by Freer, Echo;
He tutted. ‘By - you might be a comely maid but you’re an impatient one. Just watch will you?’
Ooo! Comely? I wasn’t sure what it meant but, from the tone of his voice, I was pretty sure he’d just been flirting with me. I felt my cheeks burning and gave him a little smile. ‘OK, fire away...’ Then, remembering the circumstances, I checked myself. ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that literally!’
But it was too late! There was a flash of fire and the crack of a gun, but not from Isaac - it came from the direction of the inn where the soldiers were holding Robert. I couldn’t bear to look.
‘Did they shoot Robert?’ I asked, trying to sound as matter of fact as I could.
‘Nay. They weren’t shooting at Robert,’ he replied. ‘They were shooting at me.’
‘What?’ I could hardly believe my ears. ‘You’re not trying to tell me that you’ve brought me here to witness your death are you? Because that wouldn’t just be morbid, it would be totally inappropriate.’
Before he could answer, I heard the living Quill whisper, ‘Put tha pistol away, Isaac. ‘Twill only aggravate t’matter. T’penalty for being caught wi that lot baint more than a fine. But if tha pulls a pistol on t’King’s men, we’ll both be dancing in t’air at York Castle afore t’year’s out.’
I turned to my Quill for a translation. ‘Dancing in the air? Was the penalty for smuggling to be conscripted into some sort of aerial formation dance team?’ I was trying to visualise an eighteenth century Riverdance in mid air, but couldn’t quite get my head round it.
The spirit Quill gave me another look that would’ve soured honey. ‘It means hanging,’ he said, coldly.
I gasped. So that was what all the stuff about the Hanged Man tarot card was about when Quill visited me in the PE cupboard. He was trying to tell me that he’s been hanged. Oh no! This was too awful for words. ‘I really would like to go home now please,’ I said as politely as I could. ‘I’ve seen all I want to see now, thank you.’
‘What we want isn’t allus what we need,’ my Quill said, never taking his eyes off the two men who were lying face down in the grass on the cliff top. ‘You’ll see.’
The living Quill was pleading with Isaac. ‘’Tis better to pay a fine, Isaac, please.’
‘Aye, that’s as maybe but Ah baint got ‘undred pound ti mi name,’ Isaac replied, looking round as though he was doing a recce for an escape route. ‘And Ah’m sure as ‘eck not made up wi t’idea of being impressed into t’navy for five year while ‘Lizabeth and t’bairn end up in t’poorhouse. Nay, Quill lad, Ah’m tekkin mi chances.’
Isaac began to slither down the grassy slope towards the edge of the cliff when Robert’s voice rang out.
‘Isaac, help us! ‘E says ‘e’s going to blow mi brains out! Isaac! Quill! Come back.’
I heard Isaac groan, then say under his breath. ‘Tha ‘as to have brains afore they can blown ‘em out, tha daft beggar.’
The living Quill stood up. ‘Come on, Isaac. They know us names. We’d best give ussens up. Tha’ll be no use as a father if tha’s at t’end of t’angman’s noose.’
Isaac threw down the pistol with a sense of resignation. ‘’Twere only ti scare ‘em anyhow. Ah’d neither powder nor shot.’ He shook his head. ‘Ah’ll bet it’s our Robert what’s give us away. That sly owd fox Proudfoot’d go to any ends to get information, even plyin’ a poor doit like Robert wi ower much ale.’
We watched the two of them begin to walk back towards Josiah Proudfoot and the dragoons but, they’d taken no more than a couple of steps, when there was a terrible rumbling underfoot and cracks started appearing in the earth where we were standing.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked my Quill. ‘It feels like a mini earthquake.’
‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘An earth tremor was felt through all of t’North Riding that night. ‘Twas just our luck, eh? No ponies, no fog, betrayed by t’Riding Officer and then an earth tremor. Was ever a venture more ill fated?’
Now, when Wanda and I were in Mexico, the kids there said that an earthquake is when El Diablo - that’s the devil in Spanish (you see, I can speak more than one language), rips up the ground from the inside so that he and his friends can come out and make trouble on Earth. In terms of the earthquakes that I’ve experienced, this one was fairly feeble, but even so, if this was El Diablo’s way of making trouble for Quill and his mates, then he was doing a pretty good job because the donkeys began bucking and braying again, the soldiers’ horses started rearing up and whinnying and everyone, including Quill and Isaac, started to freak out big time.
‘Run!’ Isaac shouted to the living Quill. ‘’T’cliff’s goin’!’
‘Stop!’ screamed one of the soldiers. ‘You are our prisoners. In the name of the King, stand still.’
Yeah, right! Like anyone could stand still when the whole ground beneath their feet was wobbling like a giant jelly.
‘We are done for,’ Isaac called to the living Quill as he threw himself forwards to land face down on the trembling grass.
Quill made to follow his friend but, as the tremor subsided, a fissure opened up in front of him.
‘Jump lad!’ yelled Isaac.
‘Jump!’ I screamed.
I watched in horror as the living Quill tried to leap forward but, as his back foot pushed off, tons of earth and grass began crumbling away forcing him to lose his footing. He stumbled forwards, desperately grabbing for anything to save himself.
‘Do something!’ I screamed at the spirit Quill as we stood helplessly watching the cliff face slide down on to the beach.
He shrugged. ‘History is history. Cannot be altered.’
‘So why have you brought me here? Take me back; I’m not watching any more!’
‘Wait,’ he said, never taking his eyes off his living self.
Did I say earlier that he was gorgeous? Well, strike that; he’s nothing more than a malicious sadist - making me witness horrible things like this.
The living Quill reached up and grabbed a tussock of grass and I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Phew!’ I said. ‘I thought there for a minute, you were going to make me watch you fall over the cliff.’
My Quill said nothing - which, I must confess, made me a little bit twitchy.
I watched Isaac pull himself on his stomach back to where Quill was clutching the tuft of turf.
‘Quick - give us thi hand,’ he whispered urgently, reaching out his hand to his friend.
Quill stretched out the fingers of his right hand towards Isaac. I was holding my breath, willing them to make contact. The tips of Quill’s fingers touched Isaac’s and Isaac nudged forward trying to get a tighter grip. All this tension was doing my nerves no good at all. I saw Quill give an almighty lurch and lock his fingers over Isaac’s and I started to relax a little. Uh oh - too soon; the voice of Josiah Proudfoot, the Riding Officer, rang out.
‘They’re escaping! Shoot them!’
There was another flash and a second shot cracked through the air. A dull fut sounded as the bullet hit the clump of grass next to the Quill’s hand - or at least, I thought it had hit the clump of grass next to Quill’s hand.
‘Ow!’ he yelped. In the moonlight I could just make out the pale fingers of his left hand being raised off the ground. ‘Isaac,’ he cried out. ‘ Ah can’t hold on.’ And then, ‘Aaaaaggggghh!’
‘Nooooooo!’ I yelled.
‘Are you all right love?’ An old woman with a Yorkshire terrier was standing next to me. The dog had a pale blue bow in its hair and the woman was carrying a yellow plastic pooper scooper. Now, I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure that no one pooper scooped in Quill’s day.
I looked round me. There was a light mist and it was quite dark where I was standing, but I was pleased to see about a hundred meters away, that there were street lig
hts glowing their fuzzy yellow glow and there were buildings too and cars crawling along the road.
‘I’m fine thank you,’ I said, with more than a hint of relief to be back in the twenty first century.
Suddenly there was a jingly jangly rendition of the Bob Dylan song Like a Rolling Stone coming from the pocket of my rainbow jacket. I have asked Wanda to choose a ring tone that isn’t prehistoric but she says it’s symbolic. Right at that moment though, I didn’t care. I was just glad to be back. I took the phone out of my pocket and saw Kameran’s number flashing up.
The old lady started to walk away. ‘Come on, Brutus,’ she said to the tiny dog, then tutted. ‘Young folks nowadays!’
‘Where are you?’ Kameran asked.
I did a quick geographical survey and decided I was about half a mile from where I’d last seen him.
‘If you walk along the promenade,’ I told him, ‘I’ll walk towards you. I’ll see you in about ten minutes.’
‘Ten minutes!’ he exclaimed. ‘How the heck did you manage to wander that far?’
‘Trust me,’ I replied. ‘If I told you, you’d never believe me.’
Like I said, I always believe that the truth is the best answer, but sometimes a lie would be so much easier.
8
Fortunately, when I got home, Wanda was so wrapped up in her new pet that I don’t think she’d have noticed if I’d staggered in and told her I’d been abducted by aliens. Which was fine by me; the last thing I wanted was to start explaining about my recent foray into time travel in front of Teddy.
‘Look, sweetie!’ Wanda called from the kitchen. ‘I want to introduce you to someone.’ I went through and she was holding up this tiny grey fluffy kitten and talking in a voice that was so high pitched, I’m surprised her crystal ball hadn’t shattered. ‘Who’s a beautiful little kitty then? Yes you are. Yes you are. You’re gorgeous.’
Teddy was sitting in the rocking chair by the range looking as though he only needed a pipe and slippers and he’d have been set up until retirement. Talk about too much time travel - it was as though I’d come back half a century early and landed in the cosy domesticity of the nineteen fifties.
‘Hi,’ I said, mentally debating whether I should congratulate him for surviving the entire evening with Wanda, or warn him to get his feet out from under the table on a first date. Normally, Wanda’s off the starting block like an Olympic athlete if she thinks things are moving too fast. (OK, when I say an Olympic athlete, that’s probably not the best analogy as the only Olympic events that would remotely interest Wanda would be the hundred metres macramé or the freestyle Feng Shui - but I’m sure you get my drift.)
When it comes to men, I don’t think Wanda has ever got over my dad. She met him while she was touring The States on a greyhound bus. When the coach pulled into the bus depot in Kansas City, she tripped over her hippy skirt and fell straight into the arms of Gordon Goodfox, a shaman of the Pawnee Nation. Apparently it was the longest toilet stop in history; nine months and one week to be exact. Then she slung me in a papoose on her back and moved on.
And she’s been moving on ever since - especially if someone starts to get too close. So in the interests of my future in Whitby, the last thing I wanted was Teddy thinking he was on to a sure thing. Pleased as I was that my match-making had been a success, I needed to cool things down a bit.
Wanda held the kitten up towards me. ‘I’ve called her Mushka,’ she cooed.
‘Brilliant idea,’ I said. Mushka was the name of this little old lady who lived in the apartment next to us in St Petersburg. Her hair was practically the same colour as the kitten’s. I took the kitten from Wanda and allowed her to nuzzle into the palm of my hand. Teddy had scored full marks on the kitten front as well as the whole ponytail/ casual image thing. In fact, I only needed to sort out some manly fragrances for him and, who knows, he could be Wanda’s Mr Right. But, if he was going to be in there for the long haul, I really needed to persuade him to play a little hard to get.
‘Well, goodnight then, Teddy,’ I smiled.
‘You off to bed, sweetie?’ Wanda asked, taking Mushka from me.
Which was not what I’d intended at all. ‘Oh, I thought Teddy was leaving,’ I said in my most disingenuous voice, hoping he might take the hint.
Teddy looked startled and made to stand up. ‘Er...right then. I’ll be off. Thanks for the nettle tea, Wanda. It was just the ticket.’
‘No need to go,’ Wanda offered. ‘Stay and have another cup. It’ll do wonders for that touch of rheumatism in your knee. I’ll give you some Reiki afterwards too, if you like.’
Teddy sat down again like a shot. ‘By, that would be grand.’
Oh Teddy - I was getting that sinking feeling - this was way too much, way too soon. I really needed to talk to him about the whole Zen philosophy of less is more. But right at that point, I wasn’t going to argue. I was totally whacked, so I obliged Wanda and went up to bed.
The following morning I was late for college again but as soon Milly and Amanpreet saw me in the corridor, they were on to me like an inquisition.
‘Come on then, tell us what happened.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘What did you do?’
‘Whoa!’ I put my hands up and adopted the back off pose. ‘This is worse than when Wanda and I got arrested in Tibet.’
Milly dropped the interrogation and her mouth fell open. ‘You’ve been arrested?’
I shrugged. ‘A few times. But Tibet was the worst. I mean, how were we supposed to know that busking wasn’t allowed by the occupying Chinese militia?’
‘Well...’ Amanpreet began.
But I cut her off. ‘It was a retirical question.’
They were both looking at me in this weird way like I’d got spinach stuck in my teeth.
‘You mean rhetorical?’ Milly asked.
‘Whatever.’ I flapped my hand. ‘But, you know, we had to earn a crust somehow,’ I explained, to try and stop them looking at me as though I was one of the Great Train Robbers. ‘It wasn’t like Wanda could pop into the local Lhasa Job Centre or anything. Although, I did tell her I thought Love will set you free wasn’t the most diplomatic song in her repertoire.’
‘Maybe that’s why they arrested you,’ Milly suggested. ‘But still, being a political prisoner is cool.’
Amanpreet looked positively awe-struck. ‘Wow! What was it like?’
I cleared my throat. ‘It sort of went... Loooove will set....’
‘No, not the song!’ she interrupted. ‘Being arrested; did they torture you?’
‘Neh! Just deported us. But, put it this way - if you two had had an angle-poise lamp and a pair of handcuffs, you could easily find work in the Drapchi Prison.’
‘Oh, ha-ha,’ Milly grinned. ‘Come on, seriously, tell us what happened last night?’
I went as cold as a polar bear in the Arctic! How could they possibly have found out about last night?
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, sheepishly rummaging in my bag to avoid looking at them.
‘With you and Kameran,’ Milly persisted.
‘Oh that!’ Phew - I thought they’d somehow found out about the whole ghost/smuggling/time travel thing. ‘How’d you know about that?’
‘I saw Kevin Dobson at the bus stop this morning and he told me that you and Kameran had gone out last night.’
Oh dear Lord! There are tribes in the Amazon rainforest whose jungle telegraph is less efficient than this lot. But worse still, just when I was starting to make some headway on the Milly and Kameran love front, she’d got the totally wrong idea and seemed to think that I’d been on some sort of date with him. This was awful.
‘Nothing happened,’ I said - probably a bit too quickly to sound convincing. ‘We just went for a walk and had a bag of chips.’
‘No, really!’
But, just as I was denying that there was anything going on between me and Kameran, the voice of Mr Spiggins, the head of year, screeched along the corridor. Mr Spiggins is a small, scrawny man with a toupee that looks about as natural as if he’s got Basil Brush glued to his head. I’m in his group for Geography and he has serious self esteem issues. He’s one of those teachers who would pretend not to notice two bullies punching each others’ lights out but then give the most innocuous person in the class a detention for breathing too loudly.
‘Kameran Dhillon! Don’t run.’
See what I mean? Almost everyone else was pushing and shoving their way along the Technology block corridor, but he picks on Kameran.
‘Sorry sir,’ I heard Kameran shout back. The next thing I knew, Kameran had grabbed my arm and, without even acknowledging Milly and Amanpreet, pulled me over to one side of the corridor.
‘Listen,’ he said urgently, ‘can you read palms or anything that doesn’t need your cards?’
‘Of course,’ I replied, trying not to sound too peed off that he had to ask.
‘Brilliant! Meet me behind the sports hall at lunchtime. I’ve got some more clients for you. Got to go, we’re late for Technology.’ And he and Kevin shot off.
‘Still say nothing’s going on?’ Amanpreet giggled as she and Milly headed off towards the Resistant Materials room. ‘See you at break!’
Oh dear, things were not going at all as I’d planned on the romantic liaison-front. At home, I’d got Teddy going way too fast and at school, I’d got Kameran playing way too hard to get. This was going to require some pretty skilful handling.
I was wandering along the corridor towards the Food Technology room, contemplating how I was going to convince Teddy to back off while persuading Kameran to dial it up a bit with Milly, when I heard a stifled shout. There was no one else about so I stopped and listened. Suddenly Joel Chapman, Kameran’s friend who’d come to me for a reading the previous day, almost fell out of the boys’ toilets and landed on his knees right in front of me.