Holliss was going from left to right. ‘These two seem to be dogsbodies, sir. The boy is… it’s difficult to say since of course they haven’t filled in registration cards or anything. As far as I can tell his name is something like Bayzhay. The girl is something like Killin. They don’t seem to speak our language at all.’
The display changed to one of the other men, bearded and in his late thirties or early forties. ‘This one appears to be in charge, sir. His name is Phenuel Scott. The two young ones jump when he says.
‘And last of all, this one.’ The image was of an oriental man of indefinable age. His hair was greying but his face wasn’t particularly wrinkled, yet he looked old. Perhaps it was his expression, or his eyes, or both. ‘He speaks our language but doesn’t say much. I said Scott was in charge but it seems to be because this one lets him be. Scott treats him with honour and respect — that is, his tone changes when they talk together.’
‘I see,’ Carradine said. ‘Name?’
‘Again, difficult to tell, sir. It sounds Chinese or Japanese…’
‘There is a difference, Ms Holliss, as any Chinese or Japanese will tell you.’
Holliss flushed. ‘Yes, sir. His name sounds like Daiho. Scott called him 'the Commissioner', but I don’t know what he’s a Commissioner of.’
TEN
The Correspondent lifted his head gingerly and winced as pain stabbed through it. He quickly turned his pain receptors off and cast his senses down into the rest of his body, where his healing powers were working flat out. The bruises had almost cleared up, the cuts had mended and the most serious injury — the broken rib that had pierced a lung — was all but whole again. As was the lung.
He tried to open his eyes. The swelling had gone down but the lid of his right eye was glued shut by encrusted blood. He spat on a finger and rubbed it on the blood to dissolve it. The eye opened slowly and he looked around, carefully so as not to set off another explosion inside his skull.
It was a cell; something he had always tried to avoid, usually with success, in his 600 years as a correspondent. He lay on a plank bed set into the wall. Straw covered the floor, the only light was moonlight shining through a grill high in the wall, and the whole place stank to high heaven of unwashed humans and the stuff that came out of them.
Later. His internal clock told him it was shortly after one in the morning. The sun would rise at about 4:00: he had three hours of darkness. He hoped that being hanged at dawn wasn’t
He sat up and only then realized that his hands and feet were manacled — with iron, of course, allegedly proof against witchcraft. Another incidental expense. He looked at his bonds with irritation. They didn’t present a problem in the long run, but he had better get started now.
He sat on the plank, feet on the floor, hands motionless on his lap, and began to channel energy into the muscles concerned. And while he was doing that he began to sort the facts out in his mind, prior to preparing a report.
The trial was in a large, gloomy room lined with oak panelling, and was crowded. People nowadays tended not to wash as much as the Correspondent would have liked and the finery of their clothes couldn’t hide the stench.
The main witness for the prosecution was a terrified individual named Mr Marks, steward for the household of Francis Bacon — Lord Chancellor of England, Baron Verulam and soon to be created Viscount Saint Albans. Marks’ story bore no resemblance to facts as the Correspondent remembered them. A lot of things weren’t making sense, but the Correspondent put the matter on hold while he gave the testimony his full attention.
‘Tell us,’ said the prosecuting council, a tall and balding man named Whitrow, ‘in your own words, the events of that evening.’
The witness spoke, with constant fearful glances at the prisoner in the dock. ‘Well, sir, on that evening — that is, the sixth of June, sir — I was bringing food for my lord and his, um, visitor.’
‘Is this visitor present here?’
Marks was struck dumb, and the look of sheer terror he gave the Correspondent was unfeigned. Whitrow followed the man’s gaze and smiled without humour. ‘He is bound with iron and surrounded by good, God-fearing men. He can do you no harm. Answer the question.’
‘The visitor was the man in the dock, sir,’ Marks said, almost in a whisper.
‘The man who calls himself Sir Stephen Hawking?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Carry on.’
Yes, carry on, the Correspondent thought. This was interesting.
At first, the steward’s testimony bore out his own recollection perfectly. The familiar inner promptings had led him to seek an interview with Bacon, using as an excuse a desire to discuss the recently published
And then came that baffling point where the recollections of the Correspondent and Marks diverged. The Correspondent remembered that they had discussed empiricism, politics and the transition of the monarchy from the Tudors to the Stuarts — Bacon had served the last Tudor monarch and the first Stuart, and was a rich fund of anecdotes about court life under the two regimes. It had been a pleasant time, with food and drink duly brought by Marks to Bacon’s panelled and book-lined study. Then the Correspondent had retired to his own lodgings.
To be woken by the sheriff’s men. He could have fought, yes, but they had come for him by surprise, and in large quantities, and they were armed. There were some things even he couldn’t do — not all at once. Swords, spears, arrows he could handle, preferably if he was facing them. Bullets, from any direction, were quite another matter; the bygoners’ discovery of gunpowder, in his estimation, had been a major step backwards and had made his life significantly harder.
He frowned as Marks gave his damning evidence.
‘My lord and that man were talking and laughing, sir. I could hear them through the door. I put the tray down on the floor so that I could open the door, and then I heard a third voice.’
‘Go on,’ said Whitrow. The room was silent.
‘’Twas a man’s voice, sir, and it spoke… I don’t know what it spoke, sir. It was not English. It was a babble.’
‘Who spoke?’
‘Sir, it was neither my lord nor this man here who spoke. I looked through the crack in the door and I saw it was a third man, and I heard the man in the dock shout something, then speak in kind…’
Debate ensued between the counsels as to the significance of this: Marks argued that there was only one way into his lord’s room, and that was through the door, and he swore no other man had entered the house — yet alone that room — that evening. This the Correspondent was prepared to agree with. But, a third man? And he himself had apparently spoken with the stranger, in this strange tongue…
Something was nagging at the back of his mind, like the sudden reminder in the day time of a dream some nights back. A strange sense of familiarity…
‘And why did you look through the crack?’ Whitrow asked.
‘I feared for my lord, sir. I heard such anger in the visitor’s shout.’
‘Hawking shouted?’
‘Yes, sir. The, um, third man spoke, and this man shouted, and…’
