The Thief of Time (34 page)

‘Of course, it means I'll be queen myself one day, which is tiresome,' she said eventually as we approached the dome. ‘But when one is called to duty -'

‘Alexandra! Matthieu!' The voice of her father reached the great doorways of the Crystal Palace a few moments before he did himself and he ushered us in excitedly. I was delighted to see him at last, unsure how much more of his daughter's bizarre ramblings I could endure before either bursting out laughing or stepping cautiously away. ‘I'm so glad you got here,' he said, opening his arms wide to signify the majesty of what we saw before us. ‘So. What do you think?'

I had not known quite what to expect and this enormous structure with its walls of iron and glass was without a doubt one of the most impressive sights I had ever laid eyes upon. We were standing inside and there was still an incredible amount of work to be done, however, so what we saw resembled a building site more than the great universal museum which it was no doubt intended to be.

‘It's hard to get a good idea at the moment,' said Richard, guiding us along one path, on which we were surrounded by enormous glass cabinets which were currently empty and at the time covered in enormous dustsheets. ‘They're not staying there,' he said quickly, indicating the cases with a flick of his wrist. ‘I think they're going to the India section for a display of their local pottery but I'd have to check the chart to be sure. Over here we're going to have an astronomy section. Ever since they discovered that new planet a few years ago, what do you call it ...?'

‘Neptune,' I said.

‘That's the one. Ever since they discovered that, there's been huge interest in that whole field. That's why that display's going there. When it eventually arrives, that is. There's still so much to be done,' he added, shaking his head in worry. ‘And we've only got three months left.'

‘I never expected it to be so big,' I said, catching sight in the distance of the very trees which Alexandra had mentioned on the way here, rooted in the ground and continuing to grow within the glasshouse effects of the palace. ‘How many people will fit in here?'

‘At a guess?' he said, shrugging his shoulders slightly. ‘Perhaps thirty thousand. Which is only a fraction of the number who will want to attend.'

‘Thirty thousand!' I repeated, stunned by the figure which, for the time, could have represented a large portion of any major city in England. ‘That's incredible. And all these people ...' I looked around at the tribe of workmen who were walking to and fro, carrying equipment and every type of wood, glass or iron known to man; the noise of their activities meant we were never speaking below a dull shout.

‘There're a thousand people working here, aren't there, Daddy?' asked Alexandra, the future queen of England.

‘Well, several hundred anyway,' he replied. ‘I don't know the exact figure. I -' One of their number, a dark, swarthy man with a hunchback and a cloth cap, interrupted him, whispering something in his ear which was clearly bad news for he slapped his forehead dramatically and rolled his eyes with something close to music-hall theatrics. ‘I have to go see about something,' he announced to us, cupping a hand to his mouth as he shouted. ‘Take a further look around but be careful. I'll meet you back here in about thirty minutes. And, for heaven's sake, don't touch anything!'

An opening emerged in the protocol department and, although the salary was negligible, I accepted it, as I found the whole business of the Great Exhibition fascinating. There was to be a procession of foreign representatives brought before the Queen and the Prince Consort on the opening day and I had responsibility for making sure that all those who had been invited were in fact coming and would have a place to stay in London for the duration of their visit. This work brought me into some contact with Richard, for he was making sure that there was enough room between the various exhibits for the delegations to pass through.

I tried not to see too much of Alexandra during this period for, while I was baffled by her conversation on the day we had first visited the Crystal Palace, I was also less than happy about being a foil for her delusions. I wondered about her behaviour at home, whether she created as many fictions there about her life as she had with me that day, and resolved to ask her father about it. The thing which surprised me the most had not been
what
she had said, so much as her utter conviction in the things that she was saying, as if she truly believed them herself and was utterly serious when she implored me to keep her secrets for her.

‘How is Alexandra these days?' I asked Richard one afternoon in as casual a manner as possible. ‘I thought I would see more of her down here. She seemed so interested in your work.'

‘Well, that's my daughter for you,' he replied, laughing. ‘She takes a fancy to something one minute and it goes out of her mind the next. That's always been the case with her.'

‘But what does she do with her days?' I asked. ‘She's not still schooling, is she?'

‘She's training to be a teacher,' he explained, poring over a detailed map of the ground floor of the Exhibition. ‘She's under the tutelage of some of them who taught her in the first place. Why do you want to know?' he asked me suspiciously, looking at me as if I was considering making some illicit move on his daughter.

‘No reason,' I replied. ‘No reason at all. I just wondered why I hadn't seen her in so long.'

In fact, I did not have to wait very much longer, for there was a knock on my door late that night. I opened it, just a crack to see who was there for there were a great many robberies and murders taking place in London at the time and it was unwise to simply fling open one's doors to anyone. I saw her standing outside, looking around her nervously.

‘Let me in, Mr Zéla, please,' she said in a nervous voice. ‘I must speak with you.'

‘Alexandra,' I said, opening the door as she rushed inside. ‘What's wrong? You look quite -'

‘Close the door, he's after me!' she shouted and I shut it quickly, looking at her in surprise. Her normally pale complexion had grown flushed and, as she sank down into an armchair, she put one hand to her throat as if to catch her breath. ‘I'm sorry to come here,' she said, ‘but I couldn't think of anywhere else to turn.' Considering her family lived only downstairs, I found this an odd statement, but let it pass, pouring her a glass of port to steady her nerves and seating myself at a safe distance opposite her.

‘You'd better tell me what has happened,' I said and she nodded slowly, taking a careful sip from her glass and closing her eyes gently as it warmed her inside. Again, I could not help but notice how beautiful she was as she sat there, clothed in a simple blue dress with a pale grey shawl at her neck.

‘It's Arthur,' she replied eventually. ‘He has gone mad, I believe! He wants to kill me!'

‘Arthur .. .' I said thoughtfully, running through the members of her family in my mind, as if one of them might be the intended murderer. But the boys' names were George and Alfred, and her father's name was no more Arthur than my own. ‘I'm sorry ... who
is
Arthur?'

At this she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands until such time as I stood up and went to fetch her a handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully, blowing her nose loudly in it before wiping the tear stains from her cheeks. ‘It's a terrible business,' she said then, helping herself to a little more port from the bottle. ‘I'm afraid I have not any confidante in which to place my secrets.'

‘Well, then, you must place them here,' I said hesitantly, ‘unless you would prefer that I go downstairs for your mother, of course.'

‘No, not her,' she said loudly, making me jump in my chair. ‘She mustn't know any of this. She would throw me out of the house.'

Immediately, I suspected the worst. She had arranged another marriage, or worse, she had already undertaken one and was with child. Whatever it was, I wished that I had no involvement in the business. ‘You must tell me how I can help you,' I said then, moved by her obvious unhappiness.

She nodded and took a deep breath before speaking. ‘Arthur is in charge of the school where I am currently in training. Arthur Dimmesdale is his name.'

‘Dimmesdale ... Dimmesdale ...' I said, sure that the name meant something to me, but not quite sure where to place it.

‘We have been having an illicit romance,' she continued. ‘At first it was innocent, it grew out of a mutual affection we had for each other. It was entirely natural. We enjoyed each other's company, we would dine together sometimes, he took me on a picnic in the early months of our courtship.'

‘The early months?' I said surprised. ‘How long has this relationship existed then?'

‘About six months,' she answered, a figure which predated our own acquaintance and overlapped with her alleged affair with the Prince of Wales.

‘And what about the young prince?' I asked her cautiously.

‘What young prince?'

‘Well,' I said, laughing slightly, unsure whether the conversation had ever really taken place, so absurd did it seem now, ‘you mentioned that you had an understanding with the Prince of Wales. That you were planning on eloping together as his mother would never agree to the match.'

She stared at me incredulously, as if I was the worst kind of madman she had ever had the misfortune to meet, before bursting out laughing. ‘The Prince of Wales?' she asked, between her convulsions. ‘How could
I
be having a relationship with the Prince of Wales? Isn't he just a child?'

‘Well, yes,' I admitted. ‘I did say that originally myself but you seemed convinced that -'

‘You must be mixing me up with someone else, Mr Zéla,' she said.

‘Matthieu, please.'

‘You must have a veritable harem of young girls confiding their problems in you,' she added with a flirtatious smile. I sat back in my chair and knew not what to say to her. The conversation had taken place – I could remember it distinctly – and now here was another. It was now that her position as a fictionalist first became clear to me. ‘Anyway,' she continued eventually, ‘Arthur and I have become more than friends, I am ashamed to admit. He has...' – and here she paused for dramatic effect, her eyes darting from left to right as if she was already on the stage – ‘he has
known
me, Mr Zéla.'

‘Matthieu -'

‘He has taken from me that which can never be restored. And I am damned to admit that I allowed it. For such was my own passion for him, you see. I am in love with him but now I fear that he does not love me.' I nodded and wondered whether I was expected to ask questions or not at this point. She was staring at me, wild-eyed, and it did appear to be my turn to speak so I asked her further about Arthur, whose name was swimming through my mind as I attempted to place it. ‘He is in charge of our school,' she answered. ‘And worse ... he is a man of the cloth.'

‘A priest?' I said, astonished and ready to laugh now as she took the deception further and further.

‘A minister,' she replied. ‘A Puritan minister at that. Ha!' she laughed, as if the very idea of Arthur's puritanism was no more than a joke to her. ‘He has sought to deny our affair but the other teachers have gotten wind of it. There are moves to eject me from my position. The rest of the staff, they consider me a harlot, a woman of no shame and, because they fear divine retribution if they criticise Arthur, they have turned on me instead. They have demanded my dismissal and, if he does not agree to it, they intend to stand up in front of the whole school and denounce me for a wanton. When my parents hear of this, they will kill me. And as for Arthur ... Why, his whole career could be at risk.'

Suddenly, like a lightning bolt, it hit me. I stood up, ostensibly to get another bottle of port, for the one we had both been drinking from had been almost empty before and was drained now. Beneath my bookcases, which were on the far side of the room behind her, I took a bottle from the cabinet and reached up to take down the volume which I was sure lay behind this fiction. It was a new book, published only a year or so earlier, by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, and had proved a popular success with readers. I skimmed through the pages, looking for the name, and I came across it quickly, on page thirty-five, the name whose scurrilous adventures had caused such a scandal in literary circles not twelve months earlier: ‘“Good Master Dimmesdale,” said he, “the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It behoves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof” Arthur Dimmesdale. Puritan minister and lover of Hester Prynne. I sighed and replaced the book on the shelf and the bottle in the cabinet; I suspected that Alexandra had no further need of alcohol.

‘I saw him tonight,' she said as I returned to my seat, an elbow on the arm-rest, my cheek flattened to the heel of my hand. ‘He was following me through the streets. He means to kill me, Mr Zéla. Matthieu, I mean. He means to cut my throat so that I might never be able to explain my side of this story to anyone.'

‘Alexandra,' I said, ‘are you sure that you are not just imagining things?'

She laughed. ‘Well,' she replied, ‘I realise that the streets are dark, but-'

‘No, no,' I said, shaking my head. ‘This whole relationship, I mean. Arthur Dimmesdale. His name is familiar to me, is it not?'

‘You
know
him?' she asked, her eyes opening wide as she sat forward in her chair. ‘He is a
friend
of yours?'

‘I know
of
him,' I answered. ‘I have read about him. Is he not a character in -'

‘What was that?' she said quickly, a noise on the corridor outside alerting her attention, the simple creak of floorboards as a breeze passed through. ‘He is here!' she declared. ‘He has followed me! I must leave!' She jumped out of her seat and threw her coat on again before heading for the door. I followed, completely unsure of what I should do next.