A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (150 page)

“Sacre bleu!”
shrieked a Napoleon, breaking off the attack.
“Le Grand Nez! Avancez, mes amis! Mort aux ennemis de la République!”

“Go!” I shouted to Bowden, who, despite having been struck a glancing blow by a Napoleon, was still just about conscious. The car juddered away, and I grabbed the steering wheel to avoid a band of twenty or so Wellingtons of varying shabbiness who were streaming past the car in their haste to dispose of Napoleons.

“Up, guards, and at them!” I heard a Wellington shout as we gathered speed down the road, past a smoking artillery piece and the abandoned cars we had seen on the way in. Within a few minutes, we were clear of the wood and the battling factions, and Bowden slowed down.

“Everyone okay?”

Although not unscathed, they all answered in the affirmative. Millon was still ashen, and I took Bowden's gun off him just in case. Stig had a bruise coming up on his cheek, and I had several cuts on my face from the glass.

“Mr. Shgakespeafe,” I asked, “are you okay?”

“Look about you,” he said grimly. “Security gives way to conspiracy.”

We drove to the gates, out of Area 21 and through the darkening evening sky to the Welsh border and home.

 

 

 

 

 

I
awoke and gazed at Landen in the early-morning light that had started to creep around the bedroom. He was snoring ever so softly, and I gave him a long hug before I got up, wrapped myself in a dressing gown and tiptoed past Friday's room on my way downstairs to make some coffee. I walked into Landen's study as I waited for the kettle to boil, sat down at the piano and played a very quiet chord. The sun crept above the roof of the house across the way at that precise moment and cast a finger of orange light across the room. I heard the kettle click off and returned to the kitchen to make the coffee. As I poured the hot water on the grounds, there was a small wail from upstairs. I paused to see if another would follow it. A single wail might be only a stirring, and Friday could be left alone. Two wails or more would be Hungry Boy, eager for a gallon or two of porridge. There was a second wail ten seconds later, and I was just about to go and get him when I heard a thump and a scraping as Landen pulled on his leg and then walked along the corridor to Friday's room. There were more footsteps as he returned to his room, then silence. I relaxed, took a sip of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, deep in thought.

The SuperHoop was tomorrow and I had my team—the question was, would it make a difference? There was a chance we might find a copy of
At Long Last Lust,
too—but I wasn't counting on this, either. Of equal chance and equal risk of failure was Shgakespeafe's being able to unravel
The Merry Wives of Elsinore,
and Mycroft's coming up with an Ovi-negator at short notice. But none of these pressing matters was foremost in my mind: most important to me was that at eleven o'clock this morning Cindy would try to kill me for the third and final time. She would fail, and she would die. I thought of Spike and Betty and picked up the phone. I figured he'd be a heavy sleeper, and I was right—Cindy answered the phone.

“It's Thursday.”

“This is professionally very unethical,” said Cindy in a sleepy voice. “What's the time?”

“Half six. Listen, I rang to suggest that it'd be a good idea if you stayed at home today and didn't go to work.”

There was a pause. “I can't do that,” she said at last. “I've arranged child care and everything. But there's nothing to stop you getting out of town and never returning.”

“This is my town, too, Cindy.”

“Leave now, or the Next family crypt will be up for a dusting.”

“I won't do that.”

“Then,” replied Cindy with a sigh, “we've got nothing else to discuss. I'll see you later—although I doubt you'll see me.”

The phone went dead, and I gently replaced the receiver. I felt sick. The wife of a good friend would die, and it didn't feel good.

“What's the matter?” said a voice close at hand. “You seem upset.”

It was Mrs. Tiggy-winkle.

“No,” I replied, “everything's just as it should be. Thanks for dropping round; I've found us a William Shakespeare. He's not the original, but close enough for our purposes. He's in this cupboard.”

I opened the cupboard door, and a very startled Shgakespeafe looked up from where he'd been scribbling by the light of a candle end he had stuck upon his head. The wax had begun to run down his face, but he didn't seem to mind.

“Mr. Shgakespeafe, this is the hedgehog I was telling you about.”

He shut his notebook and stared at Mrs. Tiggy-winkle. He wasn't the slightest bit afraid or surprised—after the abominations he'd dodged on an almost daily basis in Area 21, I suspect a six-foot-high hedgehog was something of a relief.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle curtsied gracefully. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Shgakespeafe,” she said politely. “Will you come with me, please?”

 

“Who was that?” Landen called out as he walked downstairs a little later.

“It was Mrs. Tiggy-winkle picking up a William Shakespeare clone in order to save
Hamlet
from permanent destruction.”

“You can't ever be serious, can you?” he laughed as he gave me a hug. I had smuggled Shgakespeafe into the house without Landen's seeing. I know you're meant to be honest and truthful to your spouse, but I thought there might be a limit, and if there was, I didn't want to reach it too soon.

Friday came down to breakfast ten minutes later. He looked tousled, sleepy and a bit grumpy.

“Quis nostrud laboris,” he moaned. “Nisi ut aliquip ex consequat.”

I gave him some toast and rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs for my bulletproof vest. All my stuff was now back in Landen's house as if I had never moved out. Sideslips are confusing, but you can get used to almost anything.

“Why are you wearing a bulletproof vest?”

It was Landen. Drat. I should have put it on at the station.

“What bulletproof vest?”

“The one you're trying to put on.”

“Oh,
that
one. No reason. Listen, if Friday gets hungry you can always give him a snack. He likes bananas—you may have to buy some more, and if a gorilla calls, it's only that Mrs. Bradshaw I was telling you about.”

“Don't change the subject. How can you go to work wearing a vest for ‘no reason'?”

“It's a precaution.”

“Insurance is a precaution. A vest means you're taking unnecessary risks.”

“I'd be taking a bigger one without it.”

“What's going on, Thursday?”

I waved a hand vaguely in the air and tried to make light of it. “Just an assassin. A small one. Barely worth thinking about.”

“Which one?”

“I can't remember. Window . . .
something.
”

“The Windowmaker? A contract with her and stick to reading short stories? Sixty-seven known victims?”

“Sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring.”

“That's not important.
Why didn't you tell me?
”

“I . . . I . . . didn't want you to worry.”

He rubbed his face with his hands and stared at me for a moment, then sighed deeply. “This is the Thursday Next I married, isn't it?”

I nodded my head.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. “Will you be careful?” he whispered in my ear.

“I'm always careful.”

“No,
really
careful. The sort of careful that you should be when you have a husband and son who'd be supremely pissed off if they were to lose you?”

“Ah,” I whispered back, “
that
sort of careful. Yes, I will.”

We kissed and I Velcroed up the vest, put my shirt over the top of it and my shoulder holster on top of this. I kissed Friday and told him to be good, then kissed Landen again.

“I'll see you this evening,” I told him, “and that's a promise.”

 

I drove to Wanborough to find Joffy. He was officiating at a GSD civil-union ceremony, and I had to wait in the back of the temple until he had finished. I had some time before I had to deal with Cindy, and looking more closely into St. Zvlkx seemed like a good way to fill it. Millon's idea that Zvlkx wasn't a seer but a rogue member of the ChronoGuard involved in some sort of timecrime seemed, on the face of it, unlikely. You couldn't hide from the ChronoGuard. They would
always
find you. Perhaps not here and now, but then and there—when you least expected it. Long before you even
thought
about doing something wrong. Plus, the ChronoGuard left no trace. With the perpetrator gone, then the timecrime never happened either. Very neat, very clever. But with the historical record so closely scrutinized and the ChronoGuard itself giving Zvlkx the seal of approval, how on earth did Zvlkx—if he
was
a fake—get around the system?

“Hello, Doofus!” said Joffy as the happy couple kissed outside the temple to a shower of confetti. “What brings you here?”

“St. Zvlkx—where is he?”

“He got the bus into Swindon this morning. Why?”

I outlined my suspicions.

“Zvlkx a rogue member of the ChronoGuard? But why? What's he up to? Why risk permanent eradication for dubious fame as a thirteenth-century seer?”

“How much did he get from the Toast Marketing Board?”

“Twenty-five grand.”

“Hardly a fortune. Can we look in his room?”

“Outrageous!” replied Joffy. “I would be guilty of a shameful breach of trust if I were to allow a room search in his absence. I have a spare key here.”

 

Zvlkx's room was much as you would suppose a monk's cell to be. Spartan in the extreme. He slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and had only a table and chair as furniture. On the table was a Bible. It was only after we started searching that we found a CD Walkman under the mattress, along with a few copies of
Big & Bouncy
and
Fast Horse
.

“A betting man?” I asked.

“Drinking, betting, smoking, wenching—he did it all.”

“The magazines show he can read English, too. What are you looking for, Joff?”

Joffy had been opening the drawers of his desk and looking under the pillow.

“His Book of Revealments. He usually hides it here.”

“So! You've searched his room before. Suspicious?”

Joffy looked sheepish. “I'm afraid so. His behavior is less like a saint's and more like . . . well, a cheap vulgarian's—when I translate, I have to make certain . . .
adjustments.
”

I pulled out his desk drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the bottom was an envelope. “Bingo!”

It contained a single one-way Gravitube ticket all the way to Bali. Joffy raised his eyebrows, and we exchanged nervous glances. Zvlkx was definitely up to something.

 

Joffy accompanied me into Swindon, and we drove up and down the streets trying to find the wayward saint. We visited the site of his old cathedral at Tesco's but couldn't find him, so went on a circuit that took in the law courts, the SpecOps Building and the theater before driving past the university and down Commercial Road. Joffy spotted him outside Pete & Dave's, lumbering up the street.

“There!”

“I see him.”

We abandoned the car and trotted to keep up with the scruffy figure dressed in only a blanket. It was just bad luck that he glanced furtively behind and spotted us. He darted across the street. I don't know whether his lank and uncut hair had got in his eyes or he had forgotten about traffic during his stay in the Dark Ages, but he didn't look where he was going and ran straight in front of a bus. His head cracked the windscreen, and his bony body was thrown sideways onto the pavement with a thump. Joffy and I were first on the scene. A younger man might have survived relatively unscathed, but Zvlkx, his body weakened through poor diet and disease, didn't stand much of a chance. He was coughing and crawling with all the strength he could muster to the entrance of the nearest shop.

“Easy, Your Grace,” murmured Joffy, laying a hand on his shoulder and stopping him moving. “You're going to be all right.”

“Bollocks,” said Zvlkx in a state of exasperation, “bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. Suruiued the plague to get hit by a sodding Number Twenty-three bus.
Bollocks.
”

“What did he say?”

“He's annoyed.”

“Who are you?” I said. “Are you ChronoGuard?”