TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 (21 page)

Dora put her hand over his. ‘Never.’ She smiled.

‘I will not leave you alone, however,’ he continued. ‘After so long from my sight I fear losing you again. I shall return to Potter’s Hill, give instructions to the others, then bring my monthly flour delivery to the hall. As it happens, I was due there this morning. I shall see you there. I must have answers from you, Dora.’

Dora wanted to tell him not to come, but she could see he was not going to be dissuaded. She realised this might not be a bad thing. If things got difficult at the hall, he could take Mother to safety.

‘As you wish, Father,’ she said. ‘Join us at the hall and I swear you shall have your answers.’

Thomas turned to Kaz and Jana, his face altogether sterner. ‘Take good care of my daughter. I shall rejoin you before sunset. God help you if anything befalls her.’

Jana rolled her eyes. Kaz nodded and said, ‘Understood.’

Dora and Thomas embraced, then he hurried away. The moment he was out of sight Dora ran as hard as she could, out across the green to the gruesome pile of bodies that lay scattered there.

She estimated she had fifteen minutes before her father reached Potter’s Hill and could once again look down on the carnage.

Just enough time to check the bodies to see whether James was amongst them.

Thomas walked away from the three young people, happy and proud. The horrors of the day should have been enough to fill him with despair at man’s cruelty and the madness of civil conflict, but seeing his daughter again had released so much emotion it was almost too much for him to bear. The astounding force of his love overwhelmed the horror, made it seem distant and insignificant. His girl was alive and well.

Her presence raised more questions than he could formulate, and her manner had changed so much in the last five years that she was almost a different person – slightly broken yet braver and more thoughtful – but it was his Dora, returned to him. He felt certain that nothing could surprise him more than the events of this day.

He hurried back to his friends and neighbours, determined to complete his grim task as quickly as possible so that he could hurry to the hall and be reunited with Dora and his wife, so they could sit by the fire, sup and share tales of the years they had missed. Who knew, maybe this could repair the breach between Sarah and him. Maybe his family could be put back together again somehow. Maybe she would finally forgive him, and maybe then he could finally forgive himself.

He hurried on, lost in his thoughts and dreams until blinded by a flash of red fire directly ahead of him. A loud crackling sound and a stench of burning made him stagger backwards and raise his cudgel, trying to flush the sudden smoke-blindness from his eyes. When his vision cleared he found himself looking down at the young man, Kaz, who was scrambling about in a pile of smoking leaves, breathing hard and looking left and right in confusion.

Thomas did not immediately announce himself. His mouth was hanging open and his pulse was racing. After a moment, Kaz noticed him and the sight seemed to calm him. The young man rose to his feet and Thomas backed away, brandishing his cudgel.

‘What witchcraft is this?’ he hissed.

Kaz held his hands out to indicate that he was no threat, and stood his ground. ‘Mr Predennick?’ he asked, as if he was struggling to recognise a man he had seen only moments before.

‘You know my name well enough, wizard,’ replied Thomas, struggling to keep his voice level. ‘Where is Dora? What in God’s name is occurring here today?’

Kaz blinked. ‘Today?’ he said. ‘What day is this? Have you seen me today?’

‘I saw you but five minutes ago,’ said Thomas angrily. ‘As well you know.’

So shocked had he been by Kaz’s sudden appearance that he only now registered the true strangeness of the boy’s aspect. Kaz was soaking wet, shivering with cold and dressed in different clothes – a white frilly shirt above leather trousers and high black leather boots. His hair was longer too, and there was an unimpressive dusting of furry beard upon his face.

‘So this is Pendarn? This is the day we first met?’ Kaz sounded desperate, fearful and excited all at once.

‘I know not what you are raving of,’ replied Thomas, ‘but I bade you farewell but five minutes ago, back down this path a ways, as you, my daughter and the boy Jana set off for Sweetclover Hall.’

Before Thomas had finished his sentence Kaz had begun to laugh, loud and throaty with a slight edge of hysteria. He fell backwards into the leaves and sat there, holding his head, laughing and laughing until the water dripping from his hair mingled with tears. Thomas could think of nothing to do but stand and watch as his fearful confusion faded into nervous curiosity.

‘I made it,’ said Kaz, when the hysteria had subsided. ‘I finally made it.’

He looked up at Thomas, wiping his eyes, composing himself, smiling broadly.

‘Thomas,’ he said. ‘Your daughter’s in terrible danger. I need your help.’

Half an hour later, Kaz, Jana and Dora walked stealthily through the woodlands, following the same route the guards had taken, heading for Sweetclover Hall.

Each of them had taken a sword and dagger from the weapons discarded on the green, shoving them into their belts. Jana had also taken a brace of pistols and bags of shot and gunpowder, explaining that her chip contained instructions for priming them.

Dora had been silent since the green. She had wiped the blood from her hands on the grass, but a dull red stain still lingered on her skin, testament to the gory task she had undertaken. She must have inspected thirty bodies, Jana reckoned, in various states. Dora had told them that her brother was not present but Jana could not divine Dora’s feelings on the matter.

While Dora was lost in thought, or possibly shock, Kaz just seemed angry. He stalked along beside Jana, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes focused ahead. Jana thought maybe he was experiencing a comedown; that the thrill of their adventure had palled once people had started dying.

As the only one of the group who seemed, to her mind, to be coping well with the situation, Jana took it upon herself to try and break the tension.

She took a deep breath. ‘That’s amazing,’ she said.

Dora and Kaz looked at her quizzically.

‘I’ve only noticed it since we left the village, but the smell, the taste of the air,’ explained Jana. ‘It’s so … clean. I shouldn’t be surprised. We’re hundreds of years before the invention of the internal combustion engine, or even steam power. Pre-industrial air.’ She took another breath and smiled widely, not only surprised by the atmosphere, but by her reaction to it. ‘Love it.’

‘The air in your time was most unusual,’ said Dora. ‘It had a taste of … I cannot describe it, but it did not seem natural to me.’

‘Pollution and air conditioning,’ said Jana. ‘Air that has been filled with fumes and then scrubbed clean again.’

‘It was not pleasant,’ replied Dora, pulling a face. ‘But this is normal. This smells of home.’

‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to grow up somewhere so clean,’ said Kaz.

‘This is Carroty Wood,’ she said. ‘James and I would play here when we were children.’

Jana was only half listening, because she had become genuinely involved in what had been conceived as a distraction. Now she tuned into the sounds of the woods and was astonished all over again.

‘The birds,’ she said. ‘Is this chorus usual?’

Dora nodded. ‘Do you not have birds in your time?’ she asked.

‘Not like this, not in New York.’

Dora considered for a moment and said, ‘That is sad, I think. They sing sweetly and taste good.’

Jana was shocked. ‘Taste good? You eat songbirds?’ She had thought there could be nothing more revolting than wild meat, with all its parasites and imperfections. But the idea of tiny wild birds, captured, plucked and stewed, made her feel ill. Just like that, the magic of her new surroundings vanished, replaced by reality, harsh and practical.

‘Do you have predators in these woods?’ asked Jana quietly, remembering that long-extinct animals like wolves and bears were still roaming the land at this point in history.

‘No.’ Dora laughed.

Jana felt a flush of embarrassment and allowed the conversation to falter, but Dora seemed a little less spaced out, and Kaz had managed to speak without growling. Job done.

‘This is where it all started for me,’ said Kaz as Jana forged ahead of them. ‘I was lost at night, on the other side of woods, when I found Sweetclover Hall. It is derelict in my time, as you saw, but I broke in to find shelter. I’d only just got inside when you and Jana dropped in.’

Dora considered her companion. His skin was light brown, his accent strange and his name unfamiliar to her. ‘Kaz, where do you come from?’ she asked.

‘I was born in Poland.’ He registered Dora’s look of confusion. ‘It is a country east of Germany.’ Still confused. ‘Which is east of France.’

Dora nodded slowly. ‘That is very far east.’

Kaz laughed. ‘Yes. Well, my father is Polish, so is my passport.’

‘Pass port?’

‘Official document that tells where you come from. In my time everybody must have one if they want to travel to other countries.’

‘I see, continue.’

‘My mother is Iranian.’ Kaz noticed Dora’s confused look. ‘Sorry, in this time it’s called Persia. She is Persian.’

‘So you come from two different countries,’ she said, shaking her head in wonder. ‘Are the people of Poland brown?’

Kaz smiled. ‘No, but the people of Persia are.’

‘And which language do you speak?’

‘Polish and Farsi, which is the language of Persia.’

‘And English.’ Dora smiled.

He nodded. ‘I also have some French, Spanish, a little bit of German and Russian.’

‘How is it possible to hold so many tongues in your head? Do you not become confused?’

‘Sometimes.’ He laughed. ‘We travelled a lot. My father is kind of a soldier.’

‘And he took you with him on his battle campaigns?’

Kaz shook his head. ‘No, he is a peacekeeper.’

‘I do not understand. He is a soldier who keeps the peace? Like a nightwatchman?’

‘Sort of. In my time, armies sometimes go to countries where there is war and stop the fighting while politicians talk and try to fix things.’

‘Soldiers who fight for peace, not conquest,’ said Dora. ‘It seems to me that your world is upside down. And you travelled with him to these places, even as a child?’

‘My mother was a journalist, so she …’ Kaz registered the look on Dora’s face. ‘You don’t know what a journalist is, do you?’

Dora shook her head.

‘OK. Her job was to travel to interesting places, find out what was going on there and write about it so people at home could read her reports and understand what was going on.’

Dora was incredulous. ‘This is woman’s work?’

Kaz nodded. ‘So she followed my father around the world, reporting on conflicts he was trying to end. She couldn’t go home because in my time Iran is not a great place to be a female journalist, and she wouldn’t stay alone in Poland because she would have died of boredom. She was very passionate about her work, about trying to change the world. So she followed my father, and I followed with her.’

‘And because of this you grew up in many different lands?’

‘All over the world. A year here, a year there.’

‘That sounds very exciting.’

‘It was,’ agreed Kaz.

Dora considered this. ‘If you had asked me yesterday, I would have said that was the most awful thing I could imagine. All I wanted was to stay in Pendarn and raise goats.’

‘But now?’

‘Now, I do not know.’ She shrugged. ‘I have seen much in one short day. I do not know if I could go back to a settled life, even if I were to be allowed. Which I suspect I will not be.’

‘You don’t know that.’

Dora looked at him sideways. ‘You talk about your mother in the past,’ she said.

‘She died.’

‘That is very sad. How old were you?’

‘Your age. Fourteen. After she died my father took me home to Poland and we stopped travelling. But after that things were not so good between us. I suppose he was only trying to protect me, but it was stifling so I ran away and now here I am.’

‘Losing someone from your family is not an easy thing,’ said Dora, laying a hand on Kaz’s arm. ‘I had two brothers. Little Godfrey, who was born after me. He was a sweet boy, kind and funny. I loved him so much. He had the most delightful laugh. But he died. Then James, my older brother, ran away without a word some years later.’

Kaz looked across at Dora and smiled sadly, but did not say anything further. They walked together in companionable silence.

‘Please tell me,’ said Dora after a short while, ‘what is a “headtrip”?’

There was snow in the air; Sarah Predennick could tell that from the dense, low clouds on the horizon. For all the inconvenience it brought – the frozen toes, the struggle to get provisions delivered from the nearby villages and towns, the tiny fissures in the roof that widened and cracked as the snow thawed, and the cascades of meltwater that poured through them when the sun returned – she still felt a flutter of excitement at the prospect. Even now, at forty-two years of age, she had not entirely lost the girlish thrill the sharp white light of a snow-covered landscape gave her.

This year there was another reason to welcome the prospect – it was harder to wage war in winter. A good, deep snowfall would halt the armies in their tracks for a while. It would be a temporary respite, she knew that well enough, but any delay was welcome. Any pause increased the chances, however slim, that cooler heads could prevail and further hostilities could be avoided. Surely a period of enforced reflection would cause Cromwell’s troops to realise their folly and turn away from their godless battle with the king. One long, harsh winter would restore the natural order: such was Sarah’s hope.

So as she stood at the scullery door, her back warmed by the fires within, her face nipped by the frosty air that insinuated its way past her to battle with the heat of the ovens, she welcomed the coming deluge and the serenity she hoped it would deliver.