Conrad's Fate (23 page)

Lady Felice looked up at him ruefully. “I wouldn't bet on that,” she said. “Mother's a genius at getting her own way.”

“I'll fix something,” Count Robert said.

The Countess came back then, very crisp and angry.
“Well!”
she said. “Such impertinence! I soon sent that man packing.”

“What did he want, my lady?” Mr. Amos asked.

“There's a Royal Commissioner coming to the district,” the Countess said. “They want me to entertain him as a guest at Stallery, of all things! I told the man it was out of the question and sent him away.”

Mr. Amos went a little white around his pear-shaped jowls. “But, my lady,” he said, “this must have been a request from the King himself.”

“I know,” the Countess said as Andrew pulled her chair out for her and she sat down. “But the King has no right to interfere with
my
plans.”

Mr. Amos gulped. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “It is mandatory for peers of the realm to extend hospitality to envoys of the King when required. We would not wish to annoy His Majesty.”

“Amos,” said the Countess, “this person wishes to plant himself here, in my mansion, at the precise time when we have a house full of eminent guests. Lady Mary, the Count's fiancée, will be here with all her family and the people I have chosen to meet her.
All
the guest rooms will be full. The valets and lady's maids will be filling both upper floors. This Commissioner has a staff of ten
and
twenty security men. Where, pray, am I supposed to
put
them? In the stables? No. I told them to go to a hotel in Stallchester.”

“My lady, I think that was most unwise,” Mr. Amos said.

The Countess looked stonily at her soup and then across to the chops Andrew was fetching from the food lift. “I don't want this,” she said. She slapped her napkin down and stood up again. “Come, Felice,” she said. “We'll set off for Ludwich
now
. I'm not going to stay here and have my authority questioned all the time. Amos, tell them to bring the cars round to the door in five minutes.”

She and Lady Felice hurried away in a brisk clacking of heels. Suddenly everyone else was rushing about as well. Andrew raced off with a message to the garage, Christopher was sent to fetch the two Lady's Maids, who were going to Ludwich, too, and the other footmen rushed away to bring down the luggage. Mr. Amos, looking thunderously upset, turned to Count Robert. “Will you wish to continue lunch now, my lord, or wait until the ladies have departed?”

Count Robert was leaning on the back of a chair, and I swear he was trying not to laugh. “I think you should go and lie down, Amos,” he said. “Forget lunch. No one's hungry.” Then, before Mr. Amos could send me off to the kitchens, he turned and beckoned me over to him. “You,” he said, “go to the library and tell the young lady waiting there to meet me in the stable yard in ten minutes.”

As I left, he was giving Mr. Amos a sweet, blank smile.

I found Anthea in the library sitting rather crossly in front of a computer screen. “They were quite right about the disturbances here,” she said to me. “Everything keeps hopping sideways, and when I get it back, it says something quite different.”

When I gave her Count Robert's message, she jumped up, beaming. “Oh good! How do I find the stables in this barracks?”

“I'll take you there,” I said.

We went the long way around, talking the whole way. I told her about the screens Christopher and I had found in the cellar. “And I think your computer went wrong when Christopher pressed the shift button,” I said. “It felt magic to me.”

“Very probably,” she said. “So it's that pear-shaped butler messing up the world's finance, is it? Thanks. Robert will be very glad to know that.”

“How did you meet Count Robert?” I asked.

My sister smiled. “At university, of course. And Hugo, too—though he was always popping off to visit Felice in her finishing school. I met Robert at a magic class on my first day, and we've been together ever since.”

“But,” I said, “the Countess says Count Robert has to marry a Lady Mary Something who's coming here soon.”

Anthea smiled, happily and confidently. “We'll see about that. You'll find Robert's just as strong-minded as his awful mother. So am I.”

I thought about this. “And what do
I
do, Anthea? I can't stay on here as an Improver, and Uncle Alfred won't let me go to school, because I didn't use the cork like he said—anyway, he'll know I know he's told me all those lies now. What do I
do
?”

“It's all right, Conrad,” Anthea said. “Just hang on. Hang on and wait. Robert will make everything all right. I promise.”

Then we got to the stable yard, where Count Robert was waiting in his red sports car. My sister rushed over to it, waving happily. I went away. She had an awful lot of faith in him. I didn't. I couldn't see someone like Count Robert ever sorting out this mess. Anthea's faith was just love, really.

The next couple of days were strange and
hectic.

I hardly saw Anthea, except when she was dashing away from the Upper Hall after breakfast. She was out with Count Robert in his sports car almost all the time. I don't think she went into that library at all. And Count Robert didn't come in to meals, so I never set eyes on him either. Hugo, now, he was another matter. I seemed to run into him everywhere, wandering about, missing Lady Felice.

Because none of the Family were using the dining room, Mr. Amos used it to train the actor footmen in. He had me and Christopher and Andrew and Gregor in there all that first afternoon, sitting at the table, pretending to be Family, so that Manfred and the rest could pour us water into wineglasses and hand us plates of dried fruit and cold custard. To do those actors justice, they learned quickly. By the evening, Francis only dropped one spoon the last time he served me with custard, and Manfred was the only one still falling over things. But, none of us really fancied our supper.

Christopher summed up my feelings, too, when he poked his potato cheese with a fork and said, “You know, Grant, I find it hard not to see this as custard.” The food turned into liver and cauliflower as he poked it. Christopher shot me a glum, guilty look. Since Mr. Amos had been giving the actors a hard time in the dining room all afternoon, we knew he had not been down to the cellar to push the shift button. So this change was Christopher's fault. I quite expected him to start persuading me to go to the cellar again with him that night. I was determined to say no. One time in that place was enough. The thought of its alien, technological magics made my flesh creep—and the thought of Mr. Amos discovering us there was even worse.

But all Christopher said was, “Things must be changing like this where Millie is, too. She could be lost for good if I don't get to her soon.” And I half woke up in the night to hear him tiptoeing away to the forbidden part of the attics.

I don't know how long he stayed out there, but he was very hard to wake in the morning. “No luck?” I asked as we collected the shoes.

Christopher shook his head. “I don't understand it, Grant. There were no changes at all, and I sat there for hours.”

Here the lift opened, and we found it crowded with actors acting a scene from
Possession
. This was the strange thing about actors. They loved acting so much that they did it all the time. They spoke in funny voices and imitated people if they didn't do scenes from plays. And the lift made a good place to act in, because Mr. Amos and Mrs. Baldock couldn't see them at it there. From then on, the lift was always liable to have a scene going on in it or someone saying, “No, darling, the best way to see the part is like
this
,” and then doing it. In between, Hugo rode broodingly up and down, looking as if he did not want to be disturbed. Christopher and I got used to taking the stairs instead.

The undercroft was crowded with the regular Staff, up early in hopes of catching one or other of the actors. The maids had all got it badly for the footmen. Francis was most popular, and Manfred next, because he looked dark and soulful, but even Mr. Prendergast got his share of giggles and fluttered eyelashes and shy requests for his autograph—and he was really odd-looking.

“It's something about greasepaint, Grant,” Christopher said. “It acts like a love potion. What did I tell you?” he added as we ran into four of the regular footmen, Mr. Maxim, and the bootboy, who all wanted to know if we had seen Fay Marley that morning. “In the lift,” Christopher told them, “pretending to be possessed by a devil or something.”

Stallery echoed with rehearsals that day, not only actors acting, but with official ones. Mrs. Baldock and Miss Semple tore the maids away from the actor-footmen and the actor-maids out of the lift and drilled them all in their duties upstairs. Mr. Amos took Mr. Prendergast and all the footmen to the hall, where he trained them in how to receive the guests. Mr. Smithers was roped in to pretend to be a guest, and sometimes Christopher was, too. Christopher was good at grand entries. I was on the stairs, mostly, learning what to do with the dozens of empty suitcases Mr. Amos had found to be luggage for the pretend guests. Mr. Amos made me stack them in pairs in the lift and then take each one to the right bedroom. This always took ages. If Hugo was not in the lift, then it was two of the actresses, looking exhausted.

“If I have to make one more bed or lay out one more breakfast tray, I shall
drop
, darling!”

“Why does Miss Semple
insist
on
counting
everything? Does she think I'm a
thief
, darling?”

And when I arrived in the right bedroom with my empty luggage, Mrs. Baldock usually grabbed me and trained me in all the other things I might have to bring to people's bedrooms. I was made to carry in trays, newspapers, drinks, and towels. Mrs. Baldock seemed to think she had as much right to me as Mr. Amos did. I several times caught myself thinking that this must be my Evil Fate at work—in fact I
kept
thinking it and then realizing all over again that Uncle Alfred had probably invented it. It gave me a strange, hectic feeling at the back of my mind all day. On top of that, I kept waiting for Mr. Amos to discover that Christopher had pressed that shift button.

Luckily, Mr. Amos was too busy in the hall just then. I came back to my station on the main stairs to find a full-scale rehearsal just starting.

“Right,
go
!” Mr. Amos shouted. He was standing in the middle of the hall like the director of a film.

The great doorbell solemnly clanged. At this signal, footmen in velvet breeches and striped waistcoats and stockings came rushing from behind the stairs and formed up in two slanting rows on either side of the front door.

“Like a flipping
ballet
,” Mr. Prendergast said, gloomily standing beside me with his arms folded and too much wrist showing beyond the sleeves of his smart dark coat.

Mr. Amos paced solemnly toward the front door. He took hold of the handles. He stopped. He called over his shoulder, “Prendergast! Where are you
this
time?”

“Coming, coming,” Mr. Prendergast called back, walking slowly and importantly down the stairs.

“Hurry it up, can't you?” Mr. Amos boomed up at him. “Do you think you're the King, or something?”

Mr. Prendergast stopped. “Ah, no indeed,” he said. “It's these stairs, you see. No actor can ever resist a fine flight of stairs. You feel you have to make an entrance.”

Mr. Amos, for a second, seemed about to burst. “Just … hurry … up,” he said, slowly, quietly, and carefully.

Mr. Prendergast went on down the stairs, in a sort of royal loiter, and crossed the hall to stand behind Mr. Amos's left shoulder.

“My
right
shoulder, you fool!” Mr. Amos practically snarled.

Mr. Prendergast took two measured steps sideways.

“
Now!
” said Mr. Amos, and threw open the two halves of the door. Francis jumped forward and grabbed one half and Gregor took the other and they each dragged their half wide open. Mr. Amos bowed. Mr. Prendergast did a much better bow. And Mr. Smithers edged apologetically indoors. Christopher followed him, airily strolling, looking every inch an important guest....

But here one of the sideways changes happened, and the show broke down. Everyone was suddenly in a different position, milling around, with Mr. Amos in the midst of the chaos almost screaming with rage. “No, no,
no
! Francis, why are you over there? Andrew, it is
not
your job to fetch luggage in.
You
take Mr. Smithers's coat.”

Mr. Amos really did not seem to see that there had been a change. It began to dawn on me that he might be as insensitive to the shifts as Mr. Maxim was. It was an odd thing, because Mr. Amos must have been some sort of a magician, and I would have thought he ought to have known when his own magic machinery was working, but I could see that he didn't. That was a relief! Christopher was looking at Mr. Amos consideringly, as if he was thinking the same things as me. Beside him, Mr. Smithers stared around anxiously for the right footman to hand his imaginary coat to.