by Alex Scarrow
She pushed a terrified young boy forward. By the scrawny size of him, he was ten, maybe eleven, years old, with a tuft of blond hair atop a skinny frame of raggedy, patched clothes. He clung to his mother with the same savage desperation as she was clinging to Liam’s arm.
‘No, sorry … no, I can’t!’
‘Please! For God’s sake have mercy for ’im!’
‘I’m sorry!’ He tried peeling her vice-tight fingers from his arm.
‘Liam!’ snapped Rashim. ‘Come on!’
‘Go!’ he replied. ‘Jay-zus! JUST GO!’
Rashim jumped into the swelling water and began to swim for the boat.
‘God help ya, he’s just a child!’ the woman screamed into Liam’s face. ‘He can work for you! For your master!’
‘No, I can’t! I’m sorry, miss … now please, let me –’
He turned to see Rashim reaching out for the paddle of an oar being extended down into the water.
The woman released his arm, but then placed both hands on the sides of his head, turning him to face her, to really look at her. To see her. To know her … if only for that instant.
‘God help me, he is all I have! All I am … please! If you do one act of kindness in yer life, let this be it!’
Liam looked down at the boy, but saw only hair; the boy’s face was buried in the folds of the woman’s dress, his arms wrapped round her.
Ah Jay-zus, Liam, you flippin’ idiot …
He found himself nodding uncertainly. ‘Aye, all right.’ He reached down and grabbed one of the boy’s stick-thin arms. The woman let out a choked gasp of relief.
‘No! No, Mama! No!’ The boy struggled to shake off Liam’s rough grasp.
The woman, sobbing, fought with her child, wrenching his arms from around her waist. ‘You let go now! Let go!’
The boy squirmed and screamed as Liam and the woman wrestled him off her. Liam twisted his small arms until he feared one of them might break, then he had him, trussed in his arms, a thrashing, crying, kicking bundle of twigs and rags.
The woman dropped down to her knees and grasped her son’s face in her hands. ‘William, my darlin’ … my love! My baby! You’re going with this kind young man! Be very good for ’im!’ She quickly kissed his forehead then stood up and once more held Liam in an intense gaze.
‘God will bless you, sir!’ Her heat-blotched face, damp with streams of sweat and tears, betrayed the oddest contradiction: heart-rending grief … and elation. Unbridled relief.
‘God will always bless you for this!’
A loud crash to their right. Liam saw a billowing cloud of sparks descend on to the jetty. The people, the animals, screamed in fear and agony as a roaring plume of flame coiled up into the evening sky, the temperature suddenly shooting up.
‘LIAM!’ Rashim was calling him. He could see Rashim slumped half in, half out of the boat. ‘COME ON!’
There was not another second to waste. Liam leaped into the water, pulling the struggling boy with him. The cold water of the Thames was an instant relief from the now unbearable heat. With one arm, he pulled deep strokes through the water, dragging the boy behind him. Two, three, four … then his arm smacked against an oar extended towards him. He grabbed hold of it and pulled the boy up until he could reach for it too.
The boat was now beginning to draw away from the jetty. With a sense of urgency, oarsmen on both sides were pulling in unison to distance themselves quickly. Liam turned to look back and could see why. The jetty was being abandoned. The water around it frothed with people leaping for the river.
As a pair of hands roughly grappled for him, Liam pushed the boy forward. ‘Take him first!’
The boy – nothing to him but wet rags and emaciated skin and bone – was pulled easily out of the water. A moment later a big butcher’s hand grasped his and, with the last reserve of will and energy he had left, Liam worked a leg over the edge of the boat and rolled wet and coughing into the swilling bilge.
‘That was close!’ panted Rashim. ‘Look.’
Liam wearily pulled himself up to look back over the retreating prow. The jetty was receding quickly, but even so, he could feel the heat on his face as if he was staring into the open belly of a baker’s oven. In the gathering gloom of the evening, unnaturally dark from the low ceiling of thick smoke blocking out the late summer’s evening dusk, he saw that flames were sweeping down from the riverside inferno and beginning to engulf the jetty. He saw the silhouette of a goat pulling frantically against its tether, chickens in a basket, their feathers alight, wings flapping in confusion and agony. And a solitary human figure sitting on the side, perfectly still, watching the boat recede.
The boy pulled himself up from the bilges, coughing, spluttering, but desperate to catch sight of his mother. Liam turned the boy’s shoulders towards him. ‘Hey.’ He cupped his small oval jaw in a firm grasp that kept him from looking back. ‘You don’t need to see this, lad.’
A strong gust of wind stoked the flames and they swung round together, changing direction, and the woman was suddenly lost from view, embraced by flickering tongues of orange.
The boat rocked and swayed as it retreated towards the middle of the river. Silent … it was almost completely silent except for the soothing swoosh of oars being dipped into the water. Liam heard the clump of boots on wood, sloshing through bilge water, and then felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see the man he’d glimpsed from afar, nodding acceptance of their transaction: a tanned face beneath a tricorn hat, a dark goatee, not unlike Rashim’s, but long enough that it was braided with a ribbon. ‘Now then, your master said he’d entrusted you with ’is purse of money, when we was pulling him aboard.’ He grinned. ‘Somewhat trusting of the gentleman, I’d say.’
Liam looked up at Rashim, who shrugged less than helpfully.
‘I … well … now see, there is some money, sir. But it’s not exactly on us.’
The captain pursed his lips with disappointment. ‘Hmmm … you know, I expected something slippery like that. Not to worry.’ He grinned again and looked at Rashim and the boy sitting beside Liam. ‘I do believe there’s some coin to be made here all the same.’
Chapter 9
1666, London
‘Oh crud, where the hell are they?’
Maddy squinted to try to make sense out of the shadows. It was fully night-time now, but the sky wasn’t dark or peppered with stars; instead, it was a dull cauldron amber, the glow of London alight bouncing back off the bottom of a thick unnatural cloudscape.
They were bathed in a sickly sulphur-coloured twilight, an end-of-world vision. Like an Impressionist painting of Hell or Constable depicting Armageddon with a palette of only crimson and sepia. And beneath a bloody sky the north bank of the Thames churned with people fleeing west, towards them. A seething, roiling mass of figures with not a single torch or oil lamp among them – there was light enough.
In the distance, a mile away, London Bridge was an arc of fire that reflected in the restless, choppy water. And the river itself seemed to be a logjam of boats from dinghies all the way up to a few square-rigged ships.
‘Can you see them?’ Sal shook her head.
Maddy couldn’t understand what had happened to them. They’d been all together in that press of people. Then the explosion and she had figured out what that was now: demolition charges, far more efficient than men with hooks. She’d guessed what was coming a few seconds before they went off, time enough to pull Sal down to a crouch. Then the stampede had happened, people flooding towards the quay and the multitude of creaking stairs, ladders, wobbling walkways down to the river’s edge. But somehow they’d found themselves pushed to one side with a rat run beside them. Instinctively, she’d led Sal that way, away from the herd.
Stupidly.
They were heading towards the fire front and very quickly found themselves running a gauntlet of flames between two tall buildings completely on fire. She’d felt her hair singeing, her skin beginning to blister and, for
a moment, halfway down the narrow run, was considering this was where both she and Sal would die. Oddly, she’d assured herself that at least their deaths would leave nothing behind that could contaminate history. Just bones and charcoaled flesh. That would be it.
Her blouse was riddled with scorch-rimmed holes where embers and sparks had settled and burned through the material. The hem of her dress was burned up one side, all the way up to her thigh. It had caught and, as they’d sprinted for their lives, she’d been frantically patting the flames out before they engulfed her.
And now, somehow, they were here, alive. The flaming gauntlet had ended with a courtyard filled with ponies snorting, thrashing against their tethers and scraping the cobblestones in distress and panic. They’d pushed their way through, jostled and bumped by the horses’ flanks, and eventually emerged on to a small area of inner-city pasture. It was filled with soot-covered people doubled over, coughing smoke out of their lungs, tendrils of smoke rising from everyone; winged collars, bonnets, cuffs, skirts, tricorn hats and flourishes of lace gently smouldering, waiting patiently to be patted down and extinguished.
As for Liam and Rashim, Maddy could only guess that the surge of people had led them towards one of the myriad ways down to the riverside, in which case they were somewhere among the press of fleeing people picking their way through the assault course of the waterside shanty town. Or perhaps a boat had rescued them and somewhere out there, on that armada of vessels criss-crossing each other’s paths, they were both waiting to be put ashore. Quite probably equally anxious about the fate of her and Sal.
‘Jahulla!’ Sal spat soot out of her mouth. ‘Why did you take us so close to the fire?’
Maddy shook her head. ‘I … I didn’t think it had spread that far.’
She had a map. A map from the database that had shown cross-hatched areas depicting the fire’s progress over the three days. Either the Wikipedia article was inaccurate or she’d been looking at the wrong map. Either way she’d messed up. Messed up and nearly killed them.
Jesus. And this was supposed to have been ‘fun’.
You complete failure, Maddy. You frikkin’ idiot.
‘I’m sorry, Sal. I guess … I guess I screwed something up.’
Maddy led Sal out of the open area and down into a narrow cobblestone backstreet. Top-heavy houses, dark and vacated, leant over them like curious silent giants.
The scheduled return window was due any minute. They weren’t entirely alone standing here on this quiet avenue. There were people a little way further along, fearfully looking eastward, watching London burn and praying the drastic firebreaks ordered by King Charles II earlier that evening were going to prevent the fire front advancing their way.
In any case, in the half-light they were probably not going to notice a momentary shimmering sphere and suddenly two fewer people in the world. No.
‘What are we going to do? Are we going back without them?’ asked Sal.
Maddy was considering the very same question. ‘I think so. They’re not lost, Sal. Remember? Rashim’s transponders?’
Yes. That’s what they would do. Go back and get the signal array pointing this way, sniffing tonight for the faintest telltale whiff of a solitary tachyon particle. This was, after all, the precise reason they’d all been issued with one, because something like this was bound to happen.
Because you’re not a complete failure, Maddy. Because you were cautious enough to realize this could happen. Right. It was her idea for Rashim to knock up something cheap and cheerful.
If they were alive, they’d be broadcasting a signal they could zero in on to get them back. And, even if they weren’t alive, they’d probably still be broadcasting …
Don’t go there, Maddy. They’re alive, OK? Just separated. That’s all.
‘Any second now,’ she said. ‘We’ll zap back home and we’ll locate them, Sal. No sweat.’
‘I hope so.’
Maddy patted her. ‘Sure we will. Liam always finds a way, doesn’t he?’ She forced a reassuring smile, but it was probably too dark to see, and felt just about as reassuring as a wink from a used car salesman.
‘Until one day he doesn’t,’ Sal replied.
Just then they felt a puff of air in front of them and in the middle of the cobblestoned alleyway a dark six-foot-diameter sphere danced like a film of oil on water. Maddy could see the faint glimmer of an electric light bulb, the outline of Bob and Becks waiting to welcome them home. Maddy stepped through first and Sal followed her. And then it was gone in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart.
Only one person noticed it: a woman hanging out of the narrow window of her home, directly above them. A woman anxious about her watchman husband, called to his duty and somewhere out there fighting the flames. She puzzled over what she thought she’d just witnessed in the alley below, puzzled for all of a couple of minutes and then a neighbour called up to inform her that her husband and the rest of his watch crew had been seen coming this way.
News was – or at least the hopeful rumour was – that the King’s orders for drastic last-minute measures, for the gunpowder demolition, might just have done the trick, at least in terms of preventing the fire spreading any further westward. The woman barely heard that part. The word was her husband was alive, and that’s really all she wanted to hear.
Chapter 10
1666, somewhere in the English Channel
Liam was aware of three things, one after the other in quick succession. Firstly that his head was throbbing. It seemed to be contracting and expanding with metronome regularity, like a blacksmith’s bellows. With each throb, another dull wave of pain and nausea coursed through him.
Secondly that his nose and throat were clogged, almost completely blocked, with a syrupy-thick mixture of soot and snot. He hawked back some phlegm into his throat and almost immediately regretted it for the jarring pain in his head that it caused and a burning sensation in his nasal passages.
Thirdly that the world seemed to be swaying. His limp body, stretched out on the wooden floor, was slowly rocking from one side to the other as the world beneath seemed to want to gracefully lean to the left then to the right. That really wasn’t helping at all with the nausea. He felt ready to casually heave his guts on to the rough floor beside his face, except for the fact that he suspected the gently rolling floor would tilt the vomit back towards his open mouth. He groaned miserably.
‘Liam? Is that you?’
‘Ishh meee,’ Liam groaned in answer. His cheek pressed against rough planking that was rubbing his skin raw as his body rocked to and fro.
‘Thank God! I was concerned you might be brain-damaged.’ Liam recognized the male voice: slightly effete, particular and precise in the way he spoke. Rashim. He cracked open one eye and instantly winced at the bleary stars and streaks of daylight that lanced across his blurry vision. He snapped his eye shut. That was daylight, a painful sliver of it.
‘Where ishh thish plashe?’ Liam slurred, still unable and unwilling to lift his head. His lips were pressed against the floor, dry and cracked. His own voice was a spike to his temple.
‘At sea,’ replied Rashim. ‘I think.’
Liam’s ears were still ringing ever so slightly. A faint, high-pitched whine like a dog whistle. But for the first time he noticed other sounds: the regular rhythmic creak of wood, the hiss and thump of sluggish waves against a hull.
He finally decided he had enough resolve in him to lift his head off the floor, feeling a wave of dizziness and nausea overtake him as he clambered on to unsteady hands and knees. He retched, producing a drool-thread of saliva and bile that swung from his mouth then dropped to the wooden floor beneath his spread palms. With eyes narrowed against the daylight, he looked up. He saw Rashim huddled against a wooden bulwark, arms wrapped round his knees. And beside him a sandy-haired boy, in more or less the same posture.
‘Who’s he?’
Rashim shrugged. ‘He hasn’t spoken to me yet. Maybe he’ll tell you who he
is.’
Liam let that go for the moment as he looked around. Planks of rough wood made a low roof, crossed with thick oak support beams. The wooden floor was a mess of coils of rope, barrels stacked on their sides and tethered together to stop them rolling. Large cloth sacks were piled up like bodies in a mortuary.
A ship. It looked like one of those old sailing ships. Yes, of course it was an old one. He remembered now, they’d gone back to 1666 to witness the Fire of London. Clearly they weren’t back in the dungeon, so they were obviously still in 1666.
‘What happened?’
‘What do you remember?’
‘The fire. Maddy’s genius idea to make us a part of it.’
‘What’s the last thing you remember?’
Liam sat back on his haunches, wiping drool from his mouth. His head dipped low between his shoulders as he fought another urge to retch. He remembered an explosion. A big one. Being knocked off his feet and on to his back by the force of it. Then chaos. People panicking. He remembered that. A stampede towards the edge of a road or a quay of some sort and a steep drop beyond.
‘An explosion. We all headed down to the river’s edge, didn’t we?’
Rashim nodded. ‘That’s quite correct.’
Liam could picture the panic, the wobbling world of rickety wood. Down on to a pontoon now, packed with baying, pleading people and surrounded by bobbing boats that rocked on water sparkling with the glints of reflected flame.
‘We managed to get on board one of them boats, didn’t we?’
‘You agreed a price and we were pulled aboard. Yes.’ Rashim rolled his deep hooded eyes. ‘And you assured them I was a rich gentleman carrying lots of money.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not really sure what you thought the next step of your plan was going to be.’
Liam winced, cradling his thumping head. ‘I got us away from the fire, didn’t I?’
‘This is true.’
‘So, I saved us –’
‘And this little mute urchin, for some reason.’