Thief of Time

“It's as though he's being told something that had momentarily slipped his memory,” said Rinpo. “And then he gets bored and angry. He's not all there, in my opinion.”

Lu-Tze scratched in his stained beard. “Mystery boy,” he said thoughtfully. “Naturally talented.”

“And we ask ourselves wanna potty wanna potty poo why now, why at this time?” said the abbot, chewing the foot of a toy yak.

“Ah, but is it not said, ‘There is a Time and a Place for Everything’?” said Lu-Tze. “Anyway, reverend sirs, you have taught pupils for hundreds of years. I am but a sweeper.” Absentmindedly, he stuck out his hand just as the yak left the fumbling fingers of the abbot, and caught it in mid-air.

“Lu-Tze,” said the Master of Novices, “to be brief, we were unable to teach you. Remember?”

“But then I found my Way,” said Lu-Tze.

“Will you teach him?” said the abbot. “The boy needs to mmm brmmm find himself.”

“Is it not written, ‘I have only one pair of hands’?” said Lu-Tze.

Rinpo looked at the Master of Novices. “I don't know,” he said. “None of us ever sees this stuff you quote.”

Still looking thoughtful, as if his mind were busy elsewhere, Lu-Tze said, “It could only be here and now. For it is written: ‘It never rains but it pours.’”

Rinpo looked puzzled, and then enlightenment dawned. “A jug,” he said, looking pleased. “A jug never rains, but it pours!”

Lu-Tze shook his head sadly. “And the sound of one hand clapping is a ‘cl’,” he said. “Very well, Your Reverence. I will help him to find a Way. Will there be anything else, reverend sirs?”

Tick

Lobsang stood up when Lu-Tze returned to the anteroom, but he did it hesitantly, embarrassed at appearing to show respect.

“Okay, here are the rules,” said Lu-Tze, walking straight past. “Word one is, you don't call me ‘master’ and I don't name you after some damn insect. It's not my job to discipline you, it's yours. For it is written, ‘I can't be having with that kind of thing.’ Do what I tell you and we'll get along fine. All right?”

“What? You want me as an apprentice?” said Lobsang, running to keep up.

“No, I don't want you as an apprentice, not at my age, but you're going to be so we'd both better make the best of it, okay?”

“And you will teach me everything?”

“I don't know about ‘everything’. I mean, I don't know much forensic mineralogy. But I will teach you all that I know that is useful for you to know, yes.”

“When?”

“It's getting late—”

“At dawn tomorrow?”

“Oh, before dawn. I'll wake you.”

Tick

Some distance away from Madam Frout's Academy, in Esoteric Street, were a number of gentlemen's clubs. It would be far too cynical to say that here the term “gentleman” was simply defined as “someone who can afford five hundred dollars a year”; they also had to be approved of by a great many other gentlemen who could afford the same fee.

And they didn't much like the company of ladies. This was not to say that they were that kind of gentlemen, who had their own, rather better-decorated clubs in another part of town, where there was generally a lot more going on. These gentlemen were gentlemen of a class who were, on the whole, bullied by ladies from an early age. Their lives were steered by nurses, governesses, matrons, mothers and wives, and after four or five decades of that the average mild-mannered gentleman gave up and escaped as politely as possible to one of these clubs, where he could snooze the afternoon away in a leather armchair with the top button of his trousers undone.7

The most select of these clubs was Fidgett's, and it operated like this: Susan didn't need to make herself invisible, because she knew that the members of Fidgett's would simply not see her, or believe that she really existed even if they did. Women weren't allowed in the club at all except under Rule 34b, which grudgingly allowed for female members of the family or respectable married ladies over thirty to be entertained to tea in the Green Drawing Room between 3.15 and 4.30p.m., provided at least one member of staff was present at all times. This had been the case for so long that many members now interpreted it as being the only seventy-five minutes in the day when women were actually allowed to exist and, therefore, any women seen in the club at any other time were a figment of their imagination.

In the case of Susan, in her rather strict black schoolteaching outfit and button boots that somehow appeared to have higher heels when she was being Death's granddaughter, this might well have been true.

The boots echoed on the marble floor as she made her way to the library.

It was a mystery to her why Death had started using the place. Of course, he did have many of the qualities of a gentleman: he had a place in the country—a far, dark country—was unfailingly punctual, was courteous to all those he met—and sooner or later he met everyone –was well if soberly dressed, at home in any company and, proverbially, a good horseman.