Crow Boy (9 page)

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of a coal cracking in the brazier. Tom looked and saw that deep in the heart of the coals, the head of the poker was glowing bright red. He tried not to think of it making contact with Alison's neck.

The Doctor took a deep breath and then he spoke. ‘You are a . . . headstrong boy,' he said. ‘One might say, a foolish boy. If you're wrong, this girl's fate will be on your head. However . . . since time is tight and there are other cases waiting . . . ones who might accept the wisdom of an expert in this sickness . . . we shall give you the benefit of the doubt.' He waved a hand at his assistants. ‘Out,' he said. ‘We go on to the next case.'

The two men looked disappointed but they hurried to obey him. Joshua pulled the poker from the fire and thrust it into a bucket of water. There was a loud hiss as the heat was abruptly quenched. The other man snatched up the smoking brazier and carried it out of the room. Finally, with visible reluctance, Joshua took the scalpel from The Doctor's hand and returned it to its pouch. He followed his companion.

‘I'll return tomorrow,' said The Doctor. ‘You can be sure of that. And if there's no marked improvement, the girl will be given the prescribed treatment. No arguments. Do you understand?'

Tom nodded, and with that, The Doctor grabbed his cane from the end of the bed and swept out of the room. A moment later, the sound of his heavy boots went thudding down the stairs.

Tom let out a sigh of relief and even Alison managed a pale and weary smile. ‘Thank you, Tom,' she murmured. ‘I don't know what would have happened if he'd touched me with that poker.'

Tom turned back to face her, realising that the encounter had coaxed a sweat of fear out of him. He lifted an arm and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his blazer.

‘Don't thank me,' he told her. ‘Just get better by tomorrow.'

And he went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Eleven

There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Because of the white sheet in the window, no customers came to bring laundry and the tenants on the upper floors didn't want to have anything to do with the people living below them – not until the all-clear was given.

Missie Grierson spent much of her time in Alison's room and the children, free from the everyday toil of their trade, moped around the first and second floors like three lost lambs. Tom found himself sitting with Morag in the kitchen. In fact, since his run-in with The Doctor, he couldn't seem to go anywhere without her trailing along after him, looking up at him in some kind of bewildered awe. Clearly she had been very impressed by the way he'd handled himself. He'd sneaked off to the kitchen to try to think about what was happening and what he might do to escape from here but Morag had still found her way to him. He hadn't the heart to tell her to clear off. She was clearly worried and wanting reassurance.

‘Do you think Alison's going to be all right?' she asked him fearfully for perhaps the sixth time that day.

He nodded. ‘Missie Grierson says she's loads better. She reckons it's her chicken broth that's done the trick, but I know it's the antibiotics . . .' He glanced at her. ‘The, er . . . Sassenach pills,' he corrected himself.

‘You saved her life,' said Morag, almost as though she thought he might not have realised this. ‘She'll always be in your debt.'

Tom shrugged. ‘She doesn't owe me anything,' he said. ‘It was just lucky I had the pills with me. See, I had this ear infection a while ago but it went away by itself. I'd kind of forgotten I had them.'

‘Well it's lucky you did. What's an ear infection?'

‘Oh it's just . . . you know, when you get earache.'

‘Like when you've been listening to Cameron?' said Morag brightly and Tom grinned.

‘Yeah, that would do it,' he agreed.

Morag studied him intently. ‘Cameron says you're a bampot,' she said.

‘Yeah, I know he does.'

‘He says that you keep going on about being from the future.'

‘Only because it's true,' insisted Tom.

‘But . . . how could you be?'

‘I don't really understand it myself.' He thought for a moment. ‘Remember when I first met you on the Royal Mile? And I said I'd had a fall?'

She nodded.

‘Well, that's what happened to me – only when I began to fall I was in 2012 . . . and when I landed I was here, in 1645. It's like I just . . . fell through time.' He frowned. ‘I told Cameron all this but he didn't believe me.'

‘I believe you,' said Morag, solemnly.

Tom smiled at her. He reached into his pocket and took out his mobile phone. ‘See, I showed him this,' he said, ‘I thought it might convince him if I could make it work, but of course I couldn't get a . . .' He broke off in surprise as he saw that the phone's icon was now illuminated. It was only weak: a couple of bars, but it
was
a signal.

He didn't waste any time wondering how such a thing could be possible. He pressed his contacts button and hit his dad's mobile number, noting as he did so that the battery level was already dangerously low. He lifted the device to his ear and listened intently. There was the longest pause and then a ringing tone. It sounded very far away and, Tom thought,
it ought to
. It was travelling hundreds of miles across hundreds of years. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.

‘What are you doing?' asked Morag, mystified.

‘I'm phoning my dad.'

‘But what . . .?'

He waved her to silence. The phone rang again and again and he began to think he was wasting his time. Then–

‘Hello?' His dad's voice: faint, distant, but unmistakeably his.

‘Dad, it's me! It's Tom!'

‘Tom?' A pause. ‘Look, mate, you shouldn't really be calling me at work. I'm kind of busy this morning.'

‘No, Dad, listen, this is important. Really important. I'm in Edinburgh, right, only not in modern-day Edinburgh. I know it sounds crazy, but it's 1645 and I'm at this orphanage . . .'

Dad laughed. ‘That's very funny, Tom, but really, I've got way too much on this morning. You can tell me all about it when I get home, OK?'

‘When you . . . get home?' That stopped Tom in his tracks. ‘But, Dad, I don't . . . I don't understand.'

Dad answered, talking slowly as if to an idiot. ‘When I get home from work, we'll speak then. OK? I'm sure whatever it is can wait a few hours, can't it?'

‘But . . . don't you know? About Mum, I mean?'

‘What about her?' Dad sounded baffled, a little bit cross.

‘She . . . I'm sorry, there's no easy way to say this, but she's . . . well, left you, Dad. She's moved up to Edinburgh with this other guy she met, Hamish. She left you a note and . . .'

‘Son, if that's meant to be a joke, it's in very poor taste.'

Tom sat there, open-mouthed, his mind racing. ‘But, I . . .'

‘And what's all this nonsense about Edinburgh?'

‘It's . . . it's where Mum went,' whispered Tom. ‘Isn't it?'

There was a long sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘Look, I know it hasn't been easy for you,' said Dad, speaking with great care. ‘With Mum going so suddenly, it was a great shock for both of us . . . and then all the stress of the funeral and everything, of course it got to us both. But I thought we were over that. I mean, it's been a year now and we both have to go on with our lives . . .'

Dad's voice seemed to fade away to a background murmur. Tom sat there in a state of shock, only vaguely aware of two trickles of moisture running down from the corners of his eyes. He wasn't sure why he was crying. He was pretty sure she wasn't dead, not really, but it was the idea of it that had got to him. Morag was looking at him intently, her mouth open.

‘Tom?' Dad's voice: more urgent now. ‘Tom, are you still there?'

‘Uh . . . yes. Yes, I'm here.'
Wherever ‘here' is
, added a voice in his head.

‘Look, do you want me to come to school and get you?'

‘That er . . . that could be tricky,' croaked Tom. He took a deep breath. ‘Tell me . . . tell me about Mum.'

‘Tell you about her?'

‘About what happened.'

‘You know what happened!'

‘I just . . . need to hear it. One more time. Please.'

Another long pause. Tom was horribly aware that the battery on his phone was almost drained.

‘Well, she . . . Tom, she was driving down to the shops, wasn't she? You know that much.'

‘Yeah, but I can't remember
why
.'

‘Why? Well . . . she needed to look for a present for Veronica's leaving do, didn't she? And the lorry came out of a side street and I suppose maybe she wasn't concentrating . . .' Dad's voice was ragged, just on the edge of breaking up. ‘Look, this is crazy. I don't know why I'm going over it again.'

‘Because I need to know!' It came out sounding angrier than Tom had intended, but his parents had never been good at keeping him in the loop. It had come as a complete surprise to him when they'd split up.

Dad sighed. ‘They said it was very quick . . . the police

. . .
they said she wouldn't have known what . . . what hit her . . .' His voice trailed off for a moment and there was the sound of his laboured breathing as he tried to pull himself together. ‘Tom, do we have to talk about this now? Can't we do it tonight, when I get home from work?'

‘Sure. Sure, Dad, I . . . I'm sorry; I just needed to hear the details.'

‘But we must have been through it a dozen times.'

‘I know. I'm sorry.'

‘And you're all right?'

‘I'm fine now. I'll . . . I'll see you later. When you . . . when you get home. When
I
get home.'

‘OK. Bye, son.'

Dad hung up. Tom sat there, trying to tell himself that this was just another alternative reality; it didn't really mean that his mother was dead. But he couldn't help wondering if – when he got back – if he
ever
got back – would
this
be the world that was waiting for him? What if one of the crazy things he'd been shown could actually come true? What then?

Twelve

He realised that Morag was still looking up at him intently.

‘Are you all right, Tom?' she whispered. ‘I heard a wee voice coming from that thing. Like an imp in a bottle.'

Tom nodded. He sniffed, wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Then a thought occurred to him and he hit the button on the phone that would display the few photographs he had stored on there. He found the only one he had of Mum. She was standing in the kitchen at home, looking awkward because she never liked having her picture taken, but Tom thought it was a good one of her; she looked young and pretty, her dark hair brushed and shining. He held out the phone to show the image to Morag.

‘Oh, what a lovely miniature,' she said.

‘That's my mum,' said Tom. ‘And it's not a painting, it's a photograph.'

‘She looks very grand,' said Morag. ‘What are those things behind her?'

‘Hmm?' Tom looked. ‘Oh, that's just a kettle and a toaster. You make tea or coffee with this thing and you toast bread in that. You just press a button and when it's ready, it pops up.'

‘I see,' said Morag. ‘But where are the flames?'

‘There aren't any. It just . . . gets hot. You heat the bread till it's brown and you put butter on it and maybe some Nutella or something . . .' He looked at her blank expression. She clearly didn't have a clue what he was talking about. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘I just wanted to show you my mum.'

‘It's very lifelike,' said Morag. ‘You can't even see the brushstrokes.'

‘No, that's because there aren't any. I took this myself. Here, look. I'll take one of you.' He lifted the camera and framed Morag in the shot. ‘Smile,' he said, but she just opened her mouth to ask something. He snapped the picture anyway. Then he turned the camera back to show her. There she was, sitting in her chair, her mouth open, a puzzled expression on her face.

When she saw the photograph, Morag let out a gasp of surprise. ‘How did you
do
that?' she cried.

‘It's no big deal; everybody can do it where I come from. You just need a mobile phone.'

‘But that's incredible!' she cried. ‘Tom, I think you really are from the future!'

Just at that moment the door opened and Cameron shambled into the room, looking bored.

‘Cameron!' cried Morag. ‘You must come and look at this.'

He glanced at the device in Tom's hand. ‘I've already seen it,' he said, his voice toneless. ‘That's the machine that Tom uses to talk to people all over the world. Only it doesn't work.'

‘It does actually,' Tom assured him. ‘I just spoke to my dad, in Manchester.'

‘Did you really? That's nice. And what did he have to say for himself?'

‘He told Tom something about his mother,' said Morag. ‘I could hear a wee voice speaking but I couldn't make out the words. What was it he said to you, Tom? About your mother. The thing that made you cry?'

‘He told me she was dead. Only . . . I'm pretty sure she isn't, not really.'

‘Oh, right, that's as clear as mud.' Cameron nodded wearily, an expression of complete boredom on his face. ‘Is there anything to eat in here? I'm starving!'

‘But you haven't seen me on the picture box,' insisted Morag. ‘Tom just used it to paint a wee picture of me and it only took him a moment to do it.'

‘You're as barmy as he is,' muttered Cameron.

‘Come and look if you don't believe me!' cried Morag.

Cameron sighed and began to plod over to them but, in that same instant, the battery finally gave out and the screen went black.

He peered at it for a moment and then said, ‘It's not the most flattering picture I've ever seen.'

‘That's not it!' cried Morag. ‘It's gone. Tom, bring it back again!'

‘I can't,' he said mournfully. ‘The battery's gone.'

‘Gone?' She looked around the room. ‘Gone where?'

‘You don't understand. It needs recharging. I don't have a charger with me and, even if I did, I'd need somewhere to plug it in.'

‘See,' said Cameron. ‘There's always something that doesn't quite work, isn't there? Show her the piece of paper with the old woman's face on it. Maybe that'll convince her.'

Tom scowled. He slipped the useless phone back into his pocket. ‘You're always too slow,' he snarled. ‘You miss everything.'

‘Oh, excuse me!' sneered Cameron. ‘I may be slow, but at least I'm not a bampot. At least I know what's real and what isn't.'

‘Tom's
not
a bampot!' cried Morag. ‘He's telling the truth about being from the future. I've seen proof.'

‘You'd believe anything he tells you,' snapped Cameron. ‘Trotting around behind him like a wee lapdog; you're ridiculous.' He slipped into a parody of Morag's high-pitched voice. ‘Ooh, Tom, Tom, you're so brave talking to Doctor Rae like that! You're my hero!' He shook his head. ‘Can't you see he's just reeling you in with his fancy lies.'

Suddenly, Tom couldn't help himself. He was up out of his chair and striding towards Cameron. ‘You take that back!' he shouted.

‘I will not. It's the truth. You're mad and you're turning her the same way.'

‘Take it back!' Tom reached out a hand and pushed Cameron hard in the chest. ‘Or else . . .'

‘Or else what?' sneered Cameron. He bunched his hands into fists. ‘What are you going to do about it, bampot?'

Something in Tom snapped. He threw a wild punch that caught Cameron on the chin, flinging him backwards across the kitchen and slamming him up against a wall. Cameron looked dazed for a moment. He wiped his mouth on the back of one hand and grinned maliciously.

‘Right then,' he said. He came back at Tom, fists swinging. Tom managed to duck the first blow but, as he straightened up the next one thudded into his stomach, doubling him over. He managed to swing an arm up at Cameron, pushing him away, and the two of them grappled for a moment, flailing wildly around the kitchen like they were dancing with each other.

‘Stop it!' cried Morag. ‘Stop it at once; somebody is going to get hurt!'

‘That's the idea,' snarled Cameron and then yelped as a punch from Tom caught him on the ear. He retaliated, flinging more punches in return. His left hook missed completely but the right one went full into Tom's face and connected with his nose. Fireworks seemed to go off inside Tom's head, a riot of colourful explosions – and for an instant he was a little kid again – he was with his mum and dad at a firework display; they were pointing up at the rockets exploding in the sky and saying, ‘Oooooh' and ‘Aaaaah!' and he was laughing wildly because he was so excited and also a little scared by the noise.

But that was only for an instant, because then a black hood seemed to drop over his head and shoulders and he was falling in slow motion, a horrible sick feeling lurching in his stomach. The hood came off and now he was falling amidst a confusion of dust and broken floorboards and lumps of stone. He looked up and saw a grey, flickering Morag gazing down at him through a large ragged hole in the floor above. There was concern in her eyes, but suddenly she wasn't Morag any more; she was Mum, standing in the kitchen, smiling and telling him to take the picture quickly, before she changed her mind; she hated having her photograph taken. And he was just going to say ‘Smile' when something hard slammed against his back, driving the breath out of him and he lay there, gasping, as everything around him shifted in and out of focus . . .

And he was back in the kitchen of the orphanage. Morag was kneeling beside him, crying her eyes out and telling Cameron that he'd killed Tom. Cameron stood beside her, shaking his head, saying that he'd only given the lad a wee tap and didn't it serve him right for starting something he couldn't finish? Then the door opened and Missie Grierson strode into the room.

She stood there, looking down at them, her hands on her plump hips. ‘What in the name of reason is going on here?' she shouted.

‘Cameron's trying to kill Tom!' shrieked Morag.

‘Ach! He struck the first blow,' argued Cameron. ‘I'm sick of him walking round saying mad things all the time. It serves him right.'

Missie Grierson took the clay pipe from her mouth and let out a great cloud of smoke. ‘Haven't we enough trouble to contend with, without you bairns going at each other like wild animals?' she cried. She glared at Cameron. ‘You,' she said. ‘The pigs still need their food, even if we have precious little for ourselves. Get out there and feed them.'

‘Oh, but Missie Grierson, Tom–'

‘Out, I say! Morag, you go with him.'

‘Do I have to?' complained Morag.

‘Aye. Don't vex me, girl. I've had enough trouble for one day and I'm likely to take a switch to your backside. Now, go on, the pair of you.' Cameron walked over and collected the scrap bucket. He headed grumpily towards the back door. Morag trudged after him.

Missie Grierson stood there, looking down at Tom. ‘Well, don't just lie there, boy, get yourself upright.' She fished in a pocket and found a grubby kerchief, which she pressed into his hand as he struggled to his feet. ‘Clean yourself up,' she said. She indicated that he should take a seat and then settled into the one beside him. She watched as Tom dabbed at his bloody nose. ‘You all right now?' she asked him.

He nodded.

‘What was the fight about?'

‘Oh, it was just something that Cameron said about me. He keeps saying that I'm not right in the head. But he doesn't understand. I'm just
different
.'

Missie Grierson nodded. ‘I'll tell you what I know,' she said. ‘There's a young girl in the room above who's just made the most miraculous recovery in history and it's all due to you and your magic pills.' She took a couple more puffs on her pipe and looked at him intently. ‘So yes, I think you are different. I also think it's time you told me the truth, Tom. Who are you? And where did you come from?'