CHAPTER 22
2001, New York
The three of them stared in silence at the wavering image in the middle of the floor.
‘Is that … is that sky I’m seeing there?’ said Adam, squinting at the shimmering mirage. It looked like the flickering reflection one might see staring down a dark welclass="underline" a dancing, glinting, shifting reflection that hinted more than showed things.
‘Yes,’ said Maddy. ‘And that looks like a field or something.’
‘Good God!’ he whispered. ‘So I’m seeing a field and — and … the actual sky! From nine hundred years ago!’
‘But no Liam and support units,’ said Sal.
‘OK,’ Maddy said, stepping back to the desk and hitting a button. ‘It’s been open long enough. They must have decided to overnight it there.’
The portal puffed out of existence.
‘I hate it when this happens,’ said Maddy. ‘I wish they could just drop us a line and let us know what they’re up to.’ She tapped the desk mic to wake up the version of Bob’s AI installed on the computer system. ‘Bob?’
› Yes, Maddy.
‘Begin recharge for the twenty-four-hour window.’
› Affirmative.
Adam joined her. ‘But you said there is a way for them to communicate? What did you call it again?’
‘A drop-point document.’
‘That’s it. So why don’t we tell them to use the Voynich? You know … if they manage to find it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t.’ She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. ‘You’ve cracked it, someone else might. And, anyway, if another team are using it and we start overwriting their messages with ours, who knows what chaos that’ll cause.’
‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘What about gravestones?’
Both Sal and Maddy looked at him. ‘Uh?’
‘Well … not exactly a gravestone as such, but it’s in the graveyard at the back of Kirklees Priory.’
‘What is?’ asked Sal.
‘Inscribed masonry. There are dozens that date back to the building of the priory. You can find them if you dig around a bit.’
‘What, you’re saying I send us over to England and we snuffle around some cemetery — ’
‘No need,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been there. I went there years ago, after all that Voynich publicity died down. I wanted to know what was so important about Kirklees. So I went and checked it out for myself. There’s not much to see there, of course. The old priory building, and a gated orchard, which is all bloody brambles and stinging nettles. But I did uncover several slabs of masonry, some of them inscribed with Latin. They’re grave markers, knocked over or fallen but, you know, still intact — and you can still read the lettering. I photographed some of them.’
Maddy laughed. ‘And what? You’re suggesting they carve mission updates for us?’
He shrugged. ‘That would work, wouldn’t it? If carving a message in a stone causes one of your time waves, then surely the slight change in history would change the content of the photos I took?’ He looked from Maddy to Sal and back to Maddy again. ‘Or am I getting this all wrong?’
Maddy stared at him silently for a moment before finally snapping her fingers. ‘Yes … yes, I guess that could work!’ She glanced quickly at Sal. ‘If … we need it. But you know what? I really don’t plan to lose Liam in history again. Not this time.’ She looked at a display window showing the displacement machine’s charge progress bar.
‘Thirty minutes and we’ll open the portal again. I’m sure they’ll be right there waiting for us.’
CHAPTER 23
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
Liam heard the scraping of footsteps and the horses beyond, in the barn, stir before he heard the light tap on their wooden door.
‘Yes?’
‘I have food for ye.’ It was Sebastien Cabot.
‘Ah!’ Liam’s stomach had been grumbling for the last hour. The short winter day had passed without an opportunity to speak with Cabot in private again, and Liam was beginning to wonder whether his decision to overnight in 1194 was going to give them an opportunity to learn any more.
He hopped up eagerly and opened the door leading into their guest quarters.
The young monk he’d seen standing in the priory’s doorway earlier today brought in a couple of wooden bowls and a loaf of bread. Behind him Cabot entered with another bowl and a flagon of something that sloshed around as he placed it on the dirt floor.
‘A hot broth for a cold day,’ he said, ‘and a little mead to warm yer toes.’
Cabot dismissed the boy and then sat down on one of the wooden cots. By candlelight he looked older than he had this morning. The folds on his face, both wrinkles and the long twisting scar, told of a long life, and not much of it lived here in such a lonely and forlorn place.
‘My brothers seemed to have spent more time today gossiping like old women than in contemplation and prayer.’
Liam picked up one of the bowls and hungrily dipped a torn hunk of bread into the thick broth. ‘So, Mr Cabot, you said earlier that you fought alongside King Richard?’
He nodded. ‘Aye.’
‘In a real battle?’
‘Many battles, lad.’
‘But you’re a Cistercian monk, so you are. I didn’t think your kind got involved in wars and fighting.’
Cabot looked up at him. ‘I’ve not always been of this order, lad. Before, two winters gone now, I was one of the Order of Templars.’
‘You were a Templar Knight?’ asked Becks.
‘Not a knight,’ he replied. ‘I am not noble-born. But a sergeant.’
‘Sergeant?’ said Liam, tugging another hunk of crusty bread from the loaf.
‘Information,’ said Bob, ‘sergeant: lower-born professional soldier also serving in auxiliary roles within the order, i.e. maintenance of equipment and property.’
Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ye have an odd manner about ye, sir.’
Bob returned his stare for a moment, then offered a friendly display of upper and lower teeth.
‘And you fought with Richard, so you said?’
‘On this last Crusade, aye.’ Cabot shook his head wistfully. ‘’Tis the worst of things. Ten years I have been in the Holy Land in the service of Templars. Five years of it peace of a kind. After Saladin took Jerusalem, there was a peace.’
Liam nodded. Adam had given them a history class before they set off. Jerusalem had been besieged by Saladin and his massive army in 1187, and had fallen. After nearly ninety years of Christian rule it was back in Muslim hands. But Saladin had chosen to be shrewd in the matter; rather than slaughter every last Christian in the city, he proclaimed Christians would be at liberty to live there, to worship there. That Christian pilgrims would be allowed to enter the city at will and worship at their sacred sites. All this in the hope that outrage in Europe at the city falling would be somewhat lessened. But he hadn’t figured on the likes of King Richard and King Philip II of France, men who both hungered for battle and glory and a cause to hide behind. The Third Crusade was King Richard’s vainglorious attempt to reclaim Jerusalem, and Acre and Jaffa too — the other major cities taken by Saladin.
‘But with King Richard’s arrival came a bloodshed I have never seen before.’ Cabot’s eyes glistened in the dark. ‘He took Acre. The Saracens surrendered to Richard. And he had every last one of them beheaded. There was a hill of heads, a hill that grew gradually out of the moat and spilled on to the plain.’
Liam looked down at a potato bobbing in his soup and all of a sudden felt a little less hungry.
Cabot sighed. ‘I suspect King Richard came, not for Acre, not even for Jerusalem. He came for what was left behind.’
‘Left behind?’
‘Aye, what was left in haste when Jerusalem and Acre fell to Saladin.’ Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘But ye know of this already, yes?’ He smiled drily. ‘Ye claimed to be of the order, earlier. But I can see ye are not.’ He glanced at Bob. ‘And ye, sir, ye have the look of one, but not the manner. How is it ye people know of the order’s most guarded secret?’