“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 couple 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.”
Although I couldn’t see a thing, I sensed that Gideon was standing right in front of me. His body warmth was like a radiant heater in the darkness. When his hand touched my cheek, I flinched. He quickly withdrew it again.
“I’m sorry,” I heard him whisper. “Gwen, I…” Suddenly he sounded helpless, but I was far too upset to feel any kind of satisfaction.
I don’t know how much time passed as we simply stood there. I was still shedding floods of tears. Whatever he was doing, I couldn’t see it.
After a while, he switched the flashlight on again, cleared his throat, and shone the beam on his watch. “Another three minutes before we travel back,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You’d better come away from that corner, or you’ll be landing on the chest in the chronograph room.” He went back to the sofa and picked up the cushions he had thrown on the floor. “You know, of all the Guardians, Mr. George has always struck me as one of the most loyal. Someone to be trusted whatever happened.”
“But Mr. George really didn’t have anything at all to do with it,” I said, hesitantly moving away from my corner. “It wasn’t like that at all.” I mopped the tears off my face with the back of my hand. I’d better tell him the truth so that at least he couldn’t suspect poor Mr. George of disloyalty. “When I was sent to elapse alone for the first time, I met my grandfather here by chance.” Okay, maybe not the whole truth. “He was looking for the wine cel—well, never mind that. It was a peculiar meeting, especially once we’d realized who we were. He left the key and the password in hiding in this room for my next visit, so that we could talk again. And that’s why yesterday, I mean in 1956, I borrowed the name of Violet Purpleplum when I came back here. To meet my grandfather! He’s been dead for a few years now, and I miss him dreadfully. Wouldn’t you have done the same if you could? Talking to him again was so…” I fell silent once more.
Gideon said nothing. I stared at his outline and waited.
“How about Mr. George, then? He was already your grandfather’s assistant at the time,” he said at last.
“I did see him, but not for long, and my grandfather told him I was his cousin Hazel. He must have forgotten that ages and ages ago—to him it was an unimportant meeting a good fifty-five years in the past.” I put my hand on my midriff. “I think…”
“So do I,” said Gideon. He reached out his hand, but then obviously thought better of it. “Any moment now,” he said, lamely. “Come another step or so this way.”
The room began going around and around, then I was blinking at a bright light, swaying slightly on my feet, and Mr. Whitman said, “Ah, there you two are.”
Gideon put his flashlight on the table and cast me a brief glance. Maybe I was imagining it, but this time I thought there was something like sympathy in his eyes. I surreptitiously wiped my face once more, but all the same, Mr. Whitman could see I’d been crying. There was no one else here. Xemerius had probably felt bored and gone away.
“What’s the matter, Gwyneth?” asked Mr. Whitman, in the kindly tone he used to suggest that he was a teacher to be trusted. “Is something wrong?” If I hadn’t known better, I might have been tempted to indulge in more tears and pour out my heart to him. (“Horrible, horrible Gideon has been so, soooo nasty to me!”) But I knew him too well. He’d sounded just the same last week when he asked us who had drawn the caricature of Mrs. Counter on the board. “I’d certainly say that the artist has talent,” he had said, with a smile of amusement. So Cynthia (of course!) told him Maggie had done it, and Mr. Whitman had stopped smiling and entered a bad mark against Maggie’s name in the class register. “I meant it about the talent, by the way,” he had added. “Your talent for getting yourself into trouble, Maggie, is truly remarkable.”
“Well?” he said now, with the same sympathetic and trustworthy smile. But I definitely wasn’t falling for that one.
“A rat,” I muttered. “You said there weren’t any … and then the lightbulb gave out, and you hadn’t given me a flashlight, and there I was all alone in the dark with that horrible rat.” I very nearly added “I’m going to tell my mum,” but I managed to stop myself just in time.
Mr. Whitman looked a little distressed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll remember that next time.” Then he went back to his usual instructive teacher’s tone. “You’ll be taken home now, and I recommend you go to bed early. Tomorrow is going to be a strenuous day for you.”
“I’ll take her to the car,” said Gideon, picking up the black scarf that they always used to blindfold me. “Where’s Mr. George?”
“In a meeting,” said Mr. Whitman, frowning. “Gideon, I think you should consider your conversational tone. We let a good deal pass, because we know you’re not having an easy time at present, but you ought to show a little more respect for the members of the Inner Circle.”
Gideon’s face gave nothing away, but he said politely, “You’re right, Mr. Whitman. I’m sorry.” Then he held his hand out to me. “Coming?”
I almost took it, too. A pure reflex action. And it gave me a pang to think I couldn’t do it without losing face. I was on the point of bursting into tears again.
“Good night,” I said to Mr. Whitman, staring at the floor as hard as I could.
Gideon opened the door.
“See you tomorrow,” said Mr. Whitman. “And remember, both of you, plenty of sleep is the best preparation.”
The door closed behind us.
“All alone in a dark cellar with a horrible rat, were you?” said Gideon, grinning at me.
I could hardly make any sense of it. Nothing but cold looks from him for the last two days—and in fact for the last couple of hours, glances that almost made me freeze as stiff as a board, like those poor animals in the postwar winters. And now this? A joke, as if everything was the same as before? Maybe he was a sadist and couldn’t smile unless he’d been horrible to me first?
“Aren’t you going to blindfold me?” I wasn’t in any mood for more of his silly jokes, and I wanted him to know it.
Gideon shrugged. “I imagine you know the way by now. We can forget about the blindfold. Come on.” Another friendly grin.
This was my first sight of the cellar corridors in our own time. They were neatly plastered, with lights let into the walls, some of them with movement detectors. The way up again was well lit.
“Not very impressive, is it?” said Gideon. “All the corridors leading out of the cellars have special doors and alarm systems fitted, and these days it’s as safe as the Bank of England down here. But none of these security devices were fitted until the 1970s. Before that, you could go through half of London below the ground starting from here.”
“I’m not interested,” I said sullenly.
“What would you like to talk about, then?”
“Nothing.” How could he act as if nothing at all had happened? His silly grin and all this small talk made me truly furious. I walked faster, and although I kept my lips firmly compressed, I couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of me. “I can’t do it, Gideon! I can’t make out the way you kiss me one moment and then act as if you loathed me like poison the next!”
Gideon said, after a brief pause, “I’d much rather be kissing you the whole time than loathing you, but you don’t exactly make it easy for me.”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.
He stopped. “Oh, come off it, Gwyneth! You don’t seriously believe I’m swallowing that story about your grandfather? As if he just happened by chance to be in the room where you were elapsing! It’s as unlikely as Lucy and Paul just happening to be at Lady Tilney’s. Or those men attacking us in Hyde Park by chance.”
“Oh, of course, I fixed all that in person, because I’d always wanted to stick a sword through someone. Not forgetting that I wanted to see what a man looks like with half his face shot away!” I snapped.
“What you may do in the future, and why—”
“Oh, be quiet!” I cried, angrily. “I’m sick and tired of all this! Ever since last Monday, I’ve felt like I was living in a nightmare that’s never going to end. When I think I’ve woken up, I find I’m still dreaming. There are millions of questions that no one will answer going around in my head, and everyone expects me to do my best for something I don’t understand one little bit!” I was walking on again, almost running, but Gideon easily kept up with me. There was no one on the stairs to ask us for the password. Why bother, if all the ways in and out were as secure as Fort Knox? I went up the stairs two steps at a time. “No one asked me if I wanted to be involved in this at all. I have to be pestered by crazy dancing masters and have my dear cousin show me all the things she can do but I’ll never be able to learn, and you … you…”