by Jodi Taylor
‘Hey,’ protested Markham.
‘Understood,’ said Lingoss.
The first person I saw outside was Peterson, unscathed and unperturbed. Beside him, Miss Sykes, peered about her with bright-eyed curiosity. Professor Rapson and Dr Dowson stood nearby with Atherton and Evans stationed one on each side, ready to head them off at the pass should they stray, or intercede should they come to blows. Every single one of them looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. And all of them reeked of rum.
Peterson patted the pouch holding his recorder. ‘We’ve got some really good stuff here. You?’
This casual reference to my recording marathon did not endear him to me in any way.
‘Meh,’ I said. ‘Just the usual stuff. Shakespeare, Burbage, deathless prose – same old, same old.’
He opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, Dr Bairstow hove into view, his team trailing behind him, with Major Guthrie bringing up the rear and a definite contender in the Best Black Eye of the Year competition.
The curfew wasn’t until nine o’clock but the sun had long since disappeared. I flung my scorched and burned cloak around my shoulders, ignored Mrs Enderby’s reproachful stare, performed a quick head count and ordered everyone back to the pod.
Dr Bairstow said very little as we made our way back through the darkening streets. Southwark was, if anything, even livelier in the evening than during the day. Shouts and laughter could be heard through open doors and windows. Some torches and lanterns were being lit, but most streets and narrow alleyways were in deep shadow, and they really weren’t places where we wanted to be.
Snatches of conversation drifted back to me.
‘It’s a kind of a cross between a clove and hitch. I shall call it the clit.’
‘Couldn’t think of anything else to do than shove it down the front of my trousers...’
‘And then Mrs Mack fetched him an almighty wallop...’
‘Scurvy, of course, which is why Americans refer to us as Limeys. Interesting isn’t it that in these times one could journey to and from America far more easily than in our time today...’
I stood at the bottom of the ramp and counted them all into the pod, congratulated myself on not having lost anyone, and ruthlessly pulled rank to be first into the toilet. The bloody play was four hours long, for crying out loud, and while everyone else might have been happy to splash against the wall, I wasn’t. Lingoss, herself obviously not a happy wall-splasher either, was hard on my heels.
I gave the word, the world went white, and still Dr Bairstow said nothing.
We landed with barely a bump. I made everyone stand still for decontamination, watching carefully as the cold blue light played over us all. Everyone was still babbling away about their own afternoon. The only person saying nothing was Dr Bairstow. It was very unnerving.
The ramp came down. Leon entered, smiled for me alone, bent over the console, and began to shut things down.
I don’t know why I thought we might get away with it. We never had before. Just as he was leaving TB2, Dr Bairstow turned and spoke at last.
‘As soon as you have finished in Sick Bay, Doctors Maxwell, Peterson, and Mr Markham, please report to me in my office.’
I sighed.
We crept into Sick Bay and tried to hang around at the back of the queue – there were many people to process and I think our plan was to get lost in the crowd – but Helen Foster hoicked us to the head of the queue, threw us through the scanner and pronounced us fit for purpose. Well, no less fit for purpose than we were before, she said, and to get out of here now because she was very busy and had better things to do than hospitalise Markham for a couple of really very minor burns so stop waving them around Markham because no one was interested, and there was no point in Peterson hanging about because she was far too busy to talk to him at the moment, and why was Maxwell still here?
We know when we’re not wanted.
We trailed to Dr Bairstow’s office, hoping for divine intervention on the way, but we’d obviously used up our quota for the day, arriving at his door completely unengulfed by catastrophe. As Markham said gloomily, for a bunch of people overtaken by disaster far more often than was good for them, where was a good crisis when you needed one?
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t know why I’m standing around like a criminal. While everyone around me was stowing away on ships or brawling in the market or bursting into flames, I was the one who continued with the mission.’
‘That’s a very good point, Max,’ said Peterson. ‘And I saved the New World from Professor Rapson.’
‘Another good point. Lead with that.’
We both looked at Markham. ‘I’m the The Man Who Saved Shakespeare,’ he said, and we could hear the capital letters.
‘Leave this to me,’ I said, and they indicated their enthusiastic willingness to do that very thing.
We waited quietly until the Boss turned up, fresh and smart in clean clothes while we were still in our tatty Tudor gear. We followed him into his office, Markham taking care to display his burns prominently.
There’s an accepted routine for this sort of thing. Dr Bairstow sits in silent majesty and the offenders – that’s almost always the three of us, me, Peterson and Markham with a varying supporting cast – issue the standard blanket denial, offer up an unconvincing explanation, attempt to justify our actions, accept our reprimand, and hasten to the bar to nurse our wounds and our pride and have a well-deserved drink.
But maybe not today.
Dr Bairstow sat behind his desk. He didn’t have enough hair to look dishevelled. He could stand in a Force Eight gale and literally not turn a hair, but he did have a certain battered look about him. His lip was split and a rather impressive bruise was forming under his left eye. I opened my mouth to make a bid for the moral high ground, but he beat me to it.
‘Why is it that after every assignment I look up to see you three standing in front of me?’ Which since he’d particularly requested the pleasure of our company seemed a little unfair.
We indicated our own mystification.
‘So,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure you will correct me if I go astray, Professor Rapson inadvisedly boards a boat...’
‘Ship,’ murmured Peterson.
‘...bound for the New World. An altercation ensues and your solution, Dr Peterson, is to ply everyone present with cheap rum, which delays the sailing sufficiently to give the original passenger’s wife and family time to intercept the boat...’
‘Ship.’
‘...remove said passenger and restore him to the bosom of his apparently enormous family.’
‘His enormous grateful family, sir.’
‘I gather that under the mellowing influence of a great deal of alcohol, moves to keelhaul Professor Rapson were circumvented.’
‘I think they were more of a threat than a promise and...’
‘Where was Miss Sykes during all this? And don’t tell me she wasn’t there?’
‘Miss Sykes heroically undertook to induce the second mate to release the professor.’
‘He was in the brig?’
‘Not as such, sir. He was actually sitting on a coil of rope demonstrating the er ... the um ... his new knot to an admiring crowd.’
‘And Mr Keller? What was the Security Section’s role in this?’
‘Mr Keller suffered a slight loss of balance – no sea legs, sir – inadvertently falling on a couple of seamen. It was later agreed that his actions had been misinterpreted and there was general mirth and merriment over the misunderstanding.’
Peterson beamed at Dr Bairstow. Who turned his attention to me.
‘And you Dr Maxwell?’
‘I recorded the entire production sir,’ I said firmly, feeling that not enough attention was being paid to the one person who had fulfilled her part of the assignment. ‘All bladder-straining four hours of it, together with footage of the audience, paying particular attention to the galleries.’
I
placed my and Lingoss’s recorders on the desk in front of him and stepped back, oozing virtuousness and eagerness to please. Both Peterson and Markham refused to catch my eye.
He turned his beaky nose towards Markham.
‘So, Mr Markham, it would seem that when I eventually take a moment from assisting my colleagues in the execution of their duties at the street market and request an update on the assignment, I find that, for some reason, William Shakespeare is engulfed in flames and that you have appropriated his role for yourself.’
I thought he was slightly overstating events but refrained from saying so. Markham could usually look after himself.
‘Well, Mr Markham?’
‘It all happened so suddenly, sir. One minute the Ghost is denouncing his brother and his queen and exhorting Hamlet to seek revenge and the next minute he’s a raging inferno.’
Another one slightly overstating events. I stood back to let the two of them tough it out.
‘William Shakespeare was on fire?’
‘Not all of him, sir. Only his clothes.’
‘And you extinguished the flames and possibly saved his life.’
‘I did, sir,’ he said, casually moving his burns to an even more prominent position and wincing with bravely concealed pain.
‘You interfered with History. Are you aware of our Standing Orders?’
‘Very much so, sir. Major Guthrie quotes them at me on a regular basis, but I didn’t interfere, sir. We have no reports of William Shakespeare being injured or disfigured in a fire. In fact, he lives for many years and goes on to write even more plays. You could say sir, that it was necessary for me to interfere so that History wasn’t changed.’
He had a point. History is like a living organism and it will always protect itself. If it thinks, even for one moment, that someone or something is about to alter events that have already taken place then, the offending virus – or historian as we prefer to be known – is wiped out without a second thought. The fact that our Mr Markham still lived and breathed was evidence that – just for once – he was completely blameless.
Dr Bairstow shifted in his chair. ‘To use a word in keeping with the situation – what exactly was your role in all of this?’
Markham assumed his hurt expression – the one resembling an abandoned puppy in a snowstorm. ‘Well, sir, if you mean did I actually set Shakespeare on fire then no, I didn’t. The part I played – to continue your brilliant example, sir,’ he said, slathering on the butter, ‘consisted simply of acting to assess the situation, identifying the appropriate measures to be taken, staging the Stop, Drop and Roll programme, and assisting the stricken Shakespeare to exit to an area under the stage so that I could perform any further assistance.’
‘Which consisted of appropriating the role of Ghost.’
Markham beamed again and nodded.
‘But what of the understudy? How in God’s name did you ever induce him to allow you to do such a thing?’
‘I... um ... I offered him something in exchange.’
My mind boggled. I couldn’t, offhand, think of anything Markham could have had that the understudy would have wanted. We’re not allowed to take anything with us. And then – of course – my chocolate. He’d bartered my bar of chocolate. The one hidden in my cloak. True, by that point it might have been a little battered and melted, but even so ... I took a moment to imagine the impact of a brick-sized bar of fruit and nut on someone who’d never in their life tasted anything like it. The Ghost was not a major role. Only half a dozen lines – in exchange for a giant slab of the stuff? Of course he’d allowed it.
‘What could you possibly possess that would induce him to do such a thing?’
I stiffened. While taking my own lunch was perfectly acceptable, a great block of as yet undiscovered chocolate was almost certainly not. What would Markham say?
I needn’t have worried.
Contriving to look even more abandoned than ever, Markham smiled reassuringly. ‘The object concerned was completely biodegradable sir. Nothing to worry about at all.’
‘Astonishingly, this blithe assurance does nothing to lessen my anxiety.’
‘Your groundless anxiety, sir.’ He beamed in what he probably thought was a comforting manner.
‘So you are telling me that the Ghost’s unearthly utterances from beneath the stage and his final but very public appearance in Act Three – all that was you?’
I could see Markham considering possible answers, rejecting them all and settling for the uninflammatory truth.
‘If you mean my inspired recreation of a restless soul in torment, unable to rest in peace, languishing in the depths of anguish and despair, and desperate to convey his message from beyond the grave then yes, all that was me, sir.’
Dr Bairstow began to align the files on his desk. Never a good sign.
‘I find myself quite bewildered, Mr Markham. It would seem that, thanks to your admittedly timely intervention, while the damage to his clothing was fairly major, the damage to Shakespeare himself was so minor as to be non-existent. I am anxious, therefore, to learn the compelling reasons for your subsequent appropriation of the role of the Ghost, which thereby deprived the audience – and me – of the pleasure of watching the greatest playwright the world has ever known perform his own lines.’
Wow. He was really annoyed. All the signs were there. Long sentences. Polysyllabic words. Faultless grammar. Perfect punctuation. Dr Bairstow was – not to put too fine a point on it – right royally pissed at Markham.
Who shifted his feet, uneasily. ‘Well, it wasn’t so much the fire that did the damage, sir. The thing is, I might have dropped him.’
The files were now aligned with ominously millimetric precision. ‘You dropped Shakespeare?’
‘Only slightly, sir.’
‘Do you mean you only dropped part of him, or that you dropped all of him, but not from a great height?’
‘Both, sir. There was a step which, in the agitation of the moment, I didn’t notice, and he went down with a bit of a crash.’
Running out of files, Dr Bairstow gripped the edge of his desk. ‘You knocked Shakespeare unconscious? And do not say “Not all of him.”’
Obviously not feeling able to comply, Markham said nothing.
‘Answer me.’
‘Well, I didn’t, sir. Knock all of him unconscious, I mean. He was just a bit wobbly and the bit was coming up where he’s supposed to intone, “Swear,” in horrid tones from underneath the stage, and even after an interval to recover, he really was all over the place, so acting in a prompt and timely manner, I did it. And no one noticed. And the show must go on, sir,’ he added, laying on the jam as well as the butter. ‘And then he threw up. All over himself, sir, and you have to admit it would have been a bit of a disaster if he’d done that on the stage. I’m not sure they’d invented ectoplasm in the 1600s.’
‘Charles Richet, 1905,’ murmured Peterson, electing to join the conversation just in time to make things worse.
Everyone, even Dr Bairstow, turned to stare at him.
‘What?’ Peterson demanded, defensively. ‘Helen was researching anaphylaxis and his name came up.’
I’m not sure if he was attempting to deflect Dr Bairstow’s wrath or not. Whichever it was, it didn’t work. Charles Richet was dismissed as irrelevant in the scheme of things. Just as Dr Bairstow leaned over his desk for the kill, however, Markham pulled out his recorder, gently placed it on the desk and stepped back.
It’s not often you see Dr Bairstow struggle. I could sympathise. Anyone who deals with Markham would be familiar with this situation. Wearing his Director hat, the Boss would want to know what Markham thought he was doing with a recorder. Wearing his historian hat, he would want to know if there was anything interesting on it.
He pulled himself together.
‘What is that?’
‘It’s a recorder, sir. You know, the History Department use them.’
Once again, the beaky nose turned his way
and we waited for him to be blasted from the face of the earth. Apparently unaware he had only seconds left in this world, Markham innocently picked up the recorder and began to fiddle with it, talking all the while.
‘I don’t know what I’ve got, of course. It was dark under the stage, and even when I’d got him out and around the back, he was still a bit bleary and in no state to continue, so I took advantage of the opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition and ensure that the show did go on.’
He was still casually fiddling with the recorder. He could drop it at any moment. I was nearly having a heart attack and I’m pretty sure even Dr Bairstow was holding his breath. ‘I’ve always wanted to go on the stage sir, and after my performance today, I reckon my agent is going to need some publicity shots, so I thought I’d take a quick selfie.’
I waited for Dr Bairstow to demand to know who had bastardised the English language to the extent that ‘selfie’ was even a word.
He did not. He took a deep breath and held out his hand for the recorder.
Markham smiled sunnily at him and handed it over.
He hadn’t been able to record but there was a series of still images, most of which were either too dark or were obviously of his elbow. At least, I hoped it was his elbow. Some of Markham’s outlying areas can be a little unruly and sometimes you don’t know quite which bit of him you’re dealing with.
But there, towards the end, were three images.
The first showed a man sitting down, head resting back against a wall, eyes closed. He might have been unconscious or just resting his eyes. The light hadn’t been good, but we could make out a long chin, receding hair, the distinctively high forehead, and a thin nose.
‘That’s just after I got him off the stage,’ said Markham. ‘He was in shock, I think. I just sat him down and waited for someone to come and check him over. Someone called to us and Shakespeare said he was OK. Although not in quite those words. Anyway, he obviously wanted to watch the play and see how it was going, so I helped him up. I was OK, but he was a bit taller than me and I think he forgot to crouch. He banged his head on something, staggered a bit, fell down a step and banged his head again.