Something rotten

'I can't remember. Window . . . something.'

'The Windowmaker? A contract with her and you stick to reading short stories? Sixty-seven known victims?'

'Sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring.'

'That's not important. Why didn't you tell me?'

'I ... I ... didn't want you to worry.'

He rubbed his face with his hands and stared at me for a moment, then sighed deeply.

'This is the Thursday Next I married, isn't it?'

I nodded my head.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly.

'Will you be careful?' he whispered in my ear.

'I'm always careful.'

'No, really careful. The sort of careful that you should be when you have a husband and son who'd be surpremely pissed off if they were to lose you?'

'Ah,' I whispered back, 'that sort of careful. Yes, I will.'

We kissed and I Velcroed up the vest, put my shirt over the top of it and my shoulder holster on top of this. I kissed Friday and told him to be good, then kissed Landen again.

'I'll see you this evening,' I told him, 'and that's a promise.'

I drove to Wanborough to find Joffy. He was officiating at a GSD civil union ceremony and I had to wait in the back of the temple ' until he had finished. I had some time before I had to deal with Cindy, and looking more closely into St Zvlkx seemed like a good way to fill it. Millon's idea that Zvlkx wasn't a seer but a rogue member of the ChronoGuard involved in some sort of timecrime seemed, on the face of it, unlikely. You couldn't hide from the ChronoGuard. They would always find you. Perhaps not here and now, but then and there — when you least expected it. Long before you even thought about doing something wrong. The ChronoGuard left no trace, either. With the perpetrator gone, then the timecrime never happened either. Very neat, very clever. But with the historical record so closely scrutinised and the ChronoGuard themselves giving Zvlkx the seal of approval, how on earth did Zvlkx — if he was a fake — get around the system?

'Hello, Doofus!' said Joffy as the happy couple kissed outside the church in a shower of confetti. 'What brings you here?'

'St Zvlkx — where is he?'

'He got the bus into Swindon this morning. Why?'

I outlined my suspicions.

'Zvlkx a rogue member of the ChronoGuard? But why? What's he up to? Why risk permanent eradication for dubious fame as a thirteenth-century seer?'

'How much did he get from the Toast Marketing Board?'

'Twenty-five grand.'

'Hardly a fortune. Can we look in his room?'

'Outrageous!' replied Joffy. 'I would be guilty of a shameful breach of trust if I were to allow a room search in his absence. I have a spare key here.'

Zvlkx's room was much as you would suppose a monk's cell to be — spartan in the extreme. He slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and had only a table and chair as furniture. On the table was a Bible. It was only after we started searching that we found a CD Walkman under the mattress along with a few copies of Big & Bouncy and Fast Horse.

'A betting man?' I asked.

'Drinking, betting, smoking, wenching — he did it all.'

'The magazines show he can read English, too. What are you looking for, Joff?'

Joffy had been rummaging under the pillow.

'His Book of Revealtments. He usually hides it here.'

'So! You've searched his room before. Suspicious?'

Joffy looked sheepish.

'I'm afraid so. His behaviour is less like that of a saint and more like that of, well, a cheap vulgarian — when I translate I have to make certain . . . adjustments.'

I pulled out his desk drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the bottom was an envelope.

'Bingo!'

It contained a single one-way Gravitube ticket to Bali. Joffy raised his eyebrows and we exchanged nervous glances. Zvlkx was definitely up to something.

Joffy accompanied me into Swindon and we drove up and down the streets trying to find the wayward saint. We visited the site of his old cathedral at Tesco's but couldn't find him, so went on a circuit that took in the law courts, the SpecOps building and the theatre before driving past the university and down Commercial Road. Joffy spotted him outside Pete & Dave's, lumbering up the street.

'There!'

'I see him.'

We abandoned the car and trotted to keep up with the scruffy figure dressed in only a blanket. It was just bad luck that he glanced furtively behind and spotted us. He darted across the street. I don't know whether his lank and uncut hair had got in his eyes, or he had forgotten about traffic during his stay in the Dark Ages, but he didn't look where he was going and ran straight in front of a bus. His head cracked the windscreen and his bony body was thrown sideways on to the pavement with a thump. Joffy and I were first on the scene. A younger man might have survived relatively unscathed, but Zvlkx, his body weakened through poor diet and disease, didn't stand much of a chance. He was coughing and crawling with all the strength he could muster towards the entrance of the nearest shop.

'Easy, Your Grace,' murmured Joffy, laying a hand on his shoulder and stopping him moving. 'You're going to be all right.'

'Bollocks,' said Zvlkx in a state of exasperation, 'bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. :Survived the plague to get hit by a sodding number twenty-three bus. Bollocks.'

'What did he say?'

'He's annoyed.'

'Who are you?' I said. 'Are you ChronoGuard?'

His eyes flicked across to mine and he groaned. Not only dying, but dying and rumbled.

He made another attempt to reach the doorway and collapsed.

'Someone call for an ambulance!' yelled out Joffy

'It's too late for that,' Zvlkx muttered. 'Too late for me, too late for all of us. This wasn't how it toas meant to turn out; time is out of joint — anb it wan't be for me to set it right. Joffy, take this and use it wisely as I would not have done. Bury me in the grounds of my cathedral — and don't tell them who I was. I lived a sinner but I'd like to die a saint, Oh, and if a fat slapper named Shirley tells you I promised her a thousand quid, she's a bloody liar.'

He coughed again, shivered for a moment and stopped moving. I placed my hand on his grimy neck but could feel no pulse.

'What did he say?'

'Something about an overweight lady named Shirley, time being out of joint — and using his Revealments as I see fit.'

'What did he mean by that? That his Revealment is not going to come true?'

'I don't know — but he handed me this.'

It was Zvlkx's Book of Revealments. Joffy flicked through the yellowed pages, which outlined in Old English every supposed prophecy he had made, next to an anthmetic sum of some sort. Joffy closed Zvlkx's eyes and placed his jacket over the dead saint's head. A crowd had gathered, including a policeman,