A Second Chance

by Jodi Taylor

  We followed the same procedure for Site A. Van Owen reported a certain amount of curiosity from children, dogs, and old women, but no hostility of any kind. People came and went all the time.

  I ticked off the personnel.

  Site A consisted of Van Owen, Kalinda, and Prentiss in Number Four; Roberts, Dieter, and Clerk in Number Six; with Randall, Weller, and Brooks in Number Seven providing the security.

  Site B consisted of Schiller, Morgan, and me in Number Eight; Farrell, Guthrie, and Peterson in Number Three; with Markham, Ritter, and Evans operating out of Number Five. A good mix of historians and security staff, with a techie on each site should we manage to break anything.

  We gave everyone a few days to become acclimatised, although everyone had mission experience. We set up the camp. Major Guthrie indicated the site for the latrine, although his enthusiasm didn’t lead to him actually doing any of the digging.

  At Site B, the pods formed the traditional three-sided square, with rickety and patched canvas awnings stretched over the central area to give us some shade and privacy, and to make us look more temporary and even scruffier than we actually were. We appointed fire-monitors, wood-choppers, water-getters, cooks, and unskilled labour. Actually, the unskilled labour was me. I’d once nearly amputated my own feet with an axe and no one in their right minds would eat anything I cooked.

  Life is lived outside in this part of the world, so we laid down coarse mats, lugged the non-tech stuff out of the pods, and scattered it casually around. Two days later, under a thin film of gritty dust, it looked as if we’d been there for years.

  Chapter Seven

  Of course, just about the first thing that happened was that Markham and Roberts were nearly arrested for chicken stealing, temple desecration, and, if I’d had my way, just being Markham and Roberts. I’ve often suspected that Markham’s ambition is to have an arrest record in every century but I was somewhat surprised that Mr Roberts, unusually quiet in an unusually noisy organisation, was included in this particular felony.

  Major Guthrie and I were out, ostensibly for a pleasant evening stroll, but in reality to suss out the areas to be surveyed over the next few days. The sun was sinking behind us as we picked our way around the maze of streets in the lower city. Most people cooked outside and tantalising smells wafted past us. I sighed. Whatever we were having was unlikely to be anything like as good.

  We heard it before we saw it.

  The unmistakeable hubbub of outraged citizenry. Up and down the ages, whether they’re complaining about the Huns, the poll-tax, the weather, the king’s latest mistress, the bad harvest, the difficulty of getting good pre-school care under Herod the Great, the French, the price of petrol, the losing chariot team, the noise is always the same. Some poor sod would be getting it, somewhere …

  Discretion being the better part of valour, we instinctively wheeled into a deserted side street, well away from whatever was happening around the corner. Unfortunately, the uproar followed us.

  Guthrie drew me into a convenient doorway and we prepared to wait out whatever it was.

  Whatever it was turned out to be Markham and Roberts, trotting down the street (never run – it draws attention) and casting anxious glances over their shoulders. (You should never look back, either, just concentrate on running away.) The sounds of enraged citizenry were faint, but still pursuing.

  Guthrie cursed horribly, stepped out of the doorway, seized them both, and before they knew what was happening, yanked them both into our sheltering doorway.

  Both of them looked hot, dusty, and worried. Markham appeared – lumpier – than usual.

  Guthrie opened his mouth, but was forestalled by a small phalanx of temple guards trotting past, heads swinging right and left, hands suggestively on their sword hilts. They drew level and then passed on before any of us had time to move.

  We gave them a few minutes, and then as the sounds of uproar moved away, emerged back into the street.

  ‘You,’ I said menacingly to Mr Roberts, ‘belong to me. And I can do with you as I please.’ I turned to Guthrie. ‘Shoot him.’

  ‘What?’ said Roberts, shocked. He hadn’t worked for me for very long.

  ‘I’m a woman on the edge. We’ve been here nearly a month. There’s no chocolate left and I’m down to one cup of tea a day. How far do you want to push me?’

  Markham, experienced in this sort of situation, plucked at his sleeve, shook his head, and made shut up, shut up, gestures.

  I continued. ‘But for the purposes of this exercise, I am abandoning you to Major Guthrie. You …’ turning back to Mr Markham, ‘already belong to him body and soul, so I shall leave you both to his tender mercies.’

  Markham shifted his feet. ‘Can I transfer to the history department?’

  Guthrie stared coldly. ‘Even the history department is never going to be that desperate. What’s under your tunic?’

  With some difficulty, he hauled out a chicken. Who but Markham would have a dead chicken down his tunic? A fine specimen, too. Snowy-white feathers and, in this age of skinny, muscular, long-legged, aggressive chickens – nicely plump.

  ‘You stole a chicken?’

  They said indignantly that they had found it.

  ‘So you came upon a lone chicken and it died, right in front of you, and you picked it up to give it a proper burial?’

  ‘Nearly right, sir. It was dead when we found it.’

  A nasty feeling enveloped me. You didn’t just find dead chickens lying around. Particularly not chickens of this quality.

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Outside that big white building in the square where the leather worker on the corner sells those things with the …’

  ‘It’s a temple offering, you pillocks! Someone left it as an offering to the gods. Which you have stolen. Even if Apollo isn’t nocking an arrow even as we speak, there’s any number of hungry temple officials wondering where their supper’s gone. Those guards were looking for the offering. And you. And probably not in that order.’

  They looked, if possible, even more dejected than the chicken.

  ‘Shall we put it back?’

  ‘You will not, under any circumstances, venture near that temple – any temple at all – clutching a dead chicken.’

  Especially one that had been dangling down the front of Mr Markham’s tunic. The phrase ‘The last dead chicken in the shop’ refused to budge from my mind.

  Major Guthrie was made of sterner stuff.

  ‘Your irresponsible behaviour has endangered this mission and everyone here. If either of you could be spared, you would now be on your way back to St Mary’s for Dr Bairstow to deal with.’

  They quailed. Roberts, on his first major assignment, looked terrified.

  ‘Sorry, sir. We didn’t realise. We thought it was just a dead chicken.’

  ‘We did it for the team,’ added Markham, a past master at averting personal retribution and attempting to stuff the chicken back whence it came.

  I averted my eyes. Some sights are not meant to be seen.

  ‘Latrine duties,’ said Guthrie, a past master at dealing with Mr Markham and unmoved by this personal appeal.

  Latrine duties involved emptying the toilets daily, conveying the contents to the latrine pit, carrying out a close inspection in case anyone had dropped anything anachronistic down there (you’d be surprised), and then covering the day’s offerings with a layer of dirt to keep the smell down.

  ‘For a month,’ I added, getting into the spirit of the thing.

  They sagged.

  Something unmentionable dipped briefly below Markham’s hem and he hastily hauled things back into place.

  I stared intently at a wall and counted the bricks.

  With a restraint I could only admire, Guthrie commanded them to leave his sight with all speed.

  ‘And if either of you are caught, Dr Maxwell and I will disavow any knowledge of your actions.’

  They fled. Something I could only hop
e was the chicken made another unscheduled appearance, swinging briefly between Markham’s legs and then, thank God, they turned a corner and we were finally able to let go.

  I dried my eyes on my sleeve and we pulled ourselves together.

  ‘Did you see their faces?’ said Guthrie with satisfaction. It wasn’t often he got the better of Mr Markham.

  ‘You have an unsuspected streak of cruelty, Ian.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said complacently. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And,’ I said, happily, ‘chicken tonight.’

  He stopped dead.

  ‘Do you think he was wearing shorts under that tunic?’

  ‘Yes. Almost certainly. Probably. Maybe. No.’

  ‘So, just bread and cheese, then?’

  ‘Oh God, yes.’

  We worked our socks off. I’d once spent three months in the Cretaceous Period and, up until now, that had been my longest assignment. We were six months down and slightly ahead of schedule. I estimated another six weeks or so. Six more weeks of solid, unspectacular observation and then, when that was completed, it would be back to St Mary’s for a month to consolidate our data. After that, we’d be back again for the really Big Job. The end of the Trojan War. I experienced a shiver of excitement every time I thought about it. Which was often.

  The assignment was going well. Living here was no hardship. Life was good. The gods smiled on Troy and its people.

  The inhabitants were prosperous and hard-working. Wealth poured into the city, resulting in fine public buildings and temples, a reliable water supply, clean (ish) streets and always, towering above everything, keeping us all safe, the walls of Troy.

  These intimidating walls encircled the city. Walls so tall, so formidable that, even after a ten-year war, the greatest soldiers of the age would be unable to breach them. Walls behind which the Trojans were safe as houses. And yet, for some reason, they would tear them down and let in their enemies. Why would they do that? We would find out.

  We lived quietly and happily. We established our daily routine. Up with the sun, breakfast on the remains of yesterday’s bread dipped in oil to make it soft and one – just one – precious mug of tea.

  After that, there was housekeeping – and that took time. Wood gathering, going to the markets for what we could scrounge or exchange, shaking out the mats, and sweeping the pods clear of the all-pervasive gritty dust, and fetching water – lots of it. We got through gallons of the stuff, washing clothes and keeping the pods and ourselves clean.

  We couldn’t leave the pods open because Trojan livestock appeared to be fearless and frequently wandered in and made itself comfortable. Shifting them could be perilous and in a battle of wills with a small flock of geese Markham had come off considerably worse. Small but determined, he’d rattled in again, eventually driving them from the pod, emerging not only triumphant but badly bitten and covered in goose shit as well.

  After an early lunch, usually of bread and the local wet, salty cheese, we scattered to our real jobs. Having no set function, I seconded myself wherever needed, or went up through the busy streets to Site A for a bit of a catch-up.

  The rule was that everyone was back by sundown, when we would prepare our evening meal. Meat or fish if we had it, and usually we hadn’t, bread, cheese, eggs (which seemed to be some kind of currency in Troy) a vegetable broth, and some fruit. Sadly, Markham had invented some kind of dreadful grey stodge, which he merrily doled out and people ate it. I can’t cook and therefore I can (and frequently do) eat pretty well anything put in front of me. But not Markham’s porridge. In vain did he protest its authenticity. Other people ate it – and lived. I made polite excuses.

  We cooked and ate outside, sitting on our coarse mats, and afterwards we would report on our day’s findings for an hour or so and then I would make them stop. Historians can go all night if they have to – and that refers to discussing their findings, as well.

  We would sit around the crackling fire, under the stars, chatting and laughing. Sometimes, Roberts would produce his guitar. Everyone had been allowed one personal item: a book, musical instrument, whatever. We would have a bit of a singsong; just like every other Trojan household across the city. It was certainly easy to become assimilated on this assignment. We had no troubles with the locals in any way. Except for being ripped off and robbed blind by the tiny, terrifying, elderly Trojan women in the markets, of course.

  I looked up from the fire one night to see two small, curious faces peering through the trees. I’d seen them before. It was the little girl from the tavern and her brother. I’d often seen their father, serving customers outside under the trees. Sometimes he would wave. These were his children. Seeing me stare, Leon twisted around and, after a moment, held out his hand.

  Guthrie, who had stiffened, relaxed, and Markham withdrew his hand from under his cloak.

  The two children came forward and stood hesitantly, just outside the firelight. The little girl regarded us steadily and without fear. The little boy scraped the inside of his nostril with a grubby finger and held out the result for inspection.

  Leon said nothing, but cut an old, wrinkly apple in two and silently offered them half each.

  They took it and then fled.

  They were back the next evening and we got a better look at them. The boy, Helios, was around three or four, skinny and looking as if he had been put together with the unwanted pieces of other people’s bodies. His sister, Helike, angel-faced and graceful, was a year or so older.

  Again we said nothing and, as Leon reached out his hand, the boy offered a small bowl, containing a dozen figs.

  We all sat around the fire and munched away. Apart from Leon, none of us had any experience of children and were slightly at a loss. They were here. Now what should we do with them?

  They solved that problem themselves. The little girl pulled out a roughly carved doll with a rag dress tied around it, clambered onto Guthrie’s lap, and began to chatter away to him. His face was a picture. No one dared laugh.

  When I looked back, Leon, Markham, and the boy were playing jacks together in the dust and getting on like a house of fire. I heard Markham say, ‘Stop picking your nose, kid. Your head’ll cave in.’

  Markham took them back to the tavern after an hour or so. He fussed around them, making them hold his hand as they set off into the night. Their father seemed very relaxed about the whole thing. It’s small events like this that bring home the differences in various cultures.

  When you have a small population, children are valued – they are the future, after all, and, for the kids themselves, this manifests itself in a careless confidence. Who would hurt them? Why would anyone hurt them? They wandered happily wherever they pleased. In this era of extended family groups and nosey neighbours, someone, somewhere was always watching out for them. They never came to any harm. I remembered my first day here, the running child who fell over and the man who, without breaking his conversation in any way, picked him up, dusted him down, tousled his hair, and sent him on his way again, unharmed.

  They seemed to regard us as their second home after a while, coming around in the evening, playing hand games, singing their own songs. Markham took them back every night. It paid off. He was offered work and paid in wine and half a cheese.

  In case you’ve ever wondered, Trojan wine, Greek wine, all wine from that era, was ghastly. Seriously awful, tasting of liquorice and sulphur. Invented a couple of millennia before battery acid was required, they called it wine and drank it instead. Strong enough to strip paint, it was always served with water, which, believe me, did not help in any way. Mixing wine had evolved into a ceremony. In the Iliad, Achilles, receiving the Greek delegation of Odysseus, Phoenix, and Big Ajax, did them the honour of mixing the wine with his own hands.

  I allowed them all a drink on what would have been Saturday night. If we had any honey cakes or anything special, we saved that for Saturday nights as well. Sometimes people came down from Site A as well, and we had a bit of a knees-up
. The kids tried to teach us to dance. So Roberts strummed away as the men stamped, more or less rhythmically in the dust. Women danced separately. Probably because we were considerably better at it.

  There was a lot of laughing. Life was good.

  The city was thriving. There was no hint of the conflict to come. If Priam was aware of the Greeks massing over the water, no word had yet filtered down to street level. The rich got richer and even the poor didn’t do that badly. Priests distributed food from the palace and from public and private sacrifices. Once or twice – in the spirit of historical research – we queued up ourselves.

  Our neighbours were congenial and couldn’t care less about the new people suddenly living two fields away. Houses went up and down all the time as family needs dictated. No one was bothered about a couple of scruffy shacks on the far side of the olive grove. In fact, we were joined briefly by a small family plus grandmother and two goats, who camped twenty yards away, waved and smiled cheerfully, sent their children across to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come.

  One of the men got a small job of some kind occasionally, picking olives or grapes or stacking lumber for a day. The payment of eggs or olives or, once, an old boiling fowl was greatly appreciated.

  We lived quietly, established our daily routines and noted what went on around us. The war was over a year away.

  Life was good.

  It would have been very good, but the gods rarely allow perfection.

  Kal and her team had spent weeks observing and identifying all the members of the royal family and their household, and, unless Paris had her locked in a cellar somewhere, reluctantly we had to accept the fact – Helen of Sparta never came to Troy. There was absolutely no trace of her anywhere.

  It was a stunning disappointment. At her request, I drafted more people to Kal’s team, but even after a month’s intensive observation we could find no trace of her. She simply wasn’t here.