Richard sat forward, the chair creaking under the weight of the man in his chain mail and armour plating. ‘I’m ready for a fight, little brother. Are you?’
‘I – yes – I’m …’
Richard laughed again. ‘Ha! You little runt. You couldn’t fight your way off a nursemaid’s teat!’ He picked up the flagon and poured some watered-down wine into his cup. ‘But I am not here to punish you this day.’ He emptied the cup with one swig, spilling wine down his thick blond beard.
‘Now, I’ve been hearing rumours, since landing on these Godforsaken shores, that something very precious to me has been lost by you. You know what I’m talking of, don’t you?’
John nodded. Although whether it stood out as a nod instead of another involuntary tic, he wasn’t sure.
‘I know you are a fool, dear brother, but not that much of a fool to lose it. So … I can only presume this is a fiction.’ Richard smiled for the first time. A cold smile that meant absolutely nothing. ‘It seems you have grown a backbone after all. This is your attempt to bargain with me, eh?’
John could see that smile wavering. He could see it turn into a snarl in a heartbeat, a snarl, a sudden whiplash of movement and a blade sunk deep into his throat. Richard could do that and not think twice of the consequences.
Be very careful.
‘I … I have it, brother.’
‘Excellent! Of course you do. And now, I thank you for keeping it safe these last two years. You will hand it over to me and perhaps – perhaps – I will overlook your reluctance to pay my ransom. I will overlook your many attempts to undermine my authority while I have been away fighting for Christendom.’
John felt his legs trembling beneath his robes, felt his bladder loosen, his stomach flip and churn.
Be strong.
‘It is safe, Richard. I – I shall …’
‘You shall what?’
John swallowed drily. ‘I shall h-hold on to it for n-now.’
The smile froze on Richard’s face. He reached for the flagon and topped his cup up again. ‘Your pitiful attempt at defiance is almost amusing. But I have no time for that now.’
‘I am s-serious, brother,’ John uttered, the words stumbling out of his mouth like a drunkard from an inn at closing time.
Richard’s eyes narrowed. ‘I … I … I am s … s … serious, b … b … brother,’ he mimicked cruelly in a shrill, high pitch. ‘I will not be bargained with by you, you pitiful woman!’ He shook his head at the very thought of that. ‘You are a child, a baby. You always have been. You play at being king while I have been away. And now you dare – you dare to play with this?’
‘It is just a scroll of words,’ said John. ‘It means nothing.’ But almost the moment he said it, he regretted it. He expected his brother to leap off his chair, to slap his face with the hard back of his hand. But instead Richard’s response was measured, calm.
‘It is God’s instructions … instructions meant for me and me alone.’
John looked at his eyes. They glistened with a frightening sense of glee, purpose.
‘You stand in the way of the Lord’s intentions, brother. A very dangerous place to be.’
John took a deep breath, steadying the churning in his stomach, hopefully steadying the unfortunate tremor in his voice. ‘Disband your nobles and their men, leave Nottingham … and I shall g-give you the Grail.’
‘No.’ Richard looked down at the ground. ‘These are the choices I present to you. Surrender the Grail immediately, and I shall consider some leniency. I am, after all, known for my mercy. If I have to take Nottingham to obtain it, I will have your head.’
‘Attack the city and – and I shall burn it before you get to m-me.’
Dark hooded eyes settled on him for a long while. ‘Then, dear brother, you will know the agony of a witch’s fire before I have you opened up and quartered. You will see your own heart in my hand before your head comes off.’
God help me.
John stood up. ‘I am leaving. We are done!’
Richard remained seated. ‘Then you will die very badly, brother.’
John pushed his way past the velvet drapes, cursing as his robes tangled with it and he stumbled awkwardly out into the open, Richard’s raised voice following him.
‘If you burn it, you fool … you will die badly!’
CHAPTER 74
2001, New York
‘But those letters, they don’t spell anything!’ said Maddy. ‘They’re just a bunch of weird Celtic squiggles.’
Adam was looking around her messy desk for something. ‘It’s not the letters we want – just where they are on the page. Have you got any cardboard?’
Normally there were half a dozen pizza boxes lying around, but she’d binned a whole bunch of them the other day. ‘Uh? What do you want cardboard for?’
Sal looked around at the filing cabinet to the right of the computer table. Liam had left a breakfast bowl up there and, being the scruffy shadd-yah he was, the box of Rice Krispies. She reached for it.
‘This any good?’
Adam grabbed it. ‘Yeah. Scissors?’
Both girls shook their heads.
‘This isn’t a freakin’ craft store,’ said Maddy.
‘I need to cut out windows,’ said Adam. ‘Have you got anything? A penknife?’
Cabot reached into the folds of his monk’s habit and pulled out a small knife. ‘Would this do?’
‘Perfect.’
Adam grabbed the knife from him. He pulled the bag of Krispies out and then began to hack at the cereal box. Maddy frowned. ‘You gonna make something you saw on Sesame Street?’
Adam ignored the jibe and pointed at the computer screen. ‘Make a note of those stand-out letters.’ He took his cardboard box and Cabot’s knife across to the kitchen table where the Treyarch was still stretched out under the glare of the overhead light.
He finished cutting one side of the cereal box out and laid it gawdy, print-side down on the parchment, carefully lining up the ragged corners of the cardboard with the corners of the margin illuminations.
‘Too big,’ he muttered. He began trimming one side. Cursing as Cabot’s serrated blade chewed at the flimsy cardboard, leaving a rough, uneven, shredded edge.
Sal, Cabot and Becks joined him.
‘This’ll be no good for cutting out the windows,’ he said. ‘I need a modelling knife or something. The cardboard’s just shredding up.’
Sal looked down at the parchment. ‘Why not just cut the letters out of this Treyarch thing?’
Adam looked at the ragged wobbling scrap of cardboard in his hand, then down at the unravelled scroll. ‘Yeah, why not.’
Cabot’s eyes grew round. ‘But – but … ’tis a valuable account from the First Crusade!’
‘No,’ said Adam, ‘it’s a cardan grille in disguise. That’s all it is. That’s why it was written. It’s the real key to that,’ he said, gesturing at the wooden box perched on the end of the table.
Maddy rushed over with a sheet of paper in her hand. ‘I printed it out.’ She laid it down on the table, the highlighted characters still just about discernible from the rest of the text. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘this first line … it’s this character that’s highlighted,’ she said, pointing to the upside-down Gaelic symbol Cabot had noted minutes earlier.
Adam took the knife, and carefully dug its sharp tip into the parchment and the wooden table beneath.
‘What if we’re wrong?’ said Maddy. ‘What if it’s something else? You’re about to cut holes in this thing, and, like, there’s only this one copy!’
Adam hesitated a moment. ‘Ahh … true.’ He blew air through his teeth.
She looked down at the printout. ‘But looking at that …’
He nodded. ‘Exactly. Those letters are different ink. There’s only one reason you’d write certain letters out of order like that.’
‘Yeah …’ she shrugged. ‘Ahh heck – go for it, then.’
As Adam began cautiously c
utting the first character out of the stiff parchment, Cabot absentmindedly crossed himself with the tips of his fingers and muttered an apology in Latin to God above.
CHAPTER 75
1194, Nottingham
Liam and the soldiers standing alongside him ducked again at the warning shout from the gatehouse. Half a dozen rounded boulders the size of mead barrels came hurtling over the top of the city wall and with a clearly audible whistle arced downwards into the market square.
One landed with a heavy thud that he felt vibrate through the ground. It sent up a mushroom cloud of dust and airborne soil and chicken droppings. The others found market stalls and the wooden shacks that surrounded the thoroughfare, shattering them like eggshell.
‘Jay-zus-’n’-Mother-Mary!’
Bob stood beside him, calmly evaluating the paths the boulders had taken. ‘Information: they are adjusting their angles of trajectory.’ He pointed towards a section of wall twenty yards to the right of the city’s main gatehouse. ‘They are aiming for that. The wall there is weak.’
Liam could see a faint discoloration to the section of wall, as if different stone had been used there to patch up an age-old breach.
The first few volleys had overshot the wall and disappeared among the jumble of slate and wood rooftops in the middle of Nottingham, sending up plumes of dust and smoke into the cloudless blue sky. A fire had been started in among that somewhere; and the darker column of smoke, growing thicker, suggested it was beginning to take hold and spread.
Liam could feel the nervous darting eyes of hundreds of the town’s people on him; looking to their young sheriff to issue his orders.
Oh just great. Fantastic. I’ve never commanded the defence of a siege before.
‘Suggestion.’
Liam leaned closer to Bob. ‘Yes please … I’ve got no idea what to do, so help me.’
‘The wall will fail there,’ he said, pointing towards the discoloured section. ‘We will need to concentrate the garrison where the breach will be.’
‘Right.’
Bob pointed up to the top of the city wall and the gatehouse. Nottingham’s meagre garrison of troops were mostly dotted along the front wall, firing sporadic, unaimed arrows towards the metallic, shimmering and glinting mass of Richard’s assembled army. ‘These soldiers, also the ones held in reserve to defend the keep, are not efficiently deployed,’ rumbled Bob.
Liam watched them, cowering behind the crenellations as arrows flickered over the wall, occasionally sticking their heads out to return the odd shot. Bob was right. It appeared Richard had not bothered with taking more time to build siege towers. He’d efficiently evaluated the city’s wall and decided the obvious weak section was his way in. Half a dozen trebuchets working over that part of the wall was all that was needed. The fight wasn’t going to focus around the gatehouse, nor be for control of the wall tops. The fight was going to be concentrated around the breach, just as soon as the masonry had finished tumbling down and the dust settled.
Liam looked at the wall section at the same moment that voices from the gatehouse called out another warning. Several boulders arced languidly over the top, their shadows racing across the cobbles and dirt of the market square as they came to earth much closer, and thudded with impacts that shook the ground again beneath Liam’s feet.
But one shot landed on target. He heard the deep crash and boom of the projectile rock against masonry, and saw a spider’s web of cracks suddenly appear on their side of the wall. Dirt, dust and shards of dislodged flint and rock cascaded down in a clattering shower on to the market stalls standing near the base of the wall.
Liam turned to Bob. ‘We’re going to need everyone right here, aren’t we?’
Bob nodded. ‘Correct.’
Liam nodded, spat grit from his mouth. He really could have done with John being out here; for him to be seen by his people standing shoulder to shoulder with them, with his appointed sheriff. Instead of cowering in the keep.
Time to lead, Liam. Come on, Mr O’Connor … we’ve been here before.
True, but it was just a class of kids last time. Not a whole bloody city.
Come on, they’re all looking at you! Waiting for you. Do something!
He cupped his mouth and waited for a lull in the noise: the distant sound of Richard’s men chanting taunts, the frightened mewling of womenfolk and children; the braying of donkeys, the squeal of a pig nearby, dragging itself in panicked circles, both back legs and rear end crushed to a bloody, bone-splintered pulp by the fallen masonry of the wall.
‘ALL MEN-AT-ARMS TO ASSEMBLE HERE!’ he bellowed at the soldiers standing nearby, and those men up on the wall achieving nothing useful. He then turned to the townsfolk. He guessed there had to be over a thousand of them huddled in the open ground of the market square and clogging the narrow streets that led on to it.
‘EVERY MAN WHO CAN FIGHT … TO ASSEMBLE HERE!’ He gestured at the already cracked wall, through a slowly clearing pall of dust. ‘THIS IS WHERE THEY WILL COME THROUGH! WE WILL HOLD THEM HERE!’
For a moment he wondered if they’d heard him. For an absurd moment he thought everyone was going to laugh at him – Look at the boy playing at being a general.
But voices carried his command onwards across the market square and through the crowd, along the wall, one soldier to the next. He saw a flurry of movement, the backs of men, young and old, turning for their shanty homes to retrieve old weapons and farming tools.
Liam let out a gasp of relief, hiding it behind one gauntlet-covered hand. He hoped that to anyone watching him it looked like a casual yawn.
‘That sound all right?’ he uttered out of the side of his mouth.
Bob nodded, a dark brow lifted and the corner of his horse-lips stretched with a hint of pride. ‘Affirmative.’
CHAPTER 76
2001, New York
They studied the rectangle of yellow parchment cut out from the Treyarch Confession. Adam held it up carefully by two corners and looked at them through the patchwork of little square windows he’d cut out of it.
‘It’s so very fragile,’ he said, ‘I’m scared of tearing the thing.’
‘Let’s get the Grail out,’ said Maddy. She reached for the Treyarch, now missing a rectangle four feet long by eighteen inches wide, and hurriedly wound it round its wooden spindle. Rolled up, she casually tossed it on to one of the armchairs and reached for the wooden box.
Cabot rested a hand on its lid. His eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘Ye understand what lies within?’
She nodded impatiently.
He glanced at the Treyarch tossed on the chair, already forgotten. ‘I trust ye will treat what lies within this box with more respect than ye did the Confession.’ His hand remained firmly on the lid. ‘In here are precious words many men have died for … and killed for.’
‘The Holy Grail, right.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Ye say that, young girl, like a … like ’tis just a flavour of preserve.’ He looked down at the box. ‘If ’tis what King Richard believes it to be, if it be what the Templars believe it to be, then this contains the hidden words of God. Ye understand this?’
Maddy pursed her lips and sighed. ‘Yes … yes, of course, I’ll be very careful with it. OK?’
Cabot shook his head with frustration. ‘’Tis not the scroll – the parchment and ink – I am talking about. That is merely the work of a man with a quill.’ He glanced at the parchment grille Adam was holding up carefully. ‘If that really be the key … By laying that atop the Grail and looking through the holes, we are looking upon the true Word of God. Is it truly for us to see?’
Maddy’s first instinct was to brush the old fool aside. She didn’t have the patience for this kind of superstitious nonsense. She didn’t believe in some fluffy-haired Father Christmas-like guy sitting up on some heavenly throne and handing down sound-bites of wisdom once every few millennia. She was about to dismiss his medieval superstition with a sarcastic comment, but then a solitary word pushed
itself to the forefront of her mind and silenced her.
Pandora.
Her eyes dropped down to the box.
What’s in there – the message hiding inside – includes the word Pandora.
There was no knowing what was about to be revealed. She looked around at Adam, Sal, Becks, Cabot … and wondered if this really should be for all of their eyes.
For your eyes only, Maddy.
‘Uhh … yes, Cabot … Perhaps you’re right.’ She looked at Sal, then Adam. ‘I’m sorry, guys, this is something that I have to do alone.’
‘Why?’ asked Sal. She sounded hurt. In truth she probably was. After all, Sal, Liam and herself were supposed to be a team: a shared bond, a shared trust in each other. Shared secrets.
But not this one. Not yet.
‘Sal, I – I don’t know why. Not yet. I just know somebody, somewhere, in some time, has tried to warn me about something, with the word Pandora. That’s all I’ve got. That’s all I know. If this is the answer,’ she said, nodding at the box, ‘then I have to find out what this is first. Then we’ll talk.’ She looked at Adam. ‘And I’m sorry, Adam … this is meant for Sal, me and Liam, when we get him back. Team first – that’s how it works.’
‘What? You can’t cut me out now. I mean, I’ve been helping you. Maddy? I worked out –’
Becks stepped forward. ‘Team strategist Madelaine Carter has authority on this matter,’ she said in a firm voice that hushed Adam. He’d nearly lost a finger in the casual twist of her hand once before. He didn’t look like he was ready to try his luck again now.
‘Sure, all right …’ he said, ‘if that’s how you want this to go.’
‘Sorry, Adam,’ said Maddy. ‘Let me do what needs to be done first … and maybe there’ll be more I can tell you in a little while. OK?’
He nodded, putting the grille down gently on to the table.
Maddy turned to Cabot. ‘I may not share your faith, I’m sorry about that, but whatever truth is in here, I believe, is profoundly important. It’s the Holy Grail, I know. I’ll treat it with respect. I promise you that.’