1194, Nottingham

Becks managed to pick her way through the picket lines of soldiers. Not too difficult. The few men on guard duty were too busy discussing how they were going to spend their share of the spoils once Nottingham had fallen. Rumour was, King Richard was going to turn a blind eye to any looting or pillaging in the immediate aftermath, just as if this was a siege taking place in the corner of some foreign country.

Towards the rear of the camp she found the assembled carts of the baggage train and, tethered nearby in a temporarily erected corral, the horses. She picked one, untied it, led it quietly out and was cantering away up the track towards the nearby forests before the mead-soaked old boy dozing instead of watching over the animals registered they’d become restless and that one of them had in fact gone missing.

The canter became a carefree gallop along the dirt track leading up to the brow of the hill overlooking Nottingham. She took the north-east route through the forest, partially following Liam’s directions, partially relying on the precise coordinates in her head.

Liam had warned her to be wary of bandits, but the forest presented no threats to her; the shabby band of villains Liam had mentioned, Locke’s people, had either disbanded and gone home or disappeared deeper into the woods in an attempt to evade any punitive raids Richard might decide to unleash.

Through several hours of night she covered winding miles of nothing more than the hissing of trees stirred by a lively breeze and hooting birds until finally, just as her silicon mind indicated she would, she caught sight of the dark and low form of the outbuildings of the priory.

Sébastien Cabot was awake in an instant. His soldier’s instinct to reach for the dagger hidden under his straw mattress kicked in, only to be stopped by the lightning-quick grasp of a firm hand round his wrist.

From the slither of moonlight stealing through the narrow window into his bare room he could see just the dark outline of someone leaning over him. ‘Who – who is …?’ he blustered, his voice still thick with sleep.

‘This is Lady Rebecca,’ she whispered.

Cabot struggled to sit up. The wooden frame beneath his mattress creaked. ‘Good grief! What are ye doing here? The other monks –’

Her hand smothered his mouth and pushed his head down heavily against the mattress with a soft thud. ‘Be quiet and listen!’ Her hand remained clamped over his lips until he finally nodded. She lifted her hand and he sucked in a much-needed breath.

‘I have obtained the Grail document,’ she said without any preamble.

‘WHAT? MY GO–!’ His voice bounced off the stone walls of his room.

Her hand clamped his mouth firmly again. Above the back of her slender hand and the bulbous end of his florid pockmarked nose, she noted the wide rolling whites of his eyes. For a moment she considered how expressive human eyes could be; just those alone seemed to be able to communicate a whole language of emotions. Cabot, for example, right now appeared to be communicating an emotion akin to profound shock. She made a note to try rolling her eyes like that sometime.

‘I also have the Treyarch Confession,’ she added, her hand remaining over his mouth as he grunted and struggled. ‘I will need your assistance in translating a section of the Treyarch Confession.’ She waited a few moments for that request to settle in and for Cabot to stop making that muffled mewling noise beneath her firmly clamped palm. When she was sure he wasn’t going to blurt out loudly again, she slowly lifted her hand. ‘Will you assist?’

Cabot gasped for air again, sucking in breath through his mouth. After a few seconds he managed to talk in a hoarse whisper. ‘Ye … ye have them both?’

She nodded.

‘Here? Right here with ye?’

‘Yes. Will you assist me?’

‘Good Lord! I – I …’ Cabot struggled to frame an answer. Becks once more hushed him, this time with a finger pressed against his whisker-lined lips.

‘We will discuss this further in your graveyard,’ she said. ‘Put clothes on now. I will see you there in five minutes.’ She let go of his wrist and got up. ‘And bring a candle.’

He picked his way through weeds and brambles that scratched at his bare ankles below the coarse hem of his robe. By the scudding light of the moon he spotted the dark outline of Lady Rebecca standing perfectly still beside a gravestone.

‘My lady?’ he called softly.

‘Here,’ she replied.

He joined her. ‘Ye … Last I heard, ye were in Oxford.’

‘John has relocated to Nottingham. King Richard has come north with an army.’

‘Yes … yes, the county is full of this news. But – the Grail? How did ye find – where was –?’

‘The Grail was recovered from the bandit known as “Hood” earlier today,’ she replied quickly, as if answering the question was valuable time wasted.

‘How did they manage to find him?’

‘That is unimportant. The Grail document can only be decoded with the correct cardan grille,’ she said, reaching into the folds of her dark robe.

She saw the whites of Cabot’s wide and round eyes again. ‘Ye have it?’ he asked. ‘Don’t tell me ye have stolen it from King Richard?’

She ignored his question and calmly pulled out the Treyarch. ‘This document is written in Latin and Norman French,’ she began, ‘but there is one passage written in a language I have no data on. Your assistance is required to identify the language.’

She carefully started to unroll the parchment. ‘You may light your candle now if there is inadequate light for you to see.’

Cabot shook his head impatiently. ‘’Tis not necessary. The moon is enough. Please … continue.’

She resumed, turning the wooden spindle and spreading out the long curled sheet of parchment on the ground. By the moon’s wan light the pale parchment seemed to almost glow, the dark spider-lines of ink across it every bit as clear and legible as they needed to be.

‘The unidentifiable language is located here,’ said Becks, pointing to a passage three-quarters of the way down the scroll. She put rocks out along the edge of the parchment to stop it curling up again and then leaned back so that her shadow didn’t fall across it.

Cabot squatted down and inspected the writing closely. ‘This here,’ he said, running his fingers along the curls of writing, ‘’tis a form of Gaelic, I believe.’

‘You know this language?’

He grimaced. ‘I know some words of it. And there are many forms of this language. I could perhaps translate this for ye if I had some time – and a library of other Gaelic works to compare to.’

She cocked her head and her eyebrows locked in concentration for a moment. After a minute of silent consideration she nodded slowly. A decision silently made. ‘The contamination risk is acceptable for the moment,’ she uttered.

‘What is that, my lady?’

Again she ignored him. ‘You will come with me, please,’ she said.

‘Where to?’

She got to her feet and began foraging among the tall weeds around the gravestone until she finally found what she was after: a long lumber nail. She crouched down in front of the gravestone and began scratching deep lines into the stone.

‘What are ye doing?’

‘Communicating.’

She carried on in silence, nothing but the sound of scraping and scratching and stone grit tumbling to the ground. ‘I am requesting an immediate portal.’

‘What is this? What are ye up to?’ asked Cabot once again.

She turned to look up at him impatiently. ‘You are coming with me.’

‘Coming with ye? Where to?’

‘The future.’