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“I’m … er, fine, thank you.” I went red, because I was thinking what a picture of misery I must have been yesterday evening. At least Gideon hadn’t made any cutting reference to that. He was acting as if nothing at all had happened.
“What was that about my great-great-grandmother?” I hurried to ask. “I didn’t really understand.”
“No, we didn’t entirely understand it ourselves,” said Gideon, sighing.
The limousine moved away. I resisted the temptation to look at my friends through the back window.
“Margaret Tilney, née Grand, was the grandmother of your grandmother Arista, and the last time traveler in the female line before Lucy and you. The Guardians were able to read her into the first, original chronograph without any problems after her second journey back in time. That was in 1894. For the rest of her life—she died in 1944—she elapsed regularly with the aid of the chronograph. The Annals describe her as very friendly and cooperative.” Mr. George nervously passed his hand over his bald patch. “During the bombing of London in the Second World War, a group of Guardians went out into the country with her and the chronograph. She died there of pneumonia at the age of sixty-seven.”
“How … how sad.” I didn’t understand exactly what I was supposed to make of this information.
“As you know, Gideon has already visited seven of the Circle of Twelve in the past and taken a little of their blood for the new chronograph. Six if we count the twins as one. So with your blood and his, only four of the Circle are still missing. Opal, Jade, Sapphire, and Black Tourmaline.”
“Elaine Burghley, Margaret Tilney, Lucy Montrose, and Paul de Villiers,” added Gideon.
“Those four have to be visited in the past and a little blood taken from each of them.” I’d grasped that idea by now; I wasn’t entirely clueless.
“Exactly. We didn’t think there could be any complications with Margaret.” Mr. George leaned back in his seat. “With the others, yes, but there was no reason to assume that there’d be any difficulty with Margaret Tilney. The course of her life was closely recorded by the Guardians. We know where she was on every single day of it. That’s why it was also easy to arrange a meeting between her and Gideon. He traveled back last night to the year 1937, to meet Margaret Tilney at our house in the Temple.”
“Last night? Really? For goodness’ sake, when did you get any sleep?”
“It was supposed to be a very quick visit,” said Gideon. He crossed his arms over his chest. “We’d planned only an hour for the whole operation.”
Mr. George said, “But contrary to our expectations, when Gideon had explained the reasons, Margaret refused to let him have any of her blood.” He looked expectantly at me. Was I supposed to say something?
“Maybe … er … maybe she just didn’t understand you,” I said. After all, it was a very intricate story.
“She understood me perfectly.” Gideon shook his head. “Because she already knew that the first chronograph had been stolen and that I’d be wanting some of her blood for the second one.”
“But how could she have guessed what wouldn’t happen until many years later? Could she see into the future?” No sooner had I asked than I knew the answer. Slowly, I was really getting the hang of this time travel business.
“Someone got in ahead of you and told her,” I said.
Gideon nodded appreciatively. “And persuaded her not to let any of her blood be taken, whatever happened. Even stranger was the fact that she refused to speak to me. She called the Guardians to help her and told them to keep me away from her.”
“But who can it have been?” I stopped for a moment to think about it. “I suppose it can only have been Lucy and Paul. They can travel in time, they want to keep the Circle from closing.”
Mr. George and Gideon exchanged a glance.
“When Gideon came back, we faced a real puzzle,” said Mr. George. “We did have a vague idea of what might have happened, but no proof. So Gideon traveled back into the past again this morning for another visit to Margaret Tilney.”
“You’ve had a busy time, haven’t you?” I searched Gideon’s face for signs of weariness, but I couldn’t find any. Far from it—he looked wide awake. “How’s your arm?”
“Fine. Listen to what Mr. George is saying. It’s important.”
“This time Gideon visited Margaret directly after her initiation journey in 1894,” said Mr. George. “I must explain that the time travel gene, Factor X, seems to show in the blood only after that first journey. Obviously the chronograph can’t recognize blood taken from travelers before that. Count Saint-Germain did some experiments on that subject in his own time, and they nearly led to the destruction of the chronograph. So there’s no point in visiting a time traveler to take blood in his or her childhood. Although it would make things much easier. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Well, I said so anyway.
“So Gideon met the young Margaret this morning at the time of her second official date to elapse. She had been driven straight to the Temple after her first journey in time. And even as the preparations were being made to read her into the chronograph, she traveled for the second time. That’s the longest uncontrolled journey in time so far known to us. She was gone for over two hours.”
“Mr. George, you could leave out these minor details,” suggested Gideon, with a trace of impatience in his voice.
“Yes, yes. Where was I? Gideon visited Margaret when she was going to elapse, and once again he explained the story of the stolen chronograph to her, and the chance of putting things right with the second one.”
“Aha!” I interrupted. “So that’s how the older Margaret knew the whole story. Gideon had told her about it himself.”
“Yes, that looked like one possibility,” said Mr. George. “But yet again, the young Margaret wasn’t hearing the story for the first time.”
