My Name is Markham Page 3

  Yeah. Sorry about that.

  I don’t know if he ever gets tired of being right. Probably not. But Peterson was right. They didn’t love us, but they didn’t kill us either, which is usually the best we can hope for. We walked slowly down the causeway and into the clearing. Peterson went first, with his bundle of firewood. Maxwell followed on behind, staggering slightly under her load because, of course, she’d picked up far more than she could comfortably carry and wouldn’t admit it. And, finally,came me, the slave, clutching my twig.

  A goodwife scattering something to a herd of marauding chickens was the first to catch sight of us, calling something over her shoulder, clattering her wooden bucket against a stone to attract attention, and then standing straight and still outside her hut.

  Around the village, heads lifted. The women melted away and men came forward. None of them carried a sword, but one or two conveniently held axes and one, a monster man with muscles to match, carried a hammer. A visiting smith, maybe.They weren’t threatening – they were just there, directly in our path, and it was very obvious we weren’t going any further.

  I stood quietly at the back, making an excellent job of portraying the hapless slave who really didn’t want to be here. Why on earth we couldn’t have watched Alfred’s culinary catastrophe from up beyond the treeline was a bit of a mystery to me, but who was I to argue?

  Peterson said something, bowed slightly and gestured to his load of wood and then to Maxwell. He was probably introducing them in order of social importance. Wood first, then wife. He didn’t bother with me at all. One day, I really am going to have to have a word with them about this.

  They could see we weren’t armed and they didn’t seem particularly bothered by my twig. After a bit of muttering, they stepped aside and indicated the fire. So we’d obviously done the right thing with the firewood. And we couldn’t just dump our offerings on the pile, either. There were three distinct components, light brushwood, probably used for lighting this and other fires,medium-sized logs in the middle, and really big logs up near the fire. One of those would probably last a whole night. We laid our offerings appropriately and stepped back.

  I think the plan was just to sit quietly by the fire as if we were resting travellers, observe what was going on, watch for Alfred igniting the baked goods, and then make ourselves scarce. Of course, quietly never happens. As Max once explained to me, the mere fact of us being there tends to upset the balance of things. History is trying to get rid of us – like an irritating piece of grit in your eye, she said, looking straight at me for some reason – hence hardly anything goes according to plan. I’m pretty sure this is historian speak for it’s all gone tits-up again and it’s probably our fault, but don’t tell Dr Bairstow.

  Anyway, we settled ourselves by the fire. Maxwell spread her wet skirts to dry and they brought us beer. Nice hospitable folk.

  We sat and sipped. Well, Peterson and I did. Max held her beaker as if it would twist in her hand and bite her at any moment, so I finished mine and started on hers as well. It wasn’t bad.

  I know I’m always banging on about them but – when they put their minds to it – our historians are bloody good. They sat quietly by the fire, ostensibly resting from their travels and drying out, but I knew neither of them would have taken their eyes off Alfred, and that at least one of them would be discreetly recording the village and its inhabitants at the same time. The villagers carried on with their working day. Everything was fine.

  Alfred stood up again and, using a cloth, began to select hot stones from around the hearth, dropping one into each cauldron of water. To help them boil more quickly, I assumed. While he was on his feet, he checked the little balls of dough, still proving around the fire, turning one or two to better positions. When he’d finished that, he fed the fire again. He was careful and conscientious, obviously taking his responsibilities very seriously, and only when he was satisfied everything was in order did he come to sit alongside us.I could feel Maxwell quivering with excitement and she was a good three feet away.

  He greeted us courteously enough. I could see Max and Peterson were having difficulty understanding him,though, and Peterson responded in Latin. That was enough for Alfred and a moment later, they were well away. I’ve picked up a bit of Latin over the years and could mostly follow what was being said. He was asking for news.

  Peterson responded gravely, saying as little as possible and none of it good. I could see Alfred’s face cloud with disappointment. His shoulders slumped and he sighed and looked away. He looked so dejected and lonely, and I only meant it as a kindness, but I offered him my beaker of beer. He looked at it for a while and then at me. Properly. Seeing the man and not the servant. He inclined his head and thanked me politely. Suddenly, I could see why, physically frail though he was, men followed him.

  Peterson had wandered off to commune with the midden, so I turned to Maxwell and said, ‘Can you translate for me?’

  She nodded.

  If Alfred was surprised to be addressed by a servant and a woman, he had the manners not to show it.

  I said, ‘You shouldn’t give up. You should never give up. There’s a saying:This too will pass. And it will. Everything gets better. Because nothing stays the same. Bad becomes good. Good becomes bad as well – you can’t stop that – but you can be ready for it and deal with it when it happens. But this …’ I gestured around us, ‘all this – will pass. You should remember that. That’s what I did when I was a kid and some things were too bad to think about. I used to tell myself – this will pass. And it always does.’

  OK. Surprised myself a bit there. I’ve never actually mentioned my private life to anyone except Hunter, and then only briefly, and no one was more surprised than me when she put her arms around me and cried a little, which nearly set me off as well.

  I waited for Maxwell to catch up and then ploughed on.

  ‘When I was a kid, there were bad times, when nothing went right, and I had to do some things I didn’t want to. Like you do when you buy off the Danes. Anyway, I got caught. Several times, actually.’

  I paused again, remembering. The magistrate had been quite a decent old stick. We got to know each other quite well. He always said how grieved he was to see me standing in front of him yet again, and I would point out, quite reasonably, I think, that if the police stopped arresting me then he wouldn’t have to, would he?

  Anyway, I was caught once too often and they gave me a choice. Detention or the army. I chose the army and things got better. Because all things pass.

  I shifted on my uncomfortable log. ‘What I’m trying to say is that everything passes and you should never give up because bad times always get better. One day, all this will be in your past. There’s a story about a bloke hiding in a cave somewhere, watching a spider struggling to spin a web. It keeps trying. It never gives up. And eventually it succeeds. The man learns from the spider. He doesn’t give up and neither should you.’

  I sat back and watched his face while Maxwell repeated all that in Latin.

  When she’d finished, there was a bit of a silence and then, without looking at me, she scooted up and she put her hand on mine. Just for a very quick moment. I patted it carefully because she can be a bit unpredictable sometimes and it made me nervous to have her that close.

  Anyway, Alfred seemed impressed – although whether by my tale-telling abilities or my prowess with short redheads was hard to say. We sat quietly together watching the flames, and then all hell broke loose and, just for once, none of it was our fault.

  A little girl ran past us. She was wearing what I suspected was her mother’s dress, cut down to fit, but still much too big. Her face was alight with excitement.

  She ran to a hut, fiddled with the latch, and dragged the door open. Her mother – I assumed – busy tipping slop to the pigs, shouted a warning, but too late.

  A dog flew out of the door. Not one of the short-legged,curly-tailed mongrels we’d seen sniffing around the place, but a long-legged,
silky-haired aristocrat. Obviously someone’s pride and joy. Probably the best hunting dog in the village and, just at this moment, in what you might call a very … receptive state.

  She raced past the little girl, knocking her over into the mud. The little girl began to wail. Her mother dropped the bucket and ran towards her. The pigs were vocal in their disapproval of this action.

  For some reason, I tensed. This had all the makings of one of those sort of situations.

  The dog ran past us,eyes bright, tongue lolling, and obviously feeling extremely friendly towards other dogs.

  The first to notice her was some disreputable rat-thing curled up as close to the fire as he dared to get. Unable to believe his luck, he raced towards her as fast as his stumpy little legs would carry him. He was half her size and I couldn’t help wondering what he thought he was going to do when he got there, but I needn’t have worried. He took a flying leap and hung on for grim death.

  Sadly for him, he didn’t enjoy himself for long. I suspected that, rather like me, he was quite some way down in the pecking order, and by this time, others had realised what was happening.

  More dogs piled on and it got nasty. Fights broke out. One minute we had a lovely, peaceful rural scene and the next minute we were all embroiled in some sort of massive dog punch-up.

  A huge, solid mass of yelping, yapping, baying, growling, snapping, snarling dogs was cartwheeling around the place. Things were knocked over. The pig troughs went flying, distributing their contents in a kind of graceful arc. The pig protests increased in volume. Other things toppled. Shrieking chickens fluttered about, tripping people up in their efforts to fly to safer areas. Women picked up screaming kids. Other dogs raced to join in. Cats yowled and fled for the rooftops.Red-faced men shouted and wildly laid about them with sticks.

  Somehow, in all the confusion, we got separated. Peterson was over at the midden anyway, Alfred ended up on the other side of the fire and Maxwell was swept away in the confusion. I don’t think she was in any great danger, but I couldn’t afford to let anything happen to her. Chief Farrell would stare at me reproachfully. Then Dr Bairstow would give it a go, and then Major Guthrie would do a bloody sight more than stare. I had to act with decision and competence.

  I stood up and fell over a small child.

  You would think, wouldn’t you, that parents would be more careful with their offspring and not just leave them lying around all over the place.

  A woman, backed up against the same fence as Maxwell, swung her bucket at the seething mass of dogs, missed and fetched Maxwell a great buffet across the chest. She fell backwards over the fence, showing vast amounts of long crimson and gold rugby socks which were, in the absence of the Sky Sports Channel, probably the most exciting thing they’d seen around here for years.

  They would almost certainly have caused a stir if everyone’s attention hadn’t been on the fact that every dog for miles around was desperate to join the fun, convinced he finally had a chance with the snooty bitch who was never allowed out to play.

  Maxwell, meanwhile, was on her back in the pig-pen – a phrase I really feel isn’t used anything like often enough. Remembering I’m supposed to prevent this sort of thing, I went to help her up out of the mud, but as I moved to assist, Peterson caught my arm and held me back, saying softly, ‘Why not just give it a moment, eh?’

  So we stood and watched and it was bloody funny because every time she managed to pull herself up, an excited dog or two would race past and down she would go again. Only when the language became particularly ripe was I permitted to intervene.

  We went to pick her up and strangely, she wasn’t in the happiest mood.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I was here,’ I said, injured. Where did she think I would be?

  ‘And you didn’t intervene because …?’

  ‘Well, they might have turned on me. Did you see the teeth on that mastiff?’

  ‘Yes, actually, I did, thanks to you. Did you at any point remember your primary function here?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, drawing myself up proudly. ‘Not to interfere. Not to do anything to change the course of history. Not to …’ I paused.

  ‘Not to allow historians to be damaged.’

  ‘Yeah. I always forget that one.’

  She opened her mouth but, thankfully, before she could utter, the noise of dogs rose to a crescendo. The excited barking and yapping had turned to yelping. Dogs were scattering in all directions, tails between their legs, crying in pain. We turned to see what had happened.

  They’d been scalded. Not badly – but, with a sense of self-preservation historians would do well to emulate – they were disappearing as fast as their stumpy little legs could carry them. Two seconds later, apart from the grinning hussy who had caused all the trouble – and no, this time I don’t mean Maxwell – the village was completely dog free.

  Nobody was paying them the slightest attention. There had been a disaster.

  The area around the fire was swimming in water. Empty cauldrons and pots lay on their side. Whether someone had deliberately thrown the water over the dogs to separate them, or whether the dogs had knocked them over in the mêlée, was not clear. One thing, however, was very clear.

  The fire was out.

  Everything had stopped dead, the place a shambles. Some of the fences had been knocked down and the pigs were out. The chickens were on the roof. The carefully stacked woodpile was overturned. Washing lay in the mud. Buckets and barrels had been overturned and their contents trampled into the mud.

  So this was how the cakes were burned,and we’d missed it.

  Maxwell was wiping her face and Peterson was being menaced by a very agitated pack of … geese, I think. Big, nasty-looking birds anyway. But not swans, I was happy to note. Otherwise I’d be up a tree by now. Not that that would help. St Mary’s swans can climb trees as well. Why they would want to, I don’t know, but they can.

  Oh no. As you were. This was not the day the cakes were burned. Unbelievably, about the only things not damaged in the entire riot were the lumps of dough still sitting serenely at the edge of the ex-fire. I stared at them in disbelief – you’d have thought they would have been the first casualties, but no, there they were. Intact and unburned. Incredible.

  All around us, people were distraught. They were running around like ants, and as if that wasn’t enough, it had started to rain again. Not hugely, just a gentle drizzle that soaked everything without you actually noticing.

  We did what we could to help, setting things upright again, picking the washing out of the mud, and draping it over fences, but they couldn’t get the fire going again. Don’t get me wrong – they weren’t unskilful. Half a dozen men were working away with fire steels and pieces of flint, but it just wasn’t working. Anglo-Saxon curses filled the air. People were getting wet. The wood was wet. The fire was out. There would be no warmth tonight. No light. No hot meal. No bread.

  Men were restacking the all-important log pile. And still no fire. There were plenty of flames being generated, but nothing would catch. Some people were rubbing two sticks between their hands as well, blowing gently on to a handful of dried grass or what looked like sheep’s wool. There was plenty of smoke, but no flames. Somewhere, a child began to cry.

  I know we’re not supposed to interfere. God knows, we’ve had that drummed into us often enough. And most of us learned our lesson at Troy. You don’t interfere. There are consequences.

  I stood and watched their increasingly desperate efforts to get the fire going again. I don’t know why all the other people didn’t try to get under some sort of cover, but they didn’t. Those who weren’t desperately trying to get a flame stood in tight groups. Watching.Their fire more than just a tool. It was a symbol of something important to them. And it should never be allowed to go out.

  I stepped back and stared at the ground.

  We’re only supposed to record and document. To stand back and watch people living their lives. To w
atch events unfold and record them. And we do. I’ve lost count of the coronations, or assassinations, or battles I’ve witnessed and I don’t know why this was any different. This wasn’t some major historical event. This was a few people whose lives weren’t that great anyway, facing what was, in their world, a disaster. It’s hard to believe, I know. Lighting a fire seems such a small thing. But it was everything to these people. Their only source of light, heat, food and all the rest of it. Their source of life.

  The rain began to speed up, coming down faster.

  Maxwell and Peterson reappeared, surveying the shambles.

  ‘Did we do this?’ I said to Maxwell.

  She shook her head. ‘Not directly, although I might be responsible for the pigs getting out.’

  ‘And,’ said Peterson, thoughtfully, ‘Alfred hasn’t burned the cakes.’

  We surveyed the lumps of dough sitting innocently amongst the carnage.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Maxwell. ‘We only know he hasn’t burned the cakes today.’

  ‘Suppose they never get burned. Suppose it should have happened today and now it never will.’

  We looked at each other and then at Alfred silently helping to re-stack the woodpile, his face tired and sad. And without hope.

  I sighed. It was going to have to be me, wasn’t it?

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I said, hoping they’d mistake me for Arnie, but I think it went straight over their heads. Not difficult, I suppose. Typical bloody historians – they think they’re so smart and yet they never get the cultural references. They certainly didn’t get this one.

  ‘OK,’ said Peterson, vaguely, all his attention on the villagers’ attempts to restart the fire. I don’t think Maxwell even noticed I was gone.

  It only took me about half an hour to get to the pod and back. You can certainly cover the ground a lot more quickly when there aren’t any historians to slow you down, and I hardly fell into any bogs at all. I knew what I wanted. I banged in the combination, opened the locker door and grabbed what I needed, shoved it all in an old bag, and trotted back again, splashing through watery mud and muddy water, eventually arriving back at the village hot, breathless, and very wet. Well, I’d been wet when I set out. I was soaked to the bloody skin now.