downstairs, his feet clumping heavily on the wooden floorboards as he ran. Arthur followed, retrieving his own coat and hat on the way. Xian-Li was waiting for them in the yard, a bag of provisions in her hand. Arthur gave her a farewell kiss and pressed both her hands in his. “Never fear, I will take good care of him.”
“Of course you will,” she said, forcing a smile.
Daybreak was still some time off when the coach rolled out from their farm and into the gently folded hills and valleys of the Cotswolds. Their farm, on the edge of the village of Much Milford, was only a little way off the main thoroughfare linking the nearby towns and hamlets. Timothy, the farm manager, drove along the deep-rutted road, letting the horses trot along easily while keeping a sharp eye for any holes likely to break a wheel or an axle. Arthur opened the bag Xian-Li had prepared for them and passed his son a barley cake, which had been split and buttered. He took one for himself and leaned back in his seat.
“Papa,” said little Benedict thoughtfully, “will we see God?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You said we will jump up beyond the clouds and stars to a new place,” he said, picking off a bit of his barley cake. He chewed for a moment and observed, “That is where God lives. Can we see him?”
Arthur recalled the previous conversation with his son when he had just returned from one of his travels. Benedict, only four years old at the time, had asked where he had been, and Arthur had told him, in a lighthearted way, that he had been to a place beyond the clouds and stars. In his childish way, the boy considered this just one more way people travelled whenever they went on long trips to distant places.
“Would it surprise you,” Arthur replied, “to know that God cannot be seen—even up among the stars?”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a spirit, and spirits are invisible. No one can see God.”
“Vicar de Gifftley does,” Ben pointed out. “He talks to God all the time.”
“I do not doubt it,” allowed his father. “But even the vicar does not see God with his eyes.”
“Vicar says that if you see Jesus, then you see God,” countered Ben. “Lots of people have seen Jesus.”
“Well, yes, but that was a long time ago.” Arthur enjoyed these little talks, challenging, as they so often did, his own assumptions of the universe and its exceedingly odd mechanisms. “When we take a journey using the force lines we will see people from other times. The man we are going to visit—Anen, remember me telling about him?—he lived a very long time ago.”
“Will we see him?”
“Anen?”
“No—I mean Jesus. Will we see Jesus?”
“No, we won’t see him.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because Jesus lived in another place and time from the one we are going to visit.”
He watched his son puzzling over this and resisted the urge to say more. It had long been an ambition to find the line of force that might lead to the Holy Land in the time of Christ. He had yet to find it, but knew it was out there somewhere. The search went on, and Arthur contented himself with the thought that his relentless mapping of the cosmos would eventually yield the location. To this end, Arthur still faithfully recorded the coordinates of his travels on his skin through the tattoos he gathered and meticulously refined with every journey into the ether. He watched his son eating the barley cake. One day soon, he would share with Benedict the meaning of the strange runes that covered his torso, and how to read them—a secret known only to one other: his own dear wife, Xian-Li.
“How long will it take?”
“To go to Egypt?” guessed Arthur. “Not long. As I told you, it happens in the blink of an eye. It is travelling to the jumping-off place that takes all the time. The jumping-off place for this journey is very close to our farm.”
“Black Mixen Tump,” offered Ben, stuffing the remainder of his barley cake into his mouth.
“That is right.” Arthur scrutinised his son closely. “How do you know about that?”
“I heard you and Mother talking,” Ben told him. “Can I have another barley cake?”
“Later. Have a little cheese or an egg instead.” Arthur dug into the bag and brought out a lump of cheese wrapped in muslin and a clutch of eggs boiled in the shell. He offered an egg to