“Not the footman. The count,” I said.
He nodded. “That’s what people say, anyway.”
“Did he read your thoughts?”
“If he did, I didn’t notice.”
With a deep bow, the footman opened a door for us. I stopped. Maybe I should simply think of nothing at all? But that was plain impossible. As soon as I tried not thinking of anything, millions of ideas flooded my brain.
“Ladies first,” said Gideon, pushing me gently through the doorway.
I took a couple of steps forward and then stopped. I wasn’t sure what was expected of me next. Gideon followed me in, and after another deep bow, the footman closed the door behind us.
Three men were looking at us. The first was a stout man who could only just haul himself out of his chair; the second, a younger man with a very muscular build, the only one of the three not to be wearing a wig; and the third was lean and tall, with features just like those of the portrait in the documents room.
Count Saint-Germain.
Gideon bowed, though not as deeply as the footman just now. The three men bowed back.
I didn’t do anything. No one had taught me how to manage a curtsey in a hooped skirt, and curtseying didn’t feel natural anyway.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, my young friend,” said the man I took to be Count Saint-Germain. He was smiling broadly. “Lord Brompton, may I introduce my great-great-great grandson’s great-great-great-grandson to you? Gideon de Villiers.”
“Lord Brompton!” Another little bow. Obviously shaking hands wasn’t the fashion yet.
“Visually at least, I consider that my line has turned out extremely well,” said the count. “I obviously had luck in choosing the lady of my heart. The tendency to a large hooked nose has entirely died out.”
“Now, now, my dear Count, there you go trying to impress me with your tall tales again,” said Lord Brompton, dropping back into his chair. The chair was so tiny that I was afraid it might collapse under him there and then. His lordship wasn’t just a bit plump, like Mr. George—he was really huge!
“But I have no objection,” he went on, with his little piggy eyes twinkling cheerfully. “Your company is always so very entertaining. A new surprise every few seconds!”
The count laughed and turned to the younger, bare-headed man. “Lord Brompton is and always will be skeptical, my dear Miro! We must think a little harder to find some way of convincing him of our cause.”
The man replied in a harsh, clipped foreign language, and the count smiled again. He turned to Gideon. “This, my dear grandson, is my good friend and companion Miro Rakoczy, better known in The Annals of the Guardians as the Black Leopard.”
“Delighted to meet you,” said Gideon.
More bows all round.
Rakoczy—why did that name seem familiar to me? And why did the sight of him make me feel so uncomfortable?
A smile curled the count’s lips as his eyes slowly moved down over my figure. I automatically looked for some resemblance in him to Gideon or Falk de Villiers, but I couldn’t find one. The count’s eyes were very dark, and his gaze was penetrating. It immediately made me think again of what my mother had said.
Think! No, don’t! But my mind had to have something to occupy it, so I sang “God Save the Queen” in my head.
The count switched to French, which I didn’t understand at first (particularly as inside my head I was busy singing the national anthem at the top of my imaginary voice), but which, with some hesitation and leaving gaps on account of my poor command of French vocabulary, I translated as “And so you, pretty girl, are a [gap] of the good [gap] Jeanne d’Urfé. I was told you had red hair.”
Yikes! It was probably a fact that learning vocabulary was actually essential to understanding a foreign language, like our French teacher had always said. And sadly I didn’t know anyone called Jeanne d’Urfé, so I really couldn’t understand what he was talking about anyway.
“She doesn’t know French,” said Gideon, also in French. “And she isn’t the girl you were expecting.”
“But how can that be?” The count shook his head. “All this is extremely [gap].”
“Unfortunately, the wrong girl was prepared for the [gap].”
Yes, unfortunately.
“A mistake?”
“This is Gwyneth Shepherd, a cousin of the Charlotte Montrose I mentioned to you yesterday.”
“Ah, another granddaughter of Lord Montrose, the last [gap]. And thus a cousin of the [gap]?” Count Saint-Germain’s dark eyes were resting on me, and I began singing in my mind again.
Send her victorious, happy and glorious …
“It’s the [gap, gap] that I simply do not understand.”
“Our scientists say that it is perfectly possible for a genetic [gap] to—”
The count raised his hand to interrupt Gideon. “I know, I know! That may be so, according to the laws of science, but nonetheless, I do not feel happy about it.”
I shared his feelings.
“No French, then?” he asked, switching to German. I was a little better at German, or at least, my mark had been a regular B for four years now, but once again there were those annoying gaps in my vocabulary. “Why has she been so poorly prepared?”
“She hasn’t been prepared at all, sir. She speaks no foreign languages.” Gideon was speaking German too now. “And in every other respect, she is also entirely [gap]. Charlotte and Gwyneth were born on the same day. But everyone mistakenly assumed that Gwyneth was born a day later.”
“How could such a thing be overlooked?” Ah, at last I could understand every word again. They’d switched back to English, which the count spoke without a trace of foreign accent. “Why, I wonder, do I begin to feel that the Guardians of your time no longer take their work entirely seriously?”
“I think you’ll find the answer in this letter.” Gideon took a sealed envelope out of the inside pocket of his coat and handed it to the count.
A piercing glance rested on me.
… frustrate their knavish tricks, on thee our hopes we fix, God save us all …
I firmly avoided his dark eyes and looked at the other two men instead. Lord Brompton seemed to have as many gaps in his French and German vocabulary as I did (his mouth was slightly open above his many double chins, and he was looking a little foolish), and the other man, Rakoczy, was inspecting his fingernails closely.
He was still quite young, maybe around thirty, and he had dark hair and a thin, long face. He could have been quite good-looking, except that his lips were twisted as if he had a very nasty taste in his mouth and his skin was pale in an unhealthy kind of way.
I was just wondering whether he’d been putting pale gray powder on his face when he suddenly raised his eyes and looked straight at me. Those eyes were pitch-black, and I couldn’t see where their irises and pupils began and ended. There was an oddly dead look about them, although I couldn’t have explained why.
Automatically I went back to singing “God Save the Queen” in my head. Meanwhile the count had broken the seal and unfolded the letter, and with a sigh he began to read it. Now and then he raised his head and looked at me. I still hadn’t moved from the spot.
Not in this land alone, but be God’s mercies known …
What did the letter say? Who had written it? Lord Brompton and Rakoczy seemed to be very interested in it too. Lord Brompton was craning his fat neck to get a glimpse of the writing, while Rakoczy was concentrating more on the count’s face. Obviously the disgusted twist of Rakoczy’s mouth was permanent.
When he looked at me again, all the little hairs on my arms bristled. Those eyes of his were like black holes, and now I discovered why they seemed so dead. They didn’t reflect light; they didn’t have the bright sparkle that brings most people’s eyes to life. It wasn’t just peculiar, it was gruesome. I was glad there was a good five yards’ distance between those eyes and me.
“Your mother, my child, appears to be an unusually obstinate woman.” The count had finished reading the letter and was folding it up. “One can only speculate on her motives.” He came a couple of paces closer to me, and under his penetrating gaze, I couldn’t even remember the words of the national anthem anymore.
But then I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. The count was old. Although his eyes were bright and full of energy, his back was straight, and the sound of his voice was lively and youthful, you couldn’t miss the signs of old age. The skin on his face and hands was crumpled like parchment, blue veins showed through, and even under a layer of powder, the wrinkles on his face were obvious. His age made him look fragile. I almost felt sorry for him.
Anyway, all at once I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He was only an old man, older than my own grandfather when I knew him.
“Gwyneth knows nothing about her mother’s motives or the events that have left us in this situation,” said Gideon. “She has no idea at all.”
“Strange, very strange,” said the count as he walked once all around me. “We really have never met before.”
Of course we hadn’t. How could we have met before?
“But you would not be here unless you were the Ruby. Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven.” When he had finished circling me, he stood before me and looked straight into my eyes. “What is your magic, girl?”
… from shore to shore, Lord make the nations see …
Oh, why was I bothering with this? He was only an old man. I ought to treat him politely and respectfully and not stare at him like a terrified rabbit in the presence of a snake.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What is special about you? Tell me!”
What was special about me? Apart from the fact that for the last two days I’d been able to travel back to the past? Suddenly I could hear Aunt Glenda’s voice saying “Even when Charlotte was a baby, anyone could tell she was born for higher things. You can’t compare her with ordinary children.”
“I don’t think there’s anything special about me, sir.”
The count clicked his tongue. “You may be right. After all, it’s only a verse. A verse of doubtful origin.” He suddenly seemed to lose interest in me and turned back to Gideon. “My dear boy, I read here, with admiration, what you have already done. You have tracked Lancelot de Villiers down in Flanders! William de Villiers, Cecilia Woodville—the enchanting Aquamarine—and the twins I never met: you’ve ticked them all off the list. And just think, Lord Brompton, this young man even visited Madame Jeanne d’Urfé, née Pontcarré, in Paris and persuaded her to donate a little of her blood.”
“You mean the Madame d’Urfé to whom my father owed his friendship with Madame de Pompadour and ultimately with you as well?” asked Lord Brompton.
“The very same,” said the count. “I don’t know any other.”
“But Madame d’Urfé has been dead these last ten years.”