Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

And it changed him.

As John muttered on about love, in her lap, Becks replayed in her mind the audio file of the last occasion they’d spoken about the Confession. He’d been lying by the fire as it roared and crackled from a fresh log, his voice thick with drunkenness, his words slurred.

‘ Overnight it seemed … Richard was utterly transformed. He was still an awful bully. But now … now he was a bully with a singular vision of destiny. He said he would take Father’s kingdom and make it an empire. That God had shown him the way he would do it. I know … I know this is why the stupid fool went to the Holy Land. As soon as Father and our oldest brother Geoffrey died and Richard became king … that’s the first thing he did — launch his bloody crusade. ’

Becks heard her own voice. ‘ God showed him the way he would do it? ’

‘ Yes … yes … it was in that wretched Confession, wasn’t it? The Grail story, you see? It was all in there. It was what turned him into the crazy man … what’s made him so, so very dangerous. ’

‘ Is the Confession still in the royal library? ’

‘ I … I … would not know, nor care to know. It … I suppose Richard would consider Oxford the safest place for it to be kept. But, please … enough of that madman, my dear … I’m getting stomach pains thinking about him. ’

A pause. ‘ You fear him? ’

Another pause. A long one. Then finally …

‘ I am terrified of him. ’

‘ Because he will blame you for losing the Grail? ’

No sound except the crackle of flames on scorched wood. Becks, however, recalled his gesture, a silent nod of the head, his eyes wide with the look of a man considering his own imminent death.

‘ I fear I will be a dead man on his return. ’

She recalled the haunted look on his face. ‘ Let me at least enjoy whatever time I have left … with you … and not speak his name again tonight? ’

1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire

Sebastien Cabot greeted Liam with a cheerful wave as he clucked his tongue and reined in his horse. Behind him the crunch of boots and horses’ hooves on hard sun-baked soil ceased as Eddie ordered the men to a halt.

‘Sire!’ called out Cabot, stepping through the gate of the priory’s front gardens to meet him. ‘’Tis a wonderful surprise!’

Liam swung a leg over his horse’s back and stepped down out of the stirrups on to the ground. He was hot and clammy beneath the quilted tunic and the robe of office. He ran a sleeved forearm across his damp forehead, pushing dark sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes.

‘It’s hot, so it is,’ he said needlessly.

Cabot winked slyly. ‘Good for the grapes and apples.’

The two stared at each other for a moment, then Liam extended a hand. Cabot grasped it with both. ‘Has been too many weeks since last I saw ye, my friend.’

Liam nodded. ‘Busy. Very busy.’

‘What has brought ye this way, sire?’

‘We paid a visit to Sir Guy’s estate, and Sir Raymond’s this morning. Both pleading poverty, but, like all the others, both very plump and extremely wealthy. So we collected what they owed.’

‘Long overdue, I would say.’

‘Aye.’ Liam wiped the damp from the thin downy bristles on his upper lip. ‘Sebastien,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m also here to … uhh … to talk.’

The old man nodded. ‘Of course.’

Liam turned to gesture at his soldiers, all of them exhausted from the miles they’d covered so far today, and equally hot under their vests of chain mail. ‘Would your brothers see to these soldiers? A little water? A little food maybe?’

‘Of course, sire.’ He turned and bellowed orders across the garden, and several monks emerged from a small orchard beside the barn, baskets in hand.

‘Ye wish to go somewhere private?’ asked Cabot.

Liam nodded.

‘News of yer good work in Nottingham has spread,’ said Cabot. ‘Ye are fast becoming a popular sheriff, young Liam.’

‘But not so popular with all them noble fellas, right?’

‘The nobles hate ye.’ He shrugged. ‘They see ye as a young pretender. They each wonder why it is that John has not chosen them to administer the north. And,’ he chuckled, ‘ye actually make ’em pay the taxes they owe.’

Liam slurped on his flagon, savouring the cool trickle of water down his parched throat. ‘Sebastien … we will have to leave soon.’

‘Leave? To yer time ? Why?’

‘It’s just the way it works. We have to go back to our time for a bit.’

‘But … but ye can’t return the sheriff’s office to that wastrel, William De — ’

‘We’ll be back. I promise you. We just have to check in with our colleagues. See how things are in the future.’

‘The future,’ uttered Cabot. His old face creased. ‘I would dearly love to see a little of that.’

‘It’s not so great, Sebastien,’ Liam sighed.

‘Tell me something of it.’

The old monk already knew too much. Someday soon a decision was going to have to be made about him: whether they could trust him or not. A little more knowledge would probably make little difference.

‘It’s a crowded world,’ he replied. ‘That’s what I find. A crowded world full of noisy fat people.’

‘Fat?’

He nodded. ‘As plump as the lords and barons. Everyone, even the poorest, lives a lord’s life by comparison to the people here. Everyone eats more than they need. Everyone has more things than they would ever need.’

‘’Tis a good time that ye come from, then.’

He shrugged. ‘It should be.’

Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘But ye do not miss it?’

Liam knew, when he was all done here in 1194, he’d miss rising each morning with the sound of cockerels stirring and the distant ring of a blacksmith’s hammer, the smell of woodsmoke and unleavened bread baking in hundreds of clay ovens.

‘I could happily stay here,’ he said after a while, then realized that was perhaps too much of an admission. ‘But I can’t, Sebastien. Duty calls, so it does.’

‘Duty … I can understand that.’

A gentle breeze stirred the tall grass of the graveyard. They were alone here at the rear of the priory.

‘Liam,’ said Cabot after a while, ‘is this world of mine — ’ he gestured with both his hands — ‘is this world as it should be now? Is this the correct England of yer history books?’

‘I don’t know yet. The unrest that there was in Nottingham months ago could have become a much bigger problem for John. There was a new history created in my time: a history where a rebellion broke this country into pieces, and the French invaded and there was no more England.’

‘Good God!’

‘And I think — I hope we’re well on the mend from that. But …’

‘But what?’

‘But history, I think, is still altered in smaller ways. I mean, think about it. Me … me as the sheriff, for one. And all the things that you now know. Those are all small differences that could lead to bigger changes.’

Cabot hunched his shoulders. ‘Ye worry I would tell others of these things ye have told me?’

‘Well … to be honest, yes.’

‘Who would believe any of it? They would think it the ramblings of an old mad monk.’ He laughed. ‘ Travelling to tomorrows yet to be? Worlds shaped like balls? Who would listen to that nonsense? I would be clapped in stocks and have rotten food thrown at me for amusement.’

He had a point.

‘I have a thought.’

‘What?’

‘Perhaps, young Liam … perhaps history too is round , in a sort of way.’