by Annie Dalton
“Be my guest!” Orlando pointed back up the track.
A covered cart was rattling in our direction, stirring up swirling clouds of dust. The cart was painted in the same vivid blue and gold as the banners and hung with fluttering blue and gold pennants.
Three kids shared the driver’s seat, taking it in turn to sip from a leather flask. A posse of teenagers on horseback rode alongside. They wore the wary expressions of professional bodyguards.
From the way all the kids cheered and tossed their dusty caps in the air, it seemed that this mysterious Stephen was the medieval equivalent of a rock star.
Someone yelled, “Tomorrow in Jerusalem!
The cry was immediately taken up in a great roar. “Tomorrow in Jerusalem! Tomorrow in Jerusalem!” Once it had started, the cry went on, wave upon wave of sound crashing on my ears.
“Tomorrow in the cemetery, more like,” said Lola grimly.
I puffed out my cheeks. I’d only been here a few hours but it already felt like a lifetime. Orlando had been coping with this for weeks. I made a secret vow to do everything I could to help him.
I’ll be completely professional, I told myself. Then Orlando might see me in a completely different light.
We were getting closer to the port. The air had acquired a distinctly fishy smell, along with that familiar olden-times pong of sewage and rotting garbage. Except for an occasional horse-drawn cart rumbling along on clunky wooden wheels, there wasn’t much traffic. It was too hot for sensible folk to be out. But the children went marching on.
We had left the countryside behind a while ago, and the dirt track had turned into narrow cobbled streets. Medieval tenements loomed up on either side of us, like gloomy great canyons, blocking out the sunlight.
A sleepy murmuring came from behind all the closed shutters. The locals were waking from their afternoon siesta.
As they heard the kids approaching, doors and shutters flew open.
Everyone wanted to see this extraordinary procession.
Orlando caught us up. “This is where things could get ugly,” he warned. I heard his tired voice going up the line, keeping the overworked trainees on their toes. He was obviously expecting major trouble.
In fact the people of Marseilles were really sweet, clapping and calling out encouragingly, as if the kids were athletes at the end of a super-demanding marathon. A girl leaned out of an upstairs window and started throwing flowers. The idea caught on and suddenly rose and jasmine petals were raining down. The children marched on through falling blossoms, their eyes feverish with excitement.
The cart with its outriders had moved to the front by this time, the bright flags and the sound of drums and flutes all adding to the atmosphere. Some kids actually found the energy to turn cartwheels and somersaults. Their childish singing sent eerie echoes around the walls of the medieval tenements. The whole thing was dreamlike but also weirdly disturbing. Suddenly I realised why. “This is like that story!” I whispered to my mates. “The Pied Piper or whatever.”
Reuben didn’t know the fairytale, so I had to fill him in. By the time I’d reached the part where the spellbound children followed the mysterious piper into the countryside, never to be seen again, the cobblestones had run out. And there in front of us was the hot dazzling blue of the Mediterranean.
Ships, like elaborately carved wooden castles, rode at anchor, their sails tightly furled. Sailors climbed up the rigging as nimbly as if they were just going upstairs. Others were unloading sacks and barrels, or ferrying small rowboats back and forth across the harbour.
Marseilles is only just across the water from Morocco, and the dockside smells of rope and tar were deliciously mingled with exotic spices and the scent of foreign perfumes.
I’d had no idea that the Middle Ages were so multicultural! The whole world was there: black, white and golden-skinned seamen, all cheerfully fraternising with local tarts and gangsters, not to mention Arabs and Africans in dazzling ethnic clothes.
This is SO cool, I thought. Just in time I remembered I was supposed to be on duty. Stop being a time tourist, Melanie, I scolded myself. You’re supposed to be looking out for trouble.
I didn’t have far to look.
A boy emerged from inside the cart, shielding his eyes from the glare. He was dressed in what had probably once been a white tunic with an extra piece of grubby white drapery trailing over his shoulder. His wispy golden hair needed a wash.
Now personally, I would never recommend the guru look, unless you’ve got a brilliant suntan. And after months of travelling through sweltering heat, in a cart with no springs, this boy was the colour of sweaty cheese.
But style wasn’t nearly such a biggie then, and the instant he appeared, I heard excited whispering, like wind blowing through grass. “It’s him, it’s Stephen!”
Adults had joined the crowd by this time: sailors, fishwives, priests and local trades-people, all dying to see this famous youth for themselves.
Stephen made his way to the front of the crowd, where his minders had improvised a crude stage out of a sawn-off plank and a couple of barrels.
He sprang lightly on to the platform and for a few moments he just gazed peacefully down at the crowd with eyes that were just that little bit too blue.
Lola said later that it was almost like his eyes had been literally dazzled by his glimpse of Heaven. It was like he’d seen how the world could be, and now he was no longer able to see how it actually was.
He started to speak and everyone instantly hushed.
Speeches all sound the same really, don’t they? But I think the gist of Stephen’s was that medieval adults had screwed up big time and now it was up to the kids to put it right.
Eventually he stopped talking and it went electrifyingly quiet as he just gazed dreamily down at the crowd with those Heaven-dazzled eyes and thousands of awed sweaty faces gazed back. After all, it’s not every day you see a kid with his own hotline to Heaven.
Suddenly Stephen swung to face the ocean, whirling his arms like wings, yelling, “LET THE WATERS PART!” And at that moment, with his unkempt golden hair and drapery, he did look alarmingly holy.
“He believes it, doesn’t he?” I whispered to Orlando.
“That’s what’s so scary,” he whispered back.
The crowd held its breath, waiting for their miracle.
Absolutely nothing happened.
No thunderclap, no bolt of lightning, no waves scrolling back like curtains. Nothing.
At first his followers just seemed bewildered, but as the moments ticked past, they looked totally panic-stricken. A few kids started weeping and tearing at their clothes. Some even fainted. I saw Stephen’s minders muttering to each other, probably feeling like real dopes for believing him in the first place.
Poor Stephen just looked as if he wanted to crawl away and die.
Two richly-dressed merchants were watching all these goings-on with close interest. One had a thick shock of silvery hair and a smile which never quite reached his eyes. All at once he vaulted up on to the stage and slung a fatherly arm around Stephen’s shoulders.
“Don’t lose heart, boy,” he told him encouragingly. “My name is Gervase de Winter, and if you are willing, my friend and I would like to help you. As I’m sure you know, miracles come in many shapes and disguises.”
The men explained that they owned several ships. By a strange coincidence, two were sailing to Jerusalem in just three days’ time.
When Stephen finally grasped that they were offering to take all the children to the Holy Land for free, I truly thought he was going to burst into tears.
I wanted to be pleased for him, but I couldn’t help feeling suspicious. The merchants didn’t strike me as the holy type. I mean, what was in it for them?
In all the confusion I’d lost sight of Reuben. To my surprise, he suddenly came flying out of the crowd. He spotted Lola and they had an agitated conversation, then Reuben went flying off again. I ran over to Lola. “What’s up?”
“Omigosh, someone’s got to tell Orlando!” I gasped.
“Reuben’s just gone to tell him now.”
Next minute, as if there wasn’t enough going on, a cosmic fire alarm went off in my head. That’s the only way I can describe it. Angels constantly pick up vibes which humans fail to register, but I’d never experienced this horrible silent jangling before.
I saw Lola clutch at her ears.
“What’s going on?” I asked anxiously.
She shuddered. “It has to be the PODS. A juicy slavery scam is just up their street.”
The PODS, is our private shorthand for the Powers of Darkness, the gruesome beings who constantly try to sabotage our work on Earth. Unlike angels, PODS have no actual shape of their own, which unfortunately means they can disguise themselves as pretty much anything or anyone they fancy.
Confusingly, a routine scan revealed absolutely no evil cosmic personnel in the vicinity. Then I suddenly clocked some children standing slightly apart from the crowd. “I bet you anything it’s those kids!” I said.
We moved in closer and the jangling vibration doubled in intensity.
“That’s weird!” I said. “I mean, they’re not PODS, so they’ve got to be for real, right?”
Lola frowned. “Except - don’t they look just; teensy bit too clean to you?”
I instantly saw what she meant. Nice shiny, conditioned hair. No sores, fleas, or pockmarks. Costumes free from grease and grime. They looked more like child actors in a movie set in the thirteenth century. But it was the kids themselves who baffled me. They had a quality I’d only previously seen in angel kids; like a kind of radiant inner glow.
They definitely weren’t behaving like angels though!
“If we don’t get a question about this in the exam, I want a full refund, de Winter,” one boy complained.
“Yeah, Dominic,” his mate chipped in. “I can’t be doing with this religious garbage. To think I paid good money for this.”
From the way everyone was glaring at him, I decided that Dominic must be the intelligent-looking kid in the stylish medieval cap.
“Come on, you guys!” he said despairingly. “I’m giving you a unique experience. Real live history happening right in front of your eyes. So stop moaning and give it a chance!”
Lola and I exchanged puzzled glances. What was going on?
“Admit it, Dom,” said one of the girls. “Stephen’s a total nut job.”
Dominic sighed. “Agreed. But give him some credit. Before Stephen came along, these kids were like dumb animals, blindly following orders, half asleep. But Stephen woke them up. He made them see things could change for the better.” I could hear real excitement in Dom’s voice.
“Oh, who cares,” another boy whinged. “This place stinks.”
A girl with freckles immediately turned on him. “Of course it stinks, you bozo! History’s supposed to stink. Anyway, that Roman arena stank to high heaven and I didn’t hear anyone complain.”
“Yeah, but the gladiators were really lush!” one of the girls giggled.
I’m just giving you the gist of what they said. They were talking really rapidly in a weird slang which was really tricky to translate.
“Oh, come on, Dom,” said his freckled sidekick in disgust. “Take these losers back to school.”
Dom fumbled inside his jerkin, fished out something that looked like a miniature mobile phone and hit several tiny keypads.
The air started to flicker. Scribbles of colour appeared, weirdly superimposed over thirteenth century Marseilles; colours so wild and futuristic, I couldn’t even tell you their names.
At that moment Reuben came hurrying through the crowd to find us. His eye; grew huge. “Is this actually happening?”
“You tell us!” I squeaked.
The coloured scribbles formed into ropes of light, all twirling at different speeds. As they twirled they emitted confused crackles and bleeps, like someone trying to tune-in an old-fashioned radio.
Dom watched tensely, as the luminous ropes twirled faster and faster. He seemed to be counting under his breath. “NOW!” he yelled suddenly.
And as if they were playing some bizarre skipping game, the children simultaneously dived through the ropes - and vanished!
Chapter Five
We finally found Orlando in the middle of some big meeting with the local angels. I have to say, he didn’t seem too thrilled to see us.
“This had better be important, Melanie.”
“It totally is! We’ve come to report a major time anomaly!” I burbled. I was secretly proud of myself. Mr Allbright had explained all about anomalies last term. But of course brain-box Orlando had to go one better.
“What kind?” he said at once.
“Duh!” I snapped. “Some kids who totally shouldn’t be in this century, that’s what kind. Like, they belong to another time?”
Orlando looked disbelieving. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Lola told him. “They were from the future, I’d say. Probably sometime around the twenty-third century.”
Orlando shook his head, “Not possible. The Agency put a ban on human time-travel until at least the twenty-fifth century.”
“So someone’s broken the ban,” I snapped. Orlando’s superior attitude was really annoying me.
“You did say to tell you if we saw something unusual,” Reuben reminded him tactfully..
“Unusual!” I snorted. “That’s the understatement of the year!”
Orlando darted a nervous glance at the Earth angels, who didn’t look too impressed at having their meeting interrupted by three angel trainees in beach wear. “What exactly do you think you saw?” he asked in a low voice.
I was practically jumping up and down. “We don’t just think we saw something! We registered a major cosmic disturbance, which we traced to a bunch of time-travelling kids in medieval outfits.”
“Suspiciously pristine outfits,” Lola chipped in.
”Way too pristine,” I agreed. “One boy activated some kind of device and he and his mates jumped through some kind of worm hole and vanished.”
Orlando looked desperately stressed out. “Sorry, but I really can’t deal with this right now. As you can see, I’ve kind of got my hands full.”
Don’t think I wasn’t sorry for him, but we’d stumbled across something huge and I knew it. “So, you’re going to just like, pretend like it never happened, is that it?” I demanded.
Orlando shut his eyes and took several deep breaths, while I tried really hard not to admire his incredibly lovely eyelids. And when he opened them again it was like our conversation had never taken place.
He called cheerfully to a passing Earth angel. “Lucius, meet Melanie and Lola! Think you can put them to work?”
If Lucius thought our clothes were weird, he had the good manners to keep it to himself. “But of course,” he smiled. “It will be my plaisir.”
Orlando had swiftly shifted into trouble-shooting mode. “The slavers won’t dare to kidnap these kids in public,” he explained. “And the ships don’t sail for another three days. If we all pull our weight, there’s a chance some of the kids will change their minds about going to Jerusalem.”
“Will you please follow me,” Lucius asked us politely.
I flashed him my most professional smile. “Sure!”
But inside I was seething. Why, oh why, wouldn’t Orlando take me seriously? I’ve made a few mistakes in my angel career, I admit. That time I materialised to a human without permission, for instance. Oh, and I once sort of whacked an Elizabethan human, accidentally activating his hidden angel powers. OK, so it was William Shakespeare, but it all worked out brilliantly in the end. Yet Orlando still insisted on treating me like this major fluff-wit.
However, in the angel business, as you know, your private life totally has to
take a back seat. Actually it was quite a relief to throw myself into work. As well as the actual kids, we targeted local adults. Like Lucius said, some of them must know the slavers’ true intentions. And a cosmic nudge from a celestial agent just might inspire them to tell the kids what was really going on. We even zapped the evil merchants themselves. Well, it was worth a try!
Lola and I got so blissed-out on cosmic energy, I think we could have gone on all night. Lucius actually had to tell us our shift was over.
“I don’t know ‘ow we would have manage wizout you,” he said.
“He’s so charming,” Lola whispered.
Unlike some, I thought bitterly.
Orlando came to see us all off. “Thanks, guys! I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
I gave him the briefest possible nod. But he had already turned to talk to his colleagues, totally unaware that he’d been blanked.
We blasted back to Heaven in a blaze of white light.
“I want to sleep for a week,” I moaned. “Plus I want you to swear you’ll never let me go on a field trip in flip-flops again.”
Lola looked dazed. “Uh? Oh, sure.”
“Are you OK?” I asked her.
She gave me a faraway smile. “Just trying to remember something.”
Minutes later we were handing in our angel tags. We dragged ourselves through the Arrivals bay and out into the street, where a fleet of Agency limos waited in the heavenly twilight.
All the way back to school, I was longing to fall into bed. Yet after a long hot shower, my tiredness magically disappeared.
I looked at my nice clean PJs on my pillow and I thought, “Nah!”
I went into a mad whirl of activity. I threw on jeans and a cropped T-shirt, splashed on my favourite fragrance (it’s called Attitude, and comes in the cutest bottle) and grabbed my new beaded clutch bag.
I was just on my way to find Lola when she appeared in my doorway, wearing an almost identical outfit. “The Babylon, right?” she grinned.
We slapped palms. “The Babylon!”
Giggling like idiots, we rushed downstairs and out of school.