Charlie Watts and the Rip in Time
Page 1
Marcus A. Eden-Ellis
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Charlie Watts and the
Rip in Time
THE FIRST CHARLIE WATTS
ADVENTURE
© Copyright 2005 Marcus A. Eden-Ellis.
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Contents
For My Daughters
Historical Note
Prologue
PART ONE
The Present
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART TWO
1140
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
Appendix One
Appendix Two
Appendix Three
For My Daughters
If we could travel into the past, it’s mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn’t today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it’s possible, but it’s certainly worth exploring.
Carl Sagan
www.charliewatts.org
Historical Note
King Stephen was born more than nine hundred years ago in the year 1097 and became king of England in 1135. He was the nephew of the old king, Henry I, and had claimed the throne after his uncle died. He was duly crowned in 1135 and ruled England as the third in the line of the Norman kings.
There was, however, another claimant to the throne of England, Matilda, daughter of Henry I. Matilda, being the direct blood descendant of Henry, was furious that Stephen had been crowned king in her stead; the throne, she believed, was hers by right. There was also a third possible claimant, a nobleman called Robert of Gloucester, one of the apparently numerous offspring of Henry 1. Robert, however, appears to have never made any serious claim to the throne but was known to have supported Matilda in her efforts to be recognised as queen of England.
History remembers Stephen as a good man and a benefactor to his people; compassionate and fair minded. But his reign was also beset by difficulties as Matilda sought to claim the crown for herself, with varying levels of success. Stephen had to be constantly on his guard against those that would remove him from the throne and see Matilda reign in his place. Matilda, a mean spirited and ugly woman, gave herself the title “Lady of the English People” and fought hard for the throne. Determined to see herself crowned, she launched England into a civil war.
It is known that with the support of her half brother, Robert the Earl of Gloucester, she once tried to have Stephen kidnapped and imprisoned (probably secretly executed as well), so that she could rule in his absence.
The success or failure of her plan hung in the balance until the very last moment, with treachery, deceit and murder all key elements of the final outcome.
Prologue
“Bitch!” she screamed, her face twisted into a mask of red fury.
The Lady of the English People, Matilda, had flown headlong into one of her legendary rages. They could be set off by absolutely anything, no matter how seemingly trivial. This morning it had been one of her ladies in waiting, a pretty fifteen-year-old girl called Gwendolyn. The girl had been combing Matilda’s waist-length black hair with an ivory comb, but had tugged too hard at a tangled knot and the comb had snapped in two. At the same time Gwendolyn had accidentally yanked Matilda’s head sharply back.
“You clumsy… stupid… idiot of a girl!” Matilda spat out in a broken sentence and she tried to round on Gwendolyn to deliver a sharp hard slap across the young girl’s face. Gwendolyn, however, possessed the speed and reaction of youth and instinctively ducked below the incoming hand causing Matilda to miss completely. The momentum of the intended blow made Matilda spin around in almost a full circle; throwing off her balance and pitching her forward fuelling her anger even more.
“Stand still!” she exploded, her ugly face turning crimson with rage. As she shouted, a large purple vein in her left temple started to throb furiously as if it were about to burst under the pressure.
There were two other ladies-in-waiting also in the room; Freya and Rosanna, who simply cowered together in fright and immediately cast their gaze away from Matilda and down to the floor. This was the behaviour Matilda preferred from her ladies in waiting at all times, until they were spoken to, in which case it was permissible to answer with a sligh
tly raised head. It was generally assumed that Matilda, being a
remarkably ugly woman, had developed a fear of being looked at and therefore demanded that eye contact was kept to a minimum at all times.
Freya and Rosanna, both also fifteen years old, liked Gwendolyn enormously, as did everyone who knew her, but they were not going to put themselves in the way of harm. They both knew that to avoid Matilda’s anger they must appear as silent and servile as possible.
“I am so very sorry my Lady,” protested Gwendolyn, but Matilda immediately cut her short by raising an imperious hand.
“Shut up and do not move whilst I strike you as punishment for your clumsiness and insolence,” she said.
“But my Lady…” began Gwendolyn again.
“Just shut up and stand still!” screamed Matilda. She took another swing at Gwendolyn but once again Matilda’s young lady-in-waiting instinctively dodged the blow, stepping back out of range rather than ducking this time. This put the Lady of the English People beyond simple rage. She was a violent and angry person at the best of times but now she had become apoplectic at Gwendolyn’s insolence and that was just about as far as you got with Matilda.
“You disobedient bitch! I have had enough and you will live a long time to regret your behaviour this day. Guards! GUARDS!”
Two huge, rough looking soldiers crashed through the door and were inside Matilda’s bedchamber almost immediately. They stood ready with their swords drawn, the steel blades glinting; ready to carry out whatever instruction their mistress gave them.
“Take this girl to Richmond jail, throw her in the darkest deepest cell there is and do not feed her for three days. Then give her only stale bread and water until I tell you otherwise.” She snapped her fingers at them.
Neither guard hesitated for a moment. They took hold of Gwendolyn by the arms and roughly manhandled her from the room. Gwendolyn’s eyes brimmed with tears and she begged Matilda to reconsider. She apologised again for the clumsiness of her actions but Matilda simply turned and waved the guards away with a dismissive gesture. She looked at one of the other two ladies-in-waiting and barked, “You, Freya-comb my hair and be sure that you do not make the same mistake as the cow I have just imprisoned otherwise I will arrange for you to join her in my prison.”
With trembling hands Freya took an undamaged comb from the table at which Matilda had seated herself and began to comb her mistress’s long tresses. A thin smile of satisfaction slithered around Matilda’s mouth as she heard the sobbing from Gwendolyn gradually receding. Matilda fully intended that the insufferably proud Gwendolyn never see the light of day again. Matilda had been responsible for the death of Gwendolyn’s father, Sir Cyril Handwell, who had tried to oppose her march to London. Now Matilda saw no reason not to finish the job and wipe out what remained of the treacherous family.
Freya, the lady-in-waiting who now combed Matilda’s hair was trembling with terror and Rosanna kept her eyes cast to the floor. She too was visibly shaking. Matilda enjoyed that. She liked the fact that she struck terror into people and knew that to be taken seriously as the future queen of England she had to show utter strength of will and purpose. Weakness of any kind would be pounced upon by her enemies and used against her. Matilda had vowed never to show mercy of any kind to anyone who opposed her or to ever weaken in her resolve to remove Stephen, the King of England, from the throne and take the crown for herself.
PART ONE
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The Present
ONE
Charlie Watts hitched his Nike backpack higher onto his back and zipped his jacket up to his neck to combat the unseasonably cold wind which snaked around his fourteen year old, five foot, four inch high body. He fixed his gaze on the long, twisting road that led up to the courtyard of Cuttleworth High School. He hesitated before beginning the trudge up to the school building. This morning he was being cautious because if Mick Clark and his two goons were going to attack, it would be somewhere along the school approach road that they would be most likely to stage an ambush.
Charlie’s best friend, Jerry Squires, had warned him that Mick Clark, the school bully, was after him. Jerry had apparently heard it from a year ten pupil who in turn had heard it from his girlfriend, who was a friend of Mick Clark’s sister. Usually, Charlie took this kind of fourth-hand information with a large pinch of salt but he still felt uneasy about the situation and seemed to sense that Mick really was after him, although he had absolutely no idea why. Charlie’s eyes darted from side to side as he walked along the road. Every rustle of wind in the bushes or sudden scrabbling of a bird in the undergrowth made his stomach turn over.
Although it seemed to go on forever, the approach road to Cuttleworth School was actually about a hundred meters long. It winds and twists through tiered ranks of rhododendron bushes, some of which clawed their way to heights of over ten meters. The road was usually full of noisy school pupils in the hour or so before school starts but because Charlie’s mother had to be in her office by eight o’clock, it meant that Charlie had to be dropped off at the school at seven-thirty each morning. This meant that Charlie was usually at the school gates a full half an hour before anyone else. Of course, this was not so bad on spring and summer mornings but it was a complete pain in the butt during the winter, when it would still be dark.
Those who knew Charlie well would describe him as quite a fearless individual but he had also unfairly earned a reputation as something of a geek amongst those pupils that did not know him very well. It was a reputation founded on several facts: his brown hair was cut in a slightly unfashionable way, he wore glasses (he had tried contact lenses but they badly irritated his eyes), he was an inch short of the average height for his age and he had a habit of carrying a large bundle of books about with him. His passions for science fiction, astronomy and chess were well known around the school and these were pursuits that did not sit well with the townies. Charlie did have a small group of good and loyal friends but, nevertheless, tried to keep himself pretty much to himself. Despite, however, keeping the lowest of profiles, Charlie still managed to be a target for Mick Clark who was, without doubt, the meanest and downright nastiest bully any school could possibly have. Mick Clark was the pits.
He had singled Charlie out and had been picking on him ever since he had started to attend Cuttleworth after leaving his old school. Charlie’s mum and dad had split up two years ago and Charlie had not seen his father since. He seemed to have vanished right off the face of the earth. His mother didn’t know where, or even why, he had gone and he provided no maintenance money for Charlie or his mother. This state of affairs had forced Charlie’s mother to find a smaller, less expensive house than the large redbrick home in Harrow in North London in which they had previously lived. She had sold the Harrow home and had just enough money, after paying off the mortgage, to buy a chillingly damp and horrible two bedroom flat in West Drayton; an average and slightly depressing town in west London.
Although Charlie hated West Drayton with a passion, he was actually really pleased when he saw the school he was going to be attending-Cuttleworth High. It had an air of old worldliness about it; whitewashed stone walls covered in bright green ivy and high lead paned windows that shattered sunlight into hundreds of glistening diamond shaped shards. In fact, Cuttleworth High was a building completely out of the general character of West Drayton and it intrigued Charlie that such a place could still be used for a school in this day and age. The school he had come
from was one of those squat grey brick and concrete affairs; materials so beloved of architects in the sixties and seventies. His old school had always looked so cold and forbidding, as if it held the essence of despondency and despair within the very fabric of its walls. He had fully expected West Drayton to offer the same type of building, only with extra helpings of grimy grey grimness, but when his mother had brought him for an introductory visit, the air of elegance that s
urrounded Cuttleworth had taken him aback. Charlie decided that Cuttleworth would be okay, as it seemed eminently suited to the effort of learning the many interesting and varied things that Charlie knew he needed to know.
The headmaster of Cuttleworth, Mr. Artemis Auckland, who shook Charlie’s hand vigorously and in a sort of circular motion, like he was trying to start an old fashioned car, had greeted Charlie and his mother personally that day. Mr Auckland himself took the trouble to show Charlie and his mother around the school and seemed genuinely interested in Charlie and his well being. He had stressed the “intensive pastoral care” ethic of the school (Charlie made a mental note to look up the word “pastoral” when he next had his dictionary in front of him-he had always thought it meant something to do with the countryside). He also stressed that “the needs of each and every pupil were assessed on a bespoke (another one to look up) basis”.
“Here at Cuttleworth we make every effort to ensure that each child reaches their full potential, no matter how adept they are at keeping that potential hidden,” said Mr Auckland. And, as he uttered this statement, he smoothed back his ample shock of steel coloured hair and let out a strange squawking sound like the sound a duck might make when it has been shot at (and missed) on a cold winter morning. This, Charlie later discovered, was Mr. Auckland’s way of laughing, something he only ever did at his own jokes.
One of the statements made by Mr. Auckland was that the Board of Governors and he were immensely proud that they had completely eliminated all forms of bullying at Cuttleworth. All pupils were free to express themselves as individuals in an atmosphere of tolerance, fraternity and esprit de corps (yet another one to look up, noted Charlie). Charlie often reflected on the irony of that statement whenever Mick Clark punched him in his stomach and took his lunch money or food.
Mick Clark had introduced himself to Charlie on his first day at the school by cuffing him hard around the head, and then yanking his backpack so viciously that he fell backwards in the middle of the school courtyard. Mick loomed over Charlie’s prone figure and called over two gormless looking boys. Charlie later learned that these were Steve Dibben and Mark Jennings and that they always followed Mick around, like a pair of over eager pet dogs. They obeyed immediately, much like. well, faithful dogs-desperate to please their master. Mick drew their attention to Charlie, as he lay on the ground feeling both humiliated and ungainly at the same time.