THE TIME THIEF Read online

  “I’d rather tread on broken glass than go through that again,” said Anjali to the Tar Man, sinking into a sofa and pulling off her shoes.

  The Tar Man laughed. He laughed even louder when Tom appeared with his new haircut, dressed in tight black jeans and black-and-pink-striped T-shirt that displayed his midriff. Tears of mirth came to his eyes.

  “If this is your century’s version of the gentleman of fashion, then I am obliged to tell you, Anjali, that mine has produced better dressed lapdogs!”

  Anjali left for the evening, apparently in a huff, after the Tar Man’s remark but not before she had retorted:

  “Well, at least even our century’s dogs smell better than your century’s humans!”

  In truth, much as the two exiles from 1763 were amazed by the power shower in their ultramodern bathroom, their relationship to it took the form of a sincere appreciation rather than an intention to use it. In any case, the Tar Man mistrusted the concept of daily bathing and found the idea that he should aim to have no odor quite ludicrous. It was not the first time that his twenty-first-century adviser had commented on his attitude to personal hygiene, but he was not unduly perplexed.

  “I am a man!” he had replied. “Would you have me smell as a flower?”

  Anjali slammed the door behind her for effect, but she had a smile on her face. She was getting good at judging how far she could go with Vega Riaza or, as Tom called him, Blueskin, on account of his dark stubble, as well as, for reasons she had yet to discover, the Tar Man. If his attitude to names was anything to go by, she thought, here was a character who did not like to be pinned down. She knew that her cheekiness appealed to his sense of humor, which was just as well, for the Tar Man was definitely someone you wanted on your side…. When they’d gone over to Bethnal Green at lunchtime, to meet with a sleazy-looking bloke in a long leather coat, she had observed the Tar Man display his darker side. It was this aspect of his character which Anjali herself had witnessed in the underground station and which Tom had often hinted at, and which, no doubt, was the reason the boy took such pains never to overstep the mark. The meeting had been arranged because the Tar Man wanted to talk about the disposal of some goods that had been acquired in a manner which demanded more than a little discretion. The fence, unfortunately for him, displayed the merest suggestion of discourtesy to the Tar Man, whom he was meeting for the first time. Then he outlined the deal he was proposing, the substance of which impressed the Tar Man even less than his manners. Without saying a word, the Tar Man had stood up, levered the man up by his elbow, which he held in a pincerlike grip, digging his thumb into the nerve, and marched him out of the restaurant. Tom and Anjali had watched through the plate glass window as the Tar Man spoke quietly into the fence’s ear. When they returned to the table, the fence’s complexion was the color of mushroom soup and he could scarcely hold his fork for trembling. Anjali had noticed that Tom had looked away and put his hand in his pocket in search of his precious mouse. But she also noted, with some satisfaction after her lecture on discretion in an age of mobile phones and security cameras, that the Tar Man had at least gone outside before pointing out the error of his ways to the unfortunate fence. Life looking after this pair was certainly not boring.

  The Tar Man had gone for a late-night stroll by the Thames. Tom had accompanied him but was dragging behind, lost in his own thoughts. The Tar Man breathed in the cold river air. Gone were the boatmen and the sailing ships and gone was the stench, too. They walked across Waterloo Bridge and stopped at its center. An illuminated barge sailed under the bridge below them, breaking up stripes of neon pink and turquoise that shone onto the shimmering surface of the water from the South Bank. People were dancing and drinking on deck, and music drifted up and reached him for a moment before dissolving into the breeze and the noise of traffic. The Tar Man never tired of seeing this London at night. Night meant something different in his time. With it came the enveloping darkness under whose shroud he had plied his trade and had done whatever needed to be done. Gone now the velvet blackness and the silence. In its place, permanent light and the drone of a city that does not sleep. The Millennium Wheel and the Houses of Parliament rose up to the west, St. Paul’s and the Gherkin to the east. All these buildings were flooded with impossibly powerful lights. He did not comprehend this cityscape, formed, it seemed to him, from a million twinkling lights, yet he felt an almost parental pride in seeing what London had become. Reflected in the swirling river, he admired the architecture of a city whose foundations rested on centuries of the wealth and power that the Tar Man so badly craved. The cold wind blew at his face and his vivid white scar tingled. He felt at the center of the world. He soaked up the ripples of energy that came from his city. Here, anything was possible.

  As they descended the staircase that leads to the South Bank, their footsteps disturbed a homeless youth who stirred beneath filthy blankets, and, in a reflex action, his hand shot out for money. His voice was slurred.

  “Spare some change for a cup o’ tea?”

  The Tar Man stopped and looked coldly down at him and kicked at a can of beer that peeped out from under the blankets. The youth’s head slowly emerged, suddenly uneasy at the attention. He was fourteen at most. All at once the Tar Man reached down and picked him up, blankets and all, and carried him, seemingly without effort, the few steps up to the bridge. For an instant, Tom thought he was going to throw him into the river, and the youth was too shocked and disorientated even to struggle. Instead, the Tar Man lifted him up high above his shoulders and rotated him three hundred and sixty degrees, showing him the panoramic view.

  “Are you then blind?” he cried. “Is there anywhere on earth more ripe with possibilities than this city? Open your eyes and see! You are in a prison of your own making!”

  And he dropped the malodorous bundle onto the freezing concrete.

  Tom looked back at the startled young vagrant and watched him picking himself up from the floor. He scurried back into the stairwell like a rat into a gutter. The Tar Man walked on and did not look back.

  As they were passing the Globe Theatre the Tar Man paused and, pointing toward the City on the opposite bank, said: “I have a fancy to live at the top of one of those buildings that touch the sky. What say you, Tom? We could acquire a monstrous flying bird and our feet need never feel the earth beneath them….”

  Tom did not reply, for his attention was taken by a girl with silky, short black hair in a satin skirt who had just walked past him.

  “Anjali!” he called.

  The girl turned around. It was not Anjali. A look of intense disappointment suffused Tom’s face, and with a tinge of annoyance, the girl went on her way. The Tar Man observed his apprentice.

  “I had a prancer once,” he said to Tom. “Black as the night. Curb her even a little and she’d kick up and threaten to throw me in the ditch. But she was the fastest horse I ever had, so I tolerated her temper. Now I warn you, Tom, for I have eyes in my head, don’t entertain fanciful thoughts about Anjali. She has her uses and it amuses me to keep her on a long rein, but with you, Tom, I have a notion she’d do worse than throw you into a ditch…. You are but a boy. Do not let Anjali distract you from finding a foothold in this new world.”

  Tom bowed his head and did not reply.

  They continued walking and after a while Tom asked: “Was that the black horse you rode the day Lord Luxon had you race against Gideon Seymour?”

  “No, lad! Can you not tell a stallion from a mare? Lord Luxon, damn his eyes, chose the finest horses in five counties for that race. Two stallions of Arab blood. ’Tis a talent to spot evenly matched mounts and I cannot deny that my erstwhile employer has an eye for horseflesh….”

  “That day,” said Tom, “was my first day as footman to Lord Luxon and my last day in our time. We left ahead of you to be at Tempest House for the finish, but I dearly wish I could have watched you and Mr. Seymour race one against the other for you were as evenly—” Tom suddenly stopped, realizing wha
t he was about to say might give offence.

  “Finish your sentence, lad! For we were as evenly matched as the horses? Doubtless it was precisely that idea which was in Lord Luxon’s mind also. But if Gideon is the more elegant rider, I am the stronger.”

  “To be sure,” said Tom quickly.

  The Tar Man nodded. “And had that pernicious Parson not poisoned my horse I should have proved it, though, upon my word, all that matters little now…. But I do have a mind to tell you something that will astonish you, young Tom.”

  Tom looked at him, all attention. An unfathomable expression had appeared on Blueskin’s face. He stared vacantly at the river flowing past until suddenly he spoke.

  “It is on account of Gideon Seymour that I broke with my employer on the day I journeyed to the future.”

  “You broke with Lord Luxon!”

  “Yes, at least my actions on that day make it doubtful that Lord Luxon would desire my return to his employ. I was lately informed, by someone I have no reason to mistrust, that Mr. Seymour is …” The Tar Man was all at once unnerved by the reality conferred to the notion by expressing it in words. He finished off the sentence quickly. “It is possible that Gideon Seymour is my brother. Not only that, but, I am reliably informed, it was my relationship to Gideon that was the principal reason Lord Luxon took me on as his henchman.”

  “Gideon Seymour is your brother! And Lord Luxon knew! But ’twas Lord Luxon that sent him to the gallows!”

  Tom sank down onto a bench overlooking a replica of the Golden Hind and he looked so slack-jawed with shock, the Tar Man almost laughed. But, instead, he found himself sitting next to his apprentice and talking about a matter which, like an itch he could not scratch, had been bothering him a sight more than he was prepared to admit.

  The Tar Man related how, on the eve of Gideon Seymour’s execution, and in a fever of apprehension about what Lord Luxon would do to him, the new gamekeeper let slip that he and the condemned felon were, in fact, brothers. The gamekeeper’s father, a resident of the village of Abinger in Surrey, used to know a fellow named Seymour who married a widow from Somerset. She had left the county to start a new life with her children after her eldest son, still a teenager, was hanged as a thief. There was an unconfirmed rumor at the time that the boy was cut down too soon, had escaped, and had been spurned by everyone that knew him when he had burst into the village hall during a dance. Other people reckoned that it was his ghost that had appeared pleading for assistance, while in fact his body had been snatched and sold to a surgeon for dissection. In any case, the widow herself always refused even to acknowledge that she was mother to the boy.

  The Tar Man paused to gather his thoughts and Tom sneaked a look at his master’s face. His expression betrayed no bitterness and his tone of voice was matter-of-fact. Tom wondered which was worse: never to have known your mother or father, as was the case for him and most of the children he was brought up with, or to have been disowned by your own family like Blueskin. Probably the latter, he decided, and, for an instant, although he could not have articulated his feelings, he perceived the sheer strength of will and self-belief required to propel Blueskin out of the deep, dark hole that his early life had dug for him. Presently the Tar Man continued with his tale. Several years after the widow’s arrival in Abinger, an epidemic of scarlet fever devastated the village. The Seymour family was all but wiped out. There had been several children; the gamekeeper did not rightly know just how many, but only one boy from the widow’s first marriage and one boy from the second survived. The eldest boy was called Gideon….

  The Tar Man told Tom that when he had confronted Lord Luxon at Tyburn, he had refused either to confirm or deny any knowledge of the matter.

  “That my Lord Luxon hoards secrets like other men hoard gold is something I have long known,” said the Tar Man. “It pleases him to pull a man’s strings, and his satisfaction is all the sweeter if the object of his attention believes he is moving of his own accord.”

  “In your heart, do you believe Gideon to be your brother?”

  “It is possible. I had a young brother named Gideon and I have him to thank for this scar when he was too young to realize what he had done. However, our family name is not the same and I am loathe to put all my trust in one man’s word. Perhaps my mother did remarry…. But many is the time I have been wrong-footed by rumor and hearsay. Now that fate has sent me to the future, I may never learn the truth. In any case, what use have I for a brother? Yet I swear to you, were I to discover that Gideon Seymour shares my blood and that Lord Luxon has deceived me, then, one way or another, I shall extract payment from him. I’ll be no man’s puppet….”

  “Perhaps Gideon knew.”

  “Ha! Not him! If Gideon had that knowledge you can be sure he would have endeavored to turn me from my wicked ways….” The Tar Man laughed. “Or more likely put as many miles as he could between himself and the black-hearted villain he knows me to be! I should be the last man on earth he would choose for a brother and it is a sentiment that I reciprocate….”

  “And yet I saw him steal back the diamond necklace from the Carrick Gang in front of their very noses,” said Tom. “A more skillful bit of thievery I never saw in my life.”

  “Ay, confound him, were it not for his prickly conscience, I could have put him to good use.”

  “When you fade back to our time, do you not have the power of speech? Could you not ask Lord Luxon face-to-face if you have a brother?”

  The Tar Man regarded the boy in utter astonishment.

  “Tom, lad! Was I not right to choose you as my apprentice! Suddenly I have a strong desire to go a-calling to Bird Cage Walk….”

  The Tar Man smiled so broadly at Tom that the lad was emboldened to say what was on his mind.

  “I am not so surprised as you might suppose, that you and Master Gideon might be brothers. Though your faces are as different as day and night, you’re both as strong and agile as may be and … there is an air about you both that … commands men’s attention. You might almost say, begging your pardon, that you and Gideon Seymour are like two sides of the same coin.”

  The Tar Man sat in an armchair by an open casement window in Lord Luxon’s bedchamber. It was the dead of night and Bird Cage Walk was silent apart from the eerie hooting of an owl that echoed over St. James’s Park. The moon was waning, and what moonlight trickled into the room did little to dispel the inky darkness. By now the Tar Man’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light and he could just make out the bulky shape which was, in fact, the sleeping form of Lord Luxon. He listened to his steady breathing.

  “Lord Luxon,” he whispered.

  Lord Luxon moaned in his sleep and threw the linen sheets off him. He wore a white nightgown and lay in a high, four-poster bed which Louis XIV had reputedly once slept in. It was draped with heavy, ornate cloth and had clumps of dusty ostrich feathers sprouting out of each of the top four corners.

  “Lord Luxon!”

  Suddenly the recumbent figure sat bolt upright, his long blond hair loose around his shoulders. Lord Luxon froze, holding his breath and straining to hear. He was not alone. Then, with a start, he saw, or imagined that he saw, a shadowy figure sitting in the chair next to the window. He reached his hand under his pillow and drew something out.

  “Good evening, my Lord. Or perhaps I should say good morning.”

  “Who is there?”

  The Tar Man heard his involuntary gasp and the fear in his voice. Lord Luxon slipped out of bed and stood up, peering blindly into the darkness.

  “Who dares come into my chamber?”

  But the Tar Man did not have the opportunity to reply, for the figure in white came at him, one arm raised high. The Tar Man felt a long, cold blade pierce his heart. He clutched at his chest and let out a long, agonized scream.

  “Aaaaargh!”

  The Tar Man staggered toward the bed and collapsed onto the mattress headfirst, causing the dagger to sink further into his chest.

  Lord
Luxon ran to the door, struggling in his panic to find the key in its lock and to turn the brass doorknob that was always apt to stick. Finally he flung open the door and fled into the corridor. A night light still burned on a small console table beneath an oil painting of his mother as a young girl. He lurched toward it and clung on to both sides of the table like a shipwrecked sailor to flotsam, breathing as heavily as if he had been running at full pelt. Presently, rising up through the turmoil of confused thoughts that beset his mind, the idea came repeatedly to him that the owner of that chilling voice was known to him. Suddenly it struck him who it was.

  “Blueskin! By all the gods, I have killed Blueskin!”

  He lit a candle from the night light and returned, swaying, to the scene of the crime, steeling himself to look at the bloody corpse of his henchman. He hesitated at the doorway and held on to the wooden frame. He re-entered his chamber and locked the door behind him. Then he forced himself to walk across the room. With a trembling hand he held the candle up high. The flame guttered a little in the sweet air that entered the stuffy room from the park. As he reached down to pull the body over so that he could look on Blueskin’s face, the corpse stirred. Then the Tar Man rolled over onto his back. Lord Luxon’s jaw dropped open in shock. The Tar Man groaned and his face contorted in pain. His arms twitched limply at his sides and he shook his head this way and that against the blue counterpane embroidered with flowers. Did his eyes deceive him? Was Blueskin more than a little transparent? Then he noticed that there was no blood. Not a single drop. His hench-man had no blood in his veins! Was he raving? Was this a waking dream? Or did he behold a ghost? A movement on the Tar Man’s chest caught his eye. He stood up again and moved his candle closer so that he could see. Little by little the blade of his dagger was, unaided by any human hand, pushing itself up, emerging, unstained, from the Tar Man’s diaphanous flesh. Lord Luxon stepped backward, away from the dreadful apparition. He felt nauseous. The veins in his temples throbbed and although molten wax dripped onto his wrist he was oblivious to the pain.