3. A Second Chance (8 page)

I allowed them all a drink on what would have been Saturday night. If we had any honey cakes or anything special, we saved that for Saturday nights as well. Sometimes people came down from Site A as well, and we had a bit of a knees-up. The kids tried to teach us to dance. So Roberts strummed away as the men stamped, more or less rhythmically in the dust. Women danced separately. Probably because we were considerably better at it.

There was a lot of laughing. Life was good.

The city was thriving. There was no hint of the conflict to come. If Priam was aware of the Greeks massing over the water, no word had yet filtered down to street level. The rich got richer and even the poor didn’t do that badly. Priests distributed food from the palace and from public and private sacrifices. Once or twice – in the spirit of historical research – we queued up ourselves.

Our neighbours were congenial and couldn’t care less about the new people suddenly living two fields away. Houses went up and down all the time as family needs dictated. No one was bothered about a couple of scruffy shacks on the far side of the olive grove. In fact, we were joined briefly by a small family plus grandmother and two goats, who camped twenty yards away, waved and smiled cheerfully, sent their children across to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come.

One of the men got a small job of some kind occasionally, picking olives or grapes or stacking lumber for a day. The payment of eggs or olives or, once, an old boiling fowl was greatly appreciated.

We lived quietly, established our daily routines and noted what went on around us. The war was over a year away.

Life was good.

It would have been very good, but the gods rarely allow perfection.

Kal and her team had spent weeks observing and identifying all the members of the royal family and their household, and, unless Paris had her locked in a cellar somewhere, reluctantly we had to accept the fact – Helen of Sparta never came to Troy. There was absolutely no trace of her anywhere.

It was a stunning disappointment. At her request, I drafted more people to Kal’s team, but even after a month’s intensive observation we could find no trace of her. She simply wasn’t here.

Maybe she did have an affair with Paris. Maybe he had persuaded her to run away with him – but even if he did he never brought her back to Troy. There is a story that she spent the duration of the war safely in Egypt. Something else to check out one day.

Every day I hoped some piece of evidence would become known. Or someone would catch a glimpse. Or that she might still appear in one of the many ships that docked daily.

But, logistically, it was impossible. We’d been at Troy for six months now, with only a few more weeks left, and, apart from hunting trips, when he was always accompanied by at least five or six of his brothers, Paris, son of Priam, never left the city. He had no opportunity to travel to Sparta and abduct Helen. And it was far too late now. The war would begin in a little over a year from now and it would take Agamemnon all that time to put together his forces. He needed to summon his allies, build and equip ships, manufacture weapons, and arrange his lines of supply and communication. On the other side of the Aegean, the High King of Mycenae was assembling the greatest army of the age and none of it was anything to do with the most beautiful woman in the world.

As always, it was all about the money.

As for Paris, far from being the pretty, weak, besotted boy of legend, in reality he was short, tough, and probably the best archer in Troy. As a skilful hunter, he went out almost daily and never came back empty-handed, driving through the streets in triumph, displaying his kills to cheering crowds. Next to Hector, who was almost worshipped as a god, he was the most popular member of the royal family. But in all our time there we never once saw him in the company of any woman other than his mother or his sisters. In fact, his sister-in-law, Andromache, seemed to be the only female in whom he ever showed any interest whatsoever, and even that appeared to be on brother/sister terms.

‘Camouflage,’ said Kal. ‘If you must attach yourself to a woman, who better than the most happily married woman in Troy?’

We were standing in the crowd, watching. A religious ritual had been completed and grey-haired King Priam had paused to exchange a few words with favoured priests. For this public occasion, he wore a magnificent purple chiton, patterned with gold at the hem. A blue chlamys or cloak hung from his right arm, ostentatiously casual. As he turned his head, the sun glinted on his ornate golden headdress. He wasn’t tall – it was obvious from whom Paris had inherited his stocky build, but he spoke and people paid attention. The three or four priests being addressed all stood with their eyes politely lowered, listening attentively.

Hector, on the other hand, obviously took after the queen. Tall and still slender after all that childbearing, Hecuba stood with her women, patiently waiting. She too wore royal purple – a peplos in her case, beautifully draped and hanging in folds to the ground. In an age where women wore their wealth in public, she was festooned with gold. A wonderful torque-style necklace flashed in the bright sunlight – as it was obviously designed to do. She wore many heavy bracelets and rings. The light veil she would have worn during the ceremony was caught back, allowing glimpses of her intricate gold headpiece to be seen. The weight must have been incredible, but, under her mask of make-up, her face gave nothing away. Even at this distance, as she stood under her sunshade quietly awaiting her husband, her air of authority was tangible.

It was all about display. About gold and jewellery and rich fabrics. About the wealth and power of Troy. About being seen. The walls of Troy made their statement and, periodically, the royal family came down into the lower town and made theirs.

Paris and Andromache stood a little apart. To honour the occasion, he was a little more smartly dressed than usual, wearing a simple, dark-red chiton and neatly tied sandals. He was, however, vain enough to draw attention to his well-muscled arms with two golden armbands, each in the shape of a snake.

Andromache’s simple pale green robe fell in graceful folds. Unlike Hecuba, she had bloused hers over her belt. I wondered – was she pregnant again? No one had ever mentioned this possibility. Maybe it was just the style of her dress. She too stood under a sunshade held by two women. Obviously a suntan was not a fashion statement. In fact, right up until the twentieth century, no woman with any pretension to fashion at all would display a complexion anything other than milk white.

Paris said something to her and they both laughed. Hector approached, taller and fairer than both of them. He had obviously taken a little more care over his appearance than his careless brother. His purple-bordered robe proclaimed his royal status. Bronze and gold cuffs encircled his wrists. Unlike his bareheaded brother, he wore a simple gold circlet.

Paris appealed to Andromache, gesturing at his brother and the three of them laughed again. A happy moment in the sun.

Hector gently took his wife’s arm and she smiled up at him. For a brief, intimate moment, even amongst all these people, at this public event, there were just the two of them, and then they fell in behind the king and queen. Courtiers, soldiers, and priests made haste to join them. Brazen horns and trumpets sounded. People cheered, and the procession moved slowly off towards the palace. A kaleidoscope of glittering colour. Seeing and being seen.

No woman walked at Paris’s side.

I sighed. ‘There’s no Helen, is there?’

‘Well, that’s what you’ve always said, isn’t it? And it looks as if you were right.’

‘I know, but even so …’

‘Oh, I agree. I would have given a lot to see the face that launched a thousand ships.’

I looked around at Troy. Prosperous, powerful, and seemingly unassailable.

I looked at the vanishing royal procession. No pretty-boy Paris. And no Helen.

‘What else do you think Homer got wrong?’

‘We’ll have to wait and see.’

Chapter Eight

We’d finished. Seven months had flown by. Like everyone else, I was weary, covered with ingrained dust and grime, and desperate for a long, hot bath, my own bodyweight in chocolate, and a plateful of sausages. And yes, all three simultaneously. Why not?

I stood with Guthrie and Peterson in the cool pre-dawn air as we took one last look at Site B. Our home for nearly seven months.

I knew every stick, every stone, and every last blade of coarse, brown grass here, and now we were leaving. Part one of the assignment was finished. We had a huge amount of data on Troy and its citizens. An almost complete map of the city. Several holos of daily life. Number Eight was stuffed full of wonderful, unique, priceless data. Boxes full of sticks, cubes, disks, films, even scribbled hand-written notes and sketches. Half of me couldn’t wait to get at it and the other half was reluctant to leave. When we returned, the city would be at war.

We’d spent some time discussing whether to leave at least one pod on site. To mark our territory. Both Leon and Dieter had been reasonably confident that even after nearly ten years it would still be functioning on our return, requiring nothing more than a major re-alignment to make it operational again. We’d decided against it on the advice of Guthrie. While the Trojans posed no threat – there was no way they could even get inside it – that bastard Clive Ronan was still out there somewhere. Waiting for any opportunity. Alone and desperate. An unattended pod was asking for trouble. In the end it seemed easier to cope with suspicious Trojans than lose another pod to him.

In an effort to prepare the ground for our return, we’d told our neighbours we were leaving. They nodded. We told them we would return. They nodded again, uninterested. The chances were that they wouldn’t be here when we returned, anyway. When we returned, they would have been fighting the Greeks for ten years. Ten years of war would wreak enormous changes.

We withdrew in stages. Number Three had gone first. Number Five followed soon afterwards. Just the three of us left, now. When we returned, all this would be different. None of it would ever be the same again.

I watched the mist burning off as the sun rose and smelled wood smoke on the air.

Guthrie stirred. ‘We should go, Max. People will be up and about soon. And they’ll be waiting for us back at St Mary’s.’

‘Ready when you are.’

The world went white.

Peterson bumped us on landing. He always did.

I activated the decon. and the cold, blue light took care of any nasty Trojan viruses we might have brought back with us. In fact, since we’d lived there so long, I did it twice, just to be sure.

Peterson and Guthrie fussed around, picking up their kit. Peering through the screen, I could see an orange army of techies, ready to swarm over the pods the second they could get us out of Hawking. They would be itching to get on with it.

We stepped outside. St Mary’s seemed strangely harsh, noisy, smelly, and unfamiliar.

I took a deep breath and looked around. Dr Bairstow stood on the gantry, as he always did, looking down at me. I smiled and nodded.

He nodded and – did he? No. No smile. On the other hand, any mission that doesn’t end in death or my P45 is a good one.

The rest of the team were waiting for us. We always finish an assignment together. I insist on it. Van Owen and I assembled the troops and pointed them more or less in the direction of SickBay. Wise in the ways of historians, Dr Foster had sent advance troops to divert us from the bar. Which was a shame, because after months of the choice between Trojan rotgut or nothing at all, I was really ready for something blue and potent and with a little umbrella.

Helen, in a white coat and stethoscope, effortlessly achieving the sort of discipline for which lesser women would require black leather and a hunting crop, indicated we should form a line.

Being St Mary’s, we formed several clumps and a rhomboid.

I could hear Markham informing Nurse Hunter he had a septic goose bite.

‘Really? Was the goose septic before or after it bit you?’

‘I think you need to check me out in one of the examination rooms.’

‘No need. You’re septic, but the bite’s fine.’

‘Actually, I think I may have cholera. You really need to check me over. Fast.’

‘Do you actually have any symptoms at all? Of anything? Anything medical?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve got that thing that makes you feel funny. You know. All over. Requires immediate and urgent attention.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know. Four letter word. Begins with L. Ends in E.’

‘Ah, lice! Come with me.’

Schiller appeared. Apparently, she’d already been cleared because she was wearing blues and a worried expression.

‘Max. We have a problem.’

‘Give me a break. We’ve only been back ten minutes.’

‘It’s Professor Rapson. He’s – not himself.’

‘Well, thank God.’

‘No. Max, you really need to come. And Dr Dowson is …’

‘Is he not Professor Rapson, either?’ I said, lightheaded with the anticipation of sausages.

‘He’s – upset.’

I stared at her. ‘What’s going on?’

Her glance flickered to Major Guthrie standing close by and listening.

‘Can you come and have a look?’

I started to ease out of the line.

‘Where are you going?’ said Helen, sharply. I swear she has eyes in the back of her head. ‘You’ve not been cleared yet.’

‘So clear me.’

She sighed and punched up a fresh screen on her scratchpad.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Fine.’

‘Off you go, then.’

‘What? That’s it? What happened to
have I been flinging my body fluids around? Or contracted scrofula? Or lost a leg?’

‘Despite Markham’s best efforts to present with cholera, everyone’s fine. Including you. In fact, I’ve never seen you so unscathed. I think this is the first assignment ever when you haven’t returned with some sort of injury. Are you sure you haven’t just been hiding in a cupboard for seven months?’

‘Very funny. I’ll be off, then.’

‘And me,’ said Peterson, always wanting to know what’s going on.

‘And me,’ said Guthrie, also always wanting to know what’s going on, but for different reasons.

‘Oh, there’s no need, Major. You’ll have a lot to do here.’

‘Actually,’ said Schiller, ‘that may not be such a bad idea.’

My plate of sausages would obviously have to wait. We set off on reconnaissance.

‘Where is the professor?’

‘In the stacks.’

‘Has Dr Dowson banned him again? Is that what this is about?’

The stacks are behind the Archive. It’s where we keep details of our older assignments and some of the more obscure stuff. Huge, high racks of shelving contain less-used records. The shelves reach from floor to vaulted ceiling. One of those big library ladder things could be wheeled around to reach the rarefied atmosphere of the top shelves. St Mary’s, however, observing custom and practice rather than health and safety, generally scrambled up and down and swung around the shelves like Tarzan of the Apes, but noisier and more hairy. When I was a trainee, we’d had competitions.

The stacks themselves were in chaos. Not historian chaos – the other kind. A blizzard of papers lay everywhere. Boxes were overturned and their contents scattered. The place looked rather like St Albans after Boudicca had happened to it. Without the severed limbs and mutilated corpses, obviously, but the effect was the same. We picked our way through the devastation.

Overhead, I could hear a voice. Singing. Apparently, Timothy Leary was dead.

No, no, no, no.

On the outside.

Looking in.

Cutting across this tuneless lament, I could hear Dr Dowson shouting. This wouldn’t be good. I’d once come across the two of them in the professor’s office, where a scholarly debate on the sinking of the White Ship had rapidly spiralled out of control and they were facing off and on the verge of breaking out the traditional academic chant of ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’

We rounded a corner, following the noise.

Dr Dowson stood, literally wringing his hands, staring upwards into the gloom.

‘Oh, Max. Thank God. I can’t get the old fool to come down and I just know he’s going to fall. What did he think he was doing? I’ve always said that one day … and now look what he’s done. We must get him down.’

Guthrie slipped past me.

‘What has he done, Doctor?’

I stepped forward to get a better view upwards and skidded on something. ‘Oh, yuk. What have I just trodden in?’

Dr Dowson waved his arms. ‘All of you. Stay back. Don’t touch anything. Put your hands in your pockets.’

‘Why is everything sticky?’ demanded Guthrie. He sniffed his fingers. ‘Is this …?’

Dr Dowson caught his arm. ‘Stop, Major. Don’t lick your –’

Too late.

‘It
is
honey,’ he said in amazement. ‘I thought it was. Why is everything covered in honey?’

I turned slowly. He was right. We had honey everywhere. And we had a Professor Rapson who was high in every sense of the word. I had one of those foreboding things. I turned to Peterson who obviously was having similar thoughts.

‘Xenophon,’ I said.

‘Pompey,’ he replied.

Guthrie tried to wipe his hands on his tunic. You can’t shift honey that easily. ‘What are you two talking about? What’s going on here?’

Peterson sighed. ‘Toxic honey.’

Guthrie stared at his fingers in horror. ‘What the hell is toxic honey?’

‘It’s all right, Major. It’s just a touch of mad honey disease. It’s not fatal. Usually. You’ll feel a bit wobbly for a bit, maybe see a few things, but you’ll be fine.’

‘I only tasted a tiny bit.’

‘That’s all it takes, sadly.’

‘But what is toxic honey? And since I’m talking to the history department, tell me in less than one hundred words.’

I marshalled a few facts. ‘Toxic honey. Made by bees using pollen from rhododendrons growing by the Black Sea. Causes disorientation, uncoordinated movements, nausea, and hallucinations. Both Pompey and Xenophon’s armies were infected with the stuff and were defeated. Not fatal. Wears off in a couple of hours. You’ll get a bit giggly. And high. High as a kite, actually. Although not as high as the professor, here. We need to get him down before anyone sees him.’

‘There’s a ladder somewhere,’ said Peterson and disappeared into the gloom.

I turned to Dr Dowson. ‘How did he manage this? In the absence of rhododendrons, bees, hives, and even the Black Sea, how the hell has he managed this?’

‘He was looking for modern equivalents. I understand ragwort can sometimes –ʼ

‘I can hear my hair grow. Oh, wow, I can actually hear my own hair growing.’

‘Yes, you might want to sit down for a bit, Major.’

Doctor Dowson grabbed my arm. ‘Max, we really need to persuade him to come down. Delusions of flying are very common in cases of this sort. Imagine if he tries … We must get him down.’

‘Why would he do this?’

‘Well, who knows, Max? Who knows why the old fool does anything? I used to think that so long as we kept him away from matches we had a reasonable chance of getting him through the working day intact, and now it turns out he can’t even be trusted with a jar of honey.’

He was distraught. Given that he and the professor existed in a state of almost perpetual warfare, an observer might have been surprised at his distress. But I’d seen the two of them standing back to back at Alexandria, facing their enemies together. With nothing more than a converted vacuum cleaner and a milk churn, they’d sprayed flames and defiance, shouting ancient war cries, their sparse hair standing on end, covered in soot, and far more formidable than anything Clive Ronan had been able to throw at us that day. They’d been together, in one capacity or another, nearly all their working lives. I suspected that each would be astonished at the affection he really felt for the other.

And not only that. While Dr Bairstow was able to take a moderately relaxed view regarding St Mary’s
joie de vivre
, especially after a major assignment, he had zero tolerance for drugs and the use of drugs. Any drugs. At any time. By any one.

And it wasn’t just the professor soaring into the stratosphere. Major Guthrie was leaning against the stacks, singing gently to himself. I thought that was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. Until a white coat drifted gently down from above. Followed by a tie.

‘Oh, God! Put your clothes back on, you old fool. There are ladies present.’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor, we’ll get him down.’

‘How?’

‘Ian!’ I shook his arm. ‘Concentrate. Do we have some sort of cherry-picker?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Some sort of cherry-picker? How does Mr Strong change the lights? Paint ceilings? Prune trees?’

‘Tree fellers.’

I let my arm fall, mystified.

‘Tree fellers?’

‘Yes. Well, four sometimes, but usually only two,’ and collapsed, giggling, against the shelves.

I stared at him coldly. ‘Not helping.’

His face changed. ‘Elspeth? I looked for you.’

‘Major …?’

‘I looked everywhere for you.’

‘Don’t give in to the dark side, Major.’

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Helen, turning up to make things worse.

Above our head, a voice rose in song again.

‘
Well I can fly.

‘High as a kite if I want to.

‘Faster than light if I want to.’

‘Don’t touch anything, Helen,’ said Peterson, returning at last, wheeling the library ladder.

‘Why not? What is this stuff?’

‘No!’ we shouted in unison.

Too late.

‘Why is everything covered in honey?’

‘Long story,’ said Peterson. ‘I’m going up. There’s a little platform at the top of the ladder. A bit like one of those airplane embarkation stairs. I’ll get him off the shelves and persuade him down the ladder. You scoop him up at the bottom.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Helen, brusquely. ‘There’s no room for two people up there and I love you so much.’

Silence. No one caught anyone’s eye.