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I nodded. “You mean the chronograph is just left standing around? In our time, it’s locked in a safe down in the cellar for fear of thieves.”
“Its shrine in the Dragon Hall is locked too, of course,” said Lucas, urging me on down the stairs. “But we’re not really afraid of theft. There aren’t even any time travelers among us who could use it. The only real excitement was when Lucy and Paul elapsed to spend time with us, but that’s years ago now. At the moment, the chronograph isn’t the focus of the Guardians’ attention. Which is lucky for you and me, I’d say.”
The building did indeed seem to be empty, although Lucas told me in a whisper that it was never entirely deserted. I looked longingly out of the windows at the mild summer evening. What a pity I couldn’t go out again and explore the year 1956 more closely. Lucas noticed my glance and said, smiling, “Believe me, I’d far rather be sitting somewhere comfortable with you, smoking a cigarette, but we have work to do.”
“You really should lay off the cigarettes, Grandpa. Smoking is so bad for your health. And please, do shave that mustache off. It doesn’t suit you a bit.”
“Sssh,” whispered Lucas. “If anyone hears you calling me Grandpa, that really will take some explaining.”
But we didn’t meet anyone, and when we entered the Dragon Hall a few minutes later, we could see the evening sun still sparkling on the Thames beyond the gardens and walls. The Dragon Hall was as overwhelmingly beautiful a sight in 1956 as in 2011, with its majestic proportions, deep windows, and elaborate painted carvings on the walls, and as always, I put my head back to admire the huge carved dragon winding its way over the ceiling past the huge chandeliers, looking as if it was just about to take off into the air.
Lucas bolted the door. He seemed much more nervous than I was, and his hands were shaking when he took the chronograph out of its shrine—a small cupboard—and put it on the table in the middle of the Hall.
“When I was sending Lucy and Paul back with it, it was a tremendous adventure. We had such fun,” he said.
I thought of Lucy and Paul, and nodded. Yes, I’d met them only once, at Lady Tilney’s house, but I could imagine what my grandfather meant. Stupidly, at the same moment, I thought of Gideon. Had his enjoyment of our adventures together been just pretense as well? Or only the bit where he pretended to love me?
I swiftly brought the Japanese vegetable knife and what I was about to do with it to the front of my mind instead. And guess what, it worked. At least, I didn’t burst into tears.
My grandfather wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers. “I’m beginning to feel too old for these adventures,” he said.
My eyes went to the chronograph. To me, it looked exactly like the one that had sent me here, a complicated device full of flaps, levers, little drawers, cogwheels, and knobs, covered all over with miniature drawings.
“I don’t object if you contradict me,” said Lucas, sounding slightly injured. “Something along the lines of but you’re much too young to feel old!”
“Oh. Yes, of course you are. Although that mustache makes you look decades older.”
“Arista says it makes me look serious and statesmanlike.”
I merely raised my eyebrows in a meaningful way, and my young grandfather, muttering to himself, bent over the chronograph. “Now, watch carefully: you set the year with these ten little wheels. And before you ask why so many, we feed in the date in Roman numerals—I hope you know those.”
“I think so.” I took a spiral notebook and a pen out of my bag. I was never going to remember all this unless I wrote it down.
“And you set this one,” said Lucas, pointing to another cogwheel, “to the month you want. But watch out—with this one, for some reason, and only this one, we work to an old Celtic calendar system in which month one is November, so October is number twelve.”
I rolled my eyes. That was so typical of the Guardians! I’d suspected for a long time that they coded simple things to make them as complicated as possible, just to emphasize their own importance. But I gritted my teeth, and after about twenty minutes, I realized that the whole thing wasn’t witchcraft after all, once you understood the system.
“I can do it now.” I interrupted my grandfather as he was about to begin again from the beginning, and I closed my notebook. “Now we must read my blood in. And then … how late is it?”
“It’s important that you don’t make any mistakes at all setting the chronograph.…” Lucas was staring unhappily at the Japanese vegetable knife now that I’d taken it out of the glasses case again. “Otherwise you’ll land somewhere … well, sometime else. And even worse, you won’t have any control over when you go back to. Oh, my God, that knife looks terrible. Are you really going to do it?”
“Of course I am.” I rolled up my sleeve. “I just don’t know the best place to cut myself. A cut on the hand would attract attention when I travel back. And we wouldn’t get more than a few drops out of a finger.”
“Not if you nearly saw off your fingertip,” said Lucas, with a shudder. “You bleed like a stuck pig then. I did it myself once—”
“I think I’ll go for my forearm. Ready?” It was kind of funny that Lucas was more scared than I was.
He swallowed with difficulty and clutched the flowered teacup that was supposed to catch my blood. “Isn’t there a main artery running along just there? Oh, my God, I feel weak at the knees. You’ll end up bleeding to death here in 1956 because of your own grandfather’s carelessness.”
“Yes, it’s a good big artery, but you’d have to slit it lengthwise to bleed to death. Or so I’ve read. That’s where many would-be suicides go wrong, and then they’re found and survive, but next time, they know how to do it properly.”
“For God’s sake!” cried Lucas.
I did feel a little queasy myself, but there was no alternative. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as Lesley would say. I ignored Lucas’s shocked expression and put the blade to the inside of my forearm about four inches above my wrist. Without pressing very hard, I ran it over the pale skin. It was meant to be only a trial cut, but it went deeper than I’d expected, and the thin red line quickly grew broader. Blood dripped from it. The pain, an uncomfortable burning sensation, began a second later. A thin but steady rivulet of blood ran into the teacup trembling in Lucas’s hand. Perfect.
“Cuts through skin as if it were butter,” I said, impressed. “Lesley said so. It really is a murderously sharp knife.”
“Put it away,” Lucas insisted. He looked as if he might throw up any moment. “Good heavens, you’re a brave girl, a real Montrose. True to the family motto—”
