Luke rolled the young man over. ‘You’re under arrest, buster,’ which wasn’t the correct Time Police procedure but close enough for Team 236’s purposes.
Jane knelt beside Matthew. Ellis and Luke had the young man, North had the queen, and crowd control was down to Grint and his team, who should be around here somewhere, which left Matthew up to her. The wound was high up on his right arm. She ripped at his sleeve, exposing a ragged and bloody gash.
Groups of people stood around, obviously stunned at the sudden appearance of these strangely clad people. Jane couldn’t blame them. One minute they’d been enjoying a summer’s afternoon stroll in beautiful and peaceful gardens and the next moment there were bleeding men, hysterical queens, and sinister black-clad figures sprawling on the ground in front of them. Discretion and caution were conspicuous by their absence.
Several women were still screaming in the approved manner. It would appear that in 1901, women were required to scream and faint at every opportunity. Jane ignored everything around her. Grint and his team would have her back.
She realised later, when she had time to think properly, that that was when it must have happened. At the time, she was too busy to notice. Blame would fly in all directions and at least one life would be changed forever, but that was for the future.
Major Ellis, leaving Luke to deal with the prisoner, took in the confusion around him and moved smoothly into damage limitation mode.
Discreetly, he opened his com. ‘Grint, where the hell are you?’
‘Approaching your position, sir. About a hundred yards to your right.’
It was on the tip of Ellis’s tongue to ask why he wasn’t here, dealing with the situation right now, but he refrained. Time for that later when Lt Grint would be subject to some very stringent questioning, and Ellis fully intended to be the one doing the stringent questioning.
Stepping forwards, he assumed what he hoped was a re-assuring smile, summoned up as much of the French language as he could remember, and said, ‘Please, mesdames et messieurs, relax yourselves. These ladies are actresses. Today they re-enact the part of Queen Marie Antoinette as she is seized by the brave citizens of France.’
Taking the hint, North pulled her cloak around her and endeavoured, very unsuccessfully, to look like a common citizen.
‘The young man you see before you,’ he gestured to Matthew, ‘has been injured in his brave attempts to secure the rights of the citizens of France. His gallant comrade tends his wounds.’
Jane looked up from applying pressure and smiled as gallantly as she could.
‘Please, I ask you all to compose yourselves and move on, that others may enjoy this . . .’ he paused.
‘Tableau vivant,’ supplied North.
‘Yes. This tableau vivant.’ In English, ‘Smile and wave, everyone. Smile and wave.’
They smiled and waved. With the exception of Jane, who couldn’t feel that displaying her bloody paws would allay anyone’s fears.
‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your cooperation.’
Grint and his team arrived, skidding to a halt.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
Grint was defensive. ‘We got here as quick as we could.’
It wasn’t Ellis’s normal policy to argue in public, especially with another officer, but he was still suffering from the effects of the time-slip, he’d seen a member of his team shot, his assignment had fallen apart under his nose and he was very angry.
‘As quickly as you could? We’ve located and identified the two Englishwomen. Lockland and North have managed to protect the queen from an assailant who shouldn’t have been here. Yes, that’s him there. The one who went on to shoot a member of my team. What’s your info? Was he working alone? He’s not a contemporary – where’s his pod? What exactly have you been doing all afternoon?’
‘Sir,’ said North, very quietly.
The crowd, recognising angry authority when they saw it, obeyed the command to disperse, and the two teams soon found themselves more or less alone.
‘All right?’ said Jane to Matthew.
He tried to sit up, wincing with pain. ‘Yeah. Stings like hell. Was it his flintlock?’
‘It was.’
‘Oh God, if the shot doesn’t kill me then gangrene probably will.’ He nodded over her shoulder. ‘Trouble. You may have to utilise your Parrish-saving skills again.’
Luke was in Grint’s face. ‘Where the fire truck was our back up?’
Luke’s fury cooled Ellis’s temper. Someone should remain calm. ‘Thank you, Mr Parrish. It’s a little late to establish a perimeter, Lt Grint, but if you could check for possible accomplices, please. Thank you. Lockland, how’s Farrell?’
‘Conscious and complaining, sir.’
‘Typical Time Police officer.’ He turned his attention to North, still supporting a white and shocked Marie Antoinette. ‘We need to get her back as soon as possible.’
‘Agreed, sir, and we can’t go back the way we came. The time-slip has closed. We’ll need to do it manually. Grint . . . where’s your pod?’
Wordlessly, Grint gestured. Ellis turned to North, saying in a low voice, ‘Get the queen out of here. You and Lockland. Quick as you can. Leave her where you first found her. She has to be arrested – it’s a key point in history. Besides, if we don’t get it sorted, then we’ll have those clowns from St Mary’s knocking on the door and no one wants that. I’ll deal with things here.’
She turned an anxious face towards him. ‘De Vaudreuil, sir? Is he alive?’
‘Yes. We found him in a ditch not too far away. He was coming around on his own so we left him to recover and came to join you. Too late, it would seem. Off you go now.’
Between them, North and Lockland helped Marie Antoinette to adjust her dress. She was staring around in a bewildered, confused manner, obviously without any idea of what was happening to her. North spoke quietly to her in French, and she consented to be led away.
With Matthew in no immediate danger, Ellis turned his attention to the young man, now securely zipped and on his knees sobbing. Luke stood over him, making the flintlock pistol safe. Ellis nodded his approval. ‘Keep an eye on him.’
With the situation secured, he gazed around. Apart from a few small blood spots on the grass, nothing remained to show a time-slip had occurred or that a temporally displaced member of the French royal family had ever been here. The site was clear.
All officers were aware that missions didn’t always go to plan. Everyone had a bad assignment every now and then. There were occasions when the Time Police had no choice but to reveal themselves. Sometimes things could be glossed over with a plausible explanation – as now. Sometimes they had no choice but to send in a clean-up crew. That rarely ended well for anyone. Clean-up crews do what it says on the tin. Ellis sighed. This shambolic mission might well lead to his team’s period of gruntwork being extended – at least until they’d expunged their sin. God, what a cluster-fire truck. A useful lesson in how things could go wrong at the very last moment.