A Trail Through Time (The Chronicles of St Mary's #4)

by Jodi Taylor

I’ve never had a high opinion of the human race and I’m not wrong. Just look at us. We’ve been given this gift. This wonderful gift. Alone of every species on the planet, we’re able to see our own past. To build on our triumphs. To learn from our mistakes.

To discover at first hand, exactly how we arrived where we are today. And instead of regarding it as the wonderful gift it is, we’d tried to use it for nothing more productive than rehashing old conflicts.

I personally think humans have got about as far as we can go. We’re wrecking the planet. We’re never short of good reasons to massacre each other. Wrong god. Wrong race. Wrong colour. Wrong sex. I’m actually quite surprised a thoroughly pissed-off History hasn’t waved a flaming sword and we’re all back in caves in the snow, chewing on half-cooked mammoth. And even that’s more than we deserve. No wonder we still can’t get to Mars. I suspect the Universe is making damned sure we don’t get the chan...

‘So what goes wrong?’ ‘From monitoring, it’s only a small step to complete control.

Emergency extraction is – not surprisingly – for emergencies. When getting out quickly is more important than getting out safely. Because it hurts. You declare an emergency and the pod hurls you away from the current catastrophe at nose-bleeding

speed. Shortly followed by bone-breaking impact. Believe it or not, there’s the odd historian who’s never, ever, had to call for emergency extraction. I, on the other hand, am losing count of the number of times it has happened to me. And they never get any easier.

It was all a bit like Glastonbury with ice and snow instead of mud. And even fewer toilets.

‘No prostitutes,’ I said. ‘Of course not. Only a madman would get his todger out on a

night like this. It would snap off in his hand.’

Maybe this was the world that had suffered the dreadful Frost Fair Catastrophe of 1683 when the ice had

given way and the entire fair fell into the Thames with massive loss of life.

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘No one’s impugning your masculinity. All Egyptians wear make-up. Especially on the eyes. It wards off evil spirits and infections. You’ll attract far more attention without it, believe me. Of course, for a complete picture, we should be shaving our heads.’

everyone knows if you ignore

persistent, throbbing pain then it goes away. Like toothache. And small children. And overdrafts.

Wealthy Egyptians, standing under sunshades manhandled by sweating slaves, wore wonderful golden jewellery, heavy with turquoise and lapis lazuli. Even the poorer people wore cheap beads and feathers. Their appearance was very important to them. Rich and poor alike always wanted to present themselves as young and

beautiful, which made Akhenaten’s strange depictions of himself even more baffling. I couldn’t wait to see how accurate they were.

But you don’t do that. You slide, insinuate yourself, smile at your neighbours, ease yourself along, and watch the ceremony and

you don’t ever, ever do anything hasty that could attract attention, because that could be fatal.

what looked like every crocodile in Upper Egypt rose slowly to the surface, peered at us over its nostrils, and decided it was lunchtime. The Nile crocodile. An apex predator. Aggressive. Powerful. Huge. Old males can be anything up to eighteen feet in length. They eat pretty well everything. They’re agile and they can run. Actually, they can lift themselves up and gallop. There’s no point

in fleeing because they’ll chase you down. People are terrified of them and rightly so. They spend their days sunning on the mudflats, apparently in some sort of coma, until a person or an animal comes down to drink and then one or more will erupt from the water and drag them under. In times of stress, male crocodiles can produce infrasonic sounds so powerful that they cause the water to vibrate and that was what I was looking at now. Vibrating water. But on this occasion, it wasn’t the crocodiles. The idiot Time Police had fired their sonic weapons – on wide-beam, judging by the great expanse of dancing water.

a worryingly large number were starting to converge on our particular muddy bank.

They were huge and armoured, and, when they’re threatened, they turn their heads and cough.

I expected to be seized and dragged down into the muddy water because crocs don’t bite you in half and eat you straight away. They drag you underwater, roll you over and over and over until you drown, or all your bones break and your limbs drop off, and then they wedge you under a rock or log until you’re ripe and ready. Then they eat you.

Norsewomen were as ferocious as their men and with the state of us at the moment, a Viking six year old could probably take us with one hand behind her back. We’d taken every precaution. We were camouflaged and the proximity alerts were set. It was now up to

I spent a few minutes thinking about this job Mrs Partridge had sent me to do. I had absolutely no clues about that. For all I knew, it was something important in Thebes and I’d been so busy yanking Leon out of irrigation ditches that I’d missed it.

We can be tracked.

‘My pod is a Faraday cage. That’s why the tag can’t be picked up until we leave the pod. Or until we open the door.’

‘The plan can’t fail,’ I said, ignoring such minor inconveniences as an unreliable pod, an erupting volcano, the omnipresent Time Police, a dying city, and a panicking population. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

‘I will be forever grateful, eternally thankful that you did that. The door has closed now. I know you can’t ever go back, but – if you will let me – I will devote the rest of my life to making sure that you never, ever, for one moment, regret it.’ For some moments, there are no words.

No one paid me the slightest attention. In this world, as in any other, people don’t see the bizarrely dressed, the odd ones who live outside normal society. Nobody would catch my eye in case I demanded money. I told myself I was as good as invisible.

Helen Foster appeared with her emergency medical team, shouted ‘What the fu …?’ got a swan in her face, and tumbled backwards over a low wall. I was face down on the console, laughing.

Nothing goes away. It all lies dormant, waits until you’re

too sick to contain it any longer, and then it explodes in unstoppable thoughts and pictures. Every detail is presented for inspection. Every memory. Every fear. That’s the problem with locking things away – they never get used. So when they do finally burst forth, every tiny, fear-enhanced fact is perfectly remembered. All the colours are bright and shiny. Every picture is sharp and detailed. As if it happened only last week. Or yesterday.

Do not waste the time given you in fretting over events you cannot control. If you only let him, God will amend all. Have just a little faith.’

History glitters with the tales of men and women who, with no thought of reward or glory, make their stand and quietly do their duty.

Flour dust is one of the most explosive substances around. More explosive even than coal dust.

‘Getting things done at St Mary’s is a bit like elephants mating,’ explained Peterson. A remark that caused some mystification. ‘You know – there’s frantic activity at high level. There’s screaming and stamping. A lot of dust is raised. Nothing happens for two years and then you’re crushed by the result.’