THE TIME THIEF

“Sorry, I guess Mary Poppins wasn’t around in seventeen hundred and whatever…. What’s the going rate for twenty-first-century lessons?”

  “Going rate?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes. Here, take this as a token of my good intent.”

  Round-eyed, Anjali stared at the emerald ring which he held out to her beneath the table. Quickly looking around to make sure no one was watching, Anjali took the ring and thrust it into her purse. She snapped it shut.

  The Tar Man watched a pulse beating strongly in her neck. It is true that many things have changed since my time, he thought, but human nature is not one of them.

  A strong southwesterly wind had blown up during the night and the branches of an old pear tree grated and scraped at the window of Kate’s room in the vicarage at Middle Harpenden. Somehow the scratching of branches against glass transformed itself during the course of Kate’s fitful sleep into the crackling and spitting of a bonfire, and she dreamed she was back under the great oak near Shenstone under attack by the Carrick Gang. Joe Carrick was gripping tight hold of her and she could feel the beating of his heart against her back and smell his foul stink…. She tossed and turned and thrashed about in her sleep as she vainly tried to get away. All at once he let go of her and she dropped, flat on her back, onto the hard, unforgiving ground, and when she looked up it was young Tom, the youngest and most reluctant member of the Carrick Gang, that she saw, lodged in the branches of the oak tree above her. There was an expression of deep anxiety on his face and he held his beloved white mouse to his cheek. Then a deafening shot rang out and Kate sat up with a start.

  “It’s Ned Porter!” she cried. “They’ve killed Ned Porter!” Her forehead was damp and she was breathing hard, but gradually the vivid images of the dead highwayman faded away, and she became aware of the calmness and coolness of the room, of the fresh dawn light beginning to drown out the darkness, and of the first blackbird to greet the day with its joyful song.

  She dressed and crept out into the garden, walking barefoot over dewy turf and through showers of pink and white rose petals dislodged by the wind. The sun shone, the birds were singing and all seemed well with the world. Yet Kate was more troubled than she cared to admit. How she longed to leave this place and set off in search of Peter and Gideon—but how could they even think of leaving until Mr. Schock could at least put his weight on his injured leg? And then, there was their mysterious visitor who had fled in such a puzzling fashion and whose name, it appeared, was Joshua Seymour. Gideon had a half brother called Joshua who was barely out of his teens, so it could not be him. It was perhaps nothing more than a coincidence, but all Kate’s instincts told her that it was not. The crippling lack of any decent means of communication in this century was beginning to drive her wild. How frustrating that all she could do with Megan’s mobile was listen to music and take pictures (not that she had dared take any yet). In the twenty-first century they would probably be able to track down Peter in an afternoon with a telephone and access to the Internet! But in this century, if Gideon and Peter were still in hiding, scouring the English countryside in search of her friends would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. And, in the meantime, what were they going to do with the anti-gravity machine? They could hardly trust the vicar of Middle Harpenden not to tamper with it.

  While resisting a growing sense of panic, Kate did give in to a sudden urge to check up on their one means of getting back to their own century. The precious machine had been stored in one of the outbuildings at the back of the vicarage. She had spotted the vicar hiding the key under a curtain of ivy which draped itself over a small, high window. She had stood on tiptoe, resting her chin on the window ledge, and had furtively peeped in at the Reverend Austen, who stood before the antigravity machine, frowning and smoothing down his wispy hair, deep in thought. Kate’s and Mr. Schock’s inability to remember or explain how they had arrived had been largely accepted by the vicar and all the other village worthies who now came up, on a daily basis, with increasingly far-fetched theories about the intriguing device. How long before their curiosity got the better of them and they either damaged the machine or set it off?

  Kate slipped her hand behind the ivy, felt for the key, and unlocked the door. The barn was dark and musty and where a long ray of sunlight cut through the gloom, she could see clouds of dust dancing in the still air. The sight of the domed machine made her remember the distraught expression on her father’s face as he poked his head through the gap in the garage door. She bit her lip. It was then that his last words suddenly came to her, at the very moment that the antigravity machine was beginning to liquefy, when it was too late to do anything about it. Don’t alter anything, he had said. The bottom readout should be six point seven seven, but no one will have touched it…. Now Kate crouched in the straw at the bottom of the machine and scrutinized the tiny figures. She read: seven point six seven megawatts. Her blood froze. It was the wrong figure. Could her father have said seven point six seven and not six point seven seven? Could the Reverend Austen have tampered with it? She racked her brains but she just could not be sure. She peered at the setting for the tenth time but it still read seven point six seven. Perhaps it did not matter. After all, they must surely have come back to 1763. Hadn’t they? She had asked the vicar what date it was, shortly after their arrival, but he had only informed her that it was the first of September and she had not dared risk giving herself away by asking what year it was. She had not been overly concerned, however, because King George and Queen Charlotte had come up in conversation, and while no one was wearing court dress in Middle Harpenden, the fashions looked similar—even though ladies’ skirts here did not seem so wide and the waistlines were higher, and perhaps fewer of the men wore wigs…. But Kate had put this down to living in the middle of the countryside. At any rate, the food was as dodgy as ever. She had scarcely been able to look at her portion of the jellied ox tongue which had been placed on the table so proudly the first night, let alone swallow it. All the same, a sinking feeling started to come over Kate, and doubts about the accuracy of the setting started to gnaw away at her. She resolved to discover the exact date as soon as possible.

  A tiny, high-pitched squeaking nearby distracted her from her worries and she tiptoed toward the source of the sound. In a dark corner of the barn, in a hollow in some straw, lay a tabby cat and seven newborn kittens. Their eyes were still closed and they were crawling blindly over each other, struggling to stake their claim, their one purpose in life to suckle at their exhausted mother. Kate watched, smiling, for a long while and then stepped back out into the bright morning sunshine.

  Kate noticed Augusta from some distance away. She was emerging from the front door, holding something that looked like a newspaper. She was standing as still as a statue and when Kate shouted out “Good morning!” she did not even move, let alone respond. That girl is weird, said Kate to herself and continued walking toward the house. As she did so, Kate became aware of an annoying buzzing in her ears, yet when she put her hands to both sides of the head in order to work out what it was, the buzzing immediately stopped. Kate looked around her in alarm and then realized that the dawn chorus had stopped. Her eyes focused first on Augusta, still immobile and the beginnings of an expression of pure terror on her face, and then on the rose petals which were suspended in midair just like the snowflakes the day that her mother appeared to go into slow motion. Kate gasped and a sensation of utter dread gripped her so that she could hardly breathe.

  “No, no, no! This can’t be happening!” she cried.

  She ran to a rose tree and plucked a white petal out of the air and let go of it. It did not drop but rested there as if lying on the palm of an invisible hand. Either the laws of gravity had temporarily ceased to work, or she was moving through time so quickly the pull of the earth was too slow for her to notice. She ran toward Augusta and screamed uselessly into her face:


  “What’s going on? How can this be? Make it stop! Somebody make it stop!”

  Augusta’s eyes were still trained to the spot where Kate had come into view in the garden. The half-formed expression on her face would normally have made Kate laugh, but she was far too frightened. Tears started to stream down her cheeks. Suddenly she grabbed hold of Augusta’s shoulders and tried to shake the poor girl. Her body did not respond how Kate had expected—her flesh seemed hard as a rock and her body remained inert.

  Blinded by her tears, Kate ran back into the barn and flung herself onto the straw. She lay absolutely still and closed her eyes tight. Something was terribly wrong! It was as if she had lost her grip on time; it was slipping away from her. She had been fast-forwarding and she had not even noticed! How she wanted her dad right now. He would understand what was making this happen. Just thinking about her dad made her calm down a little. She made herself breathe very slowly, in, out, in, out, in, out, and gradually her pulse quietened down and she felt, if not calm, at least less agitated. After a long while, she realized that the buzzing, which was, in any case, less noticeable in the barn, had receded and soon after that she heard the tiny meowing of the kittens. Kate stood up slowly, hardly daring to look, but there they were, the seven kittens still desperately seeking their mother’s milk. The tabby cat opened one eye, regarded Kate for a moment and then closed it again. Kate scratched the cat behind her ear and she curved her neck into the palm of Kate’s hand and purred.

  “You don’t care if I fast-forward, do you, pretty cat?”

  Kate returned to the house. The birds had resumed their singing, gravity was drawing the rose petals to the ground at a more familiar rate and Augusta was reanimated. When she spotted Kate she gave a little shriek, crossed herself, and fled into the house. What a scaredy-cat that girl is, thought Kate, she must be at least three or four years older than me—and it wasn’t even happening to her!

  As Kate approached the front door, she heard raised voices and the sound of someone clumping up the stairs. Then Mr. Schock appeared in the doorway. He was limping, but at least he was managing to walk unaided this morning. He blinked in the bright morning sunshine.

  “What on earth have you been doing to poor Augusta?” he asked, trying not to laugh. “I know you have your faults but you’re not that bad…. Only joking!” he added quickly when he saw Kate’s face. “Is anything wrong?”

  Kate stared back at him, suddenly speechless. What could she say about this to him? She realized that she was not ready to say anything to him—yet.

  “Why don’t you come in and have some breakfast … and look, have you noticed? I’m on my own two feet at last! No stick!”

  “That’s great,” said Kate flatly.

  Mr. Schock looked at her. He was positive something was amiss and was about to press her, but changed his mind and held up Augusta’s newspaper instead.

  “Look,” he said, “Dr. Wolsey has sent over his copy of The Observer. We can read the article about us over breakfast.”

  When the cook brought in dishes of scrambled eggs and freshly baked bread and butter, she told them that Miss Augusta was feeling indisposed and begged to be excused from joining her guests for breakfast much as she would have liked to.

  “Oh, dear,” said Kate innocently. “Please tell her I hope she feels better soon.”

  As the Reverend Austen had already left on parish business, Mr. Schock and Kate found themselves alone in the sunny dining room. Kate picked at her food. Mr. Schock had second helpings of everything.

  “They sure know about cooking eggs in the eighteenth century! Here, have some, Kate, before I scoff the lot.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “No …”

  “I know you’re anxious to get going,” Mr. Schock persisted, “and, as my leg is so much better, perhaps today is the day to decide what to do next. What do you think?”

  Kate nodded. She could not answer as she was holding back the tears with some difficulty. While she wanted to share her fears about what had happened to her, she did not, in truth, want anyone to know. She felt like a freak. Blurring was bad enough, but this was worse. At least with blurring she felt, to some extent, in control. This was really scary. It was as if she were alone in a different world. Not only that, she was beginning to suspect that she had already had another episode of fast-forwarding a couple of days ago but had managed to explain it away to herself. And what if it kept happening? What if she ended up fast-forwarding all the time?

  Mr. Schock sighed, stood up, and sweeping away Augusta’s place setting, laid out the newspaper on the polished wooden table. He tried to change the subject.

  “I don’t know why reading eighteenth-century headlines in an eighteenth-century newspaper should be any more thrilling than spotting genuine eighteenth-century weevils in oatcakes, but it is…. I’ve got genuine shivers going up and down my spine just holding this copy of The Observer…. To think I still buy the same newspaper every Sunday….”

  Kate made an effort to snap out of it, as her mother would have said.

  “Can you manage to make out what it says?” she asked, glancing sideways at it. “The print is really difficult to read….”

  “Just about … All the news is about France! How strange … There’s a story about an aristocrat eaten by wolves while escaping from Paris!”

  “Ugh … ,” said Kate, “I didn’t know there were wolves in France…. I hope there aren’t still wolves in England….” and then, hearing Mr. Schock’s sharp intake of breath, she asked in alarm: “What is it?”

  Mr. Schock did not answer but feverishly flipped over the pages, forward and backward, scanning all the articles, and then he turned back to the front page again, sank back into his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

  “The paper is full of stories about the French Revolution,” he said through his fingers. “This isn’t 1763!”

  Kate shot up and grabbed hold of the newspaper. She read the date on the front page: MONDAY, 3RD SEPTEMBER 1792. She let out a little cry of anguish.

  “It’s all my fault! I should have checked the setting before I kicked the brick away!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The number on the digital readout—it should have been six point seven seven. I’m an idiot!”

  “So the setting affects how far back in time we go?”

  “That’s what Dad and Dr. Pirretti think—not that they’ve had time to prove it…. Oh, I’ve messed up everything! I’m so sorry!”

  Mr. Schock sat up and rested a hand on Kate’s arm. They sat in silence as the awful truth sank in.

  “What shall we do?” asked Kate, finally.

  “Well, where do you think it would take us if we just switched the machine on? Home?”

  “I guess so. I hope so. It’s happened twice so far.”

  “Then let’s do that. I hate to say it, but we need your dad’s help…. I can’t see we’ve got any alternative unless we’re prepared to risk traveling randomly through time.”

  A quarter of an hour later, Kate found herself in the barn once more, her canvas backpack on her shoulder.

  “Ready?” asked Mr. Schock, before dislodging the log that had been placed under it at one side.

  “Don’t you think we should at least say good-bye to Augusta?”

  “No,” said Mr. Schock with a wry grin, “you can send her a thank-you note when you get back home!”

  They both put their hands on the machine and braced themselves. Mr. Schock kicked the log out of the way. Nothing happened. Kate opened her eyes and waited. Then they both had the same idea and started to shift the machine around in the straw, trying to make sure that it was on the level. Both could see the rising panic on the other’s face. Still nothing happened. They tried again but already they both knew…. Mr. Schock suddenly kicked out at the machine in frustration, which he regretted as soon as he had done it. Kate looked at him in alarm.


  “Don’t!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, that’s it,” Mr. Schock exclaimed bitterly. “We’re stranded and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  Kate felt numb. First the fast-forwarding, then the discovery that it was 1792, and now this! They were stranded in a different century and this time it could be forever! She could scarcely take it all in. And then a thought struck her like a thunderbolt.

  “You don’t think Peter could still be here, do you? Waiting to be rescued after all this time … ?”

  SEVEN

  KANGAROOS AT KEW

  In which Queen Charlotte offers her friendship to Peter, and Kate and Mr. Schock hear some distressing news

  Far away from the pomp and ceremony of court life, King George and Queen Charlotte kept a private residence, in large grounds, near the river at Kew. The family soon became so numerous that all fifteen princes and princesses and their servants spilled out of the White House, as it was called, into the handsome Dutch House, opposite, with its rounded gables and distinctive red bricks.

  While the grand red and white houses looked out at one another at one end of the gardens, less than half an hour’s stroll away, past trees and shrubs collected from all four corners of the globe and past a giant, Chinese-style pagoda one hundred and sixty feet high, there lay a pretty cottage with a thatched roof. The cottage had been given to Queen Charlotte as a present, and she used it as a summerhouse. It was in a green and peaceful place, surrounded by trees and birdsong, and it was here that she would often enjoy summer picnics and sip drinks cooled by ice gathered from the lake in winter and stored under straw for many months in the cavernous ice house.

  Queen Charlotte had invited Peter Schock to visit her at the cottage many times over the years, but today it was at his own request that he was here. The front door was opened by none other than the Viscountess Cremorne, close friend and lady-in-waiting to the Queen. She was an upright figure in a dark dress, whose copious white curls were barely restrained under a white lace cap. Her face was lively and intelligent. Peter bowed low.