Authors: Kerstin Gier
All of a sudden, Lucas’s eyes were wide open. “Oh, my God!” he whispered. “
That’s
it!”
“What?”
“The chronograph! Granddaughter, you’re a genius!” Lucas came around the table and hugged me.
“I’m a genius?” I repeated. It was my grandfather’s turn to do a kind of dance of joy this
time.
“Yes! And I’m another! Geniuses, the pair of us, because now we know what’s hidden in the chest!”
Well, I didn’t. “So what is it?”
“The chronograph!” cried Lucas.
“The chronograph?” I echoed him.
“It’s only logical. Whatever period Lucy and Paul took it to, somehow or other it must have made its way back to me, and I hid it. For you! In my own house. Not particularly original, but very
logical!”
“You think so?” I stared at him uncertainly. It seemed to me very far-fetched, but then logic had never been my strong point.
“Trust me, granddaughter, I just know I’m right!” The enthusiasm in Lucas’s face gave way to a frown. “Of course that opens up all sorts of new possibilities. Now we must think hard.” He cast another glance at the clock on the wall. “Damn it, we need more time.”
“I can try to get them to send me back to 1956 again next time I elapse,” I said. “Only it won’t be tomorrow afternoon, because that’s when I have to go to that ball and see the count again.” The mere idea immediately made me feel queasy once more, and not just because of Gideon.
“No, no, no!” cried Lucas. “That won’t do. We must be one step ahead before you face the count again.” He rubbed his
forehead. “Think, think, think!”
“Can’t you see the steam coming out of my ears? I’ve done nothing but think for the last hour,” I assured him, but he’d obviously been talking to himself.
“First we must read your blood into the chronograph. You won’t be able to do that without help in the year 2011; it’s much too complicated. And then I must explain how to set the chronograph itself.” Another
anxious look at the clock. “If I call our doctor now, he could be here in half an hour, that is if we’re lucky enough to find him at home.… The only trouble is, how do I explain why I want him to take some of my cousin Hazel’s blood? Back when Lucy and Paul were here, we took their blood officially, for scientific purposes, but you’re here incognito, and it must stay that way, or—”
“Hang on,”
I interrupted him. “Can’t we take some of my blood ourselves?”
Lucas looked at me, intrigued. “Well, I’m trained in a good many skills, but I’m no use with medical needles. To be honest, I can’t even stand the sight of blood. It turns my stomach—”
“I can take the blood from myself,” I said.
“Really?” He looked astonished. “They teach you how to use medical needles in school in your time?”
“No, Grandpa, they don’t,” I said impatiently, “but we do learn that if you cut yourself with a knife, blood flows. Do you have a knife?”
Lucas hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Okay, I have one of my own.” I opened my schoolbag and took out the glasses case in which Lesley had hidden the Japanese vegetable knife, in case I was attacked while traveling in time and needed
a weapon. My grandfather looked very surprised when I opened the case.
“Before you ask, no, this isn’t part of the usual students’ school equipment in 2011,” I said.
Lucas swallowed, then he straightened his back and said, “All right. Then let’s go to the Dragon Hall, stopping off on the way to collect a pipette from the doctor’s laboratory.” He glanced at the volumes of the
Annals
on the table
and stuck one under his arm. “We’ll take this with us. And the biscuits. For my nerves! Don’t forget your bag.”
“But why are we going to the Dragon Hall?” I put the glasses case back in my bag and stood up.
“That’s where the chronograph is.” Lucas closed the door behind me and listened for sounds in the corridor, but all was quiet. “If we meet anyone, we’ll say I’m giving you a guided tour of
the building, right, Cousin Hazel?”
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—”
I giggled. “Yes, I must inherit it from you.”
Lucas’s grin was rather wry. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Of course it does,” I said. “Is that enough?”
“Yes, it ought to be enough.” Lucas retched a little.
“Want me to open a window?”
“All right.” He put the cup down beside the chronograph and took a deep breath. “The rest is easy.” He picked up the pipette. “I just have to put three drops of your blood into each of these two openings—see, under
the tiny raven here and under the yin and yang sign? Then I turn the wheel and press this lever down. There we go. Hear that?”
Inside the chronograph, several little cogwheels began turning. There was a grinding, crunching, humming sound, and the air seemed to be warming up. The ruby flickered briefly, and then the sound of the little wheels died away and all was still again. “Uncanny, isn’t
it?”
I nodded, and tried to ignore the goose bumps all over me. “So now the blood of all the time travelers except Gideon is in the original chronograph, right? What would happen if his blood was read in as well?” I had folded Lucas’s handkerchief and was pressing it to the cut.
“Apart from the fact that no one knows for sure, the information is strictly secret,” said Lucas. Some color was coming
back into his face. “Every Guardian has to kneel down and swear an oath never to mention the secret to anyone outside the Lodge. He swears on his life.”
“Oh.”
Lucas sighed. “But I tell you what … I have rather a weakness for breaking oaths.” He pointed to a little compartment on the chronograph, decorated with a twelve-pointed star. “One thing’s certain: when the blood of all the Twelve is read
in, it will complete a process inside the chronograph, and something will land in this compartment. The prophesies speak of the ‘essence’ under the twelve-pointed star or, alternatively, of the philosopher’s stone.
The precious stones shall all unite, the scent of time shall fill the night, once time links the fraternity, one man lives for eternity.
”
“Is that all there is to the secret?” I said,
disappointed. “Just vague, confused stuff again.”
“Well, if you put all the hints together, it’s fairly concrete.
Under the sign of the twelvefold star, all sickness and ills will flee afar.
Sounds as if, used properly, the substance produced in the chronograph will be able to cure all human diseases.”
That sounded a good deal better.
“Well, in that case, I suppose going to all this trouble
would pay off,” I murmured, thinking of the Guardians’ mania for secrecy and their complicated rules and rituals. If a cure for all diseases was the outcome, you could almost understand why they thought so well of themselves. Yes, it would be worth waiting a few hundred years for such a miraculous medicine. And Count Saint-Germain would definitely deserve respect for finding out about it and making
the discovery possible. If only he weren’t such a repellent character.…
“But Lucy and Paul doubt whether we really ought to believe the philosopher’s stone theory,” said Lucas, as if he had guessed my thoughts. “They say that someone who doesn’t shrink from murdering his own great-great-great-grandfather won’t necessarily have the good of all mankind at heart.” He cleared his throat. “Has it
stopped bleeding?”
“Not yet, but it’s slowing down.” I held my hand in the air to speed up the process. “And now what do we do? Shall I just try the thing out?”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s not a car to be taken for a test drive,” said Lucas, wringing his hands.