by Jodi Taylor
We meandered around pools of water, soggy trees and fallen branches. It was as if the entire landscape conspired to make progress as difficult as possible. I watched my feet sink into the soft soil and each footprint fill up with water. Something twitched in the back of my mind and I stopped.
‘What?’ said Peterson.
‘How heavy is a pod?’
‘No idea. I’ve never tried to lift one. I’m standing in a puddle. Is this important?’
‘Suppose the pod sinks.’
‘What do you mean, sinks? It’s not the bloody Titanic. Number of icebergs seen today – nil.’ He stopped and there was a bit of a silence while they had a bit of a think.
‘The weight is evenly distributed,’ said Maxwell, doubtfully. ‘It might sink a little, but surely not completely.’
‘How tall is a pod?’
‘No idea, but Dieter can stand upright inside them and he’s the biggest man I know. So over six and a half feet.’
‘Seven feet three,’ said Peterson.
We stared at him.
‘A pod is seven feet three inches tall,’ he said, with his why don’t you know that expression, and I made plans to make him an honorary security guard so we could co-opt him on to our team for the Saturday night trivia quiz in the pub.
‘It’s not going to sink seven feet in a couple of hours,’ said Maxwell, giving me another poke. ‘It’ll be fine.’
Another shining example of the triumph of historian optimism over security guard experience.
We smelled the village long before we saw it. Wood smoke, animals – especially pigs – and cooking.
We crawled forwards amongst the trees to check it out, Maxwell tucking her skirt into her belt to keep it out of the mud. We stared at her legs.
‘What?’
‘Gryffindor rugby socks?’ I said, my mind pondering life’s injustices. For the purposes of historical accuracy, I’d been rammed into some musty old sack, probably complete with authentic 9th-century fleas bred by Professor Rapson especially for today, and bloody historians are wearing bloody rugby socks.
She wasn’t listening. Of course she bloody wasn’t. Neither of them were. They – all historians – have this kind of laser-like focus that drives everything else out of their heads. Not that there’s room for much in there anyway. If only they could muster the same laser-like focus on staying alive. On the other hand, if they did, I’d be out of a job, so it’s probably just as well they don’t.
They’d pulled out their recorders and were muttering away. This could go on for hours. I settled myself against a tree trunk so nothing could get behind me and kept an eye out.
The village was a large clearing with some twenty huts of varying sizes. Most of them were round, and thatched with what looked like reeds. I wondered how waterproof they were. Moss grew on the roofs as well. Many huts had one or more lean-tos built against them, sheltering firewood and livestock. I don’t know how waterproof the thatch was, but it did seem to me they were more likely to suffer from groundwater than rainwater. They’d made an effort to build above ground level, with each hut constructed on twelve-inch-high stone foundations that provided some sort of elementary damp-proof course. The stones themselves were thick with green slime and moss.
There were no streets, or even paths, but causeways made of brushwood ran across the clearing, from one hut to another, or to the big central stone pit where a large fire crackled, sending up a plume of blue-grey smoke to be lost in the blue-grey sky.
In contrast to the bustle all around him, a solitary figure sat cross-legged near the woodpile. Occasionally he would scramble stiffly to his feet and with great care and precision, place new logs on the fire.
I know the village idiot is a bit of a cliché, but the thing about clichés is that they tend to be true. Every village has at least one – if not many. I suppose when you don’t ever have the opportunity to travel far from your birthplace, it’s very hard not to marry your cousin. When the same families interbreed over the years, there are always casualties. They’re usually cared for by the community in a way that is supposed to happen today and never does, and appropriate jobs are found for them. Firewood gathering. Keeping an eye on the less mobile livestock. And tending the fire, of course, as this one was doing.
He sat on an old log, huddled into his cloak. His head was down and I could see only a thatch of straw-like hair. Under his cloak he wore a faded red tunic that covered his knees. Everything below his knees was caked in dried mud.
And then, as he leaned over to add another log to the fire, the neck of his tunic gaped and I caught a hint of gold around his neck. At once, he pulled up the neck and wrapped his cloak even more closely around himself, but I’d seen it. And so had Maxwell and Peterson.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Max, in quiet excitement. ‘That’s him. That’s Alfred. Must be.’
No one is ever quite as you expect them to be. I remember those two legendary lovers, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, and quite honestly, you’d have to go a long way to meet two uglier people than they were. They both of them had massive noses – maybe that’s what drew them together in the first place – and Cleopatra had nostrils like the air intakes on a jet turbine. And eyebrows like two giant hairy caterpillars as well. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. Max always says that Henry V was the ugliest bloke she’s ever seen – and that includes the men at St Mary’s, which I though was a little unkind of her. Despite being unable to clear five foot six inches unless I’m standing on tip-toe, and not being all there in the ear department, I’m not bad looking. And Hunter’s always banging on about Chief Farrell’s eyes – usually at some quite inappropriate moments, let me tell you – and apparently she’s not the only one who thinks that. And Peterson – generally reckoned to be the best-looking bloke in the building – would be fighting off women with a stick, if they weren’t all so terrified of Dr Foster, of course.
I’ve forgotten where I was. Yes. Alfred. Alfred the Great as he would astoundingly be known. All right, I know I’d just mistaken him for the village idiot, but it’s a mistake anyone could have made.
He was staring thoughtfully into the fire. Tradition says he was so busy formulating plans to defeat the Danes that he never noticed the cakes burning right in front of him. This Alfred, however, obviously took his job very seriously indeed, staring unblinking at the lumps of bread dough set out round the fire, and bringing to them the same sort of single-minded concentration he would bring to every task in his life.
He wasn’t much taller than me and that’s saying something – but where I’m a living example of good things coming in little packages, he, not to overemphasise the point, wasn’t. He was skinny – his arms and legs were stick thin. His face was a yellowy-white with swollen, protruding, bloodshot eyes. His skin was bad – not teenage acne, but a really nasty rash which ran down one cheek, under his chin and down his neck. It looked too inflamed to shave, but I was willing to bet he didn’t need to anyway. I think he was around thirty years old, but he still looked a boy. His movements were slow and creaky. I wondered if he had arthritis. If so, he wouldn’t want to hang around here – arthritis capital of the world.
‘Crohn’s disease,’ muttered Peterson.
I looked at him.
‘There’s a theory he suffered from Crohn’s disease. On top of everything else. He doesn’t have an easy life.’
Maxwell shrugged. ‘Some people thrive on adversity. Us, for example. Maybe he’s another.’
She had a point. We’d covered this in the briefing. Alfred was a fighter. Legend says that at a frighteningly early age he won a book of Saxon poems from his mother by memorising the entire contents. He had been, as we could see, a sickly child, but he stood alongside his brother, King Aethelred, in the year of the nine battles. When the king died, Alfred was named his successor, even though the king had two young sons. No one objected, so he must have proved his worth. His position was weak, though, and he had no option but to sue for peace. He bought o
ff the Danes, who retired to London, presumably to count their money.
Five years later the Danes had a new leader – Guthrum. Again, Alfred negotiated a peace, but Guthrum broke the treaty. He attacked Chippenham where Alfred was staying for Christmas, killing nearly everyone. Alfred and a small band of followers barely escaped to Athelney. And here he was – at the lowest point of his life. Defeated, alone, exiled, ill, and with no immediate hope of a comeback, scrounging food and shelter in exchange for such service as he could offer.
Even as we watched, he stood up, stretched stiffly, collected a few more logs from the pile, and carefully laid them across the fire.
‘Don’t underestimate what he’s doing,’ said Peterson. ‘This is the communal fire. They’ll use it for cooking, drying wood and clothes, and smoking fish and game. This is the fire from which all other fires are lit. It’s never allowed to go out. Look at the ash bed on it.’
He was right. I couldn’t spare a lot of attention – I was watching their backs because they certainly weren’t – but I could see pans of water set to heat up on homemade trivets, together with pots, skillets and cauldrons, all carefully arranged around the fire. On an arrangement of flat hearth stones at his feet sat about two dozen lumps of what I’d taken to be dough of some kind, either proving or cooking in the heat.
‘They’ll sit round this in the evening,’ said Maxwell. ‘I’m betting those huts are cold and damp. They’ll stay by the fire as long as possible, only going inside to sleep or get out of the rain. They’ll use this one to light their small private fires at night in their own huts.’
I looked at their huts. Their cold, damp, chimney-less huts. No wonder everyone preferred to gather around the fire. Life was lived outside. You only went inside when the weather was bad. I imagined life inside one of those small round huts. I saw them sitting inside, either in the dark or by the light of a wick burning in some evil-smelling animal fat. Their tiny fire would produce a disproportionate amount of smoke, all curling around looking for a way out. I heard the rain dripping through the roof. Saw the water oozing up through the floor. Wet clothes. Wet bedding. What a life.
And yet they seemed cheerful enough.
‘Well, they don’t know any better, do they?’ said Maxwell. ‘They probably think they’ve got all mod cons here and life is good.’
A bit of a disbelieving silence there.
A number of people were trudging along a broad causeway: the men, home from gathering food. Several of them had a fish or two on a line. One had what looked like a brace of rabbits. Others had various waterfowl, swinging by their feet. But all of them carried a bundle of firewood each, and the first thing they did was distribute it. Two thirds of what they carried went on the big communal pile by the fire. Only one third was stacked neatly in their own hut’s lean-to for their private use. And yes, all right, that was quite interesting, but Peterson and Maxwell were nearly having orgasms, muttering about communal needs and teamwork and God knows what. I listened with only half an ear – quite appropriate in my case – because a herd of mammoths could have cantered past at that moment and they’d have missed them. They seemed entirely oblivious to the fact that there were people all around the place, and that half a dozen of them could trip over us at any moment, and good luck with explaining we weren’t Danes.
I ran an eye around as much as I could see of the landscape, but everything seemed quiet enough. Birds still sang in the trees, which usually means nothing unpleasant is creeping about. Apart from us, of course.
I became aware the two of them were on the move, crawling about picking up sticks and odd bits of wood. I put a stop to this madness by simply grabbing their tunics and hauling them back again.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Maxwell sighed as if she couldn’t believe such stupidity. ‘Down there, of course.’
‘Are you out of your minds?’ I said, and I think we all know the answer to that one. ‘The whole country’s on Dane alert. They’ll skewer you as soon as you appear.’
‘No they won’t,’ said Peterson, who’s also no better than he should be. ‘That’s why we’re gathering firewood. As a gift. Firewood is a currency. They’ll love us. You just wait and see.’
There was no arguing with them. The Major always says the main purpose of the History Department is to get themselves into trouble, and the main purpose of the Security Section is to get them back out again. I sighed heavily and followed them, prepared to fulfil my main purpose, and pausing on the way to pick up a bit of wood.
Peterson stared at it. ‘Is that the best you can do?’
I considered explaining the importance of remaining hands-free in case of trouble, but they wouldn’t have understood me. As I said, historians are lovely people but single-minded. Very, very single-minded.
OK. Time to set the record straight. Yes, history is quite interesting. Even without the capital H. And yes, you can tell the History Department I said that. Sadly, the most interesting parts are probably not true. Poor old Teddy Two probably didn’t get the red-hot poker up his bum. Robert the Bruce probably didn’t interact with the famous spider in the cave. The lights of Cairo probably did not go out the night Lord Caernarvon died. It’s a shame, but there you are.
And I can definitely say, without any hesitation whatsoever – King Alfred did not burn the cakes. Because, for a start, I think it was bread – not cakes. But whatever it was – and I might as well carry on saying cakes – he didn’t burn them. We did. We burned the cakes. Well, actually, I did.
Yeah. Sorry about that.
I don’t know if he ever gets tired of being right. Probably not. But Peterson was right. They didn’t love us, but they didn’t kill us either, which is usually the best we can hope for. We walked slowly down the causeway and into the clearing. Peterson went first, with his bundle of firewood. Maxwell followed on behind, staggering slightly under her load because, of course, she’d picked up far more than she could comfortably carry and wouldn’t admit it. And, finally, came me, the slave, clutching my twig.
A goodwife scattering something to a herd of marauding chickens was the first to catch sight of us, calling something over her shoulder, clattering her wooden bucket against a stone to attract attention, and then standing straight and still outside her hut.
Around the village, heads lifted. The women melted away and men came forward. None of them carried a sword, but one or two conveniently held axes and one, a monster man with muscles to match, carried a hammer. A visiting smith, maybe. They weren’t threatening – they were just there, directly in our path, and it was very obvious we weren’t going any further.
I stood quietly at the back, making an excellent job of portraying the hapless slave who really didn’t want to be here. Why on earth we couldn’t have watched Alfred’s culinary catastrophe from up beyond the treeline was a bit of a mystery to me, but who was I to argue?
Peterson said something, bowed slightly and gestured to his load of wood and then to Maxwell. He was probably introducing them in order of social importance. Wood first, then wife. He didn’t bother with me at all. One day, I really am going to have to have a word with them about this.
They could see we weren’t armed and they didn’t seem particularly bothered by my twig. After a bit of muttering, they stepped aside and indicated the fire. So we’d obviously done the right thing with the firewood. And we couldn’t just dump our offerings on the pile, either. There were three distinct components, light brushwood, probably used for lighting this and other fires, medium-sized logs in the middle, and really big logs up near the fire. One of those would probably last a whole night. We laid our offerings appropriately and stepped back.
I think the plan was just to sit quietly by the fire as if we were resting travellers, observe what was going on, watch for Alfred igniting the baked goods, and then make ourselves scarce. Of course, quietly never happens. As Max once explained to me, the mere fact of us being there tends to upset the balance of things. History i
s trying to get rid of us – like an irritating piece of grit in your eye, she said, looking straight at me for some reason – hence hardly anything goes according to plan. I’m pretty sure this is historian speak for it’s all gone tits-up again and it’s probably our fault, but don’t tell Dr Bairstow.
Anyway, we settled ourselves by the fire. Maxwell spread her wet skirts to dry and they brought us beer. Nice hospitable folk.
We sat and sipped. Well, Peterson and I did. Max held her beaker as if it would twist in her hand and bite her at any moment, so I finished mine and started on hers as well. It wasn’t bad.
I know I’m always banging on about them but – when they put their minds to it – our historians are bloody good. They sat quietly by the fire, ostensibly resting from their travels and drying out, but I knew neither of them would have taken their eyes off Alfred, and that at least one of them would be discreetly recording the village and its inhabitants at the same time. The villagers carried on with their working day. Everything was fine.
Alfred stood up again and, using a cloth, began to select hot stones from around the hearth, dropping one into each cauldron of water. To help them boil more quickly, I assumed. While he was on his feet, he checked the little balls of dough, still proving around the fire, turning one or two to better positions. When he’d finished that, he fed the fire again. He was careful and conscientious, obviously taking his responsibilities very seriously, and only when he was satisfied everything was in order did he come to sit alongside us. I could feel Maxwell quivering with excitement and she was a good three feet away.
He greeted us courteously enough. I could see Max and Peterson were having difficulty understanding him, though, and Peterson responded in Latin. That was enough for Alfred and a moment later, they were well away. I’ve picked up a bit of Latin over the years and could mostly follow what was being said. He was asking for news.
Peterson responded gravely, saying as little as possible and none of it good. I could see Alfred’s face cloud with disappointment. His shoulders slumped and he sighed and looked away. He looked so dejected and lonely, and I only meant it as a kindness, but I offered him my beaker of beer. He looked at it for a while and then at me. Properly. Seeing the man and not the servant. He inclined his head and thanked me politely. Suddenly, I could see why, physically frail though he was, men followed him.