Plan for the Worst

by Jodi Taylor

  ‘I did. I bundled my two very wet and shocked passengers into the pod and we jumped to TPHQ.’

  ‘I bet they were thrilled when you dumped that little lot in their lap.’

  ‘It would be accurate to say there was some resistance, yes. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince Commander Hay I’d done the right thing. I pointed out that as the future Mr Markham, this young boy would have considerable interaction with future timelines and that, as with Clive Ronan, he must be allowed to continue. Without the smartdust, of course. I went on to point out that many people alive today would have died without him. While they were still reflecting on that, I told them I was merely following the example they themselves had set with Clive Ronan, whose life thread – to use your own vivid analogy – was also closely interwoven with our own. I told them if this young boy did not grow up to become Mr Markham and play an important part in all our pasts then whole tranches of History would unravel and they would be contravening the very purpose of their existence.’

  ‘And they accepted that?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. I was up all night arguing with them.’ He smiled. ‘Fortunately, I have been instructed in the Black Arts of Successful Argument by a master.’

  ‘So you sent them to find me? I can imagine their reluctance.’

  ‘There was a certain amount of muttering but they jumped in the end.’

  ‘Just in time, as it happened,’ I said, closing my eyes and feeling the cold waters close over my face again.

  ‘Yes – I can’t tell you how many anxious moments Mr Markham and I endured until you were deposited, dripping, on our doorstep.’

  I was trying to pick a path through all this. ‘So you arrived back here, with Mrs Brown . . .’

  ‘And we went straight to Sick Bay, where Mr Markham was waiting for us – in a state of considerable anxiety, I might add – and then we waited, very, very fearfully, to hear that the Time Police had successfully retrieved you.’

  I thought about that for a while. No one said anything as I pieced things together in my mind.

  ‘So,’ I said to Markham. ‘What happened to you afterwards? What did they do with you? Where did you go? Did you stay with the Time Police?’

  ‘Oh no. Trust me, they couldn’t get rid of me quickly enough. Which turned out to be a continuing theme in my life. Everywhere I went, people couldn’t get rid of me quickly enough. Initially I was placed with a family who had a history of service to the Crown. Loyal, discreet people.’

  ‘Did they know?’

  ‘They did, yes. I was a very medieval prince and that had to be explained away somehow. Unfortunately, I didn’t like them and they definitely didn’t like me, although I can’t have been easy to live with. I was the son of one king and the brother of another and it took me a long time to get over that. My problem was that this world was new and frightening and the only thing I could hang on to was my identity, but that always led to trouble. Then there would be even more trouble. Many efforts were made to thump it out of me and it took a spell in one of those homes for troubled children – where, incidentally, I learned all sorts of useful things – before I learned to keep my mouth shut. Fortunately, by this time I was integrated enough to have some sort of cover story – illegitimate son of someone important, I think it was.’

  I nodded. That was basically what Ian Guthrie had believed and the story he had, in all innocence, told to me last Christmas.

  ‘I was passed around an astonishing number of families and guardians. I never stayed anywhere for very long. It was always made clear that I was only there on sufferance and that no one wanted me, and I resented it. Don’t look like that, Max, or feel sorry for me, either. They didn’t behave well but neither did I.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it.’

  I could just imagine it, actually. I could just imagine some idiot handing him an enormously long list of things he couldn’t do, or see or say, and being Markham, he would have thanked them politely with that stupid grin of his and immediately proceeded to work his way through it.

  ‘I got in with the wrong crowd – trust me, there are always plenty of people hanging around the fringes just waiting for someone like me – some yob with a sense of entitlement and a chip on his shoulder.’ He sighed. ‘I can see now how close I came.’

  ‘To what? You mean the establishment might have had you . . . ?’

  He laughed. ‘Well, it’s not as if it’s never been done before.’

  ‘Surely . . .’

  ‘Come on, Max, think back. Our royal family has over a thousand years of experience in dealing with pretenders, imposters, inconvenient scions and so on. They themselves probably don’t actually come at you with a dagger in the dark – not these days, anyway – but trust me, nothing else has changed.’

  I blinked and readjusted my ideas of a bunch of amiable, waving, smiling people who never answered back. Well, they didn’t have to, of course. They had people to do that for them. And, it would seem, by methods rather more drastic than simply penning a stern letter to The Times.

  ‘Anyway, one day I went too far and did something really stupid and everyone suddenly decided enough was enough. That might have been the end – I told myself I wasn’t bothered – but someone must have spoken up for me and I was offered a deal. The army or something even worse. As you know, I chose the army and Captain Guthrie – as he was then – took me on. My cover story was that I was just a young yob – uncontrollable and his own worst enemy. Which was not so far from the truth.’

  ‘But why? Why were cover stories necessary? Does it really matter who you are?’

  ‘Not to me. Not any longer. But others care. It’s not that long since we had a civil war, and Laurence Hoyle isn’t the only nutter out there. Governments get very nervous about this sort of thing. Suppose someone decides my claim is stronger than the present incumbent and tries to install me instead so that I could be some sort of puppet. The thing is, Max, the one thing the monarchy provides is continuity and stability. The last thing they need is a pretender turning up and undermining all that with a possibly better claim.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said vaguely, closing my eyes and following the royal succession back through the centuries to 1483.

  ‘See?’ he said sharply. ‘You can’t help yourself, can you?’

  ‘But surely, you’re the last Plantagenet. You’re the . . .’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he said firmly. ‘Since then, we’ve had the Welsh lot, the Scottish lot and the Germans. We’ve moved on. Besides, I’m at St Mary’s now and I really like it here.’

  He had a point. I couldn’t help feeling the monarchy should be kept away from Markham for much the same reasons they had to keep the One Ring away from Sauron. I could just imagine him, sword in hand, knighting yet another government-sponsored idiot: ‘Arise, Sir . . . Whoops. Bollocks. Sorry. My bad. Don’t stand in the blood, anyone.’

  He was still speaking. ‘I was never going to give up what I have now for some poncey waving and ribbon-cutting job. I signed a ton of papers and got on with my life.’

  ‘You certainly have,’ I said, remembering little Flora upstairs.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said uneasily.

  ‘You weren’t supposed to have children, were you? Your line was supposed to die with you. That’s what the letter was about. The one you got last summer. After the steam-pump jump.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said again.

  ‘But . . . didn’t you have . . . you know . . .’ I glanced uneasily at Dr Bairstow, not wanting to shock him if he didn’t know about such things. ‘The snip?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he said indignantly. ‘And then I met Hunter and got unsnipped.’

  So he’d done it deliberately. Of course he had. ‘How much trouble are you in?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘It probably ranges from a lot all the way up to an ab
solute shitload. But, to stop talking about me for a moment – I can’t say I’m sorry this has come out. I haven’t done you any favours today, Max, telling you this, but ever since we met, I’ve been wanting to say thank you. Thank you for saving my life and giving me a future.’

  ‘An honour and a privilege,’ I said and really meant it. A thought struck me. ‘Did you know, sir? When Markham came to St Mary’s?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said calmly. ‘Major Guthrie showed me Mr Markham’s file when I recruited him. There was a remarkably long list of transgressions and we agreed it was an unfortunate start to a young life and left it at that. I had no idea until he bobbed up in front of me in London. For one moment, I was really quite perplexed as to the correct course of action to take.’

  I remembered the expression on his face. The horror. The fear. The hard choice he’d had to make. And how, when you thought about it, it hadn’t really been a choice at all. It hadn’t been his fault. It certainly hadn’t been mine, but it hadn’t been his, either. And the thing in Mechelen – which turned out to have been the Wardrobe Department – when he’d done his best to keep me from harm. The thought struck me – far too late, of course, which is how my thoughts usually strike me – how likely was a young page to have a knowledge of Latin? And when that hadn’t been enough – there had been a warning. An unpleasant and unmissable warning. Danger to both me and my family. Finally, I’d got the message.

  I sat and looked at my hands. Now what did I do? The hurt was still there. And the anger. I could hold on to them both. I could let them poison my life as I’d let them poison the last months. And for what? It hadn’t made me any happier.

  I looked at Dr Bairstow. His face told me nothing – well, it never did. I looked at his hand as he moved a file to the other side of his desk. There was just the very faintest tremor, and it occurred to me that if I hung on to this then it wasn’t only myself I would be damaging.

  I looked at Markham. His problems were so much more serious than me just having a bit of a strop. I wasn’t the important one here. I should let it go. For the sake of everyone.

  So I did. I sat up straight, took a deep breath. I nodded at Dr Bairstow, who nodded back again.

  I let it go.

  43

  In the same way I didn’t remember getting up the stairs, I didn’t remember leaving the Boss’s office, either. Somehow, Markham and I were out on the gallery.

  I should have had a head full of questions – did Richard try to kill his nephews after all? How did Markham feel about that? What about his brother? Had his becoming a father changed anything? And like an idiot, I just stood on the gallery giving an excellent impersonation of someone who didn’t know where to go or what to do next. Someone whose world had picked itself up, turned itself around and was now facing in another direction.

  I travel in time for a living. Stuff that can’t be explained just has to be accepted and I’d accepted a lot over the years. Now, I didn’t even know what was real and what wasn’t. How did I know this wasn’t a dream? Or was I dying somewhere and these were my last thoughts? Was I even now sinking into thick black Thames mud? Lost in a world of watery silence forever?

  Someone poked me. ‘Oi.’

  Typical Markham. You don’t even get to die in peace. ‘Ow. That hurt.’

  ‘Sorry, but I thought you needed bringing back.’

  I looked around me. The problem of what to do next was far too big for me to grapple with. I’d just stand here for a while.

  ‘Do you want to come and see her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Flora, of course.’

  ‘Is it allowed?’

  ‘Of course it is. You’ll be the first person to see her. Her first visitor.’ He looked down at his feet. ‘It’s the only gift I can give you, Max. I don’t have any money nor ever likely to have.’

  ‘I’d love to see her. And then you can buy me a drink afterwards and we’ll call it quits.’

  ‘Deal.’

  The women’s ward – or as Dr Stone now insisted on calling it, the St Mary’s Maternity Wing – was quiet and peaceful. It was almost a shock to see that nothing here had changed. The same sun still streamed in through the windows. Hunter was sitting up in bed, cradling a small bundle. She looked tired but happy.

  Markham crossed to her and kissed her gently. ‘How are my girls?’

  ‘We are neither of us your girls and you are about to embark upon a lifetime of hardship, strife and being outnumbered.’

  He kissed her again. ‘It won’t be any of that if you’re there.’

  They smiled at each other for a moment and then she looked past him. ‘Hello, Max.’

  ‘I can go away,’ I said. ‘You must be tired.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. Come and say hello.’

  I approached the bed and peered down. A tiny scrunched-up face looked back at me.

  ‘Would you like to hold her for a moment?’

  ‘Oh. Um . . .’

  I wasn’t given a choice. I sat in the window seat and Markham handed her to me as if she was the Crown Jewels.

  You forget. I’d certainly forgotten. You forget how small they are. How fragile. How precious. Those tiny, tiny fingers. The soft, wispy hair. That new-baby smell. I’d forgotten. All that had been ripped away from me one dreadful day and whether my memories had faded naturally or in self-defence . . .

  I don’t know where it came from. Something huge and horrible, that had been inside me for so long that I’d forgotten it was there, just burst forth. I gave a great sob that hurt my throat. Tears streamed down my face. The sobs wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Each one tore at my heart. One after the other. Like waves on the shore.

  Someone must have rung for Dr Stone because suddenly he was there, looking down at me.

  ‘Finally,’ was all he said.

  Fortunately, Markham took little Flora away before I dropped her or drowned her and somehow, I was shivering in Dr Stone’s office with a blanket round me.

  He said gently, ‘Shall I fetch Leon?’

  I shook my head. Leon was out kite-flying with Matthew. Both of them doing something nice and normal. I could deal with this alone. All I had to do was stop crying and everything would be absolutely fine.

  He made me some cocoa. Apparently, it cures everything except in-growing toenails. No one knows why not. One of life’s great mysteries into which he was researching. He chattered on, bustling around his office doing God knows what, and eventually I subsided.

  ‘Well,’ he said, sitting opposite me. ‘That was a long time coming. How do you feel?’

  I shook my head. ‘Like shit.’

  He pointed out that was because I hadn’t drunk my cocoa.

  I sipped obediently because although he looks about twelve years old and his ears stick out like the wing mirrors on an old car I once owned, he’s one of the greatest tyrants in History and I’ve never known him not to get his own way over anything.

  ‘Better now?’

  I nodded and put the mug back on his desk.

  ‘Every Friday,’ he said. ‘Three to three thirty.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your appointment. Every Friday you come and talk to me about your week. Or your past. Or your future. Or anything you want. But every Friday, you come and talk to me. After which, you can go and drink wine with Peterson or blow yourself up in R&D, or participate in a sporting bloodbath – however you traditionally round off your working week. No ifs, no buts, no arguments. Be here. Don’t make me come looking for you.’

  I nodded, too tired and too overwhelmed to do anything else.

  ‘Well,’ he said, standing up. ‘That was easier than I thought it would be. I’ll show your visitor in now.’

  He pushed a piece of paper across the desk and left the room.

  I thought it would be Leon but it was
Dr Bairstow.

  He sat in the other visitor’s chair and we faced each other. I knew I looked terrible and he didn’t look much better.

  ‘Did he suffer?’

  He wasn’t talking about Markham.

  I nodded. ‘Horribly.’

  He looked down at his feet. I knew what he was thinking. With Ronan’s death, a big part of my life and an even bigger part of Dr Bairstow’s had come to an end. I knew how I felt but what about him? Of the three of them – Dr Bairstow, Annie Bessant and Clive Ronan – he was now the only one left. He’d once said to me, ‘Never be the last to leave the party, Max,’ and then failed to follow his own advice.

  I think each of us was waiting for the other to speak.

  Eventually, he said, ‘Well, Max, where do we go from here? Is this the parting of the ways for us?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I know anything any longer. My world is . . . not what I thought.’

  Silence fell and then he said, ‘My dear, it is very important to me that you know this. When you were in the river . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I couldn’t come myself – so I sent.’

  I knew what he was saying. That he hadn’t been able to return to help me out so he’d sent the Time Police. He’d done what he could. I stared at my hands.

  ‘Max, speak to me. Say what you are thinking.’

  I don’t know if the crying had helped – loosened something, perhaps – but suddenly everything was easier. I looked him in the eye and said, ‘I trusted you.’

  He nodded. ‘This may not be what you want to hear, but we did it for your benefit, Max. No, I know that is the age-old excuse, but in this instance it is true. On my recommendation, the Time Police are about to declare 1483 to be a Triple-S area. Completely out of bounds to everyone.’

  ‘What reason will they give?’

  ‘They don’t need a reason, or so they tell me, and in this instance, I am happy to go along with that. Max, I know you better than you know yourself. I knew you would attempt to jump back to discover the truth. I knew you’d go alone and could only imagine the amount of trouble you would get yourself into. I wasn’t stupid enough even to consider forbidding you to go. So you didn’t actually jump. I couldn’t allow you to. You just thought you did. You thought a prince had been delivered to Margaret. Your misgivings were stilled. You let it go. Voluntarily. You had the protection of ignorance. Until today. Max, this is dangerous knowledge. I’m sorry to say. I have no idea how the appearance of little Flora will alter the status quo but I’m sure it will. And so, to return to my original question – where do we go from here, you and I?’