TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 (15 page)

She tried not to think about the pamphlet that Jana had shown her. She could not read, but the picture had been easy to understand. It had shown two men in some kind of uniform, one with a baby held high, impaled on the end of a pike, the other standing, holding another child above the head of a kneeling woman, about to dash its brains out on the ground before her. The image filled her with horror and dread. There was great violence abroad in England, this much was clear, though whether the threat came from within or without, be it rebellion or popish invasion, she could not tell.

As Dora stood in the deserted heart of her home village, her imagination offered terrible visions of what could have befallen her friends and family. Try as she might, she could not banish them.

Then she caught the faintest hint of sound. An echoing murmur of distant conversation. Without hesitation she ran towards the source of the sound – the village church – desperate to see a familiar face.

She raced through the lychgate and ran up the path to the solid oak door of the ancient building. The hubbub of conversation was clearly audible now. She paused at the door and then thought better of her haste. Were she to enter this way, there would be little chance of her remaining unobserved. Until she knew exactly what she was walking into, she preferred caution. So she stole around the side of the church to a small door at the rear of the building. She gently pushed it open and slipped into the gloomy narthex, a screened-off area at the rear of the church from which penitents could observe the daily worship they were forbidden to join.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the half-light, as there were no candles burning, but soon she could make out what seemed to be the entire population of the village. The relief she felt was so powerful that she felt her knees go weak and she sat for a moment behind the screen, catching her breath.

The villagers were milling around near the pulpit at the far end of the nave, talking softly, as if afraid of being overheard. No candles, hushed voices; Dora realised that they were hiding. But from who, or what? Seized by a sudden apprehension, Dora rose to her feet and stepped back up to the screen, straining to overhear.

She recognised most of the people who congregated at the far end of the church, but their fear was palpable. How would they react to the sudden reappearance of a girl missing for five years but now returned, not aged a single day, and dressed in the strangest of garments? The vision of herself, strapped to a stake, with fire licking at her legs, rose up in her mind, and she shuddered at the thought that perhaps it was her own kin, mad with fear and suspicion, who would fall upon her and offer her to the flames as a witch. As much as she wished to fly to the arms of those who knew her, to beg them for news of her parents, she resolved to stay hidden until she could establish exactly what was happening.

She did not have to wait long. Parson John, looking older and more tired than Dora remembered, took the pulpit and gestured for silence.

‘Friends,’ he said, his voice tremulous and cracked. ‘We have known for some time that this was approaching, but we have been too divided amongst ourselves to determine a course of action. As a consequence, we find ourselves unprepared.’

‘The menfolk should have fled,’ shouted one woman, who Dora recognised as Goodwife Bamford. ‘That way they could not be pressed into service and could return when it was right, to tend the livestock and crops.’

‘They did that at Wych Cross,’ countered a tall man, who Dora could not make out. ‘And we all know what happened there. The womenfolk were sorely abused and half the village burned.’

‘Yet they all live still,’ replied Goodwife Bamford, folding her arms resolutely. ‘In Low Ercall, the men remained and resisted. They lie cold now, and who will protect their families as winter draws in?’

‘Friends, please,’ pleaded the parson. ‘We have argued too long and now we must decide what to do. The war is at our doorstep. I took it upon myself to dispatch a messenger to Sweetclover Hall …’ There was a smattering of derision from the crowd; murmurs of ‘you’ll get no help there’ and ‘curse him’, which astonished Dora. When she had left – which she had to keep reminding herself was not yesterday but five years previously – nobody would have dared speak ill of his lordship openly. ‘I dispatched a messenger to ask for help,’ continued the parson, raising his voice slightly to push through the murmurs of discontent.

‘And what did your messenger find?’ asked a voice in the crowd.

The parson bowed his head and answered softly. ‘The door was barred and he could not gain admittance.’

Perhaps it was the parson’s obvious distress at reporting this news that prevented the outcry Dora would have expected. Instead a sole voice spoke out. ‘He has turned his back on us.’

Dora gasped in delight as she recognised her father’s voice, but she still prevented herself from running forward and declaring her presence.

Her father continued, walking up the pulpit steps to address the village. ‘We knew he would. Since he married, rarely has he shown his face outside his walls. He has made his position clear. He considers this war none of his concern.’

‘He is too busy preparing his next black mass to honour the devils he worships. And your wife seems quite content to accept his protection,’ spat hatchet-faced old Goodman Squeer. Dora’s heart leapt again. That was why her mother had been absent from the bakery – Jana and Kaz had been right, she was not dead, she had taken a position as baker at Sweetclover Hall.

‘I will ignore your ridiculous accusation of sorcery,’ replied her father, his voice dripping with cold contempt. ‘It is founded on gossip and rumour.’

‘Rumours begun by your wife,’ pointed out one old lady.

Dora saw her father’s shoulders sag, but he regained his composure and continued. ‘My wife spoke out of turn and now recants her slanders,’ he said. ‘Lord Sweetclover does no more than we seek to do, to remain apart from this conflict, minding his own business. I, for one, see no blame in that. My point is, if we run, then our village and our womenfolk will likely be plundered by the army as it makes its way to Lostwithiel. If we stay and offer no resistance, our pantries will be emptied, our church defiled, and the men of fighting age will most likely be pressed to arms. I see no alternative but resistance.’

There were more murmurs of dissent, but no open challenge, so Dora’s father spoke on. ‘I know you have heard of the Clubmen who rose up against this war in Shropshire last year, and of the Woodbury Declaration, in which the Clubmen of Worcestershire set out their opposition to this war and those armies that prey upon decent, honest working folk. I have a copy of it here.’ He held up a piece or paper and handed it up to Parson John. ‘Parson, would you read out, please, the sentence that you marked for me.’

The parson unfolded the paper and began. ‘We, our wives and children, have been exposed to utter ruin by the outrages and violence of the soldier; threatening to fire our houses; endeavouring to ravish our wives and daughters, and menacing our persons.’ At this point he paused for effect, letting the details of their coming plight sink into the minds of the restive congregation. Then, enunciating clearly, issuing a call to arms, he continued, ‘We are now enforced to associate ourselves in a mutual league for each other’s defence, to protect and safeguard our persons and estates by the mutual aid and assistance of each other against all murders, rapines, plunder, robberies, or violences which shall be offered by the soldier or any oppressor whatsoever.’

The words echoed around the interior of the church and Dora admired, not for the first time, the parson’s skill as an orator.

Her father stood and surveyed the crowd, waiting for the echoes to fade before taking up the sermon. ‘And so must we, men of Pendarn. We must arm ourselves and stand firm against those who would seek to pull us into their war. I know there are those among us who favour the king, and those who favour Parliament. I know there are those who find the reforms of Archbishop Laud – the altar rail, the coloured glass windows and crosses of our church – offensive to their faith. But our differences matter not in the face of the destruction of our homes, our families and our livelihoods. We must set aside our quarrels and make common cause. This is not our war, but we must fight to keep it so.’

Dora’s head spun. This was no foreign invasion, it was a civil conflict between Parliament and the Crown. How such a thing had come to pass, she could not begin to imagine, but the idea that her country was tearing itself apart filled her with deep dread.

She looked at her father, standing upon the steps of the pulpit, and she marvelled. He had always been a man of firm convictions but he had been content with his lot in life. He made good bread that fed his family and neighbours. Although not a man given to much discussion of spiritual matters, he had once confided in her that he thought his work was holy. ‘Feeding the people around us is a Christian calling,’ he had told her. He had taken such pride in his work, such pleasure in the process of mixing and kneading, shaping and baking the loaves. He had seemed entirely at home in his bakery. She had never seen him as the kind of man to seek attention or leadership. Yet here he was, speaking treason to the whole village with a zeal she did not recognise.

One thing was clear to Dora – the world had changed much in the five years she had been absent, and her father had changed with it.

Before he could continue his oration, Dora heard a sound which added to her sense of growing unease.

‘Listen,’ the parson said, holding up his hand for silence. The distant noise was unmistakable.

‘Horses,’ came a terrified cry from a woman in the crowd, and there was a cacophony of frantic voices, all asking for guidance or trying to propose a course of action.

Dora kept her eyes focused on her father and the parson. She noticed they gave each other a nod, as if agreeing to enact some prearranged plan. The parson spoke quickly and firmly, his voice cutting through the hubbub with the authority of a lifetime spent asserting his will from the pulpit.

‘Able-bodied men remain here, women and children to the crypt.’ And, grateful for the direction, the women began herding their children towards the door at the side of the altar. The parson climbed down from his pulpit, shook hands with Dora’s father once, and then shepherded them underground.

‘Gather round,’ said Dora’s father, and the thirty or so men did. Dora corrected herself once she got a better look at them; in fact about half of those who remained were little more than boys, and of the men, five were well beyond fighting age. But all stood ready, hanging upon her father’s words.

‘Take these,’ said her father, handing out scraps of white cloth. ‘And wrap them around your arms. Then go to the altar. You’ll find a pile of weapons hidden there. Select one. The parson and I agree that they can defile the church if they wish. We must go to ground. We only resist if they plunder our homes.’

Of all the amazing and awful things that had happened to her in the last day, nothing had made Dora feel so despairing and helpless as watching the men of her village prepare themselves for battle. As they hurried out of the vestry door, away from the approaching soldiers and the village green, there was a loud smashing sound as a heavy rock crashed through the large stained-glass window that lit up the church from above the altar. The men at the vestry door had all turned to see, almost in spite of themselves, and so they all witnessed a second and then a third stone come flying through the glass, sprinkling the church floor with coloured shards and strips of redundant lead. Then they turned and fled. The vestry door closed at the same instant the main church door was flung open. A steady stream of soldiers poured through the door into the church and set about destroying the interior with a passion that mystified Dora.

There was a large wooden cross hanging by the altar. The soldiers pulled it from the wall and smashed it on the ground, cheering as they did so. A mural of the saints that adorned the east wall, which Dora had studied for so many hours as a child she could draw it blindfold, was daubed over with whitewash. The fact that the soldiers had come prepared to perform this task astonished Dora. More stones were hurled through the stained-glass windows.

Dora watched the destruction and thought her father wise to let the invaders give vent to their violent urges upon the signs and symbols of the church first, although what offence a mural, a wooden cross and a stained-glass window could have afforded them, Dora was powerless to guess.

Eventually the iconoclastic orgy began to abate and the soldiers drifted outside again.

When the last man had left, Dora stepped out from behind the screen, surveying the broken glass, shattered cross and defiled wall in horror before hurrying out of the church door into the sunlight.

The mist had burned away and the sun hung higher above the horizon, but there was still a chill in the air. Dora saw the soldiers making their way through the lychgate back to the village green, upon which were gathered a large collection of men and horses. Worried about being spotted, Dora crouched low and hurried away from the path towards the trees which lined the east side of the churchyard. Once safely hidden from view she made a beeline for the village boundary. Running as fast as she could, she cut back in through one of the fields and approached the bakery unseen. But as she re-entered her abandoned home she was horrified to find it empty again. She called out for her friends as loudly as she dared, but there was no reply.

Kaz and Jana were gone.

She stood there for a moment, dumbfounded and clueless. Where on earth could they have fled to? Had they been taken by the soldiers?

For a few seconds she was frozen with indecision. Her mother was three miles distant in the hands of a man Dora knew was not at all that he appeared to be. Her father was about to do battle with a far superior force. Her friends were nowhere to be found. She was in the right place but the wrong time, wearing both the wrong clothes and a face that everyone who knew her would find impossibly young. And as much as she tried to banish the image from her mind, she knew that whatever decision she made next would inevitably bring her a step closer to the fire of a witch’s death. She felt tears welling in her eyes as she contemplated the hopelessness of her situation but she blinked them back and took a deep breath. All she really wanted to do was climb upstairs, crawl into her father’s bed and hide.