February 19, 1838

The Alsop family had recently left Battersea, moving to the little village of Old Ford, near Hertford, so that David Alsop could take over a vacant blacksmith's on the outskirts of the little community. Being new to the neighbourhood, they hadn't yet settled in and made friends, so spent most evenings in their home.

The time traveller popped into existence above Bearbinder Lane, landed on the ground, and bounced on his stilts.

It was a quarter to nine.

The lane ran along a shallow valley. There were dark fields sloping up on one side, while the village high street ran uphill to the main settlement from a junction on the other. The Alsop cottage was on the corner, secluded and a considerable distance from the other dwellings.

In the distance, Oxford could see a man on a ladder fiddling with a dysfunctional gas lamp. He was the only person in sight.

Walking to the cottage's front gate, the time traveller yanked at the bellpull and heard a jangle from inside the premises. He lifted the side of his cloak and draped it over his head like a hood, hiding the helmet. He bent his knees to bring his height down. He was standing in shadow.

The front door opened and a girl walked out. As she came down the path, Oxford saw that she had a mole on her right cheek, near the corner of her mouth. He'd been lucky this time. This was Jane Alsop.

She arrived at the gate.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm a policeman," he said. "There have been reports of somebody loitering along this road. Have you a candle I can borrow? I can't see anything."

"Most assuredly, sir. Please wait here while I fetch one for you."

Good, he thought. When she comes back out, she'll have to step through the gate to give it to me.

A minute later, she reappeared, came down the path, opened the gate, stepped out onto the road, and held the light out to him.

He threw back his cloak and grabbed her by the hair, pulling her into the darkness. The candle dropped from her hand.

"Don't!" she cried.

He didn't bother to ask the question but simply clutched at her dress and tore it down to her waist.

Before he could examine her chest, though, she twisted out of his grasp, leaving him holding a clump of hair, and raced back to the cottage.

He sprang after her, slipped and staggered at the gate, regained his balance, hurled himself over it, and caught her at the threshold of the front door.

"Show me!" he hissed, pulling her around, ripping her garments away.

A piercing scream came from inside the Alsop home.

He looked up and saw a young girl standing in the hallway. She screamed again.

Oxford returned his attention to Jane Alsop, bending her backward. He stared at her naked upper torso. Her skin was white and unmarked.

Another girl suddenly rushed from a room, grabbed Jane, and wrenched her out of his grip. The door slammed in his face.

"No birthmark!" he muttered.

August 22, 1839

There was only one girl left to examine: Sarah Lovitt, who worked on a flower stall in the Lower Marsh Street Market, Lambeth.

Her excessively long walk between home and the stall took her through many of the winding bystreets alongside the Thames, so she always carried with her a posy of scented blooms which she held close to her face to ward off the river's noxious fumes.

It made her easy to identify.

Edward Oxford pounced on her in Nine Elms Lane and pulled her into a secluded walled courtyard at the side of an empty carriage house.

Sarah knew that things like this happened. Girls were forced to do things they didn't want to do and men got away with it.

Don't fight, she told herself. It will be over more quickly.

Then her assailant turned her and she saw him.

She fought.

Fingernails raked the side of Oxford's helmet, slipped off it and onto his cheek, and gouged into the skin. Teeth bit into his wrist. He lost his grip on her, regained it, was overbalanced, and fell, pulling her down with him. They rolled on the dusty ground, thrashing about, her cries echoing from the walls.

"Get off me! Leave me alone! Help! Police!"

Her elbow rammed into his chin and his head snapped back.

He flew into a wild rage and pressed his whole weight onto her, forcing her down, his crazed eyes inches from hers.

She spat in his face. He banged the front of his helmet into her forehead. She went limp.

Oxford lifted himself from her and stood.

She groaned and sat up, blinked, and looked at him.

"Are you from a carnival?" she asked.

"No. Get up."

She clambered to her feet.

"Just answer a question and you can go," he said.

"You won't hurt me?"

"No."

A bolt of energy suddenly snapped from his control unit and hit her in the chest. She flew backward into a wall and slumped to the ground.

Oxford yelled in pain and stumbled.

"Christ!" he gasped.

Another shock jolted through him. He toppled over and passed out.

He came to his senses moments later.

"Home in time for supper," he mumbled, not knowing what he was saying.

Sarah Lovitt was either dead or out cold. He giggled manically at the thought that she might be a corpse with a rainbow on her chest.

A minute later he discovered that he was wrong on both counts. She had a pulse but no birthmark.

It was June 20, 1840. Ten days had passed since the brutal assassination of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

"Tallyho, Edward! Bon voyage!" said Henry de La Poet Beresford in the grounds of Darkening Towers. He watched Oxford blink out of existence in midair, then turned and walked toward the veranda doors. Before reaching them, he heard a thud behind him.

He looked back and saw the time traveller lying in a heap on the lawn.

"That was fast!" he cried, running over to his friend. "Are you all right?"

Oxford turned over and looked up at him. Beresford stepped back in shock. The man from the future seemed to have aged twenty years.

"What the devil happened, Edward? You look terrible!"

"None of them!" rasped the stilt-man. "No birthmarks! I've spent God knows how many hours exposed to your stinking damned past and all for nothing!"

Beresford dropped to his haunches, unbuckled Oxford's boots, and pulled them off.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you inside."

Two hours later, despite the removal of his malfunctioning suit, a hearty meal, and a glass of brandy, Oxford had fallen into a virtually catatonic state. His eyes, the whites visible all the way around the irises, stared fixedly at the wall. The muscles to either side of his jaw clenched spasmodically. He had told Beresford very little, just that none of the Battersea Brigade girls bore the crescent-shaped mark.

The marquess was, nevertheless, as sure as he could be that one of them would, in the not too distant future, become mother to a girl with such a mark.

Now the search must switch to that descendant.

It took him nearly three months to recover his wits," said Henry de la Poet Beresford. "Though `recover' may be too optimistic a word, for I assure you that, by this point, the time traveller was quite demented."