North sat slightly off to one side in no man’s land. There had been a time when, as a member of Team 236, Trainee Parrish’s disrespect would have been very much her concern, but not any longer. Now she was a Hunter and Trainee Parrish was someone else’s problem. Her days with Team 236 were behind her. A fact pointed out by Lt Grint, to whom the social graces were things that happened to other people. ‘So why are you here?’
She closed her notes and replied, ‘To provide an historical context.’
‘What for? This isn’t bloody St Mary’s, you know. All we have to do is get in there, sort it out and come home. Basically, this whole panic is just about making sure a couple of old women get through a time-slip safely.’
North took a deep breath and spoke calmly. ‘Time-slips are fragile, sir. It’s important to ensure nothing happens to change history.’
He shrugged. ‘Not a priority for me.’
Sitting back, he folded his arms. The matter was obviously closed. North sighed. Clearly a very light touch would be required for this one. To say nothing of an adequate briefing. Although whether adequate listening would occur was debatable.
Major Ellis opened the batting.
‘Pay attention, everyone. Today’s minor problem is a time-slip. I don’t think any of you have been with us long enough to have experienced one of these. It’s relatively straightforward, but time-slips can be nasty so we need to get on to it as soon as possible, so prep for immediate departure.’
Luke sighed. ‘Really? Is that necessary? Is there really any reason why we couldn’t rise gently at half past nine, and then when everyone’s quite ready, we could assemble here, quietly and without all the shouting – definitely no shouting – while someone gently explains what’s going on and . . .’
Grint twisted in his chair to look at him. ‘Shut up, Parrish.’
‘I’m just saying . . .’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘But . . .’
‘Shut up, Parrish, before I put you on report.’
‘But . . .’
‘You’re on report.’
‘But . . .’
‘You’re on report again.’
‘Is that the same report?’
Lt Grint blinked. ‘What?’
‘Are these two separate reports I’m on, or am I on the same report twice?’
‘You’re nanoseconds away from a third report,’ said Ellis, without looking up. ‘A record even for you.’
‘I should get danger money for doing this,’ muttered Jane, nudging Luke to another seat well removed from Lt Grint’s blast zone.
Ellis began again. ‘Another time-slip has been discovered.’ He looked around the room. ‘You will all have covered this in your basic training, but a time-slip is an area where some people – usually quite unwittingly – appear to be able to enter another time period as easily as entering another room. Sometimes, they don’t even know they’ve done it until it’s all over. Sometimes they never know they’ve done it at all.
‘Many people offer time-slips as an explanation of ghosts – a person moving from A to B, often in strange clothes and repeating the same actions over and over again. Are they trapped, unable to escape until some circumstance changes and they are able to break out? Or does some external event somehow release them? As you can imagine, a great deal of work has been done on this subject and it would be fair to say we’re no wiser now than when we started.’
Grint sighed. ‘It’s not Bold Street again, is it? I thought that had finally been plugged.’
‘No, not Bold Street again, and incidentally, that particular plug isn’t working so I’m guessing we’ll be back there before long. This time I’m afraid it’s the Versailles time-slip. The year 1789 is a key point in history which is why I’ve asked Officer North to join us today. Officer North, a little context, if you please.’
North brought up a map of the Palace of Versailles and its grounds. As usual she spoke without referring to her notes.
‘I want to take you through events as they occur within the slip so you’ll recognise anything unexpected.’
Grint sighed loudly.
‘The first reported instance of this particular time-slip is at the beginning of the 20th century.’
Luke Parrish sat up, alarmed. The 20th century was not his favourite century.
‘In 1901, two English academics, Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, visit Versailles. Somehow, they become lost. On their way to the Petit Trianon, they miss their turning and find themselves in a deserted part of the gardens, where they begin to experience what their contemporaries have called either a shared delusion or the inadvertent participation in the recreation of an historical event, but which we know now is a genuine, recurring time-slip.
‘The Petit Trianon is a small palace, located in the gardens of the larger Palace of Versailles. It was given to Marie Antoinette by her husband, King Louis XVI. The palace was for her use exclusively. Only her very close friends were ever admitted.
‘Our two English ladies have a guidebook – a Baedeker – but somehow they will miss the turning to the Avenue de Trianon here,’ North pointed to an area on the map, ‘and take a more minor path. They wander around between the Petit Trianon and the Temple de l’Amour . . .’ she highlighted another area of the map, ‘a pretty area of woodland and water. They report seeing other buildings and other people as they wander the paths. Importantly – and this does seem to be a common feature of time-slips – they both experience feelings of depression and hopelessness. Afterwards they rather fancifully ascribe these feelings as somehow being telepathically projected by Marie Antoinette, whom they are convinced they encounter. We now know that tightness of the chest, feelings of panic and so on are typical time-slip features and probably not due to telepathically picking up the queen’s feelings of despair on the day of her arrest.
‘They will say they encounter gardeners, together with an old woman and a child outside a cottage, which, at the time, they thought was a tableau vivant.’
‘What’s a . . . ?’ said Grint, managing to make his feelings about time-slips, Team 236, poncey briefings, the French language and female officers known to all present in just two short words.
‘Tableau vivant,’ said Luke. ‘Think Madame Tussauds.’
‘Another foreigner?’
‘As are so many of us,’ Luke said, brightly. ‘The Grints, I believe, hail from darkest Scotland.’
North swept on before the situation could deteriorate any further. ‘Both ladies also comment on the lifelessness of everything around them, describing their surroundings as flat – like being in a tapestry. At the edge of the wood, close to the Temple de l’Amour, they encounter a man. A sinister individual, according to them, ugly and with dark, pockmarked skin. We now think this might be the Comte de Vaudreuil, whose mistress was Gabrielle de Polignac, one of the queen’s favourites.’