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—”