The Thief of Time (7 page)

‘I'm only going as far as Canterbury for the night,' said the young man. ‘I can take you there but I'll be stopping to sleep when I reaches it and I turns off the road towards Bramling after that. If you want to continue to London then you're best getting out there and seeing what luck you can find along the road after that. There's an old barn I know there where I tends to sleep. It'll be dark by then and you're best off staying there with me and moving on in the morning. Or walk on in the dark but I don't know the roads from there so you'd need to be on your guard.'

Dominique nodded as if she was giving her approval to these plans and lay back in the cart. Furlong – he introduced himself to me a moment later – said nothing more for a time and appeared content to slow down the horse a little and stare ahead. He took some chewing tobacco from his pocket and bit off a chunk. He went to put it back in his pocket before hesitating and offering me some, which I accepted a little nervously. It was a delicacy I had never tasted before but did not want to appear so rude as to decline. I bit down on the chewy mound and took off a lump equal in size to the one he had taken himself. It tasted foul – like a mouthful of burnt, spiced fruit, only more bitter on the tongue – and I wondered how he could chew it with such relish, not to mention noise. As I rolled it around my mouth it released a liquid of poisonous taste whose odour seemed to take a hold of the passageways up to my nostrils and constrict them suddenly. I felt a tightening in my throat and for a moment I could not breathe. I gasped and could hear the catch, knowing my voice was, for now at least, vanished.

‘Not often I get company on these roads,' Furlong was saying. ‘My father sends me once a month to do this trip. We're suppliers, you see. We run a farm but we sends some of our dairy food to the continent. It doesn't earn us much, if you want to know the truth, but it helps my father's claims to being an international man of business. That's how he styles himself in our village, you see.' I nodded and gave a slight cough, spitting the foul mucus into my hand and letting it drop over the side of the cart as we drove on. I looked back and saw Dominique watching me, an eyebrow raised in amusement. My face was purple from the experience and I swallowed several times to rid myself of the tobacco's taste and wished for a pitcher of cold water with which to wash it away. ‘There's often people along this road, of course,' he said. ‘But I don't likes taking single men. You don't know where you'll end up with some of them. Rob you blind, they would. Slit your throat for a few pounds. That's why I carries this.' He reached to the side of the cart and extracted a long knife, perhaps twelve inches in length, with a serrated edge. He touched it with the tip of a finger and I winced, expecting blood to appear in a sudden spurt. ‘That's sharp, that is,' he said.
^T
makes sure to sharpen it on a leather before I leave each month. For self-protection, you understand.'

‘Right,' I said, unsure what answer he was looking for here.

‘But when I saw you there, you and your missus and your little boy, I-'

‘My sister and brother,' I corrected him, continuing the deception.

‘I thought I'd stop and lend a hand,' he continued, ignoring me. ‘Seemed like a good idea anyway. Helps make the time go a little quicker.'

‘We're very grateful,' I said, feeling a sudden rush of warmth for this young man and his lonely monthly trips from Bramling to Dover and back. ‘My boots were beginning to hurt me and Tomas was beginning to whine.'

‘Not much I can do about the boots,' he said, peering ahead at the deserted road as the light grew a little more dim. ‘But, as for the child, I should expect a sound thrashing at the starts of any complaining would put an end to that sort of thing.'

I looked across at him, expecting to see him smiling at his joke, but it was no joke and I was pleased that my half-brother had fallen asleep almost immediately after getting into the cart, for if he had not I could only have guessed what his behaviour might have been or what it might have resulted in for all of us.

‘Are you married then, Mr Furlong?' I said after another extended period of silence during which time I had thrashed around in my mind for conversation topics. For a man who was looking for company, he seemed content simply to sit beside me and stare at the road ahead, as if the presence of some other human beings in the cart with him was company enough. Furlong laughed.

‘Not married yet,' he said. ‘But I hopes to be shortly.'

‘A sweetheart?'

He blushed scarlet and I was taken aback by his modesty, a characteristic I had come across in few people. ‘I am', he said slowly, in the manner of a courtly gentleman, ‘under something of a commitment to a young lady of my parish although an actual arrangement for nuptials has yet to be made.'

I grinned. ‘Well, good luck to you,' I said.

‘Thank ‘ee.'

‘When do you think your arrangements will be made then?'

He paused and the smile seemed to fade slightly. ‘Someday soon,' he said. ‘There has been a ...' – he searched for the right word – ‘a complication. But I expect it will be solved soon enough.'

‘AH romances are complicated,' I said cheerily, seventeen years old, once loved, and behaving for all my worth like a man of the world. T expect their resolutions make the complications all the more worthwhile in the end.'

‘Aye, I expect so,' he said. He opened and closed his mouth several times and I guessed he was trying to tell me something but was unsure of how to begin or whether he even wanted to discuss it or not. I said nothing and stared ahead, closing my eyes for a moment to relax myself, when I heard his voice again, louder now, and without any of its previous good humour. T known Jane – that's her name, you see, Jane – I known her a good eight year now and we've been under something of an understanding to each other, you see. Sometimes I takes her for walks and sometimes I visit her of an afternoon and bring her a fancy something which she always takes with great pleasure. We made a haystack once, in the summer, two year back. Six feet high, it was. Taller than me.' I nodded and looked at him. In profile, his head was nodding and I could see a glisten in his eyes as he spoke of her.

‘Sounds like quite the courtship,' I said in order to appear agreeable.

‘It has been,' he agreed heartily. ‘No question that it has been. She's a very able girl, you see.' I nodded, although I hadn't the faintest idea what he meant by that phrase. ‘Now she's trying to distance herself from some army fellow who's come through. Made himself a little forward with her and I know that she don't like him much but can't find the way to tell him to leave her alone. With him fighting for king and country and all that. And just passing through. He cant stay long.'

‘Nuisance,' I muttered.

‘Takes her for walks every afternoon,' he continued, ignoring me as if I wasn't in the cart at all. ‘Down by the river once, I heard. Visits her and likes to sing with piano, if you can believe it, the nance. You'll not find me singing at her, sir. Not a bit of it. Needs to pack his bags and get on with himself, that's what I think. Stop bothering her. She's too polite, though, you see. Too polite to tell him to be on his way. Humours him. Goes for her walks with him. Listens to his pretty voice. Makes him tea and listens to his talk of adventures in Scotland, if you please. Some might say, unkind folk, that she's leading the poor blighter on, but I say he should just pack his bags and go, that's all. It's her and me who are under a commitment.'

His face was quite red now and his hands shook as he held the reins. I nodded but said nothing, seeing only too well the situation which was taking place in Bramling. I felt sorry for him but my mind was elsewhere already. I was thinking about the morning, about how we would still have a long way to travel after our sleep. About London. The night grew around us and we all fell silent. I thought of my prostitutes in Dover and drifted away with happy thoughts of them, wishing I could be there at that moment with a few pennies in my pocket to spend, and would have happily closed my eyes to dream of our encounters had not the horse come to an abrupt stop with Furlong's cry and we all four sat up suddenly. We had arrived at our resting place for the night.

It was a small barn but we all fitted in comfortably. It smelled of cattle although there were none to be seen now. ‘They milk them here, during the day, one by one,' said Furlong. ‘There's a farm a mile up the road there. They bring the cows to the field to graze and in here to milk ‘em. That's what you're smelling. The milk.'

He had a small basket of food but it was enough only to feed himself with a little left over. I declined his offer to share, feeling it would be rude to deprive him of his meal after he had driven us so far for so many hours, but Dominique ate a leg of chicken which he forced on her, and Tomas would have greedily eaten the lot if she had not insisted that she share her portion with him. I watched as they ate, my mouth salivating, still resonant with the taste of the chewing tobacco, but claimed I felt ill from the motion of the cart so as not to appear the martyr. We talked for a little more time, the four of us, and Dominique grew animated now, asking him many questions about his village and the activities of – as she put it – the surrounding ten square miles, as if she was considering changing our London plans now that we had a horse and cart to take us elsewhere. It sounded a pleasant enough place but then I was not too concerned with our final destination, so sure was I that I could make a go of our lives anywhere, as long as we were together. It grew darker in the barn as our candle burned out but in its flicker her smile, as she told some tale of a show she had once seen in Paris where the girls had worn no underwear and the men had been tied to their seats in order to avoid a riot, made me long to hold her, to take her in my arms and feel my body become one with hers. My mind swam with the madness of my desire for her and I wondered whether I could get through an evening without wanting to kiss her. I questioned our friendship, whether it was simply based on my desire to touch her, to be touched by her, and found that I no longer heard a word of her conversation as I simply stared at her face and body and allowed my head to be filled with visions of the two of us together. I longed to tell her how I felt but the words were not to be found. My mouth opened and closed and despite Tomas and despite Furlong I found myself close to falling on top of her as the room would swim in darkness around us and there would be just us, just the two of us, just Dominique and Matthieu. No one else.

‘Matthieu,' said Dominique, pushing me gently on the arm and snapping me out of my daze. ‘You look as if you are about to collapse with exhaustion.'

I smiled and looked around the group, blinking several times as I tried to focus on them. Tomas was already curled up asleep in a corner, his jacket taken off and thrown carelessly across his body. Furlong was watching Dominique as she stepped outside the barn for a few moments and walked not so far away that we could not hear her pissing in the grass, a sound which embarrassed me as we sat there in silence. When Furlong and I went outside upon her return to do similar, I tried to move further away but he stopped short and I was obliged to stand alongside him as he talked.

‘You're a lucky lad to have a sister like that,' he said, laughing. ‘She's something for the eyes, ain't she? And those stories she tells, saucy girl. Why, she must have suitors all the way from here to Paris and back.'

Something in the tone of his voice offended me and I looked across at him sharply as he shook himself dry. ‘She keeps to herself and to Tomas and I,' I said gruffly. ‘We still have a distance to travel and we have no time for suitors or anything of that sort.' I decided immediately that we would continue on to London in the morning and nowhere else.

‘I meant no harm,' said Furlong as we stepped back inside and settled ourselves in the remaining two corners of the barn for a night's sleep. ‘Some things just cry out to be said, that's all,' he whispered in my ear as he left me, his breath stinking now from the chicken he had brought with him. ‘Like some deeds just cry out for the doing, am I right?'

Sleep came quickly to me for I had not managed to get a moment to myself the whole day long, and the distance we had covered, along with the groaning of my empty stomach, brought me to the point where my whole body wanted to be finished with this day for good.

I dreamed first of Paris and of my mother and of a time when I was a child when she had made me hold the end of a huge, colourful rug while she beat it soundly with a carpet-beater. The dust which rose off it had made me cough and had gone down my throat, producing tears, much like the tobacco had done earlier on. Paris gave way to another city, an unknown one, where a man led me by the hand through a bazaar and handed me a candle which he lit with a golden lighter. And here is a light that only you can see, he told me in mid-conversation. As it burned, the marketplace surrendered to a horse fair, where men shouted to outbid each other, and a fight ensued. A man rushed towards me, his fist pulled back, his whole face grim with determined anger, and as he made to hit me I jerked back into consciousness, my legs stabbing into the air and for a moment I knew not where I was.

It was still dark – despite all I had dreamed, it was perhaps no more than fifteen minutes after I had gone to sleep – but I was freezing with the cold and my stomach pained me. I heard a thumping sound from the other side of the barn and hoped that it would lull me back to sleep quickly. It was joined by a throaty breathing and a muffled complaint, the sound of a mouth trying to scream while a hand holds it tight. I sat and listened as full consciousness returned to me and then jumped, in sudden recognition, as I looked around, my eyes trying to grow accustomed to the blackness. There was Tomas, shifting slightly in his sleep, a finger in his mouth, emitting a sigh of contentment. And there was an empty corner, which Furlong had left. And there was a struggle opposite me and the picture of a man above a woman, still clothed but with a hand missing, a hand working its way between them somewhere to undo clothing, to break through. I threw myself at him and he gasped but recovered quickly, a hand lashing out to hit me which sent me sprawling across the barn in a daze. He was strong and powerful, much more than I had ever imagined, and I lay there struggling to pull myself back into action. I heard Dominique shout in agony and then her cry became muffled again as he whispered to her and sent his hand beneath her dress once again. I stood up, my hands in my hair, knowing not what to do, aware that another attempt on my part to pull him off could lead to my death and possibly hers and Tomas too. Instead, I ran outside the barn into the cold night, where the moon threw a thin prism of light on to the cart, which I threw myself at before running back inside, back behind Furlong who by the relaxed motions of his hand and his release of Dominique's mouth appeared to be getting closer to his intention. He lifted himself off her slightly, positioned his body back a little and was about to fall inside her when my hands came down, and the sharp serrated edge of the knife he had shown me earlier slid, as if through melting butter, between his powerful shoulder blades. His body drew a deep intake of breath -hollow and animal-like – as he jerked upwards, his shoulders bouncing backwards to relieve the pain as his hands grasped aimlessly in the air. I jumped back towards the wall of the barn, knowing that this was it, that I had only one chance to finish Furlong off and that chance was already behind me and if I had not succeeded we would all pay the price within minutes. Dominique scrambled out from beneath him and also plastered herself to the opposite wall as he slowly stood and spun around, staring at us with wide, disbelieving eyes, before swaying and falling backwards, the knife making a wretched sound as it pushed up inside his body – even the handle – a few more inches.