A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St Mary's) (3 page)

We wandered through the maze. The deserted streets contrasted strangely with the lights and bustle of the fair only a hundred yards away. I shivered under my layers of eccentric clothing. Snowflakes fell silently out of the dark sky. We were the only people around.

The silence was actually a little worrying. Where were the feral dogs, cats, rats, and prostitutes who would normally be scavenging in these dark places?

Staying out of the cold was the answer to that one. Dogs, cats, rats, and prostitutes obviously had a lot more sense than we did. Not difficult.

‘No prostitutes,’ I said.

‘Of course not. Only a madman would get his todger out on a night like this. It would snap off in his hand.’

We crept a little further. More flakes drifted down. The cold was almost unbearable.

‘We’re on our way back to the pod,’ he said in an undertone, breath billowing around his head. ‘We’re walking parallel with the river, now. If we take the next turning left, we should come out somewhere nearby.’

We flitted quietly from shadow to shadow. ‘Nearly there,’ he said, and barely had the words left his mouth than three or four dark figures appeared at the end of the street, fortunately, not looking our way. Yet.

‘Down here,’ he said, and we wheeled left down an alley so narrow we had to turn sideways in places.

The good news was that overhanging roofs had kept this narrow space comparatively snow free. The bad news was that this place could accurately be called Bodyfluids Alley. The stink was bad enough but we were also slipping in pools of frozen urine. Icy turds crunched underfoot. One day, surely, I would find myself some place where I wasn’t up to my knees in effluent. Just one day, please.

Leon stopped dead and I walked into the back of him. Slowly, he drew me aside, behind a broken barrel. I crouched, painfully. We both breathed into our sleeves so our frosted breath wouldn’t give us away, although the snow was falling quite thickly, now. In half an hour, we’d be well camouflaged. And frozen stiff, of course.

Voices sounded at the entrance. A bright, white, non-17th-century searchlight flashed past us, giving me a wonderful opportunity to see what I was crouching in. Appropriately, we froze.

Several endless seconds passed and then they moved away. Neither of us attempted to move. We were far too old to fall for that trick.

Time ticked by, as it tends to do when you’re slowly dying of exposure in a frozen, piss-filled alleyway in the late 17th century. I decided our next jump would be to some fragrant tropical island. Still we crouched there. We passed the point where I would be able to move. When the time came, Leon would have to crack my joints to stand me up.

I felt him stand, slowly and cautiously. It took two goes for me to stand upright. We inched our way along the icy wall. Flakes of snow swirled around us. No one could see us, but we couldn’t see a thing, either.

At the end of the alley, Leon crouched and cautiously eased his head around the wall. He straightened and turned to me.

‘They’re here. I know they are, but we have to get back. We’re going to freeze if we stay out here much longer. We can’t risk them finding the pod, but as soon as we’re out in the open, they’ll spot us. I’m going to run and you’re going to get yourself back to the pod. Wait for me as long as you can, but don’t risk yourself or the pod. You can always come back for me. Understood?’

I opened my mouth to protest.

‘Understood?’

I nodded.

‘It’s not far. Across this lane and back over the wall. Turn right. The pod’s opposite the beer stall, next to the red-and-white booth. OK?’

I nodded.

He turned and ran back down the alley, slipping and sliding in the ice. He kicked over a pile of something that made a satisfying clatter and launched himself into the street.

I heard a shout. Then another. Keeping to the wall, I stepped into the lane and looked left and right. There was no one in sight. All I had to do was nip across the wall, back on to the river, and lose myself in the crowds. Except I was nearly frozen solid and nipping anywhere was about as likely as finding a politician who works selflessly for the public good.

I shuffled across the lane, sat on the wall, and tried to swing my legs over. Eventually, I had to pick them up one at a time and lift them over manually. By now, I was chilled to the bone, shivering uncontrollably, and worried that my fingers and toes would just crack off in the cold.

I dropped back down on the riverside, skidded, and fell painfully onto the frozen snow. As I hit the ground, I heard a shout.

Oh, great!

Finally, the weather worked in our favour. As I struggled to my feet, the snow started properly. Swaying lanterns blew out and only the bonfires showed in the sudden darkness.

People laughed, cursed, and generally milled around and I milled right along with them. The crowds were thick and I stayed in the middle, allowing myself to be carried along. I knew I couldn’t miss the beer tent. The crowds outside wouldn’t let a little thing like a snowstorm divert them from their sworn purpose of knocking back as much ale as they could possibly manage.

They had braziers going outside. I stood with a family group and warmed my hands. Worryingly, I could barely feel the heat.

Across from me, I could see the red and white booth through the snow, and next to it, the darker patch of shadow that was our camouflaged pod.

Warmth. Light. Safety.

Despite the fast falling snow, the crowd was still good-natured. Alcohol helped.

I inched my way through the people, laughing and smiling at complete strangers. Fitting in. It was vitally important not to hurry. Not to disturb the flow of people as they streamed past.

Then, just as I thought I’d made it – just as I drew level with the booth, some instinct kicked in. Something about the way the crowd was moving …

I heard a cry of protest as a woman was shoved roughly aside and her escort shouted angrily. Risking a glance behind me, I could see two or three men, wearing all enveloping, black cloaks, which was surprising. Black was a rare and expensive dye before modern times. I suppose it enabled easy identification. Or intimidation, more like. One held something in the palm of his hand. Faintly, I caught an electronic beep. They’d found the pod. They were shouldering their way roughly through the crowd. You could tell they weren’t historians – they didn’t care about careful concealment. Their job was something else entirely.

The crowd liked being shoved about as much as crowds usually do. There’s always someone who’s had that bit too much to drink and whose temper is, consequently, that bit easier to lose. In this case, there was a whole gang of them. Young men – apprentices probably – out for some fun, noisy and belligerent.

I eased away from the shouting. Thoughtful family men were ushering wives and children out of harm’s way. I ushered myself along with them.

A group of roughly dressed men issued from the beer tent; some to see what was going on and others to take a more participatory role.

Sadly, I was even further from the pod than when I’d started. The huge press of people was pushing me in the wrong direction. I couldn’t even move my arms to elbow my way out and the ground underfoot was so rough that I was afraid I’d lose my footing and go down. With that thought, I stumbled over a rut and fell to my knees.

A man swathed in two or three blankets and smelling strongly of drink, tobacco, and horses pulled me up again. I came up ready for trouble, but he was already moving away. I gasped my thanks. He nodded. Nothing sinister – just a disinterested act of kindness.

I was caught in a dilemma. Go with the crowd? Rely on safety in numbers? Or try for the pod again? But what if I led them to it? Or had they found it already and were just waiting for us to return?

Think, Maxwell.

They wanted me. If I led them away then at least Leon, who was still out there freezing his bits off, could reach the pod and once he was there, all things were possible. In these temperatures, if neither of us found shelter soon, we were finished anyway. At least, as their prisoner, they would be bound to warm me up a little. Unless, of course, they just killed me here and now and left my body on the ice.

I was roused from that pleasant picture by Leon seizing my arm and demanding to know, in some exasperation, why I was just standing here.

‘They’re everywhere,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to lead them to the pod.’

‘We’ll make a dash for it,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold to stay here any longer. Head down. Use your elbows. Get to the pod. I’ll cover your back.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘No. Go.’

Head down, I barged through the crowd. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line and historians’ elbows are honed by years of practice.

I heard a voice. ‘There! In the grey blanket!’

I braced myself again for a bullet in the back.

I was in a cathedral once. I can’t remember what I was doing there – trying not to burst into flames on consecrated ground, probably. Anyway, they were getting the place ready for a TV programme and someone was checking the sound levels. At some point, the organist must have played a series of the lower notes. I hardly heard anything, but I felt the note inside my chest, rather than with my ears.

This was very similar.

The pain was sudden and savage. For a moment, I was back in the woods at Agincourt, staring at the red, wet sword protruding from my chest.

I felt my legs begin to give way. I couldn’t breathe in. Sounds around me began to blend one into another, one long drone …

Now I knew what the hairdryer thing was. Not an EMP device. They had some sort of sonic weapon designed to neutralise people, not equipment. The effects were painful and disabling. And very unpleasant.

My lungs couldn’t seem to work properly. I couldn’t get a rhythm going. My heart fluttered. Beneath me, the ice swayed and tipped as I felt my head spin. Everything blurred. I couldn’t get back to the pod. I’d forgotten where it was. Legs that weren’t mine took two or three wobbly steps in a direction I hadn’t meant to go.

All around me, I could vaguely hear women screaming. Someone crashed into me, spun me around, and I was lost all over again.

Where was I?

What was happening?

My chest was on fire. I put two clenched fists to my heart and tried to bend forward to ease the pain, but it was all internal. Nothing helped.

Sonic weapons are supposed to be less harmful than conventional types. They’re not. Take my word for it – and I’m someone who knows what she’s talking about.

They must have had it on a fairly narrow beam because only a few of us seemed to be really badly affected. It was the secondary effect that did the real damage.

Panic.

The Great Plague might be nearly twenty years in the past, but the nightmares were still only just beneath the surface. Londoners, seeing people drop suddenly to the ice for no good reason at all, lost their heads and panicked.

The screaming intensified. People tried to scatter away from what they supposed was infection. Maddened dogs ran through the crowds, howling and barking. They’d been affected too. Children cried. Men shouted. In fear. Or anger. Or for their families who were being swept across the ice in the panic. I heard the sounds of a stall overturning.

The worst was yet to come.

I heard a sharp crack. And then another. Beneath my feet, something trembled.

Whether because of the sonic weapon or because of the sudden concentration of people all in one spot – or maybe a combination of both – the ice was cracking.

I’d never heard of any Frost Fairs crashing through the ice, but this wasn’t my world. Maybe this was the world that had suffered the dreadful Frost Fair Catastrophe of 1683 when the ice had given way and the entire fair fell into the Thames with massive loss of life. It was more than possible. That these people would be prepared to run that risk rather than let us get away was not a good sign. I remembered Leon telling me they would do anything to get the job done, whatever the cost. They were ruthless and professional and they would get what they wanted. And they wanted me.

Someone caught me from behind and lifted me off my feet.

They had me.

I tried to struggle, kicking out, and flailing with my arms.

People were still clutching their heads or their chests. I could still hear screaming. Was it me? It usually was.

Someone shouted, ‘Door.’

I flew through the air and hit the floor hard. The universe kicked me hard in my already damaged chest and everything went black.

Chapter Three

I lay on the sleeping module, spread-eagled like a stunned starfish under the weight of blankets. So much of me hurt that it was probably easier to list the parts that didn’t.

No, that wasn’t going to work. There weren’t any.

My face throbbed with the pain of returning blood. And my feet. And my hands. My head pounded. Even my ears hurt. My chest was just a red-hot ball of heart-squeezing pain. I was certain something important had been dislodged. I felt sick, disoriented, and confused as to who and where I was. Was I still on the ice? Did they get us?

I turned my head and immediately wished I hadn’t.

And, with apologies to all the purveyors of romantic fiction – bronzed, muscle-rippling heroes who can go all night like a crazed rhino are all very well – indeed, every woman should have at least one – but sometimes, what you need – what you really, really need – is a quiet man with his own basin.

Afterwards, when he’d wiped my face and given me a sip of water, I said, ‘Sorry.’

‘Not a problem. Have another sip.’

‘You really should get yourself a more delightful travelling companion.’

‘Just what I was thinking. I’ll drop you off at the next stop and look around for someone with a little more fragrance and a lot more dress sense.’

I looked down at myself and groaned. ‘Help me sit up.’

‘No. This basin’s not big enough for that manoeuvre. Stay where you are for the moment.’

I clutched his arm.

‘Leon, please tell me no one went through the ice.’

‘No one went through the ice.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

He wouldn’t lie.

‘You got us away safely?’

‘I did. Man of the hour.’

Man of every hour as far as I was concerned.

‘Where and when are we?’

‘Central Asian steppes.’

My anxieties returned. Thousands and thousands of fierce men thundering across the steppes on thousands and thousands of fierce horses were not what we needed at the moment.

‘Keep your eyes peeled for the Mongol hordes.’

He leaned sideways so I could see. He’d split the screen to show all camera angles and I was worrying unnecessarily, because there was nothing out there. Nothing but windswept grass in every direction, stretching all the way to the horizon. And silver, sheeting rain. A whole reservoir was emptying itself on the empty landscape outside. I could hear it pounding on the roof. Suddenly, it felt good to be inside.

‘I’ve set the proximity alerts for one hundred, fifty, and ten yards. We’ll see anything long before they see us. We’re camouflaged. I think we’ll be safe for a little while. We can rest a while and then be off.’

‘Somewhere warm.’

‘Definitely somewhere warm, but not straight away. Try and sleep.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m fine. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours. Sleep now.’

When I awoke, the screen was on night vision. An eerie green light filled the pod. Apart from the background hum or the occasional muted beep, everything was very quiet.

Leon sat motionless at the console, arms folded, and his chin resting on his chest. Even given that green isn’t the most flattering colour, he looked tired and cold. He’d turned the heating down. The lights were out. He was conserving power.

I struggled out from my blanket cocoon.

He came over to assist. ‘What’s the problem? Bathroom break?’

‘No. Well yes, actually. But it’s my watch now.’

‘I don’t think …’

‘Well, of course you don’t – you’re from the Technical section. But the historian, who does this for a living, says you split these things equally. Help me up.’

Once upright and once my head stopped spinning, I actually felt a little better. ‘Go on. Get your head down for a bit.’

‘I’m not sure …’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m just going to make myself a cup of tea – after the bathroom break, obviously – and sit and watch the screen. It can’t be that difficult – you seemed to be doing OK.’

‘My next travelling companion will be less insulting, as well. Here – take a blanket.’

He settled himself down. I could tell by his breathing that he wasn’t asleep, but he didn’t speak.

I pottered quietly around, finally settling at the console with a much-needed mug of the amber nectar. I stared unseeingly at the screen and thought. I had a lot to think about.

First, there was the whole new life thing, which probably wasn’t proceeding along the lines envisaged by Mrs Partridge when she dumped me on his carpet yesterday. Was it really only yesterday?

Then there was this Time Police thing. Who they were and what they wanted seemed fairly obvious. They wanted me – a stranger in a strange world – and, if they’d already successfully sorted out some sort of international time-travelling crisis, I couldn’t imagine that one small, ginger historian was going to cause them a lot of trouble. But how had they known about me? Not twenty-four hours after I’d arrived in this world, they’d come after me. I’d had less than one day in Rushford before they’d come crashing through the gate and it had been very apparent from the start that they knew who they wanted and where I was.

We’d jumped to Skaxos. We’d sat for a while, talking, and then started to set up camp. Less than an hour later, there they were again.

We’d jumped immediately – at random – and yet, a couple of hours later – they’d found us again. Spatially and temporally, bang on target. I know they were from the future and had some cool kit, but even so – this was amazing. When St Mary’s mounted search parties for lost historians, it could sometimes take weeks to find us, even when they knew when and where to look.

Finally, of course, there was the question of Leon and me and that was when my thoughts skidded away and shot off in all directions. I’d have to come back to that.

At some point, he fell asleep. I sat and watched the screen, listened to his slow breathing, and sipped my tea.

Perhaps because my future looked so bleak and my present so uncertain, my thoughts turned to the past. To the place where I’d always been happy. To St Mary’s. Memories crowded thick and fast. Who could forget the day when Markham set himself on fire during the Icarus Experiment? Racing across the field, frantically beating out the flames and not – being Markham – looking where he was going in any way at all, he’d run slap bang into a horse’s bottom and knocked himself out cold. I could still see him, toppling slowly backwards like a felled tree, while Mr Strong chased away old Turk, who was trying to stand on him in revenge. He survived, of course. He had to. Who wants ‘Fatal Impact with Horse’s Arse’ on their death certificate?

I looked over at Leon, still lying quietly in the corner, and heard voices from the past. A certain annual performance appraisal … and, for that one, I had been fairly optimistic.

‘A nice programme,’ he said, eventually. ‘Well thought out, creative and, as always, imaginatively presented.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, beaming.

‘Well executed and with correct adherence to protocols, but not slavishly so. Never underestimate the benefits of improvisation.’

‘No, Chief.’

‘There are still one or two areas in which you should strive for more co-ordination. Enthusiasm has its place, but remember, lower back pain is no joke.’

‘Yes, Chief.’

‘Otherwise, not bad at all. Can you pass me my trousers please?’

Or the time we had a heavy snowfall and the History department decided to stage an impromptu re-enactment of the escape of Queen Mathilda from Oxford Castle in 1142, when she and a couple of knights lowered themselves from the walls in the dark and crawled away through the snow, supposedly invisible in white nightshirts.

The party consisted of Messrs Clerk, Markham (who else?), and Roberts, and let’s face it, if you lumped those three together and excavated with a JCB you still wouldn’t be able to find even a single brain cell.

The plan was that they’d lower themselves from an upstairs window and wriggle through the snow down to the lake. Evans would head a small team from Security who would play the part of soldiers trying to intercept them. The whole thing would be observed and adjudicated by Professor Rapson.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for a start, Clerk got his knots wrong and nearly cut himself in half. They left him, dangling and blaspheming about twelve feet up in the air, and Professor Rapson, caught up in the excitement, forgot about him.

The other two idiots, gaining the safety of terra firma, immediately began worming their way through the snow in a doomed attempt to reach the lake. Undoubtedly their poor sense of direction was a factor, but what really brought the whole thing to a standstill was that, in their quest for historical accuracy, the silly asses hadn’t put their drawers on.

After a great deal of wriggling through the snow on their bellies, they made the simultaneous discovery that they couldn’t feel their todgers. I didn’t even want to speculate on what they were doing to make that discovery and it was at this point that they fell into the stream, where they floundered helplessly and were eventually discovered by Evans and his team who had, unfortunately for them, stopped for a mug of tea and a bacon butty.

Professor Rapson had, by this time, taken a wrong turn in the dark and was later discovered in the car park.

Roberts and Markham were rushed to Sick Bay, suffering from the effects of encasing their unprotected private parts in snow and freezing water and, when I eventually got to them, they were sitting on a table, carefully immersing their affected members in pint beer glasses filled with warm water and being supervised by a near-hysterical Nurse Hunter.

I shouted for a good twenty minutes, because if I hadn’t I’d have been laughing hysterically, too. And when I’d finished, Ian Guthrie had a go at them as well, and on this occasion, he was magnificent. They listened in a rare state of subdued obedience to his thundering denunciation of their intelligence, and their usefulness to the world in general and St Mary’s in particular. They stared at him like terrified rabbits and at one point I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d both made involuntary contributions to the contents of their glasses.

He finished by instructing Nurse Hunter for God’s sake to ensure the complete destruction of the unfortunate glasses because no one would ever want to drink from them again.

‘Out of respect?’ enquired Markham, unwisely.

‘Don’t get cocky,’ said Hunter.

It was at that this precarious moment that they suddenly remembered the unfortunately still dangling Mr Clerk.

I lost myself in these and other happy memories, smiling for a while at my own thoughts, Inevitably, however, the comfort they brought me was tempered by sadness. The sadness of knowing that those carefree days were gone. Lost for ever.

After four hours, I was cold, stiff, hungry, thirsty, bored, and determined not to wake Leon. I was shifting my position for the umpteenth time, trying to ease the pain in my chest, when he stirred.

‘Max?’

‘Still here.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes. Not a sign of them.’

‘Actually, I was enquiring after you. Did you get any rest?’

‘Of course not. You could snore for England. I would have slept better in the European Wind Tunnel. I think my ears started to bleed at some point. Do you want some tea?’

I made us both a mug and joined him on the floor. He pulled his blankets over me. Heroically, I’d left the heating off.

‘How’s the chest?’

‘Absolutely fine,’ I said, uttering the traditional St Mary’s lie with the traditional St Mary’s panache.

He sipped his tea and said, ‘I suggest we shower, have breakfast, and then push off. The water tanks will be more than full by now.’

‘Somewhere warm and sunny.’

‘Yes, we can recharge the cells as well. Do you have anywhere particular in mind?’

I batted my eyelashes. ‘Actually …’

He sighed. ‘Yes?’

‘Well, while your snores were rattling the ceiling, I was working out some coordinates. What do you say to Ancient Egypt? Eighteenth dynasty? Peaceful. Stable. Sunny. What do you think?’

‘And?’

I put on my blindingly innocent face.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You just picked Ancient Egypt at random?’

‘Astonishingly, yes. It just … popped into my head.’

‘I see. Any time specific in this peaceful, sunny, stable, eighteenth dynasty?’

‘Strange you should ask. I was thinking – I mean, it did cross my mind – and the coordinates were easy because we know he performed the ceremony during the third year of his reign, and it would have to take place during Akhet …’

‘During what?’

‘Akhet – the season of inundation – when the Nile floods – because no one’s working in the fields then. Any other time would …’

‘No. Stop.’

‘What?’

‘Obviously you can remove the girl from St Mary’s, but it’s less easy to remove St Mary’s from the girl.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Coincidentally, that was my question, too.’

‘Akhenaten.’

‘What?’

‘Not what – who. Akhenaten. The Heretic Pharaoh.’

‘Yes. Drawing on past experience, my finely honed instinct tells me something hugely catastrophic will happen to Akhenaten, and we, of course, we will be closely involved.’

‘No, no. Don’t panic. Well yes, it will. But in the future. We won’t be around for that. Unless you want to be, of course.’

‘Hardening my heart to the wistful note in your voice, I invite you to continue.’

‘Well, Akhenaten comes to power. He succeeds a powerful and popular father – not sure how much that’s got to do with his rebellion – and immediately starts chucking sacred cats amongst the pigeons.’

‘Why?’

I hesitated.

‘I don’t think there’s any clear reason why. The fact is – he’s different. In every way. Deliberately so. It’s almost as if he said, ‘How can I overthrow the thinking of thousands of years, upset my people, antagonise the priesthood, and offend all the gods? Oh, I know! Let’s abolish all the gods and have just one. Oh, and let’s have a new city devoted to that one god and make people abandon the ancient city of their ancestors and live there. They won’t mind. And what else? Oh, yes! Let’s have a new style of realism in our art. Warts and all. Well, don’t just stand there, everyone – jump to it. Nations don’t just weaken themselves, you know.’