Free Overtime by Tom Holt Page A

complained, ‘what are you doing?’
    â€˜See this?’
    â€˜No,’ Guy replied. ‘Somebody put the lights out.’
    Blondel showed him a little grey box, with wires coming out of it. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a radio transmitter-cum-microphone-cum-hologram projector. It also sends electrical impulses into this poor mutt’s brains to control its actions. Cerf le Blanc,’ he said, patting the stag’s nose, ‘is just an ordinary white deer, aren’t you, boy?’
    â€˜Oh,’ Guy said. ‘I see.’ To a certain extent, he felt, he ought to be relieved. Somehow he wasn’t.
    â€˜All those magical effects,’ Blondel went on, ‘were produced by this little box of tricks here. That’s where the voice came from. I expect it’s also transmitting what we say back to Head Office, wherever that is. Is that right, boys?’ he said.
    â€˜Yes, that’s...’ said the voice of Cerf le Blanc. Another voice said something rude and there was an audible click. Blondel chuckled softly and then put the box on the ground and jumped on it.
    â€˜All right,’ he said, ‘you can turn the deer loose now. We’d better be going.’
    Cerf le Blanc, freed from the rope, picked up his hooves and ran for it. Blondel took back the rope, coiled it up neatly and stowed it in the saddlebag. ‘Time we weren’t here,’ he said. ‘Now, our best bet will be a corn exchange or something like that.’
    Guy, who had just started to feel he could cope, on a purely superficial level at least, felt his jaw drop. ‘A corn exchange,’ he repeated.
    â€˜Or a yarn market will do,’ Blondel replied. ‘We can make do with a guildhall at a pinch, I suppose, but there may well be people about. Somehow I don’t feel a church would be a good idea. They may be idiots, but they aren’t fools. Coming?’
    It was about two hours before dawn when they reached the town. Fourteenth-century Wandsworth was waking up, deciding it could have another ten minutes, and turning over in its warm straw. Blondel quickened his step.
    â€˜In the 1480s,’ he whispered as they crept past a sleeping beggar, ‘there was a corn exchange in the town square, but they may not have built it yet. Looked a bit perpendicular when I saw it. Hang on, this’ll do.’
    They were standing under a bell-tower. Blondel was looking at a small, low door, which Guy hadn’t even noticed. It wasn’t the sort of door that you do notice. Over its lintel were letters cut into the stone.
    NOLI INTRARE, they said, AD VSVM CANONI-CORVM RESERVATA.
    â€˜That’s the Latin,’ Blondel explained, ‘for No entry, staff only. This’ll do fine. We’ll have to leave the horse, but never mind.’
    He knocked three times on the door and pushed. It opened.
    Â 
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜He hit me,’ Pursuivant explained.
    â€˜I gathered that. What else?’
    Meanwhile the doctor’s assistant was up a ladder in the stockroom, looking at the labels on the backs of what looked like shoe-boxes. ‘We’ve only got a 36E,’ he called out. ‘Will that do?’
    â€˜Have to,’ the doctor said. ‘Means he’ll get bronchitis from time to time, but so what?’
    Pursuivant sat up on the operating table. ‘Hold on, doc,’ he said. The doctor pushed him down again.
    â€˜You never heard of the cuts?’ he said. ‘You’re lucky we’ve got a 36E. There’s been a run on lungs lately.’
    â€˜Yes, but...’
    â€˜Don’t be such an old woman,’ said the doctor. ‘We should have some 42s when you have your next thirty-year service. Until then, you’ll have to make do.’
    Mountjoy, who had been standing fiddling with his signet ring all this time, was getting impatient. ‘He hit you,’ he repeated. ‘Then what?’
    â€˜Then I fell over,’