“Sorry,” I said, backing away. “I thought you were a cat.”

“Hiss-s-s-s!” it said, and started for me at a run.

Nothing in all those “O swan” poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented being mistaken for felines. Or bit.

I finally managed to escape by crashing through a thicket of some thorny variety, climbing halfway up a tree, and kicking at its beak with my foot until it waddled back to the river, muttering threats and imprecations.

I waited fifteen minutes, in case it was a trick, and then climbed down and began examining my wounds. Most of them were to the rear and difficult to see. I twisted round trying to see if there was blood, and saw Cyril, coming out from behind a tree, looking shamefaced.

“A rout,” I said. “Just like the Persians. Harris had trouble with swans. In Three Men in a Boat,” I said, wishing I’d remembered that chapter before now. “They tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat.”

I picked up the lantern, which, amazingly, had fallen in an upright position when I dropped it. “If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”

We set off again, staying away from the river and keeping a wary eye out for patches of white.

Polly Vaughn’s boyfriend had killed her because he mistook her for a swan in the old poem. She’d been wearing a white apron, and he thought she was a swan and shot her with an arrow. I could sympathize completely. In future, I’d shoot first and ask questions later, too.

The night got darker and damper, and the bushes thornier. There were no patches of white or shining eyes and scarcely any sounds. When I dropped the last of the bread and called, “Here, cat!” my voice echoed in the black, empty stillness.

I had to face it, the cat was long gone, to starve to death in the wilderness or be murdered by an irate swan or be found in the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s daughter and change the course of history. Cyril and I weren’t going to find her.

As if in confirmation, the lantern began to smoke. “It’s no use, Cyril,” I said. “She’s gone. Let’s go back to camp.”

That was easier said than done. I had been paying more attention to finding the cat than to the way we had come, and all thickets look alike.

I held the lantern close to the ground, looking for the trail of bread crumbs I’d left, and then remembered Hansel and Gretel were another couple who had come to a bad end.

“Show me the way, Cyril,” I said hopefully, and he looked around alertly and then sat down.

The thing to do, of course, was to follow the river, but there was the possibility of swans to be considered, and surely the wolves hadn’t eaten all the bread crumbs. I set off in a likely looking direction.

Half an hour later it began to drizzle, and the leaf-strewn ground turned wet and slick. We slogged on like Saxons who’d been marching for eleven days. And were about to lose England.

I had lost the cat. I had wasted hours of precious time, unaware I had her, and then let her get away. I had gone off with a total stranger, made Terence miss a possibly important meeting and…

A thought occurred to me. I had gone off with Terence, and we had shown up at exactly the right moment to save Professor Peddick from a watery grave. Would that have happened if Terence had met Maud, or had he been meant not to meet her so that he would be in the right place at the right time to save his tutor? Or was Professor Peddick supposed to drown, and I had the rescuing of him to add to my list of transgressions?

But if it was a transgression, I couldn’t make myself feel too guilty about it. I was glad he hadn’t drowned, even though he had complicated my life significantly, and I began to understand how Verity felt about rescuing the cat.

The cat, which was lost somewhere out in the rain. Like Cyril and I were. I had no idea where we were, I knew I had never seen a row of trees like that, or a tangle of thickets like that. I stopped and then started back the way we had come.

And there was the boat. And the clearing. And my bedroll.

Cyril saw it first and made a dash for it, wriggling happily, and then stopped dead. I hoped the swan hadn’t taken up residence in it.

It hadn’t. There, curled up in the middle of the rugs, sound asleep, was Princess Arjumand.

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.