I calmed down slightly and looked around. There was no one else in the room, and no sign of Xemerius. He might be able to walk through walls, but he obviously couldn’t travel in time.
Hesitating briefly, I picked up the piece of paper. It was yellowed, a sheet out of a notebook torn hastily out of the perforations. The message scrawled on it, in surprisingly familiar handwriting, said
For Lord Lucas Montrose—important!!!
12 August 1948, 12 noon, the alchemical laboratory. Please come alone.
Gwyneth Shepherd
My heart began beating faster. Lord Lucas Montrose was my grandfather! He’d died when I was ten. I looked at the curving lines of the two capital Ls. No doubt about it, unfortunately; the scrawly writing was exactly like mine. But how could it be?
I looked up at the young man. “Where did you get this? And who are you?”
“Did you write that?”
“Maybe,” I said, and my thoughts began frantically going around in circles. If I’d written it, how come I couldn’t remember writing it? “Where did you get it?”
“I’ve had it for five years. Someone put it in my coat pocket along with a letter. On the day of the ceremony for admission to the Second Degree. The letter said, He who keeps secrets ought also to know the secret behind the secret. Show not only that you can keep quiet, but that you can also think. No signature. It was in different handwriting from the note, it was—er—rather elegant old-fashioned handwriting.”
I bit my lower lip. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. All these years, I’ve thought it was some kind of test,” said the young man. “Another exam, so to speak. I never talked to anyone about it. I was always waiting for someone to mention it to me or drop more hints. But nothing of that kind happened. And today I stole down here and waited. I wasn’t really expecting anything at all. But then you materialized out of nowhere right in front of me, just like that. At twelve noon on the dot. Why did you write me that note? Why are we meeting down in this remote cellar? And what year do you come from?”
“Two thousand eleven,” I said. “Sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know the answers to those other questions myself.” I cleared my throat. “So who are you, then?”
“Oh, sorry. My name is Lucas Montrose. No Lord. Adept Second Degree.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. “Lucas Montrose of 81 Bourdon Place.”
The young man nodded. “That’s where my parents live, yes.”
“In that case…” I stared at him and took a deep breath. “In that case, you’re my grandfather.”
“Oh, not again,” said the young man, sighing heavily. Then he pulled himself together, moved away from the wall, dusted down one of the chairs stacked on top of each other in a corner of the room, and offered it to me. “Why don’t we sit down? My legs feel like rubber.”
“Mine too,” I admitted, sinking onto the upholstered seat. Lucas took another chair and sat down opposite me.
“So you’re my granddaughter?” He grinned faintly. “You know, that’s a funny idea for me. I’m not even married. Strictly speaking, I’m not even engaged.”
“How old are you, then? Oh, sorry, I ought to know that. Born 1924—that makes you twenty-four in 1948.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be twenty-four in three months’ time. And how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Just like Lucy.”
Lucy. I thought of what she’d called after me when we were on the run from Lady Tilney’s house.
I still couldn’t believe that I was sitting in front of my own grandfather. I looked for any likeness to the man who used to tell me exciting stories while I sat on his lap. Who had protected me from Charlotte when she said I was trying to show off by telling ghost stories. But young Lucas Montrose’s smooth face didn’t seem at all like the wrinkled, lined face of the old man I’d known. I did see a likeness to my mum, though—the blue eyes, the firm curve of his chin, the way he was smiling now. I closed my eyes, feeling that all this was simply … well, too much for me.
“So there we are, then,” said Lucas quietly. “Am I … er … a nice grandpa?”
I felt a prickling in my nose as I fought back tears. So I just nodded.
“All the other time travelers arrive by chronograph officially and in comfort up in the Dragon Hall or in the documents room,” said Lucas. “Why did you pick this gloomy old laboratory?”
“I didn’t pick it.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “I didn’t even know it was a laboratory. In my time it’s just a normal cellar, with a safe where they keep the chronograph.”
“Really? Well, it’s not been a laboratory for a long time,” said Lucas. “But originally this room was used as a secret alchemy lab. It’s one of the oldest rooms in the whole building. Famous London alchemists and magicians worked here searching for the philosopher’s stone hundreds of years before the Lodge of Count Saint-Germain was even founded. You can still see eerie drawings and mysterious formulas on the walls here and there, and it’s said that the walls are so thick because bones and skulls are built into them.” He stopped, biting his own lower lip. “So you’re my granddaughter. May I ask which of my … er, my children is your mother or father?”
“My mum is called Grace,” I said. “She looks like you.”
Lucas nodded. “Lucy told me about Grace. She says she was the nicest of my children, the others were boring.” His mouth twisted. “I can’t imagine having boring children—or any children at all, come to that.”
“Maybe they inherited it from your wife, not you,” I murmured.
Lucas sighed. “Since Lucy first turned up here a couple of months ago, everyone’s been winding me up because she has red hair, just like a girl I’m … er, interested in. But Lucy wouldn’t tell me who I’m going to marry, because she thinks I might change my mind. And then none of you would be born.”
“I expect the time-travel gene that your future wife must be going to pass on matters more than her hair color,” I said. “You ought to have been able to identify her that way.”
“That’s the funny thing about it.” Lucas sat a little further forward on his chair. “There are two girls from the Jade Line who seem to me really … well, attractive. The Guardians have classified them as observation numbers Four and Eight.”
“Oh,” I said.
“You see, the fact is that at this moment I can’t really decide. Maybe a little hint from you might help me.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “If you say so. My grandmother, that’s your wife, is La—”
“No!” cried Lucas. He had raised both arms to stop me saying more. “I’ve changed my mind.” He scratched his head, looking awkward. “That’s the St. Lennox school uniform, isn’t it? I recognize the crest on the buttons.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said, looking down at my dark blue blazer. Madame Rossini had obviously washed and ironed my things. At least, they looked like new and smelled slightly of lavender. She must also have done something clever with the blazer, because it was a much more elegant fit now.
“My sister, Madeleine, goes to St. Lennox, too. She won’t be leaving until the end of this year because the war got in the way.”
“Aunt Maddy? I didn’t know that.”
“All the Montrose girls go to St. Lennox. Lucy too. She had the same school uniform as you. Maddy’s is dark green and white, and the skirt is checked.…” Lucas cleared his throat. “In case you’re interested … but we’d better concentrate on working out why we’re meeting here. So assuming you wrote that note—”
“Will be writing it!”
“—and you’ll be leaving it for me on one of your future time-travel trips, why do you think you did it?”
“You mean why will I be doing it?” I sighed. “It must make some kind of sense. You can probably tell me a lot. But then again, I don’t know.…” Baffled, I looked at my young grandfather. “Do you know Lucy and Paul well?”
“Paul de Villiers has been coming here to elapse since January. He’s grown two years older in that time, which is rather creepy. And Lucy came for the first time in June. I usually look after them both when they visit. As a rule, it’s very amusing. I can help them with their homework. I must say, Paul is the only de Villiers I’ve ever liked.” He cleared his throat again. “But if you come from the year 2011, you must know them both. Funny to think they’re nearly forty by now.… You must give them my regards.”
“I can’t do that.” Oh, dear, this whole thing was so complicated. And I probably ought to be careful what I said, when I myself didn’t really understand what was going on. My mother’s words were still ringing in my ears. Trust no one! Not even your own feelings! But I simply had to trust someone, and who better than my grandfather? I decided to stake everything on a single card. “I can’t give Lucy and Paul your regards. They stole the chronograph and traveled back into the past with it.”
“What?” Lucas’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Why would they have done that? I can’t believe it. They’d never … When is this supposed to have happened?”
“Nineteen ninety-four,” I said. “The same year I was born.”
“In 1994 Paul will be twenty, and Lucy eighteen,” said Lucas, more to himself than to me. “In two years’ time, then. Because now she’s sixteen and he’s eighteen.” He smiled apologetically. “Well, of course I don’t mean now, I only mean their now when they come to this year to elapse.”
“I haven’t had much sleep the last couple of nights, so I get the feeling my brain is nothing but candy floss,” I said. “And I’m useless at arithmetic anyway.”
“Lucy and Paul are … Oh, what you’re telling me makes no sense. They’d never do anything so … so outrageous.”
“But they did. I thought you might be able to tell me why. In my own time, everyone keeps telling me that they’re wicked. Or crazy. Or both. Anyway, dangerous. When I met Lucy, she said I ought to ask you about the Green Rider. Okay. So who or what’s the Green Rider?”
Lucas stared at me, baffled. “You met Lucy? But you just said she and Paul had disappeared the year you were born.” Then something seemed to occur to him. “If they took the chronograph with them, how can you travel in time at all?”
“I met them in the year 1912. At Lady Tilney’s house. And there’s another chronograph that the Guardians use for us.”
“Lady Tilney? But she died four years ago. And the second chronograph isn’t capable of working.”
I sighed. “It is now. Listen, Grandpa”—that word made Lucas jump—“this is all much more confusing for me than you, because until a few days ago, I hadn’t the faintest idea about it. I can’t explain anything to you. I’ve been sent here to elapse, for heaven’s sake, I don’t even know how to spell the stupid word—I heard it for the first time yesterday. This is only the third time the chronograph has sent me back to the past. I traveled back uncontrolled three times before that. Which was not a lot of fun. But the fact is that everyone thought my cousin Charlotte was the gene carrier, because she was born on the right day, and my mum lied about my birthday. So Charlotte had dancing lessons instead of me, and she knows all about the plague and King George, and she can fence, and ride sidesaddle, and play the piano—and goodness only knows what she learned during her introduction to the mysteries.” The more I talked, the faster the words came tumbling out of me. “Anyway, I don’t know anything except what they’ve told me so far, and I can’t say that was much, or very enlightening—and what’s worse, I haven’t even had time to make sense of the whole thing. Lesley—she’s my best friend—Googled it all, but Mr. Whitman confiscated her folder, and I’d only copied half of the stuff she found out anyway. Everyone seems to have expected me to be somehow special, and now they’re disappointed.”