‘Maybe. When this is over.’ She backed away from him as he advanced. ‘And only if you behave yourself.’ She knelt on the couch and peered up out of the window again. The sounds of the battle were louder now. ‘It’s a Praetorian ship — Pompey’s elite fighting force — and Rufius and his merry band of pirates are trying to take them out. Don’t you think he needs all the help he can get?’
‘But he gave me an order not to let you out! I need to keep on his good side, remember?’
‘And what if the old fool doesn’t make it? Who’s going to speak up for you then?’ she said stubbornly. ‘I’m sure if Sim were here he’d put the odds at five-to-one against.’
Josh thought back to the events he had seen in the colonel’s lifeline, how close the strzyga attack had been to the point of death. He knew then that this battle might be his last.
Caitlin was rummaging around in one of the wooden chests. ‘You never struck me as the type who would leave a man behind,’ she said taking out a breastplate and a long sword.
‘I’m not. Where did you find —’
‘The colonel isn’t the only resourceful one on this mission. If I remember rightly, didn’t I take down a horde of ugly demon bitches yesterday?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ Josh said, moving away from the door, ‘but won’t I need a weapon too?’
‘Do you even know how to use one?’ she joked, handing him a short sword from one of the chests.
49
The Fight
Blood and rain dripped down through the cracks in the decking as they walked through the deserted lower decks.
Josh’s heart was thumping like a drum inside his chest, his senses heightened, every sound and smell magnified a thousand times — he had never felt so alive.
Caitlin made her way to the ladder and looked up at the small square of thunderous sky that loomed over it. She carefully placed one foot after the other until her head was just below the level of the deck and then peered out. What she saw seemed to drain the colour from her face. When she looked back down at Josh, there was nothing but fear in her eyes. He shook his head as if to say, ‘Don’t go,’ but she ignored him and leapt through the hatch.
He felt a cold shiver run down his spine, then followed her up and out into the fight.
Corpses littered the deck. An indistinguishable mass of limbs and assorted body parts lay scattered across the planks, which were slick with rain, blood and entrails. There was no way to tell how many had been lost from each side.
Through the sheeting rain, Josh caught a glimpse of Caitlin as she disappeared into the centre of the fight. Selephin, the colonel and a small band of what was left of the crew were surrounded by a circle of heavily armed Roman soldiers.
The colonel’s bald head towered over the helmets of the guards. It was covered in blood — he was wielding a large sword like a dervish in wide, deadly arcs, but the Romans were well drilled and held their ground, waiting for him to tire.
Josh could see the old man’s arm wavering a little more with every stroke and knew he was running out of steam.
One of the soldiers spotted Caitlin and turned to engage her. She leapt over a fallen body and struck high with her first blow, knocking him slightly off-balance. As she landed, she went low and sliced his leg with another cut above the knee. He went down quickly, and her sword buried itself into his neck.
Illuminated by a flash of lightning, Josh saw another soldier turn to attack Caitlin while she tried to free her blade. Josh picked up a discarded spear and threw it as hard as he could at the man.
The shaft buried itself in the chest of her attacker, and he crumpled. She turned and nodded her thanks before having to parry the blow from another centurion.
With the fight divided on two fronts, the Roman circle opened and gave Selephin and the colonel the break they needed. They carved their way through the ring of steel, and the fight fractured into a series of one-on-one melees across the deck.
The ship rocked violently as the storm-tossed waves did their best to throw them all into the sea. Josh was soaked to the skin and wiped his eyes free of the stinging salt water. He knew he would do more harm than good with the sword, so he found another spear and managed to take down a soldier who was about to gut one of the crew.
A few minutes later, the last of the Roman guard fell.
The storm calmed to a persistent drizzle, and an eerie silence fell over the survivors. Selephin gathered the remainder of his crew together, and they started dropping the dead unceremoniously overboard. A crewman lay struggling for breath close to where Josh was standing. He knelt down to help him, but Caitlin caught his hand before he made contact.
‘Best not to touch the dying,’ she said, panting with exhaustion. There was blood splattered across her cheek.
‘Why?’ he asked, pulling back his hand.
‘Bad things happen at the end of timelines.’
There was a tremor in her voice that spoke of something terrible. The man’s eyes rolled, he let out a last groan and was gone.
Josh looked out into the sea, realising that the men they’d killed were sinking slowly into the deep. It was an odd feeling to know that he could do it. Taking another life was very different when they were trying to end yours — it was a primitive survival instinct that required no emotion, no remorse — nothing like when Gossy had died. That was a cold, empty place in the pit of his soul, one that had taken years to stop staring into.
Caitlin knelt beside the dead man for a few seconds as if in prayer, then stood up and took off her chest plate.
‘Nice throwing arm you’ve got there,’ she said, tossing the dented armour over the side.
‘Remind me not to pick a fight with you,’ he replied, handing her a water skin that he’d found near one of the dead. It was hard to feel victorious standing amongst so many bodies, ones that had breathing a few minutes before. Selephin’s men seemed to have no qualms about it. They were already helping themselves to the captured wine barrels.
The colonel came over to them. He looked drained. His sword had been left in the body of the last man.
‘You disobeyed me.’
Josh nodded. ‘Guess I did.’
‘I think your training is over.’ He was panting and there was blood running down his arm when he slapped Josh on the shoulder. ‘Well done.’
Caitlin shot Josh a look of concern, but, before they could ask, Selephin swung back over on a rope carrying a polished wooden box. The colonel opened it and showed them all the small bronze astrological clock that lay inside.
‘So that’s what all the fuss was about?’ asked Selephin. ‘What is it?’
‘Analog computer, fourteenth century.’
‘OK, so now that you have your clock, I assume the rest is booty?’ Selephin smiled. His crew had already begun to transfer the contents of the captured ship to their hold.
‘The device must sink with the ship,’ the colonel said, handing back the box, ‘and we’ll follow this back to its maker.’ He held up a small gear wheel. ‘And don’t forget you need to leave enough treasure to look convincing when you scuttle it.’
Selephin was already standing on the gunwale, preparing to swing back over to the other ship.
‘Of course, my friend! Just enough to keep them guessing.’
The colonel turned to Caitlin and Josh. ‘So you two have earned a break. I’ll follow this one up.’ He pocketed the gear wheel. ‘Go back home and get some rest.’
Caitlin shook her head. ‘Not before we get you to a doctor.’
Josh caught the colonel as he stumbled. He was like a dead weight. Caitlin unbuckled his armour to reveal a large red slash below his ribs. Josh realised it was in the same place as the dagger wound used to summon the strzyga.
Caitlin grimaced. ‘We need to get him to Dr Crooke right now!’
50
Bedlam
[Bishopsgate, London. Date: 11.647]
Doctor Helkiah Crooke was an imposing figure in his long black cloak and hum
ped back. To Josh he looked more like an evil wizard than a physician — especially when his surgery had all the trappings of a medieval torture chamber.
A stern-looking woman dressed in a nun’s habit ushered Caitlin and Josh out of the room, telling them that the colonel’s treatment would take many hours, and banished them to the outer rooms.
Josh was tired and sore. He’d wasted enough time in waiting rooms and had grown to despise them. It seemed that no matter which era you were in, they always had a lingering odour of disease weakly masked by chemicals.
‘Is there a garden or something?’ Josh asked as he paced around, trying not to look at the pale organs that sat in fluid-filled specimen jars on the shelves.
‘There’s a herbarium,’ Caitlin replied. ‘It’s a garden, or we could go back to the chapter house?’
‘No. I just want to get some fresh air.’
The herbarium was set within the main quadrangle of Bethlem hospital, or Bedlam as it was more commonly known. On every side, the old redbrick walls were covered in ivy and climbing roses. It was midday and the sunlight bathed the small garden, which had been divided into four sections, each with a planter full of medicinal herbs. In the centre was a neatly clipped lawn with a small stone fountain surrounded by a circular bench.
Josh sat down heavily on the bench and dipped his hand into the cool waters of the fountain. As he rubbed the cold liquid into the back of his neck he watched the swallows diving in and out of the eaves — it was good to feel the sun on his face, to chill out after everything they had been through.
Caitlin wandered around the herb garden, bending over to smell a flower or pick the odd leaf and eat it. His stomach growled at the thought of food.
Drowsy from the warmth of the sun, he watched her through half-closed eyes as she inspected the plants. There was an intensity about the way she examined everything, as if each petal were the most precious thing in the world.
She walked back over to him with a handful of strawberries. ‘Hello, sailor,’ she joked, popping one into his mouth.
He couldn’t reply. The taste of the fruit was overwhelming his senses.
‘Good?’
He nodded and took another from her.
‘Always got to keep an eye on your blood sugar after that kind of action. Don’t want you having a hypo.’ She dropped the rest into his lap and went off to search the other side of the garden.
‘Before,’ Josh began after they’d finished another batch of fruit, ‘when I was rescuing the colonel from the strzyga, he had a wound in exactly the same place as he has now.’
Caitlin lay beside him on the bench, her head in his lap as she watched the birds. A nun was wandering around the garden with a basket over her arm picking off the dead heads of the roses.
‘That was a fated wound,’ she replied dreamily.
‘A what?’
‘Some things will always happen, no matter what.’ She pulled back the sleeve to reveal a fine scar on her upper arm. ‘I got this when I was seven playing with one of my father’s swords. No matter what I did to try to avoid it, however many times I rewound and tried different ways — it still happened. My father told me later that there are certain events that cannot be changed. “The continuum will have its moment,” he used to say. The Order refers to them as cornerstones.’
‘Cornerstones?’
‘Moments that define who we are. They shape our future. We all have them — mine was losing my parents.’
Josh had never given it a name, but in that moment he saw that losing Gossy had changed his life irreversibly. Since the accident, his fate seemed to be a never-ending catalogue of disasters.
‘What if there was one thing that you could change? Would you do it?’
‘An intercession?’ she whispered as if it were a cursed word.
‘Yeah.’
‘No. There are too many consequences. Changing your own timeline is one of the cardinal sins. The Protectorate will lock you up in here and throw away the key.’
‘But what if it meant you could see your parents again?’
‘She opened her eyes and he could see tears welling in the corners.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t wanted to, but no matter what I tried they would still have gone on that mission. I couldn’t change who they were.’
They sat in the garden until the shadows reached their feet. It was a small moment of sanctuary, even if it was surrounded by the insane, which was something that Josh could relate too.
‘Got yourself a new one, did you?’ the colonel asked as he nodded admiringly at Josh’s tachyon. He was sitting up in a huge four-poster bed, bolstered by a hundred pillows. There was a large poultice pasted over his ribs and a series of glyphs written in ink over his bare chest.
‘Sim gave it to him for passing his second Millenial,’ lied Caitlin before Josh could think of a better excuse. He didn’t want to explain how he’d left his previous one with the professor at the university.
The nun was busy at the other end of the room, washing out a bowl and humming to herself annoyingly. The colonel waved them closer and struggled to sit up. He whispered so the woman couldn’t hear.
‘Listen, you two, I appreciate what you’ve done, but I have unfinished business back there — need to find out who’s been passing technology to the Greeks. Get yourselves back to Methuselah before someone notices you’re missing. I’ll be fine. Old Crooke’s medicine smells like bat shit, but it works wonders.’
He winked at them and peeled away the poultice to show a newly healed lesion underneath. Josh was impressed — a few hours ago the wound had looked pretty fatal.
‘Thank you for coming,’ the colonel said loudly for the benefit of the nun. ‘I should like to rest now.’ Again a wink.
‘Take care, Uncle,’ Caitlin said, and she bent to kiss the old man on the cheek.
He took Josh by the hand and looked earnestly into his eyes. ‘Be careful, Joshua. Your training may be over, but you still have a hell of a lot to learn.’
‘Shall we?’ Caitlin asked, taking Josh’s hand. As they walked out of the room, she whispered, ‘Rufius suspects that the old battle-axe is a spy for the Determinists. Did you notice how she was always hovering around us?’
‘Why would they be so interested in him?’
‘Oh, it’s not him,’ she said, turning to face Josh. ‘It’s you.’
51
Private Hospital
Professor Fermi left the nurse settling the patient into her private room. He’d already spoken to the clinical specialist and knew there was very little left they could do — other than continue her current treatment and make her comfortable. Multiple Sclerosis was a terrible illness, one that eroded the body and the mind. There were new therapies, ones that she would never be able to afford, trials that only those with the right connections could try.
‘It’s the fate of the poor to suffer,’ his father had once told him as they watched the grapes being harvested by the local villagers.
Fermi was a pragmatist. He took no pleasure in her suffering. He simply needed her to get to her son. She’d no idea of his whereabouts, the sedatives had made her confused, so it was just a case of waiting for Josh to resurface and come looking for his mother — which Lenin had assured him he’d do very soon.
52
The Text
Caitlin had left Josh at the colonel’s house and gone back to the Chapter House. She’d promised to come back after dinner, or if she couldn’t then they’d agreed to meet the next day in the local library. Josh had forgotten that she had a day job, and that in terms of the present they’d only been gone for a few minutes.
Josh sat alone in the study. The room was still a mess. He had set a fire in the grate, which was slowly warming the unheated room; the house had no central heating, and the nights were cooling quickly as the summer came to an end.
He sat in the colonel’s worn leather armchair and flicked through his old diary, rereading the notes he’d made all those year
s ago. Amongst descriptions of his mother’s symptoms and daily medication schedules were doodles of knights and spacemen, dragons and castles. As Josh ran his fingers over the badly drawn figures, he could feel the pen in his eleven-year-old hand, drawing them on his mother’s bed as she lay sleeping. They were quiet moments of escape when he let his mind wander — daydreams of adventures he thought he would never have.
He came to a week of blank pages, June 12th, 2011, the day of the accident. He couldn’t remember much about that day. The doctor told his mother it was some form of post-traumatic stress that would heal in time — it never did. The empty pages were like a mirror of his memories, a missing week in his life. All he knew was that when he came home his best friend was dead, and there were no more doodles in the diary after that.
The coals on the fire sputtered and hissed as rain fell down the chimney. The Grecian storm seemed to have followed him back to the present. It was sheeting rain outside, and there were flashes of lightning behind the curtains.
The house was too quiet, too empty. Josh went over to the stereo, which was some kind of retro-turntable model. He knew the colonel was a purist when it came to music. He was always complaining that digitising sound lost something — preferring vinyl to MP3s or CDs.
Josh thumbed through the collection of albums and picked Ella Fitzgerald Live at Mister Kelly’s. It reminded him of his gran. She was always singing — her favourite song was called You Don’t Know What Love Is.
He pulled the shiny black disc out of its sleeve and placed the needle carefully on track six of the B side. The speakers crackled into life. The music was a pure, beautiful tone that surrounded him. He stood in the middle of the study and let the warm notes flow over him. It was as if the band were in the room — playing just for him. He’d never experienced anything quite as moving as when Ella’s deep velvet voice sang the first words of the song.
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