by Jodi Taylor
I didn’t look at my bag. ‘I do.’
‘Then let’s go.’
I had to carry my own bag downstairs. It was very obvious he was Lady Amelia’s butler, not mine.
We slipped down the corridor and, turning our backs on the sound of conversation from the bar, nipped out the back door that leads to the smokers’ area, the garden, the car park and eventually, fields. It was quite dark by now.
‘A bit too close to the buildings, I think,’ I said and led him through the gate. There’s a big field behind the pub where the village events happen. Peterson and Lingoss have hired a giant tent for their wedding reception here and Ian’s organising the catering.
I looked around. There was no one in sight anywhere.
‘Would you excuse me a minute, please,’ I said.
He shrugged and wandered off to inspect the hedge.
I pulled out the Trojan Horse and stuck my thumbnail in a place no thumbnail should ever go. The horse fell into two pieces to reveal the remote concealed inside.
Fifteen seconds later, Leon’s pod stood in front of me. Still invisible, obviously.
‘Ready,’ I said.
He turned around, blinked and then realised. ‘Camouflage device. That’ll come in useful.’
‘Where to?’
He passed me a piece of paper with the coordinates. You never touch someone else’s pod. I don’t know why but it’s a rule everyone seems to adhere to. Me, St Mary’s, the Time Police. And butlers, it would seem.
With a wave of his hand, he disappeared into the night. To his own pod, presumably.
It hadn’t been so very long since I’d exited this pod. The smell of Babylon still hung in the air – spices, dung and hot dust. Suddenly I was back in the baking sun, the dust, the noise, the quiet desperation as we searched and searched. I pushed all that away. We’d found them in the end – try and remember that, Maxwell, not all the other stuff.
The pod was in a bit of a state. Leon would do his nut. There was still sand on the floor. The bathroom looked as if an ex-slave who hadn’t had a shower in over a year had been in there. I sighed. I was going to have to give it a good scrub because it was my responsibility now. No more techies to run around and clear up after me. I’d have to remember to check the water and power levels regularly, as well.
I programmed in the coordinates Pennyroyal had given me and, too tired to worry about where I might end up, initiated the jump.
I had no idea where I landed. It was dark, I can tell you that. And given the smell of animals and manure, I was in the countryside somewhere. Which country and when, I had no idea. Nor did I care. My head was really beginning not to work very well.
I carefully shut everything down, which, because I was tired, took me much longer than usual, and exited the pod. Pennyroyal was waiting for me a few yards away. We were inside a large, dimly lit structure that felt and smelled like some sort of old barn. An old agricultural building anyway.
‘This way, Dr Maxwell, if you please.’
‘No,’ I said, faint vestiges of common sense remaining. ‘I can’t just blindly follow you into the unknown. If I’m in the past, then I need to know. There’s rather a lot of the past that already has me in it.’
‘No cause for alarm. You’re in your future. Not too far – just enough to avoid any inadvertent accidents. You’re perfectly safe for the moment. Your temporal whereabouts are not something about which you need to be concerned.’
OK then. I followed him across a hard floor. He found his way to a doorway with a keypad. He typed in a number and pushed the door open. ‘After you.’
I walked past him into a long, narrow, lighted passage that stretched in both directions.
Old house, was my first thought. To go with the old barn. There was a slight smell of damp stone. Doors on the left-hand side of the passage, windows to the right. Small windows with chintzy curtains. An odd choice for someone like Pennyroyal.
He pointed left to a door at the very end. ‘Lady Amelia’s private quarters. Out of bounds to everyone.’ He pointed right to a corresponding door at the other end of the passage. ‘My quarters. Ditto. This one . . .’ he pushed open a door, ‘kitchen. Lady Amelia would wish me to welcome you and say her house is your house. Please make yourself at home. Eat and drink whenever you feel like it.’
I nodded, too tired to do anything else. Quite honestly, if he’d told me the torture chamber was just next door and he’d booked me in for tomorrow at eight, I’d still have nodded, too tired to do anything else.
He looked down at me and said, ‘I’ll take you upstairs to your room, shall I?’
The clonky wooden staircase twisted up through the middle of the house. Shallow treads with a worn crimson carpet. Amy Robsart would almost certainly have survived falling down this one. At the top, again, the long passage stretched to left and right. Doors to one side, windows to another. My room was first left.
I opened the door to a bedroom. The curtains were snugly drawn and the golden glow from the small lamp gave everything a cosy look. There was a chimney breast with an empty fireplace. Double doors in the right-hand alcove were a wardrobe, I guessed. And a corresponding single door to the left.
‘Bathroom,’ he said, pushing it open. I could dimly see the usual equipment.
This was obviously someone’s spare room. There were two single beds with plain white bedspreads; a bedside table with the lamp stood between them. A small table with a kettle and other necessities stood in the corner. To my right was a tall chest of drawers with a curved front which, by the smell, they’d used for storing apples once upon a time.
I was experiencing all the disorientation of an exhausted traveller who arrives after dark and hasn’t a clue what’s going on. I was in another time and another place and I had no clue about either.
‘I’ll leave you to get settled in,’ he said. ‘Get up whenever you feel like it. There’s nothing happening tomorrow so take your time. Sleep well, Dr Maxwell.’
It took me nearly four seconds to unpack. I stood the Trojan Horse, now with its remote control back in place, together with my other bits and pieces, on the mantelpiece in plain sight. I dumped my toiletries in the bathroom, noting the enormous number of fluffy towels provided. PJs went on the bed. I pulled open the second drawer – because the top drawer was above my eyeline – and laid underwear on the left-hand side, a spare pair of jeans in the middle and two T-shirts and a sweatshirt on the right. Job done. My shoes went under the bed and my riding mac behind the door. That was it. I’d moved in. I undressed, left my clothes on the chair, used the bathroom and crawled into bed. A small part of my mind was telling me I really should carry out some sort of recce; anything could happen while I slept. But sometimes you just don’t care.
The bed was cool and comfortable. I pulled the covers around me and closed my eyes. It had been quite a busy day.
I woke slowly, wondering where the hell I was. I didn’t recognise the room. All the furniture was strange and in the wrong place. I could smell apples. What the hell was going on?
I’m never brilliant first thing in the morning – although I rather suspected this was slightly past first thing in the morning. At St Mary’s – where I obviously wasn’t – no one would ever come near me until I’d had my second cup of tea. I could see a kettle from where I was. And a bowl of tea bags. And a matching sugar bowl. There was even a plate of lemon slices. Tea seemed the obvious way to go.
I made myself a mug, wandered over to the window and pulled back the curtains. I don’t know what I was expecting but what I got was a country landscape. A long lawn stretched in front of me, down to a line of willow trees fringing the banks of a stream. An old, battered table with four chairs sat on the grass under the trees.
I opened the window and leaned out. I was in a very long, low, red brick building. An old farmhouse, I guessed. I counted eight windows on the ground floor and,
I think, eleven along the first floor. It was difficult to be sure without actually falling out of the window.
The building was very old. Looking at the style of the windows, either late 1600s or early 1700s. If it had ever been modernised it had been very well done.
I looked left and right. Part of the building was covered in a creeper similar to the one at St Mary’s. The one that turns red in autumn. This one was green so it was still summer here.
A long hoggin drive led up past the lawn and disappeared under an archway in the building.
I stood sipping my tea, and as I looked, one of those quad-bike things that farmers race around on shot out of the arch and headed down the drive. Apart from the crunch of tyres on the hoggin, this one was completely silent. Electric, obviously. Two sheepdogs raced alongside, their tongues lolling.
OK, I was in the country somewhere. Northern Europe. Possibly England. Probably England. Possibly. Somewhere rural. A working farm judging by the smell.
I sat on the low windowsill and sipped my tea. It was all very peaceful here. Other than the bloke on his quad-bike thingy, there wasn’t another soul in sight. A couple of crows called from a group of trees to my right and behind them rose a series of low hills, patchworked with fields. A few cows grazed. So peaceful . . .
I finished my tea, ignored the temptation to climb back into bed and have another half hour or so and wandered off to have last night’s bath. I washed my hair – there was even a hairdryer provided – and dressed in yesterday’s clothes because there wasn’t a lot of choice. That done, I went downstairs.
Pennyroyal was in the kitchen, sitting at the table doing some paperwork. He actually had a small pair of spectacles on the end of his nose. Now he looked like an intelligent psychopath. ‘Good morning, Dr Maxwell. Did you sleep well?’
‘Very well, thank you.’
‘Help yourself to anything you want for breakfast.’
The message was clear – he cooked for Lady Amelia and no one else.
I couldn’t be bothered to do anything for myself so I made a couple of slices of toast and poured some orange juice. The day looked lovely and I felt the need for some solitude while I thought things through, so I took it all outside to the little table under the willows. Everything was very still. I could hear the stream burbling over its stony bed and then a voice behind me said, ‘What ho, Max.’
I dropped my toast on the grass in shock.
‘Oh my God. Markham? Is that you?’
‘The one and only,’ he said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t turn round.’
‘Why not? Are you here in secret?’
‘No,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘You just look better from the back.’
I leaped to my feet, toppling my chair and crushing my toast, and gave him a massive hug. With Markham here the world was suddenly a very different place.
He gave me a massive hug back. We stood for a long time and then he said, ‘Good to see you again, Max. Did you miss me?’
I stepped back to look him up and down. ‘I’m sorry – have you been away?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice, obviously.’
‘You look well.’
He grinned his usual sunny grin. ‘Yeah, not too bad.’
I looked around. ‘Hunter’s not here, then?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You’re wearing odd socks.’
‘Oh.’ He looked down, helplessly.
In some exasperation, I said, ‘Don’t you have another pair?’
‘Well, yeah, but they’re exactly the same.’
We grinned at each other.
‘How’s Flora?’
‘Beautiful. Well. Growing. She can hold up her head now.’
‘Not something you’ve ever managed to do.’ I looked around. ‘Where are they?’
He shook his head. ‘Not here.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re somewhere safe. I see them regularly.’ He changed the subject. ‘I gather you’ve been sacked. Again.’
I sighed. ‘It’s all gone to shit. I’m sorry, but I have some bad news for you. Dr Bairstow . . . has died.’
‘Yeah, I know. Pennyroyal told me. I didn’t believe him to begin with.’
‘I didn’t believe Treadwell, either. It just doesn’t seem possible, does it?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I thought he’d go on forever. He couldn’t, of course, but even so . . . It’s a bit of a bugger, Max.’
‘I know.’ I started on my depressing catalogue again. ‘You’re gone, I’m gone, the Boss is gone. Clerk and Prentiss . . . I have to stop doing this.’
‘What?’
‘Listing all the people who aren’t with us any longer.’
‘Peterson’s still there.’
‘Yes, true. But God knows what’s going to become of St Mary’s.’
He straightened my chair and we sat down. ‘Well, you could say it’s not our problem, Max. We’re not part of St Mary’s any longer and we have ourselves to worry about now.’
I nodded, picking pieces of grass off my toast.
I expected I’d have to talk about Hyssop and her gang of clowns and what had happened to Clerk and Prentiss but Markham was as up to date as I was. A line of communication clearly ran from Ian Guthrie, through Pennyroyal, directly to Markham. There wasn’t anything I could tell him he didn’t already know.
I gestured around. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Oh, a while,’ he said vaguely and I remembered there’s no getting any information out of Markham if he doesn’t want you to. ‘It’s not bad here and the pay’s good.’
‘You’ve been working for them?’
‘I’ve done a couple of jobs, yeah.’
‘What sort of jobs?’
‘Picking up people, mostly. Pennyroyal tracks them down, I lure them into a dark place, incapacitate them by whatever means seem best at the time, cuff and stuff, then Pennyroyal takes them back to TPHQ and returns with a wad of money, some of which he gives to me.’
‘You’re working alone?’
‘Only at the moment. Lady Amelia’s off somewhere, doing something to someone, so I’ve had Pennyroyal teaching me the ropes – which I will now pass on to you. Apparently, you and I are the B Team.’
I sat back. So – now I was a bounty hunter. Sorry – recovery agent.
I finished my breakfast and Markham showed me around. There was a whole farmyard behind the arch. A proper old-fashioned farmyard with ancient but still working brick buildings built around a square. The long farmhouse formed one side. On the left was a large barn in which nestled their pod – or possibly one of their pods – and now my pod as well – and a couple of smaller barns with normal, more agricultural contents. A row of four stables stood on the south side, unoccupied for the moment. Four pigpens – again unoccupied because their owners were vacationing in the field behind the pens. On the right-hand side there were sheds storing colourful but complicated pieces of farming machinery and a Dutch barn full of hay at one end and straw at the other.
‘It’s a working farm,’ said Markham. ‘Owned by Lady A, I assume, but worked by the Faraday family, who hang out in a bungalow about half a mile away. They go home every night.’
‘What on earth made Lady Amelia want to live here?’
‘It’s a good choice. Easily defended. Long low building. Accessed only through the archway which is gated and locked at night. Poor access from the rear because of all the buildings. To say nothing of three or four dogs running around so don’t venture out there at night unless you want to be a canine midnight snack. Plus, we’re miles from anywhere, there’s only one road in and out . . .’
‘All-terrain attack vehicles?’ I said.
‘Really boggy ground. Streams come off the hills everywhere.’ He gestured. ‘Really, without installing
minefields and gun turrets and deploying a battalion, they couldn’t be much more secure. And, of course, they can easily get to their pod without leaving the building.’
I nodded. Not a bad set-up.
‘There’s a job coming up,’ he said, moving to stand behind me as a chicken approached too closely. Markham and the animal world are frequently at odds and he always comes off worse. Even Angus bullies him and she’s a sweetie. ‘I expect Pennyroyal’ll give you a couple of days to recover – got to say, Max, you’re looking rough, even for you – and then we’ll get stuck in.’
He was right – I had three days off to get some strength back and then there was a job waiting for us. We gathered around the heart of the house – the kitchen table.
‘Josiah Winterman and Jack Feeney,’ said Pennyroyal, laying two images on the table in front of us. Markham had explained they did very little electronically. Should anyone unfortunate appear through the door it would be a simple matter to pick up the files and dump them all in the kitchen range. Electronics leave a trail. Apparently, you had to know this sort of thing when you were on the wrong side of the legal establishment. If apprehended by the forces of law and order, the correct procedure is to demand a lawyer and then utter, ‘No comment,’ over and over again until they either go mad and release you or go mad and shoot you. ‘Can go either way,’ he said, serenely.
I expressed some doubt.
‘Oh, come on, Max,’ he said, grinning. ‘Admit it – you’ve been training for this your entire life.’
‘I do sometimes wonder whether Pennyroyal and Lady Amelia have ever been tempted to the dark side. Do you think they sit planning bank heists during the long winter nights?’
‘Nah,’ said Pennyroyal when I mentioned this. ‘We’re on to a good thing here. Those bastards in the Time Police tolerate us as long as we do a good job and I will say this – the buggers pay well. We’d be idiots to jeopardise that.’
Back to the files on Winterman and Feeney. Not their real names, apparently. Pennyroyal wouldn’t tell us those in case we inadvertently let them slip. Which showed he’d judged his audience correctly. These were the names they were currently using in the 19th century and these were the only names we needed to know.
