Could there be self-connecting leys?
He did not know. Yet it was a very simple theory to test. All he had to do was find the Oxford ley and try it. And this he did.
One morning before dawn-and before the traffic virtually consumed the road-Douglas, armed with a diagram he had copied from Watkins’ book, walked out onto the High Street. A few false tries, a lot of pacing, retracing, and sidestepping, but he eventually sensed the tingle on his skin that told him he had located a ley. After another attempt or two, he achieved a successful crossing-a fact not completely realised until he reached the crossroads and saw torches burning outside Saint Martin’s church.
Douglas hurried to the crossroads he knew as Carfax and paused to search for any clue that might establish the date of this particular iteration of Oxford. The buildings were mostly the same ones he recognised, but of more recent age; the streets were not paved with tarmac, but with cobblestones; heaps of dung mouldered at the street corner. There was no one else around, so he could not derive a guess from clothing. He might have been able to delve a little deeper into this mystery, but the sun was just rising and he knew that he must either depart again at once or spend at least one day and maybe more in this place. He was not prepared for that, so he ran back to the ley and made the jump back to the home world-albeit, three days later by the calendar.
Over the next few weeks Douglas made many more excursions, calibrating by trial and error the distance coordinates along the ley that corresponded with what he thought of as the Otherworld timescale. In the end, he succeeded in locating the era that formed the centre of his search, as confirmed by the Roll of Vicars plaque on the wall of Saint Mary the Virgin church.
Satisfied that he had done all he could to prepare, Douglas pulled the hood over his robe, settled it on his shoulders, and stepped to the mirror. The image reflected there was of a healthy and well-nourished man of middle height and weight dressed in a good, serviceable robe of a country priest. The newly shaved tonsure on his head completed the effect. He smiled at his reflection.
“Come along, Snipe,” he said, stepping quickly to the door. “It is time to go.”
They walked out from the town house and proceeded towards the centre of Oxford. It was just before daybreak, but being a busy modern city, there were already a few people about. They passed a milkman and his mule and some black-gowned students asleep in doorways. At Broad Street, a rag and bone man with his pushcart trundled along, and on Turl Street the lamplighter with his pole was putting out the last lights. If anyone marked the strange apparition of a pair of medieval monks flapping towards city centre, they did not show it. In a place like Oxford, where students still wore the vestiges of medieval robes to tutorials and their professors still addressed formal assemblies in Latin, things that might have been considered an oddity to be remarked upon anywhere else were merely too common to be afforded attention.
They followed Turl Street to the end and turned onto the High, joining the ley line as it ran towards Carfax. Here Douglas paused. “Ready, Snipe?” he asked. “Do not be afraid, and do not make a fuss. You have done this before. Remember?” When this brought no response, Douglas gave him a light slap on the cheek. “Remember?”
The surly youth shook his head.
“Good. Then hold on.” He extended his hand to the lad, who gripped it tight. “Here we go!”
They began walking very quickly along the street, and Douglas counted off the steps. As he fell into the optimum stride, he looked for the marker he had chalked on the base of Gill the Ironmonger’s shop a few meters from the corner. As they approached the crossroads, a gaggle of students-either hastening to their studies or returning from the night’s revels-straggled by. Douglas’ first instinct was to turn and flee-to have his sudden and inexplicable dematerialisation publicly witnessed seemed far too risky. He wavered on the brink of abandoning the attempt.
That impulse was swiftly jostled aside by another: What did he care if a passel of bleary-eyed scholastics got an eyeful? What did it matter if they talked? What difference would it make?
He saw the chalk mark and stepped up his pace. A sound like a banshee howl reached them, falling through the upper atmosphere. In the same instant, a stiff wind gusted out of nowhere, driving a sudden rain shower. The street and buildings, the bus and its passengers, all the world around them grew misty and indistinct. Then they were falling through darkness-but only for a moment, the fractional interval between one heartbeat and the next-before striking solid earth again.
Snipe stumbled upon landing and went down on hands and knees; his lips curled in a curse that was interrupted by a gagging sound as his stomach heaved. Douglas, too, felt the incipient nausea. Bile surged up his throat, but he swallowed it back down. Resisting the urge to shut his eyes, he tried to maintain contact with some physical object, fixing his gaze on the steeple of Saint Martin’s church rising like a dagger blade pointing towards the heart of heaven.
The queasy sensation passed, and he drew fresh air into his lungs. “Breathe, Snipe,” he advised the heaving boy beside him. “Don’t fight. It will pass.”
He glanced quickly around. A pair of figures moved among the shadows a short distance away-too far to have seen them arrive, he thought. Indeed, the only living thing to have seen the translocation was a scrawny dog standing in the road a little way off, its head lowered and hackles raised. Douglas kicked a dirt clod in its direction, and the animal scurried off.
The light was dim-but was it early morning or evening? He looked to the east and saw only darkness, yet the western sky still held a glimmer of light. Nightfall, then. “Stand up, Snipe,” he commanded. “Wipe your mouth. We made it. We are here.”
The youth climbed to his feet, and the two moved slowly on towards the church. Douglas paused at the crossroads to look both ways up and down each street, getting his bearings. Much of the town that he knew was here-in a general sense, as old Oxford of the medieval period remained in the outlines of the modern city-and he recognised it. He knew where he was, now to find out when. That was the first item of business-to find out the exact date and time.
As the two travellers hurried across the road, a monk carrying a large candle appeared in the doorway of the church. The fellow proceeded to light the torches in the sconces either side of the door. He turned, saw the strangers, and called to them in a language Douglas assumed was some local dialect. He had his reply ready. “Pax vobiscum,” he said, folding his hands before him and offering a small bow from the waist. Summoning his practised Latin, he said, “May grace attend you this night, brother.”
The monk responded likewise. “Peace, brothers.” He made to retreat into the church once more. “May God be good to you.”
“A moment, brother,” called Douglas, striding forward. “We have just arrived in this place and have need of information.”
The monk turned back and waited for them to come nearer. “Have you travelled far?” he said, his Latin tinged by his broad, oddly flattened accent.
“Far enough,” replied Douglas. “I am charged with a duty to find one known as Dr. Mirabilis-a fellow priest, I have it, whose writings have reached us in Eire.”
The monk rolled his eyes. “You and all the rest of the world!”
“Am I right in thinking that he reside hereabouts?”
“He does,” replied the monk without enthusiasm. “He has rooms in one of the university inns-I cannot say which one.” He turned and started into the church.