The Outcasts of Time

by Ian Mortimer

  They seize me, from all sides. I hear myself crying, ‘O mercy, Heaven! Look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly Hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! Come not, Lucifer! Come not, Lucifer!’

  The next thing I know is that I am lying, painfully, on my back. I can hear the clicking of a clock, the crackle of a fire. And the voice of Frances Harington on the far side of the room.

  ‘I told you that nothing good would come of taking him to see a play by an atheist.’

  ‘No you did not, Mother,’ replies Georgiana. ‘It was me you told not to go.’

  ‘I think it was a case of the impact when he fell,’ says the voice of a man whom I do not know. ‘It can affect the brain in the most extraordinary ways.’

  ‘Well,’ replies Frances, ‘I have to say that I am ashamed that he should have been so overcome and my own good Christian children should prove inured to naked heresies and bestiality. It was not the way they were brought up.’

  ‘There was no bestiality!’ exclaims Georgiana.

  ‘In that case, no doubt you were mightily disappointed,’ says Frances.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ says Father Harington. ‘Please add this evening’s call to my bill.’

  ‘Thank you, Father, I will. And now if I may have my coat and hat, I’ll wish you an easy night.’

  I blink. I seem to be on some sort of narrow bed in the drawing room of Father Harington’s house. They have taken off my overtunic but otherwise I am fully clothed. There are several blankets draped over me.

  I turn my head and see Father Harington. ‘The hour is drawing near,’ I whisper.

  ‘I am sorry the play upset you.’

  ‘It was a warning. It is a most moral play. You should take your mother to see it.’

  ‘Is our guest pulling through?’ asks Frances, in a politely loud voice from the doorway.

  ‘He is, Mother. He will be fine.’

  ‘Good. In that case I will retire for the night. Come on, Georgiana, you too. Goodnight, Mister Offremont, I hope your condition improves before morning. Just ring the bell for Eliza if you want anything in the night.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mister Offremont,’ says Georgiana.

  I hear the door close.

  Father Harington takes my left hand in his hands. ‘Tell me, John, what was it that so affected you?’

  I make the sign of the cross on my breast. ‘Just as Doctor Faustus could not step aside from the pact he made with the Devil, so it is with me. I’ve but one day to live.’

  ‘John, do not say that.’

  ‘It is true. I made a pact once. And the spirit with whom I made it was there tonight. I heard him.’

  ‘Then he is your evil angel and I am your good one. Give up this pact.’

  I look up at the ceiling. ‘It is not so easy, Father. The only reason why I am here is because of it. To give it up would be to die now.’

  ‘John, promise me that you will not try to take your own life again.’

  ‘You have been very good to me, Father Harington. But I once undertook a quest, and I am still engaged upon it. I did it in the hope of being good to others. I’ve failed every step of the way.’

  ‘John . . .’

  ‘Father Harington. There are precious few men who are truly sent from God. But I believe you are one of them. Where I was last, I saw all around me the Seven Deadly Sins, in the flesh. They all spoke to me. Tonight, I saw them all again, on the stage. And I thought to myself, where are the Seven Cardinal Virtues? Now I see. They are in you: chastity, temperance, liberality, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. I’ve no doubt that, on account of your virtues, the next and final stage of my journey will be the best. The world will be a better place in ninety-nine years on account of men such as you, I’ve no doubt now. But still I am afraid – more afraid than ever.’

  I hear the clock chime. It rings twelve times.

  ‘Leave me now,’ I say. ‘I do not want you to see me depart.’

  Father Harington nods gently. ‘I hope you sleep well, John. Is there anything else you need? There are more blankets here. The bell rope is by the door, if you need to call the servants in the night. Ask them to wake me.’

  ‘Goodnight, Father Harington. And thank you.’

  ‘I will pray for you,’ he says, laying a hand on my breast, and leaving it there a moment. Then, getting to his feet, he says, ‘We never went to the cathedral, did we? I never saw the sculpture of your wife.’

  ‘You can see her tomorrow,’ I reply. ‘I pray that I will too. In Paradise.’

  Chapter Eight

  I hear Hell long before I see it. A huge droning sound, as if a hundred thousand knives are being sharpened on a hundred thousand granite boulders, which are in turn rolling across a rocky landscape with such crushing force that no obstacle can stop them. And yet this immense noise is not without a tone. It contains the low hum of a bow drawn slowly across the strings that bind Heaven and Earth.

  There are crosses in the sky. A dozen droning crosses, flying westwards.

  Nothing in all the ages could have prepared me for this. The voices I heard at the stones were not so unnerving. Even the plague itself was easier to understand than this array of black flying crucifixes. I lie still, hating the noise, fearing it. And then it dies away.

  Father Harington’s house is gone. Around me there is splintered painted wood and broken slates, pieces of mangled ironwork and huge amounts of shattered pottery and glass. There is no ceiling or roof above me; there are no walls except the one that looks out over the street. All the neighbouring houses have gone too – I can see for a hundred yards in each direction. All that is left is the façade of the row of eight houses. Here and there is a small relic in the rubble to show that this was someone’s home: a white leather baby’s shoe, a clock face without a clock. I can see a fragment of a gilt picture frame, the front of a wooden drawer with a blackened brass handle, and a scorched book. A dented and discoloured copper saucepan. The arm of a small sculpted figure.

  It would have taken many men several days to destroy the houses like this, and everything in them, ripping off the roof and pulling down all the walls and floors. Why, if they were prepared to go to such an extent, did they not finish the job and pull down the façade too? This destruction can only have been the work of men with siege engines or a great cannon.

  Stepping through the rubble I see more signs of a home rent apart. In a small wooden frame, with glass across the front, is a picture of a young husband and wife. It is a black-and-white picture, but otherwise so detailed in its portrayal of their features and moods that one might have thought that Nature herself had frozen within the frame. The young woman holds a small bunch of flowers and is wearing a long white tunic, and has a veil lifted up over her head. The young man looks very proud, wearing a black upper tunic and breeches, with a tall shiny hat. They are standing outside a church, and smiling. But the glass across the front of the picture is cracked. And what of the couple themselves? Do they lie now beneath this debris?

  I am still wearing the suit of clothes and black shoes that Father Harington lent to me. Nothing I have is my own; the only thing that has lasted from my own time is William’s ring. I raise this to my lips and kiss it, in memory of him.

  Leaving the house, I climb past the wooden barricade outside the front door, and feel unsteady and sick. The air stinks of things burning. The road looks and smells strange. There are boards down over the grass on Southernhay; the buildings on the other side of the road lie in ruins. But in the centre of this scene is a monstrous covered wagon, with large black wheels and a chamber made of dark-red iron. This chamber has glass windows and doors in its sides, and an enormous carrying space at the back. Surely no beast could possibly pull such a vehicle? How much larger could horses and bullocks have grown to draw this?

  Suddenly the wagon gives a huge burst of noise, like that of the flying crosses, and a cloud of stinking smoke billows from the back. The throbbing cacophony increases
still further in volume. I can’t hear anything but its terrible roaring and raging. And then, just when I am about to run, it moves away – without anything dragging, pushing or pulling it.

  Astonished, I watch it disappearing down the road, leaving a stinking trail of smoke, sickened in my mind and by the taste the smoke has left behind.

  Roger Bacon foresaw this. If only I could go back and tell Master Ley. What were his words? ‘Friar Bacon wrote of chariots that could move at the most incredible speeds without a single draught animal.’ But it leaves no delight in me. Rather, it is as if I have stumbled into some vast cathedral of unsuspected knowledge. Its vaults look like sky to my eyes – and yet across them crucifixes fly, and beneath them great roaring wagons grind their way at huge speed. Is there a window of divine light that shines on these things equally as it shines on me? Is there an altar or a pulpit that commands the humanity of such things? If there is, I fear it. Because I do not see it.

  Directly opposite Father Harington’s house, where the Public Bath House once stood, is a pile of rubble. The last building on this site was clearly a church, for an isolated steeple rises high into the overcast sky. Huge chunks of cemented brick, carved window mouldings and glass have been left in piles. The next site along the street is similar, and so is the next. The plots of the houses are heaped with wreckage. Only the road surface itself is clear.

  I walk, watching the people come and go. There is a sense of urgency in their movements that is unfamiliar. Or, rather, it is familiar – but the last time I saw it was when we were in France, with the king’s army, on our way to Crécy. Then, everything that needed doing was done positively. War is like that. And very clearly, Exeter is at war.

  In the middle of Bedford Circus I come across another of these self-moving metal wagons. It is painted dark green and many young men in matching long green breeches and woollen upper tunics are unpacking shovels, pails, crowbars and other implements. Several of them are laughing in a way that looks so free and easy, their laughter could have come from my own time. But that is the only sign I recognise, and it is not reassuring, for it makes me think that men can be at ease with all these deafening sounds and signs of violent destruction around them. Two young women pause briefly to watch them: they are both dressed in dark-blue tunics with short skirts, revealing not just their ankles but the lower part of their legs too – something I have never seen women do in public. It seems they are inviting men to think lustful thoughts about them amid the blasted remains of the buildings. More women in the same dark-blue clothes are walking together on the other side of the street. I turn away from the sight, reeling with the image of so many females dressed in a lewd manner, like armies of prostitutes marching towards war: a ruthless coupling with the enemy.

  And then I turn the corner.

  No destructive army in all my experience ever wrought such damage as this, not even one that had gonnes. In France, in the chevauchées, when we had to destroy every building we came to, we did not manage to lay waste so comprehensively. We did not have the time. When we put French houses and churches to the torch, those that were timber and thatch burned completely but many churches, merchants’ houses and municipal buildings were made of stone. We left them as burned-out ruins. Here, between me and the High Street, one or two broken houses remain, seemingly hanging precariously in mid-air, but almost everything has been thrown down to ground level and now is a pile of splintered wood, smashed glass, fragmented pottery and rusting metal.

  The people appear calm, however. They seem hardly to notice the devastation all around them. Men in long coats and soft hats are walking along stone pathways as if the huge wasteland of brick and twisted metal beside them is a flower garden. Here and there a building pokes its head up above the rubble, screaming in grief at its own destruction – its window frames empty, thin curtains blowing in the breeze – but people nonchalantly lean against it, reading newspapers. Pieces of sculpture and wall lie fallen by the ruins of the church of Saint Lawrence, and women sit on the rubble, eating pies and stuffed slices of bread, seemingly unaware of the tragedy of the smashed roofs behind them. Huge metal trusses, which once supported the roof of a wide building, stick up like giant bones into the sky – and yet a man steers one of those grinding metal carriages into the space beneath them. A large building on the High Street still stands to first-floor level but it looks as though a great pair of jaws has reached down and taken a huge bite out of it, leaving its jagged brickwork bearing the impression of enormous teeth marks. Two women stand in the doorway, sucking on small white cylinders of the fragrant weed whose smoke people like to inhale – again, oblivious to the diabolical sight above them.

  At first glance, the cathedral looks as if it has survived unscathed. A more prolonged inspection reveals that all the windows are broken. Up close, the old building is a ruin. I look at the screen. I see that the carefully sculpted hands of one figure have been worn away entirely: they were images of my own hands, and were carved with the hands they showed. Faces have cracked. Arms have broken off. Some figures have been replaced entirely with clumsily carved modern versions. Inside the building, piles of glass remain in the nave and there are puddles of water on the floor. The Great East Window has gone entirely. The great throne of Bishop Stapledon has disappeared. Light floods through a ghastly void on the south side of the quire. The whole of the chapel of Saint James has been destroyed.

  I climb over the barrier to have a closer look at the ruins of the chapel, ignoring the warnings of an onlooker. There are piles of carved stone here and there, in tidied lines. The buttresses have gone. Two adjacent ones have been shattered. The remaining supports on either side are vulnerable, doing twice the work they were intended to do; they will fail before long. The vault above me hangs precariously: I can feel its weight, like a colossal tear about to drop from God’s eye.

  I return to the nave and sit on one of the wooden seats, dazed. Once war was a matter for brave soldiers, fighting hand to hand. Then it became a bloodthirsty zone of deadly musket balls. And now it is everywhere. War has infected everything, so that even the most precious things in our lives are vulnerable. The last day I was here, in eighteen forty-three, was the only time since the plague when we were not at war. The people who build weapons must have made use of that peace to design more effective means of destroying and killing. But who could have been so soulless as to attack this glorious building? This cannot be the result of a civil war – no Englishman would harm a cathedral, surely? The blame must lie with the accursed French.

  I walk to the chapel of Saint Andrew and Saint Catherine, fearing the worst. But the chapel is intact. Catherine’s face too is intact. I feel relief: the screw of my anguish has not been given another twist. I look at her stone image, and am glad that the stone does not have eyes with which to look at me. The past is only there to be seen, it cannot see. But then I wonder. Is this destruction around me not due to the fact that we can only look back in time? Would the people of today have caused such destruction if those of Father Harington’s day had been able to look forward? Or would they have made different mistakes?

  I leave the cathedral. At the top of the street that leads to the South Gate I see further devastation in the form of a row of burned-out buildings. Here and there a blackened wall, relieved of its plaster, shows that it is ancient, with an old window and an arch. But such antiquities are just awaiting their turn to be pulled down, along with the rest of the wrecked walls, and left in piles of rubble.

  I walk down the hill past more bombed buildings towards the river, needing the reassurance of something that will not have changed. Even before I arrive, I can see that the elegant bridge of Father Harington’s day has gone: a single-arch span of iron and stone now stands there, with balustrades on either side of the roadway. As I draw nearer, I see that this bridge is nowhere near as long as its predecessors. The river is not as wide as it once was. It runs through a channel, and the marshes on either side where so much rubbish was habitually dump
ed have gone. No rats are to be seen scampering over the piles of offal and bone thrown down amid the washed-down sticks and earth mounds of the river bank. This new century seems to have pushed away everything that went before, even the river.

  I walk back up into the town feeling as if I have lost another old friend.

  On a street corner I watch a large self-moved carriage stop and many young men in grim green garb get out, carrying heavy bags over their shoulders. They all look at me in my old clothes. A few other people watch them. Most get on with their business. A shop here that seems to sell sweetmeats is doing a brisk business: the door rings every time someone opens or closes it. On a table beside the road two women in overalls attend large cauldrons, handing out steaming brown drinks to a number of men and women waiting in a row. One woman catches my eye as she sips her drink. She does not look away from me. She is tall and has black curly hair, and olive skin, and beautiful brown eyes. She must be in her early twenties. Her coat, which is open at the front, is a light brown with a fur trim around the hood, and beneath she is wearing a tunic of blue-coloured fabric, not unlike the lewd uniforms I saw earlier.

  She is looking at me intently. I want to continue to watch her face as I turn away. Reluctantly, my attention is dragged to the woman beside her, who has just started to scream. My gaze does not remain on her for long, however, for my ears are filled with a screeching sound. And something strikes me with a sudden and tremendous weight.

  It is late, almost dark, when I get home. I lift the latch and open the door. Catherine is sitting on a bench, sewing a boy’s tunic by the light of a rushlight on the table. I close the door behind me, noticing that since I left it has started to drag on its hinge. Have all these other centuries and days been a dream, which is now over? Am I well again, in my own time?