The Terror Time Spies (46 page)

There was a strange orange white glow everywhere.

“In a Cloudburst, bambini,” rumbled a deep foreign voice suddenly, that seemed to fill the cloud itself, and which Henry recognised immediately from the barn and the well - an elegant Italian voice. 

It was as if God himself was talking to them.

“A revolutionary historic maelstrom, Bonespair,” said the foreigner, “or special atmospheric interference.”

“Interference?” gulped Henry, wondering if they were all dead. 

The astounded Pimpernels looked out of the basket to see three figures, standing in mid air near the edge of the cloud, the three that Henry had seen in the firelight, twice, and Spike for real in Paris, on a kind of floating wooded platform. 

It was just like the trial box that Juliette had stood in in the Champs de Mars.

That tall man, the blue stockinged woman, who had emanated from the tapestry, and the seemingly overgrown child, held leather satchels in their gloved hands, watching them all rather blithely, although the short one kept looking at his wrist too, which had a miniature Chronometer attached to it:  A wrist watch.

“Who are you, please?” gulped Nellie Bonespair, as Francis Simpkins remembered that woman from the portrait, with a shudder.  “Are you Gods?”

“Ghosts, Nellie,” Francis gulped, tugging his collar, “The dead.”

“Perhaps, bambini,” said the tall Italian, like a gentle pirate, as little Spike clasped Henry’s hand, “Ghosts in the machine, if there
are
any ghosts.  At present though, we’re here to assist with your defence you before the SP.”

Spike thought of The Scarlet Pimpernel again.

“The Special Tribunal,” explained the elegant Italian though and she remembered the man in the Square.

“Tribunal?” cried Henry, wondering if they would ever escape, even up here in the clouds.  “And what defence?”

“That’s technically incorrect, Garimondo,” corrected the woman in blue stockings though, in a strong American accent, just like Obediah Tuck’s, “These children haven’t even been arraigned yet.”

“Ah no, but they will be, Spilling, they will,” said the tall Garimondo, as if addressing some annoying work colleague, “Everyone
is
, in the end.  You know that, Spilling.  Its inevitable.”

“What do you mean, Sir,” gulped Henry, not liking the sound of being arraigned at all, as the crystals in the smoky cloud seemed to quiver and sing around them, while the strange watch trembled in his hand.

“We are ‘ere doing free work for the BCA, bambini,” explained Garimondo, with a kindly smile, “Just as my colleague Miss Spilling here says.  The Bureau of Children’s Advisement.”

“Citizens,” corrected Spilling, with a gentle frown, “The Bureau of
Citizen’s
Advisement, Professor Garimondo.  It’s a new world now.  All is change.”

“Quite, Senora,” cried Garimondo, looking very irritated though, “you are with the times.  But we’ve been trying to get through since you birthday, Henry Bonespair, or since you started to pull us through, for Citizen’s Advisement, courtesy of our firm, Messers Chronos, Garimondo, Spilling…”

“And Boffin,” snapped the third extraordinary bald character.  He looked rather sour, still rubbing his head.  “And that bucket hurt, boy.”

Henry Bonespair blinked at him in astonishment.  They had all been down the well.  It had not been Spike throwing her voice at all.

“At your service, Mr Bonespair,” said Spilling, in her flowing gown, looking rather admiringly at Obediah Tuck’s now waxwork-like moustache.  “The senior partner ain’t with us, I’m afraid.  Chronos is back teaching at the moment, academically, for Habeas Corpus College, at his old Universe.”

“
University
, Senora,” corrected Garimondo sharply.

“Yes, yes. The University,” said Spilling, blushing, “Chronos is…er…he’s the law Don there now, specialising in special Patents.”

“You are lawyers!” cried Henry Bonespair, wondering how they had climbed so high. 

Francis was trying to scribble in his book, but in the Cloudburst his pencil would not work, but just kept slipping across the page.

“We are Counsel, yes, Henry,” corrected the floating American. “Advocates.”

“Advising our new murderous French citizens?” said Count Armande rather coldly, as they wondered if they had been killed, and these were really angels.

“Advising citizens of the World, Count,” answered Spilling sharply.  “A new world, especially now it’s all going Decimal.”

“The Tribunal Judge sent us though,” said the big headed child now, in his piping voice.  “The Tribunal of the Twelve.”

“Twelve?” said Hal sharply.

“The Great Watchmaker, they call
him
.  The Tribunal Judge.  Just a hobby of his, of course, clocks I mean, and mechanisms, between important cases.”

“Isaac Harrison,” whispered Count Armande suddenly, “but he’s fou. Mad.   In Bedlam.  I read it.”

Henry thought of the Godfather that he had never even met and the Club wondered if they were all mad too, talking to three celestial lawyers, in the middle of a cloudburst, as they tried to escape Revolutionary France.

“Not Howling Harrison, no, Count,” said Spilling rather sadly, “Dearee no.  He’s not the Tribunal judge.  Although, when he was making that special Chronometer, Henry’s Godfather did stumble on some quite remarkable discoveries, well before their time too. 
About  
Time, in fact.  Or Space, and the other worlds.”

Francis Simpkins thought of Tuck talking of another world in the Eagle, and of England, Austria, Holland, The Australias and the Americas.  He was goggling at these floating apparitions now.

“Silence, Spilling,” snapped Garimondo though, “They couldn’t understand it
, yet. 
Besides, you know teenager’s brains are different.  They can hardly hear us really.”

“The w-w-watch,” said Francis Simpkins though, “it’s linked to H-H-Hal, isn’t it?  It was made on his Birthday, 1779, by his Godfather.”

“Bravissimo,” cried Garimondo, clapping his big hands, “And Isaac promised him a very special present, so the very mechanism contains essence of Bonespair too.   In its hair spring.  A hair which Isaac Harrison plucked from his own little head, in his cot.”

Henry jolted and remembered that sharp pain in his head, that he had felt in the carriage on the Dover road, and that old dream of a face peering down at him kindly.

“But what do you want?” asked Henry, in astonishment, feeling like he was inside a glittering dream right now, and suddenly noticing how very pretty Juliette was.

“Want?” piped the large headed bald child, “Not much.  Except to warn you that you
must
never lose that watch, or let it stop either.  That’s some free advice from Messers Garimondo, Spilling, Chronos and Boffin.  We’re celebrated legal Rainmakers.”

The diminutive lawyer looked expectantly at the other two.

“We’ll see Boffin, eh, we’ll see,” muttered Garimondo, “That depends on how you do here, my friend.  A full partnership, I mean, at the firm.”

“But this,” cried Henry Bonespair, holding up the Chronometer, its hands still whizzing furiously in opposite directions, “it’s was Mr Wickham’s, not mine.  Father works for him, his Land Agent, although the diplomat’s really an English spy.”

“Commissioned for Wickham’s own father, yes,” said Spilling knowingly, “during the American wars, when you were born.  It was a time of spies too, just like the great George Washington.  Wickham’s father requested that catch, and the Gloved Hand symbol, to open the compartment at Twelve, for ordinary miniature secret messages, to be used practically in your secret service…

“Or so he thought,” said Boffin, with a wink.

“But jealous of his famous cousin, John Harrison,” said Garimondo, “and very brilliant too, mad Isaac worked on, in the deepest dark, and thinking of you as well, Hal, and your dear parents, added some very special refinements, which the foolish, spying adults never even knew about.”

“Refinements?” grunted Skipper, feeling very confused indeed and very left out too.

“Only in certain hands does that watch have very special properties.  Brave young hands, Henry Bonespair.  In fact, it’s patently Revolutionary, in younger hands.  For Revolutionary times, eh, bambini?”

Henry felt a strange tingling.

 “But Isaac always intended it for you. 
We
wouldn’t be here otherwise.  Isaac first opened the doorway, with the No-Meter, but you first pulled us through, by simply using it.  I almost wish you had not fiddled quite so much.”

“Opened the doorway?” said Henry.

“Told you so,” cried Spike, looking smugly at Hal.  “The Nometer.  Magic.”

“Or the Yes-Meter,” said Spilling, “It can give you a Yes or a No, on very important questions.  It has rather remarkable ways of affecting young travellers too though, that dial.”

“In Time?” whispered Count Armande, “you’re really travellers in time, then?”

“Or space,” said Spilling, “Although on sabbatical, Count, as we are, academic readers who get a chance to travel like to call ourselves ATM’s: 
Agents in Time and Motion
.  If such a thing as Time exists at all.  And it’s all unpaid work ,of course, at the BCA.  Free Citizen’s Advice.”

Francis Simpkins suddenly remembered the patent pending inside the watch.

“I’m an academico myself, really,” sighed Garimondo, “although more actively involved in current affairs than Chronos now, and most interested in France’s history.”

“You mean Francis’s?” corrected Spilling again, and Garimondo frowned.  He looked a little confused.

“Ah, yes.  Simpkins.”

Francis Simpkins felt rather nervous.

“The Revolution,” said Boffin though, “we shan’t know it’s real effects these three hundred years.”

“You’re just secret agents too then,” cried Spike angrily though, “Time Spies…of Terror, watching us, like horrid...”

“Of Terror?  ” smiled Garimondo, “Hardly fair, Nellie Bonespair.  Although terror faces you all now, it’s true, so we must be on the look out.  When it’s on the outside though, perhaps it starts gets
inside
too.  You must watch for that, always.”

Spike shivered and remembered the blood soaked Square.

“You’re still spying though,” said Nellie rather angrily, remembering what she had felt when she had had to say her prayers.

“Watching, child.  But when I’m not acting for The Special Tribunal,” said Garimondo, “or teaching at the University, I prefer to think of myself as rather skilled in science, and mending machines.”

Spilling and Boffin both looked at Garimondo rather sceptically, on their Arial platform, but Francis was delighted at this talk.

“Then us,” he cried, “We’re travelling in t-t-t-time too.”

“No, no,” said Spilling immediately, “We think the Club’s doing very well indeed, in your own time, although
you
may well have been born out of it.  So many of
you
are.”

“You?” said Hal.

“The Bureau has not taken a position yet,” interrupted Boffin, although Spike was sure they were talking about children, “but you may find, with that Chronometer, that the future has a strange way of coming to you, early.”

“Coming to us?” said Henry.

 “It depends on what you
do
in the revolutionary historic maelstrom.  The Cloudburst. 
They
only occur at certain momentous times in your strange history.  Really Revolutionary times, just like now.  Or if you cross the strings.”

“Strings?” said Spike.

“Do?” said Henry though, clasping hold of one of the balloon’s ropes tightly.

“Ever seen a stone dropped in a pond, Henry Bonespair?” said Garimondo, “The ripples?  Everything you do affects the future, and so the time strings.  If you reverse them, as that watch can, sometimes, it is only logical that the future starts affecting you too.  It’s a very remarkable machine, Mad Harrison made.”

Henry Bonespair thought of that terrible electrical storm and those strange spirals of weaving water and light, curling out of the sea, as they had crossed the Channel to France. 

Is that what Garimondo meant by strings?

“Some theorists believe strings into the past too,” said Boffin, clearly trying to compete with his boss Garimondo, “and even what you call ghosts.”

“Time,” cried Francis though, “you’ve made Time itself stop.  That’s why we’re…”

“Nonsense, Snipkins,” snapped Boffin, “Stay sharp, boy.  It’s the machine, the watch, not us, and in all this mayhem, we’re now really moving at fantastic speed.  That’s why everything else, relative to you, seems to be…”

“Standing still,” whispered Francis, looking around owlishly. 

Count Armande noticed the musket ball had inched just a tiny bit closer to his nose.

“Exacto Mundo,” said Garimondo.

“It
is
magic,” gulped Spike.

“That’s just a classification, child,” snapped Boffin, rather scornfully, “a word, like everything else, although of course it is.  Don’t you believe in magic anymore? But do you want Counsel, or not? There must be Justice, and proper, professional advocacy.”