Boswell responded with a long, flat stare. “What has she to do with anything?”
“Did you know she was an Anachronaut? Cressida did.”
Boswell ducked his head, looking embarrassed. “I was around when they recruited Boleyn. She was the first human ever saved from her own time stream.”
That… sounded like quite a story.
“Monterey must have really wanted to sleep with her,” Ruthven said gravely.
Boswell laughed and then tried to pretend it was a sneeze halfway through. “Before Monterey. Before Cressida.”
Ruthven was confused. “But Monterey and Cressida were in the first generation of trainees. The experimental workshops. There weren’t any time travellers before you lot. Except Banksia and Burbage.”
He’d never actually thought much about the timeline. Everyone knew that time travel had been invented by Professor Burbage (human) and Professor Banksia (cat) twenty years ago. But the experimental workshops — Lovelace and Monterey, Boswell and Cressida, the other early travellers… that all started nearly a decade later.
It had never occurred to Ruthven to wonder what happened in those intervening years. He had assumed it was mostly paperwork.
“Banksia and Burbage were the first travellers,” Boswell said, scowling as if trying to keep it all straight in his head. Or possibly because he had resting scowl face. “There were more, long before the experimental workshops. Nine humans, and not enough cats to start with. But they soon trained us up.”
Ruthven sat up straight on the uncomfortable couch, almost flinging Boswell off his legs. “Nine humans. Are you talking about the Founders?”
“You think a group of billionaires would fund time travel for the sake of humanity and not have a go at it themselves?” muttered Boswell. “They were all at it. Celeste and Melusine Oxford, Kincaid, Dumas. The Pennyworths, all three of them. The Montereys — Jolyon and Vanessa.”
“Why did they stop travelling?”
“No idea. Veil of secrecy all around. After Burbage and Banksia’s disappearance, the Founders all retired from the field — poured all their energy into setting up the experimental workshops, and the colleges. Training up their kids as travellers while they pulled strings from behind the scenes. Soames Kincaid is still the Dean at Banksia, pushing his ‘save the koalas’ agenda. Celeste Oxford was the Dean at Aleister College before the Anachronauts took over. Dumas has been teaching under the name Professor Mycroft since Chronos College began… Vanessa Monterey used to have my old job in Time Mechanics. She went by Professor Valadon before she quit in a huff over that business with the Bonfire of the Vanities.”
“You’ve known this all along?” Ruthven said, astonished. “Why does no one else know?”
Boswell gave him a canny look. “Do you think they don’t? The history of Chronos College — and the other colleges, come to that — is somewhat redacted. But believe me. People know.”
Ruthven felt sick. “Oxford and Monterey. They have to know all about it. If it’s their parents. Right?” He couldn’t wrap his head around it. The Founders and their secret history. Hiding out on campus as professors? Hiding the fact that they all used to time travel? It was so strange.
“Ah,” said Boswell, scratching himself. “Well, the thing is, young man. Your friends may not know.”
“What do you mean?”
Boswell looked miserable. He jumped off Ruthven’s lap, and scrambled to the large window seat instead.
Ruthven joined him. The grounds of Fenthorp Manor looked messier now. The large pavilion tent had been abandoned. Bags and camera gear and what looked like giant cream cakes were haphazardly scattered here and there. Tyre tracks from several trucks and other vehicles disfigured the pretty green lawn.
Everyone had left in a hurry. It was 2034, and the contestants and crew of Stately Baking had been informed that the United Kingdom was at war.
“The thing is,” said Boswell, leaning his fluffy face against the cool glass of the window. “Lovelace doesn’t remember the Anne Boleyn incident. Twelve years ago, Abydos and Lancaster Pennyworth were working together, trying to prove they could rescue items from history if they plucked them out just before destruction. But the experiment went out of control. Next thing we knew, Anne Boleyn was standing in the twenty-fourth century, wearing the gown she had been executed in.”
“That’s not possible,” said Ruthven, turning it over in his head. “How could someone take Anne Boleyn out of time without changing history? That year didn’t become an Event until much later.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Boswell said, his tail swishing in irritation. History remembers that Anne Boleyn died. The witnesses on the ground saw her die. Lovelace and I saw Boleyn in the twenty-fourth century, alive and well. We were in the meeting where it was decided what to do with her. And then we forgot all about it.”
“The Founders are messing with people’s memories? How long have you known this?” Ruthven didn’t mean to sound accusing, but his tone got ahead of him.
“All this rampaging around time aisles has brought some old memories back into the light,” said the marmalade tabby, sounding tired. He lowered his head, and pawed at the opal that hung from his collar. “It happened before, when I was searching the tenth century for Cressida. I felt the Event beginning in 912, and I almost didn’t get out in time. The same thing happened in 913. 914. I got headaches, heard a ringing sound. I thought it was, well…” He pulled a face.
“Trauma?” Ruthven suggested.
“I suddenly recalled an old time hop. Early Imperial Rome. A palace courtyard, open to the sky. Augustus Caesar reaching out to pick a poisoned fig off a tree… My partner at my side. Not Cressida. Dumas.”
“He’s the one you said is really Professor Mycroft?” The affable professor, friendly with all the students. Particularly friendly with Monterey and Oxford, now Ruthven came to think of it.
“That bastard swans around the staff room grinning, like we’re friends, knowing the memory of our travels was taken from me,” Boswell said between gritted teeth. “My head was full of confusing memories that didn’t match. Including the Anne Boleyn incident. I asked Lovelace, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I thought perhaps my opal had been damaged.”
“You stopped travelling in time.”
“I didn’t want more memories to return. Cressida was lost, no getting her back. I didn’t trust myself with anyone else.” Boswell gave Ruthven a grudging sort of look. “Well done on not getting yourself killed yet, by the way.”
“Cheers.”
“And here we are again. Every minute I’ve spent in those bloody time aisles, in Event Space… it’s dislodged whatever was holding back those memories. There are still gaps. But I have a clearer picture now.”
“It’s not a pretty picture,” said Ruthven. “If Cressida was right, if the Anachronauts and Chronos College are all part of the same thing, then the Founders are behind it. We haven’t been experimenting with time travel. We’re the experiments. The test subjects.”
“Running around mazes with peanut butter and bits of string,” agreed Boswell morosely.
The two of them stared out at the destroyed lawn, the flapping walls of the tent.
“What do you think they’ll do to us if they find out we know?” Ruthven asked finally.
“No idea,” said Boswell. “I don’t know about you, laddie, but I’m starting to think about life beyond Chronos College.”
