‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what day it was.’
‘Didn’t know what day it was! Do you honestly expect me to believe that?’
Erasmus kept quiet. He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth and he wasn’t entirely sure what he could tell her that she would believe. Godiva gave him a scornful look, then turned her head so she could address one of the guards below. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she said.
‘Yes ma’am,’ said the guard nervously, trying to fight his natural instinct to look at the person who was speaking to him.
‘Seize him, you fool.’
‘Yes ma’am.’ Both guards began to move purposefully towards Erasmus, each drawing their sword as they did so, whilst trying hard not to look back towards their mistress. Erasmus took a few careful paces backwards. Then he turned on his heel and ran.
‘Run after him, you fools,’ yelled Godiva. The two guards picked up the pace and pursued Erasmus as he sped across the marketplace.
Godiva herself pulled on the reins and her horse began to canter steadily. The increase in pace meant the horse sprang between steps and the force of its impact dislodged the braids of hair which had, up till then, been protecting her modesty by covering her breasts. The hair fell in front of her eyes and, intent on her pursuit, Godiva threw the braids over her shoulder, making no further effort to conceal herself as she continued.
‘Phwoaar,’ came a voice from the building to her left. Godiva turned and saw that, amongst the windows of the building, one was unshuttered and a man was staring out at her, his eyes wide.
‘Right, that does it,’ she snapped. She dug her heels into her horse’s sides. The beast wheeled round and brought up its forelegs, lashing out at the side of the building. The man backed away hurriedly, but wasn’t fast enough to prevent his face being bombarded with fragments of wattle from the wall.
‘Ow!’ he screamed, clutching his face. ‘My eyes, my eyes! I can’t see!’
‘Bloody peeping Alfreds,’ Godiva muttered. She guided her horse in the direction in which the guards had run.
Erasmus, meanwhile, had entered the side street. He could see his time machine ahead. His lungs were straining with the unaccustomed effort, but he had the advantage – he wasn’t, after all, encumbered by armour. Godiva’s angry yells were ringing in his ears, but he resisted the urge to look back, concentrating instead on the prize.
And so it was that he almost cannoned into a blurry shape that cut across his path. Refocusing his gaze, he found himself looking at the burly form of a man, rudely dressed and unarmoured, but holding a pitchfork in his hand like a peasant who had more than a spot of gardening in mind. Erasmus almost skidded to a halt, then took a step back and smiled amiably.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I could just get past.’
The man said nothing, but glared fixedly.
‘Only. I’m trying to go over there—’ His words were cut off by an angry cry from behind.
‘Seize him, man.’
The peasant looked up and his expression faltered. Blood rushed to his face and he clamped a hand to his eyes as if to stop it escaping. Taking his chance, Erasmus tried to sidestep him, but with the pitchfork and the narrowness of the street, there was no way past. Erasmus turned to his right, where an alley led away. He couldn’t tell if there was a way through, but it was better than staying where he was. He ran.
The cry of ‘fool’ resonated along the alley, shaking the wattle and daub walls. A door to Erasmus’ right seemed to be shaken partially open. Erasmus paused, contemplating ducking into the building and waiting for his pursuers to pass. Then the door swung wide and three more peasants piled out, each wielding a pitchfork and wearing an angry expression. Suddenly Erasmus found himself wishing the aliens had visited.
He sprinted on, almost tripping over his feet in his haste. He stumbled to one side and put a hand out to steady himself. The wall beside him yielded, but held and he sprang back, his pace barely reduced. Behind him he heard the urgent thudding of heavy soles as his pursuers broke into a run. Their heavy breaths spoke of men used to steady effort rather than sudden bursts of exertion, which filled Erasmus with hope.
Then there was a sudden and heavy-sounding thump, followed by a grunt, a crash and several angry exclamations. Despite the urgency of his situation, Erasmus couldn’t help but turn back. Behind him, he saw the original pitchfork-wielding peasant lying on the floor with a man he assumed to be one of the second batch of pursuers. The other two appeared to have vanished.
Erasmus was just musing on this when he noticed a hole in one of the buildings lining the road. The continued commotion from this direction told its own story. Grinning to himself, he turned and continued his flight. Ahead of him was a junction, where another alley crossed his path left to right. Slowing his pace to a more sustainable jog, he turned left. If he was correct, the simple geography of the place suggested this passage should lead him on to one of the alleys he’d encountered on his arrival. From there it would be only a short flit to his time machine and safety.
The sudden arrival of two hefty peasants in his path ended this latest burst of optimism. From their reddened faces and plaster-covered clothes, Erasmus couldn’t entertain the hope they were just another pair of generic peasants, despite their generic pitchforks. These they levelled to deny him passage, leaving him staring at eight unpleasantly rusty tines. He backed off.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Surely we can talk about this.’
The low growl from the peasant on the left sounded anything but conversational. Either, Erasmus considered, the Stone Age had ended later than people thought, or the people of mediaeval Coventry had poorer than average communication skills. He dodged a lunge from one of the pitchforks, eyeing the corroded metal with concern.
‘You be careful with that,’ he snapped. ‘You could give someone septicaemia.’
The peasant ignored him, his gaze seemingly drawn over his shoulder. The sound of heavy boots from behind trod what was left of Erasmus’ hope into the ground. He raised his hands in surrender, then winced as he felt the point of a pitchfork prodded firmly into his back.
‘So what happens now?’ he demanded.
None of the men spoke.
‘You must be wonderful guests at parties,’ Erasmus muttered. He paused, awaiting a response, but received none. The man to his right avoided his gaze. The man to his left said nothing, but picked his nose with his free hand. Erasmus felt a sudden terrible uncertainty descending on him. What had only moments ago felt like a bit of an adventure suddenly felt much more sinister. Life in the Middle Ages, a memory told him, could be nasty, brutish and short. It was all very well when you saw such a thing written in one of the cheaper textbooks, but that was just words; something to be contemplated in the quiet security of a twenty-first century classroom. This was reality. And the quiet didn’t help. Erasmus felt like screaming for someone to just say something, but some deeply coded message in his DNA told him making a loud, sudden noise when surrounded by men holding pointy things was no way to pass your genetic material on. He settled instead for an unthreatening smile and a slight stretch to raise his hands higher.
‘Take me to your leader?’ he ventured.
Suddenly, the man to his left flushed. He withdrew his finger quickly from his nose and clamped his hand over his eyes. Momentarily distracted by the mucus the man was now smearing over his cheek, Erasmus took a second to realise that the peasant to his right was also doing his best not to look. The teacher glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of two peasants with hands firmly in place and, beyond them, the body of an approaching horse.
There was no better moment. Erasmus looked to the building at his left. It looked solid enough, but then so did the rest of them. Tensing himself, he shoulder charged the wall. There was a sickening crunch as layers of twigs cracked under the impact,