The Dream Thief

by Catherine Webb

  Tess and Thomas had covered nearly the whole length of the train in this manner, and both were beginning to lose patience with the matter when they stumbled on the compartment. In fact, both were so bored with their search that at first they hardly noticed, but glanced inside with the brisk regularity of people who had done this too many times already, moved on and only by the next compartment door did the reality of the image they had seen settle in.

  Tess grabbed Thomas by the left sleeve, Thomas grabbed Tess by the right, and then immediately let go lest he be considered inappropriate. ‘It’s him!’ hissed Tess in an overly loud whisper to be heard over the rumbling of the train.

  ‘Erm . . . yes.’

  ‘An’ he’s got people with him!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘The bigwig from the circus with his stick an’ the man with the dancin’ monkey!’

  ‘You mean Mr Majestic and the organ grinder?’ echoed Thomas meekly.

  ‘An’ they’re gigglin’! Why do they always seem to be gigglin’? ’ demanded Tess.

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I suppose . . . I suppose we follow them to wherever their final destination is and inform the authorities.’

  ‘Inform the authorities? What you gonna say? Oi, bigwig beak, you need to arrest this child what has grey hair cos he ain’t a child really, an’ then you gotta send him to clink cos he steals other children’s dreams an’ they never wake up never after?’

  ‘Well, I thought I might dress it up a little.’

  ‘Bigwig,’ she said firmly, ‘I see as how you’re a nobbly bigwig an’ all, with like - you know - aristo thin’s an’ all, but I don’t really think as how this is your brightest idea.’

  ‘I don’t hear you coming up with a productive solution to our dilemma!’

  ‘I didn’t want to be sneakin’ round ’ere like some two-farthin’ chimney sweep what thinks he’s gonna be the next big pinch-purse cos he’s got little fingers!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to be sneakin’ round ’ere like—’

  ‘No, that wasn’t the problem.’

  ‘ ’Sides, you’re rubbish at bein’ all inno—innoc—at bein’ all not noticed like! You even stick out when you’re with other bigwigs an’ they’re like all . . . all bigwigy like you!’

  ‘Miss Teresa, I’ll have you know that I am highly competent in the detective arts, including the sometimes base yet necessary skills of surveillance and—’

  ‘You don’t even talk like proper people!’

  ‘I talk like a well-bred gentleman of society, versed and learned in oratorical, rhetorical and philosophical skills that have been nurtured within the bosom of polite civilisation since the time of Sophocles himself and . . .’

  His voice drained away. A strange expression had come over Tess’s face, and her eyes had drifted up to a point about a foot and a half above Thomas’s head. He said, ‘Tess?’

  She said, ‘Knife.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Knife! Bloody knife!’

  So, since her attention seemed so focused, Thomas half turned and looked at the object behind him.

  Which object turned out to be a man.

  Which man turned out to be wearing a large, rather overly ornate cloak, a little trimmed salt and pepper beard, and to be carrying an interesting, slightly bent, shiny and extremely sharp knife.

  The knife-thrower said, ‘Hello, children. Do you want to play?’

  In the gutter where the tracks run, between platform seven and eight, where the arch of the station ends and silver-laced night begins, an argument is going on.

  It goes like this:

  ‘We’ll go faster without the carriages . . . Whoops, watch your foot!’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Miss Lin, I find that desperate, dare I say, impossibly dangerous situations bring out in me a light of such brilliance that in retrospect, I am amazed at my own ingenuity, insanity and inspiration. So shut up, Miss Lin, with all respect, and do what I bloody say!’

  ‘I still don’t entirely believe you’re not dead, Mister Lyle.’

  There is the clinking of heavy chain being dislodged, the cranking of a gear being released, and a voice proclaims, ‘We can discuss medical trivialities at another time.’

  ‘But you were poisoned!’

  ‘Indeed. By a drug intended to act speedily in inducing a narcotic state from which an altered consciousness would emerge. But I didn’t achieve an early narcotic state, did I? Indeed, by the time I actually lost consciousness the poison had been in my system for several hours, that part of it which I hadn’t already, if you’ll pardon the descent into crude, non-scientific jargon, puked-up all over the place. Over those several hours my body would, naturally, have been fighting it, not to mention the various chemicals Thomas plied me with, and while the body is not particularly good at targeting and destroying toxins, sooner or later a combination of acids in the stomach, cellular barriers, and sheer metabolic process was bound to wash the thing out of my system. So that when’ - something loud and heavy went clunk, something else went whoosh in response - ‘when I finally achieved the narcotic state into which the poison was meant to plunge me, it was a greatly weakened dosage that affected my higher cognitive functions resulting in’ - a clank, a foot on a metal stair - ‘a process that, while I would classify it as surreal, I would also regard as largely medically irrelevant.’ Lyle let out a long breath in satisfaction at the profundity of his own analysis. ‘See? Not complicated at all.’

  Lin thought about this a moment. Then she said, ‘So the fact that you didn’t fall asleep in the initial few hours, saved your life?’

  ‘Well, there is a little more to it than that.’

  ‘And you didn’t fall asleep, Mister Lyle, because I commanded you not to.’

  ‘Again, who knows what interesting side-effects were taking place in my brain.’

  ‘So, Mister Lyle, effectively I saved your life! Ha! You’re never going to hear the end of this!’

  ‘Miss Lin, while I concede you helped stave off the inevitable,’ growled Lyle, his patience wearing thin as he struggled to decouple an engine from its carriages while avoiding the watchful eyes of the station guards, ‘there is one factor you have failed to consider. ’

  ‘And what is that, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘You have failed,’ he grunted as metal came free from metal, ‘to consider the fact that Mrs Hobbs upon immediately departing my company, went in search of the one other person in London whose grasp of organic chemistry is as rich and complex as mine.’

  Lin waited. When Lyle seemed to offer no more she asked, ‘Well go on then! Who?!’

  There was a slightly embarrassed pause. Then, ‘If you tell anyone this . . .’

  ‘Me foreign lady-demon, you Caucasian male in a patriarchal society.’ Lin sighed. ‘Who would believe me?’

  ‘Mrs Hobbs,’ growled Lyle, crawling between the tracks, ‘went to get my mother.’

  There was a silence.

  Then a long, slow, disbelieving, ‘Your mother!’

  ‘My ma has an excellent head on her shoulders!’

  ‘Your mother saved your life?’

  ‘My ma hasn’t just spent the last thirty-five years making scones and cream teas you know.’

  ‘Your mother—’ Lin stopped dead in the middle of her sentence. ‘Does this mean there’s a cure?’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Your mother found a cure to the poison?’

  ‘Yes, my mother!’ snapped Lyle. ‘Thank you for reminding me, and may I say that while I’m grateful to her and grateful to you, the children are missing, Greybags is fleeing the city to God knows where, so will you please help me steal this train before someone notices?’

  Thomas and Tess were pushed unceremoniously down onto the seat opposite Greybags, in the compartment containing Greybags, Mr Majestic the ringmaster, the organ gri
nder still turning the handle of his now very out of tune and clunky organ, and the knife-thrower, who twiddled the end of his blade nervously between his fingertips.

  Greybags sat chewing his sleeve. He looked at Tess, looked at Thomas and curled his lip in distaste. ‘I knows you,’ he said, flapping one little arm in a great sleeve indignantly. ‘You were at the circus!’

  It had been less than a day since Tess and Thomas had seen Greybags last, but already, some of the youth he’d stolen from Effy Hall was beginning to fade, and his face had the thinner, more settled look of a teenage boy of Thomas’s age, rather than the fresh glow of his stolen moments.

  ‘This is your fault, bigwig,’ hissed Tess, nudging Thomas in the ribs.

  ‘My fault? If you hadn’t been arguing all the time then we would have—’

  ‘You can’t talk like that to me, I’m a lady!’

  ‘Miss Teresa, polite ladies don’t argue back when the gentleman of the house is offering a productive plan!’

  ‘Well then, polite ladies are stupid an’ rubbish, an’, ’sides, you ain’t no gentleman of no house, you is Thomas an’ I is Tess an’ that means you should do everythin’ as I say!’

  ‘That isn’t how it works! I am the man and you are . . . well . . . you are . . .’

  ‘Ah-ha! You’re the man an’ that means you can get blamed when it all goes wrong, see. Cos if you’re s’posed to be in charge then when it goes poo-pooey like I said it would, then you is the one what must shovel the shi—’

  ‘Hello?’

  They both looked up at Greybags.

  ‘Yes?’ snapped Tess. ‘What’d you want?’

  ‘You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?’ asked Greybags.

  Tess’s eyes immediately narrowed. ‘Yes I am,’ she said, ‘but random blokes what goes round sayin’ it in a dodgy way ain’t none what I’d trust with the silver. You start by sayin’ “You is a clever girl”, see, an’ then you say “You’re beautiful” or summat an’ then you propose marriage an’ run away with my dowry!’

  ‘You haven’t got a dowry, Miss Teresa,’ Thomas pointed out politely, feeling he ought to say something, if not in the lady’s defence, then at least to show he was interested.

  ‘I’d bloody go an’ pinch one, so I’d be respectable! ’Sides, weren’t I havin’ a go at you for bein’ a useless toff?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Teresa, but I feel in the interest of factual accuracy—’

  ‘I don’t like you,’ said Greybags, and there was nothing in his childish drawl but malice and distaste.

  Thomas’s eyes flew quickly up. ‘What?’ he barked, and then cringed at how much he’d sounded like his father.

  ‘You’re borin’,’ said Greybags. ‘You’re talkin’ all posh like - like you were one of them. Like you were all grown-up. You wanna sound like one of them! You wanna sound like a borin’ adult, as if you weren’t just one of us! You want to be old!’

  Thomas swallowed. ‘Now look,’ he began firmly, ‘I’m sure we can settle this if we just discuss our mutual—’

  ‘You scared of your pa?’ asked Greybags suddenly.

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘I think you’re scared,’ he replied. ‘I think you tries to talk like your papa so as how he will think more of you. You think as how he don’t want a child, he just want a son, a thin’ what will be just like him, what will talk like him an’ walk like him, an’ have a son of his own what will have the family name an’ will have more sons an’ more sons cos that’s what the sons have to do. They have to be like their papas. I think you talk bigwig so as that’s so. So as when you grow up you’ll be just like your papa, not nothin’ like you.’

  There was stunned silence at this, except for the slow slither of the knife-thrower cleaning one of his nails with the point of his blade.

  Then Tess nudged Thomas in the ribs and whispered, ‘You know, he might ’ave a point an’ all.’

  ‘Teresa,’ breathed Thomas, eyes wide and face red, ‘not now.’

  Greybags snorted. ‘You’re borin’,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t like you.’ He looked up at the ringmaster. ‘It’d be funny if we went an’ threw him off the train, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ barked Thomas.

  ‘Wha’?’ shrilled Tess.

  But the ringmaster just shrugged, grabbed Thomas by one arm, and reached for the door. Tess threw herself between him and it, put one hand in the air and snapped, ‘Oi! You lay one finger on my bloody bigwig an’ I’ll scream so loud as how you’ll be cryin’ for two bloody weeks!’

  The ringmaster hesitated and looked to Greybags for advice. Greybags said, ‘Why’d you want to play with someone so borin’? He’s just a bigwig what don’t know how to be fun.’

  ‘He may be just a bigwig,’ snapped Tess imperiously, ‘but he’s my bigwig, what I gotta look after cos he’s too daft to go an’ look after himself proper. An’ if it’s the last thin’ I do - which it ain’t gonna be, by the way, cos I’ve got all sorts of thin’s to do with my life - I ain’t gonna let some . . . some . . . some snotty child with bad hair go an’ throw him out of the train!’

  Greybags clapped his hands together happily. ‘You are wonderful, little girl!’ he said. ‘You are so bright!’

  ‘Don’t you little me! You’re just a child in a big coat!’

  ‘Oh no! No no no no no!’ Greybags laughed. ‘I’m old. I’m so old as how I knew your mama an’ your papa when they was just children themselves. I met the drummer boys what played at Waterloo. I saw them make tea in Boston Bay. I’m real old, see? I just don’t like it that way. An’ I ain’t never goin’ to die.’

  Thomas raised his one free hand. ‘Excuse me? About my being pushed out of a moving train?’

  ‘What?’ asked Greybags, seemingly having forgotten.

  ‘Ignore my bigwig,’ said Tess quickly, ‘he has all these daft ideas ’bout duty an’ justice an’ responsibility an’ all.’

  ‘Ain’t right for a boy,’ sneered Greybags, reaching into his pocket, ‘miss . . .’

  ‘I’m Tess. Lady Tess,’ she added with a little glare at Thomas, ‘of . . . of . . . Wales.’ Uncomprehending faces stared back at her. ‘The good bit, course! Proper lady, me.’

  Greybags’s hand slid from his pocket. It held a small green bottle. ‘Lady Tess, would you like summat to drink?’ he asked.

  Tess’s face had turned the colour of freshly burnt ash. She shook her head and mumbled, ‘Um, no. Thanks a bundle but nah, I’m fine, really, honest, really, fine.’

  ‘But you gotta ’ave summat to drink! Else you’ll get all thirsty.’ He waved the bottle closer. Tess backed away until she was up against the compartment door, the sound of the night whistling by outside, the rattling of the engine on the tracks ahead and . . .

  . . . and behind?

  ‘Drink, Miss Teresa! I wanna you to drink!’

  ‘Don’t you touch her!’ snapped Thomas.

  ‘Children what don’t behave get a smack!’ wailed Greybags.

  ‘Bigwig! I ain’t drinkin’ nothin’ of yours!’

  ‘Ain’t we friends?’

  ‘No, we bloody ain’t! Didn’t you hear the part ’bout you bein’ a snotty thin’ with bad hair?’

  ‘You gotta drink!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You gotta drink! I always gets my way!’

  ‘Well then you is just a spoilt little boy!’

  ‘I ain’t!’

  ‘You is!’

  ‘I ain’t!’

  ‘You is!’

  ‘I ain’t I ain’t I ain’t I ain’t I—’

  ‘Excuse me?’ murmured Thomas feebly.

  ‘I ain’t I ain’t I ain’t—’

  ‘Is is is is is!’ shrieked Tess.

  ‘Ain’t ain’t ain’t ain’t—’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Thomas raised his voice.

  ‘Is is is to infinity!’

  ‘Wha’s infinity!’