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The count clicked his tongue. “You may be right. After all, it’s only a verse. A verse of doubtful origin.” He suddenly seemed to lose interest in me and turned back to Gideon. “My dear boy, I read here, with admiration, what you have already done. You have tracked Lancelot de Villiers down in Flanders! William de Villiers, Cecilia Woodville—the enchanting Aquamarine—and the twins I never met: you’ve ticked them all off the list. And just think, Lord Brompton, this young man even visited Madame Jeanne d’Urfé, née Pontcarré, in Paris and persuaded her to donate a little of her blood.”
“You mean the Madame d’Urfé to whom my father owed his friendship with Madame de Pompadour and ultimately with you as well?” asked Lord Brompton.
“The very same,” said the count. “I don’t know any other.”
“But Madame d’Urfé has been dead these last ten years.”
“Seven, to be precise,” said the count. “I was at the court of Margrave Charles of Ansbach at the time. I feel greatly drawn to the German states. The interest shown there in Freemasonry and alchemy is very gratifying. And as I was told many years ago, I shall die in Germany.”
“You’re just changing the subject,” said Lord Brompton. “How can this young man have visited Madame d’Urfé in Paris? Why, seven years ago he must still have been a child himself.”
“You persist in thinking along the wrong lines, my dear sir! Ask Gideon when he had the pleasure of asking for a drop of Madame d’Urfé’s blood.”
Lord Brompton looked inquiringly at Gideon.
“May 1759,” said Gideon.
His lordship uttered a shrill burst of laughter. “But that’s impossible. You can hardly be twenty years old now.”
The count laughed too, but with satisfaction. “So you met her in 1759. She never told me, old mystery-monger that she was.”
“You were in Paris yourself at the time, sir, but I had strict instructions not to cross your path.”
“On account of the continuum, yes, I know.” The count sighed. “Sometimes I am inclined to quarrel with my own rules.… But back to dear Jeanne. Did you have to use force? She wasn’t very cooperative with me.”
“So she told me,” said Gideon. “As well as the way you talked her into handing over the chronograph.”
“Talked her into it! She didn’t even know what a marvel she’d inherited from her grandmother. The poor device was lying around unused, unrecognized, in a dusty chest in an attic. Sooner or later, it would have been entirely forgotten. I rescued it and restored it to its former glory. And thanks to the figures of genius who will enter my Lodge in the future, it is still in working order today. That is little short of a miracle.”
“Madame d’Urfé also thought you were prepared to strangle her, just because she couldn’t remember her great-grandmother’s maiden name and date of birth.”
Strangle her? Yikes! How horrible was that?
“Quite so. Such gaps in our knowledge have cost me far too much time poring over old church records, when I could have put my mind to more important matters. Jeanne is a distinctly vindictive woman. Which makes it all the more remarkable that you persuaded her to cooperate.”
Gideon smiled. “It wasn’t easy. But I obviously struck her as trustworthy. I also danced the gavotte with her, and I listened patiently to her complaints of you.”
“How unjust. When it was I who nudged her in the direction of an exciting love affair with Casanova—and even if he was only after her money, a lot of other women envied her. What’s more, I shared my chronograph with her in a truly fraternal spirit. If it hadn’t been for me…” The count turned to me again, obviously brightening up. “An ungrateful female. I think she never really understood what was happening to her, poor old soul. Moreover, she felt insulted because her gemstone in the Circle of Twelve was only the citrine. Why can you be Emerald and I’m only dull Citrine? No one who takes any pride in herself wears citrines these days!” He chuckled. “She really was a very foolish creature. I wonder how often she traveled back in time in her old age. Maybe she stopped doing it entirely. She was never a greatly skilled time traveler anyway. Sometimes a whole month would pass before she disappeared. I’d say the female blood is considerably more sluggish than ours. Just as the female mind is inferior to the masculine intellect. Would you not agree with me, girl?”
Male chauvinist pig, I was thinking as I kept my eyes cast down, stupid, pompous, boring old chatterbox. Oh, no! Was I crazy? I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of anything!
But obviously the count’s mind-reading skill wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, because he just chuckled again in a self-satisfied way. “Not particularly talkative, is she?” he remarked.
“She’s only shy,” said Gideon. “Timid.”
Intimidated would have been more like it.
“There are no shy women,” announced the count. “The modest way they cast their eyes down merely hides their naivety.”
I was fast coming to the conclusion that there was no need to feel afraid of him. He was only a self-satisfied old git who hated women and liked the sound of his own voice.
“You clearly do not hold a high opinion of the fair sex,” said Lord Brompton.
“Oh, I protest!” replied the count. “I adore women! Really. I just do not believe their intellect is capable of furthering the interests of mankind. That is why there is no place for women in my Lodge.” He favored his lordship with a beaming smile. “And for many men, I assure you, Lord Brompton, that is the crucial argument that causes them to seek membership themselves.”
“Yet the ladies love you! My father never tired of praising your success with the fair sex to the skies. We are told that women have always thrown themselves at your feet, here in London and also in Paris.”
The count fell silent at once, no doubt thinking of his days as a ladies’ man. Then he said, “Oh, it is not particularly difficult to beguile women and subdue them to your will, my dear sir. They’re all the same. If my mind were not on higher things, I would long ago have written a manual for gentlemen, advising them on the right way to handle women.”
