Chapter 18
When, wobbly-legged with relief and with my head aching, I returned from the office, the others were grouped together by the main door. Outside small flakes of snow whirled, visible only in the slice of firelight that escaped.
‘Well? How did it go?’ Lachlan took my arm as I arrived back with them.
‘I…’ I had to stop and breathe. ‘I think I just caused the Industrial Revolution.’
Three faces simultaneously slackened with disbelief.
‘You did what?’ Mal covered his face with his hands.
‘I panicked, all right? I had to give him something, something to make his fortune and make battle not look such a great option. So…’ I took another deep breath. ‘I gave him the Bessemer process.’
Another simultaneous expression, but this one was bafflement.
‘It was all I had to hand! I’ve been drawing it on whiteboards for the last ten years, and showing YouTube videos on it for almost as long. I can do it in my sleep.’
‘And what is the Bessemer process?’ Lachlan asked.
‘It’s the method for producing steel, where you blow air over iron to melt out impurities and then add carbon.
’ I gabbled the explanation. ‘It’s how they made cannon that didn’t explode in their faces, and railways and bridges.
Before that they were using iron, which is brittle…
’ I’d slipped into ‘teacher speak’ and had to force myself to stop.
‘You must have done it for GCSE. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother to teach it if everyone forgets as soon as they leave school! ’
‘Because we never saw it having much impact in our daily lives post-sixteen,’ Mal said. ‘I did not need total recall of steel-manufacturing processes to get a degree in early Scottish archaeological sites or to work in Ralph Lauren.’
‘You can look it up.’ I was still speaking too fast.
The other three looked at one another, their faces still frozen into various expressions of incomprehension. ‘Not right now, we can’t,’ Mal said.
‘It’s not due to be invented for another hundred and some odd years,’ I went on.
‘So I’ve told George to find someone who can build the equipment and understand the notes and diagrams I gave him, and who won’t give away the secret.
It should buy him a monopoly on cheap steel, at least until Mr Bessemer goes public with it in eighteen fifty-something. ’
‘And… and he’s agreed?’ Kaylinn asked, as though she could not believe it. ‘Seriously?’
I shrugged. ‘Once I told him what it was, he was full of good ideas and it seems to have made going into battle sound a lot less appealing.’
‘Wow.’ Lachlan still looked stunned. ‘That’s – well done, Pax.’
There was a tennis-ball-sized lump in my throat now as the shock and relief and all-round realisation of what I had done came swarming in. ‘He’s going to break the news to his brother-in-law.’
Behind us in the hall there seemed also to be a slackening of the tension, as though word had already travelled to the men who would have been expected to fight.
Or perhaps this almost nonchalant atmosphere was normal before men marched to battle?
There were people sleeping, people cleaning weapons, some singing and two of the women, Jeannie and Kenna, were clearing a table where a meal had obviously just been served and eaten.
‘I suspect that nobody is going to be too worried about missing out on getting killed,’ Mal observed laconically.
I was now crying quietly. ‘Are you all right?’ Lachlan asked as we headed back towards our cellar. ‘You’re a wee bit weepy there.’
‘I’m tired of being a demon,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m tired of being invisible.’
Lachlan pulled at my arm until I stopped walking, letting the others go ahead down the staircase to the basement.
‘I can see you,’ he said softly. ‘You aren’t invisible to me.’
It was all too much and I hurled myself against him, sobbing copiously.
He was solid and there was a reassurance to the permanent feel of him that contrasted with all these other ephemeral beings who looked so robust but were untouchable.
It was rebounding shock, that was all, but it felt like so much more. It felt like everything.
I clung onto Lachlan. There was a slight, distressing smell from his shirt and I tried not to think about Kaylinn telling me that Jeannie bleached the linen using stale urine. Right now it didn’t matter, all that I cared about was that someone had their arms around me and was holding me.
Behind us there was a movement, either Mal or David had come back up to check on our whereabouts.
I knew it wasn’t Kaylinn because she would have had more tact.
Lachlan let go with one arm and I felt the wave of dismissal around the back of my head.
Then I heard Mal’s ‘Good grief, time and a place, Lachlan!’ and footsteps going back down the wooden staircase.
It almost made me laugh, but only almost, because I was still crying.
I impressed myself with the force of it; even given everything we’d gone through I hadn’t reacted like this since my very first exposure to the eighteenth century.
But eventually I gained enough control of my faculties to mutter a sob-ridden ‘sorry’ into Lachlan’s neckline.
‘Hey.’ A hand caressed the top of my head. ‘No need. I realise that we’ve put a lot of stress on you to convince the earl. You’ve borne the brunt of it here – it’s only natural that you’re having a wee bit of a reaction.’
‘I need to pull myself together.’ I wasn’t sure whether I was talking to myself or Lachlan, but I said it aloud, to the tops of The Proclaimers’ heads, where his T-shirt was printed with words that announced that they would walk somewhere.
The declaration about the distance they were prepared to go was lost behind ruffles.
‘You’re just fine from where I’m standing.’ Lachlan’s voice was a little muffled. ‘And it’s all right, Pax. You’ve done a great thing.’
‘Then why…’ I tried to get my voice under control ‘…are we still here?’
He stood very still for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’ He wrapped an arm around me and began to guide me down the staircase. Neither of us said anything else because there was nothing else to say.
We found the other three sitting around the table in the same attitudes of despair that they had been in when I’d first arrived. As we came in, Mal raised his head and looked at us.
‘When do we get back, then, do we think?’ His usual sardonic expression was struggling underneath lines of stress. ‘I mean, my neighbour’s feeding the cat. I can’t be away too long before they form a trauma bond.’ His voice trembled a little.
I scrubbed my face with my sleeve. Under the table, Cellar Dog made a little whimpering sound, slid himself between the legs of the attendant stools and came over to try to press himself against me.
‘Maybe we have to wait until morning? Or tomorrow at some point, just to prove that George isn’t going to the battle? ’
There were slow nods. ‘That would make sense,’ David said. ‘Otherwise he might just change his mind and all this would have been for nothing.’ I could have kissed him for agreeing with me.
‘I don’t think George will go back on our agreement. He’s honourable and he’s gained something valuable in return for not riding out. But I have the feeling that Jamie isn’t going to give up easily.’ I sniffed. ‘He seems really keen to make sure everyone goes into battle.’
‘Why do they all have the same name?’ Kaylinn raised a note of complaint. ‘I mean, it’s stupid. We’ve got Georges and Jameses everywhere – how do you even know which one you’re talking about? Why do the British not have more names? Could you not squeeze in a Michael now and again? Or a Bruno?’
‘One of my grandmothers was called Hepzibah,’ Mal said, sounding slightly more cheerful. ‘Must be really difficult going through life with a name like a random Scrabble hand. George and James are nice. Simple. Easy to spell.’
‘Maybe…’ I said haltingly. ‘Maybe I ought to check up on them. To make sure that Jamie doesn’t try something?’
‘But you’re a demon from the future,’ Mal pointed out. ‘Our Jamie would have to have some techniques up his sleeve to counteract that.’
‘But we haven’t gone back to our own time yet. That means that there’s still some doubt as to the outcome.’ What I really wanted to say was that we might never go back, that this might be it, but I didn’t feel I could. ‘I think I ought to go and keep an eye on things.’
‘If you feel you must.’ Lachlan let go of my hand. ‘Do you want us to come with you?’
David groaned. ‘Oh no. Not more standing around in corridors behind tapestries feeling like some secondary Shakespearean character whose destiny is to get stabbed.’
‘No. I’ll go on my own,’ I said, sounding far more definite than I felt.
I looked at the four of them, the three archaeologists sitting around the table and Lachlan standing next to me.
There was an air of pessimism that was almost suffocating me.
Nobody was saying it, but they were certainly all thinking it – if this was what we were meant to do, why are we still here?
Nobody wanted to put words around the fear. So everyone was trying not to think it.
Lachlan met my eye. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. He must have seen that fear in my face. ‘To keep you company.’
I relaxed a little. ‘Thank you.’ I really didn’t want to be alone, not now. ‘I want you where I can see you,’ I added, and was pleased to hear that the jokey note made it into my voice.
‘Course you do,’ he said lightly. ‘I might get up to anything if I’m left unattended.’
‘No time like the present.’ I took some of the bread from the table and put it in my pocket. ‘George was wanting to talk to Jamie as soon as I left, so they should both be up there together now. We can listen in.’
Now I sounded as though I really were the person with the power to get us home that the others were seeing me as. As though I’d got the vaguest idea of what was going on.
‘Right. We will see you later. Or possibly not. Or maybe we’ll all get together in the twenty-first century.’ Lachlan waved an informal salute and then he and I headed back up into the castle.
As we left, I heard David begin, ‘My sister…’ I was glad I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because I didn’t think I could bear it.