1194, Kirklees Priory, Yorkshire

Liam heard the scraping of footsteps and the horses beyond, in the barn, stir before he heard the light tap on their wooden door.

‘Yes?’

‘I have food for ye.’ It was Sébastien Cabot.

‘Ah!’ Liam’s stomach had been grumbling for the last hour. The short winter day had passed without an opportunity to speak with Cabot in private again, and Liam was beginning to wonder whether his decision to overnight in 1194 was going to give them an opportunity to learn any more.

He hopped up eagerly and opened the door leading into their guest quarters.

The young monk he’d seen standing in the priory’s doorway earlier today brought in a couple of wooden bowls and a loaf of bread. Behind him Cabot entered with another bowl and a flagon of something that sloshed around as he placed it on the dirt floor.

‘A hot broth for a cold day,’ he said, ‘and a little mead to warm yer toes.’

Cabot dismissed the boy and then sat down on one of the wooden cots. By candlelight he looked older than he had this morning. The folds on his face, both wrinkles and the long twisting scar, told of a long life, and not much of it lived here in such a lonely and forlorn place.

‘My brothers seemed to have spent more time today gossiping like old women than in contemplation and prayer.’

Liam picked up one of the bowls and hungrily dipped a torn hunk of bread into the thick broth. ‘So, Mr Cabot, you said earlier that you fought alongside King Richard?’

He nodded. ‘Aye.’

‘In a real battle?’

‘Many battles, lad.’

‘But you’re a Cistercian monk, so you are. I didn’t think your kind got involved in wars and fighting.’

Cabot looked up at him. ‘I’ve not always been of this order, lad. Before, two winters gone now, I was one of the Order of Templars.’

‘You were a Templar Knight?’ asked Becks.

‘Not a knight,’ he replied. ‘I am not noble-born. But a sergeant.’

‘Sergeant?’ said Liam, tugging another hunk of crusty bread from the loaf.

‘Information,’ said Bob, ‘sergeant: lower-born professional soldier also serving in auxiliary roles within the order, i.e. maintenance of equipment and property.’

Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ye have an odd manner about ye, sir.’

Bob returned his stare for a moment, then offered a friendly display of upper and lower teeth.

‘And you fought with Richard, so you said?’

‘On this last Crusade, aye.’ Cabot shook his head wistfully. ‘’Tis the worst of things. Ten years I have been in the Holy Land in the service of Templars. Five years of it peace of a kind. After Saladin took Jerusalem, there was a peace.’

Liam nodded. Adam had given them a history class before they set off. Jerusalem had been besieged by Saladin and his massive army in 1187, and had fallen. After nearly ninety years of Christian rule it was back in Muslim hands. But Saladin had chosen to be shrewd in the matter; rather than slaughter every last Christian in the city, he proclaimed Christians would be at liberty to live there, to worship there. That Christian pilgrims would be allowed to enter the city at will and worship at their sacred sites. All this in the hope that outrage in Europe at the city falling would be somewhat lessened. But he hadn’t figured on the likes of King Richard and King Philip II of France, men who both hungered for battle and glory and a cause to hide behind. The Third Crusade was King Richard’s vainglorious attempt to reclaim Jerusalem, and Acre and Jaffa too – the other major cities taken by Saladin.

‘But with King Richard’s arrival came a bloodshed I have never seen before.’ Cabot’s eyes glistened in the dark. ‘He took Acre. The Saracens surrendered to Richard. And he had every last one of them beheaded. There was a hill of heads, a hill that grew gradually out of the moat and spilled on to the plain.’

Liam looked down at a potato bobbing in his soup and all of a sudden felt a little less hungry.

Cabot sighed. ‘I suspect King Richard came, not for Acre, not even for Jerusalem. He came for what was left behind.’

‘Left behind?’

‘Aye, what was left in haste when Jerusalem and Acre fell to Saladin.’ Cabot’s eyes narrowed. ‘But ye know of this already, yes?’ He smiled drily. ‘Ye claimed to be of the order, earlier. But I can see ye are not.’ He glanced at Bob. ‘And ye, sir, ye have the look of one, but not the manner. How is it ye people know of the order’s most guarded secret?’

Cabot’s gaze returned to Liam. ‘How is it ye would know of … Pandora? Pray tell, who are ye?’

Liam looked to both support units for help, but both of them stared dully back.

Great.

He put the bowl of broth down on the dirt floor. ‘We … Perhaps I better give you the truth.’

Cabot nodded. ‘I think ye better had.’

‘We’ve come from … well, a long way. We came here looking for a document called the Voynich Manuscript, and this may sound very strange, Mr Cabot, but your name is linked to it. Your name is in it for some reason.’

‘I’ve never heard of the thing!’

‘I know.’ Liam nodded. ‘I know. I believe you. But there was something else mentioned in this manuscript.’ He glanced at the support units; neither looked like they were about to caution him to stop. ‘Pandora – what you also called the Word of God when we spoke earlier?’

Cabot was reluctant to speak.

Liam decided to push him. ‘You also called it the Holy Grail?’

‘I cannot speak of these things with ye, lad. ’Tis the Templars’ business alone.’

‘But … it’s not any more, is it?’ Liam couldn’t help a mischievous grin. ‘Your brothers went and lost it, you said?’

Cabot pressed his lips together stubbornly. ‘I cannot talk of such things.’

‘But you did talk about it.’ Liam leaned forward. ‘Look, I think it’s this Grail we need to find. And if your Templar brothers have lost it to some robber, then maybe we can help?’

Cabot laughed. ‘The three of ye? Ye would hunt through all the woods of Nottingham for the Hooded Man and take it back from him?’

‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob.

The old man’s laughter dried up as he stared at the flickering light of the candle between them.

‘There are some fools who say he is but the Devil himself.’ Cabot shrugged. ‘He has attracted men, starving men, into the woods. Men who follow him like a king, like a god because it seems he cannot be killed and because of the raids on the taxmen. They have coin and they have food fighting for him. There are stories that he has a great strength, can tear a man in two with his bare hands. That he can run as fast as a horse can charge … but most of all, that he is immortal, that he cannot be killed.’ Cabot smiled wryly. ‘These are dark, troubled times and people tell stories. The poor, the hungry look to devilish stories like this.’

Cabot sighed. ‘Truth is this Hooded Man, whether ’tis true what they say about him or not, he is stirring up unrest and trouble among the poor and starving. And worse still – he has the Grail.’

Liam chewed silently on his warm broth-soaked bread.

Strong enough to tear a man apart? He glanced at Bob.

Another support unit? Another team in the area?

Cabot suddenly looked at Bob and Becks. ‘Will ye two not eat? Are ye not hungry?’

Both shook their heads. ‘We are fine,’ said Becks.

Liam cleared his throat. ‘You said you wanted to know who we are, Mr Cabot?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, we’re from the same place as this Hooded Man.’

Cabot stared at him. ‘Ye know him?’

‘Not really. But I think I know what he is.’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘I’m not sure I can, Mr Cabot … It’s very complicated. But I know if we could track him down in all those woods … and if we had enough help, enough people –’ Liam glanced at his support units – ‘I’m pretty sure my friends here could make him hand back what he took.’

Cabot studied them silently for a long while. ‘I have not met the likes of ye before. There is a very strange manner about all three of ye. I almost half believe what ye say.’

‘Mr Cabot,’ said Liam, grinning, ‘you have no idea how strange we are.’

The man sensed his humour in that and shared the smile. ‘Then there is a person I have a half a mind to take ye to. A man I know who is sorely worried about the growing unrest in these parts … and, moreover, worried that he will face King Richard’s wrath should he return to find the Grail is lost. If he sees truth in ye – if he believes ye can get back this Grail, then I am sure he would be willing to provide ye all the help ye might need.’

‘Who?’

‘A man I provided sword training to as a boy. A poor swordsman by any standards. But his heart, ’tis good. Mostly.’

‘Who?’

‘The king’s younger brother, the Earl of Cornwall and Gloucester. John Lackland he is known as.’