Subject 574-A: Ah, shit, now | gotta think about this. 
Uhhh... shit. Probably Frank, or his little posse, told me 
we was gonna be stayin’ up there tonight to talk about 
somethin’. 


Dr. Jankovic: And you went? 


Subject 574-A: They said they had baked beans, so shit 
yeah, | went. 


Dr. Jankovic: What happened when you arrived? 


Subject 574-A: Well, nothin’ much at first. | bummed 
around... heh, on the first floor. Heard a lotta people on 
the next one up, but | didn't really want to bother with 
those guys more'n | needed to. 


Dr. Jankovic: Please get to the point, if you can. 


Subject 574-A: Right, sorry... tend to, uh, ramble about 
stuff. Anyways. So I'm bumming around on the first floor, 
and Frank's crew comes down. Frank starts preachin' to 
the dozen or so guys there, talkin' about a place where 
we'd never need to worry ‘bout cops or gangs or nuthin’. 
We asked where it was, 'n he said we was in it. 


Dr. Jankovic: What was the general reaction? 


Subject 574-A: Confusion, cos that shit didn't make 
sense. He goes on, ‘bout there being lottsa new buildins 
around here, and how they was gonna make even more 
for us. Then, he started askin’ for volunteers... 


wandering knight is taken into the home of a nobleman, and during 
the feasting they are attacked by a knight with the head of a stag, or 
a stag with the head of a knight, it changes from chapter to chapter. 
He challenges them to seek out the Rose Chapel, a stained-glass 
church built where Maura of Troyes shed a river of miraculous tears. 
So far, so Green Knight. They gird themselves up and take to the 
saddle, and follow the trail of the stag knight, righting wrongs as they 
go. Then they approach a shadowy canyon. The stag knight flies out 
of it—presumably in human-head, stag-body form—and shouts for 
them to give up their quest; even he's terrified by whatever lies 
within. Being your average Arthurian meatheads they swear an oath 
to brave the dangers of the canyon." 


"What happens?" she said, craning her neck. 


"Nothing. That's the thing. There's just -" he turned the yellow 
parchment—"a blank page." It was black from top to bottom, 
saturated with ink. "It's unbelievably literary for the time; makes 
Chaucer look like a second-rater. Some commentaries on A Journey 
just treat it as a misprint—it ends the first fragment—but here it is, in 
the original manuscript." 


"What does it mean?" asked Maria. "Just that it was dark?" 


"Not exactly ... it's more like Gervase sees the darkness as 
swallowing up any mention of what happened. We're never told 
what happens in the canyon—t's like the text has been redacted. 
But when we pick up with them something has changed. Most of the 
knights are dead—the chap we've been following goes home but his 
castle's ruined and his family slain. There's a long digression here -" 
he turned the pages—'very long, actually. It's one of the fragments, 
so I'll cut it short; he meets the stag knight and they have a lengthy 
debate on the nature of heaven, hell and reality; except all the 
concepts were far too advanced for the time, as though the writer 
were channeling post-Reformation thinkers." 


"No wonder Gervase got written out of history." 


"Most commentaries assume it was a later addition, something that 
couldn't have been in the original text. Another strike for the critics. 
Then things get weird." 


"Weirder than they already are, you mean?" 


"Definitely. The knight goes back to South-Cadbyri Palis, Gervase's 
Camelot-in-all-but-name, and they sally out and fight monsters, 
except it's written in the most bizarre, repetitive way. Look here— 
this was in the chapbook; it's an honest-to-god itemised list of all the 
giants, demons and goblins they kill or capture. The dragon's new, 
though." 


"It isn'ta good Arthurian legend without a dragon-slaying,” Maria 
said, nuzzling his arm. 


"This one is slightly unconventional. It doesn't breathe fire, well most 
of the time. It still eats people, though. The thing is, they slay it 
again, and again, and again. They chop off its head, they put it ina 
cauldron to boil its flesh off its bones, they crush it under a boulder... 
And the next chapter it's back and they have to do it all over again." 


"Sounds like it represents something." 


"Too right. What, | don't know. Look, each chapter starts with an 
illustrated letter of them trying to kill the dragon." It was a weirdly 
scrawny, beaked thing with a long mane in the heraldric tradition 
that looked thoroughly disgusted by the knights' attempts at 
dispatching it—here it was, being impaled on a dozen glaives. It was 
probably intended to be wild with pain, though Edward thought it 
looked like it was just rolling its eyes. 


"The knight has a son and grows old, and his son becomes a knight 
too—and then one day, while he's making merry in the hall, the stag 
knight comes in and challenges them to seek the Chapel. It's 
unclear whether it's warning the knights they haven't yet completed 
their quest, or whether time has somehow looped." 


"The son becomes his father," observed Maria. 


"This time the knight succeeds in his quest—he finds the chapel. But 
it's ruined, broken. The spring of healing tears is dry. And then the 
writing goes mad. Our hero hunts down the stag knight and eats 
him, then tries to disembowel himself, but is resurrected by some 
kind of angel, it's not really clear—people die and reappear without 


rhyme or reason. There are these huge battles out of nowhere, like 
the world's tearing itself apart. The sky starts raining blood. The 
knight volunteers for one last mission to try and set things right—to 
sail to Hyperboria, the land beyond the wind." 


"The mythical land of the Cimmerians." 


"Yes. There's a whole sequence here about his voyage on a raft, 
travelling into the icy north. But it's not very convincing—he recycles 
the Sirens and Charybdis from The Odyssey, even the island of the 
Lotus Eaters. It's like he's trying to put the voyage into words his 
listeners will understand. Things get interesting when he finally drifts 
ashore. Gervais wrote Cimmeria as this desolate wasteland where 
it's twilight all the time; the knight finds a frozen body of a woman in 
a ditch. The people are all half-starved; they've nearly forgotten 
language and live in these half-collapsed huts, living on root croops 
and herding a few skinny sheep. It's obviously a metaphor; Edward 
Forsyth -" 


"Who o" 


"The man who printed the fragments of the Viage as A Journey to 
the End of the World." 


"He has your name," said Maria, sleepily. 


"He obviously believed Cimmeria was England after the apocalypse. 
It's a valid interpretation—there's a whole section where the knight 
loses his way on the ocean due to mist and can't be sure whether 
he's progressing or regressing." 


"You bastards, you blew it up," she said, not quite accurately. It was 
the first time he had heard her swear. 


"Exactly; but 800 years before Heston. Other commentators just 
take the knight's doubts as a religious analogy, feeling unsure about 
your faith, et cetera. There's a sort of compromise position— 
Cimmeria represents Gervais’ own view of the world around him, 
seemingly falling to bits after the knightly golden age. Remember, 
this was back when Geoffrey of Monmouth was considered a 
reliable non-fiction writer. King Arthur was seen as a historical 


figure." 
"How does it end?" 


Edward narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the spidery writing. "He 
finds the Rose Chapel, intact, the miraculous spring flowing again." 


"That doesn't make sense." 


"You bet. He goes in and prays, and he knows—this is really odd for 
the time, there should be some thundering voice from heaven or an 
angel or something to tell him—that his own land is safe, but that he 
can never leave Cimmeria for the rest of his life." 


"It is a horrible book and it ends sadly," decided Maria. "Why do you 
think Marshall wanted it?" 


"Well, it's an important manuscript—some of the things Gervase 
does here rewrite our understanding of the development of English 
literature. It must be quite valuable. I'd love to see what a 
medievalist would make of the dragon." Except that'll never happen 
now, he said to himself, because of you. He turned the last page 
and closed the iron cover. Maria drew up the covers and he slept. 


He was awakened by a thin pale light shining through the window, 
illuminating Maria's arm draped over his chest. He looked at the 
bedside carriage clock—it was already nine o'clock. 


"| have to go," he said, gently moving Maria's arm. "You're in danger 
if Marshall finds me here." 


Maria, stirred, looked up at him with her brown eyes. "You think I'm 
fragile, that | need to be protected. Don't forget I'm a Beaumont. We 
can take care of ourselves." 


"| don't want you to suffer for my mistakes. Take the codex; I'm sorry 
but you mustn't let anyone see it. No-one can know you have it 
back." 


"Don't worry. It's not going to be on my coffee table. And you mustn't 
go out in those," she said, as Edward picked at his ruined trousers. 
"You're too tall for Daddy's clothes, but maybe Grandfather's will 


work." 


Thus outfitted with a dead man's suit—the fit not quite up to 
Huntsman's or Stathopoulos's standards but still comfortable—and a 
big black umbrella like the wings of a bat, he kissed her, and left the 
Beaumont house for the last time. 


Fingering the shard of glass he had removed from the pocket of his 
last suit, Edward stopped under the porch of St Martin-in-the-Fields 
and, finding Death's last text, selected 'Answer by phone’. 


"Hello, is that Death? ... Well, | don't know his name, is he your 
son? Just put him on, please, this is urgent ... Yes, it's Edward. Of 
course I'm still alive. ... No, forget the comb, | ... No, | don't have the 
replica ... | can imagine. Expensive. ... I'm sure it didn't come out of 
your pocket money, was that your mother? Oh. You start early these 
days, don't you? Look, I've got something way better if you like 
conspiracies. You show this to any news agency and ... No, meet 
me at O'Reilly's in half an hour. ... Well, this isn't a movie, and | 
don't intend to die before showing it to you. ... Better make it an 
hour and a half then, Jesus. Make sure you bring enough change for 
the fare. Or get War to give you a lift, | presume at least he's passed 
his test." 


Edward stashed the phone in his other pocket and leaned against 
the pillar. It was faint, now, but it was coming to back to him; he 
could see the pieces in movement. Not six moves ahead, not yet, 
but four, or three. Enough. Now he just had to stay alive long 
enough to reach the endgame. 


This time Edward stood across the street and watched them arrive, 
one ata time, taking their seats by the window as they ordered 
milkshakes, Coke, a pint of beer: Death the kid; the spotty young 
man who rejoiced in the name Pestilence; War, waddling in playing 
a game on his iPhone; and a grim-faced man in his late twenties or 
early thirties with prematurely greying hair and military surplus togs 
he presumed must be Famine. He checked his watch—fashionably 
late for only the second time in his life. He strolled over the crossing 
and approached, slowing as he did so until he was close enough to 
see the on-rails FPS on War's mobile. Death looked up and caught 


his eye. 


The men in black paramilitary jumpers and dog tags around their 
neck approached him from behind, clapped a hand over his mouth 
with casual ease, grabbed his arms and pushed him sideways into 
the rear of the waiting van. 


Death punched War's arm and shouted something, and the Four 
Horsemen of the Apocalypse rolled off their seats to take cover 
under the table with long-practiced grace. No-one else on the street 
or in the bar even noticed Edward's disappearance. 


Edward was getting used to journeys where he couldn't see where 
was going. No blindfold at first, just a windowless van and 
handcuffs. Then, for a few minutes, light again; clean, clinical walls 
and stairs edged with crisp yellow safety tape. Making a sudden and 
jarring appearance, the grey sky, still resolutely spitting down at the 
earth. Now the blindfold, as the roaring in front of him rose like a 
dragon. 


My first helicopter ride, he thought. He had envisioned it going rather 
more glamorously. 


"Mobile Task Force Epsilon-Seven ‘Santa's Little Regifters' reporting 
in," someone said into a radio close to him. "Package acquired." 


He was reasonably sure—indeed was counting on—the fact that the 
men around him were not in the employ of Marshall, Carter & Dark. 
Exactly who they were working for was a matter he'd have to clear 
up as he went. 


The helicopter's drone descended, stabilised, then petered away. 


After being unloaded like a sack of potatoes, Edward was led 
through several hydraulic-sounding doors before the gift of sight was 
finally, gloriously returned. He stood blinking in the glaringly bright 
white corridors, the dark balaclava'd men who had abducted him 
filling out various forms he was sure pertained to him before handing 
him into the custody of less militarised but equally alert men with 
blue hard hats and truncheons. There would be no bluffing these 


men, he was sure—he got the impression they were trusted to do 
their job well. 


"Don't | get at least the courtesy of an introduction?” he asked 
cheerily. "You did just snatch me off the street, after all." 


"You're here to answer some questions for us," retorted one of the 
men, "and then we might end up letting you go. Don't count on being 
able to remember anything we say." 


He was led down through level after level of brightly lit concrete, 
punctuated by small safety glass windows through which he caught 
glimpses of men in laboratory coats at work, though the experiments 
in progress seemed to verge on the lunatic. White coats watching 
from a distance as a man in an orange jumpsuit painted a door 
clamped horizontally to a pair of workbenches. Examining a horse, 
hanging in a set of medical stirrups from the ceiling, as though it 
were some kind of alien creature. Pouring a popular brand of 
detergent on clothes within a fumigation tank via a robotic arm. 


The plaque on the office door read "Professor J Gelding DPhil 
DEng"—when the door was opened Edward saw a large desk. The 
man sat behind it was small with shiny round glasses which 
obscured his eyes and a close-cropped horseshoe of grey hair. The 
room was outfitted like a doctor's surgery, with a medical cabinet, 
reclining bed covered in green construction paper and a small chair 
in front of the desk. 


"Close the door, please, Agent Howard," he said to the hard-hatted 
man, who complied. "Please ensure the subject is searched prior to 
interview." 


Edward submitted to the indignity of search by Howard, who turned 
out his pockets, patted down Grandfather Beaumont's suit and 
shone a bright light in his mouth. His car keys, wallet and phone 
were taken and put in a tray near the door—hopefully to be returned, 
he thought. His glass MC&D membership pass was held up and 
passed to the Professor, who turned it over thoughtfully. 


"Please take a seat." Edward settled in the uncomfortable plastic 
chair across from the little bald man. Agent Howard stood a 


respectful distance away, watching. 


"This is an interview, not an interrogation, Mr Gradley. Having said, 
that, we make use of applied pressure techniques and will employ 
them if we feel you are being untruthful. We are not law enforcement 
personnel, which means you are not under caution. That also means 
we are not obliged to offer you legal counsel. As you may have 
already surmised from the manner you were brought in, you are also 
not subject to the protections of the law." 


"| understand." 
"What is the nature of your relation with Marshall, Carter & Dark?"