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“Good morning,” replied Xemerius, hopping down from the windowsill and up on an empty chair.
While the others looked at me, rather surprised, Xemerius scratched his belly. “Yours is rather a large family. I haven’t quite managed to get the hang of it yet, but I did notice there are a lot of women about the place. Too many, if you ask me. And most of the time, half of them look like they need a good tickling.” He shook out his wings. “Where are the fathers of all these children? And where are the pets? A great big house like this, and not so much as a canary! I’m disappointed.”
I grinned. “Where’s Great-aunt Maddy?” I asked as I happily began to eat.
“I am afraid my dear sister-in-law’s need for sleep is greater than her curiosity,” said Lady Arista, with dignity. She was sitting ramrod straight at the breakfast table, eating half a slice of buttered toast with her fingers delicately spread. (I’d hardly ever seen her anything but ramrod straight.) “Getting up so early yesterday left her in a bad temper all day long. I don’t think we’ll see her before ten this morning.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Aunt Glenda. “All that talk of sapphire eggs and clocks on towers really gets on my nerves. Well, how are you feeling, Gwyneth? I imagine this must all be very confusing for you.”
“Hm,” I murmured.
“It must be so dreadful, finding out all of a sudden that you’re born to higher things when you can’t live up to expectations.” Aunt Glenda forked up a small piece of tomato from her plate.
“Mr. George says Gwyneth has acquitted herself very well so far,” said Lady Arista, although before I could feel cheered by this evidence of solidarity she added, “In the circumstances, anyway. Gwyneth, you’ll be fetched from school again today and taken to the Temple. This time Charlotte will go with you.” She sipped her tea.
I couldn’t open my mouth without letting scrambled egg drop out, so I just gawped at her in alarm, while Nick and Caroline spoke for me. “Why?”
“Because,” said Aunt Glenda, wagging her head in a peculiar way, “because Charlotte knows all the things that Gwyneth ought to know if she’s to do any kind of justice to her task. So on account of the chaotic events of the last few days—and as I’m sure we can all imagine only too vividly, they must indeed have been chaotic—the Guardians want Charlotte to help her cousin prepare for the rest of her time traveling.” She looked as if her daughter had just won an Olympic gold medal. At the very least.
The rest of my time traveling? What was this all about?
“Who’s that skinny, redheaded battle-ax with the sharp tongue?” inquired Xemerius. “I hope for your sake she’s only a distant relation.”
ded. “I think so. But you can’t wait for me day and night down here. What’s more, Gideon could turn up anytime. After all, he has to elapse as well.”
“I know what to do,” said Lucas, with growing enthusiasm. “If you land in this room next time, just come up to me! My office is on the second floor. You’ll only have to pass two guards, but that’s no problem if you say you’ve lost your way. You’re my cousin. My cousin Hazel from the country. I’ll start telling everyone about you this very day.”
“But Mr. Whitman says this room is always kept locked, and anyway I don’t know exactly where we are.”
“You’ll need a key, of course. And the password for the day.” Lucas looked around him. “I’ll get a key made for you and leave it somewhere here. Same with the password. I’ll write it on a note and leave it in our hiding place. Somewhere in the brickwork would be best. The bricks are coming a bit loose just there, see? Maybe we can make a hollow space behind them.” He got to his feet, made his way through the junk in the cellar, and knelt down in front of the wall. “Look, here. I’ll come back with tools and make a perfect hiding place. When you come back next, you just have to pull out this brick, and then you’ll find the key and the password.”
“But there are a lot of bricks,” I said.
“Just remember this one, fifth row from the bottom, roughly in the middle of the room. Damn, that was my fingernail! Never mind, that’s my plan, and I think it’s a good one.”
“But then you’d have to come down here every day from now on to change the password,” I said. “How are you going to fix that? Aren’t you studying at Oxford?”
“The password isn’t changed daily,” replied Lucas. “Sometimes we use the same one for weeks on end. Anyway, this is our only chance to fix another meeting. Remember that brick. I’ll draw a plan as well, so that you can find your way up. There are secret passages from here that go over half of London.” He looked at his watch. “Now, let’s sit down again and make notes. Systematically. You wait, we’ll both know more in the end.”
“Or alternatively we’ll still be two people without the faintest idea down in a musty cellar.”
Lucas put his head to one side and grinned at me. “Maybe, just in passing, you could tell me whether your grandmother’s name begins with an A or a C?”
I had to smile. “Which would you rather?”
FOUR
“GWENNY! GWENNY, wake up!”
With difficulty, I struggled up from the depths of my dream. In the dream I’d been an ancient, hunchbacked old woman sitting opposite Gideon, who was looking terrific, and claiming that my name was Gwyneth Shepherd and I came from the year 2080. Now I looked into the familiar, snub-nosed face of my little sister, Caroline.
“At last!” she said. “I thought I’d never get you to wake up. I was asleep when you came in yesterday evening, though I tried so hard to stay awake. Have you brought one of those gorgeous dresses back again?”
“Not this time.” I sat up. “I was able to change when I got there.”
“Is it always going to be like this? You not coming home until I’m asleep? Mum has been so odd since this happened to you. And Nick and I miss you. Suppers don’t seem right when you’re not there.”
“They didn’t seem right before,” I reassured her, dropping back on the pillow.
