The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 46

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.’

‘What do you mean?’

Cabot’s bushy eyebrows locked with concentration. ‘Round … such like a cart’s wheel. Perhaps ye were always meant to come back and be the Sheriff of Nottingham? Perhaps I was always meant to be told these things by ye.’

The old man had an interesting point.

‘And perhaps our poor John was always meant to have lost the Grail. Is that what your history books say, Liam?’

‘About the Holy Grail?’ Liam emptied the cup. ‘I dunno … I think there’s nothing certain on that. I think history books treat the Grail like a fairy story, or a myth or something.’

‘There, then,’ said Cabot, smiling. ‘If it is a thing that never was … then for it to be lost, what difference does that make?’

‘True.’

He leaned forward and punched Liam on the arm affectionately. ‘Ye worry too much, lad.’

‘Don’t I just?’ he smiled. ‘Anyway … Sebastien.’ He produced a sheet of parchment from the inside of his robe. A single line of pigpen symbols were scrawled across it. ‘We need to cut this into — ’ he looked at the gravestone — ‘into poor old Haskette’s gravestone.’

Cabot studied the parchment for a moment. ‘Ye know, ’tis a very good thing this code of yers is all straight lines. I am no stonemason. I cannot engrave a curve worth speaking of.’ He pulled a mason’s hammer and chisel from the apron of his robe.

‘To work, then.’