He took his bearings from the setting sun and rose to his feet, brushing leaf mulch off his cambric trousers and straightening his smock. To a casual observer he looked like a simple farmhand. It was a disguise that had served him well, allowing him to make his way across two counties unmolested by the enemy. But his final destination was within two hours’ walk, and no subterfuge, no matter how well rehearsed, would disguise his true intent if he were caught now. He would have to rely on stealth, cunning and the cover of darkness as he made his approach.
He took a deep breath, took one step forward, and froze in horror as a young man stepped into view from behind an oak tree, as casual and unconcerned as could be. The man wore the distinctive colours of Parliament’s army; his hand rested upon the hilt of his sword, which remained in its scabbard at his hip.
Richard’s mind raced as he tried to gather his wits, but the surprise had been so complete he knew his alarm had been plainly visible upon his face.
‘Oh, you gave me quite a start, good sir,’ he said.
The parliamentarian did not acknowledge Richard’s comment in any way. He remained still, face impassive, hand on sword. He was a young man, probably about twenty years or so.
‘I was on my way home, if you’ll excuse me,’ continued Richard, unnerved by the calm stillness of the soldier. He bowed his head and turned to walk away. He had gone three steps, long enough that he had almost begun to think he was getting away with it, when the soldier said quietly, ‘Your voice betrays you.’
Richard stopped, but did not turn to face the soldier. ‘Excuse me?’ But he knew the game was up – the soldier spoke with the thick accent local to this part of England.
‘Your voice,’ said the soldier. ‘You do not speak as a Cornishman speaks.’
Richard turned then. ‘I was not born in these parts. I am a London man, born and raised.’
The soldier raised a single eyebrow. ‘A city pauper come to work the land? If that truly be the case, then you are a most uncommon creature.’
‘I am as you see me, sir. A working man on my way home.’
‘From where?’
‘The fields where I labour.’
‘Whose fields?’
Richard cursed inwardly. This man really was a local. That would explain how he had tracked him and approached so silently – he knew these woods and the villages that bordered them. Richard realised that any lie he told would be instantly discovered. But to come so close only to be caught at the last minute would be intolerable. Richard stretched, faking a yawn. As he drew his arms down he reached behind him to take the knife from his belt. Before he could grasp its handle, the point of the soldier’s sword was brushing the soft flesh of his throat.
‘I do not think so,’ said the soldier. ‘I was born in Pendarn, two miles yonder. You were the unluckiest of spies to have me come across you this day. Many of my comrades would have believed your story. But not I. You are a Royalist spy, taking intelligence to the Sweetclover estate.’ It was not a question, and Richard did not give any indication of a response – he was too busy trying to think of a way out of the situation. The other man’s sword hopelessly outmatched his knife, even if he were able to reach it before the soldier opened his throat.
The only thing on his side was that the soldier appeared to be alone.
‘You calculate your chances of escape, or of overpowering me,’ said the soldier. ‘They are not good.’
Richard shrugged, smiling ruefully, and then turned the shrug into a jump backwards, his arm reaching behind and grasping the knife handle. As he brought the knife around, the soldier stepped forward and, with one casual swipe, opened a foot-long gash upon Richard’s chest. He gasped at the sharpness of the blade which parted cloth and flesh as easily as air, but he did not pause. He dived sideways, rolling in the leaves and coming up on his knees, arm raised. He let the dagger fly purely on instinct, but though his aim was true his choice of target was fatally flawed. The blade bounced off the soldier’s shiny silver breastplate and fell, useless, to the forest floor.
‘Alarum!’ cried the soldier. ‘Spy!’
Within a minute a group of three more parliamentarian soldiers burst into the clearing, drawn by their comrade’s cries. Richard could see that these were men who had marched long and fought hard. There was something in their eyes that spoke of compassion worn down and extinguished by hardship; these were not men to look to for kindness or reason.
Richard knew that all was lost. As the soldier stepped forward, he held his arms out at his side in surrender. His best hope now was that his captor would take him back to the parliamentarian camp for interrogation.
The bakery oven was cold.
Dora’s relief at their arrival, her cry of recognition and joy as the crimson fire faded to reveal the familiar interior of her home, had faded also as she had registered the silence. There was sunlight streaming through the window, so the room should be hot, the oven blazing, the air full of the warm, comforting aroma of baking bread.
Instead the oven was cold and empty.
‘Something is wrong,’ announced Dora as soon as the three time travellers regained their balance.
‘Is this not your home?’ asked Jana as she examined her surroundings.
‘My father is a brown-baker. We bake every day,’ said Dora, the words rushing out of her. She gestured to the white clay oven that dominated the wall beside her, a long wooden paddle standing beside it alongside sacks of flour. ‘The embers from last night’s fire should be drying the wood for today’s bread, but the oven is cold and there is no wood within. If the sun is up, the oven should be full and hot.’
Dora took a deep breath, but Jana shook her head before she could cry out for her parents.
‘Don’t,’ she warned. ‘We don’t know what’s going on here. If something is wrong, then it could be that Quil or her servants have got here first. Let’s not announce ourselves until we have to.’
‘I needs must find them,’ said Dora, her voice betraying her rising panic.
‘And we will,’ said Jana. ‘Kaz, what can you see outside?’
Kaz had moved to the small mullioned window and was peering out. ‘The sun is low, some mist, so it’s morning. Autumn or spring, maybe. Can’t see much. Few other houses, no people. Seems quiet.’
‘It was summer when I left,’ said Dora, trying hard to keep the edge from her voice. ‘So we have either arrived early or late.’
‘Do you ever remember a day when you didn’t bake?’ asked Kaz.
Dora shook her head.
‘Then we’re probably late,’ he said. ‘But how late?’
‘Dora, what’s the layout of this house?’ asked Jana.
‘Layout?’
‘The rooms, how many?’
Dora was puzzled by the question. ‘There is this room, and there is the room upstairs,’ she replied slowly, as if talking to an idiot. How else would a house be constructed?
‘Perhaps they still sleep,’ said Dora. She hurried to the simple wooden staircase that ran up one of the walls. As she climbed the stairs she was aware of Kaz ascending behind her. When she reached the top Dora could see there was nobody home. The single room was not large, so Dora instantly registered the changes, and she felt a deep thrill of fear.
‘There is but one bed,’ she said.
‘Which means …?’ asked Kaz.
Dora was already across the room, rummaging in a pile of clothing that lay by the bed. She recognised the garments, and the tears that had already been welling in her eyes began to roll down her cheeks as she realised what they meant.
‘These are my father’s. There are none of my mother’s garments here. My mother … my mother must be dead,’ she said.
There was a flash of sparks from her shoulder that made her jump. She turned and saw that it was Kaz, reaching out to comfort her.
‘You don’t know that, not yet,’ he said.
Dora shrugged his hand away, wiped her eyes and looked up at his kind, concerned
face. It had the same look the older version of him had worn when she had encountered him on her first trip through time, and she was surprised how safe it made her feel. She nodded.
‘You are right, of course,’ she said, sniffing.
Kaz bent over and picked up a shirt. It was canvas, old and patched, with many stains. ‘Dora, do you recognise this shirt?’
Dora held out her hands and Kaz passed her the garment. She examined it and found that she did.
‘Yes, this is Father’s.’
Kaz smiled. ‘So we know that if we are late, we’ve still arrived within the time that your parents own this bakery. That’s good. Can you tell anything else from this shirt? Did it have these patches?’
Dora understood what he was trying to do and nodded, impressed by his cleverness. She examined the shirt closely. There were two new patches across the belly, where the heat of the oven tended to scorch the material if Father was careless removing the loaves from the oven.
‘No, there are two new patches,’ she said. ‘And they have been sewn here by my mother’s hand. Her needlework is very precise. The fabric is thinner too, more worn.’
‘OK, so using the shirt to help you guess – how long since you were here?’
Dora thought for a moment then said, in a whisper, ‘I think perhaps three or four years.’ She felt despair rise within her again. ‘What will they think has become of me? They will think I have run away, as James did.’
‘James?’
‘My brother. Fled to London on his fifteenth birthday. It near killed my mother. And now, oh, what must they think?’ A sudden, terrible thought occurred to her, and she caught her breath. She looked up at Kaz, desperate for him to dismiss her fears. ‘What if she could not bear the loss? That would explain her absence from this room. Oh Lord, what if she died of a broken heart? Or worse …’
‘You’re jumping to conclusions, Dora,’ he said, trying to calm her. But she could see on his face that he thought she might be right. She felt heavy sobs building up in her breast, but she forced them down.
‘We must find my father,’ she said, trying to sound resolute but knowing she sounded like the scared child she was. She hurried back down stairs, where she found Jana reading a piece of paper which she held up as Dora approached.
‘What year was it when you left, Dora?’ she asked.
‘The year of Our Lord sixteen hundred and forty,’ she said.
Dora took the paper and examined it. The words meant nothing to her.
‘Then you’ve been gone five years,’ said Jana. Her voice lacked any of the sympathy that had warmed Kaz’s. She was simply stating a fact, and although Dora knew enough by now to realise that Jana was not trying to be unkind, she felt a sudden surge of anger at the girl’s detached calm. She dropped the paper to the floor and held out her hands.
‘We must try again,’ she said.
‘Try what?’ asked Kaz as he came down the stairs behind her.
‘To cross the bridge of time. We must go back to 1640.’ Dora grabbed his hand as he reached the floor and felt the tingle in her palm as the fire of time crackled and sparked.
Kaz did not pull his hand free, but he looked unconvinced and did not hold his other hand out to Jana, who anyway was backing away from them both and shaking her head.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said.
Before Dora could shout at her, Kaz asked, ‘Why not?’
‘Why do you want to go back, Dora?’ Jana asked.
Dora was furious that she even had to answer such a stupid question. ‘I thought you were supposed to be wise. Because,’ she said slowly, as if addressing an imbecile, ‘my parents must think I have abandoned them and my mother may be dead as a consequence. If we go back we can correct this, make sure it does not happen …’
‘That won’t work, Dora,’ explained Jana, visibly working to remain calm and patient. ‘Now that we’ve seen this’ – she gestured to indicate the house and its contents – ‘we know that this is what happens.’
Quick as a flash, Dora darted forward, dragging Kaz with her left hand and reaching for Jana with her right. Jana skipped sideways.
‘Dora, think about it,’ she said. ‘We don’t know how time travel works. It’s not exactly precise. If we try and jump again, isn’t it equally likely we’ll end up five years early?’
Dora lunged for Jana again, still pulling Kaz behind her. ‘I have to try,’ she shouted, but Jana stepped back again, keeping herself out of reach.
Then Dora felt Kaz gently but firmly extracting his hand from hers. She turned and grasped his forearm with her right hand, but he prised her fingers free and stepped away.
‘I’m sorry, Dora, but I think she’s right,’ he said. ‘We’re close enough. We should get to Sweetclover Hall.’
Dora felt hot, angry tears welling in her eyes and stamped her foot in fury. ‘Then curse the pair of you,’ she shouted as she ran out the front door into the early morning mist.
‘Let her go,’ said Jana as Kaz made towards the door. Kaz didn’t slow down, so Jana stepped in front of the door and barred his way. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘We’re wearing the wrong clothes, we speak the wrong dialect. We’ve both got the wrong damn skin. Go outside like this and the first person we meet is likely to lynch us.’
Kaz stopped, his face only a few inches from hers. Jana held his gaze and saw for the first time how much anger there was in this boy, and how hard he was working to control it.
‘She’s alone and scared. We have to help her.’ He spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each word in his effort to avoid shouting.
‘And we will, but not like this,’ said Jana, carefully modulating her tone to sound placatory rather than bossy. Looking into the furious eyes of this boy, she was beginning to realise that bossing him around had probably worked earlier only because he was in shock after their trip to Beirut. Now he was beginning to find his feet, which meant she needed to recalibrate the way she handled him if she wanted to remain in control of the situation.
She bent down and picked up the leaflet that Dora had thrown away, unscrunched it and smoothed it against her belly before handing it to Kaz. ‘You should read this,’ she said, keeping her tone neutral; it was a suggestion not an instruction.
He took the heavy paper and scanned it. ‘So?’ he said when he had finished, impatient to resume his pursuit of Dora.
Jana consciously stifled a weary sigh. This was going to be harder work than she’d anticipated. ‘So it’s 1645. The height of the English Civil War.’
Kaz shrugged. ‘So?’ he said again, and this time Jana had to prevent a roll of the eyes. She obviously didn’t entirely mask her impatience, because he continued, ‘I never studied that. Why would I? Why did you? You’re an American from the future, why would you learn about an ancient civil war?’
‘OK, fair point,’ said Jana, even though she thought exactly the opposite. What did it matter whether they knew the specifics of the situation or not? It was a civil war, for God’s sake, a society tearing itself apart, brother against brother. The levels of suspicion, hatred and violence waiting for them outside that door were unlike anything she had ever encountered and she wouldn’t have been ashamed to admit that it scared her, if she’d thought admitting it would be in her interest. But as self-evident as this was to Jana, she could see Kaz hadn’t reached that understanding yet, so she spelt it out for him, trying as hard as she could not to sound condescending. She knew that if he felt patronised she’d lose him in an instant.
‘My chip is full of English Civil War stuff,’ she explained. ‘Politics, people, dates of skirmishes and battles, details of the society and culture. I know everything there is to know about what’s waiting for us outside, and trust me, this is a very dangerous time to stand out from the crowd. There are armies roaming the land picking fights almost at random, sweeping through villages and towns and stripping them bare. Forcing men to join up and fight. Forcing women to keep them … entertained
. Then there are the religious zealots who think pretty much everything is ungodly and must be destroyed, and the civilian militias who organise to protest against the war and protect their homes but who end up just as brutal as the armies they’re opposing. It’s a mess, Kaz. The most violent period in Britain’s history.’ She stopped, as something occurred to her. ‘In fact, it’s the perfect time and place for someone like Quil, someone out of time, to lay low and hide.’
‘But Dora …’
‘Needs our help and protection, yes. But we’ll need hers too. The second we step out that door we enter a war zone, so we need to be careful.’
Jana judged that she had calmed Kaz enough to take control again, so before he could protest she grabbed his hand and pulled him upstairs.
11
Dora ran from her house out into the cold, fresh mist of a winter morning and was immediately struck by the silence.
Pendarn was a small village, humble and unambitious, but the sun was up and there was no rain or snow, so there should be people going about their daily tasks. There should be chickens scratching in the dirt, Farmer Weth grazing his sheep on the green, children running around and getting into mischief.
Instead there was only stillness.
The mist was beginning to burn away as she ran on to the village commons. She stood there, wiping her eyes and turning round and round, watching and listening for the slightest hint of life. The smithy was locked up, furnace and forge unused. There were no horses tethered to the water trough. The stocks were empty. Dora found herself remembering the world she had seen through the window of the lab in the future. The grass beneath her feet would, she knew, be covered with buildings and streets. Somehow the village felt different to her because she knew what would become of it.
She tried not to think about the pamphlet that Jana had shown her. She could not read, but the picture had been easy to understand. It had shown two men in some kind of uniform, one with a baby held high, impaled on the end of a pike, the other standing, holding another child above the head of a kneeling woman, about to dash its brains out on the ground before her. The image filled her with horror and dread. There was great violence abroad in England, this much was clear, though whether the threat came from within or without, be it rebellion or popish invasion, she could not tell.
TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 Page 11