It had been a simple there-and-back-again to test the on– site net. Only thirty years. Dunworthy was to go through to Trafalgar Square, take the tube from Charing Cross to Paddington and the 10:48 train to Oxford where the main net would be open. They had allowed plenty of time, checked and rechecked the net, researched the ABC and the tube schedules, double-checked the dates on the money. And when he had got to Charing Cross the tube station was closed. The lights in the ticket kiosks were off, and an iron gate was pulled across the entrance, in front of the wooden turnstiles.
He pulled the blankets up over his shoulder. Any number of things could have gone wrong, things no one had even thought of. It had probably never occurred to Colin’s mother that Colin’s train would be stopped at Barton. It had not occurred to any of them that Badri would suddenly fall forward into the console.
Mary’s right, he thought, you’ve a dreadful streak of Mrs. Gaddsonitis. Kivrin overcame any number of obstacles to get to the Middle Ages. Even if something goes wrong, she can handle it. Colin hadn’t let a little thing like a quarantine stop him. And Dunworthy had made it safely back from London.
He had banged on the shut gate and then run back up the stairs to read the signs again, thinking that perhaps he had come in the wrong way. He hadn’t. He had looked for a clock. Perhaps there had been more slippage than the checks indicated, he’d thought, and the underground was shut down for the night. But the clock above the entrance said nine-fifteen.
“Accident,” a disreputable-looking man in a filthy cap had said. “They’ve shut down till they can get it cleaned up.”
“B… But I must take the Bakerloo line,” he’d stammered, but the man had shuffled off.
He’d stood there staring into the darkened station, unable to think what to do. He hadn’t brought enough money for a taxi, and Paddington was all the way across London. He’d never make the 10:48.
“Whah ya gan, mite?” a young man with a black leather jacket and green hair like a cockscomb had said. Dunworthy could scarcely understand him. Punker, he’d thought. The young man had moved menacingly closer.
“Paddington,” he’d said, and it had come out as little more than a squeak.
The punker had reached in his jacket pocket for what Dunworthy had been sure was his switchblade, but he’d pulled out a laminated tube pass and begun reading the map on the back. “Yuh cuhn get District or Sahcle from Embankment. Gaw dahn Craven Street and tike a left.”
He had run the whole way, certain the punker’s gang would leap out at him and steal his historically accurate money at any moment, and when he got to Embankment, he had had no idea how to work the ticket machine.
A woman with two toddlers had helped him, punching in the destination and amount for him and showing him how to insert his ticket in the slot. He had made it to Paddington with time to spare.
“Aren’t there any
He rolled over onto his other side. “She will be perfectly all right,” he said aloud, but softly, so as not to wake Colin. “The Middle Ages are no match for my best pupil.” He pulled the blanket up over his shoulder and closed his eyes, thinking of the young man with the green cockscomb poring over the map. But the image that floated before him was of the iron gate, stretched between him and the turnstiles, and the darkened station beyond.
19 December 1320 (Old Style.) I’m feeling better. I can go three or four careful breaths at a time without coughing, and I was actually hungry this morning, though not for the greasy porridge Maisry brought me. I would kill for a glass of orange juice.
And a bath. I am absolutely filthy. Nothing’s been washed since I got here except my forehead, and the last two days Lady Imeyne has glued poultices made of strips of linen covered with a disgusting-smelling paste to my chest. Between that, the intermittent sweats that I’m still having, and the bed (which hasn’t been changed since the 1200’s), I positively reek, and my hair, short as it is, is crawling. I’m the cleanest person here.
Dr. Ahrens was right in wanting to cauterize my nose. Everyone, even the little girls, smells terrible, and it’s the dead of winter and freezing cold in here. I can’t imagine what it must be like in August. They all have fleas. Lady Imeyne stops even in mid-prayer to scratch, and when Agnes pulled down her hose to show me her knee, there were red bites all up and down her leg.
