“So I was. Until I had a call from Madame Rossini and heard that Gwyneth had already been fetched to go and elapse,” said Mr. George. This was the first time I’d seen him really angry.
“But—Gideon said you’d asked us to—” said Mr. Whitman, clearly confused.
“I hadn’t! Gideon, what’s going on?” All the kindliness had vanished from Mr. George’s little eyes.
Gideon had crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought you might be glad if we relieved you of that task,” he said smoothly.
Mr. George mopped the beads of sweat off with his handkerchief. “How very thoughtful of you,” he said, with a distinct sarcastic undertone. “But there was no need for that. You’d better go straight up to Madame Rossini.”
“I’d be happy to go with Gwyneth,” said Gideon. “After yesterday’s events, it might be better for her not to be on her own.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. George. “There’s no reason to suppose there’s any danger for her, as long as she doesn’t travel too far back.”
“Quite true,” said Mr. Whitman.
“Like for instance to the year 1956?” asked Gideon slowly, looking Mr. George straight in the eyes. “I was leafing through the Annals this morning, and I must say the year 1956 certainly sounds peaceful enough. The reports of the men on guard say no unusual incidents more often than anything else. A report like that is music to our ears, wouldn’t you say?”
By now my heart was in my mouth. The way Gideon was acting, he must have found out what I’d really been doing yesterday. But how on earth could he know? After all, I’d only smelt of cigarette smoke, which might be suspicious but couldn’t possibly have told him what had really happened back in 1956.
Mr. George returned his glance without batting an eyelash. At the most, he looked slightly irritated. “That wasn’t a request, Gideon. Madame Rossini is waiting. Marley, you can go too.”
“Yes, Mr. George, sir,” muttered Mr. Marley. He almost saluted.
When the door had latched shut behind Marley, Mr. George, eyes flashing, looked at Gideon. Mr. Whitman, too, was looking at him in surprise.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Mr. George coolly.
“Why did you let Gwyneth land in the afternoon, in broad daylight? Isn’t that against the rules?” asked Gideon.
“Uh-oh,” said Xemerius.
“Gideon, it is not your—” Mr. Whitman began.
“It makes no difference what time of day or night she landed,” Mr. George interrupted him. “She traveled to a locked room in the cellars.”
“I was scared,” I said quickly, and perhaps my voice was a little too shrill. “I didn’t want to be alone in that cellar in the middle of the night, right beside the catacombs—”
Gideon turned his gaze briefly to me, raising one eyebrow again. “Ah, yes, you’re such a timid, shrinking little thing. I’d quite forgotten.” He laughed softly. “Nineteen fifty-six—that was the year when you became a member of the Lodge, wasn’t it, Mr. George? What a strange coincidence.”
Mr. George frowned.
“I don’t see what you’re getting at, Gideon,” said Mr. Whitman. “But I would suggest you go up to Madame Rossini now. Mr. George and I will look after Gwyneth.”
Gideon looked at me again. “Let me make the following suggestion: I get the fitting over with, and then you can simply send me on to join Gwyneth, never mind where or when. Then even if it’s night, she won’t have to be scared of anything.”
“Except you,” said Xemerius.
“You’ve already fulfilled your quota for today,” pointed out Mr. Whitman. “However, if Gwyneth is afraid…” He looked at me sympathetically.
I couldn’t bear him a grudge for that. I supposed that I really did look kind of terrified. My heart was still in my mouth, and I was totally unable to say anything.
“Well, I don’t mind if we do it that way,” said Mr. Whitman, shrugging. “Any objections, Thomas?”
Mr. George slowly shook his head, although he looked as if he wanted to do the opposite.
A smile of satisfaction spread over Gideon’s face, and he finally moved from his rigid position beside the door. “See you later, then,” he told me triumphantly. It sounded like a threat.
When the door closed behind him, Mr. Whitman sighed. “He’s been acting very strangely since he got that knock on the head, don’t you think, Thomas?”
“Definitely very strangely,” said Mr. George.
“Maybe we should talk to him, mention the tone to be taken with senior members of the Lodge,” said Mr. Whitman. “For his age, he is extremely … ah, well. He’s under great pressure. We have to take that into consideration.” He looked at me encouragingly. “Well, are you ready, Gwyneth?”
I stood up. “Yes,” I said. I was lying through my teeth.
The raven red, on ruby pinions winging
its way between the worlds, hears dead men singing.
It scarce knows its strength, the price it scarce knows,
but its power will arise and the Circle will close.
The lion—as proud as the diamond bright,
Though the spell may be clouding that radiant light—
In the death of the sun what’s amiss will then mend,
While the raven, in dying, discloses the end.
FROM THE SECRET WRITINGS OF COUNT SAINT-GERMAIN
NINE
I HADN’T ASKED what year they’d sent me to, because it made no difference anyway. In fact, the place looked the same as on my last visit. The green sofa still stood in the middle of the room, and I cast it an angry glance, as if everything was all that sofa’s fault. Chairs were stacked up against the wall where Lucas had made his hiding place for the key, the same as last time, and I struggled with myself. Should I clear out the hiding place? If Gideon suspected its existence—and he definitely did—then searching the room was the first thing he’d think of, right? I could put the contents of the hidey-hole behind the loose brick out in the corridors somewhere, and come back into the room before Gideon arrived.
I began frantically pushing the chairs aside, but then I changed my mind. First, I couldn’t hide the key outside the room, because I’d have to lock the door again, and second, even if Gideon did find the hiding place, how was he going to prove that it was meant for me? I’d simply make myself look silly.
Carefully, I put the chairs back where they had been before, wiping away any telltale traces I’d left in the dust. Then I made sure the door really was locked and sat down on the green sofa.
I was feeling rather like I did four years ago over that frog incident, when Lesley and I had to wait in Mr. Gilles the principal’s room until he had time to tell us off. We hadn’t really done anything wrong. It was Cynthia who had run over the frog on her bike. She didn’t seem to have any guilty conscience about it—“It was only a silly old frog”—so Lesley and I got angry and decided to avenge the frog. We were going to bury it in the park, but first, since it was dead already, we thought it might shake Cynthia up and make her a little more sensitive to frogs in future if she saw it again in her soup. No one could have guessed that the sight would send her into a fit of hysterical screaming.… Mr. Gilles, anyway, had treated us like a couple of serious offenders, and unfortunately he had never forgotten the incident. If he met us somewhere in the corridors, even today, he always said, “Aha, the evil-minded frog girls,” and then we felt terrible all over again.
I closed my eyes for a moment. There was no reason for Gideon to treat me like that. I hadn’t done anything bad. They all kept saying I wasn’t to be trusted, they blindfolded me, no one would answer my questions—so it was only natural for me to try finding out what was really going on here for myself, wasn’t it?
Where was Gideon, anyway? The electric bulb hanging from the ceiling was fizzing; the light flickered for a moment. It was very cold down here. Maybe they’d sent me to one of those cold postwar winters that Aunt Maddy was always talking about. Great. Winters when the water p
ipes froze and dead animals lay about the streets frozen stiff. I tested my breath to see if it would form little white clouds in the air in front of me. But it didn’t.
The light flickered again. I was getting scared. Suppose I suddenly found myself sitting here in the dark? This time no one had thought of giving me a flashlight—in fact you couldn’t say I’d been treated with any consideration at all. I felt sure the rats would come out of their holes in the dark. Maybe they were hungry … and where there were rats, cockroaches wouldn’t be far behind. Then there was the ghost of the one-armed Knight Templar, the one Xemerius had mentioned. He might feel like taking a little trip down here.
Fzzzzz.
That was the lightbulb.
I was gradually coming to the conclusion that Gideon’s presence would at least be better than rats and ghosts. But he didn’t arrive. Instead the lightbulb flickered in its death throes.
When I was scared in the dark as a child, I always used to sing, and I automatically did that now. First very quietly, then louder and louder. After all, there was no one here to listen in on me.
Singing helped. I didn’t feel so scared, or so cold. After the first few minutes the lightbulb even stopped flickering. It started again when I began on Adele songs, and it didn’t seem to like Katy Perry, either. However, when I tried old Abba songs, it rewarded me with a steady, regular beam of light. A pity I couldn’t remember more of them, particularly the words. But the lightbulb was ready to accept lalala, one chance in a lifetime, lalalala.
I sang for hours, or that’s what it felt like. After “The Winner Takes It All,” Lesley’s ultimate unrequited-love song, I started again with “I Wonder.” I danced around the room at the same time so as not to get too cold. After the third encore of “Mamma Mia,” I felt sure that Gideon wasn’t going to turn up.
Damn. I could have stolen out of the cellar and gone upstairs after all. I tried “Head over Heels,” and when I got to “Wasting My Time,” he was suddenly standing there beside the sofa.
I closed my mouth and looked at him accusingly. “Why are you so late?”
“I imagine it seemed a long time to you.” His glance was still as cold and peculiar as a little while ago. He went over to the door and rattled the handle. “At least you had enough sense not to leave this room. You couldn’t know when I might come after you.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Is that meant to be a joke?”
Gideon leaned back against the door. “Gwyneth, you needn’t bother to act all innocent with me.”
I could hardly bear that chilly expression. The green eyes that I usually liked so much had gone the color of pea soup—the nasty sort we had in the school dining room, of course.
“Why are you being so … so horrible to me?” I asked. The lightbulb flickered again. It was probably missing my Abba songs. “You don’t by any chance have a lightbulb with you, I suppose?”
“It was the cigarette smoke that gave you away.” Gideon was playing with the flashlight he held in one hand. “So then I did a little research, and I put two and two together.”
I swallowed. “What’s so terrible about smoking a cigarette?”
“You didn’t. And you can’t tell lies half as well as you think. Where’s the key?”
“What key?”
“The key that Mr. George gave you so that you could visit him and your grandfather in 1956.” He took a step toward me. “If you’re clever, you’ve hidden it somewhere in here, if not, then it’s still on you.” He went right up to the sofa, picked up the cushions, and threw them on the floor one by one. “Well, it’s not here, anyway.”
I stared at him, horrified. “Mr. George didn’t give me any key! Really he didn’t. And as for the cigarette smoke, that’s totally—”
“It wasn’t just cigarette smoke. You’d been somewhere near a cigar as well,” he said calmly. He looked around the room, and his eyes lingered on the chairs stacked in front of the wall.
I was beginning to feel very cold again, and even the lightbulb seemed to be trembling worse than ever in sympathy. “I…,” I began uncertainly.
“Yes?” Now Gideon sounded positively friendly. “You smoked a cigar as well, did you? In addition to the three Marlboros? Is that what you were going to tell me?”
I said nothing.
Gideon bent down to shine the flashlight under the sofa. “Did Mr. George write the password on a piece of paper for you, or did you learn it by heart? And how did you get past the Cerberus Watch on the way back? They never mentioned it in the records.”
“What on earth do you think you’re talking about?” I said. I meant to sound outraged, but I’m afraid it came over more intimidated.
“Violet Purpleplum—what a very remarkable name, don’t you agree? Ever heard it before?” Gideon had straightened up again and was looking at me. No, greengage jelly wasn’t the right comparison for his eyes. They were a positively toxic green.
Slowly, I shook my head.
“That’s funny,” he commented. “And she’s a friend of your family, too. When I happened to mention the name to Charlotte, by chance, she told me kind Mrs. Purpleplum always knitted scratchy scarves for you all.”
Oh, damn Charlotte! Couldn’t she ever keep her mouth shut? “No, that’s wrong,” I said all the same. “She knits the scratchy ones specially for Charlotte. The rest of us get nice soft scarves.”
Gideon leaned against the sofa and crossed his arms. He shone the beam of the flashlight at the ceiling, where the bulb was still flickering nervously. “For the last time, where’s the key, Gwyneth?”
“Mr. George didn’t give me any key. I swear it,” I said, with a desperate attempt at damage limitation. “He doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Oh, no? I told you before, I don’t think you’re a good liar.” He shone the flashlight over the chairs. “If I were you I’d have tucked the key away behind a cushion somewhere.”
Okay, so let him search the cushions. At least that would give him something to do until we traveled back. It couldn’t be much longer now.
“On the other hand”—Gideon swung the beam around to shine it right on my face—“On the other hand, that might be a labor of Sisyphus.”
I stepped aside and said, angrily, “Stop it!”
“And we shouldn’t always draw conclusions from what we’d do ourselves,” Gideon went on. His eyes looked darker and darker in the flickering light, and suddenly I felt afraid of him. “Maybe you simply put the key in your jeans pocket. Give it here.” He put out his hand.
“I don’t have a key, damn it!”
Gideon came slowly toward me. “Again, if I were you, I’d hand it over of my own accord. But like I said, we shouldn’t draw conclusions about other people from ourselves.”
At that moment the lightbulb finally fizzled out and expired.
Gideon was right in front of me, the beam of the flashlight shining somewhere on the wall. Apart from that beam, which acted as a spotlight, it was pitch-dark. “Well?”
“Don’t you dare come any closer.” I took a couple of steps back, until I came up against the wall. The day before yesterday he couldn’t have been too close for my liking. But now I felt as if I were confronting a stranger. Suddenly I lost my temper. “What’s the matter with you?” I spat. “I haven’t done anything to you! I don’t see how you can kiss me one day and then hate me the next. Why?” My tears were coming so fast that I couldn’t keep them from streaming down my cheeks. A good thing he couldn’t see that in the dark.
“Maybe because I don’t like being told lies.” In spite of my warning, Gideon was advancing on me, and this time, I couldn’t retreat any further. “Particularly by girls who throw themselves at me one day and get me knocked over the head the next.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I saw you, Gwyneth.”
“What? Saw me where?”
“When I traveled back in time yesterday morning. I had a small errand to run, but I’d gone only a cou
ple of yards when you were suddenly standing there in front of me—like a mirage. You looked at me and smiled as if you were pleased to see me. Then you turned and disappeared around the next corner.”
“When is this supposed to have been?” I was so confused that I stopped crying for a few seconds.
Gideon ignored my question. “When I went around the same corner a moment later, I was hit over the head, so I’m afraid I was in no position to have a conversation with you to clear things up.”
“You think … you think I knocked you out?” The tears were flowing again.
“No,” said Gideon. “I don’t think that. You weren’t holding anything when I saw you, and I doubt whether you could have hit so hard. No, you just lured me around the corner because someone was waiting for me there.”
Impossible. Totally, absolutely impossible.
“I’d never do a thing like that,” I finally managed to say reasonably clearly. “Never!”
“Yes, I was a little shocked myself,” said Gideon in an offhand tone. “When I was thinking we were … friends. But when you came back from elapsing yesterday evening smelling of cigarette smoke, it occurred to me that you might have been lying to me all along. Now, give me that key!”
I wiped the tears off my cheeks. Unfortunately more kept coming. I only just managed to suppress a sob, hating myself even more for crying. “If that’s true, then why did you tell everyone you hadn’t seen who hit you?”
“Because it’s true. I didn’t see who it was.”
“But you didn’t say anything about me, either. Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want Mr. George to … you’re not crying, are you?” The beam of the flashlight shone on my face again, dazzling me so that I had to close my eyes. I probably looked like a chipmunk, all stripy. Why had I bothered to put on mascara?
“Gwyneth.” Gideon switched off the flashlight.
Now what? A body search in the dark?
“Go away,” I said, sobbing. “I do not have any key on me, I swear I don’t. And whoever you saw, it can’t have been me. I would never, never let anyone hurt you.”