A moment later Bob stood over the man’s body and retrieved his sword, wiping the blood off on Locke’s clothing. His silicon mind quietly ticked off the lowest of his list of mission priorities. His animal mind begrudgingly murmured approval of the small mercy he’d given to Locke, letting him believe he was going to live. Death came without any warning … and quickly.
A small mercy at least.
CHAPTER 66
1194, Nottingham
He wasn’t sure if he’d actually fallen asleep. He must have because all of a sudden he was looking up at an evening sky, free of overlapping branches and leaves, and the cart’s wheels were creaking easily along a rutted track. He sat up and turned to see Bob’s wide shoulders swaying in the driver’s seat.
‘Did you get him?’
Bob turned and looked at him. ‘Locke is no longer a contamination issue.’
‘What? You mean he –?’
‘I managed to acquire what we were after,’ Bob interrupted. He pulled some sackcloth aside to reveal a small dark wooden box. The lid was decorated with the faint lines of a geometric pattern carved a long time ago and attached by old iron hinges.
‘Bob! Is this really it? Is this the Holy Grail? Did you open it?’
Bob played his best grin. The kind that would give small children nightmares. ‘I believe it contains what we have been looking for.’
Liam reached out for the box, touching the wooden grain lightly with his fingertips, the faint lines of the carving on the lid. The oddest sensation. He felt a tingle of energy course through his hands. He felt the fine downy hairs on his arms raise, and a shudder of something – fear? excitement? – ripple through his body.
Inside this is the Holy Grail, Liam. The Holy Grail.
The very thing sought by figures of legend, King Arthur and his knights of the round table. A relic thought to be a cup of Christ, a chalice … or just a myth, a metaphor. But here it was, in the back of a bouncing cart full of rolling apples.
Carefully, reverentially, he eased the lid slowly open … half expecting the sky above to crack open and reveal a God ready to smite him with a bolt of lightning for daring to consider himself worthy enough look upon his very words.
Inside the small box he saw a threadbare canvas bag, a drawstring at the top pulling it tight and closed. The canvas bag rested on a shallow bed of coins, stamped with the face of King Henry II, Richard and John’s father. Liam guessed that was some of the money Locke’s bandits had managed to rob from tax collectors and merchants foolish enough to travel the forest tracks of Nottingham during the last two years.
Carefully, he lifted out the canvas bag and loosened the drawstring to look down inside.
He could see the handle of a wooden scroll spindle and the frayed edges of yellowing parchment wrapped tightly round it. He felt an almost overpowering urge to pull it out of the bag and unroll the parchment, but the cart was rolling and bucking as the wheels rode up and down ruts in the track. A bump and it could tear in his hands.
He stared at the frayed edges curled round the spindle. Somewhere on those pages of parchment the word Pandora was written. A message, a warning that – if Maddy was right – someone wanted them, specifically them, to know about.
He felt that shudder down his spine again, as if simply by holding this roll of parchment, looking at it, he was waking something up from a deep slumber, disturbing it … foolishly prodding it.
He pulled the drawstring tight again and gently laid the canvas bag back on its bed of coins and closed the lid.
He shuffled forward and tapped Bob on the shoulder. He turned his head and Liam found himself looking at the frayed and bloody pink edges of what remained of the top rim of Bob’s right ear. A line of dark dried blood ran down the side of his neck and disappeared beneath the folds of the dark cape.
‘Bob … that’s really it, isn’t it? We’ve got …’
He looked down again at the box. We’ve got, quite possibly, the most important piece of rolled-up paper that has ever existed.
He was wondering whether to voice that out loud, or whether saying it was somehow pushing their luck, inviting some sort of lightning bolt.
‘Caution!’ said Bob suddenly.
Liam looked up from the box. The dusty track had just brought them over the brow of a hill. There below them like a child’s play set, shimmering amid the midday warmth, was the walled town of Nottingham, busy with activity. A welcome sight for Liam. Or at least it would have been, had it not been for the spreading dark line of figures casually crossing and flattening the patchwork of furrowed fields outside the walls.
Thousands of them.
He saw the flickering glint of chain-mail armour among them: a forest of multicoloured pennants fluttering above columns of men, trudging off the road leading up from the south and fanning out into the fields. He could see swarms of dark figures pulling equipment from baggage trains of carts, tents already being erected on beds of trampled crops, and long beams of wood being worked upon by teams of carpenters with the percussive rattle-tap of dozens of hand axes and hammers.
‘It appears King Richard has arrived,’ said Bob.
Down the sloping track leading to the town’s main entrance, Liam could see a river of traffic emerging. King Richard’s soldiers seemed to be permitting those who wanted no part in the siege to leave. Mostly merchants, visiting tradesmen driving out empty carts: people with no special allegiance to the place and no wish to die for a cause.
‘Letting people out. But no one in,’ Liam commented.
‘Affirmative.’
He looked down at the milling chaos outside the opened gates to Nottingham. Perhaps, if they could get down there, in among all that confusion, they could find a way to sneak in.
‘Bob. Let’s see how close we can get before someone stops us.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘And you better pull your hood up … your ear’s going to attract attention.’
Bob did as he was told, working the hood up over his shaggy head. Then with his one good hand, he grabbed the reins and kicked the horse’s rump. It staggered wearily forward and the cart’s wheels once more creaked as they descended towards the scene below.
A couple of minutes later and they were passing the first of the merchants streaming out, many of them irritably shouting at them that they were heading the wrong way and should either turn round or get off the track; otherwise, they met with no interference. Until a picket of soldiers thirty yards ahead of them, wearing olive-green sashes over leather jerkins, began waving them down to stop.
Liam cursed. ‘What’re we gonna do?’ he hissed from the back.
Bob shrugged casually. ‘I am evaluating.’
‘Well, we don’t have time to evaluate … dammit!’ Liam gritted his teeth. They were a hundred yards from the main entrance and all of that distance was a confusion of people. Surely, if they could just lose themselves in that?
The soldiers ahead of them were now stepping on to the track and into their way.
And what if they decide to search the cart? What if one of them decides this little box looks rather nice?
‘Bob, I think we’re going to have to make a go for it.’
‘Clarify “go for it”.’
‘Don’t stop. Just go. Go very fast!’
Bob nodded. ‘Agreed.’
He whipped the reins across the horse’s shoulders, and for good measure swung a hard kick once more at its rear. The horse bellowed a complaint but all the same broke into a begrudging canter.
The soldiers ahead of them called out warnings for them to stop but, at the very last moment, stepped aside to avoid being run over.
As they swept by them, angry voices rippled orders and another party of soldiers further up, overseeing the merchants’ exodus, readied themselves to stop the cart. Liam could see these ones were better equipped for the job, armed as they were with pikes. Just one of those braced firmly against the ground would be enough to run their horse’s chest th
rough and bring it down in an untidy heap.
What they needed was a stampede. A distraction. Chaos. What they needed was …
He reached for the box, yanked the lid open and carefully tucked the drawstring canvas bag into the folds of his cloak. What was left inside, a small mound of gold coins, he scooped up into his hands.
‘Bob!’ he bellowed over his shoulder. ‘Shout “free money”! Shout something like “free money”! Really, really loud!’
Bob craned his hooded neck to look at Liam and saw him holding the handfuls of coins. He seemed to understand what Liam was up to. ‘MONEY!’ his voice boomed above the pounding hooves and the laboured creak of their spinning cartwheels. ‘HAVE FREE MONEY!’
Liam tossed a handful of the glinting coins over the left side of the cart and into the tall grass beside the track. The result was almost instantaneous – like tossing a handful of breadcrumbs into a courtyard full of pigeons. Merchants’ wives walking beside their husbands’ carts, the foot traffic, tradesmen’s helpers old and young, children, all swarmed off the dusty track and began scrabbling in the tall grass.
Bob steered their horse, cutting in between two carts and putting them on the right side of the traffic emerging through the arch of the gatehouse as Liam tossed another handful into the crowd around them.
‘FREE MONEY FOR EVERYONE!’ bellowed Bob again.
Hands snatched and grabbed for the coins tumbling through the air. They were now level with the pikemen – the soldiers on the left of the surging river of people, them on the right, separated by a roiling sea of grasping hands fighting each other to get within reach of the last shower of coins.
The soldiers pushed their way angrily through people bent over double and scrabbling in the dust to get to them, but then Liam tossed a handful right at them. Coins clanging like shrapnel off their helmets. It did the trick, stopping them dead, as they too dropped to their hands and knees to scrabble for what they could.
The large arched entrance to the town loomed above them and Bob savagely kicked their poor beast one last time, raising their canter to a reckless gallop. Its hooves clattered and scraped noisily off dried mud on to cobbles and flagstones, and the tail end of evacuating merchants ahead of them swiftly parted either side to avoid being flattened as they passed beneath the archway and into the market square inside the wall.
‘FREE MONEY FOR EVERYONE!’ Bob’s deep voice echoed across the market, bouncing off the inside of the stone walls like the blast of a ship’s foghorn. Liam tossed out another fistful in their wake, ensuring none of King Richard’s soldiers were going to be able to push through the entrance after them, plugged as it was with people doubled over and searching for coins.
‘We’re in!’ Liam shouted. ‘We did it!’
Bob reined the horse back and it slowed down to a blown, wheezing trot.
People around them, soldiers too – this time wearing the burgundy and orange colours of the town’s garrison, flocked around the back of the cart. Looking in at the remaining coins scattered across the flatbed.
Why not? Liam grinned.
He scraped the last of the coins up and threw them out into the crowd.
‘Money for the poor!’ he shouted.
CHAPTER 67
1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
The first thing Liam registered as he and Bob stepped through the velvet drapes into the keep’s main hall was Becks. She was standing by the arch that led out on to a wooden balcony, poised in a ridiculously-not-her demure and ladylike pose, long embroidered linens and lace fluttering glamorously from her in the breeze.
‘Salutations, Liam. J’espère que vous allez bien?’
Liam bit his lip, resisting an inappropriate urge to giggle. Instead he tipped a polite nod at her. ‘Greetings, Lady Rebecca.’
She switched to English. ‘Greetings to you also.’
John stepped into view from the balcony. He smiled, genuinely pleased to see Liam. ‘Ahhh! My sheriff! ’Tis the man of the hour!’ He stepped forward to greet him. ‘I am indebted to you. I truly am! I arrived here earlier today to, would you believe, to cheers – actually, cheers from the peasants!’
Liam bowed. ‘They are loyal to you, Sire.’
‘Indeed, but I suspect it has been your common touch as sheriff that has earned me their affection, hmmm?’ John’s face adopted a mock-serious expression. His thick brows knotted. ‘I noticed your rather flamboyant entry to the marketplace just now. Congratulations for making your way through Richard’s lines outside … but, I must ask, is it customary now to hurl handfuls of royal revenue at the people to gain entry?’
‘Ahh, yes, that … Well, err … I – we, umm –’
John’s frown faded and he waved the question away. ‘It matters not to me any more. Now he is back home, it is Richard’s money you were throwing anyway. Not mine.’ He stepped closer to Liam. He could see there was something far more pressing on John’s mind than mere coin. ‘Now … Please, please, you must tell me,’ he said more quietly. ‘I … I need to know –’
Liam quickly nodded, saving the man any more anguish. ‘“Yes” is the answer, Sire. I have it. We have the Grail.’
John sagged with relief, his breath puffing out in a barely suppressed gasp. ‘Oh, thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!’ He settled down heavily into a wooden chair, robbed of the strength to remain standing. ‘I cannot tell you how … how vexed – how … how so very worried I have been!’
Becks stepped into the room and stood beside him. Liam noticed the graceful way she moved and the way she gently caressed his brow. No longer the swagger of a tomboy, no longer another Bob in a girl-suit. She was all grace and elegance.
Now that’s very weird so it is.
He smiled, proud of what she seemed to have learned over the last few months, her ability to adapt so convincingly. Not so long ago she’d barely managed to pass herself off as an American high-school student. Now here she was, quite believable as a medieval lady of noble blood.
‘Calm yourself, my lord,’ she cooed softly. ‘Did I not say my friend Liam would retrieve it for you?’
John nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, my dear … yes, so you did. I should never have doubted you.’
‘Bob helped, of course,’ said Liam, shrugging. ‘Actually he did most of the hard work.’
Bob emerged from behind the drapes and nodded politely at John and Becks.
‘Good God!’ said John, his eyes suddenly as round as pickled eggs. ‘This man needs a physician!’
Bob looked down at the ragged, shredded stump of his left arm, dangling shreds of tattered skin and the rounded white nub of a bone. ‘The wound is no longer bleeding. It is not life threatening.’
‘Your arm is GONE, man! You should be attended to immediately!’ gasped John. He got up from his chair and led Bob back towards the drapes. He called out for one of the guards standing outside to take Bob to the garrison’s apothecary. ‘And be double quick about it, fool! The man needs it bound!’
He returned, pale-faced and shuddering. ‘Ughh! I … have a poor stomach for such things.’ He puffed his cheeks queasily. ‘Oh, quite horrible … All that … gristle and – and …’ He reached for a cup of wine and drained it, then wiped his mouth. ‘Now, to matters of importance.’ He pointed to the balcony. ‘I should waste not another moment. We must surrender the town immediately!’
‘What?’
John nodded his head vigorously. ‘Indeed, yes! I have what he wants!’ John looked at Liam. ‘Where is it, by the way?’
Liam nodded down at the box in his arms. ‘Right here.’
John glanced down at it. ‘And it is safe? Complete? Undamaged?’ He had little interest in opening the box and inspecting the parchment itself. Holy relics and Templar superstitions were his brother’s obsession, not his.
‘It is fine.’
‘Good. Then there’s no need for this battle to take place. No need for bloodshed today. I shall arrange a parlay with him at once!’
Becks leaned
down, speaking in soft soothing tones to him and gently stroking his forehead. ‘That is a bad idea. The Grail is all that you have to bargain with. You must hold on to it. Tu dois es courageaux et fort, mon cher.’
Liam was again impressed with how much her AI had picked up, how convincing she sounded and looked.
‘I am tired, my dear lady,’ muttered John, closing his eyes. ‘Tired of fearing him. Fearing his return … I want this to be over with, so I can rest –’
‘And it will be. Soon,’ she cooed, ‘soon. But you must be strong. Be strong for me.’
He opened his eyes. ‘For you?’
She nodded. ‘You must be strong and make your brother wait.’ Becks glanced towards the archway and balcony. From afar the sound of carpenters at work echoed across the walls of Nottingham. ‘Let him build his siege weapons, let him waste time and then you should parlay.’
John closed his eyes as she caressed his forehead.
‘You should rest, my lord, there’s time for that and you have slept little.’
John nodded. ‘I am so very tired.’
Becks glanced up at Liam. ‘Rest now, my dear. Take some more wine. And I shall go and arrange supper for you and the sheriff.’
She stood up and discreetly beckoned Liam to follow her out of the hall.
CHAPTER 68
1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham
‘Jay-zus, Becks!’ whispered Liam. ‘You were completely convincing back there. Does John … is he in love with you or something?’
She shrugged. ‘He has developed an infatuation for me. I have attempted to analyse why this is so and have no valid conclusions to make. He has said he finds “my unladylike fortitude bewitching”. The important factor is that this is useful leverage, which can be applied if needed.’