The Armageddon Conspiracy (49 page)

She wondered where they were going.
To
the nearest army base, the nearest town?
Glastonbury wasn’t too
far.
Maybe she’d end up back at her convent.
Wherever they were
going, it would be difficult getting there.
There was no roadside
lighting and the snow was swirling in the wind.

After a few minutes, the carriage
stopped.
Gresnick pointed his torch at a signpost at a
roundabout.

‘
We can go to either
Glastonbury or Cheddar,’ he yelled.
‘Which way, Lucy?’

For a second, she was speechless.
Why
was Gresnick asking her?
Not so long ago, he’d pointed a pistol at
her head.
‘Are you sure you want me to decide?’

‘
This is all about you,
Lucy.
I trust you to do the right thing.’

Do the right
thing
?
Lucy had no idea what that was.
She
was operating on pure instinct now.
To go back to Glastonbury was
to go back to her cell, to close the door and wait for the end.
There was a time in the last twenty-four hours when that would have
been her preferred choice.
Now, she wanted something else.
Closure
– of who she was,
of Raphael’s mural, of whatever role Morson claimed was
hers.

‘
Cheddar,’ she said.
‘There’s a famous Gorge there that I visited it as a kid.’
She
stared at the bright star in the sky.
‘And it contains a cave
called King Solomon’s Temple.’

64

T
hey had been on
the move for over an hour.
There were no signs of pursuit.
Lucy had
expected to see flares exploding in the sky and hear the sound of
Morson’s trucks, but there was nothing.
The snow hadn’t let up.
That meant it would be impossible to follow their tracks.
She
wondered if Morson would know to go to Cheddar Gorge, or if he had
been expecting her to choose Glastonbury as the next logical
move.

They were making slow progress in the
dark and heavy snow.
Luckily, Gresnick had managed to light a
couple of lamps on the side of the hearse, so they had just enough
light to see the way ahead, but the main road had vanished beneath
the snow.
Gresnick couldn’t be sure he was heading the right
way.

Lucy reckoned they had put about four
or five miles between them and the chapel; enough to make it
unlikely Morson would find them, at least until morning.
This part
of the country mostly consisted of fields and woods, so she wasn’t
surprised when they began to make their way through the edge of a
forest.

She sat up, hunched like a ball,
clasping her knees and staring ahead.
All the time, she was aware
of James.
He was lying on his side, asleep.
She wasn’t relishing
the moment when they’d have to talk.
With all their history, every
word would be loaded with unspoken meanings.
It was so long since
she last deciphered language like that, words that were all subtext
and practically meaningless on the surface.

As the carriage made its way through
the trees, the road grew narrower.
They had probably strayed off
the main road and onto a country track.
Maybe they were going in
the wrong direction.
How could they tell?
They might need to stop
and wait until morning to find their bearings.

As they moved deeper into the forest,
Lucy huddled up even more.
She was certain they were being watched
from the trees.
Strange sounds broke out all around.
She imagined
the floor of the forest had come to life, and millions of insects
were crawling towards them.

The trail disappeared and a dense
screen of trees blocked their way.
The carriage stopped.

‘
We can’t go any
further tonight,’ Gresnick said.

‘
We’ll freeze,’
Cardinal Sinclair objected.
‘We need to light a fire, get some
proper shelter.’

Gresnick nodded.
‘I’ll go on a reccy,
see if I can find a better spot.’

Lucy got out of the back of the
carriage and stood shivering in the dark.
The trees swayed in the
wind.
Their branches kept making odd, creaking noises.
She’d never
been anywhere quite so creepy.

Sinclair came over, rubbing his hands
together.
‘Hungry?
I found a packed-lunch stuffed under the
driver’s seat: a couple of sandwiches, some chocolate bars, a
couple of bags of peanuts and a carton of orange.’

‘
Not right now,’ Lucy
said.

‘
How are you bearing
up?
You’ve been off your medication for a while.
Are you feeling a
bit strange?’

‘
I’m OK.’

‘
What about
James?’

‘
He’s
asleep.’

‘
We’ll let him
rest.’

‘
Cardinal, I never got
the chance to thank you properly for what you did for me back at
Tintagel.
You saved my life.’

‘
It was for all our
sakes, Lucy.
There’s only one thing Morson and I agree on: you are
destiny’s child.’

Lucy couldn’t help smiling.
As a
teenager, she used to listen to a girl-band with that name.
She and
her friends learned all their dance moves, using them to terrorise
the boys at school discos.

‘
What do you think will
happen next?’
she asked.

‘
We’re all in God’s
hands now.’

‘
Do you believe God
would destroy the world to stop Morson doing whatever it is he’s
planning?’

‘
God once drowned the
world, Lucy.
Only Noah and his Ark were saved.
Why should he let
anyone survive this time?
If he does spare us, it will be thanks to
you.’

‘
But I have no idea
what I’m expected to do.’

‘
Just be yourself.
That’s all anyone can ask of you.’

Gresnick came back out of the woods,
his torchbeam piercing the dark.
‘I’ve found somewhere.
It looks
like a ruined abbey.
There’s a room with a fireplace.
We can stay
there for the rest of the night and set out at dawn.’

They found a sheltered spot where they
tied up the horses.

‘
Come on, Mr Vernon,’
Gresnick said, waking James, ‘we have to move.’

Lucy watched as James stiffly emerged
from the back of the carriage, a dazed look on his face.
He briefly
glanced at her then turned away again.

After tethering the horses, Gresnick
led the way through the trees, his boots sinking into the flaky
snow.

‘
God have mercy on us.’
Sinclair stopped abruptly.

‘
What is it?’
Gresnick
spun round.
‘Did you see something?’

‘
There are wolves in
the woods.
They’re everywhere, staring at us.
They have bright
yellow eyes.’

They all halted.
Lucy peered into the
darkness.
Sinclair was right.
There were yellow eyes all around
them.
But this was insane: England didn’t have any wolves.
They
were hunted to extinction long ago.

‘
Why are they so
quiet?’
Gresnick whispered.
‘They’re not moving a
muscle.’

Sinclair fidgeted with
the crucifix round his neck.
‘It’s as if they’re waiting for
someone –
something
– to give them orders.’

‘
Let’s get moving,’
Gresnick said.

The ruined abbey was just a few metres
further on, in a clearing near a stream.
The light from Gresnick’s
torch reflected in the dark water.
Drops of snow peppered the
surface, melting into it.
It made Lucy think of white confetti
showering down on newly laid tarmac.

A graveyard full of snow-covered
headstones stood in front of the abbey.
They had to walk through it
to get to the entrance of the room Gresnick had mentioned.
Made of
sandstone, with a hole in one corner of the ceiling, the room had a
large fireplace with blocks of old chopped wood stacked in front of
it.
A rear door led to other rooms of the abbey.
Gresnick checked
them out with his torch.

‘
They’re safe,’ he
said.
‘They’re all like this one: holes in the ceiling and a few
gaps in the walls, but there’s no way wolves can get in.
There’s
even a toilet – well, a room with a hole in the ground.’

‘
We need to barricade
ourselves in,’ Sinclair said.
‘Then we can light the fire and
settle down for the night.’

Gresnick and James found some boxes and
wedged them in the doorway.
Lucy took the chance to visit the
toilet.
It was as grim as Gresnick had hinted.

Gresnick used a lighter to ignite the
firewood.
It didn’t take long to get a good fire burning.
The
crackling wood mesmerised Lucy.
She stood near it, holding out her
hands towards the flames.
It seemed miraculous to have found this
place in the woods, a sanctuary from all the madness.

‘
Have you heard of the
story about Kafka and his friend Max Brod?’
she asked Gresnick.
‘They were discussing hope, or, rather, Kafka’s lack of
it.’

‘
No, what did they
say?’

‘
I think about it a
lot.
Brod wondered if there was any room for hope in Kafka’s bleak
world.
Kafka replied, “
Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope –
but not for us
.
” I can’t get those words out of my
mind.’

Gresnick nodded.
‘I can see why.’
He
brought his head down towards hers.
‘What about you – do you think
there’s hope?’
Leaning into her, he gently put his hands on her
upper arms and held her for a moment.

She looked at him and
didn’t know how to respond.
Again, she was aware of how attractive
she found him, and how
wrong
it was.
She wanted him to put his arms right
round her and hug her, to protect her.
A shudder ran through her.
How could she be so disloyal to James?
‘I’m tired,’ she said,
stepping away.

Gresnick reached out and gripped her
arm.
‘Wait, there’s something I have to tell you.’

Lucy looked at him.
‘What?’

‘
I lied to you,’ he
said.
‘James never said anything about killing you.
I…I don’t know
why I said it.’
He stared at the ground.
‘I’m ashamed of
myself.’

Lucy was appalled.
‘How could you do
something like that?’

Gresnick shuffled uneasily.
‘When I met
you, I didn’t expect to…’ He couldn’t look Lucy in the eye.
After
an awkward pause, he said, ‘I guess I was jealous of James.’

‘
I can’t listen to
this.’
Lucy freed herself from Gresnick’s grip then quickly lay
down in front of the fire.

Struggling to get comfortable on the
hard stone floor, she kept turning over.
Her mind was flooding with
alternate images of Gresnick and James.
She was so confused.
Part
of her wasn’t nearly as disgusted by Gresnick’s revelation as ought
to have been the case.
He wanted to say that he was attracted to
her, didn’t he?
She didn’t dislike the idea.