“Oi, can I help you?” The voice sounded vaguely threatening.
Fenella spun around in surprise, trying not to look guilty. Unfortunately, guilty surprise was her default expression. “Hello!”
A sturdy-looking young chap in overalls and a flat cap stood there holding a cardboard box, with the burning end of a cigarette expertly balanced between two of his nicotine-stained fingers. “Was that a cat?” he asked, as Lovelace slunk behind some flower pots.
“I don’t know,” said Fenella quickly. “We’re not together. She must belong to the house.”
“Right,” said the young man, starting to pile the empty cups into his box. “I’m Sid, production assistant. You are?”
“Fenella,” she blurted, not having had the wherewith-all to come up with a period-appropriate name. Fenella was sort of old fashioned no matter where you were. “I’m assisting Costume, but I’m not sure where to go.”
“Crikey, there’s a lot of you birds in Wardrobe,” said Sid. “Reckon it needs three of you to carry some of those dresses around?”
“Oh, yes,” said Fenella with a little laugh. “Crinolines. What a hoot. So very heavy. And flammable.” She felt she was doing brilliantly at talking to a real historical person. She even managed to stop before rattling off all the facts she knew about flammable crinolines, which was good because this was an Edwardian costume show, Fenella. “Where is everyone?”
“The pub, of course,” said Sid. “Something bollocksed up the camera cables this morning, and the director was so browned off, he called an early lunch. Not that Barry needs an excuse for his long lunches, eh?”
“That’s Barry for you,” said Fenella brightly.
“Worked with him before, have you?” said Sid, looking more closely at her. “You look familiar.”
People always said that Cress and Fenella looked alike, which neither sister thought was remotely true. Cressida was tall, blonde, and had all the curves in the family. Fenella was tiny and twitchy and had eyes too big for her face. If she had a tenth of her sister’s confidence, life would have been a lot easier for Fenella Church.
Cressida would not have meekly gone along with an administrative error that meant she could not be partnered with a cat… not that such a thing would ever have happened to Cressida in the first place. Cressida sailed effortlessly through life with all the luck and success in the world… until her tragic disappearance, of course.
At least Fenella’s pixie-cut was not massively unfashionable for this decade, if was a little daring for 1964. She’d be the cutting edge of fashion, if she was in London instead of East Anglia!
“Are the sound crew down at the pub?” she asked Sid. “I had a message for one of them.”
“Nah,” said Sid. “Back in the van to London, ain’t they?”
“What?” Fenella gasped. Had they missed Cressida? What kind of stunt was her sister pulling, leaving a clue for future time travellers and then leaving the county in a van? That was like setting off a rescue flare at sea and promptly jet-skiing on to another location.
“Funny story,” said Sid. “Sound aren’t even supposed to be here on site! We always record mute on location, pick up the voice track back in the studio. Don’t know what they were thinking, turning up in the first place. You look upset, miss. Fancy a cup of tea?”
Tea was unlikely to fix this disaster. However, given a choice between being miserable with or without a cup of tea, Fenella knew the right answer.
“Oh, yes please.”
1 The unaired pilot of Cramberleigh was a disaster from beginning to end, the entire production rife with drama and problems. Still, the final product caught the eye of one TV executive, Melvyn Davenport, who insisted the show continue. Exterior shots of the house from that original shoot were later used and re-used in the opening credits. Long-shots of the grounds and the village were used as scene transitions for many years to come. Seasons 1-4 were filmed on sound stages using a house design based on Fenthorp Manor. When in 1969 the production moved to film instead of video, and embraced location shoots once again, the producers contacted the Hepple family, offering a respectable stipend for further use of their house. This financial arrangement continued on and off for the next two decades. After the death of Emmett Hepple in 1983, his heir Phillip George Hepple demanded a much higher location fee, which was rejected. Return to Cramberleigh (1984-1986) therefore included no footage of Fenthorp Manor, except for the episode Blast From the Past, which included previously unseen scenes shot for the Unaired Pilot (1964).
2 In 2028, Fenthorp Manor became a filming location once again thanks to popular reality show Stately Baking: celebrity chefs and amateur home bakers teaming up to recreate historical recipes in the large, old-fashioned and deeply under-resourced kitchens of stately homes across Britain. The show ran for twenty-five years, and was famous for the catchphrases: “Hand whisking isn’t for everyone,” “Who needs electricity?” and “It’s Suet Week!”
Twenty-One
Ruthven couldn’t possibly be in 912
Ruthven had written a dissertation on Viking Britain society in his final year of study at Chronos College. He knew what to expect from a village like this.
Thick-walled longhouses, small and rectangular, made from wood and mud. Mostly mud, though there were probably animal droppings wedged in there for good measure. Roofs cut from thick wedges of turf — or thatched, with sticks and straw. The distinctive smell of animals and people living in close proximity, in a culture that wasn’t big on sewage systems.
Hand-woven clothes: bright coloured embroidery used to brighten simple garments that were mostly made of basic brown wool. So much brown wool. Braided hair. Beards. Damp linen. Leather. Fur. Brown.
It was market day. The streets were filled with tables and benches covered in all manner of food and wares, as the local farmers did their best to feed the villages while eking out a living for themselves.
Not a double-horned helmet in sight. Not even any helmets with a single horn.
Ruthven knew a reasonable amount about village-dwelling Viking settlers in Britain. More to the point, he knew a great deal about this specific village. The first file he had researched in depth when he was assigned to Media Archives was that of Boswell and Cressida’s legendary visit to Kettlewick, 912. The last time anyone had seen Cressida Church alive.
Kettlewick had never made the history books in a general sense. Nothing important ever happened here, in the grand scale of human endeavour. Not over centuries. Not over millennia. Not a single recorded battle of significance. No perspective-changing archeological finds. No one born here had ever gone on to become a celebrity, serial killer or Nobel Prize winning scientist.
This village only had one moderate claim to fame, of interest only to those who studied at Chronos College during the twenty-fourth century. This was the first time and place where a time traveller was lost.1
The frenetic search for Cressida Church had been so destructive to the timeline that the years 911-915 were walled off by Events before Ruthven graduated.
When Ruthven opened the files to review the footage from the Matter of Kettlewick 912, he was aware that this was the only way that any traveller would ever again experience this specific year of history.
So, he paid attention.
Kettlewick belonged to the Kingdom known as the East Angles (a name it kept after it was invaded by Mercia, and then again after it was invaded by the Vikings).
But that was just history. Geography. Ruthven knew more than that. As he approached the market, he recognised faces. That turnip seller with the rude-shaped vegetable stall, those two dirt-smeared children in braids playing knucklebones in the street (with actual knuckles, oh that was a historical detail he could have lived without witnessing in person)… he’d seen them before, in the vid footage. Cressida had bought turnips off that fellow and chattered to his kids, who happily ignored her. If not this actual market day, she and Boswell had visited a market day very like this one, at a time very close to what Ruthven was seeing now.
That meant he was in trouble.
912 was inside an Event. Inaccessible. For Ruthven to be here, now, meant he was also inside an Event. No one had ever managed to hop inside an Event before.
Also, he continued to lack a cat.
