Surprise and confusion are difficult feelings to quantify. Everything, after all, is relative; it depends entirely upon one’s circumstances. For Bartholomew Browne, who was feeling especially surprised, thoroughly confused, and more than a little disturbed, his circumstances had just altered with a violence that left him quite out of sorts.
Try, if you will, to imagine a gentleman of fifty-one—a creature of strict routine and unvarying habit—finding himself standing in an unmapped marsh up to his knees in warm mud, without the faintest notion of how he came to be there. This is where we find Bartholomew Browne, which is slightly after where our story ought properly to begin.
Our story begins in Camden, a quiet village just north of London, in the late spring of 1682. Bartholomew Browne lived in the modest timbered cottage where he had been born in 1631, and it remained the only home he had ever known.
His parents had both vanished in the chaos of the Great Fire of 1666— an inconvenience that still troubled Bartholomew whenever he balanced the old ledgers—leaving their only son to manage the family enterprise. The Browne business consisted of buying and selling almost anything from the ships docking along the pool of London that might conceivably be sold on for a profit. Because the lifeblood of their trade flowed through the river wharves and coaching inns of Holborn, the family maintained premises at the corner of Dane Street and Red Lion Square: a cramped, low-ceilinged shop smelling perpetually of tarred twine, dried cloves, and damp wool.
As a man of strict routine, Bartholomew took pride in ensuring that every day began and proceeded much like the last. He had awoken at his customary hour of five o’clock, washed in cold basin water, dressed in his sober brown broadcloth coat, and set out upon the mile-long walk through the dewy fields and hawthorn bridleways of Camden toward Bloomsbury.
By the time he unlocked the shutters at the corner of Dane Street and Red Lion Square, the morning was already unseasonably warm. It was far too sultry for May; the air inside the shop hung thick and stale, trapped behind closed oak panels. Deciding that a lively draught was required before the first carters called, Bartholomew propped open the street door and made his way through the cluttered gloom to unbolt the heavy wooden door at the rear of the building.
No sooner had he lifted the iron latch and swung the back door wide than a freak gust of wind tore through the yard and raced into the shop. Every internal door slammed shut at once with a deafening report. The floorboards shuddered, and a tall bookcase crammed with stoneware jars, tallow candles, and brass weights toppled forward with an almighty crash.
Clouds of grey dust billowed toward the rafters. Bartholomew stood coughing and waving a handkerchief in front of his nose until the debris settled. Only then, peering down into the wreckage where the bookcase had stood for thirty years, did he notice that the oak planking beneath had given way. One of the floorboards had snapped cleanly in two and now stood wedged almost vertically in the joists.
In the dark cavity beneath the floor sat a small wooden box.
Bartholomew knelt carefully, mindful of his knees and the splinters, and lifted the object from the dirt. The varnish on the lid had been crudely scraped away with a knife, and across the pale, rough grain someone had written a single line in faded black ink:
Raahi Shah, Lost in time
Bartholomew held the box up to the dusty shaft of sunlight with one hand and scratched behind his ear with the other. The name meant nothing to him, though he vaguely recalled his father grumbling about an Indian merchant back in the autumn before the Fire.
Carrying the box back to his counting desk, Bartholomew set it down upon the blotter and brushed the cobwebs from his cuffs. He felt around the bevelled edges of the lid for a brass catch or keyhole, but found none; the wood appeared to have been wedged or glued shut. Annoyed by the puzzle, he gripped the base with one hand, slid the blade of his heavy iron letter opener into the seam, and levered with all his weight.
With a sharp crack, the lid gave way. In his haste, the open box flew straight out of Bartholomew’s hands and clattered across the floorboards, spilling a single heavy object that rolled with a dull rumble beneath the wicker baskets by the shopfront window.
Dropping to all fours, Bartholomew reached blindly amongst the straw and fallen ledgers until his fingers curled around something cold, smooth, and hard, roughly the size of a good cooking apple. He pulled it free, stood up with a groan, and held it out toward the morning light.
It appeared to be a piece of cut crystal or heavy glass, shaped into facets rather like an ornamental paperweight.
‘Odd item,’ he murmured under his breath.
Tilting it closer to his spectacles, he noted a murky cloudiness deep within the core. ‘Cheap rubbish,’ he decided.
Then he blinked. Had his eyes played him false, or had he just seen a cluster of tiny stars wink inside the stone?
He rubbed his eyes and held the crystal at arm’s length to focus. There was no mistaking it: miniature constellations, milky spirals, and luminous bubbles were drifting in a slow, deliberate circle inside the glass. For several seconds Bartholomew stood entirely transfixed, his mouth slightly ajar, before giving himself a firm shake. A London tradesman had no business being hypnotised before breakfast.
He noticed then that the crystal had picked up a smear of grease and soot on one facet where it had rolled under the baskets. Quick as a flash, Bartholomew spat lightly on the glass and rubbed it furiously against the linen front of his shirt to see if it would take a shine.
What happened next was witnessed by Bartholomew Browne and by him alone—for at half-past seven in the morning on Red Lion Square, never the briskest thoroughfare in London, his was the only shop open. The room filled with a silent, pulsing light. It was not the yellow glow of tallow or sunshine, but a fierce, blue-white brilliance that swelled from his palms until it swallowed the shelves, the counting desk, and the leaded windows. Then, with the sensation of a trapdoor dropping beneath his heels, it was over.
The glare burst outward, blinding him for a heartbeat and leaving him gasping, shivering, and—
‘My legs are wet!’ he exclaimed aloud.
Bartholomew blinked away the purple spots dancing before his eyes and looked down. His best worsted stockings and buckled shoes were submerged to the knee in dark, reed-choked water. His desk was gone. The shattered bookcase was gone. In fact, the entire parish of St Giles- in-the-Fields appeared to have been removed without his permission.
‘Where on earth—?’ he began, turning in a slow, squelching circle. ‘Where are the houses? How did I get here?’
The questions tumbled over one another in his mind as he stood alone in the sudden, baking heat. Above him stretched an immense canopy of ancient oaks, alders, and ferns thicker than any he had seen on Hampstead Heath. After a minute or two of futile indignation, he decided that standing in a swamp was beneath his dignity and trudged with loud, sucking footsteps toward higher ground.
Through a break in the dense trees ahead, he caught the broad, silver- brown glint of a river. The sun was climbing high, and without further delay Bartholomew set off toward the bank in search of assistance. Wherever he was, there were bound to be wharves, toll-houses, or fishermen along the water. With a bit of luck, he might hail a passing wherry or find a coaching inn to carry him back to Holborn before noon.
Yet as he emerged onto the muddy foreshore, his confidence faltered. The bend of the great river before him was unmistakably that of the Thames—he knew that broad curve like the back of his own hand—and yet there was not a single spire, bridge, or barge in sight. In the branches overhead, birds of extraordinary size and plumage sang in a deafening, alien chorus. Suddenly, the reeds on the far bank parted. Bartholomew froze as two figures peered out at him across the water. They were short, barrel- chested people clad in uncured skins, with heavy brows and tangles of matted hair hanging past their shoulders. For three heartbeats they stared at the gentleman in the muddy broadcloth coat; then, without a sound, they melted backward into the undergrowth.
Bartholomew Browne stood upon the banks of the Thames, smoothing his damp waistcoat and staring at the empty bushes in profound irritation. He remained blissfully unaware that the next stagecoach to Red Lion Square—or river ferry, for that matter—would be along in roughly thirty thousand years, give or take.