by C. R. Berry
The curator directed him to a 1977 book by Edith Starkey, Secrets of the Great Pestilence. The only one they had on the Black Death, she told him. He sat down in a quiet corner to read it, with a rather tepid peppermint tea he’d purchased from the museum’s tiny cafe.
‘Great Pestilence’ was one of several medieval names for the scarier-sounding Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in history. Across Europe, fifty million people – sixty per cent of the population – were killed. In some places, whole communities were wiped out. It changed the course of European history completely.
Most of Edith Starkey’s book, though written with enthusiasm, talked about things Ferro knew, things that were already well-documented.
But then, and honestly it was like winning the lottery, he came to a section titled, Legend of the Evil Plague Doctor. It mentioned how Ralph of Wallingsworth, writing in 1358 about the arrival of the Black Death in London ten years earlier, recorded the story of an evil plague physician. Similar to what Simon of Stonebury wrote, it was said that a mysterious, malevolent man dressed as a plague doctor was visiting homes and questioning people on their deathbeds, threatening to make their sickness worse if they refused to cooperate. He was only interested in talking to families with the surname ‘Godfrey’ and was seeking the location of a ‘book with a strange title’.
There it was again – the book with the strange title. What in the world could it be? Would Ferro ever find out?
Unlike Stonebury’s account, there was no mention of the doctor being seen on a phone-like device and disappearing into thin air in an alleyway. But Starkey went on to say…
Whether there is any truth to the story of the evil plague doctor and the ‘book with a strange title’ is unclear, but some historians have linked it to another legend from that time, that of the ‘Godfrey letter’. According to the legend, the Godfrey letter was written to Edward III by a woman called Catherine Godfrey and enclosed with a book. Of particular note is that Catherine wrote the majority of the letter in Middle English, except for the title of the book, which she wrote in Modern English. She gave it as ‘The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems by Jeremy Jennings’.
What?
Ferro stopped, went back and read that paragraph again. And again.
He blinked hard and carried on.
Some believe that ‘The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems’ was the very same book that Ralph of Wallingsworth was referring to, the ‘book with a strange title’.
Strange title? Try impossible title!
In her letter Catherine explained that the Godfrey family had been looking after the book at the request of King William II since 1100. According to her, the book warned of a terrible oncoming threat to the realm and yielded an otherworldly power that nobody could understand. She said it was no longer safe in her possession, hence why she had decided to discharge her family’s burden and pass it back to the king.
Ferro shut the book, keeping the tip of his index finger in that section so he could return to it, and looked at the back for any hint that author Edith Starkey might be having a laugh. The blurb was like a million others he’d read on the backs of history books.
But this was unbelievable. Totally unbelievable.
He returned to where he was in the book and continued reading.
Unfortunately, the Godfrey letter, reportedly once held at the Tower of London, has never been traced or verified. Today, most historians believe it to be a myth.
Ferro got out his phone and used the museum’s WiFi to google The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems by Jeremy Jennings.
The plot thickened.
There it was. Boring-looking book, long out of print, just a couple of copies available on Ebay. Hardback, basic green cloth binding, with gold foil lettering on the front and spine in Times New Roman – the world’s dullest font – but no other distinguishing features.
But the publication date was 1995. Ferro double-checked the publication date of Secrets of the Great Pestilence. As he thought. 1977. Which meant The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems was published eighteen years after it was cited in Edith Starkey’s book.
Astonishing. Just astonishing.
Evidence of real time travel.
A book from the future, stuck in the past, chased by time travellers.
Had he stumbled into a science fiction movie?
Needless to say, Ferro bought a copy of The History of Computer-Aided Timetabling for Railway Systems immediately. He then went and asked the curator if he could take Edith Starkey’s book away with him. She said no – he could make copies of the relevant pages only. That would have to do. He could always buy a copy of her book online too if necessary, if copies were available.
The curator led him to the room with the photocopier. Just as he was about to start copying, his phone rang.
It was Beth’s solicitor, violently yanking him back to reality. “Mr Ferro, have you received my letter about the divorce?”
The word ‘divorce’ made him wince. Like a knife in the heart. He still couldn’t believe it had come to this.
“Not yet, no,” Ferro lied. He received it yesterday. A parting gift just before he headed off to Wales. He wasn’t sure why he lied. Pretending he hadn’t received it was only delaying the inevitable.
“Can you let me know tomorrow if you haven’t, please?” the solicitor asked.
Oh, get off my back. “Yes, alright.”
“Thank you.” She reeled off a list of procedural points and Ferro was struck by the indifference in her tone. Not a single thought for how hard this was for him.
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” he said, interrupting her.
“I’m just making sure.”
“Please can you get Beth to call me?”
“Mr Ferro, my client does not wish to speak to you.”
He winced again. ‘My client’ made it sound like they’d done a bit of business together and were in dispute over it, not that they’d been married twenty-three years.
“Can you just ask her for me?” said Ferro. “Please?”
“I’ll mention it next time I speak to her.”
“Thank you.”
“And I must advise you, again, to retain your own solicitor.”
He’d heard that before as well. He didn’t have the money. “Yes, fine, thank you.” He just wanted her to go now.
“I look forward to hearing from you when you’ve received my letter. Goodbye.”
She was like a robot. He echoed, just as coldly, “Goodbye.”
He hung up and copied the pages he needed from Edith Starkey’s book. Then he left the museum and began his long journey home to an empty house.
After a tedious five-hour drive, Ferro was back home in Norton Hill, sitting in a chair in his lounge with a glass of Merlot, looking at a framed photo of him, Beth and the kids and fingering the inscription on his pocket watch. A tear splashed the glass in the frame, blurring Maggie’s face. His chest ached.
It was all his fault, he knew that. He’d been ignoring Beth for months, ignoring the kids. Never at home, always at this library, that museum. His love for them all never changed, never faltered, but his research had become an obsession he couldn’t shake. Didn’t want to shake. He had to know what was going on. He’d pleaded with Beth to be patient, told her the things he’d found, but she wasn’t interested.
He remembered their last exchange two weeks ago, every word of it burned into his memory, like a video on continuous playback.
Beth’s ultimatum.
“We’ve had enough,” she had said, catching him off guard as he walked in the front door with some shopping, finding her, Maggie and Ryan in the hallway with suitcases.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Giving you a choice, Greg,” Beth said. “You can choose this preposterous mission you’re on. Or you can choose us. Your family.”
At that point he
’d just discovered the Simon of Stonebury text – new evidence that time travellers were tinkering with history. He couldn’t stop there. He just couldn’t.
“Beth, I’m getting closer to the truth every day,” he’d said. “These time travellers –”
“I don’t want to hear another word about time travellers, Greg. It’s nonsense. I feel like I’m married to David Icke.”
“I’m not crazy. I promise. This is real.”
“Whatever, Greg.”
Ferro looked at Maggie and Ryan. Maggie was crying. Ryan looked like he was trying to hold back tears. “Is this how you two feel as well?”
Ryan answered, it felt like, for both of them, “There’s no point us being here at the moment. You’re never around. You never do anything with us. I asked for your help back in June with some of my exams and you kept promising you would, but that’s when you’d just found out about William II and the, erm, time traveller” – there was derision in the way Ryan said it – “and you were always too busy. So Dad, do what you’ve got to do. We still love you. But it’s clear you don’t want us around right now.”
Ryan was so grown-up. Seventeen going on thirty. And hearing him say that was a real punch in the stomach. Of course Ferro wanted them around. They were his family.
But he was trying to have his cake and eat it. He knew that. Expecting them to be there for him when he wasn’t there for them.
“I do want you around,” Ferro insisted. “I love you. All of you.” He wiped Maggie’s tears with his thumb, then looked at Beth. The look on her face was cold, hard, like she’d already let go.
If only she could understand how important this was. To them. To everybody.
“Beth, please don’t do this,” he said. “Please don’t make me choose.”
“You already have, Greg.”
And that was that. Beth and the kids moved out and went to live with her mum. A few days later, Beth instructed that delightful divorce lawyer.
Sniffing, wiping his tears with his palms, Ferro replaced the photograph on the side table by his chair. He’d not checked his emails since Portphilly so he dug out his phone.
In amongst some uninteresting marketing emails was one telling him he’d had a comment on his blog, on the article he wrote this morning at the B&B.
A small twinge of excitement eased his heartache. He’d been publishing the odd article about his findings and theories since his trip to the New Forest in May, just in case anyone else in the world knew anything. Unfortunately his blog didn’t get much traffic and only had seven followers. Now, at last, he’d had his first comment.
The twinge of excitement diminished somewhat when he saw the username of the commenter: ‘WibblyWobblyTimeyWimey’. Not expecting a particularly intellectual discussion, he clicked through to the comment.
Hey there Ferro! Great blog! There’s just one little problem with the idea of time travellers talking to each other on phones in the Middle Ages… I’m pretty sure there were no signal towers back then!
Ah, okay. He was wrong. WibblyWobblyTimeyWimey had raised a sensible point that others might be wondering about too. While he didn’t profess to have the answer, he typed back a quick and obvious counter-argument about time travellers being able to phone each other without needing signal towers because they’re… time travellers.
Ferro was about to put his phone away, but WibblyWobblyTimeyWimey commented again immediately. Good point!
Ferro thought he may as well ask who he was.
WibblyWobblyTimeyWimey answered, Jennifer. I’m a history graduate. Love this kind of thing.
Oh, that surprised him. He’d assumed it was a man, though he wasn’t sure why.
In any case, ‘Jennifer’ sounded interested. What the hell. It would be nice to share his work with someone who might actually appreciate it. So Ferro typed back telling her that he’d discovered something new today, mentioned living in Norton Hill in case she was nearby, and suggested meeting to show her his work.
After posting the comment, he suspected he might’ve scared her off. Oh well. No harm in trying.
Jennifer responded saying she actually wasn’t far from him, but wasn’t one for meeting up with someone she’d just started talking to online. Fair enough. Very sensible.
Ferro thought he’d put her mind at rest anyway, commenting that he’d only meet her in a public place, because for all he knew, she might be the crazy one.
It worked, surprisingly, so she was obviously quite keen to hear what he had to say. LOL. Okay, well there’s a pub in Deepwater I like called The Kipper and the Corpse. We could meet there if you want.
Ferro didn’t know Deepwater or its pubs that well but said he’d look it up and suggested they meet at midday.
Jennifer rounded off their conversation with a warning that she’d kick his arse if he tried anything funny. He might’ve said the same were he in her position. He promised he wouldn’t.
At least tomorrow he could talk time travel with someone who was prepared to listen. He’d been on his own with all this for months now.
He downed the dregs of his Merlot and went to bed.
6
September 13th 2019
Jennifer arrived at the Kipper and the Corpse five minutes late. She was, admittedly, a bit nervous. Let’s face it. What she was doing was pretty random and potentially a little stupid. After a five-minute conversation online, she’d agreed to meet up with a bloke more than twice her age who was potentially off his rocker. If it was her own daughter doing this, well, she wouldn’t be. (Not that Jennifer had told her mum – that would be dumb. She would’ve blown a gasket.)
Having said all that, she had done a bit of due diligence. As in, she’d googled Gregory Ferro last night. She didn’t find much. Good sign, really. No news articles about a ‘Gregory Ferro’ getting convicted of murder or anything. She did find a seven-year-old article with a photo of a Gregory Ferro posing alongside some A-Level History students at Reading College, the history department having won an award. This Ferro had grey hair, glasses and a short beard – she guessed he was mid-fifties. Whether it was the one she was meeting, who knew. He hadn’t put a photo of himself on his blog for her to be able to compare, but he did say he was a former history teacher.
Jennifer entered the pub and scanned the large main lounge at the front. There was one man sitting at the bar with a lager who didn’t look like he was waiting for anyone, and a man and a woman eating sandwiches in one of the booths. She went through into the back room that had the fireplace. A man sat in the corner, sipping a cup of tea, a box file on the table in front of him.
It was him. Same man as in the picture she’d looked at last night. A few details had changed. He was larger, his glasses rounder, and he looked like he was trying to go the full Father Christmas with his beard.
“Gregory Ferro?” Jennifer said, approaching his table.
He stood up, held out his hand to shake hers. “Yes. Jennifer, is it?”
They shook hands. “Yes, pleased to meet you. What do I call you? Gregory? Greg?”
“Ferro, actually. Everybody calls me that.” He smiled, “Apart from the wife and kids, of course.”
Okay, good. He’d already said online that he was a father of two. Now she knew he was a husband. Very normal so far. She wasn’t sure what to make of the crucifix around his neck. Normally that meant the wearer was religious, but not always. Could’ve been a family heirloom.
“I’m just going to grab a drink,” said Jennifer. “You want anything?” A few inches of something yellowy remained in his cup, and the cool tingle of peppermint had hit her nostrils when they shook hands.
“No, thank you.”
Jennifer got a cider from the bar and returned to the table.
“Pretty freakish coincidence, this,” she said, sitting down opposite Ferro. “You and I living this close to each other.”
Ferro gave a small smile but didn’t say anything. If there was anything Jennifer hated it was an awkward silence, so
she took a sip of her pint and continued speaking. “I’ve been following your blog for a couple of months now. Really interesting stuff. I loved studying William II, particularly his mysterious death and all the people who had a motive to bump him off.”
Finally he spoke – “What did you make of it all?”
“Of what? Your blogs about it?”
He nodded, “Yes.”
Jennifer wondered if he was trying to suss out if she was genuinely open to his ideas. Honestly, Jennifer wasn’t sure on that herself yet.
“It’s a fun idea. Great plot for a movie. Do I think William II was actually shot by a man who talked to someone on a mobile phone, then disappeared? Not really.” Jennifer smiled, sipped her pint. “Unless you can prove it to me.”
“Let me show you proof, then,” Ferro said, opening his box file and lifting out a folder of papers, which he handed to her.
Jennifer put down her pint and opened the folder. She found some pictures of the Rufus Stone, colour photocopies of the Latin manuscript he’d posted the fuzzy photos of on his blog, some white pages on which he’d typed up an English translation of the Latin, and a report detailing the results of a radiocarbon dating test.
He explained, “Those photocopies are of the chronicles of Father Jerome, a Benedictine choir monk from Canterton Priory in the New Forest, writing in the early 12th century. They were discovered recently, buried in the walls of the crypt at St Margaret’s Church in Highcliffe.”
“Yes, you talked about these on your blog,” said Jennifer.
