by Jodi Taylor
Worst of all, the River Thames – London’s main thoroughfare – was jam-packed with boats and small craft. Barges, wherries, small rowing boats, the larger and more ornate ferries belonging to the well-off – all were crammed together in a frantic, heaving tangle from bank to bank and as far upriver as the eye could see. There was no order and certainly nothing was moving. Just hundreds of boats all jostling against each other as they tried to escape. Watermen were waving their arms and roaring silent curses at each other as they tried to force their way through. Oars that weren’t irrevocably entangled were wielded with vicious precision but to no avail. Boatmen swore and their passengers screamed. Even as I watched, a young noble in an obviously privately owned wherry wobbled to his feet and attempted to make his way to the bank, stepping from boat to boat. I think he successfully negotiated two boats, leaving them precariously rocking in his wake, before an infuriated boatman fetched him a blow that knocked him clean into the water. Boats closed in over his head and I never saw him again. No one made the slightest attempt to save him.
To go downriver was impossible because London Bridge had been blockaded. I could see massive chains stretched between the starlings, and each narrow area of water between the arches was filled with small boats. And each of those small boats was packed high with barrels.
‘Gunpowder,’ said Ellis in disbelief. ‘They’re going to blow the bridge. Why would they do that? What could be so bad they’re going to destroy the only bridge in London?’ He turned to me. ‘Max, help us out here?’
I tried to stay calm because panic wouldn’t help. There was enough of that going on outside. ‘I’m sorry – I don’t know. Yes, there was alarm over the Armada . . .’
‘Wasn’t Drake so cool about it he finished his game of bowls first?’
‘Well, that’s the story, but it’s possible the tides weren’t right for the fleet to sail at that moment. They were all dependent on the tides and weather in those days, so, unable to sail, he finished his game and scored a point for style. But this . . .’ I gestured at the chaos. ‘This is almost a rout. It’s as if the enemy is already at the gates. According to records, Elizabeth should be at Tilbury, addressing the troops. And Clerk, Bashford and North should be there, and probably Evans, too, and yet you say they’re here?’
‘Grint, can we get a fix on any of the St Mary’s crew?’
He shot his eyes to me in an is this something we want her to know? look and then, at a nod from Ellis, consulted some sort of proximity detector.
‘Yes and no. Their readings are flickering. They’re here. Which is why we’re here. We’ve homed in on their tags, but where they are in all this . . . Let’s face it, they could be twenty feet away and we’d never know.’ He shook his head.
‘They’ll have a handle on what’s going on here,’ I said, with more confidence than I actually felt. ‘We should go and find them and get them out.’
‘In this?’ The pilot gestured at his screen again.
‘You’re right,’ I said, rather pissed off with this let’s all stay safely in the pod attitude. I could have done with a bit of that when they were chasing me and Leon up and down the timeline. We were falling over the buggers everywhere we went.
I picked up my cloak. I don’t know why. It was August out there. ‘You’re right. I’ll go and find them and you all stay in here where it’s safe.’
‘No one is to hit her,’ said Ellis, without looking up from the console. ‘That’s my job.’
Obviously, they all came with me. Except for Grint who remained with the pod. Even the clean-up crew came along. And very glad I was to have them because it was murder out there.
The pod door opened to a cacophony of noise. You couldn’t hear yourself think, let alone speak. The streets were packed solid with people all trying to go in different directions and all screaming at the tops of their voices. An unending clamour of bells was sounding as every church in the city raised the alarm, while over them all, almost opposite us on the other bank, the single Great Bell of Bowe Church rang the death knell of England itself.
I couldn’t understand what was going on. It was as if someone had shoved a stick in an ants’ nest. There was no order. No authority. People weren’t fleeing in one direction away from a peril behind them. They were just milling around all over the place, leaderless and terrified. The whole city appeared to be one massive logjam of panicked people going nowhere. The injured and dying were left to lie where they fell. A distressing number of them were children or old people. I suspected either they hadn’t been able to keep up or they’d just been abandoned to their fate. People ran straight over the top of them. I don’t think they even noticed they were doing it.
Watching the scenes from inside the pod had been bad enough but it was a hundred times worse to be part of it. The noise was horrendous. Thousands of people were all screaming at everyone else to get out of their way. The few horses we could see were foam-flecked and terrified, lashing out at anyone who came close. Fights were breaking out everywhere. The smell of burning was overwhelming. Smoke caught at the back of my throat and made my eyes stream.
I’d never seen anything like it. Not even at Pompeii. People were killing each other in their desperation to get away. But from what were they trying to escape? From which direction was the danger coming and which was the way to safety? And where, in all this, was St Mary’s?
We flattened ourselves against the side of the pod while we got our bearings. London Bridge was to our right. A church was at our backs. On the opposite bank stood the Fishmongers’ Hall, surrounded by wooden quays and warehouses. Bowe Church rose majestically from the smoke. Further to our left across the river stood Old St Paul’s.
As far as I could see in each direction, the river was bordered by wooden and stone-gabled buildings and warehouses. Each had a set of steps leading down to the river and were chaotic with people at the top trying to get down to the shoreline while those at the bottom attempted to force their way up.
Nash consulted his hand-held reader and shouted, ‘They’re . . . over there. I think. West. About a hundred yards. I think.’
I tried to stay calm. Not easy in all this turmoil when we had to scream at each other to make ourselves heard. ‘Can’t you tell?’
‘Not in all this, no.’
We battled our way through the crowds. It wasn’t a case of struggling against the flow. There was no flow. We were buffeted on all sides, pushed this way and that. An angry man shouted in my face, his spittle flying in all directions. Bevan took hold of my left arm and someone else my right, otherwise I’d have been swept away. Sometimes we allowed ourselves to be carried along because it was easier than fighting the crowd, but mostly, with the clean-up crew at the front, we fought our way westwards.
Nash was counting down. He put his head close to Ellis and shouted, ‘Only twenty yards to go, sir, but we’ve drifted too far to the left. Next opportunity we get, we should head back towards the river.’
Ellis nodded and we took a moment to catch our breath.
We shouldn’t have stopped. A hysterical woman grabbed my arm. The strength of her nearly pulled me over. She screamed something – I think she was looking for her child. I felt a huge stab of sympathy. I tried to disentangle myself as gently as I could. I didn’t want one of the clean-up crew pulling her off and throwing her into the crowd.
We did our best, battling our way along. The ground underfoot was bumpy and uneven. Once, I think something tried to grab my ankle. I tried hard not to think about what I could be standing on. And tried even harder not to trip over any of it.
I could hear the beeping from the tag reader, increasing in frequency and rising in tone. They couldn’t be that far off, although how would we find them in all this . . . They could be ten feet away and we’d never know in this solid wall of people.
Ellis made a sign and we halted, hot and panting, in the shadow of a low-h
anging roof. ‘Nash, Oliver, get yourselves up there and tell me what you see.’
They clambered up and stood rather precariously on the loose thatch.
‘Can you see anything?’
Oliver shook his head. ‘Wall-to-wall people. This is useless.’ He put a hand on his belt. ‘Sir?’
He looked down at Ellis who nodded reluctantly. ‘Very well, but not here. Let’s get down to the river. Best place. Visible from both banks and the river itself.’
We struggled to the bank. It was August and the stench from the river easily overcame the smell of smoke and sweaty, frightened people. The tide was coming in, washing over the wet mud glistening in the hot afternoon sunshine. The shoreline was littered with discarded possessions, broken boats, dead animals, shattered planks of wood, tangled nets and the occasional body.
‘Ready, sir.’
‘Do it.’
They fired a fizzer. They fired a bloody fizzer. I could see their thinking – the people here obviously aren’t terrified enough so let’s give them a hanging red ball in the sky, shall we? It stabbed silently upwards into the sky, leaving a brilliant white trail some twenty feet high. I thought it looked like the finger of God and I wasn’t the only one. The panic around us shifted up a gear.
I rounded on Ellis, furious. ‘What the hell are you doing? You fired a fizzer? Here? Now?’
‘It’s a flare,’ he said calmly. ‘And fairly discreet. As opposed to the St Mary’s version which sends a brilliant red ball screaming into the sky, where it hangs around for ages frightening the living daylights out of contemporaries. Of course, we can always just find somewhere to sit down and wait for your lot to turn up of their own accord. Except we don’t have the time because we need to get them out of here as soon as possible. Time is not stable here, Max, so shut up and let us get on with our job.’
Well, that told me. I shut up and let them get on with their job.
The first thing that happened was that the crowd, catching sight of this dire portent in the sky, collectively screamed and stampeded. We were swept along, desperately trying to hang on to each other and keep our feet. We were pushed around a corner and the second thing that happened was that I collided with something bony and hard which turned out to be Bashford. Of course, it would be him, wouldn’t it?
‘Mr Bashford?’
If I was surprised, you should have seen him. He stared as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Max? What the hell?’
I seized his arm in case he was swept away. ‘Where are the others? We’ve been looking for you.’
‘Here. Somewhere.’ He raised his voice in a bellow and waved a stick on which he’d tied a piece of material. He does sometimes have moments of near intelligence. There was an answering shout and the next moment Evans appeared, with North in the crook of one arm. She, too, was carrying a stick. There was blood on it. I guessed she’d been laying about her again. Damn – I’d missed it. Clerk panted along behind, bringing up the rear.
‘Max? How did you know?’
I gestured around. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on here? There’s all sorts of alarm bells going off everywhere at TPHQ. Have you managed to break the 16th century?’
He wiped sweat off his grimy face. ‘It’s the Spanish.’
‘The Armada? Here already?’
‘The word is out. They’re sailing up the Thames . . .’
‘Why?’
Someone cannoned into him and nearly knocked him sideways. I don’t think he even noticed. I’d never seen him so rattled. ‘It’s all gone to shit, Max.’ He was shouting at me. Sweat had run clean channels down his dirty face. One of the Time Police offered him a drink and he took it thankfully. ‘We’ve lost, Max. Drake and Effingham have been defeated. The English fleet is scattered. Or sunk. Gone, anyway. But that’s not all of it. The Scots have poured across the border. Berwick is burned to the ground. Completely destroyed. Durham and York have been occupied. The word is they’re marching south on London.’
I was bewildered. ‘The Scots? What have the Scots got to do with this?’
‘Not just the Scots. It’s the Auld Alliance again, Max. The French have landed at Dover and they’re marching towards the capital. London will be caught between the two and the Spanish are sailing up the river.’
Now I could understand the sheer panic around me, but not how this had happened. None of this was supposed to happen. I said, more to the uncaring universe than anyone in particular, ‘How could this happen? What is going on here?’
Bashford took two or three deep breaths and tried to speak calmly. ‘Three armies are converging on London. They’re killing and burning everything in their path. The whole country is ablaze. We’re in the middle of a massacre. People are desperate to get out but there’s no way for them to go. A secondary Spanish force is making its way up the Severn Estuary for the sole purpose of torching the Forest of Dean.’
‘What?’ said someone. ‘Why?’
‘The forest provides the timber for English ships. One of King Philip’s stated aims was its complete destruction. The end of the Navy. And that’s only the beginning, Max. They’re going to carve up the country between them. This is the end of England as we’ve known it.’
‘So, the queen’s not at Tilbury?’
‘The queen’s not anywhere, Max. She’s long gone. Fled to Holland two or three days ago.’
I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t believe that. Elizabeth would never flee.’
He sighed and looked at me. I felt the fingertips of fear run down my spine.
Perhaps because he was speaking quietly, his voice cut through the turmoil around us. ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Max. Elizabeth isn’t the queen.’
I couldn’t take it in for a moment, repeating stupidly, ‘Elizabeth isn’t the queen?’
He shook his head.
I had to have this spelled out for me, saying stupidly, ‘So Mary Tudor is still queen? Elizabeth never ascended the throne?’
He shook his head again.
I raised my arms in frustration and fear. ‘So, who? For God’s sake, what is happening here?’
‘I’m trying to tell you, Max. Elizabeth was never queen. Neither was Mary.’
I gaped like an idiot. Captain Ellis, the Time Police, I forgot them all. ‘Well, who’s queen then? There’s no one left.’
‘Yes, there is. There’s one left. The one and only Queen of England.’ He took a breath. ‘Jane Grey.’
I clutched his arm. ‘What?’
‘I know how it sounds and I didn’t believe it myself, but it’s true, Max. Somehow – don’t ask me how – the Nine-Day Queen has ruled England for thirty-five years.’
9
I know we historians are carefully trained – or so we tell people. And so are the Time Police – apparently. But this caught us all unprepared. We all stood and stared at him like a bunch of trainees confronted with an unexpected question during Friday afternoon exams. None of this should be happening. History was way off course and careering in the wrong direction. I saw again the Time Map’s broken silver lines, blindly feeling their way towards the wrong destinations.
I took a deep breath to enquire further, but Ellis cut in.
‘We can’t stay here. It’s not safe. Where’s your pod?’
Clerk gestured. ‘Behind St Mary Overie. About two hundred yards over there.’
We all surveyed the mêlée around us.
‘Right,’ said Ellis. ‘Our pod is closer. Everyone back to my place.’
‘Good idea,’ said Bashford, wiping sweat off his face. ‘I’m gagging for a cup of tea.’
This didn’t seem the moment to tell them.
They stuck me and North in the middle. I could have told them they’d do better to put her at the front and just follow meekly on behind, but it was their assignment so we did things their way. The
clean-up crew took up their positions at the front – like black-cloaked icebreakers, the rest of us clustered behind them – and we fought our way back to Ellis’s pod, down alleyways, along blocked streets, occasionally even dropping down to river level to avoid the worst bits.
We weren’t that far away – I thought I could catch a glimpse of the pod between groups of fleeing people – and I was looking forward to getting out of this crush and being able to take a moment to think things over properly – when London Bridge exploded. I’d completely forgotten about it and, judging by the expressions on their faces, so had Ellis and his crew.
We were trying to get off the foreshore, fighting our way up a flight of slippery wooden steps, and therefore had a first-class view I could well have done without. I don’t know whether they’d lit long fuses – probably – or floated a fireship – unlikely given the river congestion – but I saw a white flash that hurt my eyes, followed by a series of short, sharp cracks that ran from one starling to another and hurt my ears, followed by a massive boom that made the ground shake beneath my feet and, finally, a long, loud rumble that seemed to go on forever. The shockwave flung me backwards off the steps and into the mud and North landed on top of me. Everyone else flung themselves to the ground anyway.
Almost in slow motion, the bridge blew apart. A lot of it went up. Some of the structures on it were seven storeys high and solidly built and they disintegrated like children’s building bricks. There was no warning. They hadn’t bothered to clear the bridge, although in all fairness, it was hard to see how they could have. I saw scores of people flung, cartwheeling, high into the air, black silhouettes against the bright blue sky.
Great lumps of masonry cracked and tumbled on to the boats beneath. There was no escape for anyone on the river. Giant waves capsized those boats not crushed beneath the bridge itself.
