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“So do I,” said Gideon. He reached out his hand, but then obviously thought better of it. “Any moment now,” he said, lamely. “Come another step or so this way.”
The room began going around and around, then I was blinking at a bright light, swaying slightly on my feet, and Mr. Whitman said, “Ah, there you two are.”
Gideon put his flashlight on the table and cast me a brief glance. Maybe I was imagining it, but this time I thought there was something like sympathy in his eyes. I surreptitiously wiped my face once more, but all the same, Mr. Whitman could see I’d been crying. There was no one else here. Xemerius had probably felt bored and gone away.
“What’s the matter, Gwyneth?” asked Mr. Whitman, in the kindly tone he used to suggest that he was a teacher to be trusted. “Is something wrong?” If I hadn’t known better, I might have been tempted to indulge in more tears and pour out my heart to him. (“Horrible, horrible Gideon has been so, soooo nasty to me!”) But I knew him too well. He’d sounded just the same last week when he asked us who had drawn the caricature of Mrs. Counter on the board. “I’d certainly say that the artist has talent,” he had said, with a smile of amusement. So Cynthia (of course!) told him Maggie had done it, and Mr. Whitman had stopped smiling and entered a bad mark against Maggie’s name in the class register. “I meant it about the talent, by the way,” he had added. “Your talent for getting yourself into trouble, Maggie, is truly remarkable.”
“Well?” he said now, with the same sympathetic and trustworthy smile. But I definitely wasn’t falling for that one.
“A rat,” I muttered. “You said there weren’t any … and then the lightbulb gave out, and you hadn’t given me a flashlight, and there I was all alone in the dark with that horrible rat.” I very nearly added “I’m going to tell my mum,” but I managed to stop myself just in time.
Mr. Whitman looked a little distressed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll remember that next time.” Then he went back to his usual instructive teacher’s tone. “You’ll be taken home now, and I recommend you go to bed early. Tomorrow is going to be a strenuous day for you.”
“I’ll take her to the car,” said Gideon, picking up the black scarf that they always used to blindfold me. “Where’s Mr. George?”
“In a meeting,” said Mr. Whitman, frowning. “Gideon, I think you should consider your conversational tone. We let a good deal pass, because we know you’re not having an easy time at present, but you ought to show a little more respect for the members of the Inner Circle.”
Gideon’s face gave nothing away, but he said politely, “You’re right, Mr. Whitman. I’m sorry.” Then he held his hand out to me. “Coming?”
I almost took it, too. A pure reflex action. And it gave me a pang to think I couldn’t do it without losing face. I was on the point of bursting into tears again.
“Good night,” I said to Mr. Whitman, staring at the floor as hard as I could.
Gideon opened the door.
“See you tomorrow,” said Mr. Whitman. “And remember, both of you, plenty of sleep is the best preparation.”
The door closed behind us.
“All alone in a dark cellar with a horrible rat, were you?” said Gideon, grinning at me.
I could hardly make any sense of it. Nothing but cold looks from him for the last two days—and in fact for the last couple of hours, glances that almost made me freeze as stiff as a board, like those poor animals in the postwar winters. And now this? A joke, as if everything was the same as before? Maybe he was a sadist and couldn’t smile unless he’d been horrible to me first?
“Aren’t you going to blindfold me?” I wasn’t in any mood for more of his silly jokes, and I wanted him to know it.
Gideon shrugged. “I imagine you know the way by now. We can forget about the blindfold. Come on.” Another friendly grin.
This was my first sight of the cellar corridors in our own time. They were neatly plastered, with lights let into the walls, some of them with movement detectors. The way up again was well lit.
“Not very impressive, is it?” said Gideon. “All the corridors leading out of the cellars have special doors and alarm systems fitted, and these days it’s as safe as the Bank of England down here. But none of these security devices were fitted until the 1970s. Before that, you could go through half of London below the ground starting from here.”
“I’m not interested,” I said sullenly.
“What would you like to talk about, then?”
“Nothing.” How could he act as if nothing at all had happened? His silly grin and all this small talk made me truly furious. I walked faster, and although I kept my lips firmly compressed, I couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of me. “I can’t do it, Gideon! I can’t make out the way you kiss me one moment and then act as if you loathed me like poison the next!”
Gideon said, after a brief pause, “I’d much rather be kissing you the whole time than loathing you, but you don’t exactly make it easy for me.”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.
He stopped. “Oh, come off it, Gwyneth! You don’t seriously believe I’m swallowing that story about your grandfather? As if he just happened by chance to be in the room where you were elapsing! It’s as unlikely as Lucy and Paul just happening to be at Lady Tilney’s. Or those men attacking us in Hyde Park by chance.”
“Oh, of course, I fixed all that in person, because I’d always wanted to stick a sword through someone. Not forgetting that I wanted to see what a man looks like with half his face shot away!” I snapped.
“What you may do in the future, and why—”
“Oh, be quiet!” I cried, angrily. “I’m sick and tired of all this! Ever since last Monday, I’ve felt like I was living in a nightmare that’s never going to end. When I think I’ve woken up, I find I’m still dreaming. There are millions of questions that no one will answer going around in my head, and everyone expects me to do my best for something I don’t understand one little bit!” I was walking on again, almost running, but Gideon easily kept up with me. There was no one on the stairs to ask us for the password. Why bother, if all the ways in and out were as secure as Fort Knox? I went up the stairs two steps at a time. “No one asked me if I wanted to be involved in this at all. I have to be pestered by crazy dancing masters and have my dear cousin show me all the things she can do but I’ll never be able to learn, and you … you…”
