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“That’s not true!” Charlotte shook her head. “Typical of you to think like that! You’re so childish, you see yourself at the center of everything. The rest of us just want to help you so that you won’t spoil everything because you aren’t fit for your task. Although maybe that possibility won’t come up again. I can imagine them calling the whole thing off.…”
“What makes you say so?”
Charlotte looked at me for a while in silence. Then she said, almost gleefully, “You’ll find out soon enough, I expect.”
“Has something happened?” I asked, but I was asking Xemerius, not Charlotte. I wasn’t stupid. “Did Mr. Marley say something before I got here?”
“Only cryptic stuff,” said Xemerius, as Charlotte compressed her lips and looked out of the window. “There was obviously some kind of incident this morning when whatsisname, your boyfriend, sparkly jewel thingy…” He scratched his eyebrows with the tip of his tail.
“Don’t make me worm it all out of you!”
Charlotte, who understandably thought I was talking to her, said, “If you hadn’t been late, then you’d know.”
“Diamond, that’s it,” said Xemerius. “Well, he went traveling in time and someone—how can I put this? Seems like someone hit him over the head.”
My stomach muscles contracted painfully. “What?”
“Don’t upset yourself,” said Xemerius. “He’ll live. Or so I gathered from what Ginger there was stammering. Oh, good heavens, you’re white as a sheet! Not going to throw up, are you? Pull yourself together!”
“I can’t,” I whispered. I really did feel terrible.
“You can’t what?” snapped Charlotte. “The first thing gene carriers learn is to put their own wishes last and do their best for the cause. While you are just the opposite.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw Gideon lying on the ground covered with blood. I was finding it difficult to breathe.
“Other people would do anything to be taught by Giordano, and you act as if we were setting out to torture you.”
“Oh, do shut up for once, Charlotte,” I said.
Charlotte turned back to the window. I began trembling.
Xemerius put one claw comfortingly on my knee. “Listen, I’ll find your boyfriend and report back, okay? But please don’t cry, or I’ll get upset and spew water all over this showy leather upholstery, and your cousin will think you’ve wet yourself!”
With a jerk, he disappeared through the roof of the car and flew away. It was a dreadful hour and a half before he finally came back. An hour and a half in which I imagined the most terrible things, feeling more dead than alive. It made matters no better that meanwhile we had arrived at the Temple, where the implacable Giordano was waiting for me. But I was in no fit state to take in what he was saying about colonial policy in the eighteenth century or to imitate Charlotte’s dance steps either. Suppose Gideon had been attacked by swordsmen again, and this time he hadn’t been able to defend himself? When I wasn’t seeing him lying on the ground covered with blood, I imagined him hooked up to thousands of tubes in intensive care, looking whiter than the sheets on his bed. Why wasn’t there anyone here to tell me how he was?
Then, at last, Xemerius came flying straight through the wall and into the Old Refectory.
“Well?” I asked, ignoring Giordano and Charlotte. They were in the middle of teaching me how to clap when you were applauding something in the eighteenth century. Not the way I did it, of course.
“You’re playing pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, you stupid creature,” Giordano was saying. “That’s the way toddlers clap in the sandbox when they’re pleased—oh, what’s she looking at now? I am going right out of my mind.”
“Nothing to worry about, haystack girl,” said Xemerius, grinning cheerfully. “Something came down boing on your friend’s head, put him out of action for an hour or so, but his skull must be hard as diamond itself—he didn’t even get concussion. And the wound on his forehead makes him look kind of … er … oh, no, don’t go all pale again. I told you he’s all right.”
I took a deep breath. I felt dizzy with relief.
“That’s better,” said Xemerius. “No need to hyperventilate. Lover boy still has all his nice white teeth. And he’s cursing under his breath nonstop, which I guess is a good sign.”
Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.
In fact the person about to hyperventilate was Giordano. Go ahead, I thought, why don’t you? Suddenly his screeching didn’t bother me anymore. Far from it—it was very amusing to watch his complexion turning from dark pink to purple in between those crisscross lines of beard.
Mr. George arrived just in time to prevent the furious Puffylips from slapping my face.
“It was even worse today, if that’s possible.” Giordano sank down on a delicate little chair and mopped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief as purple as his present skin color. “She just stared ahead with glazed eyes all the time—if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought she was on drugs!”
“Giordano, please!” said Mr. George. “We have none of us had a particularly good day today—”
“How is … he doing?” asked Charlotte quietly, with a sideways glance at me.
