‘Bruno, stand aside and let the gentleman in.’
Bruno moved out of the way. Bruno? thought Cobb, looks more like an Igor to me. As he moved to one side the room seemed to get lighter. Across the room, behind a desk sat an enormously fat man, sipping tea and eating dainty cakes from a plate. He had to lean right forward to put his cup and saucer on the desk, as his belly did not allow him to sit any closer.
I don’t ever want to get that fat, thought Cobb. Correction. … I don’t ever want me and three of my friends to get that fat! The man affected to be a smart dresser, something of a dandy, with his silk cravat and his ruffled cuffs but the cuffs were grubby, there was an old stain on his waistcoat and his fingernails were dirty.
‘You’re Mr. Jarse?’ asked Cobb.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name is Cobb; I’m a private detective. I wonder if you might spare me a few moments to talk about one of your tenants?’
‘Sit down,’ said Jarse, indicating the chair in front of the desk. Cobb did so; Bruno also took a chair, in the corner of the room.
‘So Mr. Cobb, how can I help you?’
‘It’s about a Mary Templeton, she rents a room from you in Cheapside. She tells me that there is a difference of opinion between you about some back rent.’
‘And what business is it of yours?’
‘She happens to be a friend of mine, so I said I’d speak to you about it. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.’
‘No misunderstanding. She owes me three months back rent plus interest.’
‘She says she paid you the rent but then you upped the rent and then backdated it.’
‘I’m a businessman Mr. Cobb. I have taxes to pay, I have overheads in the upkeep of those buildings, it was necessary to raise the rent.’
‘But you neglected to tell her about it for three months.’
‘I was being kind. I knew she would find it a struggle but I didn’t want to embarrass her, so I graciously considered it a loan. But now she wants to leave … well that makes things different. The loan will have to be repaid plus of course, interest at my standard rate of fifteen percent a week.’
‘That’s extortion!’
‘No Mr. Cobb, that’s business.’ Jarse poured himself more tea, without offering Cobb a cup. Cobb waited for him to continue. ‘Mary Templeton, yes I remember her now. Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Does that explain your interest?’
Cobb didn’t normally dislike people on first meeting them but in Jarse’s case he was prepared to make an exception. ‘She’s just a friend. Now what do you say we come to some kind of arrangement. How about she pays the back rent and you forget about the interest. That’s reasonable isn’t it?’
‘Reasonable yes, but not profitable. What do I get out of it?’
‘My goodwill. I’m a private detective and frankly I’m at a bit of a loose end at the moment. I could always spend my time looking into your affairs. Something to keep me occupied. If I looked hard enough, I’m sure I could find a few … discrepancies.’
‘Don’t think you can scare me Cobb. I know who you are and what you were. I know you were in the force but you’re not anymore so your word doesn’t carry any weight around here. You can’t threaten me, you’re no longer a policeman!’
Cobb replied coolly, ‘Do you think that makes me less dangerous … or more?’
Jarse waved at hand at Bruno and Cobb felt a hand the size of a dinner plate grip his shoulder. He stood up quickly and grabbing Bruno’s hand, twisted it sharply and bent the hand in towards the wrist. With his other hand he grabbed Bruno’s arm, just above the elbow and squeezed hard. Cobb’s grip on the pressure point froze Bruno’s whole arm and he forced Bruno to his knees with a gasp of pain.
Cobb stood over Bruno and spoke to Jarse, ‘You don’t want to make an enemy of me Jarse, that would be very … unwise. I’ve offered you a proposal, think on it, I’ll be in touch.’ He let go of Bruno who slumped to the floor, cradling his arm.
Cobb strode to the door and swung it open. He glanced down at the painted glass sign. ‘What does the “H” stand for?’ he asked.
‘Henry,’ replied Jarse.
‘Funny, I though it stood for Hugh,’ retorted Cobb and went out, slamming the door behind him.
***
That night Cobb staggered out of the Ferret and Furlong pub and wandered down the street. He’d been drinking for several hours and was now hungry and felt like some fish and chips, “The Great Albion Invention” as it was known. (As opposed to “The Great Caledonian Invention”, the deep-fried Mars bar.)
Fish, chips and mushy peas, just what a man needs after a night on the beer. (This was the Victorian Era; Kebabs hadn’t been invented yet.)
He reached the end of the street and waited at the kerb while the cabs and carriages passed. He was swaying slightly as he stood there so he supported himself by leaning against the lamp-post while the cabs rattled past over the cobbled street.
When a large enough gap opened in the traffic, Cobb stepped forward but tripped over a raised kerbstone. He tried to regain his balance but he fell forward anyway. He managed to raise his arms to avoid smashing his face on the cobblestones and fell face first into a patch of grass.
Grass? he thought as he lay there, in the middle of a Londum street? What’s going on? He thought he must have hit his head and was imagining it but he could feel the grass on his face and smell it clearly. He curled his fingers and they dug into soft earth. Oh bugger! he thought, it’s happened again. He rolled over onto his elbow and looked around him. He was in the middle of an empty field but over in the distance he could see lights, tents and hear noise and lively music.
He had done it again. Cobb had unconsciously propelled himself into another Universe. He would get a tingling sensation in his chest that quickly spread to the rest of his body and the next thing he knew, he was somewhere else. This was always the way it happened. It was obviously him that caused it; it wasn’t just random chance that made him fall through holes between dimensions as he used to think, because it only ever seemed to happen when he was in some sort of physical danger or even worse, just when his mind was distracted. He had even done it sometimes by falling asleep, you know, when you are in that ‘not quite awake, not quite asleep’ period as you are drifting off to sleep or waking up. He had once fallen asleep in the summer sunshine on a park bench, only to wake up sitting in the straw of a stable on a strange Earth.
He was sure that he caused it … he just couldn’t control it. But the strange thing was, although he couldn’t influence where he went, he could always come back at any time of his choosing. He could make the dimension shift happen at will if he concentrated hard enough but when he did he just randomly went to an alternate Universe, it could be anywhere. But once he was there, if he made it happen again, he always returned home, not to another Universe. It was like buying a return ticket for the train, you could only go there and back, not to a completely different station in another part of the country. He’d never figured that one out.
And he always moved backwards and forwards to exactly the same geographical location on either side. Sometimes whatever geographical upheavals had shaped that world were different from his own and the landscape did not match the one he had just left. Fortunately, on the rare occasions he had jumped when he was upstairs in a building he had landed in another building or on a hill or tree that was conveniently at the same height as the building he had just left behind.
But normally it was the same from world to world. If he was standing in the street in his world, then he would end up in the street in the other world, or at least … where that street should be, for in the other world that street may not have been built. Because there may not be a civilisation there to build streets.
It had taken him some time to get his head around that. At first he thought that every alternate Universe he went to would be the same, the people would be the same, the level of civilisation would be the same but apparently
that was not the case.
When he was younger, if he ended up in a strange, new world he didn’t usually hang around to do any sight-seeing but since Esme’s death he didn’t really give a damn any more whether it was dangerous or not, so for the past five years he had sometimes taken the opportunity to take a wander around and have a look.
And the one thing he had discovered to his surprise was that all the Universes were different. Sometimes only slightly, strange birds and plants that he didn’t recognise but the hills and valleys and people looked physically the same as what he was accustomed to. And then sometimes they were completely different, strange, alien landscapes populated by animals that seemed to be extracts from some madman’s nightmares.
But for the most part they were normal planets, occupied by normal people, however, they weren’t always the same as Cobb’s Earth. Sometimes they were less advanced, sometimes they were more. Cobb had been to places where humans lived in mud huts and wore animal skins. In other places he had seen them travelling around in flying machines or self-propelled wheeled vehicles that travelled at tremendous speeds, as fast as the fastest locomotives that Cobb had seen.
At first Cobb thought he was jumping to different time periods in his own world’s history but he saw landmarks that he recognised, such as the Houses of Parliament, but each fresh viewing was different enough to know that what he was looking at, each new version, could never all have existed on his own planet. He finally came to the conclusion that he was travelling between worlds but history must be different on those worlds, in each Universe.
After doing a bit of reading on the subject Cobb realised that history is made by people, inventions, driven by wars, that all combine to affect the flow of history. If some of those elements are removed then that version of history will go down a different path.
So, although each Universe and each planet in the Multiverse is exactly the same geographical age, some human populations (on planets where human populations had evolved) have advanced much further than those on other planets. Some are living in caves and others are advanced enough to think that digital watches are a good idea. (Okay, I nicked that joke from Douglas Adams.) And on the other hand, some civilisations have solved the Cold Fusion problem and gone to the stars.
So where am I? Cobb wondered. He raised himself slowly to his feet and looked over to the lights at the far end of the field. He could hear jolly fiddle and flute music coming from the brightly lit gathering and the sound of laughter. Well that was a good sign; if people play music like that they’re not usually in the process of dismembering human sacrifices or burning non-believers, so he thought he might check it out. He was still hungry and the smell of cooking meat wafted past him, He thought, that’s where I want to be.
He made his way over to the noise and the lights and stood outside the circle of light while he studied the place, from the shadows. It was a group of tents roughly arranged in a circle. On one of the tents he could see a hand panted sign,
Autumnus Fayre
All Welcome
He could see loads of people milling about, some dancing, some buying things from stalls. They definitely looked human all right. Okay, he thought, let’s give it a go.
As he moved forward to enter the Fayre, someone in a cloak bumped into him. He couldn’t see the face of the man, who made a muttered apology, but he’d apologised and obviously wasn’t out to cause trouble, so Cobb ignored the incident and went into the light.
He wandered around looking into the tents and the stalls arranged in the open circle between them. There were stalls holding competitions like darts and tombola and throw the hoop over the stick; then there were signs for contests such as ‘Guess the weight of the pig’ then ‘Anyone seen the pig?’ followed by ‘Guess where the pig has escaped to’. Then another sign ‘Guess how many kittens in the sack and win both of them’. This obviously wasn’t the Brains Trust Annual Jamboree figured Cobb but they seemed friendly enough and they were enjoying themselves, which was always a sign of good folk in Cobb’s estimation.
They were all strangely dressed in a kind of mediaeval clothing. What he didn’t know was whether it was their normal form of garb or whether they were dressed up for the occasion. Back on his world they had people who ran events where everyone dressed up in mediaeval clothing and had banquets. Maybe it was one of those gatherings. Or maybe one of those societies that re-enacted the battles from the Albion Civil War, between the Roundheads and the Coneheads.
He followed his nose to a large, open fronted tent filled with benches, before a long bar. He had come here because in front of the tent was a fire pit where they were roasting various animals. They looked like sides of beef and pig and his mouth watered as he stared at them. He went up to the bar and listening to the other customers realised they spoke Albion albeit with a strange accent and used a lot of thee’s and thou’s. (In the interests of brevity I shall not attempt to transcribe all their strange dialect and will confine the dialogue to pure Albion.)
Cobb asked the barman for a beer and got a puzzled look in reply. ‘Er … ale?’ he ventured.
‘Ah, ale, why didn’t you say so?’ The barman filled up a tankard from a barrel, placed it front of Cobb and looked at him expectantly. ‘That’ll be two groats please.’
Cobb took out his money and held it out to the barman who looked at the coins and said, ‘Haven’t you got any real money?’ pulling the tankard back across the bar away from Cobb.
Cobb searched through his pockets for something to barter with, like a penknife, and found some more coins that he didn’t know he had, in another pocket. He took them out and stared at them, they were totally unfamiliar to him, he never seen any coins like them before. Nor did he know where they came from or how they got in his pocket. As he held his hand out and sorted through them with his finger, wondering where they came from, the barman said, ‘Ah that’s better, I’ll have two of those, thank you kindly, sir,’ picked out two coins and slid the tankard back to Cobb.
Oh well, thought Cobb, in for a … groat, in for pound. ‘Can I have some food please? Some er … pork and some bread, perhaps?’
‘Certainly sir, I get the serving girl to bring some to you. You’re not from round here are you? Are you from up north?’
‘That’s right,’ said Cobb. ‘I’m from … Norfolk,’ he racked his brain for anything he knew about Norfolk. The man who discovered the tomb of the Eejiptian Faraoh, Tuten Kha-Hawn, lived in Norfolk and it was also famous for … potatoes!
‘Yes … I’ve come from Norfolk to … sell potatoes,’ he said, hoping it sounded rustic enough to explain his presence there.
‘Ah, that explains the strange money and the way you talk. I suppose that’s the way they wear clothes in Norfolk.’
‘Yes, they’re quite fashionable in … er … Norfolk.’
‘Well, you be welcome round here stranger. You turned up just in time for our Autumnus Fayre. All the crops have been gathered in and people are celebrating a good harvest and getting ready for the winter chill.’
A few customers who were sitting at the bar had been listening to the conversation and one joined in. ‘I had a brother who went to Norfolk, once.’
‘No, really?’ said another one, impressed.
‘Did you meet my brother? He went to Norfolk,’ the first man asked Cobb. ‘His name was Harold.’
‘No, sorry, never met him,’ replied Cobb.
‘I had a brother once,’ said a third.
‘And what did he do?’ asked Cobb.
‘Nothing, I just had a brother once.’
Okay. I’m guessing they don’t have a MENSA here, thought Cobb. He said to the barman, ‘I think I’ll go sit at a table, by myself, if you don’t mind?’
‘Grab a table,’ said the barman, ‘make yourself at home and enjoy the night. I’ll have the girl bring your food over to you.’
Cobb thanked him, told him to give the village idiots a tankard of ale on him, let him take some more coins from his out
stretched hand and then made his way to an empty table. He sipped his beer and watched the dancing in the centre of the open space. There were males and females, young and old, slim and stocky, your typical, salt of the earth, rustic types, who just seemed to be taking a welcome break from the daily grind of trying to survive. Cobb had spent a few summers in the country working on a farm when he was growing up and he knew how bloody hard the work was, so he could sympathise. It pleased him to see them enjoying themselves after a hard time gathering in the harvest. They were the people from which the Albion civilisation had grown in his world and now it ruled at least a quarter of the globe. Good people. He hoped for their sakes that the same happened here.
The serving girl brought his food and he tucked in. He was starving and the food was good, the ale was fine and the dancing and music livened the place up. Despite a certain amount of wariness when he first approached the site, he now felt at home amongst people he could understand. He was actually enjoying himself. He seemed to have enough of the strange coins to get well and truly drunk, so he planned to do that and then kip down by the fire or on some of those bales of hay he had seen out at the back of the tents. If he were drunk enough he wouldn’t notice the cold.
As he ate, he pondered the mystery of the ‘appearing’ coins. He knew he hadn’t had them on him when he had fallen into this place and the only person he’d had contact with … was the man in the cloak. He must have slipped them to him. Now why would he do that? It was obvious that Cobb might need some at a party like this but why would he be so generous to a stranger? And why sneak it into his pocket, why not just give it to him? Not that he’d have taken it of course, so maybe the man could have just dropped a moneybag in front of him. Hmmm, it was all very puzzling.
He finished his pork and bread and emptied his tankard. The serving girl came over to take his plate and bought a board over with some cheese on it. He ordered another drink and chewed on some cheese as he waited for her to bring it.
Suddenly a flash of red caught his eye, he glanced in that direction and saw the man in the cloak. His hood was pulled back so you could see his tanned, handsome face and the cloak was thrown back over his shoulder revealing his red and white diamond clown’s costume. It was the man in the clown’s outfit from the pub, whom Cobb had seen wind his way through the crowd and then disappear. The man was staring straight at Cobb and as their eyes met, he raised two fingers to his forehead in a salute and then turned away to leave.