To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?” I said weakly.

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

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

“Not at all,” Terence said.

Cyril growled again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Turn it to starboard,” Terence said impatiently.

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

The duck squawked and flapped its wings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Princess Arjumand?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you didn’t find the cat?”

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

“Muchings End?” I said.

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

“A medium?” I said weakly.

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

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

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

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

“Terence,” I said. “I’m afraid I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Lord, I thought, it is Darwin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Drowning,” Professor Peddick said.

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

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

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

“By that murderous villain Overforce.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actually, I thought, they were utterly important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And love,” Terence said.

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

“In the water?” I said blankly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.