by Adrian Speed
“Almost nine years you’ve spent buried in books here. Either you’ve wasted all that time or you’ve become the greatest legal scholar here. So why? Why is it so hard to say the right things to the right people? Why can’t you bow your head when you’re told?”
“Easy words for a ship’s captain to say! You need bow to no-one!”
“Brother, do you really think I became a captain by shouting at the officers above me and ignoring their stupid orders? Or do you think I learnt when to tack into the wind, hunker down, and weather the storm?”
John and Jacob Arnold burst out of the porter’s door both shaking with rage. If they had been sailors down at the docks they would have come to blows by now. John’s hands were opening and closing with fury even so. Jacob was little better. He was younger and dressed plainer than John, but the two could have been twins.
“Let me escape this folly,” Jacob begged. “I am not a lawyer.”
“You do not wish to be a lawyer, but it is what you will be.” John smacked his fist against the wall to stop himself smacking it against his brother. “Or you will be out of my household. Understand? If you truly wish to make your way in the world as a merchant or a sailor or a... a fribble in the pocket of Lord Clarendon you may do as you please, but you will do it alone.”
“You would leave me with nothing?”
“I have furnished you with the finest legal education that can be bought. It is you who wishes to turn that into nothing.” John closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Go back to the shop. Sleep, and see if your wits return by morning. If they have, Sir Edward will be waiting for your apology and if it is gracious enough, he may allow you to stand before the bar at last.”
“So I can spend another five years as the whipping boy of the Ancients? No brother, that is not my fate.”
“Go. Home,” John ordered. It was forceful but almost silent, and Jacob couldn’t help but step back in shock.
The younger brother took another step back towards the road and his hand slipped towards an empty coin purse. He paused, and looked pleadingly at John.
“Can you spare a shilling for a cab?”
“No.”
“Then... then may I travel with you in yours?” Jacob asked.
John shook his head. “No. I have other business in the city. A walk might endow you with some sense. Maybe you’ll learn the value of thrift.”
Jacob rolled his eyes and pushed his hands into his pockets. He trudged off towards the Exchange with a grim expression. John waited until he was out of sight before he turned to me.
“I am sorry you were witness to that, Master Delaronde,” John said. “My brother... is my brother. He has every bit of stubbornness I do, I am afraid, yet in all the wrong places.”
“That’s the nature of brothers,” I shrugged. “I am sure my sister would say the same.” Even though she is me, and I am he, and we are all together, coo-coo-kachoo.
“He’s got to rid himself of his insolence,” John sighed. “I hoped marriage would quash the urge, but it has only empowered it. His wife’s second cousin is the Lord Clarendon–”
“Edward Hyde?”
“Yes, the Lord Clarendon, and since he met the man he seems to think he is above the rules. He thinks all it will take is a word in Lord Clarendon’s ear and riches will shower down upon him.”
“When in reality Jacob is nothing but another face in the crowd?”
“Precisely,” John sighed. “If Jacob were a respected legal scholar rising through the ranks of the Inns of Court, perhaps then Lord Clarendon would take note and ally with my brother, but as it is Jacob is of no more use than the dozen other coxcombs that orbit his lordship as the planets orbit the sun.” John frowned deeply. “Come, I promised you a new hat. The milliner’s not far.”
A few hours later I left furnished with a new hat and a declaration of friendship from John. I headed back to Covent Garden with a heavy heart. John was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it, and it seemed almost certain Jacob was the killer.
But if I was going to be sure, I’d have to come back, again and again, all the way to September and spend more time with a man doomed to die.
“Well of course my dear, nothing strange about that,” Sir Reginald said when I shared this grim news with him. “We’re all doomed to die.”
Chapter XVII
“If Jacob detests his brother so intensely why would he wait until the fire?” Sir Reginald was reclining at the small table in the almost-drawing room looking over his notebook. The small copperplate was too small for me to read across the room. “Men die in London every day and the Justices of the Peace are known to be worse than useless. John could be floating upside down in the docklands tomorrow and all Jacob would need do is have his wife swear he was with her all evening.”
“Perhaps there was something that tipped him over the edge,” I said, adjusting my hat and staring at myself in the mediocre reflection of a seventeenth-century glass. “Or maybe he was waiting for a convenient moment to strike.”
“Take it from me, my dear, siblings hate each other.” Sir Reginald found a small spot of spare paper in his notebook and filled it with words legible only to him. “The interactions you’ve described between Jacob and John sound normal for brothers.”
“And that’s your incredible powers of observation at work, is it? That brothers hate each other?”
“That’s the experience of being a brother,” Sir Reginald sighed. “There is nothing quite as irritating as a sibling. They are the closest person to you in all of existence, in appearance, in skills, and in location. You are told to love them and yet everything they do drives you insane.” Sir Reginald tucked the notebook inside his suit jacket. “At least that is how it can appear at times.”
I let my hands fall to my waist. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I do not feel the need to talk of him often,” Sir Reginald shrugged. “But rest assured, the way Jacob and John Arnold treat each other is not unusual even if it is unhealthy.” Sir Reginald turned towards the heating stone in the fireplace and warmed his hands against it. The cold air still seeped in through the cracks in the house. “I do not think we can assume it is Jacob by his behaviour alone.”
“But combine his behaviour with the new will...”
“And you know nothing,” Sir Reginald raised his hand. “No evidence. Not even a crime scene to investigate.”
“Because it was destroyed by fire.”
“It is the realm of facts we must concern ourselves with Hannah, not feelings and hunches. Hunches might lead us to facts, but we must not confuse them.”
I almost stamped my foot at that. It was easy for Sir Reginald to say as he sat reading through crusty old records day after day, but I was the one actually looking for evidence. It had been almost a month since we’d landed in 1666 and Sir Reginald had only stirred himself to go down to the basement for another cask of wine or to the coffee shop.
“Fine,” I huffed. “We need facts? Let’s get some facts. I’ll go find Jacob after the fire and see if John is with him.”
Sir Reginald paused in the act of rubbing his hands together, his head slowly inclining as the thought moved through his brain.
“Risky...” he said. “Anything that will allow you to confirm John and Jacob did not flee the city together would mean putting yourself into events.”
“Would it be so strange for Andrew Delaronde to look for his friend John Arnold after the fire?” I asked, flicking my hat brim to remind Sir Reginald.
“True, you and he have spent a lot of time together recently,” Sir Reginald nodded. “But suppose Jacob is there alone, and he sees you looking for John who isn’t there? Is he still going to write that fake will knowing you were there to witness the lies?”
“Well... perhaps he will still fake the will but invent a different cover story,” I suggested, resting my thumb on my belt.
Sir Reginald shook his head. “I wouldn’t risk it.”
&n
bsp; “And what would you risk? Another journey to the coffee shop?” I flinched the moment the words were out of my mouth and wished I could take them back. Sir Reginald slowly turned away from the heating stone and back to me.
“How do you organise your notes?” he said with disarming calm.
“What?”
“I don’t like repeating myself.”
“Well, they’re all on my phone,” I said, tapping it through the puffy pocket of my jacket. “So, that automatically sorts them by date, and I organise them into case-by-case folders.”
“Not organised by date.” Sir Reginald raised a finger to stop me. “They’re organised in chronological order of you writing them.”
“Well, yes, obviously, that’s how computers work. If I tell it a file was written in 1666 it would just spit it out as a date that can’t possibly exist for computers.”
“The way computers work does not have to be the way you work.” Sir Reginald drew out his notebook. “My notes are chronological to history. If you organise things your way, how do you know if you have been here before?”
“Sir Reginald, we’ve never come to 1666 before.”
“We, perhaps, but I have.” Sir Reginald flipped through his notebook until he found the appropriate page. “Last week I was dining with Gilbert Ironside, the Warden of Wadham College, and today I am meeting with Lord Fairfax at his home in Yorkshire to discuss what he can remember of the Battle of Naseby in order to find the Red-Eyed Sergeant. That was three years ago, and five years ago respectively.”
“Alright, alright, I get it.” I raised my hands in defeat. “If you leave the house you might cross paths with your past self and create a paradox. You’ve done it before.”
“To save your life,” Sir Reginald rebuked me. “But more importantly, I must contend with the possibility that my future self may wish to travel to this time and place. If I go gallivanting around London for no other reason than to keep you company I waste that opportunity in the future. If I believed there was any chance I could find some shred of evidence I would leap to my feet and be out the door before you could count to five.”
“You think I am wasting my time?”
“No, I do not believe you are wasting your time.” Sir Reginald shook his head. “But for me to accompany you would be a waste of mine.”
“So my time is less valuable than yours, is that it?”
“It was an attempt at a compliment.” Sir Reginald’s head slid into his hand. “I do not believe there is anything you would miss that I would pick up on. So I am content to linger here with my books while you solve this mystery.”
The moment he mentioned the books I realised I’d seen this image before. It was a different chair, a different room, in a different time, but this new house in Covent Garden somehow felt exactly the same as the spare room in Edgware Road. Sir Reginald was at rest, I realised, waiting for another great mystery to whisk him away. He really did trust me to solve this, and to solve it correctly.
I sank into a chair opposite him and clasped my hands together in thought.
“I... am very used to having you with me,” I said after a while. “You always... seem to catch something I miss. You’re always ready with a revelation I just can’t reach. The only time you’ve left me alone to solve a case, really alone, was when the Genesis computer had taken you prisoner.”
“What good is a sailor who can never be more than six feet from his captain?” Sir Reginald asked. “We are chrononauts my dear, and it is a solitary life.” Sir Reginald idly tugged at the cuff links on his sleeve. “You cannot rely on me being here forever. I will never want to stop solving mysteries with you. I want to accompany you on this one. But to be sure I can trust you with the responsibilities of sailing the oceans of time... I need to step back sometimes. I need to watch you work alone. I need to see you make mistakes, I need to see you recover from them.”
“You need to see me fail.” I said bitterly.
“I’ve already seen you succeed.” Sir Reginald took my hand and smiled. The chill of February vanished as the warmth of Sir Reginald’s pride overwhelmed me. “And you succeeded stunningly. But overcoming failure is more important than success. So I must wait and watch you make mistakes.”
“And if I never make a mistake?” I grinned.
“Then all hail our new messiah!” Sir Reginald bowed his head in faux reverence.
“You think going to see Jacob after the fire is a mistake, don’t you?”
“I think it is a risk.” Sir Reginald let go of my hand. “A very great risk for very little reward.”
“I am not sure what else I can do.”
“Then do what you think is right,” Sir Reginald said, and retreated back into his chair and raised the computer tablet.
*****
The time machine landed with a thwump in a copse on the outskirts of Bethnal Green. It was twilight on the third of September and I could hear screaming. Beyond the trees it was as if two suns were setting on the horizon, the disc of the sun slipping behind earth and the flames of London rising up towards the sky. It was deep, dark flame, like blood spilling out into the sky, filling it with acrid dark smoke.
A column of people were silhouetted against the flames. They were streaming out of the city with whatever they could carry. There were carts pulled by horses and wheelbarrows pushed by men and women with great sacks thrown over their shoulders. Everyone was dragging their wealth out of the city consumed by flame.
I pushed my way out of the undergrowth in the copse and across the fields until I reached the road. A few people glared at me but most stayed focussed on the village of Bethnal Green and the relative safety it held. There were almost two miles of fields between the city and the village, and as people threw their livelihoods down in friend’s houses and even just in the street, they clearly thought that was too far for fire to spread.
“John Arnold!” I called out at the column of people. “Jacob Arnold!” I strode down the road towards the city. “Has anyone seen John or Jacob Arnold?” No-one said anything. I marched down the road calling out for help past faces each more distraught than the last. Some were covered with ash and smut streaked with sweat, while others were pale with thousand-yard eyes. Some of them had been weeping, some of them still were, and none of them had heard of John or Jacob Arnold.
Maybe they hadn’t fled this way; worry began to gnaw at me as I got closer and closer to the city. Maybe they fled further north to Islington, or Stoke Newington, or Camden. Or maybe they were already in the fields catching the chill that would kill John.
I knew that couldn’t be right. Even in twilight the summer heat was brutal. Sweat was soaking into my hat brim just from the march down the road in this heat and the sun had almost set. It could get cold on a cloudless night but not one like this. No-one could catch their death on a night like this.
“John Arnold!” I yelled. I was only one field away from the first houses of London now. If they weren’t in this column should I continue searching, or would that just be wasting time? Was it worth the risk of checking the other nearby villages? “Has anyone seen John or Jacob Arnold?”
A head stirred in the crowd. Wild eyes locked with mine, made wider and whiter by the ash smeared across them and coating their clothes. Jacob recognised me instantly and his jaw dropped in surprise.
“Andrew!” Jacob pushed his way through the crowd of people until he was with me on the side of the road. “Where’s John?”
“I wanted to ask you that!”
“You said you’d get him out of there!” Jacob grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me violently. His fingers dug into my shoulders and his pupils narrowed. The same rage that had flowed at Gray’s Inn was now directed entirely at me. “You said you’d keep him safe!”
“Jacob, calm down.” I tried to pull away from his grasp but he had fingers like a sailor. His hands slid across my shoulders towards my neck. “Jacob stop! Where did you last see John?”
“With you!” Jacob’
s rage overtook him and he smashed a fist into my face. I should have gone flying but he was still holding onto my shoulder. The pain was blinding and my feet gave out from under me. Jacob let me drop to my knees as his anger was suddenly directed elsewhere.
He span on his heel away from me and towards a horse in the throng. It was a tall, proud beast, pressed into ignoble service and laden down with goods to save from the fire. He grasped at the buckles holding the panniers on and threw them to the ground. The man leading the horse started to shout but Jacob threw a handful of gold coins at the man and pulled himself up into the saddle. He turned the horse, drove it to the edge of the road where I was still sprawling and kicked it into a gallop back into the London inferno.
I staggered back to my feet, ignoring the yellow and white flashes in my eyesight and tried to give chase. There was no way I could keep up with a galloping horse, but it wouldn’t be galloping for long. Jacob was a distant figure on horseback as I passed the first houses of Shoreditch, but by the time we passed Bishop’s Gate I was gaining on him. The horse was rearing against the crowds and the stench of smoke. Jacob wrenched on the reins to try to keep control of it and screamed at the fleeing Londoners to let him pass.
It wasn’t any easier for me. I barged forward, elbow first into what felt like a solid mass of humans. They barely gave way against me as I kicked and pushed my way past them. Everything was lit with the horrible light of the flames. People’s faces flickered in the red glare and they seemed to emerge out of the darkness itself. Every shadow, every doorway, every alleyway was filled with people trying to join the mass fleeing the city, like rats.
The sky rumbled. An explosion? It couldn’t be thunder. I thought of all the warehouses down by the docks. All the oil, all the gunpowder, all the casks of brandy and whisky, all it would take was a spark and it had an inferno to set it off.
I caught up with Jacob at the walls of the old City. His horse was bucking and rearing as he cursed, trying to get through the gatehouse. The two squat square towers of the gatehouse were wreathed in the flames beyond, looking almost like the devil’s horns.