Madeleine Maxwell

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> Dr Madeleine Maxwell
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> ### Aliases
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> * Max
> * Lucy (Leon has the privilege)
> * Little Maddy
> * Philippa of Rushford
> * The Margarita Monster
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> ### Department
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> * History
> * Director (formerly)
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> ### Status
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> * Alive (current timeline)
> * Deceased (alternate timeline)
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> ### Affiliation
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> St Mary's
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> ### Relatives
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> * Leon Farrell (husband)
> * Unnamed child (miscarriage)
> * Matthew Farrell (son)
> * John Maxwell (father)
> * Unnamed mother (fate unknown)
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> ### Victim(s)
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> * Jack the Ripper (severely wounded)
> * Isabella Barclay (killed, original timeline)
> * Clive Ronan (killed by proxy)
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> *I don't disbelieve. I think it's perfectly possible. I just didn't know it was possible right now.*
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**Dr Madeleine Maxwell** is the main character in the Chronicles of St Mary's. After struggling through a difficult childhood, a young Max finds a passion for history in the back of a closet. With a little push from her teacher Mrs De Winter she decides to attend the University of Thirsk and gains a doctorate in history, specialisation Ancient Civilisations. She travels and works abroad for a while before another intervention by Mrs De Winter sends her into the welcoming arms of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research. There, she finds that St Mary's uses a much more hands-on aproach when it comes to fact checking historical accuracy...

Along with her friends and fellow historians Tim Peterson and Kalinda Black, and Chief Technical Officer Leon Farrell, she skips up and down the timeline to observe historical events. If you can call causing chaos and mayhem at any time and place observing, that is. You'd think Dr Bairstow would know better by now, wouldn't you?

**This page is chock-full of spoilers for the Chronicles of St Mary's and the Time Police series. Proceed with caution.**

## Biography

### Just One Damned Thing After Another

Dr Madeleine Maxwell, a short, red-haired, engaging, impatient and self-deprecating woman in her late twenties, sums up the two single most important events of her life: when her head teacher, Mrs De Winter, sent her on an assignment in the library instead of expelling her for her bad behaviour, and when she received an email from Mrs De Winter about a job interview at St Mary's Institute of Historical Research. The first event sparks her interest in a career as an historian, while the second takes said career in a whole new direction.

Mrs De Winter meets her at St Mary's and gives her a tour, telling everyone they meet on their way to the director that Max hasn't had 'the interview' yet, hinting to some secretive information she obviously isn't entitled to yet, including Professor Rapson, Dr Dowson, Chief Technical Officer Farrell and Mrs Enderby. Once ready for the interview, they greet Mrs. Partridge, the director's PA.

The interview with Dr Bairstow, St Mary's director, starts easily enough with some work related questions. Those questions soon turn into cryptic what-if's about time travel, all of which Max wholeheartedly says 'yes' to. She's hired by a captivated Dr Bairstow who then leaves her in the extremely capable hands of Chief Farrell for the 'other' tour. They explore the previously skipped parts of St Mary's, like Hawking Hangar and Sick Bay. The Chief shows her the pods in which the historians travel up and down, though usually down and then back up, the timeline.

Max starts her training along with Dr Sussman, Dr Grant, Dr Rutherford, Dr Stevens, Dr Nagley and Dr Jordan, though most of her fellow trainees don't qualify. Only Max, Sussman and Grant become fully fledged historians after successfully completing their final test. Each one of the remaining trainees must go to a preset time and location, spend a few hours doing what historians should do, and then return to St Mary's. Instead of the actual coordinates for their destinations, however, they each land in an unknown location at an unknown time and must either wait a few days for their pod to take them back to St Mary's or take matters into their own hands by calling for an emergency extraction. Max waits the full sixteen days it takes her pod to resume its countdown, to the approval of the senior staff.

After several unfortunate events that lead to the death or departure of most of the earlier qualified and more experienced historians, Grant gets his chance to travel through time. Max learns that he tried to help someone in a dangerous battle and ended up getting killed himself, because History doesn't like pesky little historians fiddling with important moments in time. She experiences this herself when she is almost killed by falling debris trying to prevent a robbery on a jump to London in 1040 to see Westminster Abbey during its construction, after which Tim Peterson, her chaperone for this jump, accidentally pees on her.

Her next jump is to a chateau near the Somme in France in 1917, in the middle of World War one. Both Kalinda Black and Sussman accompany her, all three of them taking on odd jobs in the chateau-turned-field hospital in order to document how and why it burned down. Max is once again nearly killed, though this time not by History's fickle whims; she opens the door to the linen room, which causes a massive explosion. She struggles back to the pod, helping hurt soldiers, nurses and others along the way. Kal does the same, while Sussman went straight for the pod; this results in a rift between the two historians who, henceforth, stop working together.

She and Sussman are called into Dr Bairstow's office and are assigned a really Big Job: to travel sixty-seven million years back in time and do research in the middle of the Cretaceous Period. During their prep for the three month mission, several people warn Max about Sussman's cocky behaviour. Before the jump, Max is invited to a fancy dinner with Kal and Dr Helen Foster, who works in the Medical Section of St Mary's. To her surprise, Peterson, Dieter and Chief Farrell show up as well; it was simply a ploy by her friends to get Max and Farrell together. The two of them retreat to Max's room where Farrell tells her he's from the future. He was actually a frenchman with a great mother, a beautiful wife and two lovely kids until his wife left him and his mother and his two sons died of the flu. He tells her she's important and that she should be careful to stay alive. One day soon after the dinner, Max finds a little wooden model of the Trojan Horse on her doorstep, left there by Farrell who made it himself.

It's finally time for Max and Sussman's jump to the Cretaceous, and the first 73 days are absolutely magnificent. On the 74th day, Max wakes up to Sussman bent over her with his todger in his hand and an insatiable lust in his eyes, and proceeds to douse him in dinosaur grade pepper spray and lock him out of and restrict his access to their shared pod. When she decides to go about their business as usual, Sussman hits her over the head with a rock and leaves her for dead stuck beneath a tree trunk in the valley below their camp. She regains consciousness, crawls back to the camp and discovers that Sussman has been attacked and eaten by Deinonychus in the meantime, finding only one of his feet in the foliage.

Max, grieving the loss of her friend and colleague, decides to stay in the Cretaceous despite St Mary's rule about historians working in pairs to finish the last sixteen days of the mission. Upon her return to St Mary's, Dr Bairstow, Mrs Partridge and Chief Farrell discover what happened right before Sussman's death via the pod's video feed which he turned on to film his sexual exploits. The footage is deleted, though Max watches all of it, including what happens outside the pod. After almost killing her, Sussman is approached by Clive Ronan who stabs him with a knife and leaves him to be eaten alive by the Deinonychus.

Chief Farrell takes Max to a special place of his with his own personal pod, a mediterranean island some five thousand years ago. Here he tells her about Clive Ronan, his history with Dr Bairstow and Annie Bessant, and the start of his evil ways. They stay on the island for a few days before returning to St Mary's with a considerable tan that nobody seems to notice.

Isabella Barclay and her team finish working on the holo, but Max wants to make some minor changes to the credits, including putting Sussman's dedication way up front instead of at the end. She shows the holo to all her colleagues at St Mary's before going to the University of Thirsk with Chief Farrell for the offical sales pitch, and it's a smashing success. On their way back to St Mary's, Max comments on Farrell's driving, distracting him enough to crash Dr Bairstow's leant Bentley into a tree. Max and Farrell finally have it out on the bonnet, after which Mr Dieter shows up to tow them back to St Mary's.

After seeing something suspicious in the holo, Max takes an extremely uncomfortable Mr Dieter back to the Cretaceous Period to check something. They discover that Clive Ronan has been capitalizing off commercial time travel to have tourists hunt and kill dinosaurs for sport. They make it back to St Mary's, but only by emergency extraction and to the detriment of Dieter and the pod. The whole unit plans to stop Ronan's business in the Cretaceous and jumps back. Things go wrong almost immediately: Barclay opens the dinosaur cages instead of locking them, creating a bloodbath in Ronan's tourist encampment; Farrell, Peterson, Guthrie and Markham get lost before the unit is extracted back to St Mary's; Dr Bairstow is seriously injured and subsequently replaced by Barclay as Acting Director.

In the face of the recent failure and Max's 'reckless behaviour' during and after the mission, Barclay fires her with immediate effect. She gets one hour to gather her personal belongings before leaving and settling in Rushford. There, both her health and her meagre savings quickly deteriorate and she ends up in a medical clinic, having just had a miscarriage. She is at an extremely low point, spending the last of her savings on a supper in a local café and apparently planning her own demise, when a concerned but kind Mrs De Winter shows up and takes her to her bed & breakfast.

Mrs De Winter gives Max the two personal possessions her sister, Mrs Partridge, had managed to save from Barclay's wrath: a picture of her and Farrell, and the little wooden model of the Trojan horse that he made for her. They discover the remote control to Farrell's pod in the belly of the wooden horse and plan a rescue attempt for Farrell, Peterson, Guthrie and Markham. During the rescue, which almost doesn't happen by virtue of a very hungry Tyrannosaurus rex, a very loud explosion rocks the Cretaceous and Max spots the wreckage of a pod.

Max and the four men are welcomed to the b&b by Dr Bairstow and Mrs De Winter, who has made them a more than adequate supper. They all go back to St Mary's the next day, where Max personally confronts Barclay. A proper bitchfight ensues. Dr Bairstow relieves Barclay of her function of Director and takes up the mantle himself again. Max is reinstated as Chief Operations Officer, but quits together with Peterson after she is angrily berated and insulted by Farrell, who has heard from Barclay about Max's miscarriage, and assaulted by Mr Whissel since he thinks her body is now free real estate. That night, Farrell apologizes for his behaviour and he and Max make up before descending onto her couch in a crying heap.

After Mrs Partridge repeatedly tells her to do her laundry, Max finds a pinecone caught in the lining of her jacket, proving that object that would shortly be destroyed can actually be removed and replaced elsewhere. Since Dr Bairstow has given both Max and Peterson a five day waiting period before they can actually quit, Max still has a job at St Mary's and is able to come up with a plan to rescue a few thousand scrolls from the library of Alexandra right before it burns down.

The mission seems to be a success, but lots of things go wrong from the get go. Max, the appointed mission leader, gets distracted and tries to take even more scrolls with her once the need to retreat to the pod is voiced by another member of staff. Ronan's thugs show up at the library, too, and start shooting at them. Upon their jump to their secondary camp somewhere in the desert, they find out they've managed to rescue some fifteen thousand scrolls, but are ambushed again by Ronan in the night.

Ronan wants someone from St Mary's to open the pods with the scrolls, and lines up everyone in the desert sand. He shoots Jamie Cameron and Mr Markham, then threatens to shoot Max, but before he can do so Farrell opens their new, large transport pod Thunderbird Two. Professor Rapson and Dr Dowson emerge with a handmade flamethrower fueled by the animal droppings the former had wanted to use to seal in the scrolls for preservation. Ronan is chased, but jumps away with Izzie in TB2. Max notices the same painted RD T on the pod that she saw on the wreckage in the Cretaceous and gets why Farrell let them go; he'd rigged the pod beforehand to explode.

Max talks with Mrs Partridge in a semiconscious state, realizing that she is actually Kleio, daughter of Zeus and Muse of History. Mrs Partridge tells her that 'the anomaly is under the fourth step', and once she's back at St Mary's, Max finds some sonnets and a play by Shakespeare under the fourth step of the stairs to the front door. The play, a marvelous piece about Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England, has a mistake in it: instead of being executed at the end of the first act, Mary lives and becomes Queen of England and Scotland, while Elizabeth I takes her place at the gallows.

### A Symphony of Echoes

Max is back, and how! Some months have passed since the first book, and Kalinda Black is finally ready to call it quits as an Historian. She takes Max with her on her last jump, during which she hopes to find out the identity of Jack the Ripper. They spend some time in a pub before slinking into London's misty streets. They've jumped to the night of his murder of Mary Kelly, but can't seem to find him. Max has a funny feeling that she and Kal are being followed. They get back in the pod for some tea and a talk, then jump back to St Mary's, unaware of another presence in the pod.

Just before she can open the door, something moves that isn't supposed to. It's some kind of monster that can render itself practically invisible to the human eye, and it's prepared to violently murder the two women. Max calls for a code blue, a contamination in the pod, and outside everyone starts the procedure for removal. Max and Kal fight for their lives before Max realizes that they won't make it one way or the other, and decides to take matters into her own hands. She points a gun at Kal, but the Security Section breaks into the pod before anything happens.

In the medical ward, Max and Kal are tormented by visions of Jack the Ripper walking through St Mary's and standing at the end of their beds. Farrell and Guthrie make short work of destroying the last sample of the monster that Dr Foster had kept in case of any infections, but Farrell doesn't return to meet Max, who has just been released from the medical ward with a handmade red snake. A search starts, but the only thing found is a set of coordinates written in soap on a men's bathroom mirror. Someone has set a trap and used Farrell as bait.

Max makes a plan with Dr Bairstow and, alone, takes a pod to the set of coordinates on the mirror, and discovers that they lead to a future St Mary's. She finds Farrell in their medical ward, hurt and confused and kept in a medical coma, presided over by a terrified young nurse Katie. Max is caught, attacked by Izzie Barclay and assaulted by Ronan's thugs before Peterson and Guthrie intervene with a distraction elsewhere. A battle commences.

On her way back to the medical ward, Max sees Izzie about to kill Farrell and shoots her in the back. Izzie is unceremoniously dumped in the elevator, tries to tell Max how she dies and is shot in the head by a very mad Max. Hostages come swarming out the basement, together with Peterson and Guthrie, and the battle is won by St Mary's. Max, Peterson and Guthrie decide to stay a while until the institute is able to run itself again, with Max acting as interim director until a new one could be chosen.

Some time later, the future St Mary's has a day out to Mauritius around 1666 to catch some dodos. Mrs Partridge is the only one to succeed at this task and is presented with a tiny cup. Another jump is arranged, this time to watch the murder of Thomas Becket on 29 December 1170, at the Canterbury cathedral. Peterson jumps back to talk with Dr Bairstow, after which some familiar sonnets are found under a certain fourth step during a flying apparatus contest. The future St Mary's finances are set. Now a fully functioning unit once more, Max calls an all staff meeting to announce Pinkie will be its new director. She, along with Peterson and Guthrie, jump quietly back to their own St Mary's.

After everything that's happened, Dr Bairstow tells Max she could use some r&r and sends her and Farrell to an extremely expensive retreat center called the 'Red Barn'. The director of the Red Barn, a nasty piece of work by the name of Dr Alexander Knox, wrecks Max's confidence with alarming speed. The whole situation is made even worse when she is rejected by Farrell, and, completely done with it all, she in turn totals his car and drives it into the lake near St Mary's. Once Farrell has also returned, Max stubbornly refuses to make up with him, even when he tells her Knox made him reject her.

Max figures out that Farrell's realistic dreams are actually bleed-through from a different time. She tries to look up Knox's history, but finds nothing. Thinking it's possibly protected by the thirty year rule, she jumps to the future St Mary's and discovers that Knox is its missing director. Instead of being killed during the battle, he must have jumped back to establish the Red Barn and give refuge to Clive Ronan, Izzie Barclay and Davey Sussman. Knox is apprehended in the past, tried in the future by the entirety of his old unit, and shot dead and left together with his accomplice Evan in a ice cold, snowy landscape somewhere along the timeline.

Some time after her return to her own St Mary's, Max is called to the medical ward. Her PA, David Sands, is dying. He tells Max to make up with Leon and she promises to do so. A bit later, Max, Peterson, Schiller, Van Owen, and [NAME] jump to the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh in 680 BC in a series of relatively easy jumps to the seven wonders of the ancient world designed to help the new recruits get their bearings. The three recruits jump back to St Mary's after a medical emergency arises, leaving Max and Peterson in the gardens.

They are rescued after struggling to survive for a few days because of their witnessing the death of Nineveh's king in the gardens. Max and Leon finally make up before the team jumps to Edinburgh, 1567, to fix the anomaly found in the Shakespearian play they found under the fourth step last year. In the play, Mary Stuart never marries James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, which seems to be the cause of the anomaly. During an audience with Queen Mary, the team sees a young Clive Ronan conniving with the French ambassador, realizing that it's him who made the anomaly possible. Max succeeds in locking Mary in a room with Bothwell to be sexually assaulted, feeling sick because she's the reason the lovely Mary goes down such a dark path.

Once back at St Mary's, Dr Bairstow meets with Max to tell her that her next mission will be Troy, the one destination she's always wished to go to.

### A Second Chance

Since the entire history department has dyed itself blue with a semi permanent dye in preparation for one of Professor Rapson's experiments in her absence, Max is pressed into taking the 79 year old, retiring Professor Penrose on a jump to Cambridge, 1668. The professor desperately wants to sneak a peek at Sir Isaac Newton, but since Peterson is currently blue, he can't accompany him. Max does as she's told, for once, but the duo quickly gets in trouble when a bunch of students at Cambridge University mistakenly assume they stole Newton's mirror, which is the exact opposite of what happened. They race through the streets, pursued by a mob of angry students, a mob of angry Cambridge residents, and an angry Newton.

Max and Penrose make their way back to the pod and jump, well, nowhere. They open the door to jumpstart the pod and get back to St Mary's, and possibly cause the rebirth of the universe. The duo makes it back, and after a conversation with Leon about their future together, Max decides to leave St Mary's after the Troy assignment.

Max, Peterson, Schiller, Van Owen, Leon, Guthrie, Markham, and [DID I FORGET ANYONE?] jump back in time to a few months before the beginning of the Trojan War. They discover that Helen never went to Troy, disproving the myth of her involvement in the war. They spend a few months documenting, filming, and living amongst the citizens of the city before jumping back to St Mary's. There they find Professor Rapson high on hallucinogenic honey of his own making. Guthrie and Dr Foster both eat the honey, exclaiming 'Elspeth, I looked for you,' and 'I love you, Peterson' respectively.

The team jumps back to troy, this time aiming for the final few weeks. Life is bad for everyone there; the Greeks are silently retreating, while the Trojans are starving inside their city walls. Once the Greeks have fully retreated overseas, Max discovers that the Trojan horse is, in fact, some dozen sick horses left behind by the Greeks. The Trojans bring the horses inside the city, slaughter them, prepare them, and eat them, causing the entire city to contract the disease the horses had. The next day, a massive earthquake hits the city, breaking down its walls and bringing the Greeks back as they're looking to stay out of harm's way in the nearest harbour. The Greeks see what has happened and can't believe their luck; within a day, they bring the mighty Troy to its knees.

Max is caught up in the chaos and ends up as a captive at the temple of Athena by Ajax and his thugs, while the Greek hero brutally rapes Kassandra. She and the other women are brought to the beach in order to be taken back to Greece as slaves, but Guthrie manages to infiltrate their ranks and save Max. The two make it back to the pod, where everyone else but Leon has assembled for take-off. A little later, Leon comes running, a young boy by the name of Helios clinging to him, and pleads Max to take him with them. Max refuses, pulls a gun on the boy, and tells Leon he has twenty minutes to get Helios somewhere safe outside the pod. He returns within the given time, but Max notices a two-day stubble. She notes that she and Leon do not speak directly to each other again, ever.

Soon afterwards, Max makes a jump to witness the murder of Agamemnon and Kassandra by Agamemnon's jealous wife. Upon her return to St Mary's she makes two beautiful paintings on the matter, which are subsequently stored in St Mary's archive by Dr Dowson. Dr Bairstow has a new assignment for Max and Peterson, namely to make a jump to the Gates of Grief and see firsthand humanity's only successful migration out of Africa. They intervene, helping some of the early humans across the strait, and spend the night in their company. The next morning they realize that they're not as important as they might think, because the tribe has departed the beach without waking them.

Some time later Max is working in her office when she gets a call from Leon, asking her if she hasn't forgotten about lunch. This worries her, and she makes her way over to Hawking Hangar where apparently the entire staff of St Mary's has assembled. Max pushes her way through the crowd only to find Leon lying dead in a pod, evidently having passed away from a heart attack after a small explosion in the pod's circuits. Dr Bairstow arranges a meeting with Max, who refuses to grieve for the loss of her colleague and lover, to tell her he intends for Peterson to start shadowing him as Associate Director while Max would take on the job of Deputy Director. Sensing Max's discomfort, he also tells her about Leon's early time at St Mary's. He was an angry, depressed, grieving young man for quite some time after his mother and sons died, but got a bit better after going on a secret assignment. This assignment was written up decades before, with implicit instructions to give it to one Leon Farrell and no one else.

Max organizes a day out for the whole unit to 19th Century Gloucester after [Professor Rapson/Dr Dowson] mentions an interest in cheese rolling. In an effort to have a more peaceful day than her cheese chasing colleagues, Max seats herself and [NAME] somewhere on the side of the hill. The first race goes exactly as planned, but during the second one the cheese rolls right into Max's face, rendering her unconscious. She wakes up in Sick Bay to a laughing nurse Hunter and an extremely displeased Dr Foster.

After she's discharged from the Medical Section, Max is kidnapped by Clive Ronan and taken back to the Cretaceous Period. Ronan intends to kill her, but Max is able to trick him into getting out of the now broken pod and getting exactly what he deserves. As multiple Deinonychus are chomping on bits of Ronan, one of them takes an interest in Max, but quickly loses it again when she starts attacking it with an empty fire extinguisher. Once nothing of Ronan remains, she hears a knock on the pod door and finds a much younger Leon has come to rescue her.

The two have to stay in the Cretaceous and wait out a violent rainstorm, which leads to an interesting conversation. Leon, in between telling a now finally grieving Max about his past, mentions his next assignment: to bring something to a schoolgirl. He doesn't see the point, but Max realizes that she's the schoolgirl and that he is the one that left the history book in her closet all those years ago. The two have a vicious fight that ends in a night of passion before Leon takes her back to St Mary's. He asks her to come with him and live the rest of their lives somewhere peaceful and in each other's arms, but Max tearfully refuses. Their story is done, the circle has finally closed.

Max goes to the pub in Rushford and realizes that the owner, Joe, is actually Helios. She confronts him, and he asks her to please keep his secret to herself, which she does. Her next and supposed 'last' jump is to the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry V defeats the much larger French army and showcases his brilliance in battle. She takes Peterson with her, and the two witness the battle in all its glory until they decide to check out what happened to the French hostages. Peterson is stabbed in the arm and while he and Max try to get back to the pod, the two of them are ambushed by French soldiers who escaped the fray. Max hits Peterson over the head with a rock, hides him in a bush, and runs away into the woods, French soldiers on her heels. She's stabbed through the heart and falls to the forest floor, about to die, when instead of smacking against leaves and branches, she falls on a soft carpet.

Mrs Partridge tells Max to get up, and explains that she's closed her fatal wound and brought her to a different timeline where she's the one who died instead of Leon. Max pleads with Mrs Partridge for one last goodbye with Peterson, and she reluctantly complies; Max visits Peterson in Sick Bay, the two say their goodbyes and then kiss before she finds herself back in her new timeline. She makes her way through the little flat, which looks like it houses two people, to the bathroom where she discovers only one toothbrush. Mrs Partridge explains that Leon couldn't let Max go, and has created the life they'd planned on having after Troy anyway. She says Max is here to do a job but doesn't elaborate as to what that would be.

After Mrs Partridge departs, Max makes her way down to Leon's workshop. He's set it up exactly as they'd talked about, with two distinct work spaces: one for him, where he currently sits tinkering on something or other and talking as if Max is still there, and one for Max, with an easel and painting equipment. He turns around, takes one look at Max, and calls her Izzie Barclay, upon which Max goes berserk and attacks him with a blue plastic dustpan. Leon initially doesn't want to believe Max is real, but eventually warms up to the idea.

All seems to go well until Leon receives a call from Dr Bairstow, telling him that 'they're coming'.

### No Time Like The Past

After rebuilding St Mary's, it's business as usual for everyone - well, except for Markham. He walks past a window one day and sees someone fall past it; Max and Peterson decide that it's a ghost. All three of them team up to investigate, and Max cashes in her Jump of Choice-card with Dr Bairstow to go to St Mary's, 1643. The priory is in possession of the Laceys and their two sons, it's the middle of the British Civil War, a fire breaks out that kills two or three family members, one of the sons is spotted on the roof... The best candidate for the birth of a ghost, if you will. Or the death of a contemporary. Whichever one you prefer.

They arrive at the priory with bells on, slip into the main building, and to their surprise, the history books are wrong on this instance. Lady Lacey and her two sons awaken on the fateful morning to the arrival of Captain Lacey, Lady Lacey's brother in law. He warns her of his brother's imminent return from his post in the army, and that he's found out about them. Max notes that the elder son looks suspiciously much like Captain Lacey; Lady Lacey must've had an affair with him.

Lord [IS HE A LORD?] Lacey arrives with murder on his mind and follows his wife and two kids - sorry, his own and his brother's kid - to the library, where Lady Lacey manages to escape into a priest hole with her elder son while the younger one runs, presumably, to the roof, followed by Markham. Lord Lacey sets fire to the library, after which Max and Peterson fight off some thugs in the Great Hall. The whole affair culminates in Markham jumping off the roof himself to fulfil the role of the ghost, Max rescuing the younger son, and Peterson thumping Lord Lacey unconscious. Lady and Captain Lacey and their son disappear at Max's insistence, leaving the youngest Lacey to inherit the priory as was recorded in the history books. Markham miraculously survives his jump off the roof.

Nurse Hunter righteously guilt-trips Max into thinking about the ones left behind when she and her team go off hurting themselves somewhere along the timeline, after which Max plans a 'boring' jump to the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London, 1851. It's a brilliant success, and almost nothing goes wrong. Almost, but not nothing: during their afternoon tea, Max and Sands spot an older Clive Ronan looking murderously at a younger Dr Bairstow and Annie Bessant, who are also on an assignment at the Great Exhibition, though look more interested in each other than the wonders of the modern world. Max joins Ronan at his table and talks to him long enough for Sands to taser him, saving Dr Bairstow and Annie, and the entire timeline, too.

Up next is another salvage operation, this time to Old St Paul's cathedral during the Great Fire of London, 3 September 1666. Since Max had already made a jump to that exact date, to Mauritius to save some dodos, she can't join Van Owen, Schiller, Clerk, Sands, Peterson, Guthrie, Leon, Dr Foster, Professor Rapson, and the rest. Markham doesn't go, either. When the team doesn't show up at the Estimated Time of Arrival, Dr Bairstow gives Max and Markham one hour on 3 September 1666 to find and save them.

Max and Markham find the team stuck in the cathedral and missing Schiller, but eventually manages to rescue the remaining members from the burning building. The duo almost doesn't make it back to their pod in time, and as instructed by Dr Bairstow, Markham warns Max he is to shoot her dead if they don't make it. Their landing in Hawking Hangar is less than stellar. The rest of the team makes it back some days later, having buried their treasures somewhere on the grounds of St Mary's, 1643. Thirsk is invited to join in the discovery, but it does not go as planned. The unit digs up the chest and, horrified, finds the decayed remains of Mary Schiller inside instead of their treasures, complete with a note signed by Ronan and Izzie.

To cheer up the unit after Schiller's memorial service, planning resumes for St Mary's Open Day. R&D builds a raft to participate in a race with Thirsk on the lake, there's a local farmers' market, a bouncy castle, some adorable donkeys, a sidesaddle demonstration, a medieval sword fighting demonstration... and an angry, vengeful Izzie Barclay. She takes Max to a discreet part of St Mary's grounds, tells her she's her sister on her father's side, and shoots her in the back; just in time, Van Owen arrives and empties an entire magazine into Izzie, both to save Max and as revenge for her killing of her lover, Schiller.

Max wakes up in Sick Bay, where Leon tells her that Izzie lied about being her sister. Max goes berserk, wrecking everything within her reach, and is taken to an isolation ward by Leon to calm down and take some time to sleep it all off. Some time later, Van Owen pays her a visit and tells her she's leaving. Once again, Max plans a relatively safe salvage operation to counter all the violence the unit has had to go through, this time to the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence, 7 February 1497. She and her team make the jump and save three Botticelli's from being burned at the bonfire, but on her way back to the pod, Max can't stop herself from helping a fellow redhead from humiliation. She is stoned by a bunch of children when Leon arrives to rescue her, then falls backwards through a catch in the wall and takes Leon with her. In all the chaos, one of them proposes, and the other accepts.

After being saved from the stoning kids by their colleagues, Leon jumps to the second location while Max and Peterson go back to St Mary's. Peterson proposes a job-swap to Max since Dr Bairstow wants to send her away to Thirsk for a year, which she reluctantly accepts. As her wedding present, Peterson arranges for a jump to the Battle of Thermopylae, 480 BC. Markham goes with them and while squatting it behind a boulder unknowingly thumps Ephialtes unconscious with a rock. Peterson takes on the responsibility of guiding the Persians around the Spartan army for an ambush, while Markham takes on the responsibility of guiding Peterson and keeping him on the right track. Max stays with the unconscious Ephialtes; some time before the final battle, she is seemingly found by some Spartan scouts. One of them takes a wee all over her head and shoulders while standing on her hand, but they don't notice her.

Once Markham and Peterson, although a bit battered and slightly shattered, return to the pod, Markham fishes a bottle of wine from his backpack and the three of them toast to Max's upcoming wedding to Leon. She has trouble planning the whole ordeal, but thankfully that's all taken from her quivering hands by Kal and Helen. Mrs Enderby fixes her a beautiful gold dress, Mr Strong is in charge of the flowers, and she even racks up the courage to ask Dr Bairstow to give her away during the ceremony. Sometime during the reception, Max and Leon slip away in Dr Bairstow's Bentley, with Max behind the wheel. Leon thoroughly distracts her, and for the second time in its life the Bentley hits a tree. Just as the newlyweds are about to refresh their memories of the first time the Bentley was in this position, the police arrive.

Against the backdrop of the low loader adorned with lights, music, and the rest of the wedding party singing Dancing Queen, Guthrie hands them a set of car keys and a torch, and Max and Leon hasten away into the night.

## Appearances

###### Chronicles of St Mary's

* The Very First Damned Thing (short story)
* Just One Damned Thing After Another
* A Symphony of Echoes
* When a Child is Born (short story)
* A Second Chance
* Roman Holiday (short story)
* A Trail Through Time
* Christmas Present (short story)
* No Time Like The Past
* What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
* Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings (short story)
* Lies, Damned Lies, and History
* The Great St Mary’s Day Out (short story)
* My Name is Markham (short story)
* Dessicated Water (blog post)
* And the Rest is History
* Markham and the Anal Probing (blog post)
* A Perfect Storm (short story)
* Christmas Past (short story)
* An Argumentation of Historians
* The Battersea Barricades (short story)
* The Steam-Pump Jump (short story)
* And Now For Something Completely Different (short story)
* Hope For The Best
* When Did You Last See Your Father? (short story)
* Why Is Nothing Ever Simple? (short story)
* Plan for the Worst
* The Ordeal of the Haunted Room (short story)
* Another Time, Another Place
* The Toast of Time (short story)
* A Catalogue of Catastrophe
* The Good, The Bad and the History

### Time Police Series

* Doing Time
* Hard Time
* Saving Time
* About Time