John Schettler - Devil's Garden

“Face it, Karpov. To achieve anything like the scenario I think you are creating in your head, you will need the close cooperation of these men. You will need someone like Kolchak, for example, and a White Army that can hold its own against the Bolsheviks. Otherwise they will prevail and Stalin will eventually rise out of the fires of the civil war. What then? You want to face off with Stalin?”

“Don’t you understand, Zolkin? Knowledge is power too. I can know all the history as it is about to unfold. Stalin? I did some reading the other day. You want to know where Stalin is at this very moment? He’s in prison at Baku! Why, if I chose to do so I could sail to the Black Sea and send helicopters there and make an end of Stalin before he ever becomes a factor in Russian history.”

“My God! Listen to yourself. Sometimes I really wonder if you are serious about all this. Well… I’ll give you one thing, Captain. You have power here, that much is obvious. You want to go kill Stalin? I suppose no one can stop you. Do that, however, and another man may rise from the dark corners of history to take his place. Your knowledge of future events will come unraveling the moment he dies. Fedorov will tell you this. Anything you do here will have dramatic repercussions. So this knowledge you think you can use will soon be useless when everything starts to change. Yes, someone will rise in Stalin’s place, and you will not know who that man is, or how to reach him. History may be far more resilient than you realize.”

Karpov shrugged. “This is all academic,” he said. “The question is what do we do about Fedorov?”

“Fedorov? Yes, he wants to try and rescue us. He’s a good man, Captain. You know that as much as I do. He will want to do everything possible to let sleeping dogs lie here. The world is going into the cauldron of the First Great War soon, and back home it’s about to go into the last Great War. Those dogs will soon be on the hunt without any help from us, in both eras.”

“Do you think this plan of his will work? I mean… well how did it come to pass that he appeared here, in 1908? What if those control rods just end up sending us even farther back in time? Fedorov devises all these plans and schemes, but he really has no way to control what happens, any more than you say I do.”

“Yes, Karpov. In the end we are all at the mercy of time and events. Call it fate, call it the will of God, but there is something bigger than you or me or Mister Fedorov at work here. We are like blind men in a dark closet looking for the right coat here. Whatever you decide, consider the men on this ship. They may not share your dream of conquest. Have you even bothered to consider asking what they might want to do? Well, here’s a thought you can put into your own scheming head. Suppose you do something here; something that changes everything. Suppose the grandparents of men aboard this ship don’t survive in the new world you create? What happens to the men then? Do they end up dead, never born, just like the men on that list Volkov was all worked up over, with no record they ever existed? Suppose your own grandfather dies. Then what?”

Thesky was low that day when he arrived, the long causeway leading the way across the South Low where it meandered into the sea. At low tide there was a mile or more of mud flats here, until the causeway rose on the far banks of Holy Isle. At high tide the low was entirely submerged by the sea, cutting the island off from the greater shore of England to the west. To this day the tides dictated access to the isle, and now they had gracefully withdrawn for his Lordship, Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington, who passed quickly over the narrow way in his town car.

The bare windswept stone of the island greeted him, called whinstone by the locals. It was a hard and durable rock, and it had hidden secrets here from the world for many centuries. He passed beneath the Snook along the narrow neck of Holy Isle, following the narrow road as it hugged the coast through the village, past Riding Stone and Cockle Stone to the castle at Lindisfarne on Beblowe Crag. Cobblestone as it ended, it would take him all the way the boat houses, three herring boats cut in half and set upside down on the green earth. The gap was walled in and a door installed. How quaint, he thought.

There he would thank the driver, and have his effects moved up the long flat stairs to the lower battery of the castle itself, where he had so arranged it that he would have the entire facility to himself. If Mister Thomas was prompt, he should be waiting for him to move the luggage. The driver would be dismissed before high tide, and it would be just he and Thomas left alone at the castle, on the eve of their great adventure.

They would take their meal, all arranged and set out at that very moment on the long oval table of the dining hall. It sat at the edge of a great hearth stretching in a wide arch, with stolid brickwork rising to the vaulted ceiling. It was once an old bread oven, but it would hold a nice fire and warm their meal. He had a mind to tour the ‘ship room,’ where a rustic model of an old tri-mast frigate was hung from the arched stone ceiling, as if it were sailing there in formation with 17th century Dutch candelabra chandeliers. After that they would spend a few quiet hours of quiet in the upper gallery. There were some old books to pass the time, and a lovely cello he might play, listening to the sound echoing in the empty halls of the castle.

Ian Thomas got quite a kick out of the ship room. “My, look at that, it’s as if a ghost ship were sailing through the room, sir.”

“Indeed, Mister Thomas. Wouldn’t you be thrilled to ride on a ship like that?”

“I certainly would, sir.”

“Well, that may soon be arranged.” The Duke let that hang, a subtle clue to the business ahead, which had Thomas very curious to learn more. Yet he knew enough not to probe. He would be told anything the Duke decided he needed to know in good time. So instead he kept to the particulars of their immediate schedule. After a sumptuous dinner they shared a glass a brandy in the upper gallery until the Duke stood up, looking at his pocket watch.

“Will we be leaving the castle tonight, your grace? Shall I arrange for a car?”

“In a manner of speaking…but no, a car will not be necessary. I should like to walk the shore for a time and see if I might happen upon old Saint Cuthbert stringing his beads. Would you be so kind as to see the luggage gets up to the small bedroom off the long gallery? You’ll find it right on the landing at the top of a narrow stairway there, just outside the gallery on the upper battery.”

“Right away, sir.” Apparently they were staying the night there at the castle.

As evening fell the Duke walked in the walled garden, once a vegetable garden for the castle garrison, enjoying the cool sea air on this last night. He would end with a final walk on the stony shore as the darkness settled in, listening to the sound of the surf on stone and the cooing of the fulmars roosting there. At one point he thought he heard the distant barking of a dog and looked to see what he thought was a white shepherd roaming near the edge of the castle, but it seemed to vanish in the mist.

There had been an old priory on the island dating to the 600s, long before the castle was built many centuries later in the 1500s. Venerable saints like Adian and Cuthbert both preached the Gospel from the isolated island base, finding it a special place to withdraw from the world to commune with the sea, and their God. Adian died there and his remains were buried beneath the ruins of the old Abbey, and it was said that Cuthbert had a vision that night of the saint being taken to heaven by Angels.