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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Japan?” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For want of a cart. Or a cat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, no. Not the child. The cat.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, sir,” she said politely.

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

“In what?” she said.

“In the boat,” Terence said.

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

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

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

“Who? Mr. Henry?” Terence said.

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

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

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

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

The cat slumbered on.

“Who was in the boat?” I said.

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

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