“Thanks!” Gideon made a little bow. “The latest thing from Paris. I ought really to be wearing yellow knee breeches and yellow gloves with this outfit, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Madame Rossini is furious,” said Mr. George.
“Gideon!” said Mr. de Villiers reproachfully. He had just appeared behind Dr. White.
“Well, Uncle Falk, I ask you! Yellow knee breeches?”
“It’s not as if you were going to meet old school friends who might laugh at you there,” said Mr. de Villiers.
“No,” said Gideon, putting my hat down on a table. “More likely I’ll meet guys wearing embroidered pink breeches who think they look terrific,” he said, shaking his head. At first I’d had to let my eyes adjust to the light. Now I looked curiously around. The room had no windows, as I’d expected, and there was no fireplace either. I couldn’t see a time machine anywhere. Only a table and a few chairs, a chest, a cupboard, and some kind of saying in Latin carved into the stone wall.
Mr. de Villiers gave me a friendly smile. “Blue suits you wonderfully, Gwyneth. And Madame Rossini has done something very elegant to your hair.”
“Er … thank you.”
“We’d better hurry up. I’m dying of heat in these clothes.” Gideon undid his coat so that I could see the sword hanging from his belt.
“Come over here.” Dr. White went up to the table and revealed something that had been wrapped in red velvet. At first glance it looked like a large clock, the kind you might stand on a mantelpiece. “I’ve adjusted all the settings. The window of time available to you two is three hours.”
At a second glance, I realized it wasn’t a clock. It was a strange device made of polished wood and metal with any amount of knobs, flaps, and little wheels. All the surfaces were painted with miniature pictures of the sun, moon, and stars, and inscribed with mysterious signs and patterns. It was curved like a violin case and set with sparkling jewels, great big ones that couldn’t possibly be real.
“Is that the chronograph? It’s so small!”
“It weighs nine pounds,” said Dr. White, sounding as proud as a father telling you the weight of his newborn baby. “And before you ask, yes, the stones are all genuine. This ruby alone is six carats.”
“Gideon will go first,” said Mr. de Villiers. “The password?”
“Qua redit nescitis,” said Gideon.
“Gwyneth?”
“Yes?”
“The password!”
“What do you mean, password?”
“Qua redit nescitis,” said Mr. de Villiers. “The password of the Guardians for this twenty-fourth of September.”
“But it’s the sixth of April.”
Gideon turned his eyes to heaven. “We arrive on the twenty-fourth of September inside this house. If we don’t want the Guardians to chop off our heads, we have to know the password. Qua redit nescitis. Go on, repeat it.”
“Qua redit nescitis,” I said. I was never going to be able to remember that for longer than a second. There, now it was gone again. Maybe I could write it on a scrap of paper. “What does it mean?”
“Don’t tell me you’re not learning Latin at school!”
“Well, I’m not,” I said. I was taking French and German at school, which was more than enough.
“In full, Qua redit nescitis horam. “You know not the hour of your return,” said Dr. White.
“Rather a flowery translation!” said Mr. George. “One could also say, ‘You don’t know when—’”
“Gentlemen!” Mr. de Villiers tapped his wristwatch in a meaningful way. “We don’t have forever. Ready, Gideon?”
Gideon held his hand out to Dr. White, who raised one of the flaps and put Gideon’s forefinger in the opening behind it. There was a faint humming sound as if cogwheels had started moving inside the device. It was almost like a tune on a music box. One of the jewels, a huge diamond, suddenly lit up from inside and bathed Gideon’s face in clear white light. At the same moment, he disappeared.
“Wow, out of this world,” I whispered, impressed.
“Literally so,” said Mr. George. “Your turn now. Stand exactly here.”
Dr. White went on. “And remember what we’ve told you: do as Gideon says and, whatever happens, always keep close to him.” He took my hand and placed my forefinger in the opening under the flap. Something sharp pricked my fingertip, and I flinched. “Ow!”
Dr. White held my hand firmly down inside the flap. “Don’t move!”
This time a big red stone on the chronograph began shining. Red light dazzled me. The last thing I saw was my huge hat lying forgotten on the table. Then everything around me went dark.
A hand took hold of my shoulder.
Oh, no. What was that stupid password? Qua thingummy thingsitis. “Is that you, Gideon?” I whispered.
“Who else?” he whispered back, and let go of my shoulder. “Well done, you didn’t fall over!” A match flared, and next moment, the room was lit by a burning torch.
“Cool. Did you bring that with you?”
“No, it was here already. Hold it for a moment.”
When I took the torch, I was glad I wasn’t wearing that ridiculous hat. The huge nodding feathers on it would have caught fire in no time at all, and then I’d have been a pretty, blazing torch myself.
“Hush,” said Gideon, although I hadn’t so much as squeaked. He had unlocked the door. (Had he brought the key with him, or had it already been in the lock? I hadn’t been watching.) Then he peered cautiously out into the corridor. Everything was pitch-dark.
“This place smells kind of like something decaying,” I said.
“Nonsense. Come along!” Gideon closed the door behind us, took the torch from me again, and went down the dark corridor. I followed him.
“Aren’t you going to blindfold me again?” I asked, only half joking.
“It’s dark, you’d never remember the way,” replied Gideon. “One more reason to stick close to me. We have to be back down here in three hours’ time.”
One more reason for me to know my way around. How was I going to manage if anything happened to Gideon, or if we were separated? I didn’t think it was such a great idea not to let me know anything. But I bit back the words on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t want to pick an argument with Mr. High and Mighty just now.
It smelled musty, far worse than in our own time. What year had we traveled back to again?
The smell really was pungent, as if something was decomposing down here. For some reason, I suddenly thought of rats. In films, long, dark, torchlit corridors always had rats in them! Hideous black rats with their beady little eyes glowing in the dark. Or dead rats. Oh, yeah, and spiders. There were always spiders in this kind of place. I tried not to touch the walls and pushed the thought of fat spiders clinging to the hem of my dress and slowly crawling up my bare legs out of my mind.
Instead, I counted the footsteps to every bend in the corridor. After forty-four steps, we turned right, after fifty-five, we turned left, then left again, and we reached a spiral staircase leading up. I held my skirt up as high as I could so as to keep up with Gideon. There was a light somewhere up there, getting brighter as we climbed, until finally we were in a broad corridor with many lighted torches along its walls. There was a large door at the end of the corridor, with two suits of armor standing on either side of it. They were just as rusty as in our own time.
Luckily I didn’t see any rats, but all the same I had a sinking feeling that we were being watched, and the closer to the door we came, the stronger that feeling was. I looked around, but the corridor was empty.
When one of the suits of armor suddenly moved its arm and pointed a dangerous-looking spear or whatever it was at us, I froze, gasping for air. Now I knew who’d been watching us.
The suit of armor also, and totally unnecessarily, said, “Stop!” in a tinny voice.
I felt like screaming with terror, but once again not a sound would come out of my mouth. Pretty soon I realized it wasn’t the suit of armor that had moved and spoken but whoever was inside it. The other suit of armor also seemed to be inhabited.
“We have to speak to the Master,” said Gideon. “On urgent business.”
“Password,” said the second suit of armor.
“Qua redit nescitis,” said Gideon.
Oh, yes—that was it. For a moment I was genuinely impressed. He’d actually remembered it.
“You may pass,” said the first suit of armor, and it even held the door open for us.
There was another corridor beyond it, also lit by torches. Gideon stuck our torch in a holder on the wall and hurried on. I followed as fast as my hooped skirt would let me. By now I was out of breath.
“This is like a horror film. My heart almost stopped. I thought those things were just for decoration! I mean, suits of armor aren’t exactly modern in the eighteenth century, are they? And not much use either, if you ask me.”
“It’s a tradition for the men on guard to wear them,” said Gideon. “They do in our time as well.”
“But I haven’t seen any knights in armor in our time,” I said. Then it occurred to me that maybe I had seen some after all. Maybe I’d just thought they were empty suits of armor.
“Get a move on,” said Gideon.
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t carrying a skirt the size of a tent around with him.
“Who is ‘the Master’?”
“The Order is headed by a Grand Master. At this period of course it’s the count himself. The Order is still young; the count founded it only thirty-seven years ago. Even later, members of the de Villiers family often held the post of Grand Master.”
Did that mean Count Saint-Germain was a de Villiers? If he was, then why was he called Saint-Germain?
“What about now? Er, I mean in our time. Who’s the Grand Master today?”
“At the moment, my Uncle Falk,” said Gideon. “He took over from your grandfather Lord Montrose.”
“Oh.” My dear, kindly grandfather, Grand Master of the Lodge of Count Saint-Germain! And I’d always thought he was totally under my grandmother’s thumb.
“So what position does Lady Arista hold in the Order?”
“Oh, none. Women can’t be members of the Lodge. The immediate families of the members of the Inner Circle automatically belong to the Outer Circle of initiates, but they don’t have a say in anything.”
That was obvious.
Maybe his way of treating me was natural to all the de Villiers family? A kind of congenital defect leaving them capable of only a contemptuous smile for women? On the other hand, he had been very gentle with Charlotte. And I had to admit that at the moment he was at least behaving himself reasonably well.
“Why do you always call your grandmother Lady Arista, by the way?” he asked. “Why don’t you say Grandma or Granny?”
“I don’t know. We just do,” I said. “So, why can’t women be members of the Lodge?”
