Authors: Tom Harper
A weary dread seeped into Ellie’s blood. She clutched Harry’s arm.
‘Those men. They’re Blanchard’s.’
Harry sat bolt upright. ‘Are you sure?’
‘They were at my mother’s funeral.’ She felt the same overwhelming helplessness she’d felt in the tunnel, unstoppable light bearing down on her. ‘But how did they get here?’
‘They must have followed you.’
Ellie stared at him blankly. ‘They couldn’t have.’
Harry glanced down at the bulge in her jeans pocket. ‘You didn’t bring –?’
She pulled the phone out of her pocket and stared at it, the black plastic so smooth and beguiling. Red writing gleamed under the mirrored surface as the phone began to vibrate. It was ringing.
Harry jumped to his feet and pulled her up. ‘Get out of here, Ellie!
Go
!’
He ran down the carriage. A steward tried to stop him, but Harry pushed past, shouting something about forgetting his umbrella. He pulled a backpack off the luggage rack and dived onto the platform. Ellie hesitated just a moment, then grabbed her bag and ran the opposite way.
At the end of the platform, a guard in a peaked cap blew a whistle. The doors slid shut with a hiss. The signal turned green.
Tripping over outstretched legs and bags, Ellie reached the train door just as the door locked. She hammered at the button, but the door wouldn’t open. The platform began to move: through the window, she saw Harry and the two Monsalvat men like mannequins in a shop window. Harry had been wrestled to the ground; one of the men crouched over him, while the other searched the backpack he’d stolen. She watched, a spectator at an exhibition, as the tableau drifted out of sight. She wanted to scream, but the sound wouldn’t come.
Pinned to the platform, Harry looked up into his enemy’s face and felt the needle slide into his vein.
‘This won’t kill you,’ the man told him. ‘We just want a chat.’
Beside him, the other man had finished digging through the stolen backpack.
‘It’s not here. It must be on the train.’
Harry heard footsteps running across the concrete, but he wasn’t expecting a rescue. He supposed they’d have some kind of story ready. He could feel the poison creeping through his body: soon he’d be in no position to deny anything.
They’d pinned his arm to his side, but he could still reach his coat pocket. He slid his hand in and felt for the capsules. There were two: he’d meant to give one to Ellie, but there’d been no time.
His captor got to his feet and started explaining to the station staff how Harry was an escaped patient from a private mental hospital. He’d stolen someone’s bag – was there any way of returning it to the poor victim? They’d sedated him; if the station guard could just help them lift him
…
The movement loosened the grip that held him. It was all the time Harry needed. He ripped his arm free, and in an instant had the capsules popped in his mouth. He bit down on both, just to be sure, while his captors tried too late to wrench his mouth open.
With his last living thought, he prayed they wouldn’t catch Ellie.
Ellie got off the train at Ebbsfleet. The staff tried to stop her, to explain you couldn’t use the Eurostar for domestic journeys, but she screamed and wept about a family emergency and in the end they let her go. She scanned the platform, terrified that Blanchard’s men might have anticipated her move and got there first, seen the commotion she’d made. But it had only taken fifteen minutes, and even Blanchard couldn’t conjure a faster way to get across London. She watched the train pull out of the station, a wasteland of concrete, arc lights and chain-link fences that looked like some kind of prison camp. On board, in the luggage rack above Ellie’s empty seat, her mobile phone emitted its invisible signal, describing her progress towards the Channel Tunnel and France. With any luck, it would be hours before they found she wasn’t with it.
She stood in the station hall and stared at the departure
boards. Through her shocked and exhausted eyes, the names blurred into a meaningless void, a nowhere place. Her shoulders ached from the weight of the backpack; she wondered what was inside, but didn’t dare take it out in public. What could possibly be worth so much violence and terror?
Her mind was drifting. She forced herself to focus.
You’re carrying something on your back that your father died trying to get hold of, that Monsalvat are willing to kill to get back. Harry might have some friends, but he’s almost certainly dead and you’ve no way of getting in touch with them. You’re on your own.
Where do you go now?
Île de Pêche, 1142
The Count’s corpse lies headless on the floor. Blood pools around the altar. At the door, two of our men are battling back the guards who’ve arrived too late. Malegant rips open the lid of the golden reliquary, peers in, then hurls it at the window. The glass cracks; bones and dust fall out of the casket. It’s not what he came for.
He gestures to a side door in the chapel wall.
‘Through there.’
Four of us follow of him into a tiny vestry. A ring of keys lies on the table. Malegant snatches them up, then leads us out by another door into the courtyard. To our left, the guards are still attacking the chapel. We fall on them like wolves: trapped between the men in the chapel and the men outside, they’re quickly slaughtered.
I feel something peck my face, too hard for a raindrop. A small crater’s appeared in the wall in front of me, gouged out by a crossbow bolt. I hurl myself to the ground. The man beside me isn’t so lucky: the bolt hits his shoulder, drives
through the chain mail and lodges in his back. I think about pulling it out, but it would only make the bleeding worse.
More missiles rattle around us. They’re coming from the windows in the keep.
‘We have to get in,’ Malegant says. We don’t have shields, but Malegant grabs one of the dead guards and hauls him to his feet. He holds the corpse in front of him like a rag doll. Bolts prick it like a pincushion.
I have a better idea. I tip over a water barrel and roll it up the slope, crawling behind on hands and knees. Halfway to the tower, it no longer protects me: I kick it away and sprint the last few yards to the shelter of the wall. Crossbow bolts clatter off the ground behind me.
Malegant’s already there, an arrow-riddled corpse beside him. He’s lethal, but I want to keep him close. He has an aura, a sense of invulnerability that I hope will protect me.
The rest of the men are still back by the chapel. Malegant orders them forward. One of them carries the priest’s silver-bound bible as a shield; another tries to swat away the bolts with an oar. The rest have to take their chances.
But they’re only there as a distraction. Malegant leads me up a thin flight of stairs to the curtain wall. To our left, a small door goes through to the keep. It’s locked, but one of the keys Malegant took from the vestry opens it.
The archers didn’t expect us to get through. They’re standing by the windows, taking aim at their targets in the courtyard. Malegant and I have killed two of them before they even notice us. Another turns, a tensed crossbow pointing straight at my chest. If he loosed then, I’d be dead. But Malegant’s aura protects me. Fear makes the crossbowman’s hand quiver: the bolt goes wide, so close the fletches almost brush my cheek. I cut him down.
Malegant’s dealt with the others. There’s nothing in the corridor now except corpses and blood and unspent missiles – and, halfway down, a pair of double doors.
We enter into a great hall, with a fireplace in its centre, and wooden benches pushed back against the walls. At the far end stand two high doors, one black as mulberries, the other ivory-white: they remind me of the goldsmith’s chequerboard table in the vault in Troyes. One’s ajar – I can see a white-sleeved arm reaching around to close it. Malegant takes a knife from his belt and throws. The Devil’s with him today. There’s a scream from behind the door as the knife pins the hand to the wood. He can’t close the door now: his own arm’s jamming it.
Malegant wrenches the door open. The man within gets dragged out in its wake. Except it isn’t a man. It’s the woman in the white dress I saw from the courtyard. Blood’s running down her arm, soaking into the sleeve, spreading towards her elbow. She must be in agony but she doesn’t make a sound.
I don’t see her face – not as it really is. I’m back in Tourcy, at the chapel on the edge of the forest. Her hair and skin have become paler, her fine dress reduced to a torn shift. Ada.
Malegant pulls the knife out of the door and slits her throat.
Strange to tell, all I remember of that moment is what I see through the door. It looks like another chapel, though without saints or crucifixes. It must be built out on a promontory: clear glass windows on three sides look down to the sea, so that the whole room feels like a boat adrift. The ceiling is a rounded vault painted twilight blue, with golden stars in their constellations. At the far end of the room, under the windows, a white stone stands alone on an ivory table. A black lance hangs over it, suspended point down by a rope from the roof-beam. With the window behind showing only mist, it seems to float in space.
The woman sinks to the floor. Blood blossoms through her skirts like a rose. Something breaks inside me; I raise my sword. Malegant must be expecting it. He spins around – his sword strikes mine with a clang that echoes through the hall like a bell. My blade shatters. All that’s left is a fractured stump.
‘Peter of Camros.’ Malegant laughs. ‘I wondered when you’d remember yourself.’
I don’t know how he knows that name. I’m lost in a cloud, waking from a nightmare into something far worse. I can hear the sounds of fire and slaughter in the distance as the rest of the castle is devastated.
I hurl the broken sword at his face and run. Across the hall, into the main stair. More of our men are coming up from below – I can’t go down. I go up, chasing around until it ends in an ironbound door that – thank God – isn’t locked.
After the darkness of the stairs, even the fog is blinding. I’m in an open guardroom at the top of the tower. I stagger across to the rampart. There’s no bolt on the door, no way of keeping them back. Even if I could hold them, there’s only one way out.
I unstrap my helmet and pull it off. I can hear shouts, feet pounding up the stairs. How long do I have? I try to remove my armour, but the leather knots have shrunk in the wet. I take my knife and cut the cords. The hauberk falls to the ground like a broken chain. The footsteps are close, lots of them. I rip off my quilted coat. I’m left wearing nothing but a thin linen tunic.
I perch on the battlements. White-capped waves champ below me like teeth. I feel dizzy. The door bangs open.
I jump.
Oxford
‘Ellie?’
Doug peered out of the door into the darkness. A warm yellow light framed him like a halo; from inside, the mouth-watering smells of frying onion and bacon drifted out. Ellie realised she was ravenous.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course. Are you OK? Why haven’t you been answering my messages?’
She glimpsed herself in the hall mirror and realised why he looked so shocked. Her face was grey and worn. Underground soot still made a streak above her right eye; tears had left long silver fingers down her cheeks, though she couldn’t remember crying.
She toppled forward and Doug caught her. He brought her in to his sitting room and made her a cup of tea. He had an old-fashioned kettle that whistled when it boiled; the smells of gas and steam brought back memories of winter evenings in the kitchen with her mother. She started crying again.
‘Why don’t you clean up?’
He took her upstairs and ran a bath. Part of her protested that she didn’t have time, it wasn’t safe. The pressure was like a clock ticking inside her. But she didn’t resist. The water was so hot it made her skin blush scarlet.
She lay there almost submerged, her face sweating in the steam, her hair fanned out in the water as if she were drowning. Doug sat on the floor next to the towel rail. With his fisherman’s jumper and cup of tea, Ellie thought he looked almost absurdly comforting.
‘I got your text about your mother. I’m so sorry.’
He said it cautiously, but he didn’t hide the reproach. Ellie slid deeper into the water.
‘When was the funeral?’
‘Yesterday.’ It felt like a million years ago.
‘I would have liked to be there. I don’t know what’s going on with us, but –’
‘It’s not that. It’s – crazier than you can imagine.’ Tears began to flow again, mixing with the sweat on her face. ‘What happened to Mum, that’s not even half of it. It’s …’ She slid down so that the water covered her face completely, then broached the surface again.
‘I need you to help.’
Doug leaned forward. His face brimmed with confusion.
‘Can you tell me?’
She told the story from the beginning, though she didn’t tell him everything. She wondered if he realised, if he noticed the places where the story went inexplicably vague, and if he noticed that those places were always when she was talking about Blanchard. Blanchard was the void at the centre of her story. She saw, as she told it, how little sense it made without him.
But perhaps it was so incredible that Doug didn’t see the omissions. He listened in silence. When she was done, he had only one question.
‘What was it for?’
Ellie stared at the ceiling. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t dare open the box in public.’
Doug glanced to the corner, where her bag lay beside a heap of stripped-off clothes. ‘Shall we?’
She found some old clothes left over from the summer and dressed, adding one of Doug’s heavy sweaters. She liked the weight on her body, his scent around her.
They drew shut the curtains in the living room and knelt on the floor, like children at Christmas. Ellie opened the bag.
Was it all for this?
She could see Doug thinking the same thing. A cardboard box and a leather tube. Could they really be worth dying for? Rain rattled on the windows: a fearful instinct made them both glance towards it. She remembered something Blanchard had once said.
Money is a fiction, a suspension of disbelief
.
Value is only what two parties can agree on at any given time.