Overtime Tom Holt

by Overtime (lit)

  He froze.

  The men, he observed, were all wearing dinner jackets, the women posh frocks. They were holding wine glasses. Women in waitress outfits were holding trays of bits of minced-up fish and tiny impaled sausages. There was no band.

  A woman screamed, in isolation. Being English and of the social class brought up to believe that being conspicuous is the one crime which even God cannot forgive, Guy began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. He tried to smile, found that he was having problems with his facial motor functions, and looked down at the revolver, which was pointing at the third waistcoat button of a tall, stout gentleman who Guy felt sure was a chargé d'affaires.

  'Er,' he said.

  'M'sieur,' said the chargé d'affaires. It was the way he said it that made Guy's bowels cringe; also the fact that he said it in French. Guy was no linguist, and the thought of trying to apologise, or say, 'Sorry, I thought this was the Wilkinson's fancy-dress ball' in a foreign tongue, was too much for him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth so effectively that he might as well have forgotten not only Jerusalem but Damascus and Joppa as well.

  He was just about to shoot himself, as being the civilised way out of it all, when a familiar figure appeared behind him. A figure in red and yellow trousers and chain mail, holding a sword, handing a piece of tattered parchment to the toastmaster.

  'Monsieur le Président de la République,' announced the toastmaster.

  There was a brief, thrilled murmur from the distinguished guests, and Guy realised that they'd forgotten all about him. They were forming an orderly queue.

  De Nesle, smiling brightly, stepped forward to start shaking hands. As he passed Guy, he hissed, 'Go back through the door you came in by, quickly,' out of the corner of his smile and passed on.

  Guy needed no second invitation. Despite the fact that the door was marked Défense d'entrer, he pushed through it and found himself back in de Nesle's peculiar study. He sat down heavily in the chair and began to shake.

  'I warned you.'

  De Nesle was standing over him, a comforting grin on his face. A small part of Guy's mind toyed with the idea of pointing the revolver at him, but was howled down by the majority. He put the gun on the table and made a small, whimpering noise in lieu of speech.

  'Don't worry,' de Nesle went on, 'I said that you were a new and rather over-zealous security guard.'

  Guy found some words. They wouldn't have been his first choice, but they were there.

  'Are you the president of the republic?' he asked.

  'Good Lord, no,' said de Nesle. 'I don't go in for politics much, I'm afraid. Not deliberately, anyway. I think you'd better have another drink, don't you?'

  This time, Guy felt, it would be churlish to refuse; and besides, he needed a drink, dead wasps or no dead wasps. To his surprise, however, de Nesle produced a bottle of brandy from a drawer of the desk and poured out a stiff measure into two balloon-shaped glasses.

  'You must excuse my offering you mead just now,' de Nesle was saying. 'I forgot that you don't drink mead any more, and it can be something of an acquired taste. Cheers.'

  He drank and Guy followed suit. It was very good brandy.

  'Now then.' De Nesle sat down on the edge of the desk and stroked his thin moustache with the rim of his glass. He was grinning. 'I'm terribly sorry if I've put you out at all.'

  'Don't mention it,' Guy heard himself saying. Pure reflex.

  'Nonsense,' said de Nesle. 'If you hadn't been kind enough to give me that lift - oh yes, let's see if my call came through.' He pressed a knob on the box attached to his telephone, and then continued; 'No, not yet, what a nuisance. If you hadn't been kind enough to give me that lift, you wouldn't have been put to all this trouble. Actually,' de Nesle said, in a confidential whisper, 'I think you'd have crashed in the sea, because you were almost out of fuel. Can you swim?'

  'No.'

  'Oh well,' de Nesle said, 'I needn't feel quite so bad about it after all. Still, it was a bit of a liberty when all's said and done, particularly since your friend was, well, dead. A bit tasteless in the circumstances. Still, needs must, as they say.'

  'Er,' said Guy.

  'The main thing now,' said de Nesle, 'is to get you back where you want to be. Now I'm not sure I'm supposed to do that - they get awfully cross Upstairs when I go interfering with things that aren't really any of my concern - but if you can't help someone out of a jam, what's the point of any of it, that's what I always say. Where would you like to go?'

  Guy took a deep breath. 'Would London be out of the question?' he said.

  'By no means,' de Nesle replied. 'Anywhere in particular in London, or can I just drop you off at Trafalgar Square?'

  'Yes,' said Guy. 'I mean, Trafalgar Square will do fine.'

  'Splendid. Now then, when?'

  'Sorry?'

  'When would you like me to drop you off?'

  Guy frowned slightly. 'Well, now, if that's no...'

  De Nesle raised an eyebrow and pointed to the wall calendar. 'Are you sure?' he said.

  Guy looked at the calendar. It was one of those mechanical perpetual-calendar things, and the little wheels with numbers on them to represent date, month and year were spinning like the tumblers of a fruit machine, turning so fast you couldn't read them.

  'Now,' said de Nesle brightly, 'doesn't mean a lot here. We're in the Chastel des Temps Jadis, you see. Time here is very much what you make of it.'

  A very silly thought made itself known in Guy's mind, declaring to all who would listen that it might not be all that silly after all, if only it could get a fair hearing.

  'Are you trying to tell me,' he said slowly, 'that this is a sort of, well, time machine?'

  De Nesle grinned. 'Well,' he said, 'the strict answer to your question is No, but you're on the right lines. Now be honest; you'd really rather I didn't explain, right?'

  Guy nodded.

  'Good man.' De Nesle nodded approvingly. 'By now, I suppose you meant 6th July 1943?'

  'Well, if that's all right...'

  'Nothing simpler.' De Nesle stood up and pressed some keys on his typewriter keyboard. The green lights on the screen flashed and then went out. A moment later they read

  6/7/43; # 8765A 7.

  De Nesle walked over to the door which, a few minutes earlier, had led to the diplomatic reception and pushed it open.

  'Follow me,' he said.

  Just then, the other door opened and a girl walked in. She put a cup of what looked like coffee down on the desk, picked up the two brandy glasses, smiled brightly at Guy, and walked out again.

  'Er,' said Guy, 'just a moment.'

  When Julian XXIII was installed as the hundred and ninth Anti-Pope, his unsuccessful rivals raised a number of objections, not least of which were the undisputed facts that he had previously been the Pope of Rome, and that he was now dead.

  For his part, Julian treated these objections with the contempt they deserved. Once established in his palace of the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes, he issued a bull pointing out that he wasn't dead at all, or else how come he could still do thirty lengths of the Anti-Papal swimming pool each morning, and that if he chose to travel to work each day from his home in the sixteenth century, how was that different, when you came right down to it, from the commonplace practice of millions of commuters all over the world? As to the other objection, the exact point in time he commuted from was a week before his election to the See of Rome, and thus he wasn't Pope yet, and it would be a fundamental breach of the rules of natural justice if the rules governing eligibility were to be applied retrospectively. He then had the bull pronounced by his Anti-Papal guard, who called on each of the disappointed candidates personally, usually at three o'clock in the morning and carrying big axes, and explained it carefully. As even his enemies had to admit, as a communicator Julian was hot stuff.

  Once safely established in the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes, Julian set about the pressing task of clearing up the mess left over from the reign of his pr
edecessor, the luckless Wayne XVII. Of the problems facing him, clearly the most urgent was that of Jean II de Nesle.

  'I mean,' he observed to his chaplain, a timeless figure called Mountjoy King of Arms, 'the man's a menace. He's completely out of control. Zooming backwards and forwards between the centuries like the proverbial loose cannon. He just doesn't think.'

  'Well,' said Mountjoy, 'it's not really his place to think, is it?'

  'Be that as it may,' said Julian firmly. 'What gives me sleepless nights is the thought that one of these days he might actually succeed. Find the wretched man. Then what? I don't suppose you've considered that.'

  Mountjoy had the irritating habit of flickering at the edges when stuck for an answer. 'With all due respect,' he said, shimmering, 'that's not terribly likely, now is it?'

  'Why not?' replied Julian gloomily. 'Stranger things have happened, you know that. I mean, by rights, none of us should be here at all.'

  Mountjoy rematerialised completely. 'That,' he said stiffly, 'was an exceptional incident. Nothing like that could ever happen again.'

  'You reckon?' Julian shook his head. 'Nothing like that could have happened in the first place, but it did. Now if I had my way, I'd go back and put a wet sponge down the back of his neck. That'd have woken the dozy so-and-so up right enough. Still, there we are. We're drifting away from the point. All this darting backwards and forwards has got to stop.'

  'Well ...'

  Julian tried giving his chaplain a hard stare, but instead found himself staring at the wall through a vague and insubstantial silhouette. 'Go on then,' he said wearily. 'Spit it out.'

  'With all due respect,' said Mountjoy, 'I would ask you to consider whether it's really up to you whether de Nesle is allowed to continue or not. Isn't that a decision for...

  Mountjoy made a gesture with his hands.

  'Indeed it is,' said the Anti-Pope. 'And as his duly appointed agent, I take the view that I have full authority to... Stop fading when I'm talking to you, it makes me lose my thread. Thank you.'

  'Full authority?'

  Julian frowned. 'Yes, dammit, why not?' he said. 'Why can't I rub out Jean de Nesle?'

  'The Seventy-Fourth Lateran Council -'

  'Stuff the Seventy-Fourth Lateran Council.'

  'The Bull Non tibi soli -' said a patch of glittering mist.

  'Is neither here nor there,' snapped the Anti-Pope. 'And if you don't want to do it, then I quite understand. There'll always be a job for you in the Pensions department.'

  Mountjoy rematerialised with an almost audible snap. 'I see,' he said. 'Right.'

  'Not,' said Julian pleasantly, 'that I'm threatening you or anything.'

  'No.'

  'I mean,' Julian went on, 'I hear they've brightened up the decor down there quite a lot recently. Someone even cleaned the window, I think.'

  'Nevertheless ...'

  'Good man,' said the Anti-Pope. 'Good Lord, is that the time? I must fly.'

  'Um,' said Guy, as casually as he could. 'Who was that?'

  'Sorry?' De Nesle was grinning.

  'That, urn, lady,' said Guy, 'who just came in.'

  'Oh, that,' de Nesle replied. 'That was my sister, Isoud. Right, shall we be getting along?'

  'Yes, yes, thank you,' said Guy, not moving. 'Your sister,' he repeated.

  De Nesle sat down on the edge of the desk and picked up the coffee cup. He took a sip and grimaced. 'She's put sugar in it again,' he said. 'Yes, very much my sister. Makes a profoundly horrible cup of coffee, bless her, but otherwise she's better than having malaria. I take it you don't want to go home now.'

  Guy lifted his head sharply, and saw that there was little point in lying. He nodded.

  'You would prefer,' said de Nesle, with a certain degree of amusement in his voice, 'to spend the rest of your life as a knight of La Beale Isoud, doing deeds of note in her name and striving to be worthy of her?'

  'Well,' said Guy, and then he nodded again. 'The thought had crossed my mind, yes.'

  De Nesle smiled. 'There's one born every minute,' he said, 'or at the outside, every ninety seconds. My sister has enough knights strewn across history to re-enact Agincourt. You may remember,' he added softly, 'what happened to the knights at Agincourt.'

  'Oh.'

  'Isoud,' de Nesle continued, 'is the plain one. My sister Mahaud, at the last count, had more admirers than there are Elks. Mahaud, by the way, isn't the pretty one. My sister Ysabel, she's the pretty one.'

  'Um...'

  'Fortunately,' de Nesle went on, 'Mahaud and Ysabel are both happily married and living back in time. Furthermore, they're both putting on weight. They do that. Not that Isoud's a slouch when it comes to putting away the carbohydrates; she may look like she'd get blown away by the downdraught from a closing door, but put her in front of a dish of roast pullets and you'll begin to believe what they say about how thin the dividing line is between humanity and the lower animals. The sight of Isoud eating corn on the cob ... Sorry, I seem to have lost my thread.'

  'I...'

  De Nesle rested his chin on his hand and looked at Guy for a moment. 'When there's just one of them it's not so bad; it's when you've got three of them cluttering up the place that you've got problems. They gang up on you. They throw out shirts without telling you. They repaint bathrooms while you're out. Worse still, they repaint a third of the bathroom, get bored and leave the rest for you to do when you get back. They make funny remarks about you to visitors. They decide that they can't bear to live with the tapestries in the hail for another day, drag you round the fair looking at tapestries, moan at you for not taking an interest, and then sulk at you when you express an opinion. In my opinion, the idea of anyone wanting to fight knights and kill dragons just to prove themselves worthy of somebody's sister is so absurd as to be ludicrous.'

  De Nesle finished his coffee and put the cup down. 'Anyway,' he said, 'that's all beside the point, isn't it? I take it that all my well-chosen words have been entirely wasted?'

  Guy nearly said something but nodded instead. De Nesle shrugged.

  'In that case,' he said, 'I suppose we'd better get down to business.'

  Guy started. 'Business?' he said.

  'Business.' De Nesle put a businesslike expression on his face. 'Terms and the like.'

  'Terms?'

  'Terms. I'd be only too glad for you to take La Beale Isoud off my hands - it wouldn't be losing a sister so much as gaining five hundred cubic metres of wardrobe space - but a man in my position has to make full use of all the resources at his disposal. So, terms.'

  Guy swallowed. 'You mean,' he said, 'money?'

  De Nesle scowled briefly, and then, as if remembering something, smiled again. 'Certainly not,' he said. 'My fault, should have made myself clear instead of trying to be delicate. Not money. Help.'

  'Help?'

  'Look,' de Nesle said, 'imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery and all that, but I wonder if you'd mind not repeating every single word I say? It makes one so self-conscious. Perhaps I'd better explain.'

  'Yes,' said Guy.

  'Right.' De Nesle stood up, walked round the room, and then sat down again. 'Yes,' he said. 'Cards on the table, and all that.'

  Guy leaned forward slightly, to demonstrate attentiveness. This seemed to disconcert de Nesle somewhat, for he got up again and walked round the room the other way. Finally he sat down, scratched the back of his head and started making a chain out of paperclips.

  'You see ...' he said. 'Yes?'

  'Oh never mind,' de Nesle exclaimed. 'It's like this ...'

  Once upon a time (said de Nesle) in a province of Greater France called England, there was a king; and his name was Richard. This king was so brave that people called him Richard the Lion-Heart; and at a time when most kings went down to posterity with names such as Charles the Bald and Louis the Fat, this must be taken as evidence that he was at least reasonably popular.

  But then, King Richard wasn't like most of his fellow kings. For instance,
when two peasants disagreed over who owned a particular pig and brought the matter to the King's court of justice for a ruling, Richard would usually end up giving the losing party a pig from the royal pigsties by way of a consolation prize. This was partly because Richard was not always fully capable of following the complexities of a fiercely contested legal argument, and so hedged his bets somewhat to avoid injustice. On the other hand, his royal cousin King Philip Augustus of France, who was rather better at law, tended to resolve all such disputes by finding technical irregularities in the pleadings of both parties, dismissing the case and eating the pig.

  What King Richard was best at was fighting; in fact, he was the finest swordsman and horseman of his age. The trouble was that he didn't enjoy it. War bothered him. It was, he felt, morally questionable, and if he had his way he would quietly phase it Out and replace it with something rather less destructive, such as tennis or community singing (for Richard was extremely musical). Unfortunately, the times he lived in were primitive, to say the least, and warfare was in fact one of the milder and least hazardous pastimes available; besides, as the greatest knight in Christendom, Richard had appearances to keep up. If he suddenly turned pacifist and went about the place sniffing flowers, his adoring people would in all probability change his name to Richard the Fairy and burn him at the stake.

  It was then that King Richard came up with a quite brilliant solution. He would organise a Crusade.

  There had already been a Crusade, about a hundred years earlier. It was basically a joint-stock, limited-liability Crusade, organised by two astute French noblemen, and after deductions it paid a twenty-seven per cent dividend on capital invested, and was accordingly a success. It also recaptured Jerusalem, but the overheads proved unrealistic after a couple of years, and following a period of restructuring the Crusaders rationalised Jerusalem to the Saracens. Jerusalem, when all was said and done, hadn't really been the point.