“Married?” I said. The woman on the platform had talked about someone getting married.

“In spite of my sister’s best efforts. Met him at church. Classic example of individual action. History is character. She brought my niece instead.”

“Your niece?” I said.

“Lovely girl.” He brought up a slimy piece of trailing brown grass. “Wonderful at labelling specimens. Too bad you weren’t there to meet them when they arrived so you could have met her.”

“I was, but they weren’t there,” Terence said.

“You’re certain?” Professor Peddick said, handing the grass to me. “Maudie’s letter was quite clear about the time.” He patted his coat pockets.

“Maudie?” I said, hoping I’d misheard.

“Named after her poor dear mother, Maud,” he said, looking through his pockets. “Would have made a good naturalist if she were a boy. Must have lost the letter when Overforce tried to murder me. Certain it was the 10:55. Might have been tomorrow’s train, though. What day is it? Ah, here we are, arrived at last in paradise, ‘the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys is.’ ”

The boat hit the shore with a jolt hard enough to wake Cyril, but it was nothing to the jolt I’d just had. Maud. I had made Terence miss meeting the “agèd relicts.” If it hadn’t been for me, Professor Peddick’s sister and niece would still have been sitting on the platform waiting for Terence when he skidded in. And if I hadn’t told him no one of that description had come in on the train, he’d have caught up with them on their way to Balliol. But he had said “agèd relicts.” He had said they were “positively antediluvian.”

“Can you get the rope, Ned?” Terence said, pulling the nose of the boat into the shore.

Meetings are notoriously pivotal in the complex chaotic course of history. Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Crick and Watson. John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And Terence was supposed to have met Maud on that railway platform in Oxford.

“Ned?” Terence said. “Can you get the rope?”

I took a giant step onto the muddy bank with the rope and tied the boat up, thinking this was the last thing I should be doing.

“Hadn’t we better leave for Oxford now to meet your niece? And sister,” I added. They wouldn’t be at the station, but at least they’d have met. “We can leave this luggage here and come back for it. Two ladies, travelling alone. They’ll need someone to see to their luggage.”

“Nonsense,” Professor Peddick said. “Maudie’s perfectly capable of ordering their luggage sent and hiring a fly to take them to the hotel. She’s extremely sensible. Not silly like other girls. You’d like her, St. Trewes. Have you any mealworms?” he asked, and set off toward the willows.

“Can’t you convince him?” I said to Terence.

He shook his head. “Not where fish are concerned. Or history. The best thing to do is to set up camp before it gets dark.” He went over to where our various suitcases and boxes were piled under a large willow tree and began rummaging through them.

“But his niece—”

“You heard him. Sensible. Intelligent. His niece is probably one of those dreadful modern girls who have opinions and think women should go to Oxford.” He pulled out a skillet and several tins. “A most unpleasant sort of girl. Not like Miss Mering. So pretty and innocent.”

And silly, I thought. And he shouldn’t have met her. He should have met Maud. “You’d like her,” Professor Peddick had said, and I had no doubt Terence would have, with her dark eyes and sweet face. But I had looked suspicious, and Verity had acted without thinking, and now Terence and Tossie, who would otherwise never have met, were planning rendezvouses, and who knew what complications that would cause?

“We shall meet her in the morning, at any rate,” Terence said, slicing meat pie. “When we take Professor Peddick back tomorrow.”

He would meet her in the morning. Chaotic systems have redundancies and interference and feedforward loops built in, so the effect of some events is not multiplied enormously, but cancelled out. “Missing you one place, we meet another.” Terence had missed meeting Maud today, but he would meet her tomorrow. And, in fact, if we took him back tonight we might be too late and Professor Peddick’s sister would not be receiving visitors, and he’d miss meeting her again. But tomorrow morning, she’d be wearing a pretty dress and Terence would forget all about Muchings End and ask Maud to go punting up to the Port Meadow for a picnic.

If he was meant to meet her. And Professor Peddick’s sister might well have thought the porter looked suspicious or felt a draft and gone off in a hired fly before Terence got there even if I hadn’t been there. And Terence, in a hurry to hire the boat, would still have gone off to Folly Bridge without ever meeting her. T.J. had said the system had self-correction capabilities.

And Verity was right. Princess Arjumand had been returned, the incongruity, if there even was one, had been repaired, and I should be resting and recovering, which meant food and sleep, in that order.

Terence was spreading out a blanket and putting tin plates and cups on it.

“What can I do to help?” I said, my mouth starting to water. When was the last time I’d eaten? A cup of tea and a rock cake at the Women’s Institute Victory Drive Sale of Work was all I could remember, and that was at least two days and fifty-two years ago.

He dug in the hamper and brought up a cabbage and a large lemon. “You can spread out the rugs. Two of us can sleep in the boat, the other on shore. And if you can find the silverware and the ginger beer, you can set them out.”

I went over and got the rugs and began spreading them out. The island was apparently owned by the churchwarden in Iffley. Signs were posted on virtually every tree and on a number of stakes pounded into the bank. “No Thoroughfare,” “Keep Off,” “Private Land,” “Trespassers Will Be Shot,” “Private Waters,” “No Boats,” “No Fishing,” “No Dumping,” “No Camping,” “No Picnicking,” “No Landing.”

I rummaged through Terence’s boxes and found an assortment of peculiar-looking utensils. I chose the ones which most closely resembled forks, spoons, and knives, and set them out.

“I’m afraid we’re rather roughing it,” Terence said. “I’d intended to stop for provisions along the way, so we’ve had to make do. Tell Professor Peddick dinner is served, such as it is.”

Cyril and I went and found Professor Peddick, who was leaning precariously over the water, and brought him back.

Terence’s idea of roughing it consisted of pork pie, veal pie, cold roast beef, a ham, pickles, pickled eggs, pickled beets, cheese, bread and butter, ginger beer, and a bottle of port. It was possibly the best meal I had ever had in my life.

Terence fed the last bits of roast beef to Cyril and picked up a tin. “Drat!” he said, “I’ve gone off and left the tin-opener behind, and here I’ve brought a tin of—”

“Pineapple,” I said, grinning.

“No,” he said, looking at the label, “peaches.” He bent over the hamper. “But there might be a tin of pineapple in here somewhere. Though I should imagine they’ll both taste about the same without a tin-opener.”

We could try opening it with the boathook, I thought, smiling to myself. That was what they’d done in Three Men in a Boat. And nearly killed George. It was his straw hat that had saved him.

“Perhaps we could open it with a pocket-knife,” Terence said.

“No,” I said. They had tried a pocket-knife before they tried the boathook. And a pair of scissors and the hitcher and a large rock. “We shall have to do without,” I said sagely.

“I say, Ned,” he said, “you haven’t a tin-opener in among your luggage, have you?”

Knowing Finch, I probably did. I unbent my legs, which had gotten stiff, went down to the willows, and started through the luggage.