AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, we know that Mr. Whitman is a stickler for the rules,” said Mr. George, as he fiddled with the little cogwheels. In between delicate colored drawings of patterns, planets, animals, and plants, there were gemstones set into the surface of the strange machine, so big and bright that you felt they must be imitations—like the interlinking beads that my little sister liked to play with. All the time travelers in the Circle of Twelve had different jewels allotted to them. Mine was the ruby, and the diamond, so big that it was probably worth the price of a whole apartment block in the West End of London, “belonged” to Gideon. “However, I think we are gentlemen enough not to leave a young lady sitting on her own in a vaulted cellar at night, don’t you agree, Leo?”
Mr. Marley nodded uncertainly.
“Leo?” I said. “That’s a nice name.”
“Short for Leopold,” said Mr. Marley, his ears shining like the rear lights of a car. He sat down at the table, put the journal in front of him, and took the top off a fountain pen. The small, neat handwriting in which a long series of dates, times, and names had been recorded there was obviously his. “My mother thinks it’s a terrible name, but it’s traditional to call every eldest son in our family Leopold.”
“Leo is a direct descendant of Baron Miroslav Alexander Leopold Rakoczy,” explained Mr. George, turning around for a moment and looking me in the eye. “You know—Count Saint-Germain’s legendary traveling companion, known in the Annals as the Black Leopard.”
I was baffled. “Oh, really?”
In my mind, I was comparing Mr. Marley with the thin, pale figure of Rakoczy, whose black eyes had terrified me so badly. But I didn’t really know whether I ought to tell him he was lucky not to look like his shady ancestor, or whether maybe it was even worse to be red-haired, freckled, and moonfaced.
“You see, my paternal grandfather—” Mr. Marley was beginning, but Mr. George quickly interrupted him. “I am sure your grandfather would be very proud of you,” he said firmly. “Particularly if he knew how well you have passed your exams.”
“Except in the Use of Traditional Weapons,” said Mr. Marley. “I was marked only satisfactory there.”
“Oh, well, no one needs that these days. Use of traditional weapons is an outmoded subject.” Mr. George put his hand out to me. “Here we are, Gwyneth. Off to 1956 you go. I have set the chronograph to exactly three and a half hours. Keep a tight hold on your bag and be sure not to leave anything lying around in the cellar when you travel back, remember? Mr. Marley will be waiting for you here.”
I clutched my schoolbag with one arm and gave Mr. George my free hand. He put my forefinger into one of the tiny compartments behind flaps in the chronograph. A needle went into it, and the magnificent ruby lit up and filled the whole room with red light. I closed my eyes while I let the usual dizzy feeling carry me away. When I opened them a second later, Mr. Marley and Mr. George had disappeared, and so had the table.
It was darker, the room was lit by only a single electric bulb, and my grandfather Lucas was standing in the light of it looking at me, puzzled.
“You … you—didn’t it work, then?” he cried, alarmed. In 1956, he was thirty-two years old, and he didn’t look much like the old man of eighty I’d known when I was a little girl. “You disappeared over there, and now here you are again.”
“Yes,” I said proudly, suppressing my instinct to hug him. It was the same as at our other meetings: the sight of him brought a lump to my throat. My grandfather had died when I was ten years old, and it was both wonderful and sad to see him again six years after his funeral. Sad not because when we met in the past he wasn’t the grandfather I had known, but a kind of unfinished version of him, but because I was a complete stranger to him. He hadn’t the faintest idea how often I had sat on his lap or that, when my father died, he was the person who comforted me by telling me stories, and we always used to say good night in a secret language of our own invention that no one else understood. He didn’t know how much I had loved him, and I couldn’t tell him. No one likes to hear that kind of thing from someone after spending only a few hours with her. I ignored the lump in my throat as well as I could. “For you, only about a minute has probably passed, so I’ll forgive you for not shaving that mustache off yet. But for me it’s been a few days, and all kinds of things have happened.”
Lucas stroked his mustache and grinned. “So you simply … Well, that was very clever of you, granddaughter.”
“Yes, wasn’t it? But to be honest, it was my friend Lesley’s idea. So that we could be sure I’d meet you and then we wouldn’t have to waste any time.”
“And I haven’t had a moment to wonder what to do next. I was just beginning to get over your visit and thinking about it all.” He examined me with his head to one side. “Yes, you do look different. You didn’t have that barrette in your hair earlier, and somehow you seem thinner.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“It wasn’t a compliment. You look as if you were in rather a bad way.” He came a little closer and scrutinized me critically. “Is everything all right?” he asked gently.
“Everything’s fine,” I meant to say cheerfully, but to my horror, I burst into tears. “Everything’s fine,” I sobbed.
“Oh, dear,” said Lucas, patting me clumsily on the back. “As bad as all that?”
For several minutes, I couldn’t do anything but let the tears flow. And I’d thought I was back in control of myself! Fury at the way Gideon had behaved seemed the right reaction—very brave and adult. And it would look much better in a film than all this crying. I’m afraid Xemerius was only too right to compare me to an indoor fountain.
“Friends!” I finally sniffed, because my grandfather had a right to an explanation. “He wants us to be friends. And for me to trust him.”
Lucas hunched his head down and frowned, looking baffled. “And that makes you cry because…?”
“Because yesterday he said he loved me!”
If possible Lucas looked even more puzzled than before. “Well, that doesn’t necessarily seem a bad way to start a friendship.”
My tears dried up as if someone had turned off the electricity powering the indoor fountain. “Grandpa! Don’t be so dim!” I cried. “First he kisses me, then I find out that it was all just tactics and manipulation, and then he comes out with that let’s-be-friends stuff!”
“Oh. I see. What a … what a scoundrel!” Lucas still didn’t look entirely convinced. “Forgive me for asking silly questions, but I hope we’re not talking about that de Villiers boy, are we? Number Eleven, the Diamond?”
“Yes, we are,” I said. “That’s exactly who we’re talking about.”
My grandfather groaned. “Oh, really! Teenagers! As if all this weren’t complicated enough already!” He threw me a fabric handkerchief, took my schoolbag out of my hand, and said firmly, “That’s enough crying. How much time do we have?”
