Plan for the Worst

by Jodi Taylor

  And that was another thing: Edward was only twelve. A long minority lay ahead of him and from past experience, those never ended well. Take Henry VI, for example. He was a baby when his father, Henry V, died. The factions fighting over his throne had led to the Wars of the Roses.

  Richard II was another who’d succeeded young and that hadn’t turned out well, either. Long minorities were rarely good news for anyone.

  And one final thought: Richard III had had the boys declared illegitimate. Because, supposedly, their father had a prior attachment to another woman. But – and I’m out on a limb here – suppose it wasn’t the boys specifically whose legitimacy was in question. Suppose it was their father, Edward IV, who was illegitimate. His mother, Cecily of York, supposedly had a bit of a thing with an archer, Will Blaybourne, and she herself had declared – admittedly in a moment of fury – that Edward was his son. Her assertion was considerably strengthened by the fact that Edward was tall and blond while his official father was famously short and dark. And if Edward was illegitimate then so were his children. On that assumption, Richard was the rightful king.

  So, had he removed the boys for safekeeping? Was he, even at this stage, aware of the threat Henry Tudor posed? Again – get the boys out of harm’s way. Henry went on to make it his life’s work to exterminate Plantagenets. Two young boys wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes.

  And if Richard had removed them – where would he have removed them to? To his sister Margaret in Burgundy would be my bet. Intelligent and astute, she could have kept her nephews safe. But young Edward wasn’t well; suppose he died young. Before he was in a position to pursue his claim. That left that rascal, the young Prince Richard. Was Perkin Warbeck, the infamous pretender, actually who he professed to be – Richard of York? Margaret of Burgundy supported his claim. Although, to be fair, she’d have supported her dog over Henry Tudor, whom she hated with a passion. Warbeck failed in his claim and was ultimately hanged before the crowds at Tyburn. I didn’t like to think of that little boy with his wooden sword, so full of life and mischief, ending his days kicking at the end of a rope.

  And now, because I couldn’t avoid thinking of it any longer – what became of the boy who was pulled out of the water? Did Dr Bairstow, having saved his life, abandon him outside the Tower and he was recaptured? And had Dr Bairstow and Mrs Brown escaped to safety? Or had they been taken as well?

  And – the question I really wanted answered – why did Dr Bairstow leave me to die? Why did he choose that child over me? You could argue he’d done it for humanitarian reasons, except this was Dr Bairstow and he knows better than anyone the risks involved in meddling with History. The same History who might already have taken out both boy and Bairstow and had a go at me as well. I’d been only seconds from drowning when I was pulled from the dark waters.

  I opened my eyes – sorry, eye – again and was surprised to find he was still there. Markham, I mean.

  I croaked, ‘You look awful. And this is me talking.’

  He did. He looked terrible. Drawn and haggard with nasty, purple, shiny shadows under his eyes. I leaped to the wrong conclusion, rasping, ‘Is it Hunter? Has something happened? Is she all right?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, yes, she’s fine. As far as I know, anyway. She’s not allowed in here because some people had cholera and that’s not good for pregnant women.’

  ‘It’s not that good for unpregnant women, either,’ I said, and began to cough again, which activated all the aches and pains that had, until this moment, only been lurking in the background. He leaned sideways out of range. I suspected there had been copious vomiting and said so.

  ‘If only it was just vomiting,’ he said, sadly. ‘You wish it was just vomiting.’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Wasn’t going to. In fact, I don’t even want to think about it.’ He reached for something off the bedside locker. ‘Here, drink this.’

  I regarded it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘ORS – oral rehydration salts.’ He shook it vigorously and pulled the tab. ‘Sip, don’t gulp, or we’ll be scraping it off the walls again. I’ll just give Dr Stone a shout. Gets me out of range, just in case. Tactful, eh?’

  I sipped very slowly and very cautiously as Mr Tactful tapped on the observation window and gestured in my direction. There was an intercom and I don’t know why he didn’t use it but the world is full of things I don’t know.

  I finished the drink and we both waited anxiously to see what, if anything, would transpire. I think it would be hard to say which of us was most relieved when nothing did.

  I asked how long I’d been in Sick Bay.

  ‘Two, no, three days. Two nights and three days.’

  Dr Stone bustled in, checking read-outs, graphs, flashing lights, tubes and all the important stuff before finally sparing a look for his patient.

  ‘Well,’ he said, making a note on something. ‘No need to ask when you last opened your bowels.’

  Doctors shouldn’t be allowed to talk to their patients. There should be rules.

  He put the chart down. ‘All right then, Max? How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit.’

  ‘That’s appropriate.’

  ‘Have I really got cholera?’

  ‘Not any longer. Thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the medical profession, we’re up to date with your shots and you only had it very mildly. You didn’t even manage to give it to Markham. And he’s like a sponge for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Leon? Matthew? Can I see them?’

  ‘Not allowed in,’ he said firmly. ‘You can wave at them through the glass.’

  ‘When can I get up?’

  ‘As soon as you can stand. Do you want to give it a go now?’

  I threw him another nasty look and he wandered cheerfully away, insensitivity oozing from every pore.

  I turned back to Markham and asked the really important question: ‘Dr Bairstow?’

  ‘Back safely. And Mrs Brown. She’s gone back to London. Two days ago.’

  I thought of that brief glimpse of them pulling the boy out of the river and hardly dared ask. ‘They’re all right?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re fine.’

  I hardly dared believe it. ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Yep. Both fine.’

  OK. Now I needed to work up to the next bit. I said, casually, ‘Has he been in at all?’

  ‘Once. Said to let him know when you were awake.’ He took the empty cup off me and sat down again, watching me carefully. ‘Tell me what happened. I gather you fell in the river?’

  I blinked vaguely and shook my head, giving a wonderfully realistic impersonation of someone who didn’t remember a single thing. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Don’t you remember anything?’

  ‘Um . . . I vaguely remember landing outside the Tower.’

  ‘Did you see the princes?’

  ‘Um . . . I’m not sure.’ I had a clever thought. ‘What does Dr Bairstow say?’

  ‘He said there was a bit of an accident and you fell in the river.’

  Rage is pleasantly warming. One minute you’re lying in bed, chilled and weak, and the next moment red hot rage is pumping through every vein, together with an entirely justified desire to do some damage.

  I swallowed it down. ‘Did he say how I came to fall in the river?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And what did he do when I fell in the river?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Did he pull me out?’

  ‘Sorry, Max, I don’t have any details. I’ve been stuck in here, remember. Do you remember what happened?’

  I lay back on the pillows and wondered what would happen if I said, ‘Actually, he endangered Mrs Brown and the entire mission, interfered with the course of History, left me to die and lied about it.’ What would Markham say? What woul
d he do? I tried to put myself in his position. He was Head of the Security Section. Discipline and good order was his responsibility. He wouldn’t do anything. Not immediately. He would wait for the first opportunity, then he would seek out Dr Bairstow for a discreet conversation. If Dr Bairstow denied it then he probably wouldn’t do anything. What could he do? It would be one word against another and one of those words would be Dr Bairstow’s.

  On the other hand, if he admitted what he’d done, again, what would Markham do? How would it help anyone to make the truth known? It’s our mantra – we don’t leave our people behind. How would it help anyone to know that, actually, we did?

  I bottled it.

  ‘Sorry, not a thing.’

  I thought he looked at me rather closely. He sat back. ‘Well, that’s a shame. It’s not every day you’re brought home by the Time Police looking slightly less appetising than something the cat’s sicked up.’

  I remembered to say, ‘The Time Police?’

  ‘They pulled you out of the river. I have to ask: what were you doing with the Time Police?’

  I shook my head again and deflected. ‘My face hurts.’

  ‘Yes, either someone fetched you a bit of a wallop or you ran into something really solid. You have a world class bruise and only one working eye. Probably why you don’t remember anything.’

  Time to change the subject. ‘Leon?’

  ‘He peers through the window at you a couple of times a day. He’s not allowed in because of Matthew. They’re both fine. Speaking of which, do you want to hear about my new assistant?’

  ‘No,’ I said wearily. Hell is being trapped in a small space with Markham.

  ‘I knew you’d be interested,’ he said, drawing his chair closer. ‘Well, they’ve built the basic unit and it’s divided into three areas.’ He waved his arms to illustrate three areas. I prayed for an early death. ‘There’s the base, which is the propulsion unit. Then the mid-area – the thorax, if you like – which is hollow. For mugs of tea, ham sandwiches, files, Evans’s socks and so on. But the top bit – you’ll love this, Max – actually detaches. It’s amazing. It can fly away, carrying stuff with it. Except that one of Evans’s socks got sucked into some sort of intake, which didn’t do either of them any good. But it solves the problem of steps and stairs. I have to say, it’s not much of a looker – not that that’s important, obviously, as long as it remembers I like two sugars in my tea and brown sauce on my bacon butties. There’s been a bit of a problem with the gearing but Professor Penrose says . . .’

  He went on and on and on. I closed my eye. Where’s a coma when you need one?

  I graduated to sitting up and from there to a cup of tea and from there to wobbling into the bathroom by myself and from there to some very gentle toast and from there to an even gentler boiled egg, as my normally very underused colon struggled to recover from all the recent heavy traffic. Markham watched anxiously from a safe distance.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ I said, one morning. ‘How is opening my eyes and finding you lurking at my bedside supposed to be an aid to recovery?’

  ‘Waiting for my test results,’ he said.

  ‘They still don’t know what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried I’ll infect you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well, suppose you infect me?’

  ‘Nope – still not worried. Besides, we’ve only got one isolation ward and I was here first. They’d have to put you out in the stables with the horses.’

  ‘They’ve no idea what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nope, but that’s pretty much standard for the medical profession, isn’t it? They don’t have a clue most of the time, so they do lots of tests in the hope the patient will spontaneously recover and they can take the credit.’

  ‘Is Nurse Hunter aware of your opinion of the medical profession?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ he said, reflectively. ‘I tell her lots of interesting things but sometimes I wonder if she actually listens.’

  ‘That’s the medical profession for you.’

  He nodded glumly. ‘Sometimes she just gets up and walks away. In mid-sentence.’

  ‘Aww,’ I said, sympathetically.

  ‘Sometimes she runs. Anyway – how are you feeling?’

  ‘Absolutely fine. A bit wobbly, but fine. Cholera’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Still, it’s going to raise my position in the Dangerous Diseases League.’

  ‘Yeah, but no one’s ever going to beat Peterson’s plague. About the only thing that’s going to top that is being regurgitated by a dinosaur.’

  ‘Or coming back from the dead.’

  There was a pause. ‘As I said – Peterson’s got it nailed until the end of time. Lucky devil.’

  We were still brooding on Peterson’s good fortune in contracting bubonic plague when the door opened. I looked up. Shit.

  Markham twisted round to look. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning to you both. Mr Markham, I wonder if I might have a few moments with Dr Maxwell.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ He got up and left. I just had a moment to wonder how he was allowed to leave if they still weren’t sure what was wrong with him, before Dr Bairstow sat himself in the recently vacated chair, folded his hands over his stick – the very one he’d used to save someone else – and looked at me. As if nothing had happened. As if he’d never left me to die in the 15th century.

  ‘Dr Maxwell, how are you?’

  I looked back at him. ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘Dr Stone tells me you should be released either tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘I believe so.’

  There was a short pause and then he said, ‘I do not appear to have received your report.’

  ‘I have not yet written it.’

  ‘In that case, a short verbal report should suffice, if you feel well enough to give it to me now.’

  I made up my mind. I’d spent hours lying awake in the dark, wondering what to say to him, ricocheting from anger to hurt to anger to disbelief and back to anger again. I would have trusted this man with my life. Until a couple of days ago, anyway. I forgot to add conflict to the anger, hurt and disbelief. Because this was Dr Bairstow. The man who had calmly walked off with Mikey, Adrian and Matthew from right under the Time Police’s noses. And their illegal pod. Now, here he sat, a little pale, a little heavy-eyed, but otherwise perfectly calm, perfectly normal – as if nothing had happened. As if it wasn’t important. Perhaps he was right. It wasn’t important. Well, if it wasn’t important to him then it wasn’t important to me, either.

  I held his gaze. ‘I don’t remember anything.’

  He regarded me for a very long time. ‘You don’t remember anything.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘No.’ I touched my still colourful face. ‘At some point I must have collided with something. Dr Stone says possibly a slight concussion.’

  He said nothing. He knew I was lying.

  I hadn’t finished. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, looking straight at him, ‘you could give me your version of events.’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘We were able to identify the princes,’ he said, eventually. ‘Unfortunately, at some point during the assignment, you fell into the river and were swept away. Your recorder was lost.’

  I’d handed him my recorder for safekeeping. I wondered if he’d deliberately destroyed it. Now there was no record of the assignment at all.

  ‘So we have no record of the assignment?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Just your version of events.’

  ‘Since Mrs Brown has returned to London, yes. And you, of course, have no memory at all.’r />
  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Allow me to fill in the few details we have. A small boy was pulled out of the River Thames.’

  I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know anything. ‘What small boy? Was it one of the princes? How did he get in the river? What did you do with him?’

  Typically, he chose to answer only one of my questions. ‘It seemed safe to assume, since he had come from the Tower, that he was indeed one of the princes.’

  ‘What did you do with him?’

  ‘Since we were unclear as to how he came to be found in the river, we felt that returning him to the Tower was not a safe option.’

  I forced myself to breathe slowly. If he had taken the little boy somewhere else . . . If he had removed him from his own time . . . then we were in a world of trouble.

  ‘And what, in your opinion, Dr Bairstow, was a safe option?’

  ‘We took him to Burgundy.’

  Ah. I was still unsure whether this was good or bad.

  He continued. ‘To his aunt, the Duchess. Where he was affectionately received.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did you take him there immediately?’

  ‘It seemed prudent to put some time between events that night and our arrival in Burgundy, so the next day.’

  I tried to be cunning. ‘Which one was he?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘There were two princes. Which one was he?’

  ‘He was muffled in blankets and we deliberately didn’t enquire too closely.’ I bet he didn’t. Plausible deniability for when History came a-calling. Although, by not removing the lad from his own time, he had at least avoided the attentions of the Time Police. Which was good. We’d never have survived another investigation. I could feel the rage begin to boil again. The risks he had taken . . . the danger he had exposed us to. To say nothing of what he’d done – or rather, hadn’t done – for me.