My Name is Markham Read online

  I was checking the lockers, making sure I had everything I needed to repel whatever the 9th century was going to throw at us. I knew dinosaurs and mammoths were extinct and the Black Death hadn’t arrived yet, but that wouldn’t stop either of them from discovering something new and innovative to die from.

  ‘All set?’ said Maxwell, not waiting for a response. ‘Off we go then. Computer, initiate jump.’

  ‘Jump initiated.’

  And the world went white.

  We stood in the doorway and looked around. If I was an historian – and I think everyone at St Mary’s is grateful I’m not – I’d be describing the scene in detail, listing the types of trees and generally being intellectual. All I can say is that everything was wet. Really, really wet. It wasn’t actually raining at that moment, but the lull had only a very temporary feel to it. The ground was soft and wet. The smell of wet earth, stagnant water and rotting leaves curled around us.

  We had arrived around the beginning of April, 878 AD, and spring was springing everywhere. Fat green buds were on the point of bursting into leaf, although they were no greener than the tree trunks themselves. Moss grew on everything in this mild, wet climate. I could see new grass peeping through the thickly rutted mud. But mostly, everything was wet. We were in a world of wet.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Peterson, pulling his foot free of the gloopy mud with a sucking sound.

  I was convinced we’d come to the wrong place. There was no way Alfred would ever get a flame going here long enough to set fire to anything, let alone the cakes. We were only two steps from the pod and already Maxwell’s hem was soaked – something about which she would be complaining bitterly later on. I’ve seen her endure blood, pain and broken bones, but she really doesn’t do cold and wet. I think her natural habitat is a hot bath with a mug of tea.

  We’d landed on the Isle of Athelney itself. Tactically, it was a good place for a king on the run – surrounded by marshland and swamps. There was a wooden causeway from Lyng to the island itself, but it was heavily guarded at both ends. Professor Rapson had wanted us to take a flat-bottomed punt to help us get around, but we couldn’t get it in the pod. And we had tried;well, the professor, Peterson and I tried. Maxwell said it wouldn’t fit and just sat down with her arms folded, and that expression women have when they’re right, they know they’re right, and the whole world is only seconds away from knowing they’re right. All women have it. Even Hunter. I reckon it’s a gene thing and they can’t help themselves.

  We set off. My clothes were itchy and smelled funny. Bloody historians always hog the best things for themselves. I’m always the bloody slave. Or the servant. Or the groom. Or whatever. It’s only a matter of time before they make me the eunuch. Figuratively speaking. Maxwell’s not so bad. She’s a woman – or so she maintains – and she usually stays quietly at the back, keeping her head down and her mouth shut. Except for that time in Viriconium when she poked me so hard with her staff that she nearly impaled my bloody kidney. When I remonstrated in the mildest way possible, she told me that many people live a happy and useful life with only one kidney and to stop moaning for God’s sake. Actually, Major Guthrie always says he feels a lot happier if she’s in front of him, where he can keep an eye on her, and I think he might have a point, so this time, I stayed at the back, ready to spring into action the moment they got themselves into trouble.

  I’ve only ever been to Somerset once and that was some time ago when I took a girlfriend to the Glastonbury Festival and she went all funny and started rolling her eyes around and falling over. We were all convinced she was channelling King Arthur or Merlin or something, but it turned out she just couldn’t handle the local scrumpy.

  What I’m trying to say is that, with the exception of the Glastonbury Festival which invariably attracts a year’s worth of rain on its first day, Somerset is reasonably dry these days. Not so in the 9th century. I forget who was the first of us to fall into a bog, but it didn’t matter because ten minutes into the jump we were all soaked and swampy.

  There were paths. There must have been, otherwise the entire population would be permanently up to their knees in mud. In the end, I shouldered the two of them aside, cut myself a long pole and used it to probe the ground ahead of us. There was a short ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ silence and then they fell in behind me.

  I have to say that while no one was ever going to get sunburned here, it was a brilliant place for a king to hide out. You’d never get an army in. And I bet anything metal had a life expectancy of about half an hour before it crumbled into rust. And that would be on a dry day. Which apparently, this was.

  We meandered around pools of water, soggy trees and fallen branches. It was as if the entire landscape conspired to make progress as difficult as possible. I watched my feet sink into the soft soil and each footprint fill up with water. Something twitched in the back of my mind and I stopped.

  ‘What?’said Peterson.

  ‘How heavy is a pod?’

  ‘No idea. I’ve never tried to lift one. I’m standing in a puddle. Is this important?’

  ‘Suppose the pod sinks.’

  ‘What do you mean, sinks? It’s not the bloody Titanic. Number of icebergs seen today – nil.’ He stopped and there was a bit of a silence while they had a bit of a think.

  ‘The weight is evenly distributed,’ said Maxwell, doubtfully. ‘It might sink a little, but surely not completely.’

  ‘How tall is a pod?’

  ‘No idea, but Dieter can stand upright inside them and he’s the biggest man I know. So over six and a half feet.’

  ‘Seven feet three,’ said Peterson.

  We stared at him.

  ‘A pod is seven feet three inches tall,’ he said, with his why don’t you know that expression, and I made plans to make him an honorary security guard so we could co-opt him on to our team for the Saturday night trivia quiz in the pub.

  ‘It’s not going to sink seven feet in a couple of hours,’ said Maxwell, giving me another poke. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  Another shining example of the triumph of historian optimism over security guard experience.

  We smelled the village long before we saw it. Wood smoke, animals – especially pigs – and cooking.

  We crawled forwards amongst the trees to check it out, Maxwell tucking her skirt into her belt to keep it out of the mud. We stared at her legs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gryffindor rugby socks?’ I said, my mind pondering life’s injustices. For the purposes of historical accuracy, I’d been rammed into some musty old sack, probably complete with authentic 9th-century fleas bred by Professor Rapson especially for today, and bloody historians are wearing bloody rugby socks.

  She wasn’t listening. Of course she bloody wasn’t. Neither of them were. They – all historians – have this kind of laser-like focus that drives everything else out of their heads. Not that there’s room for much in there anyway. If only they could muster the same laser-like focus on staying alive. On the other hand, if they did, I’d be out of a job, so it’s probably just as well they don’t.

  They’d pulled out their recorders and were muttering away. This could go on for hours. I settled myself against a tree trunk so nothing could get behind me and kept an eye out.

  |The village was a large clearing with some twenty huts of varying sizes. Most of them were round, and thatched with what looked like reeds. I wondered how waterproof they were. Moss grew on the roofs as well. Many huts had one or more lean-tos built against them, sheltering firewood and livestock. I don’t know how waterproof the thatch was, but it did seem to me they were more likely to suffer from groundwater than rainwater. They’d made an effort to build above ground level, with each hut constructed on twelve-inch-high stone foundations that provided some sort of elementary damp-proof course. The stones themselves were thick with green slime and moss.

  There were no streets, or even paths, but causeways made of brushwood ran across the clearing, from one hut t
o another, or to the big central stone pit where a large fire crackled, sending up a plume of blue-grey smoke to be lost in the blue-grey sky.

  In contrast to the bustle all around him, a solitary figure sat cross-legged near the woodpile. Occasionally he would scramble stiffly to his feet and with great care and precision, place new logs on the fire.

  I know the village idiot is a bit of a cliché, but the thing about clichés is that they tend to be true. Every village has at least one – if not many. I suppose when you don’t ever have the opportunity to travel far from your birthplace, it’s very hard not to marry your cousin. When the same families interbreed over the years, there are always casualties. They’re usually cared for by the community in a way that is supposed to happen today and never does, and appropriate jobs are found for them. Firewood gathering. Keeping an eye on the less mobile livestock. And tending the fire, of course, as this one was doing.

  He sat on an old log, huddled into his cloak. His head was down and I could see only a thatch of straw-like hair. Under his cloak he wore a faded red tunic that covered his knees. Everything below his knees was caked in dried mud.

  And then, as he leaned over to add another log to the fire, the neck of his tunic gaped and I caught a hint of gold around his neck. At once, he pulled up the neck and wrapped his cloak even more closely around himself, but I’d seen it. And so had Maxwell and Peterson.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Max, in quiet excitement. ‘That’s him. That’s Alfred. Must be.’

  No one is ever quite as you expect them to be. I remember those two legendary lovers, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, and quite honestly, you’d have to go a long way to meet two uglier people than they were. They both of them had massive noses – maybe that’s what drew them together in the first place – and Cleopatra had nostrils like the air intakes on a jet turbine. And eyebrows like two giant hairy caterpillars as well. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. Max always says that Henry V was the ugliest bloke she’s ever seen – and that includes the men at St Mary’s, which I though was a little unkind of her. Despite being unable to clear five foot six inches unless I’m standing on tip-toe, and not being all there in the ear department,I’m not bad looking. And Hunter’s always banging on about Chief Farrell’s eyes – usually at some quite inappropriate moments, let me tell you – and apparently she’s not the only one who thinks that. And Peterson – generally reckoned to be the best-looking bloke in the building – would be fighting off women with a stick, if they weren’t all so terrified of Dr Foster, of course.

  I’ve forgotten where I was. Yes. Alfred. Alfred the Great as he would astoundingly be known. All right, I know I’d just mistaken him for the village idiot, but it’s a mistake anyone could have made.

  He was staring thoughtfully into the fire. Tradition says he was so busy formulating plans to defeat the Danes that he never noticed the cakes burning right in front of him. This Alfred, however, obviously took his job very seriously indeed, staring unblinking at the lumps of bread dough set out round the fire, and bringing to them the same sort of single-minded concentration he would bring to every task in his life.

  He wasn’t much taller than me and that’s saying something – but where I’m a living example of good things coming in little packages,he, not to overemphasise the point,wasn’t. He was skinny – his arms and legs were stick thin. His face was a yellowy-white with swollen, protruding, bloodshot eyes. His skin was bad – not teenage acne,but a really nasty rash which ran down one cheek, under his chin and down his neck. It looked too inflamed to shave, but I was willing to bet he didn’t need to anyway. I think he was around thirty years old, but he still looked a boy. His movements were slow and creaky. I wondered if he had arthritis. If so, he wouldn’t want to hang around here – arthritis capital of the world.

  ‘Crohn’s disease,’ muttered Peterson.

  I looked at him.

  ‘There’s a theory he suffered from Crohn’s disease. On top of everything else. He doesn’t have an easy life.’

  Maxwell shrugged. ‘Some people thrive on adversity. Us, for example. Maybe he’s another.’

  She had a point. We’d covered this in the briefing. Alfred was a fighter. Legend says that at a frighteningly early age he won a book of Saxon poems from his mother by memorising the entire contents. He had been, as we could see, a sickly child, but he stood alongside his brother, King Aethelred, in the year of the nine battles. When the king died, Alfred was named his successor, even though the king had two young sons. No one objected, so he must have proved his worth. His position was weak, though, and he had no option but to sue for peace. He bought off the Danes, who retired to London, presumably to count their money.

  Five years later the Danes had a new leader – Guthrum. Again, Alfred negotiated a peace, but Guthrum broke the treaty. He attacked Chippenham where Alfred was staying for Christmas, killing nearly everyone. Alfred and a small band of followers barely escaped to Athelney. And here he was – at the lowest point of his life. Defeated, alone, exiled, ill, and with no immediate hope of a comeback, scrounging food and shelter in exchange for such service as he could offer.

  Even as we watched, he stood up, stretched stiffly, collected a few more logs from the pile, and carefully laid them across the fire.

  ‘Don’t underestimate what he’s doing,’ said Peterson. ‘This is the communal fire. They’ll use it for cooking, drying wood and clothes, and smoking fish and game. This is the fire from which all other fires are lit. It’s never allowed to go out. Look at the ash bed on it.’

  He was right. I couldn’t spare a lot of attention – I was watching their backs because they certainly weren’t – but I could see pans of water set to heat up on homemade trivets, together with pots, skillets and cauldrons, all carefully arranged around the fire. On an arrangement of flat hearth stones at his feet sat about two dozen lumps of what I’d taken to be dough of some kind, either proving or cooking in the heat.

  ‘They’ll sit round this in the evening,’ said Maxwell. ‘I’m betting those huts are cold and damp. They’ll stay by the fire as long as possible, only going inside to sleep or get out of the rain. They’ll use this one to light their small private fires at night in their own huts.’

  I looked at their huts.Their cold, damp, chimney-less huts. No wonder everyone preferred to gather around the fire. Life was lived outside. You only went inside when the weather was bad. I imagined life inside one of those small round huts. I saw them sitting inside, either in the dark or by the light of a wick burning in some evil-smelling animal fat. Their tiny fire would produce a disproportionate amount of smoke, all curling around looking for a way out. I heard the rain dripping through the roof. Saw the water oozing up through the floor. Wet clothes. Wet bedding. What a life.

  And yet they seemed cheerful enough.

  ‘Well, they don’t know any better, do they?’ said Maxwell. ‘They probably think they’ve got all mod cons here and life is good.’

  A bit of a disbelieving silence there.

  A number of people were trudging along a broad causeway:the men, home from gathering food. Several of them had a fish or two on a line. One had what looked like a brace of rabbits. Others had various waterfowl, swinging by their feet. But all of them carried a cord of firewood each, and the first thing they did was distribute it. Two thirds of what they carried went on the big communal pile by the fire. Only one third was stacked neatly in their own hut’s lean-to for their private use. And yes, all right, that was quite interesting, but Peterson and Maxwell were nearly having orgasms, muttering about communal needs and teamwork and God knows what. I listened with only half an ear – quite appropriate in my case – because a herd of mammoths could have cantered past at that moment and they’d have missed them. They seemed entirely oblivious to the fact that there were people all around the place, and that half a dozen of them could trip over us at any moment, and good luck with explaining we weren’t Danes.

  I ran an eye around as much as I could see of the lan
dscape, but everything seemed quiet enough. Birds still sang in the trees, which usually means nothing unpleasant is creeping about. Apart from us, of course.

  I became aware the two of them were on the move, crawling about picking up sticks and odd bits of wood. I put a stop to this madness by simply grabbing their tunics and hauling them back again.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  Maxwell sighed as if she couldn’t believe such stupidity. ‘Down there, of course.’

  ‘Are you out of your minds?’ I said, and I think we all know the answer to that one. ‘The whole country’s on Dane alert. They’ll skewer you as soon as you appear.’

  ‘No they won’t,’ said Peterson, who’s also no better than he should be. ‘That’s why we’re gathering firewood. As a gift. Firewood is a currency. They’ll love us. You just wait and see.’

  There was no arguing with them. The Major always says the main purpose of the History Department is to get themselves into trouble, and the main purpose of the Security Section is to get them back out again. I sighed heavily and followed them, prepared to fulfil my main purpose, and pausing on the way to pick up a bit of wood.

  Peterson stared at it. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  I considered explaining the importance of remaining hands-free in case of trouble,but they wouldn’t have understood me. As I said, historians are lovely people but single-minded. Very, very single-minded.

  OK. Time to set the record straight. Yes, history is quite interesting. Even without the capital H. And yes, you can tell the History Department I said that. Sadly, the most interesting parts are probably not true. Poor old Teddy Two probably didn’t get the red-hot poker up his bum. Robert the Bruce probably didn’t interact with the famous spider in the cave. The lights of Cairo probably did not go out the night Lord Caernarvon died. It’s a shame, but there you are.

  And I can definitely say, without any hesitation whatsoever – King Alfred did not burn the cakes. Because, for a start, I think it was bread – not cakes. But whatever it was – and I might as well carry on saying cakes – he didn’t burn them. We did. We burned the cakes. Well, actually, I did.