Ruby Red (21 page)

“Nonsense. Come along!” Gideon closed the door behind us, took the torch from me again, and went down the dark corridor. I followed him.

“Aren’t you going to blindfold me again?” I asked, only half joking.

“It’s dark, you’d never remember the way,” replied Gideon. “One more reason to stick close to me. We have to be back down here in three hours’ time.”

One more reason for me to know my way around. How was I going to manage if anything happened to Gideon, or if we were separated? I didn’t think it was such a great idea not to let me know anything. But I bit back the words on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t want to pick an argument with Mr. High and Mighty just now.

It smelled musty, far worse than in our own time. What year had we traveled back to again?

The smell really was pungent, as if something was decomposing down here. For some reason, I suddenly thought of rats. In films, long, dark, torchlit corridors always had rats in them! Hideous black rats with their beady little eyes glowing in the dark. Or dead rats. Oh, yeah, and spiders. There were always spiders in this kind of place. I tried not to touch the walls and pushed the thought of fat spiders clinging to the hem of my dress and slowly crawling up my bare legs out of my mind.

Instead, I counted the footsteps to every bend in the corridor. After forty-four steps, we turned right, after fifty-five, we turned left, then left again, and we reached a spiral staircase leading up. I held my skirt up as high as I could so as to keep up with Gideon. There was a light somewhere up there, getting brighter as we climbed, until finally we were in a broad corridor with many lighted torches along its walls. There was a large door at the end of the corridor, with two suits of armor standing on either side of it. They were just as rusty as in our own time.

Luckily I didn’t see any rats, but all the same I had a sinking feeling that we were being watched, and the closer to the door we came, the stronger that feeling was. I looked around, but the corridor was empty.

When one of the suits of armor suddenly moved its arm and pointed a dangerous-looking spear or whatever it was at us, I froze, gasping for air. Now I knew who’d been watching us.

The suit of armor also, and totally unnecessarily, said, “Stop!” in a tinny voice.

I felt like screaming with terror, but once again not a sound would come out of my mouth. Pretty soon I realized it wasn’t the suit of armor that had moved and spoken but whoever was inside it. The other suit of armor also seemed to be inhabited.

“We have to speak to the Master,” said Gideon. “On urgent business.”

“Password,” said the second suit of armor.

“
Qua redit nescitis
,” said Gideon.

Oh, yes—that was it. For a moment I was genuinely impressed. He’d actually remembered it.

“You may pass,” said the first suit of armor, and it even held the door open for us.

There was another corridor beyond it, also lit by torches. Gideon stuck our torch in a holder on the wall and hurried on. I followed as fast as my hooped skirt would let me. By now I was out of breath.

“This is like a horror film. My heart almost stopped. I thought those things were just for decoration! I mean, suits of armor aren’t exactly modern in the eighteenth century, are they? And not much use either, if you ask me.”

“It’s a tradition for the men on guard to wear them,” said Gideon. “They do in our time as well.”

“But I haven’t seen any knights in armor in our time,” I said. Then it occurred to me that maybe I had seen some after all. Maybe I’d just thought they were empty suits of armor.

“Get a move on,” said Gideon.

Easy for him to say. He wasn’t carrying a skirt the size of a tent around with him.

“Who is ‘the Master’?”

“The Order is headed by a Grand Master. At this period of course it’s the count himself. The Order is still young; the count founded it only thirty-seven years ago. Even later, members of the de Villiers family often held the post of Grand Master.”

Did that mean Count Saint-Germain was a de Villiers? If he was, then why was he called Saint-Germain?

“What about now? Er, I mean in our time. Who’s the Grand Master today?”

“At the moment, my Uncle Falk,” said Gideon. “He took over from your grandfather Lord Montrose.”

“Oh.” My dear, kindly grandfather, Grand Master of the Lodge of Count Saint-Germain! And I’d always thought he was totally under my grandmother’s thumb.

“So what position does Lady Arista hold in the Order?”

“Oh, none. Women can’t be members of the Lodge. The immediate families of the members of the Inner Circle automatically belong to the Outer Circle of initiates, but they don’t have a say in anything.”

That was obvious.

Maybe his way of treating me was natural to all the de Villiers family? A kind of congenital defect leaving them capable of only a contemptuous smile for women? On the other hand, he had been very gentle with Charlotte. And I had to admit that at the moment he was at least behaving himself reasonably well.

“Why do you always call your grandmother Lady Arista, by the way?” he asked. “Why don’t you say Grandma or Granny?”

“I don’t know. We just do,” I said. “So, why can’t women be members of the Lodge?”

Gideon put out an arm and shoved me behind him. “Shut up for a moment, would you?”

“What?”

There was another staircase at the end of this corridor. Daylight fell in from above, but before we reached the stairs, two men with drawn swords stepped out of the shadows, as if they’d been waiting for us.

“Good day,” said Gideon. Unlike me, he hadn’t batted an eyelash. But his hand had gone to his own sword.

“Password!” demanded the first man.

“Surely you were here only yesterday,” said the second man, coming a little closer to take a look at Gideon. “Or your younger brother was. The likeness is remarkable.”

“Is this the boy who can appear out of nowhere?” asked the other man. Both of them stared openmouthed at Gideon. They wore clothes like his, and Madame Rossini had obviously been right: in the Rococo age men did like bright colors. These two had combined red and brown with turquoise, which was then embroidered with little mauve flowers, and one of them really was wearing a lemon-yellow coat. The sight should have been appalling, but there was just something about it. It was … well, colorful.

They were both wearing wigs with curls like sausages over their ears and a small extra pigtail at the back of the neck tied with a velvet ribbon.

“Let’s just say I know ways about this house that are unknown to you,” said Gideon with a scornful smile. “I and my companion have to speak to the Master. On urgent business.”

“That’s right, mention yourself first,” I murmured.

“The password?”

Quark edit bisquitis
. Or something along those lines.

“
Qua redit nescitis,
” said Gideon.

Well, I’d had it almost right.

ELEVEN

THE MAN IN THE YELLOW
coat put his sword away. “Follow me.”

Curious, I looked out the first window we passed. So this was the eighteenth century! My scalp began tingling with excitement. But all I could see was an inner courtyard with a fountain in the middle of it. I’d seen it looking just the same before.

We went up more stairs. Gideon let me go first.

“You were here only yesterday?” I asked, intrigued. I whispered it so that the man in the yellow coat wouldn’t hear what we were saying. He was only a couple of steps ahead of us.

“It was yesterday to them,” said Gideon. “To me it’s almost two years ago.”

“Why were you here?”

“To introduce myself to the count, and I had to tell him that the first chronograph had been stolen.”

“I don’t suppose he thought much of that.”

The man in yellow acted as if he wasn’t trying to listen to us, but you could practically see his ears popping out from under the white sausages of hair in the effort to hear.

“He took it better than I’d expected,” said Gideon. “And after the first shock, he was delighted to hear that our second chronograph really was in working order, giving us another chance to end the whole thing successfully.”

“Where’s the chronograph
now
?” I whispered. “I mean at this moment in this time.”

“Somewhere in this building, I assume. The count won’t be parted from it for long. He himself has to elapse to avoid random time traveling.”

“Why can’t we simply take the chronograph back with us into the future, then?”

“For a number of reasons,” said Gideon. His tone of voice had changed. It wasn’t quite so arrogant. More like patronizing. “The most important are obvious. One of the Guardians’ golden rules for the use of the chronograph is that the continuum must never be broken. If we took the chronograph back to the future with us, the count and the time travelers born after him would have to manage without it.”

“Yes, but then no one could steal it either.”

Gideon shook his head. “I can see you’ve never thought much about the nature of time. It would be very dangerous to interrupt certain sequences of events. In the worst case scenario, you might never be born.”

“I see,” I said untruthfully.

Meanwhile we had reached the first floor, passing two more men armed with swords. The yellow man had a brief exchange with them in whispers. What was that password again? All I could think of was
Qua nesquick mosquitoes.
I definitely had to get myself another brain.

The two men were looking at Gideon and me with unconcealed curiosity, and as soon as we’d passed them, they went on whispering. I’d have loved to hear what they were saying.

The man in yellow knocked on a door. Another man was sitting at a desk inside the room, also wearing a wig and colorful clothes. The turquoise coat and flowered waistcoat that showed above the desk were dazzling, and below the desktop, there was a cheerful view of bright red trousers and striped stockings. I’d stopped even being surprised by this kind of thing.

“Mr. Secretary,” said the man in yellow, “here’s yesterday’s visitor again. And he knows today’s password, too.”

The secretary man looked incredulously at Gideon’s face. “How
can
you know the password? We announced it only two hours ago, and no one’s left this house since then. And who is
she
? Women are not allowed here.”

I was going to tell him my name politely, but Gideon took my arm and interrupted me. “We have to speak to the count,” he said. “On urgent business. We’re in a hurry.”

“They came from down below,” said the man in yellow.

“But the count isn’t here,” said the secretary. He was on his feet now, wringing his hands. “We can send a messenger—”

“No, we have to speak to the count ourselves. We don’t have time to send messengers back and forth. Where is the count at the moment?”

“Visiting Lord Brompton in his new town house in Wigmore Street. A meeting to discuss something of the greatest importance. He arranged the meeting directly after your visit yesterday.”

Gideon swore under his breath. “We need a coach to take us to Wigmore Street, then. At once.”

“I can arrange that,” said the secretary, nodding to the man in yellow. “See to it yourself, please, Wilbour.”

“But—won’t we be rather short of time?” I asked, thinking of the long way back through the musty cellar. “I mean, time to get to Wigmore Street in a coach.” Our dentist was in Wigmore Street. The nearest Tube station was Bond Street on the Central Line, but going there from here you’d have to change several times. And like I said, that was on the Tube! I hated to think how long it would take in a horse-drawn coach. “Maybe it would be better if we came back another time?”

“No,” said Gideon, suddenly smiling at me. There was something in his face that I couldn’t quite interpret. A wish for adventure, maybe?

“We still have over two and a half hours,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll drive to Wigmore Street.”

*   *   *