in the porch. John Bartholomew had talked about its having been repeatedly knocked over by blast.
But the trees could very well have been there. He wouldn’t have seen them in the darkness.
But if it’s Christmas, he thought, that means there’s been nearly four months’ slippage, and that’s impossible. The increase was only two days. But he knew it was true. That was why it was so cold. And so dark. The net had sent him through at four A.M., but in December four A.M. would be pitch-black.
“Ascertain your temporal location immediately upon arrival.” Wasn’t that what he was always enjoining his students to do? He should have realized it couldn’t be September tenth when there weren’t any fires. They hadn’t got the ones on the docks out for nearly a week.
But he’d ignored the clues, and now he’d have to climb all the way back up that hill in the rain. Because Polly wasn’t here. Her assignment had ended the twenty-second of October. She’d been safely back in Oxford for at least a month and a half, and this had been an exercise in futility.
Except that now he had the proof he’d been looking for that the slippage was beginning to spike. He had to return to St. Paul’s immediately, go back through to Oxford, and tell Badri to pull all the historians out. He started back up the hill, looking for a taxi, but the streets were completely deserted.
No, wait, there was one, in the darkness at the end of a side lane. He stepped into the lane and hailed it.
It had seen him. It pulled out and began to move toward him, and thank God Colin had insisted on his bringing money. Dunworthy pulled out his papers and It had seen him. It pulled out and began to move toward him, and thank God Colin had insisted on his bringing money. Dunworthy pulled out his papers and shuffled through them, looking for the five-pound notes, and then looked up again.
The taxi was moving away. It hadn’t seen him after all. “Hullo!” Dunworthy shouted, his voice echoing in the narrow street, and rushed toward it, waving.
There, it had seen him now. The taxi began to move toward him again. It must be farther away than he’d thought because he couldn’t hear the engine at all. He hurried toward it, but before he’d gone half the distance, he saw it wasn’t a taxi. What he’d thought was the vehicle’s bonnet was the rounded edge of a huge black metal canister, swinging gently back and forth from a lamppost. A dark shroud was draped over the lamppost. A parachute.
It’s a parachute mine, he thought, watching as the canister swung gently back and forth, missing the lamppost by inches. And if the wind shifted slightly, or the parachute ripped …
He took two stumbling steps backward, and then turned and ran for the mouth of the lane, listening for the tearing of parachute silk, for the scrape of the mine against the lamppost, for the deafening boom of the explosion.
It didn’t come. There was a faint sigh, and he was suddenly on the ground, his hands out in front of him on the pavement. He thought at first he must have tripped and fallen, but when he got to his feet, he was covered with dust and glass.
It must have broken the stationer’s window, he thought, and then, confusedly, The mine must have gone off.
He brushed the glass and dirt off his trousers, his coat. And he must have cut himself in the process because the palms of his hands were scraped and bloody, and blood was trickling down behind his ear. He could hear ambulance bells.
I can’t let them find me here, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. I must pull everyone out. He started down the lane, wishing there was a wall to lean against for support, but all the buildings seemed to have fallen down except the one at the very end. He walked toward it as quickly as he could. The bells were growing louder.
The ambulance would be here any second, and so would an incident officer. He needed to be out of the lane, across the road, around the corner …
He made it just past the corner before he collapsed, falling to his knees.
Colin was right. He said I’d get into trouble, he thought. I should have let him come with me. And he must have been unconscious for a few minutes, because when he opened his eyes, it was nearly light and the rain had stopped. He got heavily to his feet and then stood there a moment, looking confused. What had he—?
Oxford, he thought. I must get back to Oxford. And started down the hill to Blackfriars to take the tube to Paddington Station to catch the train.
The rain it raineth every day.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
TWELFTH NIGHT
London—December 1940
MIKE STARED AT POLLY, SITTING THERE ON THE STEPS OF the Albert Memorial. “You were the historian we were talking about that day in Oxford?” he said angrily. “The one we couldn’t believe Mr. Dunworthy would let do something so dangerous?”
Polly nodded.
“Which means your deadline’s not April second, 1945. It’s what? When did the V-1 attacks start?”
“A week after D-Day.”
“A week—in 1944?”
“Yes. June thirteenth.”
“Jesus.” VE-Day had been bad enough, but D-Day was only three and a half years away, and if the slippage had increased enough for Dunworthy to be canceling drops right and left … “Why didn’t Dunworthy cancel your assignment if you had a deadline?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Polly said.
“But if he didn’t, then perhaps he was changing the order for some other reason,” Eileen suggested. “Because he was putting the less dangerous ones first or something. The Reign of Terror was more dangerous than the storming of the Bastille, wasn’t it? And Pearl Harbor was more dangerous than—”
