And the Rest Is History

by Jodi Taylor

  Still no one had spoken. I’m not sure why they were hesitating. We obviously weren’t Norman knights – had they taken us for locals? Was it possible everyone felt enough Saxons had died today? Or was this just wishful thinking on my part?

  I turned my head to look at the man on the litter. I might as well know the truth before I died. I had nothing to lose.

  I wasn’t the only one who was going to die tonight. I looked at the ruined and blood-soaked man in front of me. A bloody bandage covered one side of his face, including his eye. So no clue there. One leg was gone above the knee. And I was pretty sure he had been castrated, as well. I struggled to compare this broken man with the mighty figure I had seen at Beaurain. Or Stamford Bridge.

  There are all sorts of stories, of course. Some say that Harold survived the battle and went abroad. Others that he remained in England but lived out his days as a hermit. Although looking at the state of him, my guess was that if he wasn’t dead now then he very soon would be. I’d seen Harold Godwinson in his prime and I couldn’t believe that, while he had breath in his body, he would not have come back to fight the usurper William every inch of the way. The crown of England would have sat very uneasily on William’s head. My guess was that he would die this night.

  On the other hand, there are those stories…

  So now what?

  We had an uncomfortably large number of swords pointing at us. They weren’t going to run the risk of us giving them away. We were going to die.

  The silence just dragged on. I could hear the horse breathing. I could certainly hear my own heart pounding away.

  And then, not too far away, a horse neighed. Two men immediately muffled the farm horse with their cloaks. It shifted uneasily but remained calm. I could hear voices – Norman voices – and the sounds of undergrowth being beaten down.

  The escort glanced nervously over their shoulders. The riders were very close. What could they do? Any attempt to move would be heard. Staying put would lead to their discovery. Someone should do something.

  Yes, well, we all know who that’s going to be, don’t we?

  I put out both my hands, palms outwards, in the traditional ‘Stay where you are,’ gesture.

  They stared but stayed.

  I said to Evans, ‘Get yourself back to the pod.’

  His response was unrepeatable, but the gist was that that wasn’t going to happen.

  I made one final ‘Stay here and stay quiet,’ gesture and turned to run.

  ‘This way,’ said Evans.

  Always run downhill. Especially when you’re trying to get away from a bunch of men on horses. We fled down the hill, making as much noise as we could. Which was a lot. We crashed through the undergrowth, snapping twigs and small branches as we went.

  I enquired where we were heading to.

  ‘As far away as possible,’ he panted. ‘Australia, perhaps.’

  Wherever we were going, it was working. I heard shouts behind us, and a second later, the sound of hooves. Evans picked up the pace.

  As far as I could tell, we were heading in a south-westerly direction, with the Andredsweald Forest behind us and to our right, into which, I hoped, Edith Swanneschals and her entourage were now disappearing as fast as they could go. I knew there was a stream somewhere around here and a lot of boggy ground nearby. If we could get to that then we might yet escape the horsemen.

  Fat chance. Another group of them where thundering up the hill towards us. We were pushed northwards. Uphill. And now it was dark. I could barely see a thing.

  ‘Keep going,’ panted Evans. ‘We’ll get back into the woods and climb a tree.’

  They were gaining on us. The hooves sounded very close now. I heard a shout. They’d seen us.

  We veered off left again. It was uphill and hard work. I could feel my breath rasping in my throat. My lungs were on fire. This was all Clive Ronan’s fault. If I’d completed my run that day – and the next day, and so on – instead of having him crash into my life and throw everything into chaos, then today I’d be lithe, svelte, fit, athletic, whatever.

  I fell over. I know – such a cliché. In films, when running from peril, it’s always the silly little heroine who trips over her own feet. Sadly, life imitates art and I went down with a bloody great crash.

  Evans screeched to a halt, whispering, ‘Max?’

  ‘Keep going, you pillock,’ I said, struggling to disentangle my foot from something or other. ‘Don’t stop.’

  He completely ignored me, turning back to kneel beside me.

  And suddenly there were horses everywhere.

  I pulled him down beside me. They had torches, but there was a slight chance they might miss us in the dark. We lay in the long, coarse grass, breathing into our sleeves so they wouldn’t hear us panting.

  I heard shouts of recognition as the two groups caught sight of each other and they both turned towards us.

  ‘Shit,’ whispered Evans.

  Spurring their horses, they moved uphill, strung out in a long line that left us nowhere to go, all ready to flush us out.

  ‘Shit,’ said Evans again.

  Now what? Did we stand up and run? Where to? Did we stand and fight? With what? Did we crouch and hope they’d miss us in the dark? I’ve heard that horses won’t willingly stand on a human being, but with our luck, these horses would be ancestors of the infamous Turk, the horse allocated to me for side-saddle training, whose relationship with his rider included biting, kicking, rolling on, crushing, attempted drowning – and trampling.

  I could hear the horses snorting as they increased their speed. They couldn’t see us. Yet

  We began to inch our way backwards. The torches were less than twenty yards away. They would be on us in seconds.

  We were concealed by long grass and some of the prickliest brambles in south-east England, but they didn’t have to see us to run us down. Which was probably what they intended to do. Yes, we both had stun guns, but frankly, who wants a stunned horse and its rider crashing down on top of them in the dark?

  ‘Come on,’ said Evans. ‘We have to make a run for it. Stay with me.’

  Someone shouted.

  I don’t know what happened next. I was nearly blind. Their torches had ruined my night vision. My ears were full of the sound of thundering hooves. They were almost on top of us. And then, someone shouted a warning. And then someone else screamed. The sound of hooves became confused. A horse neighed – high pitched in fear. And then another. I could hear furiously scrabbling hooves. And then a series of crashes. Men shouted in warning and in fear. More men were screaming. And horses too. The torches began to disappear, one by one.

  Some went out, but some lay on the ground, still burning and giving us flickering glimpses of a dreadful scene.

  My first, admittedly slightly overwrought, thought was that the ground had opened up beneath our feet, illuminating a scene from hell. But it was true. The ground had indeed opened beneath our feet. Here, at last, was the Malfosse. The Evil Ditch.

  The story goes that a small group from William’s forces, responding to the taunts of a bunch of anonymous Saxons, were lured into an area where long grass concealed a number of steep-sided and very deep ditches. Oh my God – were we those taunting Saxons? My heart turned over. What had we done?

  No time to think about that now. Unable to see in the near darkness, the Normans had run straight into one of the open ditches. And they didn’t just stumble and fall. They had been galloping headlong when the ground ended and the earth gaped for them. Horses had fallen headfirst, somersaulting over each other. We had heard the crack of broken backs and legs. Their riders, flying through the air, had hit the ground with bone-shattering force and lay helpless as they were either trampled to death or crushed by those falling in after them.

  Another wave of horses and riders were following them in – tumbling and cartwheeling, to land with hideous impact. Huge, heavy destriers flew through the air as if they weighed nothing. Broken men and horses lay in a m
angled mess of bodies and limbs. Any survivors of the initial fall couldn’t possibly be saved and were perishing either from their injuries or suffocation.

  The dying screams of fatally injured horses and their riders echoed through the gathering night. Down below, in William’s camp, horns sounded the alarm. Already, we could hear the sound of hooves as Duke William, possibly fearing another Saxon army falling on his camp from out of the dark, despatched forces to investigate.

  I tried to look away, but there are some things you can’t unsee. I saw a horse, one of the first to fall, I guessed, wedged vertically, head down, trapped and suffocating beneath a mass of bodies. Its back legs were clear, and it kicked and kicked, legs flailing violently in its frantic efforts to be free, injuring all those around it. Even as I looked, its struggles weakened and then ceased.

  A solitary, riderless horse ran past us, almost knocking me over, its reins flying loose. I caught a glimpse of a wild, rolling eye, and then Evans grabbed my arm.

  ‘Come on. Uphill and to the left. Get into the trees.’

  ‘But this is the Malfosse incident. I have to …’

  ‘Listen. Guthrie’s gone. Markham’s gone. I’m in charge and I’m not losing you on my very first assignment. Get into the trees or I’ll stun you and drag you there myself.’

  Fair enough, I suppose.

  We made no attempt at concealment, running as fast as we could for the cover of the forest, finally collapsing and crawling, panting, into a patch of scratchy brambles.

  I could see lights moving uphill. Part of William’s army was coming to investigate.

  We crawled deeper under cover and I called up Sykes.

  ‘Oh, hello Max. Everything all right?’

  ‘A bit busy here, but I know what happened after the battle. I’ve just seen Edith Swanneschals making away with Harold. And he’s still alive. And I’ve just witnessed the Malfosse incident. And there’s any number of Normans on their way to investigate. And I’m trapped in a bramble patch with our Head of Security.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she actually sounded sympathetic. ‘Well, if he gets a bit frisky, you should fetch him one with a rolled-up newspaper.’

  Bashford intervened. ‘Do you know if Edith got Harold away?’

  ‘She must have. There’s no report of him being captured after the battle and there were always rumours that he got away.’

  ‘Do you think he survived?’

  I thought of big, strong, vigorous Harold Godwinson. Then I thought of those wounds. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because if he had lived he would have fought William with every breath in his body. The country would have risen up and followed him. It didn’t. So no, I’m sorry, Mr Bashford, but I don’t think he did.’

  Evans intervened. ‘Far be it from me to interrupt this intellectual discussion, but I need to get your lost historian back to the pod. Watch out for us and be prepared to have the door open in a hurry.’

  ‘We’ll come and search for you.’

  ‘No,’ I said alarmed. ‘We’re quite safe where we are.’ Evans rolled his eyes. ‘We’ll work our way back to you. No one leaves the pod. That’s an order.’

  *

  We struggled back in the dark. We saw no one and no one saw us. We tumbled in through the door, where Sykes passed us some tea. I don’t think mine even touched the sides. I gulped it down while Evans described what we’d seen. He had a bit of a job dissuading them from going to have a look for themselves.

  Then we washed our face and hands, tidied ourselves up, because historians never go back looking scruffy, and, finally, we jumped away.

  Normally, the return from an assignment as important as Hastings is a triumphant business. As many of the unit as can be prised away from their work – which is all of them – assembles on the gantry or behind the safety line and cheers us in. We wave and march to Sick Bay for them to pull us about in the name of medicine and then retire for a shower and a favourite meal. Reports are written, arguments settled, the odd margarita secretly imbibed and we sleep for twelve hours.

  This wasn’t anything like that.

  We disembarked quietly. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could still hear the ring of steel on steel, the thunder of hooves, the moans of the dying.

  And then we stepped out of the pod into Hawking. Only a few emergency lights were on. The roof was covered with a giant tarpaulin that flapped and rustled occasionally. The giant space was almost completely empty, making it easy to see the great gouges in the walls where lumps of pod had been blown around like dandelion seeds.

  Dieter appeared with a glow stick and in silence, guided us around the holes in the floor. In equal silence, we followed him. There were no dreadful jokes. No banter. There weren’t even any arguments. The effects of what we’d just witnessed, together with disembarking to a wrecked Hawking … We’d had some tough times. It wasn’t the first time St Mary’s had blown up around us, but I thought at the time that this was our darkest hour.

  We pulled everything together, viewed the footage, wrote our reports, and indulged in a bit of speculation just for the hell of it. I recommended Bashford and Sykes do the presentation to Thirsk and, since every technician was now working his socks off in Hawking, that they take Lingoss along for technical support. As I said to Dr Bairstow, it was time we gave the younger generation a chance to shine. There was a short pause as we both envisaged what Miss Sykes and the Senior Faculty would make of each other, and then he agreed.

  He rearranged one or two things on his desk and then said, ‘Our current schedule of assignments is ended. May I enquire as to your plans for the future?’

  I hadn’t been going to say anything, but this seemed a fortuitous coincidence, so I said, ‘Well, sir, actually…’ took a deep breath, and with some misgivings, admitted I was seriously thinking about taking Matthew away. Ronan was dead, I said. We could live quietly in Rushford. Perhaps we could stay with Mrs De Winter for a while. I would commute. Matthew could go to the school Dr Dowson had found, I said. We could say he’d been subject to some sort of trauma and evolved stories of living in another time as some sort of defence mechanism. And living a normal life, with normal friends, doing normal things, would surely cause bad memories to fade and he would become a normal little boy with a favourite football team. He’d leave his stuff all over the house, become indescribably dirty at the drop of a hat, refuse to eat his vegetables, incubate new forms of life under his bed, sulk in his room when he couldn’t get his own way, and just generally be normal.

  I’d clean the house on Saturday mornings, I said, becoming quite carried away at this fantasy of another life. I’d shout at him about the state of his room, demand to know why one of his socks was always missing, force him to do his homework, moan about the cost of living, my job, my life. We would go to the cinema – but not on school nights. We’d have a week’s holiday every year in Devon. He could have pizza on Saturday nights.

  Eventually emerging from cloud-cuckoo land, I asked Dr Bairstow’s opinion.

  After a long silence, he said, ‘I cannot take exception to any of your plans, Max, although I myself have never regarded pizza as nutritiously acceptable, but from a purely personal point of view I would feel much happier if you were to wait, say, six months. If you are still of the same mind then, it might be a good step for both of you – but I need to be sure you are taking it for the right reasons.’

  ‘What would be the wrong reasons?’

  He hesitated. ‘If you are running away from bad memories, then your strategy won’t work. Wherever you go, you will be taking your memories with you. It is always better to confront them. Furthermore, I think you underestimate how lonely and how difficult is the life of a single parent. Here, you have friends and their support. They tell me Matthew is settling well and I think it would be a shame to jeopardise the progress made so far. And from a personal, purely selfish point of view, I would like you to stay. You are a key member of this unit. I know you don’t think
so, but people look to you for guidance and example. If you were to leave, others might think of following your example. Obviously I cannot compel you to remain and nor would I wish to do so. All I ask is that you wait six months and if you are still of the same mind, then yes, we can make plans. Together.’

  He was right. I nodded, rather glad of the excuse not to have to make any hard choices just yet.

  The days dragged past. One after the other. As they do. People said I was handling things well and I was. No credit to me. I didn’t do anything. The bits that loved and laughed and experienced emotions had all disappeared with Leon. Wherever he was, those parts of me were with him. What remained was some kind of shell or husk – empty and dry – that walked and talked and never felt a single thing.

  I’ve never told anyone about this. I’ve never even mentioned it to Peterson. Even after it was over, I wasn’t quite sure it hadn’t all been a dream.

  I’d put Matthew to bed, quietly closed his door and sat down to watch a little TV. When I awoke, hours later, cold, cramped and groggy, someone was outside, fumbling with the door knob.

  I didn’t make the mistake of leaping to my feet to challenge whoever it was. For a start, I’m not good when I wake up. I’m never sure where my feet are, and it’s hard to be taken seriously when trying to challenge someone from ankle height because you’ve fallen flat on your face.

  I checked Matthew’s door was still closed and that I was between him and whoever was out there, and reached for my old walking stick which I still kept propped against the bookcase. The door finally opened and a dark figure slipped through, closing it noiselessly behind him.

  I raised the stick, said, ‘OK, buster, don’t make a move unless you’re really, really fond of hospital food,’ and Leon said, ‘Well, there’s a fine welcome,’ and I dropped the stick in shock.