The Indigo King - James A. Owen [111]
“You have a Compass Rose?” Jack said, suddenly excited. “Which knight?”
Geoffrey shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said, moving aside several piles of parchments. “I’m just riding along on the skiff. I haven’t any idea where the river is flowing.”
“Jack,” John said, looking over the monk’s accumulations. “I think I’ve read some of these! I think these are some of the actual Histories!”
“I can do you one better,” said Hugo. “There’s one over here that I actually wrote in.”
The others clustered around Hugo’s discovery and realized they recognized it themselves. It was the Grail book that had been sent to Charles.
“Oh, yes, that,” Geoffrey said from behind a mound of books. “A very odd Frenchman gave it to me only recently. I had just begun transcribing it, but then parts of several pages mysteriously disappeared. I can’t imagine what happened to them.”
“That’s too bad,” said Jack. “I’m sorry your work was interrupted.”
“Oh, it didn’t slow me down too much,” Geoffrey told him. “I’m quite good at, uh, extrapolating details from limited information.”
“Making things up out of whole cloth, you mean,” said Jack.
“More or less, yes,” Geoffrey admitted. “Sorry about the mess, by the way. I’ve been collecting these writings for years, and I just ran out of places to keep them all.”
“I think we can fill in some of the fabric here,” said Hugo, “at least where my own contribution is concerned.”
On a clean sheet of parchment, Hugo recreated the entire message he’d actually written, which had been truncated by the torn page:
The Cartographer is Merlin, who cannot be trusted.
He who seeks the means to conquer and rule
the islands of the Archipelago and our own world
will follow the true Grail and the children of Holy
Blood will be saved, by willing choice and sacrifice
that time be restored for the future’s sake.
And in God’s name, don’t close the door!
—Hugo Dyson
John breathed hard and rubbed the back of his neck. “If we’d only had this whole message,” he said to Hugo, “we might have made all kinds of different choices, starting with never having trusted Merlin.”
“Oh, Merlin?” said Geoffrey. “I’ve written a biography of him. A fascinating man.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jack told him dryly.
“Someone sent the book to us,” said John. “So someone, somewhere, somewhen, knows more about this than we do.”
“Found it!” Geoffrey exclaimed happily. “Now, if I can just remember the working of it …”
“Here,” Jack said, taking the Compass Rose. “Allow me.”
He swiftly found the appropriate place and made the mark that would bring someone from the Archipelago.
“One thing’s certain,” John said as Geoffrey, accompanied by Fred and Uncas, went to fetch some bread and cheese for his guests. “We prevented Mordred from establishing the Winterland. Geoffrey of Monmouth is in the twelfth century. If Mordred had regained the upper hand, Geoffrey wouldn’t be here now, in our England.”
“So you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve, then,” Rose said as she examined Archimedes. “This is good, is it not?”
“It is,” John replied, clearly uncomfortable discussing Mordred in front of his own daughter. “Now our objective is to simply return home to our own time.”
“You’re here now,” said Rose. “Doesn’t that make this time your time?”
John rubbed his temples. “She’s another one of those, isn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Jack. “And more are on the way, unless I miss my guess.” He pointed at the Compass Rose, which had begun to glow. “Company’s coming.”
Geoffrey and the badgers had just returned with the food when there was a sharp knock at the door below.
Rather than bring someone else into an overcrowded room, they all went down to meet the new visitor.
It was the Green Knight.
Jack and John both cried out in joy at the thought of a reunion with Chaz, but an instant later their faces fell. This was indeed the Green Knight, but it was a different one.
“I am called Abelard,” the knight said in a clipped French accent, bowing deeply. “Have I the honor of addressing the Caretakers?”
John and Jack stepped forward.