“Looks like that little worm just activated,” said Kelly. “Golems just fed a huge block of data to the breaching module, undoubtedly the coordinates for this shift. I’ve got a good pattern on Paul, double sweep, and he’s installed. OK, Robert. Get ready on the Golem Module and watch for variations. On my mark… Three, two, one. Initiating Time shift… Looks good, a little bump there on the integrity line but it’s settled down now. I think he made a good shift.”
A few moments later Maeve was on the intercom confirming that Paul was gone. “We’ve launched our torpedo,” she said. “He’s on his way, God help him…”
It was completely dark when he manifested on the coordinates, and Paul spent a breathless moment regaining his senses, stooping low and groping about on what was obviously a firm wooden floor. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw he was in a circular enclosed room, with walls of hard stone and three tall embrasures or slits in the upper wall, open to the cold night air. Something loomed before him in the darkness and he reached out, tentatively, trying to feel what it was. The cold touch of metal was the last piece of the puzzle he needed.
I’m in a bell tower, he thought. Thank God I didn’t walk right into the bell and announce myself! He moved, ever so cautiously, and peered out of one of the three window slits. He could dimly see the gleam of moonlight on water, and he guessed that he must be in the chapel that was built to house Lambert’s tomb and shrine on the banks of the River Meuse. He had no idea what time it was, but reasoned it might be the hour before dawn. The coordinates clearly meant to put Rantgar here, in a position to possibly fling his javelin or fire an arrow from one of these windows. They wouldn’t want him lurking here very long, he thought, so the hour of Grimwald’s arrival must be very near, possibly at dawn.
He had little time to waste, so he felt his way along the wall for a door, but there was none. Then he looked down and saw a knotted rope at his feet off to one side, and realized there was a trap door in the bare wooden floor. Sweating and very nervous, he took something from beneath the folds of his robe and laid it softly on the floor, right beneath the window that opened directly above the chapel entrance, about twenty or thirty feet below.
Maeve’s challenge concerning the javelin echoed in his mind. Yes, he knew there was no way he would ever have been able to hurl the weapon through the embrasure with any hope of hitting someone. Rantgar had undoubtedly trained to perform this task to perfection, over all the many years he lived out his assignment here. But Paul had no such training, nor even the strength that would be required to make for a lethal throw. So it was not the javelin he set down, but something else, and thankfully, Maeve had not been so meticulous about screening him before the shift. She noticed the slight bulge beneath his cassock, assuming it was the weapon.
“Oh, Paul,” she had said. “Sorry about being such a curmudgeon, but what in the world are you going to do with that?”
“Leave it to me,” he told her quietly. But what he didn’t tell her was that he was concealing his .22 caliber rifle beneath his robe. It was the only weapon he knew anything at all about using, and it now had a very deadly bite. He had coated the tips of three bullets with a lethal compound from the lab, and slipped them ever so carefully back into the ammo clip. They would be the first three rounds fired if it came to that, but his primary plan involved a less direct approach.
He hesitated as he set the rifle down, afraid to leave it out of his sight for a single instant. Then he slowly pulled on the trap door rope, opening it quietly. A ladder led down into the neck of the bell tower, and he slipped his narrow frame easily through the opening, gathering his robes tight about him as he descended. His feet, in woolen slippers with leather soles, were whisper quiet. Stealth was his one advantage. Who would think anyone was up in the bell tower at this hour?
He was down, feeling his heartbeat increasing, more from fear than any real exertion. There was a single door there with an iron latch. He tried peering through a knot hole in the wood, but could see little in the inky darkness. Then, trusting to fate and his own star, he lifted the latch very slowly and pushed open the door. It made a slight creek on its hinges, freezing him in a moment of uncertainty. He waited in the silence, hearing nothing, then slipped through the opening.
He was in a small alcove that probably served as the sacristy of the chapel, he reasoned. Perfect! He could see shelves on the wall in the dim light, goblets, a chalice, a gourd of water, wooden pegs holding plump skins with a corked spout fitted at one end. He took one and opened it with a dull pop, muffling the sound in his cassock. A sniff told him it contained mulled wine, exactly what he was looking for!
He took the chalice and quietly poured a small serving of wine. Then he looked about until he had found a small brass dish, used for holy water at the cisterns. Undoubtedly the gourd of water would be used for these, so he poured out a small quantity of water as well.
Right outside the room he could see the shrine to Lambert, and it chilled him to think that Maeve was standing very near this place, just hours ago in his chronology, yet nine long years ago here on this Meridian. Dodo and his men were riding hard to this very place back then, and she had bravely set loose the barge that removed Bishop Lambert’s last route of escape. His followers eventually found the bodies of Lambert and his family, carrying them off to Maastricht. But the Bishop there, seeing that he was likely to cultivate sainthood, had wisely returned them to this place, first building a shrine, then this very chapel.
Paul approached the shrine, the brass dish in one hand, the chalice in the other. He saw the kneeler there before the altar, which was really the bishop’s tomb, and two low stools to either side, perhaps there to hold flowers, candles or allow visitors to leave offerings. He set the water dish on the rightmost stool, and the chalice on the left. In spite of the cold, his brow was wet with sweat.
Now he reached carefully into the pocket of his cassock, where he had secreted away a special metal cylinder containing another pen-like object with lever handled cap. It was clear glass, half full, and contained a very dangerous agent. The cap was designed to rotate slightly to one side by means of the lever that looked like a pen clip. It extended down the side of the pen so that he could lever the cap open without having his fingers anywhere near the tip, then use his thumb at the other end to squirt out precisely measured amounts of the contents.
He slowly levered it open and seconds later he had made an offering of his own, one dose in the water, one in the wine. The sacrilegious nature of his crime was apparent to him, there before the tomb of the sleeping saint. With his lethal agents now in place, he put the pen-like container back into the metal cylinder, screwed the cap tightly shut, and slipped it into his cassock. How long would it be now? The agents would have a limited potency in the new medium of wine and water.
He took a deep breath, looking furtively about as if he expected to be discovered and called out for his sin at any moment. Murder and assassin—that was his lot now. How was he any different than the cult they had opposed these weeks past, struggling to reverse one intervention after another in the convoluted history? This life for a billion more, he thought, consoling himself. Yet now, more than ever, he found solidarity with Maeve, knowing exactly what she must have felt like.
The soft early light of pre-dawn filtered through the stained yellow glass window behind the altar, and he immediately wanted to be gone from this place, hidden, secreted away again in the tower.