They listened to the woods, the call of a heron, the lapping of the river up the shingle banks nearby.
‘The future doesn’t sound so great,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-uh. I remember … everything felt so … so — ’ she struggled to find a word that worked — ‘so … temporary. Like you couldn’t really get used to anything, because you knew it wasn’t going to last forever.’
‘Sheesh, that’s my future too, then. Twenty-five years from now.’ He did a quick sum. ‘I’ll be fifty-two, fifty-three then. I wonder if I’ll still be in New York?’
‘New York’s not so good,’ she replied. ‘They started evacuating parts of it.’
‘Flooding?’
‘Uh-huh. And growing crime and food riots and stuff. Like we were having in Mumbai.’
‘Jesus,’ Adam sighed. ‘You make the future sound depressing.’
‘Sorry,’ she replied softly.
‘No — not your fault, Sal. Thanks for, you know, being honest about it.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Makes you wonder why you bother doing anything if that’s how it all goes. Like, why am I bothering with my consulting job? Saving up for a retirement that sounds like, well … a nightmare.’
‘It’s only a nightmare for the poor,’ she replied. ‘For those with lots of money it’s just …’ Sal hesitated.
‘Sal? What is it?’
She looked at him. ‘I think there’s a big wave coming.’ She leaned around and ducked her head under the shutter. ‘Maddy! Time wave! Big one!’
Maddy pulled herself off the bunk and staggered bleary-eyed to join them in the doorway.
‘There it is!’ said Sal, pointing east.
A dark wall approached; like last time, rolling in from the Atlantic, looking like a mountain range advancing rapidly towards them.
‘Better come inside, so you’re not right on the edge of the concrete,’ Maddy said, pointing at the crumbling edge of the field office’s force-field effect. Adam and Sal shuffled quickly inside and crouched on the floor just inside the archway.
‘Here it comes,’ uttered Maddy. ‘Just hope this one gets us back.’
Adam watched the churning black wall approach like a tsunami, blotting out the sky, the stars, the crescent moon. ‘I wonder whether we’d be better hanging on to this,’ he said, nodding at the wilderness. ‘Given how it all goes in the future.’
‘Too late,’ said Sal.
The time wave rolled over Manhattan and the distant tall trees quivered and shook and vanished and swirled into a maelstrom of flickering possibilities. As the wave swept across the broad river, Adam thought he saw the ghostly outline of skyscrapers forming. Then, with a fresh gust of wind pushed before it, the wave was over them; a destructive tornado passing momentarily overhead, eating up reality that shouldn’t be and laying down, in its wake, reality that should.
And then as soon as it had arrived it was gone.
Outside, a cobbled street littered with plastic bags and several wheeled dustbins. And the ambient noises of New York.
Sal was the first to step out. She looked to her left, towards the river, and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘looks like we’re back home.’
Adam and Maddy joined her. Manhattan glistened, flickered, shimmered in the night; the sky punctuated with the far-off winking lights of commercial airliners coming in to JFK and LaGuardia. A distant police siren, the booming of someone’s sound system.
A Monday night in New York, still very much alive, noisy and busy, even approaching midnight.
‘I better go check our database and see if history’s properly back,’ said Maddy.
Sal and Adam watched the night in silence for a while.
‘I kind of liked Manhattan the way it just was,’ said Adam.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Sal sadly. ‘Me too.’
CHAPTER 84
1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire
It was a cool morning. For a change the clear blue sky with its relentlessly hot sun was tucked away behind a skein of combed-out clouds that looked thicker towards the west.
Cabot looked out of the stable across the priory’s parched vegetable gardens. ‘Looks like rain is coming. That is good.’
Liam admired the old man’s calming air of common sense. Amid all the things that had gone on, he was so very easily able to come back to his priory, to resume a role of quiet contemplation and address the practical matters of their small order.
‘When will ye leave?’ asked Cabot.
‘Soon,’ replied Liam. ‘Bob and Becks have a device in their heads that sort of does them in if they stay in a place for too long. Time’s nearly up, isn’t it?’
Bob nodded. ‘Remaining mission time: thirty-seven hours, forty-three minutes.’
‘A window will open just before that time runs out,’ said Liam, ‘unless we signal the field office to open one up sooner.’
‘Suggestion,’ said Becks, ‘it is not necessary to communicate again. The window in thirty-seven hours will be adequate.’
‘Agreed,’ said Bob.
Liam nodded. ‘Fine, then we’re in no hurry.’
The siege at Nottingham had ended peaceably. Although the citizens of the town had been quaking in fear at what King Richard would do to them, he had surprised them all with his unexpected leniency. There’d been some grumbling among the assembled army and their controlling barons, earls and dukes, who’d all been assuming they’d get a share of the town’s loot.
John had been sent with an escort of soldiers to London. Officially ‘pardoned’ by Richard, but perhaps not entirely trusted by him. Rumour was, John was going to be kept in the Tower for an undefined period as a punishment.
Becks had been allowed to visit him one last time before he was despatched south. She said he appeared to be relieved to still have his head on his shoulders.
‘He also appears to be exhibiting a different behavioural pattern,’ she’d reported after seeing him. Liam had asked her to describe it. ‘He no longer shakes. His at-rest heart rate is within normal parameters,’ she replied coolly. Liam had laughed at that. She’d managed to take his pulse as they’d embraced one last time.
‘I believe he’d make a good king,’ Cabot had said. ‘He may not ever be a great commander of soldiers, but he has other qualities worth speaking of. Prudence. Caution. Compassion.’
Compassion? Liam wondered now.
Perhaps. History was going to judge John harshly; he was destined to be known as England’s worst king. The king unable to hold on to the French territories his much ‘braver’ older brother fought so hard to keep hold of. The king who signed the Magna Carta granting legal rights to its subjects, but only because of the pressures put on him by England’s ‘valiant’ nobles.
There was a correct history, and it seemed like they’d managed to restore it. But Liam couldn’t help wondering if this ‘correct’ history, as it was recorded in history books and encyclopedias, was a true reflection of the past. A part of him was always going to wonder if the signing of the Magna Carta — signing away the most powerful privileges of the monarch — was really the result of nobles fighting for the rights of their peasants … or whether it was, in fact, King John’s idea, a gratitude to the common people of Nottingham for fighting for him.
‘Liam.’ Becks’s voice cut through his musings.
‘Uh?’
‘Liam, Bob and I have one remaining mission task.’
Liam looked at her, at Bob. ‘What now?’
Bob answered. ‘The Voynich Manuscript dates from this time. It has yet to be written.’
‘We have to write it,’ said Becks.
His jaw sagged open. ‘Hold on! Are you — you’re saying this Voynich thing was …?’
‘Was originally written by us?’ Becks nodded. ‘Yes. It was written by us to ensure we visited this time, this place.’
Liam frowned, trying to put the circular logic together. ‘But does that mean we’ve been here before?’ He scratched at his temple where a thin plume of grey hair grew.