THE TIME THIEF

by Linda Buckley-Archer

  “I’m sorry, Tom…. I’m sorry for everything….”

  Anjali fled from the building, unseen, and blinded by her own tears.

  It was a Sunday, and most Londoners slept on under a thick blanket of slate-gray clouds that, as forecast, would not shift. Hyde Park was deserted apart from the odd jogger. The Tar Man strode around the Serpentine. His face was drawn, his lips pressed together; there was a bitter expression on his face. On the other side of the lake a lone swimmer dived into the freezing water with a splash. A moorhen squawked, its cry echoing around the quiet park as its oversize, webbed green feet scurried across the surface of the water.

  The Tar Man had been invited to dine in Mayfair the previous evening with the entrepreneur who had expressed an interest in the oil paintings of George Stubbs. He had anticipated that he would walk away from the evening with a commission for a major art theft and an invitation to become a member of the most exclusive club in London. Instead, the hypocritical, puffed-up socialite had looked down his superior nose and had harangued him until the Tar Man’s self-restraint broke. At least he had managed to hurt him before he found himself escorted off the club premises by four liveried thugs and kicked, literally, out onto the pavement. When he had tried to hail a cab, a nod from the doorman, who clearly put a lot of work the cabbies’ way, meant that none of the taxis would stop for him, and he was forced to walk down the street knowing that all eyes were upon him and with the barrage of abuse still ringing in his ears.

  “You’re scum,” the entrepreneur had said. There was something about his face that reminded the Tar Man of an emaciated eagle. Grandeur, cruelty, Olympian disdain. Like Lord Luxon, he was old money. How the Tar Man resented all those centuries of unearned privilege, looking down his hawk-like nose at him.

  “You’re the scum of the earth and always will be. How could you possibly think I was serious? All the cash and the Rolex watches, all the fancy apartments and designer labels, all the trappings of what you think is success don’t fool anyone. Do you really think we would tolerate your kind in this club? Do you really imagine that you could threaten me with your sordid little blackmail threats? Half of the greatest political minds, scientists, lawyers have passed through our doors at one time or another, with the finest pedigrees…. But who are you? What are you? I’ll tell you what you are: You are a gnat, a nothing, a deluded grotesque, and we would not have you taint the air that we breathe….”

  The Tar Man’s headbutt had split open the skin of his noble forehead, though his blood was not blue but red like anyone else’s….

  The Tar Man walked on around the Serpentine. After this little incident he had visited Lord Luxon and, making light of it, told him what had occurred. He noted that Lord Luxon did not attempt to refute the insults but merely suggested that he try another club. He had gone on to say that although gaining power and influence was important, his priority should remain the acquisition of the antigravity machine. After all, with such a device, would it not be possible to change the course of history? The words had resonated in his mind, but it was only now that the idea grew, like yeast, as the Tar Man reflected on who he was and what he had become.

  The entrepreneur’s words had stung so much, he thought, because they were not so far from the truth. All the money in the world would not change who he was: a thief, a talented villain, a manipulator of men, a black-hearted rogue, a murderer. Other men might command respect, admiration, love—what did he inspire? Fear? Horror? Hatred? And why should he care if he did? What would he have become if he had been meek and respectable and weak-willed like the rest of humanity? Ground down with daily toil until his body gave out? Starving in a fleapit? Dead in a ditch? And if he had done bad things, the world had done worse to him. All the same, he pondered when it had all started to go wrong. Was it the day he had been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit? Or was it earlier? The first time he had stolen a loaf of bread, shortly after his father had died? Suddenly he saw the face of Gideon Seymour, with his direct blue eyes and his priggish view of the world. The mere thought of Gideon being his brother brought with it a powerful spurt of anger in his chest which he could not explain. Yet the thought still tugged at him. Why had his brother chosen one path while he … He refused to continue with the thought but the thought continued despite him. What if, he reasoned, the antigravity machine could change the course of history, change the course of his history…. If he could press a button and change that pivotal moment in his life, would he press it?

  Dring-dring … Dring-dring … Dring-dring … With a start the Tar Man realized that his mobile phone was ringing. It would be Anjali. It was only ever Anjali. But what was she doing calling him at this time in the morning? He idly wondered if she could still contact him if he had faded back to 1763.

  “Vega?”

  “Faith, Anjali, who else would it be?”

  “You gotta stay away from the apartment for a while. There’s police cars and ambulances crawling all over the place…. There’s been an accident….”

  “Your voice is shaking.”

  The Tar Man listened in silence to what Anjali had to say, looking all the while at the water and the trees and the clouds reflected in it.

  “Vega? Are you still there?”

  The Tar Man stood motionless, holding the mobile phone to his ear.

  “Vega?”

  “I do not wish to see your face again, Anjali.”

  There was a long silence, then Anjali said: “I … I have Tom’s mouse. Do you want me to—”

  “His mouse!” shouted the Tar Man. “Should his mouse be some kind of consolation?”

  The Tar Man flung the mobile phone into the center of the Serpentine and started to run. He ran halfway around the lake, over a small bridge and along Rotten Row, the dirt bridle path where, even now, Londoners exercise their horses. A girl trotted past him on a glossy black mare. All at once the Tar Man was sick of the future. He wanted to return to his own century. He wanted to feel horseflesh between his knees and the wind in his face. He grabbed hold of the reins and pulled the girl off the saddle so that she fell backward onto the soft ground. She lay, helpless, in the dirt as he mounted her horse. He shrugged off the gold Cartier watch from his wrist and threw it at her. It landed on her belly. She picked it up and looked from the watch to the Tar Man and back again.

  “For your horse,” he said and galloped out of the park into Knightsbridge.

  The Tar Man rode without thinking for many miles through the quiet streets of Belgravia, Chelsea, and Westminster. He galloped on and on, but no matter how fast he rode, the once heady scent of the twenty-first century had lost its appeal, contaminated with a whiff of the despair that had dogged him all his life and had turned him into what he was. The Tar Man allowed the steaming mare to come to a halt at the north side of Westminster Bridge. London had not changed, but all he could taste was dust and ashes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE CHALK MINES OF ARRAS

  In which the party finds itself in a difficult situation

  In the still of the night Kate did not at first realize that she was fast-forwarding. She had been unable to sleep since her startling vision of young Peter arriving back safe and sound with her father at the farm. Nor could she get her mother’s distraught face out of her head. Alone, in the dark, she felt that she was clinging to a reality which was constantly shifting: What would happen to her next? What could happen next? First blurring, then fast-forwarding and now this … She did not want to see the future. While it was a relief to know that Peter was back in the twenty-first century, what if she started to see her own future? What if she saw terrible things, wars and natural disasters that she could do nothing about but live in dread of them happening? Nor did she want to know how her own life was going to pan out: what she would do for a living, if she would marry, the children and grandchildren she might have … how her parents would die, how she would die. Kate suddenly grew angry at what a truly dreadful thing the scientists had unleashed. Peter
had once told her that fish must always swim forward through water else they drown. Surely it was the same for humans moving through time? Humans can’t fly, they can’t breathe in water, their lives can only unfold through time in one direction. We’re not meant to know how it will all end, she thought, and once we’ve moved on there’s no going back. At least, that’s what it should be like….

  Kate felt drained, utterly wrung out. How she wished she could feel her mother’s arms around her right now. How she wished she could share her problems with Megan. Instead, she was falling further and further away from the life that she knew and loved. Worse, she was transforming into this strange, frightening creature who was blown about space and time like a leaf in an autumn gale.

  All of it would be easier to bear, Kate thought, if she had some control over these unpredictable episodes. She had almost given up trying to blur back to her own time since leaving Middle Harpenden. What talent she had for it seemed to have been left behind in 1763 with Peter. Kate idly wondered if she could make herself fast-forward. She tried to imagine becoming detached from the broad reaches of time that carried everything along with it like a great river; she pictured stepping out of it and plunging into a faster-flowing current. But this did not work and nothing happened, or at least, so she thought.

  Hannah was snoring and Mr. Schock kept mumbling half-finished sentences. Once he called out for Peter. She was too alert now to get back to sleep and in the end decided to get up and explore. It was only after she had crept up the stairs and roamed up and down the moonlit corridors and poked her head through slits in the deep stone wall to look at the stars that she realized that her attempt to deliberately fast-forward had, at some point, been successful. Kate happened to find herself in yet another high-ceilinged room that smelled of damp and dust. A harvest moon, large and yellow, hung in the clear sky and by its light, in a corner of the window, she saw a fat spider sitting at the center of its web. As she gazed up at the spider, waiting for it to move, the quadrangle below entered her angle of vision. It was at that moment she realized she was fast-forwarding. She could have been looking at a photograph. A man in striped trousers and a soft cap was entering the yard. He held a pistol in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. Captured in that instant of time, the blue and yellow flames looked like billowing silk…. It was Sorel! She was sure of it. Behind him trotted two horses pulling a large wagon, and following the wagon were four more men. All were frozen in mid-step. She could not see the other four as clearly since they were half in shadow, but all were burly, powerfully built men. Kate could easily guess the purpose of this visit: the capture of four English spies caught plotting together with an aristocrat. That would boost Sorel’s reputation with his Revolutionary friends….

  Kate pelted out of the room, along the corridor and down the stairs three steps at a time. She tried to wake Mr. Schock, but it was like trying to shake a tree trunk. Could she stop fast-forwarding at will too? Poor Hannah did not respond either. Kate ran around the room, peering through the window, examining Montfaron’s electric booby trap with all its jars full of water and wires leading from them, and wished she knew how to set it up again. Then she considered going outside and disarming Sorel and his gang, but the heavy door was locked and she could not find the key anywhere. Finally she gave up. Her father’s voice came to her. Use your head, Kate. No good ever came from panicking. All right, she thought, I can’t disarm them, and I can’t warn anyone but at least we can be prepared….

  By the time Kate fell backward on Peter while trying to pull out an ormolu table from the furniture mountain, the doors were barricaded against all comers. Tables, chairs, chests, piles of books, a statue of Venus, a globe … Peter cried out more in surprise than in pain. Kate sighed with relief. She was back.

  “That’s the third time, Joshua!” she said. “You are my guardian angel!”

  Then she hurried from one person to another, shaking them.

  “You’ve got to wake up! Sorel has come for us with some men and they’re armed!”

  “Is this your work, Kate?” cried Mr. Schock incredulously, indicating the barricade and struggling to disentangle himself from a dust sheet.

  Kate nodded.

  “Why on earth didn’t you wake us up so we could all help?”

  Suddenly there was a gigantic crashing and splintering of glass and timber as a casement window at the far end of the room imploded under the impact of axes. Getting in through the window had clearly been an easier option than breaking down the door. Kate berated herself: “Stupid, stupid, stupid …” Montfaron ran to the mantelpiece and plucked two swords that were hung on the wall above it. He tossed one to Peter, who caught it by the hilt and raised it above his head with both arms in readiness. A second later they saw five men jump through the window carrying flaming torches and pistols. Flickering flames exaggerating the shadows on their faces, Sorel’s men immediately trained their pistols on the five of them.

  The heavy wagon wheels rolled over the pitted road under the stars. Sorel drove, two men walked ahead with flaming torches, and two went behind to guard the prisoners. Everyone winced with every jolt, for with their hands tied together they could not brace themselves against knocks. The air was chill, and a ghostly mist rose up from the land after all the heavy rain of the previous day. They heard frogs croaking in the silence of the night, and as they approached Arras, a nightingale sang its heart out in a walled garden filled with apple trees.

  At first the party had been in genuine fear of their lives, but Montfaron’s unfailing courtesy and quiet acceptance of events had, at least for now, defused a dangerous situation. Peter did his best to hold Kate’s hands in his and gave her reassuring smiles every time their eyes met. Peter was impressed with Montfaron. He had nerve and good instinct and he clearly had the measure of Sorel. After Montfaron had failed to convince him that the motive behind his English guests’ visit was not espionage but science, he applauded him for his good citizenship and agreed that the party would accompany him on condition that their case be formally submitted to the proper authorities first thing in the morning.

  Sorel’s brooding temperament, however, put the party on their guard. He reminded Kate a little of Joe, the leader of the Carrick Gang, in that he put everyone on edge, even the men he had brought with him. While being careful to address them as “Citizen,” the men mostly treated their prisoners with respect. The Marquis de Montfaron had, after all, been an important figure in their community, and the memory of how things had been could not be sponged away so quickly. Sorel, however, was provocative and unpleasant. He had spat on the floor, clearly aiming for Montfaron’s shoes, and would not allow anyone to take anything with them other than the clothes they stood up in, although, in the darkness, Kate had managed to secrete several items from her backpack in the lining of her dress.

  Montfaron insisted that as Sorel was acting purely on his own initiative and had not brought with him a formal warrant for their arrest, the authorities would be obliged to release them in the morning. “Sorel does this for personal glory,” he whispered. “Do not fear, all will turn out well, you will see….”

  Kate kept opening her mouth to tell Mr. Schock about her vision of the future, but it was not an appropriate moment to announce to Mr. Schock that she believed Peter would manage to get home—even if they might not. Meanwhile Montfaron hummed a tune and tapped his feet.

  “I am pleased that you are able to keep so cheerful, Sir!” said Mr. Schock.

  “A man’s happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his good fortune….”

  By now they had entered Arras itself, and Montfaron pointed out a small sapling surrounded by protective iron railings.

  “Behold,” he said. “The Tree of Liberty. I saw it was planted amidst great celebrations in the spring. It was the last time I dared come openly into the town. I pity the person who has the responsibility of keeping that young tree alive….”

  Soon afterward they came to a halt
in a great square surrounded on all sides by houses built in the Flemish style. The storm had swept the heavens clean and above them the velvet sky was studded with stars. The moonlight was strong enough for Kate to see ornate, curved gables and, below, covered arcades which would protect pedestrians from the elements. Sorel climbed down from the wagon and disappeared down a narrow passageway, leaving the four men to guard them. His footsteps echoed into the night. After what Mr. Schock had said, Kate wondered how long it would be until the shadow of the guillotine fell over this beautiful square.

  “I fear he plans to hold us in the subterranean tunnels,” whispered Montfaron. “Pray do not be alarmed when they take us underground. There have been chalk mines here for many centuries and there are miles of tunnels underneath the town. People store cheese here, and wine, as well as, it seems, those suspected of being against the Revolution.”

  “Are we to be thrown into a dungeon, Mistress Kate?” asked Hannah.

  “If we are, I’m sure the Marquis will soon get us out.”

  Peter looked at his father and Montfaron. “We are three against four,” he whispered. “Should we not attempt to escape now, before it is too late?”