Authors: Tom Harper
A few hundred yards inland I find a farm track running broadly parallel with the river. I scan the fields for any sign of a farm, but there’s nothing. With a sigh, I turn north. I’ve forgotten Malegant, the King, Hugh’s treasure – all I want is a bed for the night and a warm plate of food.
I come into a copse of birch and thorns. It’s dark in here, though the birch bark seems to glow with a silver light. No birds are singing – I wonder where they’ve gone.
A twig snaps. I spin around. A man’s standing in the trees, watching me. He’s wearing a dirty smock and queer rabbit-fur buskins, but I don’t think to mock him. He’s holding a bow, and the nocked arrow’s pointed straight at my throat.
Near Troyes, France
The Mercedes rocked as the passenger door opened.
‘I’ve got a good shot,’ Destrier announced. He turned slowly, following the car with the gun. ‘Do I go for it?’
It wasn’t often that Blanchard hesitated. Destrier opened his left eye and looked at his boss. ‘Do I?’
Blanchard stared after the car, the brake lights like jewels in the night. He said nothing.
Destrier got agitated. ‘I’m about to lose them in the trees.’ No answer. ‘Fuck it, Blanchard – do I shoot?’ He twisted a dial on the scope to correct the distance. His finger curled around the trigger. ‘I’m going for it.’
The gun jerked in his grasp as a firm hand gripped the barrel and pulled it upwards. The shot flew at the moon.
Destrier put the gun down and gave Blanchard a look of pure, unvarnished rage.
‘Just because you fucked her …’
The slap caught him clean on the jaw, so hard it left him numb. He tasted blood in his mouth. He wasn’t used to being
hit. It took all his discipline not to smash Blanchard’s nose with the butt of the gun.
‘That’s none of your business.’ Blanchard’s breath steamed in the night. ‘If you want to keep working for Monsalvat, you never mention that again.’
At the far end of the valley the Land Rover had vanished into the trees.
They drove for an hour and didn’t say a word. Ellie’s eyes flicked between the mirrors and the road ahead; she didn’t dare look at Doug. Only when they saw a sign for a twenty-four-hour supermarket did Doug say, ‘Turn in here.’
The store was virtually empty. In the stationary section, they found graph paper, tracing paper, and a child’s geometry set. On their way to the checkout, Ellie added two boxes of biscuits, some instant coffee and a six-pack of Coke.
‘Is there a hotel near here?’ they asked the cashier.
‘If you follow this road, you have a camping in five kilometres.’
Dawn had begun to crease the sky, blood-red beams splitting grey clouds. They found a sign for the campsite and turned down a muddy track. After a few hundred yards a plastic chain dangling a
NO-ENTRY
sign barred their way. Beyond it, they could see a clutch of caravans jacked up on bricks, a squat cinderblock toilet and an empty field beyond. A dog-eared sign pinned to a tree announced the site was closed until April.
Doug got out and unhooked the chain. Ellie rolled in and parked behind the caravans, out of sight of the road. Doug took his penknife and fiddled the lock on one of the caravans until it gave.
‘That’s a useful skill.’
‘Misspent youth.’ He didn’t smile.
The caravan was like a museum: nicotine-yellow walls, orange lino floors and brown formica surfaces. A bare, mouse-eaten mattress covered the far end. Ellie drew the curtains, leaving just enough of a gap to see anyone coming. Doug took their stationery out of the shopping bag and spread it over the table. He nodded at the kitchenette built into the bulkhead.
‘Do you think that works?’
She thought the tension might snap her.
‘What Blanchard said …’
‘A coffee would be great.’
She went outside so he wouldn’t see her cry and found a gas cylinder nestled under the caravan. Water dripped from the trees; a flock of ravens perched on a power line. To her surprise, she heard a hiss of gas when she opened the valve.
By the time she went back inside she’d composed herself. There was no kettle, but she dug out a pan and a book of matches from under the sink and heated some water for coffee. Doug pored over the papers.
First, he drew an eight-by-eight grid on the graph paper and wrote out the poem in the original French, syllable by syllable. It filled the grid exactly. He drew the grid again on a sheet of tracing paper, then took the printout of the Mirabeau mosaic and used the ruler to copy the path on to the grid.
‘Did they have tracing paper in the Middle Ages?’ Ellie asked.
‘You could treat vellum with water to make it semi-transparent. Or maybe they just used a pencil. Or maybe no one’s ever done this.’
Doug laid the diagram over the poem and lined them up so that the two grids merged into one. They fit together perfectly – the syllables connected in a new order by the moves of the knight’s tour.
But something wasn’t quite right. ‘It’s an infinite loop,’ Doug realised. ‘You could start reading from anywhere – and go in either direction.’
‘Start there.’ She held up the original manuscript and pointed to the gilded
E
at the beginning of the fifth line. ‘That explains why he put that elaborate initial halfway through the poem. And if you look at the inside of the
E
there are spirals turning counter-clockwise.’
‘Most medieval church labyrinths go counter-clockwise.’
Turning back to the grid, Doug took a clean sheet of paper and wrote out the poem in its revised order, starting with the first syllable of the fifth line and ending with the third syllable of the line below. Ellie watched over his shoulder, double-checking his copy.
The stove hissed as water slopped over the edge of the pan. Ellie found a pair of chipped mugs and made coffee, trying not to spill as she poured. She put one down on the table next to Doug, who grunted his thanks.
Like two little children playing tea parties in our Wendy house
, she thought. His unyielding calm was crushing her.
Doug put down his pen and sipped the coffee. ‘I still can’t make sense of it. There must be some sort of secondary code.’
A wave of exhaustion broke over Ellie. She fought back a yawn and lost. Doug’s face narrowed.
‘You should get some sleep. I can work on this for a while.’
There was a rug in the back of the Land Rover. Ellie spread it over the mattress and wrapped herself in one of the caravan’s moth-eaten blankets. She pretended to close her eyes, watching Doug bent over the table. He sucked his pen; he tapped a fingernail against his coffee mug. She wished she could throw her arms around him and bring him to bed with her.
At some point her eyes stopped pretending and closed for real. Doug got up from the table and entered her dreams. Some were ecstatic and some were dreadful: afterwards, all she could remember was sadness.
Her first thought on waking was that she’d hardly slept at all – the crack of the world she could see through the curtains still looked like dawn. But when she checked her watch the dial said four o’clock. She’d slept right through to dusk.
The caravan was empty. Doug must have gone out, come back and gone again: a new grocery bag sat on the table, beside a neat stack of papers and a green book. The two coffee mugs stood next to the sink, washed and dried.
Ellie went over to the table. The top sheet of paper was covered in scribblings, random syllables ordered and reordered, letters circled, lines connecting them and crossed out. In the middle of the page, boxed in heavy lines, a single word leaped out at her.
LOQMENEZ.
The book was a Michelin guide to Brittany. A strip of paper marked a map of the western peninsula.
Finisterre
– the end of the world. Some distance inland from Brest, in an empty quarter of the map where the only legend was
Montagnes Noires
, Doug had pencilled an ‘X’.
X marks the spot. X is a kiss. X as in Ex.
She peered out of the window. The Land Rover was still there, but she couldn’t see Doug. Had he gone shopping? Gone for a walk? His coat hung over the back of a chair – he obviously meant to come back.
She knew what she had to do, though she hated it.
Now you know who I really am
, she told him silently.
I won’t inflict any more on you
.
She gathered up the papers in the guidebook and stuffed them into her backpack, fumbling in her haste. She didn’t want him to come back and find her there. She knew he’d insist on coming with her.
You’ll be safer this way
, she promised him. It was the last, only good thing she could do.
She took the bag of food and hoped he didn’t mind. She left twenty euros on the table so he wouldn’t go hungry, together with a quick note scribbled on a piece of graph paper. There was no time to say everything she felt – so much gratitude, so much guilt. She simply wrote:
I’m sorry for everything
.
She drove away and didn’t look back.
Caerleon, Wales, 1143
The bow is rough and gnarled: not horn or yew, like the Normans use, but unstripped dwarf-elm. That won’t stop it from killing me. Welsh archers can hit a bat’s eye in the dark.
I drop my spear and raise my hands in surrender. It’s a wise move. More men melt out of the forest. In their green-brown smocks and muddy faces, they look like trees come alive. They bind my hands and lead me away.
We march through the night. Whatever dangers lurk by the roads, these men don’t fear them. To be a prisoner is to be trapped in a long, lightless tunnel. I stare at my feet, never looking more than a yard in front of me. I don’t think about the King, or about Malegant – I don’t care. Instead I think about Jocelin. I remember the weight of the spear in my hand and the tremor of the point as it hung over his face. I remember the flash of mercy. I wonder why I did it. The rope chafes my wrists and I ask God, ‘
Is this how You repay me
?’
At dawn we reach a city on a river surrounded by woods and meadows. Sea-going ships unload on wooden piers, while a
lofty stone tower overlooks stout walls. But if you look closer, the picture changes. The town is like an old fur coat patched with homespun cloth. Holes in the masonry have been filled with mortared rubble, or merely barricaded with palings, while the handsome red roofs sprout straw where the tiles have fallen through. At its centre stands an enormous roundhouse, like a pavilion: stone walls topped with a cone of thatch. The stones look ancient; the thatch is still yellow.
‘Whose castle is this?’
My captors ignore me. Dredging words from the depths of memory, I repeat it in Welsh. They look surprised.
‘Morgan ap Owain, King of Morgannwg.’
They lock me in a wattle enclosure that smells of pigs and leave me to rot. An icy wind blows rain through the woven branches, though I still haven’t dried out from my plunge in the river. I curl myself in a ball and fall asleep.
Hours later – I don’t know how many – the guards return. They tie my arms behind my back and slide a rod through my elbows, then drag me like a plough along the street to the roundhouse I saw earlier. Huddled in front of the gate a wretched group of prisoners waits in the rain. I don’t recognise them without their armour, until I see Hugh.
‘Are these your friends?’ one of the guards asks. I nod; he whips the rod out from my arms and pushes me in with the other prisoners. I almost sprawl headlong into the mud, but Hugh catches me.
‘They captured me just after I crossed the river.’
‘Us too. We found the ford Malegant used. Two minutes later, we were surrounded.’
‘What are they going to do to us?’
‘Give us an audience with the King of Morgannwg.’
He says the name with scorn. I know from my childhood that the Kingdom of Morgannwg hasn’t existed for fifty years. When the Normans conquered Wales they abolished it along with all the other old kingdoms. I assume that now, in the anarchy of the civil war, some enterprising local lord or bandit has seized power, resurrecting an obsolete title to buttress his authority.
William’s standing just behind Hugh. ‘Don’t mention the King,’ he hisses to me as I go past.
The guards take us through a double gate into King Morgan’s hall. It’s circular and entirely open, except for a central pole supporting the roof. A round table circles the edge of the room, with knights and barons seated at it like judges in a court.
The hall is filled with kings – rather, the same king again and again, woven into the cycle of tapestries around the room. A young king, a gold circlet on his head, receiving prophecies from a white-bearded old man. The same king, crowned and older, killing a swarthy giant; defeating a Roman emperor; locked in a great battle; finally, laid in a boat tended to by women in white. And, at the head of the table opposite the door, seated in majesty on a throne carved with dragons and lions.
The King moves. I blink. The smoky hall’s deceived me: the last hanging isn’t a tapestry, but cloth-of-gold, hung in the space where the eighth tapestry should be. The King sitting in front of it is entirely real: a flesh-and-blood man about my age, with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold crown on his head that looks very much like the one in the tapestries.
I don’t know how he claimed his title, but I have to admit he looks more the part than King Stephen did. He lounges back in his chair and studies the prisoners. William has slipped back into the middle of the group, keeping his face down to avoid being recognised. Hugh stands at the front and meets the King’s gaze.
‘Who are you?’
‘Knights from England. An enemy stole something from us. We followed him here to get it back.’
The King presses his fingertips together. ‘You should have appealed to me for help. What was it he stole?’
Hugh stays silent. That doesn’t impress the King.
‘If the king of England wants to invade my kingdom, I’ll give him a fight. I’ll push him all the way back to the sea, reclaim all of Britain as it was in Arthur’s time.’
He’s exaggerating. It’s a fine castle, but Stephen’s army could reduce it in a week. If Stephen hasn’t crushed this pretender already, it’s only because he’s had more urgent concerns. But Morgan’s men love it. They’re on their feet, shouting and clapping. Some of them pelt us with scraps from their plates. I duck a crust of bread and listen to what they’re saying. One name, chanted over and again.