Overtime Tom Holt

by Overtime (lit)

  Someone behind the bar started to scream. Blondel frowned.

  'Right,' he said, 'I think we ought to be getting along.'

  There is a wide dichotomy between actual truth and perceived truth; and if the actual truth about the history of the world is that it was just one of those things, that is not necessarily important or even relevant to the people responsible for making sure that it doesn't happen again. Of this latter group, a considerable number have offices at the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes; and one of them in particular, having just had a report from his senior operations manager, was not happy at all.

  'Idiot,' he said.

  Mountjoy King of Arms was far too spiritual, in the widest sense of the term, to be upset by vulgar abuse. He flickered for an instant, like a table lamp in a thunderstorm, and carried on with what he'd been saying.

  'After that,' he said, 'they gathered up the bits and came back.'

  Julian II snarled and stabbed the arm of his chair with a pencil, snapping it.

  'Sack the lot of them,' he said. 'I ask you, what is this world coming to? You send out your top men - supposedly your top men - and what do you get? Unseemly brawls in public houses. I want them all back in the filing department by this time tomorrow, do you hear?'

  Mountjoy nodded. His Unholiness' outbursts of temper rarely lasted long, and he never remembered what he'd said afterwards.

  'And meanwhile?' he asked.

  'Good question.' Julian's face calmed down slightly - the act of thinking always had that effect on him - and he stroked his beard gently. Small flashes of blue fire crackled away into the air.

  'So where are they headed now, do you think?'

  'We don't know,' Mountjoy replied. 'However, we have at last got some information on the men who were with him.'

  Julian lifted his head and nodded approvingly. 'That's rather more like it,' he said. 'What have you got?'

  Mountjoy took out his notebook. 'One of them,' he said, 'is a British citizen by the name of Guy Goodlet.'

  'Yes?'

  'From the mid-twentieth century,' Mountjoy went on. 'Some sort of professional warrior. His family held land in Norfolk at the time of the Domesday Book, but they've always been what you might call small to middling yeomen. No particular antecedents.'

  'That doesn't sound very promising.'

  'No indeed. The other three men are in fact the Beaumont Street Syndicate.

  Julian looked up. 'Are they indeed?'

  Mountjoy nodded. He had decided that there was no point in trying to cover it up. After all, he really had nothing to hide. When he'd invested his small savings in the Beaumont Street Renaissance Income Fund, he'd had no idea that they were mixed up in anything untoward.

  'The Beaumont Street Syndicate,' Julian repeated. 'Well, well. How deeply do you think they're involved?'

  'Too early to say,' Mountjoy replied. 'It might be,' he added cautiously, 'that their involvement is entirely innocent.'

  'Well quite,' Julian replied, nodding. 'In fact, I expect we'll find that that's it, entirely. I mean, everybody's got to have a financial adviser, even Jean de Nesle. No law against it.'

  'No indeed.'

  'Just common sense, really.'

  'Quite so.'

  'Well, there you are, then,' Julian said. 'Nevertheless,' he added, 'we'd better keep an eye on them. Discreetly, of course. Wouldn't want to start a scare on the Exchanges, would we?' He laughed brightly. 'Right, you get that in hand straight away. Put Pursuivant on to it, why don't you? He's got more brains than the others. I've even known him switch on a light without blowing all the fuses. Oh, and Mountjoy

  'Yes?'

  'I wonder if you'd mind just sending a fax for me. To my broker, you know,' Julian said. 'Just a little bit of personal business.'

  'Blondel.'

  'Testing, testing, one, two, three,' said Blondel. 'Yes?'

  Guy frowned. He didn't want to appear faint-hearted or anything like that, but he felt he had a right to know. 'Those people,' he said. 'You know, in that pub?'

  Blondel thought for a moment. 'Oh,' he said, 'you mean in that pub in the Elephant and Castle?'

  'That's right,' Guy said. 'After we'd been sorting things out with the Lombards; the men who came in and...'

  'Got you, yes,' Blondel said. He peered at the microphone and blew into it, giving rise to a sound like God coughing. 'What about them?'

  'It's nothing, really,' Guy replied. 'It's just ... well, does that sort of thing happen very often? Because first there was the fight we had with the man when we followed the stag, and then that business in the Houses of Parliament, and now this...'

  'The Houses of Parliament thing was different,' Blondel said. He adjusted the microphone stand slightly and tightened up the little clips. 'They were just ordinary guards. Must be an awful job, I always think, being a guard. Complete strangers forever hitting you and so forth.'

  'But the other ones,' Guy persisted. 'What about them?'

  Blondel shrugged. 'I don't really know all that much about them myself. They just keep turning up and trying to attack me. They're not very good at it, as you'll have seen for yourself. Their arms and legs don't seem to ... well, to work properly, if you know what I mean. They've been doing it for as long as I can remember.'

  'How can you tell?' Guy asked. 'That it's the same lot, I mean.'

  'Easy,' Blondel replied. 'It's always the same people. They never seem to get a day older, you know. Been jumping out on me for years, some of them have.'

  'Have you tried finding out who they are?'

  'What, from them, you mean? No point.'

  'Why not?' Guy asked. 'Do they refuse to talk, or something?'

  Blondel scratched his ear. 'It's not that,' he said, 'far from it. It's just that when you try questioning them, they go all to pieces.

  'Perhaps if you tried, I don't know, being a bit less intimidating...'

  'No, you don't understand,' Blondel said. 'When I say they go all to pieces, I mean all to pieces. If you don't duck pretty sharpish, bits of them hit you. Legs, kidneys, that sort of thing.'

  Guy stared. 'You mean they ...?'

  'Blow up, yes. Now, where does this wire go?' He traced the course of the wire to the back of a huge amplifier and pulled it out. 'There,' he said, 'that's better. Never could be doing with all this gadgetry.' He picked up the microphone and tapped it. Silence. 'I always reckon that if you can't make them hear you at the back of the hall then you shouldn't call yourself a singer. Why they blow up, of course, I haven't the faintest idea, but they do. The odd thing is that it can't do them much harm, because a month or so later they come bouncing back, club in hand...'

  'You're telling me,' Guy said, 'that the same men who blow up

  'That's right,' Blondel said. 'Anyway, that's all I know about them. Except, of course, that they're something to do with the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes. They've got the Chastel livery, you see.'

  'Fine,' Guy said. 'So what's the ...

  But Blondel had gone off to disconnect the boom mikes, and Guy thought it was best to leave it at that. The hell with La Beale Isoud, he had decided. If there was any way he could get back to his own time, he'd do it. If not, well, he'd have to settle down here (wherever here was) and get a job. But no more of this being lumped on by strange exploding assassins. Not his cup of tea at all.

  'Now where's he gone?' said a voice behind him. It was Giovanni, the senior partner.

  'He went off to look at something,' Guy replied. 'Something technical, after my time. Look, can I ask you something?'

  Giovanni raised an eyebrow. 'What can I do for you?' he asked.

  'It's like this,' Guy said. 'Have you known Blondel long?'

  Giovanni grinned. 'Yes,' he said.

  Guy nodded. 'All this stuff, about time travel and the civil service and Richard the Lion-Heart. It's not for real, is it?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'I mean,' Guy said, 'it's not actually true, is it? None of this is actually happening, or about to happen o
r whatever; it's all just.

  Giovanni had both eyebrows raised. 'Of course it's true,' he said. 'What a very peculiar thing to suggest. After all, here you are experiencing it; it must be true, don't you think?'

  'I ...'Guy rallied his thoughts. 'I just find it hard to accept,' he said, looking out over the auditorium, 'that I'm here with the court poet of Richard the First, who's about to give a concert in a specially built auditorium somewhere in the middle of the Hundred Years War. With a public address system,' he added, 'which makes the sort of thing we have back in my own century look like two cocoa tins and a length of string. I mean, you'll understand my being a bit confused.'

  'Indeed I do,' Giovanni said. 'And I think I can help.'

  'You can?'

  Giovanni smiled. 'I believe so,' he said. 'What you're really saying is that you're worried.'

  'Extremely worried.'

  'Perfectly understandable,' Giovanni said. 'After all, you can't be expected to know what's going to happen next. You've absolutely no way of knowing, from one moment to the next, what the future, immediate or long-term, has in store for you.'

  'Exactly,' Guy said. 'So perhaps ...

  'What you need,' Giovanni said, 'is your own personal pension scheme. Now it so happens...

  It had taken a long time.

  Well, it would, wouldn't it, if all you had to dig with was the handle of a broken spoon, and the wall was thirteen feet thick and made of a particularly hard sort of toughened silicon.

  And then there was the problem of disposing of the dust and the rubble; you can't just leave it there, or the guards will notice and get suspicious. You have to stash it somewhere out of sight. The prisoner had eventually hit on the idea of stuffing it into bags and hanging them from the roof, where it was so dark that nobody could see them. But the only materials he had for making bags from was spiders' webs - it takes literally hundreds of miles of spiders' web to weave three inches of reasonably strong thread - and the skins of rats. He had, over many years, found out that his cell produced only enough food for one spider and one rat to live on at any one time. But one thing that the prisoner had plenty of was time; and while he was waiting for the spiders to spin another few inches of gossamer and for the rats to die of old age, he could always get on with the digging.

  And now he was almost through. Another half inch, no more, stood between him and whatever it was that lay on the other side of the wall. If he really got stuck in and put his back into it, he'd be through in five years, or six at the very latest. He was virtually free already

  He was just about to set to work when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Hurriedly the prisoner dropped the spoon-handle back into the hole he'd gouged in the floor for a hiding-place, and sat on it. The door opened.

  'Afternoon,' said the jailer.

  'Afternoon,' replied the prisoner affably. He was always careful to be as pleasant as he could with the staff. After all, it couldn't be a wonderfully exciting and fulfilling job working in a place like this, and the prisoner was the sort of man who thought about such things.

  'I've got some good news for you,' said the jailer. 'The bloke in the cell next to you's just died.'

  The prisoner went as white as a sheet. Since he hadn't seen daylight for a very, very long time now, this wasn't immediately apparent to the jailer.

  'Which side?' the prisoner asked.

  'Sorry?'

  'On which side was his cell?'

  'That one,' the jailer replied, and pointed. The prisoner 's heart started to beat again. Not the side he was digging on, thank goodness!

  'Got to be that side,' the jailer continued, "cos there isn't a cell the other side. The other side's the exterior wall of the castle. Anyway,' he went on, 'your neighbour's just snuffed it.'

  'Ah,' said the prisoner. This was supposed to be good news, and the prisoner could see nothing pleasant in the news that a man had just died, even if it was a man he'd never even heard of before.

  'And the good news,' the jailer went on, 'is that that means his cell's now empty. We can move you in there straight away.

  'But...'

  'You'll like it,' the jailer said. 'It's got a lovely south-facing aspect,' he went on. 'Bigger than this one, too; you d have - oh, six inches at least more living area. Open plan. The door doesn't squeak, either, and it's ever so quiet and peaceful. It's even got a window.'

  'I -'

  'Well,' said the jailer, 'maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. What I mean is, the door isn't exactly flush, and so when there's a lamp lit out in the corridor, that means that a little crack of light gets in under the door. Now isn't that something?'

  'Yes, but I -'

  'Kept it lovely, he did,' the jailer went on blithely. 'The bloke who's just died, I mean. He did this nice sort of mural thing all over the walls with chalk. Sort of pattern of bunches of six lines down and one line through them. Simple, if you know what I mean, but sort of striking.'

  'Yes, but I can't -'

  The jailer smiled. 'That's all right,' he said. 'I know what you're going to say, but really, no problem. You've never been any trouble, you haven't, not like some of them, and you've always had a cheerful word for me and the kids of a morning. We appreciate that sort of thing in the prison service, believe you me. So this is my way of saying thank you. I mean, if we can't help people out sometimes, what sort of a world is this, anyway?'

  'But ...' The prisoner couldn't help turning and looking into the darkness at where his tunnel, which had occupied his waking and sleeping thoughts for so long now that he couldn't remember a time when

  On the other hand, a voice said at the back of his mind, this gentleman is being extremely kind and generous, doing his best to be helpful, and even when people do things for you and give you things that you don't actually want, you must always remember that it's the thought that counts. Anything else would be sheer ingratitude.

  'Thank you,' said the prisoner. 'Thank you ever so much.' He looked round for the last time. 'I'll just say goodbye to my rat and I'll be right with you.'

  The concert had been a success.

  Nominally, it was a charity gig, with all the proceeds going to finance a last-ditch attempt to turn back the tide of Islam and recapture Jerusalem; hence the name of the organization - CrusAid - and the stalls at the entrances to the auditorium selling a wide range of official souvenir missals, holy relics and I-Forcibly-Converted-The-World surcoats. In reality, CrusAid was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clairvaux Holdings, the property arm of the United Lombard Group of Companies, which in turn was a satellite corporation of the Second Crusade Investment Trust (established 1187) into which the Beaumont Street Syndicate funnelled the accumulated capital of the centuries. By the time the proceeds reached SCIT, however, the money had been not so much laundered as washed in the blood of the Lamb.

  In spite of all that, however, they came in their thousands from all over Christendom, and when Blondel sang O Fortuna Velut Luna, Imperator Rex Graecorum, Aestuans Intrinsecus and other numbers from his 1186 hit missal Carmina Burana, they had to be forcibly restrained by the Templar security guards from ripping up the seats and setting fire to them.

  Afterwards, Giovanni came backstage. He looked exhausted and his hands were black with silver oxide from helping his brothers count the takings. They had had to hire fifteen mules and three hundred Knights Templar to transport the money to Paris to be banked.

  'Blondel,' he said wearily, 'that was great. I mean really great. Stupendous.' He sat down heavily on a chest and massaged his wrists.

  'Good,' said Blondel absently, towelling his damp hair. 'Can we be getting on now, please?'

  'I'm sorry?' Giovanni said.

  'Well,' Blondel replied, 'there's no point in hanging about here, is there? I thought you said you wanted me to do several concerts.

  'Yes,' said Giovanni, 'but not now, surely. I mean...'

  'No time like the present,' Blondel said, 'if you'll pardon the expression. When to?'

  'Now
hang on a minute ...

  Blondel shook his head. 'We had a deal,' he said. 'I was to do a certain number of concerts, and then you'd tell me what you know about the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes. You didn't say anything about intervals between the concerts. I just want to get all this fooling about over and done with and then get back to work.'

  Giovanni shuddered. 'Fair enough,' he said, 'but -'

  'But nothing,' Blondel replied firmly. 'Where's the next venue?'

  Just then the door of the dressing room burst open, and in tumbled three large men in armour, all with that air of complete discomfort that comes from charging a door with their shoulders without first ascertaining whether or not it's actually locked. They grabbed at a table to try and stop themselves, succeeded only in turning it over, skidded across the flagstones, collided with the wall and fell over, stunned. On their surcoats they bore a coat of arms comprising a mitre argent on a sable field, a bend cross keys reversed gules, attired of the second. Blondel blinked, stood motionless for a second as if rapt in thought, and then grabbed a fire extinguisher and hosed them down until they were all thoroughly drenched in white foam.

  'Now try it,' he said. 'Go on.'

  The three men made various gestures. Their reactions suggested that what they'd expected would happen hadn't.

  'Thought so,' Blondel said. 'I thought you wouldn't be able to blow up if you were all wet. Now, I think it s time we had a chat, don't you?'

  'We're saying nothing.'

  'All right, then,' Blondel replied grimly. 'Guy, shoot their hats off.'

  'But they aren't wearing...'

  Blondel scowled, and then grabbed the headgear from the Lombard brothers and rammed it down over the ears of the prisoners. 'They are now,' he said.

  Guy reached, rather hesitantly, for his revolver. One of the prisoners let out a howl of anguish and asked Blondel rather urgently what it was that he wanted to know.

  'You could start,' Blondel said, 'by telling me where the Chastel des Larmes Chaudes is.'