam.
> That is a fair analogy.
‘Well … what? Do we wait? Do we risk it?’
> We can risk sending them back using Becks’s time-stamp, but I cannot anticipate the result of that.
Maddy balled her fist on the desk. ‘OK, then … Well, how big is this instability?’
> Please restate the question.
‘How … far, how much time is affected by it? What I mean is … is it regionalized? Like a storm or something?’
> The fluctuating timelines appear to branch from between seven and nine hours before Becks’s return time-stamp.
Maddy turned round towards the water tube. Becks was just about to climb the stepladder to get into the water.
‘Becks! What happened seven hours before you left 1194?’
Becks stopped, consulted her memory. ‘Precisely seven hours? I was walking along a stone passage.’
Maddy flapped her hands impatiently. ‘Or thereabouts. Anything significant?’
‘Six hours and forty-three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I scaled the outer wall of the city of Nottingham.’
‘Go back a bit.’
Becks tilted her head. ‘Seven hours and three minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was saying to Liam and Bob that “I would be fine”.’
‘Oh come on! Go back more. Something significant!’
Becks spooled memories silently for a moment, then finally her eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘At eight hours and fifty-six minutes prior to the time-stamp, I was speaking with John.’
‘What the hell did you say to him? Exactly!’
Her eyelids fluttered. ‘… A man must find at least one moment in time to make a stand for himself … or live a life – burning in the flames of regret.’
Maddy looked to Adam.
He shrugged. ‘It’s very poetic.’
> Checking quotation database. Just a moment …
She turned back to Becks. ‘You think that’s, like, changed history somehow?’
‘I believe it may have inspired him,’ Becks replied. ‘John was considering immediate surrender to his brother. However, correct history shows he held out for five days. I decided he needed … encouragement.’
Maddy sighed. ‘Well guess what? Looks like it worked.’
> Quotation source: Rock band – EssZed. Lyrics to song.
‘Yuh, thanks, Bob. So –’ she turned back to Becks – ‘you think maybe saying that quote to –’
‘I also offered myself to him.’
Sal’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean …?’
Becks looked down at her. ‘Marriage.’
‘If he … what? Showed you he was a big tough man?’ said Maddy. ‘If he stood up to his brother?’
‘Affirmative.’
Maddy shook her head. ‘Oh well, looks like you really encouraged him all right.’ She turned back to the monitor. ‘Bob … what competing histories are we getting out of this?’
> No information. The fluctuation is
too rapid to generate timelines.
‘That’s why we’re not getting time waves?’ said Adam.
> Correct. However, this oscillating status is unstable and dangerous.
‘Dangerous?’ Maddy pushed up her glasses. ‘What’s that mean exactly?’
> It is a stress factor on the reality wall.
Adam looked at her. ‘The reality wall?’
‘What separates us from chaos space,’ she replied quickly. ‘Bob … then what are we supposed to do?’
> The instability may settle itself. Or it may increase in severity.
‘And if it does do that – if it gets worse?’
> No information.
‘No information?’ she howled, exasperated. ‘Well … But look, it’s not a good thing, right?’
> Not a good thing. There are several essays on chaos space written by R. Waldstein and E. Chan in my database.
‘Can you sum them up?’
> Chaos space is a dimension where the laws of quantum physics are contradicted. Theoretically, the effect on normal dimensions would be their complete destruction.
‘What does that mean? Like, all of Earth … destroyed?’
> Negative. Everything.
‘Ev– everything?’
> The entire universe.
Maddy suddenly felt light-headed and short of breath. ‘Oh crud. Oh my God! We’ve … we’ve really messed up.’ Her hands scrambled across the clutter on the desk for her inhaler. ‘We’ve –’
‘Maddy.’ Adam put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Maddy, come on, calm … don’t lose it.’
She found the inhaler and pulled hard on it several times. She doubled over on her seat, her head between her knees, the wheezing rasp of her contracting throat sounding like a blacksmith’s bellows.
Sal was over beside her, an arm across her shoulders. ‘Maddy? You OK?’
She shook her head. ‘Second …’ she wheezed. ‘Gimme … a … second …’
Adam looked down at her. ‘This is all going wrong, isn’t it? This organization of yours, it’s –’
‘We’re still learning,’ Sal snapped defensively. ‘We’ve been in worse situations.’ She bent down and stroked the hair out of Maddy’s face. ‘Right, Maddy? We’ve got out of worse things?’
