The Thief of Time

  ‘Leaving,’ I said quietly, allowing the word to settle in before continuing. ‘I’m leaving is what I’m doing. I’m getting out of here and going on to London as originally intended.’ She snorted and looked away, as if I was an idiot. ‘And Dominique’s coming too,’ I added.

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ she said and I grew furious and determined to hurt her, this harmless, generous woman who had shown nothing but charity to me. I threw one final line at her to cause her pain as she was causing me pain by her attitude towards Dominique.

  ‘And I’m taking Tomas too,’ I said.

  They both looked up, astonished. Mrs Amberton’s hand went quickly to her throat as she gasped and her husband looked at her with concern in his eyes.

  ‘You can’t,’ she said.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Why do you have to?’

  ‘Because he’s my brother]’ I roared. ‘Why do you think? You think I’m just going to desert Tomas? I would never do that!’

  Suddenly, she was crying, her words becoming engorged by the choking in her voice. ‘But he’s just a child,’ she protested. ‘He needs his schooling, his friends. He’s doing so well now. You can’t take him away from us.’ I shrugged and grew hard-hearted; those days were terrible. ‘Please, Matthieu,’ she begged, reaching across and taking my hand in her tough, gnarly claw. ‘Please don’t do this. You and Dominique go to London if you must, set up house, become rich and famous and send for him then. But let him stay here in the meantime.’

  I looked at her and sighed. ‘I can’t do that,’ I said eventually. ‘I’m sorry but I won’t leave him behind.’

  ‘Then stay!’ she cried. ‘Stay at Cageley House, both of you. You both have good jobs. You’re earning -’

  ‘After what I’ve done to Jack?’ I cried. ‘I just can’t, I’m sorry. Both of you, I’m truly sorry. I’m grateful to you both for all you have done for us, but I’ve made my decision. And Dominique has agreed. We’re leaving for London, the three of us. And we will be a family again. I’m ... I’m grateful to you both, naturally, but sometimes ...’ I couldn’t think of the end of the sentence; I couldn’t muster up a sometimes. Silence descended upon us and after a few minutes of unbearable tension I got up to leave. I went to my room for my coat, as I had somewhere else to go now, and as I left their house I could hear crying coming from the kitchen and for the life of me I couldn’t make out whether it was hers or his.

  The jail was no more than a small, purpose-built structure just outside the main village of Cageley. I approached it nervously, having never been there before, and felt somehow afraid that I myself would be dragged inside and locked up for my part in these troubles. Outside the main door, a group of children were playing, throwing a ball to each other and running away whenever one of their number was hit; when the ball came too close to the jail there was a noticeable concern among them regarding who should reclaim it. I kicked it back to them myself as I walked up the steps towards the entrance and they scattered, afraid now that I was actually going to open the door.

  I had never been inside a prison before. When my stepfather Philippe was arrested in Paris, I had remained in our house with Tomas, waiting until the next day for an officer to return to speak to me regarding his trial which was set for more than a couple of weeks away. At the time I had considered going to visit him in jail, not to offer any comfort or support, but rather to fulfil some strange need that one last time I had to see the man who had killed my mother. Despite the fact that we had been living in the same house for some years and knew each other well, I felt as if I had never really known him at all. I thought that by looking at him in his prison cell, particularly after he had been found guilty and was sentenced to death, I would gain some insight into who that man really was; I believed I would see something evil in him which I had never seen before. However, in the end I didn’t go, instead joining the throng on the day of his execution.

  The jail was built in the shape of a ‘T’. Along the main corridor as you walked in there was a desk, behind which the constable sat when he was present. At the end it branched off on either side into two prison cells which faced each other. As I stood at the door I couldn’t see either cell, just the long corridor, and the turning to left and right. I presented myself to the constable who looked up at me in surprise.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked me. ‘Come to join your friend, have you?’ He was a tall, thin man with a shock of dark hair and a scar running along his jaw, which for some reason I suspected he was extremely proud of.

  ‘Come to speak to him,’ I countered, wanting to behave in a more aggressive fashion than was my normal manner but aware that I had a task to fulfil there and it wasn’t worth jeopardising that just to prove that I wasn’t afraid of him. ‘If that’s all right,’ I added deferentially.

  He tapped his pencil on the desk rhythmically, leaning back on his chair until I was afraid he might topple over but he had the movement down to a fine art from years of trying. ‘You can see him,’ he grunted. ‘But not for long. About fifteen minutes, all right?’ I nodded and looked towards the end of the corridor, unsure which way to go but before I could even make a step in that direction he was in front of me, holding me by the arm roughly, his thick, dirty fingers pressing into the bone of my arm. ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘Have to make sure you’re not carrying anything, don’t I?’

  I looked at him in surprise. I was wearing trousers, boots and a loose-fitting shirt. There was hardly anywhere for me to be concealing a file or a gun. ‘Do I look like I’m carrying anything?’ I asked, biting my tongue to prevent myself from saying more.

  ‘Have to be careful in this job,’ he said, pushing me up against the wall and kicking my legs apart with the toe of his boot. I gripped the wall and tried not to kick backwards, as a horse might do under pressure, as his hands roamed around my body, checking for hidden equipment.

  ‘Happy?’ I asked sarcastically, and he shrugged and nodded in the direction of the cells. My opinion meant nothing to him.

  ‘Down the end. Turn left,’ he said. ‘He’s in there.’

  I walked down the corridor and breathed in before making that final step which would lead me into sight of the two cells. For some reason I looked to my right first in order to see who was the occupant of that cell. It was empty and this pleased me. I turned around with a smile, but it fell as I saw Jack sitting silently on the floor of the facing cell.

  It contained nothing more than a small bed and a hole in the corner of the room which served as a toilet. Jack was sitting on the floor, his back to the bed, staring at the wall. His blond hair hung limply around his face, a dirty brown now. He wore nothing on his feet and I could see that his shirt had been ripped slightly at the shoulder, revealing a purple bruise beneath. As he turned to look at me I could see that he was pale and his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. I swallowed nervously and moved towards the bars.

  ‘Jack,’ I said, shaking my head in dismay. ‘How are you?’

  He shrugged but seemed pleased to see me. ‘I’m in trouble, Mattie,’ he replied, dragging himself up now to sit on the bed. ‘I’ve messed up.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I said, unable to control my emotions as I saw my friend in such a state of disrepair. ‘This is my fault,’ I added.

  ‘It’s not,’ he said quickly, looking irritated now as if the last thing he needed was for me to start feeling sorry for myself. ‘It’s no one’s fault but my own. I should have just pulled you away, not laid into Nat myself. How is he anyway? Did I kill him? They won’t tell me anything here.’

  ‘Unfortunately, no,’ I answered. ‘You broke his jaw and a couple of his ribs. He doesn’t look too good to be honest.’

  ‘He never did anyway,’ Jack said with a shrug. ‘And you? What’s happening with you?’

  ‘I haven’t been fired yet if that’s what you mean. I thought I would be but no one’s said anything to me there yet.’

  He looked surprised but said nothing for a
moment. ‘They still need someone to look after the horses, I suppose,’ he said eventually. ‘They’ll keep you on for as long as it takes them to find someone to replace you. And me too. We’re both finished there.’

  I nodded and stared at the floor. I wasn’t sure whether I should apologise to him or not, whether he even wanted to hear anything like that. I decided against it and told him instead of my conversation with the Ambertons, of how they had said they had never liked Dominique in the first place and how annoyed that had made me.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, looking away from me. ‘She treats you like shit. And you’re the only one who can’t see it.’

  I stared at him, my eyes opening wide. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about her right now.’ I opened my mouth to speak again but he silenced me by raising his hand. ‘Mattie, I don’t want to talk about her, do you hear me? I’ve got more pressing problems right now than your love life. Like the fact that I’m about three days away from ruining the next few years of my life. I need you to do something for me, Mattie. I need a favour.’ I nodded and looked around me conspiratorially, although from where I sat there was nothing on either side of me but a wall. I pressed closer towards the bars as he began to whisper. ‘I have a plan,’ he said, a sparkle coming into his eyes now as he smiled at me.

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Can I trust you?’ he asked me after a pause, his eyes looking right through me.

  ‘Of course,’ I answered quickly. ‘You know you -’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, cutting me off, ‘because you’re the only one that I can afford to trust right now so I have to hope I’m doing the right thing. That constable out there,’ he said, nodding in the general direction of the corridor, ‘Musgrave. He’s no friend of mine. We’ve had some run-ins in the past and he’d like nothing more than to see me swinging from the end of a rope.’

  ‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ I said. ‘You’ll only end up doing time for -’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said irritably. ‘What I’m saying is that he won’t help me, that’s all. But the other constable, Benson. You know him?’ I nodded. I knew him by sight. He was a younger man and popular with the villagers. His mother owned a local inn and his father’s funeral earlier in the year had attracted the entire population of Cageley, even Sir Alfred himself. ‘He’s got a far smaller social conscience than Musgrave,’ he said. ‘And he’s sick of living off his mother. He’s open to persuasion.’

  I shook my head and checked once again that no one could hear us as I looked at my friend, somewhat confused. ‘You want me to persuade him to let you go?’ I asked doubtfully.

  ‘Listen, Mattie. I told you I was leaving Cageley, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And that I’ve saved up enough money over the years to get out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got over three hundred pounds stored away now.’

  ‘Three hundred pounds?’ I said in amazement, for the figure was enormous to me. I could barely imagine such a sum and knew that he must have had great plans for his future to wait until he had that much saved up before making his escape.

  ‘I told you; I’ve been putting it aside since I was about twelve. There’s not much to spend it on here, you know. My aim was three hundred and then I was going to leave. I hit the amount last week. That’s when I told you that I was going to hand in my notice. I need you to get it for me.’

  My heart sank. I could feel a growing tension inside me and became afraid of what he was going to ask me to do. More than that, I remembered Dominique’s phrase of the night before – ‘Five years is a long time to be away’ – and worried for my own integrity. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly.

  ‘I know for a fact that Benson would let me out of here for a portion of that money.’

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ I said, confident of his honesty, if not my own.

  ‘He would,’ said Jack clearly. ‘I’ve spoken to him about it already. For forty pounds he’ll let me out. He’s always left alone here overnight, that’s his regular shift, so you can be sure that he will be the only one we have to deal with. We just have to make it look like a break-out, that’s all. That’s where you come in.’

  I hated the conflicting feelings that were running through my mind. I wanted to help Jack – I truly did – but I also wished that I’d never come here in the first place. I was about to bury myself in deeper and deeper when I could have fled hours before. I thought about it, considered my options, and nodded to him. It could do no harm to hear him out. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘You get the money, you bring it here at night, we give some to him, he lets me out, then we have to knock him unconscious so that it looks as if you came in and attacked him and set me free.’

  ‘He’ll let you do that?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘He’ll let you do it,’ he replied. ‘Forty pounds is a lot of money.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, willing to go along with the story if not necessarily execute the plan. Friendship was one thing, but being implicated in the crime and potentially separated from Dominique and Tomas was another. ‘Where do I find the money then?’

  He paused now, realising that this was the moment of truth between us. Everything he had been working for all his life, every penny that he had put aside after shovelling shit or rubbing down the horses since he was twelve years old, he was about to place in my hands. He would give me the information and trust me with it. He had no choice; it was either that or he would lose it all anyway.

  ‘It’s on the roof,’ he said eventually, sighing as he said it, the final release of his security.

  ‘The roof?’ I asked. ‘At Cageley House, you mean?’

  He nodded. ‘You’ve been up there, right?’ he asked.

  ‘A couple of times,’ I said. In the east wing, where the servants’ rooms were located, I knew that there was a corridor which led to a window from which one could gain access to the roof of the house. Just before the ascent to the slate and the chimneys, there was a flat portion where, in the summer, I had often seen Mary-Ann or Dominique or Jack himself lying, relaxing in the shade.

  ‘When you step out there,’ said Jack, ‘you turn right and you’ll see a covering that leads to a drain. Open it up, reach below and there’s a jewellery box in there. That’s where I keep it. No one knows it’s there, Mattie. It’s my hiding place. It’s safe there. I’ve never felt that I could trust anyone in that house. Except you now. That’s all. And you can’t tell anyone, you hear me?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, closing my eyes and nodding slowly. ‘All right. I hear you.’

  ‘I can trust you, Mattie, can’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because this is everything I have. Tell me I can trust you.’ His hand darted out between the bars and he caught hold of my wrist tightly. ‘tell me,’ he hissed, his eyes narrowing into slits with the frustration of being locked up.

  ‘You can trust me, Jack,’ I said. ‘I promise. I’ll get you out of here.’

  To betray a friend. To accept that you can’t save someone and so to decide to save yourself instead, that is the dilemma with which I was faced. Nat Pepys was sitting outside the front door of the house with a parasol over his head to prevent the sun from burning him. He watched me as I walked towards the stables, his head rotating slightly through design or pain as I made my way past him. I stopped and walked over towards this man who had caused so much trouble. His mouth was wired up and his face was multi-coloured; he looked truly dreadful. I knew that most of his injuries were simply surface bruising which would heal but nevertheless he wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked, before realising that he couldn’t answer me anyway. He grunted slightly and his head jerked in spasm which I took to be my cue to vanish. I shrugged – I was past caring about the likes of him – and went on my way, listening to the sounds of his increasingly loud grunts as I went. I wasn’t sure
if he was trying to call me back again or whether he was simply shouting abuse at me.

  Dominique sat outside the kitchen, shelling peas. She glanced in my direction as she heard my footsteps approaching her but she didn’t acknowledge me. I sat on the ground beside her and played with the pebbles, wondering which one of us would speak first and whether we were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘So?’ she asked eventually. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ I asked, looking up at her irritably. Her hair was tied back behind her and she wore a low-cut dress which accentuated the pale smoothness of her neck. I sighed, exasperated with myself, and threw the pebbles away.

  ‘And what did you discuss?’ she asked patiently.

  ‘Well, he’s very worried,’ I admitted. ‘Needless to say. It’s a terrible place. And he knows that he’s thrown it all away. He’s devastated.’

  ‘Of course he is, but what else did you discuss?’

  I hesitated and felt her hand on the back of my neck, squeezing tightly to massage away the knots of tension which were even then building up; it felt good. ‘He has more than three hundred pounds,’ I said.

  ‘Three hundred pounds?’ she cried in astonishment, echoing my reaction of a couple of hours earlier. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money. Just think what he could have done with that. He could have put this entire place behind him. He could have disappeared completely. Found a new life. Anyone could. Money breeds money.’ I looked at her and wondered whether she was using ‘he’ for ‘we’. Neither of us had actually said it yet but I knew what we were both thinking. Finally, she cracked. ‘It’s of no use to him, Matthieu,’ she said in a stern voice and I jumped up and began pacing the yard in front of her.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ I asked her, raising my voice in anger. ‘You think we should just take the money and run? Leave him to rot in his jail cell, is that it?’