‘Where’s the other bit, then?’ asked Liam. ‘The key bit?’
‘While Jerusalem existed under Christian kings, the text itself was guarded by Templar Knights in Jerusalem and the key was guarded by another order in the city of Acre, a hundred miles north. Then both cities fell to Saladin … and so Richard launched his crusade to retrieve both items.’
Cabot’s eyes looked a thousand miles away. ‘I was there when Acre fell to Richard’s army.’ He sighed. ‘I was there, I watched as all three thousand Muslim defenders were beheaded. I believe he acquired the key that day. That was his celebration.’
Liam shuddered at the thought of that. ‘So he wanted both things, and he managed to get both things … but sent the text to England?’
‘Question,’ said Becks. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘For safety. King Richard, I know, feared rivals, perhaps other kings who might also know of the Treyarch Confession. His army of crusaders became weakened after it became clear it was too small a force to besiege and take Jerusalem. His fighting men started to return to their home countries — as I did a year before. He sent one half of the Grail home for safekeeping and kept the other, the key to decoding it, with him.
‘Now, his return home has been delayed by shipwreck and imprisonment. Two years he has waited to get home — two years knowing he has had the means to unlock the words of God, and finally he returns …’
‘And John has lost it to this hooded fella.’
Cabot nodded.
Liam could see why the poor man had looked so unhappy at every mention of his brother’s name.
‘King Richard will kill him on his return,’ uttered Cabot. ‘Of that I have no doubt. I believe this obsession has twisted his mind beyond any reason.’
Becks broke a long silence punctuated only by the crack and hiss of a burning log. ‘Question: what has the word Pandora got to do with the Holy Grail?’
Cabot seemed hesitant to answer that.
‘Mr Cabot?’ Liam prompted.
His voice was low, barely more than a whisper. ‘It is the oneword of the original message that the Templars were permitted to know.’
Liam stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Becks … Bob?’ Four grey eyes panned to rest on him. ‘If we got our hands on this Grail text, would you two be able to decode it?’
‘Unknown,’ said Becks.
‘We have insufficient data on the encryption technique used at this time,’ added Bob.
‘But say we got it, and managed to take it back to …’ He glanced at Cabot. Perhaps it was best not to reveal the precise year to him. ‘If we got it back home, maybe that Adam fella could work it out?’
‘It is a possibility,’ said Becks.
‘It is not just a child’s puzzle for ye to solve!’ snapped Cabot. ‘This — this is Our Lord’s words! A sacred truth! And, lad, ye talk of it like a … like a game to be played!’
Liam returned a stern expression. ‘It is no game, Mr Cabot. Not to me, at any rate. We are here because, well … because these may not be the words of Our Lord. They could be the words of people like ourselves, other travellers in time.’
The old man’s lower jaw hung and wobbled uncertainly.
‘We received a warning, Mr Cabot. A warning to look for this Pandora, whatever it may be. You said this Treyarch Confession goes that the scroll they found was written in Jesus’s time? Right?’
Cabot nodded. ‘’Tis what is said.’
‘Then this warning has travelled across twothousandyears to find us.’ He looked up at the old monk. ‘This is no game.’
‘We must acquire this Grail,’ said Becks.
‘Agreed,’ added Bob. ‘That must become the mission priority.’
CHAPTER 33
1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
He listened to the sounds of his people, his followers, their voices echoing through the woods as they chattered around their campfires. Their spirits were lifted. For them, today had been a good day. They’d managed to intercept a merchant’s wagon destined to deliver to some baron a cart full of luxuries. The foreign wine they’d found was being consumed now. And their songs around the fire were gradually becoming less tuneful and more raucous.
They are like children.
He watched them from the darkness of his hut, his army of peasant bandits. So used to the grinding poverty of recent years, the starvation, grubbing for scraps of food. That here, in the forests of Nottingham, where they could poach royal deer and hares because the soldiers daren’t follow them in, they were like excitable children.
It reminded him, James Locke, too much of the place, of the time, he’d come from. A world of poverty, overcrowded and crumbling cities … polluted oceans populated by nothing but floating islands of plastic rubbish and slowly dispersing toxins. A dying world … a dying world.
He looked down at the wooden box in his hands, old weathered wood with an ornate pattern carved into its sides.
Locke stared at it. Inside this box was what he’d come back in time for. Inside this box was what his brotherhood had been waiting nearly a thousand years to recover. A lost truth. A warning. A prophecy.
Pandora.
Locke had glimpsed inside, had touched it, even unravelled some of it just to get a glimpse of the writing. And he’d felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The words were there on the parchment, hidden from a casual eye: random, unintelligable, the meaning locked away by its code.
He looked up again, out through the flap of his hut at his bandits making merry by the flickering light of the campfire. Their raids on the baron’s goods, on the farms, on the taxmen’s carts — all of that was eventually going to bring King Richard up to Nottingham once he returned to England, up to these woods. That, and the knowledge that his precious Holy Grail had been taken.
Locke nodded.
He’ll come. And he’ll bring with him the other half of the Grail. The key.
CHAPTER 34
1194, Oxford Castle, Oxford
‘This will ensure you have the full co-operation of that bumbling fool,’ said John.
Liam looked down at the roll of parchment in his hand. It was sealed with a blob of wax in which John Lackland’s royal crest had been impressed.
‘What is it, Sire?’
‘Orders for the Sheriff of Nottingham to give you anything that you need in hunting down this Hooded Man and his bandits.’ He pursed his lips with wry amusement. ‘Should that useless fool, the Sheriff William De Wendenal, object to this, or prove obstructive in any way, you may assume the office yourself. These papers confer that authority to you.’
‘You mean … I’d be Sheriff of Nottingham?’
‘’Tis so if necessity requires.’
‘Cool,’ Liam chuckled.
‘Aye,’ said John, looking around at the courtyard. The readied horses blew plumes of steam and overhead the grey winter’s sky tumbled uneasily, promising another light flurry of snow. Cool indeed. ‘But it shall warm up soon, though, I warrant.’
Stern-faced soldiers stood nearby, rubbing gloved hands and stamping their feet to stay warm. ‘I give you a dozen of my best guards to take up to Nottingham with you. They are all good men. I trust them. They will take your orders as if they were mine.’ John glanced at Bob, now equipped with a chain-mail hauberk over his wide torso, a chain-mail coif protecting his coconut head and a long sword in a sheath attached to a belt of leather cinched tight round his waist. ‘Mind you, if your big friend is half the fighter as you say … I should think you’ll not need them?’
Liam looked at them and struggled hard not to grin proudly.