Copyright © 2024 Jodi Taylor

The right of Jodi Taylor to be identified as the Author of

the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP LIMITED

1

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law,

this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted,

in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of

the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in

accordance with the terms of licences issued by the

Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication – other than the obvious

historical figures – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 0354 1653 0

Cover design and illustration by Sophie Ellis

Author photograph © Accent Press

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Contents

Title

Copyright

Contents

About the Author

Also By

About the Book

Starring . . .

Lights! Camera! Mayhem!

Acknowledgements

Discover more about Jodi Taylor

About the Author

Jodi Taylor is the internationally bestselling author of over twenty-five novels and more short stories that you can shake a stick at.

Her Chronicles of St Mary’s series follows a bunch of disaster-prone individuals who investigate major historical events in contemporary time. Do NOT call it time travel!

She is also the author of the Time Police books. Set in the same world as St Mary’s, this spinoff charts the highs and lows of an all-powerful, international organisation tasked with keeping the Timeline straight no matter what the cost. Efficient and disciplined, obviously they’re nothing like St Mary’s. Except when they are.

In 2024, The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal accidentally grew from a short story to a full-length novel, revealing the origin story of two beloved characters who feature in both series.

Jodi is also known for her gripping supernatural thrillers featuring the mysterious Elizabeth Cage together with the enchanting Frogmorton Farm series – a fairy story for adults.

Born in Bristol and now living in Gloucester (facts both cities vigorously deny), she spent many years with her head somewhere else, much to the dismay of family, teachers and employers, before finally deciding to put all that daydreaming to good use and write a book.

By Jodi Taylor and available from Headline

The Ballad of Smallhope and Pennyroyal

time police series

doing time

hard time

SAVING TIME

About time

Killing Time

The Chronicles of St Mary’s series

Just One Damned Thing After Another

A Symphony of Echoes

A Second Chance

A Trail Through Time

No Time Like the Past

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Lies, Damned Lies, and History

And the Rest is History

An Argumentation of Historians

Hope for the Best

plan for the worst

Another Time, Another Place

A Catalogue of Catastrophe

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE HISTORY

The Long and Short of It (short-story collection)

Long Story Short (short-story collection)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (short-story collection)

The Chronicles of St Mary’s digital shorts

When a Child is Born

Roman Holiday

Christmas Present

Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings

THE VERY FIRST DAMNED THING

The Great St Mary’s Day Out

My Name is Markham

A Perfect Storm

Christmas Past

Battersea Barricades

The Steam-Pump Jump

And Now For Something Completely Different

WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?

Why is Nothing Ever Simple?

The Ordeal of the Haunted Room

the toast of time

christmas pie

Time Police digital short

SANTA GRINT

Elizabeth Cage novels

WHITE SILENCE

DARK LIGHT

LONG SHADOWS

Frogmorton Farm Series

The Nothing Girl

The Something Girl

Little Donkey (digital short)

Joy to the World (digital short)

––––––––––––––

A Bachelor Establishment

About the Book

Jodi Taylor and the disaster magnets of St Mary’s return with a story of chaos and catastrophe, to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Coming to a screen near you . . .

TEMPORA, THE TIME-TRAVELLING TOURIST

Starring Astrid Gustafsson as Helen of Troy – ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’

With Dirk Thrust as Achilles – ‘demigod and hero’

And the Wooden Horse as Himself – ‘easily the least wooden performance from anyone participating in this particular travesty’ (Dr Maxwell)

Watch and weep as this epic tale unfolds . . .

This story features Calvin Cutter. At no point does credibility occur.

This is not a Christmas story as such, but it is a story for Christmas. As if that makes things any better.

Starring . . .

Tempora, the Time-Travelling Tourist

Astrid Gustafsson

Darkly Smouldering Hero. Sadly underused, but perhaps one day . . .

Dirk Thrust

The second half of Cavendish Cutter Productions

Calvin Cutter

Director of St Mary’s

Dr Bairstow

Personal Assistant/Muse of History

Mrs Partridge

Senior Priestess at the Temple of Athena

Dr Maxwell

Fine upstanding Security guards from St Mary’s

Mr Markham

Mr Evans

Hapless eagle victim

Adrian Meiklejohn

Deputy Director of St Mary’s

Dr Peterson

Keeper of the Sacred Data Stack

Rosie Lee

Former Resident of Welwyn Garden City

Mrs Enderby

First Greek Hero

Odysseus, son of Laertes

Second Greek Hero

Diomedes, son of Tydeus

Dei Ex Machina

Smallhope & Pennyroyal

Full supporting cast of

Priests and Priestesses

Handmaidens

Door wardens

Soldiers and guards

Citizens of Troy

Psychotic eagle

Damaged drone

Sacrificial chickens

Trojan drop goats

‘Um . . .’ said Adrian.

I don’t know if anyone’s ever noticed, but there are a million interpretations of the word ‘Um . . .’

There’s the ‘Um . . .’ that means ‘I’ve forgotten what I was going to say’.

Then there’s the ‘Um . . .’ that says ‘I’m not sure what’s going on’.

Even the ‘Um . . .’ that politely and delicately tries to attract attention.

And then, of course, there’s the ‘Um . . .’ that precedes the apocalypse.

Guess which one this was.

Ten days earlier . . .

Just when I thought things were going reasonably well at St Mary’s and I could relax a little, we were hit by an all-staff briefing from Dr Bairstow.

‘This will be fun,’ whispered Leon, sliding into the seat beside me.

It struck me he was looking much more cheerful than the occasion warranted.

‘Do you know what this is all about?’ I asked.

He grinned and settled back in his seat. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Nope.’

‘Tell me or I’ll send Rosie Lee round to break your legs.’

‘Your words have no power over me.’

‘Tell me or I’ll . . .’

Silence fell as Dr Bairstow descended the stairs to take his traditional place on the half-landing. ‘Good morning. Thank you all for coming at such short notice.’

As if we ever had a choice.

‘I am delighted to announce that after prolonged and sometimes quite cut-throat negotiations . . .’

He left a pause long enough for us to imagine and admire these cut-throat negotiations.

‘. . . Cavendish Cutter Productions is again to avail itself of the unique services offered by St Mary’s. We are to provide professional advice in connection with the production of the second series of their ever-popular TV show Tempora, the Time-Travelling Tourist. At, I have to say, a fee very advantageous to this unit.’

He left a pause long enough for us to imagine and admire this advantageous fee.

‘A preliminary visit will take place next week. Mr Cutter will be accompanied here by various key members of his team, to whom you will extend the traditional St Mary’s courtesy. Their purpose will be to familiarise themselves with the background material being prepared for them by our History Department and to liaise with Wardrobe, who will be designing and making the costumes required for the new series.

‘We expect their stay to last between five and seven days. All compromising material – the Archive, contentious History Department files, and the pods themselves – will be removed to our remote site under the supervision of Chief Technical Officer Farrell. Along with as many of you as wish to accompany him.’

Looking around I could see that included nearly everyone. It certainly included me. Calvin Cutter was the world’s biggest – I believe the technical expression is . . . ‘prat’. I’d come across him once before and had no intention of repeating the experience. Besides, life at any of our remote sites was rarely dull. My last visit had manifested a bunch of geographically challenged football-playing Vikings, and that’s not something you see every day.

A buzz of excitement from my similarly thinking colleagues rose around the Great Hall. I had, however, greatly underestimated Dr Bairstow’s cunning.

Slowly turning a page of his notes, he waited for silence to fall before he continued.

‘Mr Cutter has asked me to inform you that he would very much like to offer members of St Mary’s the chance to act as extras in his forthcoming enterprise. For which, of course, the appropriate fees will be paid. Preliminary interviews – or auditions, as I believe they are known – will be carried out after Christmas for anyone interested in availing themselves of this unique opportunity to participate in the shooting of Mr Cutter’s exciting flagship series.’

Dr Bairstow paused, artistically turning another page and waiting for us to admire his grasp of theatrical terms. The buzz in the Great Hall became a roar. I could hear Markham informing someone that he was an act-or, you know. I had a horrible feeling St Mary’s would be to stage-struck what the Black Death was to the Middle Ages. The result would probably be similar, too. Two-thirds of the population dead and Europe laid waste.

On the other hand . . . I could be a star!

Ten days later . . .

‘Oh my God,’ said Peterson, hanging out of my office window because his faced in the wrong direction. ‘It’s her.’

Peterson is Deputy Director of St Mary’s and frequently displays levels of intelligence commensurate to senior managers everywhere.

The door burst open and Markham rushed in, trailing clouds of excitement, followed by Mr Evans, trailing a ham sandwich.

‘Oh my God, is it her?’ he squeaked. Markham, I mean, not Evans. At approximately the size of the principality of Wales – from where he definitely does not hail – Evans is too big to squeak.

They crowded around my window, pushing me out of the way. There are two windows in my office, but Rosie Lee was standing at the other one and obviously she had that to herself.

‘It is her,’ she declared. ‘I thought it was. She looks just the same as she did in Joan of Arc.’

Joan of Arc was an earlier Calvin Cutter creation and Astrid Gustafsson’s first major role. In this version of events – a memorable departure from the more traditional tale – Joan did not die at the stake but leaped from the flames (method never specified) wielding the cross assembled for her by an English infantryman. Striking down everyone in her path – it seemed she had, at some point, acquired slightly improbable Eastern self-defence skills – Joan went on to overcome about forty armour-clad, sword-wielding, battle-hardened knights, before finally succumbing to a cowardly thrust from behind, delivered by a blood-crazed and frothing-into-his-beard King Henry VI himself, who had apparently turned up to supervise the cruel execution of his supposed nemesis. I’ve no idea how he would have managed that – especially as he’d only have been about ten years old at the time.

Anyway, eventually dying lengthily and prettily, and bathed in soft-focus golden light, Astrid Gustafsson’s Joan ascended into heaven above, having been sainted on the spot by the Bishop of Beauvais – who had been presiding over her execution in the first place but now, presumably, had seen the error of his ways.

This astonishing film had concluded with half a dozen buxom young women in their diaphanous nighties – without whom no Calvin Cutter film would be complete – apparently representing angels. They enveloped Joan in a magnificent golden cloak and, for reasons never established, placed a crown upon her head. The clouds rolled back, the choir belted out something suitably angelic, Joan ascended in more soft focus and the screen faded to black. The End. Another Calvin Cutter classic. Made a fortune at the box office, apparently.

So pleased had Calvin been with the actress who had managed to convey this astonishing storyline with a straight face that he immediately signed her up to star in his next project – an epic time-travel series. The one based on David Sands’ popular time-travel books published under the series title Sands of Time. I forget the original name of Sands’ heroine, but on Planet Cutter she was known as Tempora, the Time-Travelling Tourist – thus thoroughly confusing Markham who had always thought Tempora was some sort of batter until Mrs Mack led him quietly away for explanations.

Anyway, in every episode, Tempora would leap into her time-travelling vehicle – David Sands’ original idea of a wrist-worn device had been replaced by something suitably futuristic which graunched its way dramatically through the centuries, trailing clouds of psychedelic smoke as it went – and become embroiled in another exciting adventure, which mostly involved her running, screaming, falling over, being rescued and having sex. In various permutations depending on the plot.

The first series had been a huge success and Calvin Cutter was about to embark upon the second. Hence his presence here at St Mary’s. And that of his leading actors.

The actress playing Tempora – the famous Astrid Gustafsson now disembarking from the smart SUV parked under my window – stood six feet tall in her stockinged feet. Her long silver-blonde hair was caught up in a casual knot, but what you saw first were her extraordinary blue eyes. Clear and calm and framed with thick black lashes.

Obviously she was wearing normal clothes at the moment, but her regular time-travelling uniform comprised leather boots with six-inch heels and a silver outfit moulded so completely to her body that fights still broke out across the land as to whether it was an actual costume or just something the studio’s wardrobe department sprayed on every morning. The nation was more divided over this issue than whether to indict the current PM for a series of misdemeanours longer than War and Peace. When questioned about this astonishing costume in television interviews, Mr Cutter’s explanation was always that it was vital to the story and that the time-travel machine couldn’t work unless Tempora was wearing it.

I should imagine physicists across the land must have been gobsmacked to discover that the solution to the problem of successful time travel was simply to spray the nearest female with silver paint. Apparently an entire department at one of our more distinguished centres of learning – yes, all right, Thirsk University – was devoting their afternoons to watching every episode and drinking beer in their tireless quest to resolve this scientific conundrum. Sadly, despite months of intensive research, they hadn’t even been able to work out how she got in and out of the silver clingy thingy.

Anyway, Tempora was inevitably rescued each week by her much more sensibly dressed co-star, the really rather gorgeous Dirk Thrust, and every episode ended with her falling into his arms. Because of all this, in both the real world and that of St Mary’s, she was inevitably known as Tempora, the Time-Travelling Tottie.

And now she was here. Actually standing on the South Lawn under my window. Not in six-inch heels, should anyone be concerned for our ancient bit of turf – although given everything that had happened to it under the current regime, it seemed safe to assume a six-foot actress in killer heels wouldn’t cause it any great problems.

Back to the window. Markham, Peterson and Rosie Lee all turned to look at me and grinned. Because guess who’d been allocated Tottie Duty? Chaperone . . . guide . . . assistant . . . you name it – my responsibility was to escort Astrid Gustafsson around the building, make sure she arrived at various appointments on time, and didn’t get lost or have a ceiling come down on her. A not unlikely possibility given the toll R&D has taken on St Mary’s over the years. Additionally I was to make sure she had everything she needed, answer questions and just generally stop her wandering off and getting lost. Simple, you might think.

You’re wrong. So, so wrong.

I flew around the gallery and down the stairs, arriving just as our visitors mounted the front steps where Dr Bairstow was waiting to greet them. Mr Strong was supervising their luggage. Our guests would be staying in the slightly more modern Staff Block, so they all stood quite a good chance of getting through the visit without their accommodation disintegrating around them.

First up the steps was Dirk Thrust. The archetypal leading man. Generally reckoned to have so little between his ears that it was a miracle they didn’t overlap. His ears, I mean. He paused at the top and smouldered. Tall, dark and handsome – he’d make a fabulous Charles II.

Dirk Thrust was followed by Calvin Cutter – or CC as he now liked to be known. He hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d seen him, although admittedly during his previous visit we had exploded a number of rocks all over him – as you do – and he’d spent a lot of time under a table. Still average height and a little soft around the middle. The only slight difference was a smart new earpiece that kept him constantly connected with the outside world and enabled him to sustain multiple conversations simultaneously. This new one was sleek and silver and flashed coloured lights on a seemingly random basis. God knows what it was doing to his brain. Perhaps this wasn’t the real Calvin Cutter. Perhaps this was a cyborg of some kind. The latest thing in AI, perhaps. A Terminator, sent by the Time Police to kill us all. I made a mental note to discuss this new and interesting theory with Peterson at the first opportunity.

But back to CC.

‘Ah,’ he said, breaking off his telephone conversation and grasping my hand in his flabby paw. ‘You’re Dr Maxwell. I remember you.’

Probably not for the right reasons.

‘How’s Marj?’ I said. ‘She was having a baby, I believe.’

Marj was his long-suffering PA. As far as I could make out, she ran Cavendish Cutter Productions while CC was away. I suspected she ran Cavendish Cutter Productions while CC was actually present, as well.

‘Oh, I think she’s had another one since then. Hang on.’ He thumped his ear. ‘Marj? . . . Yes, at St Mary’s . . . Yes, they’re still here . . . I know – I’m surprised, too. Anyway, it’s just come up in conversation – how many children do you have? . . . Well, of course I know . . . Yes, I do . . . I sent a birthday card . . . Well, yes, but you told me it was a boy . . . Yes, you did . . . No, Marj, I listen all the time. And anyway, it’s the thought that counts.’ He stared at his fingers, performed a rapid mental calculation and then said with confidence, ‘Two. You have two children . . . Really? . . . When did that happen? . . . I definitely remember the one you had on my desk during that scriptwriters’ meeting. Terrible mess. I had to have all twenty-three copies of the script for Victoria’s Love Agony – the Queen’s Forbidden Passion completely reprinted . . . Well, yes, all right, you had the twenty-three copies repri— Yes, but . . . No, but . . . You’re never going to let that go, are you? . . . You could have gone to the hospital at any . . . Well, yes, I do remember you weren’t around for a while because I couldn’t find the . . . No, it wasn’t on my desk, Marj, first place I loo— That’s not what in-trays are for, Marj . . . Look, I can’t . . . Hello? Hello?’

As Peterson had once remarked, Calvin Cutter really was rather good value.

Tempora, or Astrid, as I suppose I should call her, was a completely different kettle of fish. Sometimes, meeting someone famous can be a bit of a disappointment, but not in this case. Tempora – sorry, Astrid – was exactly as she appeared on-screen. Even more so, perhaps – and when she donned her famous time-travelling outfit and piled her hair on top of her head in her equally famous beehive, she was well over six foot six. But even out of costume, standing here on the steps outside St Mary’s, she was the most striking woman I’d ever seen.

Dr Bairstow was shaking hands and welcoming everyone to St Mary’s and we ushered director, actors and senior members of the production team in through the front door. Safely. No random bits of building dropped off. In fact, the place looked quite nice. The normal historian vortex of unstable tables, one-legged whiteboards, piles of files, and blizzards of yellow stickies all over the priceless oak panelling had been removed. The Great Hall was now revealed in all its glory and I have to say, with its flagged floor and hammer beams, it did look impressive.

Only an hour later, of course, it was cluttered up with all the equipment and paraphernalia members of the entertainment industry deem necessary for survival in the wild – or outside London, as it’s often known. Most looked as if it had evolved during the Spanish Inquisition and I looked forward to divining its true purpose in due course, but just at that particular moment, the Great Hall did look amazing.

We took them up the stairs, around the gallery and into Dr Bairstow’s office, where tea and biscuits were waiting. Mrs Partridge was introduced and I was interested to see CC did remember her name and politely shook her hand. She’d obviously made quite an impression on his previous visit.

Everyone took their seats, there were formal introductions, and then we all got stuck in. I’d brought all the research we’d carried out on the production company’s behalf, and thirty seconds later it was spread all over the table and I was deep in discussions about sets and backgrounds. Especially those for episode one. Because, for episode one, I was the expert. I’d actually been there. Because, in episode one, Tempora was going to Troy.

From my point of view, things went badly right from the off. Apparently elegant pillared temples and palaces weren’t exciting enough for Calvin Cutter – sorry, CC – and he’d brought his own ideas with him, including sketches of how he thought Troy should look. There was a ziggurat. And a couple of Egyptian pylons. Then something that I thought looked very like the Shard, although apparently I was looking at it upside down so I might have been mistaken. I swear there was a pyramid and a couple of monoliths in there as well.

I countered with a folder of sketches and graphics – mostly done by me and Polly Perkins from IT – which showed, if not a more accurate Troy, at least one that could have been achieved by the building methods of the time. Frankly, even with today’s modern construction techniques, they’d have struggled to build some of Cutter’s suggestions.

CC wasn’t having any of it.

He thumped his ear again. ‘Marj? . . . Yes, of course I’m still at St Mary’s. Why would I not be? Have you still got the artwork for Moses? You know, the bloke who did the thing with the Red Sea. Although what he was doing at the Red Sea if he was on his way to the Promised Land beats me every time. Very woolly navigation skills, if you ask me. I mean – all he had to do was find the Med and turn right. Forty years in the wilderness with fifty thousand kids in the back seat whining “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” and all because Moses had his map upside down . . . What? . . . Well, I am getting to the point, Marj. Can you get Justin to send over sketches of the exteriors? We can use them again for Troy . . . Because Egypt and Troy are identical . . . No one will notice . . . Oh, sod the critics – what do they know? Cheers, Marj.’

I sighed. This was going to be a very long week. Leon’s advice, just before he departed on the week-long holiday I’d been denied, had been to smile and smile and think of the money. I’d told him women had been doing that for millennia and waved him goodbye.

Mrs Enderby was present at the meeting too. I reintroduced them and, evidently remembering the somewhat embarrassing circumstances of their last encounter, she confined herself to a simple ‘Good day’.

Calvin Cutter fixed her with a suspicious stare. ‘I’m sure I remember you as having a brogue,’ he said.

‘I’m from Welwyn Garden City,’ she said primly, and we all left it at that.

Anyway, this episode was entitled Tempora and the Fall of Troy.

For those of you who fondly imagine you are familiar with the story behind the fall of Troy – heads up – you aren’t. According to Calvin Cutter, the legend was to be given a whole new treatment, making it more relevant to today’s modern world, and bringing it in line with current thinking and social mores.

Which led to a certain amount of bewilderment by all, and some heavy drinking later that evening by me.

‘It’s Troy,’ said Peterson, putting a margarita in front of me. ‘How many other ways are there to tell the story?’

‘Perhaps Troy doesn’t fall,’ said Markham. ‘Perhaps it’s the Trojans who build a wooden horse and leave it outside the city, where it’s welcomed by the Greeks who don’t know it’s stuffed to the gunwales with bloodthirsty Trojan spearmen. They creep out at dead of night, run amok through the Greek lines, set fire to the ships, kill as many as they can and enslave the rest. War over – Mycenae falls and Troy dominates that end of the Med for the next five hundred years.’

‘Or,’ said Peterson, in great excitement, ‘and more in line with today’s modern trends, both sides sit down together for a feast on the beach – at which all special dietary requirements are catered for – and thrash out a way forwards that doesn’t involve bloodshed or the forcible relocation of large numbers of various populations, and all the decisions are reached after extensive and wide-ranging negotiations which prioritise inclusivity, fairness and equality for all.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can just see Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector and Odysseus going for that. Don’t think much of its chances at the box office, though.’

We’d still been speculating when a copy of the full script had come our way.

Allow me to summarise the glorious plot. If History is an important part of your life, you might need to skip this next bit.

Tempora jumps into her time-travelling device and is psychedelically whirled back to besieged Troy, where there’s a bit of a panic on because Helen – yes, her – has just died. I can’t remember from what. I’m not sure it’s ever specified.

Anyway, by the sort of coincidence that happens all the time, Tempora is a dead ringer for Helen. Obviously in Cutterworld, statuesque Nordic blondes are constantly being mistaken for Mediterranean Greeks. They must be so bored with that.

But, to continue this enthralling storyline – the Trojans, apparently mastering fluent English with ease, persuade Tempora to impersonate Helen and win the war for them. Why they don’t just open the gates and hand Helen’s lifeless body back to Menelaus so everyone can go home and pick up their lives is never adequately explained.

Tempora willingly agrees to become Helen – again, for reasons beyond the ken of man.

Achilles does challenge Hector to their famous duel but, in a teeny tiny departure from the original legend, Hector has been too badly wounded to fight, so he persuades Tempora to don his armour and fight in his place.

!!!

It’s worth noting that at this point in the script, Dr Bairstow was the only person at St Mary’s who had managed not to have a WTF moment – but it was close.

Anyway, Tempora and Achilles do battle on the plains of Troy, and after an epic fight, she defeats him – I swear I am not making this up – and when she whips off her helmet in a true Eowyn moment, he falls in love with her. There’s a torrid sex scene behind the bushes – the script was silent on whether they would keep their armour on or not. Peterson, Markham and I spent a happy half-hour drinking and imagining the clanking.

Unfortunately, her husband Paris – who, for some reason, has been kept in the dark about Tempora – doesn’t know it’s her and not Hector, and shoots off his arrow and catches Achilles on his famous heel. Achilles makes a long and moving speech proclaiming his love for Helen/Tempora and how all mankind should live together in peace and harmony, and then the greatest warrior of his time dies in her arms. Of his heel wound.

Heartbroken at her lover’s death, Tempora drags herself back to Troy where everyone is terribly pleased with her. She, however, has gone off the Trojans big time – and Paris in particular – and now she secretly sides with the Greeks.

Stick with me, because now the magnificently manufactured wooden horse turns up. You might wonder from where they got the wood. I did. Panic not – imbued with massive enthusiasm for Project Wooden Horse, all the Greeks race to the shoreline and, in a very 20th-century montage and to a catchy soundtrack, immediately begin to dismantle their ships. Obviously no one’s even slightly concerned about how they’ll get home afterwards. Paddle home on the horse, perhaps.

Anyway, as a time traveller, Tempora knows full well the horse will be stuffed full of Greeks. Seeing this as an opportunity for revenge, she persuades King Priam to bring it into the city. Cue lots of sack and slaughter while Helen/Tempora cackles demonically from the battlements and kills Paris in hand-to-hand combat while dramatically silhouetted against the leaping flames as Troy burns to the ground.

Obviously at some point she has to escape the burning city and return to her time-travelling machine, which she does while being pursued by her original husband, Menelaus, who can’t decide whether to shoot her or shag her. Sadly, he doesn’t get the chance to do either – Tempora trips over her own two feet as she’s running away and is rescued by good old Dirk Thrust – this happens every week – who leaps out of the undergrowth. Both Calvin Cutter and Homer are silent as to the reason behind this dramatic appearance of the Generic Darkly Smouldering Hero at this point. Just as Menelaus is poised for the killing blow, Dirk saves her and Tempora survives to time travel another day. The End.

For anyone wondering about David Sands’ original time-travelling story – it was in there somewhere, except that it had been set on a moon base in the future and involved robots who were gender neutral, and there certainly wasn’t any sex. Otherwise the adaptation was completely faithful to the book.

Back to the script. I’d actually been asked for my comments on this remarkable document. Mindful of Dr Bairstow’s instructions, I ignored twenty years of historianism, and said faintly, ‘Very nice,’ before going off in search of a darkened room and alcohol. And not in that order.

Anyway, I’d approached Tottie Duty with a certain amount of reluctance, only to discover, slightly to my resentment, that Astrid was a really nice person whom it was impossible to dislike.

‘Hi,’ she said, after our first script meeting had finished and we were on our way around the gallery. CC had disappeared off for a frenzy of ear thumping and chat, and she and I were pretty much alone. ‘Nice to meet you at last, Dr Maxwell.’

‘Max,’ I said. ‘And welcome to St Mary’s.’

‘That’s very kind. You must think we’re a real pain in the arse.’

Taken aback, I hesitated just that moment too long to deny it, but fortunately I was saved by Markham, who had been hovering with intent. I introduced them and said, ‘Would you like some tea?’

She sighed. ‘I’d rather have a vodka.’

Well, that was promising.

We seated ourselves in the bar and sipped for a while.

She seemed happy enough with just her drink but I felt I should make polite conversation so I mentioned I’d seen Joan of Arc.

‘I won an award for that,’ she said dismally.

I struggled not to sound too surprised. ‘How lovely for you.’

She shrugged. ‘Not really. There’s an annual award for the worst adaptation of an author’s work. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. The BADs – Book Adaptation Disasters – and Joan was the winner three or four years ago.’

‘Really?’ I said, motioning to Markham to get her a refill because this sounded interesting.

‘Yes. Back in the mists of time, a well-known production outfit – not Calvin’s, before you ask – acquired the rights to a much-loved book by a much-loved author. The finished product was – in the opinion of everyone – an unmitigated abomination.’

I had to ask. ‘What did the author say?’

‘Apparently he was rather pissed at the somewhat cavalier treatment of one of the nation’s favourite books. Actually I think he was rather pissed for an entire month afterwards. Rumour had it he called down curses on the heads of everyone involved, and his plans for their future made Jack the Ripper look like Mother Theresa— Oh, thanks.’

Markham had set down another drink in front of her.

‘And did he carry them out?’ he enquired, hugely excited at this brief glimpse into the glamorous world of acting.

‘No. His friends kept him drunk for a month and when he eventually sobered up, the production company had moved on to massacre someone else’s cherished work.’

She buried her nose in her drink.

‘So – the award?’ I prompted.

‘Oh yes. Well, when the author was functioning again, he sat down and plotted his revenge. The irony was that he’d made a shedload of money from the film which, he said, somehow made things even worse. So, he and a number of other authors, whose work had been similarly treated, sat down in the pub one night and jokingly dreamed up the annual BADs. The worst adaptation of a book for that year. And not just bad. Because most adaptations are bad – that’s par for the course. No, the winner had to be absolutely dire. Skin-crawling, fingernails-on-blackboard, cringingly awful. The bigger the desecration of a once fine work, the more chance it stood of winning. They called it a compensation to authors for having their life’s work ruined. The prize money wasn’t a huge amount initially, but other authors have chipped in over the years and it’s now quite a prestigious event in its own right. There’s a huge ceremony every year when they really take the piss out of the BAFTAs and the Oscars. There’s a red carpet and a grand location. The blokes all wear comfortable, sensible suits and we women enter into the spirit of the evening by wearing the most ridiculous, uncomfortable, unflattering, but terribly, terribly on trend, darling garments we can find. And if you can walk properly in your footwear then they won’t let you in. All the press are there, cameras flashing, with everyone on nipple alert.’

Markham spilled his drink. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Unexpected nipples. It’s not a proper evening until at least three have made impromptu appearances. There’s a rating system and everything.’

‘Number or quality?’ said Markham, seemingly oblivious to my let the subject drop gestures.

‘Oh, number, definitely. Quality wouldn’t dare show its face at these events. Last year was a seven-nipple affair – not a record, before you ask – because three actresses fell down the stairs together and there were massive wardrobe malfunctions.’

‘Seven?’ said Markham, working things out on his fingers. ‘How . . . ?’

‘Ignore him,’ I said. ‘Were any of them . . . um . . . yours?’

‘Oh, no. I’d entered into the spirit of the thing by cobbling together a couple of my mum’s dishcloths and a strategically placed feather. And a body suit underneath. I went with Dirk – who’s a lot more fun than you think. Get him to do his impersonation of that politician – Jack Daniels – and the unexpected aubergine. It’s hilarious. Anyway, one of the nipples was his. Dirk’s, I mean. He’d rigged his shirt to fall off at a strategic moment on the grounds that he spent so much time on-screen with it hanging in tatters off his body that no one would recognise his face. So the two of us posed together on the carpet, the cameras closed in, and voilà – nipple.’

Markham had assumed a faraway look. Either he was contemplating asking Dr Bairstow to employ something similar here or envisioning his own award ceremony in which he . . . No. I shut that thought down quite firmly. Naked hoovering had been bad enough.

I dragged the conversation back. ‘So you won the award for Joan of Arc.’

‘Yep. Worst Female Actress category. I accepted with pleasure, made a clever speech which was completely wasted because so was everyone else. The book’s author – poor soul – was discovered assaulting a hat stand under the impression it was Calvin Cutter, several additional fights broke out, the police were called and I took Dirk and his nipple home. I have to say it was one of the best nights out we’d had for a long time. We’re confident Tempora and the Fall of Troy will put us both right back on top again.’

She sighed and drooped over her vodka.

‘You’re the star,’ I said. ‘Can’t you say something to Calvin?’

‘He doesn’t listen to me,’ she said gloomily.

‘Really?’

‘Well, you don’t think I wear that silver clingy thingy by choice, do you?’

‘Well . . .’

‘Once it’s on, it’s on for the whole day – and that’s it. I can’t eat, drink, or wee. I can barely bend over in it. It even restricts my breathing. I’ve fainted a couple of times. The nurse on set tried to get the team to give me a two-hour break in the middle of the day, but it’s so much faff to get in and out of that we couldn’t do it.’

‘That’s awful,’ I said, genuinely shocked, because I’d seen her on-screen, running and jumping and hurling men into the middle of next week, and generally not giving any indication of physical discomfort.

‘I’m an act-or, darling,’ she said when I mentioned this. ‘Although, to give him his due, Calvin has told them to come up with better fabric, but they haven’t found anything that doesn’t wrinkle in all the wrong places, so . . . yeah.’

She stared into her glass.

‘And the boots?’

‘Make my bottom stick out. If I’m not careful, I find myself walking like a constipated T-rex.’

‘Couldn’t you get Marj to do it? Advocate for you with the wardrobe people.’

She looked suddenly thoughtful. I took full advantage. ‘What’s she like – Marj, I mean?’

‘Oh, she’s lovely. Runs the place. Runs Calvin.’

‘Did she really have a baby on his desk?’

‘And broke his thumb and two fingers.’

‘Because of the contractions?’

‘No, nothing to do with that. That was a completely different occasion. I think he just annoyed her that day. She actually turned up on set once and fought her way through a phalanx of Spartan warriors to get six months of unpaid tea money out of Calvin.’

‘He paid up?’

‘We all paid up. It’s not everyone who can traumatise twenty-five stuntmen, two internationally renowned stars of stage and screen, a flock of geese and Calvin Cutter with one look. The woman is a legend. But I doubt even she’ll be able to free me from the silver clingy thingy.’

She sighed.

I felt quite sorry for her, even though she was taller, better looking, thinner, younger, and a single minute’s work earned her ten times more than me in a whole year. And I really liked her. Although the scriptwriters were on my list of people to be dealt with one day. A swift trip to the Cretaceous for them, perhaps. Along with their boss, the less than lovely Calvin Cutter.

At this point I suppose I’d better include a few explanations for the completely bewildered.

We’re the Institute of Historical Research at St Mary’s, just outside Rushford. Our purpose – when not up to our necks in the glamorous world of Calvin Cutter – is to observe and document major historical events in contemporary time. I did once describe it as time travel – in fact I was quite loud and proud about it just outside of Coventry – and someone grassed me up to Dr Bairstow who addressed me for nearly twenty minutes on the subject and never repeated himself once. So sorry, everyone – we’re back to observing major historical whatnots in contemporary thingummy again.

Except – as you may have gathered – not just at the moment. Funding is always a problem for us – St Mary’s is not cheap to run, as Dr Bairstow points out to me ten times a week – so he pimps us out on a regular basis. We advise on historical matters. Authors come to us – well, they do if they have any sense – to get their research right, we lecture in local schools and colleges, and we’re the official advisers to Calvin Cutter’s production company. For a considerable sum of money, actually, so we have to do a good job. We meticulously assemble everything he needs to know about the historical event he’s about to massacre, have him in for a series of face-to-face briefings, charge him a fortune, and watch him ignore all of it.

Something else I should mention at this point – because it will come up in the future – is that not only was my life full of Tempora the Time-Travelling Tottie, but also Adrian the Amazing . . . um . . .

‘Aardvark,’ suggested Markham.

‘Arthropod,’ said Peterson.

‘Android,’ said Markham.

‘Armadillo,’ said Peterson.

‘Shut up, the pair of you,’ said I.

Adrian was very keen to assist with Tottie duty. Personally I’d always thought his interest in anything not directly pod-related was zero but I had mistaken the hormonal instability of a young man whose closest – and only – relationship had hitherto been with a giant teapot and who didn’t get out much.

‘I don’t understand it,’ I said to Peterson, as we once again prepared to restore our souls with copious amounts of alcohol.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A six-foot blonde time traveller who wears spray latex for a living and spends her days either falling over or having sex. What interest could she possibly have for any bloke under the age of . . . well, any bloke who still has a pulse?’

He followed Astrid around. Adrian, I mean – not Peterson. He was assiduous with cups of tea. He was always on hand with biscuits and the like. For the first time in living memory, he began paying attention to his appearance. He wore a clean T-shirt. It didn’t exactly have a pink kitten on the front, but it was an awful lot less death-metallish than his usual efforts. He even combed his hair. I wished Matthew had been around to see that.

Matters were further complicated – intentionally so – by Evans from Security, who had taken one look at Miss Gustafsson and immediately volunteered himself. For what, was not entirely clear.

‘For everything, Max,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her for one moment. ‘You name it – I’m your man.’

‘Seriously?’ I said, because normally the only thing that gets him going around here is a ham sandwich.

‘Max, for the first time in my life, I’ve met a woman who’s actually my size.’

He’s a big bloke is our Mr Evans.

‘Oh,’ I said.

Markham, not in any way intending to make my life more difficult – as he had assured me with an expression of such blinding innocence that I very nearly believed him – immediately appointed Evans as bodyguard to the stars, by which he meant Miss Gustafsson (apparently Dirk Thrust would be fending for himself). So now Astrid’s every appearance was accompanied by me – on Tottie duty, for those of you not paying attention – Adrian, festooned with everything he thought his goddess might require during the course of the day, and Evans, standing strong and stern in completely unnecessary sunglasses at her shoulder and apparently ready for anything. The two of them would glare at each other behind her back.

And so, to employ an appropriate metaphor – the stage was set, the players assembled and the drama about to unfold.

I was waiting in Wardrobe. Astrid, Calvin Cutter, Mrs Enderby and I had scheduled our first costume conference. I think Dirk was off somewhere having sword practice with the Security Section – which would probably involve drinking copious amounts of alcohol while sometimes holding a sword – and almost certainly having a lot more fun than us.

Scattered across one of the worktables were swatches of hugely inappropriate fabric and sketches of hugely inappropriate designs from Calvin’s studio. Mrs Enderby was being terribly brave about it all.

‘Where’s Astrid?’ said CC, looking around as if he expected his leading lady to spring into existence before our very eyes.

‘On her way, I expect,’ said Peterson, who’s rarely invited to this sort of thing but tends to turn up anyway. He calls it encouraging the troops and deludes himself it’s good for morale. ‘I think our Mr Meiklejohn has been giving her a brief tour of the building and grounds.’

Fear not, gentle reader – anything having even the remotest connection with the true purpose of St Mary’s had long since been despatched to our remote site under Leon’s careful supervision. Only a skeleton crew remained on site. No Archive, no pods and definitely no R&D. Dr Bairstow had been very specific on that point. The building was virtually empty, so Adrian must be happily showing his goddess miles and miles of dusty corridors and damp-stained plaster walls. I had no doubt that both would turn up at any moment.

However, distracting CC was one of my many tasks.

‘So,’ I said, intending to head him off at the pass. ‘I understand that should she survive Troy, our heroine is off to Ancient Egypt next, to become embroiled in the Curse of the Pharaohs.’

‘Just finalising the script now,’ he said happily. ‘Oh, while I’ve got you – you’re the expert – what’s a good name for a pharaoh?’

‘Butluvdon-karmese,’ I said, without thinking.

Calvin nodded. ‘Yeah. That’ll do. Nice ring to it.’ He fetched his earpiece a thump. Surely his cranium couldn’t sustain these perpetual blows for much longer. ‘Marj? Marj? Get on to the writers, will you. The pharaoh’s name is Butluvdon-karmese. Son of . . . ?’

He stared at me.

I stared back. Deer in headlights. Shit. Now what had I done?

‘We’ll come back to that later,’ he said to his ear. ‘Make a note, Marj – wicked pharaoh. Lots of slaves wearing not very much. Ask Justin to do the thing with the baby oil again, will you? That went down really well last time. And I want to see brutality and suffering . . . Yes . . . Very funny, Marj. Life under the lash. All that sort of thing . . .’

‘No,’ I said feebly, mustering my tiny historical resources for a death-or-glory stand because Egyptian builders were actually skilled workmen and paid handsomely in beer and barley. ‘Actually . . .’ But once again I was wasting my time.

He swept on. ‘Sacred crocodiles, Marj. He feeds his enemies to the sacred crocodiles. Tell Justin to get some crocodiles . . . I don’t know. Try a zoo somewhere. They’re always desperate for money. They probably hire them out all the time. We’ll only need three or four. The rest can be CGI’d . . . Oh – and tell the scriptwriters – he buries all his courtiers and courtesans with him when he dies . . . Yes, of course still alive . . . Because that’s what the pharaohs did, of course. I want lots of shots of their agonising deaths as the sand pours into the pyramid . . . I don’t know . . . holes in the walls, I assume. Tell Justin to get sand and stop making difficulties . . . No, actually, it was St Mary’s who gave me the idea, so it must be kosher, mustn’t it? Sand, Marj. And crocodiles. And baby oil. And don’t forget the writers.’

He disconnected his ear.

‘Or,’ I said. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘He could die of being trampled. By a hippo. Like Menes.’

Occasionally – just very occasionally – I go too far. Calvin Cutter stared at me. ‘He’s supposed to die in battle.’

‘A hippo is cheaper,’ I said, wondering if I wasn’t beginning to get the hang of this production business after all. ‘Surely Justin could get a hippo from . . . somewhere. The same place as the crocodiles. You’d get a discount for bulk, probably. I can see it all now,’ I said, seeing it all now. ‘A wise woman foretells the pharaoh’s death at the hands – or the feet – of a giant hippo. All his life, he’s haunted by the shadow of an enormous hippo. On the wall. Always just behind him – but whenever he spins around, there’s never anything there. No one else ever sees it, either. This goes on all his life as he slowly becomes madder and madder and more and more bloodthirsty in a doomed attempt to appease his hippo nemesis until, finally, it catches up with him, gores him to death and then tramples him into the ground. Lots of teeth and screaming,’ I said, really embracing my theme. ‘The hippo could have golden tusks, dripping with blood.’

‘Do hippos have tusks?’ said Mrs Enderby doubtfully.

‘Of course they do,’ I said confidently, because they don’t have many hippos in Welwyn Garden City.

‘I saw one in a zoo once,’ she said. ‘No tusks.’

I shook my head. ‘They have to have their tusks sawn off. It’s the law.’ Scriptwriters aren’t the only people who can make things up, you know.

At the time I thought it very fortunate that Adrian turned up at that moment and before I could dig myself in any deeper. I was completely wrong. I should have stuck with the hippo.

‘Um . . .’ said Adrian.

So, to recap – my dormant instincts flaring into life, different ways of saying um, looming apocalypse, and now you’re all caught up.

I turned. Adrian was leaning against the doorjamb, quivering with casualness.

‘Have you got a minute, Max?’ he enquired. Casually.

‘Of course,’ I said, equally casually. I flashed Peterson a look which plainly said that something was up and he was to hold the fort here until I could establish what had gone wrong and how best to fix it and save the day.

Peterson stared back in complete perplexity. I sighed. Senior managers . . .

I said cheerily, ‘What’s the problem, Adrian?’ and hustled him across the Great Hall, around the mysterious impedimenta of the film industry, and into Professor Penrose’s classroom. Until they’d been shunted off to the remote site, the professor and young Helen had been quenching her unquenchable thirst for knowledge by, among other things, excavating one of Mr Strong’s compost heaps, and unidentifiable things were neatly laid out on a long table, awaiting her return to classify them. The smell was appropriate. I should have chosen another room. Too late now.

Adrian’s sparkle had completely disappeared. He stood before me, quiet, grave and, for almost the first time ever, very frightened.

‘Max, I’ve done something really stupid.’

Adrian’s life so far had been one long adventure. He and his sibling Mikey had spent years in an illegal time machine on the run from the Time Police. Who would not have dealt gently with either of them if they’d ever managed to catch them. The two of them had faced peril and disaster and catastrophe on a daily basis. If Adrian thought he’d done something stupid – really stupid – then everyone else would probably regard it as completely off-the-charts insane.

I made myself stay calm. The secret is to establish the facts as quickly as possible with a view to taking the appropriate action. I’ve been in this situation many times before. Both as the one doing something stupid and as the one attempting to tidy up afterwards. There’s always a way out.

‘OK,’ I said, careful to keep my voice reasonable. ‘Tell me what’s happened and then we’ll see what needs doing to put it right.’

This kind invitation did not lead to Adrian being as forthcoming as I’d hoped. For someone known far and wide for his chattiness, he seemed ominously reluctant to speak.

‘Well . . . um . . .’ He dwindled into silence, his face red and just about on the verge of tears.

I moved my chair so I was sitting alongside him rather than opposite and took his hand.

‘Adrian – this is me, Max. There isn’t anything you can say that will stop me in my tracks. So – how can I help you fix whatever it is that needs fixing?’

‘That’s just it, Max – I don’t think even you can fix this.’

‘Challenge accepted,’ I said, doing my best to project outward confidence. ‘Now give me the facts.’

A kaleidoscope of emotions flitted across his face. I’d seen him excited, impatient, carefree, frightened for Mikey – but I’d never seen this. Shame, fear, guilt and a ton of other stuff I couldn’t recognise.

Staring down at Helen’s table, he said, ‘I . . . um . . . I . . . well . . .’

I said gently, ‘Adrian, the first sentence is always the hardest. Tell me the worst and then everything’s easier from that moment.’

He nodded, stared out of the window and said in a rush, ‘I took Astrid to Troy and I lost her there.’ Then he burst into tears.

Oh.

Shit.

Over the years I’ve stared disaster in the face any number of times. I’ve been abandoned in the 14th century, chased by a T-rex, attacked by Jack the Ripper – I even died once. But all that, horrible though it was at the time, was dealable-withable. We could hush it up, explain it away, bury the bodies, bluff, lie to people’s faces – whatever the situation called for. But now – now we’d managed to lose an internationally known actress. One of Sweden’s biggest national treasures. Well, no, we hadn’t actually lost her – Adrian and I knew exactly where she was: she was in Bronze Age Troy, and we needed to get her back. Not least because she had a costume meeting in Wardrobe in . . . I glanced up at the clock . . . three minutes and people were going to start noticing she wasn’t around.

‘Facts,’ I said to Adrian. ‘Beginning with your mode of transport. All the pods are at the remote site so I’m guessing you took Leon’s.’

As Chief Technical Officer, Leon keeps a small, private pod in the paint store behind the pod bay. For emergencies. It’s supposed to be a secret but it isn’t. It’s also supposed to be very secure, but this was Adrian, for whom access would not even have been a challenge.

He nodded.

‘Without Leon’s permission.’

‘He’s not here,’ said Adrian, ‘so I couldn’t ask him. But in the interests of full disclosure, he wouldn’t have said yes so I probably wouldn’t have asked.’

‘And obviously you returned in it?’

He nodded.

‘How long did you stay?’

‘Altogether? Around three hours. She . . . she disappeared about thirty minutes after we landed.’

‘How?’

He hesitated.

‘Adrian?’

‘We – I – sent up a drone and it was attacked.’

‘How? Arrow? Javelin?’

‘Actually, it was an eagle. I didn’t know they did that. And I think Professor Rapson’s going to be quite cross about us losing his drone, isn’t he? And if he isn’t, then Miss Lingoss certainly will be.’

‘I’m assuming one or both of you left the pod to find the drone.’

He nodded.

‘And that was when . . . ?’

‘It attacked.’

‘What did?’

‘The eagle.’

I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes. It didn’t help.

‘OK. Start at the beginning. How did you sell this scheme of yours to Tempo— Astrid – in the first place?’

‘Well . . . and some of this is your fault, Max . . .’

‘Me? What did I do?’

‘Well, not just you, but everyone assumed she was just . . . you know . . . sex on legs and with the IQ of candy floss . . .’

I opened my mouth to refute this with some indignation but . . . actually . . . now I came to think of it . . . possibly a little bit guilty.

‘And she was asking questions, Max. Good ones. Who was the main deity in the city? Did all women cover their hair? Who were the Trojans’ main trading partners? What sort of levies did they charge ships to get through the Bosphorus? She knew Agamemnon and Menelaus were brothers. She knew Helen and Penelope were cousins. She’d done her homework, Max, and she wanted to know more. And I didn’t have all the answers.’

No, he didn’t, but I did. She should have asked me. No – I mean, she really should have asked me. It was my job. My responsibility. But just like everyone else, until I’d met her, I’d assumed she was simply an airhead in a silver clingy thingy . . . Adrian wasn’t wrong – a lot of this was my fault.

‘So you thought you’d just pop her to Troy and take a look?’

‘Well, not initially, but then she put the idea into my head.’

‘Astrid? You mean Astrid knows about . . . ?’

‘No, no. She was talking to Mrs Partridge about CC’s ideas for Troy and she said what a pity it was that she couldn’t see for herself. And I thought, well, why not?’

I struggled for words.

‘How did you . . . I mean – what the hell was your cover story?’

‘Oh – actually, I was rather clever, Max. I told her that Leon’s pod was a simulated time-travel device that we used to show educational holos to schools. You know – dinosaurs, the Black Death, Elizabeth I. And Troy. I told her we took kids into the pod, pretended to jump back into the past, got them to operate the screen, bring up the appropriate holo, take notes and pretend it was all real.’

Actually, that’s more or less what we did do. It always went down well. Especially the dinosaur holo.

‘Astrid was so excited.’

He closed his eyes for a moment. Perhaps he was imagining Astrid’s excitement. Especially if she was in her silver clingy thingy. Which was ridiculous because she mostly wore jeans with a long-sleeved top around St Mary’s. We weren’t far off Christmas and the building can be chilly. In fact, if you are warm at St Mary’s, it’s almost certainly because something close by is on fire.

‘Anyway,’ said Adrian, returning me to the moment because I do tend to drift off every now and then, ‘she was thrilled. She said, “You actually have a holo of Troy?” And I said, “We do. Would you like to see it?” And she said, “Yes.” I told her we could do it like a real time-travel thingy, so we wrapped ourselves in some sheets from the airing cupboard on the third floor . . .’

I winced. Dead man walking. When Mrs Midgley, our housekeeper, found out, Adrian wouldn’t live long enough for Dr Bairstow to kill him.

‘. . . And then we snuck off to the paint store.’

‘How did you get into the pod?’ I asked.

He just looked at me. Yeah – OK – this was Adrian. Point taken.

‘Anyway, I pretended I was laying in coordinates – actually, I was laying in coordinates – and I made it exciting and dramatic . . . you know . . .’

I nodded. There isn’t actually anything dramatic about setting up a jump but I couldn’t see that standing in Adrian’s way. Not when he had a six-foot blonde to impress. Actually, given the level of his adoration, it was a bit of a miracle he’d been able to see straight enough even to find the console, let alone get the coordinates right.

‘I laid them in, warned her to close her eyes, and off we went. When she opened her eyes again, we were in Troy. She was very impressed.’

‘So why on earth did you go outside? Wasn’t it enough for her to see it on the screen?’

‘Well, yes, it probably would have been, if it hadn’t been for that bloody eagle. I panned the screen around a bit and she was really impressed, Max. But we were in a narrow space between the inner and outer walls and there wasn’t actually a lot to be seen, so I thought it would be nice if she had a kind of . . . overview . . . of the whole city, the shoreline with the Greek encampments, the ships and so on, so I pretended to launch a drone.’

‘You did launch a drone.’

‘Well, yes, obviously, but she didn’t know she was in Troy so I had to pretend, but at the same time I had to make it exciting and dramatic and . . .’

‘So you launched a drone,’ I said, sticking firmly to the point.

‘Yes, and we were getting some really good stuff. The Greek lines, horses, and so forth. If we manage to retrieve it, you’ll be pleased.’

‘At the moment I’m more concentrating on the fact that we’ve left an internationally famous film and TV star stranded and alone in Troy.’

‘Yes. Sorry. Well, the drone was buzzing about – you know, like they do – and all of a sudden the screen was full of this bloody great eagle. All beak and talons. And there were a lot of feathers and banging and jabbing and then suddenly the screen went black and it just fell out of the sky.’

‘The eagle?’

‘No, the drone. The eagle was fine. Trust me. Nothing wrong with the bloody eagle.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Well, she said, “Oh dear, have we broken something?” And I remembered she thought it was all a holo, so I said, “No, it’ll be fine,” and I thought, well, I can’t leave it here – you know, Max, contaminating the timeline and stuff – so I pretended I had to nip out and find it . . .’

‘You did have to nip out and find it.’

‘Well, yes, obviously, so I told her to keep her eyes on the screen – to see if the picture came back. And so she couldn’t see Troy when I opened the door. Because she’d expect to see the paint store, wouldn’t she?’

He blinked and peered hopefully at me.

Do you ever have days when you wish you hadn’t come into work? I should have gone with Leon to the remote site. At this very moment I could be picnicking under a tree somewhere watching an impromptu game of football – or, the more accurate description – twenty-two people hacking great lumps out of each other as they settled old scores.

Possibly mistaking my silence for admiration, Adrian forged on. ‘So I left her staring at the screen, nipped out, and I thought everything was going to be OK because there was the drone. Literally only about fifty feet away. On the ground. Right in front of me. Only . . .’

‘Only what?’

‘So was the eagle. Standing on the bloody thing, pecking the hell out of it and looking seriously annoyed. And it’s not as if their resting face isn’t seriously annoyed anyway. Obviously I had to do something quickly. My plan was to grab the drone, run back inside the pod, tell Astrid that was it for the day because she had a meeting with you this afternoon, and get back to St Mary’s with all speed, and hope no one noticed the sheets, the broken drone . . .’ He tailed away.

‘So what went wrong with this master plan?’

‘Mostly – the eagle. It started stamping around the drone and looking dangerous. I ran towards it, waving my arms and shouting . . . meaning to drive it away . . .’

‘And . . . ?’

‘And it attacked me.’

I closed my eyes and resisted the temptation to assume the crash position.

‘It was brutal, Max. It was in my face, flapping at me with its great wings, and there were talons and blood . . . Look . . .’ He pulled up his sleeve to show long gashes somewhat amateurishly covered with festoons of blood-spotted toilet paper.

‘You’d better get Dr Salt to look at that. Not now,’ I added as he got to his feet.

He sat back down again.

‘What happened next?’

‘Well, I went arse over tit and curled up in a ball to try and save myself. The thing was shrieking and pecking at me – it was worse than our swans and that’s saying something. And then I had a brilliant idea. My sheet had fallen off as I grappled with . . . well, while the eagle grappled with me, so I thought I’d try and throw it over the eagle, grab the drone and make my escape before it could free itself. I knew I’d lose the sheet, but after the eagle, Mrs Midgley didn’t seem so bad.

‘Anyway, I was all tangled up in the thing – the sheet, not the eagle – and I was vaguely aware of something going on nearby – I don’t know what, before you ask – but when I eventually emerged from my entanglement, I was alone. Even the bloody eagle had gone. I shot back into the pod. Which was empty. Because Astrid had gone as well.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How did she get out?’

‘Well – and this is just a wild guess – she hit the big red button clearly marked DOOR, because Chief Farrell says you have to make things easy for historians – and exited the pod.’

‘Was she the noise you heard? You know – while you and the eagle were having your moment?’

‘Must have been, but why didn’t she stick around?’

Well – the easy answer to that was that she hadn’t had a choice. Someone else had been there – it was hard to believe Adrian’s screams of pain and the screeching eagle hadn’t attracted all sorts of attention – and they’d taken Astrid away. Had she gone willingly? She must have, surely. She was tall and could handle herself in a fight. It wasn’t all stuntwomen and clever camera work. She’d shown me the bruises. And at the very least she could have shouted for help.

‘I searched the area, Max – and I was very thorough. I was too scared not to be. I shouted her name. God knows what people thought. I stood and listened in case she was screaming for help or something but I couldn’t hear a thing.’

‘This was in the upper city?’

He nodded. ‘I promise you, Max, I calmed down and did it properly. I searched every street. I chalked up messages for her. Nothing.’

‘She must be inside a building somewhere.’

He nodded.

‘She was wearing a sheet?’

‘Several sheets, actually, and I didn’t find any anywhere, so she must still have them on. I mean, she didn’t look like a prostitute or anything. Actually, I thought she looked rather regal.’

I drew breath. ‘Right – first things first. You will go and find Mr Markham. And Mr Evans if he’s around. Quietly and with discretion. We have civilians in the building and no one must know about this. You will tell Markham and Evans to meet me in Dr Bairstow’s office. Yes,’ I said, ignoring his panic-stricken expression. ‘He has to know about this, Adrian.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ll need someone to keep Calvin Cutter in check while we mount a rescue and he’s the best person to do it.’

‘He is so going to yell at me.’

‘No, he won’t, because I’ll be the one breaking the bad news to him.’

Adrian was horrified. ‘Oh God, Max, I’m sorry. He is so going to yell at you.’

‘He doesn’t yell but he’s not going to be happy. However, he won’t be unhappy all over you until we’ve got her back safely.’

He nodded. His expression was so distressed that, even though he’d dropped us in the very deepest shit ever, I felt a little sorry for him.

‘Getting her back unscathed will go some way towards mitigating your sentence,’ I said. ‘But there will be a sentence.’

‘What will he say? Or do?’

‘I don’t know. Leave all that with me for the moment. You find Markham and Evans. When you’ve done that, go to Rosie Lee and ask her to pull up her data stack. Tell her I want to know who wasn’t in Troy on that particular day. That done, wait with Mrs Partridge until Dr Bairstow sends for you. I’m sorry, Adrian, but he will send for you.’

He nodded. Again. His head was going to fall off in a minute. Which might be a merciful release.

‘What are you waiting for? Go on.’

He shot off.

I stood up, sighed, and made my way to Dr Bairstow’s office. With absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Mrs Partridge shook her head as I walked in. ‘He’s on a conference call with the Chief Constable.’

Shit. That was never good news. Talking to the Chief Constable always put Dr Bairstow in a bad mood and I’d be interrupting him in the middle of justifying one St Mary’s catastrophe to bring him news of a second.

‘I’m sorry. I need to speak to him immediately.’

She got up and disappeared into his office. I waited, staring out of the window and trying to marshal my arguments. Sadly, nothing would come.

She re-entered. ‘He’ll see you now.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Partridge.’ You never lose anything by being polite and I had an idea I was going to need all the allies I could get. ‘When Markham and Evans turn up, could you ask them to come in, please. And when Adrian appears, could you keep him with you.’

She inclined her head. ‘Very well.’

I was very careful to close the door behind me. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

‘Good afternoon, Dr Maxwell. Your diary leads me to believe you should be in a Wardrobe meeting with Mr Cutter.’

I sighed. ‘I wish I was, sir.’

He looked at me sharply and then said, ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down.’

‘No, sir, if you don’t mind, I think I had better stand.’

‘Very well. How may I be of assistance, Dr Maxwell?’

‘Sir, I regret to inform you there has been a serious incident. The shit is about to hit the fan and the consequences will certainly affect the future of St Mary’s. I have to tell you the blame is mostly mine. I dropped the ball on this one and, therefore, I must take the responsibility. Please accept my resignation with immediate effect.’

Well, he could at least have had the courtesy to look a little bit alarmed.

‘Dear me. What exactly has occurred?’

‘Mr Meiklejohn stole Leon’s pod and jumped to Troy, taking Miss Gustafsson along with him. She’s gone missing and he was forced to return without her.’

To Dr Bairstow’s credit, he barely blinked. I did not make the mistake of thinking he wasn’t taking this seriously.

I don’t normally gabble but I was having to work hard to resist the temptation.

‘Believing the matter to have some urgency, sir, I have taken the liberty of sending for Markham and Evans. Dr Peterson is with Mr Cutter and I’ve left him there. I’ve despatched Adrian to ask Miss Lee to fire up her data stack and let me know which personnel – if any – are available for me to utilise in the rescue.’

More silence. I knew what his first thoughts would be. To my shame, they’d been mine as well.

The quickest and easiest solution would be to leave her there. Quietly delete the coordinates from Leon’s pod, pretend no one had seen her today, deny all knowledge of everything and just let the world assume she’d strolled out of the gates and vanished off the face of the earth. Easy enough to get two or three people to say they saw her walking towards the village. Problem solved. Well, problem dumped on someone else, anyway. And no difficult explanations for St Mary’s to come up with. Definitely the best way out. No – not the best way out – the easiest way out.

Except he wouldn’t do it. And I couldn’t do it. No one could. This was our fault. We’d lost her – it was our responsibility to get her back. God knows what we’d do if – when – we did, but we’d cross that particular bridge when we burned it. The important thing was to rescue her from whatever was happening in war-torn Troy three and a half thousand years ago.

Eventually Dr Bairstow stirred. ‘Details, Dr Maxwell.’

So I did. He got everything. Adrian’s attempts to impress Astrid, Leon’s pod, the drone, sheets, eagle – the lot. He was looking a trifle stunned by the time I’d finished and I didn’t blame him. When I finally stopped talking, he reached for his stick, pulled himself to his feet, limped to the window and stared outside for a long time.

I waited, passing the time by remembering all the times I’d been in this room reporting various catastrophes or struggling to put a good spin on our latest disaster. Looking back, there hadn’t been anything that couldn’t be fixed with a bit of effort, a couple of illegal jumps, a touch of blackmail and a ton of downright lying, but this . . . this involved a third party. A high-profile third party who would be missed. And common humanity demanded we get her back as soon as possible. The ancient past isn’t anything like as romantic as people – especially Calvin Cutter – would have us believe. Astrid wouldn’t have a clue what had happened to her. For whatever reason, she’d left the safety of the pod; she wouldn’t know she was in Troy three and a half thousand years ago. Her first thoughts surely would be complete bewilderment. That somehow she’d got herself outside the main building and was lost in the surrounding countryside. Although she wouldn’t be thinking that for long – Rushfordshire doesn’t look anything like Bronze Age Troy. She’d wander around looking for an unaccountably vanished St Mary’s. She’d venture further and further afield. She’d get lost and be unable to find her way back to the pod. Which she wouldn’t be able to get into anyway.

If they hadn’t already, sooner or later someone would come across her. She couldn’t speak the language. Troy was at war and had been for years. Trojan society was complex and it would only be a matter of time before she unwittingly broke one of the many, many rules pertaining to the behaviour of women. And no matter how many sheets she was draped in, she’d stand out like tits on a bull.

No, getting her back had to be our first priority. I amended that to getting her back safely. And then amended it again to getting her back quickly. Another few minutes and Calvin Cutter would be thumping his ear trying to contact her and then the shit would really hit the fan. Once she was back at St Mary’s, we’d think of something. Perhaps Professor Rapson had some sort of selective amnesia drug tucked away somewhere. Or we could knock her out somehow and pretend the whole thing had been a dream.

I sighed. My career at St Mary’s hadn’t been particularly glowing. Lively, yes, but not glowing. But I’d never envisaged it ending like this.

Dr Bairstow and I were both still staring out at the landscape when Markham and Evans turned up. Looking past them, I saw Adrian slipping into Mrs Partridge’s office and then Evans closed the door.

Dr Bairstow turned. ‘Gentlemen, you are aware of the particular magnitude of today’s catastrophe?’

They nodded.

‘Shall we sit?’

We arranged ourselves around his briefing table.

‘Dr Maxwell? Your thoughts?’

‘Speed, sir. We can’t hang around on this. We don’t have time to get pods or people back from the remote site. For us, this is happening in real time, and any moment now Mr Cutter is going to be looking for his leading lady. I think we should involve as few people as possible. Without yet hearing from Miss Lee, my first choice is me, Markham, Evans, possibly Peterson . . .’

‘And Adrian,’ said Markham.

‘Yes. Good thought. He’ll be able to pinpoint his previous landing site and retrieve the drone. Your task, Dr Bairstow, if you would be so good, sir, is to keep Calvin Cutter occupied. I’m sorry, I have no idea how.’

‘Leave that with me,’ he said. ‘Get yourselves kitted out. Take whoever and whatever you need. Speed is of the essence. Just bring her back.’

We nodded and made for the door.

‘Dr Maxwell.’

Reluctantly, I turned back. Markham and Evans closed the door behind them and I was alone with Dr Bairstow. I waited, because I knew what he was going to say. And he looked me in the eye while saying it.

‘Be aware, Max – the moment might come when there is a decision to be made. Know when to call it a day.’

‘Sir, this isn’t her fault.’

‘I understand, but just be aware of all your options. I know you will recognise the moment if it comes, Max. And I know that you will make the right decision.’

I knew exactly what he was saying. And if that moment came . . . But Astrid was a person. A real person. None of this was her fault. Again, I closed my mind to the things that could be happening to her in Troy. Without any male members of a family or tribe to protect her or give her status, she could be sold into a brothel, attacked and robbed in an alleyway, enslaved, fall prey to some ghastly ancient disease – and there were a lot of them about – or contract food poisoning because she wouldn’t know what not to eat. And if she escaped all that, then drinking the water would probably see her off. The list of potential disasters was endless. And there was the very real possibility that we might never find her. True, I would have Markham with me. And Evans. If necessary I could call on them for advice, but at the end of the day, the decision would be mine. Everyone would back me – but the decision to return without her would still be mine.

I collected Markham and Evans, gave Adrian a sympathetic nod as he knocked on Dr Bairstow’s door, and we made our way down to Wardrobe – avoiding Calvin Cutter who appeared, once again, to be haranguing the unfortunate Marj – and were ambushed by Rosie Lee, lurking in a doorway for that very purpose.

‘Bad news, Max.’

Of course it was bad news. What else would it be?

‘I’ve been interrogating the data stack. The date Adrian gave me coincides with a shift change.’

‘Shit,’ said Markham softly.

I nudged everyone back into Professor Penrose’s office before Calvin Cutter saw us. This was really bad news. The Troy assignment had been my first Big Job. Almost everyone at St Mary’s had been involved in one way or another. We’d been on site for months, recording and documenting, and we’d worked to the rule of threes. Three pods with three people in each, three weeks on site – one week off. And the date Adrian had chosen for his little excursion had coincided with a shift change. Teams coming in. Teams going out. There would have been a period of handover. For nearly twelve hours, just about every historian, Security guard, techie, and anyone who could make themselves useful would have been in Troy. Either beginning or ending their shift, repairing things, or just along to fetch and carry. Worse – so would all the pods.

I stared at Rosie Lee in dismay. ‘No exceptions?’

‘Yes. Of those not in Troy on that day – you, Chief Farrell, Markham and Roberts . . .’

‘Roberts isn’t here. Nor Leon.’

‘. . . And Evans – who’d been medevacked out with a temporary medical problem.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Evans and shuffled his feet.

‘What?’ I said.

He shuffled his feet some more. ‘There was a rash.’

‘Ew,’ said Rosie Lee, moving away from him.

‘Well, it’s gone now, hasn’t it?’ he said defensively.

‘What was it?’

‘Dunno. Dr Foster gave me some cream. Which now I come to think of it, smelled a bit like Swarfega.’

‘Is it worth getting Leon back from the remote site?’ said Markham.

I shook my head. ‘We’d be wasting precious time to go and get him.’

‘Peterson?’ said Markham.

‘No, he and I were the senior historians then. If I wasn’t on site, then he would have been.’

‘So, just you, me and Evans.’

‘Yes. And actually, I don’t think this is an occasion for a great bunch of people.’

‘Just as well,’ said Evans gloomily. ‘Can we call on those of us already there?’

There was a moment’s silence as we tried to work out the implications of this. There would be a large contingent of St Mary’s in Troy already. With more due to turn up. How helpful would it be to involve them in the rescue? Unless someone was keeping an enormous secret, we hadn’t done it. Called on them, I mean. If we had – if we’d turned up at one of the camps requesting assistance – then everyone would remember that. They didn’t so, presumably, we hadn’t. I know – difficult to get your heads around, isn’t it? This is why Leon always says historians’ brains are wired differently to everyone else’s. Actually he says they’re not wired at all, but you get the drift.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about you, but there’s no record of future us erupting out of the undergrowth demanding assistance to rescue a six-foot blonde civilian, so I’m guessing we didn’t. Will not have done. Won’t do.’

Markham sighed. ‘So we’re on our own then?’

I nodded. ‘Looks like it, but I’m not ruling anything out. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll get the costumes organised. You sort out any weapons.’

‘What about Adrian?’

We all looked up in the direction of Dr Bairstow’s office. ‘If he still lives, then he’s definitely coming with us. He could be useful and anyway it would be cruel to leave him here.’

Rosie Lee coughed. She hadn’t finished.

‘More bad news, Max.’

I sighed. ‘Go on – hit me.’

‘Yours is the incoming team. Not Mr Evans – he’s fine – but you and Mr Markham arrived on site – will arrive on site – at midnight local time. So you’ll need to be gone well before then.’

We regrouped at the paint store. Including Adrian, who looked subdued but no longer tearful. Dr Bairstow wouldn’t have ripped him a new one before the rescue attempt. Afterwards, however, regardless of how things turned out, Adrian would be in for a very hard time.

I was carrying an armful of tunics, grabbed from Wardrobe while Calvin Cutter was inadvertently keeping everyone busy – thank you, Mr Cutter – together with half a dozen sheets torn from one of Mrs Midgley’s fiercely guarded airing cupboards. Sheets are brilliant. You can use them as cloaks or togas, or as stretchers, or you can tear them up for bandages. You can even sleep in them.

Leon’s pod is a one-seater so it was a bit of a squeeze but no one complained.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Computer . . .’

The computer chirped.

‘Initiate jump.’

‘Jump initiated.’

And the world went white.

We landed, as far as I could see, just after noon, about an hour after Adrian had left. Safety protocols wouldn’t let us get any closer. Nothing – pod or person – can be in the same time twice.

Adrian peered at the screen and agreed that yes, this was the right place. He was panning the camera in all directions. Including up.

‘Eagle,’ he said briefly, catching my enquiring glance.

Markham frowned. He doesn’t deal well with the animal kingdom, although not half as badly as the animal kingdom deals with him. We’ve had to stop him walking past the paddocks because the horses kept trying to climb over the fences to eat him. Even our half-blind donkey had once chased him all the way back to Security. He didn’t need an eagle in his life as well.

Evans was peering at his arms, twisting them back and forth.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m worried my rash will come back.’

I surveyed my team. One lovestruck idiot. One eaglephobe. And a giant from Halifax who was probably allergic to Troy. I sighed. What sort of team was this when I was the most normal one here? I never thought I’d say this, but I almost wished Peterson was with us. Now that his hair’s going grey, he does have a bit of an elder statesman look about him which could have been useful.

Markham was checking the screen. ‘All clear.’

I opened the pod door and we looked out at Troy.

It would be nice to say that Troy looked back at us, but it was far too busy to bother. There was a lot going on.

Troy is divided into two cities. There’s the walled upper city known as the citadel – full of temples and palaces and imposing public buildings. It’s where the posh people live. Most of it is whitewashed but with architectural details picked out in bright colours, so when the summer sun beats down, the effect is eye-watering. The lower city is more rural, less densely populated – farms, workshops, olive groves, livestock enclosures, stone cisterns and so forth. People do live there, but in small groups of houses – flat-roofed and often smothered in vines, both for shade and fruit.

We’d landed in the lower city but very close to the inner wall which reared above us. This was the very unfashionable landward side of Troy. I knew from previous experience there were no cooling breezes from the sea and no pleasant views, either, because this was an unproductive piece of land sandwiched between two high walls. There were middens, dilapidated old huts used for storage, piles of evil-smelling rubbish – and because of all the old carcasses lying around, you had to watch out for feral dogs. No one actually lived in this part of town because the huge stone outcrops were very close to the surface here and were much too big to be broken up, so building was impossible. Mostly it was used for fly-tipping, plein-air sex, informal corpse disposal and, if you weren’t careful, small boys peeing over the wall to see how many people they could hit. Not something Homer ever mentions in the Iliad. We’d avoided it on our previous visit. Even the great city of Troy suffered inner-city decay.

From where we were standing, there was no indication that thousands of Greeks were parked on the other side of the walls, the sea black with their ships. This was early afternoon and the only sounds were the hum of sleepy flies inspecting piles of something yukky and the cicadas all around us.

We split into two teams and searched the immediate area. At this stage it was all we could do. We hadn’t bothered bringing tag readers because:

a) They don’t work very well

b) Astrid wasn’t tagged anyway

Our search found no trace of her anywhere, not that we had expected it would. As far as we were able, we extended outwards in a spiral pattern. Between boulders, along various rock-strewn paths, behind piles of stinking-to-high-heaven-in-this-heat animal and human waste. Nope – no Astrid. I hadn’t actually expected to find her sitting on a rock waiting for us to turn up and collect her – well, not really – but sometimes you can dream. At least we hadn’t tripped over her corpse.

‘Look – it’s still here.’ Adrian ran forwards and picked up something mechanical. The remains of our drone. He held them up for us to see. The eagle had done a stunning job.

Speaking of which . . . I looked up, squinting in the bright sunshine. There was a dark dot in the cloudless blue sky but it was a long, long way off. I decided not to mention it. Which turned out to be a bit of a mistake because the eagle appeared, literally, out of the blue. Seriously – one minute empty sky – the next minute – eagle. Everywhere.

There was an enormous amount of screaming and flapping and flailing and that was just St Mary’s. Experienced in the way of eagles, Adrian fell backwards and curled into a ball. In their efforts to get away, Markham and Evans collided with each other and Markham fell to the ground. The eagle, obviously considering him hors de combat, turned its attention to Evans.

You would not believe the noise. For a stealth mission during which we were not supposed to draw attention to ourselves, this was not going well. Dogs barked and people began to appear from nowhere, even hanging over the walls to see what was going on.

This was all taking far too long and Team St Mary’s was losing badly, so in the end I nipped behind them all, picked up what remained of the drone and threw it as far away as I could. Wings spread wide, the eagle hopped after it. I suspect it was in love.

I drew back into the shade for a bit of a think. Suppose, during Adrian’s original battle with the eagle, Astrid had left the pod. To assist, probably. The battle would have drawn a crowd, just as it was doing now. She’d been taken. She might have put up a struggle – she might not. But I was willing to bet someone somewhere had her. Her looks would fetch a fortune at a brothel.

My band of fearless heroes picked themselves up, examined themselves closely for eagle-related injuries and joined me in my patch of inadequate shade.

They were not a sight to gladden the heart of any team leader. Adrian, unbelievably, was even more bloody than before, Evans was fretting about his rash and Markham was fretting about the eagle coming back.

I sighed. As teams go, we lacked cohesion, a plan, hope, common sense and any chance of success. We straightened our clothing; the injured spat on their fingers and rubbed away the blood.

Twenty feet away, the eagle glared at us. The message being this was his drone, his sky, his city, and, if we didn’t clear off sharpish – we’d be his lunch.

Entertainment over, the crowd dispersed.

‘Let’s get cracking,’ I said. ‘I think we should start with the upper city. It’s more compact and a better neighbourhood. We’ll work our way down to the lower city and back to the pod. Which means we’ll have less far to run as our deadline approaches.’

‘And,’ said Evans, ‘give things a chance to calm down here.’

‘Yes,’ said Markham, ‘fewer eagles up there.’

This was felt to be the most important point.

We chalked Astrid – wait here on the pod door, just in case she turned up while we were gone. I picked up my historian basket – always carry something because it helps you to blend in – and we looked around. It was some years since I’d been in Troy but I wasn’t surprised how quickly it all came rushing back. The sights, the sounds, the smells.

‘I think I know where we are,’ I said. ‘There should be a track over there which joins the road leading to the main gate to the upper city.’

There was – which was gratifying, because I’m not famed for my sense of direction – and we followed it, eyes peeled for six-foot blondes, eagles, bored Trojan soldiers looking for some fun, and other members of St Mary’s. Although St Mary’s shouldn’t be a problem. Shift change meant everyone would be packing up their gear, getting their notes in order for the new teams coming in, and tidying away any evidence of recent debauches.

Today was market day. Which was good because it meant we could pass almost unnoticed in the crowd. And bad because there was a crowd. The approaches to the gate into the upper city were jam-packed with people, pushing and shoving, buying and selling, having conversations at the tops of their voices, and not only generally getting in the way of hard-working employees from St Mary’s, but making it extremely difficult to pick out any international film stars who might happen to be knocking around.

Canvas awnings had been erected to protect buyer and buyee from the sun, although, since most stuff was laid out on the ground, some sort of protection from the dust might have been a better idea. There were piles of green stuff being sprinkled with water to keep them fresh, eggs carefully displayed in small bowls, chickens with their feet tied together, bolts of cloth, wooden bowls, metal bowls, hides of leather – it was all here and the noise was deafening.

And it wasn’t just the people. Chickens squawked. Goats bleated. Somewhere not that far away a cow mooed and another answered. There was an overpowering smell of hot livestock in the air. And signs of loose bowels splattered on to the rough stones. There was an equally strong smell of hot people, as well. And someone was cooking something spicy.

I couldn’t see any meat or fish for sale, but that might’ve been due to the time of year, rather than the effects of a prolonged siege. Fish especially wouldn’t take long to go off in these temperatures. There were no real signs that Troy was faring badly in this war. Barring a disaster, it could stand forever.

Sadly, that disaster would occur. Troy would fall. A combination of stupidity and bad luck. Which pretty much sums up all of human history.

We joined the crowd pushing through the main gate into the upper city.

This part of town was more the Troy of Calvin Cutter’s imaginings. Dominating the whole area was Priam’s palace with its own towers and gates. The palace was mainly white, with details picked out in ochre and the pillars painted terracotta and green. Its flat roofs reminded me of Knossos, except this was much more compact. Knossos had rambled to such an extent we’d been unable to distinguish where the palace ended and the town began. This palace was clearly delineated, surrounded as it was by the usual inward-sloping walls. Well-armed soldiers patrolled everywhere. If Astrid was in there, then we had no chance.

The next biggest building was the Temple of Athena, on the north-east side of the big public square, exactly as I remembered it. The day was hot but suddenly the breeze was cold. I remembered the last time I had seen it – sacked – Athena’s statue toppled – Greek soldiers dragging the women away – Kassandra foretelling my death . . .

I pretended to rummage in my basket. Just for a moment . . . just until the memories subsided . . .

Bright sunshine today meant the temple interior was dark, but I could make out the statue of Athena at the far end, sword in her right hand, distaff and spindle in her left. Two lighted tripods stood on either side of her altar, sending patterns of shadow flickering across the marble floor.

To the rear of the temple was a complex of smaller buildings, housing priests, acolytes, administrators, slaves, guards – all the people who actually made the temple work. The temple treasury was probably in there somewhere, as well.

Facing the temple and around the other two sides of the square stood private houses, often two or three storeys high – partly because their owners were wealthy and partly because, up here, space was at a premium. The houses followed the traditional design – one door or gate, blank walls facing the street, and windows high up and small, to keep the rooms cool and dark. Take it from me, the summer heat here was savage.

If I remembered rightly, if we kept the temple to our right and walked along this narrow street here . . . Yes, there were the upper-city walls. And if we climbed these stone steps here . . .

The view was amazing. Not just because of the outlook over the Trojan coastal plain – which was spectacular all by itself – but because there they were: the black ships, as Homer refers to them, masts swaying as they rolled gently in the swell. Seemingly hundreds of them, row upon row, lashed together so soldiers and sailors could move easily from one ship to another.

On the beach itself, all faded in the harsh sunshine, were tents, pavilions, and bits of tattered canvas on poles – anything that would provide shelter from the sun in summer and the bitter winds in winter. Smoke drifted from a hundred campfires – from the smell they were burning dung.

One or two ships were rowing away. I watched the oars rise and fall. I could hear a faint voice bellowing orders. They were off to look for supplies, probably. Feeding his army must have been a never-ending problem for Agamemnon. His ships must have roved up and down the coastline for miles in each direction, acquiring – by which I mean stealing – provisions for the thousands of men we could see before us.

Beyond the ships, and much closer to Troy than it is in modern times, Homer’s wine-dark sea glittered in the bright sunshine, dazzling my eyes with light and sparkle.

The sudden wave of nostalgia hit me head on. I couldn’t say how many years since I’d last been here – time travel really mucks up people’s personal calendars – but it was as if I’d never been away. A lot had happened to me since, but if I closed my eyes, inhaled the unique smell of Troy and just listened . . . yes, the years rolled back.

‘Fun Fact,’ said Markham. ‘Dried poo burns hotter than some types of hardwood – of which there won’t be any for a radius of about fifty miles.’

I made a mental note to check that out as soon as we got back to St Mary’s. I’d have a word with Professor Rapson, who once converted a vacuum cleaner into a flamethrower and blew up an entire midden – and was the nearest thing we had to an authority on the subject.

Faintly, on the breeze, I could hear the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer. Repairing armour and forging swords must be a full-time occupation.

Men swarmed everywhere. Hundreds and hundreds of men. Sitting, lying, crossing from tent to tent, busy with target practice for the archers or sword drills for the infantry. There was a constant susurration of sound. Hundreds of voices all talking at once. Occasionally one would rise above it all, shouting an order, perhaps, and then subside again.

And between the Greek lines and the city – the ditch and barricade. To protect themselves and their ships from an attack by Trojan chariots. Beyond that, and as far as the eye could see, the countryside had been stripped bare of everything. There were no trees, no scrubby bushes, no fields or crops, no grazing livestock. Only bare rock and dust remained.

I sighed. The time of Troy was ending and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I took one last look and turned away. We had a job to do.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘we’ll split into two pairs and search the city.’

Markham and I took the east side – Evans and Adrian the west. And we were thorough. We explored every alleyway, courtyard and flight of steps – no matter where they led. Dogs barked at us. Men regarded us suspiciously. Women brandished household implements. Children stared. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, Markham beguiled the afternoon with a seemingly never-ending volley of Fun Facts and Top Tips until I threatened to throw him from the walls.

I was wasting my breath.

‘Did you know it’s illegal to own just one guinea pig in Switzerland?’

I withdrew my head from a small, empty stone shed – purpose unknown but smelling heavily of goat – and stared at him. ‘Of course I didn’t.’ I paused. ‘Why?’

‘Because they’re social animals and the Swiss think it’s cruel to keep one all on its own.’

‘What has that to do with the task in hand?’

‘Not a lot, I’ll admit, but you’re looking very tense right now.’

‘And you thought . . . ?’

‘I thought either I’d provoke you into doing me a serious injury – stress relief – or you’d laugh and lighten up a bit. One of the two. And – the icing on the cake – whichever one you went with, you’d still be in possession of a very important piece of information should you ever decide to take up guinea-pig farming in Switzerland.’

‘Not the worst idea you’ve ever had. Let’s see what’s down here.’

There was nothing down here. Well, yes, there were buildings and sheds and everything you’d expect in a heavily populated residential area, but absolutely no Astrid Gustafsson.

The streets were paved, but this was a very seismic part of the world and the paving had suffered accordingly. Frequent tremors had caused some stones to sink. Others to rise up. Or wobble. Markham and I had to concentrate on where we put our feet. Our hot, aching feet.

Occasionally we called, ‘Astrid – Astrid Gustafsson,’ but carefully. There were soldiers everywhere. Troy’s allies had answered the city’s call and the streets were full of off-duty Lycians, Carians, Phrygians, Thracians and Lydians, most of them either sitting outside bars, gossiping in doorways, or marching about and looking important. We didn’t want any trouble.

Finally, hot, tired, thirsty and footsore, we all met up again outside the temple to contemplate our complete failure. I rummaged in my trusty historian basket for water.

‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ said Adrian, red-faced in the heat.

Evans nodded. ‘Doorways, patches of wasteland – although there’s not much of that up here – all the tiny gaps between buildings – everywhere.’

Markham and I had done the same. All the secret places ideal for hiding a body. Even though we hadn’t found one, I think we all reckoned she was dead. But no one was going to put that thought into words.

‘Let’s keep going,’ I said wearily.

To move the narrative on a little – we found her.

To tell the absolute truth – she found us.

Because we managed to get ourselves arrested.

It wasn’t our finest hour. They say old sins have long shadows. That certainly turned out to be the case. Actually the whole thing was quite humiliating.

We’d been so busy discussing what to do next – whether to continue up here, or abandon the citadel and start on the lower town – a much less likely location and much more difficult to search – that we only slowly became aware of something happening around us. Out of sight, a big metallic gong sounded a long, low, melodic note. Like the opening to one of those old-fashioned films.

And again.

And again.

People were surging into the square – which was already crowded – including many coming up from the lower town. There was a lot of excited chatter and jostling for a good position. Something was obviously about to happen.

Temple acolytes were lining up braziers. There was a table covered in a tasselled cloth and bearing what looked like ceremonial knives. Very bright and sharp. Not my favourite sort of knife at all. It would appear there was to be a ceremony – and a sacrifice.

‘Bugger,’ said Markham, because we’d missed the ideal moment to get away and begin our search of a possibly deserted lower town. Attempting to shove our way through this lot now would draw unwanted attention. People don’t like being jostled in hot weather.

‘The ceremony won’t take long,’ I said. Another triumph of historian optimism over experience. ‘I’m not sure what’s happening, but as far as I can remember, today wasn’t an important religious occasion – otherwise St Mary’s would be up here in force. The priests will make the sacrifice – just chickens, probably – and then everyone will surge forwards with their own offerings and we can use the confusion to slip away. And,’ I said, historian instincts overcoming common sense, prudence, discretion and all the other virtues historians don’t possess, ‘if we stand over there . . .’ I gestured towards a short flight of steps, ‘then we’ll have quite a good view and be able to get away quickly afterwards. And it’s in the shade. Sort of.’

They all blamed me afterwards but I didn’t hear anyone arguing at the time. Especially about the shade.

I was right about it being a vantage point. The steps lifted us slightly above the crowd so we had an excellent view of the proceedings. Of course, that also meant the proceedings had an excellent view of us.

The really rather magnificent Temple of Athena stood before us, a little to our left. Seven shallow, well-worn steps led up from the street to a wide platform running the whole width of the temple. This was backed by seven gleaming marble pillars. Behind them stood another seven, indistinct and barely visible in the dark shadows – the entrance to the domos and the mysteries beyond.

The priests assembled in a line. Six of them that I could see. Elderly men who wore their himations toga style, leaving one shoulder free. All the better to sacrifice with, I suspected. There was a longish invocation. Their voices drifted across the packed square as various wicker cages of chickens were produced, and then slaves handed the priests the ceremonial knives.

I find this sort of thing a little bit gruesome so I moved behind Evans to avoid seeing the actual deeds being done. Markham shuffled forwards to take my place. So yes, possibly it was my fault.

I didn’t see exactly what happened – Evans has no windows – but a sudden hush fell on the square. There’s always silence at a sacrifice, of course. The animal is being dedicated to the god or goddess and the crowd is mindful of that, but there are different sorts of silences and this was definitely a different sort of silence. And it went on for far too long.

I peeped out from behind Evans.

The first thing I noticed was that, for some reason, both the tripods inside the temple had been doused and the interior was now almost completely dark. Even the statue wasn’t visible to those of us out here in the bright sunshine. The crowd were all craning their heads in expectation. I’d never seen anything like this before. What exactly was going on?

Deep inside the temple, the shadows moved. Something was coming. I could hear a slow, dramatic drum beat drawing ever nearer. Coming towards us out of the sacred darkness. Closer and closer. I found I was holding my breath. As was everyone else, I suspect.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, an unseen fanfare from horns and trumpets reverberated across the square. Drums rolled. Cymbals clashed.

The crowd gasped. Many made the sign of respect and reverence.

Evans, who was taller than all of us and had the best view, half turned and grabbed my arm. I lost my grip on the basket, which went rolling and bouncing down the steps. People craned their necks to see what was happening and I really should have been concentrating on getting us out of there before we were all arrested for sacrilege, but the dazzling figure that had emerged from between the white marble pillars was familiar. Horribly, horribly familiar.

As is frequently the case with St Mary’s – many things happened all at once and all of them were bad.

There – centre stage – every eye upon her – stood Astrid Gustafsson, towering over those around her and wearing a dazzling white linen chiton with a gold-fringed himation wrapped decorously around her. I can’t say she was smothered in gold from head to foot but she wore a vast number of necklaces, bracelets and rings. Golden sandals adorned her feet.

She paused – both hands clasped lightly before her, her pose emphasising the graceful folds of her robe as she allowed her eyes to accustom themselves to the brilliant sunshine and the remarkable scene in front of her.

I heard Evans suck in a breath and I couldn’t blame him. I think I’ve already remarked on her striking physical presence. Now she looked absolutely magnificent. Even I could half believe the goddess Athena had come to life and was standing before us.

She remained motionless, perfectly poised. Whether or not she was in control of herself or just too terrified to move, I had no idea. I think I might have wondered if they’d drugged her, but there she stood, the very epitome of Athena herself. Almost as if she’d been born to it. And then I remembered that not only was she a trained actress, but this was the sort of part in which she had specialised. This might be her greatest role yet.

Let’s hope it wasn’t her last.

Clustered around her, the priests stood ready for whatever part of the ceremony came next. Sadly, they appeared to have lost concentration because every eye had followed my basket as it rattled and bounced from step to step, spilling its load at the bottom. Water bottles, my stun gun, emergency first-aid kit and a couple of apples rolled across the paving stones. People actually stepped back to avoid them. Worse, everyone was looking at us. Including the ceremonial soldiers, whose presence, despite their gleaming breastplates and horsehair helmets, was almost certainly not entirely decorative.

Shit.

I’d once thought I was going to die at Troy and then I hadn’t. Now it looked as if I might after all. Never underestimate the speed and savagery with which the religiously devout can turn on those not deemed to be religious and devout enough.

The long seconds of silence lengthened and then I realised something. It wasn’t Evans they were looking at. Or even me – the owner of the sacrilegious basket. It was Markham. Now what had he done?

We were about to find out. Two of the guards stepped forwards and pointed. Pointed and gestured. First to Markham and then to one of the sacrificial chickens sitting placidly in its wicker cage, unaware of its ultimate fate.

The years rolled back again. Shit. Shittity shittity shit. Yes, it was years for me and Markham, but to the temple guards it wouldn’t have been that long ago. Possibly only a few weeks. Certainly not long enough to have passed from their memories.

On one of our previous visits to Troy, Markham and Roberts had stolen a chicken. And not just any chicken. They hadn’t nicked one of the usual vicious, leggy, half-feral street chickens – the ones that would peck your eyes out given half a chance. No, they’d stolen a nice, snowy white, plump chicken. A temple offering. And dead – so it had already been dedicated to Athena. They’d literally stolen from the goddess. True, its ultimate destination had probably been the head priest’s dinner table, but that didn’t mitigate the offence.

I remembered the temple guards scouring the streets as they attempted to track down the culprits. I also remembered Markham had been hiding the dead chicken down the front of his tunic. Every now and then something distressing would make an unscheduled appearance, dipping below his hem, and he would have to haul it back up again. The chicken – not the tunic.

I could even recall Markham and Roberts’ voices, telling me they’d found it outside that big white building in the square.

I looked up at the big white building in the square – or the Temple of Athena, as it was known locally.

I remembered telling them it had been left there as an offering to the gods. They’d offered to return it and I’d told them to stay away from the temple at all costs. Markham would definitely have forgotten all about it. I’d forgotten all about it. Obviously the temple guards hadn’t – two or three of them were pointing directly us.

More and more people were turning to look at us.

‘Move,’ said Markham urgently. ‘Back to the pod. Don’t stop for anything.’

In one perfectly coordinated movement, the four of us wheeled about. Straight into a wall of Trojan guards. These people had been at war for years. Their soldiers were smart, perfectly drilled, professional and didn’t mess about. At the first sign of trouble, a signal had been given, and a small squad had moved behind us and we hadn’t even noticed.

Shit. Talk about our chicken coming home to roost. It had been delicious, too.

I turned to Markham. ‘That bloody chicken.’

‘What?’

‘You stole a chicken.’

‘I did not.’ He was very indignant. ‘I haven’t left your side all day.’

‘Years ago. Or last month, possibly. When we were last here, anyway. You stole that chicken, remember? You and Roberts – and the guards have recognised you.’

The guards indicated we were to make our way towards the Temple of Athena with all speed.

‘Don’t argue,’ said Markham. ‘Just do as we’re told, and with luck an opportunity will occur. Staying alive is the most important thing.’

We had no difficulty getting through the crowd. Having your own personal armed guard literally opens a path before you, in our case leading to the foot of the steps. Evans was in front because he was the biggest bloke we possessed. Then Adrian – just for once not the one in the most trouble. Then Markham, staying behind him as much as possible. With me at the back because I was a woman and that was my place. Which was not as unfortunate as you might think. In the days when women were expected to do as they were told without question, the defence of my father/husband/brother/son told me to do it could be surprisingly successful.

We halted close to the foot of the steps and gazed hopefully upwards. There was a goddess up there who would be on our side. Surely we could exploit that.

We didn’t have to. Athena/Astrid was already on it. Taking three paces forwards, she advanced to the top of the steps and raised her arms.

The crowd gasped. So did we. I’ve already described the gleaming white vestments and golden sandals, but by moving to the top of the steps she was now in full view and she was Athena. There was no better way to describe her. Her silver-blonde hair was piled high on her head Tempora style, and shot through with golden thread, sparkling in the sunshine. A gleaming golden headpiece encircled her brow. I suspected no one had been able to reach the top of her hair. They’d dusted her face with a golden powder. Her blue eyes – unusual in this part of the world – blazed in the sunshine. With her height and her presence, she looked magnificent. I certainly thought so and, it would seem, the crowd did, too.

I dragged my mind back to our current crisis. What would happen now? Who was actually in charge here? The priests or the guards?

Neither. I’m a bit of a godless heathen. The only deity who plays any sort of meaningful role in my life is the god of historians – a notorious airhead, deaf to the appeals of desperate historians and perpetually coming up short in the miracle department.

Not today, however.

Athena held up her hand. All movement stopped. All sound ceased. She was the most important person here and she was not going to allow herself to be hurried. I remembered again – she was an actress – and at this moment, a bloody good one.

Wisely, she conveyed her wishes through the priests. Pointing to us, she indicated we were to be brought before her.

We were hustled forwards in the traditional guards’ style. No matter where or when, prisoners are always hustled forwards and then flung dramatically to their knees. Which is bloody painful, I can tell you.

Slowly, regally, Athena descended the steps. I kept my eyes on her sandals, and if the others had any sense – who are we kidding? – they’d be doing the same.

Reaching the bottom step, she paused for a long moment, ensuring all eyes were on her. Then she reached out and placed her hand on Evans’ bowed head. Then Adrian. Then Markham. Then me.

The crowd whispered to itself. The meaning was clear. We were blessed by the goddess and under her protection. She was taking a chance. What if the priests considered the insult over a stolen chicken to be more important than the authority of a recently arrived but slightly dubious goddess?

They didn’t.

Having delivered her message, Athena turned, lifted her chiton with one hand, and, back straight and without once looking down at her feet, she mounted the steps and returned again to her original position in front of the central pillar.

The whole performance was magnificent. And she was keeping her wits about her. Facing the crowd, she raised both arms heavenwards in one graceful gesture and chanted,

‘I’m in a room . . .

In a small building . . .

At the back of the complex . . .

There are stone horses . . .

Either side of the door . . .

At least four guards . . .

Rescue me after dark.’

You had to hand it to her. Although . . . we were approaching high summer. The days were long and the nights short. And we needed to be gone before midnight. Well before midnight. Think about that later.

Athena turned to the priests and indicated they should proceed with the sacrifices. The sun beat down. This was the hottest part of the day. She stood like a statue, in all that heat, dressed in those heavy robes, with everyone watching her every move, tall and regal and born to the job. She nodded gravely as her priests made each sacrifice and accepted people’s offerings on her behalf. The sun was merciless. I could feel the heat blasting back at me from the paving stones. Sweat ran down my back – but Athena never moved. Grave, attentive, gracious, she was everything you’d look for in a goddess.

The ceremony went on for over an hour as the endless lines of people approached and were blessed. I suspected nearly everyone in Troy had turned up to see the goddess. My knees were numb, my back was killing me, and I was on the verge of collapse when, with a final clash of cymbals, the priests indicated everything was finally over. Smoke rose from the braziers as the acolytes stepped forwards, all ready to butcher the meat and cook it. A portion would go to the poor – the greater part would go to the servants of the temple.

Athena made one final graceful gesture that encompassed everyone in the square. Then, without even one look at us, she turned and somehow melted back into the dim depths of the temple. The chattering crowd started to disperse.

I drew a deep breath and tried to make my knees work after so long in one position. Evans clambered stiffly to his feet and began to gather up my bits and pieces and stuff them back in my basket.

At first, I didn’t think the guards were going to let us go. The original chicken-based insult to the temple – and by extension, to them – was obviously still fresh in their minds. The goddess had spoken – but the goddess had now disappeared. Suppose they decided to dispose of us – accidentally, of course – and say sorry afterwards? There was a long silence as they stared at us. We stared back – but respectfully. Neither Markham nor Evans made any sort of move. As stealthily as I could, I reached inside my basket, took hold of my stun gun, tried to ignore my splitting headache and waited.

I don’t know how long this stand-off would have lasted, but one of the acolytes said something. He was barbecuing bits of chicken and I’d like to think he’d just told the guards their tea was nearly ready.

The oldest guard grunted and made a slight gesture with his head that we chose to interpret as permission to depart. Now.

We bowed to the priests.

We bowed to the temple.

We bowed to everyone.

Then we backed slowly into the rapidly disappearing crowd and did our best to vanish. Not attracting attention in any way. Very slowly and very gently. We garnered a fair number of strange looks, but we’re St Mary’s and it’s not as if we don’t garner a fair number of strange looks in our own time, let alone other people’s.

‘In the middle, Adrian,’ said Markham. ‘You too, Max. Evans, get us to the main gate. Don’t catch anyone’s eye. That’s it. Nice and slow.’

To step from the baking streets into the cool tunnel of the main gate was a huge relief. And from there it was only a few hundred yards back to the pod. Which was wonderfully cool after the relentless heat outside. We sat down with water and discussed what to do next.

‘Nothing,’ said Markham. ‘It would be folly to return to the city during daylight. We wait until dark and then go and rescue her.’

‘We need to be in the upper city for that,’ said Adrian. ‘Will they close the gates at night?’

Markham shook his head. ‘No. Soldiers need to be able to move between the upper and lower cities at all times. They might close the others, but the main gate will stay open.’

‘You hope,’ I said.

‘Don’t you know?’ said Adrian. ‘I thought you’d been here before.’

‘We didn’t go out much after dark,’ said Markham.

‘Why not?’

‘There’s a war on,’ I said. ‘Soldiers don’t take kindly to civilians moving around after dark. Spies and so forth. We’re going to have to be very careful. Adrian, you’ll stay here with the pod.’

He sat up in a hurry. ‘What? Why?’

‘In case anything goes wrong. In case anything happens to us. In case Astrid is somehow able to make her way here without us. She won’t be able to get into the pod on her own.’

Adrian protested. ‘But in that case, then surely Max should be the one . . .’

The air con was doing an excellent job but the temperature plummeted all by itself.

Markham leaned back and closed his eyes. Evans became very busy doing something or other.

I folded my arms and let the silence hang in the air long enough to become uncomfortable and then said, ‘If the Trojans think she’s Athena or a manifestation of Athena, then they’ll have eyes on her at all times. They won’t keep her a prisoner but her movements will probably be restricted nonetheless. The complex is certain to be heavily guarded. No man will be allowed into that part of the building. And certainly not a bunch of scruffy foreign men.’

‘Hey,’ said Markham, easily the scruffiest foreign man present.

I ignored him. ‘Hence – me.’

‘Oh,’ muttered Adrian. He looked down at the floor. ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

I patted his knee. ‘It’s OK.’

‘No – I mean it. I’m sorry, Max.’ He looked at Markham and Evans. ‘I’m really sorry. This is all my fault. I just wanted to . . . I . . . I don’t know . . .’

‘It’s all right, mate,’ said Evans. ‘We’ll get her back. This is the dream team, you know.’

Markham nodded.

I stared. ‘We have a dream team?’

‘Yes. And we’re it.’

Now Adrian stared. ‘What the hell are the others like?’

That was a very good question.

We passed the time in intelligent discussion – yes, really – during which everyone made excellent if somewhat impractical suggestions on how best to effect the rescue – and in the end, the best we could come up with was to get ourselves up to the temple just before dusk, have a poke around and see what opportunities arose. I’m aware this might not seem much of a plan, but we’re St Mary’s and you’d be surprised how often that works for us.

Fortunately the moon came up early. There would be no street lights in this rough part of the lower town. Or anywhere, actually. No one in their right minds would leave a burning torch out at this time of year. There wouldn’t have been any rain for months, so everything was tinder-dry, and the perpetual wind off the sea would fan any stray spark into a blazing inferno in minutes. This might be a bit of a problem for us since our path would be littered with any number of hidden obstacles – rocks, trees, sleeping goats, unexpected holes, dogs . . .

‘Eagles,’ said Adrian.

Evans frowned. ‘I don’t think they come out at night.’

‘I bet that one does,’ he said darkly.

Markham, Evans and I left the pod at dusk and worked our way around the inner-city walls, heading for the path that would take us back to the gate. No one fell into anything unpleasant en route, which we took to be a good omen.

The market, which would have been open since dawn, was winding down. We used the noise and clatter of people packing up to ease our way towards the gate.

A group of soldiers approached from the seaward side – I suspected they’d been on duty at the Scaean Gate – and we drew back to let them go first and then followed in their wake. Markham and Evans went ahead, holding a casual murmured conversation just as the soldiers were doing. Markham had advised against me bringing my basket again – people would remember it from the afternoon – so I followed on at the rear, carrying Adrian’s folded himation over one arm. In this world, an empty-handed woman was a lazy woman.

We peeled off as soon as we were through the gate. The streets weren’t yet completely deserted. Some people were going home, others were going out for the evening. There were more soldiers here, some relaxing at the end of their shift, sitting on benches outside bars and enjoying their evening meals. We slipped silently from one darkening street to the next. Another few minutes and the light would be almost gone. And midnight was only a few hours away.

The main square was almost deserted at this hour. Ceremony over, focus had shifted to the palace where a group of men stood around the gates, talking and laughing. Lights blazed there, but the temple itself stood in almost complete darkness.

We threaded our way past, keeping to the shadows where possible. The night wasn’t silent – there was a continual murmur of voices all around us – and we had to move quietly but without raising suspicions.

And I felt naked without my basket. With it, I was just a housewife on her way back from the market. Without it, I was an unofficial time traveller about to kidnap a goddess. I did, however, have my stun gun stowed within the folds of my himation.

There were a number of buildings scattered haphazardly behind the temple – one and two storeys, stone built, purposes unknown, fading away into impenetrable shadows. Occasional glowing braziers marked entrances or patches of particularly rough ground. We needed to be careful, as there would be people tending them. Braziers need constant monitoring.

I could smell cooking and the murmur of voices grew louder. There must be some sort of mess hall nearby. Evans signalled left and we moved cautiously from shadow to shadow. Time was ticking and we still hadn’t found the building with the twin statues outside. Nor the four guards.

And then . . .

Even now I still can’t believe what happened next.

Unseen in the dark, but not that far away from us, there was a kind of thump. As if something heavy had fallen. Not a body. A rock or boulder, perhaps. Yes – exactly as if a heavy stone had thudded to the ground.

I stopped and peered into what was by now full darkness. Something moved. Markham touched my shoulder and we dropped to the ground and waited.

There was a very faint scrabbling sound and then, from a seeming hole at the base of an elderly and uneven wall, there emerged first one figure and then a second, both very heavily cloaked, their faces deliberately darkened with ash.

For a long time they remained motionless, almost becoming part of the night.

We didn’t move either. I suspected these two were up to even less good than we were, and giving away our presence would result in either the alarm being sounded or . . . I was conscious of my increasing heart rate. I had a horrible feeling these two weren’t Trojans. If I was right, then we could be in some serious shit.

A minute ticked by. I tried to remain absolutely still. I told myself midnight was still a couple of hours away. We could afford to wait a while. Because – mind-blowing though it was – I had a very good idea who these two buggers were and what they were up to, and if I was right, then this was one of the most dangerous episodes of the entire Trojan war. Forget Helen, forget wooden horses and all that romantic nonsense. The moment that would decide the fate of Troy was taking place before our very eyes.

A soft breeze blew, chilling the sweat on my head and neck. And still we waited. We had no choice. If those two had the faintest idea we were here, they’d cut our throats – silently, of course – and leave our bodies where they fell. So we waited. I could feel my legs cramping. I had pins and needles and I didn’t dare move, but if this went on much longer then I’d seize up and very probably topple over when the time came to move.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, they slowly stood up. Again, they waited, heads cocked, listening, but other than the cicadas and the murmur of voices from the nearby mess hall, there was silence. Very slowly and very cautiously, they drew their swords. I did hear the faint ring of metal but only because I was listening for it.

Suddenly, from behind us – voices. Footsteps. Someone stumbled over a rock and swore. They were speaking Luwian but a curse is a curse in any language. His friends laughed. Three soldiers walked past. They had their shields over their shoulders, so again, coming off duty.

The two figures drew back again. We didn’t have that luxury. True, we were at ground level, but very exposed should someone walk past with a torch.

Still talking among themselves, the soldiers passed on their way. They would never know what a lucky escape they’d just had.

Because – it couldn’t be – but suppose it was – the circumstances were right – suppose – just suppose – these two men were Odysseus and Diomedes on their legendary mission to steal the Palladium and end the war.

The Palladium features in Greek and Roman mythology and is important to both. It was a wooden statue, about four and a half feet high, and is said to have been thrown down from Olympus by Zeus who, no doubt, was having one of his hissy fits at the time. Troy was built on the spot where it fell. It became the city totem and everyone knew that Troy couldn’t fall while the statue remained in the city.

To cut a long and typically bloodthirsty story short – enter Diomedes and Odysseus on a mission to steal it. The story always said that they entered Troy by a secret passage – which I never really believed, because if there was a secret passage along which the Greek soldiers could creep, then what need would there have been of the Trojan Horse?

There’s actually another legend that Aeneas smuggled the Palladium away from Troy to prevent it falling into Greek hands and it eventually ended up in Rome, which I had always assumed to be the more likely of the two versions – but here, now, in the dark, watching these two shadows drift silently behind the temple, it looked as if I’d been wrong about the existence of both the secret passage and the Palladium. Because he was here. Odysseus himself. OMG. The actual Odysseus. And Diomedes – king of Argos and archetypal Greek hero.

My heart was racing fit to burst out of my chest, because if I was a very, very lucky historian, I might actually discover which of the two legends was true. Here. Now. Tonight.

I have to say, for a moment, I wavered. I could send Markham and Evans to scout for Astrid while I followed Odysseus and Diomedes. I might, at some point, be able to catch a glimpse of their faces. Or of the Palladium itself. Imagine being able to confirm its fate. I didn’t have a recorder with me – stupid historian – but I could commit the details of faces and statue to memory and draw them afterwards. Markham and Evans could rescue Astrid and we’d all meet back at the pod. The plan was doable.

No – it wasn’t. What had I said to Adrian? I was here in case we needed access to the women’s quarters. To rescue Astrid. Because that’s why we’re here, Maxwell. Remember?

My thoughts were racing. Odysseus and Diomedes were here to steal the Palladium, but more importantly, they would know where they were going – which was to the heart of the temple complex. Where Astrid was most likely to be. Unless she’d been removed to the palace by now, of course. But the more I thought about this, the less likely that seemed. Priam’s palace was one seat of power – the temple the other. There would be a certain amount of rivalry between the two. No – Astrid would be here somewhere, and theoretically all we had to do was follow Odysseus and Diomedes. I indicated all this to my companions through the medium of mime.

Markham sighed heavily but nodded; we rose silently to our feet, and very, very carefully followed them. With luck, the house with the two stone horses would be easy to find because surely they wouldn’t have shoved the goddess Athena in a wooden hut.

I suppose everything depended on whether the Trojans genuinely believed she was Athena come down from Olympus. In a culture where gods walked among mortals every day, that was perfectly possible. Or whether they’d simply come across her somehow as she’d wandered around outside the pod and seized the opportunity to use a goddess lookalike as a piece of propaganda in this seemingly endless war. In which case she’d definitely be under armed guard, which would make our job very much more difficult.

As I had hoped, our two Greeks knew exactly where they were going. Of course they did. Blundering around in the dark looking for a small wooden statue in enemy territory wasn’t Odysseus’s style at all. And, if I remembered the tale correctly, somewhere along the way they’d encountered Dolon – a Trojan spy. He’d thought he was trading information for his life and told them everything they wanted to know – and in return they’d murdered him. A timely reminder that these two were not romantic heroes of ancient myths – none of them were – but a pair of ruthless psychopaths to whom life meant very little. Especially other people’s. If they had even the slightest idea we were just behind them, then we’d have only seconds to live.

Evans inched his way around a dark corner, paused, and then indicated all was clear. Surprisingly clear. Given the location, the presence of a supposed goddess, and the proximity to Priam’s palace, I would have expected more of a security presence. Where were the guards?

Markham found them. Though ‘tripped over’ is probably more accurate. All four of them. Bundled into the deep shadow between two buildings. Worryingly, we hadn’t heard a thing.

Theoretically, all we needed to do was follow the trail of horizontal guards. I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder and obediently dropped to the ground just as a door opened. There was a glimpse of a lighted space beyond and delicious smells wafted my way. Two men exited, one carrying a tray, the other a lamp. They were delivering someone’s dinner.

I held my breath in case these two went the same way as the guards, but if our Greek friends were anywhere in the vicinity, they were staying quiet and still. The two men crossed the path. One lifted his lamp, illuminating a stone horse standing on a small plinth. And another on the other side of the entrance. These must be Athena’s quarters, so this must be Athena’s supper.

Markham looked at me and shook his head. I agreed. It made sense to wait until they left. Fewer people to deal with.

The servants knocked politely. The door opened, and they both stepped over the threshold and disappeared inside.

My knees were telling me they couldn’t do this for much longer. I would be getting a letter of complaint from them in the morning. If I lived that long.

The servants reappeared, empty-handed. We watched them return the way they’d come. I cocked my head, listening for the sound of two bodies hitting the ground, but somewhere behind us a door closed. It seemed safe to assume Odysseus and Diomedes were no longer in the vicinity.

‘Max,’ breathed Markham. ‘You’re up.’

And indeed I was. I rose to my feet, ignored my throbbing knees, smoothed my chiton, pulled my himation up and over my hair, summoned what little Luwian I could remember, did my best to look respectable, and approached the stone horses. Markham and Evans fell in behind me. We were a priestess – a senior priestess, given my age – and her escort.

Evans knocked. Senior priestesses don’t knock on doors, apparently. The wooden door swung open. The trick is not to wait to be invited in. I stepped across the threshold as soon as I could because obviously I had a right to be here. Senior priestess. In the service of Queen Hecuba. Stand aside, minion.

The doorkeeper stepped back and in I went. I have no idea whether Markham and Evans followed me in. Senior priestesses don’t worry about who’s behind them.

I was standing in an anteroom. Don’t stare. It was important to look as if I had every right to be there. I do remember there was a lion frieze painted in red along the right-hand wall. More lamps. Bronze, burning sweet-smelling oil. Definitely no horse dung here.

There was a curtained doorway ahead of me. I stood absolutely still. Senior priestesses don’t lift their own curtains. I was penetrating further into what I suspected was a maze of rooms and passageways and every step took me further and further from the way out. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, somewhere out there, two Greek heroes were creeping through the night to commit sacrilege and steal Troy’s most treasured possession.

I waited for the doorkeeper to scuttle past me to pull aside the curtain.

I saw Astrid immediately. My heart knocked against my ribs with relief. She wasn’t alone, obviously. That would be much too easy, wouldn’t it? Important people were never alone. There would always be an entourage – slaves, officials, priests, handmaidens and so forth, even when she was sleeping.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Incense, lamp oil, people . . . roast chicken . . . Concentrate, Maxwell.

All right – what had we got here? A long, inner room, no windows, and with too many people in it. It was very hot in here. For a moment my head swam, but that could have been the overwhelming smell of incense. The room was well furnished, with a long couch and some very nicely painted friezes along the walls – horses, this time. Very appropriate for the Trojans – famous horse breeders. There were a couple of stools scattered around and, most interestingly, an ornate wooden chair on a slight dais against the far wall. The light was bad but I could make out another curtain in the wall to my right – leading to Athena’s bath and sleeping quarters, perhaps. Probably with no exit. The quickest way out would be the way I’d come in.

There were four – no, five – other people present; six, now I was here. Astrid herself, minus himation and jewellery but still wearing the white robes, half reclined on the really not-very-comfortable-looking couch; three younger women, also wearing white; and an older woman. Chaperone? Gaoler? A real senior priestess? She wouldn’t know me. This could be dodgy.

Standing quietly by the door wouldn’t do. I moved to the centre of the room, bowed my head and touched my forehead in the gesture of respect, saying quietly, ‘Can you get rid of all these people?’

Astrid rose gracefully to her feet. Immediately the handmaidens moved forwards to adjust her hair and clothing because the goddess must look good at all times. She held up her hand and then made a gesture of dismissal. They scurried backwards through the other curtain. As I had feared, the older woman stayed put. Now that I could see her more clearly, her robes were of either a deep blue or, worryingly, royal purple. I suppose it made sense to honour the goddess with a royal presence, but this could be a problem.

Astrid drew herself up and, without even looking at her, said, ‘She won’t go. She only leaves my side when I appear in the temple.’

I said, ‘Oh dear,’ pulled out my stun gun and zapped the royal priestess. We both caught her as she fell and lowered her gently on to the couch. She hardly weighed a thing.

‘She won’t be out for long,’ I said. ‘Are you a prisoner here?’

Astrid straightened up. ‘Hard to tell. I’m never alone, but that’s normal, isn’t it?’

I handed her Adrian’s himation. ‘Put this on over your hair.’

She draped it over her head and around herself. Not perfect, but better. At least she wouldn’t be glowing in the dark.

I peered back through the curtain. The doorkeeper was still there, perched on his stool by the door and half asleep in this hot, incense-laden night. It was now or never.

‘Astrid, follow me. Say nothing to anyone. The trick is to move slowly. Don’t run. Don’t look at anyone. Stare over their heads. You’re a goddess. Just hold your nerve.’

She nodded. ‘Got it.’

She seemed calm. There were no demands for explanations. Or to get her out of here. Now. No hysterics. No confusion. She seemed to have grasped that our priority was to escape. Everything else could happen later.

I went first, sweeping along the little corridor. The doorkeeper leaped to his feet so quickly he knocked his stool over. The clatter sounded horribly loud in this silent night.

Ducking his head, he stammered something. An apology, I hoped. I had status – he didn’t – but I didn’t want him fainting with terror. His night was about to take a turn for the worse anyway, so I nodded at him and he relaxed by about half an inch. We waited for him to pull the door open and I paused on the threshold. No sign of Evans or Markham anywhere. Where the hell were they? Well, we couldn’t go back, so . . .

We stepped outside into the hot, close night. I didn’t hear the door close behind me.

Shit. The doorkeeper was going to watch us head off in the wrong direction . . . and any moment now he was going to notice that no guards were patrolling.

I pulled out my stun gun, turned, smiled and zapped him. He fell backwards into the anteroom. I moved his legs out of the way and pulled the door shut. There – job done.

Astrid was staring at me. ‘Who are you people?’

‘Tell you later. Follow me.’ And just at that moment, two figures emerged from the shadows. I swear I lost ten years off my life. Odysseus, Diomedes, temple guards, groggy senior priestesses, casually passing Trojan citizens – no one here tonight would be on our side. Excruciating death awaited us whichever way we turned.

And then the figures morphed into Evans and Markham. I bent forwards, put my hands on my thighs and took a few deep breaths.

‘Buck up, buttercup,’ whispered Markham and gestured towards Evans, who was proffering a shield and a helmet and grinning his head off.

My brain sucked in some oxygen and started working again. ‘Oh my God, that’s absolutely brilliant.’

Evans smirked in what he fondly imagined was modesty.

Markham pushed us all into the dark space between two huts and turned to Astrid. ‘Take off your clothes.’

She drew herself up and stared down at him. ‘Make me.’

I was liking her more with every passing moment. And Evans, I’m afraid, lost all capacity for rational thought from that moment onwards.

‘No,’ said Markham patiently. ‘You’ll wear Evans’ clothes. Plus the helmet and carry the shield. You’re tall, even for a bloke. Do it.’

There was a lot of whispering in the dark. ‘Put your arm through there. No, there. Hold this. Turn around. Put this on,’ and so forth, but not three minutes later we had Evans wearing his himation toga style and Astrid looking surprisingly masculine in his tunic, carrying a shield over her shoulder and with the helmet covering her famous hair.

Markham picked up Astrid’s discarded clothing, folded it neatly and handed it to me. OK – now we had one helmeted soldier, two temple servants, and a dodgy-looking senior priestess carrying precious vestments.

Time to go. Not only would Adrian have worked himself up into a complete lather by now, but midnight was approaching. Plus, the senior priestess and doorkeeper would be coming to at any moment. Kitchen staff would return to collect the goddess’s supper things. To say nothing of two ruthless and rather famous psychopaths into whose path it would not be wise to wander. And sooner or later someone was bound to stumble over the stricken guards they’d left lying around the place.

But, the worst part was over. We had Astrid. Now we had only to navigate this maze of buildings in the dark, around the temple again, across the square, through the gate, follow the inner walls without falling into, out of, or over anything, and back to Adrian, the pod and safety.

Genuine grounds for optimism, I think everyone will agree.

Sadly – no.

We ran into trouble almost immediately. Although it could have been worse, because at least we were still in the temple complex with plenty of cover when those two lovable scamps, Odysseus and Diomedes, ghosted around a corner just ahead of us. Whatever they’d been up to had clearly been successful because Diomedes was carrying something long and solid wrapped in a cloak, and Odysseus was playing to his strengths and dragging another unconscious guard.

We froze. I know I stopped breathing.

They paused too, heads tilted, testing the night. Looking, listening . . . Only for about ten seconds or so but some of the longest ten seconds of my life. I knew their instincts were telling them they weren’t alone. And if they saw us . . . But we couldn’t stay here . . . We had to move . . .

Odysseus was closest to me. He’d flung back his cloak. Partly to free his arms for whatever might need doing and partly because the night was so hot. I could see the gleam of sweat across his chest. He wasn’t tall, even by contemporary standards, but he was broad and barrel-chested. And hairy. He had the heavy shoulders of an archer and the knobbly muscles of someone who’d swung a lot of swords in his life. His hair and beard were dark in the moonlight and obscured most of his face. All his movements were quick and neat – he moved soundlessly and with confidence. This was a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

Diomedes was huge. As befitted a hero. Again the light wasn’t good enough for any details. ‘Tall and muscular’ was as close as I could get. He’d used his cloak to wrap what I assumed was the Palladium and was wearing some kind of kilt and heavy boots.

Neither had drawn their swords – yet – but it would seem they’d been successful in their quest. If they’d just stop hanging around and push off now, then we stood a chance of being successful in ours. Why were they waiting?

Grunting, Odysseus dropped the unconscious guard to the ground – not six feet away from me – and rolled him against the wall with his foot. Then he disappeared. I just had time to wonder where he was going and why when he appeared with another one. Diomedes propped the Palladium against a wall and dragged out another two guards. They piled them with the first one. One rolled over and his outflung arm brushed Astrid’s leg. She made a tiny sound.

I swear I barely heard it, and she was standing right next to me, but Diomedes stopped dead. I never saw him reach for his sword but suddenly it was in his hand. He crouched, staring at our particular patch of shadow, slowly turning his head from left to right, searching.

I stopped breathing again – it’s overrated – and moving just the tips of my fingers, reached again for my stun gun. We couldn’t get past them. We couldn’t do a thing until they moved away, and that wasn’t happening. Any second now . . . The song of the cicadas sounded loud in this airless night . . .

My fingers touched my gun, although I’d be dead before I dragged it out.

I was saved by Odysseus. I don’t have many claims to fame but that’s one of them. I was saved by Odysseus himself. Son of Laertes, and, very fortunately for us, far too clever for his own good.

Because Diomedes had made a serious error. Not only had he laid down the Palladium, but he’d turned his back on Odysseus. I remembered this bit of the legend. Odysseus would try to kill Diomedes and steal the Palladium for himself.

While Diomedes was still staring suspiciously at a spot about two feet to my left, Odysseus was inching silently towards him. Closer and closer. Evil intent written all over him.

I don’t know what sort of sixth sense alerted Diomedes. Although he was a warrior – he did this sort of thing for a living. And everyone knew the son of Laertes was a tricky bastard. Spinning around, he caught Odysseus just as he was pulling his sword clear of its leather sheath.

I half expected a roar of rage from Diomedes, because self-control wasn’t something that happened a lot to Greek heroes, but he didn’t waste his time. In the same smooth, fluid movement, he knocked Odysseus’s sword flying with one hand and punched him with the other. The blow lifted Odysseus off his feet to fall arse first in the dirt.

Not content with that, Diomedes aimed a couple of hefty kicks at his former friend who, after a wallop like that, was probably still wondering what day of the week it was. I didn’t actually blame Diomedes. I wouldn’t have turned my back on that bastard, either. Yes, I know Odysseus is supposed to be a hero and all that, but I’ve always thought he was a bit of a weasel. And yes, he found his way home eventually, but it would take him ten years – learn to read a map, Odysseus – and he lost all his crew along the way. Never trust the only bloke to make it home safely – there’s always a good reason for that. And remember – this bastard would have killed one of his best mates for no better reason than that would enable him to take sole credit for bringing back the Palladium.

And before anyone starts on about the vital role Odysseus played in the fall of Troy – there was no wooden horse. No brilliant scheme of his would bring down Troy. Sorry to shatter any illusions, but he was one of the most devious, ruthless bastards in history. And don’t get me started on what he did to Penelope’s maids.

Anyway – it was quite a nice little tableau. Us, still crouched in the shadows with our international film star, wondering whether we’d still be alive in ten seconds’ time. Odysseus sprawled on the ground as Diomedes kicked the living shit out of him. Diomedes happily kicking the living shit out of the mate who’d tried to kill him and take all the glory. Any number of unconscious guards scattered about the place. And Troy, slumbering peacefully, unaware of the drama playing out under the stars.

And the Palladium lying exposed on the ground. A shadow lay across it, so sadly I couldn’t see the true face of Athena, but there didn’t seem to be anything particularly magical about it – nothing was glowing in the dark. Compared to the magnificent statue in the temple, with its bronze tripods and altar, this was small and dark and primitive. And yet, somehow, there was a power. You could sense it. A direct link to Athena herself.

The light was poor but even from here the statue looked ancient. The wood had split between her neck and right shoulder. Quite a deep crack. That needed repairing or she’d lose her arm one day. If anyone ever offers you a supposed Palladium and it has both arms then it’s probably a fake. If it’s missing a right arm, however – sell your children and snap it up.

Not ten feet away from me, Diomedes was still expressing his displeasure to Odysseus over his recent conduct. I could hear him grunting with the effort and while I didn’t want to spoil his fun, time was ticking on. I racked my brains for some way to move things on a little. Midnight approached and if Markham and I were still here, we’d be turning into something considerably messier than a pumpkin.

Beside me, I felt Markham shift his weight, and a little distance away, a pebble skittered across the ground.

Both Diomedes and Odysseus froze for a moment, then, presumably, readjusted their priorities. Diomedes hauled Odysseus to his feet and yanked at his belt. In two or three swift moves, he’d pinioned Odysseus’s hands behind his back. Effortlessly heaving the statue on to his shoulder, he fetched Odysseus a crack across the buttocks with the flat of his sword. Odysseus leaped into the air. But silently. Avoiding the enemy was still their joint priority.

Diomedes did it again and Odysseus clearly got the message. The two of them disappeared around the side of a building. We gave them a few seconds and then followed on. There were virtually no guards around now, of course, but even so we trod very, very carefully. And very quietly too. Every now and then, from up ahead, there was the sound of Greek buttocks benefitting from a well-deserved wallop. Yeah – that was going to sting in the morning.

Maintaining a careful safe distance, we trailed them back to the temple, at which point, and as suddenly as they had arrived – they disappeared. Back down their secret passage, I supposed.

Evans led us to the gate. Followed by me. Astrid strode along at my shoulder and Markham brought up the rear. No one spoke. I wondered if everyone else was feeling as utterly cream-crackered as me. Perhaps because we looked exactly what we were – a bunch of weary people who just wanted to go home – we weren’t challenged at the gate. No one queried why a senior priestess would be carrying sacred vestments away from the Temple of Athena – which was just as well because the senior priestess had neither the language nor the imagination to account for this bizarre action. The senior priestess just wanted to get back to St Mary’s.

The guards waved us through and we emerged out into the lower town and comparative safety.

I drew a long deep breath. On to the next problem. ‘Time?’

Markham consulted something concealed in his clothing. ‘Twenty-five minutes past eleven.’

‘Ten minutes to the pod,’ I said. ‘We’re going to make it. Can someone let Adrian know? Put the poor lad out of his misery.’

I could hear Evans talking softly into his com.

We turned left, all set to weave our way between middens, dead animals, rats, dogs and cats, and – a nocturnal addition to the local scene – temporarily purchased ladies of the night and their customers. There was actually quite a lot going on up here after dark.

I was picking my way over the rough ground and allowing myself some small congratulations. Everything had gone smoothly. Textbook exercise. Target located – all right, she’d made herself hard to miss, but we had actually found her. Rescue flawlessly planned and executed. Major historical event observed as per St Mary’s standing orders. There was a lot of grief still to come, of course, but here – now – at this very moment – against all the odds – we’d done it.

I don’t know from where I get these moments of madness. Of course we hadn’t bloody well done it. Why would I even think such a thing?

We were inching our way past a couple whose activities are better not described – ‘Good Lord,’ said Astrid, averting her eyes – when it all kicked off.

High above our heads a gong sounded. Deep and full-bodied. The temple gong. The one we’d heard this afternoon. Followed by voices. First one voice, then another – the alarm was taken up all along the walls. All over the citadel. Brazen trumpets sounded. Drums beat. We could hear feet pounding the pavements. Lights sprang up everywhere. Dogs, rats and courting couples all disappeared as if by magic.

I don’t know whether the Trojans had discovered the goddess Athena was no longer in her quarters, or that their beloved Palladium had been stolen. Or maybe somehow Diomedes and Odysseus had been discovered. Or perhaps someone had tripped over an unconscious guard. Or what if the Greeks had mounted a night attack and were scaling the walls at this very moment? Or an event completely unconnected with any of the night’s adventures could be kicking off. Whatever, the alarm had definitely been raised.

The first thing they’d do would be to close all the gates. Then they’d station soldiers at every street corner. If that failed, then they’d conduct a house-to-house search as they slowly closed the net. None of which would be a problem for us as we were no longer in the upper city.

But, if I was the officer in charge, the first thing I’d do would be to despatch a couple of platoons down to that well-known shady area between the two walls. Just to check things out. Shit. I could hear marching feet coming our way already.

We moved.

Regardless of the rough ground, we broke into a run. With all the racket going on over our heads, no one was going to hear us stumbling about down here. Speed was the thing. As always, Evans went first, followed by Astrid, then me, then Markham. Despite everything that had happened to her today, Astrid was focused and obedient, and I was really grateful that she wasn’t slowing us down with ridiculous questions. Well, all right, they’d be very good questions, actually – it was the answers that would be ridiculous. Worry about that later, Maxwell. Concentrate on the now because the future often takes care of itself.

Actually, I was wrong. Astrid did have a question. And it was a very good one.

‘Why are all those goats standing on the roof?’

We now move slightly away from the narrative again for a word about goats.

Goats climb. They can’t help themselves. Walk past a stony field and each rock will have a goat standing on it. They might be only six inches off the ground but there they are – each one king of his own particular castle. They’ll stand on anything. Rocks. Buildings. Walls. Other animals. It’s not unusual to see a goat standing on a horse. Bizarre, perhaps, but not unusual. They even climb trees. Matthew had once given me a Goats in Trees calendar for my birthday. I still had it.

Anyway, climbing is hardwired into them, something we should have taken into account, I suppose, but we’d had a lot on today. Now there were a good half-dozen goats standing on the pod roof and regarding us with some hostility. Perhaps they felt standing on the roof conferred ownership.

‘Shit,’ said Markham, looking at the goats.

‘Shit,’ said Evans, looking at the lights drawing closer by the moment. Troy was definitely awake.

‘Shit,’ I said, as echoes of the big temple gong reverberated around the citadel.

Adrian appeared in the doorway. ‘There are goats on the roof.’ He made appropriate gestures. ‘They won’t come down.’

Technically, I should ignore everything, bundle everyone inside, initiate the jump and return to St Mary’s before things got any worse. It wouldn’t do the goats on the roof any good but you could argue that was their problem. From our point of view, the quickest and easiest thing to do was to ignore them. The problem would resolve itself as soon as we jumped. It wouldn’t be a pleasant death for the goats, though. It was the Astrid problem all over again, wasn’t it? There’s the best thing to do – which isn’t always the right thing to do. And then there’s the right thing to do – which isn’t always the easiest.

‘I tried to shift them,’ said Adrian, who, I could now see, had incurred fresh injuries since we’d last seen him. ‘And they went for me. One of them butted me straight off the roof.’

Goat trauma as well as eagle trauma. He was certainly packing a lot in today.

‘I am not going up there,’ said Markham.

‘They’re coming,’ reported Evans, staring over Markham’s shoulder and trying to bundle us all into the pod.

I blinked. ‘The goats?’

‘No – the soldiers. Will you all go inside. Now.’

We went inside.

Evans closed the door behind us. A bit of a squeeze but Leon’s pod has seen worse.

Markham dragged out his watch. ‘Less than fifteen minutes.’

‘Stacks of time,’ I said, switching the cameras to night vision, splitting the screen and panning around.

‘Less than fifteen minutes until what?’ enquired Astrid, on whom, I think, it was beginning to dawn that she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

‘Until Markham and I die particularly nasty and painful deaths.’

She stared at me. ‘Why?’

I sighed. ‘We’ve been here before,’ I said. ‘And you can’t be in the same time twice. Nature will resolve the situation by killing us both.’

‘How?’

‘Your body convulses. Your bones break. Your blood boils. Your spine cracks. You die in agony.’

‘I’ll go up there,’ she said. ‘I’ll clear the goats off the roof.’

Evans stood in front of the door and shook his head. There was no way he was letting her out of the pod. Or out of his sight, either.

‘I’ll have another go,’ volunteered Adrian, smiling bravely through the pain of eagle bites and goat buttings.

‘Max,’ said Markham quietly, as I pored over the console. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Watching our two terrorists emerge from those rocks. That must be where the tunnel begins. They haven’t got far, have they?’

No – they hadn’t. Diomedes and Odysseus still had to get over the outer walls somehow, and now soldiers were appearing from all directions. They were surrounded. The only option open to Diomedes was to abandon the Palladium, cut Odysseus free and for the two of them to fight to the death.

‘They’re not going to make it,’ said Markham.

‘They have to. It’s already happened.’

‘Does it matter?’ enquired Astrid. ‘Surely . . .’

‘It matters,’ I said. ‘Our presence here is disrupting History. History always protects itself.’

‘How?’

‘By removing the source of the disruption.’

She was silent for a moment. Then she got it. ‘Which is us.’

I nodded. ‘However – we are historians. We are brave. We are resourceful. I’m breaking out the Sonic Scream.’

The Sonic Scream is our only means of defence. We’re not allowed to damage contemporaries so Leon came up with a Brilliant Idea.

Stepping away from the narrative yet again . . . At some point in the past, someone had discovered that teenagers can be discouraged from congregating in unwanted quantities by broadcasting high-frequency sound. Only they could hear it. They didn’t know they could hear it, but after a short while they’d just feel the urge to shamble off and be somewhere else.

Sadly, this wonderful invention was banned. I know – what were they thinking? Anyway, Leon had taken the principle and tinkered with it a little and now we had the Sonic Scream.

Sometimes, and never for good reasons, we find ourselves surrounded by crowds of people, and the pod can’t jump with them standing close by. Not because of the effect suddenly disappearing pods would have on contemporaries, but because they’d be sucked into some sort of vacuum. Messy and horribly fatal. We have a safety line in Hawking specifically to prevent that sort of unfortunate workplace incident.

There are occasions when we have to make a quick getaway – crowds of people besieging the pod and keen to burn us as witches, for example – and if they won’t get out of the way then we have to give them a quick blast of the Scream. We tended to use it sparingly. There had been an incident in Ancient Rome once. With bullocks. The devastation had been, as they say, widespread and massive.

More and more Trojan soldiers were appearing all the time and beginning to spread out, swords drawn. A good number of them were heading directly towards the place I’d last seen Diomedes and Odysseus. They carried torches – an acceptable risk now, obviously, because not only were there no buildings here to burn but a sudden conflagration could only improve the area. They didn’t appear to have noticed us yet but they would. Having six goats on your roof does not aid inconspicuousness.

We could, of course, engage the camo device, thus rendering ourselves almost invisible, but half a dozen goats apparently standing unsupported in mid-air would probably not be helpful, either.

Markham came to stand next to me, muttering, ‘Get a move on, Max. If it doesn’t work first time, we might not have enough time to go again.’

‘I have to get this right,’ I said quietly. ‘Odysseus and Diomedes must get away.’

He sighed. ‘Understood.’

I began to set up the Scream, at the same time saying to Evans, ‘Your instructions, Mr Evans, with which you will comply: if this goes wrong, you will push us both out of the door, shoot us and jump away. That’s my final order to you.’

Evans nodded silently.

‘I’m not messing about,’ I said, my fingers hovering over the range and intensity settings. ‘It’s ten minutes to midnight and we only have time for one go, so I’m not bothering with subtle. I’ve set the controls for a full-strength Scream. Initiating in five, four, three, two . . . Computer – initiate Scream.’

‘Scream initiated.’

Inside the pod, nothing happened. Nor should it.

Outside, though, was quite interesting.

Forget Australian drop bears – so passé, darling. Let me introduce you to Trojan drop goats. The screen was full of them, dropping from the heavens – or the pod roof, if you want to be mundane – landing heavily, their hooves scrabbling for purchase before skittering frantically away into the darkness.

Unfortunately for everyone, the darkness was full of Trojan soldiers who were, at one and the same time, clutching their heads, avoiding a stampede of maddened goats and trying to work out what the hell was going on.

‘Nine minutes,’ intoned Markham. ‘Look at that goat go.’

‘Can anyone see what’s happening to Diomedes?’

‘They disappeared behind that rock,’ said Astrid, pointing to the screen and showing true historian focus. ‘And they haven’t come out.’

‘Keep watching out for them. I’m hoping they’ve taken advantage of the chaos and disappeared.’

‘That does seem likely.’

I watched for another few minutes while Evans and Markham ditched Astrid’s robe and the other contemporary stuff we’d acquired. She was particularly reluctant to part with her helmet. I didn’t blame her.

Adrian had retrieved the drone; there were no signs Odysseus and Diomedes were still in the area and no reason to hang around.

‘Four minutes,’ said Markham. ‘Max . . .’

‘Yeah. On it. Computer . . .’

The computer chirped.

‘Computer, initiate jump.’

‘Bye-bye, eagle,’ said Adrian.

And the world went white.

Well – here we were. Back at St Mary’s. Mission accomplished.

In order of strategic importance:

Mrs Midgley’s sheets grubby but unscathed.

Missing actress retrieved.

Drone broken but retrieved.

Important historical event observed in contemporary time.

History nudged back on track.

Now for the difficult bit.

‘She fell down the stairs and sprained her ankle,’ I said to Calvin Cutter. ‘No serious damage done – Sick Bay’s just keeping an eye on her for twelve hours or so. Can’t be too careful, can we?’

Famous actress or not, Miss Gustafsson was subject to the same decontamination and quarantine rules as the rest of us.

CC narrowed his eyes. ‘Why are you in Sick Bay as well?’

‘I fell too.’

‘Both of you?’

‘All five of us, actually.’

‘What was this? Synchronised stumbling?’

‘No, I tripped and somehow brought Miss Gustafsson down with me. She, in turn, knocked into Adrian, Markham and Evans.’ I turned to her. ‘Terribly sorry, Miss Gustafsson. All my fault.’

Astrid smiled her famous smile. Never mind a thousand ships – this was the one that had launched at least three brands of toothpaste. ‘Not a problem, Max. There’s no reason why Calvin can’t hold his conferences in here, is there, Calvin?’

She peered innocently up at him through her eyelashes – another award-winning performance. St Mary’s standard, you could say. Evans couldn’t take his eyes off her. A man deeply in love.

CC stared at us for a moment, suspicion written all over him. Perhaps because he spent ninety-eight per cent of his time in Fantasyland, he could recognise it in others.

He turned away and bashed his ear. ‘Marj . . . Marj . . . Can you send Astrid some flowers? And a card . . . Get Well Soon . . . Because I need her to get well soon, obviously . . . A bit of an accident . . . Yes . . . Well, not so much an accident as some kind of mass staircase incident . . . Five of them . . . Yes, that’s what I thought . . . Lemmings, perhaps . . . No, Dirk’s fine . . . Kiss him yourself, Marj, I’ve told you before – inappropriate workplace behaviour. I don’t care if he does enjoy it . . . And send her some fruit . . . The food here’s terrible. Not a lentil in sight . . . Get Chelsea to sign the card for me, will you?’

He thumped his ear again and beamed at Astrid. Obviously no effort spared for his leading lady.

I fought very hard to keep Adrian at St Mary’s.

‘He knows he’s done wrong, sir. In fact, he knew he was doing wrong when he did it.’

‘Which did not stop him, did it, Dr Maxwell?’

I tried another tack. ‘Can we afford to let him go? Knowing what he knows about us? Do we actually want someone with his abilities floating free? According to the Time Police, there are always people out there looking for talented misfits like Adrian. He wouldn’t last ten minutes.’

‘The alternative is prison.’

‘I’m not sure he’d be safe there, sir. You could argue it would be even easier to get to him.’

‘This could have been a disaster, Max. He could have blown us wide open.’

I took a deep breath. Here we go. ‘Actually, sir, I’ve had a Brilliant Idea.’

He looked at me. ‘So have I. I wonder if they are one and the same.’

I resisted the temptation to say you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

‘Sir, mine would involve contacting some friends . . .’

‘As does mine.’

‘In that case, sir, would you like me to . . . ?’

‘No, I shall deal with the matter myself. Moving on to our other problem . . . Have you yet managed to ascertain exactly how Miss Gustafsson found herself taking on the role of the goddess Athena?’

‘I believe so, sir, yes.’

‘And?’

‘An unfortunate series of events, sir.’

‘They always are when St Mary’s is involved.’

‘Well, you will be aware of the importance of eagles in Greek culture, sir. The Aetos Dios and all that?’

‘The giant golden eagle – Zeus’s personal messenger? Yes, I am, Dr Maxwell, and eagerly await your unavailing efforts to introduce a divine component into this shambling narrative.’

‘According to Miss Gustafsson, she watched Adrian’s struggles on the screen and went out to investigate this bizarre event. Accordingly, she left the pod – really, sir, we might want to give some thought to removing the giant DOOR sign. It’s a bit like the James Bond films where the villain always helpfully points out the self-destruct button in his hollowed-out volcano. But that’s not important right now,’ I said, catching a glimpse of his expression. ‘Anyway, she left the pod . . .’

‘Was she not slightly bewildered at finding herself in Bronze Age Troy?’

‘Very, sir, but eventually realising she wasn’t in some sort of immersive holo, and showing the correct grasp of priorities, she set about rescuing Adrian.’

‘How?’

‘Well, sir – and you might not believe this . . .’

‘When the rest of this story is so credible, Dr Maxwell? Why would I not?’

I forged on. ‘Unsure of the correct procedure for engaging with possibly divine avian entities, Miss Gustafsson stamped her foot and shouted, “Leave him alone, you naughty bird.” I’m paraphrasing, sir.’

‘Quite considerably, I should imagine.’

‘But it did as she said, sir. It desisted its attack on Adrian, hopped towards her and just stood quietly at her feet. This apparently had a profound effect on the really quite sizeable crowd that had gathered, and before Miss Gustafsson was aware of what was happening, she was whisked away to the temple where, presumably because of her sudden appearance and her eagle-handling skills, she was hailed as the goddess Athena. The crowd followed on behind and by the time Adrian had uncurled himself and staggered to his feet, she was long gone. We know all the rest.’

He stared at me. I stared back. Time to move him on a little.

‘Actually, sir, I’ve had another Brilliant Idea.’

He regarded me warily. I can’t think why.

‘Our options are limited. We can’t bribe her – she earns more in a year than all of us put together. We can’t terrorise her – she’s six foot tall and throws men around for a living. We can’t imprison her – there would be the most fearful scandal and Calvin Cutter would certainly have something to say – although I suppose we could always lock him up too . . .’

I disengaged from this agreeable fantasy.

‘No – there’s only one course of action open to us, sir. If you can’t beat them – join them. We offer her a job here at St Mary’s.’

This silence was even longer than the usual silence which greets one of my Brilliant Ideas.

Eventually, I said, ‘Is this an appreciative silence, sir?’

‘No.’

I ploughed on anyway. ‘I expect you’re wondering in what capacity we could employ Miss Gustafsson, sir.’

‘No.’

Keep going, Maxwell. ‘Well, sir, as you yourself will have noticed, she’s extremely bright. She could probably do any job here with one hand tied behind her back. I’d happily have her in the History Department. She’s knowledgeable and would probably welcome further training. She has the skills and presence for the Security Section. There’s Admin, if she wants it. Or the Library – Dr Dowson would happily take her on. I’m not sure about R&D, but Miss Lingoss likes a challenge. And, sir, the clincher – I don’t think you can afford not to bring her into the fold.’

‘You think she would abandon a lucrative career involving travel, meeting interesting people, contributing positively to our cultural heritage, enjoying a glamorous lifestyle and so forth, only to . . .’

I interrupted him. ‘To travel, meet interesting people, contribute positively to our cultural heritage . . .’

He interrupted me before I could get to the glamorous lifestyle bit, which was probably just as well. ‘. . . to be blown up on a regular basis, attacked by a homicidal horse or have the occasional ceiling fall on her? You think she would even contemplate such a . . .’

‘Like a shot, sir. Anyone would. And she’ll be able to wee during daylight hours.’

He blinked. ‘Is the prohibition of daytime urination some obscure contract clause demanded by the entire film industry, or unique to Cavendish Cutter productions?’

‘The silver clingy thingy, sir. Makes her life difficult.’

He was silent for some time. ‘I shall consider your proposal, Dr Maxwell.’

No ex-senior priestess could ask for more.

The next day I was in Dr Bairstow’s office. Along with Miss Gustafsson – who was still limping artistically when she remembered to.

Dr Bairstow opened the batting.

‘Miss Gustafsson, thank you for coming. I have a number of reasons for wishing to speak to you today. Firstly, to apologise for the incident in which you were involved. The responsible party is being dealt with appropriately.’

She nodded. ‘I gather – more from what has not been said rather than what has been said – that there is far more to St Mary’s than meets the eye.’

‘That is correct.’

‘I have questions.’

‘And I shall endeavour to answer them as best I can.’

She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Why didn’t you just leave me there? Obviously I’m glad you didn’t, but surely that would have been the best solution?’

He nodded. ‘It would. And, since we are speaking frankly – there was a chance we might have had to. But we have a saying here – we’re St Mary’s and we never leave our people behind.’

‘But I’m not one of your people.’

‘A situation I hope to remedy. Miss Gustafsson – I would like to offer you a position here at St Mary’s.’

Whatever she’d been expecting – it wasn’t that.

‘You’re offering me a job?’

‘I am.’

‘Surely that’s a little drastic. Why don’t you just shoot me and dispose of the body discreetly? The lake, for instance.’

Dr Bairstow waved this comment aside, although it’s interesting he didn’t deny considering it.

‘You have very considerable talents, Miss Gustafsson, which appear to be somewhat wasted in your current position. I would, therefore, like to offer you the position of Public Relations Officer.’

She stared at him. As did I.

‘This organisation, very occasionally, finds itself in a position where it is necessary to emphasise a positive interpretation of some of our activities. Depending on the circumstances, you could find yourself dealing with MPs, the civil service, the Chief Constable, local authorities, the police, Thirsk University, the funding committee and the Time Police.’ He paused, reviewing this list of miscreants. ‘Not forgetting, of course, the Parish Council. A well-meaning body but very prone to grasping the wrong end of the stick.’

‘You want me to be . . . ?’

‘Your main responsibility would be, very occasionally, to minimise St Mary’s role in any unfortunate events with which we have inadvertently become involved.’

‘How often is very occasionally?’

‘Two or three times a week.’

‘By minimising St Mary’s role, you mean . . . ?’

‘Lying like stink,’ I said, because Dr Bairstow wouldn’t. ‘With skill, aplomb, conviction, and a straight face. Which I know you can do because you told me yourself you’ve won an award.’

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘But there’s a problem. I can’t deny it sounds interesting . . . but I’m under contract to Cavendish Cutter for season two. It would be a year, probably, before . . .’

‘Your starting date can be negotiated,’ said Dr Bairstow. ‘I have a contract here for you to sign before you leave tomorrow.’

‘Including, I am assuming, a copy of the Official Secrets Act.’

‘We’ve all signed that,’ I said. ‘The downside is that we’re disenfranchised – we can’t vote. The upside is that you get to lie like stink to everyone from politicians upwards.’

She nodded. ‘Well, if they don’t like it, then they shouldn’t have set the precedent, should they? Is there a uniform?’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Definitely no silver clingy thingy. You’d be able to wee whenever you like.’

‘The pay?’

‘Terrible.’

‘Working conditions?’

‘Worse.’

Dr Bairstow shifted in his seat. I think he felt that I possibly wasn’t promoting a positive image of St Mary’s, but I refused to panic. I reckoned we’d got this.

Astrid frowned at her hands. ‘Would there . . . um . . . be an opportunity to . . . you know . . . see Troy again?’

I shook my head. ‘Probably not – but only because you’ve already been there. I’d be happy to trade you a trip to Ancient Egypt in return for a signature. Be aware there will be the Egyptian secret police, hippopotami, twenty-foot-long Nile crocodiles, sand fleas, and the last time we were there, we nearly drowned halfway up a mountain.’

She sat back and grinned at us. ‘Where do I sign?’

And then it was Adrian’s turn.

He seated himself nervously. No one said anything. We waited. Dr Bairstow glanced at his watch, and just as his wheezy clock gathered itself to strike the hour, someone knocked at the door.

Enter Smallhope and Pennyroyal. Bounty hunters extraordinaire.

Dr Bairstow stood up. As did I. Adrian looked as if he was about to jump from the window.

Everyone politely wished everyone else a good afternoon.

Dr Bairstow got straight to it. ‘May I introduce Adrian M—’

‘We’ve met, I think,’ said Smallhope. ‘At one of your Christmas lunches, I believe.’

Dr Bairstow turned to face them. ‘If convenient, I would like you to take care of Mr Meiklejohn until further notice.’

Neither Smallhope nor Pennyroyal moved a muscle; their expressions didn’t change even a fraction. But I knew them well and, for some reason, they’d both suddenly shifted to high alert. Which was baffling. They’d met Adrian before. I don’t think they’d ever exchanged any conversation with him, but they’d certainly known of him. What could possibly have produced this reaction? I looked at Smallhope because Pennyroyal’s face never gives anything away. She was looking at Adrian. Adrian himself appeared as much at sea as I was.

‘Meiklejohn?’ said Smallhope eventually.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Bairstow.

‘You are Adrian Meiklejohn?’

‘Since birth,’ said Adrian warily.

Smallhope and Pennyroyal regarded each other. I had the impression a conversation was taking place. Then they turned back again.

‘Yes,’ said Smallhope. ‘Of course we will.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dr Bairstow. ‘We are in your debt. Should there ever be anything St Mary’s can do for you . . .’

There was another long silence and then Smallhope said, ‘Shall we be off then?’

I don’t think Dr Bairstow wanted Adrian to leave us like this. Holding out his hand, he said, ‘This is not forever, Mr Meiklejohn. And you are in good hands.’

Pennyroyal was already heading for the door.

I followed them out. ‘Good luck, Adrian. You’ll be fine.’

‘Max, I’m sorry for bringing all this trouble down on you.’

‘I know you are. Take care.’

He nodded again and set off around the gallery with Pennyroyal.

I turned to Smallhope. ‘We’re all rather fond of Adrian. Please look after him.’

‘Actually,’ she said quietly, ‘this is not the first request we’ve received to take care of a Meiklejohn.’

‘Really? When?’

‘Some years ago in the future.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Odd.’

‘What do you call it, Max? Closing the circle? I think a circle has just closed. Or opened, of course. Ah, well – can’t stand here chatting. See you the next time there’s trouble.’

She clapped me on the shoulder and set off after Pennyroyal and Adrian.

I was standing like an idiot trying to work out the ramifications of what she’d just told me when Mrs Partridge coughed behind me. Apparently I was blocking the way. I followed her into her office.

‘Can I be of assistance, Dr Maxwell?’

‘I don’t know – it’s just something Adrian said.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Adrian said Astrid was talking to you about CC’s ideas for Troy. He said she said what a pity it was that she couldn’t see for herself. At the time I thought he was referring to Astrid, but he wasn’t, was he? He meant you. You said what a pity it was, etc. You planted the idea in both their heads.’

‘Did I?’

I swept on. ‘And it occurred to me that if we hadn’t been there, then Odysseus and Diomedes might not have got away with the Palladium. And if they hadn’t, then there’s the possibility Troy might not have fallen.’

‘Goodness,’ she said vaguely.

‘Indeed,’ I said, determined not to be overawed.

‘The implications . . .’ she said.

‘Wide-ranging and very important to the development of other cultures.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, pinching my line.

‘Really, it’s a good thing that we were there.’

‘Indeed,’ she said again. Obviously the mot du jour.

‘Which leads me to believe that possibly Adrian’s little catastrophe wasn’t, in fact, quite the catastrophe it initially appeared to be.’

‘Mm?’ she said, her attention all on her filing. You have to admire such dedication. Mine is in a heap under my desk all ready to be torched should the Dark Forces of the Freedom of Information Act turn up. But I digress.

‘Pursuing this train of thought,’ I said, perching on the corner of her desk, ‘one is led to the inevitable conclusion that had Adrian not had the idea to take Astrid to Troy, then we wouldn’t have had to go after her, thus putting us in exactly the right place to aid Odysseus and Diomedes in their getaway, thus ensuring the whole course of both Greek and Roman history – and Europe, of course – remained intact.’

She stared coldly at my bottom perching on her desk.

I persevered. ‘All thanks to Adrian, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking up. ‘I was concentrating on my filing. Were you saying something important?’

I grinned. ‘No, Mrs Partridge. Not in the slightest.’

I shifted my bum off her desk and went off to make Mr Evans’ day.

Acknowledgements

I recently had a meeting with my editor to discuss, among other things, whether anyone felt it necessary to include a paragraph at the beginning of each of my books, assuring people of my humanness.

Apparently, this was very funny.

Anyway, there was discussion, and defining my exact status was deemed to be unnecessary. Whether this was because it’s obvious that I am human or whether me being an AI would actually enhance my sales remained unclear and I lacked the nerve to ask.

However, as always, many thanks to everyone involved in the production of this story.

All the folk at Headline:

Frankie Edwards – my editor. Human, but with godlike powers.

Jessie Goetzinger-Hall – making things work, as usual. Human.

Hannah Sawyer – marketing guru. Human.

Federica Trogu – in charge of publicity. Human.

Ellie Wheeldon – who produces the audio books. Human.

Everyone else involved, including the Sales, Rights, Art and Production teams. Humans – every single one of them.

Together with:

Sharona Selby and Jill Cole – my copy-editor, proofreader and safety nets. Humans.

Hazel Cushion – my agent, for her encouragement. Superhuman.

Zara Ramm – who reads my books so beautifully. Human.

Julia Turley – beta reader, who always picks up on something I’ve missed. Human.

Phil Dawson – adviser on all the slightly dodgy stuff. Probably human. Wears human clothes, anyway.

Lose track of time in the world of

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www.joditaylor.online

You can also find her on

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@joditaylorbooks

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