The Time Travel Diaries

by Caroline Lawrence

‘Oh!’ came the moan again. And then a voice with a Romanian accent said, ‘Wimpy? Are you here?’

  I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

  ‘Dinu?’ My voice came out croaky. ‘Dinu, is that you?’

  The only reply was the sound of someone heaving and then being violently sick. A moment later I caught a rancid whiff of vomit.

  Now I wanted to be sick too, but I had nothing in my stomach to throw up.

  ‘Dinu, what are you doing here?’ My voice was still croaky.

  The flash of green had temporarily blinded me, but now my eyes were readjusting. Silhouetted against the green portal I saw the shape of a boy on hands and knees.

  ‘I saw you go through naked, so I did too,’ he said. ‘They tried to stop me but they weren’t fast enough.’ He started laughing and finished up vomiting again.

  ‘You idiot! You’re not supposed to eat for two days beforehand,’ I said. ‘You could have killed us both. If I hadn’t crawled away you could have materialised inside me and we’d both be dead!’

  ‘Oh!’ This time it was a whimper.

  My anger actually made me feel a little better. Then a thought hit me like a number forty-four bus. ‘Dinu, do you have any fillings in your teeth?’

  ‘No.’ It came out as a moan. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if you’d had anything inorganic in your body, you’d have exploded like a cat in a microwave.’

  ‘What is inorganic?’

  ‘It means metal or stone or anything not alive.’

  ‘Oh!’ he moaned again.

  ‘Dinu,’ I said, ‘do you even know where we are?’

  ‘Another dimension? Like TV show Stargate? Maybe another planet?’

  ‘No. This is a time portal. We’ve gone back in time nearly two thousand years.’

  ‘To time of cavemen?’

  ‘No, you idiot! To Roman London.’

  ‘Oh!’ He retched again.

  The stink of vomit filled my head. I tried to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose.

  ‘Dinu, go back now.’

  ‘Yeah. I think you right maybe,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel so good. But how?’

  ‘Can you see a circle of faintly glowing green light?’

  There was a pause and then, ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t see that greenish light?’

  ‘My eyelids are stuck together.’

  ‘Open them!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Wait. I’ll guide you.’

  I took a step forward and almost slipped in something warm and slimy and wet.

  ‘Ugh!’ I drew my bare foot back and moved a little to the side.

  ‘Wimpy, where are you?’ he moaned.

  A moment later I grasped his arm. ‘Got you!’ I said.

  He replied by vomiting.

  ‘Ugh!’ I said. Then, ‘Hurry. We have to go back around to the front of the portal. I’ll push you through. You’ve got to go up a bit, like the first step of stairs. Good. But not there. Here. It’s right here. Now go!’

  But at the very moment I gave him a shove, the hum stopped and the light faded. Dinu took several stumbling steps forward and bashed into the big statue of Mithras on the bull.

  ‘Ow!’ he said.

  ‘Oh no!’ I groaned. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  I was stuck in the past with my arch-nemesis for at least another twelve hours.

  16

  Wimpy Tarzan

  In the dark space of the Mithraeum, Dinu the class bully was still vomiting.

  I cursed in Greek, using a word my gran had told me never to say.

  ‘Listen, Dinu,’ I said when he finally stopped, ‘I’ve got a mission here in Roman London, but you don’t have a clue. In fact, you could ruin everything.’

  ‘You have mission?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And hopefully it won’t take more than two days. So why don’t you just wait here? When you feel that hum again and see the greenish light, step through. It will be in about twelve hours. There should be a well with water in it just over there.’

  ‘No.’ He grabbed my arm. ‘I’ll go with you. I want treasure too.’

  I groaned. ‘I’m not looking for treasure, Dinu. I’m looking for a person. I’ve got to find a blue-eyed girl with an ivory leopard knife. That’s all.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘No treasure?’

  ‘The only treasure I’ll get is a reward from that big guy you might have seen as you followed me through the portal. How did you get in anyway?’

  ‘They left the door open.’ He retched again.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Listen – you’ve got to wait here. It’s a kind of ancient temple. If men come in to do their ceremony, just hide behind the bull statue and keep quiet, OK? And if you hear a hum and see a green soap-bubble thing, then come around this side and step through. But don’t wear any clothes or take anything.’

  ‘No,’ came his voice. ‘I will not stay alone.’

  ‘Dinu. You haven’t prepared. You don’t know a word of Latin. You might ruin everything. You might even change the future.’

  His hand gripped my wrist even harder. ‘No. Take me with you. Please.’

  I felt dizzy and had to sit on the side of the nave. The columns were real and solid. I leaned against one.

  When my dizzy spell passed, I said, ‘All right. You can come with me on a couple of conditions.’

  ‘Yes. You name them.’

  ‘First, let go of my wrist. You’re cutting off my blood supply.’

  He let go of my wrist.

  ‘If you want to come with me,’ I said, ‘you have to promise to stick with me, obey my every command and not say a word. In fact, you have to pretend to be my slave.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Swear it.’

  Dinu said, ‘I swear I will pretend to be your slave. I will do everything you say. I will not say a word.’

  Then he expelled something through his other portal.

  ‘Ugh!’ I groaned as I caught the smell. After a while I said, ‘Finished?’

  ‘I think.’ He sounded miserable.

  ‘OK. Then let’s get out of here. Are your eyes open now?’

  ‘Not sure. I can only see grey and black.’

  ‘That’s because we’re in a temple designed to resemble a cave. Can you see me waving my arm?’

  I waved my arm slowly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Then follow me.’

  I led the way down the nave towards the entrance. The floor was made of smooth oak planks. Dim light showed columns looming on either side but wasn’t bright enough to prevent me from stubbing my toe on a small block of stone, possibly an altar. I cursed in Greek and moved into the centre of the nave.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The exit should be this way.’

  A soft moan behind me was the only reply.

  Then I saw a faint thread of light up ahead. It outlined double doors at a higher level. My cautious toes found a step, then another, then another.

  ‘Ow!’ yelped Dinu.

  ‘Watch out for the stairs,’ I said.

  When I reached the double doors my groping fingers found a crossbar and I managed to lift it up. According to Martin, beyond these doors was an anteroom leading to a changing room for priests where I would find water and clothes.

  The inner double doors opened with a squeak and I saw the anteroom. Small high windows let in a little light and showed another set of double doors straight ahead and also a small wooden door on my left.

  Going through the small door brought me into the brightest room yet. It had a vaulted ceiling and two high unglazed windows. A kind of shelf bench covered with the same grey plaster as the walls ran around three sides of the room. The floor was concrete and sloped down to a small bowl-shaped marble drain with four comma-shaped holes in it. I spotted a well in the far corner, and when I came closer I could see a mop in
a wooden bucket next to it.

  This must be the changing room for the priests of Mithras. But where were the robes? Apart from the bucket and mop, the room was totally empty.

  Approaching the wooden bucket, I saw that the mop was just a wooden stick with a short bar at the end wrapped in a rag. I gingerly picked it up and the rag came away. It was loosely woven and damp, and barely big enough to tie around my waist, but it was better than nothing.

  You know Tarzan, that guy who swings through the jungle on vines, wearing a tiny animal-skin loincloth?

  I looked like a wimpy Tarzan, but at least my modesty was covered.

  ‘What about me?’ said a voice from the doorway.

  I turned to see more of Dinu Balan than I ever hoped or expected. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the bully who had mugged me for my crisps the past few weeks. His face was a chalky white, his chest covered with yellow vomit and his legs streaked with brown.

  ‘Come and stand here,’ I said, pointing at the drain in the floor. I looked into the well and saw another bucket, this one leather. It was attached to a wooden dowel by a rope and could be lowered or raised by turning a wooden crank. I let the bucket down into the well and cranked it up again. The water in it looked clear enough so I took a sip. It tasted slightly musty but I was thirsty so I drank deeply. Rule number two: Drink, don’t eat.

  I rinsed Dinu’s vomit off my feet. The water was ice cold.

  ‘Crouch down a little and close your eyes,’ I said.

  Dinu dutifully bent forward and rested his hands on his knees. I brought the bucket as close to him as the rope would allow.

  Then I emptied it over him.

  ‘Aaaargh! Is freezing!’ I ignored his protests and sluiced him down three more times. I even made him turn around and bend over. That is a sight I will never unsee.

  At last he stood shivering and naked. His blond hair was plastered to his wide forehead, making him look like a drowned rat, but a clean drowned rat at least.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I said. ‘Stay close to me and don’t say anything, all right?’

  Dinu nodded meekly and used the wooden bucket to cover his groin. I had to turn quickly so he wouldn’t see my smile.

  Who cared about Roman London and the blue-eyed girl from Africa with the ivory leopard knife? It was worth the misery to get a little revenge on Dinu Balan.

  I went out of the changing room and back into the dimly lit anteroom between the two sets of double doors. The doors leading to the outside were barred, but for anyone inside that posed no problem. I lifted the wooden plank from its cradle, pushed the doors, and stepped out into the past.

  17

  Roman T-Shirts

  Have you ever had that nightmare where you show up at school to find everybody pointing at you and laughing and you realise you’re wearing only your Spiderman underwear?

  That’s what it was like when I first stepped out of the Mithraeum in my Tarzan loincloth. I’d been told that the temple was in the garden of a private villa.

  So I wasn’t expecting an audience.

  Outside, the soft light of a summer evening showed what looked like a big vegetable garden. A single tall tree grew in its centre, and standing beneath this tree I saw three men. One – a stocky guy – wore something like an orange bathrobe and a matching turban. The other two were skinny and wore long pale blue T-shirts.

  No. Not T-shirts.

  Tunics.

  They were ancient Romans and I was in Londinium!

  I only had a moment to take all this in. They had been examining something – a large turnip, I think – and were already turning to look at me.

  For a moment we gawped at each other.

  Then the guy in orange pointed. First he shouted, ‘Heus!’, the Latin version of ‘Oi! You!’ Then he bellowed something that sounded like ‘Captem!’ I didn’t need to understand Latin to know he meant, ‘Get him!’

  I turned to look at Dinu. He stood unmoving, the wooden bucket covering his private parts and his eyes wide with astonishment.

  The two skinny guys in blue tunics started running towards us.

  ‘Come on, Dinu!’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Run!’

  Without waiting to see if he would follow, I charged around the corner and raced down a muddy path that ran between the outer wall of the Mithraeum and a cane-fenced garden. My plan had always been to go along the north side of the temple to the stream called Walbrook and follow it down to the Thames. Then I would cross over the original London Bridge and make my way to the urine-scented fullers’, so that I could find Caecilius the knife-seller who might be able to point me to the blue-eyed girl from Africa.

  Now I was running with the Mithraeum on my left and an allotment on my right. It looked just like the vegetable patch out of Peter Rabbit. It must have rained recently because the long grass at the edge of the path made my legs wet.

  ‘Furcifer!’ shouted one of the slaves in pursuit.

  I almost laughed out loud. Furcifer was one of the first words we had learned in Latin club. It means ‘scoundrel’ or ‘crook’.

  I risked a look over my shoulder – Dinu was about two paces behind me and our two skinny pursuers were not far behind him.

  When I turned back I saw a white head with evil yellow eyes and horns rising up above the tall grass straight ahead. A goat!

  I veered right to avoid it, but Dinu hadn’t seen it. He took a spectacular tumble and ended up flat on his back.

  He was up in a second, without his bucket, and running free.

  But now the angry goat was aiming his horns at our pursuers and they slowed down.

  Just ahead on my right I spied three pale blue tunics draped over a kind of trellis that formed the far end of the garden fence. I grabbed one and pulled it over my head with a prayer of thanks to the God I hadn’t known till now that I believed in. The tunic was too big and faintly damp, but I didn’t mind. Dinu tried to follow my example and nab another tunic, but it caught on one of the slats of cane that made up the fence. He managed to tug it off, but nearly pulled the whole fence down.

  A small part of me thought it strange that they would leave clothes drying on the fence like that, with no wall to protect them from robbers. Then I stepped out into empty space, and in the split second before I hit the water I remembered why they didn’t need a wall to protect the west side of the garden.

  They had a perfectly good stream.

  18

  Bog Kid

  When I say the Walbrook was ‘a perfectly good stream’, I mean it was good as a boundary that no sane person would ever cross.

  The real version didn’t have creepy tree roots like the bronze sculpture outside twenty-first-century Bloomberg Arcade. It was much deeper, freezing cold and with unmentionable things floating in it.

  There was a huge splash behind me and I managed to turn and see Dinu doing the doggy paddle. Up on the bank, our two pursuers were shaking their fists and still crying, ‘Furcifer!’

  They seemed unwilling to follow us in.

  Maybe they couldn’t swim.

  Of course they couldn’t swim.

  There were no swimming pools in Londinium apart from maybe a hot plunge in the baths.

  And you don’t need to know how to swim to take a bath.

  Also, nobody in his right mind would want to swim in this brook. I could not imagine anything worse.

  Then I was swept into the Thames.

  It was even colder than the Walbrook, and just as full of floating things, but with the added element of being much more dangerous because there were boats everywhere. My head nearly struck one the size of a bathtub made of leather. What was that kind of boat called? A barnacle? No: a coracle.

  ‘Help!’ I made a swipe for it, but already I was being whirled past it and the open-mouthed face of the boy inside.

  When I turned away, I realised the current wanted to slam me into a big wooden ship up ahead. I thrashed with my arms and kicked with my feet and only just managed not to get my br
ains bashed out by a giant paddle.

  I knew I had to get to the south side of the river, but I had got turned around and no longer knew which way was which. Plus this ancient version of the Thames seemed twice as wide as the river I knew.

  Then I glimpsed a big wooden bridge between two boats. I knew Londinium had only one bridge across the Thames, and it was east of the Walbrook.

  I struck out for what I hoped was the south bank.

  My legs and arms felt as if a thousand freezing needles were pricking them. A couple of times I gulped water instead of air. I tried not to think about what else I might have swallowed.

  Finally, just when I thought I couldn’t swim any further, I realised the water wasn’t tugging at me as much as before. I managed to float on my back for a moment and gather my thoughts.

  Dinu! Where was he?

  I trod water and looked around, but couldn’t spot him among the flotilla of boats.

  ‘Dinu!’ I shouted, but only got a mouthful of water.

  So I turned and paddled for shore.

  I almost sobbed with relief as my numb toes felt slippery mud and soon I was staggering out of the water. The sun was low in the sky, making an angry orange smear. It was setting on my right, which probably meant I had made it to the south bank.

  But you can never tell with the Thames; it curves like a snake.

  Finally I was out of the water and wading through grey mud. But I wasn’t home free. In fact, it was getting harder and harder to move. Every time I pulled my leg out it was covered with more mud than before. And with every step I sank deeper. After about five more minutes of this, I found myself stuck up to my waist. I squirmed and writhed but only managed to wedge myself tighter.

  There was something evil about the cold and slippery grey mud, like it wanted to suck me down. My heart was pounding so hard that I felt sick. I took deep breaths and tried to think what to do.

  Once when I was in Year Four, the Thames River Police came to our school and told us never to go down on the foreshore without supervision. A few weeks before, three teenagers from Putney had taken a boat for a midnight joyride. Out near Hammersmith they had seen a kind of island in the river and got out of the boat to explore. Then they started to sink into the mud.