“What wise old self from the future?”

“Well, me!” Lucas cried, and immediately lowered his voice again. “I mean, I thought that in 1992 I’d still remember what Lucy and Paul and I had been up to in 1948, and then, if it had gone wrong, I could have warned them to ignore my reckless younger self … or so I thought.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, helping myself to another scone. Good food for the brain. “But you didn’t?”

Lucas shook his head. “Evidently not, fool that I was. And so we got more and more reckless. When Lucy was studying Hamlet at school, I sent them off to the year 1602. Over three days in succession, they saw the premiere of the play by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe Theatre.”

“In Southwark?”

Lucas nodded. “Yes, it was quite tricky. They had to cross London Bridge to get to the south bank of the Thames, try to see as much of the play as possible in one go, and be back before they were due to travel forward in time. It worked well for the first two days, but on the third day, there was an accident on London Bridge, and Lucy and Paul were witnesses to a crime. They didn’t make it to the north bank in time, so they landed in Southwark in the year 1948 still half in the river, while I was going out of my mind with worry.” He obviously still remembered that vividly, because he went pale around the nostrils. “They reached the Temple just for a moment, dripping wet in their seventeenth-century costumes, before traveling on again to 1992. I didn’t hear what had happened until their next visit.”

My head was spinning with all these different dates. “What kind of a crime did they witness?”

Lucas moved his chair a little closer still. Behind his glasses, his eyes were dark and serious. “That’s the point! Lucy and Paul saw Count Saint-Germain murder someone.”

“The count?”

“Lucy and Paul had met the count only twice before, but they were sure it was him. After their initiation journey, they’d been introduced to him in the year 1784. The count himself decided on that date; he didn’t want to meet the time travelers who would be born after him until near the end of his own life. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same with you.” He cleared his throat. “Will be the same with you. Whatever way around it is. Anyway, the Guardians traveled with Lucy and Paul and the chronograph specially to north Germany, where the count spent the last years of his life. I was with them myself. Will be with them. As Grand Master of the Lodge, would you believe it?”

I frowned. “Could we maybe…?”

“I’m trying to think of too many things all at once, right? It’s still more than I can grasp, knowing that these things are still going to happen although they took place long ago. Where were we?”

“How could the count commit a murder in 1602 … oh, I see! He did it on one of his own journeys back in time!”

“Yes, exactly. And when he was a very much younger man. It was an amazing coincidence that Lucy and Paul happened to be in just the same place at just the same time. If you can talk about coincidences at all in this connection. The count himself writes, in one of his many books, Those who believe in coincidence have not understood the forces of destiny.”

“Who did he murder? And why?”

Lucas looked around the café again. “That, my dear granddaughter, is something that we ourselves didn’t know at first. It was weeks before we found out. His victim was none other than Lancelot de Villiers. Amber. The first time traveler in the Circle.”

“He murdered his own ancestor? But why?”

“Lancelot de Villiers was a Flemish baron who moved to England with his whole family in 1602. The chronicles, and the writings of Count Saint-Germain that he left for the Guardians, say that Lancelot died in 1607, which threw us off the track for a while. But the fact is—I’ll spare you the details of our detective work—the baron’s throat was cut as he sat in his own coach in the year 1602.…”

“I don’t understand,” I murmured.

“I haven’t been able to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together myself yet,” said Lucas, taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one. “In addition, there’s the fact that I never saw Lucy and Paul again after 24 September 1949. I suspect that they went back to a time before my own, taking the chronograph with them, or they’d have visited me by now. Oh, damn … don’t look that way!”

“What’s the matter? And how long have you been smoking?”

“Here comes Kenneth de Villiers with his battle-ax of a sister.” Lucas tried to get into cover behind the menu.

“Just say we don’t want to be disturbed,” I whispered.

“I can’t—he’s my boss. In the Lodge and in everyday life. He owns those legal chambers.… If we’re in luck, they won’t see us.”

We weren’t in luck. A tall man in his mid-forties and a lady wearing a turquoise hat were making purposefully for our table. They sat down, unasked, on the two free chairs.

“Both of us playing hookey this afternoon, eh, Lucas?” said Kenneth de Villiers affably, slapping Lucas on the shoulder. “Not that I wouldn’t have turned two blind eyes after you brought the Parker case to such an excellent conclusion yesterday. My congratulations again. I heard that you had a visitor from the country.” His amber eyes were subjecting me to close scrutiny. I tried to look back as naturally as possible. It was weird the way the de Villiers men, with their pronounced cheekbones and straight, aristocratic noses, looked so like each other through the years. Kenneth was another impressive specimen, if not quite as good-looking as, say, Falk de Villiers in my own time.

“Hazel Montrose, my cousin,” Lucas introduced me. “Hazel, meet Mr. and Miss de Villiers.”

“We’re brother and sister,” said Miss de Villiers, giggling. “Oh, good, you have some cigarettes—I really must cadge one.”

“I’m afraid we were just leaving,” said Lucas as he gallantly gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. “I have to look through some files.”

“But not today, my dear fellow, not today!” His boss’s eyes had a friendly twinkle in them.

“It’s so boring with only Kenneth,” said Miss de Villiers, puffing the smoke from her cigarette out through her nostrils. “One can’t talk to him about anything but politics. Kenneth, please order more tea for us all. Where do you come from, my dear?”

“Gloucestershire,” I said, coughing slightly.

Lucas sighed, resigned. “My uncle, Hazel’s father, has a large farm there with a lot of animals.”

“Oh, how I love the country life,” said Miss de Villiers enthusiastically. “And I do so love animals.”

“Me too,” I said. “Particularly cats.”

0700h: Novice Cantrell, reported missing during the nocturnal Ariadne test, reaches the way out seven hours late, unsteady on his feet and smelling of alcohol, suggesting that although he failed the test, he found the lost wine cellar. For once, I allow him in on yesterday’s password. Otherwise, no unusual incidents.

Report: J. Smith, Novice, morning shift

1312h: We see a rat. I am in favor of running it through with my sword, but Leroy feeds it the rest of his sandwich and christens it Audrey.

1515h: Miss Violet Purpleplum reaches the way out after taking a path unknown to us, a shortcut from the Royal Courts of Justice. She is word-perfect in the password of the day. At her request, Leroy escorts her up to the offices.

1524h: Audrey comes back. Otherwise, no unusual incidents.

Report: P. Ward. Novice, afternoon shift

1800h to 0000h: no unusual incidents

Report: N. Cantrell, Novice, evening shift

0000h to 0600: no unusual incidents.

Report: K. Elbereth, M. Ward, Novices

FROM THE ANNALS OF THE GUARDIANS

“RECORDS OF THE CERBERUS WATCH”

24–25 JULY 1956

“Nam quod in iuventus non discitur, in matura aetate nescitur.”

EIGHT

THE GUARD at the foot of the stairs was fast asleep with his head against the banister.

“Poor Cantrell,” whispered Lucas as we stole past the sleeping man. “I’m afraid he’ll never make the grade to Adept if he goes on drinking like a fish.… Still, all the better for us. Come on, quick!”

I was already breathless. We’d had to run the whole way back from the café. Kenneth de Villiers and his sister had kept us there forever, talking for what seemed like hours about country life in general; country life in Gloucestershire in particular (here I’d managed to steer the conversation around to some anecdotes about my cousin Madeleine and a sheep called Clarissa); about the Parker case (all I understood about that was that my grandfather had won it); about that cute little boy Charles, the heir to the throne (hello?); and about all the Grace Kelly films and the star’s marriage to the Prince of Monaco. Now and then, I coughed and tried to interest them in the health risks of smoking, but I got nowhere. When we were finally able to leave the café, it was so late that I didn’t even have time to go to the toilet, although I had pints of tea in my bladder.

“Another three minutes,” gasped Lucas. “And there was so much else I wanted to say to you. If my wretched boss hadn’t turned up—”

“I didn’t know you worked for the de Villiers family,” I said. “After all, you’re the future Lord Montrose, you’ll be a member of the Upper House of Parliament.”

“Yes,” replied Lucas gloomily, “but until I inherit from my father, I still have to earn a living for my family. And I was offered this job … never mind that, listen! Before Saint-Germain died, he censored everything he left to the Guardians: his secret writings, the letters, the chronicles, the entire lot. All the Guardians know is what Saint-Germain saw fit to tell them, and all the information that we do have obviously aims to get later generations putting all their efforts into closing the Circle. But the Guardians don’t know the whole secret.”

“Then you do?” I cried.

“Shh! No, I don’t know it either.”

We turned the final corner, and I flung open the door of the old alchemical laboratory. My stuff was lying on the table just where I’d left it.

“But I’m convinced that Lucy and Paul do know the secret. The last time we met, they were on the point of finding the missing documents.” He looked at his watch. “Damn.”

“Go on!” I begged him, as I snatched up my school bag and the flashlight. At the last moment I remembered to give him back the key. The familiar flip-flop sensation was already taking me over. “Oh, and please shave that mustache off, Grandpa!”

“The count had enemies who are mentioned only briefly in the Chronicles,” gasped Lucas, speaking as fast as he could. “In particular, there was an old secret society with close ties to the Church that had its knife into him. It was called the Florentine Alliance, and in 1745, the year when the Lodge was founded here in London, the Alliance got its hands on some documents that Count Saint-Germain had inherited— Don’t you think the mustache suits me, then?”