The return flight was gloomy. Caydon was in a glowering sulk. He snapped at Oz and scowled at Lily.
“I don’t care what Mrs Fladgate predicted,” Lily said. “You don’t have to take it out on the rest of us.”
“Leave him alone,” Oz said. “Can’t you see he’s had a shock?”
“So what? Nobody ever cares when I’VE had a shock. He’s always getting at me for not being brave – now he’s acting like a total wimp.”
“Oh, I’m not a wimp,” Caydon said darkly. “Considering what I’ve just heard, I’m being incredibly brave – anybody else would be screaming.”
Oz nudged him. “You’re not going to die, are you?”
“No. It’s worse.”
“Shut up, you lot.” Silver said. “That means you too, Caydon – I’ve no idea what that mad old bat said to you, but she doesn’t have the power for that sort of prediction. She probably said you’d grow up to be uncool or something. Get over it.”
“Not as bad as that,” said Caydon, suddenly smiling. “Nothing could make ME uncool.”
Oz grinned back at him, relieved that his best friend, and distant cousin, wasn’t in serious danger. “Well, I’m certainly not going to be cool when I grow up – not if she was right about me.”
“Never mind,” said Caydon. “Maybe you’ll be the world’s first cool violin player.”
Lily said, “I want to know what she meant about Daisy. We shouldn’t have left her.”
“Daisy’s fine.” Silver leaned across the machine gun on her knee to pat Lily’s arm. “She’s at my house, with Mum and Elvira. Honestly, she’s totally safe.”
“What about our parents?”
“They’re having lunch at one of the SMU’s sealed pubs. Caydon, your mum’s gone to a sealed cinema with her two best friends. We’re not going back to Skittle Street.”
“I’m starving,” Caydon said. “Can we have lunch at that pub?”
“Sorry, we’re headed for MI6.” Silver glanced round at them, with an expression that looked odd on her eleven-year-old face. “I don’t know if I should tell you this – but I think we’re going on a pretty serious mission.”
This pushed old Mrs Fladgate out of their minds. They were all very quiet.
“I haven’t been told anything officially,” Silver said. “It was the way Mum sounded when I called her. And I could hear Dad shouting ‘Love you, baby’ in the background. I could tell they were worried about me. They know I’m very experienced – but parents are always parents, even after two hundred and forty-six years.”
Oz asked, “What’s the mission?”
“Sorry, I don’t know. But I do know we’re all going to have to work together as a team. We can’t afford any more silly squabbles.”
The twins and Caydon looked at one another; the power was strong between them, and nobody felt like squabbling.
“Very well done, everyone,” J said. “Thanks to you three carriers, Madge’s vision was beautifully clear and we think we’ve found Alba’s time stitch. All the signs tell us that she’s planning to make her entry on Sunday the second of September 1666. Does that date mean anything to you?”
Oz, Lily and Caydon looked at one another blankly.
“But we saw a modern city,” Oz said. “With cars and trains – it didn’t look like sixteen – whenever.”
“The picture was full of clues,” J said. “Do you remember seeing an old castle beside the river, with red-brick turrets? It was called Baynard’s Castle and it burned to the ground in 1666 – the date of the Great Fire of London.”
They had all heard of the Great Fire of London. Lily and Oz had done a project about it at their last school. “If that castle burned to the ground, why could we see it?” Lily asked.
“Because in Madge’s awful vision, it survived,” J said.That vision showed what London could look like today – if Alba and her wicked sisters manage to slip through the dropped stitch and put the fire out.”
“But –” Lily was puzzled “–wouldn’t that be quite a good thing?”
“The Great Fire ended the plague,” Oz remembered. “And in that vision there were plague barges.”
“Yes,” J said, “there was a very bad strain of plague around in those days. It was wiped out when the city was consumed by fire. If there hadn’t been a fire, that strain would have got stronger and less possible to cure, and, we estimate, a third of the population would have died of it. That’s why you children must make sure that fire starts.”
There was a long silence.
“So,” Oz said slowly, “you want us to go back in time to sixteen-whatever –”
“1666.”
“– and START the Great Fire of London?”
“More or less,” J said. “Alba can’t stop the fire starting, but you have to make sure she doesn’t manage to put it out. If she puts it out, you lot must start it again.”
There was an even longer silence.
“I’ve been with the SMU for more than a hundred years,” Silver said, “and this is the craziest job I’ve ever heard of.”
“We’re living in crazy times,” said J.
They were in his grand secret office in the MI6 building beside the river, and he was wearing the dark blue uniform of a senior officer in the Navy. He stood up behind his desk. “If you agree to this little jaunt back to the seventeenth century, you’ll start your training after lunch. If you don’t agree,” he added, very solemnly, “we could wake up tomorrow morning in a different reality – an evil D33 dictatorship, in the cruel reign of King Brian. Our future-casters tell me that King Brian is just a puppet in the hands of Alba and her sisters.” He shook his head sadly. “How does she attain such power? We don’t know. But something vitally important will be destroyed, unless that fire takes place.”
“It’d be so weird to wake up and find everything different,” Caydon said thoughtfully. “Would we know it was different? If history had been changed that long ago, wouldn’t we have grown up with King Brian? Wouldn’t we just think he was the normal king?”
J smiled. “That’s a very good question. I think you’d all notice because you’re carriers.”
“So we’d just wake up one day and there’d be somebody else on the stamps and the money,” Lily said. “And we’d know about it but nobody else would? This is making my brain hurt!”
“Try not to think about it too hard,” J said briskly. “You don’t need to understand all the details. Your job will be simple – to stop D33 putting out the Great Fire of London. Your power as carriers will be enough to transport Silver as your bodyguard.”
“Thank you, sir,” Silver said.
Lily said, “I’m glad you’ll be there. You know more about things in the past.”
There was a knock on the door. Three men, armed with machine guns and dressed in the white clothes and hats of chefs, pushed in three trolleys laden with food.
“First, you must have something to eat,”said J. “Food in the past will be full of germs and you mustn’t touch it.”
The armed chefs quickly set up a table, covered it with a white cloth and set it with plates, knives and forks. The office began to fill with delicious smells.
One of the chefs asked, “Do you need the cat food, sir?”
“Oh, yes, I nearly forgot. Bring in those ridiculous animals.”
Two armed policemen came in, each holding a reinforced pet carrier.
“This is the LIMIT!” screeched Demerara, inside one pet carrier. “Let me out! Let me get at that GHASTLY RODENT!”
“Let me out!” squeaked the angry voice of Spike from inside the other carrier. “I’m going to sink my teeth into her FAT BUM!”
“Stop it at once – both of you!” J was very stern, though Lily was sure he was trying not to smile.
She went over to peer through the steel bars of Demerara’s pet carrier. “What’s going on – have you been arrested again?”
“Lily, he won’t stop attacking me!” A pair of angry green eyes glared at her from the depths of the pet carrier. “Spike’s the one who should be locked up.”
“You both had to be locked up,” J said. “You wouldn’t stop fighting.”
“That OLD BAG killed six more of my best rats!”
“They were INSOLENT LOUTS and they STOLE my lovely piece of pizza!”
“The argument will have to wait,” J said, “until this emergency is over. Let me say this to all of you, animals and children. For the sake of this mission, you must forget any silly disagreements and work together as a perfect unit.”
They were all silent for a moment.
“I’ll stop being angry about that prediction,” said Caydon.
“Oh, all right,” said Spike. The easy-going rat was always the first to get his temper back. “I won’t make any more trouble. I’ll put off biting her bum till it’s over.”
“And I suppose I’ll stop killing his army,” Demerara hissed. “I’m as patriotic as the next cat and I’m doing this for my country. Now someone kindly give me some FOOD.”
One of the policemen unlocked the pet carriers. Demerara climbed out into Lily’s arms. Spike dropped to the floor and jumped on to Oz’s trainer, and they all sat down to a very good lunch of roast chicken, with trifle for pudding. Demerara ate a saucer of cat food and half the chicken on Lily’s plate, and was polite to Spike. They were all talking and laughing normally – but they knew the coming mission was going to be very dangerous, and they sensed it like a gathering storm.