To Say Nothing of the Dog

CHAPTER NINE

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?”

Neither, I thought. “Down,” I said. “Where is the telegraph office?”

“Down,” she said delightedly. “Then you’ve already seen it. Lovely, isn’t it?” She handed me a fringed yellow satin pillow with the mill and “Souvenir of Iffley” stencilled on it.

I handed it back. “Very nice. Where can I send a telegram?”

“From the postal office, but I always think it’s so much nicer to send a letter, don’t you?” She whipped out writing paper. Each sheet had “Greetings from Abingdon,” inscribed on the top. “Ha’pence a sheet and a penny for the envelope.”

“No, thank you. Where did you say the postal office was?”

“Just down the street. Opposite the abbey gate. Have you seen it? We’ve got a lovely replica of it. Or perhaps you’d like one of our china dogs. Handpainted. Or we’ve some lovely penwipers.”

I ended up buying a china bulldog that bore no resemblance to Cyril — or to a poodle for that matter — to get away, and sought out the gate and the postal office.

Professor Peddick wasn’t there, and the mobcapped old woman behind the counter didn’t know if he had been. “My husband’s gone home for his dinner. He’ll be back in an hour. Out for a trip on the river, are you?” she said, and tried to sell me a vase with a picture of Iffley Mill painted on it.

He hadn’t been in the greengrocer’s either. I bought a souvenir tooth glass inscribed “Holiday Greetings from the River Thames.” “Have you any salmon?” I asked.

“We do,” yet another mobcapped old woman said and set a tin on the counter.

“I meant fresh,” I said.

“You can catch it yourself,” she said. “Abingdon’s got the best fishing on the entire river,” and tried to sell me a pair of rubber fishing waders.

I came out of the shop and said to Cyril, who had been waiting patiently outside each door, “Where to now?”

Abingdon had been built around a mediaeval abbey. The ruins, including the granary and a croft, were still there, and they seemed like the likeliest places for Professor Peddick to be, but he wasn’t there. Or in the cloisters.

Neither was anyone else. I knelt down next to the cloister wall, set the bottle of milk on a stone, and opened the carpetbag.

Cyril sat down, looking disapproving.

“Princess Arjumand?” I said, lifting her out. “Want some breakfast?”

I set her down, and she walked a few feet across the grass and then took off like a shot and disappeared round the corner of a wall.

I told you so, Cyril said.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Go after her,” I said.

Cyril continued sitting.

He had a point. Our chasing after her in the woods hadn’t been a roaring success. “Well, what do you suggest then?”

He lay down, his muzzle against the milk bottle, and it wasn’t a bad idea. I got the saucer out of the carpetbag and poured some milk into it. “Here, cat,” I called, setting it out in front of the wall. “Breakfast!”

As I say, it wasn’t a bad idea. It did not, however, work. Neither did searching the ruins. Or the town square. Or the streets of half-timbered houses.

“You knew what cats were like,” I said to Cyril. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

But it was my fault. I had let her out, and she was probably on her way to London this morning to meet Gladstone and cause the fall of Mafeking.

We had come to the outskirts of the village. The road petered out and ended in a hay field crisscrossed with narrow streams.

“Perhaps she’s gone back to the boat,” I said hopefully to Cyril, but he wasn’t listening. He was looking at a dirt path leading off toward a bridge over a narrow stream.

And there by the bridge was Professor Peddick, knee-deep in the stream with his trousers rolled up, holding a large net. Behind him on the bank was a tin kettle with water in it and, no doubt, fish. And Princess Arjumand.

“Stay here,” I said to Cyril. “I mean it,” and crept up on the crouched cat, wishing I’d had the foresight to buy a net.

Princess Arjumand crept toward the kettle, her white paws silent in the grass, and the professor, as intent as the cat, stooped and lowered the net slowly toward the water. Princess Arjumand peered into the kettle and stuck her paw experimentally into the water.

I pounced, clapping the open carpetbag over her and scooping her up like the fish she was after. So did Professor Peddick, bringing the net down and up again with a wriggling fish in it.

“Professor Peddick!” I said. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Stickleback,” he said, extracting the fish from the net and tossing it in the kettle. “Excellent pitches for trout along here.”

“Terence sent me to fetch you,” I said, extending a hand to help him up the bank. “He’s anxious to get on to Pangbourne.”

“‘Qui non vult fieri desidiosus amet,’ ” he said. “Ovid. ‘Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love,’ ” but he climbed out and sat down on the bank and put his shoes and socks back on. “Pity he never met my niece, Maudie. He’d have liked her.”

I picked up the tin kettle and the net. It had “Souvenir of the River Thames,” printed on the handle. Cyril was still sitting where I’d told him to stay. “Good boy!” I said, and he galloped over and crashed into my knees. Water slopped out of the kettle.

Professor Peddick stood up. “Onward. The day’s half over,” he said, and set off briskly for the village.

“You did send your telegram?” I asked him as we passed the postal office.

He put his hand inside his coat and pulled out two yellow slips. “The abbey has some small historical interest,” he said, sticking them back inside his coat. “It was pillaged by Cromwell’s men during the Protectorate.” He stopped at the gate. “There’s a Fifteenth-Century gateway here you should see.”

“I understand Professor Overforce considers the Protectorate a result of natural forces,” I said, and steered him, ranting, down to the dock where an old woman in a mobcap was trying to sell Terence a mug with a picture of Boulter’s Lock on the side.

“Such a nice reminder of your trip downriver,” she said. “Each time you take your tea, you’ll think of this day.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Terence said, and to me, “Where have you been?”

“Fishing,” I said. I climbed in the boat, set the carpetbag down, and reached out my hand to help Professor Peddick, who was bent over his kettle of fish, peering at them through his pince-nez.

“He did send his telegram, didn’t he?” Terence said to me.

I nodded. “I saw the yellow slips.”

Cyril had lain down on the quay and was deep in slumber. “Come along, Cyril,” I said. “Professor? Tempus fugit!”

“Do you know how late it is?” Terence said, waving his pocket watch in front of my nose. “Drat! It’s nearly eleven.”

I sat down at the oars and put the carpetbag between my knees. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s all clear sailing from here.”