She fought wildly, twisting this way and that, hitting and kicking, shrieking at the top of her voice.
The thing, struggling to hold her, lost its grip and she fell backward into the fence with such force that it bent with a splintering crack and collapsed with her on top of it.
"Oy!" came a distant shout. "What's going on? Leave her alone!"
The thing turned its black globular head to look along the lane.
Mary heard running footsteps drawing closer.
It looked back down at her, its eyes on her chest.
She grabbed the material of her dress and drew it over herself.
"It's not you, Mary Stevens," said the thing, and suddenly it bounded high into the air.
"Bloody hell!" exclaimed a man's voice.
"What is it?" came another's.
She saw the thing jumping away, taking prodigious leaps, and then it was gone and gentle hands were helping her up.
"Are you hurt, love?"
"Steady now."
"Pull your coat together, lass. Cover yourself."
"Here, take my arm. Can you walk?"
"Why, it's Mary Stevens! I know her old man!"
"What was it, Mary? What was that thing?"
"Did you see the way it jumped? Blimey, it must have springs in its heels!"
"Was it a man, Mary?"
The young girl looked around at the concerned faces. "I don't know," she whispered.
January to May 1838
Edward Oxford waited in the shade of an ugly monument in the grounds of St. David's Church on Silverthorne Road. He knew that Deborah Goodkind attended the Sunday service regularly throughout this year, yet he had been here on three consecutive Sundays in January, two in February, and this was his second in March, and hadn't seen anyone fitting her description.
"If the information the Original gave to the marquess was wrong, I'll never find the little bitch," he muttered to himself. He laughed. He didn't know why.
There was snow on the ground. He was cold. The thermal controls in his time suit had stopped working.
People started filing out of the church. He hadn't seen her go in but he may have missed her in the crowd. He was getting a clearer view of people's faces now.
He drew back a little, concerned that the sparks from his control unit might attract attention. He pulled his cloak around it.
Half an hour later, the last straggler left the church.
"Where the hell are you?" he muttered.
He crouched, jumped up, and landed one month later and ninety minutes earlier.
It was raining heavily.
He banged his fist against the side of the monument.
"Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Come on! Come on!"
The congregation started to arrive. Their faces were obscured by hats and umbrellas.
Oxford swore and leaped to May 25.
After waiting for just over an hour, he saw her at last, coming out of the church.
She was a small, mousy little thing; her hair colourless, her skin white, her limbs thin and knobbly. She said a few words to the vicar, then to an elderly woman, then to a young couple, then walked down the path, out of the churchyard, and turned left.
A strangely warm mist clung to the city but it wasn't thick enough for concealment and Oxford knew that he stood a good chance of being spotted.
He'd have to risk it.
He vaulted over the graveyard wall into someone's back garden and went from there to the next one, bounding along behind the houses that lined Silverthorne Road until he reached an alleyway. Striding to the corner, he peered around it back in the direction from whence he'd come.
Moments later, the girl walked into view.
Luck was with him; the road was quiet.
Oxford leaned against the wall and listed.
Her light footsteps grew closer.
He reached out as she passed and jerked her into the mouth of the alley, twisted her around, and pushed her against a wall, clapping a hand over her mouth.
He pressed his face close to hers and asked the question.
"Is there a birthmark on your chest?"
She shook her head.
"None? Nothing shaped like a rainbow?"
Again, a shake of the head.
Oxford let go of her and, with a last look at her strangely calm face, strode away and sprang to a different time and place.
Deborah Goodkind stood motionless, her shoulders against the bricks.
She shook her head once more and smiled.
She raised her right hand and banged the heel of it against her ear.
She did it again.
And again.
And again.
And she started to giggle.
And she didn't stop.
Not until the year 1849, when she died in Bedlam.
October 10 and November 28, 1837
Lizzie Fraser, like Deborah Goodkind, was not where-or when-she was supposed to be.
Edward Oxford was close to where he'd accosted Mary Stevens the previous day. He was crouching behind a wall on Cedars Mews, a narrow lane leading off from Cedars Road, which crossed Lavender Hill not far to the north.
This lane was part of the route that Lizzie Fraser walked to reach her home on Taybridge Road after she finished at the haberdashery shop where she worked every day.
In theory, she passed this way at around eight o'clock each evening, but it was now Tuesday and Oxford had been here seven times so far without seeing her.
His suit was sending small shocks through him at regular intervals.
From behind the wall, he could see people passing the end of the lane. Their tightly laced clothing and restrained mannerisms were not real. Their horses and carriages were illusions. The noises of the city were an incoherent mumble scratching unceasingly at his consciousness. He vaguely remem bered how, when he first arrived in the past, London had seemed weirdly silent. How wrong! How wrong! The cacophony never stopped! Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare.
He beat his fists against his helmeted head, burning his knuckles in the blue flames but feeling nothing.
"Every day at eight o'clock, damn you!" he groaned.
No.
He couldn't do this any more.
"Find her!" he said. Then he looked up at the clouded sky and bellowed: "Find her!"
He hurdled over the wall and ran out of the mews into the main street.
Women screamed. Men uttered exclamations.
Oxford sprang onto the side of a passing brougham. It lurched and veered under his impact. The coachman gave a shout of fright. The horses whinnied and bolted, nearly jerking the stilt-man loose.
"Where is Lizzie?" he screamed.
"Jesus, Joseph, and Mary!" cried the driver.
"Tell me, you damned clown! Where is Lizzie?"
The horses pounded along the street, with people crying out and scattering before them, the carriage swinging and swaying dangerously behind, its wheels thundering over the cobbles.
"Get off? Get off!" yelled the terror-stricken coachman.
Oxford hung on desperately, with one of his stilts dragging along the road.
The horses stampeded headlong into a small street market and their flanks caught the side of a cheese stall, sending it flying, before they then ploughed head on through a poultry stall. Chickens, geese, feathers, and fragments of wood went spinning into the air.
Shouts. Screams. A police whistle.
"Fuck!" said Oxford, and hurled himself from the vehicle. He hit the ground and bounced fifteen feet into the air, landed, and started running.
A scream of dismay came from the coachman but was cut off when, with a terrific crash, the horses and carriage collided with the corner of a shop. The splintering of wood and bone was immediately drowned by the smash of breaking glass and masonry as the side of the building collapsed onto the wrecked vehicle.