Gideon the Cutpurse

  Whenever they passed another coach the drivers and passengers would exchange greetings and pleasantries and wave their handkerchiefs out of the windows.

  ‘This is a bit different to being stuck in lines of traffic on the M1,’ whispered Kate to Peter.

  ‘Yeah,’ he whispered back. ‘But I wish we could stop at a service station for a Coke and a burger and chips.’

  The golden landscape swept slowly by. Day turned into night and night into day. Once they passed a village green where they saw, suspended from a gibbet, the body of a half-decomposed man swaying in the summer breeze. He still wore his three-cornered hat. Hannah would not let Jack look. Otherwise the journey was uneventful. The most exciting thing that happened was in Highgate the following morning when the driver took against a foppish young gentleman in a yellow jacket who refused to give way to him, nearly causing the carriage to run over a woman carrying a baby. He was driving a pretty, if slightly ridiculous-looking, one-seater chaise – a carriage built for one passenger – and was hurtling through the crowded streets paying no heed to the other road users.

  The driver cracked his whip over the horses’ heads and skilfully drove off in hot pursuit of the one-seater, weaving between wagons and horse riders. He drew up next to him and started to force him, inch by inch, into the side of the road, brushing the flimsy, ornate wheels of the chaise with the solid, metal-rimmed ones of the coach. The gentleman, red-faced with fury, called out: ‘What the devil are you about, you impudent hound?’

  The driver took pleasure in howling at him like a love-sick dog and then replied: ‘Have you not heard of hunting the squirrel? ’Tis a fine game – so long as both players can hold their nerve …’

  And with that, he urged the horses forward and compelled the one-seater to dive into the gutter where one of its wheels collided with some debris. The chaise tipped sideways and the young dandy was deposited into the gutter. If his dignity was not already damaged enough, a gang of small boys then decided to pelt him with mud. Everyone laughed, even Tom, who had remained silent the whole trip.

  The roads had become busier and busier and Peter and Kate hung their heads out of the window, eager for their first glimpse of the London of 1763. And then they saw it, the greatest city in Europe, stretched out below them, set against a blue horizon made hazy by the woodsmoke of tens of thousands of fires. A host of church spires rose up from a maze of streets that described the curving contours of the Thames. Soaring up majestically in the east, the tallest building in the city, was the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, and, further east still, the Tower of London. To the west, Westminster Abbey and St James’s Park. It was not the gigantic, sprawling city of the twenty-first century that Peter and Kate knew. You could walk from one end to the other in the space of an afternoon and yet they recognised it straight away like an old friend.

  ‘It’s so beautiful!’ Kate gasped.

  ‘It’s so small!’ said Peter who had seen London from high up on Hampstead Heath many times. ‘You can see the edges! It’s surrounded by green … And no Post Office Tower! No Big Ben! No Canary Wharf! No Centre Point! Not a single skyscraper! I wonder if there are this many churches in our century – because if there are you can’t see most of them behind everything else …’

  They stared, mesmerised, longing to get out of the coach and experience the city at first hand, all feelings of fatigue gone. At a quarter to ten the stagecoach came to a halt in the yard of the Blue Boar Inn at Holborn. The driver leaped down and opened the door. His passengers clambered out onto the granite sets of the street. Although they now stood on firm ground, after over a day of being constantly jolted over holes in muddy roads, they had the impression that they were still in motion.

  Peter and Kate looked about them. The noise of the street reached them from the other side of the inn. Here in the yard it was scarcely calmer. The Blue Boar Inn, one of the largest coaching inns in London, was a hive of activity – they saw porters carrying trunks, bakers delivering bread, a butcher stooped nearly double with the weight of a whole side of beef on his back. And there was a smell … Peter sniffed the air and a grin appeared on his face which no one else could have understood. Eighteenth-century London in the summer had its own distinctive mix of odours: woodsmoke and horse flesh, rotting vegetables and sewers and fresh horse manure. But over and above that pungent mix there was a trace of a smell, something subtle and impossible to define but which Peter recognised. London still smelled like London. In a curious sort of way Peter felt he had arrived home.

  The Parson yawned extravagantly. ‘Upon my word, a more vexatious journey from Baslow Hall I cannot imagine! The stagecoach is a marvel of the modern age but does little for my aching back. Thank Heaven we have arrived in civilisation. It is wearisome indeed to go abroad fearing that every other fellow has his eye on your purse.’

  The Parson stretched up his arms to relieve his aching back and then reached down to touch his toes, which he would have managed were it not for the obstacle of his large belly. When he stood up again he found that a woman had planted herself in front of him.

  ‘Won’t you spare a farthin’ for a poor widow wiv ten children to feed?’ she asked.

  She was so thin her bones jutted out from beneath her skin like furniture under dust sheets. She appeared to have no teeth and she was swaying ever so slightly. Just visible underneath a frayed shawl, a baby was clamped to her bosom. The stench emanating from her was such that Kate, who stood right next to her, could not help retching. The Parson reached into his pocket in search of a coin.

  ‘And this must be the welcoming committee,’ commented the driver sarcastically. ‘Keep your money, Parson. I know her sort. She won’t spend it on her poor starved children, it’s gin she’s after.’

  ‘So you’d begrudge me a drop of kill-grief, would you?’ she hissed. ‘You in your fancy livery and a face like a pig’s backside. What’s it to you if the gentleman has a kind heart?’

  The woman spat at the driver and a large glob of spittle ran down his cheek. The driver wiped his face with his sleeve and pushed her roughly out of the way, and she and the baby fell in the mud.

  Kate was mesmerised by the hate in her eyes. Hannah came forward and held out a penny which the woman grabbed instinctively in a movement that reminded Kate of the way a chameleon shoots out its sticky tongue to catch a fly.

  As the woman disappeared into the heaving crowd, Kate noticed the bruises on her arms and her bare, black feet. She turned to look at Peter who was clearly thinking the same thing.

  ‘So this is eighteenth-century London,’ he said.

  Detective Inspector Wheeler crouched down and drew a line with his finger in the red dust gathered in a pile at the foot of the brick wall. He shone a torch at the wall where Dr Pirretti’s knife had effaced Kate’s message. When he got up his face was like thunder.

  ‘Where are they now?’ he asked Sergeant Chadwick.

  ‘They arrived at the NCRDM lab half an hour ago.’

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’ barked the Inspector. ‘Get me a car!’

  The Inspector stared around Dr Dyer’s office, his eyes resting on the piles of computer printouts covering the floor and the wall-to-wall photographs of deep space. Dr Pirretti poured him a cup of strong, black coffee.

  ‘Sugar?’ she asked.

  ‘Two. Please.’

  A vein throbbed in his temple. His studied silence prompted the scientists to exchange anxious glances. Suddenly the Inspector grabbed hold of the sides of Dr Dyer’s desk and leaned over it, glowering at the row of apprehensive faces.

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to deny that you are all concealing something. If you know anything that could be helpful to us in our enquiries I should like you to tell me. Now.’

  No one spoke. Inspector Wheeler turned to face Dr Dyer. ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ he exploded. ‘There are two hundred police officers involved in this case. It has national press coverage. Pleas for information are still
going out on local news stations four times a day. The Police Commissioner is breathing down my neck, insisting on an early resolution to our investigations. And, meanwhile, the one man who seems to know something, the father of the missing girl, no less, sees fit to keep this information to himself!’

  ‘I …’ Dr Dyer faltered. He was at a loss to know what to say. He passed a hand over his forehead.

  ‘Dr Dyer,’ growled the Inspector, ‘if you don’t want me to charge you with obstructing the police in their enquiries, I strongly suggest that you start talking.’

  Dr Dyer looked around wildly at his colleagues.

  The Inspector walked right up to Kate’s father and leaned in so close that Dr Dyer could smell his breath. He tried his best not to flinch.

  ‘Have the children been launched into outer space?’ asked the Inspector sarcastically. ‘Has NASA invented an invisibility machine? Have they been abducted by aliens? Tell me!’

  ‘I … can’t …’ said Dr Dyer.

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t?’ shouted the Inspector.

  ‘He means,’ interrupted Dr Pirretti, ‘that the information is classified. You will have to go through the official channels at NASA if you wish access to this information and I doubt whether they will agree to it. However, I should like to assure you that we do not mean to obstruct your enquiries in any way.’

  ‘Nor help them either …’ retorted the Inspector.

  ‘I can give you the Director of Research’s number at Houston, if you like …’

  ‘Please do.’

  Half an hour later Inspector Wheeler returned briefly to Dr Dyer’s office to inform them that NASA had been singularly unhelpful and that he would be contacting the Foreign Office to ask them to pursue the matter vigorously. No sooner had he swept out of the door than the telephone rang. Dr Jacob answered the call and put his hand over the receiver.

  ‘It’s Houston,’ he said. ‘They want to speak to you at once, Anita.’

  Dr Pirretti took a deep breath, reached out her hand to take the phone and then changed her mind.

  ‘Tell them I’ll ring them back later.’

  She ran her fingers through her wavy, dark hair. ‘Now what?’ she breathed.

  The Honourable Mrs Byng’s brother, Sir Richard Picard, owned a grand, five-storey house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, five minutes’ walk from the Blue Boar Inn. Gideon hired a hackney coach for a shilling and went on ahead to the house with the luggage. He asked Tom to help him before he took his leave of them. The rest of the party were glad to stretch their legs and go on foot.

  ‘Richard is an accommodating fellow,’ commented the Parson to Peter and Kate. ‘I have no doubt that he would be happy to have you in his house until you can find your uncle. Indeed, Richard will doubtless assist you in your search.’

  Kate and Peter smiled and nodded in thanks.

  ‘This is going to be tricky,’ said Peter to Kate when the Parson had turned his back.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ replied Kate. ‘It’s just going to take a very long time to find this particular uncle … Anyway, we might have the anti-gravity machine soon … If we can find the Black Lion Tavern, that is …

  Peter frowned. ‘That’s not going to be the problem, it’s whether we can persuade the Tar Man to hand it over …’

  ‘I know,’ Kate replied. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing. But at least he told you where to find him.’

  ‘Yeah – but what does he want in return? He’s not going to say, “of course you can have your machine back – no problem at all!” What have we got that he wants? We don’t have any money, that’s for sure …’

  Kate suddenly clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘We have got something that he wants. Or rather, someone …’

  Peter looked at her, puzzled, and then understood what she meant. Peter clenched his fists tight.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to give Gideon up to him no matter what he does to us!’

  That first walk along eighteenth-century Holborn made such an intense impression on Peter and Kate that they could scarcely take it all in. They stepped into the street and joined the great crowd that streamed eastwards and westwards along High Holborn. All around them was the din of a thousand conversations, of hawkers selling their wares, of infants crying, of a gypsy playing his fiddle, of church bells, of horses snorting and wooden axles creaking. They walked along, craning their heads first upwards, gawping at the fine, high stone buildings and the huge, colourful shop signs hanging from iron brackets, and then downwards at the cobbled street as they tripped over a loose stone or sank ankle-deep into a muddy hole, spattering their clothes with stinking filth. Several times they became separated from their companions, and it was only the beacon of Jack’s blond hair, shining in the sunlight as he rode astride the Parson’s shoulders, that saved them from becoming utterly lost in the heaving mass of people.

  They rubbed shoulders with beggars and merchants, servants and labourers, street urchins and courtiers. Soon they began to pick out details in the ever-changing scene: black beauty spots on powdered white faces, greasy ponytails and three-cornered hats, wigs and turbans, cascades of lace flowing from wide sleeves, white stockings and polished black boots, exquisite embroidered court shoes with pointed toes and satin heels that had no business treading in the dirt of the street.

  Every few yards a stallholder would accost them.

  ‘Who will buy my lovely roses? Two a penny, four a penny!’ cried a flower girl.

  ‘Hot pudding and grey peas!’ called out a plump woman stirring a pan of unidentifiable green mush.

  They all soon learned to step aside when they heard the shout: ‘Chair!’ or ‘By your leave, sir!’ Saved by a quick shove from Parson Ledbury, Sidney was nearly trampled underfoot by two bearers carrying a sedan chair. This one must have belonged to a great family for it was upholstered in brocade and a coat of arms was embroidered in gold thread on the door. The two chair-men, who wore liveried uniforms, ran at breakneck speed through the street with their heavy burden – far too fast to be able to stop if anyone got in their way. As it raced by, Kate caught a glimpse through the window of turquoise taffeta, a painted fan and ropes of pearls draped over creamy skin.

  Peter felt Kate grab hold of his hand.

  ‘This is something else, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ Peter replied and he thought, although he could not bring himself to say it, how much he would have loved his mother to be here. Once, when she had been working on an historical film she had shown him around the set. His mother had been so proud of all the authentic details that they had used. He could imagine the exact expression, the wide eyes and half-open mouth, which would have come to her face if she had been here with him and could have experienced all of this. A pang of sadness entered his heart and for a moment he trudged along and desperately did not want to be in Holborn in 1763 with Kate and the Byng family. He wanted to be with his family, not a stranger in a time that was not his own.

  When they had to cross the road, treading over the foul-smelling central gutter, they took their lives in their hands darting between lumbering wagons and elegant chaises, carriages and four and hackney coaches. Halfway across they saw a magpie pecking at a dead cat, his meal forever interrupted by the constant procession of vehicles.

  At last, the Parson took them up a narrow street past a noisy tavern where a woman in a revealing red dress sidled up to Sidney, took him by the arm and said: ‘Come, my young sir, let us drink a glass together.’

  Sidney’s jaw dropped and he stared at her, speechless. The Parson grabbed him by the other arm and pulled him forwards. The woman loosened her grip and laughed.

  ‘Another day perhaps, my lord,’ she called out after him.

  Suddenly they stepped out into the sunlight and saw the great expanse of calm green that was Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Children were playing, a cow was grazing and some ladies holding lapdogs were sitting on a bench. Around the edges of this tranquil squar
e stood tall, elegant terraces. It was to one of the grandest houses, on the west side, that the Parson led them. They walked through an ornate iron gate, flanked by two giant urns. The Parson rapped on the door with a brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin and a footman in full livery pulled open the heavy door. Finally they had arrived at their destination.

  By late afternoon everyone had washed, put on a change of clothing and eaten a late lunch. Sir Richard Picard was busy at the Treasury Offices in Downing Street but sent word that he would be back by eight to join them for a celebratory supper. Gideon asked the cook to give Tom something to eat before he left and the kind-hearted woman prepared him a feast of bread and chicken and ham washed down with a glass of cider. Peter and Kate sat with him in the dark basement kitchen. He ate greedily but could not bear to look anyone in the eye, although when Kate asked if she could hold his pet mouse, he took it out and let it scamper on his head and shoulders and run up his sleeves.

  ‘She won’t go to no one else,’ Tom explained. His voice was breaking and he hit squeaky high notes and rumbling low ones in the space of a few words.

  Gideon asked him if he had somewhere to go.

  ‘Yes, yes, sir. I …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Where?’ enquired Gideon. ‘To your parents’ house?’

  ‘I have no parents. Lodgings … I have lodgings,’ he muttered.

  Peter and Kate said goodbye to the boy and when Kate held out her hand he was too shy to take it and took a step backwards. Peter was pretty sure he was close to tears. Tom can’t want to go home, he thought. It can’t, in any case, be much of a home if he’d left it to hang around with the Carrick Gang …