The Doomsday Code

Cabot was suddenly beside Liam, reaching down and pulling him out of the nest of wood. He was shouting something at Liam, but above the roar of chanting voices and the hailstone rattle and clang on the shields of the soldiers, he couldn’t make out what the old man was saying.

Cabot looked back over his shoulder and quickly ducked an arcing lump of flint, that shattered and sparked on masonry nearby. He turned back to Liam and jabbed a finger past his head, shouting something again. Liam turned painfully, grimacing at the sudden twist of his spine, to see the oak gates behind him had been cracked ajar. No more than would allow a single man to squeeze through sideways.

Cabot shouted again, this time directly into his ear. ‘Forget the cart!’

Liam nodded as Cabot pulled him roughly to his feet. ‘Yeah … OK,’ he uttered to himself. Liam could see that Eddie and his remaining ten men could do little more than hunch down behind their battered and misshapen shields, several of which looked little more than twisted corners of foil paper.

Liam cupped his hands. ‘The gate is open!’

His words were lost amid the chanting from the rioters. He tried to make himself heard again. ‘THE GATE IS OPEN!’

This time Eddie heard, turned quickly and saw for himself. He snapped an order to his men and they immediately began to shuffle backwards towards the gates.

Liam looked for Bob. Over the top of the cart’s two horses he could see his round head protected by the swinging skirt of his chain-mail coif as he ducked and weaved, and the metallic blur of the pike’s head whizzing round like the blade of some vast propeller.

‘BOB!’ he bellowed.

The support unit paused, straightened up like a startled rabbit and looked round for Liam.

Liam waved his arms until Bob spotted him, then pointed to the gates. ‘IT’S OPEN!’

Bob nodded and then, with one last warning flourish of his pike and a deep bear-like roar that startled and hushed the rioting crowd for a few fleeting seconds, he bounded around the uneasy horses and the abandoned cart.

The soldiers had begun stepping through the tangle of branches quickly, one after the other, and through the narrow gap between the gates. Until all that remained of them was a rearguard of Eddie and two others.

‘You first!’ Eddie shouted at Cabot and Liam.

Liam pushed Cabot towards the gates. ‘I’ll wait for Bob!’

Cabot nodded and followed through the gap. The rioters resumed pelting them with missiles as Bob arrived beside Liam.

‘GO!’ Bob’s voice boomed. A large rock bounced off his left shoulder and spun off into the night. ‘NOW!’

‘All right, all right!’ Liam nodded and beckoned at the remaining soldiers to go for the gap in the gates.

The air around them was now thick with the hum of incoming rocks and stones. Liam hunched over with his arms round his head as he waited his turn, certain that some large hunk of masonry was going to brain him before he got a chance to squeeze his way through.

Eddie waved at him to go first and Liam wasted no time. He stepped through the nest of remaining branches and forced himself into the narrow gap between the two large oak gates, rattling like drumheads from the impact of stones and rocks.

Then he was through into the darkness of the tower’s entrance arch. He collapsed on to a hard floor of flagstones, gasping and wheezing. By the wan light of the torches outside falling through the opening he could see the pale and frightened faces of half a dozen men, their shoulders braced against the gate, ready in case the rioters decided to rush it and force it wider.

Bob’s head appeared through the gap between the gates. ‘Wider, please!’ his voice boomed above the din. The men against the gate reluctantly gave him a few more inches to push himself through, and then he was inside with the others. Immediately a heavy locking bar was slid into place.

Liam collapsed back on to the ground exhausted as the thick gates rattled and thudded for a while longer under the dwindling barrage of projectiles. Finally, apart from the occasional thud, it seemed the riot going on outside had spent its energy. He could hear the roar of voices grow sporadic, beginning to dwindle and lose some of the intensity they’d experienced earlier. Finally, one of the men in the guard tower called down.

‘They’re leaving!’

A man next to Liam, one of the guards who’d handled the locking bar, sighed. ‘Same as last night.’

Liam grasped his arm. ‘It was like this last night as well?’

He shrugged. ‘’Tis like this most nights.’

CHAPTER 38

1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham

It took a word of command from Cabot and a mere glimpse of the king’s royal seal to convince one of the castle guards to take them immediately into the main keep. They found the Sheriff of Nottingham hunched over a round oak table, on which a dozen thick candles cast a flickering glow across cluttered stacks of parchment and a plate of food uneaten and forgotten.

‘What is it now?’ He stirred drunkenly. Bleary eyes opened, and at the sight of strangers in rags, spattered with blood, he lurched back in his chair and fumbled clumsily for a longsword on the table. It slid off the table along with a small stack of parchment and clattered uselessly on the floor.

‘Sire!’ said the guard, a young lad with tufts of ginger hair poking down from the rim of his helmet. ‘Sire! ’Tis not villains!’

The sheriff stopped fumbling for the blade on the floor and looked up. ‘N-not villains?’ His rheumy eyes narrowed behind a tangle of dark greasy hair. ‘We are safe? They — they have … gone?’

‘The fool is drunk,’ growled Eddie under his breath.

‘Aye, sire,’ replied the young guard, ‘they have dispersed, as last night.’

The sheriff collapsed back into his chair with a sigh of relief, resigned to leaving his sword where it lay on the floor. He muttered a prayer of thick unintelligible words and then reached across the table for a goblet of wine.

‘Sire,’ said Cabot, stepping forward, ‘we are on royal business. His Lordship, Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester — ’

‘Oh yes? What d-does John want of me now, eh?’ He grinned up at them and then upended the goblet into his open mouth.

‘We have come directly from John’s keep in Oxford,’ said Cabot. ‘On his orders.’

Nottingham laughed again. ‘Orders? I have orders, eh?’ He attempted to pull himself to his feet, stumbled a solitary step towards them before losing his balance and sprawling on to the floor. He lay where he was and began whimpering. Finally, while they waited for him to pick himself up, they realized he was snoring.

‘He is of no use to anyone,’ said Cabot.

‘Bob,’ Liam sighed, ‘lift him on to his bed.’

They watched Bob heft the sheriff carelessly over his shoulder and cross the hall to a large oak-framed mattress.

Liam turned to the guard. ‘Is he always so drunk?’

The young man was unsure whether he should reply.

‘Answer the man!’ barked Eddie.

‘Aye, s-sire. ’E …’e’s turned to drink.’ The guard looked anxiously at them. ‘Dreadful afraid, ’e is.’

‘Of what?’ asked Liam.

‘The people, sire! The people out there! Every night now they come out. Every night they gather and try an’ burn them gates.’

‘Lad, where are the captains? The sergeants? Who is in charge here?’

The young guard shrugged. ‘Many ’ave deserted. They gone to serve other masters.’

‘So who is in charge?’

‘The sheriff,’ said the lad.

‘There are no captains?’