Once upon a time at one of Mrs Cowley’s famous masquerade parties at Carlisle House in London, Merlin’s steam wheels of the mind propelled him on his own invention, the inline skates, into a mirror worth over £500, smashing it into atoms. In truth, in this incident Merlin’s face was almost smashed to pieces along with his atoms. Billy, having heard of this story, imagined that John Joseph Merlin’s best friend Merlin the Magician would come to his rescue and put his atoms back where they belonged. Merlin the Magician was good at shifting atoms around, it was how he travelled in time, or so Billy was given to thinking, or perhaps that should be given to imagining! It seemed being around Scarlet, Billy Higginbottom had caught the imagining bug!
After polishing off what was left of the tea and cakes Merlin insisted he show his visitors around his workshop, as he could see Billy was chomping at the bit to see the magical space where he created his miniature clockwork masterpieces.
‘I trust you, William, you have a kind face and as you and your friends have shown me a kindness I would like to show you one. Now, whatever you see behind this door must be kept secret. As it happens I’m looking for a reliable apprentice. Perhaps in time when I am certain I can trust you I may offer you the position,’ Merlin said coolly.
Billy’s eyes widened so far one would have thought he had seen a ghost. Perhaps he had, after all, in his time, that of the Edwardians, Merlin was no longer in the land of the living. He sincerely hoped Merlin wasn’t a member of the living dead either. He may have been a member of the new London club, the Ghost Club, a real club believe it or not, and not just one a storyteller had dreamt up. It was said when old members passed on, their names were still read out at the annual general meeting as if their spirits were still attending the meetings. And what of Merlin the Magician? Was he still alive and travelling along the highways and byways of the time-space continuum? Once again only time would tell.
‘I, I would be honoured to work for you,’ Billy replied hardly believing his ears, and when he saw Merlin’s work space he wouldn’t believe his eyes either.
Scarlet raised her eyebrows. Her mind was working overtime. Unless Billy was prepared to stay behind in time this would be impossible. Would he really leave his past behind him to work with John Joseph Merlin in the eighteenth century and was this even possible? For what would happen to the Edwardian William?
‘Did you know, William, that Sir Isaac Newton lived in a giant clock house when he was a boy or so he appeared to have imagined? You see, in the morning when the sun first came in through the window shutters it made a line upon the wall, which he marked in pencil. He did this on the hour every hour so he could tell the time, so in effect the house became like a giant clock, so I have imagined. And he did all this as a young boy. No wonder he became a genius later in life, a boy wonder!’ John Joseph Merlin exclaimed blowing out his cheeks. ‘He also said he and other inventors and scientists were standing on the backs of giants. In other words, without the likes of Archimedes, Pythagoras and da Vinci they would not have had the knowledge to move the science of time forward.’
Some small time later the travellers left the premises of the great Merlin to find a boarding house where they could stay for the night, otherwise like Billy they would either be sleeping on the streets or on a park bench. Billy suggested he sell his timepiece to a pawnbroker so they could afford this little luxury. Some further small time later they had arrived at a quaint little boarding house not much bigger than a dolls’ house on the outskirts of London. Here they settled in for a much-needed rest. Later the landlady, Mrs Piddgley, cooked them a hearty meal, after which they retired to bed… tick tock, tick…
42
Time Street
The following morning the travellers took a stroll in a park nearby to decide what their next move should be.
‘It looks like our thief isn’t interested in Mr Merlin, perhaps we gave him too much credit and imagination. He’s probably just out pickpocketing,’ Billy said thinking out loud as he found a park bench and they all sat down.
‘Yes, strolling along Time Street,’ Alfie laughed, a pigeon almost landing on his head as the laughter died. ‘Hey watch it, bird, it’s bad enough I have ticks and little people want to set up home on my head!’
‘Please, Alfie, concentrate, this is important,’ snapped Scarlet scolding her brother. ‘The thief may still come. Perhaps we’d better watch the house just in case,’ added Scarlet sounding a note of caution as Alfie pulled a face like a gargoyle perched upon an uncomfortable plinth no bigger than a birdtable.
‘You know, if we stayed in this time awhile I could become Merlin’s apprentice and then perhaps he would share even more of his secrets with me,’ mused Billy, his mind ticking over like the second hand of a watch, with grand possibilities of how his future might pan out if he swapped one time for another.
‘Thanks to the passing of time and with you being a watchmaker, unemployed watchmaker, you would be more skilled and more knowledgeable than Merlin,’ said Scarlet.
‘I suppose in some respects I would, although I’m not sure I will ever have the skills of such an imaginative thinker as John Joseph Merlin. I will have to play the dumb waiter. An apprentice must never know more than his master,’ Billy replied gravely as if he were a Buddhist monk. ‘You know, the storytellers would have us believe that when you travel to the past and then back again time hardly passes. You can be in the past for years and when you get back only a few weeks or days have passed,’ Billy added blowing out his cheeks.
‘I wonder if that really is the case. Only time will tell. We don’t want to come back to find our parents have died or London has changed so much we don’t recognise it,’ Scarlet said trying to imagine the unimaginable as Nostradamus and da Vinci appeared to have done.
‘We could test the theory out,’ Alfie said enthusiastically.
‘We don’t need to, the Time Thief has already done it for us, hasn’t he?’ Billy said thinking bigger than Big Ben.
‘Yes, I suppose he has, that’s if he has travelled back in time. As yet we haven’t seen our thief since he disappeared. And we disappeared and ended up back in the past, which means he almost certainly has travelled back in time at least once if not twice. But still, until we meet him in the past we still can’t be one hundred percent sure, can we?’
‘We can be as sure as damn it!’ Alfie snapped jumping in to add his two penneth worth, using an expression he’d heard his father use on many an occasion. But was a penny in the time of the Georgians still worth the same amount as it was in the time of the Edwardians? ‘Does not one and one make two? Ergo if one time traveller travels to the past and returns on the morrow then surely two time travellers or a team of time travellers in this equation do likewise,’ Alfie said sounding like a mad scientist.
‘Ergo, who do you think you are a Greek philosopher or Sir Isaac Newton?’ Scarlet spat not believing her ears! Maybe travelling in time had made him grow up faster than she had realised, travel being said to broaden the mind.
‘I imagine my young brain has the potential to expand like Newton’s great brain and the great thinker Socrates too,’ Alfie replied with his nose in the air.
‘Whose brains I imagine are pickled in a jar standing on a shelf in a cabinet in the Science Museum in London and what do you know about Socrates?’ Scarlet said trying not to laugh.
‘I do occasionally go to school, you know, the Archie Mides School of Thought and, and sometimes I even listen to what the teachers are dribbling endlessly on about, even if it is simply to make time pass more quickly. You can scoff all you like but one day, missy, I will make you eat those fine words and when you do, like the boy wonder Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart it will be like music to my ears. Now let them eat cake,’ Alfie said polishing off the rest of the cake Mrs Merlin had offered them.
‘Marie Antoinette said “let them eat cake”, I seem to recall, it’s been a while since I was at s
chool,’ Billy mused. ‘The great clockmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet built a watch in 1783 for Marie Antoinette, the finest timepiece ever built. It took forty-three years to complete, in fact the watch was completed by Breguet’s son in 1827. The watch was made of gold, platinum, diamonds and rubies, and sapphires inside the watch to decrease friction. It was worth a small fortune and now it is worth a large fortune. Unfortunately Marie Antoinette never lived to see the watch as she was beheaded in the French Revolution. The timepiece was a compass, a perpetual calendar, thermometer, chronograph, and had many other features never seen in a watch before. It was labelled “a poem in clockwork”. I would love to see it,’ Billy mused almost salivating at the thought of such a complicated chronograph. It seemed for our time travellers all subjects led back to one big subject, ‘Time’, and as for space, well, according to Scarlet that was the large vacuum between her brother’s filthy ears!
‘You don’t think the thief has come back to steal the Marie Antoinette, do you?’ Billy mused.
‘Steal Marie Antoinette? I thought she was already dead!’ Alfie exclaimed getting his history a little front to back.
‘I mean the watch, although she soon will be,’ Scarlet said trying not to lose her head and her mind.
‘What would be the point? It’s not finished,’ Billy said asking the question.
‘Maybe he’s going to hang around until it’s finished then steal it?’ Scarlet replied as sparks flew between them, fairy sparks known as static electricity.
‘Why doesn’t he simply come back in 1827 then?’ Billy countered with another question.
‘Maybe he can’t control the time compass on the watch?’ Scarlet replied within a second of Billy asking the question.
‘Maybe?’ Billy said taking a second to think about it.
‘Perhaps we’d better travel back in time then we’ll know for certain how much time we’ve lost or gained as, after all, we can always travel back to the past some other time in the future,’ said Scarlet trying not to tie herself up in elf knots or forget-me-knots.
‘How do we travel back to the exact point in time we want to visit?’ Billy asked sounding like he was about to book a holiday in time.
‘The time compass, the watches must both have a time compass built into them. We just have to figure out how to use them. Either that or get our time warper friend the dragonfly to guide us, but then again I don’t speak dragonfly.’
‘No, but Wilbur does. Wilbur!’ said Alfie suddenly realising once again they had forgotten all about him.
‘Sorry Wilbur, we must find a way for you to communicate with us. Perhaps banging on the top of the snuffbox with some metal object, maybe a brass ladle from the kitchen in the dolls’ house will do the trick,’ said Scarlet once again using her imagination to great effect.
‘Wilbur just jumped up like a jack-in-the-box as if to say yes.’
‘That’s it, Wilbur, you’re a genius. One jump for yes, two for no. Oh and here’s my hairpin. You can use that to tap on the lid of the snuffbox. At least it will do until we can get the ladle from the dolls’ house!’ Scarlet cried as Wilbur jumped up and down twice as if to say ‘good idea’. In truth it wasn’t his idea, he was simply jumping for joy to be released from his dark, dingy, metal prison cell that was the snuffbox.
‘He’s not a magic jumping bean or an acrobat, you know,’ Alfie huffed raising his eyebrows.
‘Well, genius, if you’ve got a better idea please let me know!’ Scarlet scowled.
‘The great inventor is already working on it, just give me a little time and the solution will make it known to my great intellect,’ replied Alfie trying to look intelligent as he raised his finger and the wheels of his mind started to slowly turn.
‘You know, all joking aside when you put your mind to it, Alfie Potts, you’re not as stupid as you make out. If only you spent more time using that brain of yours for good instead of evil mischief, the world would be a better place, my small world most certainly would!’ sighed Scarlet blowing out her cheeks.
It seemed travel really did broaden the mind and stretch the imagination and time travel broadened the mind and stretched the imagination even further… tick tock, tick…
43
Two Merlins for a Princely Sum!
‘Look, the thief!’ Billy shouted pointing at a man coming down the street in their direction.
‘You see, I knew he was here somewhere. He mustn’t see me, he’s already seen me before. Mind you, it was over a hundred years ago. Time certainly does fly,’ mumbled Scarlet as she hurriedly crossed to the other side of the street. Of course the truth was he had seen her a few weeks ago but in another time, and if the thief had seen Scarlet he may have thought it a mite curious. ‘Fancy bumping into you!’ the thief exclaimed looking at Scarlet, or so she imagined. ‘It’s a small world,’ Scarlet imagined her witty reply would be. ‘The size of the world, like time, is an illusion, or so it appears!’ would be the thief’s comeback as he raised an eyebrow or two.
‘Where’s he heading?’ Billy asked staring at the thief from the other side of the street.
‘I’ll give you three guesses but I think you’ll only need one,’ Scarlet said covering her face with her hand just in case the thief felt compelled to turn around. After all, it wasn’t just women who had a sixth sense, thieves had a sixth and a seventh sense when it came to being rumbled.
‘Merlin’s house, John Joseph Merlin that is, as I don’t know where Merlin the Magician lives,’ Billy smiled.
‘I do, Merlin lives in Hampton Court along with Henry VIII and Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen of Albion,’ Alfie beamed once again proving he did go to school occasionally!
‘Two Merlins for a princely sum, a price I’m afraid we cannot afford,’ Billy said in jest wishing he could hold court like either of the two great Merlins, both magicians in their own field.
‘We’d better follow him, but let him get a little way ahead, we don’t want him to suspect anything out of the ordinary and after all we’re pretty sure where he’s heading.’
‘No, of course we don’t want him to suspect anything out of the ordinary like he’s being followed through time!’ Alfie muttered shaking his head in a disbelieving manner.
‘Look, a street magician, he looks familiar somehow,’ Billy grunted pointing at a man who had gathered quite a crowd. Even two policemen had stopped to watch the show. Normally the police would have told the man to move on, as he was creating a disturbance.
‘You there, can I borrow your watch? I can assure you I will return it to you in perfect condition,’ the street magician shouted looking at Billy as he passed by.
‘Sorry, I haven’t got the time,’ Billy replied trying to move on quickly. However, the street magician did not stop there.
‘Officers, stop that man, he’s a time waster and should be locked up in the Tower of London!’
The officers duly did what they were told. It was as if the street magician had hypnotised them and he appeared to have the crowd spellbound as well. Alfie and Scarlet looked on in horror as the real thief got away!
‘Just a little bit of fun, sir. Today these officers are assisting me in my act. Now the watch, and don’t worry I’m not a thief,’ the magician smiled holding out his hand. Billy duly slipped his hand into his pocket and gave the magician his fob watch, as he too appeared spellbound by the magician.
‘Let’s make sure it’s working,’ said the magician looking at the watch intently then showing the crowd it was working which they all agreed it was. The street magician then held the watch by its chain and swung it in front of his own face, as if he were trying to hypnotise himself. ‘Right, you’ll see I place the watch in this small sack then I tie the bag up tightly with string. Please make sure the bag is tightly tied, sir, and pass it around the audience just to show you’re not working for me, good, good. Now I will take this hammer,’ the mag
ician paused before banging the hammer on the lamppost to show it was real and not made of rubber, ‘now I will break this watch into a hundred pieces, not much of a trick but that’s only half the trick,’ and with that the magician struck the bag with the watch inside it, which was lying on a card table, several times to theatrical cries of ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’, and then untied the bag and tipped the contents out onto the table. ‘As you can see, time is broken, so we had better repair it otherwise Old Father Time will have something to say about it.’
By now even the traffic upon the street had stopped to see what all the fuss was about and the crowd had grown thricefold.
‘Right, I’ll just collect all the pieces of this man’s expensive timepiece together and put them back into the bag and tie it up like that. Please, sir, if you will be so kind as to shake the bag,’ said the magician as he passed the bag to one of the spectators, a tall thin man with a wax moustache. The man shook the bag which made a tinkling sound. He also felt the bag with his hand and then passed it to another member of the captive audience who did likewise. The man now in possession of the bag then passed it back to the magician.
‘Right, now I’ll wave my hand over the bag and as they say in magic circles, abracadabra and hey presto, that should cover it.’ And with that the magician untied the bag, shook it and Billy’s fob watch fell out onto the table intact.
‘There we go, sir, as good as new,’ the magician said handing Billy his watch back as the crowd burst into spontaneous applause. This in truth was better than bursting into spontaneous human combustion, a cruel trick!
‘Thank, thank you,’ Billy said snatching the watch and making his way out of the crowd. He didn’t know why he was thanking the magician. Anyone would have thought the watch was broken and the magician had magically repaired it simply by the power of the mind.
The Clock People Page 26