The Dream Thief

by Catherine Webb

  Don’t close your eyes don’t close your eyes don’t close your eyes don’t close your eyes don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t DON’T DON’T NO DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES!!

  Just a moment.

  Just a little, little moment.

  (What’s that in the corner?)

  No one need ever know.

  So tired.

  (A thing knocked over in the dark.)

  Just a moment . . .

  . . . not sleep . . . just . . . closing his . . .

  (A remnant of cake. There was cake they took from the circus. Poisoned cake.)

  eyes . . .

  And here is the place where the children sleep.

  Mercy Chaste sits by the door, to keep them safe from all nightmares. And if there’s nothing left in them that’s capable of such a thought, then isn’t the absence of a nightmare always for the best?

  Then a voice said, coming out of the darkness where there shouldn’t have been any voice, ‘Miss Chaste? Miss Mercy Chaste?’

  And that, right there, was the end of Miss Chaste’s dream.

  ‘Miss Chaste? Miss Mercy Chaste?’

  Tess had silently opened the door to the hospital ward. She’d also removed the padlock from the outer gate, picked the lock between the main door and the upstairs ward, and purloined half a dozen silver spoons that the maid had left on the downstairs table ready to administer the morning dose of medicine to the slumbering patients in the other wing. Old habits died as hard as old skills in Teresa Hatch; she’d barely noticed she was doing any thieving, even as she did it.

  Now Tess, Thomas and Lin stood in the door of the silent ward, lit by little more than the thin moonlight falling through the tall windows, and the lingering greenish-yellow glow of the gas lamps hissing smelly sulky light down in the streets below.

  Miss Chaste, vicar’s daughter, spinster at an unfashionable age, as thin as the shawl wrapped across her bony shoulders, looked up sleepily from the great rocking chair by the door, blinked distant thoughts from her eyes and breathed, ‘Hush, the children are sleeping,’ in the distracted half-gone manner of someone who hasn’t yet realised that this is more than just a dream.

  ‘You’re Miss Mercy Chaste,’ replied Thomas. His voice was cold and level with the full wrath of aristocratic over-containment. ‘A charitable,’ the word dripped bitterly off his tongue, ‘a charitable and philanthropic lady.’

  Miss Chaste, becoming aware that this was something more than a dream, sat up in her chair, smoothed her skirts and raised the dim lantern by her side from floor to face. She said, ‘I remember you. You’re Horat—you’re Mister Lyle’s friends. Are you here to see the child Sissy Smith?’

  Then her eyes fell on Lin, and her expression faltered at the sight of this strange, bright-eyed, angry-looking foreigner. But since Miss Chaste was, more than anything else, a lady of good breeding, she hid her consternation at seeing a creature so very un-English entering her tidy ward. She rose to her feet and said, ‘Master . . . Elwick, is it not? How can I help you?’

  ‘You run a charity,’ replied Thomas coldly, and now Miss Chaste noticed the girl by his side, whose eyes were red with exhaustion and whose face was flushed in response to something more than mere fatigue.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she breathed in quick reply. ‘It is our duty as members of the upper orders to give charity to those who are—’

  ‘You visit workhouses,’ barked Thomas, and the armies of both Wellington and Bonaparte would have trembled at the bubbling rage rising in his too polite, far too polite, cold voice. ‘You visit workhouses, pay money to the masters, the masters take their children to the circus, to be poisoned! They are given free food, free cake, free pudding. What child, what hungry child who lives on workhouse nothing, what such child says no to pudding, ma’am? Can you show me that child who would say no?’

  ‘The tragedy of our times is the ineffective provision for the poor,’ lamented Miss Chaste automatically.

  ‘That don’t sound like nothin’ to me,’ hissed Tess. ‘Big words what mean nothin’! What ’bout Mister Lyle!’

  Her voice echoed down the ward. In their beds, the children shifted and turned over in their empty sleep.

  Thomas gestured at her to be silent. ‘Miss Chaste,’ he went on, implacable as the progress of a glacier, ‘someone pays for children to vanish. The money is supplied by a charitable foundation, on whose board sit many no doubt kindly and noble donors. And you.’

  Lin stepped forward. She had been moving down the ward, examining each sleeping child in turn. Now she wore a look in her eye as if she had never been able to imagine such a thing. ‘Women,’ she sighed, ‘can’t vote, can’t work for the wages of a man, are secondary in the laws of inheritance or divorce, cannot preach from the pulpit. And yet,’ her smile was a flash of moon-reflecting whiteness in the gloom, ‘those ladies with both money and time may, at the very least, make great inroads into the world of local governance and exclaim that is all that woman should desire, and you, Miss Chaste, you, I think, are one of these women. You know, I begin to question whether the female revolution will ever throw off its corset in my life time.’

  Miss Chaste smiled. It was the nervous, slightly disbelieving smile of an innocent prisoner who wants above everything else to please the executioner at the gallows, just in case it was a misunderstanding after all.

  She said, ‘I really don’t know what it is you’re talking about. Of course I have interests in charitable affairs, what gentlewoman could do otherwise? But all this talk of missing children - I do not know what you mean. Really, this is all most strange to me. Perhaps you could be kind enough to explain?’

  When she finished gabbling, there was silence. Lin’s shoes creaked on the hard stone floor. Thomas scratched his chin where one day - soon, surely, please God - a beard would grow. Tess, who usually had much to say about very little, was as silent and still as a carved cemetery angel.

  ‘You and Greybags,’ breathed Thomas. ‘You give out the money so that children are sent to him. You use charities to hide your work, to keep suspicion away from you, but we’ve seen the records. We know where the money comes from, and where it goes. You didn’t even bother to hide it.’

  ‘Hide what?’ asked Miss Chaste breathlessly. ‘I really don’t—’

  ‘You thought as how no one would look.’ Tess’s voice rang through the long room, no longer angry, just flat and tired and old. ‘You didn’t bother to go coverin’ up the money, cos you thought no one would look. No one would care nothin’ about the children what vanishes from the workhouse. No one would care for the orphans what goes from the streets, ’bout the beggars an’ their sons, ’bout the ones what live in the hospices on rags an’ a boiled potato. You just didn’t think no one would care.’

  She looked up slowly from the point on the floor where her eyes had locked as if to burn it, and her gaze was on fire. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered. ‘You as think you know best, think you can talk ’bout the bigger good. You, as visit the workhouses an’ pat each child on the head, an’ say, “There there now, it’s not your fault as how you’re small an’ ignorant an’ poor an’ stupid an’ ain’t goin’ to be nothin’. What a pity as how your parents couldn’t treat you right, but then they were stupid an’ poor an’ weren’t goin’ to be nothin’ neither. But it’s all right cos we’re ’ere now to save you. We’re goin’ to make you better than what your parents could, teach you to be proud to be so humble. An’ though you be humble, proud ’cos you ain’t dead, or thievin’ or beggin’ an’ wastin’ our big people’s coppers an’ our time.” An’ that’d be all well and good so long as you went an’ gave us the extra copper, an’ let us learn to be what we were gonna be, but you don’t. Cos you can’t make everythin’ better, can you, bigwig? So you gotta choose. You sit down an’ you say, “Let’s make these children better. Such a shame, but those ’ave got to starve.” An’ in all that choosin’ who to save an’ who to let die, you ain’t never lifted no finger to save me. You let
me an’ mine go an’ starve, an’ felt good ’bout yourself for bein’ so kind to others.’

  ‘An’ that ain’t even before what you gone an’ done to Sissy Smith. That ain’t even before what you gone an’ done to Mister Lyle. You just didn’t think as how anyone would look at that money. I hate you.’

  ‘Why do you help Greybags?’

  Lin’s voice cut across the shuddering breath that Tess was letting slowly out. It seemed to slice into Miss Chaste like a knife. She jerked at the sound of it.

  ‘I help the children,’ breathed Miss Chaste.

  ‘You supply him with children. Then you help fake their death certificates and hide what’s left of each child in your hospital!’

  ‘I . . . I . . . the circus is such a pretty place.’

  ‘Greybags doesn’t have the intellect,’ snapped Lin, taking a step towards Miss Chaste, who flinched. ‘He isn’t grown-up enough to think of a scheme like this. Which means that you,’ stabbing a finger at Miss Chaste’s face, ‘must have helped him, given him children who won’t be traced. And unlike the clowns who drank the poison and forget their names, unlike the men and women of the circus who were made part of the circus by Greybags’ trickery, you are alert, you are aware, you remember your name. You are a conscious participant!’

  ‘I . . . you’ll wake the children!’

  ‘They’re not wakin’ up!’ shrieked Tess. ‘They ain’t never wakin’ up! I hate you!’

  ‘Tell me why you did these things!’ snarled Lin. Miss Chaste cringed from the sight of her.

  ‘The children are . . . They are peaceful like this.’

  Silence, except for the harsh rush of Tess’s breath.

  ‘Peaceful?’ echoed Lin, drawing back a little. ‘Are you using this word in a fascinatingly English way whose semantic meaning I don’t understand? What do you mean, peaceful?’

  ‘They are peaceful,’ repeated Miss Chaste, gesturing futilely at the room of slumbering children.

  ‘They are empty shells,’ snapped Thomas.

  ‘They are peaceful!’ she repeated. ‘I only looked at the workhouses first, at the children, at how they ate, how they lived, how they were. And do you know how many children from the workhouse are hanged, or sent to the hulks, or deported, or go to prison?

  ‘We can’t save every one. But if we save a few? The children who would have had so much trouble, been so unhappy, destined for the gallows, the daughters of impure women, fathered by thieves and beggars! The sons of criminals. Of debtors who couldn’t pay their debts.’ Miss Chaste’s voice had a frantic, questioning lilt. The faces about her darkened.

  ‘They were nothing!’ she wailed. ‘The children were nothing, the lowest of the low, the scu—the bottom of the . . . It’s not their fault, they didn’t choose it, I understand that. It’s not their fault that they will amount to so little. But true philanthropists don’t naively dream. They accept. And I saw that this was a way to save them by . . .

  ‘When I found Greybags, he was a dying old man! A harmless dying old man. And then I found a child, and then . . . the child was at peace and Greybags was young again - a miracle. I saw my father die when I was just a child, but this child need never see that. I said sorry, Pa, so sorry, so sorry. You should have had a son. If you’d had a son he could have carried on the name. But you don’t understand, these children never see sorrow or pain or any of the things that wait on the other side of maturity. They need never understand that things end and fathers must die.

  ‘He gives them peace! They eat cake and see the wonders of the circus and then they sleep and dream beautiful stories for ever, and need never, ever, see their father die!’

  Her voice, almost risen to a scream, faded away.

  Lin said, ‘Lyle is dying.’

  Miss Chaste blinked, like someone stepping into a dark cave after being dazzled by too much sun. ‘What?’ she murmured.

  ‘Lyle is dying,’ repeated Lin. ‘Tell me, Miss Chaste, does this excite feelings?’

  Miss Chaste shook her head, mostly in numbed incomprehension.

  ‘Now that I meet you,’ breathed Lin, ‘I see that, though I myself can choose to indulge in childish, simple pleasures, you are nothing but a child in an adult woman’s tasteless tight bodice. It’s not your fault you were born an idiot, or a human, for that matter. Now, you may be so lost in this fairyland you have created that you cannot understand what I’m about to say. But I shall say it anyway. Is there a cure?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A cure,’ repeated Lin. ‘An antidote for the poison that turns adults to children. The poison which is, may I add, currently killing a man whom I find, despite my infinitely superior nature and his lack of social graces, rather charming. Is there an antidote? ’

  ‘I . . . don’t know.’

  ‘I think you do, Miss Chaste. I think you’re going to tell me.’

  Miss Chaste looked at Lin, shuddered as she suspected the truth of what she saw, looked away, then slowly looked straight back at her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Greybags uses the poisons to make the children easier to . . . to calm. To make the adults more . . . open minded. There is no antidote.’

  ‘And Lyle?’

  ‘He . . .’ This time Miss Chaste’s voice almost caught in her throat. ‘He is old enough to understand.’

  Miss Lin smiled, looked away and then said, ‘Miss Chaste, I feel that at this point it would be appropriate for me to show moderation. However . . .’

  Her fingers bent into a fist. Drawing her arm back, she swung it upwards, twisting at the elbow, the whole weight of her body going into the punch. Miss Chaste didn’t scream or cry out - didn’t have the breath. She just fell to the floor, gasping in amazement and pain.

  ‘I am not, so I am informed,’ sighed Lin, ‘a proper lady. Where is Greybags?’

  ‘Why do you—’

  ‘Greybags is what you might describe as an adaptation of my kind. He has some of our gifts, to a limited degree, and some benefits too. But he relies on chemicals to further his capabilities, hence the poisons. My tedious task is to deal with him. We lost him in the circus, at which time I had other things on my mind. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Miss Chaste.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ repeated the woman, her jaw hardening in defiance. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I did.’

  Lin stepped forward, raising her fist again, when Thomas spoke calmly from behind her.

  ‘Excuse me?’ he said. ‘Might I be allowed to talk to Miss Chaste in private?’

  Coooo-eeeey - Mister Lyle?

  Cooey?

  Mister Lyle?

  A finger twitches on the floor.

  A breath shudders hard and harsh.

  Oi! You!

  Lyle blinked back thick yellow gum from his eyes.

  He’d crawled across the floor, ten thousand years ago, and now, beyond the reach of all mortal compass, just at the end of his nose, lay a small glass vial. It contained some thin liquid, just a few drops at the bottom. It smelt familiar. It smelt of the stuff Thomas had been extracting from a slice of poisoned cake, just before that trouble at the circus.

  Lyle closed his fingers round it. They seemed too big; it too small.

  There was something about . . .

  . . . poisons.

  Just had to stay awake.

  Just a little bit longer.

  On the table, higher and further away than the smallest star on a blackened night, he caught a glimpse of another vial. Belladonna, distilled into its nastiest elements: inducing rapid heart beat, hallucinations and, eventually, death. But not before it caused a serious case of insomnia.

  He thought he could hear his mother’s voice.

  He thought he could hear children singing.

  He sang in reply, humming under his breath, ‘Two by two is four, four by four is sixteen, sixteen by sixteen is two hundred and fifty-six, two hundred and fifty-six is . . . is - hold on - sixty thousand, sixty-five thousand, sixty-five thousand five
hundred and thirty-six . . .’

  He started the ten-thousand-mile climb towards the bottle. All he needed was a little time.

  Thomas sits alone with Miss Chaste, in the gloomy lamplight of the hospital.

  The trains from Coventry rumble by outside, under a weight of coal and steel. In the other direction, the wagons from London are heavy with clothes, with bales of cloth and with manufactured trinkets, to be shipped to the hungry Empire’s inhabitants, waiting beyond the seas. The city staggers on, like a drunkard pushed from the music hall, warmth in his belly, bottle in his hand and the sound of music ringing in his ears, as shadows stretch thin beneath the gas lamps.