Gideon the Cutpurse

by Linda Buckley-Archer

  ‘If only I could phone your mum to tell her that I’ve found you,’ said her father.

  They all took it in turns to tell Dr Dyer what had happened to them since their arrival, everyone interrupting and commenting and adding another detail. Dr Dyer was stunned by how much they had lived through in such a short space of time. They had encountered footpads and highwaymen, the King and Queen of England, Erasmus Darwin, not to mention Dr Johnson … They had seen the inside of Buckingham House as well as Newgate Prison. When Kate told her father about Ned Porter’s murder and how they had been kidnapped by footpads, he went very quiet and stroked her cheek.

  ‘I cannot thank you enough for the kindness you have shown to Kate and Peter,’ he said to Sir Richard and the Parson when he realised just how much he owed to the Byng family. ‘And Gideon Seymour, too – if Gideon had not stumbled across the children in Derbyshire I do not like to think what could have happened to them. It is tempting to think that fate had a hand in all this … I look forward to thanking Gideon in person. I agree with Kate that we cannot think of trying to return home until he is freed from Newgate Prison.’

  ‘Do you have the means of returning home, Dr Dyer?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘Andrew, please call me Andrew. Yes, I believe I do, at least I hope I do – but more of that in a moment. First there is something I must know. There is a massive police hunt underway in the twenty-first century, as I am sure you can imagine …’

  ‘Ah,’ said Parson Ledbury, ‘999. Police cars …’

  ‘Mmm …’ continued Dr Dyer. ‘Well, given how Peter and Kate disappeared, it’s not surprising that the police have not come up with anything. There was your message, of course, Kate, etched into the wall at your school – very clever idea, by the way, well done. Naturally we erased it before the police saw it …’

  ‘Erased it? Why?’

  ‘Because we, I mean the NASA scientists who came over to help and I …’

  ‘NASA?’ asked the Parson and Sir Richard.

  ‘They build space rockets …’ explained Peter quickly.

  ‘The future sounds damned tricky, does it not, Sir Richard?’ said the Parson. ‘I think we are better off where we are, what?’

  Sir Richard laughed. ‘I am sure you are right and yet there is a part of me that longs to see what we will achieve, the progress we shall have made …’

  ‘I should be satisfied with your own time,’ said Dr Dyer. ‘From what I have seen, we have lost much that should not have been lost, and although great scientific discoveries will be made, I am sorry to say that mankind does terrible, terrible things to itself over the next centuries.’ He sighed. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘NASA scientists,’ said Kate. ‘Why you erased my message.’

  ‘Ah yes. We decided that if, as we were beginning to suspect, you had gone back in time, we did not want the public to get to know about it. You don’t have to think very hard to come up with some of the potential dangers. For instance, my history is not very good but England has just won the Seven Years War, yes?’

  Sir Richard nodded. ‘Yes, the Treaty of Paris was signed in February.’

  ‘Well, what is to stop some fanatical Frenchman travelling back in time with a large bomb and blowing up the English fleet at a crucial moment? France wins and bang goes the Treaty of Paris …’

  The Parson looked horrified. ‘It cannot be! You cannot come back and take away our past! We have earned our history – it is ours!’

  ‘But we already have,’ said Dr Dyer. ‘We’ve just got to try and minimise the damage, leave and never come back.’

  The Parson looked shaken.

  ‘I promise you that, as soon as we return, the anti-gravity machine and all its documentation will be destroyed.’

  ‘Is everyone concerned with this anti-gravity machine of the same opinion, Andrew?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘I believe so …’

  ‘Then have a care, for whoever holds this knowledge has a power greater than any army …’

  There was a long and profound silence. Dr Dyer squeezed Kate’s hand. It was Kate who spoke first.

  ‘Well, don’t keep us in suspense, Dad! How did you get here?’

  ‘I will tell you, I will, once you’ve told me how you two managed to appear like ghosts in the twenty-first century, leaving a trail for me to follow from Bakewell to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’

  ‘Oh yes! We haven’t told you about blurring! But surely you must have blurred – how long have you been here?’

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘But that’s as long as us!’

  ‘I know. Carry on. And no, I haven’t ‘blurred’ as you call it. Not once. Tell me what happens when you do.’

  Kate and Peter struggled to explain to Dr Dyer what blurring felt like, how at first they blurred without realising what was happening and how subsequently they had learned to blur at will.

  ‘So it doesn’t happen to you of its own accord any more?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to. The last time we both blurred together without meaning to was days and days ago. We popped up in a supermarket car-park! We got some very funny looks, I can tell you!’ said Kate.

  ‘I know you did, I’ve seen the photograph!’

  ‘No! Someone took a picture of that, too?’

  ‘Yes, you two are celebrities for what it’s worth … But, tell me, you say that when you blur you soon get pulled back?’

  Peter and Kate nodded. ‘It hurts,’ said Peter.

  ‘You get sucked back and you can’t resist it for very long,’ said Kate. ‘It’s a horrible feeling.’

  ‘Fascinating … I wonder why it hasn’t happened to me – or Molly for that matter …’

  ‘Kate finds it easier to blur than me,’

  ‘Well, girls are best!’ said Kate.

  ‘Could you blur now, so I could see?’ asked Dr Dyer.

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ exclaimed Parson Ledbury. ‘Not during supper! I can assure you that it is a perfectly blood-curdling sight and will give us all indigestion.’

  Dr Dyer laughed. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. When our stomachs are empty. Why don’t I tell you my story, then …’

  The telephone call came, he told them, on the morning of Christmas Eve. Sam was still refusing to come out of his room but the rest of the family were sitting around the Christmas tree. It was pointless trying to pretend that this was a normal Christmas but for the little ones’ sake they were playing Snap! and charades. Ever since Kate had vanished, the sound of a telephone always made the grown-ups apprehensive. A desperate wish for good news was always accompanied by the fear that this call could bring the bad news they had been dreading. Dr Dyer picked up the receiver. It was one of the security guards at the NCRDM Laboratory. He had been making a routine check on the office which Dr Dyer shared with Tim Williamson when he heard a message being recorded on their answering machine. It was an unusual message and he made a note of the number in case it was important.

  Kate’s father decided to make the call immediately. He got through to the estate manager of a property owned by the National Trust in Surrey. It was called Tempest House.

  ‘Tempest House!’ cried everyone at once. ‘But that’s …’

  ‘Lord Luxon’s country estate. I know – I found that out for myself.’

  The estate manager told him that a piece of equipment with a NCRDM security label on it had turned up inexplicably inside the Luxon family crypt. It was a total mystery how the object had got in there as it was securely locked. Not only that, there was also a crazed tramp in the crypt who fled like a trapped bird as soon as the doors were opened … the estate manager presumed that it was a student prank.

  ‘It was your mum who suggested taking Molly,’ said Dr Dyer, ‘and thank goodness she did. I got straight into the Land Rover and three hours later I was standing in the crypt. It was Tim’s anti-gravity machine all right, and it seemed undamaged. I watched Molly sniffing about and hoped she might pick up your scent. She didn’t but funnily enou
gh there was a strong smell of fish … I think I’d convinced myself that you were going to come back for Christmas – the one present your mum and I had prayed for. As I stood there, trying to calm down, the tramp crept back into the crypt. One look at him and I knew he wasn’t mad – he was from the eighteenth century. I asked him what the date was.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Kate.

  ‘26th July 1763.’

  ‘Yesterday!’ exclaimed Sir Richard.

  ‘Yes. Anyway, it was after talking to him that I realised what I must do.’

  ‘Who was he, Dad?’

  ‘A poacher. He had been fishing for carp in Lord Luxon’s lake. He used the crypt as a hiding place when he thought he had been spotted. There were a couple of loose tiles on the roof and he would squeeze through and drop down into the crypt. He thought Lord Luxon was up in town but he had appeared unexpectedly that morning and he had thought it best to make himself scarce until it was safe to go. Only when he landed on the floor of the crypt and lit a candle as he usually did, did he discover that he wasn’t in fact alone. There was one of Lord Luxon’s liveried footmen in there with him. The poacher was so startled he took a step backwards and fell over something. That was the last thing he could remember.

  ‘Of course, it was the morning of the race!’ exclaimed Peter. ‘So they had put the machine in the crypt … It wasn’t a trick.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Sir Richard. ‘I am beginning to understand.’

  ‘And so,’ continued Dr Dyer, ‘I had the proof I needed that the anti-gravity machine was indeed responsible for Kate and Peter’s disappearance and that it had gone both backwards and forwards in time. If the children were still in 1763 and their only hope of returning was this machine, I had no choice, I had to get it back to you. I telephoned your mother, Kate. And do you know, she did not hesitate for a second. “Go,” she said. “Bring my Katie back.”’

  Kate burst into tears.

  ‘Don’t cry, love, I have hidden the machine on Hampstead Heath. I shall get you back to your mum – and Peter to his – I promise. And you know that I don’t break my promises.’

  Peter looked down at the table and tears pricked at his eyelids. Unlike some people, he thought bitterly …

  ‘How did you know that the machine would return you to 1763?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘I didn’t, but what else could I do? I had to try.’

  Kate grabbed hold of her father’s hand and squeezed it.

  ‘There are various settings on Tim’s anti-gravity machine and a dial. I reasoned that if the machine had gone forwards and backwards over an identical time span, so long as none of the settings had been interfered with, I stood at least a decent chance of being able to replicate that journey. And it did, give or take a few days. Bizarrely, two days before it happened, I had visited one of my NASA colleagues in hospital. She said something to me whilst she was apparently asleep. She told me that the time differential is directly proportional to the quantity of anti-gravity generated. She couldn’t remember saying it afterwards.

  ‘Ooh, that’s spooky!’ said Kate.

  ‘I know. And it’s not something I would want to write up in a scientific journal, either, but it did give me the courage to switch on the generator. But she could be right – perhaps there is a direct relationship between energy output and the lapse in time.’

  He then described how the poacher had helped him move the machine out of the crypt and into the Land Rover for he did not want to risk getting to 1763 and then being locked in the crypt! Dr Dyer drove to Abinger Forest – a truly terrifying journey for the poacher – but he gamely helped unload the anti-gravity machine once they had arrived. Dr Dyer said that he had no recollection whatsoever of switching the machine on but remembered waking up in the woods in the middle of the night, owls hooting overhead, and the poacher long gone. Molly was fast asleep beside him and appeared none the worse for her experience.

  ‘We couldn’t remember anything about our journey, either, could we?’ said Kate to Peter.

  ‘No. I couldn’t even remember who you were at first …’

  ‘But we are talking about short-term memory loss, here, aren’t we?’ asked Dr Dyer anxiously. ‘I mean, you don’t have any difficulty recalling the names of your friends at school or the name of the Prime Minister, do you?’

  ‘Now you come to mention it …’ said Kate.

  ‘What?’ said Dr Dyer.

  ‘What were you saying? I can’t remember …’

  ‘Very funny, Kate. As I was saying, Molly and I woke up in the middle of Abinger Forest. The next day I sold my gold watch to a master clockmaker in Effingham for twenty guineas, hired a horse and cart and made for London where I hid the machine on Hampstead Heath and rented some rooms in Highgate. I knew that at some point you were going to turn up in Covent Garden or Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so Molly and I have been searching for you ever since.’

  ‘When you say watch, Andrew, do you mean a pocket watch small enough to be worn around the wrist, by any chance?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘In which case I can tell you that King George himself is in possession of your timepiece! No wonder there was such amazement at the delicacy of its mechanism!’

  There was so much more to say and so much more to ask but after all the excitement everyone was beginning to grow tired. Molly was snoring gently at Kate’s feet. The candles were low and Parson Ledbury kept dropping off to sleep and waking up with a start. At half-past eleven Sir Richard suggested that they resume the conversation the next day. He had an appointment to keep at Newgate with Gideon and Mr Leche at nine o’clock and he wondered if Kate’s father would be prepared to join them.

  ‘I should be honoured,’ said Dr Dyer. ‘I should like to be able to shake his hand. I can, in any case, swear on oath that Gideon did not take the anti-gravity machine. Although I am not sure that it would be a very good idea for me to explain the circumstances of its disappearance …’

  Kate and Peter waited in Sir Richard’s carriage outside St Sepulchre’s church while Dr Dyer, Sir Richard, Parson Ledbury and the lawyer, Mr Leche, went to visit Gideon. A quarter of an hour later the four men appeared at the iron gates. Mr Leche, a sallow-faced man in a tightly curled wig, shook hands with Sir Richard and, with a slight bow to the others, strode away at a furious pace in the direction of the Old Bailey. He did not look pleased. Neither did the others. They stood at the gate talking to each other urgently with angry expressions on their faces.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ said Peter. ‘What’s Sir Richard doing?’

  Sir Richard was waving down a hackney coach. He climbed in and was followed by the Parson. Dr Dyer watched as the driver turned the carriage through a hundred and eighty degrees and set off at a great speed towards Holborn and the west.

  ‘What’s happening?’ cried Kate as her father climbed in next to them. He called up to the driver to take them back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  ‘I’ve got bad news to give you, I’m afraid. Gideon’s case was heard at the Old Bailey yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘But he was only arrested the day before yesterday!’

  ‘I know. Lord Luxon clearly knows whose strings he can pull … Gideon was convicted of seven instances of theft – all valuable items and all the property of Lord Luxon.’

  ‘But he’s innocent! How could they find him guilty with no proof?’

  Dr Dyer called up to the driver to stop for a moment. They had just passed in front of the Old Bailey. Dr Dyer peered through the window.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Sir Richard was telling me about them. Can you see that group of men standing in front of the law courts? Look at their shoes.’

  ‘They’ve got something sticking out of them,’ said Peter.

  ‘It’s straw. They call them the straw men. They’ll go into court and swear anything you like under oath – for the right price. That’s how they got Gideon.’

 
; ‘We’ve got to do something!’ cried Peter. ‘Pay some other straw men to say something different. Ask for a retrial! There must be something we can do!’

  ‘Mr Leche says it’s too late.’

  ‘But why? How long must Gideon stay in that awful place?’

  ‘Gideon wasn’t sentenced to imprisonment. He is to be hanged at Tyburn on the next hanging day – which is on the 1st August, in five days’ time. The Recorder of London has already delivered the names of the condemned to the King.’

  Kate cried out in horror. ‘No!’ she exclaimed ‘No, it can’t be!’

  Peter was so shocked that he could not say a word. He had been so sure that Gideon would have been out of Newgate today, or tomorrow at the worst. Now he felt weak with the shock of it, winded as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

  ‘It can’t be true!’ he murmured.

  ‘I’m afraid that it is true. Gideon had already been moved to the Condemned Hold so we could not even speak to him. Although the turnkey told us that he was in not in despair.’

  ‘Then we must go to Buckingham House and explain what has happened!’ said Peter. ‘Queen Charlotte will help us – she said she would …’

  Peter was shaking with emotion. Dr Dyer assured him that Sir Richard and Parson Ledbury were doing all they could. They were going at this very minute to the Court of St James to prepare a petition to send to King George. Hopefully, as long as he got it in time, the King would pardon Gideon if Sir Richard could present a convincing enough case.

  ‘What do you mean, as long as he gets it in time?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Kate’s father, ‘the King and Queen have already left London for the country. To make matters worse, Sir Richard heard that King George has plans to visit the Earl of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle on the Northumberland coast.’