Something Rotten (Thursday Next 4)

'Which one?'

'I can't remember. Window . . . something.'

'The Windowmaker? A contract with her and you stick to reading short stories? Sixty-seven known victims?'

'Sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring.'

'That's not important. Why didn't you tell me?'

'I ... I ... didn't want you to worry.'

He rubbed his face with his hands and stared at me for a moment, then sighed deeply.

'This is the Thursday Next I married, isn't it?'

I nodded my head.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly.

'Will you be careful?' he whispered in my ear.

'I'm always careful.'

'No, really careful. The sort of careful that you should be when you have a husband and son who'd be surpremely pissed off if they were to lose you?'

'Ah,' I whispered back, 'that sort of careful. Yes, I will.'

We kissed and I Velcroed up the vest, put my shirt over the top of it and my shoulder holster on top of this. I kissed Friday and told him to be good, then kissed Landen again.

'I'll see you this evening,' I told him, 'and that's a promise.'

I drove to Wanborough to find Joffy. He was officiating at a GSD civil union ceremony and I had to wait in the back of the temple ' until he had finished. I had some time before I had to deal with Cindy, and looking more closely into St Zvlkx seemed like a good way to fill it. Millon's idea that Zvlkx wasn't a seer but a rogue member of the ChronoGuard involved in some sort of timecrime seemed, on the face of it, unlikely. You couldn't hide from the ChronoGuard. They would always find you. Perhaps not here and now, but then and there — when you least expected it. Long before you even thought about doing something wrong. The ChronoGuard left no trace, either. With the perpetrator gone, then the timecrime never happened either. Very neat, very clever. But with the historical record so closely scrutinised and the ChronoGuard themselves giving Zvlkx the seal of approval, how on earth did Zvlkx - if he was a fake — get around the system?

'Hello, Doofus!' said Joffy as the happy couple kissed outside the church in a shower of confetti. 'What brings you here?'

'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?'