To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER FOUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, Auntie.

“And told him the time, I hope?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, perhaps not completely cured.

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

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

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

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

Or a shopping center, I thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Great Western, madam.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They were both elderly?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shook it. “Ned Henry,” I said.

“What college are you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” I said. “That’s Canterbury.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Hasn’t Cyril any money?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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