Time Knot

by M. C. Morison

  I’d only had time to eat pale yellow cornflake look-a-likes with weird-tasting milk, and cram a sweet roll, covered with tooth-tingling ultra-sugary jam, before the door buzzer announced that Mohammed had arrived with the car.

  I sank into the front seat, and rested my hands on the slightly cracked leather. “This is an amazing car, Auntie. What is it?”

  “A Daimler,” said my aunt from the back, as the driver eased his way into the honking traffic edging past the apartment block. “My father used to own a car dealership before things became difficult. He’s managed to keep this car running. It’s his pride and joy. Mind you, it drinks petrol like a rugby player drinks beer.”

  I squinted up at the fifth floor, as we pulled away. I thought I could see my balcony. Leaning forward I looked at the other side of the road. Apartment blocks pushed up towards the leaden sky. They were six or seven stories high, topped with spiky metal aerials and satellite dishes. So how had I seen the harbour last night?

  “Will we see the temples today Auntie?”

  Mohammed the driver looked across at me, frowning slightly.

  “What’s that?” said my aunt.

  “We were wondering what we would see today,” Natasha said.

  “Well we have to go and visit my friends first. I was at school with her, and her daughter is soon to be married. They are pretty strict Muslims, Rhory, and it’s best you do not come up. We won’t be long.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. We were caught behind a cart being pulled by a large donkey. Our driver had turned off the main road down a narrow side street, and it hadn’t proved to be a short cut. People stared at the car and a couple of boys with white skullcaps and wispy beards ran up and pointed at me in the front seat. Mohammed accelerated past the cart at a point where the road widened. A man in a white turban sitting at the front, waved and grinned a toothless smile.

  Something someone had said to me yesterday floated back into my mind. “Will we see Cleopatra’s Palace today?”

  “How good’s your swimming?” said my aunt. “And how long can you hold your breath?”

  Natasha snorted.

  “But it’s by the harbour isn’t it?” Someone had told me that. It was the grand building overlooking the harbour. Perhaps I’d spotted it last night from the balcony.

  “It is by the harbour, Rhory,” said Aida, “but it’s metres under the water.”

  Natasha made a strange choking, snuffling sound. Even our driver was smiling slightly, his cheeks with white bristles moving like he was chewing something.

  “Oh!” I managed, my arms tingling with embarrassment.

  “Yes,” Aida continued, “we now believe it was destroyed by a massive earthquake that consigned it to the sea bed. It’s one of the reasons I’m here. One of my archaeology friends wanted me to do a little exploratory work for her.”

  “You’re going diving?” asked Natasha.

  “No. That won’t be allowed, I’m afraid. Mind you, I’m not so keen on snorkelling, let alone aqualungs. No, I’m going to be helping her with, shall we say, locating certain things. Remember I told you about what I did when you visited me before Christmas.”

  “The reason you lost your job?” said Natasha.

  “Yes. Pretty much. The officials here don’t much like unorthodox methods. They can’t control the outcome. But my friend thinks that some of the things stored at that palace may have been hidden elsewhere in Egypt. Important things.”

  “How would they know that?” I asked, turning around to squint at my aunt.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, smiling at me and raising her eyebrows.

  I didn’t. And then I did. Aunt Aida must be in contact with someone who could do what I seemed to be able to do. Someone who could end up sliding into the past and then back again.

  A statement I’d heard recently sounded in my mind. ‘The treasures of the past and the future are stored there but soon they must be moved. Times are changing and not for the better I heard the voice of the woman quite clearly. I’d heard her say that to me yesterday, or the day before. Then I remembered that the day before I had been in Hammerford. I could nearly remember what the woman looked like and how she dressed.

  I caught the driver looking at me: the wrinkles around his eyes had become a little bit more wrinkly. He cleared his throat and looked back at the traffic. Mohammed wore a white turban and had a deeply tanned face, a bit like the man on the cart except Mohammed appeared to have most of his teeth. I couldn’t easily judge his age.

  We pulled out into a wide road.

  “Here is the Serapeum,” he said in perfect English, with hardly an accent.

  The sky had cleared a bit and sunlight gave the wide-open space a warmer hue than the high-rise apartments that surrounded the monument which remained in shadow. The archaeological remains lay lower than the road, in an area the size of a couple of football pitches. Three coaches were drawn up by the side of the road, and groups of Chinese tourists were about to follow a woman with a headscarf holding a stick with a red triangular flag. High above the coaches, many of the balconies had damp clothing hanging on short lines, no doubt to welcome the sun back to Alex.

  “We’ll visit here properly in a day or two,” said my aunt. “It was a temple once, until the early Christians destroyed it, dedicated to a strange god called Serapis. Hence it’s known as the Serapeum.”

  We drove slowly along the road bordering the site. One tall column still stood and sitting sphinx-like near its foot was – well – a sphinx. Made of black stone, it stared at the world with all the mystery of a feline Mona Lisa.

  Aida said something to Mohammed in what I assumed was Arabic.

  “We just have time to take a dekko at the harbour,” said Aida, “before we need to meet my friends. Really the harbour is the best view in Alex.”

  “I love the little palms,” said Natasha, as we drove past a row of small, squat palm trees.

  I did too, but found them less fascinating than the billboards that sat on posts the height of a bus stop, advertising something or other, but with no pictures.

  “There’re fewer billboards here than in Hammerford,” I said.

  “That’s true, Rhory,” said my aunt. “Remember, we’re in a Muslim country and generally we don’t show pictures of people or animals – it’s forbidden. Certainly no girls in bikinis selling motorbikes.”

  A Giant Intervention

  We pulled out onto the broad two-lane road following the long curve of the harbour. Trees and lights adorned the middle of this dual carriageway, and hotels lined the road with stunning views out over the sea.

  “What sea is this, Auntie?” I asked.

  “It’s the Mediterranean,” said Natasha.

  “I thought that was the sea off France and Spain and Italy,” I said. “I know I have heard people talk about the Libyan Sea with all those immigrant boats. I thought this might be the Egyptian Sea.”

  “I wish,” said Aida.

  “So where are the palaces and temples?” I swivelled around, but could see nothing like the building I had spotted from the balcony the previous night.

  “Hardly anything is left,” said Aida. “The streets still follow the pattern that Alexander the Great mapped out, but we have lost nearly all the buildings. Fires, earthquakes and mobs have done about equal damage.”

  “But …” I took a breath and stopped myself from making a bigger twit of myself than I had managed already. Obviously I’d had one of my things last night. I hadn’t needed the bandstand to slip back through time. Just being tired had been enough. I’d seen Alexandria as it was then and not as it was now. A shiver went right through me.

  We drove the full length of the harbour. Grey waves complete with white horses rolled towards the beach until they petered out on the cold, dark sand. I hadn’t brought my swimming trunks. Now, that didn’t appear to be a mistake. Mohammed turned the car into the city once more.

  He parked in a wide street with trees sprouting from convenient gaps in the
pavement. At ground level, shops and cafes spilled out onto the pavement. Aunt Aida and Natasha disappeared into a doorway between a men’s clothing shop and one that specialised in old fridges.

  “Do you wish to sit in the car, young man,” said Mohammed, turning to me, “or do you wish to stand on the pavement?”

  “Um …” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  “I’m going across the road to that tobacconist. I will have a smoke and a black coffee. I will be no longer than eight minutes. But if I leave the car I must lock it, you understand?”

  I did. The car door swished closed behind me and Mohammed came round and locked my door after his. Apparently the Daimler pre-dated central locking.

  “There’s a bookshop behind you,” said the driver. “By all means go in. I will find you there.”

  “Thanks,” I said. The idea of browsing books in Arabic didn’t appeal. I fished out my phone and my earbuds. I would pass the time losing my mind in techno whilst leaning on the car.

  A bus on the other side of the road delayed Mohammed. He could have been military, the way he stood upright, with his broad shoulders and powerful arms. He had a jacket on over his ankle length robe. His hands on the steering wheel had looked almost too big for that job and the hairs on his hands, unlike those on his face, had been black. He disappeared into the shop opposite, with its one small table and chair outside already occupied by a man with a white skullcap, reading a paper.

  People walking past generally ignored me. Mostly it was men striding purposefully. A couple of women, with only their eyes showing, and shapeless, dull cotton robes covering themselves, went by with their eyes averted. I drifted over to the bookshop.

  The books had sat in the window since Alexander the Great left for India. The covers had faded and only the blue tones remained. The window had a crack low down on the right-hand side. A wooden screen, peppered with regular small holes, prevented me seeing into the shop. Wire hooks on the screen displayed several books more prominently.

  The Mystery of the Sphinx, said one. It had a black and white picture of the Sphinx with the pyramids in the background. A man wearing a pith helmet stood in front of the stone monument. Hypatia, the Last of the Mysteriarchs, said another. A woman with large eyes looked out from the cover. My knowledge of archaeology and ancient history was pretty much zilch, but she looked Roman rather than Greek, I thought. Roman and infinitely wise.

  A man of enormous size swayed his way towards me. The two women looked like pygmies as they passed him by. He’d the sort of physique that makes enormous wrestlers with rippling muscles, blanch. In fact he looked like he might eat a couple of wrestlers for breakfast. Although he was about 50 metres away, I wondered if I should cross to where Mohammed was. Something about this man spooked me.

  The techno music rose to a shrieking crescendo and then resolved into a squeal of brakes. A car had screeched to a halt just in front of the Daimler. It had darkened windows. Both doors on my side swung open and two men sprang out, followed by a third. All had shades on, even though the sun had long since given up the struggle with the clouds. All had dark suits. All were staring at me. One spoke into a mobile and then said something to the others. They moved across towards me.

  I moved as quick as my pounding heart would allow and reached the bookshop door. I pushed on the handle but it jammed. I tried again. Not jammed – locked. One of the men grabbed my phone. A second grabbed my arms from behind.

  “With us. Now. Or we hurt you. Very bad. Very bad.”

  I kicked the man who had my phone and, flexing my knees, cracked my head against the chin of the man behind me. I had the satisfaction of hearing him howl and seeing the other man wince before a vicious slap nearly separated my jaw from my face.

  One of the men jabbered something in their own language and the man sitting at the wheel of the car shouted.

  The man behind me let go. I think he hit the car without his feet touching the ground. The man who’d just slapped me was held, by his neck, by the giant who had arrived at my side.

  “Mistake,” said the giant to the man, who struggled to breathe and to reach into his jacket. He also thumped into the car, and with a movement of ballet-like suppleness, my saviour-giant scooped up the gun that had fallen onto the pavement. He dropped onto one knee and pointed it at the driver, who wouldn’t have won a quick-draw competition, and decided to speed off once his passengers had flung themselves onto the back seat.

  The man with my phone was legging it in the other direction. My phone. The one with the only proof on it that I had been to ancient Egypt.

  “Fricking heck. Come back!” I shouted.

  The huge guy looked at me from an expressionless face. It dawned on me, rather late, that if he wished to take me captive there was nothing whatsoever I could do. His deep brown eyes searched into mine, and he grunted, as though confirming something to himself.

  “Cross road,” he said. “Stay with Mohammed.” He nodded, and checked his wristwatch that had a band with the circumference of a side plate. “Then safe. Safe until we meet again.”

  Georgina Rillington

  England – about now

  Hanging Copse, Bog Copse, Windgate Copse … where did they get these names from? Onyx took a sip from her water bottle, kept cool in the armrest of her car. Woodland surrounded her on both sides of the road. The heavy rain had completely cleared and clouds piled up in massive confections of pale candyfloss, impressively white against the blue of the spring sky. An image of a headlight on her dashboard reminded her that her lights were still on. She switched them off. Checking her watch she muttered a swear word and pushed down the accelerator. Her tyres swished through a deep puddle, sending a great spray of water into the bushes beyond.

  About an hour earlier, the storm clouds had made it so gloomy she’d needed headlights to see a few metres into the wall of rain that had greeted her as she drove through Dorset. The roads had been awash, and several times she’d had to drive slowly through floods.

  The satnav showed the route in bright blue with arrows pointing the way. A female voice with a reassuring British accent guided Onyx through the maze of country lanes. Just as well as the journey had now become complex. Typical that Georgina Rillington, the most important female spook in the country, had her home in the heart of a labyrinth. Onyx had been to her London flat once for a semi-official government party, but she’d never visited her country residence.

  Georgina Rillington lived at the edge of an obscure village in Devon. Georgina Rillington gave her the willies. Not many people could do that to Onyx, but ‘Emerald’ wielded a lot of power, both literal and metaphysical. The spymaster connected in some weird way with a priestess far back in time. Maybe more than one. Emerald didn’t talk about things like that and Onyx hadn’t seen fit to ask.

  She braked to cope with the lorry carrying manure, crawling along in front of her. Her window glided up too slowly and allowed in the rich countryside aroma. She wrinkled her nose, tried not to breathe and switched on the air-con. That only made the smell worse. The narrow road curved this way and that, and she didn’t quite dare to overtake the ancient lorry and risk meeting a combine harvester or something equally rustic coming the other way. Her Maserati had amazing acceleration, but could still skid off into a field from a road that had – minutes before – been converted into a river. She banged her hand on the steering wheel in frustration. At this rate it would be nearly an hour before she reached Emerald’s country hideaway. Or at least that’s what the satnav calculated.

  She’d left Hampstead while darkness still hid the large houses of the very well-heeled who lived there. She cleared the outskirts of London before the milk floats hummed their way through the suburbs. She wanted to complete her meeting and return to London all in one day. She absolutely did not want to spend the night with the person she needed to visit. At first she’d headed towards Oxford. Twice, when the roads were quiet, she had gone right round a roundabout before taking her exit. Once she’d do
ne a quick U-turn in the middle of the road. When she was quite sure no one was following her she changed route and headed south-west. Before setting out she’d used a scanner to check no one had planted a tracking device on her sleek sports car. This meeting today was above Top Secret. Only Sardius knew about it.

  The smelly lorry slowed even more. The blinker on the right of the vehicle had a broken glass and only one brake light worked. The driver had his hand stuck out of the window and Onyx breathed a sigh of relief as he turned right into a field, taking his pungent aromas with him. She zoomed past, only to jam on her brakes once more to prevent driving into a horse’s rump. Ahead, a woman on horseback held out a red flag. She trotted at the back of a file of horses, each with riders wearing bright yellow reflective bands and mustard-coloured jackets saying ‘Treetops Riding School’. Onyx could see nothing coming and, ignoring the red flag, pressed her horn and accelerator at the same time, speeding past the seven or so schoolgirl riders and receiving a shout from the corpulent young woman on the leading black horse. Glancing in her mirror she could see one of the girls’ horses had skittered to the wrong side of the road. “Blast them,” she said to the lady on the satnav who calmly told her to continue straight for the next three miles.

  “You have arrived at your destination,” announced the softly spoken voice from within the dashboard. A checked flag waved triumphantly on the screen. To the left a hedgerow bordered a large field that sloped away towards woodland. Near its centre a few cows gathered by a couple of nondescript trees. Ahead a church tower suggested the heart of the village wasn’t more than half a mile away. To her right a high wall of ancient pale grey stone had tiny flowers and green plants clinging to the crevices and glistening with raindrops. An impressive entranceway announced Featherstone Cottage. Onyx pressed the button on the entry-phone, conveniently placed at driver height. The large wrought iron gates swung open. In front of her a substantial two-storey thatched cottage dominated the large front garden. A statue, invisible from the road, showed three women dancing, facing outwards, their arms linked. “Hecate,” Onyx breathed. “Immortal Hecate, we honour Thee.” A frisson passed up her arms and neck.