by Kerstin Gier
“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, baffle
d. “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.”
“Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven,” murmured Lucas.
“Yes, well, there you are—magic of the raven, blah blah blah. But I’m the wrong person. Count Saint-Germain throttled me even though he was standing several yards away, and I could hear his voice in my head, and then there were those men with pistols and swords in Hyde Park, and I had to run a sword into one of them because otherwise he’d have killed Gideon, who is … who’s such a…” I took a deep breath, only to go headlong on the next minute. “Gideon is a pain in the neck, he acts as if I were a millstone around his neck, and this morning he kissed Charlotte, well, only on the cheek, but maybe it meant something, I never ought to have kissed him without asking about that first, after all, I’ve only known him a day or so, but suddenly he was so nice and then … oh, it all happened so fast … and everyone thinks I told Lucy and Paul when we were visiting Lady Tilney because we need her blood, and we need some of Lucy and Paul’s blood too, but they need Gideon’s blood and mine because that’s still missing from their chronograph. And no one tells me what’s going to happen when everyone’s blood has been read into the chronograph, and sometimes I think they don’t know for certain themselves. And Lucy said I ought to ask you about the Green Rider.”
Lucas had half closed his eyes behind his glasses and was obviously trying desperately to make sense of my torrent of words. “I have no idea what this Green Rider could mean,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s the first time I ever heard of him. Maybe it’s the title of a film? Why don’t you ask … I know, you could simply ask me in the year 2011.”
I looked at him, horrified.
“Oh, dear, I see,” said Lucas quickly. “You can’t, because I’ll be dead by then, or old and blind and deaf drowsing away in some senior citizens’ home.… No, no, please, I really don’t want to know.”
This time I couldn’t hold back my tears. I sobbed for at least half a minute because—strange as it sounds—I suddenly missed my grandfather dreadfully. “I loved you very much,” I said at last.
Lucas gave me a handkerchief and looked at me sympathetically. “Are you sure? I don’t even like children. Little pests, if you ask me.… But maybe you were a particularly nice child. In fact, I’m sure you were.”
“Yes, I was. But you were nice to all us kids.” I blew my nose noisily. “Even Charlotte.”
We said nothing for a little while. Then Lucas took a watch out of his pocket and said, “How much time do we have?”
“They sent me here for exactly two hours.”
“Not very long, then. We’ve wasted far too much time already.” He got up. “I’ll get pens and paper, and we’ll try to find some kind of system in all this chaos. You’d better stay here. Don’t move from the spot.”
I just nodded. When Lucas had left, I stared into nothing with my face buried in my hands. He was right. It was important to keep a clear head now.
Who knew when I’d meet my grandfather again? Which things that hadn’t happened yet ought I to tell him about, which should I hush up? And looking at it the other way around, I was desperately anxious for any information he could give me that might come in useful. Basically, he was my only ally. But living in the wrong time. And how could he cast light, from here, on any of the dark riddles facing me?
Lucas stayed away for some time, and as the minutes passed, I began to doubt my own feelings. Maybe he’d been lying, and any moment now he’d be back with Lucy and Paul and a big knife, to get blood out of me. Finally, feeling worried, I stood up and looked around for something I could use as a weapon. There was a board with a rusty nail in it lying in a corner, but when I picked it up, it crumbled apart in my fingers. At that very moment, the door opened again, and my young grandfather came back with a notepad under his arm and a banana in one hand.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Here, to stave off hunger pangs.” Lucas tossed me the banana, took a third chair off the pile, placed it between us, and put the notepad on it. “Sorry I was so long. That idiot Kenneth de Villiers was upstairs getting in my way. I can’t stand the de Villiers family. Always sticking their long noses into everything, wanting to be in control and make the decisions and always thinking they know best!”
“How right you are,” I murmured.
Lucas shook his wrist to loosen it up. “Then here goes—granddaughter. You’re the Ruby, the twelfth in the Circle. The Diamond, from the de Villiers family, was born two years before you. So he’d be around nineteen in your time. What’s his name again?”
“Gideon,” I said, and just saying it out loud made me feel warm. “Gideon de Villiers.”
Lucas’s pen was hurrying over the paper. “And he’s a pain in the neck, like all of them, but you still kissed him, if I caught the drift of what you were saying just now. Aren’t you rather young for that kind of thing?”
“Goodness me, no,” I said. “Far from it—I’m a late developer. All the girls in our class are on the pill but me.”
Well, all except Aishani, Maggie, and Cassie Clarke, but Aishani’s parents were conservative Indians and would murder Aishani if she so much as looked at a boy, Maggie fancied girls, and as for Cassie—one day I was sure those spots would go away of their own accord, and then she’d be nicer to other people and stop snapping, “What do you think you’re gawping at in that silly way?” when anyone even glanced in her direction.
“Oh, and of course Charlotte won’t have anything to do with sex either. That’s why Gordon Gelderman calls her the Ice Queen. But now I’m not so sure if that’s really right for her.…” I ground my teeth, because I was thinking how Charlotte had looked at Gideon—and vice versa. If you stopped to think how quickly Gideon had thought up the idea of kissing me, on only the second day after we met, I couldn’t even imagine what had been going on between him and Charlotte over all the years they’d known each other.
“What kind of pill?” asked Lucas.
“How do you mean?” Oh, my God, in the year 1948 they probably had nothing but cow-gut condoms, if that. I didn’t really want to know. “Honestly, I’d rather not talk to you about sex, Grandpa.”
Lucas looked at me, shaking his head. “And I’d rather not hear that word in your mou
th. I don’t mean Grandpa.”
“Okay.” I peeled the banana as Lucas went on making notes. “What do you say instead?”
“Instead of what?”
“Instead of sex.”
“We don’t talk about it,” said Lucas, concentrating on his notepad. “Or anyway, not to girls of sixteen. So let’s go on. The chronograph was stolen by Lucy and Paul before the blood of the last two time travelers could be read into it. Then the second chronograph came into use, but of course the blood of all the other time travelers is missing from that one.”
“Not anymore. Gideon has found nearly all of them, and they gave him some of their blood. There’s only Lady Tilney to go, and the Opal, Elise something-or-other.”
“Elaine Burghley,” said Lucas. “A lady-in-waiting at the court of Queen Elizabeth. She died in childbirth aged eighteen.”
“Right. And Lucy and Paul’s blood too, of course. So we’re after their blood, and they’re after ours. Or that’s how I understand it, anyway.”
“And now there are two chronographs which might complete the Circle? This is really incredible!”
“What will happen when the Circle is complete?”
“Then the secret will be revealed,” said Lucas solemnly.
“Oh, no, not you too!” I shook my head angrily. “Isn’t there any more concrete information available, just for once?”
“Well, the prophesies speak of the rise of the eagle, the victory of mankind over disease and death, and the dawn of a new age.”
“Oh,” I said, no wiser than before. “So it’s a good thing, is it?”
“A very good thing. Something of benefit to the entire human race. That’s why Count Saint-Germain founded the Society of the Guardians. That’s why the most brilliant and powerful men in the world joined our ranks. We all want to keep the secret so that it can be revealed at the right time and save the world.”
Okay. A clear statement for once. Or at least the clearest anyone had yet given me since I got mixed up in all this mysterious secret stuff. “But why don’t Lucy and Paul want the Circle to be closed?”