We were a hundred yards away from the pod and the commotion behind was drawing ever closer.
‘Don’t look back,’ he said again. ‘This is a common technique. They start a disturbance behind us and as we run away, the majority of them are ahead of us, waiting for us to run blindly into their arms.’
‘Any helpful thoughts?’
‘Let’s get off the river. Too exposed. We’ll lose ourselves in the streets and find our way back later.’
‘Suppose they find the pod?’
He stopped.
‘Good thought.’
It was. I do have them occasionally. If they found the pod and disabled it, we would be helpless. In fact, that was all they would have to do. In these temperatures, unable to gain access, we could be dead in hours. Maybe not even that long. Once again, I felt a little tickle of fear. I’ve said this before. It’s not easy living out of your own time. Everyone has a place in society and without the backing of family, friends, a guild, a tribe, a village, we were officially non-persons. Scratching a living by stealing is no fun. And, it seemed, wherever we went, these people were only a few hours behind us. We could be in big trouble.
He looked down at me. ‘Can you run?’
I opened my mouth to say yes, but it came out as no. Sometimes prudence overcomes stupidity. Even for me.
We turned casually aside off the river, crunched over the snow, climbed a few icy steps, and scrambled over a low wall.
‘Don’t look back and don’t run. Steady, now.’
Walking slowly, we entered a warren of small lanes, fronted by narrow wooden houses leaning unsteadily over the street. Nearly twenty years after the Great Fire, the streets of London were still cramped and noisome. I knew there had been ambitious plans for a modern city with boulevards and avenues, but the common people, afraid of having their tiny plots of land absorbed into these new schemes, had started to rebuild even before the ashes cooled. The result was that, in parts, the new London wasn’t that much different from the old one.
Away from the lights and fires of the fair, everything seemed dark and shadowed. And much, much colder. What snow remained was black and filthy. The few people on the streets were staggering home, clutching as much wood as they had been able to find. Tiny windows were heavily shuttered against the cold and any gaps stuffed with frozen rags. Few lights showed. The air was heavy with smoke and caught at my throat. I tried not to cough.
We wandered through the maze. The deserted streets contrasted strangely with the lights and bustle of the fair only a hundred yards away. I shivered under my layers of eccentric clothing. Snowflakes fell silently out of the dark sky. We were the only people around.
The silence was actually a little worrying. Where were the feral dogs, cats, rats, and prostitutes who would normally be scavenging in these dark places?
Staying out of the cold was the answer to that one. Dogs, cats, rats, and prostitutes obviously had a lot more sense than we did. Not difficult.
‘No prostitutes,’ I said.
‘Of course not. Only a madman would get his todger out on a night like this. It would snap off in his hand.’
We crept a little further. More flakes drifted down. The cold was almost unbearable.
‘We’re on our way back to the pod,’ he said in an undertone, breath billowing around his head. ‘We’re walking parallel with the river, now. If we take the next turning left, we should come out somewhere nearby.’
We flitted quietly from shadow to shadow. ‘Nearly there,’ he said, and barely had the words left his mouth than three or four dark figures appeared at the end of the street, fortunately, not looking our way. Yet.
‘Down here,’ he said, and we wheeled left down an alley so narrow we had to turn sideways in places.
The good news was that overhanging roofs had kept this narrow space comparatively snow free. The bad news was that this place could accurately be called Bodyfluids Alley. The stink was bad enough but we were also slipping in pools of frozen urine. Icy turds crunched underfoot. One day, surely, I would find myself some place where I wasn’t up to my knees in effluent. Just one day, please.
Leon stopped dead and I walked into the back of him. Slowly, he drew me aside, behind a broken barrel. I crouched, painfully. We both breathed into our sleeves so our frosted breath wouldn’t give us away, although the snow was falling quite thickly, now. In half an hour, we’d be well camouflaged. And frozen stiff, of course.
Voices sounded at the entrance. A bright, white, non-17th-century searchlight flashed past us, giving me a wonderful opportunity to see what I was crouching in. Appropriately, we froze.