To Say Nothing of the Dog

by Connie Willis

  “Sit,” I commanded, and Professor Peddick looked around bewilderedly and sat down.

  “St. Trewes, we must take the boat to shore immediately,” he said, pointing at the bank. “Look.”

  We all, even Cyril, looked at a grassy meadow covered in Queen Anne’s lace and buttercups.

  “It is the very image of the field of Blenheim,” Professor Peddick said. “Look, yonder the village of Sonderheim and beyond it Nebel Brook. It proves my point exactly. Blind forces! It was the Duke of Marlborough who won the day! Have you an exercise book? And a fishing line?”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to do this later? This afternoon, after we’ve been to Iffley.”

  “The attack against Tallard happened in early afternoon in just this light,” Professor Peddick said, pulling on his boots. “What sort of bait did you bring?”

  “But we haven’t time,” Terence said. “I’ve this appointment—”

  “‘Omnia aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est,’ ” Professor Peddick quoted. “‘Nothing is ours except time.’”

  I leaned forward and whispered to Terence, “You could leave us here and come back for us after your appointment.”

  He nodded, looking happier, and began bringing the boat in toward the bank. “But I need you to go with me,” he said, “to work the tiller. Professor Peddick, I’m going to put you ashore to study the battle, and we’ll go on to Iffley and then come back and collect you.” He began to look for a place to land.

  It took an eternity to find a spot where the bank sloped enough for the professor to be able to climb it, and even longer to locate the fishing equipment. Terence rummaged through the Gladstone bag between frantic looks at his pocket watch, and I dug into the tin box, looking for the fishing line and a box of flies.

  “Here it is!” Terence said. He thrust the flies into the professor’s pocket, reached for an oar, and pushed us up flat against the bank.

  “Land ho,” Terence said, popping up and standing with one foot on the muddy bank. “Here you go, Professor.”

  Professor Peddick looked vaguely around, picked up his mortarboard, and started to put it on.

  “Wait!” I said, rescuing it. “Have you got a bowl or something, Terence? For the white gudgeon.”

  We rummaged again, Terence through one of the bandboxes, I in my satchel. Two starched collars, a pair of black patent shoes three sizes too small for me, a toothbrush.

  The covered basket Cyril had been sniffing at. It had the food in it, and presumably, a pot to cook it in. I dug through the jumble in the stern and then under the seat. There it was, perched on the prow. I reached for it.

  “A kettle!” Terence said, holding one up by the handle. He handed it to me.

  I emptied the fish and the water into it and handed the mortarboard to Professor Peddick. “Don’t put it on just yet,” I said. “Wait till the water’s evaporated.”

  “An apt pupil,” the professor said, beaming. “‘Beneficiorum gratia sempiterna est.’ ”

  “All ashore that’s going ashore,” Terence said, and had him out of the boat and up the bank before I could set the kettle down.

  “We’ll be an hour,” he said, clambering back into the boat and grabbing the oars. “Perhaps two.”

  “I shall be here,” Professor Peddick said, standing on the very edge of the bank. “‘Fidelis adurnum.’ ”

  “He won’t fall in again?” I said.

  “No,” Terence said, not very convincingly, and went at the oars as if it were Eights Week.

  We pulled rapidly away from Professor Peddick, who had stooped to peer at something on the ground through his pince-nez. The box of flies fell out of his pocket and skittered halfway down the bank. He bent farther and reached for it.

  “Perhaps we should . . .” I said, and Terence gave a mighty pull around a bend, and there was the church and an arched stone bridge.

  “She said she’d be waiting on the bridge,” Terence panted. “Can you see her?”

  I shaded my eyes and looked at the bridge. There was someone standing near the north end of it. We pulled rapidly closer to the bridge. A young woman holding a white parasol. In a white dress.

  “Is she there?” Terence said, yanking on the oars.

  She was wearing a white hat with blue flowers on it, and under it her auburn hair shone in the sunlight.

  “Am I too late?” Terence said.

  “No,” I said. But I am, I thought.

  She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

  Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.

  (Things are not always what they seem.)

  Phaedrus

  CHAPTER 6

  An English Rose—Ruffles—Cyril Guards the Boat—A Message from the Other Side—Seeing the Sights—A Butler—Signs and Portents—In a Country Churchyard—A Revelation—An Alias—Explanations—A Water-Logged Diary—Jack the Ripper—A Problem—Moses in the Bulrushes—More Aliases—An Even More Unexpected Development

  I know, I had said the naiad was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, but she had been wet and dirty, and, even though she looked like she’d risen out of a Pre-Raphaelite pond, unmistakably Twenty-First Century.

  Just as the creature on the bridge was unmistakably Nineteenth. No historian, no matter how casually she caught up her trailing white skirts with a kid-gloved hand, no matter how erect she held her head on her aristocratic neck, could hope to capture the quality of stillness, of clear eyed innocence of the girl on the bridge. She was like a delicate blossom, capable of growing only in a single time, adapted only to the select hothouse environment of the late Victorian era: the untouched flower, the blooming English rose, the angel in the house. She would be extinct in only a handful of years, replaced by the bicycling bloomer girl, the cigarette-smoking flapper and the suffragette.

  A terrible melancholy swept over me. I could never have her.Standing there with her white parasol and her clear greenish-brown-eyed gaze, the image of youth and beauty, she was long since married to Terence, long since dead and buried in a churchyard like the one at the top of the hill.

  “To port,” Terence said. “No, to port!” He rowed rapidly toward the side of the bridge, where there were several stakes, presumably for tying the boat up.

  I grabbed the rope, jumped out into squishy mud, and looped the rope.

  Terence and Cyril were already out of the boat and climbing the steep bank up to the bridge.

  I tied a very lumpish-looking knot, wishing Finch had included a subliminal tape on half-hitches and sheepshanks, and that there were some way to lock the boat.

  This is the Victorian era, I reminded myself, when people could trust each other and the earnest young man gets the girl and is probably already kissing her on the bridge.

  He wasn’t. He was standing on the muddy bank, looking vaguely round. “I don’t see her,” he said, looking directly at the vision, “but her cousin’s here, and there’s the landau,” he pointed at an open carriage standing on the hill next to the church, “so she must still be here. What time is it?” He pulled out his pocket watch to look at it. “You don’t suppose they’ve sent her cousin to tell me she’s not to see me. If she—” he said, and broke into a wide smile.

  A girl in ruffles appeared on the bank above us. Her white dress had ruffles on the skirt and ruffles on the yoke and ruffles on the sleeves. Her parasol had ruffles round the edges, too, and her short white gloves, and all of the ruffles were in motion, like flags being carried into battle. There weren’t any ruffles on her hat, but, to compensate, it had a large batch of fluttering pink ribbons, and her blonde hair under the hat curled and bounced with every stray breeze.

  “Look, Cousin, it’s Mr. St. Trewes,” she said, and started down the slope, which set everything into a flurry of motion. “I told you he would come!”

  “Tossie,” the vision in white said reprovingly, but Tossie was already running toward the towpath, catching her flounced skirts up just enough to reveal the toes of very small feet in w
hite boots, and taking dainty little steps.

  She reached the edge of the riverbank and stopped—comparatively,that is—fluttered her eyelashes at us, and addressed Cyril. “Did the dearie doggums come to see his Tossie? Did he know his Tossie missed her sweetums Cyril?”

  Cyril looked appalled.

  “He’s been goodums, hasn’t he?” Tossie cooed. “But his master’s been a naughty bad boy. He didn’t come and didn’t come.”

  “We were delayed,” Terence interjected. “Professor Ped-dick—”

  “Tossie was afwaid her tardy boy’d forgotten all about her, wasn’t her, Cywil?”

  Cyril gave Terence a look of resignation and ambled forward to have his head petted.

  “O! O!” Tossie said, and somehow managed to make it sound exactly like I’d seen it written in Victorian novels. “O!”

  Cyril stopped, confused, and looked at Terence, and then started forward again.

  “Bad, bad dog!” Tossie said, and pursed her lips into a series of tiny screams. “The horrid creature will muss my dress. It’s silk muslin.” She fluttered her skirts away from him. “Papa had it made for me in Paris.”

  Terence lunged forward and grabbed Cyril, who had already backed away, by his collar. “You frightened Miss Mering,” he said sternly, and shook his finger at him. “I apologize for Cyril’s behavior,” he said, “and for my tardiness. There was a near-drowning, and we had to save my tutor.”

  The cousin came up. “Hello, Cyril,” she said kindly and bent to scratch him behind the ears. “Hello, Mr. St. Trewes. How nice to meet you again.” Her voice was quiet and cultured, without a hint of baby-talk. “Does your being here mean you’ve found Princess Arjumand?”

  “Yes, do tell us,” Tossie said belatedly. “Have you found my poor lost Juju?”

  “Alas, no,” Terence said, “but we intend to continue the search. This is Mr. Henry. Mr. Henry, Miss Mering and Miss Brown.”

  “How do you do, Miss Mering, Miss Brown,” I said, tipping my straw boater as the subliminals had instructed.

  “Mr. Henry and I have hired a boat,” he gestured toward the foot of the bridge, where the nose of the boat was just visible, “and we intend to explore every inch of the Thames.”

  “That’s very good of you,” Miss Brown said, “but I have no doubt that when we return home this evening, we shall find she has returned safe and sound.”

  “Home?” Terence said, dismayed.

  “Yes!” Tossie said. “We’re to return to Muchings End tonight. Mama has had a message that we are needed there.”

  “I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to call you home,” Terence said.

  “Oh, no,” Tossie said, “it wasn’t a message like that. It was from the Other Side. It said, ‘Return to Muching’s End to await your happy Fate,’ so Mama is determined to go at once. We’re taking the train this evening.”

  “Yes,” Miss Brown said. “We should be returning to Madame Iritosky’s.” She extended a kid-gloved hand. “Thank you for your kindness in looking for Princess Arjumand. So nice to have met you, Mr. Henry.”

  “Oh, but we mustn’t go back now, Cousin Verity,” Tossie said. “Our train isn’t till half-past six. And Mr. St. Trewes and Mr. Henry haven’t seen the church.”

  “It is a long way to Madame Iritosky’s home,” Cousin Verity protested, “and your mother particularly said we were to be back for tea.”

  “We’ve plenty of time,” Tossie said. “We’ll tell Baine to drive very fast. Wouldn’t you like to see the church, Mr. St. Trewes?”

  “I’d love to,” Terence said fervently. Cyril trotted happily up between them.

  Tossie hesitated prettily. “Shouldn’t Cyril stay by the boat?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Terence said. “Cyril, you must stay.”

  “He could wait outside the lychgate,” I offered, but it was no use. Terence was too far gone.

  “Stay, Cyril,” he commanded.

  Cyril gave him the look Julius Caesar must have given Brutus, and lay down on the shadeless bank, his head on his paws.

  “Don’t let any bad, bad mans steal the boat,” Tossie said. “You must be a brave, brave doggums.” She unfurled her parasol and started up the path. “It’s the cunningest little church. So quaint and old-fashioned. People come from miles about to see it. I do love sights, don’t you? Mama has promised to take us to Hampton Court next week.” She led the way up the hill, chattering to Terence, and the vision and I followed.

  Tossie was correct about the church, and people did “come from miles about to see it,” if the signs posted were any indication. They began at the foot of the hill with a hand-lettered placard that said, “Keep to path.” This was followed by, “No tours during church services,” “Keep off grass,” and “Picking flowers forbidden.”

  “Mama says we’re to have a seance in the Gallery at Hampton Court. The spirit of Catherine Howard walks there, you know. She was one of Henry the Eighth’s wives. He had eight wives. Baine says he only had six, but if that were true, why would his name be Henry the Eighth?”

  I glanced at Miss Brown, who was smiling gently. At close quarters she was even more beautiful. Her hat had a veil, caught up behind into a fall of sheer white over her auburn hair, and through it her fair skin and pink cheeks looked almost ethereal.

  “Henry the Eighth’s wives were all beheaded,” Tossie was saying. “I should hate to be beheaded.” She gave her blonde curls a toss. “They clipped off your hair and dressed you in a horrid plain shift without any decoration at all.”

  Or ruffles, I thought.

  “I do hope it won’t just be Catherine Howard’s head,” she said. “It is sometimes, you know, not the entire spirit. When Nora Lyon came to Muchings End, she materialized a spirit hand. It played the accordion.” She looked coyly at Terence. “Do you know what the spirits told me last night? That I would meet a stranger.”

  “What else did they tell you?” Terence asked. “That he was tall, dark, and handsome, I suppose.”

  “No,” she said, perfectly serious. “They rapped out ‘Beware,’ and then the letter ‘C.’ Mama thought it was a message about Princess Arjumand, but I think it meant the sea, only we aren’t anywhere near it, so it must mean the stranger will arrive by the river.”

  “Which I have,” Terence said, far gone.

  We were nearing the crest of the hill. An open carriage stood at the top with a driver in, of all things, full morning dress: swallowtail coat and striped trousers. He was reading a book, and the horse was grazing listlessly at the grass. I was surprised there wasn’t a “No parking” sign.

  As we came up, the driver closed the book and sat up stiffly at attention. “I was afraid we couldn’t come after all,” Tossie said, walking past the carriage without so much as a glance at the driver. “Madame Iritosky’s boy was to have driven us, but he was in a trance, and Mama wouldn’t let us take the landau alone. And so then I thought, Baine can drive us. That’s our new butler. Mama stole him from Mrs. Chattisbourne, who was dreadfully angry. Good butlers are so difficult to find.”

  That explained the striped trousers and the stiffness—Finch’s tape had been very clear. Butlers did not drive carriages. I looked at him. He was younger than I’d expected, and taller, with a rather haggard expression, as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. I could relate to that. I felt as though I’d been up for centuries.

  Finch’s tapes had said that butlers were supposed to be poker-faced, but this one wasn’t. He looked distinctly worried about something. I wondered what. This outing, or the prospect of working for someone who thought Henry the Eighth had eight wives? I tried to sneak a look at his book as we passed. It was Carlyle’s The French Revolution.

  “I don’t like our butler,” Tossie said as if he wasn’t there. “He’s always cross.”

  Apparently Cousin Verity didn’t like him either. She kept her gaze straight ahead as we passed. I nodded to the butler and tipped my hat. He picked up his book and resumed reading.
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  “Our last butler was much nicer. Lady Hall stole him from us when she came to visit. Imagine, while she was staying under our roof! Papa says servants shouldn’t be allowed to read books. It ruins their moral fibers. And gives them ideas.”

  Terence opened the gate to the church. It had a sign on it which read, “Close gate when you leave.”

  He and Tossie walked up to the door. It was plastered with signs—“No visitors after four o’clock.” “No visitors during services.” “No photographs or daguerreotypes allowed.” “For assistance contact Mr. Egglesworth, Churchwarden, Harwood House, do not disturb except in case of EMERGENCY.” I was surprised Luther’s Ninety-Nine Objections weren’t on there, too.

  “Isn’t the church cunning?” Tossie said. “Look at those sweet zigzags carved over the door.”

  I recognized them even without tapes as dogtoothed ornamentation dating from the twelfth century, the result of having spent the last several months on Lady Schrapnell’s cathedral. “Norman architecture,” I said.

  “I do so love dear old-fashioned churches, don’t you?” Tossie said, ignoring me. “So much simpler than our modern ones.”

  Terence opened the simple old-fashioned note-covered door, Tossie furled her parasol, and went in. Terence followed her, and I expected Cousin Verity to follow suit. Finch’s tapes had said Victorian young ladies were never allowed to go anywhere unchaperoned, and I had assumed that Cousin Verity, vision though she was, was that chaperone. She had certainly looked disapproving enough down on the riverbank, and the church would be dimly lit and full of opportunities for hanky panky.

  And it was clear from the sign on the door that the churchwarden wasn’t inside. But Miss Brown didn’t so much as glance toward the half-opened door or the shadowy darkness within. She opened the iron gate, which was decorated with a sign that read “No spitting,” and walked into the churchyard.

  She paced silently among the graves, past several signs directing us not to pick the flowers or lean against the tombstones, past a badly tilting obelisk, against which somebody obviously had.