3. A Second Chance (9 page)

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Tim, you take Helen. Dr Dowson, you keep an eye on the galloping Major, and I’ll go and talk to the naked man up there. Miss Schiller, where’s Dr Bairstow?’

‘In his office, as far as I know.’

‘Watch the door. No one comes in.’

Peterson heaved Helen onto the other shoulder. ‘You can’t go up there, Max. You won’t have the strength if he takes it into his head to do something stupid.’

‘Well, you can’t go. You’re wearing the unit’s medical officer.’

‘Yes, did you hear what she said? I have witnesses.’

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do. If she remembers any of this, she’ll never let us live. We’ll all have to join a witness protection programme somewhere.’

‘Someone’s coming,’ said Schiller from the door, because the day just wasn’t bad enough.

‘Quick,’ said Tim. ‘Everyone look normal.’

Guthrie’s legs folded beneath him like wet string.

Oh, great.

Leon had come looking for me. Discharged from SickBay, he’d gone to my room and I wasn’t there. He’d gone to the dining room, expecting to find me in a close relationship with a plate full of great British bangers and I hadn’t been there either. After that, of course, he’d just followed the noise.

We regarded him with all the dismay of a politician who has suddenly remembered the existence of the electorate only ten minutes before the polls close.

I wasn’t sure whether his arrival was a good thing or not. We all tend to forget he’s actually second in charge at St Mary’s. Mostly, I think, because he never needs to make the point. What people like Barclay never understood is that the louder and longer you shout, the less people listen. That doesn’t mean, however, that he can’t shout if he wants to.

He summed up the situation at a glance.

Dr Dowson, alternately exhorting the professor to come down at once for the love of God, and then threatening him with some blood-curdling fate should he actually choose to do so.

Ian Guthrie, collapsed in a badly folded heap on the floor and singing something incomprehensibly Caledonian, no doubt involving banks, braes – whatever the hell they are –, and Bannockburn.

And the Chief Medical officer, who appeared to be eating the Chief Training Officer who had a stupid grin on his face and was putting up no sort of resistance at all.

We must have been back all of twenty minutes.

I got a long, slow look. The words
seven months
could not have been more clearly conveyed, even if they’d been set to music. I got the message. There’s no sex on assignments. That would be stupid and embarrassing. And our shifts hadn’t coincided. So he’d waited seven months and I suspected he wasn’t going to wait very much longer. However, we had other things to deal with first …

‘
Speeding through the universe.

Thinking is the best way to travel.
’

Correctly categorising everything happening at ground level as irrelevant, he threw his head back and, in a voice in which failure to comply was not an option, called, ‘Professor Rapson, if you would be good enough to join us down here, please. You are causing some alarm and Dr Dowson is distressed.’

Obviously, something got through. The overhead singing ceased.

‘Octavius, my dear fellow …’

I said urgently, ‘He shouldn’t try to get down alone.’

‘He won’t. I’ll get him down. Go and see Dr Bairstow who is looking for you and none of you want to be found here. Dr Peterson, please help Major Guthrie to his quarters. Miss Schiller, if you could assist Dr Foster to hers, please. Go now. Dr Dowson, you will remain.’

He began to climb the library ladder.

As I sped thankfully away, the last thing I heard was the professor’s faltering footsteps on the metal staircase. ‘Occy, my friend, what is all this?’ and then I was out of earshot, never doubting for one moment that all would be safely resolved.

I raced up the stairs, arriving, hot and sticky in the Boss’s office. Mrs Partridge frowned disapprovingly, but she always did. I flashed her a grin, just to annoy her, and bounced in to see him.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Dr Maxwell, welcome back.’

‘Thank you, sir. Nice to be back.’

He looked me up and down. ‘You appear to be remarkably unharmed.’

‘I am.’

‘If a little sticky.’

‘Honey, sir.’

‘Of course,’ he said, as if chatting with a honey-covered expat from the Bronze Age was the most natural thing in the world, which, of course, at St Mary’s, it was.

‘I understand that in addition to a successful assignment, you have managed to prevent Mr Markham contracting cholera.’

‘My talents are limitless, sir. Something I was planning to bring up at my next performance appraisal.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be appropriate to bring it up at someone else’s, would it?’

‘Since I feel certain that by then, any credits you may have earned will be more than outweighed by corresponding debits for damages incurred, I remain unalarmed by this threat.’

‘I’ll leave you to enjoy your false sense of security, sir.’

As I was oozing out of the door, he said, ‘Very satisfactory work, Dr Maxwell.’

Beneath my outer layer of honey and dust, I glowed. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Twelve hours.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘The usual recovery period. Twelve hours to sleep it off and then complete recovery. Please convey suitable reassurances to Dr Dowson.’

I gaped. How does he know these things?

I dithered outside the Boss’s office. I could smell sausages. And fish and chips. And all the other favourites so carefully chosen to welcome us home. There would be chocolate mousse. And pancakes. And Mrs Mack’s chicken tikka masala. The noise from the dining room was as tempting as the smell. Oh God, I really wanted a sausage. And no, that’s not a metaphor.

But … 

Heroically, I made my way to my own room, where, with luck, something nearly as good would be waiting for me.

Everyone has their fantasies. Some of them quite wide-ranging and varied.

Comprehensive.

Imaginative.

Detailed.

I was looking at about eight of mine all at once.

The room was dim. Somewhere in the background I could hear
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
That was for me. In private moments, he always called me Lucy. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

He’d pulled my old table to the foot of the bed and laid it with a cloth I could barely see, the table was so stacked with good things.

Not one, not two, but three boxes of my favourite chocolates sat invitingly open. Behind them, two (because one is never enough) tall sundae glasses of chocolate mousse. Plates of smoked salmon, pink and curling. A plate of sushi. A jug of margaritas stood next to two frosted glasses. And in the centre, the second star of the show, a colossal plate of crisply roasted sausages, done just the way I like them, with all the scrummy black bits still attached.

I say second, because the real star of the show lay stark naked on the bed, grinning like the naughty boy he intended to be, and monumentally, magnificently pleased to see me.

He linked his hands behind his head and leaned back on the pillows.

‘Well, Lucy, what shall we do now?’

Later – much later, actually – when I could finally string two words together, I asked, ‘Who’s Elspeth?’

He was silent for a little while and then said, ‘You must know the name. Elspeth Grey?’

I did know the name. Elspeth Grey was the very first name on our Board of Honour. The names of those who have died in the service of St Mary’s. She’d gone off to 12th-century Jerusalem and never come back. That bastard Ronan had got her.

I nodded, unsure whether to say any more. This was Leon’s nightmare – that one day I wouldn’t come back, either. This why he wanted me out of here. I thought of the quiet and contained Ian Guthrie. All those years and I’d never guessed. I heard again the pain in his voice.

‘
Elspeth?
’

And I shivered.

Like the Windmill in WWII, St Mary’s never closed – always humming with activity and, occasionally, strife. Well, now it didn’t so much hum as roar. Historians raced from the Hall to the library and back again, dragging printouts or clutching data-sticks, reviewing and organising our data, identifying areas for further study. Trying to pull the whole shapeless mass of information into something useable was a bit like eleven bickering historians stuffing a duvet into its cover while wearing boxing gloves. In the dark.

Tired-looking techies swarmed all over the pods, complaining their typical techie complaints because we’d actually used the things instead of leaving them pristine and virginal on their plinths. (The pods, I mean, not the techies.)

I reported daily progress to the Boss, as did Leon.

Apart from the first twenty-four hours when we hadn’t left my room (and why would we?) we didn’t have a lot of time together. It didn’t seem important at the time. We had a whole future ahead of us.

We did talk occasionally of our new life together. Since he’d already borne the revelation that I couldn’t cook with equanimity, I gave him the rest of the bad news.

‘Not that keen on housework, either.’

‘We’ll get someone in.’

‘Really? You’d be all right with that?’

‘I’ve seen you fashion a weapon out of two pieces of toilet paper and a paperclip. There’s no way I’m going to be trapped in a small flat with an angry woman who has access to a vacuum cleaner.’ He put his hand over mine. ‘It really will work, you know.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I do know that, really. And if you changed your mind and didn’t want to do it then I’d be really disappointed. It’s just … I’m …’

‘Of course you are,’ he said, following this without difficulty. ‘But everything will be fine. Yes, there will be days when doors will be slammed and pots will be thrown. But I promise you now, you’ll never have to hide in a wardrobe again.’

As a child, I’d spent a lot of time at the back of my wardrobe, eyes squeezed tight shut, hoping and praying that this time – this time – I would open them to the snow-covered trees of Narnia and safety. It never happened.

I nodded. ‘I am looking forward to it. Not leaving St Mary’s – that’s not going to be fun, but …’

‘You’re not saying goodbye for ever,’ he interrupted. ‘We’ll still see them. They can come for Sunday lunch. Not all of them at the same time, of course, we won’t have enough chairs. We can meet them in the pub. You’re not cutting them completely out of our lives. Remember, they’re my friends too.’

‘You’re right. I don’t know why I’m worrying because I do have a fall-back position. If things don’t work out for us, Professor Penrose has offered to take me on.’

He regarded me severely.

‘Is it not enough that you bounced that poor man all around the universe without threatening his declining years as well?’

‘You can’t blame me for setting up a first reserve.’

‘I’m so glad to see you’re approaching this new phase of your life with total commitment.’

‘He was very keen.’

‘He was very concussed.’

I glared at him.

‘One day you really must tell me why you think I’m so unattractive to other men.’

‘It would take much longer than one day.’

‘It’s not just Professor Penrose, you know. The world is full of men who find me irresistible.’

‘Really? Well, I’ll be blowed.’

‘After that last comment – unlikely.’

Chapter Nine

Everything had changed on our second visit. By our calculations, the war was well into its tenth year now and the Trojans were suffering. Long years cooped up behind their own walls had taken their toll. The arrival of their allies had more than tripled the population. The streets were packed with Lydians, Carians, Phrygians, Lycians, Thracians, and many more, all noisily pushing their way through the crowds and filling every roadside tavern and eating-place.

The rural areas were much less haphazard than during our first visit. Almost every square inch was under cultivation. Livestock no longer roamed free, but were confined and carefully guarded.

Our olive grove was still there, but someone had assumed ownership, pruning the trees and scything the grass. Three haystacks, carefully built around central poles, now stood between the tavern and us.

We had thought long and hard about returning to our original sites. Surely our sudden reappearance would provoke at the very least, gigantic curiosity, if not outright hostility. We were foreign – we left – the war came – and now we were back. It wasn’t hard to imagine their suspicions.

We abandoned Site A as being too public. Too near the heavily guarded citadel. And we needed to be closer together. Just in case.

We eased back into Troy very carefully. First one pod, with me, Guthrie, and Peterson. We waited a day. No one tried to kill us. The second pod, Number Five, landed late at night, so in the morning, there were two of them.

Nothing happened.

We repeated ourselves three days later with Number Three, twenty yards away to the west, on the other side of the grove. No reaction. Finally, and with a certain amount of trepidation, we introduced a fourth, Number Six. So that was twelve of us here and I’d fretted over nothing because it was two days before anyone even turned up to investigate and then it was only a short, scrawny, grubby boy with a shock of dark hair and ears like the wing mirrors on an old Beetle I’d once owned. Helios had grown up.

And if Helios had grown, then so had his sister Helike, who must now be around fourteen or fifteen years old. Rather old to be unmarried, especially as she was such a pretty girl. Helios, poor lad, had been behind the door when good looks were being allocated. We discovered later, mostly through the medium of mime, that she had been briefly married to a soldier, an archer I think, who had been killed around six months before and, as was the custom, she had returned to her father and both children now worked full-time in their father’s tavern.

There were a number of soldiers billeted at the tavern but they never bothered us. In their world, people came – people went. People lived – people died. There was a war on. No one cared. There were other things to worry about.

There was sickness in the city, for a start. With so many people jammed so tightly together, of course, there would be. And food was short. It was there, but never quite enough. Water was not rationed, but soldiers stood at every well. It was all good-natured enough, but no one took more than their fair share.

The old women had disappeared from the streets. They had nothing to sell. People hoarded any surplus food they happened to have. No one was starving, but the children had that pinched look. There was no running around now. They and everyone who could be spared from fighting or manning the walls worked in the fields, wringing every last mouthful of food from the exhausted soil.

But if the Trojans were suffering, the Greeks had it even worse. They were in the tenth year of a siege that was going nowhere. Where was the promised plunder? The spoils of war? The women?

I think the tenth year marked some sort of watershed for them. They didn’t want to play any more. They just wanted to take their toys and go home.

We heard it every night. Their shouted arguments drifted over the city walls in the still night air. And with the rising sun, one, maybe two ships would up-anchor and, accompanied by jeers and insults from those remaining, row silently away.

I don’t actually know how Agamemnon kept them there. Apart from the lack of any military progress of any kind, their campsite was filthy. There are only so many latrines you can dig over ten years. Broken gear and piles of stinking rubbish littered the shoreline. The shallows were thick and oily with sewage. When the wind was in the right direction, we could smell it from Troy. The conditions must have been appalling.

They’d built their own famous wall – the ditch with sharpened stakes to protect themselves from the Trojan chariots – and they squatted sullenly behind it. The days slipped away – as did Agamemnon’s troops.

The Troad, that once fertile plain, was devastated. Gone were the small farms, the huddles of houses, the neatly tilled fields, the olive groves, the woods. Everything had been flattened under the enormous weight of the opposing armies. The trees were long gone. The crops trampled back into the soil. The herds driven back to safety inside Troy itself.

Yes, the Trojans were suffering, but they were on their home ground. The Greeks, trapped on their narrow beach and with their backs to the sea, were becoming desperate.

Something had to give.

Blame Homer with his long descriptions of aristeia – personal combat – in which admiring soldiers from both sides supposedly took a break from the fighting to watch their champions duke it out. In fact, the old boy was a bit of dead loss. Wonderful poet – crap war correspondent. For a start, there was very little formal fighting. The Greeks, far from home, were more concerned with keeping themselves supplied, spending long periods further and further away from Troy as they stripped the Troad and surrounding areas of everything they could find.

So nine years had drifted by in inconclusive sea raids and the odd skirmish outside the walls, with nothing to show for it.

But now, now we were well into the tenth year and, suddenly, everything changed.

It came out of the blue. One day we were on the walls, lethargically watching the ten-year stalemate – and the next day, all hell broke loose.

We were moving into the season of the hot winds. Winds that blew dust into every last nook and cranny. Dust that stuck to sweating skin and drove us insane. Dust that got into our clothes, our beds, our food, and under our eyelids. Winds that blew hot air into our faces no matter in which direction we faced. Winds that irritated and niggled and maddened and we all became snappy and fractious, even with each other. Nothing personal. It was just that time of year. The nearest equivalent is blowing a hot hair-dryer into your face twenty-four hours a day.

Whether the winds were a contributing factor, I don’t know. Probably. But today was the beginning of the end. Today, although we didn’t yet know it, Achilles would finally emerge from his tent, insane for blood and revenge, and all hell would break loose.

As Homer describes it, Agamemnon and Achilles had quarrelled over the division of their booty. Achilles had a massive strop and withdrew to his tent, from whence he refused to budge. Think petulant teenager. The war was going badly for the Greeks, so Patroclus, his friend and countryman, had stolen his armour and led Achilles’ Myrmidons into battle himself. He was immediately engaged and killed by Hector, who, along with everyone else, was under the impression he had killed Achilles.

Sadly, we’d missed those events, but today Achilles’ need for revenge would overcome his grief and remorse. Today, he would re-join the battle.

We didn’t know it yet, but a lot of people were going to die today.

It was a normal day. I was on the walls with Peterson. Kal and Markham were further along, trying to estimate how many more ships Agamemnon had lost during the night. At this rate, the Trojans didn’t need to do anything but wait it out. So what took Hector and his army outside the walls was anyone’s guess. Homer puts it down to godly intervention. And for all I know it may have been.

Trumpets sounded around the town and voices were raised both inside and outside the walls.

Within the city, excitement boiled in the streets. People raced to the walls. Something was happening. And it was happening now.

It was as we were jostling for position on the walls that Roberts nudged me.

‘Look up.’

I glanced up and to my right.

There, on the walls above the Scaean Gate, exactly as Homer had recounted, Hector, the Trojan hero, was talking quietly to his wife, Andromache, who carried their infant son, Astyanax. They stood a little apart from everyone else, their heads close together. We were too far away to hear the words, but their body language was eloquent.

They were saying goodbye.

For me – for all of us – it was the most amazing moment. Legend springing to life right in front of our eyes. Because, if Homer had got this bit right … then this was the day when man-murdering Achilles left his tent to do what he did best …

I let my imagination roam …

With his back to the sea, Agamemnon would be issuing his final orders.

Armoured Achilles would be emerging from his quarters, intent on avenging the death of his friend Patroclus.

Up on MountOlympus, home of the gods, Zeus would be informing them they could fight for whichever side they pleased. There were no holds barred today.

And here, in Troy, Hector was taking leave of his wife and son, both of them knowing in their hearts that this day would be his last and that Troy was doomed.

She clung to him, unable to let him go. He touched her cheek – a small gesture of comfort and courage.

The trumpets sounded again. Hector pulled on his helmet with its unique dyed red horsehair plume and his little boy cried out in fear. Gone was the loving family man and in his place stood Hector the warrior, the hero of Troy, magnificent in his bronze armour, decorated with intricate gold patterns.

The gate opened. Long lines of Trojans marched out. The Greeks lined up to meet them.

It had begun.

Achilles led his screaming Myrmidons directly at the main body of Trojan soldiers who raised their shields and spears. The two sides met with a roar and crash of metal that shook the ground.

Battles are nowhere near as neat and tidy as Homer would have us believe; and most of the time we had no idea who was who. All we could do was discreetly record as much as we could and sort it all out later with the aid of slow-motion replays. I’d been strict about this. The temptation is to forget the recorder and just watch events unfold. I’d described, in horrible detail, what would happen to anyone who forgot why we were here. I had people stationed up and down the walls and two more at the Scaean Gate, as well. I could do no more.

The slaughter was horrific. Vicious and violent. Brutal. Massive. It was hard to see how anyone could survive. Men fought hand to hand, face-to-face, swinging swords, stabbing with spears, even throwing rocks. They clubbed each other with stones and when they ran out of weapons entirely, punched, kicked, and head-butted.

The tide of battle swept across the plain, first one way, and then another. Clouds of dust hung in the air, catching in our throats and making our eyes sting. I’ve fought. I know how thirsty combat can make you. I could only try to imagine how those shrieking, roaring soldiers must feel, baking in their armour under the pitiless sun, choking in their own dust and sweat.

Not that it appeared to slow anyone down. Everywhere, arms rose and fell tirelessly. Some discarded their shields and fought with a sword in either hand. Others used their shields to protect the archers, giving them time to pick their targets.

Occasionally, very occasionally, someone would pull themselves out of the melee and limp back to their own lines, but only very occasionally. In this sort of fighting, you were on your feet or you were dead. There was no halfway house today.

I heeded my own instructions – for once – and kept my attention rigorously on what was happening in front of me, but all the time I was waiting … waiting for some event – big or small – that I could recognise, say ‘there’ – and use this as a starting point to identifying those around me.

And then I did.

A huge skirmish was taking place across the plain, to the south-west. A handful of Greek soldiers were laying ferociously into a larger Trojan force. If this was who I thought it was, then this was the man-killer, himself.

Terrified and overwhelmed, the Trojan force split, half of them racing back towards Troy and the other half falling back into the River Scamander itself, maybe hoping to find some safety there.

Not so. A magnificently armoured figure roared commands and urged his men on. Could this be – please let it be – it must be – Achilles. I’d always pictured him as a giant. A colossal killing machine in golden armour, but even with his distinctive black horsehair crest, he stood no taller than anyone else. And his armour was of bronze, just like everyone else. He was just a man. But he fought like a god. Roaring like a bull, he plunged into the water after the fleeing Trojans, striking left and right.

No one escaped.

They say: ‘The river ran red with blood,’ and it did that day. So many bodies lay in the water that they blocked the flow of the river, which backed up, flooded its banks, and began to change its course.

Nor did the killing stop there.

Back on the dry and dusty plain, tireless Achilles once again gathered men to himself and set off in relentless pursuit of more Trojans. And Hector.

I didn’t know where Hector was. Or Paris. Or Deiphobos, of any of the Trojan generals, but the whole world could see Achilles in his fury, slaughtering Trojans by the truckload and working his way ever nearer to the Gate of Troy.

One brave warrior stepped forward – it might have been Agenor, Antenor’s son – and threw his spear, which caught Achilles a glancing blow, just below his well-armoured knee.

Whoever it was, he wisely didn’t hang around and was off like a deer with a roaring and completely uninjured Achilles in hot pursuit. What happened to Agenor, if indeed it was he, I couldn’t see in all the dust, but a hundred Trojans used Achilles’ absence to try to cram themselves in through the gate as fast as they could go. There was no dignity. No chivalry. No honour. They fought and elbowed and shoved in their eagerness to be within the safety of their own walls. To be as far as they could from the big, blond killing-machine outside.