Ruthven scooped his cat up and hung her delicately over one shoulder, as he’d seen the other travellers do. He got a claw to the rib for his troubles, but Aesop balanced herself perfectly after a moment. “Hever Castle has two moats,” he informed her.
“Well,” said Aesop, recovering quickly. “That seems excessive, even for royalty.”
“She’s not royalty yet.”
Aesop gently head-butted him on the side of the face as Ruthven escorted them both across the bridge. “I do hope you’re not planning to waste this hop trolling for historical celebrities, my good man,” she said archly. “We have a job to do. A vital, nay, essential task.”
“I know,” he muttered reluctantly. “I remember.”
Hever Castle was spectacular. One of those traditional, boxy British motte-and-bailey castles with proper turrets, battlements and a gatehouse. The double moat gave the gardens a particularly grand look, sandwiched as they were between two opportunities for cats to fall into rectangular bodies of water.
Enticing as the castle was, Ruthven and Aesop were not supposed to go near it. The task as laid out for them was simply to count the box hedges in the gardens between the moat, and measure their heights. Get in, count, get out.1
“Shame about the maze,” said Ruthven as they made their slow stroll through the various ‘rooms’ within the gardens, stopping to make notes here and there.
He was garbed in the authentic costume of a sixteenth century gardener, made from fabrics that were rather rough on the skin. Genuine burlap. He was going to need moisturiser, when he returned to the twenty-fourth century. Tunbridge laughed her arse off at him when she saw what he was wearing, and asked what he had done to offend Hogarth from Costume.2
“What maze?” asked Aesop now, leaping from Ruthven’s shoulder to stroll prettily across the top of the nearest hedge. She was quite the loveliest calico cat imaginable, her black and orange tabby features set off by dramatic patches of white, not to mention her pale yellow eyes with rings of green. Well aware of how adorable she looked, Aesop had a tendency to preen when in especially flattering situations, such as direct sunlight.3
“There used to be a Tudor replica maze right about here,” said Ruthven. “Uh. I mean, there will be. The gardens were radically overhauled in the Edwardian era, made to look like Tudor gardens. But actually they went way more elaborate than these Tudor gardens ever were, hundreds of years earlier right now.”
“You’re going to have to get better hold of your tenses,” said Aesop, taking a step off the hedge into empty air, and promptly falling off.
Ruthven looked at the sky, and the moat, pretending he hadn’t noticed. There were certain courtesies one learned to observe, when one was partnered with a cat.
A slightly rumpled Aesop leaped back up on the hedge and yawned pointedly. “I’m fine,” she grumbled.
“Any reason you wouldn’t be?” If Ruthven was acting any more innocent, there would have to be whistling involved.
“Shut up.”
“Oh!”
Ruthven and Aesop both froze. That voice did not belong to either of them. Slowly, they turned to look over the hedge.
A young woman stood there before them. She wore an embroidered green gown that marked her out as a sixteenth-century Lady of Quality. Her hairline was plucked fashionably high, disappearing beneath a white linen cap and velvet headdress.
She carried a basket of flowers, in which was tucked several crumpled, much-read letters in tiny inked handwriting. Her gaze was wary. She wore a very familiar locket shaped like a ‘B’ which Ruthven had seen in a historical portrait, as well as the Famous Biographies section of his History exam.
“It’s only bloody Anne Boleyn!” Aesop squealed in his ear.
“Be cool,” Ruthven whispered back. Hever Castle. 1526. It would have been strange if this was not Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn in the grounds of her family home, at a crucial turning point in her life: Henry VIII had been courting her relentlessly, after she refused to become his mistress. Back in London, he was even now working on an annulment of his marriage to Queen Katherine of Aragon.
Anne Boleyn had a decade to live. She would marry the king twice over, give birth to his daughter, the future Elizabeth I, and ultimately be executed for treason and witchcraft.
Those letters in her basket might be missives from the king! Which month was it? Ruthven had forgotten the exact date. Staring into the face of history, he would be hard-pressed to remember his own name.
The lady regarded them both with a stoic attitude. “Pray, sir,” she said. “How is it that you come to be in possession of a talking cat?”
“We’re,” said Ruthven, hoping inspiration would come to him, “…time travellers,” he finished.
“Good save,” said Aesop, smacking herself in the face with her own paw.
1 Traditionally, newly graduated travellers were given small, achievable tasks for their early hops, so as to warm up to more significant missions. Tasks like: ‘count the box hedges of Hever Castle in 1526 and compare their heights to the same box hedges in 1557.’ Restrictions like these rarely prevent travellers from tripping over someone famous, setting something on fire, or accidentally triggering an Event, but it means they are more likely to feel guilty afterwards.
2 The answer to the question “What did Ruthven do to offend Hogarth from Costume?” involves an awkward couple of drinks at the campus bar, which Ruthven realised belatedly was probably supposed to be a date.
3 Most cats preen when they find themselves looking especially good, but Ruthven was convinced Aesop did this twice as often as other cats.
Thirty-Seven
2034 “Before Monterey. Before Cressida.”
Ruthven woke up to the warm heat of a cat curled against him. For a moment, just for a moment he allowed himself to imagine it was Aesop. She was here with him, and everything was all right.
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes.
Professor Boswell’s light green irises stared back at him, startled. They had been snuggling together. Best not to mention it.
“Cressida disappeared,” said Boswell gruffly. “I think perhaps she wasn’t real in the first place.”
“I’m sorry,” breathed Ruthven. If it was Aesop sitting here on his stomach looking miserable, he would have reached out and scritched her behind the ear.
What the hell. He reached out and did it.
Boswell leaned into his hand for a moment, then pulled away.
It was odd, having it be just the two of them. Like real partners. “Tell me what you know about Anne Boleyn,” said Ruthven.
