‘They will come,’ said Harry. ‘Pushing across the Ocean Sea, a conquering fleet heading east where the Europeans might have gone west. On the coasts of England, France and Portugal they will fall on an overstretched Chinese empire.’

Abdul read,

The Feathered Serpent, plague-hardened,
Flies over ocean sea,
Flies east.
Serpent and Dragon, the mortal duel.

‘But the western conquerors will unleash a horror not known in our continent since before the Romans.’

‘“And Serpent feasts on holy flesh.”’

‘They eat the flesh of humans. They sacrifice human lives in great numbers. Their wars, Geoffrey predicts, will be terrible slave-raids, as captives from across a devastated Europe are hauled to their temples to die under the knives of the priests. Whole populations will be consumed . . .

‘This, and no more,’ Harry said. ‘The prophecy lets us see no further.’

Abdul sat as if stunned. Then he got up and paced around the room. He took a bowl of jasmine blossom and breathed deeply of its scent. ‘All this,’ he said at last, ‘if this Dove turns east and not west. But these final lines: “All this I have witnessed / I and my mothers.” What does that mean?’

‘Geoffrey says that Eadgyth was not a prophet, not a seer who could see the future, but - a puppet. The words were put into her mouth by a Witness, just as the line says, a saint of the far future - a woman, Eadgyth always believed - who will live at a time of the terrible calamity of the western invasion of the east, or at least fears its likelihood. And this person, wishing to avert the horror, will find a way - well, to speak to a woman of her own deepest past.’

‘How?’ Abdul demanded.

Harry smiled. ‘If I knew that I’d sell it, and wouldn’t be here talking to you. In fact, Geoffrey believes we are dealing with two prophecies here - or two witnessings. He says the Dove was meant to go west. Somebody else found a way to deflect him from his true course - somebody else has already meddled in history, and is trying to send the Dove the wrong way, east, equipped with the Engines of God. And it is a second witness who is now trying to reverse things through the Testament.’

Abdul thought that over, and laughed. ‘Geoffrey says, Geoffrey says. These scholars are troublesome to men of the world like us. I suppose these Witnesses are scholars too, competing to muck about with history. And now we’re meant to put it all right by packing the Dove off to the west?’

‘That’s the idea,’ Harry said unhappily. ‘I suppose the question is, what do we do now?’

Abdul sat again. ‘I think we have a responsibility, even if the chance of the witnessing coming true is small, to try to avert this huge destructive disaster of the future of Serpent and Dragon. Anything would be better than that.’