The Gentleman Thief

by Kate Gragg

  “Titus Saunders, I summon you! Make your power one with mine! I’ve earned it! I’ve made my sacrifices! I’ve watered the island with blood, just as you did!” Clifton bellowed, his voice louder than it should be, booming through the hall, smothering the terrified screams of the crowd.

  “Yes, Titus, return to this realm and fill this useless vessel,” shouted Saunders.

  “What?” said Clifton.

  The truth fizzed and bubbled through my brain like a stiff drink. It had been bothering me since I first fell into this intrigue. Why would anybody go out of their way to give Clifton Crome anything more than a sharp kick in the pants? I couldn’t think of a single person on the island who could stand him, and certainly nobody who’d want to be ruled by him.

  I lunged at Clifton, digging my fingers under the rim of his helmet and trying to prise it off his melon of a head.

  “Careful!” Saunders called out. “He must be whole!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Clifton, the alarm rising in his voice.

  “Don’t you get it, Cliffy?” I said, giving him a few more whacks on the back of the head, “how did you think reincarnation worked? Did you think you and Titus would just be roommates in that pretty little head of yours?

  Clifton shifted his weight in an instant, catching me off-guard, and suddenly his knees were on my chest, pinning me to the ground. He clutched my throat, the gauntlets ice-cold and impossibly strong, and glared at Saunders.

  “Is this true?”

  “Everyone has a purpose in life,” Saunders shrugged. “This is yours.”

  Clifton held up the hand he didn’t have wrapped around my windpipe and looked at it in disbelief.

  “I don’t think it’s working,” Lydia said.

  “That’s right, perhaps it was a mistake to use a commoner,” said Saunders.

  “No!” Clifton said, releasing his grip on my neck and punching my chest, which I guess was an improvement. “The power is mine; I can feel it. I just need to do... something. Something’s missing. I don’t understand it. My armor is complete, every piece...”

  “It’s Titus’ armor,” Saunders corrected. “And I think you’ve been squatting in it quite long enough.”

  He drew a slim dagger and rested it under Clifton’s rapidly blinking eye. I sacrificed what little airflow I had to clamp my mouth shut, just in case Clifton started bleeding all over me.

  “Time to stop stalling, squire. Complete the ritual,” Saunders said.

  “I don’t know how,” Clifton stammered. “I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “You’re wrong!” a voice cried out from behind the stage. I used all my strength to roll Clifton off of me and looked up to see who was speaking.

  “Margaret! What are you doing here?” said Lord Saunders.

  It was the old lady I’d met in the woods. She stormed up to the front of the stage and squared off against her husband.

  “Have you forgotten our Titus entirely?” she said.

  “Forgotten? We’re a hair’s breadth from getting him back.”

  “Some misremembered shade, perhaps,” Lady Saunders said, “but not our Titus. Not mine. It’s all wrong. A thing half done is as good as none. My son used to say that.”

  “Well, Margaret, darling, if you would just tell me what I missed, then–”

  I looked at Clifton, then at the portrait of Titus hanging behind him, and laughed.

  “Not forgotten,” I said, “added.”

  I pointed at Clifton’s gauntlets, then at the portrait of Titus, his hands bare.

  Saunders slapped himself on the forehead.

  “Titus didn’t wear gloves.”

  “He didn’t!” Lady Saunders said. “Said he couldn’t pet his horse properly with them on.”

  “I hardly think a man of his military prowess would care about what an animal liked,” Clifton said.

  “He wasn’t all bad!” Lady Margaret said. “He had good in him. That’s why it hurt me so much to do what I did, but it had to be done.”

  “Margaret!” Saunders said in horror. “My god, what did you do?”

  Clifton pulled off the gauntlets and threw them to the ground.

  “Well, if those aren’t his, what's missing?”

  “Something you don’t have!” Lady Margaret said. “And from the looks of you, you never will.”

  “Margaret, please, what did you do to our son?”

  “The island told me what he did,” she said. “The island can’t defend itself, not against evil so great. I had to help it stop him. So, I pushed him in.”

  “Into the water?” Saunders gasped.

  “The living water of Teems! The lifeblood of this island and everything on it! It made short work of him, yes, it did. Sundered him into all his parts. Broke him so he couldn’t be made whole again, not by this fool, not by you.”

  “My god, Margaret, he was our son,” Saunders said softly. “I’ve been working all this time to bring him back to you, in whatever way I could…”

  “I said, what is missing?” Clifton said, shaking Lady Margaret by the shoulders.

  I jumped for him and my handkerchief jumped too, but it didn’t attack Clifton. It leapt onto Lady Margaret’s shoulders and caressed her face. She gave Hank a kiss and handed it back to me, then smiled at Clifton.

  “The good part. He isn’t whole without it.”

  I looked at her, wanting to know if she was sure. She nodded at me. I took the handkerchief in my hands.

  “Thanks again, old friend,” I said.

  I wadded up the handkerchief and threw it at Clifton, landing it right in the collar of his oversized chest plate. He didn’t have time to scream.

  All the pieces in place, the armor fused and glowed. It got big, then shrank down. It pulsed with lightning, then shattered, leaving a man in ordinary clothes standing where Clifton had been. He had his father’s drawn, high cheek-boned face, his mother’s piercing black eyes.

  “Titus Saunders,” Althea breathed.

  He bowed to her.

  “I know you never wanted to marry me,” he said, “but I very much wanted to marry you. I’m sorry that I let that get me carried away.”

  “You never wanted to marry him?” the Duke said at last.

  “Dad.” Althea hissed.

  “Then who the hell have you been moping about all year long! Titus was a catch!”

  “Daddy he was a murderer,” Althea said.

  “I was,” Titus admitted. “Sitting in that water gave me plenty of time to think about how wrong I was, how many people I hurt.”

  He turned to his mother and bowed.

  “Thank you for that. And thank you,” he said, turning to me “for showing me how to be a different kind of man.”

  “I’m sorry I blew my nose on you,” I said, shaking his hand. He laughed.

  “I deserved it.”

  He stooped and collected the gauntlets.

  “My mother is right. I never wore these. They must belong to somebody who passed the test.”

  He turned to Lydia. I saw tears well up in her eyes.

  He kneeled before her, holding up the gauntlets. She put them on tentatively.

  “They fit perfectly,” Lydia said.

  “So does the title,” Titus said, standing up and bowing to her. “Sir Lydia.”

  The gauntlets grew up her arms, transforming into a whole suit of armor. We were all so enraptured by the sight that I don’t think anyone saw Titus fade away, except maybe his mother. She looked sad, and a little proud, like my own mother had the day I stole my first basket of eggs so we could have something to eat.

  “This is ridiculous!” The Duke sputtered. “Women can’t be knights! Who wants to marry a lady knight?”

  “No one!” laughed Lydia. She kneeled before her parents, her new armor shining in the candlelight.

  “I’m sorry I’ve always been such a disappointment to you as a society lady,” she said, “but it was never what I was meant to do.”
<
br />   “What are you meant to do?” said Argus, clutching his sobbing wife to his chest.

  Lydia shrugged. It’s a funny thing to see someone in a suit of armor do.

  “Have adventures!”

  “So, there are no real knights this year? Again?” the Duke whined. “How am I ever supposed to have an heir?”

  “Did somebody call for a knight?” Wart cried, galloping through the doors on the back of Gladys.

  The crowd screamed, and somebody hollered louder than the others. It might have been me.

  “You finished the trials,” the Duke said, looking nervously at Althea.

  “Oh daddy, obviously I’m not going to marry a little boy,” Althea said wearily.

  “You’re not?” Wart said, looking a little relieved. “Well then what else is a knight supposed to do?”

  “You can arrest a villain and bring him to justice,” I said, pointing to Lord Saunders. Weirdly, Saunders didn’t look like he appreciated my helpful attitude.

  “Oh yeah!” Wart said, brightening up. “Can somebody find me a rope? I’ve got a really cool knot I want to try.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The party broke up pretty quickly after that, and then it was me and Lydia at the docks, about to part ways again. Only this time we were both getting on ships.

  “Promise me you’ll find something better to do than petty crime,” Lydia said, hugging me.

  “Oh, now that I’m all brave I’m definitely going to attempt much larger crimes,” I promised her.

  She laughed. I would miss that sound.

  We looked at each other, not sure if we should say more.

  “You’ll write?” I said.

  “Since you swear you can read,” she said.

  “Better get a move on, miss,” a dockworker said, tugging on her arm. “Tide’s about to go out.”

  “Barry?” I guessed. He broke out into a wide grin.

  “Couldn’t figure what else I should be doing, so I thought I’d set sail with Sir Lydia here, see a bit of the world, just in case some part of it looks familiar.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said, “and before you go, I want to give you this.”

  I handed him the coin.

  “Aw Joe, I couldn’t take your lucky–”

  He stopped, reading the inscription. The one I had seen and forgotten about, because it meant nothing to me.

  “Quaerite aeternum” he said.

  He ran his fingers over the face engraved on the coin, the young man with a curly hair and the beaky nose. He took the pearl out of his pocket and brought it to his lips, then halted. He looked at me, emotion welling up in his eyes.

  “You never told me what it means,” I said.

  “Seek eternally,” Althea said, walking down the docks. She turned to me.

  “I couldn’t let you leave while you still had my coin. I thought it would come back to me. It always finds me. It’s enchanted to do so. But I must have transferred the magic to you somehow.”

  “Magic acts a little funny around me,” I said sheepishly. She laughed.

  “That’s an understatement. Lydia told me what happened to my dowry.”

  “Do you want it back?” Barry said.

  “Tullio!” Althea cried, throwing her arms around him.

  “My Althea,” he said, smoothing her hair. “I told you I would always find a way back to you.”

  “Why do they call you Barry?” she said, drying her tears.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “One you’ll have a lifetime to tell,” Lydia said, clasping Althea’s hands.

  Both our boats sounded their bells. The tide really was about to go out. I stepped onto the boat and looked back at all of them. It was a strange feeling. People always come and go in life, and goodbyes had never made my heart hurt like this before.

  “Lydia, I–”

  “Aw, what are you doing, you big softie,” Lydia teased. “You know you’ll see me again.”

  “That’s true,” I laughed, “and you two, I’m sure I’ll see you on money, if I ever get my hands on some again.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Barry. “You ever try cooking those dowry potatoes?”

  “What? No.”

  “Might give it a try,” Barry said. “Might be good eating.”

  The boats rang their bells much more insistently then, and we all parted ways. The last glimpse I saw of Lydia was her standing at the bow of her ship, her armor glinting in the sunlight, facing the way ahead.

  Oh, I tried Barry’s suggestion when I got home too. Washed one of those potatoes, boiled it with salt on a bed of banked coals just like my mother used to, borrowed some butter from Fritz to do it up fine, and jabbed my fork right into it.

  Broke the fork. Tried to bite into it, nearly broke a tooth. It wasn’t until I scraped some of the skin off that I saw the problem.

  Damned thing was solid gold.