The Doomsday Code

CHAPTER 55

1194, Oxford Castle

Becks detected noises of distress coming from the castle’s outer walls: raised voices, high-pitched and signifying alarm. And one of those voices she identified as John’s.

A few minutes later he staggered into the great hall, gasping, looking for her. His eyes found her standing beside an arched window doing her best to look serene and ladylike. He came quickly over.

‘’Tis true! I have j-just this minute heard!’ he stammered.

‘What is true?’

‘R-Richard … he has s-set foot in England!’ John’s face was ashen with fear and damp with sweat. ‘The messenger … the messenger arrived this morning! He tells me he set foot in Dover yesterday!’

Becks consulted her database and a map of England. It was 118 miles from Dover to Oxford. A piece of data she didn’t have was how many miles an army from this period could travel in a day. However, a determined man could cover that distance in two days. John had already told her his brother most likely would gather supporters along the way, with his growing army eventually catching up with him.

‘Do you believe he will come to Oxford immediately?’ she asked.

John nodded frantically. ‘He will come here directly … b-because he believes the Grail is here!’ He swallowed nervously. ‘I will have to be the one to tell him — tell him that it’s lost. It was on my instructions the Templars were taking it north to Scotland.’ John’s nerves spilled out and became a manic laugh. ‘He’s going to kill me!’

‘I will protect you,’ she said calmly.

He wandered over to the balcony and looked out across the city. The heat of a mid-morning’s sun was baking the castle’s stone walls, and the air shimmered above the crenellations, making the dark slate rooftops of Oxford’s shacks and hovels dance and undulate beneath the cloudless blue sky. ‘Why has your colleague, Liam, not managed to find it yet? It does not sound like he has even started to look for it!’

There had been several couriers from Nottingham over the last few months, bearing a detailed account of matters up there. Most of Liam’s reports had been on his efforts to win the starving people round, to carefully rebuild some semblance of royal authority, law and order … all in John’s name.

‘He has been busy stabilizing the region,’ she replied. ‘Only when he has the support and sympathies of the people will he have a chance of locating this outlaw who has stolen your Grail.’ She was quoting Liam’s words from the last report.

‘I know! I know!’ snapped John. ‘But we have no more time now for making friends of the peasants! Richard will be here this very night … maybe tomorrow.’ He turned to look at her, trembling as he spoke. ‘Do you understand? There will be blood when he discovers it is lost! My blood!’

Becks’s eyes narrowed. She looked back out at the walls of the castle, the walls of Oxford. ‘You could hold out against him. Prevent him from entering the city.’

John scratched at his beard; a nervous tic of his that Becks had noticed gradually become increasingly pronounced over the last six months. ‘The city would fall to him,’ he said. ‘The people here love him.’

Becks nodded slowly. His evaluation was, of course, quite correct. She trawled through her database of history for this period and immediately hit upon the obvious solution. A solution that, as it happened, would also align with history as it was meant to happen.

‘You must retreat north to Nottingham,’ she said. ‘The castle has a better defensive configuration, and the city is sympathetic to you.’

John licked his lips, breathing noisily through his nose as he gave her suggestion serious thought. ‘NO! No … that w-will anger him f-further!’

Becks’s store of data on the correct timeline indicated a successful defence of the city and a siege by Richard that lasted several weeks. The siege concluded with John’s surrender and Richard demonstrating uncharacteristic mercy for his brother, letting him live as long as he swore allegiance to him.

That was the history that needed to happen now to prevent an unacceptable level of temporal contamination.

‘Nottingham is loyal to you,’ she said. ‘The city will hold. This may give the sheriff enough additional time to locate the Grail for you. The Grail could then be used as a bargaining tool, allowing you to negotiate an acceptable surrender.’

He looked at her. ‘You think that is possible?’

‘Of course it is possible. Liam may already have enough local intelligence from the people to successfully locate these outlaws. Winning their loyalty and support as he has been doing has been a necessary first step.’

‘Perhaps you are right.’ He cupped his chin in a shaking hand. ‘Yes … yes. Perhaps then, that’s — yes, that’s what I should do.’

‘The other alternative is to remain here,’ she added. ‘Which I calculate would be a tactically poor choice.’

He reached out for her and grasped her arms suddenly. ‘What would I do without you?’

She flashed one of her carefully selected smiles at him.

John’s face seemed to have reclaimed some of its colour. ‘Behind such beauty, you have a mind just as cunning as any ambassador or general. I … I — ’

Becks eased herself from his tight grip and pushed him gently back. ‘My lord, we should set forth immediately.’

‘Yes … yes, that would be advisable.’ His lovelorn puppy eyes cleared and focused on more practical matters. ‘Yes, we must assemble a caravan immediately.’

Yet he stared at her in silence for a while longer, his blue eyes narrowing, marvelling at her. ‘If only it were the way of things that I had been king … you would truly make a formidable queen.’

A part of her mind calculated whether she should reveal his future to him; whether knowing what fate awaited him would strengthen his resolve to stand up to Richard. But a hard-coded protocol reminded her that knowledge of the future to any man was just as big a contaminant to history as any careless time traveller. There were other ways to ensure he found a bit of backbone and stood firm against Richard when the time came.

‘Be strong for me now,’ she said gently, teasingly. ‘And perhaps I will yet be your queen.’