The Shadow Dragons - James A. Owen [50]
“As I told you, a lot has happened in seven years,” said Bert, “but now you’ll have a chance to catch up. Hello, Jamie.”
“Greetings, Bert!” Barrie answered cheerfully. “Boys, it’s good to see you again!”
“If you don’t mind,” a stately, bearded portrait sniffed, “I believe my seniority should dictate that I be released sooner rather than later.”
“Very well, Leo,” Bert said with a frown, “although technically speaking, Chaucer has seniority here.”
“Leonardo da Vinci?” Jack asked behind his hand. “Didn’t he steal a lot of things from Roger Bacon?”
“Practically everything.” Bert sighed. “If Geoff Chaucer could have done it over again, he’d have picked Michelangelo. But we were still learning the process then, and Leo became a Caretaker instead, mostly because he was older. We’ve been going after younger apprentices ever since.”
“We’re not going to let him out, are we?” Jack whispered.
“If we don’t,” Bert replied, inserting his watch into the frame, “we’re all going to hear about it for years.”
“Rude,” said da Vinci. “I can hear you, you know.”
“The effort would have been wasted if you couldn’t,” said Bert.
In short order, centuries’ worth of Caretakers had filled the gallery and were milling about, chatting, arguing, pouring drinks, and getting reacquainted with old discussions, which they were conducting in a variety of languages. John, Jack, and Charles were doing their best just to hold their own in the dialogues. It was hard enough just to keep their composure.
Bert pulled John aside. “There’s one more, lad,” he said with a smile and a hint of melancholy. “I thought you’d like to summon him yourself.”
They stepped over to the last portrait, and John felt his breath catch in his throat. He realized, as he stood there looking at it, that it was the most obvious thing in the world to expect—but he had never even considered the possibility that his mentor, Professor Stellan Sigurdsson, would be included among the throng of Caretakers who were defying space and time to come together at Tamerlane House.
“May I use my own watch?”
Bert nodded his assent. “You may indeed.”
With trembling hands, John placed the watch into the frame and watched the light race around the edges. An instant later he could smell that familiar chocolate-tobacco mixture, as his old mentor and teacher stepped down from the frame.
“Hello, my dear boy,” said Professor Sigurdsson. “I am very, very happy to see you again.”
They shook hands, then embraced.
“I’m . . . very happy to see you again too, Professor,” John said. “Perhaps this reunion will last longer than our previous one.”
“I hope so, John. I truly do.”
While the professor and his understudy became reacquainted, Jack and Charles steered Bert back into the anteroom. “Bert,” Jack said quietly, “I wonder if I might have a word with you about Kipling.”
They had noticed only at the end, after Barrie had been liberated, that among the crowd of Caretakers were several famous personages who were not, in point of fact, official Caretakers.
“I’d wondered when that would come up,” said Bert. “There are a few here in the gallery who were not official Caretakers, but who were loyal to the cause. The practice of naming three Caretakers at a time was a practice born of necessity, and so there are some from days past who were, ah, ‘spares,’ you might say.”
“We’re spares?” Charles said, faintly mortified.
“No, not at all,” Bert said, comforting him. “You are a Caretaker—but there are those among us who were able to contribute in other ways, but whose, shall we say, temperaments were not well suited to the task. Oscar Wilde, for example. Or Chesterton.”
“G. K. Chesterton’s dead?” Jack exclaimed.
“Sorry for the surprise,” said Bert mildly, “but if it helps, he’s pouring a brandy over there with Kepler.”
“It’s one of those ‘apprentice’ Caretakers I want to speak to you about, Bert,” said Jack. “How well do you know Kipling?”
Before his mentor could answer, Rudyard Kipling stepped around his chair and stuck his hand out in front of Jack. “The