by Alex Scarrow
Liam turned to the guard. ‘Is he always so drunk?’
The young man was unsure whether he should reply.
‘Answer the man!’ barked Eddie.
‘Aye, s-sire. ’E …’e’s turned to drink.’ The guard looked anxiously at them. ‘Dreadful afraid, ’e is.’
‘Of what?’ asked Liam.
‘The people, sire! The people out there! Every night now they come out. Every night they gather and try an’ burn them gates.’
‘Lad, where are the captains? The sergeants? Who is in charge here?’
The young guard shrugged. ‘Many ’ave deserted. They gone to serve other masters.’
‘So who is in charge?’
‘The sheriff,’ said the lad.
‘There are no captains?’
‘No, sire. Just other … other men at arms, sire.’
‘How many?’
‘We are at ’alf strength. Perhaps no more than two ’undred, sire. But more leave each day.’
‘So why’ve you stayed?’ asked Liam.
‘Because … because there’s food ’ere. Because I’m afraid what them people out there goin’a do to me, sire. I ’eard stories of soldiers caught leavin’ this castle … what them outside ’ave gone done to them.’
Eddie cursed. ‘This castle will not hold the people of Nottingham out much longer if all that is left inside are frightened boys.’
Cabot nodded. ‘This is not a good situation for ye to take charge of, Liam.’
The young guard’s eyes widened and Cabot noticed that. ‘Aye, seems this young man is to be yer new sheriff.’ He tossed a nod at the snoring body on the bed across the hall. ‘I am sure he can do no worse a job than that drunken fool, William De Wendenal.’
Cabot turned to Liam. ‘So, lad … there are things it seems that need yer immediate attention here, before we go looking for a certain item.’
Liam nodded silently. Jay-zus, I’m supposed to be running a castle now?
‘Right,’ he said with little enthusiasm. ‘Right … yes.’
He became aware that Cabot, Eddie, the young guard — even Bob — were all looking at him, waiting for him to say something.
Why me? Why is it always me?
‘Errr … all right,’ he said finally. ‘Right,’ he said once more for good measure. ‘Umm, OK.’
Eyes on him still.
‘So, then, Eddie?’
‘Sire?’
‘I’m going to put you in charge of the men here.’
His jaw dropped open. ‘Sire?’
‘That’s right, you’re the garrison commander now. I want you to take command on the walls for the rest of tonight. All right?’
‘Aye, my lord!’ Eddie barked with enthusiasm.
Liam expected him to turn and go immediately but then he realized the man was waiting to be dismissed. ‘So then, uhh … you can go now.’
‘Sire!’ Eddie turned on his heels. ‘Come on, lad!’ he barked at the young guard. They clumped heavily out of the hall and a minute later Liam thought he heard his parade-ground bark echoing up the stone walls from the bailey outside.
Cabot filled the quiet hall with the sound of his soft wheezy laugh. ‘So, Liam of Connor, mysterious traveller from the future. It seems now ye have become a part of history. Ye are the Sheriff of Nottingham.’
‘This will cause contamination,’ cautioned Bob. ‘And it is exceeding our mission parameters.’
‘Yes.’ Liam nodded. ‘I’m well aware of that.’ He glanced at the snoring drunk on the bed. The man was clearly unfit for his role; a nervous wreck. A drunken nervous wreck. Perhaps the situation had done that to him. The stress of it, being in charge of this hopeless mess. He’d learned enough now to know that this country was in a perilous condition, bankrupt and on the verge of complete anarchy. A resentful population taxed to their knees and now starving. The noblemen — barons, lords, earls who should have been the backbone of authority providing men-at-arms and money to maintain order — were all conspiring against John, refusing to pay the tributes they owed.
A mess. A terrible mess. But a mess that was not his nor Bob’s concern. That’s how this history was meant to be anyway, right?
‘I’m afraid, Mr Cabot,’ said Liam, ‘that fella snoring away over there … he’s still the sheriff.’
‘Ye understand this castle is the administrative centre of the north!’ said Cabot. ‘Do ye understand that? If it falls into the hands of marauding peasants, if they overrun this place, then the country north of Oxford will be lost!’
‘Right. But it’s not our business. If it happens, then it’s meant to happen. That’s how history goes.’
Cabot studied him silently. ‘Ye would let that happen? If order collapses, the land will be awash with the blood of innocent people!’
Cabot was probably right.
‘Information: there are no records in history of a popular uprising of peasants successfully overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham,’ said Bob.
Liam looked at him. ‘You sure?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Oh that’s just grand, that is,’ he sighed. ‘You’re telling me this is all wrong — right? That this shouldn’t be happening?’
Bob nodded. ‘It appears we are experiencing incorrect history.’
CHAPTER 39
2001, New York
‘Sal? Sal? … You OK?’
Maddy noticed she was teetering on her feet unsteadily. The half-empty mug of tea dropped from her slackened fingers to the floor and shattered on the hard concrete. She took a faltering step, then steadied herself against the edge of the kitchen table. Maddy got up from her armchair and put a protective arm round her narrow shoulders.
‘Dizzy,’ she replied.
‘She OK?’ asked Adam.
Sal nodded. ‘I’m fine … but I think that was a — ’
The archway went completely dark.
‘Time wave,’ said Maddy.
‘What?’ She could hear Adam’s breath, uneasy and ragged. She felt the soft touch of air on her cheek, his hands swooping and flailing in the pitch black. ‘What is this? Is this … is this some other sort of dimension thing?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just darkness. The genny should kick in, in a few seconds.’
But the lights flickered back on before she heard the deep coughing throb of the generator starting up.
‘Oh! That means we’ve got power still,’ she said, looking at him and smiling. ‘That’s a good sign.’
The computer monitors began to flicker back to life, one after the other.
‘That was a big wave,’ said Sal.
‘Yes, it was.’
Adam looked at them both. ‘So does that mean …?’
‘You’re in an alternate timeline? An alternate 2001?’
His head bobbed like a cork.
‘Yes.’ She made her way over to the computer desk. ‘Let’s see how alternate.’ The computer system was just finishing restoring itself, and Bob’s dialogue box flickered up on to one of the screens.
› System reset complete.
‘Bob?’
› Hello, Maddy.
‘We just had a time wave.’
› I know.
‘But we’ve got power still.’ Stupid thing to say, but she’d said it anyway.
› Affirmative, we have power. But I have had to correct the voltage and amplitude settings.
‘What?’
› The power coming in is a form of direct current.
She looked at Adam and Sal standing beside the desk. ‘Then maybe it’s a bigger change than I thought.’
› Information: we have no external data link.
‘No Internet,’ said Sal. She made a face. ‘That isn’t such a good sign.’
Maddy nodded towards the shutter door. ‘Something pretty big’s changed out there … maybe we should go see?’
They made their way across the floor. Maddy jabbed at the green button. Nothing happened. The shutter motor, lin
ked directly to the external power line and not automatically monitored and modulated by the computer system, wasn’t working.
‘Marvellous,’ she muttered, and began cranking the handle beside it.
‘Let me,’ said Adam, taking over from her.
The shutter clattered up slowly, letting in a surprisingly bright ribbon of light for the time of day. Maddy checked her watch. It was approaching four in the afternoon. The Williamsburg Bridge normally blocked the sun from their dim little alleyway pretty much from two in the afternoon onwards.
Adam stopped cranking. The shutter was waist height. A quick look at each other, then all three of them squatted down together to look outside.
‘Shadd-yah!’ whispered Sal.
‘Uhh … all right, that’s not New York,’ said Adam.
‘Nope,’ said Maddy almost nonchalantly. ‘No it isn’t … again.’
The cobblestones of their alley ended abruptly where the energy field ended and beyond that was a bed of tidal silt that sloped down to the East River. She spotted several fishing boats of various sizes lying askew on the mud like beached seals, tethered to wooden mooring poles.
Across the East River, Manhattan island was still there, of course. But instead of the forest of skyscrapers, there was a sleepy-looking town nestling on it. She could see a carpet of gabled rooves and chimneys and somewhere in the middle the spire of a church. Along the edge of the town she could see more fishing boats and jetties, and the bustle of activity as fishermen worked their catch ashore, small cranes lifting catch-nets full of squirming sea life out of their holds and on to the dockside as clouds of seagulls buzzed, swooped and complained.
‘We’ve had worse,’ said Maddy.
Adam shook his head. ‘It’s like … like, completely changed!’
‘Duh,’ chuckled Sal. ‘Of course it is.’
‘But there’s power,’ said Maddy. She pointed towards the town where a line of lamp posts carried overhead cables along the shore front. ‘So it’s not like we’ve been thrown back into some total dark age.’
‘But no Internet,’ said Sal.
On this side of the river, where only moments ago the seldom-used dockside cranes and abandoned warehouses of Brooklyn had stood, there was nothing but silt punctuated by hummocks of coarse grass and dozens of tide-marooned fishing boats surrounded by discarded coils of rope and useless torn fishing nets. She spotted a solitary gravel lane to their right, flanked by intermittent wooden telegraph poles. It wound along their side of the river and, a couple of miles further up, she could see the small mid-river humps of Belmont and Roosevelt islands, and — just as in the normal timeline — a bridge spanned the river there. Albeit a very different-looking bridge.
Adam followed her gaze. ‘Can we go and explore?’
Maddy pinched her lip absently. They needed information. They needed some idea when and how this alternative timeline had sprung up. ‘I think we’d better.’
Maddy locked the computer system with a password and they all stepped outside, closing the shutter door behind them. She looked at their archway, nestling low down between two hummocks of grass-tufted mud; it was a jagged hemisphere, a scruffy igloo of old crumbly brickwork that went nowhere. She wondered how visible it was to anyone looking their way from the town across the river. Someone surely would eventually notice the sudden arrival of a squat round dome of rust-coloured bricks nestling amid the mud and abandoned old boats?
Maybe. All the more reason to get a wiggle on. ‘Come on,’ she said, pointing to the gravel lane nearby. They avoided the muddy silt as best they could, picked their way along crests of grass until they stepped up on to the gravel road.
‘It reminds me of — of … Calais,’ said Adam. ‘Normandy maybe,’ he added.
They walked along the coastal road towards the bridge, finally spotting a vehicle as they neared it. A small flatbed truck loaded with wire baskets of chickens. It clattered noisily on to the bridge, a motor that coughed, whined and growled as it sped away from them towards ‘Manhattan’.
‘That looks weird,’ said Adam. ‘Like we’re in the forties or fifties or something.’
Yes, it did. Old-fashioned. The truck looked a little like one of those old Model T Fords you’d see in jerky black and white movies. They crossed the bridge, walking on one side of the road. A dozen other vehicles passed them either way, all looking oddly antiquated and ever so subtly framed with decorative curls and fleurs de lys of brass trim.
On the far side of the bridge they turned left, following a road that weaved into the centre of the village where it became busier with people going about the business of a normal Monday afternoon.
An elderly lady in a black dress and scarf pushed a wheeled basket full of baguettes and looked at them curiously as they approached her. She frowned, puzzled perhaps by their clothes, but then she nodded and smiled at them as she passed by.
‘Bonjour,’ she uttered politely.
Adam looked at them. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘French?’
Adam nodded.
‘America’s gone French?’ Maddy said incredulously.
The road took them into a small town square overlooked by the church spire and tall townhouses that seemed to lean forward over the space. A fountain gurgled pleasantly in the middle, momentarily drowned out by the piercing whine of a three-wheeled scooter whizzing past them, driven by an old man with a child sitting across his knees.
‘This seems quite nice,’ said Sal. ‘I think I like it better.’
‘It’s French,’ replied Maddy defensively. ‘It’s not right.’
A class of schoolchildren suddenly filled the peaceful town square with their voices, a walking crocodile of two-by-twos carrying satchels on their backs and wearing blazers of yellow and green. The TimeRiders watched them spill out of a building and cross the square, chattering, laughing, making the same noise any class of children would make enjoying the novelty of stepping out of school.
Sal pointed at a sign above the door they’d emerged from: BIBLIOTHEQUE.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Not sure.’ Maddy shrugged. ‘Let’s see — maybe we can get some information there.’
The other two followed her as she crossed the square, took the steps up and inside into a cool, dimly lit interior. Wood-panelled walls and a threadbare carpet; tall avenues of dark wooden shelves thick with volumes of books.
‘I’m guessing this is a library, right?’ said Sal.
Maddy nodded. ‘Yeah … yeah, that’s right.’
But it was unlike any library Maddy had ever been in since first grade. She was used to modern, bright, glass spaces filled with busy Internet stations and orange plastic bucket chairs, and racks of DVDs and magazines … and, oh yeah, one or two books, somewhere.
‘History,’ uttered Adam. ‘We need to find a history book.’ His voice echoed around the quiet library and several pairs of eyes looked up, mildly irritated.
Maddy nodded. They spread out, each picking an aisle, and started to scan the book spines on the shelves, looking for some way to identify a category. After a few minutes, Sal softly whispered for them to come over.
They both joined her in what appeared to be a children’s section. She was holding a large book in her hands. ‘It’s a kiddie history book.’ Sal flicked through several pages, all of them with brightly coloured illustrations breaking up the text. She spotted an illustration of Roman legionaries, a diagram of a sailing ship, a timeline chart. World history, by the look of it. Good enough.
‘I don’t suppose either of you can read any French?’ asked Maddy.
Sal and Adam shook their heads.
‘Me neither,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to borrow it.’ Maddy took it out of Sal’s hands and, after quickly glancing up and down the aisle, she shoved it under her sweatshirt.
‘It’s a kid’s history book,’ said Adam. ‘You can’t get all the information you need from that, can you?’
She shrugged. ‘No w
orse than Wikipedia.’
‘Wiki-what?’
‘Never mind.’ Maddy pulled another book from the shelf and flicked through several dozen pages. Finally nodding with approval. ‘This one looks good too.’ She pushed it into Adam’s hands. ‘Well? Hide it.’
CHAPTER 40
2001, New York
Computer-Bob’s cursor blinked silently on the screen for a few seconds.
› I have completed French-to-English language translation from the scanned images. I will be another few moments collating the data.
‘Right,’ said Maddy, tapping the desk impatiently with her fingers. ‘Quick as you can, please.’
› Affirmative.
She wondered how long it would be before some curious gendarme came knocking on their shutter door. Their odd-looking round brick bunker was visible from the gravel road and although it didn’t seem to be that busy a road, she was sure someone driving past would eventually register the fact that their archway ought not to be there.
She looked down at the library books they’d spent the last half an hour scanning. Not every page, just the pages that dealt with the twelfth century onwards.
Children’s history books. She shook her head. The illustrations were cartoony with bright colours and smiley, rosy-cheeked depictions of knights and maidens, soldiers and peasants. The text was printed large and friendly — little detail there, she imagined.
History for elementary-school kids.
Great research there.
The cursor skittered across Bob’s dialogue box.
› Process complete. I will summarize the data components for you in a chronological sequence.
On another screen a word-processor opened, text suddenly blinking on to the page in sentences and paragraphs, quickly building up, filling the page as Bob rapidly cut and pasted relevant sections of text from the database he’d just constructed.
Adam craned his neck forward, eager to read what was coming up on the screen. Just text. Computer-Bob had not wasted time processing the many illustrations, most of which seemed little more than decorative rather than informative, there merely to break up the paragraphs for younger minds to digest.