Why was Gideon acting like this? Nice to me one moment, kind and affectionate, next moment chilly and unapproachable? It was more than anyone could bear. Well, I couldn’t for one. What had happened down here, between him and me, had felt real. And right. And now all he could find to do was expose me to the entire team at the first chance he got? What was his idea?
“Come along,” Mr. George told me again.
“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, Gwyneth,” said Falk de Villiers. “Your big day.”
“Don’t forget to blindfold her,” said Dr. White, and I heard Gideon laugh briefly as if Dr. White had made a bad joke. Then the heavy door closed behind me and Mr. George, and we were out in the corridor.
“You’d think he didn’t like smokers,” I said quietly, though I felt like bursting into floods of tears.
“Let me put the blindfold on, please,” said Mr. George, and I stood still until he had tied the scarf into a knot behind my head. Then he took my school bag from me and carefully helped me forward. “Gwyneth … you really must be more careful.”
“A couple of cigarettes won’t kill me stone dead this minute, Mr. George.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant you should be careful about showing your feelings.”
“What? What feelings?”
I heard Mr. George sighing. “My dear child, even a blind man could see that you … you really should take care where your feelings for Gideon are concerned.”
“But I—” I stopped. Obviously Mr. George saw more than I’d given him credit for.
“Relationships between two time travelers have never turned out well,” he said. “Nor, come to that, have any relationships at all between the de Villiers and Montrose families. In times like these, we have to keep reminding ourselves that, fundamentally, no one is to be trusted.” Maybe I was only imagining it, but I thought his hand on my back was trembling. “Unfortunately it’s an incontrovertible fact that sound common sense flies out of the window as soon as love comes in through the door. And sound common sense is what you need most of all at this point. Careful, there’s a step coming.”
We made our way up from the chronograph room in silence, and then Mr. George took off the blindfold. He looked at me very seriously. “You can do it, Gwyneth. I firmly believe in you and your abilities.”
His round face was covered with little beads of perspiration again. I saw nothing but concern for me in his bright eyes—it was the same with my mother when she looked at me. A huge wave of affection swept over me.
“Here’s your signet ring,” I said. “How old are you, Mr. George? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Seventy-six,” said Mr. George. “It’s no secret.”
I stared at him. Although I’d never thought of it before, I’d have guessed he was a good ten years younger. “Then in 1956 you were…?”
“Twenty-one. That was the year when I began work as a legal clerk in the chambers here and became a member of the Lodge.”
“Do you know Violet Purpleplum, Mr. George? She’s a friend of my great-aunt’s.”
Mr. George raised one eyebrow. “No, I don’t think I do. Come along, I’ll take you to your car. I’m sure your mother will be anxious to see you.”
“Yes, I think so, too. Mr. George…?”
But Mr. George had already turned to move away. I had no option but to follow him. “You’ll be collected from home tomorrow,” he said. “Madame Rossini needs you for a fitting, and after that Giordano will try teaching you a few things. And after that, you’ll have to elapse.”
“Sounds like a wonderful day,” I said wearily.
* * *
“BUT THAT …
that’s not
magic
!” I whispered, shocked.
Lesley sighed. “Not in the sense of hocus-pocus magical rituals, maybe, but it’s a magical ability. The magic of the raven.”
“More of an eccentricity, if you ask me,” I said. “Something that makes people laugh at me—and anyway no one believes I can do it.”
“Gwenny, it’s not eccentric to have extrasensory perception. It’s a gift. You can see ghosts and talk to them.”
“And demons,” Xemerius pointed out.
“In mythology, the raven stands for the link between human beings and the world of the gods. Ravens carry messages between the living and the dead.” Lesley turned her file my way, so that I could read what she had found on the Internet about ravens. “You have to admit your abilities suit that very well.”
“Your hair too,” said Xemerius. “Black as a raven’s wings.”
I was biting my lower lip. “But in the prophesies it sounds so—oh, I don’t know, so important and powerful and all that. As if the magic of the raven was some kind of secret weapon.”
“It could be that as well,” said Lesley. “You have to stop thinking it’s only a kind of strange eccentricity allowing you to see ghosts.”
“And demons,” Xemerius repeated.
“I’d love to know exactly what those prophesies say,” said Lesley. “It would be so interesting to have the full text.”
“Charlotte can certainly rattle them all off by heart,” I said. “I think she learnt them when she was being taught the mysteries. And everyone talks about them in rhyme. The Guardians. Even my mum. And
Gideon
.”
I quickly turned away so that Lesley wouldn’t see my eyes suddenly filling with tears, but it was too late.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t start crying again!” She handed me a tissue. “You’re making too much of it.”
“No, I’m not. Remember how you cried for days on end over Max?” I said, sniffing.
“Of course,” said Lesley. “It was only six months ago.”
“Well, now I can imagine how you felt at the time.
And
I suddenly understand why you wished you were dead.”
“How stupid could I get! You sat with me the whole time telling me Max wasn’t worth another thought, not after the way he’d behaved. And you told me to brush my teeth—”
“Yes, and we were listening to Abba’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’ played in an endless loop.”
“I can play that song for you,” offered Lesley, “if it’d make you feel any better.”
“It wouldn’t. But you can hand me the Japanese vegetable knife. Then I can commit hara-kiri.” I let myself drop on my bed, and closed my eyes.
“Girls always have to be so dramatic!” said Xemerius. “The boy’s in a bad temper, looks grouchy because someone hit him on the head, and you think it’s the end of the world.”
“It’s because he doesn’t
love
me,” I said despairingly.
“You can’t know that,” said Lesley. “With Max, unfortunately, I did know, because half an hour after he dumped me, he was seen snogging in the cinema with that Anna. You can’t accuse Gideon of doing a thing like that. He’s rather … changeable, that’s all.”
“But why? You should have seen the way he looked at me! Kind of
repelled.
As if I was a … a woodlouse! I can’t bear it.”
“A moment ago, you said you were a chair.” Lesley shook her head. “Come on, pull yourself together. Mr. George is right: love comes in at the window and common sense flies out. Listen, we’re on the point of making a tremendous breakthrough!”
Earlier that morning, when she had just arrived and we were sitting comfortably on my bed together, Mr. Bernard had knocked at my bedroom door—something he never usually did—and put a tea tray down on my desk.
“A little refreshment for you young ladies,” he had said.
I’d looked at him in astonishment. I couldn’t remember ever having seen him up on this floor of the house before.
“Since you were asking about it recently, I took the liberty of searching in the library,” Mr. Bernard had gone on, studying us gravely with his owlish eyes above the rim of his glasses. “And as I expected, I found what I wanted.”
“What is it?” I’d asked.
Mr. Bernard had lifted the napkin on the tray to reveal a book lying there. “
The Green Rider,
” he had said. “If I remember correctly, this is what you were looking for.”
Lesley had jumped to her feet and picked up the book. “Oh, but I’ve already looked at this in the public library,” she said. “It’s nothing special.”
Mr. Bernard had smiled indulgently. “The reason you say that, I think, is that the copy you found in the public library was never the property of Lord Montrose. However, this one may interest you.” Then he left the room, with a little bow, and Lesley and I had fallen on the book at once. A piece of paper on which someone had written masses of numbers in tiny handwriting had fluttered to the floor. Lesley’s cheeks had turned red with excitement.
“Oh, my God, it’s a code!” she had exclaimed. “How absolutely
wonderful
! I always wanted to find something like this. Now all we have to do is find out what it means.”
“Right,” said Xemerius, who was dangling from my curtain rail. “I’ve heard that before. I think it fits the category of famous last words.…”
But it hadn’t taken Lesley five minutes to crack the code and work out that the figures related to separate letters in the text. “The first number is always the page, the second is the line, the third is the word, the fourth is the letter, get it? Fourteen, twenty-two, six, three—that’s page fourteen, line twenty-two, word six, and the third letter in that word.” She shook her head. “What a cheap trick! People use this code in every other kids’ book, as far as I remember. Never mind, that means the first letter is an
f
.”
Impressed, Xemerius had nodded. “Listen to your friend.”
“Don’t forget, this is a matter of life and death,” said Lesley. “You think I want to lose my best friend just because she couldn’t think straight after a bit of snogging?”
“My own opinion exactly!” That was Xemerius.
“This is important. You must stop crying and find out what Lucy and Paul discovered instead,” Lesley went on forcefully. “If you get sent to elapse to 1956 again today—and you’ll only have to ask Mr. George to fix that—you must insist on a private talk with your grandfather! What a crackpot idea to go out to a café! And this time you must write down all he tells you, every last little detail, understand?” She sighed. “Are you sure he said
Florentine Alliance
? I couldn’t find anything useful online about that. We just have to get a look at those secret writings left to the Guardians by Count Saint-Germain. If only Xemerius could move objects, he could search the archives—he’d simply have to go through the wall and read everything.”
“That’s right, so I’m useless. Go ahead and rub it in, why don’t you?” said Xemerius, offended. “It’s only taken me seven centuries to get used to not even being able to turn the pages of a book.”
There was a knock at my door, and Caroline looked into the room. “Lunch is ready! Gwenny, you and Charlotte are being collected in an hour’s time.”
I groaned. “Charlotte as well?”
“Yes, that’s what Aunt Glenda said. They’re imposing on poor Charlotte, she said, making her coach people with no talent at all. Or something like that.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“We’ll be right down,” said Lesley, digging me in the ribs. “Come along, Gwenny. You can wallow in self-pity later. Right now you need something to eat!”
I sat up and blew my nose. “My nerves aren’t strong enough to listen to Aunt Glenda’s nasty remarks. And we only just got started on the code!”
“I’ll keep working on it, don’t worry. Meanwhile, you’re going to need strong nerves in the immediate future.” Lesley pulled me to my feet. “Charlotte and your aunt will be good practice for when the going gets tough. If you survive lunch, you can get through that soirée, no problem.”
“And if not, you can always commit hara-kiri,” said Xemerius.
* * *
MADAME ROSSINI
clasped me to her ample bosom when I arrived. “My leetle swan-necked beauty, ’ere you are at last. I ’ave missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” I said, and I meant it. The mere presence of Madame Rossini, with her overflowing kindness and her wonderful French accent (
leetle swan-necked beauty
! If only Gideon could hear that!), was invigorating and reassuring at the same time. She was balm to my wounded self-esteem.
“You will be
enchantée
when you see what I ’ave made for you. Monsieur Giordano, ’e almost wept when ’e saw your clothes, zey are so beautiful.”
“I believe you,” I said. Giordano would have been weeping because he couldn’t wear the clothes himself. Still, he’d been reasonably friendly today, not least because I did rather well with the dancing this time—and thanks to being prompted by Xemerius, I’d been able to say which great lords of the time supported the Tories and which the Whigs. (Xemerius had simply looked over Charlotte’s shoulder from behind and read her list.) Also thanks to Xemerius, I was word-perfect in my own cover story—Penelope Mary Gray, born 1765—including all the first names of my dead parents. I was still not much good with a fan, but Charlotte had made the constructive suggestion that I didn’t need to carry one at all.
At the end of the lesson, Giordano had handed me another list full of words that I mustn’t under any circumstances use. “Learn those by heart for tomorrow,” he had said in his nasal voice. “Remember, there are no buses in the eighteenth century, no news anchormen, no Hoovers, nothing is super, wicked, or cool, they knew nothing about splitting the atom, colllagen skin creams, or holes in the ozone layer.”
Who’d have thought it? I tried to imagine why on earth, when I was at an eighteenth-century soirée, I’d want to come out with a sentence about anchormen, holes in the ozone layer, and collagen skin creams. However, I politely said, “Okay,” which had Giordano screeching, “Nooo! Not okay. There was no
okay
in the eighteenth century, you stupid girl.”
Madame Rossini laced the corset behind my back. Once again I was surprised to find how comfortable it was. You automatically stood up straight wearing something like that. She strapped a padded wire framework around my hips (the eighteenth century must have been a very relaxing time for women with big bums and broad hips), and then put a dark red dress over my head. She did up a long row of little hooks and buttons behind me, while I stroked the heavy, embroidered silk, admiring it. Wow, it was so amazing!