TIME QUAKE (5 page)

Yesterday I awoke not doubting the truth of who I am, a truth so evident you could rap your knuckles on
it and feel the pain. But today a great crack has appeared in Life’s certainties, for is it not in our nature to wish to be on the one hand the same as our fellows, and on the other to be different? For if I am not unique in all the universe, am I not, in consequence, a lesser man?

Gideon Seymour
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1763

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

St Bartholomew’s Fair

In which Gideon is horrified to learn of
Lord Luxon’s deception and the party
pays a visit to St Bartholomew’s Fair

The party waited on the steps while the footman and the driver finished making ready Sir Richard’s coach and six. The horses were skittish and unsettled and they snorted and pawed the ground. Kate held on to Peter’s arm. A procession of billowing clouds, streaked with an ominous red, raced across the pale evening sky, buffeted by a strong south-westerly wind that blew Sir Richard’s tricorn hat clean from his head and sent it scuttling over the pavement. Peter broke away to run after it. Kate flinched and stretched out her hand after him as he darted off. She noticed the Parson observing her and let her arm drop slowly to her side.

‘The weather has turned,’ declared Parson Ledbury, turning to Sir Richard. ‘That is the last of the summer, you mark my words.’

Kate was gripping Peter’s arm as he walked back to the steps to return the tricorn hat back to its owner. She saw the Parson, a frown on his face, looking first at her and then back towards the empty space next to Hannah where he was sure she had been
standing but a moment ago. He looked at Kate again. She knew precisely what he was thinking. How had she passed in front of him without him noticing? The Parson shook his head in puzzlement. Kate stared fixedly in the opposite direction.

Bats flitted about in the twilight above their heads and, far away, a mournful church bell tolled. They all squeezed inside the carriage and breathed in its now accustomed odour of leather and horseflesh. Kate sat between Hannah and Peter, whose hand she held tight in hers. Opposite the children sat Parson Ledbury, Sir Richard and Gideon. Peter reflected that not so very long ago there would have been no way that he would have let a girl hold on to him like this, no matter how upset she was. But he did not pull away and even gave Kate’s hand a reassuring squeeze. She looked up at him and smiled.

‘Everything will be all right,’ he said.

‘I know . . .’

Sir Richard’s coach and six rumbled out of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The streets seemed curiously empty. Amazingly, theirs was the only carriage in High Holborn and not a single street hawker was to be seen. Hannah said that it must be on account of the great fair in Smithfield. Half of London would be in attendance. The sound of oversized shop signs swaying and creaking in the wind and horseshoes striking granite setts echoed through the streets. Kate watched a pug dog, on the corner of High Holborn and Gray’s Inn Lane, mesmerised by some dry leaves whipped into a dancing whirlpool by a gust of wind. The dog backed away, growling. Then it charged helter-skelter up the street, barking a warning to anyone who would listen.

‘Silly old thing . . .’ Kate laughed, then thought of her own dog. ‘I wonder what Molly’s doing right now. I hope she’s okay. I hope she’s not pining.’

Peter stopped himself saying that ‘right now’ did not actually make sense and gave her hand another squeeze instead. Then he leaned over towards her and whispered into her ear: ‘I’ve been thinking . . . Ought we to tell Gideon about the Tar Man, now there’s a possibility they might actually meet each other again?’

‘Do we have to?’ whispered Kate back to him. ‘I mean, it can’t be true, can it?’

‘But we
should
tell him even if it’s not true. Don’t you think?’

‘He’s not going to like it.’

‘You think I don’t know that! Shall I tell him or will you?’

‘You!
Definitely
you.’

Peter took in a deep breath and blew it out again noisily. ‘Okay . . .’

‘What are you two rascals plotting?’ demanded Parson Ledbury.

When Peter looked up, all three men opposite were watching them expectantly.

‘Gideon?’ asked Peter hesitantly.

‘Yes, Master Peter?’ asked Gideon with a half-smile on his face. ‘You have the air of someone with a guilty admission to make. What have you done, my young friend?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that.’

‘Then what is it that troubles you so?’

Peter paused and then plunged straight in. There was no easy way to say it. ‘When the anti-gravity machine brought me and Kate back again to 1763, just before Lord Luxon made off with it and we ended up at Hawthorn Cottage, we heard the Tar Man and Lord Luxon talking.’

‘Yes?’ Gideon smiled at him encouragingly.

‘And obviously we don’t know if it’s actually
true
or not and you know how Lord Luxon will say anything to get what he wants . . .’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well—’

‘Spit it out, boy, how bad can it be?’ exclaimed the Parson.

Peter looked at Kate who nodded her head vigorously. ‘Go on, Peter. Tell him.’

‘Well, he . . . he . . .’ Peter raced to the end of the sentence. ‘He said that you and the Tar Man are brothers and that he’d known it from the start.’

Hannah gasped and put her hand to her mouth and then for a long moment the only sound was the creaking of the axles and the
clip-clop
of the horses’ hooves. Sir Richard and the Parson exchanged alarmed glances. No one knew what to say. Then Gideon started to laugh.

‘What fantasy is this? Lord Luxon lies – although for what purpose I cannot tell. All my brothers are dead – save for my half-brother, Joshua. He knows this. As I have told you, Lord Luxon forever craves diversion – he will have said it to cause mischief.’

Peter nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re right – I mean, how could
you
and the Tar Man possibly be related?’

‘Upon my word,’ said Parson Ledbury, ‘what a shocking notion! Why, to contemplate the mere possibility that you and that monster might come from the same brood chills my marrow!’ The Parson rubbed the white bristles on his chin and continued: ‘And yet, in truth, stranger things have happened . . . Nor can it be denied that the Tar Man’s motive for coming to your aid in so timely a fashion at Tyburn has long been a puzzle. If he had discovered that the same blood ran in your veins, why, that would be reason enough, would it not? Perhaps we should credit him with some human decency: perhaps his actions demonstrated a desire to save his younger brother—’

‘We do not share the same blood!’ cried Gideon. ‘As I have told you, Parson,’ he continued through gritted teeth, ‘
I have no older brother!
’

The Parson opened his mouth to speak but Sir Richard put his hand on his arm and Gideon stared fixedly out of the window.

‘I’m sorry, Gideon,’ said Peter. ‘I had to tell you.’

Gideon nodded but would not turn around to look at him. The two children exchanged guilty glances.

Darkness had now fallen and the sooty glass globes filled with whale oil that served as street lamps on this main highway were few and far between. Inside the carriage the passengers could not see their hands in front of their faces. Soon, however, an orange glow illuminated the street and they saw a family huddled around a roaring fire stoked up with what appeared to be rafters. The giant bonfire crackled and hissed and great showers of sparks shot up into the night. Behind the fire the party could see that a building had collapsed, leaving a gaping black hole in the row of houses like a smile with a missing tooth. A pungent smell of mould and lime and ashes met their nostrils as their carriage rumbled past. Too slow to catch up with them, a woman clutching a shawl ran after them, her arms extended in supplication. She shouted something at them but her words were carried away in the wind. Sir Richard reached into his pocket, drew out some coins and threw them, rolling, at her feet. Peter leaned out of the window and saw the whole family jump up and start scrabbling around like chickens pecking in the dirt.

‘What would make a house fall like a pack of cards?’ exclaimed Hannah. ‘I have never seen such a thing!’

‘Alas, Hannah, it is a common occurrence of late. It is the second house I have seen collapse in less than a month,’ commented Sir Richard. ‘These dwellings are not well built, and the hot summer has shrunk and cracked the earth in which they sit.’

‘Then I pity those poor souls with all my heart,’ said Hannah, ‘and I am glad that I live in Derbyshire in a house made of stone.’

Kate shivered all of a sudden and loosened her grip on Peter’s hand. Peter looked at her questioningly. Kate shrugged her shoulders.

‘It’s this funny wind. I keep thinking a storm is coming, don’t you?’

Peter shook his head. ‘No – how can you tell if a storm’s coming? I can’t.’

On Snow Hill the traffic grew suddenly dense and they found themselves surrounded by chaises, and carts, and wagons full of barrels of ale, all jostling for space on the thoroughfare. Everyone was headed in the same direction – Smithfield Market, the site of Bartholomew’s Fair. They proceeded at a snail’s pace while they watched the spectacle of two Irish sedan chair-men, so determined to get through the blockade of vehicles that they deliberately rammed a hackney coach, causing the skinny horses to rear up and whinny in terror.

Normally so calm in a crisis, Gideon was becoming increasingly agitated.

‘Confound this traffic!’ The words burst out of him. ‘If the pleasures of Bartholomew’s Fair do not hold him, Blueskin could be miles away by now!’

When they reached Cock Lane they decided to continue on foot. The driver was told to wait for them at the bottom of Snow Hill. There was such a multitude of folk, Sir Richard suggested it might be quicker to go a long way round through a maze of small streets which he knew. They could hire a link-boy to light their way through the dark alleys. The Parson was not in favour of such a plan, nor was Gideon.

‘Trust me, Sir Richard,’ he said, ‘for I have cause to know, Bartholomew’s Fair is a magnet for all the thieves in the city – Smithfield will be seething with villains lurking in the shadows.’

Suddenly Hannah let out a cry of fright. A man carrying a fiddle, with a pair of donkey’s ears strapped to his head, was blocking her way. He pressed his face close up to hers, turned his head coquettishly to one side and crowed like a cockerel. Hannah screamed a second time when a monkey appeared between the donkey’s ears on the man’s head, reached out its delicate, leathery fingers and proceeded to grab hold of her nose – hard.

‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ Hannah screamed, flapping her hands in front of her face as if trying to get rid of cobwebs. ‘Get that devilish creature away from me!’

The fool laughed, satisfied with her reaction, and gambolled away. As he lurched drunkenly about amidst the mass of Londoners, he took out a fiddle and bow from the inside of his jacket and began to play a fast Irish jig. People immediately started to sing along and clap in time to the tune and the monkey danced on the fool’s shoulders whilst staring up at the night sky with glittering, coal-black eyes.

‘Are you all right, Hannah?’ shouted Kate.

‘Bless you, I am, Mistress Kate, thank you for asking. I never could abide Merry Andrews. Their purpose is to make folk laugh but the principal effect they have on me is to make my flesh crawl. And that monkey will haunt my dreams – why, a person could mistake it for a tiny, wizened old man!’

‘Well, my dad told me that humans and apes share a common ancestor . . .’

Hannah looked at Kate, flummoxed, unsure whether she was supposed to laugh.

‘Is that so, Mistress Kate?’ she replied non-committally. ‘
My
ancestors came from Yorkshire.’

And so they pressed on, with Gideon and Sir Richard leading the way and pushing through the throng. Kate held tightly on to Peter’s hand and both children stared around them, eyes wide with wonder and not a little fear. Soon the din of the crowd grew into a riotous, echoing roar and they all sensed that they were approaching the great open space of Smithfield Market. They heard the pulse of a drum and then the insistent, clanging bell of a street crier. ‘Show! Show! Show!’ he bellowed. The wind – already troublesome enough to make the men hold on to their hats or wigs and the ladies to their skirts – suddenly roared furiously up Cock Lane so that the party was blown rather than walked into Smithfield. All at once they passed from darkness into light, as countless lanterns and flares of pitch and tow illuminated the vast, heaving, monstrous, stupendous spectacle that stretched out before them: Bartholomew’s Fair.

Released from the tight funnel of the street into Smithfield, the crowd was now able to disperse. The party stood motionless for a while, looking around them and getting their bearings, alert to the sounds which assailed them: canvas tents flapped and billowed in the wind, barrow boys rang their bells, hawkers cried themselves hoarse, revellers clapped and shouted and jeered, dogs barked and monkeys chattered, sudden waves of riotous laughter reached them from a nearby beer tent.

‘My head is spinning already!’ exclaimed Hannah.

Keeping together they started to walk further in. A double-jointed contortionist, skeletally thin and able to dislocate his bones at will, tied his body in knots, eliciting loud
ooh!
s and
aah!
s from an appreciative crowd; a juggler vied with a fire-eater for the attention
of fashionable ladies and gentleman whose powdered faces, studded with black beauty spots, glowed a ghostly white in the flickering half-light. A flower girl picked up apple cores and scraps and threw them to a brown bear. The beast was shackled with heavy chains to a stake and sat motionless on his ragged haunches, the expression in his soulful eyes enough to make a heart of stone weep.