What Could Possibly Go Wrong (The Chronicles of St Mary's Book 6)

by Jodi Taylor

  He flattened the data stacks and sat back in his chair. ‘So, to sum up. You jumped back in time, encountered the venerable and respected Father of History, discovered that he was actually an escaped historian from the future, got yourselves arrested for theft, burned down a gaol, started a riot which resulted not only in a young child falling into a well, but extensive damage to a pottery stall, and grievous bodily harm to the aforementioned Father of History as well.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said, meaning anything but. ‘And to think you were there for less than three hours.’

  I know when to remain silent.

  ‘What was his real name?’

  ‘I forgot to ask him, sir. He wasn’t … capable … for a lot of the time.’

  ‘And of course, none of you would know anything about that.’

  ‘It wasn’t just us, sir. Other people had a go at him too. He wasn’t a popular bloke.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  He remained silent, drumming his fingers on the desk.

  ‘We really can’t allow him to remain there.’

  ‘Agreed, sir.’

  ‘We’ll give him time to finish off his Histories. The date of his death and the location of his grave are unknown, which makes things a lot easier for us. The Time Police will remove him. It will be quick and quiet.’

  I shivered. Then I thought of the bruises on his slaves’ arms and the death of the contemporary he’d ‘accidentally’ encountered. And he’d grassed us up without a second thought. God knows what would have become of us if we hadn’t managed to escape.

  ‘What will happen to him, sir?’

  He didn’t answer and I didn’t ask again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We were half way through the programme. Only one down so far – Miss Lingoss – and even she was still alive so, as I cheerfully argued to Dr Bairstow, that didn’t really count. He countered by handing me the mid-term assessment paperwork and telling me to get on with it.

  I sighed. You lose some and then you lose some more.

  There’s an accepted routine for trainee assessments. The trainee enters the room and fixes the training officer with a glance that effortlessly combines blinding innocence with solemn dedication and hard work.

  The training officer, for her part, lets them sweat for a minute or so then lifts her eyes from their file and regards them coldly.

  The trainee, transfixed by the awfulness of this soul-penetrating glare, immediately confesses to every guilty sin he/she/it has perpetrated since the moment of conception and earnestly promises to do better in the future.

  The training officer, magnanimously allowing him/her/it to live, extracts promises of even greater commitment in whatever future she allows the trainee to enjoy and sends him/her/it on his/her/its way.

  Good fun, I think everyone will agree.

  I can’t begin to say how badly it all went. See below for selected highlights.

  Me:

  (at this point, still full of fire and drive):

  So, Miss North, tell me about your ambitions. Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?

  North:

  Oh, I want your job.

  Me:

  Training Officer?

  North:

  No, Chief Operations Officer.

  Me:

  (slightly astonished)

  You actually want to be Chief Operations Officer?

  North

  (slightly astonished at my slowness)

  Yes.

  Me:

  Well, if you stop getting up people’s noses, lose the attitude, adjust the tone, and just generally stop being a pain in the arse, you might make the long list. Until then, no chance. Next! Yeah, that could have gone better.

  Sykes was the next one through the door.

  I had noted, when reading through her file, that it was the Security Section who had christened her Psycho Psykes. Considering that between them, they enjoyed nearly every personality disorder known to man, and in Dr Foster’s opinion, at least two of them should be sectioned, I was inclined to believe they knew what they were talking about.

  Sykes:

  (bounding cheerfully through the door):

  Good afternoon.

  Me:

  (now not quite so full of fire and drive):

  Good afternoon, Miss Sykes. Please si …

  Sykes:

  (hurling herself into a chair)

  So, Dr Maxwell, how do you think it’s going so far?

  Me:

  Well, I …

  Sykes:

  (enthusiastically)

  Great.

  Me:

  Well, I …

  Sykes:

  (plonking a data cube on my desk)

  I’ve finished my report on the Herodotus assignment.

  Me:

  Jolly goo …

  Sykes:

  (plonking another data cube on my desk)

  And I hope you don’t mind but here’s a list of future assignments I think the History Department will find useful.

  Me:

  Tha …

  Sykes:

  (plonking a third data cube on my desk)

  And Lingoss and I put our heads together and here are some ideas for the future.

  Me:

  Yes, but …

  Sykes:

  So how much longer before I’m qualified?

  Me:

  (feeling the question was irrelevant because I was going to be dead long before then)

  Well …

  Sykes:

  Only there’s so much to do, isn’t there?

  Me:

  Ye …

  Sykes:

  (managing to bound with enthusiasm while still in a sitting position)

  Only I hope I’m doing well because I think it’s really great here, and I’m sorry Dr Maxwell, but if I’m not then you’ve got a problem because you’re going to have to dynamite me out of this place.

  Me:

  (alarmed at the mention of dynamite in this context)

  No, I …

  Sykes:

  Well, that’s good then. Was there anything else?

  Me:

  God, no.

  Sykes:

  OK. Bye!

  Me:

  Mrs Shaw, do we have any aspirin?

  And on to today’s mystery guest, Laurence Hoyle.

  Me:

  Well, Mr Hoyle, you’ve been here three, no four months now. Any comments?

  Hoyle:

  Is it always like this?

  Me:

  (looking around in case I’ve missed something)

  Like what?

  Hoyle:

  This … this … turmoil. This bedlam. The noise. The explosions. The shouting. How does anyone get any work done? Nothing works properly. Nothing goes according to plan. You’re like irresponsible children, noisy, reckless, and lacking all respect. No one takes anything seriously.

  Me:

  (quite indignant at this slur but conscious of not being on solid ground)

  Of course we take things seriously.

  Silence.

  Me:

  Is this a problem for you?

  Hoyle:

  I don’t know. It’s not what I was expecting.

  Me:

  (hackles rising)

  What were you expecting?

  Hoyle:

  (gloomily)

  Not this.

  Me:

  (expecting my nose to grow at any moment)

  I think you’re worrying unnecessarily, Mr Hoyle. While I admit that, on rare occasions, things might look a little chaotic, I can assure you that here at St Mary’s we are always completely on top of things. Furthermore …

  And, of course, that was the moment chosen by Rosie Lee to stick her head round my door and announce (looking anything but) that she was sorry to disturb me, but did I know the History Department had concealed a baby in a warming pan and were carting it all around the buil
ding and it didn’t sound very happy.

  ‘No, they haven’t,’ I said, fingers crossed under my desk. ‘It’ll be just a bag of flour or something.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ she said, ‘but it’s making a hell of a racket for a sack of self-raising.’

  Bloody hell. Now what?

  I said without hope, ‘Thank you, Mr Hoyle, that will be all,’ but of course he followed me out onto the Gallery, where a crowd of historians were trailing behind Prentiss, Lingoss, and Bashford rather in the manner of clouds of dirty smoke from an old banger that had just failed its emissions test. Prentiss, with some difficulty, was heaving around a warming pan and Bashford clutched the inevitable clipboard.

  I could hear the sounds of vigorous academic debate.

  ‘And might I point out,’ Bashford was saying severely, ‘that the key points of baby smuggling are to be quick and quiet. Neither of which you seem capable of. How much do you reckon the average newborn weighs?’

  Prentiss rested the warming pan on the balustrade. ‘Well, I’d say this seems to be about seven pounds. Plus the weight of the warming pan itself. And the long handle makes it quite tricky to carry. And he won’t stay still which is really making my shoulders ache. In my opinion, they couldn’t have carried him very far without their arms dropping off. Or somebody noticing. I mean, look at the crowd following us around.’

  They stopped dead as they saw us, politely stood aside, and said, ‘Good afternoon, Max.’

  I returned the greeting because I’m polite, too. Hoyle just stood with his mouth open. With misgivings, but not yet completely given over to despair, I enquired what was up.

  ‘Just checking whether it’s possible to smuggle a baby into a royal birthing chamber inside a warming pan,’ said Bashford, cheerfully.

  Ah – James Edward Francis Stewart. Son of James II and Mary of Modena, who, after years of unsuccessful reproduction, suddenly and suspiciously produced a healthy son. Rumour had it that on producing yet another stillborn child, a live baby had been smuggled into the queen’s room in a warming pan.

  ‘And is it?’ I enquired.

  ‘Not sure yet,’ said Prentiss. ‘It’s bloody heavy, I know that. Max, how much do you think a baby weighs?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Well, setting aside the fact my arms are practically dropping from their sockets, I would have thought the pan was too shallow and you have to ask yourself, isn’t someone trundling around with a warming pan in September just a little bit suspicious?’

  She hefted the pan for a better grip. The lid lifted slightly and a faint cry could be heard.

  I felt rather than saw Mr Hoyle’s agitation.

  ‘Bloody hell, we’d better get a move on if you don’t mind,’ said Bashford. ‘He’s trying to get out again.’

  ‘He?’ said Hoyle, in horror, completely missing the important word, which was again. ‘You haven’t – you surely haven’t got a real baby in there?’

  Silence. They exchanged looks with each other and grinned.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ they said unconvincingly.

  The warming pan tilted alarmingly.

  ‘Look out,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll drop him,’ and made a grab for the lid.

  ‘Don’t open it, for God’s sake,’ yelled Bashford.

  Too late.

  The lid was thrust aside revealing an enraged ginger face and bristling whiskers.

  Vortigern, the kitchen cat, who normally spent his days cocooned in the safety and security of Mrs Mack’s office, had not taken kindly to enforced deportation. Hissing, he lashed out, leaped from the pan, and disappeared back to safer regions.

  ‘Ow,’ yelled Hoyle, flapping a badly scratched hand. Bashford and Prentiss were unsympathetic.

  ‘What did you take the lid off for, you idiot?’

  ‘I thought you had a real baby in there.’

  ‘Seriously? Where would we get a real baby from?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? If Lingoss can requisition a dead pig and a coffin then I would have thought a baby would be easy.’

  I left them all deeply embedded in the process of blame allocation.

  And on to Atherton. Lovely, normal Atherton.

  Me:

  (losing the will to live)

  Everything OK with you, Mr Atherton?

  Atherton:

  Yes, fine, thank you.

  Long pause.

  Me:

  (surprised and suspicious)

  Anything you wanted to say?

  Atherton:

  Nope.

  Me:

  (still not quite believing)

  So everything’s all right?

  Atherton:

  Yep.

  Me:

  Well, thank you, Mr Atherton. Good afternoon.

  Always quit while you’re ahead.

  Having brushed through the mid-term assessments I bounced back to Dr Bairstow’s office with the completed paperwork. Mrs Partridge waved me through. ‘He has Miss Lingoss with him at the moment, but they’re just finishing. You may go straight in.’

  They were talking together in the window. Today’s hair extravaganza was purple. Hers, I mean. He didn’t have anything like enough hair to compete with the magnificent mauve madness of Miss Lingoss. He would come second place to an egg.

  ‘Ah, Dr Maxwell. Do come in. Miss Lingoss is just about to explain the reasons why there is a dead pig occupying the car parking space next to mine.’

  ‘The disabled spot was occupied, sir,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘With some curiosity, I enquire why there is a dead pig in the car park at all.’

  ‘We didn’t think you’d want it inside, sir.’

  ‘I congratulate you on your perspicacity,’ he said, ‘but we are still no nearer to ascertaining its purpose in the scheme of things.’

  ‘William the Conqueror, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I feel I may need more details.’

  ‘He was enormously fat, sir.’

  ‘One or two more, perhaps.’

  ‘The coffin was too small and as they tried to squeeze him into it, his corpse exploded.’

  ‘Disconcerting.’

  ‘To say the least, sir. I am attempting to reproduce the circumstances leading to that unfortunate event.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘Why?’

  She appeared genuinely bewildered. ‘Why not?’

  He sighed. ‘Very well, Miss Lingoss, thank you.’

  She bounded past me, grinning broadly. I grinned back. An exploding pig in the car park. Something to look forward to.

  I know I’ve made it sound as if I was bearing the trainee brunt alone, but others were actually doing their fair share too. Clerk and Prentiss had escorted them to 884AD, to watch the Vikings sail silently and menacingly up the River Medway, emerging out of the early morning mist to attack the city of Rochester. They’d enjoyed that and no one had been skewered by a Viking arrow.

  Two weeks later, they’d jumped back to Granada, 1492 to record Isabella and Ferdinand receiving the keys of the city as the final part of the Reconquista and they’d all survived that one, too.

  And now, Major Guthrie had them down for another Outdoor Survival exercise.

  I was thrilled at the thought of a couple of days without them, until it became apparent it wasn’t just the trainees involved in this one. He was expecting me to participate as well.

  I fixed him with my best reproachful puppy look.

  He laughed at me. ‘Wasting your time.’

  ‘After everything I’ve done for you, Ian.’

  ‘To me, don’t you mean?’

  I let my bottom lip quiver.

  ‘You can pack that in as well’ he said, heartlessly. ‘It won’t work. I’ve been through the records and for one reason or another you haven’t actually completed one of these for …’ he pretended to consult his clipboard as if we didn’t both know the answer to that one, ‘… Never. Anyway, now’s your chance,�
�� he continued. ‘The weather is lovely. You’ll enjoy it.’

  I abandoned reproachful for heartrending.

  ‘Let me put it this way, Max, if it’s the last thing I ever do, I will ensure you actually participate in an Outdoor Survival event.’

  ‘It could be the last thing I ever do, too.’

  ‘There’s always a silver lining. 08.00 tomorrow. Do not be late.’

  The dreaded Outdoor Survival exercise is the one where we take our trainees, drive them to some inhospitable wilderness, and leave them to die of starvation and exposure. Unless, of course, by using a combination of skill, endurance, and blind luck, they manage to find their way back to St Mary’s again.

  For various reasons, I’d never actually participated in one, but obviously the time had come when the traditional excuses of rank, pressure of work, absence in another time period, pretended sickness, actual sickness, injury, or death were unavailing and I was actually going to have to complete the bloody thing.

  I boarded the transport under the ‘I’m on to you, Maxwell so don’t even think about it,’ eye of Major Guthrie and his smirking clipboard. We drove for a hundred years. I was the first to be dropped off. They pushed me out, drove away laughing, and left me to die.

  Just for once, however, the weather was good and it was quite a pleasant spot, although my actual location was still a complete mystery to me. I could have been on one of the outer moons of Jupiter for all I knew.

  I stared around at the green rolling hills. Somewhere, high in a powder blue sky, a lark was giving it everything he’d got. It was just like that piece of music by Vaughan Williams, which was nice, but not particularly helpful. I had just under forty-eight hours to get back to St Mary’s, or be exposed forever to ridicule and general mockery.

  I think I’ve said before that I’ve never really considered the god of historians to be quite up to the job, so any requests for assistance (apart from being uttered in a hurry and at the top of our voices) usually have to be accompanied by fairly explicit instructions as to what’s required to remedy the situation. The response isn’t always quite what we had in mind, but, occasionally, every now and then, on an apparently random basis, the god of historians really, really comes through.

  A white van appeared from nowhere, cruised to a halt beside me, and asked if I was OK. I mean, obviously, the driver asked me. I’d only been out here about ten minutes or so and certainly wasn’t yet so far gone as to be imagining talking Mercedes Sprinters.

  He asked if I was in the army and was it one of those survival things?