“She thinks so,” said Thurston. “You disagree?”
Merrihew sighed. “Which one is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Thurston. “But she’s spoken.”
Merrihew grimaced. “If she’s spoken, she’s spoken.”
“How will your grandmother recognize my family?” asked Susan, but no one answered. There was a long pause before Vivien spoke, and it was to her great-uncle and great-aunt.
“How is Grandmother?”
“Much as ever,” said Thurston. “I would suppose.”
Vivien looked expectantly at Merrihew.
“I don’t know,” snapped Merrihew. “I haven’t visited for simply ages. Let her rest, I say.”
“Has anyone seen her recently?” asked Merlin. “Great-Uncle Thurston?”
“I popped down a few years ago,” said Thurston. “Or mebbe it was five or six years. There hasn’t been anything to bother herself with.”
He heaved himself out of his chair and took the coats off The Age of Bronze, handing the cape to Merrihew and shrugging on his own trench coat.
“It’ll be fine!” he said. “Off you go.”
“What . . . what’s with your grand—” Susan started to expostulate.
“I’ll explain,” interrupted Merlin. “Come on. We’ll see Grandmother and then Vivien will take us out to lunch somewhere nice.”
“No I won’t,” said Vivien crossly. “Firstly, because I will be working on finding out who Susan’s father is, and secondly because I’m broke. Borassic. A veritable pauper. Not least because you owe me fifty pounds, Merlin. Remember?”
Merlin looked guiltily away.
“Well, sandwiches in the lunchroom here, then,” he said. “After we see Grandmother.”
“Very good. You carry on,” rumbled Thurston. He surprised Susan by opening a hatch in the muscular abdomen of Rodin’s bronze young man to take out a telephone handset. The tight coil of telephone cord dangled rather obscenely in front of the statue’s groin.
“Thurston here. We’re leaving now. I’ll be back in receiving shortly; they’d better not have started unpacking without me. Have Neil bring a cab around for Merrihew. She’s off to—”
He looked at Merrihew. She had a plastic waterproof watch pinned high on her fisherman’s vest, like a nurse. She flipped it up to read the time.
“Straight to Paddington,” she said. “I might make it in time for the 12:47 that stops at Ledbury.”
“Not since 1965,” replied Thurston. “Beeching cuts, remember? Earliest you’ll catch now is the 2:26 to Hereford.”
Merrihew shrugged crossly. “I might as well go to Paddington now, anyway.”
“Merrihew’s to Paddington,” said Thurston into the phone.
He replaced the handset, closed the hatch, and beamed at Susan.
“I look forward to having you all sorted out soon, Miss Arkshaw. Goodbye.”
Susan nodded, repeating the action as Merrihew waved and followed Thurston to the stairs. There, the guardian cousin Sam had stopped writing limericks and had already slung on her ammo bag, buckled the scabbarded sword to her belt, and was holding the AK-47, her left hand now gloved, the silvery skin hidden. She preceded the two Greats down the stairs. The blackthorn stick remained behind, leaning against the wall.
“Want a Jaffa Cake?” mumbled Merlin, his mouth full.
“No thanks,” said Susan. She leaned forward and rested her head in her hands. “How long is this all going to last?”
“What do you mean by ‘this’ exactly?” asked Merlin.
“Me being guarded by you and thugs and goblins attacking me,” said Susan.
“Well, the May Fair goblins won’t do anything,” said Merlin. “They’ve shot their bolt; I doubt they’ll have the strength to do even a nighttime May Dance for a few years.”
“You’re not answering my question,” said Susan.
“It’s not an easy question to answer,” said Vivien. “There are several possibilities. One is that we will quickly discover who your father is or was, and that, in turn, will lead us to working out who or what is interested in you and then we can deal with that situation. Presuming this can be handled satisfactorily, then you will be no more at risk than any other mortal who has had some chance contact with the Old World.”
“And I suppose the other possibilities are a lot less good for me,” replied Susan, rather bitterly. She looked at Merlin. “I wish I’d never met you!”
“If you hadn’t, you’d be dead, I think, or a prisoner at least,” said Merlin. “You chose to seek out Frank Thringley.”
“I was about to leave when you turned up,” said Susan.
“I don’t think so,” replied Merlin. “The only way in and out of that house was the upstairs window. I wondered why the doors had been so carefully locked and warded. I conclude that it was to keep you in. At least until Thringley handed you over to whoever or whatever he answered to.”
“Really?” asked Susan.
“He’s telling the truth,” said Vivien. “We can nearly always tell. A right-handed thing, you know. ‘Verum ponderet dextrum.’ The right hand weighs the truth.”
“And like I said, you saved my life later,” said Merlin. “Clearly, we are meant to be together.”
Vivien snorted.
“Don’t fall in love with my brother, whatever you do,” she said. “The left-handed are not reliable in matters of the heart.”
“Oh, come on, Vivien! You were left-handed until last year—”
“But I’m not now, am I? What is it with you lot and Jaffa Cakes? If you’ve stopped stuffing your face we should take Susan down to see Grandmother. Better to do it now, while the sun’s shining.”
“It isn’t down there,” said Merlin.
“The sun affects things, even if you can’t see it, as you well know,” said Vivien. “Just as with the moon. Come on!”
Susan planted herself more firmly in her chair, hands gripping the armrests.
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where we’re going and why you are both so obviously nervous about going to see your own grandmother.”
“The where is the easy part,” said Merlin. “Downstairs. I suppose you might say the sub-subbasement. Below the air raid shelter from the war. There’s a Roman temple, a mithraeum . . . Grandmother . . . Well, let’s see how to put it—”
“She’s not simply our grandmother, as such. She’s, uh, all our grandmothers. They’re sort of spiritual remnants that inhabit the place,” interrupted Vivien. “They go back a very long way, and you can never be quite sure which particular . . . er . . . grandmother you’ll get. She changes.”
“So they’re ghosts?” asked
