Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #1)

by Jodi Taylor

‘You peed on me,’ I said indignantly, to hide the sickness sweeping over me. ‘Get over it. I peed on me as well,’

male historians wear a kind of shaggy-sheep look appropriate to any age. Peterson's made him look like an unkempt hearthrug,

He harboured a passion for Doctor Foster (or death wish possibly)

They seconded us to a nearby army hospital for three weeks as part of the training; one week's theatre training, one week on the wards, and one week in their A & E, which consisted mostly of burns, fractures, crush injuries, drunken brawls, and on one never to be forgotten night, midwifery.

The smell was distinctive. The tang of wood smoke and horses. Actually, I’ve never been anywhere in the past that didn’t stink of horses.

‘By the latrines!’ ‘It's the romance in my soul. See you.’

I opened my mouth to say, ‘I really don’t feel so good,’ and instead threw up violently all down his front. He was covered in it. There was another silence and then Kal grinned wickedly and said, ‘Not so clean now, are you?’ We all laughed.

‘Is it safe to be this close? I hear you’ve developed your own defence mechanism.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said ruefully. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.’

I don’t know if anyone said anything to Dr Bairstow, but Sussman and Kal never went on another assignment together again.

‘Your personal details update form … Mr Sussman; you are not a Jedi Knight. Kindly amend the details in Box 3 – Religion. Ditto Mr Markham, Mr Peterson, Miss Maxwell, Mr Dieter, and Miss Black. ‘Miss Maxwell, Box 5. You are not five feet seven inches tall and never will be. Live with it and correct your paperwork. ‘Mr Markham, the box marked “Sex” is not an invitation. Please amend the details and apologise to Mrs Partridge. ‘Mr Dieter, the claims made in the box marked “Other Interests” are physically impossible and, in most of the civilised world, illegal. You also render yourself liable to prosecution for misuse of government property. Amend. ‘Miss Black, there are two Ps in oppressed and only one N in minority. You are neither. Delete.

The fact that if you’ve never done a UK census you wouldn’t get why they’d out Jedi Knight in the first place just makes it ten times funnier.

Time is important in our organisation. If you can’t even get to an appointment in your own building on time, they argue, you’re not going to have much luck trying to find the Battle of Hastings.

‘Are you interested?’ I could almost hear my own excitement. I looked at Sussman's flushed face. He grinned at me. ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘We will climb over the cold, dead bodies of our colleagues for this one.’

I jumped onto a bench, lifted my head to the grey sky and shouted ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ and began to sing, ‘We are the champions’ and play air guitar. Sussman cartwheeled off down the path and back again, whooping incoherently. I jumped off the bench, met him as he straightened up, and the two of us hugged, jumping up and down together until we got tangled up and fell over. I was on the bottom, still shouting ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ as Chief Farrell came around the corner. The ground never opens up and swallows you when you need it to.

‘What do you do for large celebrations?’ ‘Oh, we really let rip for those, Chief. This is only a 2.5 on the Richter Scale.’

‘Oh, come on, Kal, look at our specialties. I’m early Byzantine and Max doesn’t even get out of bed for anything after the Peloponnesian Wars.’

Peterson, the sensible one (and imagine a group where Peterson is the sensible one), said quietly, ‘But have you thought? It's so far back.’

Look on the bright side; we’re far more likely to be eaten by the indigenous fauna than lost in time.’

And from what I could remember, the period was seismically active, so we could add being enveloped in pyroclastic flows to our list of fun ways to die.

‘Well, I’m just saying, I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.’ ‘You haven’t got a sister and if you did she’d slap you senseless if you tried any of that crap on her, so give it a rest.’

and saved Sussman's life when he told Kal her bum looked big in a bustle.

We updated our field medic skills and I began to talk to the furniture.

There were very few photos of me in this world and even fewer in which I didn’t look either drunk or criminally insane

‘Temperatures are high, but not bad. Humidity is off the charts. Hope you’ve got your rot-proof knickers on.

Of course, I could just shoot him.

If it turned into a typical Cretaceous downpour I’d either be washed away or maybe drown. How can you possibly drown half way up a mountain? Maybe I should be looking at office jobs again.

And I sprayed his penis as well, on the grounds that if he hadn’t had it out and been waving it around then it wouldn’t have come to any harm.

‘Just wood for a fire.’ ‘A fire? It's warm. Even I’m warm.’ ‘To cook lunch.’ ‘We have to cook lunch?’ ‘No, first we have to catch lunch.’ I shifted uneasily. ‘Is there another problem?’ ‘I’ve just come from a time when lunch catches me.’ ‘Well, this is your chance for revenge.’

and half of me (presumably the half that can’t add up) didn’t want to see her because I knew she would blame me for Sussman.

If this place caught fire, not only were they all doomed, but two of St Mary's finest were going up in flames as well. Better than going down in flames, I suppose.

A hundred arguments broke out around the hall as cherished theories were mercilessly amended, embellished, or discarded.

I watched in amused horror as a great dinosaur dollop apparently enveloped a group of venerable academics arguing in the corner. ‘Oh, I say,’ murmured the Chancellor. ‘All over the Senior Faculty!’ ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘No, no, they’ve been trying to do that to me for years. Jolly well done.’ ‘Always happy to oblige, ma’am.’

‘Would you like me to drive for a bit?’ ‘No. I choose life.’ ‘That's a little bit unkind, Chief.’ ‘Miss Maxwell, I have every respect for your many abilities. You are a talented and passionate historian, a skilful artist, and a fierce and loyal friend. You are warm, compassionate, smart, funny, and incredibly sexy. You are also the world's worst driver.

God knows how you passed your driving test. I can only assume the examiner was so dazzled by your beauty that he ticked the “pass” box before you even put the keys in the ignition.’

He nodded, his eyes on the road. ‘And if you pull over now, I’ll give you the blow-job of a lifetime.’ We hit a tree. The only sound was the ticking engine. I got out to survey the damage. ‘Well, for crying out loud, Chief!’

‘Do I look all right?’ ‘Not in any way. You look wanton and dishevelled and knickerless and outrageously desirable. I’m a lost man.’

‘You crashed the Boss's Bentley, Max. I’d develop shock if I were you; and severe internal injuries. It's the only thing that will save you.’

‘A deer? At four o’clock in the afternoon?’ ‘It was confused,’ I offered. ‘It's not the only one. Did you bang your head?’ ‘Not my head, no.’

No sign of the Boss. He would be off somewhere organising our P45s.

‘I need you to answer this question honestly and completely. It's important. This has serious implications.’ I felt uneasy. ‘What?’ She looked at me sternly. ‘Have you just had intercourse?’ I threw caution to the winds. ‘Not so much intercourse as such. More like full-blown, in your face, head-banging, shrieking, shuddering, mind-blowing sex that's probably illegal in many parts of the known world. Why? Are there medical implications?’ ‘Oh, no, nothing to do with that. It's just there's an awful lot of money changing hands in this building even as we speak and I want to be sure I get mine off Peterson.’

This was going to re-ignite at any minute and at any minute the Boss could walk in and after Bentley Trauma he wouldn’t be in the best of moods.

‘Well, let's just have a guess what's going on here, shall we? Some prat told the “How do you raise the intelligence level of a pod? Take out the historian,” joke. And then some smart arse said, “How many techies does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but you need a lot of light bulbs!” and someone else didn’t find that funny and then some other joker showed his ID to the dog rather than the security guy because everyone knows the dog's the one with the brains and the next thing is you’re all kicking seven shades of shit out of each other.’

I wanted to distract them with the presentation and historians are easily distracted. Attention span of a – what was I saying?

But everything seemed quiet. Nothing large appeared within biting distance.

And another thought – was this what Sussman had been protecting? We were at the unexplored northern end. Maybe it was no coincidence he attacked me on that very day. What was his role in all this?

Apparently, the shock was such that one of our decorative stone pineapples fell from its plinth and crashed onto the front steps beneath, narrowly missing our caretaker, Mr Strong, who had stepped outside for a crafty fag.

‘Jesus,’ whispered Dieter, ‘I am never going anywhere with you again, Max. Ever. I’m not even using the dining room if you’re there. You’re a fucking disaster! ‘

He grinned at me. I grinned back. Always nice to see someone who's even more of a disaster magnet than I am.

They couldn’t hear over the music and had no night vision built up should anything nasty emerge out of the dark. Like us, for instance.

It seemed very possible we would all be killed by idiots rather than villains, which would be typical.

Evans ran into a building in the dark and knocked himself silly, although it's hard to tell.’