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“It’s Lord Tilney’s money,” Lady Tilney corrected her, “and you’d be astonished to hear what he usually wastes it on. Horse races and dancing girls are the least of it. He won’t even notice the small sums I’ve abstracted for our own purposes. And if he ever does, I trust he’ll be enough of a gentleman to say nothing about it.”
“Speaking for myself, I can’t feel at all sorry to be involved,” Dr. Harrison assured them, smiling. “I’d just begun to find life rather boring. But it isn’t every day of the week you meet time travelers from the future who know your own job better than you do. And between ourselves, the high-and-mighty manner of the de Villiers and Pinkerton-Smythe gentlemen among the Guardians here is quite enough to make anyone feel a little rebellious in secret.”
“How true,” said Lady Tilney. “That self-satisfied Jonathan de Villiers threatened to lock his wife in her room if she didn’t stop sympathizing with the suffragettes.” She imitated a grumpy male voice. “What will it be next, I wonder? Votes for dogs?”
“Ah, so that’s why you threatened to slap his face,” said Dr. Harrison. “Now that was one tea party when I was not bored!”
“It wasn’t quite like that. I only said I couldn’t guarantee what my right hand might not do next if he went on making such remarks.”
“‘If he went on talking such utter balderdash’ … those were your precise words,” Dr. Harrison set her right. “I remember because they impressed me deeply.”
Lady Tilney laughed, and offered the doctor her arm. “I’ll show you to the door, Dr. Harrison.”
Paul tried to open his eyes and sit up to thank the doctor. He didn’t manage to do either of those things. “Mmph … nks,” he mumbled with the last of his strength.
“What on earth was in that stuff you gave him, doctor?” Lucy called after Dr. Harrison.
He turned in the doorway. “Only a few drops of tincture of morph**e. Perfectly harmless!”
But Paul was past hearing Lucy’s screech of outrage.
As according to our Secret Service sources, London may expect air raids by German squadrons in the next few days, we have decided to proceed at once to Stage One of the security protocol. The chronograph will be deposited for an unknown period of time in the documents room, from which location Lady Tilney, my brother Jonathan, and I will elapse, thus limiting the time spent elapsing to three hours a day. Traveling to the nineteenth century from the documents room ought not to present any problems; there was seldom anyone there by night, and there is no mention in the Annals of visitors from the future, so it is to be presumed that our presence was never noticed.
As was to be expected, Lady Tilney objected to this departure from her usual routine, and according to herself “could see no kind of logic in our arguments,” but in the end, she had to accept the decision of our Grand Master. Times of war call for special measures.
Elapsing this afternoon to the year 1851 went surprisingly smoothly, perhaps because my dear wife had given us some of her wonderful teacakes to take with us and because, remembering heated debates on other occasions, we avoided such subjects as women’s suffrage. Lady Tilney greatly regretted being unable to visit the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, but as we shared her feelings in that respect, the conversation did not degenerate into argument. She did, however, give further evidence of her eccentricity in proposing that from now on we should pass the time by playing poker.
Weather today: fine drizzling rain, temperature a springlike 50° Fahrenheit
FROM THE ANNALS OF THE GUARDIANS
30 MARCH 1916
REPORT: TIMOTHY DE VILLIERS, INNER CIRCLE
“Potius sero quam nunquam” (Livy)
ONE
THE END OF THE SWORD was pointing straight at my heart, and my murderer’s eyes were like black holes threatening to swallow up everything that came too close to them. I knew I couldn’t get away. With difficulty, I stumbled a few steps back.
The man followed me. “I will wipe that which is displeasing to God off the face of the earth!” he boomed. “The ground will soak up your blood!”
I had at least two smart retorts to these sinister words on the tip of my tongue. (Soak up my blood? Oh, come off it, this is a tiled floor.) But I was in such a panic that I couldn’t get a word out. The man didn’t look as if he’d appreciate my little joke at this moment anyway. In fact, he didn’t look as if he had a sense of humor at all.
GUE
Belgravia, London,
3 July 1912
“THAT’S GOING to leave a nasty scar,” said the doctor, without looking up.
Paul managed a wry smile. “Well, better than the amputation Mrs. Worry-guts here was predicting, anyway.”
“Very funny!” Lucy snapped. “I am not a worry-guts, and as for you … Mr. Thoughtless Idiot, don’t go joking about it! You know how quickly wounds can get infected, and then you’d be lucky to survive at all at this date. No antibiotics, and all the doctors are ignorant and useless.”
“Thank you very much,” said the doctor, spreading a brownish paste on the wound he had just stitched up. It burned like hell, and Paul had difficulty in suppressing a grimace. He only hoped he hadn’t left bloodstains on Lady Tilney’s elegant chaise longue.
