TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1

by Scott K. Andrews

  ‘I know not his politics, sir,’ she replied, casting her eyes to the ground. ‘It was my mother with whom I went to visit, not her master.’

  ‘A godly woman would not cross the threshold of such a place,’ said her brother, his voice low and threatening.

  ‘My corporal refers, no doubt, to the stories of witchcraft that swirl around Sweetclover like vile miasma,’ said the officer.

  Dora’s blood chilled at the uttering of that word. ‘I have heard no such stories,’ she said.

  There was a low murmur from the crowd of soldiers who stood around them, watching the interrogation. They obviously did not believe her.

  ‘Corporal,’ barked the officer, turning his attention to James. ‘When you were a child, did your mother ever show signs of witchery?’

  Dora looked up at the boy with whom she had shared a childhood, the big brother who had kept her safe from bullies, the boy she had adored and loved only a few years earlier. She saw not one ounce of the kindness she had known in him. This absence, more than the words he spoke next, were what shocked her to the core.

  ‘Once, when I was a boy, I fell and hurt my leg most grievous,’ he said. ‘A gash, deep and poisoned. My mother mixed a poultice which, when applied to the wound, did rid it of poison and allow it to heal.’

  No longer able to restrain herself, Dora raised her hand and inflicted her own blow upon her brother’s cheek. Before he could retaliate, the officer stepped back and shouted, ‘Bring forth the prisoner.’

  Dora was gripped from behind by one of the other soldiers, her arms pinned at her back. ‘Keep still, witch,’ hissed the soldier in her ear.

  The crowd of soldiers parted to reveal a man dressed in the clothes of a farm labourer, his hands and feet bound with rope, his face a blurred mass of bruises and swellings. His tatty shirt was red with blood. He limped forward at the point of a soldier’s sword until he stood before Dora and her brother. The officer reached out, grabbed the man’s shirt and casually shoved him to his knees. The prisoner was so weak it took hardly any effort at all.

  ‘Dora Predennick, meet Richard Mountfort,’ said the officer. ‘He is a Royalist spy who was unlucky enough to encounter your brother last night.’

  The prisoner looked up at Dora and, despite his pitiful condition, he nodded a greeting. She thought he tried to smile but it was hard to tell, his face was so badly beaten.

  ‘Richard, this is Dora,’ the officer continued. ‘She is at best a Catholic whore, at worst a witch.’ He clapped his hands together, as if an idea for an amusing game had just occurred to him. ‘Come, let me show you both something.’ Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he spun on his heels and strode away, the crowd of soldiers parting around him as he walked.

  Dora found herself being pushed in the officer’s wake, but at least she was still upright. She saw Mountfort being dragged across the ground by a rope that had been looped around his wrists. Dora lost track of her brother in the crowd.

  She was now so rigid with fear that she had almost stopped thinking entirely. All anger forgotten, all hope abandoned. She allowed herself to be pushed forward, a sick feeling building inside her as the certainty of her fate dawned on her.

  When she was roughly pulled to a halt she was standing at the foot of the large oak tree that dominated the far corner of the green. The officer stood underneath one of the huge boughs, his hands clasped in front of him.

  ‘Corporal, the ropes, if you will,’ he shouted. The crowd of soldiers was growing rowdy at the prospect of entertainment. James stepped forward and threw a rope over the bough. The officer caught it and quickly, with an ease that spoke of an action many times practised, fashioned a noose.

  Meanwhile the soldiers dragged Mountfort to his feet beside her. Dora wanted to reach out and help steady him, but the soldier who held her had a grip of iron.

  The officer called for silence and the hubbub faded away.

  ‘You.’ He pointed to Mountfort. ‘You were taking secret intelligence to the hall. Perhaps news of reinforcements? Were you to warn them of our arrival? Tell them to prepare for a siege? Or was it that you were going to beg for their intervention? What hellish armies would have spewn forth from that place had you delivered your message? And you.’ Now he pointed to Dora. ‘In your wanton garments. All of Cornwall knows the stories of the black mass that is performed at Sweetclover Hall. By your own admission you have been keeping company with the infernal denizens of that cursed place. What devilry did you enact? What have you done to the people of this village? Did you sacrifice them to Satan, hagsdaughter?’

  Mountfort did not protest, but Dora most certainly did. But as she loudly proclaimed her innocence she heard the desperation in her voice and fell silent, shocked at the stark terror apparent in her own pleas for clemency.

  The officer then gestured for the men who held Dora and the spy to drag them to the foot of the tree, beneath the bough over which James was throwing a second rope.

  ‘I will give you each a chance,’ the officer said, his voice quieter now, as he fashioned the second rope into a noose. ‘The first one to confess, entirely and completely, to their sins, to fall at my feet and beg the forgiveness of our merciful Lord, to offer up their accomplices and familiars, shall be spared the rope.’

  The officer gestured again. Dora and Mountfort were forced to their knees side by side. Dora cried out in fear as James placed the noose around her neck.

  ‘James,’ she said, staring into his eyes in a fruitless search for any sliver of the brother she had once loved. ‘Why would you do this? I am your sister … James.’

  He turned away with a cold sneer as the rope scratched the soft flesh of her bare throat. Dora felt hot tears run down her swollen cheeks. If there was no pity to be found in the heart of the boy who had shared her childhood, what hope could there be anywhere in this awful mirror image of the safe, secure village she had once called home?

  Dora tried to focus her thoughts, to banish despair and think of possible escape, but despair had driven all rational thought away. She looked across at Mountfort, who caught her gaze and this time definitely smiled. First he shook his head, wincing at the effort it took, then he nodded to her. He would not break his silence, and she understood that he was giving her the chance to save herself at his expense. Faced with the unexpected opportunity, Dora didn’t even pause.

  ‘I confess,’ she said, hating her weakness and cowardice as she did so, but also unable to prevent herself clinging desperately to the slim chance of survival. More than anything, she realised in a moment of sudden clarity, she wanted to live. She felt a deep rush of self-loathing race through her as she understood that, right at this moment, there was nothing at all she would not do in order to stay alive.

  She had not thought her will would be so easy to break.

  ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘Sweetclover Hall is infested with sprites. Demons and ghouls that serve a fearsome witch named Quil. She has enchanted Lord Sweetclover and his servants and she bends them to her will.’ The words poured out of her, almost as if spoken by someone else. She gave full rein to her darkest imaginings and fashioned them into words designed to both save herself and condemn a brave man to death in her stead. She cried as she testified, each word feeling like a thorn in her flesh, mortally wounding herself in the name of base salvation. ‘If you approach the hall you will be beset by goblins of all sorts – those that fly and swim and crawl, those that breathe fire and those that will chill your blood to ice in your veins. They made me dance with them only this last night, and suckle a black goat that walked upon its hind legs and did sing lullabies composed of the stolen screams of babes bedevilled by succubae.’

  The crowd of soldiers began to cry out in alarm, to step away from her in fear. Dora rose to her feet, the noose still around her neck as she cried and shouted and raved of the devil and all his works. For a moment she detected horror in James’ eyes, but then it was gone, replaced by cold indifference and superiority.

&nbs
p; When finally she had finished, Dora fell to her knees again and buried her face in her hands, weeping hysterically.

  ‘Hang the spy,’ the officer said.

  She looked up to see Mountfort being dragged to his feet, but her view was swiftly blocked by the officer, who walked over to her and held out his hand. She reached up and took it, and he hauled her to her feet, looped the noose off her head and pulled her in close to him.

  ‘As for you,’ he said. ‘You shall languish in the church this night, and we shall hang you at dawn.’

  With a contemptuous leer, he threw her to the ground again and walked away. A circle of soldiers enclosed her, and many hands reached down to carry her away as she screamed for mercy that she knew would not be offered.

  Behind her, she heard the gruesome rattle of the spy’s final, desperate breath as he was hauled skywards.

  14

  Thomas Predennick did not consider himself a brave man, and he certainly did not consider himself a violent one. But he was a proud man. Proud of his home, the value of his labour, the place he held within his community. With his wife and children gone, these were the only things left in which he could take pride.

  The loss of James, seven years before, had not been unexpected. The boy’s eyes had always been wide and excited at the promise of adventure. As much as he tried to deny it, Thomas had known that his son would leave as soon as he was able. In his darkest moments, when the night was still and there was nothing to distract him from his thoughts, he could admit his own guilt – that he had tried so hard to keep the boy close, to groom him for a baker’s life, that he had driven him away.

  But the loss of Theodora two years later had unmanned him entirely.

  His daughter, whom he had adored utterly and without caveat, had always been a homebody. She was not timid or foolish, but she lacked the adventurous spirit that had pulled James away. Thomas had taken comfort in the knowledge that even though he had lost a son, his daughter would stay close to him for the rest of her days. He had looked forward to grandchildren. He knew she hadn’t wanted to take the job at Sweetclover Hall, but it was only three miles yonder, an easy walk on a sunny day. Yet it seemed that much as he had underestimated his son’s lust for adventure, so he had underestimated his daughter’s determination to stay at home. The best explanation anybody could provide for her disappearance was that she had run away from the hall at night, intending to return home, and been waylaid on the road by persons unknown. Robbers or vagabonds, gypsies perhaps. Thomas knew that she would have fought them but he knew also, by her absence, that she must have lost the fight. She was dead, of that he was certain, and it was his fault, for it had been he who had insisted she take the job at the hall.

  In the year after her disappearance, Thomas had barely spoken to a soul. He baked his bread and wandered the woods and fields, the paths and byways, searching for a sign, a clue of any sort to the fate of his little girl. He found nothing. Eventually his wife, Sarah, locked deep in the well of her own grief, lost patience with him. She cultivated the opinion that Dora had not run away. She became certain that some fate had befallen her at the hall itself. Thomas could not believe it; certainly the lord had strange ways, but there had never been gossip or stories about him that indicated the kind of dark purpose Sarah suspected. Still Sarah clung tight to her suspicions. She became possessed by the idea that Lord Sweetclover himself must have done their daughter wrong. Eventually the tension came to a head in a furious argument and Sarah had spoken the words she had been holding in for so long. She screamed into his face that Dora’s fate was his fault. So Thomas, unable to form words that could express so much guilt, did something he had never done before. He raised his hand and struck his wife.

  She left immediately and never returned.

  Thomas only discovered his wife’s refuge a week later when he did a favour for the miller and took the monthly delivery of flour to Sweetclover Hall; he found her there, in floury aprons, ready to take receipt of the sacks. If he would not investigate Dora’s disappearance, she told him, she would. With that cold rebuke she turned her back on him. To the miller’s surprise, Thomas had offered to deliver the flour every month thereafter.

  For six months she refused to talk to him, and Thomas sank even deeper, this time taking solace in the only thing that could help stem, briefly, the tide of guilt – strong drink. The days, weeks and months blurred into one long haze until, one day, he just … stopped.

  He did not know how he managed to stop, or why. He just did. Had he been a man of deep conviction he might have concluded that he had been touched by the mercy of a divine God. In reality he simply reached a point where he had to choose between grave and granary, and he chose the latter. From that day he had not touched anything stronger than small beer, and he’d resumed an active role in the civil and social life of the village. While there were plenty of people who judged him harshly for the dissolution of his family, plenty more were willing to offer understanding and forgiveness. He kept delivering the flour; she gradually began to be civil to him, but nothing more.

  Three years later, he was a respected elder of the village, his opinions given weight by the experience of loss and grief that he had borne. He found what little contentment he could in this newly garnered respect, but it did not dispel the shame he felt, and he would trade it all in an instant for the companionship of the family he had lost.

  Now, with the coming of the war, he had sworn to protect the families of his fellow villagers in a way he had not been able to protect his own.

  ‘We shall circle the village,’ he said as he led the men of Pendarn through the graveyard to the woods that marked the settlement’s boundary. ‘There is a good vantage point on Potter’s Hill. From there we can observe the soldiers unseen.’

  The men murmured their agreement as they hurried into the half-lit woods.

  ‘And what provocation shall be sufficient to spur us to action, Thomas?’ asked Squeer.

  ‘If they look set to burn our houses, then we have no choice but to intervene,’ he replied firmly.

  ‘Or if they find the womenfolk,’ added young Henry Chandler, who awkwardly brandished a sword as long as he was tall.

  ‘We need have no fear of that, son,’ said Thomas, trying to sound more certain than he felt. ‘They are well hid.’

  The sound of smashing glass and the crash of splintering wood echoed through the trees from the church behind them as the men moved with silent, practised ease through the undergrowth, skirting the south side of the village, heading for high ground.

  They had not gone far when Thomas spotted motion ahead. He stopped and the men behind him did likewise, following his lead. Thomas knelt down and squinted, trying to identify the source of the movement. A moment later he caught sight of two figures moving stealthily through the woods ahead of them. He could not make out much detail but their gaits were unfamiliar, and he already knew exactly where every inhabitant of Pendarn was this day. Whoever these two were, they were strangers, keen to remain unseen.

  He turned back to the men and addressed Squeer. ‘Edward, take everyone up to Potter’s Hill,’ he instructed. ‘I’m going to track these two, see who they are and what they want.’

  ‘On your own? Is that wise?’ questioned the thin-faced man.

  ‘I can handle myself,’ Thomas reassured him with a smile, brandishing his cudgel. ‘Look at them. They wish to remain hidden, so I think they are not with the soldiers. Perhaps they are spies for the Crown. If so, they may be able to render aid to us, to help us drive out the invaders. They warrant investigation, but meanwhile you must follow our original plan. If you are forced to attack, I will hear, and will come with haste if able.’

  Squeer held out his hand, and Thomas took it. ‘Good luck, Thomas.’

  ‘And to you.’

  The men of Pendarn stole away through the trees as Thomas forged ahead, stalking the two strangers who in turn stalked his home. He was not a hunter by nature but he had grown up in these wo
ods, playing hide-and-seek almost as soon as he could walk. He could be as stealthy as the most practised poacher. His quarry were not as adept. To Thomas’ ears they fair crashed through the woods like a herd of bulls, though he doubted their noisy progress would be heard by the soldiers on the green. Keeping his distance, Thomas watched as they nipped out of the woods and tried the doors of each village house in turn, checking briefly inside then leaving and closing the doors behind them before skulking back into the woods and moving on to the next dwelling. Were they searching for allies or enemies?

  Eventually his patience wore thin. He could see no weapons about their persons, and although the taller of the two was freakishly tall, they moved like children rather than adults. From their clothes he could tell that they were boys, although the gait of the smaller one had initially led Thomas to identify him as a girl. He did not think they posed an immediate threat, but he was curious and wary. Thomas hurried swiftly into the deeper woods and cut ahead of the two strangers. Selecting a good wide oak behind which to hide, he lay in wait.

  When the tall one came alongside the tree, Thomas lunged forward and tripped him. The boy fell hard onto the ground with a muffled cry of alarm and surprise. Thomas stepped out and confronted the smaller stranger, all the while keeping his cudgel in plain view, close to the fallen one’s head.

  ‘Stay down, son,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the smaller one, who had taken a step back and spread his arms in the universally recognised sign of submission.

  ‘If you say so,’ came a strangely accented voice from the woodland floor. Thomas was immediately suspicious. This was no Englishman.

  ‘Who are you, and what are you doing skulking around my village?’

  The smaller one answered, at first in a high voice but then, after a clearing of the throat, in a deeper. ‘We are … huhhhuggh … we are strangers to this land, good sir, but we offer you no threat.’