Page 130 of Emerald Green (The Ruby Red Trilogy 3)

“Especially as I doubt whether Google will be much help in the circumstances,” said Gideon with a touch of sarcasm. “Sorry, Lesley, but I hear that Mr. Whitman was showing people a folder in which you’d … er, collected up all sorts of information.”

“Oh, yes?” Lesley put her hands on her hips. “And there was I just now, thinking maybe after all you weren’t such an arrogant a**hole as Gwen always said, but quite cute! Cute, that’s a joke! It was…” She wrinkled up her nose, looking rather embarrassed. “How mean of Mr. Squirrel to show my folder around! Those Internet researches were all we had to go on at first, and I was quite proud of them.”

“But now we’ve found out far more,” I said. “In the first place, Lesley is a genius, and in the second place, I’ve had several conversations with my grandf—”

“Of course we are not about to give away our sources!” Lesley’s eyes flashed at me. “He’s still one of the arrogant sort, Gwen. Even if he’s cast some kind of spell over you, remember, it’s only hormonal.”

Gideon gave us a broad grin as he sat down cross-legged on the rug. “Okay. Then I’ll be the first to tell you two what I know,” he said. And without waiting to get the go-ahead from Lesley, he began talking about the papers that Paul had given him again. Unlike me, Lesley was more than horrified to hear that I was supposed to die as soon as the Circle of Blood was closed. She went really pale under her freckles.

“Can I have a look at those papers?” she asked.

“Sure.” Gideon took several folded sheets out of his jeans pocket and a few more from the breast pocket of his shirt. The papers were rather yellowed, and as far as I could see, they looked flimsy along the folds.

Lesley stared at him blankly. “You just walk about with stuff like this in your pockets? Those documents are valuable originals, not … not snot-rags.” She put out her hand for them. “They’re practically falling apart. Isn’t that just typical of a man?” Carefully, she unfolded the papers. “And you’re sure they’re not forgeries?”

Gideon shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not a graphologist or a historian. But they look exactly like the other originals, the papers in the keeping of the Guardians.”

“Yes, and I bet those are kept under glass and at the right temperature,” said Lesley, still accusingly. “The way such things ought to be stored.”

“But how did the Florentine Alliance people get their hands on the papers?” I asked.

Gideon shrugged again. “Theft, I assume. I haven’t had time to sift right through the Annals for a clue. Or to check up on all of what they say. But I’ve been going around with these papers for days. I know them by heart, although I can’t make much of most of the contents. Apart from that one crucial point.”

“At least you didn’t go straight off to Falk and show them to him,” I said appreciatively.

“Although I did think of doing just that. But then…” Gideon sighed. “Right now I simply don’t know who can be trusted.”

“Trust no one,” I whispered, rolling my eyes dramatically. “Or that’s what my mother told me.”

“Your mother,” murmured Gideon. “I’d be interested to know how much she knows about everything.”

“And it means that when the Circle is closed, and the count has this elixir he’s after, Gwyneth will…” Lesley couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Die, yes,” I said.

“Pop her clogs, pass over to the other side, kick the bucket, go west, shuffle off this mortal coil, breathe her last, start pushing up the daisies.” Xemerius made his own drowsy contribution.

“Will be murdered!” Lesley reached for my hand with a dramatic gesture. “Because you’re not about to fall down dead of your own accord!” She ran her fingers through her hair, which was sticking out untidily in all directions already. Gideon cleared his throat, but Lesley wasn’t letting him get a word in edgeways. “To be honest, I’ve had a bad feeling about it all along,” she said. “Those other rhymes are terribly … terribly ominous, too. All about the raven, the ruby, and the number twelve, and the outlook is kind of grim for them. And it does fit with what I’ve found out myself.” She let go of my hand and reached for her backpack—a brand-new one!—to fish out Anna Karenina. “Well, really I suppose Lucy and Paul and your grandfather found it out—and Giordano.”

“Giordano?” I repeated, bewildered.

“Yes, haven’t you read his essays?” Lesley leafed through the book. “The Guardians had to take him into the Lodge, to keep him from broadcasting his theories to the world at large.”

I shook my head, feeling a bit ashamed of myself. I’d lost all interest in Giordano’s writings after the first long-winded sentence. (Even apart from the fact that they were by Giordano—well, I mean to say!)

“Wake me up if this gets interesting,” said Xemerius, closing his eyes. “I need a nap to help me digest my supper.”

“No one has ever taken Giordano really seriously, not even the Guardians,” Gideon said. “He’s published confused theories in dubious journals about the supernatural. The readers of such things regard the count as One Transformed and an Ascended Master, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“I can tell you all about it!” Lesley held Anna Karenina under his nose as if she were producing Exhibit A in court as evidence. “As a historian, Giordano stumbled on letters and records of the Inquisition from the sixteenth century. The sources show that when the count was a very young man and on one of his journeys in time, he met a girl who was living in a convent—Elisabetta di Madrone, daughter of the Conte di Madrone—seduced her, and made her pregnant. And on that occasion…” She hesitated for a moment. “Or, well, presumably either before or after it, he told her all kinds of things about himself—maybe because he was still young and rash, or simply because he’d lulled himself into a false sense of security.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

“He was very free with information, beginning with his origins and his real name, going on to the fact that he could travel in time, and finally claiming that he was in possession of priceless secrets. Secrets that would enable him to create the philosopher’s stone.”

Gideon nodded, as if he knew the story, but he didn’t fool Lesley.

“Unfortunately, that didn’t go down too well in the sixteenth century,” she went on. “At that time, people thought the count was a dangerous demon, and this girl Elisabetta’s father was so furious about what had happened to his daughter that he founded the Florentine Alliance and devoted the rest of his life to looking for the count and others like him. So have many generations after him—” She stopped. “Where was I? My goodness, my head’s so full of information that I feel it might explode any moment now.”

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