Adventures in Time Travel: Deeper Undercover: (part two)
John had filled out a bit in the past fifteen years and his hair had started to grey, but there was no way I wouldn’t have recognised him. Considering that I had changed far less, in fact hardly changed at all, I considered myself extremely lucky that he showed no sign whatever of recognising me. In fact the first words out of his mouth were:
“I’m so sorry I don’t recall you, Lady Moppet. All I can say is, I must have been drunk! I hope the rent question was settled to your satisfaction?”
“Oh, quite.”
“And this is your little, or should I say, our little,” he glanced at the application form, “Oscar John Plantagenet? You’ve given your child more than one Christian name, how unusual! Is that by chance a Yorkshire custom?”
“Um. Very much so.”
“Well, if you’ll just affix your seal to the form. Then we can start to process Oscar’s application.”
I thought fast. “It does seem like quite an undertaking. As generous as your offer is, I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to Oscar yet. Perhaps a trial period – ”
“Oh, but there’s no need for you to say goodbye to him. You see, something unfortunate happened this morning. I accidentally executed my mistress.”
He came closer.
“Between you and me, Lady Moppet, I haven’t quite got used to this kingship business yet. And poor Belle-Belle paid the price. We were having one of our tiffs, and I shouted something like, ‘Will someone please get rid of this woman for me?’ I only meant for her to be removed from my presence, but a couple of my knights seem to have exceeded their orders. Father was right – you have to be so careful what you say. Look, they’re carrying Belle-Belle’s coffin to the chapel now.”
We crossed ourselves as the coffin was carried across the bailey.
“Quite sad really,” John said, watching it.
Then he brightened.
“Well, I’ve got you now, so I can’t complain. I won’t be needing you until quite late tonight, there’s so much paperwork to get through. So you can settle into Belle-Belle’s room while Oscar settles into the nursery.”
Belle-Belle’s room was on the top floor of the keep. There was a lot of pink gauze drapery, and the bed was heaped with white furs. The dressing-table dripped with jewellery. On closer inspection, though, many of the pieces didn’t seem to be of high quality. In fact they almost looked like…plastic.
That couldn’t be right. They must be made of that mineral which looked like plastic. Mica, that was it.
My meals were brought up to me, along with bulletins on Oscar’s progress. He had woken up. He had bitten his nurse. He had thrown a wooden brick at a half-sibling, knocking it unconscious.
John strolled in just before midnight. “Not undressed yet?”
“Sire,” I said, “I’m very sorry about Belle-Belle. But you can’t just take me for your mistress because I happen to be here. You must ask my consent.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t mean to imply that you had no choice in the matter,” he said. “You have options, of course.”
“What are they?”
“Well, option one is to become my mistress.”
“And option two?”
“Stay locked up here till you choose option one.”
I went for option one.
***
It wasn’t the worst night I’d ever spent. In fact, around four in the morning, I was wondering if I couldn’t make this mistress thing work. Perhaps I could stay in the past, at least part-time (‘Moppet divides her time between the present day and the court of King John’) and make an attempt at some sort of family life.
John was asleep, so I got out my laptop and began to list his good and bad points. I started with the good points.
1. Sexual compatibility
2. Willing to take responsibility for offspring
I couldn’t think of anything else. There must be at least three good things about him! I stared round the room in quest of inspiration. The sight of Belle-Belle’s myriad garments and accessories piled on chairs and spilling out of drawers gave me my third point:
3. Generous with mistresses
Still thinking of Belle-Belle, I began the ‘bad points’ column:
1. Poor impulse control
John was stirring, so I closed the laptop hastily.
“Good morning, darling,” he said. “Any last requests?”
“Last requests?”
“Before your execution.”
I thought I understood matters now.
“You – you Bluebeard!” I cried. “I can’t believe I fell for that story about executing Belle-Belle accidentally. I know now why you’ve enticed all these women here. You sleep with them, then you have them killed for your sadistic pleasure and you tell the replacement the last one died by accident! Well, I’m going to put a stop to your foul plans!”
Even I wasn’t too sure how I was going to do that.
“Not at all,” he said, “although it’s an idea. Belle-Belle really did die by accident. You, however, I am deliberately going to kill.” He dug under the pillow and threw a book at me. “Take a look at that.”
At the top of the first page was LIST OF ENEMIES in wobbly capitals.
He appeared to have begun it when he was about seven. There were three columns, the first one numbered, the other two headed ‘NAME’ and ‘REASON’. The first entries read ‘1. Hodierna: Won’t let me have sweets between meals. 2. My tutor at arms: Says Richard was much further on at my age.’
I read on.
‘The Young King: Won’t let me have his castles.’ ‘Richard: Exists.’ ‘Father: Won’t have Richard killed.’ ‘Mother: Still doesn’t know who I am.’ ‘Geoffrey: Had the last chicken leg at dinner when because he knew I wanted it.’
And at entry number 1053:
‘Lady Moppet of Yorkshire: STUCK ME WITH FAKE CROWN.’
“Did you think,” said John, “that I was ever likely to forget that? Have you any idea how humiliating it was? I can hear the goldsmith now. ‘Sir, there’s a problem with your crown.’”
“I know it was a bit awkward for you – “
“A bit awkward? A bit awkward? I’d already bought up half the merchandise in London on the strength of that crown. I had to take it all back and try to explain. I couldn’t get credit in the shops for years. I couldn’t go into the shops for years. It was that embarrassing.”
“Yes, well – ”
“And then I had to bring all the presents back,” he said sulkily. “Mother even made me return Richard’s swords. I had my revenge, though. One of them was engraved with ‘Richard of England’ and I got someone to add on, ‘is a loser.’ He showed it to quite a few girls before one of them told him.”
“Clever of you,” I murmured. Perhaps flattery would help.
“I hunted for you and that crown for years,” he said. “There is no family called Moppet with land in Yorkshire. There’s no family called Moppet with land in Normandy. There’s no family called Moppet anywhere. You’re a French spy, Mademoiselle Moppet, and I’m going to hang you.”
“Well,” I said, “I think that’s most unfair.”
There was a silence.
“Aren’t you going to beg for your life?” he asked snappishly.
“Why should I? You won’t grant it. I’ve never known such an unreasonable person, and I’ve met your whole family.”
“Personal remarks won’t help you,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. Get me that crown, and I’ll spare your life and that of your child.”
“What! You can’t kill Oscar – he’s your son!”
There was another silence.
“That’s the worst part,” he said. “Not content with swindling me out of a fortune fifteen years ago, you come back now and try to lumber me with some other man’s toddler! Don’t you think I can count?”
I had to tell him the truth, which, of course, he didn’t believe. He persisted with his French-spy idea until I shouted in exasperation, “Geoffrey guessed it almost at once!”
He was outraged. “You trusted Geoffrey and not me?”
“And I was right, wasn’t I? He kept his word to me. You didn’t.”
“Why should I?”
I gave up. “Could we agree that there was fault on both sides and let bygones be bygones?”
“No.”
There was another silence.
“If it’s true,” he said eventually, “where’s this laptop thing?”
I got out the laptop and booted it up. He was suspicious but fascinated.
“It’s so black and shiny. Looks like the devil’s work!”
“The laptop is by Samsung,” I said. “I can’t answer for some of the software.”
“What does it do?”
The simpler applications kept him quiet for forty-five minutes. Then he said, “It’s possessed.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s a demon in it who wants to play chess with me, and he wins every game.”
He was getting annoyed, so I opened Excel to distract him. It proved a lucky move. He looked around for the Book of Enemies.
“Could you put the information from that into here?”
“Not unless you grant me a stay of execution,” I pointed out.
He seemed reluctant.
“I could rearrange your enemies alphabetically,” I said softly, “or by what they did. Any way you like. If they owe you money, I could put that in too. I could make it all add itself up.”
It was too much for him. “All right, you can stay alive as long as you’re doing this.”
It was just like the Thousand and One Nights, I thought. Except that instead of using my seductive charms and storytelling ability to persuade my murderous prince to let me live another day, I was persuading him to let me live another day so I could do some more data entry.
Still. The main thing was to live another day.
***
I spent the next day locked in my tower, toiling through the list of enemies. John’s clerks kept running up with instructions:
‘Outstanding grudges in bold.’
‘Need new column for Suggested Penance.’
‘Colour code by social rank?’
Then there was a message from the Royal Nursery:
‘Oscar demanding something sounds like CHOCK LUTT. Please advise.’
For obvious reasons, I didn’t hurry over the spreadsheet, but I’d still completed over a hundred entries by lunchtime. John was enchanted with the results.
“Philip Augustus hasn’t got anything like this,” he chuckled as he scrolled down the page.
I took advantage of his good humour to ask if I could see Oscar, and he decided to come with me. We were greeted at the door of the nurseries by a servant John introduced as Hodierna.
“My old nurse. Hodierna, this is Lady Moppet – Oscar’s mother.”
I didn’t relish being introduced as Oscar’s mother; as often as not, the result was threats of litigation. Hodierna, however, seemed delighted to meet me.
“Oscar! Our little star! It’s a good batch this year, Sire, but Oscar is the best of the lot! You’ll see!”
She took us into a room where several toddlers were tumbling over a miniature castle. Oscar was perched on its topmost tower. He had a short wooden sword with which he was stabbing at any child who attempted to scale the tower.
“I’m the king of the castle,” he crowed. “You’re the dirty rascals.”
“Now, Oscar,” I said, “they’re not really dirty rascals.”
“No indeed, my lady,” said Hodierna promptly. “These were all born to noble mothers. The plebeian children are in the pig wallow.”
“The pig wallow?”
“They’re perfectly happy,” said John.
“I’ve never seen such an aptitude at his age, Sire,” said Hodierna, “if it wasn’t in your brothers and yourself. He’s going to be a great warrior, sure and certain.”
“Good heavens,” I said. “Mrs Kensington thought he was going to end up jail.”
John frowned. “Who’s Mrs Kensington?”
“She runs Little Princes and Princesses. That’s the nursery Oscar attended.”
“Why wasn’t he being brought up in your household?”
“I’m short-staffed.”
“Odd arrangement. Still, at least he was with his peers.”
“It’s not really for princes and princesses,” I had to admit. “I think they did have the son of a sheik once.”
“Well, all I can say is you didn’t bring him here a moment too soon. Educated with commoners – persecuted by this Kensington woman who clearly didn’t recognise a fine soldier in the making – “
“It’s one of the best nurseries in London,” I said indignantly. “It was costing me a fortune. And not everyone would take Oscar, he’s a problem child.”
“Who says so?” demanded John.
“Mrs Kensington!”
“I’m going to write to this Kensington woman and complain in the strongest terms.”
“I wish you would, actually.”
And then Oscar said the words I’d come to dread:
“Mummy, I want some chocolate.”
***
