He shook his head. ‘You kidding? I — no … of course not. It’s an invention of the Catholic Church. Just a load of old religious mumbo-jumbo.’
‘That’s what I used to think. But, you know … I wonder. Is it?’
The dark dialogue box on the screen in front of them suddenly flickered with the movement of computer- Bob’s cursor.
› I have a candidate time-stamp that is currently holding a solid state.
‘How long will it last?’
› There is no information how long it will last. Perhaps only seconds.
‘Activate a ten-second countdown. NOW!’
› Affirmative.
She turned to see Becks
‘JUST GET HIM IN!’ shouted Maddy above the growing hum of energy building up for a release.
Sal climbed up the steps of the ladder. ‘Mr Cabot, you have to get in the water … please!’
She spun round to see the countdown on the screen.
Four … three … two …
‘PUSH HIM IN!’
Sal nodded and threw her weight behind a hard shove against the monk’s thighs. He teetered for a moment, arms cartwheeling for balance, before he toppled forward into the tube, sending a small tidal wave of water splashing over the side and on to the floor. The stepladder wobbled under Sal’s sudden lurching movement and tipped back against the brick wall, the legs sliding along the concrete floor, dumping her on to a storage shelf full of cables and toolboxes that cascaded down and clattered along with her to the ground just as the displacement machine discharged its energy. The perspex tube flexed violently and thudded with a boom as the water, Cabot and Becks vanished back into the twelfth century.
As Sal rolled on the floor among spools of cable and yelping from a sprained wrist, and the echo of the flexing boom bounced around their archway, slowly fading, Maddy could only wonder how it was that mankind — perhaps even the whole universe — had ended up resting its fate in the hands of an amateur little outfit like theirs.
CHAPTER 81
1194, Nottingham
They landed within the keep’s outer bailey, the splash of thirty gallons of water echoing off the tall stone walls. Cabot landed heavily on his side, grunting at the impact on hard cobblestone. Becks landed on her feet, poised and ready for action.
The keep itself was devoid of any activity. A pair of soldiers manning the gatehouse emerged from the cool shadow of the archway to find out what the noise was all about. They gazed in bemusement at the old monk and the woman in the leather corset and dark woollen tights.
‘Where is the Earl of Cornwall?’
‘Not ’ere, love, e’s fightin’,’ one of them answered, and then suddenly it occurred to him they might not have his best interests in mind. ‘’Ere! Ye be spies?’ he barked at them. ‘Ye stop roight there!’
Becks calmly handed Cabot the box as he got to his feet and approached the soldiers open-handed and with the most alluring smile she could conjure up.
‘Let me explain,’ she started to say.
Ten seconds later, both men were on their backs, one of them out cold, the other with a broken wrist. Becks tossed Cabot one of their swords as they jogged out of the keep through the open gatehouse, crossing the bridge over the river and following the main dry-rutted track through the centre of Nottingham towards the marketplace, towards the noise of a raging battle in progress.
The marketplace was filled with the squirming, howling wounded: men and boys missing limbs, heads and faces split open, puckered and purple wounds that were clearly mortal. Children with water and bloodstained rags moved among them providing what comfort they could, ignoring the occasional arrows that dropped down into the square and clattered on stone slabs or thudded and embedded themselves into the earth.
Up ahead, to the right of the city’s gatehouse, a seventy-five-foot-wide breach in the wall was plugged with a rising sea of struggling humanity. Soldiers and civilians, men old and young, even some women, pressed into one enormous writhing scrum. On the walls either side, she saw soldiers and citizens firing arrows, children hurling stones down at the attackers outside — a city-wide attempt to defend themselves. And a convincing job they seemed to be doing of it thus far. The sun was well past midday in the sky and halfway into the afternoon.
She realized the fluctuating timelines were stemming from this struggle that could go either way. Even though Richard’s army was far greater than the number of people in Nottingham, their motivation to fight would be entirely mercenary.
On the other hand, the people of Nottingham were fighting for their very lives. If they could hold those soldiers in the breach long enough, if the battle were to spill into another day, and another day … quite possibly the assembled nobles with their men-at-arms might begin to stand down, their selfish allegiances to the king softening.
She scanned the front line of the fighting and quickly spotted the silhouette of Bob, head and shoulders taller than anyone else.
She took the wooden box from Cabot and tucked it under one arm. ‘Stay close to me,’ she commanded him before picking her way through the marketplace carpeted with the dead and the dying, arrow stems sprouting from the dirt like freshly grown weeds.
She clambered up the incline of rubble, forcefully barging aside tired men from her path, scanning faces, on both sides: looking for Liam, looking for John. She collared a garrison soldier clambering downhill, blood-soaked and exhausted. ‘Where is the Earl of Cornwall?’
He shook his head and she realized that over the din of roaring voices and the clatter and ring of blades on shields he could not hear her.
‘WHERE IS JOHN?’ she bellowed directly into his ear.
The man pointed a shaking finger uphill. ‘He fights alongside us!’
Becks pushed past him, her feet finding a soft carpet of bodies now that shuddered and twisted underfoot. Above the din she could hear the bass notes of Bob’s voice, a deep roaring anger that seemed to fill the entire space of the breach, like an echo of whale song or the trumpeting of some enraged elephant.
She picked out his head and shoulders again — slow, shuddering, sweeping movements that told her he was fast on his way to becoming a spent force now, exhausted from exertion, or loss of blood — quite probably both.
She was nearly at the crest of the small hill of debris and bodies when she heard the sharp peal of a distant horn above the cacophony.
The clatter and ring of blades almost immediately ceased as both sides of the struggle on the mound halted their melee and disengaged, weary catcalls and taunts being exchanged as the men of Richard’s army withdrew to take another water break.
Becks took advantage of the lull in the fight to push her way up the last few yards.
‘Bob!’ she said.
He turned slowly. His eyes flickered recognition, perhaps even relief. ‘Becks.’
‘I need to locate John and Liam.’
Before Bob could point them out, Liam’s voice rang out. ‘Becks!’
She turned to see him squeeze past some bloody and grimy men descending the slope to get to the water- bearers. He stepped awkwardly over several entangled bodies and then with a careless relief swung his arms round her.
‘I thought we’d lost you, so I did!’ He lowered his voice. ‘We thought you’d open a window directly after you
