The Thief of Time (33 page)

As I turned past the stables towards the kitchen, I imagined Jack asleep in one of the upstairs rooms, dreaming of his escape from this place, and envied him his ambition. I was surprised to see a candle burning in the window of the kitchen and for a moment I thought I could see movement from within; my pace slowed down and quietened as I came closer. I hesitated outside and peered through, and I could see two figures at the table sitting close by each other and recognised them immediately as Dominique and Nat Pepys, whose head was bowed down as he held her hand. He was shaking visibly.

Shocked, I unlatched the door and stepped inside. There was a sudden rustle and they separated, Dominique standing up and smoothing down her simple dress as she looked at me, Nat barely acknowledging my presence.

‘Matthieu,' she said in surprise. ‘What on earth are you doing here?'

‘It's Tomas,' I replied suspiciously, looking from one to the other. ‘He's not well. He's asking for you.'

‘Tomas?' she asked, her eyes widening and, despite everything else, it occurred to me how much she must have cared for the lad. ‘Why? What's wrong with him? What's happened?'

‘Nothing,' I said, shrugging my shoulders. ‘He's just sick, that's all. Running a fever. Refuses to go to bed until you come to him. I'm sorry that it's late but ...' My voice trailed off. I was unsure what to say about the scene that I had witnessed, whether I had even actually seen what I thought I had seen. By now, Nat was over by the counter lighting a candle and looking at his watch.

‘It's very late, Zéla,' he said irritably, getting my name right for once. It might have waited until the morning.'

‘He's
sick,
Nat,' said Dominique quickly and I noticed he didn't flinch when she spoke to him in such a familiar fashion. ‘And he's my
brother.'
She took her coat from behind the door and followed me outside. I walked a few steps ahead of her and said nothing. All the way back to the Ambertons' house, we barely spoke and I made no mention of what I had seen, so unsure was I by now that I had even seen anything. She got Tomas to sleep and left shortly afterwards and it was I who lay awake most of the night then, tossing and turning, wondering, thinking, considering.

I tried to return to my warm, peaceful beach but it was lost to me now.

It was the following afternoon before I could get Dominique on her own again to ask her about the events of the previous night. I was tired and irritable from my lack of sleep but furious with her at the same time, having convinced myself that there was something untoward going on between her and Nat Pepys.

‘Oh, just stay out of it, Matthieu,' she told me, trying to get away from me, but I blocked her route back to the house. ‘This doesn't concern you.'

‘Of course it concerns me,' I shouted. ‘I want to know what's going on between you two.'

‘There's
nothing
going on between us,' she said. ‘As if there would be! A man in his position would never get involved with someone like me!'

‘That's hardly the -'

‘We were just talking, that's all. There's more to him than you realise. You just see black and white, that's all. Whatever your friend Jack tells you, you believe.'

‘Over Nat? Any day. Any day, Dominique,' I said firmly.

‘Listen to me, Matthieu.' She leaned in close and I could see from the flaring in her eyes that she was growing more and more angry by the minute and I was wary of pushing this to so far a point that there was no room to come back. ‘You and I ... there is nothing there. Do you see that? I care for you, but -'

‘It's this place,' I said, spinning around, not wanting to hear any of this. ‘We've both become so involved in this bloody place that we've forgotten where it all started for us. Remember the boat from Calais, do you? Remember that year in Dover? We could go back there. We were happy there.'

‘I'm
not
going back there,' she said firmly, a brittle laugh escaping her mouth. ‘Not a chance.'

‘And Tomas,' I said, ‘we have a responsibility towards him.'

‘I don't,' she said. ‘I care for him, yes, but I am sorry. My responsibilities are only towards myself, no one else. And, if you don't stop this, you're going to push me away for ever, can't you see that, Matthieu?'

I had nothing else to say and she pushed past me. I felt sick inside; I hated her and loved her at the same time. Maybe Jack was right, I thought. It was time to get out of Cage ley.

I arrived in London in 1850 a wealthy man. Incredibly, the Roman authorities had eventually paid me most of what they owed me for my work on the unfinished opera house and I came back to England burning with ambition. My experiences in Rome had left me feeling ill at ease; Thomas's unnecessary murder at the hands of Canzone was causing me some sleepless nights and I was angered by the fact that the machinations of one woman – Isabella, my bigamist wife – had resulted in two deaths, that of her husband and my nephew. I placed a sum of money at the disposal of Maria, Thomas's fiancee, and quit Italy with great haste.

I began to feel depressed and unfulfilled by my experiences there. I had worked hard on the opera house and on my plans to give Rome a centre of culture and all my efforts had come to nothing. The internal strife of that country made it seem impossible that I could ever go back and complete the tasks which I had been employed to do. I wanted to undertake something which I could feel proud of; to create something which I could look back on in a hundred years' time and say
I did that.
I had money and I had ability and so determined to keep my eyes open for any opportunities which could test me.

In 1850, that which we subsequently came to know as the Industrial Revolution in England was in full swing. The population had risen dramatically since the end of the Napoleonic Wars thirty-six years earlier; newly created machinery meant better farming practices, which led to a better quality of food and improved standards of living. The average life expectancy then rose to forty years old, although I, of course, was heading towards my 109th birthday and proving an unexpected exception to that particular rule. There was a gradual shift in the populace from the country to the city, where more and more factories and industrial settings were emerging on an almost monthly basis. By the time I myself arrived in London, more people were living in urban dwellings than rural ones, for the first time in history. I arrived with the masses.

I took a set of rooms near the Law Courts and happened to be living above a family named Jennings, with whom I became quite familiar over the subsequent months. Richard Jennings was working as an assistant at that time to Joseph Pax ton, the designer of the Crystal Palace, and his every working moment was devoted to the upcoming Great Exhibition of 1851. After some initial shyness on both our parts I became familiar with Richard and spent many happy evenings taking a glass of whisky with him at either his kitchen table or my own, listening to his tales of the exotic delights which were being brought to Hyde Park for what then sounded like the most ludicrous display of conspicuous consumption in the history of mankind.

‘What exactly is the idea behind it?' I asked Richard on the first occasion that we spoke of the Exhibition, which was already the talk of the country despite the fact that it lay several months off in the future. Many people were mocking the building, the very structure, and questioning why so much taxpayers' money was being poured into something which was little more than a display of national achievement. Whether it would serve any earthly purpose after that was open to conjecture.

‘It's to be a celebration of all that's good in the world,' he explained to me. ‘A massive structure containing works of art, machinery, wildlife, everything that you can possibly think of; too big to see it all in one day. Something from every corner of the empire. It'll be the greatest living museum that the world has ever seen. A symbol of our unity and ability. Of what we are, in other words.'

The greatest living museum; I thought his home was already that. I had never seen a house so crammed with belongings before, nor known a man so keen on displaying his every possession. There were shelves running along every wall, each one holding books, ornaments, outlandish cups and teapots, every different type of collection known to man. One sudden gust of wind through the room could have caused chaos. Remarkably, there was not a speck of dust to be found and I came to realise that Betty Jennings, Richard's wife, spent her entire life cleaning it. Her very existence revolved around a feather duster and a sweeping brush, her
raisin d'etre
to keep the place spotless. Whenever I entered their home she would greet me in her familiar apron, wiping the perspiration from her brow as she rose from washing the kitchen floor or sweeping down the stairs. She was always friendly with me, but kept a polite distance as if whatever business her husband and I had -more often than not the simple business of drinking and good conversation – was the business of men and she was better off left out of it. For my part, I would have enjoyed her company on some occasions as I suspected there was more going on behind that human cleaner than she was letting on.

Richard and Betty were the proud parents of what they called ‘their two families'. A middle-aged couple, they had brought three children into the world by the time they were nineteen, a daughter and twin boys, and eleven years later had given birth to another set of twins, this time daughters. The difference in age between them gave the impression that the baby daughters were a second family and that the first three children were more in the role of aunt and uncles than older siblings.

Although I have never much concerned myself with children, I grew to know the eldest daughter, Alexandra, quite well during my time there. The Jenkinses had high ambitions for their children and had named them accordingly; the twin boys were George and Alfred, the girls Victoria and Elizabeth. They were regal names but, like so many of the offspring of the European royal houses of the time, they were sickly children, those four, forever coughing or running temperatures or splitting their knees open simply by running down a road. I rarely called on the family without discovering that one of them had taken to their bed with some disease or ailment. Bandages and rubbing oil were familiar products on their sideboards. Theirs was a house of constant nursing.

Unlike her siblings, however, Alexandra never displayed a day's illness in all the time that I knew her. Not physical illness anyway. A headstrong girl of seventeen, she was taller than both her parents and slim, with the kind of body that turned heads in the street. Observed in the right light, her long dark hair became almost auburn and it appeared to me that she must brush it a thousand times every night in order to extract the perfect shine which glistened from its surface. Her face was pale, but not in a sickly sense, and she had the ability to control her blushes, waiting for an opportunity to impress and captivate with the charms that she had developed so naturally.

I became interested in Richard's work and he invited me to Hyde Park one day to view the Crystal Palace as the preparations continued for the May opening. It was agreed that I would walk the short distance to the park with Alexandra, who was also interested in viewing the structure. She had heard so much from her father about the delights which lay within that it surprised me that she had never asked to visit it before. I collected her from her home on a fine February morning, when the air was just a little frosty and the ground had only the slightest covering of smooth ice.

‘They say it is so big that even the great oak trees in Hyde Park are contained within its surface,' said Alexandra as we walked along, our arms linked in a platonic, parental-style lock. ‘They thought about cutting down any trees within the Crystal Palace but decided to just build the ceiling higher instead.'

The fact struck me as impressive. Some of those trees had stood rooted to the same spot for hundreds of years. Most of them were even older than I was; an impressive achievement. ‘You've been reading up about it then,' I said, making casual conversation with the girl. ‘Your father would be impressed.'

‘He leaves plans around the house all the time,' she announced haughtily. ‘You know he's had several meetings with Prince Albert, don't you?'

‘He did mention it, yes.'

‘The Prince consults my father on almost everything to do with the Great Exhibition.' Richard had mentioned to me on several occasions that he had taken part in some meetings concerning the manner of the Exhibition, meetings which were generally jointly chaired by the Prince Consort and Joseph Paxton, the chief designer. Although he clearly enjoyed speaking of his contacts with royalty, he never overstated the connection, always insisting that his role in the business, while a senior and important one, was mainly supervisory of plans which Paxton had already put in place. There had been some disagreement over which side of the structure to place the British goods with relation to light, air and visibility. Albert had asked several people for their advice and eventually a section on the western half was chosen.

‘You'll be his guest on the day it opens, of course,' I said, naturally ignorant of the chain of events which would follow over the coming months. ‘It will be a proud day for him to have his family there at such an important occasion. I hope to attend myself.'

‘Between you and I, Mr Zéla,' said Alexandra then, leaning in towards my shoulder in a conspiratorial fashion as we entered the great gates of Hyde Park, ‘I'm not sure whether I will be in attendance or not. I'm engaged to be married, you see. To the Prince of Wales. And there's a good chance that we shall
elope
before the summer is over, for his mother would never agree to the match, you know.'

Two hundred and fifty-six years is a long time to be alive. With such a life-span, one gets to meet many different kinds of people. In my time, I have known honest men and crooks; I have met virtuous men who suffer moments of crippling madness which have led directly to their downfall, and mendacious rascals whose singular acts of generosity or integrity have cleared a path for their salvation; I have acquainted myself with murderers and hangmen, judges and criminals, workers and sloths; I have been brought into contact with men whose words have impressed me and stirred me into action, whose conviction in their own principles has ignited the spark in others to fight for change or the simple rights of man and I have listened as charlatans read from scripts, proclaiming great ambitions which they have failed to enact; I have known men to lie to their wives, women to cheat on their husbands, parents to curse their children, offspring to damn their ancestry; I have seen babies born and adults die; I have helped those who are in need and I have killed; I have known every type of man, woman and child, every facet of human nature which exists on the shores around me and I have observed them and listened to them and heard their words and seen their deeds and walked away from them with naught but my memories to translate them from my head to these pages. But Alexandra Jennings was a girl who barely fits into any of these descriptions for she was an original, a true singularity in my time, the kind of girl one meets only once in a lifetime, even if that lifetime happens to last for 256 years. For she was a fictionalist, in that every word, every single phrase that ever escaped her mouth, was based upon a fiction. Not a lie exactly, for Alexandra was not a deceitful girl or a dishonest one, she simply felt the need to create a life for herself which was absolutely at odds with the one which she was actually leading and a compulsion to present that life to others as the plain truth. And it is that fact alone which holds her memory – despite the brevity of our time together – alive in my mind even today, a century and a half later.

‘I'm engaged to be married, you see. To the Prince of Wales.' These were the words that Alexandra had spoken. The year was 1851. Prince Albert, later crowned King Edward VII, was aged ten and in no condition to marry anyone, although an arrangement for the future had most likely been already made by his mother. (Ironically, he eventually married another Alexandra, the daughter of the King of Denmark.)

‘I see,' I replied, more than a little surprised by this announcement. ‘I was not aware that there was an understanding between the two of you. Perhaps I have not been paying as close attention to the Court Circular as I might.'

‘Well, it is imperative that we keep it secret,' she said casually, tossing her hair a little as we walked through the park, able now to see the great glass and iron building which stood in the distance. ‘His mother has a rotten temper, you know, and would be terribly angry if she found out. She's the Queen, you see.'

‘Yes, I know,' I said slowly, looking at my companion suspiciously as I tried to ascertain whether she was completely convinced by what she was saying or whether this was some form of youthful entertainment with which I was not familiar. ‘But there is something of an age difference between you, surely,' I added.

‘Between the Queen and I?' she asked, frowning slightly. ‘Yes, I expect there is, but -'

‘No, between the prince and yourself,' I said irritably. ‘Isn't he just a child? Nine or ten perhaps?'

‘Oh yes,' she answered quickly. ‘But he intends to grow much older. He's hoping to turn fifteen by the summer and perhaps make it into his twenties by Christmas.
I,
on the other hand, am only seventeen, and I must admit that I quite like the idea of an older man. Boys my own age are so stupid, don't you agree?'

‘Well, I don't know very many,' I admitted. ‘But I'll take your word on it.'

‘If you like,' she added after a few moments' silence, and she spoke now with the tone of a person who is unsure whether this is a good idea or not but is going to say it anyway, ‘if you like, we could invite you to the wedding. I'm afraid it won't be a grand, state affair – neither of us want that – just a simple ceremony, followed by a pleasant reception. Family and close friends only. But we would be delighted to have you there.'

I wondered where she had picked up her speech pattern, which mirrored that of society ladies almost perfectly. Her parents, while relatively well-off and suddenly mixing in elevated circles, came from simple London stock and their accents gave their ancestry away. They were regular folk who had enjoyed some luck, Mr Jennings's abilities and business sense giving them a fine home and a higher standard of living than many of their peers. Their daughter was obviously hoping to take it a step further.