Down: Trilogy Box Set (130 page)

Cromwell had arched his brows as high as they would go. “It was you who orchestrated the threats and measures we have undertaken against your people.”

“I did. It’s too bad she killed herself but in a way it’s helpful. They’re already scared out of their minds. This will only heighten their anxiety. Now’s the time to come down really hard. Threaten them directly. Tell them it’s time to start building a blast furnace. Apparently that’s the thing that enables all the rest—at least they’ve told me that much. Tell them if they don’t get on with it or if any more of them take the easy way out like Brenda, then you’ll kill the whole lot.”

Cromwell had shaken his head in amazement at Trotter’s brazen tactics. “No, I’ll leave it to you to speak to them. After your supper, of course. We wouldn’t wish to interrupt. Perhaps you can tell them that the next to die will be you.”

“Ha! Good one. That would have the opposite effect. They’d cheer the move.”

Before he left Cromwell said, “Methinks you will arrive here permanently one day, Master Trotter.”

“That may be. If so, maybe I’ll find a position working for you.”

Now, facing his people, Trotter continued to act the part of a victim.

“I live apart from the rest of you simply because Cromwell and his ilk do not understand or respect egalitarian principles. In order for me to best represent our collective interests it is necessary for me to be seen as our leader. And that means certain trappings of privilege which I would gladly give up if another strategy were more beneficial.”

Leroy Bitterman shook his head vehemently. “You know, Tony, you really know how to sling the shit.”

“I quite agree,” Smithwick said. “If and when we return to London—the real London—I shall condemn you publicly for being our Quisling.”

“Listen to all of you,” Trotter said, his voice swelling. “You don’t seem to understand the survival game. Perhaps Brenda’s suicide is the wake-up call you needed. The other side is holding all the cards. They are killers. They are ruthless. The only thing that’s keeping us sheltered and fed is our potential usefulness to them. They don’t understand how brilliant scientists who can make supercolliders can’t make blast furnaces. They want action.”

Campbell Bates said, “I’ve tried to explain the difficulties but …”

“But Cromwell won’t listen,” Trotter said, finishing the thought. “He doesn’t trust us. He thinks we’re stalling. I need to tell you what he told me when he informed me of Brenda’s suicide. He’s lost patience. He wants a tangible show of progress. He is organizing a trip to one of the royal forges where he expects us to lay out plans for enacting the designs in the blast-furnace book. If we do not fully and productively cooperate he will execute one of us.”

A quiet fell over the room. Trotter chose not to break the silence but to let it linger like an exquisite pain.

“Who? Did he say who?” The question came from Stuart Binford. For someone who made his living being voluble, the public relations man had become one of the more reticent presences among the group. He wasn’t one of the VIPs; he wasn’t one of the scientists. He seemed to try to make himself as small and innocuous a presence as possible, fearing his irrelevance.

“Not you,” Trotter said. “I’m afraid it’s you, Chris.”

“Why me?” she cried. “Why kill me?”

“He’s a canny one, that Cromwell,” Trotter said. “I think he’s observed you’re popular. And you’re a woman so he probably thinks, quite rightly, that we’ll be fiercely protective.”

“Then there’s only one thing we can do,” Bates said, slipping his shoes on. “We’ll have to try and build him his goddamn furnace.”

“Will you go talk to her?” Boris asked.

They were inside what the Hellers were calling the boy’s cottage. It wasn’t much of a cottage really. There were four walls and a hearth, but there were no windows. The door was a sturdy affair that latched from the outside to keep the boys in at night. A leaky roof spared no one when it rained. Their beds were no more than hay, and old hay at that, stuffed into burlap. Their utensils and bowls were crudely made of wood. The blankets were the only well-made things at hand. There was no shortage of wool on a sheep farm.

“And tell her what?” Angus said, tossing his porridge bowl aside.

“Tell her we don’t want to be her slaves any more,” Boris said. “Look at my hands. They look like raw meat.”

“Tell her we’re sick of her sheep,” Glynn added.

Angus gave Glynn one of his
e tu, Brute
looks, reserved for when even his best friend seemed to turn on him.

“As if she listens to me,” Angus said.

“Well she definitely doesn’t listen to me,” Danny said. “All I get is, Chinaman, go and shovel the shit over there.”

“She’s nice to me,” Harry said, sucking on his wooden spoon.

“That’s because she can’t understand a thing you say,” Stuart said. “Wormhole, parallel universe bollocks.”

“It’s not bollocks,” Harry said.

“Look, Harry,” Kevin said pointing an accusatory finger, “while we’re working like bloody slaves, you’re in her cottage sitting by a nice fire telling her tales.”

“She likes to hear about modern times,” Harry said. “I think she’s quite intelligent.”

“Then maybe Harry ought to speak to her instead of Angus. Maybe Harry’s the one to persuade her.”

“Harry the head boy, Harry the head boy,” Nigel said in singsong, mocking Angus’s authority.

Angus wasn’t going to let that stand. He flung himself toward Nigel and began pummeling him until Danny and Boris moved to break it up.

Nigel spit out some blood and Angus began to stalk out when Andrew began crying, “If we start fighting amongst ourselves then we’re no better than they are. We should be better than them. They’re evil. They’ve all done horrible things. We haven’t. At least not yet.”

Angus stared at the floor as if the right thing to say would be found scrawled upon the rough planks. “I’m sorry for bashing you, Nigel.”

“No you’re not.”

“Shut up, Nigel,” Glynn said. “He’s trying to apologize and you’re just being a shit like usual.”

That earned Glynn a look of thanks from Angus who said, “I’ll go talk to her about letting up on us, all right?”

“I just want to go home,” Andrew said, blowing his nose into a dirty rag.

“I do too,” Angus said, pushing through the door.

Ardmore was drinking ale on a patch of grass in front of the cottage he shared with Bess.

“I didn’t ring the work bell yet,” he said to Angus. “What do you want?”

“To talk with Bess.”

“Why?”

“I’m carrying a message from the others.”

“Are you now?” Ardmore grinned, exposing some yellow teeth. He called out, “Bess, Angus is bearing a message from the tykes.”

Bess came out, all in black as usual. She never smiled in front of Angus, or any of the boys. Except for Harry. If she still had a tender spot in the reaches of her soul occupied by unsullied memories of childhood, she didn’t show it. She had told Ardmore recently that the boys were nothing more to her than laborers. They didn’t produce as much as her usual workers but they didn’t eat as much either.

“That runt, Harry, doesn’t hardly do a lick of work,” Ardmore had said.

“I’ll make an exception of him,” Bess had said. “He’s my storytelling boy.”

Bess frowned at Angus and asked him why he’d disturbed her rest.

Angus cleared his throat. “We think you’re working us too hard,” he said. “We think …”

Ardmore quieted him and backed him up, coming at him with his arm cocked for a backhanded slap. “You little shit!”

“Leave him be,” Bess said. “I’ll hear his complaint. What is it you think, Angus?”

“It’s not just me, it’s all of us. We’re schoolboys. We’re not used to wrestling sheep to the ground and shearing them. We’re not used to cleaning out their pens. We want to go back to Sevenoaks and try to find our way home.”

“You do, do you?” Bess said. “And how do you propose getting there? Will you be riding in one of these motorcars that Harry’s told me about? Or maybe one of these winged machines what carries people up in the skies? If not these then I expect you’ll be walking all the way, dodging brigands and rovers along the way. Or not dodging them. Maybe winding up as cannie food instead. You want to wind up as cannie food, is that what you desire, Angus?”

“No, of course not. We were hoping you might take us back with you the next time you’re bringing wool to London.”

“That won’t be for quite a while, boy,” she said angrily, “and you won’t be coming when we do. You need to face the truth. Plain and simple. You’re not going home through your precious wormholes. You’re staying here, maybe not forever like us, but as long as you have life within your bodies. You work for me. How I want. When I want. Ardmore, ring the work bell and go ahead, you’ve my permission to strike him across his miserable little face.”

The delegation arrived at Richmond by royal barge. One of William’s forge workers had spotted the flag before it docked and had run to notify his master. William had time to wash the grime from his face before his monarch arrived.

But it was not King Henry at his door but Thomas Cromwell, the Duke of Suffolk, a contingent of guards, and a handful of bewildered Earthers eyeing the tall chimneystack, belching smoke.

“Master Cromwell,” William said, deeply bowing. “When I heard the barge was sighted I thought his majesty was coming to inspect our recent handiwork.”

“What handiwork is that?” Cromwell asked.

“The modern rifles he tasked John Camp with fabricating.”

“Did that man say, John Camp?” Campbell Bates asked Trotter.

“Christ, I think he did,” Trotter said.

“What are you speaking of, man?” Cromwell demanded. “John Camp was here?”

“He was,” William said, puzzling at the confusion.

“When?”

“He departed not two days past, having arrived earlier bearing a letter by the hand of the king. Were you not aware?”

“No, forger, I was not!” Cromwell shouted. “Who was with him?”

“Earthers, all. Miss Loughty was present, Master Kyle, Master Jones, Master Nightingale, and many, many soldiers.”

“What manner of soldiers? How many?” Cromwell said, unable to keep his voice from rising.

“What manner?” William said, rubbing his chin. “Englishmen, I’d say, but modern men and like the others, very much alive. As to number, well there were three score of them.”

Trotter edged his way to Cromwell’s side and addressed William. “Did these soldiers give you more information? Did they say if they were from the British Army?”

“They did say something which I did not understand,” William said. “What was it? SAS? Yes, that was what they said.”

Bates whispered it to David Laurent who passed it along to Henry Quint who passed it along to Leroy Bitterman. “The SAS are here. We’re going to be rescued.”

“Tell me of these modern rifles you spoke of,” Cromwell said.

“They are frightful weapons to behold. Each one holds some thirty lead and powder ammos, as they are called, and spits them out with great rapidity without the need for any manner of reloading. Mr. Kyle called them AK something or another.”

“AK-47s?” Trotter asked.

“Yes, that’s it.”

“My God,” Trotter muttered, “Brilliant move.”

“Where did Camp go with these soldiers?” Suffolk demanded.

“I presume they left to deliver the weapons to the king. Where is the king? Is he waiting on his barge?”

“He is not here,” Cromwell said, curtly. “Think man, did they not make any mention of where they might have gone?”

William thought hard and said, “I did overhear one of the soldiers, the captain with a moustache, say the name, Leatherhead.”

“Leatherhead,” Cromwell said excitedly. “This is one of the towns where men are making a crossing to Earth. Suffolk, you must assemble a troop with field cannon to make to Leatherhead. Find John Camp, kill him if you must, but if he is seized, bring him to me at Whitehall.”

Suffolk seemed to bristle at receiving orders from Cromwell but agreed to the action.

Cromwell turned to William. “These new and frightful weapons. Can you make these weapons for me?”

“I cannot, Master Cromwell. Master Kyle threw the rubber molds into the fire and John Camp smashed the plaster molds.”

Cromwell flew into a rage and grabbed his captain of the guard by the sleeve and pulled him away.

That left an opening for Trotter to approach William and say, “My name is Anthony Trotter. I’m in charge of these people. We’re being held against our will.”

“Are you now?” William replied.

“Indeed we are. John Camp and the SAS soldiers—they were undoubtedly sent to find us and take us home. Did they mention my name?”

“Trotter, you say?”

“Yes, Anthony Trotter.”

“I can’t recollect anyone doing so.”

“Well, did they mention any other names? Smithwick? Lawrence? Bates? Bitterman?”

William shook his head.

“Did they ask where prisoners might be held? Was there any talk of rescue plans?”

“Not to me.”

Red in the face, Trotter was going to keep firing questions but Cromwell returned. His captain ran down the hill in the direction of the barge.

“We will endeavor to find John Camp and his perfidious minions before they can harm the crown,” Cromwell growled. “My barge is being prepared for my departure. I will take my leave but I will leave these prisoners and a party of my men with you. They are men of science for the most part. Well not this one,” he said, referring to Trotter, “but he pleaded his case for being in attendance and I acquiesced. The scientists have brought a text with them together with plans to create a great furnace, far larger and more powerful than your present forge. I would have you begin work on this furnace immediately. Once built, we will make excellent steel from the iron we have within Brittania with no need to send our ships to the Norselands. Then we will build machines of war that harness the power of steam. We will repel all invaders. We will conquer all of Europa. Work quickly, William. If you perceive any diminution of effort, any slackness or sloth, I command you throw this one, Master Trotter, into your hottest fire.”