Gideon 02 -The Time Thief

by Linda Buckley-Archer

  “What it is to be a father, n’est-ce pas, Mr. Schock? Our offspring never fail to surprise us.”

  Mr. Schock had been staring at the palms of his hands, deep in thought.

  “I don’t understand! Why couldn’t you tell me, Peter? Now I know the truth, I’m happy but sad at the same time. Don’t you want to come home? When I first saw you in Kew Gardens … there was something about you—I couldn’t put my finger on it. But when you said that you were Joshua, I never dreamed … I just don’t know what to say.”

  Kate could contain herself no longer. “Well, I know what to say,” she cried. “How could you lie to us like that! After everything we’ve done to find you! And you must have persuaded Hannah and Queen Charlotte to lie for you too….”

  “I didn’t want to do it, Mistress Kate,” said Hannah. “But, in fairness to Mr. Joshua, I mean Master Peter, he did it with the best of intentions….”

  “What? It’s okay to imply to your best friend and your father that you’re dead? Peter should be ashamed!”

  “Kate … ,” said Mr. Schock weakly. “No doubt Peter had his reasons…”

  Peter pulled on the reins, bringing the wagon to a halt in the middle of fields bathed in moonlight. He twisted round to face Kate and his father.

  “I wish with all my heart that I could have kept my secret to the end. I regret the distress that I have caused you—above all since the motive behind my deception was to spare you pain.”

  “What are you talking about?” cried Kate.

  “I have waited to be rescued my entire life. And I have lived a good life, with good people. Although, sometimes, preoccupied by the possibility of my rescue, I have forgotten to appreciate what I had. A lesson I learned, long ago, is that timing is all. Through no fault of your own, you arrived too late. For you did not come back for me, the man you see before you. Rather, you came back for a Peter aged twelve years old with his whole life in front of him. I can assure you that the memory of these precious days which I have been allowed to spend with you will stay with me forever. But your search is not yet over; you have not found that boy. I wanted to spare you the pain of knowing that you were forced to leave me behind.”

  Peter took up the reins and clicked his tongue; the horses strained against the heavy load and soon the wagon was juddering along, once more, down the dark and lonely road.

  Dawn was breaking, gray and cold, by the time the Château de l’Humiaire came into view. At first they mistook the wisps of smoke for cloud, but when they smelled fire, the Marquis de Montfaron immediately jumped off the wagon and ran on ahead. Soon they caught up and found him staring, stony-faced, at a smoldering bonfire in the quadrangle. The heavy doors into the château gaped open like a wound. The hall was empty, gutted. Anything the looters had not wanted was already ashes.

  “Oh, sir,” gasped Hannah, when she recognized the charred remains of decades of correspondence. “It is too cruel.”

  Mr. Schock picked off a blackened book from the top of the bonfire. It was Volta’s book on electricity which they had brought from Golden Square. The Marquis de Montfaron turned on his heels and walked away without saying a word.

  “I suspect,” said Mr. Schock, “that the Marquis will be returning with us to London.”

  Kate ran into the hall to see if her backpack had been taken. It was nowhere to be seen, but she still found what she was looking for, tossed to one side and lying in a dusty corner behind the door: the bottle of penicillin for Louis-Philippe.

  When they inspected the ravaged hall, they made one consoling discovery. The looters had either forgotten or missed the valuable chandelier. Standing on a horse’s back while the rest of the party held the animal still, Peter managed to cut the exquisite object down, and afterward Hannah packed it up with scraps of an old curtain.

  Presently they heard the Marquis de Montfaron calling to them from the other side of the drawbridge. He refused to set foot back in his home. He had, he said, too many good memories of the Château de l’Humiaire to wish to contaminate them with bad ones. If ever there could be a signal to him that it was time to cut his ties with the past, it was this. Kate, Peter, and Mr. Schock walked over to the drawbridge to hear him better.

  “After what I have witnessed these last few hours,” he shouted over to them, “I am persuaded that you have told me the truth. I therefore have a proposal to put to you. I will accompany my son and yourselves back to London, and I shall attempt to repair your machine on this condition: that, were I to be successful, you will allow me to travel to the future with you. What say you?”

  Kate and Mr. Schock exchanged glances. “I reckon it’d be better to arrive home with an eighteenth-century aristocrat than not to arrive at all,” said Kate.

  Mr. Schock nodded his head. “Agreed,” he said.

  “Agreed,” said Kate.

  So it was that Kate and Hannah, two fathers, and two sons, set off on the arduous journey back to London. To Montfaron’s surprise, Louis-Philippe showed a remarkable improvement after only two doses of Kate’s penicillin, although his twenty-first-century companions were at a loss to explain what it was or how it worked. Even so, they decided to stay overnight at a comfortable inn in the village of Inxent in the Course Valley so that he could recuperate a little before the sea journey. After supper, while the sun set over the lush valley, the party left Louis-Philippe to rest and walked by the trout stream. Hannah and Kate soon returned to the inn so that father and son could talk alone. There, until well after dark, they talked and reminisced and, sometimes, argued by the gently babbling water. Mr. Schock talked about Peter’s mother, and Peter, in his turn, told his father the story of his life. There were tears and there was laughter and there were heavy silences.

  Meanwhile Kate sat for a while with Louis-Philippe while he sipped beef broth in bed. It had been prepared for him by the innkeeper’s wife, who was so taken by the handsome invalid that she could not do enough for him.

  “It must be great to be so good-looking,” Kate said to Louis-Philippe. “But doesn’t it get on your nerves? Getting so much attention, I mean?”

  “You flatter me!” he replied. “You would call me plain if you saw my cousins.”

  Kate laughed. What a family! she thought.

  “Have you forgiven Peter yet? I saw him sneak in to speak to you before supper….”

  “Forgiven him! That pompous, sanctimonious fellow …”

  Kate’s face dropped. “Oh, don’t say that!”

  Louis-Philippe laughed out loud. “I was teasing. Of course I have forgiven him. He feared for your safety. I understand that. I might have been at fault … a little. Though I paid for it by not changing out of my damp clothes! Had Sorel not captured me in Montreuil, I should still be lying in a ditch too weak to move! In truth, he probably saved my life!”

  “Peter is all right, you know….”

  Louis-Philippe laughed again and nearly said something, but stopped himself.

  “What?” asked Kate. “Go on….”

  “I took Peter, at least at first, for a sensible, quiet fellow, but now I see a more passionate vein. There is something in his manner…. He is very … protective, I think. As a boy, he must have been fond of you.”

  Everyone could see that Mr. Schock was torn. He was at once desperate to persuade Peter to come back with them and, at the same time, aware that if Kate’s prediction was correct, his young son might already be there waiting for them in the twenty-first century. It was a conundrum no one could solve. Peter, in any case, refused to be persuaded. His father had come back in search of a twelve-year-old boy, not a man who had already reached middle age.

  “You might be worrying over nothing, Mr. Schock,” commented Hannah none too tactfully, at breakfast. “For all his learning, the antigravity machine might flummox even the Marquis de Montfaron—begging your pardon, sir.”

  Now that his secret was out and her anger had cooled, Kate felt curiously shy with Peter. She kept stealing glances at him and tried to see the
boy within the man and the man within the boy, fascinated and moved by the transformations effected by time. Kate wished that her young friend could see the man that he would become; she thought that he would be pleased.

  She contrived to sit next to Peter on their way to Calais to catch the Dover packet.

  “If we do manage to mend the antigravity machine,” she said to him, “and the twelve-year-old you has managed to get back home, what should I say to him about you? And is there anything you would like to say to him?”

  Peter burst out laughing. “Upon my word, Kate, your questions are challenging! Where do I begin … ?”

  “Take your time,” she said. “It’s ages till we get to Calais.”

  After another mile or two, Peter turned to Kate and said: “I cannot tell you how you should describe me—that is your affair. But I have three pieces of advice for myself at twelve years old. The first is this: no life is perfect, but he is luckier than he can possibly imagine with the one that he has. For years, I went to sleep picturing every detail of the life that I had lost. It makes me sad to realize that it was only when I no longer possessed it that I understood how lucky I had been. The second is this: that his father truly loves him and he must never doubt it. And as he grows up, he will see the truth of this more and more.”

  “And the third?”

  “That he should never let go of you.”

  “That’s a strange thing to say!”

  “Yes, I suppose it is—yet it is how the words formed in my head.”

  Despite a rough crossing and heavy rain all the way between Dover and Shooters Hill, two days later the party arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. John pronounced them all to look thinner and paler and more fatigued than when they left. When Hannah was once more restored to her favorite chair in the kitchen, her face was wreathed in smiles and she took hold of Kate’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Perhaps it is wrong of me to wish it,” she said, “but I hope that the Marquis de Montfaron does not find a way to repair the machine too quickly….”

  The Marquis did not delay, to his wife’s disappointment and Kate and Mr. Schock’s relief, traveling to Kew Palace to meet with Sir Joseph. He examined the machine and declared it to be a mystery to him. He did not dare dismantle it for fear of being unable to put it back together. His strategy, he declared, would be to draw it.

  “Draw it!” exclaimed Mr. Schock as he read Montfaron’s note, brought to Lincoln’s Inn Fields by the Queen’s messenger. “What good will that do?”

  “Perhaps it’s his way of paying attention to detail,” suggested Kate. “Like dissecting frogs in biology lessons and then drawing what you see. It helps you … get it.”

  Mr. Schock did not seem convinced and his mood grew gloomy and pessimistic. Kate, too, wondered if her prediction was correct. Perhaps they would never get home.

  The following day they had an unexpected visit. The Honorable Mrs. Byng’s youngest daughter, Lizzie, had come down to London from Baslow Hall with her husband, who had business to attend to in the city. She had been charged by Gideon Seymour with delivering a precious present for Peter. Gideon had ordered a copy to be made of his book, which finally, after all these years, he had completed to his satisfaction: The Life and Times of Gideon Seymour, Cutpurse and Gentleman. Gideon had also sent a message. It had been too long since he had seen Peter; he urged him to come home to Hawthorn Cottage as soon as he was able. They would go trout fishing at Ashford-on-the-Water and persuade Parson Ledbury to come too.

  “Dear Gideon,” said Kate to Peter after Lizzie had left. “I do understand why you wanted to keep all this from him. All the same, I should have liked to have seen him again.”

  Ten days later, at breakfast time, another messenger arrived from Kew Palace. The Marquis de Montfaron summoned the party to come as quickly as they were able. He would await them in the Red House.

  By three in the afternoon quite a crowd had gathered on the top floor of Kew Palace, where the antigravity machine had been secreted. Queen Charlotte was present, as was Sir Joseph Banks, the Marquis de Montfaron, of course, and Kate, Peter, Hannah, and Mr. Schock. The anticipation was unbearable. Kate was feeling pessimistic and tearful. How could anyone from the eighteenth century even begin to understand the workings of a NASA antigravity machine? Was this to be good news or bad? She steeled herself; perhaps she had better get used to the idea that she would never see her family again.

  The Marquis turned to the expectant group. He held up a pile of papers covered with intricate and beautifully executed drawings of the antigravity machine.

  “I have examined this miraculous device to the best of my ability and must admit defeat: Its workings are clearly so advanced in comparison to anything our century has produced that I find myself as helpless as a young child told to mend a pocket watch.”

  Kate’s heart dropped. I knew it, she thought. We’re stranded. She looked out of the window at the view of the Thames and the fields beyond and tried to hold back the tears. She felt Hannah take hold of her hand and squeeze it. But then she looked over at Mr. Schock and Peter, and they did not look the least bit downcast. Montfaron was smiling at them; his eyes were twinkling.

  “However,” he said. Never had Kate been happier to hear a “however.” “Yesterday evening I noticed a small panel at the back of the device which I had neglected to investigate, so concerned was I with the inner workings of the machine. I unscrewed it with a fruit knife and found what appeared to be a narrow glass tube filled with mercury. A wire was attached to one side of the tube and I could see plainly that a wire should have been attached to the other side—but it had become detached and hung loosely next to it. This gave me reason to think that were the tube of mercury level, and were both wires attached as intended, an electrical current would flow through it. I consulted with Sir Joseph and he concurred. I reattached the wire and … perhaps a demonstration is in order. Sir Joseph, will you help me tilt the machine so that it is level?”

  “With pleasure, sir.”

  “Miss Dyer, Mr. Schock,” said Montfaron, “is it true that the antigravity machine will only function if it is level?”

  “Yes!” they both cried at once.

  “It has a fail-safe device built into it,” said Kate. “It won’t even start unless it’s on the level.”

  “As I thought,” Montfaron smiled.

  The two gentlemen scientists manhandled the machine until it was perfectly level.

  Suddenly there was a humming noise like a fridge being switched on.

  “Oh, my goodness!” gasped Kate. “I don’t believe it! You’ve done it! You’ve actually done it!”

  “Bravo, Montfaron! Bravo!” cried Peter.

  Mr. Schock slapped his hand to his forehead. “All that for a loose wire!”

  It was decided that they would leave the following day, at dawn. Montfaron returned briefly to Golden Square. When his wife heard of his plans to abandon her again to go on a expedition of great scientific interest, the details of which he was unable to disclose, she was too angry even to say good-bye. He shouted—through the locked door of her boudoir—that he was a man of science and this was an opportunity which would never arise again. The Marquise declared that she would have preferred to have had a husband who took any number of lovers rather than one who worshipped at the altar of knowledge—for she would never be able to tempt him away from that rival’s compelling attractions. Louis-Philippe, who was by now fully recovered, tried to understand his father’s need to constantly push at the boundaries of human knowledge. Nevertheless he was hurt that his father would leave his family again so soon to go on a journey from which he might never return. He kissed his father good-bye but the pain in his expression was not lost on the Marquis de Montfaron.

  Footmen carried the antigravity machine downstairs and laid it carefully in a part of the grounds which, as a frequent visitor to the gardens in the twenty-first century, Mr. Schock knew to be relatively quiet.

  Kate, Hannah, and the Marq
uis de Montfaron held back and watched father and son from afar in what they knew would be their final conversation. In the distance, walking across the emerald turf toward the pagoda, Queen Charlotte took Sir Joseph’s arm and would not, as she had promised, look back after saying farewell.

  “My dear Mr. Schock,” she had said, “I can only imagine how full your heart must be on this difficult day, and yet, as a parent I tell you this: You have the unique good fortune of knowing that your son will become a man you can be proud of. And I hope that it is of some consolation to you that Peter has found happiness with his adopted family. I have kept a weather eye on your son since his arrival in our century, and I promise you that I will continue to do so. God bless you and your family, Mr. Schock. May you be soon reunited with your young son and may you cherish him as he deserves to be cherished.”

  Kate and Hannah had said their good-byes too, and now stood, arms about each other’s waists, watching the two men walking away quietly together. It was almost too much to bear, and both fought a losing battle to hold back their tears. Kate had lain awake thinking of a good-bye speech to say to Peter, but in the end all she had been able to do was run up to him and hug him.

  Peter had kissed the top of her head. “You are an extraordinary person. I thought so as a boy and I know it now.”

  “You thought so then!”

  “I did. When I was left stranded here, I often cried myself to sleep because I wished you were still here with me.” Then he reached into his pocket and drew out a slim parcel. “This is Gideon’s diary. I want you to give it to the young Peter. He can read of the life that he might have had….”