by Kerstin Gier
“Gwenny?” Cynthia Dale, coming up behind us, slapped me on the back. “Do you remember Regina Curtis who was in the same class as my sister until last year? She’s in hospital with anorexia now. Is that where you want to end up as well?”
“No,” I said, baffled.
“Okay, then eat this! At once!” Cynthia threw me a caramel. I caught it and obediently unwrapped it. But as I was about to put it in my mouth, Cynthia grabbed my arm. “Stop! Are you really going to eat it? So you’re not on a starvation diet?”
“No,” I said again.
“Then Charlotte was lying. She said you kept skipping lunch because you want to be as thin as her. Give me my caramel back. You’re not anorexic after all.” Cynthia put the caramel in her own mouth. “Here, your invitation to my birthday party. It’s going to be fancy dress again. And this year the theme is “Greensleeves.” You can bring your boyfriend with you.”
“Er—”
“It’s a funny thing, but Charlotte said the same. I don’t mind which of you brings that guy, I just want him to be at my party.”
“She’s crazy,” Lesley whispered to me.
“I heard that,” said Cynthia. “You can bring Max, Lesley.”
“Cyn, Max and I haven’t been together for the last six months.”
“Oh, bother,” said Cynthia. “Sounds like too few boys this time. Either you bring some with you or I’ll have to uninvite a few girls again. Aishani, for instance, although she probably won’t come anyway, because her parents don’t let her go to mixed parties … oh, my God, who’s that? Please, someone pinch me!”
“That” was a tall boy with fair hair cut short. He was standing outside the principal’s office with Mr. Whitman. And he seemed to me curiously familiar.
“Ouch!” screeched Cynthia, because Lesley had taken her at her word and pinched her.
Mr. Whitman and the boy turned around. When those green eyes under thick, dark eyelashes glanced at me, I knew at once who the strange boy was. Good heavens! Maybe Lesley ought to pinch me too.
“Ah, just the right moment,” said Mr. Whitman. “Raphael, these three girls are from your class. Cynthia Dale, Lesley Hay, and Gwyneth Shepherd. Meet Raphael Bertelin, girls. He’ll be joining your class on Monday.”
“Hi,” Lesley and I murmured, and Cynthia said, “Is this for real?”
Raphael grinned at us, hands casually in his pockets. He really did look very like Gideon, although he was a bit younger. His lips were fuller, and his skin was bronzed as if he was just back from a month in the Caribbean. I supposed the lucky people there in the south of France all looked bronzed.
“Why are you changing school in the middle of the school year?” asked Lesley. “Did you do something to get yourself thrown out of your old one?”
Raphael’s grin grew broader. “Depends how you look at it,” he said. “I’m really here because I was fed up to the teeth with school. But for some reason or other—”
“Raphael has moved here from France,” Mr. Whitman interrupted him. “Come along, Raphael, Mr. Gilles is waiting.”
“See you Monday,” said Raphael, and I had the feeling he was speaking exclusively to Lesley.
Cynthia waited until Mr. Whitman and Raphael were in the principal’s office, and then she raised both arms in the air and cried, “Thank you, God, thank you for answering my prayer!”
Lesley dug her elbow into my ribs. “You look as if a bus had just run over your foot.”
“Wait till I tell you who that is,” I whispered. “Then you’ll look the same.”
Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.
HEINRICH HEINE
SEVEN
WHAT WITH MEETING Gideon’s little brother and my hasty conversation with Lesley afterward (she asked, “Are you sure?” ten times; I said, “Absolutely sure” ten times; and then we both said, “Crazy!” and “I don’t believe it!” and “Did you see his eyes?” about a hundred times), well, what with all that, I arrived at the waiting limousine several minutes after Charlotte today. Mr. Marley had been sent to pick us up again, and he seemed more nervous than ever. Xemerius was squatting on the car roof swishing his tail back and forth. Charlotte was already in the back of the limousine. She looked annoyed with me. “Where the hell have you been all this time?” she snapped. “One doesn’t keep a man like Giordano waiting. I don’t think you realize what a great honor it is to be taught by him.”
Mr. Marley, looking embarrassed, helped me into the car and closed the door.
“Anything wrong?” I had a nasty feeling that I’d missed out on something important, and Charlotte’s expression confirmed that idea.
When the car began to move, Xemerius slipped through the roof into the interior and flopped down on the seat opposite me. Like last time, Mr. Marley was sitting in front beside the driver.
“It would be nice if you could take more trouble today,” said Charlotte. “All this is terribly embarrassing for me, you know. After all, you’re my cousin.”
I laughed out loud. “Oh, come on, Charlotte! You don’t have to pretend with me! You just love to see me making a fool of myself!”
“That’s not true!” Charlotte shook her head. “Typical of you to think like that! You’re so childish, you see yourself at the center of everything. The rest of us just want to help you so that you won’t spoil everything because you aren’t fit for your task. Although maybe that possibility won’t come up again. I can imagine them calling the whole thing off.…”
“What makes you say so?”
Charlotte looked at me for a while in silence. Then she said, almost gleefully, “You’ll find out soon enough, I expect.”
“Has something happened?” I asked, but I was asking Xemerius, not Charlotte. I wasn’t stupid. “Did Mr. Marley say something before I got here?”
“Only cryptic stuff,” said Xemerius, as Charlotte compressed her lips and looked out of the window. “There was obviously some kind of incident this morning when whatsisname, your boyfriend, sparkly jewel thingy…” He scratched his eyebrows with the tip of his tail.
“Don’t make me worm it all out of you!”
Charlotte, who understandably thought I was talking to her, said, “If you hadn’t been late, then you’d know.”
“Diamond, that’s it,” said Xemerius. “Well, he went traveling in time and someone—how can I put this? Seems like someone hit him over the head.”
My stomach muscles contracted painfully. “What?”
“Don’t upset yourself,” said Xemerius. “He’ll live. Or so I gathered from what Ginger there was stammering. Oh, good heavens, you’re white as a sheet! Not going to throw up, are you? Pull yourself together!”
“I can’t,” I whispered. I really did feel terrible.
“You can’t what?” snapped Charlotte. “The first thing gene carriers learn is to put their own wishes last and do their best for the cause. While you are just the opposite.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Gideon lying on the ground covered with blood. I was finding it difficult to breathe.
“Other people would do anything to be taught by Giordano, and you act as if we were setting out to torture you.”
“Oh, do shut up for once, Charlotte,” I said.
Charlotte turned back to the window. I began trembling.
Xemerius put one claw comfortingly on my knee. “Listen, I’ll find your boyfriend and report back, okay? But please don’t cry, or I’ll get upset and spew water all over this showy leather upholstery, and your cousin will think you’ve wet yourself!”
With a jerk, he disappeared through the roof of the car and flew away. It was a dreadful hour and a half before he finally came back. An hour and a half in which I imagined the most terrible things, feeling more dead than alive. It made matters no better that meanwhile we had arrived at the Temple, where the implacable Giordano was waiting for me. But I was in no fit state to take in what he was saying about colonial polic
y in the eighteenth century or to imitate Charlotte’s dance steps either. Suppose Gideon had been attacked by swordsmen again, and this time he hadn’t been able to defend himself? When I wasn’t seeing him lying on the ground covered with blood, I imagined him hooked up to thousands of tubes in intensive care, looking whiter than the sheets on his bed. Why wasn’t there anyone here to tell me how he was?
Then, at last, Xemerius came flying straight through the wall and into the Old Refectory.
“Well?” I asked, ignoring Giordano and Charlotte. They were in the middle of teaching me how to clap when you were applauding something in the eighteenth century. Not the way I did it, of course.
“You’re playing pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, you stupid creature,” Giordano was saying. “That’s the way toddlers clap in the sandbox when they’re pleased—oh, what’s she looking at now? I am going right out of my mind.”
“Nothing to worry about, haystack girl,” said Xemerius, grinning cheerfully. “Something came down boing on your friend’s head, put him out of action for an hour or so, but his skull must be hard as diamond itself—he didn’t even get concussion. And the wound on his forehead makes him look kind of … er … oh, no, don’t go all pale again. I told you he’s all right.”
I took a deep breath. I felt dizzy with relief.
“That’s better,” said Xemerius. “No need to hyperventilate. Lover boy still has all his nice white teeth. And he’s cursing under his breath nonstop, which I guess is a good sign.”
Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
In fact the person about to hyperventilate was Giordano. Go ahead, I thought, why don’t you? Suddenly his screeching didn’t bother me anymore. Far from it—it was very amusing to watch his complexion turning from dark pink to purple in between those crisscross lines of beard.
Mr. George arrived just in time to prevent the furious Puffylips from slapping my face.
“It was even worse today, if that’s possible.” Giordano sank down on a delicate little chair and mopped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief as purple as his present skin color. “She just stared ahead with glazed eyes all the time—if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was on drugs!”
“Giordano, please!” said Mr. George. “We have none of us had a particularly good day today—”
“How is … he doing?” asked Charlotte quietly, with a sideways glance at me.
“As you might expect in the circumstances,” replied Mr. George gravely.
Once again Charlotte cast me a brief, searching glance. I stared darkly back. Did it give her some kind of sick satisfaction to know something I didn’t know, although she thought it would be of burning interest to me?
“Oh, nonsense,” said Xemerius. “He’s doing fine, trust me, darling! He just ate an enormous veal schnitzel with French fries and green vegetables. Does that sound like as you might expect in the circumstances?”
Giordano was getting cross because no one was listening to him. “I just hope I won’t be held to blame!” he said shrilly, pushing his little chair aside. “I have worked with unacknowledged talents, I have worked with the truly great men of this world, but never, never in my life has anything like this come my way.”
“My dear Giordano, you know how much we esteem you here. And no one would have been more suitable to teach Gwyneth the…” Here Mr. George fell silent, because Giordano had pushed his lower lip forward in a sulky pout, throwing his head with its cement hairdo right back.
“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he snapped. “That’s all I ask.”
“Very well,” said Mr. George, sighing. “I … yes, well, I’ll pass the message on. Coming, Gwyneth?”
I’d already taken off the hooped skirt and hung it up over the piano stool. “See you sometime,” I said to Giordano.
He was still pouting. “I am afraid there will be no avoiding that.”
* * *
ON THE WAY down to the old alchemical laboratory, which I knew almost by heart now, even blindfolded, Mr. George told me what had happened in the morning. He was a little surprised that Mr. Marley hadn’t passed the news on to me, and I didn’t go to the trouble of explaining.
They had sent Gideon back to the past by chronograph (Mr. George wasn’t telling me what year), to carry out a little errand (Mr. George didn’t say just what that was either), and two hours later, they’d found him unconscious in a corridor not far from the chronograph room. With a lacerated wound on his forehead, obviously made by something hard and heavy. Gideon couldn’t remember anything about it, but the attacker must have been lying in wait for him.
“But who…?”
“We don’t know. It’s worrying, particularly in the present situation. We had him thoroughly examined, and there was no sign of any puncture on him to suggest that his blood had been taken—”
“Wouldn’t the blood from his forehead have been enough?” I asked, shuddering slightly.
“Possibly,” agreed Mr. George. “But if someone had … well, wanted to make sure, that’s not how he’d have gone about getting Gideon’s blood. There are countless explanations. No one knew Gideon was going to be there that evening, so it’s unlikely that someone was lying in wait for him on purpose. It’s much more likely to have been a chance meeting. In certain years, these cellars were swarming with subversive, lowlife characters—smugglers, criminals, creatures of the underworld in every sense. My own belief is that it was an unfortunate coincidence.…” He cleared his throat. “In any case, Gideon seems to have survived the adventure pretty well—at least, Dr. White found no serious injuries. So the two of you will be able to set off on Sunday at midday as planned, to attend that soirée.” He laughed a little. “Funny idea: a soirée in the middle of the day on Sunday.”
Yes, ha ha, hilarious. “Where’s Gideon now?” I asked impatiently. “In hospital?”
“No, he’s resting—at least, I hope so. He only went to hospital for a scan, and as it found nothing, thank God, he discharged himself. The fact is, he had an unexpected visit from his brother yesterday evening.”
“I know,” I said. “Mr. Whitman registered Raphael at my school today.”
I heard Mr. George sigh heavily. “The boy ran away from home after getting into some kind of trouble along with his friends. Falk has this crazy idea of keeping Raphael in England. In these turbulent times, we all have better things to do—Gideon in particular—than bother about difficult boys, but Falk could never refuse Selina anything, and it seems this is Raphael’s only chance of finishing high school with some kind of certificate, away from the friends who have such a bad influence on him.”
“Selina … is that Gideon and Raphael’s mother?”
“Yes,” said Mr. George. “They both inherited those striking green eyes from her. Here we are. You can take the blindfold off now.”
This time we were alone in the chronograph room.
“Charlotte said that in the circumstances you’d be calling off our planned visit to the eighteenth century,” I suggested hopefully. “Or postponing it? Just to give Gideon time to recover, and maybe I could practice a bit more—”
Mr. George shook his head. “No, we won’t be doing that. The timing of your visits was very important to the count. Gideon and you will go to the soirée the day after tomorrow—that’s definite. Any particular year you’d like to elapse to today?”
“No,” I said, taking care to sound indifferent. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference if I’m shut up in a cellar, does it?”
Mr. George was carefully taking the chronograph out of its velvet wrapping. “No, it doesn’t. We usually send Gideon to the year 1953, a nice quiet year. We just have to take care he doesn’t meet himself.” He smiled. “I imagine it would feel rather eerie to be shut up somewhere with your double.” He patted his round little paunch and looked thoughtful. “How about 1956? Another quiet year.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said.
Mr. George handed me the flashlight and took
his ring off. “Just in case … but don’t worry, there won’t be anyone around in the small hours, not at two thirty A.M.”
“Two thirty A.M.?” I repeated, horrified. How was I going to find my grandfather in the middle of the night? No one was going to believe I’d lost my way down in the cellars at two thirty A.M. There might not be anyone at all in the building. Then our plan would fall through! “Oh, Mr. George, please don’t send me into those eerie catacombs in the middle of the night all by myself!”
“Gwyneth, it makes no difference when you’re in a locked room deep underground.”
“But I … I get scared at night! Please, don’t send me off all alone in the dark.” I was so desperate that tears came to my eyes of their own accord; I didn’t have to help them along.
“Very well,” said Mr. George, his little eyes looking at me indulgently. “I was forgetting that you … well, let’s just pick another time of day. How about three in the afternoon?”
“That’s better,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. George.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for.” Mr. George looked up from the chronograph for a moment and smiled at me. “We really do ask a lot of you—I think in your place I’d feel rather uneasy alone in a cellar myself. Particularly as you sometimes see things that other people don’t.…”
“Yes, thanks for reminding me,” I said. Xemerius wasn’t with us. He’d probably have been very cross at being described as a “thing.” “What about all those tombs full of bones and skulls just around the corner?”
“Oh, dear,” said Mr. George. “I didn’t mean to add to your worries.”
“I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m not afraid of the dead. In my experience, they can’t hurt you—unlike the living.” I saw Mr. George raise his eyebrows and added quickly, “Though of course I think they’re dreadfully uncanny, and I certainly wouldn’t like to be sitting around here at night next to a lot of catacombs.” I gave him my hand, clutching my school bag with the other one. “Try the fourth finger this time, please. That one hasn’t been punctured yet.”
