by Jodi Taylor
Normally, I’d make him speak, because it was important he communicated in words, not just grunts and gestures, but this wasn’t the time. I said, ‘Can you give us a minute, guys?’ and they tactfully went off to cut up the pizza.
I sat him down and said, ‘What’s the problem?’
He simply looked around us and then back at me.
Like every parent on the planet, I considered lying to him because that was the easy way out, and then had second thoughts. This might be an opportunity to prepare him for bad news.
I didn’t make the mistake of trying to take his hand or putting my arms around him, because he didn’t like that sort of thing. Instead I said, ‘We think Daddy might have hurt himself. We’re going to look for him.’
He nodded but still said nothing.
‘I’ve brought you here for these people to look after you while I’m gone.’
‘Auntie Lingoss?’
‘Is a little busy at the moment. You know we had a bit of an accident in Hawking and she’s working hard to fix it.’
He nodded.
‘I have to go for a minute now and talk to Captain Ellis and some other people. Will you be all right here with…’ I paused.
They looked up. ‘Trent and Parrish.’
‘With Uncle Trent and Auntie Parrish,’ I finished, which wiped the grins off their faces.
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded and began to rummage in the box of goodies.
I looked down at his dark hair, so like Leon’s, stood up and headed for the door.
Just as I was leaving, he said, ‘He’s not with the others.’
I said, ‘What did you say?’ but he was already head down in his box. He had forgotten me.
Ellis and I set off for the briefing.
Which could have gone better.
It started well. I sat with thirty or so other people while Captain Ellis outlined the situation and briefed us on conditions in Constantinople and what we were about to encounter there.
Acting on the assumption that they were as badly injured as anyone could be without actually being dead, there would be four medical teams, each of three people, supported by four teams of four security guards. With Captain Ellis and me, that made a total of thirty people. Which was a lot. But, as Ellis pointed out, this wasn’t a history-based assignment. This was a rescue mission.
I didn’t argue. This was their way, not ours. Go in heavy – do the job – get out again. When I thought about it, I didn’t have any problems with that at all.
We’d all go in their big hospital pod and I didn’t have any problems with that either.
‘We don’t know what sort of condition they’ll be in,’ said Ellis. ‘Or even whether they’re alive at all.’
No one looked at me.
‘Right then, people. Background. Constantinople in 1204 is a violent place. Everyone will be a threat to us. Invading crusaders are out for blood. Terror-stricken civilians will be desperate to escape and trampling anything in their path. There will be the elite troops, the Varangian Guard, fighting a rearguard action. There will be toppling buildings and trampling horses. A lot of the city will be on fire. We’ll be heavily armoured because on this occasion, historical accuracy is unimportant.’
Everyone looked at me. When did I get the reputation for being such a troublemaker? I’d barely been here ten minutes. For once, I agreed with them – historical accuracy was unimportant.
Unfortunately, that was as far as detente went. As usual, with the Time Police, things went tits-up fairly quickly.
Ellis had finished describing the conditions we could expect and was detailing the precautions to be taken. I had honestly intended to keep my head down and my mouth shut, but all I could hear was so much impatient, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ from the officers around me. I didn’t think they were listening because this wasn’t something they wanted to hear. Their attitude was very much, ‘Can we stop talking and go and shoot someone now, please?’ Shifting in my seat, I could see there were very few women present. Always a sign of an unenlightened organisation.
Eventually, I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Yes, I know but, honestly, this sea of testosterone was going to get us all killed. If Leon and the others were, by some miracle, still alive when we got there, I wasn’t going to let these idiots blow our chances of getting them out safely. I raised my hand.
‘Yes, Max?’
I did try. I tried, quietly and reasonably, to explain that shooting contemporaries, even in self-defence, would not be a good idea. I tried to explain about History. I might as well have tried to explain evolution to a creationist. I was using words they simply didn’t understand.
There was a certain amount of restless shifting in their seats and then someone said, ‘It’s going to be a slaughterhouse there. Are you saying we can’t even defend ourselves?’
‘It’s a key point in History,’ I said. ‘We have to be really careful.’
I know – I can’t believe I said that either. Two hours with the Time Police and my brain was already turning to yoghurt. I tried again. ‘It’s going to be tough enough without going in and deliberately asking for trouble.’
‘We’ve never had any trouble before.’
‘You were putting things right before. Righting wrongs. Repairing the timeline. As far as History is concerned, this will be just a bit of private enterprise. History isn’t interested in rescues and noble causes and the like, and if you start mowing people down right left and centre then it will fight back.’
‘That’s no concern of ours.’
‘It should be. There’ll be enough going on around us without having to take on History as well.’
‘Typical bloody St Mary’s. It’s a big boy’s world out there, sweetheart, and if you can’t hack it…’
‘Hey, it wasn’t St Mary’s stupidity that caused all this to blow up in the first place.’
‘It’s your bloody boyfriend we’re risking our lives for.’
‘My bloody husband kicked your arse and don’t you forget it.’
‘Listen, sister…’
‘Enough,’ said Ellis sharply and we subsided. ‘Our mission is to locate three St Mary’s personnel – two of whom were working with us to assist with the apprehension of Clive Ronan – together with one of our own, and bring them home. They were working together in a common cause and so are we. We go in and we get them out. Sonic weapons. Low charge. For defence only – and only then as a last resort. The medical teams will do their job and the security forces will do theirs. This is new style policing. Minimum impact. Is everyone clear?’
There was some muttering and I began to suspect that Commander Hay might have more of a problem on her hands than I’d realised.
We went to get kitted out.
I liked their armour. It was a matt black, flexible and light – far better than anything St Mary’s had – and, as far as I could see, capable of keeping out everything from a charging rhino to a small thermo-nuclear device. They issued me with a sonic gun. A very small one. I’d rather hoped I’d get one of the big ones and I’d look really cool, but no. I also picked up a small med-kit and a helmet. I thought I looked just like a real Time Police officer, but apparently I was in a minority of one on that one.
We assembled outside their hospital pod. Blacker and more sinister than your average medical facility, but with a big, red reassuring H painted on every side. And, presumably, the roof.
Inside, they’d set up four stations, each bed surrounded by banks of equipment. A medical team stood by each one. Two pilots sat at the enormous console. I was impressed. Standing quietly against the wall, well out of the way, I looked around me. Everyone was armoured, even the medical teams. Their names were stencilled across the helmets, together with the red cross, the red crescent and every other medical aid symbol I knew. And a few I didn’t. Faces were grim. Weapons ready. We were set to go.
For the first time since being caught up in events only a few hours ago, and whirled here almost
without having time to think, I took a moment to consider the implications. Not just for me, but for everyone. They might not be dead. There was only the faintest chance, but they might not be dead. Ronan was almost certainly still alive, so why not Leon and the others? They were three tough professional men. And Van Owen was no slouch when it came to looking after herself, either. If anyone stood a chance of survival it would be those four. They could have done it. They could have survived. For the first time since I heard the news, I felt almost optimistic.
Until we got there and I saw for myself what we were dealing with.
As I’ve said on many occasions, we’re historians. History is our business. Show me any major historical event and I’ll point to a couple of badly-dressed misfits muttering to themselves and slowly rotating through 360 degrees in an effort to get everything safely recorded before being trampled, shot, covered in boiling oil, executed as spies, or catching something unpleasant. You may not have noticed, but although we do have an enormous amount of enthusiasm for our job, sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan.
This doesn’t mean, that our enthusiasm encompasses all of History. While we all have our wish lists, many of us have whatever the opposite of a wish list is. Things, people, places we definitely don’t want to see.
For Peterson, it’s the execution of Charles I. He gets very upset about it. No one knows why. Dr Bairstow respects this and should we ever jump to that particular event, it is clearly understood that Peterson will not be included.
I myself have two events on my list. The first is the murder of the scholar Hypatia, mathematician and philosopher. She was head of the Neoplatonic School of Alexandria. Dragged from her chariot, she was stripped and flayed alive by Christian zealots – an unfortunate victim of the power struggle between Orestes, Prefect of Egypt, and Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. It is argued that her death marked the end of classical antiquity.
The second event is the Fourth Crusade. The Sack of Constantinople, April 1204. If our people were indeed here, then they were in some very serious trouble. It’s well known that the Crusaders fell on the city, looting, burning, raping and murdering. Over three days, they stripped the city of everything of value – that’s how the famous bronze horses ended up in St Mark’s Square, Venice. Countless irreplaceable treasures were broken up or melted down only for their material worth. The wonderful statue of Heracles, made by the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, Lysippos himself, was melted down for its bronze. The Library was burned. Sanctuaries looted. Nuns raped. Thousands upon thousands of people were killed, raped or mutilated. For three days, the Frankish Crusaders, mad for blood and gold, and having, as they thought, a free pass from the Pope to do as they pleased, turned the city into a living hell. The Crusaders’ treatment of Constantinople and its people would shatter the Christian church. The Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches were irrevocably sundered. The city would never recover its former glory.
And somewhere, in all this maelstrom of fire and blood, death and destruction was one small pod and its probably critically injured crew. Even if they’d survived the blast (which they probably hadn’t), and the crash landing (which they probably hadn’t), they’d be in no state to defend themselves against whatever was going on around them.
We could only hope we got to them before the invading Crusaders did.
I know we landed in the vicinity of the church of Hagia Sofia because the coordinates said so but visibility was so poor we could have been anywhere.
We were in an open space at the end of a narrow street with tiny houses on either side. This must be an area of small artisans. Each little house had a let-down front on which goods could be displayed. Normally, this street would be bustling with people going about their business: women shopping, men sitting outside their shops talking to each other, mothers shouting for or at their children, dogs sniffing around – all the sights and sounds of everyday life.
Today, that life was gone; for many people, gone for ever. It looked as if a tornado had been through the place. Gone were the carpenters, bread makers, tanners and leather workers, the metal workers, the masons. Broken pottery lay everywhere. A hand spindle lay abandoned nearby, still with tufts of sheep’s wool. Looters had already been through the place. Overturned wicker baskets spilled their contents across the street. The table fronts on which the traders would display their wares were broken off, or hanging at crazy angles. There were signs that people’s pathetic possessions had been dragged out into the street, kicked around for anything of value and then abandoned.
The air was so thick with smoke from burning buildings that even the looming presence of Hagia Sofia was lost in the murk. And given what the Crusaders were getting up to inside, it wasn’t a place where anyone sensible would want to be.
In addition to the big screen over the console, this pod had screens on every wall, all of them showing different viewpoints, and none of them good. Even as I stared at the one closest to me, a group of people burst from the smoke, scorched, choking, dishevelled and desperate, running for their lives. They streamed past the pod, so terrified, so frantic, that I doubt they even saw us. Their open mouths showed red in their smoke-blackened faces. Lost children screamed in fear and panic, holding out their arms to be picked up and comforted. By anyone.
Moments later, in hot pursuit, half a dozen men, their armour splattered with blood, swords drawn, erupted from the same smoke.
They talk about crowd mentality. How – as part of a crowd – people will do things they wouldn’t dream of normally. Terrible things. Looting. Rape. Torture. Murder. Things they would never have thought themselves capable of. Often, afterwards, they are horrified at their actions. They can’t believe what they’ve done. They’re distraught and ashamed. But here’s the thing. That’s afterwards. No matter how sorry they are afterwards, somehow it never stops them committing those atrocities in the first place.
They fell upon the fleeing people, most of whom were only women and children and all unarmed. They just hacked them into pieces. Not one swift, sure, almost merciful stroke. They fell upon them in a frenzy, hacking them apart. Limbs flew through the air, trailing arcs of scarlet blood. The man closest to us stabbed wildly into the tightly packed throng and, somehow, a bone must have locked on his sword. He tugged and tugged but to no avail. He shouted for help. Two others came to assist, laughing and tugging with him. His victim – a little boy of about ten – dead already, thank God, jerked like a hideous puppet as they pulled and pushed. It was a great game. Eventually, they had to use their own swords, hacking the body into pieces until finally the knight was able to wrench back his weapon. He aimed a final kick at something that really wasn’t recognisable any longer and followed his comrades back into the smoke.
We watched all that in silence.
I thought – that could have been Matthew. That could have been my own little boy. Where was his mother? Was she watching in anguish, unable to protect her own child? Or, more likely, was she already dead?
Under the guise of passing me my helmet, captain Ellis said softly, ‘Don’t look, Max. I know what you’re thinking, but for your own sanity, don’t look.’
I did look of course. I had to. It’s my job. Someone has to bear witness. I’ve seen brutality. I was up with the archers at Agincourt as the French cavalry crushed itself underfoot and drowned in the mud. I saw the Persian revenge on the Spartans who dared stand in their way at Thermopylae. I’ve seen Joan of Arc burn. I thought I’d seen it all, but I’ve never seen anything like the ferocity with which Christian fell upon Christian this day. It was beyond violent. Beyond brutal. The events of these three days would cast long, dark shadows over the next eight hundred years. Popes would apologise to Patriarchs but the Venetians still have the famous horses. Millions of tourists gawp at them every year and have no idea of the price paid for them.
Ellis turned to the woman in the right-hand seat. ‘How long have we got?’
She swiped a few screens on the conso
le, bringing up maps and figures. ‘We have seventeen minutes before their estimated time of arrival.’ She enlarged a display. ‘Look for them in a north-easterly direction from this pod. Approximately five hundred yards. In about seventeen minutes. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise.’
‘No, good job. Listen up everyone. Everyone stays in their teams. One security detail to each medical team. One medical team to each casualty.’ He turned to the driver. ‘Get that ramp up as soon as we’re gone and be ready to have it back down again in double time. We do not want to hang around here. Max, you will stay with me at all times. Ready everyone? On three.’ He flipped down his visor. ‘Good luck, everyone.’
The ramp came down and we moved out, plunging ever deeper into the artisan quarter. The narrow streets were like a maze. Some were no wider than the width of a skinny donkey. There were ankle-twisting steps up and down, or right-angled bends appearing out of nowhere. Sometimes we had to squeeze between two buildings. There were doorways and alleyways leading in all directions. It was almost impossible to take a direct path. Sometimes we were beaten back by flames, or the narrow streets were so choked with rubble we had no choice but to go back the way we’d come and find another way. Wooden balconies, burning thatch and roof tiles fell on us from above. I had thought our main problem would be avoiding the gangs of Crusaders roaming the streets, drunk on blood and lust and stolen wine, but actually we were in more danger from the inhabitants themselves, so blind with terror that they would run straight over the top of anyone or anything in their way.
I caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye. A leather curtain hanging across an open doorway twitched. Someone wanted to see us without us seeing them. I guessed the family was still inside. They would remain there until the very last moment because no matter how dangerous it was to remain in a burning house, it wasn’t half as dangerous as being out on the streets. As we were.