Julia went straight on the attack. 'Criminals? You patronising slug, Mackie, Captain, Royal Navy. Men like you have always disgusted me. You abuse the Party. You bleat about our treatment of the Jews. But who devised the blood libel? The English. Who expelled Jews in the thirteenth century? The English. Who set up concentration camps in Africa? The English. And you Americans are no better, Wooler. You bleat about our racial laws, but there are marital segregation laws in your southern states which the Party used as a model for its Aryan-Jewish laws. Everything Hitler has done is in the context of history – your history.'
Mackie listened to this, stone-faced. 'I really do think we should get you to a bump-feeler, my dear.'
'Do not speak to me!' she yelled, a hysterical edge to her voice.
Gary glared at Julia. 'Why is this Nazi woman keeping us talking? There's something wrong here-'
And suddenly George saw Gary was right. This was all a performance, he knew Julia well enough to see that. He glanced around. Ben, in the tank, was still stirring, his eyelids lifting like heavy curtains. He was fighting the drugs.
George said quickly, 'Listen. Gary's right. She's stalling. She sent the first lot back, the Codex. I heard her. But the second lot, this Testament, she loaded it into him but-'
The butt of Julia's pistol slammed down on the back of his skull. It felt as if his head exploded. He was on his knees, on the floor, but he was conscious. 'Ben – in the tank – keep him awake-'
It all kicked off.
XVII
Josef Trojan made a rush at the tank. But his brother blocked him, arms behind his back, getting in his way bodily. Then the British soldier, Willis, the blond one, jumped on them both.
Julia screamed her frustration, swinging her silver pistol wildly.
Gary charged her. She aimed her pistol. She fired.
George saw it clearly. Gary lumbered on, his legs still working as if by reflex, his limbs uncoordinated, his head lolling. But his forehead was a shattered mass of blood and bone. He tumbled into Julia, knocking her down. George was pushed sideways; on his back, stunned, handcuffed, he could barely move.
Mary fell on the body of her son, and the woman who had killed him. Her face was contorted, a mask of grief and rage. She clawed at Julia's throat, her hair coming loose from its tie, a cloud of grey around her twisted face.
Mackie dragged her away. He grabbed Julia's hand and crushed it, making her scream, until he had forced the silver pistol out of her fingers. He looked across at George. 'Sergeant. Help me. Hold this woman.'
. George willed himself up onto his elbows. His head rang, and his vision was blurring. But he rolled over and lay on top of Julia. Mackie dug keys out of Julia's pocket and released George from his cuffs. His hands free, George got her by her wrists, his heavy arse pinning her legs. She stared up at him, stunned, the bloody marks of Mary's hands on her throat.
Mackie pulled Mary to her feet. 'Mary. Mary! Listen to me. Listen. I know it's hard, my God. But you have to help me. The job's not done yet. The mission.'
Slowly she replied, 'The mission.'
'The Loom. You heard what George said. God, how can I have been so stupid? She was stalling – why didn't I see it? They didn't finish the job. Fiveash sent back the Codex. But she's still in the middle of sending back Eadgyth's Testament. We still have a chance.'
'But Gary, look at him, he's not even got his face covered-'
'Mary, we have to make his loss worthwhile.'
She pulled away from him. 'Don't you speak to me like that, you manipulative prick.'
He held up his hands. 'All right. I deserved that. But, Mary, for now – please.' He began to tinker with the bank of controls beside the tank. 'What if we stop the supply of opiates? Fiveash, which is the switch?'
'Too late for that,'Julia said, pinned on her back, her mouth twisted into a sneer. 'Too late! The Jew will be under in a minute, and everything will change.'
Mackie looked around. 'Trojan? Is she right?'
'I am afraid so,' said Josef Trojan.
'Plan B,' Mary whispered. 'Turn Columbus west. Not east.'
'Yes.' Mackie said. 'That's it. Good. Good, Mary. Come on, work with me now. We prepared for this eventuality, didn't we? If you can feed him your alternate version of the Testament, maybe that will be enough. Trojan, is this a microphone? Can Ben hear us? You can do it, Mary. Come on. Speak into his ear as he falls asleep. Do you remember what you worked out? The Aztec feathered serpent, the Chinese dragon-'
'They could just kill him. Kill the little fucker. But that hasn't occurred to them, has it?' Julia whispered this to George, as once she had whispered erotic promises.
He pinned her down harder. 'Shut up. For the last time, shut up.' He held his face over hers, close, as if he might kiss her. But a drop of blood from the wound she had inflicted rolled over his scalp and splashed on her cheek.
Mary lowered her head to the microphone. The body of her son was sprawled at her feet, and George could see how she was drawn to him, as if by elastic cables. But she spoke into the mike, improvising. 'Egilsson. Orm Egilsson. Can you hear me? Are you there? Are you there, Orm Egilsson? Orm Egilsson! Listen to what I have to tell you. Listen, and remember, and let your sons and their sons remember too…'
Mackie whispered, 'Mary. Old English. Speak to Egilsson. Make him hear you through Eadgyth.'
'Yes… Egilsson. Orm Egilsson. Hierst pu me? Bist pu??r? Bist pu??r, Orm Egilsson? Orm Egilsson! Hlyston ond mune, for pon ic pu recce. Hlyston ond mune, ond giefst to pin sunum ond to hira sunum…'
EPILOGUE
'My son didn't deserve this, George.'
'I know, Mary, I know.'
'To be killed by practically the last shot of the conflict.'
'Oh, the war's not over yet, Mary. And, look – well – he's with my Hilda now. His Hilda. That's something, isn't it?'
'Do you really believe that?'
'I was brought up to believe it. And, you know, I think if I try really hard I can believe it again.'
'Well, you're going to have to teach me.'
'Mary – George – please.'
'Tom? What now?'
'I know you don't want me around. But I have to show you this…'
If he could hear their voices, Ben knew he must be waking. If he was waking, he had been asleep.
And if he had been asleep, he must have implemented another of Julia's grisly historical changes. He had died and had been reborn. Again. That deep fear stabbed at him. It was a fear at the transience of life, at the impermanence of it, the fragility. A fear like being suspended over a thousand-foot cliff.
He put it aside, and kept his eyes closed. Sleep hovered about him, a loose blanket. Perhaps if he willed it he could bring it back, fall away from the world again.
But if he slept again, could he control his dreams?
'Mary. Look. These are your own notes – look, your transcription of Eadgyth's testament, taken from Geoffrey's memoir, written out in your own hand. Can you see?'
'It's changed. It no longer reads as it did. Send the Dove west! O, send him west!" West, not east.'
'History has shivered around us, Mary. The past has changed.'
'And yet we remember.'
'And yet, yes. It may take a century of tinkering with this Loom of Trojan's, and even more theorising, before we understand any of this…'
Ben had a good memory. He always had. It had only been enhanced by Julia's hypnotism and the mnemonic tapes. He thought he could remember every word of the time-manipulating chunks of doggerel she had beaten into his head, every one of the attempts she had made to change history. Even the 'dry runs', as she had called them.
And Mary's Dunkirk counter-history had intrigued him. He'd had plenty of time to think this over, lying in his tank.
What might have happened if, for some reason, the Germans had not pressed home their advantage in the spring of 1940, and had allowed the BEF to survive? There would have been a ripple of changes, he had concluded in the end, a chain of different decisions on both sides. People would have died. Of course they would. Ben knew the Nazis. If they could not conquer a slice of England, they would have struck at it another way – with terror, probably, with bombs on London and the other cities, a blitzkrieg against civilians. People would have died. But not the same people. Not Hilda Tanner, for instance.