To Say Nothing of the Dog (62 page)

“Separated?” she said, tying on the mask.

“Wind this round your right hand,” I ordered. “The door handles may be hot. The drop’s fifty-eight steps up, not counting the floor of the tower.”

I wrapped my hand in the remaining strip. “Whatever happens, keep going. Ready?”

She nodded, her greenish-brown eyes wide above the mask.

“Get behind me,” I said. I cautiously opened the right side of the door a crack. No flame roared out, only a billow of bronze-colored smoke. I reared back from it and then looked inside.

Things weren’t as bad as I’d been afraid they might be. The east end of the church was obscured by smoke and flames, but the smoke was still thin enough at this end to be able to see through, and it looked like this part of the roof was still holding. The windows, except for one in the Smiths’ Chapel, had been blown out, and the floor was covered with shards of red and blue glass.

“Watch out for the glass.” I pushed Verity ahead of me. “Take a deep breath and go! I’m right behind you,” I said and opened the door all the way.

She took off running, with me right behind her, flinching away from the heat. She reached the door and yanked it open.

“The door to the tower’s to your left!” I shouted, though she couldn’t possibly have heard me above the furious roar of the fire.

She stopped, holding the door open.

“Go up!” I shouted. “Don’t wait for me!” and started to sprint the last few yards. “Go up!”

There was a rumble, and I turned and looked toward the sanctuary, thinking one of the clerestory arches was collapsing. There was a deafening roar, and the window in the Smiths’ Chapel shattered in a spray of sparkling fragments.

I ducked, shielding my face with my arm, thinking in the instant before it knocked me to my knees, “It’s a high explosive. But that’s impossible. The cathedral didn’t sustain any direct hits?’

It felt like a direct hit. The blast rocked the cathedral and lit it with a blinding white light.

I staggered up off my knees, and then stopped, staring out across the nave. The force had knocked the cathedral momentarily clear of smoke, and in the garish white afterlight I could see everything: the statue above the pulpit engulfed in flames, its hand raised like a drowning man’s; the stalls in the children’s chapel, their irreplaceable misereres burning with a queer yellow light; the altar in the Cappers’ Chapel. And the parclose screen in front of the Smiths’ Chapel.

“Ned!”

I started toward it. I only got a few steps. The cathedral shook, and a burning beam came crashing down in front of the Smiths’ Chapel, falling across the pews.

“Ned!” Verity cried desperately. “Ned!”

Another beam, no doubt reinforced with a steel girder by J.O. Scott, crashed down across the first, sending up a blackish swell of smoke that cut off the whole north side of the church from view.

It didn’t matter. I had already seen enough.

I flung myself through the door and through the tower door and up the firelit stairs, wondering what on earth I was going to say to Lady Schrapnell. In that one bright bomb-lit instant I had seen everything: the brasses on the walls, the polished eagle on the lectern, the blackening pillars. And in the north aisle, in front of the parclose screen, the empty wrought-iron flower stand.

It had been removed for safekeeping, after all. Or donated as scrap. Or sold at a jumble sale.

“Ned!” Verity shouted. “Hurry! The net’s opening!”

Lady Schrapnell had been wrong. The bishop’s bird stump wasn’t there.

“
No,”said Harris,“ if you want rest and change, you can’t beat a sea trip.”

Three men in a boat

Jerome K. Jerome

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F I V E

Back in the Tower—The Cask of Amontillado—In the Scullery, the Kitchen, the Stables, and Trouble—Jane Is Completely Incomprehensible—The Prisoner of Zenda—A Swoon, Not Mrs. Mering This Time—Terence’s New Understanding of Poetry—A Letter—A Surprise—One Last Swoon, Involving Furniture—An Even Bigger Surprise

Third time is not necessarily a charm. The net shimmered, and we were in pitch-blackness again. The din had disappeared, though there was still a strong smell of smoke. It was at least twenty degrees cooler. I took one arm away from around Verity and cautiously felt to the side. I touched stone.

“Don’t move,” I said. “I know where we are. I was here before. It’s Coventry’s belltower. In 1395.”

“Nonsense,” Verity said, starting up the steps. “It’s the Merings’ wine cellar.”

She opened the door two steps above us a crack, and light filtered in, revealing wooden steps and racks of cobwebbed bottles below.

“It’s daylight,” she whispered. She opened the door a little wider and stuck her head out, looking both ways. “This passage opens off the kitchen. Let’s hope it’s still the sixteenth.”

“Let’s hope it’s still 1888,” I said.

She peeked out again. “What do you think we should do? Should we try to get out to the drop?”

I shook my head. “There’s no telling where we’d end up. Or whether we could get back.” I looked at her ragged, soot-streaked white dress. “You need to get out of those clothes. Especially the raincoat, which is circa 2057. Give it to me.”

She shrugged out of it.

“Can you get up to your room without being seen?”

She nodded. “I’ll take the back stairs.”

“I’ll go try to ascertain our space-time location. I’ll meet you in the library in a quarter of an hour, and we’ll go from there.”

She handed me the raincoat. “What if we’ve been gone a week? Or a month? Or five years?”

“We’ll claim we’ve been on the Other Side,” I said, but she didn’t laugh.

She said bleakly, “What if Tossie and Terence are already married?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said. “Or fall in.”

She smiled back at me, one of those heart-turning smiles no amount of rest was ever going to render me immune to. “Thank you for coming to find me,” she said.

“At your service, miss,” I said. “Go put on a clean dress.”

She nodded. “Wait a few minutes so we won’t be seen together.”

She opened the door and slid out, and I realized suddenly I hadn’t told her what I’d gone all the way to the Fourteenth Century and back to tell her about.

“I found out how Tossie’s diary—” I started, but she was already down the corridor and starting up the back stairs.

I peeled off the coveralls. My coat and trousers had been fairly well protected by them, but my hands, and presumably my face, were a mess. I wiped them on the lining of the coveralls, wishing wine cellars came equipped with mirrors. Then I rolled the coveralls into a bundle with the raincoat, and jammed them far back behind a rack of claret.

I took a cautious look and went out into the passage. There were four doors along it, one of which had to lead to the outside. The last one was covered in green baize, which meant it led to the main part of the house. I opened the first.

The scullery. It was full of Cinderella-like stacks of dirty dishes and piles of pots, and a row of unpolished shoes. The shoes had to mean it was after bedtime and before the family was up, which was good—it meant Verity wouldn’t run into anyone on her way to her bedroom—but on second thought, it didn’t make any sense. That first night, when I sneaked Cyril back to the stable, I had nearly run into Baine putting the polished shoes outside the doors, and it had still been dark out. And he hadn’t collected them till after everyone had gone to bed. But it was clearly morning. Sun was streaming in on the pots and pans.

There was no newspaper and nothing else that might give a clue to our space-time location.

One of the pots had a copper bottom. I peered into it. There was a large smear of soot on my cheek and across my mustache. I pulled out my handkerchief, spit on it, dabbed at my face, smoothed my hair, and went back out into the passage, calculating. If this was the scullery, the next door must be the kitchen, and the one after that the door to the outside.

Wrong. It was the kitchen, and Jane and the cook were in it, whispering together in the corner. They moved apart guiltily. The cook went over to an enormous black stove and began stirring something briskly, and Jane put a piece of bread on a toasting fork and held it over the fire.

“Where’s Baine?” I said.

Jane jumped about a foot. The bread fell off the toasting fork and into the ashes, flaring up brightly.

“What?” she said, holding the toasting fork in front of her like a rapier.

“Baine,” I repeated. “I need to speak with him. Is he in the breakfast room?”

“No,” she said frightenedly. “I swear by the Blessed Mother, I don’t know where he is, sorr. He didn’t tell us anything. You don’t think the mistress will dismiss us, do you?”

“Dismiss you?” I said, bewildered. “Why? What have you done?”

“Nothing. But she’ll say we must have known all about it, what with gossiping in the servants’ hall and all that,” she said, waving the toasting fork for emphasis. “That’s what happened to my sister Margaret when young Mr. Val run off with Rose the scullery maid. Mrs. Abbott sacked the whole lot.”

I took the toasting fork away from her. “Known all about what?”

“Never even guessed,” the cook said from the stove. “All those fine airs and giving orders. It just goes to show you.”

This wasn’t getting anywhere, and I was running out of time. I decided to try the direct approach. “What time is it?” I asked.

Jane looked frightened all over again.

“Nine o’clock,” the cook said, consulting a watch pinned to her bosom.

“Nine o’clock, and I’ve got to be taking it up to them,” Jane said and burst into tears. “He said not to be taking it up till the morning post’d come, so as to give them enough time, and it’s always here by nine o’clock.” She wiped her eyes on the tail of her apron and straightened, steeling herself. “I’d best be going up and see if it’s been.”

I was going to ask, “Take what up?” but was afraid it would bring on a fresh round of tears and incoherencies. And there was no telling what the response might be if I asked them what
day
it was. “Tell Baine to bring me a copy of the
Times.
I’ll be in the library,” I said, and went outside.

At least it was still summer, and, on closer inspection, June. The roses were still in bloom, and the peonies, destined to serve as prototypes for countless penwipers, were still just coming out. As was Colonel Mering, carrying a burlap sack toward the fishpond. As oblivious and absorbed with his goldfish as he very likely was, I still didn’t want to have an encounter with him until I knew how much time had elapsed.

Accordingly, I ducked around the side of the house. I’d go round to the groom’s door, through the stable, and from there to the French doors and the parlor. I slipped in the groom’s door. And nearly tripped over Cyril. He was lying on a burlap sack with his chin on his paws.

“You wouldn’t happen to know the time, would you?” I said. “And the date?”

And here was another sign that something was wrong. Cyril didn’t get up. He simply raised his head, looked at me with an expression like the Prisoner of Zenda, and lay it back down again.

“What is it, Cyril? What’s wrong?” I said, and reached to tug on his collar. “Are you ill?” And saw the chain.

“Good Lord,” I said to him. “Terence hasn’t
married
her, has he?”

Cyril continued to gaze hopelessly at me. I unhooked the chain. “Come along, Cyril,” I said. “We’ll go straighten this out.”

He staggered to his feet and trotted after me resignedly. I went out of the stables and around to the front of the house to find Terence. He was down at the Merings’ dock, sitting in the boat and staring at the river, his head sunk nearly as low as Cyril’s had been when he’d been left to guard the boat.

“What are you doing out here?” I said.

He looked up dully. “ ‘The mirror crack’d from side to side,’ ” he said. “ ‘Out flew the web and floated wide,’ ” which didn’t exactly clarify things.

“Cyril was chained up in the stable,” I said to him.

“I know,” Terence said without moving his gaze. “Mrs. Mering caught me sneaking him upstairs last night.”

So at least a full day and night had passed since our departure, and I’d better think of an explanation for my absence quickly before Terence asked me where I’d been.

But he simply went on gazing out at the river. “He was right, you know. About how it happens.”

“How what happens?”

“Fate,” he said bitterly.

“Cyril was
chained
up,” I said.

“He’s got to become accustomed to being in the stable,” he said dully. “Tossie doesn’t approve of animals in the house.”

“Animals?”
I said. “This is Cyril we’re talking about. And what about Princess Arjumand?
She
sleeps on the pillows.”

“I wonder if she woke up that morning, happy as a lark, no idea her doom was going to come upon her.”

“Who?” I said. “Princess Arjumand?”

“I hadn’t a clue, you know, even when we were pulling into the station. Professor Peddick was talking about Alexander the Great and the battle of Issus, something about the decisive moment and everything depending on it, and I’d no idea.”

“You got Professor Peddick safely back to Oxford, didn’t you?” I said, suddenly worried. “He didn’t get off the train to go look for gravel bottoms?”

“No,” he said. “I delivered him into the arms of his loved ones. Into the arms of his loved ones,” he repeated anguishedly. “And just in time. Professor Overforce was about to deliver his funeral oration.”

“What did he say?”

“He fainted dead away,” Terence said, “and when he came to, he flung himself at Professor Peddick’s knees, babbling about how he’d never have forgiven himself if he’d drowned and how he’d seen the error of his ways, how Professor Peddick was right, a single thoughtless action could change the course of history and he intended to go straight home and tell Darwin not to jump out of trees anymore. And yesterday he announced he was withdrawing his candidacy for the Haviland Chair in favor of Professor Peddick.”