Though, that might not be entirely true. Standing in the muddy streets of this tiny East Anglian Viking village, the one thing Ruthven could hear above the general bustle of market day was cats. A great many cats.2
Things only got stranger when he moved through the market. Every smallholder had at least one cat — in many cases, several, crowding around them. Sitting on tables, rubbing against ankles, staring down from rooftops. So many cats that Ruthven gave himself whiplash, constantly checking whether any of them were marmalade tabbies.
He could hear music, above the yowling of the cats. Lute music, which was unusual for Vikings. The lutist was playing a Britney Spears cover from the early twenty-first century.
The villagers were oddly polite to Ruthven, despite the fact that this must be their first encounter with a beardless man wearing a turtleneck jumper under a blazer.
Oh, he realised as he rounded a corner and found three Viking children squabbling over what an open packet of Tim Tams. This isn’t 912 at all. It’s some kind of gonzo college training module. Clearly, he had fallen into a VR projection designed to unsettle the unwary student and test them on how to spot anachronisms.
Like the fact that the woman with braided hair selling wooden carvings over there was wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt. Ten points to Ruthven for spotting that deliberate mistake.
He crossed the street between thatched houses and was almost run over by two kids in some form of go-kart pulled by cats. He blinked, staring after them.
Was that a My Other Cart Is A Longship vinyl bumper sticker?
Above his head, someone snickered.
Ruthven looked up, and spotted a twitching orange tail and a familiar grumpy face nestled into the mossy thatch. “Boswell?”
He dropped the professor title. Cats who ran away from their partners during time hops did not deserve honorifics.
“Shhh,” said the grumpy cat, scrunching down further in the roof so that Ruthven could only see the tips of his marmalade ears. “Go find your own observation spot, laddie. You’re making too much racket.”
Ruthven’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you were dead! Or scattered. Or in a completely different time zone — we’re not supposed to be in 912.”
“This isn’t 912,” muttered Boswell. “I’ve put in my time in and around 912. This isn’t it.”
Ruthven glanced around. No one was paying attention to them. Probably because there were a couple of large bearded Vikings nearby, fighting over whose turn it was to use a purple skateboard.
“I’m coming up,” he informed Boswell.
“Your contribution will be invaluable,” sighed the cat.
Ruthven found a barrel nearby. He stood on it to boost himself up into the thick, rough thatch of the cottage roof. It was more dried moss than straw, and smelled better than whatever was going on at ground level in this village.
He crawled on his elbows until he was level with the marmalade tabby who was now officially the bane of his existence. “How many anachronisms have you spotted?” he asked.
Boswell gave him a baleful glare. “This isn’t a puzzle.”
“Isn’t it? Because I think I just saw a woman in tube socks.”
“That’s Vikings for you. They’re fashion forward.” The sarcasm rolled off Boswell’s tongue.
“If this isn’t 912,” said Ruthven. “Where is it? I was thinking some sort of VR training exercise…”
Boswell rolled his eyes so hard, it was amazing they stayed in their sockets. “Obviously not. No one has ever managed to convey this level of pungency in a digital landscape. Good enough to convince human noses, perhaps. Cats? Never.”
“Who’s to say what level of technology is possible,” said Ruthven. “In a culture that has managed to develop both the yo-yo and the throwing axe.”
They might have gone on like this all day, if Boswell had not suddenly stiffened, his hackles spiking along his spine. He hissed, poised to leap off the roof like a cat half his age, spoiling for a fight.
“Keep the high ground,” Ruthven said in alarm. He had just got up here and didn’t fancy scrambling down quite so soon. “What is it?”
Hard to see which of the many confusing and upsetting sights of Not!Kettlewick in Not!912 might have stirred this reaction… and then Ruthven saw exactly what had upset Boswell.
Yep. That would do it.
A woman stood on the far side of the market street, between a mead stall and all the enthusiastic customers for the mead stall. She wore all the standard Viking gear for women — dull brown linen apron dress decorated with a wide band of bright embroidery, light brown under-gown, long blond braids. Topped off by a helmet with two horns on it.
“Really?” said Ruthven. “We’re two anachronisms short of a zeppelin, and the one you’re going to get pissy about is the two-horned helmet? They’re historically accurate for opera, you know!”
Boswell leaped.
Ruthven spent the next several minutes shuffling backwards, hanging backwards off a moss roof. He landed awkwardly on both feet, nearly tripping into a horse trough. Debonair as always.
“Aesop would have waited for me,” he grumbled to no one.
By the time Ruthven made it out to the market street, Professor Boswell and the mysterious woman in the non-standard Viking helmet had disappeared. Of course they had.
1 To be fair, Kettlewick had three claims to fame, two of which involved filming locations of popular TV shows up at ‘the big house’ known as Fenthorp Manor. But even the most rabid, lifelong fans of Stately Baking and Cramberleigh had to admit that Cressida’s disappearance was slightly more significant.
2 There are many collective nouns for cats: a clowder, a litter, a cluster, a nuisance, and a destruction. When it comes to talking cats, there is only one collective noun: a judgement.
Twenty-Two
Lovelace at Cramberleigh
At Chronos College, you couldn’t avoid Cramberleigh if you tried. Lovelace had tried.
