Day of Deliverance

down. The machine hung for a moment longer and then dropped like a stone into the sea. Jack and Angus looked on as the two pilots struggled to free themselves from the water rising up inside the cockpit. As he looked down from the stern cabin of The Revenge, Jack clearly saw Pendelshape raging at them from the cockpit.

Sultan of Spin

Beneath his feet, Jack saw the shimmering eddies of electricity consolidate and then morph into the steel platform of the Taurus. The heavy metal struts that bounded the inner shell of the great machine gradually came into focus and the features of the control room beyond the thick green glass of the blast screen became clearer. The blast screen was lowered and a number of people in the control centre came forward — they were clapping and cheering. Jack blinked. He could see Inchquin, the Rector, Beattie and, right at the front, his mum, Carole, beaming from ear to ear. They were home.

Jack could hear the hum from the generators powering down as he and Angus made their way down the gantry from the Taurus. The medical team rushed forward to help down the injured Tony and Gordon, who were immediately dispatched to the underground surgery. Carole Christie rushed forward to hug Jack and seconds later Inchquin and then the Rector were shaking their hands. It was over.

Following a medical examination and a meal, they decamped to VIGIL’s Situation Room to debrief. The team sat round the same table where Inchquin had chaired the first war council, on hearing the news leaked by Jack’s father following his bust-up with Pendelshape. They spent the next hour picking through their experiences in the sixteenth century — supported by analysis from the rest of the VIGIL team. Jack struggled to get his head round it all.

“So how do you know that our mission was a success? Is it just because you know we don’t have to go back and, kind of, do any more ‘tidying up’?”

Inchquin smiled. “I know it is difficult to understand, but it is self-evident. We are all still here and history as we remember it is the same before your mission as it is now — a very short time later.”

“But, but — what if Pendelshape had succeeded?” Angus said.

“If the Revisionist mission had been a success we would be living in a very different world. Perhaps we wouldn’t exist at all. We don’t really know for sure what the consequences would be — and for that reason alone it is extremely dangerous to meddle in history.”

“When we met Pendelshape, he said that the Revisionists’ modelling techniques were now so sophisticated that they would somehow be able to ring-fence themselves from the changes they made. So they’d, you know, make changes to history so the future was better, but kind of keep themselves and their Taurus separate and in control.” Jack looked at Inchquin with a furrowed brow. “Is that possible?”

Inchquin shook his head. “It’s called ‘lineage isolation’. They clearly think it’s possible — and it may be, perhaps with repeated interventions — but we think it would be utter madness.”

Jack’s brain was working overtime. “By what you’re saying then… does that mean we kind of know that the Revisionists will never be successful, because, you know, if they had — history would already be different?”

Inchquin smiled. “Very good, Jack. Indeed that is one theory — that history as we know it already reflects what has happened, including any interventions that the Revisionists have made, and, in fact, interventions we have made to stop them.”

Angus moaned. “Sorry — I’m lost — this is a complete mindbender.”

“The point is, Angus, much of this time theory is conjecture. However clever the scientists are, we just don’t understand it well enough. We are on the edge of the unknown, but our position is clear: the human race is not some sort of experiment in a petri dish to fiddle around with.”

“Well one thing is for sure,” Joplin said breezily, “we now know much more about what did happen — including the plot to kill the queen.”

“What do you mean, Theo?”

“Well, as you know, the plot already exists in the historical archive; however, it’s practically a footnote. But we know from what we saw at Hampton Court that it was one of the most dramatic of the many plots against Elizabeth in the late sixteenth century. My theory now is that Walsingham suppressed much of the detail, including the death of Lady Sarah.”

“Why?”

“Although unearthing the plot and trapping the assassins so brilliantly at Hampton Court was a triumph for England, and a personal triumph for Walsingham, on reflection he clearly decided that the whole thing was too close for comfort — particularly the narrow escape in the wilderness. The queen could have been killed and the kingdom could have been thrown into turmoil. Walsingham must have considered it much better to perpetuate the image of the Faerie Queene — untouchable, inviolate, supreme — rather than publicise the reality of the plot too enthusiastically.”

“No decapitated heads were sent to Philip II?”

“Far too unsubtle. And remember Elizabeth’s speech in the hall…”

Jack nodded.

“Well, that must have been quietly suppressed too. Later it was re-used, of course. It is now remembered as part of her famous speech at Tilbury, which was delivered more than a year later, actually as the threat of the Armada passed.”

“Elizabeth — the first sultan of spin!” Joplin chortled at his own joke. “She’d do some of our own politicians proud.”

“What happened to Marlowe?”

“A bit of a mystery. We know that the Spanish took him into hiding following the incident in Cambridge. When the plot fell through, there was no evidence for the Spanish to really pin the blame on him. We think Walsingham continued to use him as a spy, but may have finally lost patience a few years later. Marlowe was murdered — a dagger above the right eye — some say it was a drunken brawl, but others believe it was an assassination, as all three of the other men who were with him when he died worked for Walsingham and his brother.”

There was silence for a moment and for some reason the words from Marlowe’s portrait ghosted through Jack’s mind:

What feeds me destroys me.

“One thing, then…” Angus said, “what about a helicopter appearing in the middle of the Armada? I’ve never heard of that before — you’re not telling me that Walsingham hushed that up too.”

Joplin laughed. “Good point. My theory is that there was such confusion during the battle — the smoke, the noise — you saw what it was like — that few eye witnesses recorded the event. Remember, it was only there for a few minutes. Those who did see it, and survived, referred, glassy-eyed, to a ‘fiery monster descending into the sea’ or ‘a lightning bolt from the finger of God’ — all explanations that historians readily put down to the religious hysteria of the time or post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by the witnesses. Remember that many of the Spanish died and actually a lot of the English did too — but after the battle; there was no money to pay for their care. Anyway, the reports that existed were felt to be nonsense and were, rightly, treated as such later on by serious historians.”

“But we know better,” the Rector said as he stood up and pointed to an electronic map on the wall. “We have already dispatched a salvage crew to the English Channel to determine if anything was left of the helicopter wreck at the bottom of the sea, even though four hundred years have passed since it sank. If we can identify bones or teeth in the wreck, it will prove that Pendelshape and whoever else was in that blasted contraption are gone for good — and with them, hopefully the entire Revisionist cause.”

By the time Jack and Angus climbed wearily into Carole Christie’s battered old VW Golf, it was nearly midnight.

“I rang your parents, Angus, to say you would be late and would sleep over with us tonight,” Carole said.

“Thanks, Carole.” Angus slapped his forehead. “Hey! I nearly forgot.”