I looked at him in surprise. Normally I had to go the whole way with a black scarf tied around my eyes, because the Guardians didn’t want me to be able to find my own way to the place where they kept the chronograph that made controlled time travel possible. For some reason, they thought that if I knew the way, I’d steal it, which of course was utter nonsense. I didn’t just think the thing uncanny—I mean, it was fueled by blood! I ask you!—I hadn’t the faintest idea how you set the countless little cogwheels, levers, and flaps to get it to work. But all the Guardians were absolutely paranoid about the possibility of theft.
That was probably because there had once been two chronographs. And almost seventeen years ago, my cousin Lucy and her boyfriend, Paul, Numbers Nine and Ten in the Circle of Twelve, the time travelers, had gone off with one of them. So far I hadn’t found out just why they stole it. But I was groping around blindly in the dark about this whole business, anyway.
“Oh, and by the way, Madame Rossini asked me to tell you that she’s decided on a different color for your ball dress. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten what color, but I’m sure you’ll look bewitching in it.” Mr. George chuckled. “Even if Giordano has been telling me, yet again, about all the many terrible faux pas you’re bound to make in the eighteenth century.”
My heart jumped. I’d have to go to that ball with Gideon, and I couldn’t imagine being in any fit state to dance a minuet with him tomorrow without really breaking something. His foot, for instance.
“Why the hurry?” I asked. “I mean, from our point of view, why does the ball absolutely have to be tomorrow evening? Why can’t we simply wait a few weeks? After all, surely the ball is held on that one day in 1782 anyway, whatever the date here when we go to it?” Quite apart from Gideon, this was a question that had been on my mind for some time.
“Count Saint-Germain has worked out precisely how much time in the present should be allowed to pass between your visits to him,” said Mr. George, letting me go down the spiral staircase first.
The farther and deeper down we went through the labyrinth of cellars, the stronger the musty smell. Down here there were no pictures on the walls, and although movement detectors saw to it that a bright light came on wherever we went, the corridors branching off to our left and right were lost in eerie darkness after a few yards. Apparently people had been lost down here several times. Some hadn’t come up until several days later, in parts of the city far away from the Temple. But that was just hearsay.
“But why did the count say it had to be tomorrow? And why do the Guardians follow his instructions so slavishly?”
Mr. George didn’t answer that. He only sighed heavily.
“I was only thinking that if we gave ourselves a couple of weeks’ more time, well, the count wouldn’t even notice, would he?” I said. “He’s sitting there in 1782, and time isn’t going any more slowly for him. But then I could learn all that minuet stuff at my leisure, and I might even know who was besieging whom in Gibraltar and why.” I preferred to leave Gideon out of it. “Then no one would have to go on and on at me, and be afraid of all the dreadful mistakes I’d make at the ball, just in case the way I behave shows that I come from the future. So why does the count say it absolutely has to be tomorrow, in our time, when I go to the ball?”
“Yes, why?” murmured Mr. George. “It’s almost as if he were afraid of you. And of what you might find out if you had more time.”
It wasn’t far now to the old alchemical laboratory. Unless I was mistaken, it must be just around the next corner. So I slowed down. “Afraid of me? He throttled me without even touching me, and since he can read thoughts, he knows perfectly well that I am terrified of him, not the other way around.”
“He throttled you? Without touching you?” Mr. George had stopped and was staring at me. He looked shocked. “Dear heavens. Gwyneth, why didn’t you tell us about this before?”
“Would you have believed me?”
Mr. George passed the back of his hand over his bald patch and was just opening his mouth to say something when we heard footsteps coming and a heavy door slammed shut. Mr. George looked alarmed—more alarmed than I’d have expected—led me around the corner in the direction from which the sound of the door had come, and took a black scarf out of his jacket pocket.
It was Falk de Villiers. Gideon’s uncle and Grand Master of the Lodge, walking energetically along the corridor. But he smiled when he saw us.
“Ah, there you are. Poor Marley has just been ringing up to the house to ask what had become of you, so I thought I’d take a look.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes, as if Mr. George had only just taken the blindfold off, but that was obviously an unnecessary bit of playacting, because Falk de Villiers didn’t even notice. He opened the door to the chronograph room, once the old alchemical laboratory.
Falk was maybe a year or so older than my mum and very good-looking, like all the members of the de Villiers family I’d met so far. I always thought of him as the lead wolf of the pack. His thick hair had gone gray early and made an intriguing contrast with his amber eyes.
“There, you see, Marley? No one’s gone missing,” he said in a jovial tone to Mr. Marley, who had been sitting on a chair in the chronograph room and now jumped up, nervously kneading his fingers.
“I only … I thought that, to be on the safe side…” He stammered. “I do apologize, sir.…”
“No, no, we’re glad to know that you take your duties so seriously,” said Mr. George, and Falk asked, “Where’s Mr. Whitman? He and I had a date to see Dean Smythe over a cup of tea, and I was going to collect him.”
“He’s just left,” said Mr. Marley. “They said they really did have to meet him.”
“Right, then I’ll be off. I may catch up with him on the way. Coming, Thomas?”
After a brief sidelong glance at me, Mr. George shook his head.
“And we’ll see each other again tomorrow, Gwyneth. When you’re off to the great ball.” But halfway out the door, Falk turned again and said, as if casually, “Oh, and give your mother my regards, Gwyneth. Is she all right?”
“My mum? Yes, she’s fine.”
“Glad to hear it.” I must have been looking rather bewildered, because he cleared his throat and added, “Mothers who are on their own and working full-time don’t always have an easy life these days, so I’m pleased for her.”
Now I was intentionally looking bewildered.
“Or—or maybe she isn’t on her own? An attractive woman like Grace is bound to meet a lot of men, so perhaps there’s someone in particular.…”
Falk was looking at me expectantly, but when I frowned, puzzled, he looked at his watch and cried, “Oh, so late already. I really must be on my way.”
“Was that a question he asked?” I said when Falk had closed the door behind him.
“Yes,” said Mr. George and Mr. Marley at the same time, and Mr. Marley went scarlet. “Er,” he added, “at least, it sounded to me as if he wanted to know whether your mother has a steady boyfriend,” he muttered.
Mr. George laughed. “Falk’s right, it really is late. If Gwyneth is to get any homework done this evening, we have to send her back into the past now. What year shall we pick, Gwyneth?”
As I’d agreed with Lesley, I said as indifferently as possible, “I don’t mind. It was 1956 the other day—am I right, was it 1956? There were no rats in the cellar then. It was even quite comfortable.” Of course I didn’t breathe a word about meeting my grandfather in secret in the comfort of the rat-free cellar. “I managed to learn my French vocabulary there without trembling with fright the whole time.”
“No problem,” said Mr. George. He opened a thick journal, while Mr. Marley pushed aside the wall hanging that hid the safe containing the chronograph.
I tried to peer over Mr. George’s shoulder as he leafed through the journal, but his broad back got in the way.
“Let’s see. That was 24 July 1956,” said Mr. George. “You spent all afternoon there and came back at six thirty in the evening.”
“Six thirty would be a good time,” I said, crossing my fingers that our plan would work out. If I could go back to the exact time when I had left the room on that visit, my grandfather would still be down there, and I wouldn’t have to waste any time looking for him.
“I think we’d better make it six thirty-one,” said Mr. George. “We don’t want you colliding with yourself.”
Mr. Marley, who had put the chest containing the chronograph on the table and was now taking the device, which was about the size of a mantelpiece clock, out of its velvet wrappings, murmured, “But strictly speaking, it’s not night there yet. Mr. Whitman said—”
“Yes, we know that Mr. Whitman is a stickler for the rules,” said Mr. George, as he fiddled with the little cogwheels. In between delicate colored drawings of patterns, planets, animals, and plants, there were gemstones set into the surface of the strange machine, so big and bright that you felt they must be imitations—like the interlinking beads that my little sister liked to play with. All the time travelers in the Circle of Twelve had different jewels allotted to them. Mine was the ruby, and the diamond, so big that it was probably worth the price of a whole apartment block in the West End of London, “belonged” to Gideon. “However, I think we are gentlemen enough not to leave a young lady sitting on her own in a vaulted cellar at night, don’t you agree, Leo?”
Mr. Marley nodded uncertainly.
“Leo?” I said. “That’s a nice name.”
“Short for Leopold,” said Mr. Marley, his ears shining like the rear lights of a car. He sat down at the table, put the journal in front of him, and took the top off a fountain pen. The small, neat handwriting in which a long series of dates, times, and names had been recorded there was obviously his. “My mother thinks it’s a terrible name, but it’s traditional to call every eldest son in our family Leopold.”
“Leo is a direct descendant of Baron Miroslav Alexander Leopold Rakoczy,” explained Mr. George, turning around for a moment and looking me in the eye. “You know—Count Saint-Germain’s legendary traveling companion, known in the Annals as the Black Leopard.”
I was baffled. “Oh, really?”
In my mind, I was comparing Mr. Marley with the thin, pale figure of Rakoczy, whose black eyes had terrified me so badly. But I didn’t really know whether I ought to tell him he was lucky not to look like his shady ancestor, or whether maybe it was even worse to be red-haired, freckled, and moonfaced.
“You see, my paternal grandfather—” Mr. Marley was beginning, but Mr. George quickly interrupted him. “I am sure your grandfather would be very proud of you,” he said firmly. “Particularly if he knew how well you have passed your exams.”