by Susan Price
Per and Sweet Milk rose and went over to the far wall, to talk. One or two other Sterkarms joined them, and for a moment Isobel looked as if she would rise and follow. But although Sterkarm women had plenty to say for themselves, about everything, it was not the done thing for them to publicly discuss men’s business, such as war. After an obvious struggle with herself, she remained on her stool.
The men came back to the table and seated themselves again. “We agree,” Per said. Andrea thought that they had probably decided to agree for now, for the sake of the promised booty, but the matter of Elf-Weapons would inevitably crop up again in the near future. “Payment,” Per went on. “All that we take on the ride be ourn to keep?”
“That was agreed,” Gareth said.
“And I want wee white pills for every man. Dicket-adicket-adicket for every man—”
An excited whispering and nudging broke out around the table at this scarcely imaginable number. Gareth had to lean to Andrea for a translation, as he’d never quite got to grips with Sterkarm counting.
“A thousand,” she said. “Ten times ten times ten.”
“For every captain,” Per said, “tayn-adicket-adicket-adicket.”
“Two thousand,” Andrea said, as the awed gasps filled the hall again.
“For me,” Per said, “tether-adicket-adicket-adicket.”
“Three thousand?” Gareth asked, and Andrea nodded. Per, she supposed, planned to give the pills to his followers as presents, to keep them loyal.
“I agree,” Gareth said. In the 21st, generic aspirin cost next to nothing.
Everyone around the table committed the agreement to memory.
“For every man,” Per said, “a pair of good, waterproof boots, a pair of jeans, and a good Elf-Coat.” He meant the warm, waterproof, windproof 21st-side coats, much coveted by the Sterkarms.
That would be a good deal more expensive, and Gareth dickered. A pair of jeans for every man; the jeans and the coat for the captains; but the boots only for Per.
There was an outcry of annoyance. The Elves were rich. Did they want the Sterkarms to fight for them or not?
Gareth offered to throw in a bolt of cloth for every man—gorgeous, shiny, close-woven Elf-Cloth. It would make a good present for wives and sweethearts.
The Sterkarms were not enthusiastic. Perhaps they were remembering that Joan Grannam’s wedding dress had been made of such cloth and considered it an unlucky gift.
“A pair of good Elf-Boots for every man,” Per said.
Gareth didn’t fancy presenting Windsor with the bill for so many pairs of high-quality walking boots. He offered to increase the amount of aspirins per man.
Per withdrew from the table again with Sweet Milk, and this time they went over to Isobel, to discuss the offer with her. Andrea could hear it being eagerly discussed among the crowd around the table. The Sterkarms were tempted. They had no reliably effective painkillers to combat their toothaches, head pains, rheumatism, arthritis, period cramps, and all their other ills. Aspirin was, to them, magical stuff.
“Two thousand wee white pills for every man,” Per said, coming back to the table. “Three thousand for the captains. Five thousand for me.”
“Five thousand?” Gareth said, tapping on an electronic notebook.
“Five thousand. And a pair of boots for every man. We’ll forgo breeches and coats.” But the Sterkarms weren’t going to let go of those boots.
“Come on, agree,” Andrea said. She was impatient to see a settlement made. Beside her, Patterson yawned. Since he could understand only a few words, he must have been even more bored. “You’ll buy in bulk and get a discount. Be generous and throw in the jeans as well—cheap pairs. Windsor won’t care. It isn’t his money. He always enjoys a row with Accounts.”
Gareth considered, then said, “Right. Two thousand pills—three thousand—five for Per. A pair of jeans for every man, and a pair of boots.”
“Agreed,” Per said, and there were cheers, and beams on faces.
All those wee white pills! They were all going to be rich!
“Gold,” Per said.
“Gold?” Gareth hadn’t expected this.
“Five pieces of gold for every man. Ten pieces for captains. Fifty for me.”
The Sterkarms, as ever, were pushing their luck. Andrea turned and whispered to Gareth. “For the men, nothing. For the captains, a gold piece each. For the Sterkarm leader, five pieces.”
While Gareth said this aloud, Andrea looked up and saw Per glowering at her resentfully. The sooner she was out of here, the better.
“Forty for me,” Per said. “Eight for captains. Three for every man.” He was driving a hard bargain, probably because Andrea had dared to interfere.
“Agree, agree,” she whispered to Gareth. What did she care, after all?
“Ten for you,” Gareth said. “Five for captains. One for every man.”
The Sterkarms consulted, and Per said, “Agreed.” There was a certain subdued exultation from those around the table. They couldn’t repress it. A piece of gold each, in addition to the aspirins, the boots, and the breeches. It made them dizzy.
“Give us your word gold won’t turn to leaves,” Per said.
“Or any trash,” Sweet Milk added.
“I give you my word,” Gareth said. “I will swear on anything you choose. It will be good, solid gold, no magic about it.”
“We want a hostage,” Per said.
Nonplussed, Gareth turned to Andrea. “A hostage?”
“They want a hostage,” she said. “As a guarantee that the Elves will keep their word. It’s quite normal in the 16th.”
“But—a hostage. What will they do—?”
“The hostage will stay here, in the 16th,” Andrea said impatiently. “Whoever it is will be well treated and looked after, but if the Elves break their word—” She raised her brows. He looked blank. “They’ll kill the hostage,” she said.
He looked aghast. “We can’t agree to that!”
“Why? Aren’t the Elves going to keep their word? Keep your side of the bargain and everything will be okay.”
But Gareth turned away from her and said to Per, “It’s not the Elven custom to give hostages.”
Per leaned back in his chair. “Then we’ll no ride for Elven.”
Putting her mouth close to Gareth’s ear, Andrea said, “Agree to a hostage! Agree! Or we’ll get nowhere!”
“Are you volunteering?” Gareth asked.
“Me? No! I—I can’t.”
“Then you can hardly—” Gareth said.
Per spoke again. “Elf-May shall be sent back to Elf-Land. She be no welcome here.”
Andrea said, “I understand that. I will go as soon as may be. If Elven were to grant a hostage, who would it be?”
With a nod, Per indicated Gareth. “Elf-Windsor’s man.”
Furiously, Gareth whispered to Andrea, “I don’t want to be a bloody hostage!”
“You’ll be staying here anyway, won’t you?” Andrea whispered back. “What difference will it make? Or do you know that the Elves aren’t going to keep their word?”
Gareth stared at her. “Of course we are!”
“Good. They don’t want me here—”
“Lucky you!”
“Send me back 21st side, and I’ll take a letter to Windsor. I’ll let him know that you’re a hostage for his good behavior. You trust him, don’t you?”
Gareth’s face flushed. “That’s not the point—”
“Of course it is. I can also take the shopping list of aspirins, boots, and what nots. Anything you want him to know.”
Gareth saw the chance to send a memo, detailing all his successes, bringing himself to the notice of the men who counted. “Well …”
“Agree with them,” Andrea said. “They won’t understand why
you’re havering over a hostage.”
Gareth hesitated a moment longer, but he felt the pressure of all the many Sterkarms, all around the table, all staring at him and waiting. “All right,” he said to Per. “I offer myself as hostage. And I will send the Elf-May home.”
Per rose from his seat and held out his hand—his right hand, although he was left-handed. Never shake hands with a Sterkarm. “Then we are agreed. We shall ride for you.”
Gareth rose, and they shook. The Sterkarms cheered, and Isobel rose from her seat to chivvy her maids into filling cups and passing plates of bread.
21
21st Side: Back Again
The journey from the Bedesdale Tower to the Tube was one of anger and exasperation, and Andrea ended it feeling that her nerves had been rubbed down with sandpaper. The trip was made in an MPV, jolting and lurching over the difficult ground, with Patterson driving and, beside him in the passenger seat, a man Patterson called Plug, who carried some kind of big gun. Andrea thought it was a machine gun of sorts, but guns weren’t one of her interests.
“Sent home in disgrace, eh?” was one of the first things Patterson said. “Really blotted your copybook, haven’t you, girlie?”
Plug sniggered. He sniggered at anything Patterson said.
Andrea said nothing. All she wanted to do was reach the Tube and go through it. There wasn’t any point, that she could see, in arguing with Patterson.
“Old Jimmy Windsor ain’t going to be very pleased with you, is he?”
Andrea thought of asking Patterson whether he called Windsor “Old Jimmy” to his face, but she kept quiet, even when Plug looked at her and sniggered.
“I shall be going to see him, soon as we get in.” Patterson looked at her in the mirror. “You can come with me. I’ll fill him in on how helpful you’ve been.”
Right on cue, Plug sniggered. Andrea almost wished that a party of Grannams would appear, to give him something to snigger about—but then hastily took back even that almost wish. No Grannams appeared anyway, and the MPV ground and shuddered and swayed on its way, and Patterson made his spiteful jibes, and Plug sniggered, until Andrea felt that another minute would force her to lie on the floor and scream.
They came, at long last, to the place where the wedding feast had been held. There were the Elvish inflatables, now limp and deflated. Some of the huts in the shantytown surrounding the Elvish buildings had been pulled down, others burned down. Debris lay scattered over the grass—cushions, torn drapes, food, ropes. There were many bundles of clothing cast down on the grass—until Andrea realized that they were bodies, just left, lying there. Something scuttled away, low to the ground. A fox. She looked away before she saw anything that she wouldn’t forget.
Patterson saw her in the mirror and laughed. “The foxes and crows, they think all their Christmases and birthdays have come at once!”
Plug sniggered. She gritted her teeth. They weren’t far from the Tube now.
They drove through the electronic gates into the Tube’s compound, and saw the Tube’s great concrete pipe waiting for them beside the little prefab office on its stilts. Both looked weird against the wild hills behind. Patterson steered the MPV up the ramp that led to the Tube, halted it on the platform, and turned the engine off. Plug wound his window down.
A security guard stepped out of the office, stooped, and looked into the car. Patterson held up his pass. “Fine,” said the guard, and went back into the office. Andrea leaned forward until she could see the panel of lights hung above the Tube’s entrance. The red one was on. Soon it would turn to green and they would go through. The light changed. Patterson started the engine and the car crept forward. The plastic screening rattled against the windshield, and then they were in the Tube itself. A few seconds and five hundred years later, they drove out of the Tube’s other end, in the 21st century.
Patterson halted the car on the platform just outside the Tube. Another guard popped out of the office, checked his pass, and waved them on. Slowly the car drove down the ramp onto 21st-century gravel. Andrea looked out, with admiration, on neat 21st-century lawns, trees, and flower beds.
Patterson drove the car slowly around the grand country house to the parking lot at the front and parked it alongside the other big, square, tall vehicles that were used for driving to the office and supermarket. The only difference between these and the one that had just driven across 16th-century moorland was that theirs was muddier. Andrea could see her own little blue car a few places away.
Patterson switched off the engine, took the gun from Plug, and said to him, “Okay, lose yourself for a few hours—but keep your bloody cell phone switched on!”
Plug sniggered, climbed out of the car, and walked off.
Patterson got out too and put the gun into the car’s boot. Andrea climbed out slowly. She knew what she was going to do next—or what she wanted to do next. The trouble was she had no idea, as yet, of how she was going to do it.
“Come on,” Patterson said, and strode off toward the hall’s beautiful entrance, with its pillars and steps. Andrea grabbed her rucksack from the car’s backseat and followed him. The car, losing contact with the coder in Patterson’s pocket, locked itself.
In reception it was all gleaming wood, shining glass, and a scent of polish. Patterson showed his pass to the bored girls behind the desk and said, “Buzz me through.” Andrea fumbled in her rucksack and produced her pass. One of the girls pressed a button beneath her desk, a buzzer sounded, and Patterson pushed open the heavy wooden door into the main building, making straight for the lifts.
Patterson said nothing as they rode up in the lift but smirked at her in an annoying way when she glanced at him. They got out on the top floor and walked along a wide corridor with a floor of polished wood. Patterson turned through an open door into Windsor’s outer office where Windsor’s secretary, Beryl, sat behind a small desk, in front of a computer. Andrea stood back as Patterson spoke with the secretary.
“If you’ll take a seat,” Beryl said, “I’ll tell Mr. Windsor. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”
Patterson said no, went over to an armchair, and sat down, his boots planted firmly about a foot apart. He didn’t pick up a magazine but stared at the wall. “No, thank you,” Andrea said, and took a chair at a distance from him. She did pick up a magazine and turned its pages, but her mind was on other things. Beryl calmly finished what she was doing, then rose, knocked on the door of the inner office, and went in.
For a minute or two Andrea could hear voices speaking quietly in the next room; then the door opened again and Windsor came out, dressed in his usual smart dark suit and white shirt, smiling and holding out his hand. “Tom! Come right in, right in!” As Patterson preceded him into his office, Windsor smirked at Andrea. “Be patient for a few minutes longer, Andrea. Perhaps Beryl can rustle you up a few cookies?”
The door of the office closed behind the men, and the murmuring voices began again. Beryl smiled sympathetically at Andrea and returned to her seat. She looked up after a moment. “If you change your mind about a drink—?”
Smiling, Andrea said, “I’m fine, thanks.”
Beryl went back to her work, and Andrea went back to staring blankly at glossy advertisements in the magazine she held. There was a silence, which Andrea felt to be uncomfortable, though Beryl seemed entirely at ease. A clatter startled Andrea, and she looked up. Beryl had started the printer. Now she rose and, in silence, left the office.
Listlessly Andrea turned more pages. She finished the magazine and took up another, in which she was equally uninterested. Still she was alone in the office. A soft rustle made her look across the room. The printed pages had piled up, and were now slithering onto the floor.
That always happens, Andrea thought. And you have to pick them all up and sort them all out. With a fellow feeling for Beryl, who was also fat and plain and sneered at by Windsor, she rose
from her chair and went to pick the papers up.
They were authorization passes for going through the Tube. She shuffled through the pages. They all were. Blank forms, all ready to be filled in, issued only from this office. A large party was shortly going to be sent through the Tube. She looked up, staring at the opposite wall, and took a deep breath, deliberately calming herself.
Beryl came back through the office door and, seeing Andrea standing by the printer with her hands full of papers, stopped short and stared. Andrea felt as if a great chord of music had been struck in her head, almost deafening her. “It’s okay,” she gabbled. “It’s okay! I—well—I was just picking these up for you! It’s a nuisance, isn’t it, how they go all over the floor?” Shuffling the papers together, she put them down on Beryl’s desk but picked one off the top. “I’ll just be off now. A lot to do. You know how it is—loads!” Darting across to her chair, she grabbed her bag and made for the door.
“Um,” Beryl said, turning to watch her go and vaguely pointing at the paper in Andrea’s hand.
“Have a nice day!” Andrea said and, gaily waving the paper in farewell, almost ran out into the corridor.
Beryl remained in the center of the room, uncertain of what she ought to do. Andrea certainly shouldn’t have taken one of those papers—she really should have minded her own business and not even picked them up from the floor, but—what was Beryl supposed to do? Rugby tackle her? And Andrea was a nice young woman. Conscientious. Polite. She probably didn’t mean any harm. When you got to the bottom of it, it was most likely all to do with her anthropological studies—which sounded most interesting—and nothing suspicious at all. Slowly Beryl returned to her seat and continued with her work. She felt uneasy but didn’t want to make a fuss. It would cause a lot of trouble and probably only make her look a fool.
The buzzer sounded on the intercom, and Windsor’s voice said, “Can you send Miss Mitchell in now, please, Beryl?”