Weirdly, my Metvest would have served quite well if only I could have persuaded him not to stick me in the face, or the arms or the groin – particularly not the groin.
I considered surrendering, but settled for ducking behind the tree.
The man gave me an annoyed grimace, like a builder who’s just been asked to do a bit of extra finishing up, and stepped forward. I could see in my head what was going to happen next. He’d feint one way and then stab me with the point when I moved the other way. The trunk of the tree suddenly seemed very small.
I was about to leg it in the other direction, on the basis I wasn’t the one wearing the metal armour, when a high-pitched ululation from nearby interrupted us both. My poor cavalier had just enough time to grumpily turn to face in the right direction when a javelin whistled out of nowhere and pierced his throat. He staggered a step backwards and then fell with a look of profound irritation on his face.
I was expecting Tyburn, but instead got a much younger white guy, tall and lithe, with blond hair spiked up with grease and blue swirls on his face and naked chest. A golden torc gleamed at his neck and a cape made of dozens of beaver pelts stitched together hung rakishly off his shoulders.
Before I had a chance to speak he closed the distance between us, grabbed me and kissed me on the lips. Proper snog too, with tongue and everything. Not only was it not terrible as kisses go, it was also strangely familiar.
‘Beverley,’ I said when we broke for air. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
‘War has come to London,’ he said and then, after a pause, added, ‘Again.’
‘Chorley is heading for the bridge,’ I said – looking around to get my bearings. ‘And I have to stop him.’
I was standing on high ground three hundred metres north of the ancient Thames, about where St Paul’s Church was standing in the real world. The landscape had a strange unreal quality and was shrouded in a weird mist, as if I were playing a video game with a short draw distance.
I was still falling.
None of this was real.
But I’ve learnt that just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it’s not important.
I could look east at the wide and winding course of the river and see Londinium as a vague smudge. No walls, though – too early for them. The bridge was still there – laid low over pontoons to the first of the islands that made up Southwark. I thought something glittered on the central span.
To my south was the road, curving east before dropping down into the Fleet valley to that bridge and up again into Londinium.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The road.’
‘Whatever you say, babes,’ he said and, grabbing my hand, starting running.
Fuck me, but these ancient rivers were fit. It was all I could do to keep up and I didn’t have any imaginary breath left to speak. This close to the city, the road was the proper full Roman – three metres of cambered gravel with big drainage ditches either side. The Fleet was about a kilometre ahead and I could actually see Chorley on the road, halfway there. But he was walking – limping, in fact – and I reckoned I could take him.
But Beverley wouldn’t let go of my hand.
‘Hold up, babes,’ he said.
There was a bestial howl from across the river and something black and doglike bounded down to the bank. Behind it thundered a couple of hundred men on horses, all in variations of the cuirass and long coat worn by my dead friend with the matchlock pistol.
That would be the Black Dog of Newgate, I thought, and the cavaliers might be riding the missing horses from Brentford.
To the right of the river crossing appeared, as if spawning into a video game, a couple of thousand burly men in mail and armour made of small plates of metal. They carried round shields, spears and axes and swords. On their heads were helmets that most definitely didn’t have horns on them.
‘So that’s where the Holland Park Vikings went,’ I said. ‘Mr Chorley has been a busy, busy man.’
Had he known there’d be a confrontation? Or was it just his usual planning in depth? I decided that would be one of the many things we would have a conversation about by and by.
And, if the unreconstructed Lego merchants weren’t enough, another mass came boiling out of the indistinct wattle and daub rectangles of Roman London. This was a rabble dressed from every period in London’s history – stout men in doublet and hose, crooked bravos in puffy shorts and jackets with slashed sleeves to show the silk shirts below. There were top hats and bowlers, swords and muskets and clubs and pikes. From this levy en masse came an ugly, hate-filled muttering.
I’ve faced groups like this at closing time. Drunk, angry people spoiling for a fight. You can talk down most Saturday night wastemen but there’s always a hard core who don’t think it’s a proper night out if someone doesn’t get hurt.
Among them rode men on horses, singly or in groups of three or four. They were straight-backed and arrogant and stank of money. I’d faced these too, but not as often – the likes of me didn’t get to feel their collars very often.
‘Who the fuck are they?’ I asked.
‘That’s the gentry and their servants,’ said blond Beverley. ‘All the liars, hypocrites, exploiters, dog-bastards, wankers, janissaries, Monday men, cat-ranchers and people who fly-tip in protected waterways.’
‘There’s a lot of them,’ I said.
‘What can I say?’ said Beverley. ‘It’s London, isn’t it?’
I couldn’t do the calculation in my head, but I was pretty sure that falling twelve metres at 9.8 m/s2 meant I was going to hit the flagstones in just over a second. And whatever the real time/weirdo memory of London ratio was, I didn’t think I had time to hang about.
I didn’t need to fight them all. I just had to reach Chorley before he got to the bridge.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, but Beverley put his hand on my arm to stop me.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Got reinforcements coming.’
I heard them before they arrived. It was like a thousand pots and pans being rhythmically rattled against each other. And through the soles of my feet the stamp-stamp-stamp of thousands of hobnailed sandals hitting the ground in unison.
But trotting out of the arbitrary draw distance came a pair of shaggy ponies, manes plaited and beribboned in yellow and green, drawing a wickerwork chariot with big wheels. Standing in the forward driving position was the first Tyburn, this time smartly dressed in a metal lorica, segmented skirt and deep red cloak. The only thing he was missing was a helmet with a horsehair plume.
He did a flash little stop and swerve so that the open back of the chariot was towards me.
‘Up you get,’ he said, and pulled me into the chariot. ‘Here they come.’
I looked to the west just in time for an entire bloody Roman legion to come jogging into view. Rank after rank, by the cohort and the numbers, but with no standard raised – no eagle.
The smell of blood rolled off them and, weirdly, olive oil.
They came to a halt in a clatter of iron.
‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘I’m in an episode of Game of Thrones.’
33
The Sacrifice of Gaius C. Pulcinella Considered as a Deleted Scene from The Lord of the Rings
‘Useless fucks of the Ninth!’ shouted Tyburn, and the legion muttered – a rolling sound like distant thunder. ‘You failed this city once.’ Jeers, catcalls, and I didn’t need any Latin to recognise that tone. ‘But the gods have given you a second chance.’
The legion fell silent – which was scarier than when they were making a noise.
‘And this time you’re going to get the job done!’ shouted Tyburn.
There were mutters and sporadic cheers.
‘Right?’
A cheer started in the cohort directly in front of us. It was taken up by those on either side and proceeded to r
oll outward and then back, finally to peter out as Tyburn held up his fist.
‘Right!’
Five thousand men cheered and stamped their feet in unison; the ponies shied and pulled away. Tyburn didn’t try and stop them. I looked back at Beverley, who blew me a kiss before running out to the flank with a javelin ready in his hand.
The Romans liked to outsource their cavalry, but every legion had a small contingent of its own. Small wiry men in mail on horses the size of Shetland ponies – their saddles looked ridiculous, with absurdly high cantles and no stirrups. But the points of their spears glittered in the sunlight.
As the chariot picked up speed down the road they formed up around us as an escort.
Up ahead Chorley had limped onto the bridge across the Fleet and looked back to find us bearing down in all our righteous fury. I saw him shout something and gesture and a brace of Norsemen barred the way.
‘Take this,’ said Fleet, and handed me a spear. I handed it back.
‘I’m not using that,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you got something a bit less lethal?’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
The Norsemen formed a line and braced their shields.
‘Time to earn your triple pay, boys!’ yelled Tyburn as the chariot went down the slope towards the bridge, picking up speed as it went.
The Roman cavalry surged ahead. There was a flurry of movement and then they wheeled away to the left and right. Straight ahead men at the centre of the shield wall were staggering backwards, or sitting down coughing up blood, with spears through important parts of their anatomy.
I could hear the screaming even over the mad thundering of our horses, but the line looked unbroken and we were going to hit it any second.
‘Hold on!’ yelled Tyburn.
Whooping, he vaulted over the edge of the chariot and ran along the pole until he was standing upright on the yoke between the heads of his horses, one javelin poised to throw, another in his left hand ready to go.
With another high-pitched yell he threw both spears, one after another. Two Norsemen directly ahead fell away and the rest looked at Tyburn’s face and scattered. The shield wall broke and the chariot ploughed through.
As we did, Tyburn dropped down on the yoke and scooped something off the ground as the chariot passed over it. Then he popped back up and ran lightly along the pole to join me in the chariot. He passed me a round Norse shield.
‘That better?’ he asked.
I took the shield – it was heavier than the riot shield I’d trained with, made with wood bound with a metal rim and a centre grip within the boss. It was well balanced, nicely made, but probably not supposed to be wielded as a primary weapon.
We thundered across the bridge and the horses only slowed a little as they climbed out of the valley of the Fleet into Ludgate Hill, or at least what would be Ludgate Hill when there was a gate for it to be named after.
A shanty town with a bridge attached Tyburn had called early Londinium. But, even worse, it was spread out so thin that it was practically the countryside. Only the fort to the north had any stonework. Everything wattle and daub and thatch – half of them being the traditional British roundhouse.
The roads, though, were wide and well maintained, and fanned out from the point where the bridge met the high ground like a net cast to catch an island. And ahead on Watling Street I saw Chorley halfway to the bridge already.
‘We’ll have him in no time,’ said Tyburn, just as something huge and dog-shaped leapt out of nowhere and killed the chariot’s left-hand horse.
The chariot pitched forward like an unexpected pole-vaulter and I think Tyburn threw me clear, because I have a definite memory of tumbling along the muddy verge, stopping and looking back in time to see a wheel scything into the thatch of a nearby roundhouse. The remaining horse was screaming and Tyburn was yelling as he wrestled with the Black Dog of Newgate Prison. I grabbed my shield that was, miraculously, nearby and legged it after Chorley.
If this turns out to be cyclical, I thought, I’m going to have serious words with whoever’s in charge.
It was less than a kilometre from Ludgate Hill to the north end of London Bridge.
I was younger and fitter than Chorley, but he had a head start and the occasional friend who tried to kill me. I wasn’t sure what death in the realm of memory would entail – probably nothing permanent. It wasn’t going to be this very short gentleman with a leather jacket and a switchblade that killed me. It was going to be the sudden transfer of energy from potential into kinetic.
But I wasn’t so sure about the matter that I didn’t hit Leather Jacket very hard in the face with my shield and then stamp on his knife wrist, just to be on the safe side. Ditto for the posh guy on a horse, who obviously hadn’t done any cavalry training or he wouldn’t have pulled up beside me and tried to use a riding crop. I like to think the horse was quite relieved to be rid of him. He went into the Walbrook – the muddy creek, that is, not the conspicuously absent goddess.
I had a good view of the bridge by then. A classic bit of Roman military engineering, a wooden roadbed laid over a series of pontoons. It would rise and fall with the tides.
There was nobody on it apart from Martin Chorley.
When I saw this I stopped running and walked the rest of the way. Obviously today was my day.
Chorley glowered at me as he watched me approach.
‘Where is Punch?’ Chorley asked me when I reached him.
‘He’s behind you,’ I said, and when he turned to look I punched him in the face.
His head snapped to the side and he staggered and gave me a look of hurt outrage. A look I’ve seen so many times on the street, or in an interview room or the magistrates’ court. The one on the face of every bully that ever got what was coming to them and counted it unfair, an outrage – You can’t do this to me. I know my rights.
‘You let him go?’ he said.
I said that I had.
‘Why?’ Chorley seemed sincerely perplexed.
‘He thought I was the lesser of two evils,’ said Punch suddenly beside us.
Not the moon-faced Italian puppet but the youngest son of an Atrebates sub-chief – black haired, square faced, dressed in the blood-stained remains of his fashionable Roman tunic, ripped across the front to show the horrid gaping wound in his belly. He was a sad sight, but his eyes were full of a screaming and dangerous mirth.
‘More fool him,’ he shrieked, and seized Chorley by the throat and lifted him off his feet.
I jumped forward but Punch casually backhanded me so hard I landed on my back more than a metre away.
‘We had a deal,’ I shouted.
‘I don’t bargain,’ screamed Punch as I got to my feet.
‘Father,’ said a woman.
Still holding Chorley aloft, Punch turned to look at his daughter as she walked across the bridge towards us. She seemed taller, thinner and darker, and wore a sheath of white linen from armpit to ankle. From her shoulders trailed a shawl of implausibly gauzy material that streamed a couple of metres behind her in a non-existent wind.
Light blazed from the circlet around her head.
Isis of the Walbrook, I thought, you kept that quiet, girl, didn’t you?
Punch turned to his daughter, his face stricken, mouth drawn down in pain.
‘Never like that,’ he said. ‘You promised.’
The light faded, the gauzy shawl slipped from Walbrook’s shoulders and went fluttering over the dark gleaming river. She became shorter, stockier and lighter until she was the women I’d met in the pub a month ago, complete with orange capri pants and purple scorpion T-shirt.
‘Come on, Dad,’ she said. ‘Put the little man down.’
‘Don’t want to,’ said Punch petulantly. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because my boy there is going to deal with h
im,’ she said, glancing at me. ‘And I owe him. And I pays my debts.’
‘Shan’t,’ said Punch.
‘Drop him!’ said Walbrook sharply, and Punch let go and Chorley fell to the floor.
Punch dropped to his knees, grasped his daughter around her waist and pulled her tightly to him. His face was buried in her hair, tears streamed from his eyes, and he mumbled continuously something that sounded like Italian but was probably Latin.
Ack, I thought. Melodrama.
Walbrook turned to me and said, ‘You still here?’
And then I was falling through the rain again.
Then we hit. But not the flagstones.
We hit something white and cold that buckled under the impact. Softer than cement, but still hard enough to rattle my brain. And I didn’t have a chance to do anything useful before we rolled off the roof of the Transit van and fell the last metre and a half. This time we hit stone and it was even more painful than I was expecting.
The whole of my left side from shoulder to knee went numb, in that worrying numb-now pain-later way of a major injury, and the air was literally knocked out of my body. I was trying to breathe in but it felt as if my lungs were paralysed. Then I coughed. It hurt, then I breathed in – it was wonderful.
I rolled onto my back and looked up through the gently falling rain to see Lesley frowning down at me from the cornice. Then she vanished and I realised I had about twenty seconds while she ran down the steps. And she’d still have that pistol, wouldn’t she?
The flagstones were slick, so getting up was hard work. And I didn’t like the way my knee hurt. My only consolation was that Martin Chorley was moaning and wasn’t moving any faster than I was. I got to my feet while Chorley was still on his hands and knees. Grabbing him struck me as being too complicated an action and I did consider falling on him, but decided to caution him instead.
I got as far as ‘Anything you say might be’ when he flung out his hand and tried to impello me into the far wall of the cemetery. Fortunately he was in pain and I was ready with a shield – even so, I skidded back on my heels from the force of it. At which point Lesley came out of the main doors and, without hesitating, ran up to Chorley and kicked him in the stomach.
Lies Sleeping Page 31