by Jodi Taylor
‘You’re the only …’
‘Please …’
I sighed. ‘All right.
We entered his gloomy tent.
‘What’s that awful smell?’
‘Isn’t it incense?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s not.’
‘Oh, I thought it was. Never mind. Sit down and give me your hand.’
I held out my hand while he poured over it, making artistic passes, and breathing heavily. The smoke curled around his head. I began to feel giddy so God knows what it was doing to him and it wasn’t as if he was normal to begin with.
He seemed to spend a very long time peering at my palm. My hands are quite small. There’s not that much to see, surely. His breathing deepened – he appeared to be in some kind of trance, although with Markham, it’s hard to tell.
Whispered words drifted around the dim tent, as insubstantial as the evil-smelling smoke from his candles.
‘Watch your back.’
‘What?’ I said, confused by his departure from the script.
‘What?’ he said, blinking.
‘What was that all about?’
‘I told you. You will meet a tall, dark stranger …’
‘That’s not what you said.’
‘What did I say?’
‘Something about watching my back.’
‘No, I didn’t. I said you would meet a tall, dark stranger and you will travel across water.’
‘We’ve got to stop clouting you around the side of the head. It’s not doing you as much good as we hoped.’
Somewhat unnerved, I left him.
Small boys aged eighteen and upwards were admiring the display of vintage cars. I shook my head at such folly and passed on.
Things were hotting up in the local farmers’ market where smelly cheese and oddly shaped sausages were being purchased with enthusiasm, especially after sampling thimblefuls of assorted murky and very sticky drinks, which invariably resulted in a sharp intake of breath, a momentary loss of vision, and utterances of ‘Wow! I’ll definitely have a bottle of that! No, make it two!’ People were staggering away with slightly less control over their limbs than they had previously enjoyed.
Away in the distance, the Rushford and District Brass Band were belting out ‘The Floral Dance’ with considerable enthusiasm and much less rhythm. The sun shone down, birds sang, the house and gardens looked wonderful. How long could this last?
I wanted to have a clear look at the two boats, both now proudly moored alongside each other at the south end of the lake and guarded by rival squads from each organisation who gazed at each other with such hostility that I half expected a good number of bodies to be floating face down in the water already. Happily, not yet, but give it time.
Both ships were bigger than I expected. The word raft was misleading. True, they weren’t ocean-going liners, but they were substantial vessels.
The Black Carbuncle towered malevolently, her skull and crossbones flag fluttering in the wind. Yes, technically she was a raft, but somehow, they’d managed to build two floors.
‘Decks,’ said Professor Rapson, materialising alongside (I’m told ‘alongside’ is another nautical term).
‘Doesn’t that make it a bit top-heavy?’
‘Surprisingly, no. I suspect there’s something attached below the waterline. I can’t make it out and they won’t let us get close enough to look.’
‘What are those things at the front bit?’
‘Prow. And they’re modified bull bars.’
‘Bull bars? For God’s sake, this isn’t the school run.’ I was suddenly anxious. ‘Professor, we’re not going to lose, are we? I really don’t want to be paraded around Thirsk behind the Chancellor’s chariot, exposed to the jeers of the mob – sorry, students – and knowing I’m heading for ritual strangling.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘Have a little faith, Max.’
He stepped aside and for the first time, I saw The Valkyrie close up.
Again, yes, technically a raft. But only technically.
‘Modelled on a Viking longship,’ he said, enthusiastically. ‘Lean, mean, fast, and manoeuvrable. It can go backwards and forwards. Although not at the same time, obviously.’
‘Professor, it’s magnificent.’
And it was. It was bloody wonderful. Our boys had done us proud. They’d even built a stubby mast with a red-and-white-striped sail. Colourful papier-mâché shields were slung along each side, each one with its own lovingly painted personal symbol. Crossed spanners for the Technical Section. A scroll for the History department. The caduceus for the Medical Section. A red, green, blue, and yellow window-shaped symbol for the IT people. You know the one I mean. The international warning sign for explosions for R & D. Even the Security Section, never normally recognised for their sense of humour, was represented by crossed shields. Yes, shields on a shield. All right, they’d managed the humour, but still had to work on imagination.
The best bit, however, was at the front.
‘Prow,’ said the professor, wearily.
‘A figurehead,’ I said in delight.
‘Yes. Come and see.’
He grasped my arm.
‘I took your advice, Max.’
Oh wonderful! After all these years, now they start taking my advice and they start with this.
‘The Muse of History,’ he said proudly. ‘Kleio herself. What do you think?’
Frankly, I was amazed the boat hadn’t tipped over. Completely by accident, they’d achieved a more than passing likeness to the Muse of History. Except for one very important area. Actually, two very important areas.
I said carefully, ‘Wow!’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We had a lot of papier-mâché left over and didn’t quite know what to do with it.’
‘So you thought …’
‘Well,’ he said, cheerfully, ‘she’ll never sink.’
‘Not with those flotation devices, no. Has Dr Bairstow seen this?’
‘Oh yes, yes. He was here earlier.’
‘Was he … did he … Was he alone?’
‘Oh no,’ he said vaguely. ‘I think Mrs Partridge was with him.’
‘How delightful. And did she pass any sort of comment?’
‘No, now you come to mention it. She was very quiet. I think perhaps she was struck dumb with admiration.’
‘Nearly right, Professor. Just to be clear, she didn’t say anything at all?’
‘Well, just as she was leaving, she did ask if anyone knew of your whereabouts. I believe she wanted a quick word.’
‘Jolly good,’ I said, weakly, wondering how long it would take me to find my passport and just how far I’d be allowed to get.
‘Anyway,’ he continued briskly, ‘let me walk you around the weapons systems.’ He pointed to a giant piece of rubber, mounted on the deck. ‘Giant catapult. Water cannons – one to port, one to starboard. Simple to set up. One end sucks up the water, the other end blows it out again. Water pistols for hand-to-hand combat when we board them. Over here, plastic bags for water bombs. A crate of well-past-their-best fruit and vegetables, kindly donated by the kitchen department. Ditto a supply of eggs. And flour bombs – and let’s face it Max, who does flour bombs better than St Mary’s?’
Flour, eggs, and water. The whole lake would become one vast lump of pizza dough.
‘And the crate of beer?’
He pushed his spectacles up his nose. ‘For the crew, of course, Max. What else?’
I sighed. Silly me.
‘So what exactly is involved here, Professor?’
‘They row, or paddle, or punt, or whatever, straight across the lake. See those two trees over there? There are two rosettes secured to their trunks. They must seize one and bring it back. First one back here is the winner and it will be us, because if you look carefully, you will see that our boat is reversible. As I said, it can go forwards and backwards; the crew just have to about-face and row like hell. The Black Carbuncle, however, must be physica
lly turned. I think we’ve found their Achilles heel, Max.’
I suspected The Black Carbuncle didn’t need to be turned because our sh – boat – would have been long since despatched to the bottom. She had an air of black menace about her. I was certain the evil brain of Professor Penrose – surely a candidate for the world’s next supervillain – would have devised cruel and unusual devices that would send us to the bottom of the lake in the first ten minutes or so.
As the person nominally responsible for the Open Day, and given the capacity for potential disaster, I felt it was my duty to perform a quick risk assessment. I dived straight to the heart of the matter.
Scanning the lake, I said, ‘Where are the swans?’
He looked around vaguely, as if he expected to see them roosting in a tree somewhere.
‘No idea. I expect they’ve gone wherever swans go. Africa, maybe?’
No. In times of crisis, our swans head for the library – their traditional refuge in any sort of emergency. Since it was currently occupied by pupils and parents, they might have headed off to complain personally to the King.
Meanwhile, the crews were arriving. Everyone was wearing life jackets and hard hats. Dr Bairstow and the Chancellor, both knowing their people and their capabilities well, had insisted upon it. From the corner of my eye, I could see Helen and the medical team setting up an emergency treatment station. Crowds of people milled everywhere, seeking the best vantage points so the kids would get a good view of the drowning nutters. I suspected many of them had brought their own missiles. Even by St Mary’s standards, it was going to be carnage.
The Thirsk crew were daunting just to look at. Eight enormous young men, each of whom could almost certainly lift a horse by himself, should he ever choose to do so. They wore black hard hats. Even their life jackets were black. They loomed. They young men, I mean, not the life jackets.
Our boys, on the other hand, presented a much more … eclectic … image. They’d obviously rummaged around Wardrobe. Leon and Guthrie wore WW1 helmets, probably genuine. Peterson wore a Greek helmet with a moth-eaten crest. Possibly not genuine, but with him, you never knew. Evans wore a Norman helmet with a long nose guard. Probably not genuine. Randall wore a motor cycle helmet. Almost certainly genuine. The rest of them wore assorted knights’ helmets from which the visors had been removed. Definitely not genuine. In his search for authenticity, Mr Markham, now divested of his Madame Zara, All Seeing etc. persona, appeared to be wearing a small pink Tupperware bowl with two cardboard horns glued thereon. I was determined not to comment.
The crowd cheered both teams impartially as they prepared to board.
Beside me, Professor Rapson and Professor Penrose were eyeballing each other. Things could get ugly.
A hand fell on my shoulder. Oh God, Mrs Partridge had found me.
‘It wasn’t me,’ I said wildly. ‘It was just a suggestion. I never thought …’
Leon was grinning at me. ‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly.
‘Do me a favour, will you? Nip round to those trees over there and make sure nothing happens to those rosettes. There are people here today who have even fewer scruples we do.’
‘Good thought,’ I said, seeing Dr Bairstow and the Chancellor approaching to start the race.
The crowd roared their enthusiasm.
Suddenly, everyone was at their oars and we were ready for the start of the race – a traditional St Mary’s demonstration of entropy – from order to disorder. In the words of the song – Nobody does it better.
Believe it or not, there were rules. Everyone needs rules. After all, how can you break what doesn’t exist? Rules give anarchy something to aim at.
Points would be awarded for design, construction, innovation, teamwork, enthusiasm, and stamina. Since our boys were already making inroads into the beer, I had my doubts about the stamina. On the other hand, no one could fault their enthusiasm in knocking it back.
Anyway, each craft, ostensibly eschewing violence, cheating, dangerous rowing practices, etc., was to row across the lake, retrieve their rosette, avoid hand-to-hand fighting with any enemy forces secreting themselves nearby, and return to the jetty. Given that neither craft might survive the experience, it had been decided that the first team simply to hand their rosette to the Chancellor would be the winner. Personally, I would have just unpinned the stupid thing and strolled gently back around the lake to arrive some thirty minutes before any surviving ships pitched up. It seemed the logical thing to do. You can see now why both teams were exclusively male.
The Chancellor stood on the jetty and raised her arm above her head. The crowd, egged on by Dr Dowson over the PA system, counted down. The gun fired and in a sudden fury of boiling white water, they were off.
As was I.
I strolled slowly around the side of the lake, picking my way through excited family groups baying for blood. If we ever did this again – over Dr Bairstow’s dead body, probably – building a mock Coliseum and staging a gladiatorial combat might be extremely popular. I filed that away for future reference.
The first person I saw was Van Owen, very conspicuously not wearing a blue velvet riding habit.
‘You’re not changed,’ I said, accusingly.
She was staring over my shoulder. ‘Just on my way,’ she said vaguely. ‘I was helping Dr Dowson and didn’t want to get blood all over it.’
‘Good thought.’
She stared over my shoulder for so long that I turned myself. ‘Problem?’
She seemed to return from a great distance. ‘No. Sorry. Miles away. Where are you off to?’
‘Rosette protection duty.’
She smiled with a huge effort. ‘Very wise. Well, I’d better get changed.’
‘Greta, is everything all right?’
‘Yes. Oh, yes.’
‘I can do it alone, you know.’
‘No you can’t. I’m the star of the show. You and that rat-tailed apology for a horse are just there to make me look good.’ She paused. ‘Wait for me, Max. I’ll meet you here in twenty minutes and we’ll go to the stables together.’
She set off in a hurry.
‘You’re going the wrong way.’
‘No, it’s OK. I’ll nip through Security and take the back stairs.’
She disappeared, and I carried on around the lake.
Across the water, The Valkyrie was engaging with the enemy. Leon and Dieter, chins on their chests, were pulling doggedly across the lake, protected by Evans and Roberts, who held shields over their heads. Peterson and Clerk were loading the catapult and subjecting The Black Carbuncle to an unending rain of root vegetables.
The ancient and venerable seat of learning based in Thirsk was not, however, taking things lying down. At a given signal, they turned left – parboiled, or whatever left is called in nautical terms – and increased their rate to ramming speed. Professor Rapson was beside himself on the jetty, jumping up and down in a frenzy. Dr Dowson was shrieking contradictory instructions over the public address system. The crowd shouted a warning, but too late. There was a massive collision – or whatever the nautical word is for massive collision. Both boats seemed fused together.
Markham, still wearing his very fetching pink Tupperware bowl, and brandishing what he probably thought was a cutlass, bellowed ‘St Mary’s’ and threw himself at the crew of The Black Carbuncle, who immediately picked him up and hurled him straight into the water. He sank like an anvil. Two or three pirates followed him in, although whether to rescue him or finish him off completely, I never was able to ascertain.
Because at that moment, someone put a cold, hard gun to the back of my neck and said, ‘Stand very, very still, because the one thing I want to do more than anything else in the entire world is to blow your stupid, ugly head off your stupid, ugly shoulders.’
Isabella Bitchface Barclay was back.
Chapter Eleven
I had a sudden picture in my head. A small, concrete room, smothered in white
fluffy filling and a dismembered teddy bear pinned to the wall with a knife through his eye together with a note telling me this wasn’t over.
Sick Bay had put me back together again after the Battle of St Mary’s and Mrs Enderby had done the same for Bear 2.0 – Leon’s special gift to me. He’d taken time out from saving the world just to bring him to me. A brief glimmer of light in a dark time. Now I was back to what passed for normal and Bear spent his days on my windowsill, smiling at the world. I’d let my guard down and here she was.
There was nothing I could do. She was behind me. There were people all around us. I felt a sudden anger that no one was looking at what was going on under their noses. She’d chosen her moment well. Everyone was watching the Raft Race. I could hear cheers, boos, laughter. No one was watching what was happening here.
I stood very still because I didn’t want my stupid, ugly head blown off my stupid, ugly shoulders, either. I said nothing. She wasn’t the most stable person on the planet and this is me saying that.
She jabbed the gun.
‘Walk.’
In the absence of more detailed instructions, I turned and set off towards St Mary’s and got the jab again.
‘Not that way.’
Well, it was worth a try.
I set off again, away from the lake. Away from the noise, the activity, the people, the possibility of any chance of help.
‘The barn.’
Half hidden behind a group of trees was our old barn. Now that we had proper stables and a feed store, it had fallen into disuse. Mr Strong kept his grass cutters there and a bunch of miscellaneous tat which, being a man, he was incapable of throwing away, because, of course, it might come in useful one day.
The sound of large numbers of people having a great time slowly died away as I headed towards the barn. I could hear her walking behind me. We could have been the only two people in the world. Shortly to have that number reduced by half.
I stepped out of the sunshine and into the dim darkness of the barn. It smelled of straw, oil, and earth. Dust danced in the sunlight filtering in through holes in the roof. I walked into the centre and stood still. Waiting.
