The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [571]
“St. Zvlkx—where is he?”
“He got the bus into Swindon this morning. Why?”
I outlined my suspicions.
“Zvlkx a rogue member of the ChronoGuard? But why? What’s he up to? Why risk permanent eradication for dubious fame as a thirteenth-century seer?”
“How much did he get from the Toast Marketing Board?”
“Twenty-five grand.”
“Hardly a fortune. Can we look in his room?”
“Outrageous!” replied Joffy. “I would be guilty of a shameful breach of trust if I were to allow a room search in his absence. I have a spare key here.”
Zvlkx’s room was much as you would suppose a monk’s cell to be. Spartan in the extreme. He slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and had only a table and chair as furniture. On the table was a Bible. It was only after we started searching that we found a CD Walkman under the mattress, along with a few copies of Big & Bouncy and Fast Horse.
“A betting man?” I asked.
“Drinking, betting, smoking, wenching—he did it all.”
“The magazines show he can read English, too. What are you looking for, Joff?”
Joffy had been opening the drawers of his desk and looking under the pillow.
“His Book of Revealments. He usually hides it here.”
“So! You’ve searched his room before. Suspicious?”
Joffy looked sheepish. “I’m afraid so. His behavior is less like a saint’s and more like . . . well, a cheap vulgarian’s—when I translate, I have to make certain . . . adjustments.”
I pulled out his desk drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the bottom was an envelope. “Bingo!”
It contained a single one-way Gravitube ticket all the way to Bali. Joffy raised his eyebrows, and we exchanged nervous glances. Zvlkx was definitely up to something.
Joffy accompanied me into Swindon, and we drove up and down the streets trying to find the wayward saint. We visited the site of his old cathedral at Tesco’s but couldn’t find him, so went on a circuit that took in the law courts, the SpecOps Building and the theater before driving past the university and down Commercial Road. Joffy spotted him outside Pete & Dave’s, lumbering up the street.
“There!”
“I see him.”
We abandoned the car and trotted to keep up with the scruffy figure dressed in only a blanket. It was just bad luck that he glanced furtively behind and spotted us. He darted across the street. I don’t know whether his lank and uncut hair had got in his eyes or he had forgotten about traffic during his stay in the Dark Ages, but he didn’t look where he was going and ran straight in front of a bus. His head cracked the windscreen, and his bony body was thrown sideways onto the pavement with a thump. Joffy and I were first on the scene. A younger man might have survived relatively unscathed, but Zvlkx, his body weakened through poor diet and disease, didn’t stand much of a chance. He was coughing and crawling with all the strength he could muster to the entrance of the nearest shop.
“Easy, Your Grace,” murmured Joffy, laying a hand on his shoulder and stopping him moving. “You’re going to be all right.”
“Bollocks,” said Zvlkx in a state of exasperation, “bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. Suruiued the plague to get hit by a sodding Number Twenty-three bus. Bollocks.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s annoyed.”
“Who are you?” I said. “Are you ChronoGuard?”
His eyes flicked across to mine, and he groaned. Not only dying, but dying and rumbled.
He made another attempt to reach the doorway and collapsed.
“Someone call for an ambulance!” yelled out Joffy.
“It’s too late for that,” he muttered. “Too late for me, too late for all of us. This wasn’t how it was meant to turn out; time is out of joint—and it won’t be for me to set it right. Ah, well. Joffy, take this and use it wisely, as I would not haue done. Bury me in the grounds of my cathedral—and don’t tell them who I was. I liued a sinner, but I’d like to die a saint. Oh, and if a fat slapper named Shirley tells you I promised her a thousand quid, she’s a bloody liar.”
He coughed again, shivered for a moment and stopped