Time Riders: The Doomsday Code (18 page)

‘’Tis a bad time for the poor,’ said Cabot.

Liam’s gleeful smile all of a sudden felt wrong. Poverty. Grinding poverty. He’d seen that before; beggars in Cork, of course. But that was for money. Money that would perhaps end up going towards a drink. But this … this was begging for the food that pigs would eat.

‘Aye,’ he said quietly.

Across the market, a thin veil of smoke hung, the collaboration of woodsmoke from a dozen outdoor pyres and the mist of warm breath from a thousand mouths in the cooling air. The air smelled overpoweringly of two things: woodsmoke and dung. Woodsmoke … Liam had noticed that every place and every thing seemed to smell of that. If there was one odour that would remind him of the twelfth century for the rest of his life, it would be that. And it mercifully covered up at least some of the cloying stench of festering faeces, a heady brew produced by animals and humans alike.

Cabot noticed him wrinkling his nose. ‘’Tis one of the reasons I choose a monk’s life, far away from the city.’ He nodded ahead of them. ‘Oxford Castle.’

It was approaching dusk now; the grey sky deepening to a midwinter’s blue. The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t sun was gone, lost behind the city’s wall. Emerging through the low-hanging haze of smoke and mist ahead of them, Liam spotted the tall and square-sided Norman keep of Oxford Castle. Through high-up slitted windows, he glimpsed the amber glow cast from warming braziers and flickering torches.

Cabot steered the cart up a weaving cobblestone thoroughfare, narrowing in places where shanty-town huts and sheds encroached like scab tissue around a sore. Through open flaps of tattered cloth Liam caught the fleeting images of pale and curious faces lashing out: faces smudged with dirt, and gaunt from hunger. Eyes that stared without hope at the flickering of a tallow candle inside, eyes that glanced his way momentarily with only passing interest.

Liam’s hope of seeing green fields and fair maidens and chivalrous knights in gleaming armour and merry men skipping round maypoles and florid-cheeked buxom wenches laughing with simple peasant joy … now seemed rather naive.

This is grim.

The cart crossed over a wooden-slat bridge, over a muddy-coloured river that had frozen over at the edges. Ahead of them, a tall stone archway announced they’d arrived at Oxford Castle. Liam watched a gate guard approach the cart.

‘What business?’ He eyed Cabot’s Cistercian robes and added
brother
as an afterthought.

‘I seek an audience with His Lordship, the Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester.’

‘He has no time for a sermon.’

‘Tell him his old sword master is here. Cabot.’

The guard’s eyes narrowed as he studied Cabot in the fading light. ‘Stay here,’ he said, before turning away and calling out to one of the other guards to take the news inside.

‘Be hasty,’ said Cabot after him, ‘’tis cold out here and he will be angry when he finds ye have kept his old friend waiting.’

The guard looked sceptically at him. ‘Friend, eh?’ He walked around towards the rear of the cart as they waited. ‘What have ye in here?’

‘Visitors,’ said Cabot.

The guard lifted the canvas cover with the tip of his sword. ‘Ahhh … a strumpet for His Lordship, is it?’ A smile stretched across the leathered skin of his face as he reached a gloved hand out to touch her leg. ‘Ye
are
a pretty thing for a peasant girl, aren’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Liam, peering under the flap from the other end of the cart. He looked at Becks, and saw muscles tensing beneath her peasant’s gown. The last thing they needed was her twisting the head off one of John’s guards. ‘Becks,’ he said quietly, ‘don’t hurt him.’

‘Affirmative,’ she replied, a hint of resentment in her voice.

The guard laughed at that. ‘Hurt me, would you? Well now … this I would most like to see –’

Raised voices came from beyond the archway, echoing off the stone walls inside – a commotion within. The guard retracted his hand and nodded politely at Becks. ‘Pity,’ he muttered, then pulled his head out from beneath the canvas.

‘What is it?’

The higher-pitched voice of a younger man. ‘He comes! He
knows
the monk!’

Cabot grinned like a wily fox at the guard captain. ‘There, what did I tell you?’

The captain stepped back from the cart and stood to attention as the clacking of approaching boots on cobblestones grew louder in the twilight. Presently the archway filled with the flickering glow of a blazing torch and Liam spotted the short squat silhouette of a man with long hair standing in the middle.

‘What in damnation is going on here?’ a voice barked angrily, echoing off the masonry. ‘Let him through!’

Cabot tweaked the reins and the cart rattled through the low archway and finally came to a rest inside the castle walls. The squat figure stood on the ground beside Cabot, a dark shape puffing pale blue clouds of breath.

‘Sébastien Cabot!’

‘Aye, Sire.’

‘Last I heard, you were abroad killing Turks!’

Cabot wheezed a laugh. ‘I tired of such things.’

A young squire holding the flickering torch hurried round the back of the cart and approached them. John’s face was finally illuminated by the dancing amber light. Liam could make out a slender effeminate face, decorated with a wispy beard and moustache that fluttered with each breath, and framed by fine, long, tawny hair. He was smiling warmly at Cabot. ‘Sébastien,’ he said, after looking up at the old man’s battle-scarred face a little longer than was polite, ‘I cannot tell you how good it is to see you again, my old friend.’

Cabot jumped down from the cart and John wasted no time in wrapping his arms round him.

‘’Tis good to see a friendly face,’ added John.

Cabot gingerly returned his embrace. ‘How is my student?’

John released him and stepped back. He shrugged. ‘I am still a clumsy fool. More likely to hack my own head off than another man’s.’ He glanced up at Liam. ‘So … you have a son now?’

‘No, he is not my son.’ He turned and looked at Liam. ‘He – he is here to …’ Cabot was searching for words.

‘What? Sébastien?’

‘Sire, I believe this lad and two more of his friends in the back may help in retrieving the item that has been lost.’

John sighed. ‘So you have heard of this, as well, eh?’

A long silence passed between both men, an unspoken understanding of the matter at hand.

‘Then let us not talk carelessly out here,’ John said quietly. He beckoned Liam to climb down. ‘Come.’

Liam followed Cabot and John as they talked about old days. They crossed the enclosure and entered the dark and cold interior of the keep’s main entrance. Inside his eyes adjusted to the gloom and his ears rang with the echo of boots on stone as they ascended steps that took them upwards in a cramped spiral.

Behind him he heard Becks’s lowered voice. ‘Do you trust Cabot?’

‘We’ve no choice,’ he whispered. His words seemed to bounce and echo up the stairs towards the monk and John, still talking convivially.

Finally they emerged into a grand hall invitingly lit by an open fire and rings of fat-dripping candles on candelabra suspended from several oak support beams that crossed high above. Liam suspected it was the glow of this hall he must have seen earlier.

John turned his attention to Liam, Bob and Becks. ‘So, Sébastien, these three friends of yours … we can talk openly before them, I presume?’

Cabot nodded. ‘They are to be trusted.’

John waved a hand. ‘You may sit,’ he said, slumping down on a wooden bench near the large crackling fire. Liam noticed, for the first time, how gaunt and unwell the man looked.

‘It is a troubling time,’ said John after a while. ‘I have the people of England in open rebellion against me, I have the barons conspiring against me … all because of the taxes.’ His eyes glistened as he gazed at the flames. ‘Taxes that I had to raise to pay for this foolish crusade of his –
and
to pay for that madman’s ransom.’ He looked up at Cabot. ‘Believe me … I was sorely tempted to let him rot in captivity.’

Liam leaned forward. ‘Madman?’

‘Sire,’ said Cabot, ‘so … this lad is Liam of Connor. These other two are … Bob and Becks.’

John nodded politely at Liam and, for the first time, acknowledged the support units.

It’s the peasant clothing
. Liam suspected that’s how it worked in these times: to be poor was to be less than human; to be no better than the dogs and cats and chickens that wandered this city freely in the dark foul-smelling spaces between shacks; to be almost invisible.

‘You are a soldier?’ John asked Bob.

‘Neg–’ Bob corrected himself quickly. ‘Nay, serr. I be just a normal man.’

Eyebrows rose on John’s slim face. ‘I would wager you could pull a cart as easily as an ox.’

Bob frowned. He was busy processing that comment, trying to determine whether it was praise or an insult.

‘And this is …’ John’s eyes lingered on Becks. ‘
Becks
, is it?’

‘She was introduced to me as Lady Rebecca,’ said Cabot.

‘Oh?’ John looked sceptically at her mud-spattered rags. ‘A
lady
is she, now?’

‘
Oui
,’ replied Becks in perfect Norman French. ‘
Je viens de la duché d’Alevingnon en Normandie
.’

John’s cynical leer vanished and Cabot smiled. ‘Yes, Sire, I believe she is of noble birth … but I’ve not heard of this duchy she refers to.’

John tilted his head with a formal nod. ‘
Madame. S’il vous plaît accepter mes excuses humbles.
’

‘I am also able to communicate in English,’ she said.

‘Then, please accept my apologies, my dear.’ He gestured at her clothes. ‘It is your rags that –’

‘We choose not to attract attention,’ she cut in drily.

Cabot’s eyes widened. ‘Lady Rebecca, it is most rude to interrupt His Lord–’

John shook his head. ‘It matters not,’ he smiled tiredly. ‘I’ve far greater things to concern me these days than royal protocol.’ He looked at Liam. ‘You asked to whom I was referring?’

Liam nodded. ‘The madman?’

‘My older brother,’ he said, sighing, ‘the king.’ He seemed to spit that last word out. ‘He has brought ruin on us all with this reckless crusade of his. Which, all are saying, has been a failure. Jerusalem remains in Muslim hands. But to make matters worse the fool allowed himself to be kidnapped for a ransom.’

He pulled absently on the meagre sandy-coloured tuft of his beard. ‘And it is
I
who has had to throttle the poor and squeeze the nobles for yet more taxes – when there simply are none left to be had.’ He gestured to a tall, narrow arched window that looked out on the city below. ‘You will have seen them out there … The people, they are hungry and they blame
me
for this. Not
him
. Not Richard the
Lionheart
.’

He sighed. ‘We are all
ruined
by this crusade. The guards outside, I have not paid. They remain at their posts because here in this castle at least there is food.’

‘It is little better outside the cities, Sire,’ added Cabot. ‘The villages and towns barely survive.’

‘And all this,’ muttered John, ‘for a fool’s errand.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Liam. He noticed a sharp glance from Cabot. ‘
Sire
.’

John looked up at him. ‘Sébastien tells me you know of things only the Templars should know of.’

‘If you mean … Pandora?’

John frowned. The term didn’t seem to mean anything to him.

‘The Grail?’ Liam added.

‘Aye, this grail.’ John laughed. ‘What is it? A cup? A goblet? That is all. A cup that the Christ may have used once! But Richard, like all those other Templar fools, believes such a thing has great powers! That insane fool believes carrying this cup into battle would make him unbeatable! That’s what this crusade has been about, you see? Not to free the Holy City from the Muslims … but to retrieve what was left behind when the city fell. To retrieve this … this foolish
relic
!’

The log fire spat a smoking shard of charcoal on to the stone floor. John watched its glow slowly fade. ‘A madman’s treasure hunt … that’s what this fool’s crusade was about.’

‘Your brother found this grail, Sire?’ asked Becks.

John nodded. ‘Yes. He did. And had a party of his best Templars take it here for safe-keeping.’ He laughed nervously. ‘But I – I … He will blame me for this, I know it. He will kill me.’ Liam noticed John’s left hand trembled in his lap. ‘I had his men take their treasure to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. For greater safety, you understand, for secrecy. The royal palace is not secure.
This castle
is not secure. I thought it would be a safer place!’

‘But they were ambushed,’ said Cabot. ‘It was taken.’

‘And on his return, I have no doubt Richard will have my head on a spike,’ uttered John. Conscious that his hand was shaking, he tucked it away into a fold of his robes.

‘Sire, it is
this
matter, this reason why I have brought these three here. They say they can help ye get it back.’

‘And can you?’ He looked from Liam to Bob, to Becks. ‘I have heard all the rumours too. I have heard of this Hooded Man who cannot be killed, it seems. A demon, say some. A wrathful angel, say all the peasants and villains that are flocking out to the forests to join him. And you can steal it back from him, you say?’ John didn’t look entirely convinced.

Liam glanced at Becks, hoping she had something useful to say, but she stared back at him silently. And Bob continued to dutifully, and none-too-helpfully, monitor the conversation.