The History Keepers Circus Maximus (12 page)

‘Rose, we don’t have much time,’ Jake insisted, trying to pull her to her feet.

‘I thought I didn’t love him,’ she murmured, ‘but now I’m not so sure . . .’

Jake thought she must be drunk and even looked around for an empty bottle. Then he remembered the time he had gone to Venice in 1506: he had started doing an Irish jig and ended up embracing Topaz on the prow of the
Campana
.
He
must have seemed drunk then.

Jake had another idea: he ran along to the galley and grabbed a glass of water, went back and – apologizing before he did so – tossed it in Rose’s face. Charlie had done the same to him, and it had
revived him immediately. Now the opposite was true: Rose’s smile froze momentarily, then she passed out.

‘Rose?’ He shook her again, but she was unconscious.
All right, take the initiative
, Jake said to himself.
How hard can it be to enter a horizon point? I’ve seen them do it
 . . .

He charged back up the steps, flew over to the helm and grabbed the wheel. It was heavy and seemed to have a will of its own; he had to use all his strength to turn it right, left and right again, until finally the golden rings were aligned.

The ship started to judder.

‘Ten, nine, eight . . .’ Jake counted down, holding onto the wheel with all his might. A whirlwind encircled him; colours flashed. He had only reached three when suddenly everything became silent, diamond shapes exploded outwards, and he took off like a missile into the sky.

Everything he had experienced in the last hour might have been horrific – the sickness, the appalling visions, the panic – but this moment was sheer magic; one of the most mysterious and breathtaking of Jake’s life. He shot (or, at any rate, his alter ego did) noiselessly into the sky, as graceful and
swift as an arrow, searing through the troposphere, the stratosphere and into the deep, deep blue of the thermosphere. The Earth shot away from him and, for the first time in his life, Jake saw the planet as a whole. As he gazed down at it – a shimmering blue ball in a never-ending firmament of twinkling stars – he felt calm. In that moment it struck him that on this little sphere below him,
all
of history had taken place – from modern-day London where he’d grown up, to the nineteenth-century Mont St Michel, to sixteenth-century Italy and Germany, to the Roman times to which he was now travelling. All this – and all the hundreds of civilizations beyond: the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the ancient Chinese and Egyptians. That blue planet had been home to all those epochs and their glories – their art and learning, their progress and invention; their kings, conquerors, explorers and despots. It was a moment of profound wonder that Jake knew he would never forget.

Within seconds he was flying back to Earth. As he shot through the sky, the continents took shape once again: Africa and Europe formed beneath him. A moment later he was careering towards the Mediterranean. Finally he saw the
Conqueror
, all
alone in a sparkling sea. He saw himself standing at the helm in his white toga, and Rose stumbling up the steps onto the deck. With a final rush, he returned to himself.

Jake looked around, squinting in the sunlight. The sky was completely different here – a brilliant cobalt blue – and the air was fresh and warm. Rose, still a little bleary-eyed, came and put her arms around her nephew.

‘We made it!’ she murmured. ‘AD 27.’ They looked at each other and she burst out laughing.

They set their course and sailed through the warm afternoon, serenely cutting across the sparkling sea. Rose felt groggy (travelling to history, she explained, was far more gruelling for adults than it was for youngsters), and Jake suggested that she lie down while he took the helm. She insisted that she was too excited to sleep but would give it a go. She settled down on some cushions, and within seconds she was snoring like a foghorn.

As the sun started to set and the sky turned from pink to maroon to indigo, Jake – while keeping an eye on the wheel – brought a table and two stools from the galley and set them up on deck. He laid
the table with a white cloth, knives, forks, napkins, and a lantern that he found in a dusty cupboard. He heated up the dishes of food his mum had given him, lit the candles and finally woke Rose.

It took her a while to surface, but when she saw what Jake had done, she burst into tears. ‘Sorry,’ she sobbed, searching in her carpetbag for a tissue. ‘A touch emotional this evening . . .’

Jake showed her to her seat like a professional waiter. ‘Mum said she surpassed herself,’ he said as he whipped off the dish covers. There was a moment of stunned silence as Jake and his aunt studied their contents, then they both burst out laughing. Each dish was burned to an unidentifiable cinder.

‘All right, presentation may need some work,’ Rose conceded, plunging a serving spoon through the outer crust of charcoal on one of them, ‘but I’m sure it tastes delicious.’ She served up two portions and they both ate with trepidation. Just one mouthful produced more uncertain giggles, followed by a discussion as to what the dish might or might not contain – ‘Nuts? Bacon . . .? Toenails?’ – which brought fits of such uncontrollable guffaws that Rose had to leave the table, shaking her bangles, to take some calming air at the prow.

Feeling guilty about laughing at Miriam’s expense, after dessert (‘dread and butter pudding’, Rose christened it) Jake and his aunt drank a heart-felt toast to her: ‘To absent friends!’ they exclaimed and clinked glasses.

As the stars began to light up all around, like some boundless celestial theatre, Rose closed her eyes and let the warm wind caress her face. She began to tell Jake about some of the missions she had undertaken in her youth – in particular an expedition to the mountains of Tibet in the ancient time of Kanishka, and another to Incan Peru, where she’d fallen in love with a handsome farmer in the emerald-green plains below Machu Picchu. ‘Of course, it’s hopeless falling for a civilian,’ she sighed, misty eyed, ‘because they can’t go back with you. It’s hard enough explaining you live on the other side of the world, let alone the other end of history.’

The word ‘love’ reminded Jake of what Rose had said earlier about Jupitus –
I thought I didn’t love him, but now I’m not so sure
. He decided he didn’t want to embarrass her by prying further, but he was desperate to know whether it was down to the effects of the atomium or was actually true. As he gazed up at the north star, pulsing gently in the
heavens above him, he pondered his own feelings on the subject.

Up until a month ago, when Topaz St Honoré had come into his life, with her mysterious smile and her indigo eyes, love –
romantic
love, at any rate – was something he didn’t understand at all. It had always seemed to require the unnecessary expenditure of such a lot of energy. He couldn’t put it into words, but Jake felt differently now. Somehow the sheer existence of Topaz made him want to do things better; be braver and more daring. She didn’t ask anything of him, but Jake felt nonetheless compelled to make the world a better and safer place. ‘A better and safer place?’ he said to himself, shaking his head. ‘Where do I get these phrases from?’

At dawn the next morning Jake spied land on the horizon and called over to Rose, who was fast asleep under a blanket, her head cushioned by her carpetbag.

‘Here already?’ she cooed. ‘I must have dozed off again.’

Jake couldn’t help but smile: she had slept solidly through the night. The journey back in time really had knocked it out of her. She sat up, her corkscrew
hair going off in every direction, and squinted into the distance.

Despite the sunrise the distant lighthouse still glimmered with fire, but he could see a big landmass ahead. The faint outline of a town was just discernible, beyond that rose a volcano in hues of shimmering purple. ‘Mount Etna, looking majestic,’ Rose sighed dreamily. She took a compact from her bag, opened it and examined her puffy eyes. ‘Rose Djones, looking majestic too,’ she added with a giggle.

As Jake steered the
Conqueror
on towards the harbour of Messina (he was increasingly enjoying navigating), he noticed another ship approaching from the other direction, her two dozen oars moving swiftly and perfectly in time. He gaped in awe as she sped past them, decks teeming with activity. There were several men – personal guards – many of them bearded, and each wearing a golden breastplate that glinted in the morning sun. At the stern, under an awning, an imperious-looking couple reclined on a large velvet divan. An attendant was fanning them with peacock feathers. The man, dressed in a brilliant white toga, had narrow eyes and dark walnut skin. His companion was
thin-lipped and pale and clutched her neck as she gazed out across the seas.

‘
Salvete, amici!
’ Rose called out mischievously. One of the guards, a particularly burly and handsome man, smiled and winked back at her, but the haughty couple ignored her completely. ‘If you thought Oceane Noire was bad,’ she confided to Jake, ‘Romans – some of them, anyway – take snobbery to a whole new level. But who can blame them? They’re the first civilization in history to rule the world, practically from one end to the other.’

Once they had rounded the island on which the lighthouse stood (Jake noticed that its light was produced by
real
fire; dark smoke was rising up into the blue sky), the port started to take shape: a jumble of square white buildings with terracotta roofs, interspersed with clusters of cypresses and palms, spread up into the surrounding hills. The harbour itself was teeming with ships of all shapes and sizes, docking or setting sail, delivering or loading up amidst a cacophony of shouting people and squawking animals.

‘If all has gone according to plan,’ Rose said, coming over to Jake at the helm, ‘the others should be waiting here. See if you can spot them while I try
and bring this thing in safely – I need the practice. Parking has always been my downfall!’

As Rose took charge of the wheel, Jake stood at the prow and scanned the quayside for his friends. He was thrilled at the prospect of seeing them again. Jake had only known Nathan and Charlie for a matter of months, but he already felt that they were his best friends. When people of your own age are prepared to actually risk their lives for you – and you’re prepared to do the same for them – it gives a different meaning to friendship.

Jake trembled with excitement as he surveyed the busy Messinians – an attractive people, robust and glowing from the Mediterranean sun – going about their morning business, all dressed in tunics, togas and sandals. He searched amongst them for Nathan’s tall figure, for Charlie’s crazy brown hair, even for Jupitus’s thin and haughty silhouette. He gasped when he caught sight of a multicoloured parrot, but then realized he was sitting on the arm of an old fishmonger with a crinkled face, and was a totally different colour to Mr Drake, anyway.

As Rose drew closer, she crashed into nearly everything heading in the other direction. It took four increasingly embarrassing attempts for her to
dock, each time mumbling profuse apologies to an assortment of angry Sicilians, until finally the ship bumped against the quayside. Now familiar with the routine, Jake jumped out and fastened the moorings.

‘Any sign of them?’ Rose asked.

Jake shook his head. ‘Shall I go and have a proper look round?’ he asked hopefully. As well as being keen to find the others, he was desperate to explore this new and exciting world.

‘All right, but don’t go too far.’

Jake headed along the dock, gazing in wonder at all the activity, taking in the myriad smells and sounds. Everywhere tradesmen and merchants were buying and selling – amphorae of wine, sacks of grain, vats of golden honey and crates of fresh olives. There were stalls selling pottery and glass, animal hides piled high, cloth and parchment. There were pyramids of powdered dye in brilliant colours – crimson, burnt umber, ultramarine and cadmium yellow. Traders sold marble, mosaic tesserae, ivory, gold and chunks of amber. Meat was being roasted over coals, and there were pens of
live
animals – sheep, goats and chickens.

Jake took it all in. Only one sight wiped the smile
off his face: a cage containing several terrified-looking humans. They were chained together, dressed in rags, their hair matted and their skin filthy. A pot-bellied man with black teeth and lank grey hair held a girl by the arm as he auctioned her off. She was even younger than Jake.

He was overcome – first with pity and then with anger. ‘Slaves?’ he murmured to himself, and stopped and stared, jaw clenched, at the pot-bellied man. When a prospective buyer – a man with a white beard – went to examine the girl’s teeth, as if he were buying a horse, Jake found himself stepping forward in outrage.

It was at this moment that he saw the parrot staring at him. It was perched on a windowsill, and this time Jake was in no doubt about its plumage. ‘Mr Drake?’ he whispered.

The bird suddenly took off, flew over Jake’s head and landed on the shoulder of someone in the crowd. At first Jake couldn’t see who it was, but then his heart soared as Charlie appeared. Nathan was at his side, looking magnificent in his brilliant-white toga. They were both tanned from their week in the sun. Jake wanted to shout out to them at the top of his voice, but decided it would be wrong to attract
attention, especially as he was still on trial as an agent for the History Keepers. So he waited patiently, assuming the most serious expression he could muster, his heart pounding beneath his tunic.

As it turned out, Jake needn’t have worried about showing his emotions: the moment the three of them were face to face Nathan dropped his bag, stepped forward, took Jake in his arms and hugged him hard. Then Charlie did the same.

‘How are you, Jake?’ Nathan beamed. ‘It’s great to have you here.’

‘Is it?’ he asked with a tremulous smile.

‘Of course it is – we missed you. You’re looking very dashing in the tunic department.’ Nathan reached out to get a feel of the fabric. ‘I thought so . . . Egyptian cotton – light, durable and positively zinging on the eye. I can tell Gondolfino likes you. We saw you arrive from the villa. Shall we . . .?’ He turned towards the quay, where the
Conqueror
was moored. ‘We’re on a tight schedule.’