TimeBomb: The TimeBomb Trilogy: Book 1 (27 page)

There was a long pause. Dora imagined Sweetclover considering Mountfort disdainfully. ‘Very well,’ said Sweetclover eventually. ‘Say your piece.’

‘My lord. I am an agent of the king. Tasked with bringing you both a warning, and a request.’

‘Out with it then,’ snapped Sweetclover.

‘First the warning, your lordship. There is a large parliamentarian force marching upon this house even as I speak. They believe you to be a Royalist sympathiser and will demand a statement of allegiance from you. If you do not swear to their cause, and allow them to billet their soldiers here to prepare for the forthcoming battle which is sure to occur in or around Lostwithiel in the coming weeks, then they will take this house by force.’ He fell silent, as if waiting for a response. After a few moments, when none was forthcoming, he pressed on. ‘Secondly, the request.’ Mountfort cleared his throat and Dora could tell by the changed tone of his voice that he was nervous. ‘Reports have reached the court of witchcraft and magic being performed in this house. Your sovereign would like to know whether these stories hold any truth.’

A long pause, and then, ‘And if they do?’

‘Then I am tasked with asking whether you would be willing to lend your particular skills to the king’s cause.’

Another pause and then a rising tide of laughter from Sweetclover. He laughed long and hard for at least a minute until he caught his breath. ‘The king wishes me to use magical powers upon the soldiers of Parliament’s army?’

‘If such would please you, sir.’

‘This is most strange, think you not, my dear?’

Dora gasped as she realised that Sweetclover’s wife was also in the room. ‘It is so, husband,’ came a female voice. Dora could not tell whether it was the same voice that had called her name before its owner had flung her across the years, for it was muffled. Dora remembered that Lady Sweetclover wore a mask, which would explain the strange muted quality of her voice. This, Dora felt certain, must be Quil.

‘I am able to set your mind at rest on one matter,’ said Quil. ‘The force you describe was earlier today destroyed utterly by a cadre of men loyal to this house.’

‘Do you mean the soldiers in Pendarn, milady?’ asked Mountfort.

‘I do.’

‘Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that they were merely a scouting party. A far larger force is right behind them. But I must thank you. If not for the intervention of your … unconventional militia, I fear my life would have been lost. The arrival of your men provided the opportunity for us to escape.’

‘I am glad of that, at least. But perhaps you can answer one nagging question,’ said Quil.

‘If I am able, milady.’

‘The oak tree on the green. It had been cut through at an unusual angle. And there were bodies by the church, which seemed to have been sliced in half. Can you shed any light on this?’

‘I regret that I cannot,’ said Mountfort. ‘I was hanging by the neck when the tree collapsed and began to burn. My attention was focused strictly on my imminent demise. As for the bodies, I did hear a terrible scream, but I was fleeing in the opposite direction at the time, so cannot testify as to its cause.’

Dora could not be sure what happened next, but she fancied she heard Quil give a groan, and then Sweetclover began expressing concern, telling her to sit down. Had the woman suffered a dizzy spell?

‘I am quite all right, Hank, stop fussing,’ said Quil. But she sounded far from well. ‘If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to attend to something urgently.’

Dora heard footsteps hurrying towards the door. She had no time to make it back to the kitchen, so desperately looked around the hall for a place of concealment. Seeing nothing behind which she could hide, she hurried to the door of the room that sat on the other side of the entrance hall and slipped inside. She heard the door to the opposite room swing open, and footsteps moved away down the corridor.

Dora risked peeking around the door, but she was too late to catch a glimpse of the elusive Quil. She could hear Mountfort and Sweetclover talking still, and decided it was time to return to her mother and get her away from Sweetclover Hall. With luck they could intercept her father on the way here with the flour delivery and make their escape before the house was attacked. As quietly as she could, she slipped back into the hallway.

Moments later she burst into the kitchen. Her mother was taking a jug of milk from the fridge as if doing so were an entirely normal thing for a seventeenth-century servant.

‘Mother, come quickly,’ Dora shouted breathlessly. ‘We have to leave. The hall is about to come under attack.’

Sarah turned to her daughter, jug in hand, bemused. ‘Beg your pardon, dear?’ She did not seem particularly alarmed.

‘Mother, come on,’ urged Dora, stepping across to her, prising the milk jug from her grasp and replacing it in the fridge. ‘The forces of Parliament bear down upon us and we must flee for our lives.’

Sarah shook her head and smiled. ‘Oh, don’t be silly, dear. His lordship and her ladyship will allow no harm to befall us. Sweetclover Hall is the safest place in the whole of England. Besides, I couldn’t leave now – the bread’s nearly proven and I need to pop it in the oven.’ She spoke to her daughter as if addressing a foolish girl afraid of spiders.

‘Mother,’ said Dora, stepping forward and putting a hand on her mother’s arm, ‘when was the last time you left the hall? Stepped outside, visited with neighbours in Pendarn?’

Sarah looked at Dora as if she were mad. ‘Leave the hall? Heavens, child, why on earth would I ever want to leave the hall?’

Rescuing her mother was going to be even harder than Dora had expected. Sarah pulled away and began to rub flour on her hands preparatory to lifting the dough from the proving basket, carrying on as though her long-lost daughter were not begging her to escape, as if no attack was imminent. For a moment Dora seriously considered knocking her mother out and dragging her away, but Sarah was a round, matronly woman and Dora thought it unlikely she’d be able to pull her farther than the threshold. She tried desperately to think of some other inducement, some story that would exert a strong enough pull on her mother to get her from the hall.

And then the answer, so obvious, occurred to her.

‘Mother, listen. I saw James this morning. In the village.’

Sarah looked up sharply. ‘James?’ she said.

‘James, your son, my brother. I saw him in Pendarn not an hour after sunrise.’

‘James?’ Sarah said wonderingly, as if it the name were a lost memory, tantalisingly beyond recall.

‘Like me, he has returned to make amends to you and Father for the grief he caused by his sudden disappearance. Even now, he waits for us at home. I was sent to bring you to him.’

‘James is returned?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ she said. ‘If you would but come with me, our family can be reunited once more.’

Sarah brushed off the flour and stood back from the table. ‘James is with Thomas in Pendarn, even now?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ said Dora, trying not to let her frustration show. The spell that held Sarah in thrall was a strong one, and if the love of a mother for her child could not break it, nothing could.

Sarah’s face was a parade of confused emotions. Finally she smiled. ‘That is wonderful news, Dora. You must hurry home and fetch them to me. The bread will be baked by the time they arrive and we can have a hearty meal.’

Dora gave a groan of frustration. There was no way she was getting Sarah out of here. She stood still, hands balled into fists, utterly at a loss.

Someone ostentatiously cleared their throat behind her. She turned to see Sweetclover and Mountfort standing in the doorway. Thinking quickly, Dora decided to play innocent. She bowed her head in deference. ‘My lord, please forgive my intrusion.’

Sweetclover waved her obsequiousness away. ‘On the contrary, I am the intruder here, in your mother’s wonderful kitchen. Is that not so, Mrs Predennick?’

Dora was horrified to see her mother put her hand across her mouth and giggle, girlishly.

‘Hello, Dora,’ said Sweetclover. ‘Welcome back. You’ve been away for a very, very long time.’ The way he said those words forbade any further pretence. His tone was light, but laced with menace.

‘You already said that,’ replied Dora.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The last time we met, you spoke those very words to me.’

‘I think you must be mistaken, young lady.’

‘I seem to be mistaken about most things, this day,’ said Dora wearily. ‘My mother’s character, my brother’s love, the decency of my betters.’

‘Dora.’ Sarah’s voice was sharp with rebuke.

‘Oh, be quiet, Mother,’ snapped Dora, her impatience and frustration finally boiling over. ‘You are bewitched. It is a plain as the nose upon my face.’ She felt almost ashamed as her mother’s cheeks bloomed pink with embarrassment and outrage.

Ignoring her mother’s confusion and anger, Dora turned to Sweetclover. ‘What have you done to her?’ she said, her voice full of fury.

Sweetclover regarded her coolly. ‘After your unfortunate disappearance, your mother offered her services as our cook,’ he explained, his voice calm and even. ‘We accepted, but cookery was the farthest thing from her mind. She asked awkward questions and prowled around the house, peering into places where she was not welcome, spreading vile gossip about us to local tradesmen. Eventually it became necessary to perform what my wife terms “behaviour modification”. In terms that you will understand, we put a spell upon her to make her more biddable.’

Dora was shocked at Sweetclover’s lack of remorse.

‘You will change her back immediately,’ she said, placing her hands upon her hips and glaring at him.

‘I do not understand what is happening,’ said Sarah, her voice small and uncertain. Dora turned back to see her mother looking so lost it made her heart ache.

‘Mountfort,’ snapped Sweetclover, all attempt at charm abandoned and replaced by brisk command. ‘Follow me and bring these two with you.’

He spun on his heels and walked away.

‘Goodman Mountfort,’ said Dora, ‘I feel sure you will not partake in this madness. My mother and I must …’

But at some point in the preceding ten minutes Mountfort had acquired a sword, which he now drew and levelled at Dora. ‘I am sorry, girl, but Lord Sweetclover has pledged aid to the king’s cause. Consequently, I am now under his command.’ He gestured towards the undercroft door with the blade of his weapon. ‘If you two would precede me.’

Dora turned to her mother, who was standing by the kitchen table, hands coated in flour, looking lonely and afraid. Dora reached up and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, Mother,’ she said. ‘Our master requires our presence. Let us walk together.’

Sarah allowed herself to be led and, at the point of Mountfort’s sword, she and her daughter descended the undercroft steps.

Reeling from Kaz’s sudden disappearance, and that of the mysterious patient whose touch had sent them both spinning off into time, Jana momentarily had no idea what to do next. She sat with her back against the cold stone wall and tried to gather her thoughts. She knew she hadn’t got long before she was discovered; if the bedridden patient was being monitored so closely by various machines, it was likely that someone had received an alert when the patient vanished. Deciding that her best course of action was to rendezvous with Dora upstairs, she pulled herself to her feet, grabbed Kaz’s discarded backpack and hurried back out into the main chamber, heading for the door. She was halfway across the chamber when she heard the distant clack of footsteps coming down the undercroft stairs.

Desperately she spun through 360 degrees, looking for an exit or a place of concealment. The anteroom she had just left would be the first place someone would search, so she discounted it immediately. The only hiding place it offered was under the bed, and the humiliation of being found cowering there would be intolerable. Her gaze lighted on a door in the farthest corner so she ran towards it. As she approached she realised that it was an elevator. With nowhere else to run, she pushed the button as soon as she reached it, praying that the car didn’t have to travel far. Her luck was in, and the door opened immediately. She stepped inside the spartan, functional carriage. It was made of wood, and was lit by a single light in the ceiling. Beside the door was a simple control panel. There wasn’t a lot of choice – there were two buttons, up and down. The up was already lit. She hit the down button and the door closed silently. She was thankful for that, and for the noiseless descent that then began; the quieter it was, the greater the chance her descent would remain undetected by whoever was about to arrive in the chamber she had just vacated.

The journey was smooth but slow, so Jana took the opportunity to prime her pistols in case she was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Allowing the chip to take control of her actions, she performed the task as if she had done it a thousand times. She half-cocked the pistol, pushed the striker forward, primed the pan with gunpowder, locked the striker, poured gunpowder down the barrel, dropped the ball after it, pulled the ram out of the pistol stock and used it to push down a plug of wadding. Then she replaced the ram, fully cocked the pistol, and repeated the process on the other gun. She had just completed her task and adopted a stance with legs apart and her brace of pistols aimed forward ready for firing when the elevator juddered to a halt and the door opened to pitch darkness.

She stood still for almost a minute, waiting for something or someone to come looming in on her from the gloom, but nothing and nobody did. Deciding that she had better get out of the elevator in case it auto-returned to the undercroft, Jana uncocked the pistols, stashed them in her belt and pulled the lamp from the backpack. She clicked it on and stepped out onto smooth, wet rock. The elevator door closed behind her but there was no indication whether the carriage was rising or remaining in place.

The air was cold and damp and even in the feeble light of the lamp, which was beginning to run out of gas, Jana had a good idea where she was. She could see that there were lights strung along the rock wall behind her so she cast about for a switch and eventually found one on the cable itself. She flicked it. As the bulbs flickered into life one by one, she was rewarded with a sweeping panoramic view of a vast cavern. She surveyed the vista, whistling softly at the enormity of it.