Yes, the silk merchant would know what day of the week it really was, and he’d know more about the departure of those barges that would allow their escape downstream along a Danube that, in the afternoon sun, had been a most beautiful blue. She wondered again how, so far from the Empire, he could have known Greek. But he was a silk merchant, she thought. It seemed that trade networks in this age were more extended than she’d supposed. She closed her eyes and waited for sleep to reclaim her. Drifting back into soft oblivion, she thought she could hear the distant approach of another lorry on the M2. Was that a dog barking? She opened her eyes again and sat up. If it was a dog, it had stopped. There was a draught in the room she couldn’t recall from earlier. Trying not to cover Michael’s face, she pulled the blanket up a little.
“Did you think you’d got away from us?” someone spat softly in what she took a second to realise was neither Latin nor Greek. “Did it never cross your stupid little mind that you were tracked every inch of the way?”
“Oh, do shut up, Tarquin!” Radleigh drawled. “Don’t move, Jennifer,” he said. “You can’t see us. But we can see you as clear as day.” Jennifer opened her mouth to scream. Someone took hold of her from behind and put a hand over her mouth. “Wake the boy,” Radleigh said again. “Tell him that, if he cries out, we’ll gas everyone in Ulm. Tell him also that, if he tries to resist, we’ll shoot his bit of fluff in the stomach.”
Before anyone could reach forward to shake him, Michael was awake and trying to shield Jennifer with his own body. As Tarquin finished his whispered but triumphant threat, the room filled with an intense light. By now everyone had pulled off his night glasses. Radleigh looked up from inspecting the clothes she and Michael had left scattered on the floor. Unable to move, Jennifer blinked until she could see clearly. A cold smile on his face, Radleigh stood up and straightened his jacket. For just a moment, she had sight of a glass pendant that seemed to reflect the LED lamp in a riot of strange colours. Then Radleigh buttoned his jacket, and the pendant was covered up. Three men stood over the bed, rifles ready to point at her the moment Michael could be pulled out of the firing line.
“Have you explained things to the boy?” Radleigh asked. Tarquin nodded and went into a long and sibilant gloat. Radleigh silenced him again. “One slip, and I promise that Hooper won’t give you another last chance.” He laughed and lit a cigarette from which the tobacco showed no inclination to drop out. He stood over the bed. “You really are a couple of stupid children,” he said pityingly. “It’s only down to me this honeymoon went on as long as it did.”
Outside in the darkness, Jennifer heard the Peppa Pig theme tune and a double grunt.
Chapter Forty One
It was early afternoon when the airship reached the centre of London. Regardless of who might hear them, the engines had been set at full speed above Ulm, and had been kept going ever since. Between long bouts of trying to see and think nothing at all, Jennifer had watched the forests and clearings of Western Europe give way to the bright silver of the Channel, and then to the varying greens of an England that, from the air, looked much the same as before The Break. The great difference, of course, was London. She’d been paying attention to its ravaged, if still magnificent, expanse ever since they’d passed within its covering of smog. You could look down on Canterbury, and think nothing had changed. One look at London from the air, and it was plain that something—perhaps everything—had gone fatally wrong.
Something still was going wrong. Before the airship turned left to follow the line of the River, she’d noticed smoke over much of the East End—smoke and more than a single tongue of yellow flame. Another Pacification?…
Tarquin noticed that she was looking out of the window. “Glad to be home?” he crowed. “Look well at England, then—it’s the last you’ll see of it.” He leaned back in his seat for a better view of her face.
“If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head,” Radleigh grated from behind Jennifer, “we do have another interpreter.” He sniffed and took out his cigarette case. “Now, please go outside and make yourself useful. For some reason, best known to herself, Abigail wants that Norman thug kept alive. You might, therefore, persuade him to come inside for the landing.”
She looked out of the window again, this time at Count Robert. Hardly any time after carrying her on board, he’d been reeling drunk. Much of the time since then, he’d spent snoring in a bunk, all damp chain mail and bad smells. Since coming back to life, he’d gone out to lean on the rail, moving only to light another cigarette, or to stare disconsolately in at Jennifer. She watched Tarquin get himself on to the viewing deck and lean beside Robert. If the idea had been to jolly him back inside, it was a failure. Robert let out a stream of what anyone could have told was foul invective, before moving to the far end of the rail.
Radleigh smiled to himself and lit his cigarette. ”Am I right in thinking you broke into that oilman’s house to kill me?” he asked with no indication of holding it against her. Jennifer nodded. He grunted and looked up to avoid breathing smoke at her. “Well, you can be glad you made your usual rotten job of the attempt,” he said. “If you had killed me, you’d both have been dead long before I decided it was time to reel you in.”
Jennifer held up her cuffed wrists. “Why can’t I be with my husband?”
“Because Hooper’s orders were that you should be kept apart,” came the flat reply.
She looked past Radleigh, to the screen that had been put up to keep her and Michael from seeing each other. Behind that, also cuffed, he was sitting with the armed guards. Claiming that she needed to go to the toilet, she’d managed once to see the back of his head. Apart from that, she’d been alone. Her eyes filled with tears, and she struggled not to show weakness in front of the man who’d helped kill her parents.
“Don’t suppose, Jennifer, this is giving me any pleasure,” he said. He narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “Like your father, you have the ability to get yourself into the deepest and most avoidable trouble. Of all the boys in England, why did you have to fall in with Michael Acominatus?”
“What does Hooper want with him?” she asked.
Radleigh held up his cigarette and stared at its glowing end. “The price of my being able to answer that question will be paid when I give him to her.” He looked down at her cuffed wrists. “You know, Jennifer, all I’ve wanted for the past year was the chance of getting back to normality. I really am sorry if it’s thanks to that scowling but ineffectual young man of yours that I’ll soon have my chance.”
“And I hope you blow Washington sky high when you step across!” she replied.
He frowned, as if not sure of what she’d said. Then he smiled and took a long drag on his cigarette. “You’re not as stupid as your father’s genes might have made you—that, or my old friend Lawrence has been his usual garrulous self.” He smiled again. He even smiled at the co-pilot, who’d come over again to point at the No Smoking sign.
“Talking of Lawrence, by the way, I trust you don’t believe he expected you to make it to Constantinople, or cared if you did.” He waited for Jennifer’s face to tighten. “His plan was to keep the boy out of reach while he directed a better uprising than your father ever managed.” He glanced out of the window. “But I spoke with Abigail yesterday. Michael’s her Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. It’s only in expectation of his arrival that she’s held off dropping a few atom bombs.” He lit another cigarette. “Yes, the boy is the key to a better world.”