behind them: a short column of ruddy-faced soldiers in dull chain mail, marching heavily in their wake.
He caught one last glimpse of Becks, that teasing smile of hers packed away for later use. She nodded a farewell at him as they clattered beneath the archway and out on to the bridge.
CHAPTER 35
2001, New York
Sal watched Adam across the archway, bustling around their kettle and fridge, making them some tea.
‘Are we not telling too much?’ she asked Maddy. ‘Showing him too much? I thought Foster said we were, like, this top-secret organization.’
Maddy looked away from the monitor towards him. ‘I know, I know,’ she muttered guiltily. ‘But I … he’s useful, Sal. We need him.’
‘So what happens, though … when we’ve fixed things up and it’s all back to normal? What’re we going to do with him then?’
Maddy said nothing … which Sal misinterpreted. Her eyes suddenly lit up. ‘He can stay?’
‘No!’ she replied quickly. ‘No — we can’t
‘Oh.’
‘He can’t stay, Sal. He can’t. I just can’t take in anyone we — just because we, you know? Just because we
‘Why not?’
‘Because this is a team already. A four-man team, just like Foster said. The agency is made up of
‘But with Becks we’ve already got
‘I know! All the more reason not to be taking on any more!’
They watched Adam pour water from the kettle into several chipped mugs, stirring the tea with a tinkling sound that echoed across the archway.
‘So what’re you going to do, Maddy?’
She sighed. ‘Nothing.’
‘
‘Because — ’ she bit her lip and looked away — ‘he’s not going to
‘What do you mean?’
‘I checked his name, Sal. Checked it against the roll-call of tomorrow’s victims …’
Sal’s gaze returned to the desk, to Maddy. ‘
Maddy nodded. ‘He works for a company called Sherman-Golding Investment … they’re on the ninety-fifth floor, north tower.’ Maddy realized her voice was wobbling ever so slightly. ‘He’s one of them that never made it out.’
They heard his footsteps approaching. Both turned to see Adam carrying a steaming mug of tea in each hand.
‘Here you ladies are. Nice cuppa.’ He frowned, puzzled. ‘What’s up with you two?’
Maddy fixed a wide smile on her face. ‘Hey … absolutely nothing.’ She reached for her tea. ‘Thanks.’
He glanced back at the kitchen table. ‘I’ll just go get the biccies. Mum always said a cuppa tea’s too wet without something to dunk in it.’
They watched him go. And Maddy found herself wondering what sort of a person this job was turning her into — that she could just knowingly let someone as likeable as Adam walk blindly to his death.
CHAPTER 36
1194, Nottingham
The town of Nottingham glowed in the dark. Not the welcoming glow of lanterns and night-watch fires but from several buildings set aflame.
As the cart and its escort of guards slowly approached the entrance to the town, their ears picked up the faint ring and clatter of melee weapons and the roar of a defiant crowd.
Through an open and unmanned gatehouse they entered the walled town to see a thoroughfare cluttered and messy with broken slats of wood. A funeral pyre burned in the middle, stacked with a dozen corpses. The smell of cooking human flesh made Liam gag.
Cabot sitting beside him on the jockey seat turned. ‘All right, lad?’
‘Jay-zus! The smell,’ he grunted, wiping a string of dangling bile from his chin. ‘What’s happening?’
‘’Tis a rebellion, I think.’
Liam noticed some women and children in rags and on their knees around the fire, presumably grieving for those bodies burning in the flames. He spotted a cart laden with what at first he thought was a pile of bark-stripped firewood, pale knobbly branches of beach or willow. Then he realized he was looking at arms and legs — bodies, stacked on top of each other.
‘Starvation and disease has come to Nottingham,’ said Cabot, shaking his head. ‘Farmers no longer work their farms only to have all they yield taken in taxes. So food rots in fields and ’tis the towns that feel it first.’
‘Where is everyone?’
Cabot tipped his head towards the centre of the town where it seemed most of the night’s amber glow and the roar of voices, the ring of blades, seemed to be coming from.
‘I’ll wager they are turning on the Sheriff of Nottingham’s castle.’
Cabot reached through the canvas into the cart, pulled out his sword and sheath and rested it across his lap as he goaded the horses forward along a muddy avenue between tumbledown shacks. ‘We may have to fight our way in.’
The noise and the amber glow increased with intensity as they rounded a bend in the muddy rutted track and finally the crenellated top of a stone wall came into view. Along its base a sea of humanity swarmed by the light of hundreds of flaming torches. Activity seemed to be focused around two large thick oak gates at the base of a guard tower. From the confusion and movement amid dancing shadows and flickering firelight, Liam guessed the people of Nottingham were doing their very best to attempt to build a bonfire against the gates. The soldiers on the wall were in turn firing crossbow bolts down into the crowd, and ducking back to avoid being pelted with stones and javelins and one or two arrows.
One of the guards John had assigned to escort them jogged forward to the cart. Edward —
‘Sire,’ he called up to Liam. ‘If those see us here … they will turn on us!’
He was right. It seemed none of the hundreds in front of them had
‘We’ll have to fight our way in,’ said Liam.
‘Sire?’ Eddie stared up at him with astonishment. He looked like he’d seen a fair few battles in his time with, like Cabot, a face that had taken its share of damage. But that command seemed to unsettle him. ‘Sire … that would be suicide!’
Liam nodded uncertainly. It didn’t look too good. But then they did have Bob. He turned in his seat. ‘Uh … Bob?’ He realized his mouth was dry and his voice fluttered with nerves. He hated how every other man around him seemed to manage not to sound like a quaking child, and yet he sounded to his own ears like a boy still.
Bob’s bristly head emerged through the flap of canvas.
