‘I will ask for help. I will ask that these meddlers, the Weavers and the Witnesses and the whole pack of them, be halted from their tampering with time’s tapestry. That an end be put to it, and history be allowed to resume its proper course.’

Harry looked around the world, at the huge blue sky of Spain, the shoulders of the land around the harbour, the endless shimmering sea. He felt the heat of the sun on his neck, smelled the ocean salt, heard the cry of seabirds who wheeled far above. It was all so vivid, so specific, so real, that it seemed impossible to him that it could all be changed on a whim.

But of all the elements in the pretty panorama before him, the most vivid and exciting were the brave forms of Colon’s three ships.

At last the ships cast off, to distant cheers from the crowds who thronged the harbour. They put out to sea towed by launches, but soon their sails billowed with the offshore wind, and they surged into the waters of the Ocean Sea, the cross of Christ bright red on their sails.

‘He has gone,’ Harry said.

‘Yes. In this moment it changes,’ Geoffrey murmured. ‘If Colon is right, perhaps this is the moment when Christendom will win a world, and will never again be threatened, its destiny never again subject to the whim of history, a battle turned, a ruler dying. Certainly the dark future warned of by Eadgyth’s Witness has vanished, like so many others: whole histories that never existed, and never will exist. Millions of lives, generations of men and women living and loving, fighting and dying, marching off into the future like legions - all of them wiped out!’

Harry said, ‘But after all this, Geoffrey, as Colon sails, has the world changed for the better, or worse?’

‘I doubt if even the Lord God would answer that with confidence, my friend.’

They watched until the three fragile ships, pressing ever west, disappeared over the curve of the round world. Harry felt as if a nightmare that had plagued him since his father’s death was at last sailing out of his head.

Then, thirsty for wine, they made their way back down the slope and into the town.

II

The elderly parish priest, the same Arthur who had cherished her before, walked with Agnes to the church.

It was a hot, humid day, and England was a feverish green, lacking colour now the flowers of early summer had gone, and the air was full of busy insects. It was quite a contrast to the brilliant, arid severity of Spain. Yet Agnes was glad to be back, for this was her home. Even the ache in her damaged mouth didn’t seem so bad here.