Slammerkin [antikvár]

Prologue There once was a cobbler called Saunders who died for eleven days. At least, that was how his daughter remembered it. In the year 1752 it was announced that the second of September would be followed by the fourteenth. The matter was merely one of wording, of course; time in its substance was not to undergo any change. Since this calendrical reform would bring the kingdom of Great Britain in line with its neighbours at last, what price a brief inconvenience, a touch of confusion? London newspapers printed witty verses about the 'Annihilation of Time,' but no one doubted the Government's weighty reasons. Nor did anyone think to explain them to persons of no importance, such as Cob Saunders. He knew this much: injustice had been done. There were eleven days of chiselling shoe leather he'd never be paid for, eleven dinners snatched away before they reached his lips, eleven nights when he was going to be cheated out of the sweet relief of dropping down on his straw mattress. On September the fourteenth—New Style, as they called it—Cob Saunders woke up with a hammering head and knew that eleven days of his life had been lost. Stolen, rather; cut out of his allotted span the way you might nick a wormhole out of an apple. He had no notion how those days had been done away with, or how he might fetch them back; his