Abel Darkwater was talking to Pope Gregory XIII. ‘Ah, how long is it since we saw each other last?’
‘My son, there is no Time here, and no clock to measure it by. We are in Eternity now.’
Abel Darkwater knew that they were at Checkpoint Zero on the Einstein Line, but he knew too that the Popes liked to believe in Eternity.
And this particular Pope had no regard for Time – in 1582 he had chopped ten days out of the calendar in order to align the all-important feast of Easter with its appointed date. The Papal Bull read, ‘Let it be done that after the fourth of October, the following day shall be the fifteenth. Amen.’
Anyone who refused to follow this new calendar was branded a heretic. For a long time – in fact, 170 years – this included every person in England.
Abel Darkwater knew that a man like this, who wanted Time on his own terms, was a man he could make a bargain with.
‘We may be in Eternity,’ began Abel Darkwater, ‘but Time is still moving forward in the rest of the Universe, and many things have happened to displease you. There is no God and there is no Church.’
‘I could have you burned at the stake for saying such things, Son of Satan.’
‘I have been burned at the stake,’ said Abel Darkwater mildly. ‘It was unpleasant but I am prepared to forget about it today.’
‘What do you want, foolish man?’
‘If I said to you that we could reverse Time, that we could plan a Universe where the Church was again all-powerful, and the Pope as the Head of the Church, the most powerful man of them all, what would you say to me?’
The Pope looked round out of his hooded eyes. There was no one listening.
‘I know enough to know that in the twenty-fourth century the Holy Roman Church collapses and the Vatican becomes a Museum.’
‘And do you know that what you describe begins in the twenty-first century when a company called Quanta learns how to control Time?’ said Abel Darkwater.
‘Quanta? You are talking about the Quantum?’ asked the Pope.
‘As it is called now and afterwards, oh yes, but the Quantum is all-powerful. Quanta was not all-powerful. Quanta was a multi-national corporation, an important bully, but not all-powerful, oh no.’
‘What are you offering me, son of man?’ said the Pope in a whisper.
‘A chance to turn back the clock!’ replied Darkwater triumphantly.
‘There is only one way to turn back the clock, and that is by finding the clock itself – the Timekeeper. Oh yes, surely you remember the Timekeeper?’
The Pope leaned back in his purple chair, his long nose resting against his long ringed fingers. Abel Darkwater’s round eyes were like two dark-lit orbs hypnotising him. His mind was moving back through red robes and purple corridors. Yes, he remembered, yes, he remembered, he remembered, and his memories swirled like smoke across a mirror …
Ficino, a boy with burning eyes running through the streets of Rome.
Heretical talk of an after-life without Heaven or Hell.
A green lion with its paws cut off.
A wolf caught in a jar.
The arrest of Maria Prophetessa.
The torture chamber. The rack. The pin and screw.
His private chambers at the Vatican. The heavy dark furniture, the fruit on the table, the long windows open to the evening, the faint sound of the choirboys singing a Te Deum. A new machine for smashing a man’s hand under torture. His prayer book, jewelled and worn. A decanter of wine.
The smoky memories cleared. He was through the mirror now. He was back in his own past.
He poured the wine. He drank. He was waiting.
Gabriel and Silver came choking up out of the well, and lay down flat on their faces. As Silver opened her eyes, she saw an orange rolling towards her. She put out her hand, took it, pulled off the peel, and gave half to Gabriel.
The sun was shining. The day was boiling hot. They were in a walled courtyard garden where beautiful fruit trees, oranges and lemons, were growing in pots. They could hear a choir singing a little way off. Above them was a wide stone window opening on to a small balcony. The window was open. The voices of two men could be heard coming from the room.
‘Where are we?’ whispered Silver.
‘I know not,’ said Gabriel. ‘I digged and digged and then I felt me pulled as if by a wind, it was like a wind.’
Hungry and thirsty and dusty, they ate two more oranges each, and looked around. The garden had peaches growing against the wall, and a winged cherub spouted water in a raised lead fountain. The garden was beautiful and deserted.
‘There’s a ladder,’ said Silver. ‘We could climb over the wall.’
There was a gardener’s ladder with a wide bottom and a triangle top for propping into the fruit trees. Gabriel went to drag it over to the wall, when Silver heard a commotion and beckoned him back to hide.
Through the little door into the garden came two men dressed in strange uniforms. A woman walked proudly between them.
‘It’s her!’ gasped Silver.
It was, unmistakably her, though very different. Regalia Mason, her hair as black as it would be blonde. Her eyes with their same fierce and proud stare.
She spoke haughtily in a language Silver didn’t understand.
‘’Tis Italian,’ said Gabriel. ‘My mother Eden be Italian, you do recall. These men be leading the woman to the Pope!’
‘The Pope!’ said Silver. ‘Then this must be the Vatican, like on the Einstein Line, but we’ve gone back in Time. Miles back in Time! Look at their shoes and clothes and stuff. They look like some of the people in the paintings on the wall at Tanglewreck. What shall we do?’
‘I know not. Wait – see what they do.’
One of the guards took out a horn and blew it. A face appeared at the open window. It was a man dressed in red; red robes and a red skullcap, with a big silver cross hanging round his neck.
‘A cardinal!’ whispered Gabriel.
‘Let the captive be brought forward. His Holiness commands it.’
The guards took Regalia Mason through a tiny locked door. Silver and Gabriel heard them lock it noisily again on the inside.
Gabriel looked round quickly, then darted over to the ladder. He propped the ladder against the wall, climbed up it, and over on to the balcony.
No! thought Silver, longing to call him back and knowing she couldn’t. There was only one thing she could do, and so she ran across the flagstones, and climbed up after him.
Kneeling side by side, they peered in.
The room was dark, even though the day was bright and the sun was hot.
They were directly behind the massy carved chair of the Pope himself. On the wall opposite him was a mirror flanked with gold candlesticks. The candles were lit, in spite of the sun. They could see the shadowed face of the Pope in the mirror, which meant that if they were not careful …
Suddenly the door opened, and in came Regalia Mason, her wrists bound behind her back. The Pope raised his hand. She was released. He raised his hand again, and the guards left the room, bowing and walking backwards. The red cardinal sat in a corner ready to take notes.
The Pope spoke. ‘So, Maria Prophetessa. We find that you still pursue your sorcery.’
‘I am an alchemist, not a street magician.’
The Pope nodded, his fingers tapping his lips. ‘What marvel have you brought me to buy your freedom?’
‘I have brought you Time itself.’
He watched her open the bag. He half expected the Universe would fall out, rolled up like a ball, hidden in its own thoughts. Had not St Augustine said that before Time began, the Universe had hidden in its own thoughts, waiting?
He understood that; each of us is a tiny universe, waiting.
He waited. From the bag she drew out a timepiece, bigger than a table clock but less grand than a papal clock. Angels decorated its double face. The twenty-four segments of the hours were etched with pictures. She said that each segment was an hour and that each hour was a century. The clock began with the birth of Christ, and it would run until the End of Time.
On the stroke of midnight on the last day of the twenty- fourth century, so the prophecy ran, Time would cease for ever.
The clock now stood in the sixteenth century, at 1582. Pope Gregory turned it over in his hands while she talked.
He smiled when he saw the pictures; he knew what they were, invented over two hundred years earlier for family friends of his, the Visconti of Milano. They were known as the Tarot cards. Some called them a harmless card game, some said they were much more; something occult and forbidden.
The zero hour showed the picture of a carnival Fool in tattered clothes, his little dog jumping beside him, as he stepped cheerfully off the edge of a cliff.
The first hour showed the Magician, Lord of the Universe.
The second hour showed the High Priestess, sitting between her pillars, Keeper of the Mysteries.
The third hour showed the Empress, Mother of the World.
The fourth hour showed the Emperor, worldly ruler of this realm.
The fifth hour showed the Pope himself, hooded and veiled, all-powerful between Heaven and Earth.
The sixth hour showed the Lovers – three of them. He sometimes called this picture the Eternal Triangle.
The seventh hour showed the Chariot Driver driving his Chariot, pulled by black and white sphinxes; worldly success and secret knowledge.
The eighth hour showed a woman taming a lion.
The ninth hour showed the Hermit, lantern in hand.
The tenth hour showed Dame Fortune turning her wheel.
The eleventh hour showed Justice, sword and scales hanging by her.
The twelfth hour, which was the zero hour, returned to the Fool.
The Pope turned the clock to its reverse face and scrutinised what he saw.
At the thirteenth hour was a man dangled upside down, one leg crossed over the other.
The fourteenth hour showed an angel, one foot on sea and one on shore, pouring green liquid from one gold cup to another.
The fifteenth hour showed the Devil.
At the sixteenth hour, a tower struck by lightning exploded.
The seventeenth hour showed a naked star-maiden by her pool pouring golden water.
The eighteenth hour bayed the Moon, silver and mysterious over a deep pool.
The nineteenth hour showed the Sun.
The twentieth hour showed Judgement: an angel with a trumpet.
The twenty-first hour showed the World, spinning and glorious, and complete.
And here the Pope frowned and paused, because his cards were only twenty-two – three rows of seven according to the sacred numbers, and the zero of the Fool. What were these other images he saw now? These final two?
Maria Prophetessa was smiling.
Cut in silver and gold were two images of the future. One was a road winding through the stars. The other was a child holding a clock.
Out on the balcony, Silver felt for the bag with the two pictures in it. Yes, it was still there, but how could they be in two places at the same time? But this isn’t the same Time, she thought to herself.
Pope Gregory looked carefully at the picture of the child and the clock. The clock was the clock he held in his hands. And the child?
‘The Timekeeper,’ said Maria Prophetessa.
The Pope poured them both wine. He reminded the woman he could have her burned and tortured.
‘For keeping a clock?’ She smiled again, her smile cold in the heat of the Italian summer evening. She was not afraid of him. He was slightly afraid of her, even though she was a woman and therefore inferior.
‘God has decreed the hours and the days,’ he said. ‘We have evidence that you do not follow our new calendar.’
‘Not so,’ said Maria Prophetessa. ‘Much of magic was worked in the ten days that you took away. We call them now our secret days – locked out of Time, but powerful still.’
‘You will be burned for this,’ said the Pope.
He was about to call for the guards, but his gaze fell on the strange beauty of the clock, and he felt himself compelled to know more of it. He tapped his long hawk nose with his fingers.
‘What do you say is the purpose of this clock, this Timekeeper?’
Maria Prophetessa paused as the evening shadows fell in bars across the window, and then she began to speak.
‘Long ago on the banks of the Nile, the holy priests of the great god Ra ordained that there should be twelve hours of daytime and twelve hours of night.
‘Ra, falcon-headed, Ruler of the Sun, punted his boat across the sky every day, and at night sailed through the Underworld, until it was time for him to be reborn at daybreak.
‘The worshippers of Ra understood the ancient mysteries of the Universe, and to them was revealed a prophecy that the dying god would be reborn at the End of Time.
‘This god would be the new ruler of the Universe.
‘The great dynasties of Egypt passed into the Sands of Time, and the sphinx’s head was buried in the dust. Moses, the Israelite, brought a new god out of Egypt, made not of gold, nor in the image of an animal, but in the image of Man. This God Yahweh had a son, Jesus, whose birth we saw in a star.
‘The pattern of the Heavens is clear. Twenty-four centuries will pass until the End of Time.’
‘And then?’ said the Pope, watching her.
‘The god will be reborn and Time will belong to him.’
‘But you say that Time will no longer exist.’
‘Time will exist no more as we have known it.’
‘This is a mystery,’ said the Pope.
Maria Prophetessa inclined her head.
‘And the child? Who is the child in the twenty-fourth symbol?’ said the Pope.
‘She is the Child with the Golden Face,’ said Maria Prophetessa.
‘And what is the meaning of that?’ asked the Pope.
‘I do not know. Not all can be revealed.’
‘You do not know, or you will not say?’
‘The child is a mystery, like the clock,’ said Maria Prophetessa.
The Pope said, ‘You are not a believer.’
‘I do not believe what you believe, that is all the difference between us, but I am a believer.’
‘You are a heretic.’ The Pope banged his fist on the table.
‘I do not believe what you believe,’ she said again.
‘You have been arrested on suspicion of sorcery and heresy, and in your defence, you offer me a clock?’ The Pope was snarling like a wolf.
‘I am offering you the secret of Time!’
‘How did you come by this clock?’ demanded the Pope.
Maria Prophetessa was silent.
Then the Pope did a terrible thing. He took the clock and hurled it at the wall, where it broke into pieces.
‘Curses on you to the limits of the Heavens!’ shouted Maria Prophetessa, on her hands and knees trying to capture the beheaded angels, pendulum rods, tiny cogs, jewelled numbers.
The Pope laughed at her. ‘I care nothing for your sorcery, woman, and I care nothing for your toys. The clock is destroyed, and your raving prophecies with it. The Church of God will last until the End of Time and the End of Time will be that day when God takes His flock to His Heaven, and Hell is shut for ever on your weeping.’
Maria Prophetessa lunged forward to grab at the wounded fragments of the clock, and, as she reached past the Pope’s chair, she looked out on to the balcony and into the faces of Silver and Gabriel.
There was a second’s pause, and then she twisted a vial from round her neck and flung it straight at them, crying, ‘Away with you, away with you, it is not the time!’
The Pope looked round, surprised, but saw nothing, because Silver and Gabriel had vanished.
He rang the bell, and the guards came and dragged away Maria Prophetessa, screaming oaths and curses as she went.
Then the Pope bent down and carefully collected all the pieces of the clock and put them into the bag and put the bag into his drawer, and locked it.
Abel Darkwater was leaning forward, watching the Pope intently. He had half-hypnotised him, and his memories were cast behind him on the wall.
As the Pope returned to full consciousness, Darkwater was saying, ‘You failed. You did not destroy the Timekeeper.’
‘The pieces were stolen from me.’
‘And taken to Peru, where a new emerald was cut, to replace the one you kept to wear in your ring.’
The Pope shrugged his shoulders.
‘And it came by way of a pirate ship to England in the reign of Elizabeth the First.’
‘She was a heretic,’ said the Pope. ‘We excommunicated her.’
‘And then its history is hidden until it was found again in Jamaica in 1762 by an apprentice to a clockmaker called Harrison.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘That is the question,’ said Abel Darkwater.
For many minutes the Pope and Darkwater were silent. A serving nun came and brought them wine.
‘All could be altered, oh yes, if I had the Timekeeper again. If I had it, we could thread our way fine as a needle back through the fabric of Time, and what has happened need not happen.’
‘What has happened has happened,’ said the Pope.
‘Indeed it has, oh yes, but it need not.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying,’ said Abel Darkwater patiently, ‘that the last of the hours of the clock are the ones that matter to us. In the twenty-first century, where I am living at present, there begins for the first time in Time, if you will pardon the expression, disturbances, rents, tears, in Time’s fabric, which, if properly understood, allow us a moment to change history, I mean, to choose our future. Your old enemy is your enemy still. Would you be defeated by her?’
‘Maria Prophetessa?’
‘How she winds through Time!’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘Her name now is Regalia Mason, and it is she, oh yes, it is she, who stands at the head of the company called Quanta, which, if we do nothing …’
‘Will become the Quantum,’ said the Pope, his eyes flashing like his emerald ring.
‘The Quantum,’ repeated Abel Darkwater. ‘Ruler of the Universe, a new god indeed.’
‘And if we act now?’ said the Pope.
‘Victory will be ours.’
‘And Maria Prophetessa?’
The two men smiled at one another – the smile of a crocodile and the smile of a wolf.