“You sent her to her rooms, sir,” Finch said.

He touched the headrig. “Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1901,” the tape said in my ear.

“Go and ask her how much slippage there was on the drop,” Mr. Dunworthy said to Finch. “The one where—”

“—she brought unprecedented peace and prosperity to England.”

“Yes,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “And find out how much slippage there’s been on the others—”

“—remembered as a decorous, slow-paced society—”

“—and telephone St. Thomas’s. Tell them under no circumstances to let Lady Schrapnell leave.”

“Yes, sir,” Finch said and went out.

“So Lizzie Bittner is still living in Coventry?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“Yes,” I said. “She moved back from Salisbury after her husband died,” and then, because something more seemed to be expected, I said, “She told me all about the new cathedral and how Bishop Bittner had tried to save it. He reintroduced the Coventry morality plays in an attempt to shore up attendance and put up displays of the Blitz in the ruins. She took me on a tour of what had been the ruins and the new cathedral. It’s a shopping center now, you know.”

“Yes,” he said. “I always thought it made a better shopping center than a cathedral. Mid-Twentieth-Century architecture was nearly as bad as Victorian. It was a nice gesture, though. And Bitty liked it. It was originally sold to the Church of the Hereafter or something, wasn’t it? I suppose you’ve checked with them to make certain they don’t have it?”

I nodded, and then he must have left, though I don’t remember that part. A sound like the All-Clear after an air raid had started blasting in one ear, and the tapes were talking about the subservient role of women in the other.

“Women held little or no power in Victorian society,” the headrig said. Except Queen Victoria, I thought, and saw that Warder was coming toward me with a wet cloth. She scrubbed roughly at my face and hands and then smeared a white lotion above my upper lip.

“The role of the Victorian woman was that of nurse and helpmeet,” the headrig said, “of ‘the angel in the house.’ ”

“Don’t touch your lip,” Warder said, pulling the measuring tape from around her neck. “Your hair will have to do. There’s not enough time for fenoxidils.” She encircled my head with the tape. “Part it in the middle. I said, don’t touch your lip.”

“Women were thought to be too high-strung for formal education,” the subliminal said. “Their lessons were confined to drawing, music, and deportment.

“This whole thing’s ridiculous.” She wrapped the tape around my neck. “I should never have come to Oxford. Cambridge has a perfectly good degree in theatrical design. I could be costuming The Taming of the Shrew right now instead of doing three jobs at once.”

I stuck a finger between the tape and my Adam’s apple to prevent strangulation.

“Victorian women were sweet, softspoken, and submissive.”

“You know whose fault this is, don’t you?” she said, snapping the tape as she pulled it free. “Lady Schrapnell’s. Why on earth does she want to rebuild Coventry Cathedral anyway? She’s not even English. She’s an American! Just because she married a peer doesn’t mean she has the right to come over here to our country and start rebuilding our churches. They weren’t even married that long.”

She yanked my arm up and jammed the tape in my armpit. “And if she was going to rebuild something, why not something worthwhile, like Covent Garden Theatre? Or support the Royal Shakespeare or something? They were only able to mount two productions last season, and one of those was an old-fashioned nude production of Richard II from the 1990s. Of course, I suppose it would be asking too much of someone from Hollywood to appreciate art! Vids! Interactives!”

She took rapid, careless measurements of my chest, sleeve, and inseam, and disappeared, and I went back to my chairs, leaned my head against the wall, and thought about how peaceful it would be to be drowned.

This next part is a bit muddled. The headrig discussed Victorian table-settings, the All-Clear mutated into an air-raid siren, and the seraphim brought me a stack of folded trousers to try on, but I don’t remember any of it very clearly.

Finch lugged in a pile of Victorian luggage at one point—a portmanteau, a large carpetbag, a small satchel, a Gladstone bag, and two pasteboard boxes tied with string. I thought perhaps I was to choose from among them, like the trousers, but it developed that I was to take them all. Finch said, “I’ll fetch the rest,” and went out. The seraphim settled on a pair of white flannels and went off to look for suspenders.

“The oyster fork is placed on the soup spoon, tines angled toward the plate,” the headrig said. “The oyster spear is placed to its left. The shell is held steady in the left hand, and the oyster lifted whole from the shell, detaching it, if necessary, with the spear.”

I drowsed off several times and the seraphim shook me awake to try various articles of clothing on me and wipe off the white lotion.

I touched the new mustache gingerly. “How does it look?” I said.

“Lopsided,” the seraphim said, “but it can’t be helped. Did you pack a razor for him?”

“Yes,” Finch said, coming in with a large wicker hamper, “a pair of hairbrushes from the Ashmolean and a brush and soap mug. Here’s the money,” he said, handing me a wallet nearly the size of the portmanteau. “It’s mostly coins, I’m afraid. Bank notes from that era have deteriorated badly. There’s a bedroll, and I’ve packed the hamper full of provisions, and there are tinned goods in the boxes.” He scurried out again.

“The fish fork is placed to the left of the meat and salad forks,” the headrig droned. “It is recognizable by its pointed, slanted tines.”

The seraphim handed me a shirt to try on. She was carrying a damp white dress over her arm. It had trailing sleeves. I thought about the water nymph, wringing it out on the carpet, the very picture of beauty. I wondered if water nymphs used fish forks and if they liked men with mustaches. Had Hylas had a mustache in the painting by Waterhouse? It was called Hylas and the . . . what? What were they called? It began with an “N.”

More muddled parts. I remember Finch coming in with more luggage, a covered wicker basket, and the seraphim tucking something in my waistcoat pocket, and Finch shaking me on the shoulder, asking me where Mr. Dunworthy was.

“He’s not here,” I said, but I was mistaken. He was standing next to the wicker basket, asking Finch what he’d found out.

“How much slippage was there on the drop?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Nine minutes,” Finch said.

“Nine minutes?” he said, frowning. “What about her other drops?”

“Minimal. Two minutes to a half hour. The drop is in an isolated part of the grounds, so there isn’t much chance of being seen.”

“Except the one time it counted,” Mr. Dunworthy said, still frowning. “What about coming back?”

“Coming back?” Finch said. “There’s no slippage on return drops.”

“I am aware of that,” Mr. Dunworthy said, “but this is an unusual situation.”

“Yes, sir,” Finch said, and went over, conferred with Warder for a few minutes, and came back. “No slippage on the return drop.”

Mr. Dunworthy looked relieved.

“What about Hasselmeyer?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“I have a message through to him.”

The door opened and T.J. Lewis hurried in with a thin stack of papers. “I’ve read the available research,” he said. “There’s not much. Setting up the necessary equipment to test for incongruities is extremely expensive. Time Travel was planning to build it with the money from the cathedral project. Most temporal physicists don’t believe incongruities are possible. Except for Fujisaki.”

“Fujisaki thinks they’re possible? What’s his theory?”

“He has two theories. One is that they’re not incongruities, that there are objects and events in the continuum that are nonsignificant.”

“How is that possible? In a chaotic system, every event is linked to every other.”

“Yes, but the system’s nonlinear,” T.J. said, looking at the papers, “with feedback and feedforward loops, redundancies and interference, so the effect of some objects and events is multiplied enormously, and in others it’s cancelled out.”

“And a parachronistic incongruity is an object whose removal has no effect?”

T.J. grinned. “Right. Like the air historians bring back in their lungs or, he looked at me, “the soot. Its removal doesn’t cause any repercussions in the system.”

“In which case the object shouldn’t be returned to its temporal location?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“In which case it probably can’t be returned,” T.J. said. “The continuum wouldn’t allow it. Unless it was nonsignificant in its returned state, too. Unfortunately, this sort of incongruity’s pretty much limited to air and soot. Anything larger has a significant effect.”

Even penwipers, I thought, leaning my head against the wall. I had bought an orange one shaped like a pumpkin at the Autumn Choir Festival and Salvage Drive and then forgotten it, and when I tried to come back, the net wouldn’t open. I wondered drowsily how it had come to open for the fan.

“What about living things?” Mr. Dunworthy asked.

“Harmless bacteria, possibly, but nothing else. The effect of life-forms on the continuum is exponentially greater than for inanimate objects, and exponentially greater again for intelligent life-forms because of the complexity of interactions they’re capable of. And of course nothing that could have an effect on the present or future. No viruses or microbes.”

Mr. Dunworthy cut him off. “What’s Fujisaki’s other theory?”

“His second theory is that there are incongruities, but that the continuum has built-in defenses that counteract them.”

“Slippage,” Mr. Dunworthy said.

T.J. nodded. “The mechanism of slippage prevents nearly all potential incongruities by removing the time traveller from the area of potential danger. Fujisaki’s theory is that the amount of slippage is limited, and that an incongruity occurs when the slippage can’t increase radically enough to prevent the parachronism.”

“What happens then?”

“Theoretically it could alter the course of history, or, if it were severe enough, destroy the universe, but there are safeguards in the modern net to prevent that. As soon as the danger of incongruities was realized, the net was modified to automatically shut down whenever the slippage reaches dangerous levels. And Fujisaki says that if an incongruity did occur, which it can’t, there are other lines of defense that would correct the incongruity and would manifest themselves as,” he read from the paper, “radically increased slippage in an area surrounding the incongruity, an increase in coincidental events—”

Mr. Dunworthy turned to me. “Did you experience any coincidences in Coventry?”

“No,” I said.

“What about your jumble sales?”

“No,” I said, thinking how nice it would have been if I had experienced one, if, strolling between the coconut shy and the plum-cake raffle, I had run bang into the bishop’s bird stump.

Mr. Dunworthy turned back to T.J. “What else?”

“Increased slippage in the peripheral temporal areas.”

“How large an area?”

He bit his lip. “Fujisaki says most incongruities are corrected within fifty years, but this is all theoretical.”

“What else?”

“If it were really serious, a breakdown in the net,” T.J. said.

“What sort of breakdown?”

He frowned. “Failure of the net to open. Malfunction in destination. But Fujisaki says those are all statistically unlikely,” T.J. said, “and that the continuum is essentially stable or it would have been destroyed by now.”

“What if there was no radical increase in slippage, but it was definitely an incongruity?” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Would that mean it had been corrected before it could have any effect on the continuum?”

“Yes,” T.J. said. “Otherwise there’d have to be slippage.”

“Good. Excellent job, Ensign Klepperman,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He went over to the seraphim, who was violently banging keys at the console. “Warden, I want a list of all the drops we’ve done to the 1880s and ‘90s with the recorded amount of slippage and the normal parameters.”

“It’s Warder,” the seraphim said. “And I can’t do it now. I’ve got a rendezvous.”

“The rendezvous can wait.” He went back over to T.J. “Lewis, I want you to look for unusual slippers.”

Or at least that’s what I thought he said. The All-Clear had started up again, and now it was accompanied by a steady, thumping throb, like ack-ack guns.

“And chicken drops.”

“Yes, sir,” T.J. said and left.

“Finch, where’s the hat?” Mr. Dunworthy said.

“Right here,” Finch said, and that couldn’t be right either. I had white flannels and a waistcoat, but no hat. And Victorians always wore hats, didn’t they? Top hats and those hard round affairs, what were they called? It began with an “N.”

The seraphim was leaning over me, which meant I must have sat down again. She stood me up to try on blazers.

“Put your arm in this one,” she said, thrusting a maroon-striped one at me. “No, your right arm.”

“The sleeves are too short,” I said, looking at my bare wrists.

“What’s your name?”

“My name?” I said, wondering what that had to do with the sleeves being too short.

“Your name!” she said, yanking off the maroon-striped blazer and shoving a red one at me.

“Ned Henry,” I said. The sleeves of this one came down over my hands.

“Good,” she said, stripping it off and handing me a dark-blue-and-white one. “At least I won’t have to come up with a contemp name for you.” She tugged on the sleeves. “That’ll have to do. And don’t go diving into the Thames. I haven’t time to do any more costumes.” She clapped a straw boater on my head.

“The hat was here. You were right, Mr. Dunworthy,” I said, but he wasn’t there. Finch wasn’t either, and the seraphim was back at the console, banging away at the keys.

“I can’t believe Badri isn’t back yet,” she said. “Leaving me with this lot. Set the coordinates. Come up with a costume. And meanwhile, I’ve got an historian waiting three-quarters of an hour to come through. Well, your priority jump can jolly well wait for unmarried girls were constantly accompanied by chaperones, usually an older maiden aunt or cousin, and were never allowed to be alone with a man until after their engagement, Ned, pay attention.”

“I am,” I said. “Unmarried girls were always accompanied by chaperones.”

“I told you I didn’t think this was a good idea,” Finch, who was there, too, said.

“There’s nobody else to send,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Ned, listen carefully. Here’s what I want you to do. You’ll come through on June the seventh, 1888, at ten A.M. The river is to the left of the dessert fork, which is used for gateaux and puddings. For such desserts as Muchings End, the dessert knife is used with the . . .”

Knife. Nice. Naiads. That was what they were called. Hylas and the Naiads. He went to fill his water jug, and they pulled him into the water with them, down and down, their hair and their wet sleeves twining about him.

“As soon as it’s returned, you can do whatever you like. The rest of the two weeks is yours. You can spend it boating on the river or to the right of the dessert plate, with the blade pointing inward.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Have you got that?”

“What?” I said, but Mr. Dunworthy wasn’t listening. He was looking at the net. There was a loud hum that threatened to drown out the ack-ack guns, and the veils on the net began to lower.

“What’s that?” Mr. Dunworthy said to the seraphim.

“The rendezvous,” she said, pounding keys. “I couldn’t very well leave him there forever. I’ll do your drop as soon as I bring him through.”

“Good,” Mr. Dunworthy said. He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Ned,” he said through the hum.

The veils touched the floor, draping gently. The hum rose in pitch till it sounded like the All-Clear, the air shimmered with condensation, and Carruthers appeared inside the net. He began fighting with the veils to get out.

“Stand still and wait till the veils have raised,” the seraphim ordered, pounding keys. The veils rose a foot and a half and stopped.

“Wait?” Carruthers said, ducking under them. “Wait? I’ve been waiting for two bloody hours!” He flailed at the fabric of the veils. “Where the bloody hell were you?”

He worked himself free and limped toward the console. He was covered in mud. He had lost one of his boots, and the front of his non-AFS uniform had a long, flapping tear in the back of one leg. “Why the hell didn’t you come get me as soon as you got the fix and saw where I’d landed?”

“I was interrupted,” she said, glaring at Mr. Dunworthy. She crossed her arms militantly. “Where’s your boot?”

“In the mouth of a bloody great mastiff! I was lucky to get away with my foot!”

“That was an authentic AFS Wellington,” she said. “And what have you done to your uniform?”

“What have I done to my uniform?” he said. “I’ve just spent two hours running for my life. I landed in that same damnable marrows field. Only I must have come through later than last time because the farmer’s wife was ready for me. With dogs. She’d recruited a whole bloody pack of them to aid in the war effort. She must have borrowed them from all over Warwickshire.”

He caught sight of me. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, limping over. “You’re supposed to be in Infirmary.”

“I’m going to 1888,” I said.

“I told that nurse she wasn’t to tell Lady Schrapnell you were back,” he said disgustedly. “Why’s she sending you to the Nineteenth Century? Is this about the great-grandmother?”

“Great-great-great-great,” I said. “No. The doctor prescribed two weeks’ uninterrupted bed rest, and Mr. Dunworthy’s sending me there for it.”

“He can’t,” Carruthers said. “You can’t. You’ve got to go back to Coventry and look for the bishop’s bird stump.”

“I was looking for it,” I said, “and you pulled me out. Remember?”

“I had to. You were a raving lunatic. Going on about dogs, man’s noblest ally in war and peace, his truest friend through thick and thin. Pah! Look at that!” He held up the long strip of torn coverall. “Man’s truest friend did that!” He showed me his stockinged foot. “Man’s noblest ally nearly took my foot off! How soon can you be ready to go?”

“The nurse said no drops for two weeks. Why did you send me to Infirmary if you wanted me to go back?”

“I thought they’d give you an injection or a pill or something,” he said, “not forbid you to do drops. Now how are we supposed to find the bishop’s bird stump?”

“You didn’t find it after I left?”

“I can’t even find the cathedral. I’ve been trying all afternoon, and the marrows field was the closest I got. The bloody slippage—”

“Slippage?” Mr. Dunworthy said alertly. He came over to where we were standing. “Has there been more slippage than usual?”

“I told you,” I said, “the marrows field.”

“What marrows field?”

“The one halfway to Birmingham. With the dogs.”

“I’m having trouble getting back to Coventry Cathedral on the fifteenth, sir,” Carruthers explained. “I’ve tried four times today, and the closest I can get is the eighth of December. Ned’s got the closest of anyone so far, which is why I need him to go back and finish searching the rubble for the bishop’s bird stump.”

Mr. Dunworthy looked puzzled. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to look for the bishop’s bird stump before the raid, on the fourteenth?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do for the past two weeks,” Carruthers said. “Lady Schrapnell wanted to know if it was in the cathedral at the time of the raid, so we arranged a jump to the cathedral at a quarter till eight, just before the start of the raid. But we can’t get near the place. Either the date’s off, or if we do come through at the target time, we’re sixty miles away in the middle of a marrows field.” He indicated his muddy uniform.

“We?” Mr. Dunworthy said, frowning. “How many historians have tried?”

“Six. No, seven,” Carruthers said. “Everyone who wasn’t off doing something else.”

“Carruthers said they’d tried everybody,” I put in, “and that was why they’d pulled me off jumble sales.”

“What about the jumble sales?”

“They’re a sale where they sell things they want to get rid of, things they bought at the last jumble sale, most of it, and things they’ve made to sell. Tea caddies and embroidered needle cases and penwipers and—”

“I know what a jumble sale is,” Mr. Dunworthy said. “Was there any slippage on those jumps?”

I shook my head. “Just the usual. Mostly spatial, so no one would see me come through. Behind the rectory or back of the tea tent.”

He turned abruptly to Carruthers. “How much were the Coventry drops off by, the ones in which you came through in Coventry?”

“It varies,” he said. “Paulson came through on the twenty-eighth of November.” He stopped and calculated. “The average is about twenty-four hours, I’d say. The closest we’ve been able to get to the target is the afternoon of the fifteenth, and now I can’t even get there. Which is why Ned needs to go. The new recruit’s still there, and I doubt if he even knows how to get back on his own. And who knows what trouble he’s likely to get into.”

“Trouble,” Mr. Dunworthy murmured. He turned to the tech. “Has there been increased slippage on all the drops, or just the ones to Coventry?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m a wardrobe tech. I’m only filling in for Badri. He’s the net tech.”

“Badri, yes,” he said, brightening. “Good. Badri. Where is he?”

“With Lady Schrapnell, sir,” Finch said. “And I’m afraid they may be on their way back by now,” but Mr. Dunworthy didn’t seem to hear him.

“While you’ve been filling in,” he said to Warder, “have you run any jumps that weren’t to the cathedral on November 14th, 1940?”

“One,” she said. “To London.”

“How much slippage was there?” he persisted.

She looked like she was going to say, “I don’t have time for this,” and then apparently thought better of it and began pounding keys. “Locational, no slippage. Temporal, eight minutes.”

“So it is Coventry,” he said to himself. “Eight minutes which way? Early or late?”

“Early.”

He turned back to Carruthers. “Did you try sending someone to Coventry earlier and having them stay till the raid?”

“Yes, sir,” Carruthers said. “They still ended up after the target time.”

Mr. Dunworthy took off his spectacles, examined them, and put them back on. “Does the amount of slippage seem to be random or is it getting progressively worse?”

“Worse,” he said.

“Finch, go ask Kindle if she noticed any coincidences or discrepancies while she was at Muchings End. Ned, you stay here. I’ve got to talk to Lewis.” Mr. Dunworthy went out.

“What was that all about?” Carruthers said, looking after him.

“Lady Windermere’s fan,” I said, and sat down.

“Stand up,” the seraphim said. “The drop’s ready. Get in place.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Mr. Dunworthy?” I asked.

“I have nineteen drops scheduled, not to mention another priority jump for Mr. Dunworthy, and—”

“All right, all right,” I said. I gathered up the satchel, portmanteau, Gladstone, and wicker basket, and went over to the net. The veils were still only a foot and a half from the floor. I set down one armful on the floor, lifted the veil, ducked under, and began pulling the bags in after me.

“The Victorian era was a time of rapid technological and scientific change,” the headrig said. “The invention of the telegraph, gas lighting, and Darwin’s theory of evolution were significantly altering the fabric of society.”

“Pick up your luggage and stand on the X,” she said.

“Travel in particular was changing rapidly. The invention of the steam locomotive, and, in 1863, the first underground railway, made it possible for Victorians to go faster and farther than ever before.”

“Ready?” she said, her hand poised over the keyboard.

“I think so,” I said, checking to make sure everything was inside the veils. One corner of the covered wicker basket was sticking out. “Wait,” I said, and scraped it inside with my foot.

“I said, ready now?” she said.

“Easy and affordable travel had the effect of broadening the Victorians’ horizons and breaking down the rigid barriers of class which—”

The seraphim flung the veils up, yanked the headrig out of my ear, and went back to the console.

“Ready now?” she said.

“Yes.”

The seraphim began tapping keys.

“Wait!” I said. “I don’t know where it is I’m going.”

“June seventh, 1888,” she said, and resumed tapping.

“I mean, after that,” I said, trying to find an opening in the veils. “I didn’t hear all of Mr. Dunworthy’s instructions. Because of the time-lag.” I pointed at my ear. “Difficulty in Distinguishing Sounds.”

“Difficulty in evidencing intelligence,” she said. “I don’t have time for this,” and flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“Where’s Mr. Dunworthy?” I heard her say in the corridor, probably to Finch.

Mr. Dunworthy had said something about Muchings End, and about a boat, or was that the headrig? “It’s a perfectly straightforward job,” he’d said.

“Where is he?” I heard the seraphim say again, and her voice sounded uncomfortably like Lady Schrapnell’s.

“Where is who?” Finch said.

“You know perfectly well who,” she said in stentorian tones. “And don’t tell me he’s in hospital. I’ve had enough of your wild goose chases. He’s here, isn’t he?”

Oh, Lord.

“Come away from that door and let me pass,” Lady Schrapnell roared. “He is here.”

I dropped the luggage with a thud and looked wildly about for somewhere to hide.

“No, he’s not,” Finch said bravely. “He’s over at Radcliffe Infirmary.”

There was nowhere to hide, at least in this century. I ducked under the veils and sprinted for the console, praying the seraphim had truly made all the necessary preparations.

“I said, let me pass,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Badri, make him come away from the door. Mr. Henry’s here, and I intend to see that he goes to look for my bishop’s bird stump instead of malingering in the present, pretending to have time-lag.”

“But he does have time-lag,” Finch said. “A very serious case. His vision’s blurred, he has Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds, and his reasoning faculties are severely impaired.”

The console screen said, “Ready. Hit ‘send.’ ” I measured the distance to the net.

“He’s in no condition to make any drops,” Finch said.

“Nonsense,” Lady Schrapnell said. “Now come away from that door this instant.”

I took a deep breath, punched “send,” and dived head-first for the net.

“Please believe me,” Finch said desperately. “He’s not here. He’s over at Christ Church.”

“Get out of my way!” she said, and there was the sound of a scuffle.

I skidded face-first onto the X. The veils lowered on my foot. I yanked it inside.

“Mr. Henry, I know you’re in here!” Lady Schrapnell said, and the door burst open.

“I told you,” Finch said. “He’s not here.”

And I wasn’t.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting.”

William Shakespeare.

CHAPTER FOUR

An Abrupt Arrival—Difference Between Literature and Real Life—Similarity of Train Whistles to Air Raid Sirens—Benefits of Adrenaline—I Contemplate My Mission—Howard’s End—A Timely Newspaper—Two Ladies—A Late Arrival—Contact!—“Oxford, City of Dreaming Spires”—A Fashion Plate—Fate—The Mystery of Rabbits Hypnotized by Snakes Solved—An Introduction

I came through face-down on railroad tracks, stretched across them like Pearl White in a Twentieth-Century serial, except that she didn’t have so much luggage. The portmanteau, et al, were scattered around me, along with my boater, which had fallen off when I dived for the net.

Lady Schrapnell’s voice was still booming in my ears, and I got to my feet and looked about cautiously, but there was no sign of her. Or of a boat or a river. The railway tracks were on a grassy embankment, with trees growing below and beside them.

The first rule of time travel is “Ascertain exact time-space location,” but there didn’t seem to be any way of doing that. It was clearly summer—the sky overhead was blue and there were flowers growing between the ties—but no signs of civilization other than the train tracks. So sometime after 1804.

In vids, there is always a newspaper lying on the ground with a helpful headline like “Pearl Harbor Bombed!” or “Mafeking Relieved!” and a clock above it in a shop window thoughtfully showing the time.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t there, and I squinted at my wrist, trying to remember whether Warder had taken it off me when she was trying shirts on. I remembered she’d tucked something in my waistcoat pocket. I pulled it out, on a gold chain. A pocket watch. Of course. Wristwatches were an anachronism in Nineteenth Century.

I had trouble getting the pocket watch open and then difficulty reading the extinct Roman numerals, but eventually I made it out. A quarter past X. Allowing for the time I’d spent getting the watch open and lying on the tracks, bang on target. Unless I was in the wrong year. Or the wrong place.

As I didn’t know where I was supposed to have come through, I didn’t know if I was in the right place or not, but if there’s a small amount of temporal slippage, there usually isn’t much locational slippage either.

I stood up on a rail to look down the tracks. To the north, the tracks headed into deeper woods. In the opposite direction, the woods seemed thinner, and there was a dark plume of smoke. A factory? Or a boathouse?

I should gather up my bags and go see, but I continued to stand on the rail, taking in the warm summer air and the sweet scent of clover and new-mown hay.

I was a hundred and sixty years away from pollution and traffic and the bishop’s bird stump. No, that wasn’t true. The bishop’s bird stump had been given to Coventry Cathedral in 1852.

Depressing thought. But there wasn’t any Coventry Cathedral. St. Michael’s Church hadn’t been made a bishopric till 1908. And there wasn’t a Lady Schrapnell. I was more than a century away from her snapped orders and from vicious dogs and from bombed-out cathedrals, in a more civilized time, where the pace was slow and decorous, and the women were softspoken and demure.

I gazed about me at the trees, the flowers. Buttercups grew between the tracks, and a tiny white flower like a star. The nurse at Infirmary had said I needed rest, and who couldn’t rest here? I felt totally recovered just standing here on the tracks. No blurring of vision. No air-raid sirens.

I had spoken too soon. The air-raid siren started up again and then as abruptly stopped. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and then took several long, deep breaths.

I wasn’t cured yet, but I soon would be, breathing in this clear, pure air. I gazed up at the cloudless sky, at the plume of black smoke. It seemed higher in the sky and nearer—a farmer burning weeds?

I longed to see him, leaning on his rake, untouched by modern worries, modern haste, longed to see his rose-covered cottage with its white picket fence, its cozy kitchen, its soft feather bed, its—

The air-raid siren sounded again in short sharp blasts. Like a factory whistle. Or a train.

Adrenaline is an extremely effective drug. It galvanizes the body into action and has been known to produce impossible feats of strength. And speed.

I snatched up the satchel, the hamper, the portmanteau, the carpetbag, the boxes, and my hat, which had somehow fallen off again, chucked them all down the near side of the embankment, and chucked myself after them before the plume of black smoke had cleared the trees.

The covered basket that Finch had been so concerned about was still on the tracks, sitting squarely on the far rail. The adrenaline leaped across, scooped it up, and rolled down the embankment as the train thundered past in a deafening roar.

Definitely not totally recovered. I lay at the bottom of the embankment for a considerable time contemplating that fact and trying to start breathing.

After a while I sat up. The embankment had been fairly high, and the basket and I had rolled a considerable way before coming to a stop in a mass of nettles. As a result, the view was very different than that from the tracks, and I could glimpse, beyond a thicket of alders, a corner of some white wooden structure and a glimpse of fretwork. It could definitely be a boathouse.

I disentangled the basket and myself, climbed up the embankment, and looked carefully up and down the tracks. There was no smoke in either direction, and no sound at all. Satisfied, I sprinted across the tracks, gathered up my etc., looked in both directions, bolted back across, and set off through the woods toward the boathouse.

Adrenaline also tends to clear the brain, and several things became remarkably clear as I trudged toward the boathouse, the foremost of which was that I had no idea what to do when I got there.

I distinctly remembered Mr. Dunworthy saying, “Here are your instructions,” and after that a jumble of Stilton spoons and collars and the All-Clear, and then he’d said the rest of the two weeks was mine to do with as I liked. Which obviously meant that a portion of it wasn’t. And when I’d got in the net, Finch had said, “We’re counting on you.”

To do what? There was something about a boat and a river. And a Something End. Audley End. No, that didn’t sound right. It began with an “N.” Or was that the water nymph? Hopefully, it would come back to me when I got to the boathouse.

It wasn’t a boathouse. It was a railway station. There was a carved wooden sign on the wall above a green bench. Oxford, it said.

And what was I supposed to do now? Oxford had boathouses and a river. But if I’d come through at the railway station, perhaps I was supposed to take a train to this Something End and then a boat from there. I seemed to remember Mr. Dunworthy saying something about a railway. Or had that been the headrig?

My coming through at the railway station might have been due to slippage, and I was really supposed to have come through down at Folly Bridge. I distinctly remembered something having been said about a boat and the river.

On the other hand, I had a great deal of luggage for a boat.

I looked across the tracks to the platform. On the far side of the green bench was a glass-covered notice board. The train schedule. I could look at it, and if Something End was listed, I’d know I was supposed to take the train, especially if one was due shortly.

The platform was empty, at least for the moment. The distance up to it looked high, but not impossible, and the sky was unsullied blue in both directions. I looked up and down the tracks and then at the door to the waiting room. Nothing. I checked the tracks three or four more times, just to be safe, and then sprinted across them, heaved my luggage over the edge, and clambered up after it.

The platform was still uninhabited. I piled my luggage on the end of the bench and strolled over to the notice board. I read the headings: Reading, Coventry, Northampton, Bath. It was very likely one of the smaller stations: Aylesbury, Didcot, Swindon, Abingdon. I read the entire list. There wasn’t a single End among them.

And I couldn’t go into the station and ask when the next train to Something End was. What was it? Something End. Howard’s End? No, that was a novel by E. M. Forster. It hadn’t even been written yet. Something End. There was a pub in the Turl called The Bitter End, but that didn’t sound right either. It began with an “N.” No, that was the naiad. An “M.”

I went back over to the bench and sat down, trying to think. Mr. Dun-worthy had said, “Here are your instructions,” and then something about oyster spears and tea with the Queen. No, that had to have been the headrig. And then, “We’re sending you through to the seventh of June, 1888.”

Perhaps I’d better find out if I was really on the seventh of June, 1888, before I worried about anything else. If I was in the wrong time, I had no business going anywhere, by train or by boat. I needed to stay here till Warder got the fix, realized I was in the wrong time, and set up a rendezvous to take me back. At least it wasn’t a field of marrows.

And it had occurred to me, now that I was recovering a bit, that Warder would have set my watch for the time in the past. In which case, it proved absolutely nothing at all.

I stood up and went over to the station window to see if there was a clock inside. There was. It said twenty to eleven. I pulled out my pocket watch and checked it against the clock. Twenty to XI.

In books and vids there’s always a newsboy hawking papers with the date neatly visible for the time traveller to see, or a calendar with the dates marked off with an X. There was no sign of a calendar, a newsboy, or a friendly porter who’d volunteer, “Lovely weather for June seventh, isn’t it, sir? Not like last year. We hadn’t any summer at all in ‘87.”

I went back to the bench and sat down, trying to concentrate. Marlborough End, Middlesex End, Montague End, Marple’s End.

A train whistle (which I instantly recognized as such) sounded, and a train tore through the station without stopping, with a roar and a sudden wind that blew my boater with it. I went running after it, caught it, and was putting it back on when a paper, apparently caught in the same draft, blew against the back of my legs.

I unwrapped myself from it and looked at it. It was a sheet from a newspaper. The Times. 7 June 1888.

So I was at the right time, and all I had to work out was what I was supposed to do now.

I sat down and put my head in my hands, trying to concentrate. Carruthers had come through without his boots and Warder had slammed her clipboard down and Mr. Dunworthy had said something about a river and a contact. A contact.

“Contact Tennyson,” he’d said, only that wasn’t the name. But it had begun with a “T.” Or an “A.” And Finch had said something about a contact, too. A contact.

That explained why I didn’t know what to do. All I’d been told was that I was to meet a contact, and he or she would tell me. I felt a surge of relief. The contact would explain everything.

So now the only question was, who was it and where was he or she? “Contact someone,” Mr. Dunworthy had said. What was the name? Chiswick. No, that was the head of Time Travel. Correction, the ex-head of Time Travel. “Contact—” Klepperman. Ensign Klepperman. No, that was the sailor who’d been killed in the line of duty. Because he hadn’t known what he was doing.

“Contact—” Who? As if in answer, another train whistle blew several deafening blasts, and a train pulled into the station. Spitting sparks and great whooshes of steam, the train came to a stop. A porter jumped down from the third car, deposited a plush-covered stool in front of the door, and got back on the train.

Several minutes went by, and the porter reappeared, carrying a hatbox and a large black umbrella. He extended his hand to a frail old lady, and then a younger one, as they stepped down.

The elderly lady was wearing crinolines and a bonnet and lace mitts, and for a moment I was afraid I was in the wrong year after all, but the younger one had a long, flared skirt and a hat that tilted forward over her brow. She had a sweet face, and when she spoke to the porter, telling him what bags they had, her voice was both softspoken and demure.

“I told you he wouldn’t be here to meet us,” the old lady said in a voice with Lady Schrapnellian overtones.

“I’m certain he will be here shortly, Auntie,” the young woman said. “Perhaps he was delayed on college business.”

“Poppycock,” the old lady said, a word I had not ever expected to hear anyone say. “He’s off fishing somewhere. Disgraceful occupation for a grown man! Did you write to tell him when we were coming?”

“Yes, Auntie.

“And told him the time, I hope?”

“Yes, Auntie. I’m certain he’ll be here shortly.”

“And in the meantime we’re left to stand here in this dreadful heat.”

The weather had seemed pleasantly warm, but then I wasn’t wearing black wool buttoned to the neck. Or lace mitts.

“Absolutely sweltering,” she said, fishing in a small beaded purse for a handkerchief. “I feel quite weak. Careful with that!” she boomed at the porter, who was struggling with a huge trunk. Finch had been right. They did travel with steamer trunks.

“Quite faint,” Auntie said, fanning herself weakly with the handkerchief.

“Why don’t you sit down over here, Auntie,” the young woman said, leading her over to the other bench. “I’m certain Uncle will be here momentarily.”

The old lady sat down in a whoomph of petticoats. “Not like that!” she snapped at the porter. “This is all Herbert’s fault. Getting married! And just when I was coming to Oxford. Don’t scratch the leather!”

It was obvious neither of these ladies was my contact, but at least I no longer seemed to be having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds. And I could understand what they were saying, which isn’t always the case in the past. My first jumble sale I hadn’t understood one word in ten: skittles and shies and sales of work.

Also, I seemed to have overcome my Tendency to Sentimentality. The younger lady had a pretty heart-shaped face, and even prettier ankle-shaped ankles, which I’d caught a white-stockinged glimpse of when she alighted from the train, but I hadn’t felt any inclination to dissolve into rapturous comparisons with sylphs or cherubim. Better still, I had been able to come up with both words without any trouble. I felt completely cured.

“He’s forgotten us completely,” Auntie said. “We’ll have to hire a fly.”

Well, perhaps not completely cured.

“There’s no need for us to hire a carriage,” the young woman said. “Uncle won’t have forgotten.”

“Then why isn’t he here, Maud?” she said, arranging her skirts so they took up the entire bench. “And why isn’t Herbert here? Marriage! Servants have no business marrying. And how did Herbert meet anyone suitable to marry? I absolutely forbade her to have followers, so I suppose that means it’s someone unsuitable. Some person from a music hall.” She lowered her voice. “Or worse.”

“It’s my understanding that they met at church,” Maud said patiently.

“At church! Disgraceful! What is the world coming to? In my day, church was a duty, not a social occasion. Mark my words, a hundred years from now, one will not be able to distinguish between a cathedral and a music hall.”

Or a shopping center, I thought.

“It’s all these sermons on Christian love,” Auntie said. “Whatever happened to sermons on duty and knowing one’s place? And punctuality. Your uncle could benefit from a sermon on—where are you going?”

Maud was heading for the station door. “To look at the clock,” she said. “I thought perhaps the reason Uncle isn’t here yet is that the train might have been early getting in.”

I helpfully pulled out my pocket watch and opened it, hoping I could remember how to read it.

“And leave me here alone,” Auntie said, “with who knows what sort of persons?” She crooked a lace-mitted finger at Maud. “There are men,” she said in a stage whisper, “who hang about public places waiting for their chance to engage unaccompanied women in conversation.”

I snapped the pocket watch shut, put it back in my waistcoat pocket, and tried my best to look harmless.

“Their object,” she whispered loudly, “is to steal unprotected women’s luggage. Or worse.”

“I doubt if anyone could lift our luggage, Auntie, let alone steal it,” Maud whispered back, and my opinion of her shot up.

“Nevertheless, you are in my care, since my brother has not seen fit to meet us, and it is my duty to protect you from harmful influences,” Auntie said, looking darkly at me. “We are not staying here one moment longer. Put those in the cloakroom,” she said to the porter, who had succeeded finally in wrestling the trunks and three large bandboxes onto a luggage barrow. “And bring us the claim check for them.”

“The train is about to leave, madam,” he protested.

“I am not taking the train,” she said. “And engage us a fly. With a respectable driver.”

The porter looked desperately at the train, which was emitting great gouts of steam. “Madam, it is my duty to be on the train when it departs. I shall lose my job if I’m not on board.”

I thought of offering to get them a carriage, but I didn’t want Auntie to take me for Jack the Ripper. Or was that an anachronism? Had he started his career by 1888?

“Pish-tosh! You shall lose your job if I report your insolence to your employers,” Auntie was saying. “What sort of railway is this?”

“The Great Western, madam.”

“Well, it can scarcely call itself great when its employees leave the passengers’ luggage on the platform to be stolen by common criminals,” another dark look at me. “It can scarcely call itself great when its employees refuse to aid a helpless old lady.”

The porter, who looked as though he disagreed with the word “helpless,” glanced at the train, whose wheels were starting to turn, and then at the station door, as if gauging the distance, and then tipped his hat and pushed the barrow into the station.

“Come, Maud,” Auntie said, rising out of her nest of crinolines.

“But what if Uncle comes?” Maud said. “He’ll just miss us.”

“It will teach him a useful lesson on punctuality,” Auntie said. She swept out.

Maud followed in her impressive wake, giving me a smile of apology as she went.

The train started up, its great wheels turning slowly, then faster as it gathered steam, and started out of the station. I looked anxiously at the station door, but there was no sign of the poor porter. The passenger cars moved slowly past, and then the green-painted luggage van. He wasn’t going to make it. The guard’s van pulled past, its lantern swinging, and the porter burst through the door, ran down the platform after it, and made a flying leap. I stood up.

He caught the railing with one hand, swung himself up onto the bottom step, and clung there, panting. As the train cleared the station he shook his fist at the station door.

And no doubt in future years he became a socialist, I thought, and worked to get the Labour Party voted in.

And what about Auntie? No doubt she had outlived all her relatives and left her servants nothing in her will. I hoped she’d lasted well into the Twenties and had to put up with cigarettes and the Charleston. As for Maud, I hoped she’d been able to meet someone suitable to marry, though I was afraid she hadn’t, with Auntie’s eagle eye constantly on her.

I sat on for several minutes, contemplating their futures and my own, which was decidedly less clear. The next train from anywhere wasn’t until 12:36, from Birmingham. Was I supposed to meet my contact here? Or was I supposed to go into Oxford and meet him there? I seemed to remember Mr. Dunworthy saying something about a cabby. Was I supposed to take a hansom cab into town? “Contact,” Mr. Dunworthy had said.

The station door burst open, and a young man shot through it at the same speed as the porter had previously. He was dressed like I was, in white flannels and slightly crooked mustache, and was carrying his boater in his hand. He ran onto the platform and strode rapidly to the far end of it, obviously looking for someone.

My contact, I thought hopefully. And he was late, which was why he hadn’t been here to meet me. As if in confirmation, he stopped, pulled out his pocket watch, and flipped it open with impressive dexterity. “I’m late,” he said, and snapped it shut.

And if he was my contact, would he announce himself as such, or was I supposed to whisper, “Psst, Dunworthy sent me”? Or was there some sort of password I was supposed to know the answer to—“The marmoset sails at midnight,” to which I was supposed to respond, “The sparrow is in the spruce tree”?

I was debating “The moon sets on Tuesday” versus the more straightforward “I beg your pardon. Are you from the future?” when he turned back my way, gave me the barest of glances, strode past me to the other end of the platform, and peered down the tracks. “I say,” he said, coming back, “has the 10:55 from London arrived yet?”

“Yes,” I said. “It pulled out five minutes ago.” Pulled out? Was that an anachronism? Should I have said “departed” instead?

Apparently not, because he muttered, “I knew it,” and clapped his boater on his head and disappeared into the station.

A moment later he was back again. “I say,” he said, “you haven’t seen any agèd relicts, have you?”

“Age-ed relicts?” I said, feeling as if I were back among the jumble sales.

“A deuce of dowagers, ‘fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,’ ” he said. “Crookbacked and crabbèd with age. ‘You are old, Father William,’ and all that. They would have come in on the train from London. In bombazine and jet, I should imagine.” He saw my incomprehension. “Two ladies of advanced age. I was supposed to meet them. I don’t suppose they’d have come and gone, would they?” he said, looking vaguely round.

He must be referring to the two ladies who’d just left, though he couldn’t possibly be Auntie’s brother and Maud could hardly be described as of advanced age.

“They were both elderly?” I said.

“Antiquated. I had to meet them once before, during Michaelmas term. Did you see them? One was very likely in a crotchet and a fichu. The other’s a spinster of the sparse, sharp-nosed sort, all blue stockings and social causes. Amelia Bloomer and Betsey Trotwood.”

It wasn’t them, then. The names were wrong, and the stockings I’d seen descending from the train had been white, not blue.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t see them. There was a young girl and a—”

He shook his head. “Not my party. Mine were absolutely antediluvian, or they would be if anyone still believed in the Flood. What would Darwin call it, do you suppose? Pre-Pelasgian? Or Ante-Trilobitian? He must have got the trains mixed again.”

He strode over to the board, examined the schedule, and straightened in disgust. “Drat!” he said, another word I’d thought existed only in books. “The next train from London’s not until 3:18, and by then it will be too late.”

He slapped his boater against his leg. “Well, that’s that, then,” he said. “Unless I can get something out of Mags at the Mitre. She’s always good for a crown or two. Too bad Cyril isn’t here. She likes Cyril.” He clapped his boater back on his head and went into the station.

And so much for his being my contact, I thought. Drat!

And the next train from anywhere wasn’t until 12:36. Perhaps I was supposed to have met the contact where I’d come through, and I should take my luggage and go back to that spot on the tracks. If I could find it. I should have marked the spot with a scarf.

Or was I supposed to meet him down by the river? Or go somewhere by boat to meet him? I squeezed my eyes shut. Mr. Dunworthy had said something about Jesus College. No, he had been talking to Finch about getting the provisions. He had said, “Here are your instructions,” and then something about the river and something about croquet and Disraeli and . . . I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the memory.

“I say,” a voice said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

I opened my eyes. It was the young man who’d missed meeting the age-ed relicts.

“I say,” he said again, “you weren’t going on the river, were you? Well, of course you are, I mean, boater, blazer, flannels, you’re hardly dressed for an execution, are you, and there’s nothing else on in Oxford this time of year. Occam’s Razor, as Professor Peddick would say. What I meant was, had you made plans to go with friends, a house party or something, or were you going on your own?”

“I—” I said, wondering if he could be my contact after all, and this was some sort of intricate code.

“I say,” he said, “I’m going about this all wrong. We haven’t even been properly introduced.” He shifted his boater to his left hand and extended his right. “Terence St. Trewes.”

I shook it. “Ned Henry,” I said.

“What college are you?”

I was trying to remember if Mr. Dunworthy had mentioned someone named Terence St. Trewes, and the question, phrased so casually, caught me off-guard.

“Balliol,” I said, and then hoped against hope he went to Brasenose or Keble.

“I knew it,” he said happily. “One can always spot a Balliol man. It’s Jowett’s influence. Who’s your tutor?”

Who had been at Balliol in 1888? Jowett, but he wouldn’t have had any pupils. Ruskin? No, he was Christ Church. Ellis? “I was ill this year,” I said, deciding on caution. “I’m coming up again in the autumn.”

“And in the meantime, your physician’s recommended a trip on the river to recover. Fresh air, exercise, and quiet and all that bosh. And rest that knits the ravelled sleeve of care.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said, wondering how he knew that. Perhaps he was my contact after all. “My physician sent me down this morning,” I said, in case he was and was waiting for some sign from me. “From Coventry.”

“Coventry?” he said. “That’s where St. Thomas à Becket’s buried, isn’t it? ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ ”

“No,” I said. “That’s Canterbury.”

“Then which one’s Coventry?” He brightened. “Lady Godiva,” he said. “And Peeping Tom.”

Well, so he wasn’t my contact. Still, it was nice being in a time when those were the associations for Coventry and not ravaged cathedrals and Lady Schrapnell.

“Here’s the thing,” Terence said, sitting down next to me on the bench. “Cyril and I were planning to go on the river this morning, had the boat hired and noinbob put down to hold it and our things all packed, when Professor asks me if I can meet his agèd relatives because he’s got to go write about the battle of Salamis. Well, one doesn’t say no to one’s tutor, even if one is in a devil of a hurry, especially when he was such a brick about the whole Martyr’s Memorial thing, not telling my father and all, so I left Cyril down at Folly Bridge to watch our things and make certain Jabez didn’t rent the boat out from under us which he’s done on more than one occasion, including that time Rushforth’s sister was up for Eights, even with a deposit, and legged it up St. Aldate’s. I could see I was going to be late, so when I got to Pembroke, I hailed a hansom. I only had enough for the balance of the boat, but I was counting on the agèd relicts anteing up. Only he’d got the trains mixed and I can’t draw against my next quarter allowance because I put it all on Beefsteak in the Derby, and Jabez for some reason refuses to extend credit to undergraduates. So here I am, stuck like Mariana in the South, and there’s Cyril, ‘like patience on a monument, smiling at grief,’ ” He looked at me expectantly.

And, oddly enough, though this was far worse than the jumble sales and I’d only understood about one word in three and none of the literary allusions, I’d got the gist of what he was saying: he didn’t have enough money for the boat.

And of what it meant: he definitely wasn’t my contact. He was only a penniless undergraduate. Or one of Auntie’s “ruffians” who hung about railway stations engaging people in conversation and trying to borrow money. Or worse.

“Hasn’t Cyril any money?” I asked.

“Lord, no,” he said, stretching out his legs. “He never has a shilling. So I was wondering, since you were planning to go on the river and so were we, if we mightn’t combine resources, like Speke and Burton, only of course the sources of the Thames have already been discovered, and we wouldn’t be going upriver, at any rate. And there won’t be any savage natives or tsetse flies or things. Cyril and I wondered if you’d like to go on the river with us.”

“Three men in a boat,” I murmured, wishing he were my contact. Three Men in a Boat has always been one of my favorite books, especially the chapter where Harris gets lost in Hampton Court Maze.

“Cyril and I are going downriver,” Terence was saying. “We were thinking of taking a leisurely trip down to Muchings End, but we could stop anywhere you’d like. There are some nice ruins at Abingdon. Cyril loves ruins. Or there’s Bisham Abbey, where Anne of Cleves waited out the divorce. Or if you had in mind simply drifting along, enjoying the ‘current that with gentle murmur glides,’ we could simply drift.”

I wasn’t listening. Muchings End, he’d said, and I knew as soon as I heard it, it was the name I’d been trying to remember. “Contact someone,” he’d said, and this was clearly the someone. His references to the river and my physician’s orders, his crooked mustache and identical blazer, couldn’t all be coincidences.

I wondered why he didn’t simply tell me who he was, though. There was no one else on the platform. I looked in the station window, trying to see if the station agent was eavesdropping, but I couldn’t see anything. Or perhaps he was just being cautious in case I wasn’t the right person.

I said, “I’m—” and the station door opened, and a portly middle-aged man wearing a bowler and a handlebar mustache came out. He tipped the bowler, grunted something undistinguishable, and went over to the notice board.

“I should like very much to go with you to Muchings End,” emphasizing the last two words. “A trip on the river will be a restful change from Coventry.”

I fished in my trouser pocket, trying to remember what Finch had done with the purse full of money. “How much do you need for the hire of the boat?”

“Sicksunthree,” he said. “That’s for a week’s hire. I’ve already put noin bob down.”

The purse was in my blazer pocket. “I’m not certain if I brought enough with me,” I said, tipping the bank note and coins out in my hand.

“There’s enough there to buy the boat,” Terence said. “Or the Koh-i-noor. This your kit?” he said, indicating my stacked luggage.

“Yes,” I said, and reached for the portmanteau, but he’d already grabbed it and one of the twine-tied boxes up in one hand, and the satchel and hamper in the other. I grabbed the other box and the carpetbag and the covered basket up and followed him.

“I told the hansom driver to wait,” he said, starting down the steps, but there was nothing outside the station except a mangy spotted hound, lazily scratching its ear with its hind leg. It paid no attention as Terence passed, and I felt another surge of jubilation that I was years and years from vicious dogs and downed Luftwaffe pilots, in a quieter, slower-paced, more decorous time.

“Uncivilized blighter,” Terence said. “I told him to wait. We’ll have to get a cab on Cornmarket.”

The hound shifted position and began licking its private parts. All right. Not entirely decorous.

And not all that slow. “Come along then,” Terence said. “There’s no time to lose,” and took off up Hythe Bridge Street at a near-gallop.

I followed at as fast a clip as I could manage, considering the luggage and Hythe Bridge Street, which was unpaved and badly rutted. It took all my attention to keep my footing and juggle the luggage.

“Come along then,” Terence said, pausing at the top of the hill. “It’s nearly noon.”

“Coming,” I said, adjusting the covered basket, which was slipping, and struggled up the hill to the top.

When I got there, I stopped, gaping as badly as the new recruit had at the cat. I was in the Cornmarket, at the crossroads of St. Aldate’s and the High, under the mediaeval tower.

I had stood here hundreds of times, waiting for a break in the traffic. But that was in Twenty-First Century Oxford, with its tourist shopping centers and tube stations.

This, this was the real Oxford, “with the sun on her towers,” the Oxford of Newman and Lewis Carroll and Tom Brown. There was the High, curving down to Queen’s and Magdalen, and the Old Bodleian, with its high windows and chained books, and next to it the Radcliffe Camera and the Sheldonian Theatre. And there, down on the corner of the Broad, was Balliol in all its glory. The Balliol of Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins and Asquith. Inside those gates was the great Jowett, with his bushy white hair and his masterful voice, telling a student, “Never explain. Never apologize.”

The clock in Cornmarket’s tower struck half past eleven, and all the bells in Oxford chimed in. St. Mary the Virgin, and Christ Church’s Great Tom, and the silvery peal of Magdalen, far down the High.

Oxford, and I was here in it. In “the city of lost causes” where lingered “the last echoes of the Middle Ages.”

“ ‘That sweet city with her dreaming spires,’ ” I said, and was nearly hit by a horseless carriage.

“Jump!” Terence said, lunging for my arm, and pulled me out of the way. “Those things are an absolute menace,” he said, looking longingly after it. “We’re never going to find a hansom in this mess. We’re better off walking,” and plunged in amongst a host of harried-looking women with aprons and market baskets, murmuring, “Sorry,” to them and tipping his hat with the hamper.

I followed him down Cornmarket, through the bustling crowd and past shops and greengrocers’. I glanced in the window of a hatter’s at the people reflected there, and stopped cold. A woman with a basket full of cabbages crashed into me and then went round me, muttering, but I scarcely noticed.

There hadn’t been any mirrors in the lab, and I had only been half aware of the garments Warder was putting on me. I had had no idea. I looked the very image of a Victorian gentleman off for an outing on the river. My stiff collar, my natty blazer and white flannels. Above all, my boater. There are some things one is born to wear, and I had obviously been fated to wear this hat. It was of light straw with a band of blue ribbon, and it gave me a jaunty, dashing look, which, combined with the mustache, was fairly devastating. No wonder Auntie had been so anxious to hustle Maud off.

On closer inspection, my mustache was a bit lopsided, and my eyes had that glazed, time-lagged look, but those could be remedied shortly, and the overall effect was still extremely pleasing, if I did say so my—

“What are you doing, standing there like a sheep?” Terence said, grabbing my arm. “Come along!” He led me across Carfax and down St. Aldate’s.

Terence kept up a cheerful stream of chatter as he went. “Look out for the tram rails. I tripped over one last week. Worse for the carriages, though, just the right size to catch their wheels, and over they go. Well, over I went, and lucky for me that the only thing coming was a farm wagon and a mule old as Methuselah, or I’d have gone to meet my Maker. Do you believe in luck?”

He crossed the street and took off down St. Aldate’s. And there was The Bulldog with its painted pub signboard of angry proctors chasing an undergraduate, and the golden walls of Christ Church, and Tom Tower. And the walled deanery garden, from which came the sound of children laughing. Alice Liddell and her sisters? My heart caught, trying to remember when Charles Dodgson had written Alice in Wonderland. No, it had been written earlier, in the 1860s. But there, across the street, was the shop where Alice had bought sweets from a sheep.

“The day before yesterday I’d have told you I didn’t believe in luck,” Terence said, trotting past the path to Christ Church Meadow. “But after yesterday afternoon, I’m a true believer. So many things have happened. Professor Peddick getting the trains mixed, and then you being there. I mean, you might have been going somewhere else altogether, or you mightn’t have had the money for the boat, or you mightn’t have been there at all, and then where would Cyril and I have been? ‘Fate holds the strings, and Men like children move but as they’re led: Success is from above.’ ”

A hansom cab pulled up beside us. “Tack ye summers, gemmun?” the driver said in a completely unintelligible accent.

Terence shook his head. “By the time we got all our luggage in, it’s faster to walk. And we’re nearly there.”

We were. There was Folly Bridge, and a tavern, and the river, with a ragtag of boats tied up to its edge.

“ ‘Fate, show thy force. What is decreed must be, and be this so,’ ” Terence said, crossing the bridge. “We go to meet our destiny.” He started down the steps toward the dock. “Jabez,” he called out to the man standing on the riverbank. “You haven’t rented our boat, have you?”

Jabez looked like something out of Oliver Twist. He had a scruffy beard and a decidedly unfriendly manner. He was standing with his thumbs in a pair of impossibly dirty braces, and his hands were, if possible, even dirtier.

At his feet lay an enormous brown-and-white bulldog, its ugly flattened snout resting on its paws. Even at this distance, I could see its powerful shoulders and belligerent underslung jaw. Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist had had a bulldog, hadn’t he?

I didn’t see any sign of anyone who might be Terence’s friend Cyril, and I wondered if Jabez and his dog had murdered him and thrown him in the river.

Terence, obliviously chattering, hurried down the bank toward the boat. And the monster. I followed cautiously, keeping well to the rear and hoping it might ignore us like the hound at the station, but as soon as it saw us, it sat up alertly.

“Here we are,” Terence called out gaily, and the bulldog took off at a run for us.

I let go of the satchel and box with a thud, clapped the covered basket to my chest like a shield, and looked wildly about for a stick.

The bulldog’s wide mouth opened as he ran, revealing foot-long canines and row upon row of sharklike teeth. Bulldogs had been used for fighting in the Nineteenth Century, hadn’t they? Fighting bulls, that was how they’d gotten their name, wasn’t it? Leaping for the bull’s jugular and hanging on? That was how they’d gotten that mashed-in nose, too, and those heavy jowls, wasn’t it? The flat muzzle had been bred into them so they could breathe without letting go.

“Cyril!” Terence cried, but no one appeared to save us, and the bulldog shot past him and straight for me.

I dropped the covered basket, and it rolled off toward the riverbank. Terence dived for it. The bulldog paused and then took off for me again.

I had never understood what would hypnotize a rabbit into standing there and staring at an approaching snake, but now I realized it must be the snake’s unusual method of movement.

The bulldog was running straight toward me, but it was more a roll than a run, and there was a lateral component to it, so that although he was clearly going directly for my throat, he nevertheless was canting to the left, so much that I thought he might miss me altogether, and by the time I realized he wouldn’t, it was too late to run.

The bulldog flung himself at me and I went down, trying to protect my jugular with both hands and wishing I had been more sympathetic to Carruthers.

The bulldog had his front paws on my shoulders and his wide mouth inches from mine.

“Cyril!” Terence said, but I didn’t dare turn my head to see where he was. I hoped, wherever he was, that he had a weapon.

“Good boy,” I said to the bulldog, not very convincingly.

“This basket of yours nearly went in the drink,” Terence said, moving into my field of vision. “Best catch I’ve made since the match against Harrow in ‘84.” He set the basket down on the ground beside me.

“Could you . . .” I said, cautiously taking one hand away from my neck to point at the bulldog.

“Oh, of course, how thoughtless of me,” Terence said. “You two haven’t been properly introduced.” He squatted down beside us. “This is Mr. Henry,” he said to the bulldog, “the newest member of our merry band and our financial savior.”

The bulldog opened his huge mouth in a wide, drooling grin.

“Ned,” Terence said, “allow me to introduce Cyril.”

“George said: ‘Let’s go up the river.’ He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet; the constant change of scene would occupy our minds (including what there was of Harris’s); and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.”

Three men in a boat.

Jerome K. Jerome

C H A P T E R  F I V E

Bulldogs’ Tenacity and Fierceness—Cyril’s Family Tree—More Luggage—Terence Packs—Jabez Packs—Riding a Horse—Christ Church Meadow—The Difference Between Poetry and Real Life—Love at First Sight—The Taj Mahal—Fate—A Splash—Darwin—A Rescue from a Watery Grave—An Extinct Species—Natural Forces—The Battle of Blenheim—A Vision

“How do you do, Cyril?” I said, not attempting to get up. I had read somewhere that any sudden movement could cause them to attack. Or was that bears? I wished Finch had brought me a tape on bulldogs instead of butlers. Bulldogs nowadays are solid marshmallow. Oriel’s mascot has a pleasant disposition and spends all of his time lying in front of the porter’s lodge, hoping someone will come along and pet him.

But this was a Nineteenth-Century bulldog, and the bulldog had originally been bred for bull-baiting, a charming sport in which bulldogs, specifically bred for tenacity and a ferocious disposition, latched onto vital arteries, and the bull, understandably annoyed, attempted to gore the dogs and/or toss them on his horns. When had bull-baiting been outlawed? Surely before 1888. But it would take some time, wouldn’t it, to breed all that tenacity and fierceness out of them?

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Cyril,” I said hopefully.

Cyril made a sound that might have been a growl. Or a belch.

“Cyril comes from an excellent family,” Terence was saying, still squatting beside my prostrate form. “His father was Deadly Dan out of Medusa. His great-great-grandfather was Executioner. One of the great bull-baiters of all time. Never lost a fight.”

“Really?” I said weakly.

“Cyril’s great-great-great grandfather fought Old Silverback.” He shook his head in admiration. “Eight-hundred-pound grizzly bear. Latched onto his muzzle and didn’t let go for five hours.”

“But all that tenacity and fierceness has been bred out of them?” I said hopefully.

“Not at all,” Terence said.

Cyril growled again.

“I shouldn’t think they ever had it,” Terence continued, “except as an occupational necessity. Being clawed by a bear would make anyone ferocious, I should think. Wouldn’t it, Cyril?”

Cyril made the low rumble again, and this time it sounded definitely like a belch.

“A heart of gold Executioner had, so they say. Mr. Henry’s going on the river with us, Cyril,” he said, as if the bulldog didn’t still have me down and thoroughly drooled on, “as soon as we load the boat and settle up with Jabez.” He pulled out his pocket watch and snapped it open. “Come along, Ned. It’s nearly a quarter to twelve. You can play with Cyril later.” He picked up both bandboxes and started for the dock.

Cyril, apparently desiring to help, got off me and ambled over to sniff at the covered basket. I picked myself up, rescued the basket, and followed Terence down to the river.

Jabez was standing on the dock next to a large pile of luggage, his arms folded militantly. “They think I’m going to let them pack the boat before they pay,” he said to no one in particular, “but Jabez has seen that trick before.” He thrust an impressively dirty hand under my nose. “Farnsecks.”

I had no more idea of what “farnsecks” was than “noinbob.” “Here,” I said, handing Terence my purse, “you settle up with him, and I’ll fetch the rest of the luggage.”

I gathered up the portmanteau and the satchel, which had been knocked halfway up the steps when Cyril hit me, and took them down to the dock, Cyril waddling amiably along beside me.

Terence was standing in the boat, which was a peeling dark green and had Victory stencilled on its prow. It was battered-looking but large, which was a good thing, since the pile of luggage on the dock turned out to be Terence’s.

“A beauty, isn’t she?” Terence said, taking the portmanteau from me and stowing it under the middle seat. “We’ll have her loaded and be on the river in no time.”

It took somewhat longer than that. We stowed Terence’s luggage, which consisted of a large Gladstone bag, two bandboxes, a valise, three hampers, a wooden crate, a tin box, a roll of rugs, and two fishing poles, in the prow, and mine in the stern, which completely filled the boat, so that we had to pull it all out and start again.

“We need to go at this scientifically,” Terence said. “Large items first, then fill in with the smaller.”

We did, starting with the Gladstone and ending with the rugs which we unrolled and crammed into corners. This time there was a space approximately a foot wide in the middle. Cyril immediately came over and lay down in it.

I felt I should volunteer to leave some of my bags behind, but as I had no idea what was in them, I decided I’d better not.

“I knew I should have brought Dawson,” Terence said. “Dawson’s a wonder at packing.”

I assumed that Dawson was his valet. Then again, it might be his pet raccoon.

“When I came up to Oxford, he managed to fit all Cyril’s and my earthly possessions in a single trunk with room left over. Of course, if he were here, there’d be his luggage to consider. And him.” He looked speculatively at the luggage. “Perhaps if we started with the smallest first—”

Eventually I suggested we tip Jabez an additional noinbob (whatever that was) and have him try. He did, jamming and mashing things in by brute force, and keeping up a running monologue. “Keep Jabez waiting half the day for his money,” he muttered, cramming the satchel under a seat, “and then expect him to pack the boat, as if he was a common servant. And then stand there watching Jabez like a pair of fools.”

We were. At any rate I was. Watching him with a sort of sick fascination. He had apparently not had the fierceness and tenacity bred out of him. I hoped there was nothing fragile in any of the boxes. Cyril, evicted from the boat, had gone back to sniffing at the covered basket, which must contain food. Terence pulled out his pocket watch and asked Jabez if he couldn’t go faster, which seemed to me extremely unwise.

“Faster, he says,” Jabez said, smashing in the side of Terence’s bandbox. “If they hadn’t brought along everything they own, it wouldn’t take this long. You’d think they were going to find the sources of the Nile. Serve ‘em right if she sinks.”

Jabez finally succeeded, after much dark muttering and some denting of the valise, to get everything stowed. It wasn’t scientific, and the pile in the prow looked like it might topple over at any moment, but there was space for the three of us.

“Right on schedule,” Terence said, snapping his watch shut and stepping into the boat. “Avast, mateys, we’re off. Step lively now.”

Cyril ambled into the boat, lay down on the boards, and went to sleep.

“Ahoy, Ned,” Terence said. “Time to shove off.”

I started for the boat, and Jabez stepped in front of me, his hand outstretched for a tip. I gave him a shilling, which was apparently too much. He broke into a snaggled smile and stepped back immediately, and I climbed into the boat.

“Welcome aboard,” Terence said. “This first bit’s rather tricky to navigate. You row to start, and I’ll be cox.”

I nodded and sat down at the oars, looking dubiously at them. I’d rowed some at school, but only with automatically coordinated supraskims. These oars were wooden and weighed a ton. And they didn’t appear to have any linkage. When I tried to move them together, one hit the water with a flat splash, and the other didn’t even make contact with it.

“Sorry,” I said, trying again. “I haven’t done much rowing since my illness.”

“It will come back to you,” Terence said cheerily. “It’s like riding a horse.”

The second time I got both oars in the water, and could hardly get them out again. I gave a mighty pull, as if I were lifting roof beams in Coventry Cathedral, and sent a fountain of water over everything in the boat.

“Pair of fools!” Jabez said to no one in particular. “Never been in a boat before. They’ll be drowned before they get to Iffley, and what’ll become of Jabez’s boat then?”

“I say, I’d better row to start,” Terence said, scrambling over to change places with me, “and you be cox.” He took the oars and lowered them expertly into the water together and out again with scarcely a splash. “Just till we’re through this tricky bit.”

This tricky bit was the bridge, and then a veritable forest of skiffs, punts, rowboats, and two large yellow-and-red-painted barges. Terence rowed energetically past them, shouting orders to me to pull the tiller lines straight, which I was trying to do, but the boat seemed to have something of the same tendency as Cyril and kept canting to the left.

In spite of my best efforts, we were drifting steadily sideways toward some willows and a wall.

“Hold her to starboard,” Terence shouted, “to starboard!”

I had no idea what starboard was, but I pulled experimentally on the tiller lines until the boat more or less straightened, and by that time we were past the boats and opposite a wide grassy field.

It took me a moment to realize the field was Christ Church Meadow, though not the one I knew. No dozers, no scaffolding, no billowing sheets of plastic. No cathedral rising up out of heaps of red sandstone and mortar and roof slates. No workmen shouting orders to the robot masons. No Lady Schrapnell shouting orders at the workmen. No pickets protesting the ruination of the environment, education, the skyline of Oxford, and things in general.

A trio of cows were placidly chewing their cuds where the west tower and its spire now stood, swathed in blue plastic and waiting for Lady Schrapnell and the Coventry City Council to complete the bell negotiations.

A dirt path led past them, and, halfway up it, two dons strolled toward Christ Church’s honey-colored walls, their heads bent together, discussing philosophy or the poems of Xenophon.

I wondered again how Lady Schrapnell had managed to talk them into letting her build there. Back in the Nineteenth Century, the city had tried for thirty years to build a mere road across Christ Church Meadow before it finally lost to the university, and later, when the tube came to Oxford, the outcry at the mention of a tube station there had been even greater.

But temporal physics had reached a point in its research where it couldn’t go anywhere without building a nuclear-powered fine-structure oscillator. And there was no money to be gotten from the multinationals, who’d lost interest in time travel forty years ago, when they found out they couldn’t rape and pillage the past. No money for buildings, either, or for fellowships or salaries. No money, period. And Lady Schrapnell was an extremely determined woman and extremely rich. And she had threatened to give the money to Cambridge.

“No, no,” Terence said, “you’re steering us into the bank!”

I hastily pulled on the lines and we headed back out into the current.

Ahead lay the college boathouses and the green-arched mouth of the Cherwell, and beyond that the gray tower of Magdalen and the long sweep of the Thames. The sky overhead was a gauzy blue, and, ahead, piled white clouds caught the sun. Near the far bank there were waterlilies, and between them the water was a deep, clear brown, like the Waterhouse nymph’s eyes.

“ ‘Dark brown is the river,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘golden is the sand,’ ” and then hoped that had been written before 1888.

“ ‘It flows along forever, with trees on either hand,’ ” Terence said, so apparently it had.

“Although actually it doesn’t,” Terence said. “After this next bit it’s mostly all fields till Iffley. It doesn’t flow along forever, either, of course, only as far as London. That’s the thing about poetry, it’s scarcely ever accurate. Take the Lady of Shalott. ‘She loosed the chain and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away.’ She lies down in the boat and goes floating down to Camelot, which couldn’t possibly happen. I mean, one can’t steer lying down, can one? She’d have ended up stuck in the reeds a quarter of a mile out. I mean, Cyril and I always have trouble keeping the boat headed in a straight line, and we’re not lying down in the bottom of the boat where one can’t see anything, are we?”

He was right. As a matter of fact, we were drifting directly toward the bank again, which here was overhung by spreading chestnuts with spreading dark-green leaves.

“Turn it to starboard,” Terence said impatiently.

I tugged on the lines, and the boat headed straight for a duck who’d built a floating nest out of sticks and chestnut leaves.

The duck squawked and flapped its wings.

“To starboard!” Terence said. “To the right!” He back-paddled furiously, and we missed the duck and headed back out toward the middle.

“I’ve never understood how a river works,” Terence said. “If one’s pipe or one’s hat falls in, even if it’s only a foot from shore, it goes bang into the current, straight out to sea, and round the Cape to India, which is probably what happened to poor Princess Arjumand. But in a boat, when one wants to be in the current, it’s all eddies and whirlpools and side currents, and one’s lucky if he doesn’t end up in the middle of the towpath. And even if the Lady of Shalott didn’t end up in the reeds, there’s the problem of the locks. To starboard, man! Starboard, not port!” He snapped his pocket watch open, looked at it, and began rowing even more energetically, shouting at me periodically to hold her to starboard.

But in spite of the boat’s unfortunate leftist leanings and the fact that I seemed to have signed on with Captain Bligh, I felt I could finally begin to relax.

I had met my contact, who was clearly very good—he had the role of Oxford undergraduate down perfectly—and we were on our way to Muchings End. Christ Church Meadow was an open field and Lady Schrapnell was a hundred and sixty years away.

I still couldn’t remember what it was I was supposed to do at Muchings End, but bits of it were coming back. I distinctly remembered Mr. Dunworthy saying, “as soon as it’s returned,” and telling Finch, “it’s a perfectly straightforward job,” and something about a nonsignificant object. I still couldn’t remember what the nonsignificant object I was supposed to return was, but it was obviously somewhere in that pile of luggage in the prow, and if all else failed I could leave it all at Muchings End. And presumably Terence knew. I’d ask him as soon as we were safely away from Oxford. We were obviously going to an appointment in Iffley, and possibly that was where I’d find out exactly what the plan was.

In the meantime, my job was to rest and recover from the ravages of time-lag and Lady Schrapnell and all those jumble sales, lean back and follow doctor’s orders and Cyril’s example. The bulldog had rolled over on his side and was snoring happily.

If the Victorian era was the perfect infirmary, the river was the perfect ward. The healing warmth of the sun on my neck, the soothing dip of the oars in the water, the restful scenery, green upon green upon green, the comforting drone of bees and Cyril’s snoring and Terence’s voice.

“Take Lancelot,” he was saying, apparently back on the subject of the Lady of Shalott. “Here he is in his armor and his helmet, riding along on his horse with his shield and lance, and he’s singing ‘Tirra-lirra.’ ‘Tirralirra’! What sort of a song is that for a knight to be singing? ‘Tirralirra.’ Still, though,” he said, pausing in his pull on the oars, “he did get the part about falling in love right, even though he made it a bit overdramatic, all that bit about ‘The web flew out and floated wide. The mirror crack’d from side to side.’ Do you believe in love at first sight, Ned?”

The image of the naiad, wringing out her sopping sleeve on Mr. Dunworthy’s carpet, rose unbidden before me, but that was clearly a side-effect of time-lag, the result of hormones out of balance, and so, very probably, was this. “No,” I said.

“Neither did I until yesterday,” Terence said, “or in Fate either. Professor Overforce says there’s no such thing, that it’s all accident and random chance, but if that’s so, why was she out on the river just at that spot? And why had Cyril and I decided to go boating instead of reading Appius Claudius? We were translating ‘Negotium populo romano melius quam otium committi,’ you see. ‘The Romans understand work better than leisure,’ and I thought, that’s exactly why the Roman Empire fell, they understood work better than leisure, and I certainly don’t want that to happen to the dear old British Empire, so off Cyril and I went and hired a boat and started up toward Godstow, and as we were passing through this wooded bit, I heard a voice so sweet it could have been a fairy’s calling ‘Princess Arjumand! Princess Arjumand!’ and I looked over at the bank, and there she was, the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.”

“Princess Arjumand?” I said.

“No, no, a girl, dressed all in pink, with golden curls and a sweet, fair, beautiful face. Red cheeks and a mouth like a rosebud, and her nose! I mean, ‘She hath a lovely face’ simply doesn’t cover it, although what can one expect from someone who would go about on his horse singing, ‘Tirra-lirra’? I sat there, hanging onto the oars, afraid to move or speak for fear she was an angel or a spirit or something who would vanish at the sound of my voice, and just then she looked up and saw me and said, ‘O, sir, you haven’t seen a cat, have you?’

“And it was just like ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ only without the curse, and the mirrors breaking and flying about. That’s the thing with poetry, it tends to exaggerate. I hadn’t any inclination to lie down in the bottom of the boat and die of a broken heart at all. I rowed smartly in, hopped ashore, and asked her what sort of cat and where had she last seen it. She said, black with a white face and the dearest little white feet, and that it had gone missing two days before and she was afraid something had happened to it, and I said, never fear, that cats have nine lives. And just then a chaperone person who turned out to be her cousin came along and told her she shouldn’t talk to strangers, and she said, ‘O, but this young man has kindly offered to help me,’ and her cousin said, ‘That’s very good of you, Mr.—?’ and I said St. Trewes, and she said, ‘How do you do? I am Miss Brown and this is Miss Mering,’ and then she turned to her and said, ‘Tossie, I’m afraid we must be going. We shall be late for tea.’ Tossie! Have you ever heard such a beautiful name? ‘O name forever sweet! forever dear! The sound of it is precious to mine ear!’ Tossie!” he said rapturously.

Tossie? “Then who’s Princess Arjumand?” I said.

“Her cat. It’s named after the Indian maharani they named the Taj Mahal after, though one would think it would be called the Taj Arjumand in that case. Her father was out in India, the Mutiny and Rajahs and never the twain shall meet and all that.”

I was still lost. “Princess Arjumand’s father?”

“No. Miss Mering’s father, Colonel Mering. He was a colonel in the Raj, but now he collects fish.”

I didn’t even ask what “collecting fish” was.

“At any rate, the cousin said they had to be going, and Toss—Miss Mering said, ‘O, I do hope we meet again, Mr. St. Trewes. We are going tomorrow afternoon to see the Norman church at Iffley at two o’clock,’ and her cousin said, ‘Tossie!’ and Miss Mering said she was only telling me in case I found Princess Arjumand, and I said I would search most diligently, and I did, I went up and down the river with Cyril, calling ‘Puss, puss!’ all last night and this morning.”

“With Cyril?” I said, wondering if a bulldog was the best searcher under the circumstances.

“He’s nearly as good as a bloodhound,” he said. “That’s what we were doing when we ran into Professor Peddick and he sent us along to meet his antique relatives.”

“But you didn’t find the cat?”

“No, and not likely to, either, this far from Muchings End. I’d assumed Miss Mering lived near Oxford, but it turns out she’s only visiting.”

“Muchings End?” I said.

“It’s downriver. Near Henley. Her mother’d brought her up to Oxford to consult a medium—”

“A medium?” I said weakly.

“Yes, you know, one of those persons who tips tables and dresses up in cheesecloth with flour on her face to tell you your uncle’s very happy in the afterlife and his will’s in the top lefthand drawer of the sideboard. I’ve never believed in them myself, but then again, I’ve never believed in Fate either. And that’s what it must have been. My meeting Miss Mering, and your being on the railway platform and her telling me she and her cousin were to go to Iffley this afternoon.

“Only I hadn’t enough money for the boat, which is why it must be Fate. I mean, what if you hadn’t wanted to go on the river and hadn’t had the cost of Jabez? We shouldn’t be going to meet her at Iffley right now, and I might never have seen her again. At any rate, these mediums are apparently very good at finding missing cats as well as wills, so they came up to Oxford for a séance. But the spirits didn’t know where Princess Arjumand was either, and Miss Mering thought it might have followed her up from Muchings End, which didn’t seem very likely. I mean, a dog might follow one, but cats—”

Only one thing in all this tangled account was clear—he was not my contact. He knew nothing about what it was I was supposed to do at Muchings End. If it was Muchings End and I hadn’t gotten that wrong, too. I had gone off with a contemp and a complete stranger—to say nothing of the dog—and left my contact waiting on the station platform or the tracks or in a boathouse somewhere. And I had to get back there.

I looked back at Oxford. Its distant spires shone in the sun, already two miles behind. And I couldn’t jump overboard and walk back because that would mean leaving my luggage behind. I’d already abandoned my contact. I couldn’t abandon my luggage as well.

“Terence,” I said. “I’m afraid I—”

“Nonsense!” someone ahead of us shouted, and there was a splash that nearly swamped the boat. The covered basket, which was sitting on the top of the Gladstone bag, almost went overboard. I grabbed for it.

“What is it?” I said, trying to see round the curve.

Terence looked disgusted. “Oh, it’s very likely Darwin.”

I kept imagining I was cured, when clearly I was obviously still suffering from a considerable residue of time-lag and was still having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds. “I beg your pardon?” I said cautiously.

“Darwin,” Terence said. “Professor Overforce taught him to climb trees and now he’s taken to jumping down on innocent passersby. Turn the boat, Ned.” He gestured the direction I was to turn us in. “Bring us away from the bank.”

I did so, trying to see round the bend and under the willows.

“Landed bang in the middle of a punt with two Corpus Christi men and their girls last week,” Terence said, rowing us toward the middle of the river. “Cyril completely disapproves.”

Cyril did, in fact, look disapproving. He had sat up, more or less, and was looking toward the willows.

There was another, louder splash, and Cyril’s ears went back alertly. I followed his gaze.

Either I had been mistaken about my Difficulty, or my Blurring of Vision had taken on new dimensions. An elderly man was floundering in the water beneath the willows, splashing wildly and uselessly.

Good Lord, I thought, it is Darwin.

He had Darwin’s white beard and mutton chop whiskers and his balding head, and what looked like a black frock coat was floating around him. His hat, upside down, was floating several yards from him, and he made a grab for it and went under. He came up choking and flailing, and the hat drifted farther out.

“Good heavens, it’s my tutor, Professor Peddick,” Terence said. “Quick, turn the boat, no, not that way! Hurry!”

We rowed frantically over, me with my hands in the water, paddling, to make us go faster. Cyril stood up with his front paws on the tin trunk like Nelson on the bridge at Trafalgar.

“Stop! Don’t run Professor Peddick over,” Terence said, pushing the oars away from him and leaning over the side.

The old man was oblivious to us. His coat had billowed up like a lifejacket around him, but it obviously wasn’t keeping him afloat. He went under for more than the third time, one hand still reaching ineffectually for his hat. I leaned over the edge of the boat and grabbed for him.

“I’ve got his collar,” I shouted, and suddenly remembered that the one Warder had put on me was detachable, and fumbled for the collar of his frock coat instead. “I’ve got him,” I said, and yanked upward.

His head rose out of the water like a whale’s, and, also like a whale, spewed a great gasping spout of water all over us.

“ ‘Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise.’ Don’t let go,” Terence said, clamping Professor Peddick’s hand onto the side of the boat and fishing for the other one. I’d lost my grip on his neck when he spouted, but his hand had come up, too, when he breached, and I grabbed for that and pulled, and his head came up again, shaking water like a dog.

I have no idea how we got him into the boat. The gunwale dipped sharply underwater, and Terence shouted, “Cyril, no! Ned, back up! We’re going under! No, don’t let go!” but our masses of luggage apparently acted as ballast and kept us from upsetting, even though Cyril came over at the last minute to look at the proceedings and add to the weight on this side of the boat.

Finally, I got a grip on one of his arms, and Terence maneuvered around till he was on the professor’s other side, bracing his foot against the portmanteau so the boat didn’t capsize and got a grip on the other, and we were able to haul him, drenched and pathetic, over the side and into the boat.

“Professor Peddick, are you all right, sir?” Terence said.

“Perfectly all right, thanks to you,” he said, wringing out his sleeve. What I had taken to be a frock coat was actually a black gabardine academic robe. “Fortuitous thing you came along when you did. My hat!”

“I’ve got it,” Terence said, leaning out over the water. What I had taken to be a hat was a mortarboard, complete with the tassel.

“I know I packed blankets. I remember Dawson setting them out,” Terence said, rummaging in his luggage. “What on earth were you doing in the water?”

“Drowning,” Professor Peddick said.

“You very nearly were,” Terence said, digging in the tin box. “But how did you come to be in the water? Did you fall in?”

“Fall in? Fall in?” the professor said, outraged. “I was pushed.”

“Pushed?” Terence said, taken aback. “By whom?”

“By that murderous villain Overforce.”

“Professor Overforce?” Terence said. “Why would Professor Overforce push you in the water?”

“Larger matters,” Professor Peddick said. “Facts are inconsequential in the study of history. Courage is unimportant, and duty and faith. Historians must concern themselves with larger matters. Pah! A lot of scientific rigamarole. All history can be reduced to the effects of natural forces acting upon populations. Reduced! The Battle of Monmouth! The Spanish Inquisition! The Wars of the Roses! Reduced to natural forces! And populations! Queen Elizabeth! Copernicus! Hannibal!”

“Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,” Terence said.

“Ab initio. An excellent plan,” Professor Peddick said. “I had come to the river to reflect upon a problem I was having with my monograph on Herodotus’s account of the battle of Salamis by that method which Mr. Walton recommends as the perfect aid to thinking, ‘a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts.’ But, alas, it was not to be. For I had come to ‘piscatur in aqua turbida.’ ”

Oh, good, I thought, another one who makes no sense and spouts quotations. And in Latin.

“One of my pupils, Tuttle Minor, had told me he’d seen a white gudgeon just here along the bank while practicing for the Eights. Nice boy, wretched recitations and worse penmanship, but very sound on fish.”

“I knew I’d packed them,” Terence said, coming up with a green wool blanket. “Here,” he said, handing it to the professor. “Take that off and put this round you.”

Professor Peddick unbuttoned his robe. “His brother, Tuttle Major, was the same way. Dreadful penmanship.” He pulled his arm out of one sleeve and stopped, a peculiar expression on his face, and stuck his arm into the other sleeve.

“Always blotted his essays.” His hand groped wildly in the sleeve. “Translated ‘Non omnia possumus omnus’ as ‘No possums allowed on the omnibus.’ “He made one last wild gyration and pulled his arm out of the sleeve, “Thought he’d never be able to sit exams,” and opened his closed hand to reveal a tiny white fish.

“Ah, Ugobio fluviatilis albinus,” he said, peering at its flopping. “Where’s my hat?”

Terence produced the professor’s mortarboard, and Professor Peddick dipped it in the river and then dropped the fish into the water-filled hat. “Excellent specimen,” he said, leaning over it. “Assistant to the Head of the Exchequer now. Advisor to the Queen.”

I sat there watching him examine the fish and marvelling at what we’d caught. A genuine eccentric Oxford don. They’re an extinct species, too, unless you count Mr. Dunworthy, who is really too sensible to be eccentric, and I had always felt a bit cheated that I hadn’t been there in the glory days of Jowett and R. W. Roper. Spooner was the most famous, of course, because of his gift for mangling the Queen’s English. He’d told a delinquent student, “You have tasted a worm,” and announced the morning hymn one Sunday as “Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take.”

My favorite don was Claude Jenkins, whose house was so messy it was sometimes impossible to open the front door, and who had arrived late for a meeting and apologized by saying, “My housekeeper has just died, but I’ve propped her up on a kitchen chair, and she’ll be all right till I return.”

But they had all been personalities: Professor of Logic Cook Wilson, who after two hours of steady orating, said, “After these preliminary remarks . . .” Mathematics professor Charles Dodgson who, when Queen Victoria wrote him praising Alice in Wonderland and requesting a copy of his next book, sent her his mathematical treatise Condensations of Determinants, and the professor of classics who thought a barometer would look better if placed horizontally rather than vertically.

And of course Buckland, with his household menagerie and his trained eagle who had strutted, wings half spread, down the aisle of Christ Church Cathedral during morning prayers. (Church must have been exciting in those days. Perhaps Bishop Bittner should have tried introducing animals to Coventry Cathedral when attendance lagged. Or Spoonerisms.)

But I had never expected to actually meet one in the flesh, and here he was, an excellent specimen, interestedly peering at a fish swimming in his mortarboard, and orating on the subject of history.

“Overforce propounds the theory that the study of history as a chronicle of kings and battles and events is obsolete,” Professor Peddick said. “ ‘Darwin has revolutionized biology,’ he says—”

Darwin. The same Darwin whom Professor Overforce had taught to climb trees?

“ ‘—and so must history be revolutionized,’ Overforce claims. ‘It must no longer be a chronicle of dates and incidents and facts. They are no more important than a finch or a fossil is to the theory of evolution.’ ”

Actually, I thought, they were utterly important.

“ ‘Only the laws underlying the theory of history are important, and they are natural laws.’ ‘But what of the events that have shaped history for good or ill?’ I asked him. ‘Events are irrelevant,’ Overforce said. Julius Caesar’s assassination! Leonidas’s stand at Thermopylae! Irrelevant!”

“So you were fishing on the riverbank,” Terence said, spreading the professor’s robe out to dry over the luggage. “And Professor Overforce came along and pitched you in?”

“Yes,” Professor Peddick said, pulling off his boots. “I was standing under a willow, hooking a worm to my line—gudgeons prefer blood-worms but Pseudococcidae will do—when that imbecile Darwin flung himself out of the branches and plummeted toward me like one of Satan’s angels ‘hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion down,’ and landed with a great splash that made me drop my line.’ He looked darkly at Cyril. “Dogs!”

A dog, I thought gratefully. Darwin is Professor Overforce’s dog. Which still didn’t explain what it was doing jumping out of trees.

“He’ll end by killing someone.” Professor Peddick took off his socks, wrung them out, and put them back on again. “Leaped out of a tree on the Broad last Tuesday and knocked Trinity’s bursar flat. The man’s completely unbalanced. He fancies himself another Buckland,” professor Peddick said, “but Buckland, for all his faults, never trained his bear to jump out of trees. Tiglath Pileser was always extremely well-behaved, and so were the jackals, though one wouldn’t want to dine at his house. Liable to be served crocodile. I remember one dinner party at which the meat course was vole. But he had two excellent Crucian carp.”

“Darwin made you drop your line . . .” Terence prompted, trying to get the professor back on track.

“Yes, and when I turned round, there was Overforce, laughing like one of Buckland’s hyenas. ‘Out fishing?’ he said. ‘Tch, tch. You will never attain the Haviland Chair idling your time away like that.’ ‘I am pondering the effects of Themistocles’s deception of the Persians at Salamis,’ I said, and he replied, ‘An even more idle pursuit than fishing. History is no longer a chronicle of mere events. It is a science.’

 “ ‘Mere events!’ I said. ‘Do you consider the Greeks’ defeat of the Persian fleet a mere event? It shaped the course of history for hundreds of years!’ Overforce waved his hand as if to dismiss them. ‘Events are irrelevant to the theory of history.’ ‘Do you consider the Battle of Agincourt irrelevant?’ I said. ‘Or the Crimean War? Or the execution of Mary Queen of Scots?’ ‘Details!’ he said. ‘Did details matter to Darwin or Newton?’ ”

As a matter of fact, they had. As Lady Schrapnell is so fond of saying, “God is in the details.”

“ ‘Darwin! Newton!’ I said,” Professor Peddick went on. “ ‘You disprove your own argument by your examples. It is the individual that matters in history, not the population. And it is forces other than natural ones that shape history. What of courage and honor and faith? What of villainy and cowardice and ambition?’ ”

“And love,” Terence said.

“Exactly,” Professor Peddick said. “ ‘What of Antony and Cleopatra’s love? Was that irrelevant to history?’ I asked him that while he was in the water. ‘What of Richard the Third’s villainy?’ I said. ‘What of Joan of Arc’s fervor? It is character, not populations, that affect history!’ ”

“In the water?” I said blankly.

Terence echoed, “You pushed Professor Overforce in the water?”

“A push is an event, an incident, a fact,” Professor Peddick said, “and therefore irrelevant to Overforce’s theory. I said that to him when he shouted at me to pull him out. ‘Natural forces acting upon populations,’ I said.”

“Good Lord,” Terence said. “Turn the boat around, Ned. We’ve got to go back. I do hope he isn’t drowned by now.”

“Drowned? Impossible! A drowning is unimportant in his theory of history, though it be the drowning of the Duke of Clarence in a vat of malmsey! ‘What of murders?’ I said to him while he was splashing about, waving his arms and calling for help. ‘And what of help? They are irrelevant, for both require intention and morality, of both of which you have denied the existence. Where in your theory are purpose and plan and design?’ ‘I knew it!’ Overforce said, thrashing wildly. ‘Your theory of history is nothing but an argument for a Grand Design!’ ‘And is there not evidence for a Grand Design?’ I said, offering my hand to him to pull him out. ‘Is there only chance in your theory of history? Is there no free will? Are there no acts of kindness?’ I said, and pulled Overforce up onto the bank. ‘Surely you must admit now that the individual and the event are not irrelevant to history,’ I said, quite reasonably. And the villain pushed me in!”

“But he is all right?” Terence said anxiously.

“All right?” Professor Peddick said. “He is wrongheaded, ignorant, prideful, opinionated, puerile, and violent! All right?”

“I mean, he’s not in danger of drowning.”

“Of course not,” Professor Peddick said. “He has no doubt gone off to expound his misguided theories to the Haviland Committee! And left me to drown! If you two had not come along when you did, I should have shared the Duke of Clarence’s fate. And Overforce, that villain, would have had the Haviland Chair!”

“Well, at least no one’s killed anyone,” Terence said. He looked anxiously at his pocket watch. “Ned, take the lines. We must hurry if we are to take the professor home and be back to Iffley before the afternoon’s gone.”

Good, I thought. When we get back to Folly Bridge I can make some excuse for not going on to Iffley with Terence—seasickness or a relapse or something—and go back to the railway station. And hope my contact was still there.

“Iffley!” Professor Peddick said. “Just the place! Splendid dace fishing there. Tuttle Minor said he saw a split-tailed rainbow half a mile above Iffley Lock.”

“But shouldn’t you go back?” Terence said unhappily. “You should get out of those wet clothes.”

“Nonsense. Nearly dry. And this is too good an opportunity to miss. You’ve fishing lines, I presume, and bait?”

“But what about Professor Overforce?” I said. “Won’t he be worried about you?”

“Ha! He’s gone off to write about populations and teach his dog to ride a bicycle! Populations! History is made by individuals, not populations! Lord Nelson, Catherine de Medici, Galileo!”

Terence looked longingly at his pocket watch. “If you’re certain you won’t catch cold,” he said. “The thing is, I’ve an appointment at Iffley at two o’clock.”

“Then ‘Press on! while yet ye may!’ ” Professor Peddick said. “ ‘Vestigia nulla retrorsum,’ ” and Terence took up the oars with determination.

The willows dwindled to bushes and then to grass, and ahead around a long curve of the river I could see a gray church tower. Iffley.

I pulled out my pocket watch and counted out the Roman time. Five minutes till II. Terence would be on time for his appointment at least. And hopefully mine would wait for me.

“Stop!” the professor said and stood up in the boat.

“Don’t—” Terence said and dropped the oars with a clatter. I grabbed for him and caught the rug as it fell around his feet. The boat swayed dangerously, and water slopped over the gunwales. Cyril blinked, bleary-eyed, and wobbled to his feet, and that was all we needed.

“Sit,” I commanded, and Professor Peddick looked around bewilderedly and sat down.

“St. Trewes, we must take the boat to shore immediately,” he said, pointing at the bank. “Look.”

We all, even Cyril, looked at a grassy meadow covered in Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups.

“It is the very image of the field of Blenheim,” Professor Peddick said. “Look, yonder the village of Sonderheim and beyond it Nebel Brook. It proves my point exactly. Blind forces! It was the Duke of Marlborough who won the day! Have you an exercise book? And a fishing line?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to do this later? This afternoon, after we’ve been to Iffley.”

“The attack against Tallard happened in early afternoon in just this light,” Professor Peddick said, pulling on his boots. “What sort of bait did you bring?”