“But we haven’t time,” Terence said. “I’ve this appointment—”

“ ‘Omnia aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est,’ ” Professor Peddick quoted. “ ‘Nothing is ours except time.’ ”

I leaned forward and whispered to Terence, “You could leave us here and come back for us after your appointment.”

He nodded, looking happier, and began bringing the boat in toward the bank. “But I need you to go with me,” he said, “to work the tiller. Professor Peddick, I’m going to put you ashore to study the battle, and we’ll go on to Iffley and then come back and collect you.” He began to look for a place to land.

It took an eternity to find a spot where the bank sloped enough for the professor to be able to climb it, and even longer to locate the fishing equipment. Terence rummaged through the Gladstone bag between frantic looks at his pocket watch, and I dug into the tin box, looking for the fishing line and a box of flies.

“Here it is!” Terence said. He thrust the flies into the professor’s pocket, reached for an oar, and pushed us up flat against the bank.

“Land ho,” Terence said, popping up and standing with one foot on the muddy bank. “Here you go, Professor.”

Professor Peddick looked vaguely around, picked up his mortarboard, and started to put it on.

“Wait!” I said, rescuing it. “Have you got a bowl or something, Terence? For the white gudgeon.”

We rummaged again, Terence through one of the bandboxes, I in my satchel. Two starched collars, a pair of black patent shoes three sizes too small for me, a toothbrush.

The covered basket Cyril had been sniffing at. It had the food in it, and presumably, a pot to cook it in. I dug through the jumble in the stern and then under the seat. There it was, perched on the prow. I reached for it.

“A kettle!” Terence said, holding one up by the handle. He handed it to me.

I emptied the fish and the water into it and handed the mortarboard to professor Peddick. “Don’t put it on just yet,” I said. “Wait till the water’s evaporated.”

“An apt pupil,” the professor said, beaming. “ ‘Beneficiorum gratia sempiterna est.’ ”

“All ashore that’s going ashore,” Terence said, and had him out of the boat and up the bank before I could set the kettle down.

“We’ll be an hour,” he said, clambering back into the boat and grabbing the oars. “Perhaps two.”

“I shall be here,” Professor Peddick said, standing on the very edge of the bank. “ ‘Fidelis ad urnum.’ ”

“He won’t fall in again?” I said.

“No,” Terence said, not very convincingly, and went at the oars as if it were Eights Week.

We pulled rapidly away from Professor Peddick, who had stooped to peer at something on the ground through his pince-nez. The box of flies fell out of his pocket and skittered halfway down the bank. He bent farther and reached for it.

“Perhaps we should . . .” I said, and Terence gave a mighty pull around a bend, and there was the church and an arched stone bridge.

“She said she’d be waiting on the bridge,” Terence panted. “Can you see her?”

I shaded my eyes and looked at the bridge. There was someone standing near the north end of it. We pulled rapidly closer to the bridge. A young woman holding a white parasol. In a white dress.

“Is she there?” Terence said, yanking on the oars.

She was wearing a white hat with blue flowers on it, and under it her auburn hair shone in the sunlight.

“Am I too late?” Terence said.

“No,” I said. But I am, I thought.

She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.

(Things are not always what they seem.)

Phaedrus

C H A P T E R  S I X

An English Rose—Ruffles—Cyril Guards the Boat—A Message from the Other Side—Seeing the Sights—A Butler—Signs and Portents—In a Country Churchyard—A Revelation—An Alias—Explanations—A Water-Logged Diary—Jack the Ripper—A Problem—Moses in the Bulrushes—More Aliases—An Even More Unexpected Development

I know, I had said the naiad was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, but she had been wet and dirty, and, even though she looked like she’d risen out of a Pre-Raphaelite pond, unmistakably Twenty-First Century.

Just as the creature on the bridge was unmistakably Nineteenth. No historian, no matter how casually she caught up her trailing white skirts with a kid-gloved hand, no matter how erect she held her head on her aristocratic neck, could hope to capture the quality of stillness, of clear-eyed innocence of the girl on the bridge. She was like a delicate blossom, capable of growing only in a single time, adapted only to the select hothouse environment of the late Victorian era: the untouched flower, the blooming English rose, the angel in the house. She would be extinct in only a handful of years, replaced by the bicycling bloomer girl, the cigarette-smoking flapper and the suffragette.

A terrible melancholy swept over me. I could never have her. Standing there with her white parasol and her clear greenish-brown-eyed gaze, the image of youth and beauty, she was long since married to Terence, long since dead and buried in a churchyard like the one at the top of the hill.

“To port,” Terence said. “No, to port!” He rowed rapidly toward the side of the bridge, where there were several stakes, presumably for tying the boat up.

I grabbed the rope, jumped out into squishy mud, and looped the rope.

Terence and Cyril were already out of the boat and climbing the steep bank up to the bridge.

I tied a very lumpish-looking knot, wishing Finch had included a subliminal tape on half-hitches and sheepshanks, and that there were some way to lock the boat.

This is the Victorian era, I reminded myself, when people could trust each other and the earnest young man gets the girl and is probably already kissing her on the bridge.

He wasn’t. He was standing on the muddy bank, looking vaguely round. “I don’t see her,” he said, looking directly at the vision, “but her cousin’s here, and there’s the landau,” he pointed at an open carriage standing on the hill next to the church, “so she must still be here. What time is it?” He pulled out his pocket watch to look at it. “You don’t suppose they’ve sent her cousin to tell me she’s not to see me. If she—” he said, and broke into a wide smile.

A girl in ruffles appeared on the bank above us. Her white dress had ruffles on the skirt and ruffles on the yoke and ruffles on the sleeves. Her parasol had ruffles round the edges, too, and her short white gloves, and all of the ruffles were in motion, like flags being carried into battle. There weren’t any ruffles on her hat, but, to compensate it had a large batch of fluttering pink ribbons, and her blonde hair under the hat curled and bounced with every stray breeze.

“Look, Cousin, it’s Mr. St. Trewes,” she said, and started down the slope, which set everything into a flurry of motion. “I told you he would come!”

“Tossie,” the vision in white said reprovingly, but Tossie was already running toward the towpath, catching her flounced skirts up just enough to reveal the toes of very small feet in white boots, and taking dainty little steps.

She reached the edge of the riverbank and stopped—comparatively, that is—fluttered her eyelashes at us, and addressed Cyril. “Did the dearie doggums come to see his Tossie? Did he know his Tossie missed her sweetums Cyril?”

Cyril looked appalled.

“He’s been goodums, hasn’t he?” Tossie cooed. “But his master’s been a naughty bad boy. He didn’t come and didn’t come.”

“We were delayed,” Terence interjected. “Professor Peddick—”

“Tossie was afwaid her tardy boy’d forgotten all about her, wasn’t her, Cywil?”

Cyril gave Terence a look of resignation and ambled forward to have his head petted.

“O! O!” Tossie said, and somehow managed to make it sound exactly like I’d seen it written in Victorian novels. “O!”

Cyril stopped, confused, and looked at Terence, and then started forward again.

“Bad, bad dog!” Tossie said, and pursed her lips into a series of tiny screams. “The horrid creature will muss my dress. It’s silk muslin.” She fluttered her skirts away from him. “Papa had it made for me in Paris.”

Terence lunged forward and grabbed Cyril, who had already backed away, by his collar. “You frightened Miss Mering,” he said sternly, and shook his finger at him. “I apologize for Cyril’s behavior,” he said, “and for my tardiness. There was a near-drowning, and we had to save my tutor.”

The cousin came up. “Hello, Cyril,” she said kindly and bent to scratch him behind the ears. “Hello, Mr. St. Trewes. How nice to meet you again.” Her voice was quiet and cultured, without a hint of baby-talk. “Does your being here mean you’ve found Princess Arjumand?”

“Yes, do tell us,” Tossie said belatedly. “Have you found my poor lost Juju?”

“Alas, no,” Terence said, “but we intend to continue the search. This is Mr. Henry. Mr. Henry, Miss Mering and Miss Brown.”

“How do you do, Miss Mering, Miss Brown,” I said, tipping my straw boater as the subliminals had instructed.

“Mr. Henry and I have hired a boat,” he gestured toward the foot of the bridge, where the nose of the boat was just visible, “and we intend to explore every inch of the Thames.”

“That’s very good of you,” Miss Brown said, “but I have no doubt that when we return home this evening, we shall find she has returned safe and sound.”

“Home?” Terence said, dismayed.

“Yes!” Tossie said. “We’re to return to Muchings End tonight. Mama has had a message that we are needed there.”

“I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to call you home,” Terence said.

“Oh, no,” Tossie said, “it wasn’t a message like that. It was from the Other Side. It said, ‘Return to Muching’s End to await your happy Fate,’ so Mama is determined to go at once. We’re taking the train this evening.”

“Yes,” Miss Brown said. “We should be returning to Madame Iritosky’s.” She extended a kid-gloved hand. “Thank you for your kindness in looking for Princess Arjumand. So nice to have met you, Mr. Henry.”

“Oh, but we mustn’t go back now, Cousin Verity,” Tossie said. “Our train isn’t till half-past six. And Mr. St. Trewes and Mr. Henry haven’t seen the church.”

“It is a long way to Madame Iritosky’s home,” Cousin Verity protested, “and your mother particularly said we were to be back for tea.”

“We’ve plenty of time,” Tossie said. “We’ll tell Baine to drive very fast. Wouldn’t you like to see the church, Mr. St. Trewes?”

“I’d love to,” Terence said fervently. Cyril trotted happily up between them.

Tossie hesitated prettily. “Shouldn’t Cyril stay by the boat?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Terence said. “Cyril, you must stay.”

“He could wait outside the lychgate,” I offered, but it was no use. Terence was too far gone.

“Stay, Cyril,” he commanded.

Cyril gave him the look Julius Caesar must have given Brutus, and lay down on the shadeless bank, his head on his paws.

“Don’t let any bad, bad mans steal the boat,” Tossie said. “You must be a brave, brave doggums.” She unfurled her parasol and started up the path. “It’s the cunningest little church. So quaint and old-fashioned. People come from miles about to see it. I do love sights, don’t you? Mama has promised to take us to Hampton Court next week.” She led the way up the hill, chattering to Terence, and the vision and I followed.

Tossie was correct about the church, and people did “come from miles about to see it,” if the signs posted were any indication. They began at the foot of the hill with a hand-lettered placard that said, “Keep to path.” This was followed by, “No tours during church services,” “Keep off grass,” and “Picking flowers forbidden.”

“Mama says we’re to have a séance in the Gallery at Hampton Court. The spirit of Catherine Howard walks there, you know. She was one of Henry the Eighth’s wives. He had eight wives. Baine says he only had six, but if that were true, why would his name be Henry the Eighth?”

I glanced at Miss Brown, who was smiling gently. At close quarters she was even more beautiful. Her hat had a veil, caught up behind into a fall of sheer white over her auburn hair, and through it her fair skin and pink cheeks looked almost ethereal.

“Henry the Eighth’s wives were all beheaded,” Tossie was saying. “I should hate to be beheaded.” She gave her blonde curls a toss. “They clipped off your hair and dressed you in a horrid plain shift without any decoration at all.”

Or ruffles, I thought.

“I do hope it won’t just be Catherine Howard’s head,” she said. “It is sometimes, you know, not the entire spirit. When Nora Lyon came to Muchings End, she materialized a spirit hand. It played the accordion.” She looked coyly at Terence. “Do you know what the spirits told me last night? That I would meet a stranger.”

“What else did they tell you?” Terence asked. “That he was tall, dark, and handsome, I suppose.”

“No,” she said, perfectly serious. “They rapped out ‘Beware,’ and then the letter ‘C.’ Mama thought it was a message about Princess Arjumand, but I think it meant the sea, only we aren’t anywhere near it, so it must mean the stranger will arrive by the river.”

“Which I have,” Terence said, far gone.

We were nearing the crest of the hill. An open carriage stood at the top with a driver in, of all things, full morning dress: swallowtail coat and striped trousers. He was reading a book, and the horse was grazing listlessly at the grass. I was surprised there wasn’t a “No parking” sign.

As we came up, the driver closed the book and sat up stiffly at attention. “I was afraid we couldn’t come after all,” Tossie said, walking past the carriage without so much as a glance at the driver. “Madame Iritosky’s boy was to have driven us, but he was in a trance, and Mama wouldn’t let us take the landau alone. And so then I thought, Baine can drive us. That’s our new butler. Mama stole him from Mrs. Chattisbourne, who was dreadfully angry. Good butlers are so difficult to find.”

That explained the striped trousers and the stiffness—Finch’s tape had been very clear. Butlers did not drive carriages. I looked at him. He was younger than I’d expected, and taller, with a rather haggard expression, as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. I could relate to that. I felt as though I’d been up for centuries.

Finch’s tapes had said that butlers were supposed to be poker-faced, but this one wasn’t. He looked distinctly worried about something. I wondered what. This outing, or the prospect of working for someone who thought Henry the Eighth had eight wives? I tried to sneak a look at his book as we passed. It was Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

“I don’t like our butler,” Tossie said as if he wasn’t there. “He’s always cross.”

Apparently Cousin Verity didn’t like him either. She kept her gaze straight ahead as we passed. I nodded to the butler and tipped my hat. He picked up his book and resumed reading.

“Our last butler was much nicer. Lady Hall stole him from us when she came to visit. Imagine, while she was staying under our roof! Papa says servants shouldn’t be allowed to read books. It ruins their moral fibers. And gives them ideas.”

Terence opened the gate to the church. It had a sign on it which read, “Close gate when you leave.”

He and Tossie walked up to the door. It was plastered with signs—“No visitors after four o’clock.” “No visitors during services.” “No photographs or daguerreotypes allowed.” “For assistance contact Mr. Egglesworth, Churchwarden, Harwood House, do not disturb except in case of EMERGENCY.” I was surprised Luther’s Ninety-Nine Objections weren’t on there, too.

“Isn’t the church cunning?” Tossie said. “Look at those sweet zigzags carved over the door.”

I recognized them even without tapes as dogtoothed ornamentation dating from the twelfth century, the result of having spent the last several months on Lady Schrapnell’s cathedral. “Norman architecture,” I said.

“I do so love dear old-fashioned churches, don’t you?” Tossie said, ignoring me. “So much simpler than our modern ones.”

Terence opened the simple old-fashioned note-covered door, Tossie furled her parasol, and went in. Terence followed her, and I expected Cousin Verity to follow suit. Finch’s tapes had said Victorian young ladies were never allowed to go anywhere unchaperoned, and I had assumed that Cousin Verity, vision though she was, was that chaperone. She had certainly looked disapproving enough down on the riverbank, and the church would be dimly lit and full of opportunities for hanky-panky.

And it was clear from the sign on the door that the churchwarden wasn’t inside. But Miss Brown didn’t so much as glance toward the half-opened door or the shadowy darkness within. She opened the iron gate, which was decorated with a sign that read “No spitting,” and walked into the churchyard.

She paced silently among the graves, past several signs directing us not to pick the flowers or lean against the tombstones, past a badly tilting obelisk, against which somebody obviously had.

I tried to think of what one said to a Victorian young lady when alone with her. Finch’s tapes hadn’t given any guidelines as to proper topics of conversation for a young man and a young lady who’d just met.

Not politics, since I had no idea what they were in 1888, and young ladies weren’t supposed to bother their pretty heads about affairs of state. And not religion, since Darwin was still controversial. I tried to remember what people had said in the Victorian plays I’d seen, which consisted of The Admirable Crichton and The Importance of Being Earnest. Class issues and witty epigrams. A butler with ideas was clearly not a popular idea in these parts, and I couldn’t think of any witty epigrams. Besides, humor is always fraught with peril.

She had reached the last of the tombstones and was looking at me expectantly.

The weather. But how was I supposed to address her? Miss Brown? Miss Verity? Milady?

“Well,” she said impatiently. “Did you get it back all right?”

It was not exactly the opening line I had expected. “I beg your pardon?” I said.

“Baine didn’t see you, did he?” she said. “Where did you leave it?”

“I’m afraid you’ve confused me with someone else . . .”

“It’s all right,” she said, looking toward the church. “They can’t hear us. Tell me exactly what happened when you brought it back through the net.”

I must be having some sort of relapse of the time-lag. None of this was making any sense.

“You didn’t drown it, did you?” she said angrily. “He promised he wasn’t going to drown it.”

“Drown what?” I said.

“The cat.”

This was worse than talking to the nurse in Infirmary. “The cat? You mean Tossie—Miss Mering’s cat that’s lost? Princess Arjumand?”

“Of course I mean Princess Arjumand.” She frowned. “Didn’t Mr. Dunworthy give her to you?”

“Mr. Dunworthy?” I gaped at her.

“Yes. Didn’t he give the cat to you to bring back through the net?”

The light began to dawn. “You’re the naiad in Mr. Dunworthy’s office,” I said wonderingly. “But you can’t be. Her name was Kindle.”

“That’s my name. Miss Brown is my contemp name. The Merings don’t have any relatives named Kindle, and I’m supposed to be a second cousin of Tossie’s.”

The light was still breaking. “You’re the calamity,” I said, “who brought something forward through the net.”

“The cat,” she said impatiently.

A cat. Of course. That made much more sense than a cab or a rat. And it explained the peculiar look Mr. Dunworthy’d given me when I mentioned Lady Windermere’s fan. “It was a cat you brought through the net,” I said. “But that’s impossible. You can’t bring things forward through the net.”

Now she was the one gaping. “You didn’t know about the cat? But I thought they were going to send the cat through with you,” and I wondered uneasily if they had intended to. Finch had told me to wait when I was standing there in the net. Had he gone to fetch the cat, and I’d made the jump before he could give it to me?

“Did they tell you they were sending it back with me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Mr. Dunworthy refused to tell me anything. He told me I’d caused enough trouble already, and he didn’t want me meddling any further. I just assumed it was you because I saw you in Mr. Dunworthy’s office.”

“I was there to speak to Mr. Dunworthy about my time-lag,” I said. “Infirmary prescribed two weeks’ bed rest, so Mr. Dunworthy sent me here to get it.”

“To the Victorian era?” she said, looking amused.

I nodded. “I couldn’t get it in Oxford because of Lady Schrapnell—”

She looked even more amused. “He sent you here to get away from Lady Schrapnell?”

“Yes,” I said, alarmed. “She isn’t here, is she?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “If you don’t have the cat, do you know who they sent it through with?”

“No,” I said, trying to remember that conversation in the lab. “Contact someone,” Mr. Dunworthy had said. Andrews. I remembered now. Mr. Dunworthy had said, “Contact Andrews.”

“They said something about contacting Andrews,” I said.

“Did you hear them say anything else? When they were sending him through to? Whether the jump worked?”

“No,” I said, “but I was dozing a good deal of the time. Because of the time-lag.”

“When exactly did you hear them mention Andrews?”

“This morning, while I was waiting for my jump,” I said.

“When did you come through?”

“This morning. At ten o’clock.”

“Then that explains it,” she said, looking relieved. “I was worried when I got back and Princess Arjumand wasn’t there. I was afraid something had gone wrong, and sending her back through the net hadn’t worked, or that Baine had found her and thrown her in again. And when Mrs. Mering insisted on coming to Oxford to consult Madame Iritosky on her disappearance, and your young man showed up, I got truly worried. But everything’s all right. They obviously sent her through after we left for Oxford, and the visit was a good thing. It put us all out of the way so no one would see her being put back, and Baine’s here, so he can’t drown her before we get back. And the jump must have been successful, or you wouldn’t be here. Mr. Dunworthy said he was suspending all drops to the Nineteenth Century till the cat was returned. So everything’s all right. Mr. Dunworthy’s experiment worked, Princess Arjumand will be there waiting to greet us when we get back, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Wait,” I said, thoroughly confused. “I think you need to begin at the beginning. Sit down.”

I indicated a wooden bench with a sign on it: “Do not deface.” Next to it was a carved heart with an arrow through it and under it, “Violet and Harold, ‘59.” She sat down, arranging her white skirts gracefully about her.

“All right,” I said. “You brought a cat forward through the net.”

“Yes. I was at the gazebo, that’s where the drop is, just behind it in a little copse, it’s on a ten-minute on and off rendezvous. I’d just come through from reporting to Mr. Dunworthy, and I saw Baine, that’s the butler, carrying Princess Arjumand—”

“Wait. What were you doing in the Victorian era?”

“Lady Schrapnell sent me here to read Tossie’s diary. She thought there might be some clue in it as to the whereabouts of the bishop’s bird stump.”

Of course. I might have known all this had something to do with the bishop’s bird stump. “But what does Tossie have to do with the bishop’s bird stump?” I had a sudden horrible thought. “Please tell me she isn’t the great-great-grandmother.”

“Great-great-great-great. This is the summer she went to Coventry, saw the bishop’s bird stump—”

“—and had her life changed forever,” I said.

“An event she referred to repeatedly and in great detail in the voluminous diaries she kept for most of her life, which Lady Schrapnell read and became obsessed with rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, and had her life changed forever.”

“And ours,” I said. “But if she read the diaries, why did she have to send you back to 1888 to read them?”

“The volume in which Tossie originally recorded the life-changing experience—the one Tossie wrote in the summer of 1888—is badly water-damaged. Lady Schrapnell’s got a forensics expert working on it, but she’s only made limited progress, so Lady Schrapnell sent me to read it on the spot.”

“But if she referred to it in great detail in the other diaries—?” I said.

“She didn’t say exactly how it changed her life or on what date she went there, and Lady Schrapnell thinks there may be other details in the volume that are important. Unfortunately, or perhaps I should say fortunately, since Tossie writes the way she talks, she keeps her diary under better lock and key than the Crown Jewels, and so far I haven’t been able to get at it.”

“I’m still confused,” I said. “The bishop’s bird stump didn’t disappear till 1940. What use is a diary written in 1888?”

“Lady Schrapnell thinks there might be a clue as to who gave it to the church. The donations records for Coventry Cathedral were burnt up during the air raid. She thinks whoever donated it, or their descendants, might have taken it away for safekeeping at the beginning of the war.”

“Whoever donated it was probably trying to get rid of it.”

“I know. But you know Lady Schrapnell. ‘No stone unturned.’ So I’ve been following Tossie around for two weeks, hoping she’ll leave her diary lying out. Or go to Coventry. She’s got to go soon. When I mentioned Coventry, she said she’d never been there, and we know she went sometime in June. But so far nothing.”

“So you kidnapped her cat and demanded her diary as ransom?”

“No,” she said. “I was coming back from reporting to Mr. Dunworthy, and I saw Baine, that’s the butler—”

“Who reads books,” I said.

“Who’s a homicidal maniac,” she said. “He was carrying Princess Arjumand, and when he got to the riverbank, a perfectly lovely June. The roses have been so pretty.”

“What?” I said, disoriented again.

“And the laburnum! Mrs. Mering has an arbor of laburnum that is ever so picturesque!”

“Begging your pardon, Miss Brown,” Baine said, appearing out of nowhere. He gave a stiff little bow.

“What is it, Baine?” Verity said.

“It’s Miss Mering’s pet cat, ma’am,” he said uncomfortably. “I was wondering if Mr. St. Trewes’s being here meant that he had located it.”

“No, Baine,” she said, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “Princess Arjumand is still missing.”

“I was concerned,” he said and bowed again. “Do you wish the carriage to be brought around now?”

“No,” she said frostily. “Thank you, Baine.”

“Mrs. Mering requested that you return in time for tea.”

“I am aware of that, Baine. Thank you.”

He still hesitated. “It is half an hour’s drive to Madame Iritosky’s home.”

“Yes, Baine. That will be all,” she said and watched him till he was nearly to the carriage before she burst out, “Cold-blooded murderer! ‘I was wondering if Mr. St. Trewes might have found the cat.’ He knows perfectly well he hasn’t. And all that about being concerned! Monster!”

“Are you certain he was trying to drown her?” I said.

“Of course I’m certain. He flung her as far out as he could throw her.”

“Perhaps it’s a contemp custom. I remember reading they drowned cats in the Victorian era. To keep the population down, of all things.”

“That’s newborn kittens, not full-grown cats. And not pets. Princess Arjumand’s the thing Tossie loves most, next to herself. The kittens they drown are farm cats, not pets. The farmer just up the road from Muchings End killed a batch last week, put them in a sack weighted with stones and threw it in his pond, which is barbaric but not malicious. This was malicious. After Baine threw her in, he dusted off his hands and walked back toward the house smiling. He clearly intended to drown her.”

“I thought cats could swim.”

“Not in the middle of the Thames. If I hadn’t done something, it would have been swept away in the current.”

“The Lady of Shalott,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing. Why would he want to murder his mistress’s cat?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he has something against cats. Or perhaps it isn’t just cats, and we’ll all be murdered in our beds some night. Perhaps he’s Jack the Ripper. He was operating in 1888, wasn’t he? And they never did find out his true identity. All I know is, I couldn’t just stand there and let Princess Arjumand drown. It’s an extinct species.”

“So you dived in and saved it?”

“I waded in,” she said defensively, “and caught hold of her and brought her back on shore, but as soon as I did, I realized no Victorian lady would have waded in like that. I hadn’t even taken off my shoes. I didn’t think. I just acted. I ducked in the net, and it opened,” she said. “I was only trying to get out of sight. I didn’t mean to cause a problem.”

A problem. She had done something temporal theory said was impossible. And possibly caused an incongruity in the continuum. No wonder Mr. Dunworthy had asked Chiswick all those questions and been grilling poor T.J. Lewis. A problem.

A fan was one thing, a live cat was another. And even a fan won’t go through. Darby and Gentilla had proved that, back when time travel had first been invented. They’d built the net as a pirate ship for plundering the treasures of the past, and they’d tried it on everything from the Mona Lisa to King Tut’s tomb and then, when that didn’t work, on more mundane items, like money. But nothing except microscopic particles would come through. When they tried to take any object, even a halfpence or a fish fork, out of its own time, the net wouldn’t open. It didn’t let germs through either, or radiation, or stray bullets, which Darby and Gentilla and the rest of the world should have been grateful for, but weren’t particularly.

The multinationals who’d been backing Darby and Gentilla lost interest, and time travel had been handed over to historians and scientists, who’d come up with the theories of slippage and the Law of Conservation of History to explain it, and it had been accepted as a law that if one tried to bring something forward through the net, it wouldn’t open. Till now.

“When you tried to bring the cat through, the net opened, just like that?” I said. “You didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about the drop, no delays or jolts?”

She shook her head. “It was just like any other jump.”

“And the cat was all right?”

“She slept through the whole thing. Fell asleep in my arms in the drop and didn’t even wake up when we got to Mr. Dunworthy’s office. Apparently that’s how time-lag affects cats. It puts them right out.”

“You went to see Mr. Dunworthy?”

“Of course,” she said defensively. “I took the cat to him as soon as I realized what I’d done.”

“And he decided to try to send it back?”

“I pumped Finch, and he told me they were going to check all the drops to the Victorian era, and if there weren’t any indications of excessive slippage, that meant the cat had been returned before its disappearance could cause any damage, and they were going to send it back.”

But there was excessive slippage, I thought, remembering Mr. Dunworthy asking Carruthers about Coventry. “What about the trouble we were having in Coventry?”

“Finch said they thought it was unrelated, that it was due to Coventry’s being an historical crisis point. Because of its connection to Ultra. It was the only area of excessive slippage. There wasn’t any on any of the Victorian drops.” She looked up at me. “How much slippage was there on your drop?”

“None,” I said. “I was spang on target.”

“Good,” she said, and looked relieved. “There was only five minutes on mine when I came back. Finch said the first place an incongruity would manifest itself was in the increased slip—”

“Oh, I do love country churchyards,” Tossie’s voice said, and I leaped away from Verity like a Victorian lover. Verity remained serene, opening her parasol and standing up with a calm grace.

“They’re so delightfully rustic,” Tossie said and hove into view, flags flying. “Not at all like our dreadful modern cemeteries.” She stopped to admire a tombstone that had nearly fallen over. “Baine says churchyards are unsanitary, that they contaminate the water table, but I think it’s wonderfully unspoilt. Just like a poem. Don’t you, Mr. St. Trewes?”

“ ‘Beneath those rugged elms that yew trees shade,’ ” Terence obligingly quoted, “ ‘where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap—’ ”

The bit about “the mouldering heap” seemed to confirm Baine’s theory, but neither Terence nor Tossie noticed, Terence particularly, who was declaiming, “ ‘Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.’ ”

“I do love Tennyson, don’t you, Cousin?” Tossie said.

“Thomas Gray,” Verity said. “ ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.’ ”

“Oh, Mr. Henry, you must come and see the inside of the church,” Tossie said, ignoring her. “There’s the dearest decorated vase. Isn’t it, Mr. St. Trewes?”

He nodded vaguely, gazing at Tossie, and I saw Verity frown. “We must see it, by all means,” she said, and caught up her skirts with a gloved hand. “Mr. Henry?”

“By all means,” I said, offering her my arm, and we all went into the church, past a large sign that read, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

The church was chilly and smelled faintly of old wood and mildewing hymnals. It was decorated with stout Norman pillars, a vaulted Early English sanctuary, a Victorian rose window, and a large placard that proclaimed “Keep out of chancel” on the altar railing.

Tossie blithely ignored it and the Norman slate baptismal font and swept up to a niche in the wall opposite the pulpit. “Isn’t it the cunningest thing you’ve ever seen?”

There was no question she was related to Lady Schrapnell, and no question where Lady Schrapnell had got her taste from, though Tossie at least had the excuse of being a Victorian, and part of an era that had built not only St. Pancras Railway Station, but the Albert Memorial.

The vase that sat in the niche looked like both, though on a less grandiose scale. It only had one level and no Corinthian pillars. It did, however, have twining ivy and a bas-relief of either Noah’s ark or the battle of Jericho.

“What is it supposed to be depicting?” I asked.

“The Slaughter of the Innocents,” Verity murmured.

“It’s Pharaoh’s Daughters Bathing in the Nile,” Tossie said. “Look, there’s Moses’ basket peeping out from among the rushes. I do wish we had this in our church,” Tossie said. “The church at Muchings End hasn’t anything in it but a lot of old things. It’s just like that poem by Tennyson,” Tossie said, clasping her hands together. “Poem to a Greek Vase.”

And the last thing we needed was Terence quoting Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” I looked desperately at Verity, trying to think of something to get us out of here and somewhere we could talk. The dogtoothed ornamentation? Cyril? Verity was looking round calmly at the stone vaulting, as if we had all the time in the world.

“ ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ ” Terence said. “ ‘That is all ye know—’ ”

“Do you suppose it’s haunted?” Verity said.

Terence stopped quoting. “Haunted?”

“Haunted?” Tossie said happily and gave a miniature version of a scream, a sort of screamlet. “Of course it is. Madame Iritosky says that there are certain places that act as portals between one world and the next,” she said.

I glanced at Verity, but she looked serene, untroubled by Tossie’s having just described the net.

“Madame Iritosky says that spirits often hover near the portal by which their souls passed to the Other Side,” Tossie explained to Terence. “That’s why séances fail so often, because they’re not close enough to a portal. That’s why Madame Iritosky always holds her séances at home, instead of travelling to people’s homes. And a churchyard would be a logical portal.” She looked up at the ribbed vaulting and gave another screamlet. “They could be here with us now!”

“I should imagine the churchwarden would know of any spirits,” Verity said helpfully.

Yes, and would have put up a sign saying, “No manifestations,” I thought. “Absolutely no ectoplasm.”

“Oh, yes!” Tossie said and gave another of her little screamlets. “Mr. St. Trewes, we must ask the churchwarden!” They went out the door, consulted the sign, and started off for Harwood House and the churchwarden, who would no doubt be delighted to see them.

“All Mr. Dunworthy would tell me was that he was sending me back to two hours after I’d rescued the cat,” Verity said, picking up where she’d left off, “and to report back if there was any unusual slippage or coincidental happenings, and I assumed that meant Princess Arjumand was already back at Muchings End. But when I came through, she wasn’t there. Tossie had discovered she was missing and had the whole household out searching for her, and I began to worry that something had gone wrong. And before I could report back to Mr. Dunworthy and find out what had happened, Mrs. Mering had hauled us all off to Oxford, and Tossie had met Count de Vecchio.”

“Count de Vecchio?”

“A young man at one of the séances. Rich, handsome, charming. Perfect, in fact, except that his name begins with a ‘V’ and not a ‘C.’ He’s interested in theosophy,” she said. “He was also interested in Tossie. He insisted on sitting next to her at the table so he could hold her hand, and he told her not to be afraid if she felt a touch on her feet, that it was only the spirits. That’s why I suggested the walk by the Thames, to get her away from him, and then Terence came rowing by, and his name doesn’t begin with a ‘C’ either. And he seemed so smitten with her. Not that that’s unusual. Every young man who meets Tossie is smitten with her.” She looked up at me from under her veil. “Speaking of which, why aren’t you?”

“She thinks Henry the Eighth had eight wives,” I said.

“I know, but I’d have thought with your time-lag you’d have been in poor Titania’s condition, wandering about ready to fall in love with the first girl you saw.”

“Which was you,” I said.

If she had been the untouched English rose she looked like, she’d have blushed a becoming pink under that veil, but she was Twenty-First Century.

“You’ll get over it,” she said, sounding just like the Infirmary nurse, “as soon as you’ve had a good night’s sleep. I wish I could say the same for Tossie’s suitors. Especially Terence. Tossie seems so taken with him. She insisted on coming to Iffley this afternoon even though Mme. Iritosky had arranged a special séance for finding Princess Arjumand. And on the way over in the carriage, she asked me what I thought of plum cake for a bride’s cake. That’s when I got truly worried that my taking the cat had caused an incongruity and Count de Vecchio and Terence would never have met Tossie if she hadn’t come to Oxford, and neither of their names begins with a ‘C.’ ”

I was getting lost again. “Why do their names need to begin with a ‘C’?”

“Because that summer—this summer—she married someone whose name begins with a ‘C.’ ”

“How do you know? I thought the diary was unreadable.”

“It is.” She walked over to a pew and sat down next to a sign that read, “Sitting in pews allowed only during services.”

“Then couldn’t the ‘C’ refer to that trip to Coventry that changed her life forever?” I said. “Coventry begins with a ‘C.’ ”

She shook her head. “Her diary entry for May 6, 1938 says, ‘This summer we shall have been married fifty years, and I am happier than I ever thought possible being Mr. C-something’s wife,’ but the middle of his name is blotted out, and the letter ‘w’ of ‘wife.’ ”

“Blotted?”

“An ink stain. Pens did that in those days, you know.”

“And you’re certain it’s a ‘C’ and not a ‘G’?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to rule out not only Count de Vecchio and Terence but also Professor Peddick and Jabez. And thankfully, me.

“Who is this Mr. Chips or Chesterton or Coleridge she’s supposed to marry?” I said.

“I don’t know. It’s no one she’s ever mentioned and no one who’s ever been to Muchings End. I asked Colleen, the parlor maid. She’d never heard of him.”

There was the sound of distant voices from outside. Verity stood up. “Walk with me,” she said. “Pretend we’re examining the architecture.” She strolled over to the baptismal font and looked interestedly at it.

“So you don’t know who this Mr. C is, but you know it’s someone Tossie hasn’t met yet and you know she married him this summer,” I said, examining a sign that said, “Do not remove church furnishings.” “I thought Victorians went in for long engagements.”

“They do,” she said, looking grim, “and after the engagement, the banns have to be read out in church for three successive Sundays, not to mention meeting the parents and sewing a trousseau, and it’s already nearly the middle of June.”

“When were they married?”

“We don’t know that either. The church at Muchings End was burned during the Pandemic, and her later diaries don’t mention the date.”

I thought of something. “But surely they mention his name, don’t they? The May sixth entry can’t have been the only time she mentioned her husband in fifty years.”

She looked unhappy. “She always refers to him as ‘my darling husband’ or ‘my beloved helpmeet.’ ‘Darling’ and ‘beloved’ underlined.”

I nodded. “And exclamation points.” I’d had to read some of the diaries for references to the bishop’s bird stump.

We strolled over to the side aisle. “The diaries stopped for several years after this summer’s,” Verity said, “and then started up again in 1904. By that time they were living in America, and he was working in silent films under the stage name of Bertram W. Fauntleroy, which he changed to Reginald Fitzhugh-Smythe in 1927, when the talkies came in.”

She stopped in front of a stained-glass window half-covered with a sign that read, “Do not attempt to open.” “He had a long and distinguished career playing British aristocrats,” she said.

“Which means it was likely he was an aristocrat himself. That’s good, isn’t it? It means at least he wasn’t a tramp who wandered by.” I thought of something. “What about his obituary?”

“It lists his stage name,” she said, “and so does hers.” She smiled wryly at me. “She lived to the age of ninety-seven. Five children, twenty-three grandchildren, and a major Hollywood studio.”

“And nary a clue,” I said. “What about Coventry? Could she have met this Mr. C there, while she was looking at the bishop’s bird stump, and that’s the event that changed her life forever?”

“It’s possible,” she said. “But that’s another problem. They haven’t said anything about a trip to Coventry. Mrs. Mering’s talked about going to Hampton Court to see Catherine Howard’s ghost, but they’ve never so much as mentioned Coventry, and they didn’t go before I got here. I know because I asked—”

“—the upstairs maid,” I finished.

“Yes. And we know Tossie went there sometime in June. That’s why I’ve been so worried about their coming to Oxford to see Madame Iritosky. I was afraid Princess Arjumand’s disappearance had made them come to Oxford when they should have been going to Coventry, or that Mr. C might have come to Muchings End while Tossie was here and missed meeting her. But if Mr. Dunworthy and T.J. have returned Princess Arjumand, that means the cat’s simply wandered off. And who knows? Mr. C may be the one who finds her and brings her back. Perhaps that’s why they got engaged so suddenly, because she was grateful to him for returning Arjumand.”

“And it isn’t as if you’ve been away from Muchings End long,” I said. “Only a day. If Mr. C did come calling, the maid would no doubt ask him to wait in the parlor till you returned.”

“What do you mean?” she said. She stood up abruptly, her skirts rustling.

“I just assumed,” I said, surprised. “Weren’t the Victorians the ones with parlors? Didn’t their maids ask callers to wait?”

“When did you come through?” she demanded.

“This morning,” I said. “I told you. Bang on target. Ten o’clock, June the seventh, 1888.”

“This is the tenth of June,” she said.

The tenth. “But the newspaper—”

“—must have been an old one. I came through on the night of the seventh. We came to Oxford on the eighth, and we’ve been here three days.”

I said blankly, “Then there must have been—”

“— increased slippage,” she said, “which is an indication that there’s been an incongruity.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I left rather in a hurry.” I explained about Lady Schrapnell. “Warder might not have finished setting the coordinates. Or she might have made a mistake. She’d done seventeen drops already.”

“Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “Where did you come through? Folly Bridge? Is that where you met up with Terence?”

“No, the railway station. He was there to meet his tutor’s relatives, but they didn’t arrive.” I explained about his asking me if I were going on the river and about his financial problems. “So I paid the balance on the boat.”

“And if you hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t be here,” she said, looking even more worried. “Could he have gotten the boat if you hadn’t lent the money to him?”

“Not a chance,” I said, thinking about Jabez, and then, at her worried expression, “He said something about trying to borrow money from someone named Mags at the Mitre,” I said. “But he was determined to see Tossie again. I think he would have run the entire way to Iffley if he hadn’t had the money.”

“You’re probably right,” she said. “There’s a great deal of redundancy in the system. If he hadn’t met her here, he might very well have met her at Muchings End. He said yesterday he had been thinking of going downriver. And three days’ slippage isn’t all that much.” She frowned. “Still, though, it seems a lot for a pleasure trip. And it’s more than on the other Victorian drops. I’d better report it to Mr. Dunworthy when I get back to—”

“—certain the spirits will bring us word of Princess Arjumand,” Tossie’s voice said, and she fluttered in with Terence, who had his hat in his hands. “Madame Iritosky is famous for locating lost objects. She told the Duchess of Derby where her lost brooch was and the Duchess gave her a reward of a thousand pounds. Papa said, of course she knew where it was, she’d put it there herself, but Mama,” she said, putting the accent on the last syllable, “knows it was the workings of the spirit world.”

Verity stood up and draped her skirts. “What did the churchwarden say?” she said, and I was amazed at her composure. She looked the serene English maiden again. “Is Iffley Church haunted?”

“No,” Terence said.

“Yes,” Tossie said, looking up at the vaulting. “And I don’t care what he says, cross old bear. They are here now, spirits from another time and place. I can feel their presence.”

“What the churchwarden said was that it wasn’t haunted, but he wished it were,” Terence said, “because ‘hants’ didn’t get mud all over the floor or take down his notices. Or bother the churchwarden when he was having his tea.”

“Tea!” Tossie said. “What a lovely idea! Cousin, go and tell Baine to serve tea.”

“There isn’t time,” Verity said, pulling on her gloves. “We are expected back at Madame Iritosky’s.”

“Oh, but Mr. St. Trewes and Mr. Henry have not seen the mill yet,” Tossie said.

“They shall have to see it after we are gone,” Verity said, and swept out of the church. “We do not want to miss our train to Muchings End.” She stopped at the lychgate. “Mr. St. Trewes, would you be so good as to tell our butler to bring the carriage round?”

“My pleasure,” Terence said, tipping his hat, and started toward the tree where Baine sat reading.

I’d hoped Tossie would go with him so I could talk to Verity, but she stayed by the lychgate, pouting and snapping her parasol open and shut. And what sort of excuse could give us a few moments alone? I could hardly suggest she follow Terence with Verity already concerned about her attraction to him, and she was the type to give orders, not take—

“My parasol,” Verity said. “I must have left it in the church.”

“I’ll help you find it,” I said, and opened the door with alacrity, scattering notices everywhere.

“I’ll return to Oxford and report to Mr. Dunworthy as soon as I get the chance,” she whispered as soon as the door was shut. “Where will you be?”

“I’m not certain,” I said. “On the river somewhere. Terence talked about rowing down to Henley.”

“I’ll try to get word to you,” she said, walking toward the front of the nave. “It may be several days.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Keep Terence away from Muchings End,” she said. “It’s probably just an infatuation on Tossie’s part, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

I nodded.

“And don’t worry. It’s only three days’ slippage, and Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t have sent you through if Princess Arjumand hadn’t already been safely returned. I’m certain everything’s fine.” She patted my arm. “You get some sleep. You’re supposed to be recovering from time-lag.”

“I will,” I said.

She retrieved the white parasol from underneath the kneeling rail and started toward the door, and then stopped and smiled. “And if you meet anyone named Chaucer or Churchill, send them along to Muchings—”

“Your carriage, miss,” Baine said, looming in the door.

“Thank you, Baine,” she said coldly and swept past him.

Terence was handing Tossie into the carriage. “I do hope we shall meet again, Mr. St. Trewes,” Tossie said, no longer pouting. “We take the train home this evening to Muchings End. Do you know it? It’s on the river, just below Streatley.”

Terence took off his boater and held it over his heart. “ ‘Till then, good-bye, fair one, adieu!’ ”

The carriage lurched forward. “Baine!” Tossie protested.

“I beg your pardon, miss,” Baine said and clucked the reins.

“Goodbye,” Tossie called back to us, waving a handkerchief and everything else on her person. “Goodbye, Mr. St. Trewes!” The landau rolled away.

Terence watched it till it was out of sight.

“We’d better go,” I said. “Professor Peddick will be waiting.”

He sighed, looking longingly after the dust cloud it had left. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We must start immediately for Muchings End,” he said, and started down the hill.

“We can’t,” I said, trotting after him. “We have to take Professor Peddick back to Oxford, and what about his agèd relicts? If they’re on the afternoon train, they’ll need to be met.”

“I’ll arrange with Trotters to meet them. He owes me a favor for that translation of Lucretius I did,” he said without stopping. “It will only take an hour to row Peddick back. We can put him off at Magdalen by four. That will still give us four hours of daylight. We should be able to make it past Culham Lock. That will put us at Muchings End by noon tomorrow.

And so much for my blithely promising Verity to keep Terence away from Tossie, I thought, following him down to the boat.

It wasn’t there.

“This is the cat

That killed the rat

That ate the malt

That lay in the house that Jack built.”

Mother Goose

C H A P T E R  S E V E N

Importance of Locks in Victorian Era—“Loose lips sink ships”—Tristan and Isolde—Pursuit—The French Revolution—An Argument Against Tipping—A Traumatized Cat—Soot—The Bataan Death March—Sleep—The Boat Is Found at Last—An Unexpected Development—Importance of Meetings to History—Lennon and McCartney—I Search for a Tin-Opener—What I Found

Cyril was there, in the same position in which we had left him, his head disconsolately pressed against his paws, his brown eyes reproachful.

“Cyril!” Terence said. “Where’s the boat?”

Cyril sat up and looked round in surprise.

“You were supposed to guard the boat,” Terence said sternly. “Who took it, Cyril?”

“Could it have drifted off, do you think?” I said, thinking about the half-hitch.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Terence said. “It’s obviously been stolen.”

“Perhaps Professor Peddick came and got it,” I said, but Terence was already halfway across the bridge.

When we caught up to him, he was looking downstream at the river. There was no one on it except for a mallard duck.

“Whoever stole it must have taken it back up the river,” Terence said, and ran the rest of the way across the river and back up to the lock.

The lock-keeper was standing on top of the lock, poking at the sluice with his boathook.

“Did our boat go back through the lock?” Terence shouted to him.

The lock-keeper put his hand to his ear and shouted back, “What?”

“Our boat!” Terence shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Did it go back through the lock?”

“What?” he bellowed back.

“Did our boat,” Terence said, pantomiming the shape of a boat, “go back—” he made a sweeping motion upriver, “through the lock?” He pointed exaggeratedly at the lock.

“Boats go through the lock?” the lock-keeper shouted. “Of course boats go through the lock. What else do you think it’s for?”

I glanced around, looking for someone, anyone else who might have seen the boat, but Iffley was completely deserted. Not even the churchwarden was in evidence, putting up “No shouting” signs. I remembered Tossie had said he was having his tea.

“No! Our boat!” Terence shouted. He pointed first at himself and then at me. “Did it go back through the lock?”

The lock-keeper looked indignant. “No, you can’t go through the lock without a boat! What sort of foolery are you up to?”

“No,” Terence shouted. “Someone’s stolen the boat we hired!”

“Wire?” The lock-keeper shook his head. “The nearest telegraph’s in Abingdon.”

“No. Not wire. Hired!”

“Liar?” he said and raised his pole threateningly. “ ‘Oo you callin’ a liar?”

“No one,” Terence said, backing up. “Hired! The boat we hired!”

The lock-keeper shook his head again. “What you want’s Folly Bridge. Man name of Jabez.”

Cyril and I wandered back down to the bridge, and I stood there, leaning over it and thinking about what Verity had told me. She’d saved a cat from drowning and then stepped into the net with it, and the net had opened.

So it must not have caused an incongruity, because if it would have, the net wouldn’t have opened. That’s what had happened the first ten times Leibowitz had tried to go back to assassinate Hitler. The eleventh he’d ended up in Bozeman, Montana in 1946. And nobody’s ever been able to get close to Ford’s Theater or Pearl Harbor or the Ides of March. Or Coventry.

I thought T.J. and Mr. Dunworthy were probably right about the increased slippage around Coventry, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to us before. Coventry was obviously a crisis point.

Not because the raid had done significant damage. The Luftwaffe had only damaged, not destroyed, the aircraft and munitions factories, and they were up and running again within three months. They’d destroyed the cathedral, of course, which had enlisted outrage and sympathy from the States, but even that hadn’t been critical. The Blitz had already stirred up plenty of American support, and Pearl Harbor was only three weeks away.

What was critical was Ultra, and the Enigma machine which we’d smuggled out of Poland and were using to decipher the Nazis’ codes, and which, if the Nazis had found out we had it, could have changed the course of the entire war.

And Ultra had warned us of the raid on Coventry. Only obliquely, until late in the afternoon of the fourteenth, which had made it impossible to do more than notify Command and take impromptu defensive measures, and those (because history’s a chaotic system) had cancelled each other out. Command had decided the main attack would be on London, no matter what Intelligence said, and sent their planes up accordingly, and the attempts to jam the pathfinder beams had failed because of an error in calculations.

But secrets are always pivotal events. A stray word could have endangered the safety of the Intelligence setup. And if something, anything, had happened to make the Nazis suspicious—if the cathedral had been miraculously saved or the entire RAF had shown up over Coventry, even if someone had talked—“Loose lips sink ships”—they would have changed their code-machines. And we would have lost the battles of El Alamein and the North Atlantic. And World War II.

Which explained why Carruthers and the new recruit and I had ended up in the rubble and the marrows field. Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects.

The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.”

And around those attractors, there was radically increased slippage and net closures.

Which must mean Muchings End wasn’t a crisis point, and the cat hadn’t changed history, particularly since it would only have required a few minutes’ slippage to prevent the whole thing. Verity wouldn’t even have had to have ended up in Bozeman, Montana. If she’d come through five minutes later, the cat would already have gone under. Five minutes earlier, and she’d have been inside the house and missed the whole thing.

And it wasn’t as if this were Queen Victoria’s cat (in spite of her name) or Gladstone’s or Oscar Wilde’s. It was hardly in a position to affect world events, and 1888 wasn’t a critical year. The Indian Mutiny had ended in 1859 and the Boer War wouldn’t start for another eleven years. “And it’s only a cat,” I said out loud.

Cyril looked up, alarmed.

“Not here,” I said. “It’s probably safely back at Muchings End by now,” but Cyril got up and began looking warily about.

“No! Thieves, not sheaves!” Terence was yelling, his voice drifting toward us over the water. “Thieves!”

“Sieves?” the lock-keeper bellowed back. “This is a lock, not an ironmonger’s.”

Eventually, he waved his arm dismissively at Terence and went inside the lockhouse.

Terence hurried over. “Whoever took it went that way,” he said. “The lock-keeper pointed downstream.”

I was not at all sure of that. It seemed to me just as likely that the gesture had meant, “Go on, I’ve had it with talking to you,” or even, “Get the bloody hell out of here!” And the opposite direction was better in regard to keeping Terence away from Tossie.

“Are you certain?” I said. “I thought he pointed upstream.”

“No,” Terence said, already across the bridge. “Definitely downstream, and galloped off down the towpath.

“We’d better hurry,” I said to Cyril, “or we’ll never catch up to him,” and we set off after him, past the straggle of Iffley’s cottages and a line of tall poplars and up a low hill, from which we could see a long stretch of river. It glittered emptily. “Are you sure they went this way?”

He nodded without slackening his pace. “And we’ll find them and get the boat back. Tossie and I are meant to be together, and no obstacle can keep us apart. It’s fated, like Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Héloïse and Abelard.”

I didn’t point out that all of the aforementioned had ended up dead or severely handicapped, because it was all I could do to keep up. Cyril wobbled after us, panting.

“When we catch up to them, we’ll go back and fetch Professor Peddick and take him back to Oxford and then row down below Abingdon and camp for the night,” Terence said. “It’s only three locks away. If we work at it, we should be able to make Muchings End by teatime tomorrow.”

Not if I could help it. “Won’t that be a rather tiring journey?” I said. “My physician said I wasn’t to overtire myself.”

“You can nap while I row. Tea’s the best time. They have to ask you to stay, it’s not like dinner or something, it doesn’t require a formal invitation or dressing or anything. We should be able to make Reading by noon.”

“But I’d hoped to see some of the sights along the river,” I said, racking my brain to think what they were. Hampton Court? No, that was below Henley. So was Windsor Castle. What had the three men in a boat stopped to look at? Tombs. Harris was always wanting to stop and look at somebody or other’s tomb.

“I’d hoped to see some tombs,” I said.

“Tombs?” he said. “There aren’t any interesting ones along the river, except for Richard Tichell’s at Hampton Church. He threw himself out of one of the windows of Hampton Court Palace. And at any rate, Hampton Church is past Muchings End. If Colonel Mering likes us, we might be asked to dinner. Do you know anything about Japan?”

“Japan?” I said.

“That’s where the fish are from,” he said obscurely. “The best thing, of course, would be if we were asked to stay a week, but he doesn’t like houseguests, says it disturbs them. The fish, I mean. And he went to Cambridge. Perhaps we could pretend to be spiritualists. Mrs. Mering’s mad for spirits. Did you pack evening clothes?”

The time-lag must be catching up with me. “Do spiritualists wear evening clothes?” I asked.

“No, long, flowing robe sort of things, with sleeves you can hide tambourines and cheesecloth and things in. No, for dinner, in case we’re asked.”

I had no idea whether there were evening clothes in my luggage or not. When we caught up to the boat, if we caught up to the boat, I needed to go through my bags and see exactly what Warder and Finch had sent with me.

“It’s too bad we haven’t found Princess Arjumand,” Terence said. “That would get us an invitation to stay. The lost lamb and the fatted calf and all that. Did you see Tossie when she ran down the bank and asked me if I’d found her? She was the loveliest creature I’d ever seen. Her curls bright as gold and her eyes, ‘blue as the fairy-flax, her cheeks like the dawn of day!’ No, brighter! Like carnations! Or roses!”

We went on, Terence comparing Tossie’s various features to lilies, berries, pearls, and spun gold, Cyril thinking longingly of shade, and me thinking about Louis the Sixteenth.

It was true that Princess Arjumand wasn’t Queen Victoria’s cat and Muchings End wasn’t Midway Island, but look at Drouét. He hadn’t been anybody either, an illiterate French peasant who normally would never have made it into the history books.

Except that Louis the Sixteenth, escaping from France with Marie Antoinette, leaned out the window of his carriage to ask Drouét directions, and then, in one of those minor actions that change the course of history, tipped him a banknote. With his picture on it.

And Drouét tore ahead through the forest to raise a force to stop the carriage, and failing that, dragged a cart out of a barn and across the road to block their way.

And what if an historian had stolen the cart, or waylaid Drouét, or warned Louis’s driver to take another road? Or what if, back at Versailles, an historian had stolen the banknote and replaced it with coins? Louis and Marie would have made it to their loyalist army, put down the Revolution, and changed the entire course of European history.

For want of a cart. Or a cat.

“We should be coming to Sandford Lock soon,” Terence said cheerfully. “We can ask the lock-keeper if he’s seen the boat.”

In a few minutes, we came to the lock, and I thought we were going to have to endure another interminable and incomprehensible conversation, but this time Terence’s earnest shouts failed even to bring the lock-keeper out, and after several minutes he said, undaunted, “There’ll be someone at Nuneham Courtenay,” and set off again.

I didn’t even ask how far Nuneham Courtenay was, for fear of the answer, and beyond the next bend in the river there was a line of willows next to the towpath, obscuring the view. But when we came round the bend, Terence was standing in front of a thatched cottage, looking thoughtfully at a little girl in the front garden. She was sitting on a swing in a blue-and-white-striped pinafore whose petticoats billowed up around her, holding a white cat and talking to it.

“Dear sweet pussy,” she said, “you love to go up in a swing, don’t you? Up in the air so blue?”

The cat didn’t answer. It was sound asleep.

Cats weren’t extinct yet in the Forties, so I’d seen them before, but, except for that sooty streak in the cathedral, I had yet to see one that was awake. Verity had said time-lag had made the cat she brought through the net sleepy, but I wasn’t convinced this wasn’t their normal state. The black-and-orange calico at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Fête had slept the entire duration of the fête on top of a crocheted afghan on the Fancy Works Table.

“I say, what do you think?” Terence said, indicating the little girl.

I nodded. “She might have seen the boat. And she can’t be any worse than the lock-keeper.”

“No, no. Not the child. The cat.”

“I thought you said Miss Mering’s cat was black,” I said.

“It is. With white feet and a white face,” he said. “But with a bit of boot-blacking in the right spots—”

“No,” I said. “You said she was very attached to her pet.”

“She is, and she’ll be extremely grateful to the person who finds it. You don’t think some soot, carefully applied . . .”

“No,” I said, and walked over to the swing. “Have you seen a boat?”

“Yes, sir,” she said politely.

“Excellent,” Terence said. “Who was in it?”

“In what?” she said.

“In the boat,” Terence said.

“Which boat?” she said, petting the cat. “There are lots and lots of boats. This is the Thames, you see.”

“This was a large green boat with a great deal of luggage piled in it,” Terence said. “Did you see it?”

“Does he bite?” the little girl asked Terence.

“Who? Mr. Henry?” Terence said.

“Cyril,” I said. “No, he doesn’t bite. Did you see a boat like that? With a lot of luggage?”

“Yes,” she said, and got off the swing, shifting the cat to her shoulder. It didn’t wake up. “It went that way,” she said and pointed down the river.

“We know that,” Terence said. “Did you see who was in the boat?”

“Yes,” she said, patting the cat as if she were burping a baby. “Poor, dear pussy, did the big dog frighten you?”

The cat slumbered on.

“Who was in the boat?” I said.

She transferred the cat back to her arms and cradled it. “A reverent.”

“A reverend? You mean, a clergyman? A verger?” I said, wondering if the churchwarden had posted a sign saying, “No docking,” and carted the boat off as punishment.

“Yes,” she said. “Wearing a robe.”

“Professor Peddick,” I said.

“Did he have white hair?” Terence said. “And muttonchop whiskers?”

She nodded, picking the cat up under the front legs and holding it out in front of her like a doll. “What a wicked dog, to frighten you so!”

The cat still didn’t wake up.

“Come on, then,” Terence said, already far ahead. “We should have thought of that,” he said when the wicked dog and I caught up to him, “that it was Professor Peddick who took the boat. He can’t have gone far.”

He gestured at the river, winding slowly off to the southwest between the flat fields. “It looks exactly like the plain of Marathon.”

It might have been a spitting image, for all I knew, but either the resemblance hadn’t struck Professor Peddick or he could row faster than I thought. Neither he nor the boat were anywhere to be seen.

Terence didn’t seem bothered. “We’re bound to spot him soon.”

“What if we don’t catch up to him?” I said.

“We shall,” he said. “There’s a lock five miles from here. He’ll have to wait to go through it.”

“Five miles?” I said weakly.

“And we must catch up to him. That’s how Fate works. Like Antony and Cleopatra.”

Yet another love story that hadn’t turned out well.

“Would Antony have let a little thing like a lost boat stand in his way? Though I suppose in his case it would have been a barge.”

We struggled on. The Victorian sun beat down, Terence hurried on at an energetic pace, comparing Tossie to angels, fairies, sprites, and Cleopatra (a truly bad end); Cyril began to take on the demeanor of a Bataan Death March participant; and I thought longingly of sleep and tried to calculate how long I had been up.

I had been here since ten, and my pocket watch said nearly IV, so that was six hours, and I had spent three hours in the lab being prepped, an hour in Mr. Dunworthy’s office, a half hour on the playing fields of Oxford, ditto in Infirmary, which added up to eleven, and that didn’t count the two hours I’d spent looking for the bishop’s bird stump and the hour I’d spent looking for the cathedral, and the five hours I’d spent at the Harvest Charity Bazaar and Scrap Metal Drive. Nineteen.

When had I gone through to the bazaar, in the morning or the afternoon? Afternoon, because I was just heading back to my rooms for dinner when Lady Schrapnell caught me and put me on jumble sale duty.

No, that was the day before. Or the day before that. How long had I been doing jumble sales? Years. I had been up for years.

“We’re going to have to give this up,” I said, thinking wearily of how far it was back to Oxford. Perhaps we could sleep in the church in Iffley. No, it was only open until four. And no doubt there was a “No sleeping in pews” sign tacked to the hymnal rack.

“Look!” Terence cried. He pointed to a willow-covered island in the middle of the river. “There he is!”

It was definitely Professor Peddick. He was bending over at the very edge of the river, his robe fluttering, peering through his pince-nez at the water.

“Professor Peddick!” Terence shouted to him, and he nearly toppled in.

The professor grabbed hold of an uncertain-looking willow branch and steadied himself. He adjusted his pince-nez and peered at us.

“It’s us,” Terence shouted, cupping his hands round his mouth. “St. Trewes and Henry. We’ve been looking for you.”

“Ah, St. Trewes,” Peddick shouted. “Come over. I’ve found some excellent shallows, perfect for chub.”

“You must come over here and fetch us,” Terence said.

“Hitches?” Professor Peddick said, and I thought, here we go again.

“Fetch us,” Terence said. “You’ve got the boat.”

“Ah,” Professor Peddick said. “Stay there.” He disappeared into a thicket of willows.

“Let’s hope he remembered to tie up the boat,” I said.

“Let’s hope he remembers where he left it,” Terence said, sitting down on the bank.

I sat down next to him, and Cyril lay down and immediately rolled over on his side and began to snore. I wished I could do the same.

Now we’d have to row the professor all the way back to Oxford, which would take at least three hours, if we could talk him out of stopping at every fish and meadow.

But perhaps this was all to the good. Verity had said to keep Terence away from Muchings End, and this was certainly doing that. It would be dark by the time we reached Oxford. We’d have to spend the night, and in the morning perhaps I could talk Terence into going upriver to Parson’s Pleasure. Or going down to London or to a horse race. When was Derby Day?

Or, who knows, with a good night’s sleep he might come to his senses and see Tossie for the twittering ignoramus she was. Infatuation was a lot like time-lag, an imbalance of chemicals, cured by a good night’s sleep.

There was no sign of the professor. “He’s found a new variety of chub and forgotten all about us,” Terence said, but presently the boat appeared, nosing around the end of the island, Professor Peddick’s sleeves billowing like black sails as he rowed.

The boat pulled up downstream from us, and we scrambled down the towpath to it, Cyril wobbling after us.

I turned to urge him. “Come along, Cyril,” I said, and crashed into Terence, who had stopped short and was staring down at the boat.

“You cannot imagine the wonderful discoveries I’ve made,” Professor Peddick said. “This island is the very image of the location of the battle of Dunreath Mow.” He held up the pan. “I want to show you the double-gilled blue chub I’ve found.”

Terence was still staring strickenly at the boat.

I couldn’t see any scrapes or dents except for the ones that had been there when Jabez rented it to us, and there didn’t seem to be any holes. The boards of the stern and the bow looked perfectly dry.

The boards of the stern. And the bow. “Terence . . .” I said.

“Professor Peddick,” Terence said in a strangled voice. “What’s happened to our things?”

“Things?” Professor Peddick said vaguely.

“The luggage. Ned’s portmanteau and the baskets and—”

“Ah,” the professor said. “Under the Salix babylonica on the far side of the island. Climb in. I shall ferry you across like Charon bearing souls over the River Styx.”

I climbed in and helped Terence get Cyril in, propping his front legs on the gunwale while Terence hoisted his rear legs over and then clambered in himself.

“Wonderful gravel bottoms,” Professor Peddick said, and began rowing across. “Perfect spot for dace. Lots of midges and flies. I caught a trout with a red ridge-gill slit. Have you a net, St. Trewes?”

“A net?”

“For trawling. I do not want to endanger the mouth by using a hook.”

“There really isn’t time for fishing,” Terence said. “We must repack the boat as quickly as we can and then start back.”

“Nonsense. I’ve found a perfect place to camp.”

“Camp?” Terence said.

“No use in going home and then having to come back again. Chub bite best near sundown.”

“But what about your sister and her companion?” He pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s nearly five o’clock. If we leave now, you can be there to see them at dinner.”

“No need,” he said. “A pupil of mine has already met them.”

“I’m that pupil, professor,” Terence said.

“Nonsense. This pupil was boating along the Thames while I was working on my—” He peered at Terence through his pince-nez. “By George, you are.”

“I met the 10:55,” Terence said, “but your sister and her companion weren’t on it, so they must have come in on the 3:18.”

“Didn’t come,” he said, peering into the water. “Good grass for perch.”

“I know your sister didn’t come,” Terence persisted, “but if she arrived on the 3:18—”

“Not my sister,” he said, pushing up the sleeve of his robe and sticking his hand in the water. “Her companion. Ran off and got married.”

“Married?” I said. The woman on the platform had talked about someone getting married.

“In spite of my sister’s best efforts. Met him at church. Classic example of individual action. History is character. She brought my niece instead.”

“Your niece?” I said.

“Lovely girl.” He brought up a slimy piece of trailing brown grass. “Wonderful at labelling specimens. Too bad you weren’t there to meet them when they arrived so you could have met her.”

“I was, but they weren’t there,” Terence said.

“You’re certain?” Professor Peddick said, handing the grass to me. “Maudie’s letter was quite clear about the time.” He patted his coat pockets.

“Maudie?” I said, hoping I’d misheard.

“Named after her poor dear mother, Maud,” he said, looking through his pockets. “Would have made a good naturalist if she were a boy. Must have lost the letter when Overforce tried to murder me. Certain it was the 10:55. Might have been tomorrow’s train, though. What day is it? Ah, here we are, arrived at last in paradise, ‘the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys is.’ ”

The boat hit the shore with a jolt hard enough to wake Cyril, but it was nothing to the jolt I’d just had. Maud. I had made Terence miss meeting the “agèd relicts.” If it hadn’t been for me, Professor Peddick’s sister and niece would still have been sitting on the platform waiting for Terence when he skidded in. And if I hadn’t told him no one of that description had come in on the train, he’d have caught up with them on their way to Balliol. But he had said “agèd relicts.” He had said they were “positively antediluvian.”

“Can you get the rope, Ned?” Terence said, pulling the nose of the boat into the shore.

Meetings are notoriously pivotal in the complex chaotic course of history. Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Crick and Watson. John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And Terence was supposed to have met Maud on that railway platform in Oxford.

“Ned?” Terence said. “Can you get the rope?”

I took a giant step onto the muddy bank with the rope and tied the boat up, thinking this was the last thing I should be doing.

“Hadn’t we better leave for Oxford now to meet your niece? And sister,” I added. They wouldn’t be at the station, but at least they’d have met. “We can leave this luggage here and come back for it. Two ladies, travelling alone. They’ll need someone to see to their luggage.”

“Nonsense,” Professor Peddick said. “Maudie’s perfectly capable of ordering their luggage sent and hiring a fly to take them to the hotel. She’s extremely sensible. Not silly like other girls. You’d like her, St. Trewes. Have you any mealworms?” he asked, and set off toward the willows.

“Can’t you convince him?” I said to Terence.

He shook his head. “Not where fish are concerned. Or history. The best thing to do is to set up camp before it gets dark.” He went over to where our various suitcases and boxes were piled under a large willow tree and began rummaging through them.

“But his niece—”

“You heard him. Sensible. Intelligent. His niece is probably one of those dreadful modern girls who have opinions and think women should go to Oxford.” He pulled out a skillet and several tins. “A most unpleasant sort of girl. Not like Miss Mering. So pretty and innocent.”

And silly, I thought. And he shouldn’t have met her. He should have met Maud. “You’d like her,” Professor Peddick had said, and I had no doubt Terence would have, with her dark eyes and sweet face. But I had looked suspicious, and Verity had acted without thinking, and now Terence and Tossie, who would otherwise never have met, were planning rendezvouses, and who knew what complications that would cause?

“We shall meet her in the morning, at any rate,” Terence said, slicing meat pie. “When we take Professor Peddick back tomorrow.”

He would meet her in the morning. Chaotic systems have redundancies and interference and feedforward loops built in, so the effect of some events is not multiplied enormously, but cancelled out. “Missing you one place, we meet another.” Terence had missed meeting Maud today, but he would meet her tomorrow. And, in fact, if we took him back tonight we might be too late and Professor Peddick’s sister would not be receiving visitors, and he’d miss meeting her again. But tomorrow morning, she’d be wearing a pretty dress and Terence would forget all about Muchings End and ask Maud to go punting up to the Port Meadow for a picnic.

If he was meant to meet her. And Professor Peddick’s sister might well have thought the porter looked suspicious or felt a draft and gone off in a hired fly before Terence got there even if I hadn’t been there. And Terence, in a hurry to hire the boat, would still have gone off to Folly Bridge without ever meeting her. T.J. had said the system had self-correction capabilities.

And Verity was right. Princess Arjumand had been returned, the incongruity, if there even was one, had been repaired, and I should be resting and recovering, which meant food and sleep, in that order.

Terence was spreading out a blanket and putting tin plates and cups on it.

“What can I do to help?” I said, my mouth starting to water. When was the last time I’d eaten? A cup of tea and a rock cake at the Women’s Institute Victory Drive Sale of Work was all I could remember, and that was at least two days and fifty-two years ago.

He dug in the hamper and brought up a cabbage and a large lemon. “You can spread out the rugs. Two of us can sleep in the boat, the other on shore. And if you can find the silverware and the ginger beer, you can set them out.”

I went over and got the rugs and began spreading them out. The island was apparently owned by the churchwarden in Iffley. Signs were posted on virtually every tree and on a number of stakes pounded into the bank. “No Thoroughfare,” “Keep Off,” “Private Land,” “Trespassers Will Be Shot,” “Private Waters,” “No Boats,” “No Fishing,” “No Dumping,” “No Camping,” “No Picnicking,” “No Landing.”

I rummaged through Terence’s boxes and found an assortment of peculiar-looking utensils. I chose the ones which most closely resembled forks, spoons, and knives, and set them out.

“I’m afraid we’re rather roughing it,” Terence said. “I’d intended to stop for provisions along the way, so we’ve had to make do. Tell Professor Peddick dinner is served, such as it is.”

Cyril and I went and found Professor Peddick, who was leaning precariously over the water, and brought him back.

Terence’s idea of roughing it consisted of pork pie, veal pie, cold roast beef, a ham, pickles, pickled eggs, pickled beets, cheese, bread and butter, ginger beer, and a bottle of port. It was possibly the best meal I had ever had in my life.

Terence fed the last bits of roast beef to Cyril and picked up a tin. “Drat!” he said, “I’ve gone off and left the tin-opener behind, and here I’ve brought a tin of—”

“Pineapple,” I said, grinning.

“No,” he said, looking at the label, “peaches.” He bent over the hamper. “But there might be a tin of pineapple in here somewhere. Though I should imagine they’ll both taste about the same without a tin-opener.”

We could try opening it with the boathook, I thought, smiling to myself. That was what they’d done in Three Men in a Boat. And nearly killed George. It was his straw hat that had saved him.

“Perhaps we could open it with a pocket-knife,” Terence said.

“No,” I said. They had tried a pocket-knife before they tried the boathook. And a pair of scissors and the hitcher and a large rock. “We shall have to do without,” I said sagely.

“I say, Ned,” he said, “you haven’t a tin-opener in among your luggage, have you?”

Knowing Finch, I probably did. I unbent my legs, which had gotten stiff, went down to the willows, and started through the luggage.

The satchel had three collarless shirts, a set of formal evening clothes that were far too small for me, and a too-large bowler hat in it. It was a good thing I was only going on the river.

I tried the hamper. This was more promising. It held several large spoons and an assortment of utensils, including one with a blade like a scimitar and another with two long handles and a revolving barrel pierced with holes. It was possible one of these was a tin-opener. Or some sort of weapon.

Cyril came over to help.

“You don’t know what a tin-opener looks like, do you?” I said, holding up a flat grid affair at the end of a long handle.

Cyril looked in the satchel and then went over and sniffed at the covered basket.

“Is it in there?” I said, and unfastened the loop-and-peg arrangement that held the lid on, and opened the basket.

Princess Arjumand looked up at me with her gray eyes and yawned.

“Cats, it has been well said, will be cats, and there seems nothing to be done about it.”

P. G. Wodehouse

C H A P T E R  E I G H T

Pandora’s Box—Underwear as a Topic of Conversation in the Victorian Era—My Mistake—Commands Suitable for Use With a Cat—King John’s Mistake—Importance of a Good Night’s Sleep—Opening a Tin—Cat-Calls—A Swan—Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow—Hansel and Gretel—The Perfect End to a Perfect Day

“What are you doing here?” I said.

But it was obvious what she was doing here. Mr. Dunworthy had sent her through with me, and I was supposed to return her to Muchings End before her disappearance caused any consequences.

But I had been three days late and forty miles off. And too time-lagged to realize what I was supposed to do. And in the meantime, Mrs. Mering had gone to Oxford and consulted a medium, and Tossie had met Terence and Count de Vecchio, and Terence had missed meeting Maud.

And the incongruity hadn’t been repaired. It was right here, looking up at me.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said numbly.

The cat gazed up at me with its gray eyes. They had strange vertical pupils, like slits, and flecks of green in them. I had had no idea they had eyes that color. I had thought all cats had bright yellow eyes that glowed in the dark.

I had also thought dogs chased cats, but Cyril was simply sitting there, looking at me with an expression of utter betrayal.

“I didn’t know she was here,” I said defensively.

But how could I not have? What had I thought Finch would bring me in a basket—a covered basket!—at the last minute? A round of cheese? Why else would he have said he didn’t think sending me was a good idea because I was time-lagged?

Well, he was certainly right. I hadn’t even tumbled to it when Terence told me Tossie’d lost her cat. Or when Verity’d asked me where it was. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I could have given it to Verity to take back to Muchings End. Or to Tossie. I could have made some excuse to go back to the boat and then pretended I’d found it walking along the riverbank. If I’d known I’d had it. If I’d so much as thought to look in the luggage. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The cat was moving. She yawned and stretched delicately, extending one white paw. I leaned over the basket, trying to see her other feet. I couldn’t see anything but black fur.

A wild thought occurred to me. What if this wasn’t Princess Arjumand after all? Tossie had said it was black with a white face, but no doubt there had been hundreds or even thousands of white-faced black cats in 1888. They had had to drown kittens to keep the population down.

“Princess Arjumand?” I said tentatively.

There was no flicker of response in her gray eyes.

“Princess Arjumand,” I said more firmly, and she closed her eyes.

It wasn’t Princess Arjumand. It was the lock-keeper’s cat, or the church-warden’s, and it had crawled in the basket while we were in Iffley Church.

The cat yawned again, revealing a pink tongue and a lot of sharp little teeth, and stood up.

Cyril moved back like an ARP warden faced with an incendiary.

The cat stepped out of the basket and sauntered away on four white feet, her white-tipped tail in the air. She had white on her hindquarters as well, with rather the effect of pantaloons. Tossie hadn’t mentioned pantaloons, I thought hopefully, and then remembered this was the Victorian era. Well-bred people didn’t discuss pantaloons, or any sort of underwear, did they? And how many white-pawed cats were there who were likely to have stowed away in my luggage and then fastened the lid?

She was nearly out of the clearing.

“Wait!” I said. “Princess Arjumand!” and then remembered the proper command. “Stay,” I said firmly. “Stay.”

She kept walking.

“Come back here,” I said. “Stay. Stop. Whoa.”

She turned and looked curiously at me with her large gray eyes.

“That’s it,” I said, and began to advance slowly. “Good cat.”

She sat down on her haunches and began to lick her paw.

“Very good cat,” I said, moving forward. “Stay . . . stay . . . that’s it.”

She rubbed her paw delicately over her ear.

I was less than a foot away from her.

“Stay . . . good . . . stay . . . ,” I said and lunged for her.

She bounded lightly away and disappeared into the trees.

“I say, have you found it yet?” Terence called out from the direction of the riverbank.

I sat up, dusting off my elbows, and looked at Cyril. “Don’t you say a word.” I stood up.

Terence appeared, carrying the tin of peaches. “There you are,” he said. “Any luck?”

“None at all,” I said. I walked rapidly back to the luggage. “I mean, I haven’t finished looking through everything.”

I jammed the lid on the basket and opened the satchel, hoping fervently it didn’t contain any surprises. It didn’t. It contained a pair of lace-up boots that couldn’t have been more than a size five, a large spotted handkerchief, three fish forks, a large filigreed silver ladle, and a pair of escargot tongs. “Would this work?” I said, holding them up.

Terence was rummaging through the hamper. “I doubt . . . here it is,” he said, holding up the scimitar-looking object with the red handle. “Oh, you’ve brought Stilton. Excellent.” He went off, clutching the tin-opener and the cheese, and I went back over to the edge of the clearing.

There was no sign of the cat. “Here, Princess Arjumand,” I said, lifting up leaves to look under the bushes. “Here, girl.”

Cyril nosed at a bush, and a bird flew up.

“Come, cat,” I said. “Heel.”

“Ned! Cyril!” Terence called, and I dropped the branch with a rustle. “The kettle’s boiling!” He appeared, holding the opened tin of peaches. “What’s keeping you?”

“I thought I’d just tidy up a bit,” I said, sticking the escargot tongs in one of the boots, “get everything packed so we can make an early start.”

“You can do it after your dessert,” he said, taking me by the arm. “Come along now.”

He led us back to the campfire, Cyril looking warily from side to side, where Professor Peddick was pouring out tea into tin cups.

“Dum licet inter nos igitur laetemur amantes,” he said, handing me a cup. “The perfect end to a perfect day.”

Perfect. I’d failed to return the cat, kept Terence from meeting Maud, made it possible for him to get to Iffley to see Tossie, and who knew what else?

There was no use crying over spilt milk, even if that was an unfortunate metaphor, because it couldn’t be put back in the bottle, no matter how hard one tried, and what exactly would be a good metaphor? Opening Pandora’s box? Letting the cat out of the bag?

Whatever, there was no use crying over it, or thinking about what might have been. I had to get Princess Arjumand back to Muchings End as soon as possible, and before any more damage was done.

Verity had said to keep Terence away from Tossie, but she hadn’t known about the cat. I had to get it back to the site of its disappearance immediately. And the quickest way to do that was to tell Terence I’d found it. He’d be overjoyed. He’d insist on starting to Muchings End immediately.

But I didn’t want to create any more consequences, and Tossie might be so grateful to him for returning Princess Arjumand she’d fall in love with him instead of Mr. C. Or he might start wondering how the cat had got so far from home and insist on setting off after its kidnapper the way he had after the boat and end up going over a weir in the dark and drowning. Or drowning the cat. Or causing the Boer War.

I’d better keep the cat hidden until we got to Muchings End. If I could get it back in the basket. If I could find it.

“If we were to find Princess Arjumand,” I said, I hoped casually, “how would one go about catching her?”

“I shouldn’t think she’d need catching,” Terence said. “I should think she’d leap gratefully into our arms as soon as she saw us. She’s not used to fending for herself. From what Toss—Miss Mering told me, she’s had rather a sheltered life.”

“But suppose she didn’t. Would she come if you called her by name?”

Terence and the professor both stared at me in disbelief. “It’s a cat,” Terence said.

“So how would one set about catching her if she were frightened and wouldn’t come? Would one use a trap or—”

“I should think a bit of food would do it. She’s bound to be hungry,”

Terence said, staring out at the river. “Do you suppose she’s looking at the river as I am, ‘’mid the cool airs of Evening, as she trails her robes of gold through the dim halls of Night’?”

“Who?” I said, scanning the riverbank. “Princess Arjumand?”

“No,” Terence said irritably. “Miss Mering. Do you suppose she’s looking at this same sunset? And does she know, as I do, that we are fated to be together, like Lancelot and Guinevere?”

Another bad end, but nothing compared to the one we were all going to come to if I didn’t find that cat and get it back to Muchings End.

I stood up and began picking up plates. “We’d best clear things away and then get to bed so we can make an early start tomorrow.”

“Ned’s right,” Terence said to Professor Peddick, pulling himself reluctantly away from the river. “We’ll need to start early for Oxford.”

“Is Oxford necessary, do you think?” I said. “Professor Peddick could go with us down to Muchings End, and we could take him back later.”

Terence was looking at me disbelievingly.

“It would save two hours at the least, and there must be any number of historical sights along the river Professor Peddick could study,” I said, improvising. “Ruins and tombs and . . . Runnymede.” I turned to Professor Peddick. “I suppose it was blind forces that led to the signing of the Magna Carta.”

“Blind forces?” Professor Peddick said. “It was character that led to the Magna Carta. King John’s ruthlessness, the Pope’s slowness in acting, Archbishop Langton’s insistence on habeas corpus and the rule of law. Forces! I’d like to see Overforce explain the Magna Carta in terms of blind forces!” He drained his teacup and set it down decisively. “We must go to Runnymede!”

“But what about your sister and your niece?” Terence said.

“My scout can provide anything they need, and Maudie’s a resourceful girl. That was King John’s mistake, you know, going to Oxford. He should have stayed in London. The entire course of history might have been different. We won’t make that mistake,” he said, and picked up his fishing pole. “We shall go to Runnymede. Only thing to do.”

“But your sister and your niece won’t know where you’ve gone,” Terence said, frowning questioningly at me.

“He can send a telegram from Abingdon,” I said.

“Yes, a telegram,” Professor Peddick said and hobbled off toward the river.

Terence looked worriedly after him. “You don’t think he’ll slow us down?”

“Nonsense,” I said. “Runnymede’s down near Windsor. I can take him down in the boat while you’re at Muchings End with Miss Mering. We could be there by midday. You’d have time to wash up so you can look your best. We could stop at the Barley Mow,” I said, pulling the name of an inn out of Three Men in a Boat, “and you could have your trousers pressed and your shoes shined.”

And I can sneak out while you’re shaving and return the cat to Muchings End, I thought. If I can find the cat.

Terence still looked unconvinced. “It would save time, I suppose,” he said.

“Then it’s settled,” I said, scooping up the cloth and stuffing it into the hamper. “You wash the dishes and I’ll make up the beds.”

He nodded. “There’s only room for two of us in the boat. I’ll sleep by the fire.”

“No,” I said. “I will,” and went to get the rugs.

I spread all but two in the bottom of the boat and took the others into the clearing.

“Shouldn’t you put them near the fire?” Terence said, piling dishes up.

“No, my physician said I shouldn’t sleep near smoke,” I said.

While Terence rinsed the dishes, standing ankle-deep in the river with his trousers rolled up, I stole a lantern and a rope, wishing Professor Peddick had brought along a fishing net.

I should have asked Terence what sort of food cats ate. Some of the Stilton was left. Did cats like cheese? No, that was mice. Mice liked cheese. And cats liked mice. I doubted if we had any mice.

Milk. They were supposed to like milk. The woman running the coconut shy at the Harvest Fête had been complaining about a cat getting into the milk left on her doorstep. “Clawed the cap straight off,” she’d said. “Impudent creature.”

We hadn’t any milk, but there was a bit of cream left in the bottle. I pocketed it, a saucer, a tin of peas and one of potted meat, a heel of bread, and the tin-opener, and hid them in the clearing, and then went back to the campfire.

Terence was digging in the boxes. “Where has that lantern got to?” he said. “I know there were two in here.” He looked up at the sky. “It looks like rain. Perhaps you’d better sleep in the boat. It’ll be a bit crowded, but we can manage.”

“No!” I said. “My physician said river vapors were bad for my lungs,” a pathetic reason since I had just had my physician recommending a trip on the river for my health. “She said I should sleep inland.”

“Who?” Terence said, and I remembered too late that women hadn’t been physicians in Victorian England. Or solicitors or prime ministers.

“My physician. James Dunworthy. He said I should sleep inland and away from others.”

Terence straightened up, holding the lantern by its handle. “I know Dawson packed two. I watched him. I’ve no idea where it got to.”

He lit the lantern, removing the glass cover, striking a match, and adjusting the wick. I watched him carefully.

Professor Peddick came up, carrying the kettle with his two fish in it. “I must notify Professor Edelswein of my discovery. The Ugubio fluviatilis albinus was thought to be extinct in the Thames,” he said, peering at it in the near-darkness. “A beautiful specimen.” He set it down on the hamper and got out his pipe again.

“Shouldn’t we be going to bed?” I said. “Early start and all that?”

“Quite right,” he said, opening his tobacco pouch. “A good night’s sleep can be critical. The Greeks at Salamis had had a good night’s sleep the night before.” He filled his pipe and tamped the tobacco down with his thumb. Terence took out his pipe. “The Persians, on the other hand, had spent the night at sea, positioning their ships to prevent the Greeks from escaping.” He lit his pipe and sucked on it, trying to light it.

“Exactly, and the Persians were routed,” I said. “We don’t want that to happen to us. So.” I stood up. “To bed.”

“The Saxons, too, at the Battle of Hastings,” Professor Peddick said, handing his tobacco pouch to Terence. They both sat down. “William the Conqueror’s men were rested and ready for battle, while the Saxons had been on the march for eleven days. If Harold had waited and allowed his men to rest, he would have won the Battle of Hastings, and the whole course of history might have been changed.”

And if I didn’t get the cat back, ditto.

“Well, we don’t want to lose any battles on the morrow,” I said, trying again, “so we’d best get to bed.”

“Individual action,” Professor Peddick said, puffing on his pipe. “That’s what lost the Battle of Hastings. The Saxons had the advantage, you know. They were drawn up on a ridge. Being on a defended height is the greatest military advantage an army can have. Look at Wellington’s army at Waterloo. And the battle of Fredericksburg in the American Civil War. The Union army lost twelve thousand men at Fredericksburg, marching across an open plain to a defended height. And England was a richer country, fighting on their own home ground. If economic forces are what drives history, the Saxons should have won. But it wasn’t forces that won the Battle of Hastings. It was character. William the Conqueror changed the course of the battle at at least two critical points. The first came when William was unhorsed during a charge.”

Cyril lay down and began to snore.

“If William had not gotten immediately to his feet and pushed back his helmet so that his men could see that he was alive, the battle would have been lost. How does Overforce fit that into his theory of natural forces? He can’t! Because history is character, as is proved by the second crisis point of the battle.”

It was a full hour before they knocked the tobacco out of their pipes and started down to the boat. Halfway there, Terence turned and came back. “Perhaps you’d better take the lantern,” he said, holding it out to me, “since you’re sleeping on shore.”

“I’ll be perfectly all right,” I said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said, starting down to the boat again. “ ‘Night is the time for rest.’ ” He waved to me. “ ‘How sweet when labors close, To gather round an aching breast the curtain of repose.’ ”

Yes, well, it would be, but I had a cat to find first. I went back to the clearing to wait for everyone to go to sleep, trying not to think about how every moment the cat was loose the number of consequences multiplied exponentially.

It might have been eaten by a wolf. Did Victorian England have wolves? Or found by an old woman in a cottage and taken in. Or picked up by a passing boat.

The locks are closed, I told myself, and it’s only a cat. How much of an effect on history can an animal have?

A big one. Look at Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus, and “the little gentleman in the black fur coat” who’d killed King William the Third when his horse stepped in the mole’s front door. And Richard the Third standing on the field at Bosworth and shouting, “My kingdom for a horse!” Look at Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. And Dick Whittington’s cat.

I waited half an hour and then cautiously lit the lantern. I took the tins out from their hiding place and pulled the tin-opener out of my pocket. And tried to open them.

It was definitely a tin-opener. Terence had said it was. He’d opened the peaches with it. I poked at the lid with the point of the scimitar and then with the side of it. I poked at it with the other, rounded edge.

There was a space between the two. Perhaps one fit on the outside of the tin as a sort of lever for the other. Or perhaps it went in from the side. Or the bottom. Or perhaps I was holding it the wrong way round, and the scimitar thing was the handle.

That resulted in a hole in the palm of my hand, not exactly the idea. I rummaged through the satchel for a handkerchief to wrap round it.

All right, look at the thing logically. The point of the scimitar had to be the part that went through the tin. And it had to go through the lid. Perhaps there was a specific place in the lid where it fit. I examined the lid for weaknesses. It hadn’t any.

“Why did the Victorians have to make everything so bloody complicated?” I said and saw a flicker of light at the near edge of the clearing.

“Princess Arjumand?” I said softly, holding up the lantern, and I had been right about one thing. Cats’ eyes did glow in the dark. Two were shining yellowly at me from the bushes.

“Here, cat,” I said, holding out the heel of bread and making “tsk”ing noises. “I’ve got some food for you. Come here.”

The glowing eyes blinked and then disappeared. I stuck the bread in my pocket and started carefully for the edge of the clearing. “Here, cat. I’ll take you home. You want to go home, don’t you?”

Silence. Well, not exactly silence. Frogs croaked, leaves rustled, and the Thames made a peculiar gurgling sound as it flowed past. But no cat sounds. And what sounds did cats make? Since all the cats I’d ever seen had been asleep, I wasn’t sure. Meowing sounds. Cats meowed.

“Meow,” I said, lifting branches to look under the bushes. “Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.”

There the eyes were again, past that thicket. I set off through it, dropping bread crumbs as I went. “Meow?” I said, swinging the lantern slowly from side to side. “Princess Arjumand?” and nearly tripped over Cyril.

He wagged his nether half happily.

“Go back and sleep with your master,” I hissed. “You’ll just get in the way.”

He immediately lowered his flat nose to the ground and began snuffling in circles.

“No!” I whispered. “You’re not a bloodhound. You haven’t even got a nose. Go back to the boat.” I pointed toward the river.

He stopped snuffling and looked up at me with bloodshot eyes that could have been a bloodhound’s and an expression that clearly said, “Please.”

“No,” I said firmly. “Cats don’t like dogs.”

He began snuffling again, what passed for his nose earnestly to the ground.

“All right, all right, you can come with me,” I said, since it was obvious he was going to anyway. “But stay with me.”

I went back into the clearing, poured the cream into a bowl, and got the rope and some matches. Cyril watched interestedly.

I held the lantern aloft. “ ‘The game’s afoot, Watson,’ ” I said, and we set off into the wilderness.

It was very dark, and along with the frogs, river, and leaves were assorted slitherings and rattlings and hoots. The wind picked up, and I sheltered the lantern with my hand, thinking what a wonderful invention the pocket torch was. It gave off a powerful light, and one could point the beam in any direction. The lantern’s light I could only direct by holding it up or down. It did give off a warm, wavering circle of light, but its only function seemed to be to make the area outside said circle as black as pitch.

“Princess Arjumand?” I called at intervals, and “Here, cat,” and “Yoo hoo.” I dropped bread crumbs as I went, and periodically I set the dish of cream down in front of a likely looking bush and waited.

Nothing. No glowing eyes. No meows. The night got darker and damper, as if it might rain.

“Do you see any sign of her, Cyril?” I asked.

We trudged on. The place had looked quite civilized this afternoon, but now it seemed to be all thornbushes and tangled underbrush and sinister clawlike branches. The cat could be anywhere.

There. Down by the river. A flash of white.

“Come on, Cyril,” I whispered and started toward the river.

There it was again, in the midst of some rushes, unmoving. Perhaps she was asleep.

“Princess Arjumand?” I said and reached through the reeds to pick her up. “There you are, you naughty thing.”

The white suddenly rose up, revealing a long, curving neck.

“Squaw-w-w!” it said, and exploded into a huge white flapping. I dropped the dish with a splash.

“It’s a swan, I said unnecessarily. A swan. One of the ancient beauties of the Thames, floating serenely along the banks with their snowy feathers and their long graceful necks. “I’ve always wanted to see one,” I said to Cyril.

He wasn’t there.

“Squaww-w-w-k!” the swan said and unfolded its wings to an impressive width, obviously irritated at being awakened.

“Sorry,” I said, backing away. “I thought you were a cat.”

“Hiss-s-s-s!” it said, and started for me at a run.

Nothing in all those “O swan” poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.

I finally managed to escape by crashing through a thicket of some thorny variety, climbing halfway up a tree, and kicking at its beak with my foot until it waddled back to the river, muttering threats and imprecations.

I waited fifteen minutes, in case it was a trick, and then climbed down and began examining my wounds. Most of them were to the rear and difficult to see. I twisted round trying to see if there was blood, and saw Cyril, coming out from behind a tree, looking shamefaced.

“A rout,” I said. “Just like the Persians. Harris had trouble with swans. In Three Men in a Boat,” I said, wishing I’d remembered that chapter before now. “They tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat.”

I picked up the lantern, which, amazingly, had fallen in an upright position when I dropped it. “If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”

We set off again, staying away from the river and keeping a wary eye out for patches of white.

Polly Vaughn’s boyfriend had killed her because he mistook her for a swan in the old poem. She’d been wearing a white apron, and he thought she was a swan and shot her with an arrow. I could sympathize completely. In future, I’d shoot first and ask questions later, too.

The night got darker and damper, and the bushes thornier. There were no patches of white or shining eyes and scarcely any sounds. When I dropped the last of the bread and called, “Here, cat!” my voice echoed in the black, empty stillness.

I had to face it, the cat was long gone, to starve to death in the wilderness or be murdered by an irate swan or be found in the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s daughter and change the course of history. Cyril and I weren’t going to find her.

As if in confirmation, the lantern began to smoke. “It’s no use, Cyril,” I said. “She’s gone. Let’s go back to camp.”

That was easier said than done. I had been paying more attention to finding the cat than to the way we had come, and all thickets look alike.

I held the lantern close to the ground, looking for the trail of bread crumbs I’d left, and then remembered Hansel and Gretel were another couple who had come to a bad end.

“Show me the way, Cyril,” I said hopefully, and he looked around alertly and then sat down.

The thing to do, of course, was to follow the river, but there was the possibility of swans to be considered, and surely the wolves hadn’t eaten all the bread crumbs. I set off in a likely looking direction.

Half an hour later it began to drizzle, and the leaf-strewn ground turned wet and slick. We slogged on like Saxons who’d been marching for eleven days. And were about to lose England.

I had lost the cat. I had wasted hours of precious time, unaware I had her, and then let her get away. I had gone off with a total stranger, made Terence miss a possibly important meeting and . . .

A thought occurred to me. I had gone off with Terence, and we had shown up at exactly the right moment to save Professor Peddick from a watery grave. Would that have happened if Terence had met Maud, or had he been meant not to meet her so that he would be in the right place at the right time to save his tutor? Or was Professor Peddick supposed to drown, and I had the rescuing of him to add to my list of transgressions?

But if it was a transgression, I couldn’t make myself feel too guilty about it. I was glad he hadn’t drowned, even though he had complicated my life significantly, and I began to understand how Verity felt about rescuing the cat.

The cat, which was lost somewhere out in the rain. Like Cyril and I were. I had no idea where we were, I knew I had never seen a row of trees like that, or a tangle of thickets like that. I stopped and then started back the way we had come.

And there was the boat. And the clearing. And my bedroll.

Cyril saw it first and made a dash for it, wriggling happily, and then stopped dead. I hoped the swan hadn’t taken up residence in it.

It hadn’t. There, curled up in the middle of the rugs, sound asleep, was Princess Arjumand.

“In the little grey cells of the brain lies the solution of every history.”

Hercule Poirot

C H A P T E R  N I N E

My First Night in the Victorian Era—Crowding—Snoring—Rain—Importance of Weather to the Course of History—Pneumonia—The Cat Is Missing—An Early Start—Professor Peddick’s Double-Gilled Blue Chub Is Missing—Abingdon—Rowing Advice—Professor Peddick Is Missing—Souvenirs—The Telegram’s Sent—A Tardy Departure

My first night in the Victorian era was not exactly what the nurse in Infirmary had had in mind. Or what I’d had in mind, for that matter. It was a good deal less comfortable than I’d imagined, and a great deal more crowded.

I had intended to put Princess Arjumand back in the basket, with a strong lock and some rocks on the lid for good measure. But when I’d picked her carefully up, watching out for claws and sudden moves, she’d snuggled cozily into my arms. I carried her over to the basket and knelt down to deposit her. She looked up appealingly at me and began to hum.

I had read of cats purring, but I had always imagined it as more of a low growl, or perhaps a sort of static. This had nothing unfriendly or electromagnetic about it, and I found myself apologizing. “I have to put you in the basket,” I said, petting her awkwardly. “I can’t run the risk of your running away again. The universe is at stake.”

The hum increased, and she laid a paw beseechingly on my hand. I carried her back over to the bed. “She’ll have to be in the basket all day tomorrow,” I said to Cyril, who had settled down in the middle of the rugs. “And I don’t think she’ll run away now that she knows me.”

Cyril looked unimpressed.

“She was frightened before,” I said. “She’s quite tame now.”

Cyril snorted.

I sat down on the rugs and took off my wet shoes, still holding the cat against me, and then tried to get into bed. Easier said than done. Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. “Move over!” I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. “Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed.”

Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms.

Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint “oof,” and kneading her claws in my leg.

Cyril shoved and shoved again, until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam’s apple. Cyril shoved some more.

An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again. Eventually both of them wore themselves out and fell asleep, and I lay there and worried about what Verity was going to say when she found out I had the cat and about the rain.

What if it rained all day tomorrow and we couldn’t go to Muchings End? The weather had affected how many turning points of history, starting with the heavenly wind, the kamikaze that had destroyed the Kublai Khan’s fleet when it tried to invade Japan in the thirteenth century?

Gales had scattered the Spanish Armada, a blizzard had determined the outcome of the battle of Towton, fog had diverted the Lusitania into the path of a German U-boat, and a low-pressure front over the forest of Ardennes had nearly lost the Battle of the Bulge for the Allies in World War II.

Even good weather could affect history. The Luftwaffe’s raid on Coventry had been successful because of cold, clear weather and a full “bomber’s moon.”

Weather and its sidekick, disease. What if Professor Peddick caught cold from sleeping in the rain and had to be taken back to Oxford tomorrow? The United States President William Henry Harrison had caught cold standing in the rain at his inauguration and died of pneumonia a month later. Peter the Great had caught cold while sighting a ship and died within a week. And not just colds. Henry the Fifth had died of dysentery, and as a result the English lost everything they’d gained at Agincourt. The undefeatable Alexander the Great was defeated by malaria, and the face of the whole continent of Asia changed. To say nothing of the Black Death.

Weather, disease, changes in climate, shifts in the earth’s crust—Professor Overforce’s blind forces—all were factors in history whether Professor Peddick would admit it or not.

The problem, of course, as in so many wars, was that Professor Overforce and Professor Peddick were both right. They were just a century too early for chaos theory, which would have incorporated both their ideas. History was indeed controlled by blind forces, as well as character and courage and treachery and love. And accident and random chance. And stray bullets and telegrams and tips. And cats.

But it was also stable. I remembered distinctly T.J. saying that, and Mr. Dunworthy saying that if the incongruity had done any damage it would have shown up by now. Which meant that the cat had been returned to its original space-time location before it had caused any long-lasting consequences.

Or, the other possibility was that the cat’s disappearance hadn’t affected anything, but I knew that wasn’t true. It had made me make Terence miss meeting Maud. And I wasn’t taking any chances. I intended to return the cat to Muchings End as quickly as possible, which meant getting us on the river in the morning as quickly as possible.

Which meant it couldn’t rain. It had rained at Waterloo, turning the roads to an impossible muck and bogging down the artillery. It had rained at Crécy, soaking the archers’ bowstrings. It had rained at Agincourt.

Somewhere in the midst of worrying about the rain at the Battle of Midway, I must have fallen asleep, because I woke with a jerk to the gray light of dawn. It had stopped raining and the cat was gone.

I leaped up in my stocking feet and flung the rugs aside, trying to see if she was hidden in them somewhere, disturbing Cyril, who whuffled and rolled over.

“Cyril!” I said. “The cat’s gone! Did you see where she went?”

Cyril shot me a look that clearly said, I told you so, and subsided among the covers.

“Help me look for her!” I said, yanking the rug out from under him.

I fumbled with my shoes. “Princess Arjumand!” I whispered frantically, “Where are you? Princess Arjumand!” and she strolled into the clearing, treading daintily on the wet grass.

“Where have you been?” I said. “I should have shut you in the basket!”

She sauntered past me to the disordered bed, lay down next to Cyril, and went to sleep.

I wasn’t going to take a second chance. I got the carpetbag and emptied out the shirts and the escargot tongs. Then I got the fileting knife out of the hamper and made several short slashes in its sides with the point, making sure they went all the way through the lining. I arranged the too-small tweed jacket in the bottom for a nest and stuck the saucer next to it.

Princess Arjumand didn’t even wake up when I put her in the carpetbag and closed the clasp. Perhaps Verity was right, and she was suffering from time-lag. I jammed the clothes in the portmanteau, and rolled up all but one of the rugs, which Cyril was on.

“Rise and shine, Cyril,” I said. “Time to get up. We need to make an early start.”

Cyril opened an eye and stared at me disbelievingly.

“Breakfast,” I said, and, carrying the carpetbag, went down to the remains of the campfire. I gathered wood, laid the fire, and lit it like an old hand, and then looked through Terence’s luggage till I found a map of the river, and sat down by the fire to plot our trip.

The map was an accordion-style which folded out to portray the full winding length of the Thames, which I certainly hoped we didn’t have to cover. I had learned to read maps when I was an undergraduate, but this one suffered from a wealth of details: it not only listed villages, locks, islands, and all the distances between, but weirs, shallows, canals, towpaths, historic sights, and recommended fishing spots. I decided I’d better keep it out of Professor Peddick’s hands.

It also provided an assortment of editorial comments, such as “one of the most charming views along the river” and “a rather difficult current just here,” with the result that it was difficult to find the river in amongst all the wordage. Terence had said Muchings End was just below Streatley, but I couldn’t find either.

I finally found Runnymede, which was listed as “the historical site of the signing of the Magna Carta, not, as certain river people would have you believe, the stone on Magna Carta Island. Good bream deeps. Poor for gudgeon, dace, and jack.”

I worked my way up from Runnymede to Streatley, marked its place with my finger, and looked for Iffley. There it was:  “Quaint mill, which people come from miles about to see, 12th cent. church, middling chub.” We were halfway between Iffley and Abingdon, and twenty-three miles from Streatley.

Allowing half an hour for breakfast, we’d be on the river by six. We could easily be there in nine hours, even allowing for Professor Peddick to stop along the way and send a telegram to his sister. With luck, we’d have the cat back to the place where it had disappeared by three, and the incongruity corrected by five.

“We can easily be there by teatime,” I told Cyril, folding the map up. I put it back in Terence’s bag and got eggs, a slab of streaky bacon, and the skillet out of the hamper.

The birds began to sing, and the sun came up, streaking the water and the sky with ribbons of rosy-pink. The river flowed serene and golden within its leafy banks, denying incongruities—the placid mirror of a safe, untroubled world, of a grand and infinite design.

Cyril was looking up at me with an expression that clearly said, “Exactly how time-lagged are you?”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night,” I said. “Thanks to you. Come along.”

I put the kettle on, sliced bacon, broke eggs into the skillet, and went down to the boat to wake Terence and his tutor up, banging on a pot lid with the Stilton spoon. “Time to get up,” I said. “Breakfast’s on.”

“Good Lord,” Terence said groggily, fumbling for his pocket watch. “What time is it?”

“Half-past five,” I said. “You wanted to make an early start to be at Muchings End by teatime. Miss Mering, remember?”

“Oh,” he said, and shot up out of the blankets. “You’re right. Wake up, Professor Peddick.”

“ ‘Morn, wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand unbarr’d the gates of light,’ ” Professor Peddick said from the stern, blinking sleepily.

I left them and ran back up to check on the eggs and the cat. She was sleeping soundly. And soundlessly, which was even better. I set the carpetbag over with the luggage and began dishing up the eggs.

“At this rate, we’ll be on the river by six,” I told Cyril, feeding him a strip of streaky bacon. “We’ll be through the lock by half-past, we’ll stop in Abingdon so the professor can send his telegram, we’ll be to Clifton Hampden by eight, Day’s Lock by nine, and to Reading by ten.”

By ten we were still in Abingdon.

It had taken us two hours to load the luggage, which seemed to have expanded, and then, at the last minute, Professor Peddick discovered his double-gilled blue chub was missing.

“Perhaps an animal got it,” Terence said, and I had a good idea which animal.

“I must catch another specimen,” Professor Peddick said, unloading the fishing pole and tackle.

“There isn’t time,” Terence said, “and you’ve still got your albino gudgeon.”

Yes, I thought, and it had better be put under lock and key, or an animal might get it, and we’d never get to Muchings End.

“We need to start, sir, if we intend to make Runnymede by tomorrow,” Terence said.

“ ‘Non semper temeritas es felix,’ ” the professor said, selecting a fly from his box. “ ‘Rashness is not always fortunate.’ Remember, if Harold had not rushed foolishly into the fray, he would have won the battle of Hastings.” He meticulously tied the fly to his line. “Early morning is not the best time for chub,” he said, making practice casts. “They do not usually rise before late afternoon.”

Terence groaned and looked beseechingly at me.

“If we leave now, we can be to Pangbourne by late afternoon,” I said. I unfolded the map. “It says the Thames at Pangbourne has long been a favorite spot of the angler. It is a perfect spot for barbel.” I read aloud, “Superior perch, roach, and gudgeon. Plenty of dace and chub. The weir stream is famous for large trout.”

“At Pangbourne, you say?” Professor Peddick said.

“Yes,” I lied. “It says, ‘There are more fish of every kind at this spot on the Thames than at any other.’ ”

That did it. He got in the boat.

“Thank you,” Terence mouthed and pushed off before he could change his mind.

I looked at my pocket watch. Twenty past VIII. Later than I’d hoped, but we could still be to Muchings End by five if things went well.

They didn’t. Abingdon Lock was closed, and it took us a quarter of an hour to wake up the lock-keeper, who took it out on us by letting the water out of the lock at a trickle. In the meantime, the rearward stack of luggage had overbalanced, and we had to stop twice and tie it into place.

The second time Professor Peddick announced, “Do you see those water lilies? And that swift-moving current near the bank? Perfect for barbel,” and clambered out of the boat before we could stop him.

“There isn’t time,” Terence said helplessly.

“Pangbourne,” I reminded him.

“Pshaw,” he said, and I would have been impressed at yet another Victorian exclamation if I hadn’t had the carpetbag and the fate of the universe to worry about. “There can’t be a more perfect spot than this.”

Terence took out his pocket watch and looked despairingly at it. What would get him moving? The Battle of Hastings? Salamis? Runnymede?

“This is how I’ve always pictured Runnymede,” I said, waving my hand at the meadow beside us, “the mist rising from the fields as King John and his men rode in. Where do you think the actual signing took place? Runnymede or Magna Carta Island?”

“Runnymede,” he said. “The King is proved to have spent the night in Staines and ridden to the field in the morning.”

“Ah,” I said. “I believe Professor Overforce makes an extremely convincing case for Magna Carta Island.”

“For Magna Carta Island?” he said disbelievingly.

“Extremely convincing,” Terence said. “It goes along with his theory of history being the result of natural forces.”

“Balderdash!” Professor Peddick said and flung the fishing pole down.

Terence snatched it up and stuck it in the boat.

“Convincing case?” Professor Peddick steamed. “There is undisputable evidence that the signing took place in Runnymede.” He climbed in the boat. I grabbed up the rope and cast off. “What sort of convincing case? There were far too many barons and lords to fit on the island, and King John was far too suspicious to let himself be in a situation with no avenue of escape. Natural forces!”

And so on till we reached Abingdon.

It was a quarter past nine by the time we got through the lock and up to the village.

Professor Peddick went off to send his telegram, and Terence went into the village to buy bread and sliced meat so we wouldn’t have to stop and cook lunch.

“And a bottle of milk,” I called after him. As soon as they were out of sight, I opened the carpetbag and checked on Princess Arjumand.

Still sleeping. I left the carpetbag open, set it between my knees, and took up the oars. Terence had done all the rowing this far, but he couldn’t keep it up all day, not if we were going to make good time. And rowing was rowing. It couldn’t be all that different from supraskims. Except that the oars were a good deal heavier. And less balanced. When I pulled back on them, nothing happened.

I sat up straight on the seat, braced my feet, spit on my hands, and yanked back on the oars.

This time something happened. The right oar came out of the water, the oar handles banged together violently, smashing my knuckles, the left oar came unshipped, and the boat swung around and headed straight for the stone wall of the bridge.

I scrambled to get the oar back in its oarlock and both of them in the water before we hit the bridge, banging my knuckles together again in the process, and bringing us up against the bank.

Cyril stood up and waddled over to the bank side of the boat, as if preparing to abandon ship.

All right, third time’s a charm. I managed to push the boat away from the bank with an oar, get it out in the current, and tried again, watching to make sure the handles didn’t hit me on the knuckles. They didn’t. The left one swung up and hit me on the nose.

But on the fourth try, I got it, though rather clumsily, and after a few minutes I had mastered the fundamentals. I took the boat out across the current and then under the bridge and back again, rowing smartly and with a good deal of dash.

“No, no!” Terence said behind me. “Not like that. Throw your weight onto the sculls at the beginning of the stroke.”

I looked back at him, standing on the bank, and both oars came out of the water and smacked me on the hand.

“Don’t look back! Watch where you’re going!” Terence shouted, which struck me as a bit unfair. “One hand over the other. Keep the trim. No, no, no!” he shouted, gesticulating with the bread in one hand and the milk bottle in the other. “Get forward. Open your knees. Keep her head out. Remember your seat.”

There is nothing more helpful than shouted instructions, particularly incomprehensible ones. I did my best to follow the ones I could understand, which consisted of, “Open your knees,” and was rewarded by Terence shouting, “No, no, no! Bring your knees together! Feather! You’ll catch a crab! Head up!”

But eventually I got the hang of it and, keeping the trim, head up, weight on the sculls, knees open and closed, and keeping my seat fully in mind, I rowed back across to him.

“Slow and steady,” Terence said as I brought the boat neatly up to the dock. “That’s it. Very good. All you need’s practice.”

“Which I should have plenty of opportunity to get,” I said, taking the milk bottle from him and sticking it in my pocket. “Let’s go. Where’s Professor Peddick?”

Terence looked round as if expecting to see him. “He hasn’t come back from the telegraph office?”

“No,” I said, climbing out and tying up the boat. “We’d best go look for him.”

“One of us had best stay here with the boat,” Terence said, looking severely at Cyril. “In case he comes back.”

“Excellent idea,” I said. While he was gone, I could check on the cat again and perhaps let it out.

“You should be the one to go,” Terence said. “You’re better at history.” He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at it.

I took advantage of his distraction to pick up the carpetbag and hide it behind my back.

“Ten o’clock,” he said, snapping the watch shut savagely. “I should have insisted on taking him home the moment we pulled him in.”

“There wasn’t time,” I said. “Besides, you said yourself there’s no stopping him if he’s determined.”

He nodded gloomily. “He’s an unstoppable force. Like William the Conqueror. History is the individual.” He sighed. “By the time we get there, she’ll already be engaged.”

“Engaged? To whom?” I said, hoping she’d mentioned other suitors and that one of them was the required Mr. C.

“I don’t know to whom,” he said. “A girl like Tossie—Miss Mering probably gets a dozen proposals a day. Where is he? We’ll never get to Muchings End at this rate.”

“Of course we will,” I said. “It’s Fate, remember? Romeo and Juliet, Héloïse and Abelard?”

“Fate,” Terence said. “But what a cruel Fate, that keeps me from her even for a day!” He turned to gaze dreamily downriver, and I escaped with the carpetbag.

Cyril trotted after me. “You stay here, Cyril,” I said firmly, and the three of us set off into the village.

I had no idea where the telegraph office might be or what one looked like, but there were only two shops. A greengrocer’s and a shop with fishing gear and flower vases in the window. I tried the fishing shop first. “Where can I send a telegram?” I asked a smiling old woman in a mobcap. She looked just like the sheep in Through the Looking Glass.

“Out for a trip on the river?” she said. “I’ve lovely plates with views of Iffley Mill painted on them. They’re inscribed, ‘Happy Memories of the Thames.’ Are you heading upriver or down?”