by Jodi Taylor
We’d landed at night because we’re reckless but we’re not stupid. OK – disregard that last statement. But we had to do something for poor, dying Richard Hoyle. Give him a little comfort as he started out on his last journey.
Given the one-hundred-years rule, we had calculated the jump to the very closest date we thought we could get away with and for some reason, either the pod was becoming unreliable, or because we were tired, we got it wrong. Badly wrong.
We’d aimed for mid-20th century. I had no idea when we actually did land and there was no time to check because the second we touched down, a klaxon went off and frightened the living daylights out of all of us. Red lights flashed everywhere, even in the ex-toilet.
‘Warning. Extreme hazard. This jump is not within permitted parameters. Emergency evacuation in four minutes, fifty-nine seconds.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Sykes. ‘Will we have long enough?’
‘We have to,’ I said. ‘Sykes, Markham. Do you have your canisters?’
‘But what about the safety protocols,’ said North, her voice effortlessly audible over the shrieking klaxon. ‘We should check the proximities and …’
‘No time,’ said Markham, already shoving Sykes out of the door. ‘Move.’
‘Good luck,’ said North.
We exited the pod in a hurry.
There were no lights in the car park. I wasn’t even sure it was a car park. The ground beneath my feet was solid, so it was either concrete or tarmac, but it could easily have been a school playground or someone’s back garden.
Dark clouds scudded across the sky and it was cold. A light breeze stirred the short hairs around my head.
And North had been absolutely right, we should have checked the proximities, because just as we were dashing across the car park in our bedraggled Victorian gear, a voice shouted, ‘Hoi!’
‘Bollocks,’ said Sykes again, and I mentally awarded her another couple of points for correct use of language in a hazardous situation.
‘You two go on,’ I said. ‘Get it done. I’ll talk to whoever it is.’
It was the police. Of course it bloody was. You’d think they’d have something better to do than patrol deserted car parks in the middle of the night. There were major criminals out there. Bank robbers. Burglars. Motorists somewhere were probably approaching the speed of light even as we spoke. Why weren’t they pursuing them instead of harassing very nearly innocent historians? I’m not fond of policemen. It’s nothing personal, but a couple of them did once try to arrest me on my wedding night. That sort of thing leaves mental scars, you know.
There were two of them and they were upon me before I knew it, which was bad because I had no time to think up an acceptable reason for a bunch of weirdly dressed people apparently vandalising a perfectly respectable council car park.
‘Good evening, officers. What seems to be the problem?’
The played their torches over me and then past me into the night, trying to see if I was alone. I strained my ears for the sounds of urban vandalism and could hear nothing. Whatever they were doing back there, they were doing it in silence. And in the dark.
‘What’s going on here?’
I decided to go with the truth.
‘Good evening. I am Dr Maxwell from the Institute of Historical Research near Rushford. Acting on information received, we are engaged in painting a large letter “R” in this car park, to pinpoint the position of the grave of Richard III. Not immediately, but some years in the future, this area will be excavated and the king’s bones located and identified. The old Alderman Newton’s school will be converted into a magnificent visitors’ centre, resulting in fame, prestige, and much-needed revenue for the city. The story of the discovery of Richard’s remains will fly around the world and the fact that they are buried almost directly under this letter “R” – that’s the one being painted as we speak – will pass into folk legend. As you can imagine, it is enormously important that we complete our task, otherwise the course of History will be changed, with catastrophic results. I estimate they will require another minute and then we will be gone and you will never see us again.’
They stared at me. ‘What?’
I was done. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say. I sent up a mental prayer for help and the god of historians responded with a bolt of inspiration, which, typically, missed me and hit the two fine representatives of the local constabulary standing before me instead.
One of them started to laugh. ‘It’s Rag Week, isn’t it?’
Why the bloody hell hadn’t I thought of that? The god of historians was fired on the spot.
‘Yes. You’re right. It’s Rag Week. Can I interest either of you in making a contribution to …’ I tried to remember when I was and what were the issues of the day, ‘… pulling American troops out of Vietnam? Banning the Bomb? Ending apartheid in South Africa? Equal rights for women?’
They stared at me again in complete bafflement. ‘What?’
All right – I admit it. I’m not good with stuff after 1485.
I was rummaging for something to say when Markham appeared out of the dark. Somehow, he’d straightened his cravat and slicked down his hair. He looked nearly normal.
‘Ah, there you are, mother.’
What?
‘Thank you officers, I can take it from here. It’s her age, you know. Normally she’s as good as gold, but sometimes she does take it into her head to go for a bit of a wander. Was she talking about Richard III again? A bit of an obsession with her, I’m afraid. Come along now, dear,’ he continued, raising his voice slightly and skidding closer to death with every word. ‘The car’s just around the corner. I’ll take you home, make you some nice Horlicks, and you can listen to The Archers. You know how you like that. Goodnight, officers.’
He took my arm, and before they could say a word, he turned me around, and led me off into the night back to the pod.
‘Mother?’
‘Come on Max, pick up the pace or the pod will go off without us.’
We broke into a trot.
‘Mother?’
‘We don’t want to be stranded here, do we? We’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘Mother?’
‘We got it done. Nice big “R” as close as we could get to where he’s buried. Well, within about ten feet, anyway. Not a bad effort, all things considered. Sykes is back in the pod.’
‘Horlicks?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said soothingly. ‘You can murder me later, but for now we need to move.’
They had the door open ready. I could hear the countdown. We had over thirty seconds to spare. That’s practically a lifetime. Where’s the drama in that?
Hoyle lay on the floor, staring up at me with eyes that were far too large for his face. Atherton was cradling his head and North and Sykes were bracing him as best they could.
I knelt at his side and took his ice-cold, bloodstained hand in mine. ‘We’ve done it, Richard. We’ve marked the grave. Richard III will be discovered. All thanks to you.’
Not strictly true, but what would you have said?
He nodded, his eyes cloudy. He didn’t have long.
I went to get up but he clutched at me.
‘I get it,’ he said, his voice barely audible.
‘Get what?’
‘I get why you do it. The shouting. The chaos. It’s … how you cope, isn’t it? It’s how you deal with … what you’ve seen. How you deal with people dying. All the stuff you watch and you … can’t change a single thing. You can’t help a single person. It’s how you yourselves don’t explode.’
Atherton said urgently, ‘Max, we have to go. Now.’
I said, ‘Computer, override emergency evacuation. Jump to pre-programmed coordinates. Now.’
And the world went white.
Hoyle died somewhere between the council car park in Leicester and Bosworth Field. North covered his face with the blanket.
We landed back in the Redemoor Marsh. I esti
mated we’d been gone about an hour. They were still parading the king’s naked body around because everyone must see that Richard was dead. The sword protruding from between his buttocks waggled grotesquely at every movement of the horse.
We waited until dark and then very quietly let ourselves out of the pod. Atherton and Markham carried him carefully to the edge of the marsh. We turned away while they gently stripped him of his anomalous clothes. We had no choice. We couldn’t leave them here. I hoped he would understand.
There was a long row of bodies already laid out. We simply set him down at the end. Atherton straightened his legs. North folded his hands on his poor crushed chest. Sykes smoothed his hair. No one took any notice of us. There were many other people doing the same. Women included. Battlefields take a lot of clearing away afterwards.
‘Would anyone like to say anything?’ I said.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Sykes, and the other two nodded in agreement. I understood. They had thought he was one of them and then discovered he wasn’t. Then they’d changed their minds and decided that maybe he was after all. Or could have been. Until he allowed obsession to get the better of him. Had he even noticed he was being used? Or didn’t he care as long as he achieved his ends? Was he good? Or bad? Or like Randall, was he a little of both?
A chill wind blew in off the marsh, bringing with it the smell of stagnant water. Dark clouds scudded across the darker sky. I looked at the scene around me. Lights moved in the distance, rising and falling as people leaned over the bodies, trying to find any that might still be alive. Voices came and went. Somewhere, a priest was intoning a prayer. A woman was sobbing. I can’t remember how many died that day. Thousands, I think. I wondered where Henry was and what he was doing now. He’d left the field, anyway. Only the dead and those ministering to the dead remained.
I don’t know why we were so reluctant to leave. Was it because, for the first time ever, we were deliberately leaving one of our own people behind?
‘If he can be happy anywhere,’ said Markham quietly, ‘it will be here. Yorkists all around him and his king not far away.’
I nodded, even though by now, it was too dark for anyone to see clearly. ‘Richard Neville Laurence Hoyle – rest in peace.’
‘Come on,’ said Markham. ‘Time to go.’
I picked up Hoyle’s clothes and we squelched our way back through the bog.
Chapter Twenty-four
I can’t even begin to describe the grief we got from Sick Bay.
‘Isolation,’ said Helen, muffled behind a mask.
‘What? Why? All right, I’ll grant you Markham and I are a little battered, but …’
‘Are you serious? You’ve been rolling around in a swamp. A medieval swamp.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘With insects, mosquitoes …’
‘And poisonous frogs,’ interjected Markham, who always has his own reasons for wanting to remain in Sick Bay as long as possible.
She ignored him and Hunter shot him a look that considerably decreased his chances of surviving whatever they had in store for us.
‘Cholera. Leptospirosis.’
I tried. ‘Yes, but …’
‘E. coli infections. Dysentery.’
I tried again. ‘No, but …’
‘Typhoid. Botulism.’
I gave up. ‘Yes – all right.’
‘Tapeworms.’
‘Oh, not again,’ said Markham. ‘I’ve only just evicted the last one.’
‘Cryptosporidiosis.’
‘What?’
‘Microsporidiosis.’
‘Well now you’re just making things up.’
A week later, Dr Bairstow and I stared at each other across his desk. Yes, all right, I’d allowed a bunch of trainees to be hijacked off to 1485, but he’d allowed said hijacker into St Mary’s in the first place. In fact, if my memory served me well, I’d had a bit of a protest about our Mr Hoyle and been told, in no uncertain terms, to wind my neck in. Something I would have no hesitation in pointing out to him as soon as the words ‘How could you allow this to happen?’ floated across his desk.
They never did. Just for once, he neatly sidestepped the vexed question of whose fault all this was – usually his favourite part of any mission debriefing and plunged straight into my nipping off to a council car park in Leicester. And yes, all right, that was my fault. In an effort to deflect him, I strove to convey the importance of the painted ‘R’.
He refused to be deflected. ‘Would I be right in crediting the appearance of this painted letter “R” solely to the efforts of St Mary’s?’
‘Do you mean the one that contributed to the discovery of his remains, sir?’ I said, trying to paint things in the best possible light.
He regarded me coldly. ‘Was there more than one painted letter “R” in that particular car park?’
‘Not that I’m aware of, sir.’
‘So St Mary’s was responsible?’
‘It would appear so, sir.’
‘You changed the past.’
‘No sir, we changed the future. Different crime altogether.’
There was a long pause and then he leaned forwards, suddenly serious. ‘You need to take care, Max. Great care. You are beginning to tread the line between what is acceptable and what is not. From there, it only takes the smallest step to find you have stepped over that line altogether. That you have done the wrong thing for the right reasons. I am warning you, in future, to be very, very careful.’
I shivered, suddenly cold. As cold as the night following the battle at Bosworth. As if something had walked over my grave.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to distract him. ‘So what happens now, sir?’
He stood up, and went to look out of the window. ‘I am not sure.’
‘Hoyle was a bit of a time bomb, sir, which is rather appropriate, don’t you think? He could have gone off at any time. We were lucky.’
‘I’m assuming this is the St Mary’s definition of the word luck.’
‘It could have been a lot worse, sir. Someone became aware of his obsession and used it to gain whatever it was they wanted.’
‘They wanted St Mary’s,’ he interrupted. ‘And a deliberate attempt by one of our own people to assassinate Henry Tudor and change the course of History would have brought everything crashing down around us. We who have always – always – maintained History must not be changed in any way, would have been found guilty of our own most serious crime. The Time Police would have come down on us in force and this time, there would have been no escape. You and I would almost certainly have been imprisoned.’
‘If the Time Police let us live.’
‘If, as you say, the Time Police had let us live. And even if St Mary’s had been able to continue, a new regime would certainly have been installed.’
‘Someone more able to recognise the true potential of time travel,’ I said slowly, remembering what Hoyle had said.
‘Yes.’
‘Sir, are we in trouble? Again?’
‘Specifically, no. Thanks to your prompt actions, no. The threat was neutralised. But generally, yes. There are people who – who feel that St Mary’s could … fulfil other functions.’
‘Such as?’
He looked at me and said nothing. I understood. Some things were above my pay grade. Actually, there were things that slithered on their bellies that were higher than my pay grade. Wisely, I did not mention this.
‘What do we do, sir?’
He shrugged. ‘At this moment, there’s nothing we can do. But there’s nothing they can do, either. History is intact. The assignment records have been destroyed. They will never know what happened to Mr Hoyle and there is no proof.’
‘Will they try again?’
‘Oh, almost certainly, I think. Don’t you?’
I remained silent, thinking about this.
He sighed and said quietly, ‘Why did you do it, Max?’
‘Sir?’
‘T
ake him on to Leicester. Risk the hundred-year rule.’
I replied, equally quietly, ‘He was dying, sir. I wanted his death to have some meaning for him.’
He turned from the window and came to sit back in his chair, his face unreadable. ‘Explain.’
I swallowed back a sudden urge to cry. I must be more tired than I thought.
‘I’m willing to bet the idea to kill Henry Tudor was not his. His obsession was with Richard. Someone took him aside and said, “But what if Henry died at Bosworth, not Richard.” That was probably all it took. The seed was planted. Then, at the end, I think he realised what he’d try to do. What he’d nearly done. How he’d been used by someone who knew that whatever the outcome, he himself would not survive it. He was ashamed. And defeated. And bitter. He had nothing left.’
I swallowed and continued defiantly, ‘So I took him to Leicester and told him he’d performed a service for his king. That Richard’s body was discovered because of his actions. I like to think he died a little happier because of that, sir. I’m sorry if you wanted to have him shot, but if you’d seen his face, perhaps you might agree with me. If you don’t, of course, you’ll just have to shoot me instead.’
‘A course of action I have not yet discounted, given that Mr Hoyle is no longer here to answer the charges brought against him.’
Well, yes, he had me there, but when I looked up he’d put the file away and was smiling faintly.
‘So, you are handing over three trainees, Dr Maxwell. Soon to become Pathfinders.’
‘Three exceptional trainees, sir. I think there’s great potential there.’
‘As do I.’ He paused. ‘Tell me, does any of this seem familiar to you?’
‘Sorry sir, I’m not with you.’
‘Well, we have three new historians. Mr Atherton is a natural leader. He possesses a quiet confidence that is impressive. People like him. Then there’s Miss North. Tall, blonde, a little terrifying – especially if things don’t go as she thinks they should. And Miss Sykes, of course. Short, passionate, energetic, and with the same sense of self-preservation as a mongoose staring down a cobra.’
I stared at him. ‘No, sorry sir. I’m not with you.’