by Kerstin Gier
I had sunk into my chair again, and I was waiting for the tears, with my eyes closed, but they wouldn’t come. Maybe it was better that way. In silence, I followed the secretary downstairs, and then we stood around for a while, also in silence (I kept thinking I was going to fall over and die), until the man looked at the clock on the wall. Frowning, he said, “He’s late.”
At that moment, the door opened and Gideon came in. My heart forgot that it was already broken and lying smashed at the bottom of a rocky ravine, and it beat quickly a couple of times. Wild anxiety took over from the chill in my body. Considering the disordered state of his clothes, his tousled, sweaty hair, his flushed cheeks, and the almost feverish gleam in his green eyes, I might possibly have put it all down to Lady Lavinia, but there was also a long tear in his sleeve, and the lace at his neck and cuffs was drenched in blood.
“You’re injured, sir!” cried the morose secretary in alarm, taking the words out of my mouth. (Okay, except for the sir.) “I’ll get someone to call a doctor.”
“No, don’t do that,” said Gideon, looking so self-confident that I could have hit him. “It’s not my blood. Or not all of it, anyway. Come on, Gwen. We must hurry. I was slightly held up.”
He took my hand and led me on. The secretary followed us down to the next flight of stairs, stammering a couple of times, “But what happened, sir? Shouldn’t we tell the count…?” Gideon said only that there was no time and he’d visit the count again as soon as possible to tell him what had happened.
“We’ll go on our own from here,” he said as we reached the foot of the stairs, where the two guards were standing with their swords drawn. “Give the count my regards! Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare.”
The two Guardians let us pass, and the secretary bowed a good-bye. Gideon took a torch out of its holder and made me go on. “Come along, we have another two minutes at the most!” He seemed to be in high spirits, if untidy. “Have you worked out yet what the password means?”
“No,” I said, surprised at myself to find that my heart, having grown back, refused to fall into the ravine again. It was acting as if everything was all right, and the hope that after all my heart might not be wrong was almost too much for me. “But I did find out something else. Whose blood is that on your sword?”
“He who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to rule,” said Gideon, holding up the torch to show us the way around the next corner. “Louis XI.”
“Very suitable, I’m sure,” I said.
“To be honest, I haven’t the faintest idea of the name of the man who got his blood all over these clothes. Madame Rossini is going to throw a fit.” Gideon opened the laboratory door, and put the torch in a holder on the wall. By its flickering light, I saw a large table covered with strange apparatus, glass bottles, little flasks, and beakers filled with liquids and powders in many different colors. The walls were in shadow, but I could see that they were almost entirely covered by diagrams and writing, and just above the torch, a roughly sketched death’s-head with pentagrams instead of eyes was grinning at us.
“Come over here,” said Gideon, leading me around to the other side of the table. Then he let go of my hand at last. But only to put both his own hands on my waist and draw me close to him. “How did your conversation with the count go?”
“It was very … enlightening,” I said. The phantom heart in my breast was fluttering like a small bird, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “The count explained how you … you and he share the same weird opinion that a woman is easier to control if she’s in love. It must have been really annoying to put in all that strenuous work on Charlotte and then have to begin again at the beginning with me, wasn’t it?”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Gideon looked at me, frowning.
“You did it really well, all the same,” I went on. “The count thinks so, too, by the way. Of course you didn’t have a particularly difficult time with me.… My God, I’m so ashamed when I think how easy I made it for you.” I couldn’t look at him anymore.
“Gwyneth—” He interrupted himself. “Look, we’ll be traveling back any minute. Maybe we should continue this conversation later. In peace and quiet. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re getting at.…”
“I only want to know whether it’s true,” I said. Of course it was true, but as everyone knows, hope dies hard. I was getting the familiar feeling that we were about to travel forward in time again. “Whether you really planned to make me fall in love with you—the same as you did with Charlotte before me.”
Gideon let go of me. “This isn’t the moment,” he said. “Gwyneth. We’ll talk about it when we get back. I promise you.”
“No! Now.” The knots tying up my throat broke apart, and my tears began to flow. “Just say yes or no—that’ll do. Did you plan it all?”
Gideon was rubbing his forehead. “Gwen—”
“Yes or no?” I sobbed.
“Yes,” said Gideon, “but—oh, please stop crying.”
And for the second time that day, my heart—only this time its second edition, the phantom heart that had grown out of sheer hope—fell over the precipice and smashed into thousands of tiny little pieces at the bottom of the ravine. “Okay, that’s really all I wanted to know. Thanks for being so honest.”
“Gwen. I want to explain.…” Gideon disappeared into thin air in front of me. For a few seconds, as the chill came back into my body, I stared at the flickering torchlight and the death’s-head, tried to suppress my tears, and then everything blurred before my eyes.
It took me a few seconds to get used to the light in the chronograph room of my own time, but I heard the alarm in Dr. White’s voice and the sound of ripping fabric.
“It’s nothing,” said Gideon. “Only a tiny cut. It hardly bled at all. I don’t even need a plaster for it, Dr. White, and you can put those clamps away again! Nothing happened.”
“Hello, haystack girl!” said Xemerius. “You’ll never guess what we’ve found out! Oh, no! You haven’t been crying again, have you?”
Mr. George took hold of me with both hands and swung me once around my own axis. “She’s not injured!” he said, with relief in his voice.
Not injured, no, except for my heart.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Xemerius. “Bonehead’s brother and your friend Lesley have something very interesting to tell you! Guess what? They’ve tracked down the place described by the coordinates in the Green Rider code. You’ll never believe it!”
“Gwyneth?” Gideon was looking at me as if he was afraid I might throw myself under the first bus to come along, all because of him.
“I’m fine,” I said, without looking him in the eye. “Mr. George, could you please take me upstairs? I have to go home. It’s urgent.”
“Of course.” Mr. George nodded.
Gideon made a movement, but Dr. White was holding him. “Oh, keep still, for heaven’s sake!” He had torn the sleeves of Gideon’s jacket and the shirt he was wearing under it right off. The bare arm was encrusted with blood, and I saw a small cut up almost by Gideon’s shoulder. The little ghost boy Robert was staring at all the blood in horror.
“Who did this? It will have to be disinfected and stitched,” said Dr. White gloomily.
“Certainly not,” said Gideon. He was pale, and there was nothing left of the high spirits he’d shown back in the eighteenth century. “We can see about that later. I have to talk to Gwyneth first.”
“There’s really no need,” I said. “I know all I want to know. And now I have to go home.”
“I should just about think so!” said Xemerius.
“Tomorrow is another day,” Mr. George told Gideon, as he picked up the black scarf. “And Gwyneth looks tired. She has to go to school tomorrow morning.”
“Exactly!” said Xemerius. “And tonight she’s going on a treasure hunt. Or a hunt for whatever those coordinates lead us to.”
Mr. George blindfolded me. The last thing
I saw was Gideon’s eyes, looking unnaturally green in his pale face.
“Good night, everyone,” I said, and then Mr. George led me out of the room. No one had answered me anyway, except for little Robert.
“Okay, I’ll put you out of your suspense,” said Xemerius. “Lesley and Raphael had a lot of fun this afternoon—unlike you, I guess from the look of you. Well, anyway, the two of them managed to locate the place described in the coordinates precisely. You can have three guesses where it is.”
“Here in London?” I asked.
“Bingo!” cried Xemerius.
“What did you say?” Mr. George asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “Excuse me, Mr. George.”
Mr. George sighed. “I hope your conversation with Count Saint-Germain went well.”
“Oh, yes,” I said bitterly. “It was very instructive in all sorts of ways.”
“Hello! I’m still here, you know,” said Xemerius, and I felt his damp aura as he clung to my back like a monkey, with his arms around my neck. “And I have really, really interesting news. Listen to this: the hiding place we’re looking for is here in London. And even better, it’s in Mayfair. To be precise, in Bourdon Place. And to be even more precise, at number 81 Bourdon Place. Now what do you say?”
In my own home? The coordinates described a place in our own house? For heaven’s sake, what would my grandfather have hidden there? Maybe another book? One with drawings that would finally help us to get somewhere?
“So far the doggy girl and the frog-eater have done a good job,” said Xemerius. “Admittedly, I had no idea of that coordinates stuff myself. But now I can be really useful. Because only the unique, the wonderful, the brilliantly clever Xemerius can stick his head through walls and see what’s hidden behind them. We’re both going on a treasure hunt tonight.”
“Would you like to talk about it?” asked Mr. George.
I shook my head. “No, it can wait until tomorrow,” I said, and I was speaking to both Mr. George and Xemerius.
Tonight I was going to lie awake in mourning for my broken heart. I wanted to wallow in self-pity and high-flown metaphors. And maybe I’d listen to Bon Jovi and “Hallelujah” while I wallowed. After all, everyone needs her own soundtrack for a tragic case like this.
EPILOGUE
London,
29 September 1782
HE LANDED with his back to the wall, placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, and looked around him. There was no one about in the yard of the inn, just as Lord Alastair had promised. Washing lines stretched across it from wall to wall, and the white sheets hanging on them moved slightly in the wind.
Paul looked up at the windows that reflected the afternoon sun. A cat lay on one windowsill, giving him a mocking glance, one paw dangling casually over the edge of the sill. The cat reminded him of Lucy.
He took his hand off the sword hilt and shook out the lace cuffs around his wrists. These Rococo clothes all looked the same to him, stupid knee breeches, weird, impractically long tailcoats, embroidery and lace everywhere. Frightful. He had intended to wear the wig and costume left over from his visits to the year 1745, but Lucy and Lady Tilney had insisted on having a completely new outfit made for him. They said everyone would notice if he went about in 1782 wearing clothes dating back to 1745, and when he said, who cared, he was only going to a remote yard for a short time to meet Lord Alastair and exchange the papers, they refused to see his point. He slipped his hand between his coat and his shirt, where the folded copies lay in a brown envelope.
“Excellent. You are punctual.”
The cool voice made him spin around. Lord Alastair stepped out of the shadow of the arched entrance to the yard, as elegantly dressed as ever, even if his clothes were very colorful, and their embroidery and the jewels he wore sparkled in the sunlight. He looked exotic against the plain background of the sheets. Even the hilt of his sword seemed to be made of pure gold and was set with gemstones. They gave the weapon the appearance of being harmless, almost ridiculous.
Paul glanced quickly through the arch, where green turf ran beside the road and down to the Thames. He could hear horses snorting, so he assumed that Lord Alastair had come in a coach.
“Are you alone?” asked his lordship. His tone of voice was extremely arrogant, although he also sounded like a man with a chronically stuffy nose. He came closer. “What a pity! I would have liked to see your pretty red-haired companion again. She had such … such an unusual way of expressing her opinion.”
“She was only disappointed that you didn’t make use of the advantage our last information gave you. And she’s suspicious about what you intend to do with it.”
“Your information was incomplete.”
“It was complete enough! The Florentine Alliance hadn’t thought its plans through properly! In forty years, five attempts on the count’s life have failed, and you were personally responsible for two of them. Last time—and that was eleven years ago—you seem to have been so certain of yourself!”
“Have no fear! The next attempt won’t fail!” said Lord Alastair. “Until now, my ancestors and I have always made the mistake of fighting the so-called count as if he were an ordinary human being. We have tried to unmask him, spread defamatory rumors about him, destroy his reputation. We have also tried to help lost souls like you back to the straight and narrow path, before we realized that you were all lost long ago—because you inherited his demonic blood.”
Paul frowned with annoyance. He had never been able to make head or tail of the unctuous remarks uttered by his lordship and the other men of the Florentine Alliance.
“We have tried to destroy him, like any ordinary man, with poison, the sword, bullets,” Lord Alastair went on. “How ludicrous!” He gave a hoarse laugh. “But whatever we did, he always seemed to be one step ahead of us. Wherever we went, he was always there first. He seemed invincible. He has influential friends and protectors everywhere, and like him, they are experts in black magic. The members of his Lodge are among the most powerful men of our time. It has taken me decades to understand that a demon cannot be defeated by human methods. But now I know better.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Paul, casting a quick glance to one side. Two more men, clad in black and carrying drawn swords, had appeared in the arched entrance. Damn it—Lucy had been right! Alastair had no intention of keeping his word. “Do you have the letters?”
“Of course,” said Lord Alastair, taking a thick bundle of papers tied together with a red cord out of his coat pocket. “These days—and not least thanks to you and your excellent information—I have succeeded in getting a good friend of mine to infiltrate the ranks of the Guardians. He is now providing me with important news every day. Did you know that the count is back in town at this moment? Ah, but of course you did!” He weighed up the bundle in his hand, and then tossed it to Paul.
Paul caught it neatly with one hand. “Thank you. I’m sure you’ve had copies of them made.”
“There was no need,” said his lordship, with his usual arrogance. “And what about you? Have you brought me what I asked for?”
Paul stowed the bundle of letters away under his coat and held up the brown envelope. “Five pages of the family tree of the de Villiers family, beginning in the sixteenth century with Lancelot de Villiers, the first time traveler, and ending with Gideon de Villiers, born in the twentieth century.”
“And the female line?” asked Lord Alastair, and now he almost sounded excited.
“It’s all in there as well. Beginning with Elaine Burghley and ending with the name of Gwyneth Shepherd.” Speaking her name gave Paul a pang. He cast a quick glance at the two men. They had stopped under the arch, hands on the hilts of their swords, as if they were waiting for something. Gritting his teeth, he admitted to himself that he could guess what it was.
“Good. Then give it to me.”
Paul hesitated. “You haven’t kept to our agreement,” he said, trying to gain time. He pointed to the two men. “You w
ere going to come alone.”
Lord Alastair followed his gaze with indifference. “A gentleman of my social rank is never alone. My servants accompany me everywhere.” He took another step forward. “Now, give me the papers! I’ll see to the rest of it myself.”
“And suppose I change my mind?”
“It doesn’t matter to me whether I take those papers from your hands when you’re dead or alive,” said his lordship, and his hand went to the ornate hilt of his sword. “In other words, it makes no difference whether I kill you before or after I have them.”
Paul put his hand on his own sword. “You swore an oath.”
“Huh!” cried Lord Alastair, drawing his sword. “A man doesn’t outwit the Devil by means of morality! So give me those papers!”
Paul took two steps back and drew his own sword. “Didn’t you say it was no use trying to defeat us with ordinary weapons?” he asked, raising one eyebrow as derisively as possible.
“We’ll see about that,” said his lordship. “En garde, demon!”
Paul would rather have gone on talking, but Lord Alastair seemed to have been just waiting for his opportunity. He lunged, obviously fiercely determined to kill Paul. That ferocity and his brilliance as a swordsman were not an ideal combination.
Paul realized as much when, two minutes later, he had his back to the wall. He had parried the attack as well as he could, had ducked down under the sheets, and tried to drive Lord Alastair into a corner himself. It didn’t work.
The cat from the windowsill, spitting, jumped down and ran away through the arched entrance. All was still behind the windows. Damn it, why hadn’t he listened to Lucy when she begged him to set the chronograph to a shorter window of time? Then he might have been able to hold out long enough to disappear into thin air before his lordship’s eyes.
Alastair’s weapon flashed in the sun. His next stroke was so hard and forceful that it almost knocked Paul’s sword out of his hand.
“Wait!” he cried, gasping even more than he really had to. “You win! I’ll give you the papers.”
