Ruby Red

“Yes.” Well, I said so anyway.

“So Gideon met the young Margaret this morning at the time of her second official date to elapse. She had been driven straight to the Temple after her first journey in time. And even as the preparations were being made to read her into the chronograph, she traveled for the second time. That’s the longest uncontrolled journey in time so far known to us. She was gone for over two hours.”

“Mr. George, you could leave out these minor details,” suggested Gideon, with a trace of impatience in his voice.

“Yes, yes. Where was I? Gideon visited Margaret when she was going to elapse, and once again he explained the story of the stolen chronograph to her, and the chance of putting things right with the second one.”

“Aha!” I interrupted. “So that’s how the older Margaret knew the whole story. Gideon had told her about it himself.”

“Yes, that looked like one possibility,” said Mr. George. “But yet again, the young Margaret wasn’t hearing the story for the first time.”

“So someone else had got in ahead of Gideon. Lucy and Paul again. They traveled into the past with the stolen chronograph to tell Margaret Tilney that, sooner or later, it was very likely that someone would turn up wanting to take some of her blood.”

Mr. George said nothing.

“So did she let you take her blood this time?”

“No,” said Mr. George. “She refused to let him have it.”

“Although at sixteen she wasn’t quite as obstinate as later, in her old age,” said Gideon. “This time she let me talk to her for a while. And finally she said that she would negotiate, but only with you.”

“With me?”

“She gave me your name. Gwyneth Shepherd.”

“But…” I chewed my lower lip while Mr. George and Gideon watched me closely. “I thought Paul and Lucy had disappeared before I was born. How could they know my name and tell this Margaret?”

“Yes, that’s the question,” said Mr. George. “You see, Lucy and Paul stole the chronograph in May of the year when you were born. First they hid in the present with it. For a few months, they cleverly managed to keep eluding the detectives employed by the Guardians, laying false trails and using other tricks. They moved from city to city and traveled over half of Europe with the chronograph. But we were coming closer and closer to their hiding place, and they realized that they could escape us for good only if they took refuge in the past with the chronograph. Unfortunately they had no intention of giving up. They defended their mistaken ideals uncompromisingly.” He sighed. “They were so young, so passionate.…” There was a slightly dreamy look in his eyes.

Gideon cleared his throat, and Mr. George stopped staring into space. He went on: “Until now we always thought they took that step here in London in September, a few weeks before your birth.”

“But then they can’t possibly have known my name!”

“Correct,” said Mr. George. “That’s why, since this morning, we have been considering the possibility that they went into the past with the chronograph only after your birth.”

“For whatever reason,” added Gideon.

“But we still have to find out how Lucy and Paul knew your name and your destiny. One way and another, Margaret Tilney refuses to cooperate with us.”

I thought about it. “So how are we going to get at her blood now?” Oh, my God, surely I hadn’t just said that, had I? “You won’t use force, will you?” I pictured Gideon doing sinister things with ether, bonds, and a gigantic syringe—and that ruined my perfect image of him.

Mr. George shook his head. “One of the golden rules of the Guardians is that we use force only when nothing else will work. We try negotiation and amicable agreement first. So we will do as Margaret has suggested. We’re going to send you to see her.”

“So that I can convince her?”

“So that we can find out about her motives and her informants. She’ll talk to you—she said so herself. We want to know what she has to tell you.”

Gideon sighed. “There’s no getting around it, but myself, I’ve been talking to a brick wall all morning.”

“Yes, Gwyneth, and that’s why at this moment Madame Rossini is making you a nice summer dress for the year 1912,” said Mr. George. “You’re going to meet your great-great-grandmother.”

“Why 1912?”

“We picked the year at random. All the same, Gideon thinks you may be falling into a trap.”

“A trap?”

Gideon said nothing, just glanced at me. And he did look worried.

“By the laws of logic, that’s as good as impossible,” said Mr. George.

“Why would anyone set a trap for us?”

Gideon leaned toward me. “Think about it: Lucy and Paul have the chronograph in their power, and ten of the twelve time travelers have already had their blood read into it. To close the Circle so that they can use it for themselves, they only need blood from you and me.”

“But … Lucy and Paul wanted to stop the Circle being closed and the secret from being revealed,” I said.

Once again Mr. George and Gideon exchanged a glance.

“That’s what your mother thinks,” said Mr. George.

And it was what I’d thought myself so far. “And you don’t?”

“Look at it the other way around. Suppose Lucy and Paul want the secret all to themselves?” said Gideon. “Suppose that’s why they stole the chronograph? Then all they still need to go one better than Count Saint-Germain would be our blood.”

I let the words sink in. Then I said, “And since they can only meet us in the past, they have to lure us somewhere there to get at our blood?”

“They may think that they can get it only by force,” said Gideon. “Just as we know, looking at it from the other angle, that they aren’t going to give us their blood willingly.”

I thought of the men who had attacked us yesterday in Hyde Park.

“Exactly,” said Gideon, as if he had read my thoughts. “If they’d killed us, they could have had as much of our blood as they wanted. It only remains to find out how they knew we’d be there.”

“I know Lucy and Paul. That’s simply not their style,” said Mr. George. “They grew up knowing the golden rules of the Guardians, and I’m sure they wouldn’t plan to get members of their own families murdered. They would prefer discussion and negotiation—”

“You knew Lucy and Paul, past tense, Mr. George,” said Gideon. “But can you really be sure what they are like by now?”

I looked from one to the other of them. “Well, anyway, I think it would be interesting to find out what my great-great-grandmother wants to meet me for,” I said. “And how can it be a trap if we choose the time of our visit ourselves?”

“That’s how I see it too,” said Mr. George.

Gideon sighed, resigned. “It’s all been decided now, anyway.”

* * *

MADAME ROSSINI PUT an ankle-length white dress with a fine-check pattern and a kind of sailor collar over my head. It was held in around the waist by a sky-blue satin sash, and there was a ribbon bow of the same material where the collar met a buttonhole.

When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was a little disappointed. I saw the reflection of a demure, good girl. The outfit reminded me slightly of what the servers wore at Mass in St. Luke’s, where we sometimes went to church on Sundays.

“The fashions of 1912 can’t, of course, be compared with the extravagance of the Rococo era,” said Madame Rossini as she handed me a pair of buttoned leather ankle boots. “I would say the idea was to conceal rather than reveal feminine charm.”

“I’d say so too.”

“And now your ’air.” Madame Rossini gently pushed me down on a chair and made a long side parting in my hair. Then she put it up in strands at the back of my head.

“Isn’t that a bit—well—bushy over my ears?”

“It’s in period,” said Madame Rossini.

“But I don’t think it suits me, do you?”

“Everything suits you, my little swan-necked beauty. Anyway, this isn’t a beauty contest. It’s all about—”

“Authenticity. Yes, I know.”

Madame Rossini laughed. “Then zat’s all right.”

This time Dr. White came to collect me and take me to the cellar where the chronograph was hidden. He looked very bad-tempered, as usual, but to make up for it, Robert the little ghost boy gave me a beaming smile.

I smiled back. He really was very cute with his blond curls and dimples. “Hello!”

“No need to sound so effusively pleased to see me,” said Dr. White, bringing out the black blindfold.

“Oh, no! Why do I have to have that on again?”

“There’s no reason to trust you,” said Dr. White.

“Oh, let me do that, you clumsy fool!” Madame Rossini snatched the black blindfold from his hand. “Zis time no one is going to ruin my lovely ’airstyle!”

A pity, really. Madame Rossini herself put the blindfold on, very carefully. Not a hair was disturbed.

“Good luck, ma petite,” she said as Dr. White led me out. I waved in what I thought was her direction by way of good-bye. Once again, it was an unpleasant feeling to be stumbling about in a void. All the same, the way was beginning to seem more familiar. And this time Robert kept warning me in advance. “Two more steps and now left through the secret doorway. Careful, mind the step. Another ten paces and then we come to the big staircase.”

“Great service you give here! Thanks a lot.”

“Let’s leave out the sarcasm,” said Dr. White.

“Why can you hear me and he can’t?” asked Robert sadly.

“I’m afraid I don’t know either,” I said, and I felt so sorry for him it was almost too much for me. “Is there anything you’d like to tell him?”

Robert did not reply.

“Glenda Montrose was right,” said Dr. White. “You really do have conversations with yourself.”

I put out my hand to feel my way along the wall. “Oh, I recognize this spot. Now there’s another step—yes, there it is—and after twenty-four footsteps, we turn right.”

“You’ve been counting!”

“Only out of boredom. Why are you so suspicious, Dr. White?”

“I am not at all suspicious. I trust you implicitly. At the moment. At the moment, you are behaving reasonably well, or at the worst you are only somewhat infected by your mother’s crazy notions. But no one knows what you’ll grow into, so I would be very sorry if you knew where the chronograph was kept.”

“The cellar can’t be all that large,” I said.

“You’ve no idea,” said Dr. White. “We’ve already lost people there.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” There was a touch of laughter in his voice, so I knew he was only joking. “Others have wandered around the passages for days before they found a way out.”