It was a chicken. They found themselves out of doors, in a walled space with cobbles in the ground, which seemed to be a sort of farmyard. The evening seemed to have turned much milder and warmer, and this was bringing out a strong smell of manure. There were hens all over the place, running toward a girl of about Howard’s age who was scattering corn for them. One of them had got in the way of the door in its hurry. As Howard shut the door behind him, a man came out of the doorway to the right, leading a horse. When he saw Awful and Howard, he stopped, grinned, and called something to the girl. He had such a thick accent that they could not understand a word. But the girl understood. She looked up and bit her lip in order not to laugh.
“Can I be of help to you?” she asked. She had an accent, too, and her voice wobbled with laughter.
They had a right to laugh! Howard thought indignantly. The girl had a long dress on and a silly little cap sitting on her hair. The man was actually wearing a smock, like a joke yokel. He supposed they were actors, hired for another display like the Saxon one, but he did not see why they should have a joke at his expense. “We—er—we’d like to see Hathaway, please,” he said as politely as he could. It came out a little curt.
“Come with me,” the girl said. She shot a grin at the man and dumped the corn out of her apron in a heap on the cobbles. Leaving the hens to squawk and squabble over it, she led the way to another arched doorway in the opposite wall. She made rather heavy going of it because she had clogs on.
There was a garden beyond the wall, a very well-kept garden made mostly of trees or shrubs trained and clipped around neat paths. It was not surprising it was so neat, Howard thought, as the girl led them through. There were so many people at work on it. Men with shears kept bobbing up from behind hedges to stare at them. Two girls in long skirts came running with rakes to rake a path, and they stared, too. And small boys kept popping up everywhere, giggling. Under a tree that had been trained into a sort of roof, two men were sitting writing with quill pens. One of them was Hathaway’s polite messenger. He recognized them. The dismay which came over his face was almost comic.
“I—I trust your father keeps well?” he said.
“It’s all right,” said Awful. “He isn’t here.”
“God be praised!” said the messenger. He really meant it.
Awful was biting her lip, too, as they came to the house. It ran along one side of the garden, and it was big. It puzzled Howard because, in a way, it was like Dillian’s house, made of red bricks in a thoroughly old-fashioned style. It had a great many diamond-paned windows and brick battlements along the top, in a way that ought to have been old. But it shone with newness. The thick oak of the open door was yellow with newness.
A lady dashed out of the door, saying, “What’s this, Anne?” At least when Howard really thought about what she said, he knew it was “What is’t, Nan?” but he could not quite bring himself to believe it. The lady was wearing a cap which covered more of her hair than the girl’s and made her face look too narrow, and she had on a long, rather beautiful dress of greenish brocade. Howard kept trying to tell himself, uneasily, that she was just dressed up like this for a museum display.
“They’re for Father,” the girl said in a very much stronger accent. She gave the lady a droll look. “Our strangest yet, think you not?”
“Hush, Anne,” said the lady. “Will told me on’t.” And she said to Howard and Awful, “Welcome to Abbey House. Please to follow me. I will bring you where Hathaway is.”
As soon as the lady took them into the house, Howard knew it was not a museum display. He knew, even before they went past some diamond-paned windows that looked out from the other side of the house. There he found himself looking out at the cathedral. One end of it was covered in rather insecure-looking wooden scaffolding, and workmen in strange clothes were climbing up and down long ladders rebuilding the west end, which Howard knew had been added around the reign of Henry VIII. All the people going past on this side of the house were dressed like the people in the garden. But this just confirmed what Howard knew. The house inside was real. He could see it was. The boy’s hoop thrown on the floor, the silk cloak tossed over the new yellow oak of the banister, the thick stools, and the leather jug someone had tried to jam out of sight in a corner—all were there because people were really using them. When the Goon said Hathaway lived in the past, he had meant exactly that.
Howard had got used to this idea by the time the lady threw open a pale oak door and said, “Hathaway, here are strange guests again!” So the sight of Dad’s typewriter wrapped in chains and lying on the table in that room was almost shocking. It looked thoroughly out of place, even though the room was evidently a study, too.
Hathaway was sitting with his elbows on the table, staring gloomily at the typewriter, but when he saw Howard and Awful, he sat up and turned his chair around. Color came into his rather pale face. “Bess!” he said to the lady. And the two of them began to talk so rapidly in the strong accent of the past that neither Howard nor Awful could catch one word in ten. They looked at Hathaway while he talked. His eyes were greenish, and he was fair like Dillian, though like many fair men, the neat little beard he wore was gingerish. He was quite the smallest of any of the family they had so far seen, almost normal size, in fact, probably only a few inches taller than Howard. Altogether he had a narrow, thin, frail look, which seemed to fit well with the padded brocade clothes he wore.
The rapid talk ended with the lady’s saying, “I’ll look to’t,” and blowing Hathaway a kiss as she went out. Hathaway turned eagerly to Howard and Awful. “Is it possible you come to me from your father?” he said. He was speaking in a way they could understand, but Howard could see it was not the way he usually spoke.
“No,” he said, “Sorry. We came off our own bat.”
Hathaway looked guarded at that. “Enterprising,” he said. “Why?”
“To ask you things, of course. Stupid,” Awful said.
Hathaway smiled. Awful scowled back. That seemed to amuse Hathaway. “See here, little madam,” he said. “Your father sent my secretary home in tears. It is I who should scowl at you.”
“Dad had a lot to put up with,” Howard explained quickly. “He’d had Archer and Torquil already that morning. And Dillian had pinched his words.”
Hathaway’s greenish eyes lifted to examine Howard. “I know that,” he said. “I do keep in touch to that extent. So what have you come to ask me?”
“Stop digging up our road, you beast!” Awful said in her most outspoken way. It sounded to Howard as if she were getting ready to behave as badly as she had with Miss Potter. But when he looked, he saw that Awful liked Hathaway. She was talking to him the way she talked to Dad. She was expecting Hathaway to understand. Howard thought it was lucky that Hathaway did not happen to have a paunch, or Awful would have been making rude remarks about it before long.
Hathaway did understand Awful perfectly, Howard was glad to see. He kept a straight face and asked innocently, “And what is wrong with your road?”
“There’s a moat outside our house,” Awful said truculently.
Hathaway’s straight face became amused and slightly guilty.
“All right,” Howard said. “I suppose it is funny! But along with all the rest, it just isn’t anymore! And what about the men who keep having to dig it up and fill it in?” He was, he realized, talking to Hathaway as he would talk to Dad, too. He went on hurriedly, trying to sound more polite. “But what I really came about was Dad’s two thousand words.” Hathaway nodded, because he knew that. “Obvious, isn’t it?” said Howard. “Now look …” It was no good. He forgot to be polite again. Quite suddenly he found himself as eloquent as Quentin and walked up and down the room, shouting things about Dillian, cursing Torquil and Shine, complaining about Archer, explaining about Quentin and Mum, and generally going on about Hind’s gang, the music, the electricity, the borrowed food, and the roadworks.
Awful stood holding the edge of the table, watching him wonderingly. Hathaway leaned his bearded chin on his hand and listened with what seemed to be amused, dry attention. After a moment, however, when he saw Howard was not going to stop quickly, he reached to a shelf behind him and fetched down an hourglass, which he turned sand side up and stood on the table. Then he went back to listening. Howard did not know if the hourglass was Hathaway’s idea of a joke, but he did not let it put him off. He had a lot to say. And it was such a relief to tell it to someone who understood. Hathaway understood. Through the look of dry attention, other looks kept flickering: faint guilt, sympathy, dislike of Shine and Dillian, annoyance at Archer, and even some humorous admiration for the way the Sykes family had been coping.
“And today was the last straw for Dad,” Howard was concluding when the door beside him opened. The girl who had been feeding the chickens came around it with a tray, swiveling on one clogged foot because she had the tray balanced on her knee in order to open the door. Howard knew how easy it is to drop everything when you do that. Since he was beside the door, he took the tray away from her.
“I thank you,” she said, and bobbed a sort of curtsy. Then she took back the tray firmly and carried it to the table. There were mugs and a jug and a wooden plate of cakes on it. The girl made a great business of pushing aside the hourglass and the typewriter to set them out, so that she could take a great many quick, sharp looks at Awful and at Howard.
“And why are you acting as servant?” Hathaway said to her, seeing it. “My daughter Anne,” he said to Howard and Awful. “Nan, you are in luck today with your spying on my people from the future. Here are Howard and Anthea, who could be your own descendants.”
This made Howard feel very odd. Anne laughed and tossed her capped head. “And not princes!” she said. “There’s been a sad falling off in my line. I intend marrying a king. All my offspring shall be royalty.”
“We came in disguise,” Awful invented. “We left our crowns at home.”
“Then that explains all,” Anne said, not believing a word. “Wear them next time, and I shall wear mine.” Hathaway made her a little shooing motion. “I’ll not pour the wine?” Anne asked, pleadingly. Hathaway shook his head. Anne clumped out of the room, casting regretful, curious glances over her shoulder.
“She does what she’s told!” Awful exclaimed in surprise.
“Not very often,” said Hathaway. “I think she didn’t want to let me down in front of you. Sit down. Have some wine.”
“Her name isn’t really Anne Hathaway!” Howard said as he pulled a heavy stool over to the table.
Hathaway shook his head. “No. The name I use here is Moneypenny. She is Anne Moneypenny.”
“But Moneypenny’s Mum’s old name!” Awful said, rather feeling that Hathaway had stolen it. And Howard felt odder than ever. He knew now that the thing that had made him so sure that Bess was dressed up for a museum display was that Bess was really quite like Catriona to look at.
Hathaway laughed as he poured wine into the mugs. “I remember it was. I think it may have some bearing on all this.” He pushed the mugs toward them. “Have some spiced wine while I check.” He turned around toward his bookshelf.
“Don’t drink too much,” Howard warned Awful while Hathaway’s back was turned. There had been a terrible time last Christmas when Awful got at Dad’s Christmas whiskey.
There was no danger of that. Awful took one sip and was nearly sick. She hated spices. When Hathaway turned back, holding a large book bound in pale grayish leather, Awful’s face was twisted into a mixture of disgust—because of the taste—and accusation—because it was all Howard’s fault—and disappointment—because she had wanted to like the wine. “Oh, dear!” said Hathaway. “We have to drink wine or beer here because the water’s not clean. Take a cake instead.”
But Awful did not like the cakes either. They were very dry, with seeds in. Howard was not sure he liked them much himself. Hathaway, as he leafed through the book, pushed Awful’s mug aside in order to turn the wooden dish of cakes around. “Try the ones this side,” he murmured. “You may like them better. Here we are—Anne’s marriage, William’s descent.” The green eyes looked at Howard over the edge of the book rather apologetically. “I haven’t looked at the records of my own children before,” he said. “Ever since I found that Anne will marry a man called Sykes and move away from town, I have preferred not to know.”
“Sykes!” said Howard. He took another cake to steady himself. This cake was much nicer, with no seeds and a taste of chocolate.
“Yes,” Hathaway said rather sadly. “But whether he is your ancestor, I have no means of knowing. I am confined to this town, as you know, and my records can be of only this town. But Will’s descent may throw some light.” He ran his finger down the page. “Will stays and becomes a wealthy man. There are Moneypennys the whole way down to your day. Moneypenny girls married with the Mountjoys, the Caldwicks, a Wiggins here—most local families. Here is one in the nineteenth century marrying a Hind—”
“No!” Howard and Awful said together. Awful was surprised enough to pick up her mug and drink without thinking. Her eyebrows went up. “This is nice now! It tastes of strawberry!”
Howard thought he saw a little smile on Hathaway’s face as Hathaway bent over the book, but all he said was “Ah. This is it. Catriona Moneypenny does descend from William. Marries Quentin Jocelin Sykes in 1967. Children—” Hathaway’s green eyes flicked to Howard for a moment in a startled way and then back to the book. “Howard Graham and Anthea Mildred Dolores,” he said.
“Why did you look at Howard like that?” Awful demanded.
“Like what?” said Hathaway.
“Surprised,” said Awful. “Is it something children shouldn’t know?”
Hathaway’s face flushed a little. He looked worried. “No, no,” he said. “It’s only—well, if your parents haven’t told you, it would not be right for me—”
“What?” said Howard.
Hathaway seemed more worried still. “Now you’re thinking all sorts of terrible things,” he said. “It’s nothing. Truly. Have they never told you that you were adopted?”
“No,” said Howard, and for a moment the ground felt as if it were falling away underneath him. Suddenly he did not seem to be who he thought he was. He did not know who he was. He saw Hathaway looking at him with concern, but he did not want to look at him or at anyone else.
“Oh, I know that!” Awful said, scornful and relieved. “Mum told me once when I bit her. She said she wished she could have chosen me like she chose Howard. She”—Awful had the grace to go red here—“she said she’d have chosen someone else.”
“I wish you’d said!” Howard said.
“Sorry.” Awful hung her head. “Mum told me not to. She knew you’d be upset.”
“Drink some more wine,” said Hathaway. “I know a little how you feel. My family always swore I was a changeling.” Howard swigged off the spicy wine. He was not sure it helped. Meanwhile, Hathaway glanced at the sand filtering through the waist of the hourglass. “You haven’t much longer here,” he said, “I can keep people from your time as they are for an hour, but beyond that I don’t let anyone risk himself.”
“Why?” said Awful.
Hathaway smiled in a quiet, rueful way, which had just a trace of Archer’s smile in it. “Because the longer anyone stays in the past, the older he becomes in his own present day. You won’t want to go home a grown woman, will you?” Awful stared at him, not believing it. “It’s true,” said Hathaway. “I found out the hard way. After two years here I was an old, old man in your time—and I don’t age as fast as you would. After all the years I’ve spent here now, I think I would not be alive in your time at all.”
“But don’t you mind?” said Awful. “How long have you been here?”
Hathaway shrugged. “I’ve been here nearly thirty years now. I don’t mind much. Some things I miss, but I’m pretty happily settled here, as you see. And I’ve got things well organized, so that I can keep in touch and run the things in your century that I said I would. Mind you”—he laughed a little—“I wouldn’t have stayed in the past for those two years if I’d known. It always puzzles me how Venturus manages, living in the future as he does.”
“Living in the future?” said Awful. “People can’t. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“I don’t think he lives as far ahead as I live back,” Hathaway said. “Only a hundred years or so. But of course, I haven’t seen him for years.”
“But why did you come to the past?” persisted Awful. By now she had absentmindedly drunk most of her strawberry wine and was feeling very chirpy—with a large furry feeling that she loved Hathaway greatly, particularly now she knew he was a sort of grandfather of hers.
“Why did I?” Hathaway reached out musingly and moved Awful’s wine mug a long way away from her. “You might say I’m the odd one out in my family, but that’s not quite true. I always got on with the three younger ones rather well. I suppose it was after I had such a flaming row with Torquil—”
“He quarrels just like me,” Awful said, sitting very upright, with her eyes shining. “I don’t mean it either. I wish people understood.”
Hathaway smiled. “That will be enough from you, young madam.” He clearly did not want to discuss Torquil. He turned to Howard. “There are things I have to say to your brother now. Howard, what purpose do those two thousand words serve?”
Howard came out of his daze of strangeness, rather shamed to see that Hathaway had kindly been allowing him time to feel better. “I thought you knew,” he said. “You’re the one who got Dad to do them, after all.”
“Oh, no,” said Hathaway. “It wasn’t me. I said it because, upon thought, it seemed the speediest way to get hold of a sample. If I’d known what your father was like—”
“Archer thought one of you had doctored the typewriter,” said Howard.
“This?” Hathaway reached a hand to the typewriter Anne had pushed to the end of the table. “No. It’s just an ordinary typewriter. So”—he looked almost beseechingly at Howard—“how is it being done? Why are we being confined in space and time like this?”
“In time?” said Howard. “You aren’t. Well, at least—”
“I forget. The others probably don’t know,” said Hathaway. “Sitting here in the past, in the sixteenth century, I know that twenty-six years have gone by since we were first confined to the town. Up in your century, it only seems thirteen years—you have had the same thirteen years twice.”
“Erskine knew,” said Howard. “And Archer suspected. The others didn’t say.”
“You’re stuck in the town, too?” Awful asked, catching up with the talk a little late. Everything had slowed down for her.
Hathaway nodded. “Some of it is merely annoying,” he said. “If Bess goes to see her father out at the castle, the children can go, but I have to make my excuses. But I long to go abroad.” He looked sad and wistful. “What truly saddens me is that I can never see Anne again after she marries and leaves here.”
Awful asked, with a look of low cunning, “Don’t you want to farm the world?”
“This world? In this century?” Hathaway laughed. “A man is lucky if he can rule one country here! Besides, what do you do with the world when you have it? Archer seems mad to me. No, I certainly have no such ambitions.”
Howard was sure Hathaway meant this. He felt angry on Hathaway’s behalf, as well as for Mum and Dad and himself. The person causing all this seemed so spiteful. “I’m going to find out who it is,” he said. “Somehow. Who do you think it is?”
Hathaway pushed aside the book and the plate of cakes and leaned his elbows on the table thoughtfully. “I think it is someone unexpected,” he said. “We’d have found them out if it were one of the obvious ones, like Shine or Torquil. If I were one of my brothers and sisters, I’d think it was me. But since I know it isn’t me, well, it could be Dillian. She hasn’t done anything with the words she stole, and she could have stolen them as a blind. If she did, that was foolish because it alerted all the rest. And from what I know of Dillian, I think she would be angrier than most at being confined. She hates farming law and order, you know. She’s always yearned to be lawless, like Shine.” Hathaway glanced at the hourglass. The sand was well below its last quarter, filtering away fast. “I’m considering our characters,” he said. “And it interests me that neither Erskine nor Venturus has threatened your father. It’s almost as if they want you to suspect them. That suggests to me that they’re covering up for a third person. And I think that person has to be Archer. Venturus, being the youngest, admires Archer almost to the point of worship. He tries to imitate Archer—”
The way Hathaway said this made Howard feel that Hathaway was trying to tell him something else, something behind the actual words. But he had not a clue to what it could be. “Archer swore it wasn’t him,” he said. “I thought he was being honest.”
“Everyone blames Archer,” Awful said in vast, weary wisdom, as if she were at least ninety.
“I know,” Hathaway said, with a soft, apologetic movement. He looked at Howard earnestly. “But you wouldn’t believe how often Archer has played on that—doing his honest, injured, wry act. Who me? You know. And so he is honest, but with Archer you have to watch what he doesn’t say. And if he hasn’t told you definitely that Erskine and Venturus are not doing his dirty work for him, then the person you want is Archer.”
That look of Hathaway’s made Howard surer than ever that Hathaway was trying to tell him something else, but he still could not see what it was. What he said about Archer was enough to worry about in itself. “How could anyone stop Archer?” he said. “He seems so powerful.”
“Erskine might,” said Hathaway. “Erskine’s the only one of us who can really stand up to Archer. I’ll try to get a message to Erskine, but I strongly advise you and your father to see Erskine, too.” He looked at the hourglass again and pushed his chair back. “You must be going now.”
Awful scrambled from her stool with slow dignity. Howard, as he got up, remembered the letter from the city treasurer. “By the way,” he said, “are you the one who found out Dad hasn’t paid his taxes? He got a bill for thousands of pounds this morning.”
Hathaway went red. It was almost the way Archer did. Surprise and annoyance and some guilt swept across his face. “I was going to do that!” he said. “It would have been my next move. Someone else got in first. That’s really annoying! Now what can we do about that?”
“It’s the last straw for Dad,” Howard said.
Hathaway crossed to the door and opened it. Howard followed, admiring the way Hathaway’s padded blue robe swung comfortably about him. Living in the past had its points. Dad would have loved that robe as a dressing gown. “It’s difficult,” Hathaway said, going with them into the rest of the house. “It’s easier to start the Council on a thing like that than to stop it. I’ll think about it. And I suppose you’ll want me to call off the road menders?”
“Yes, please,” said Howard.
“I’ll do it at once,” said Hathaway.
They went through the house. Awful trod with unnatural dignity behind. The house was full of bustle and voices. Somebody was singing in the distance and clattering dishes. There was a smell of food cooking, mixing with wax and smoke and scents coming in through the open door to the garden.
“I like this house,” Howard said.
Bess was standing by the open door to say good-bye. She heard Howard and sank into a deep curtsy, smiling with pride and pleasure. Howard did his best to bow back. Awful bent her head majestically. It was all she dared do.
Outside, in the gathering evening, Anne and the little boy were hiding in the garden, watching them. There was only one little boy, Howard realized. He had just kept appearing all over the place. As Hathaway took them through the garden to the farmyard, Anne and William kept pace with them behind hedges and shrubs. Howard could hear them rustling and giggling. It was not meant to be rude. William was too shy to come out.
“It would be easier to provide your father with the money he owes,” Hathaway remarked as they came to the barnyard, “than to stop the Council from asking for it.”
Howard remembered a book he had read. “Couldn’t you bury some money where our garden’s going to be, and I could dig it up tomorrow?”
Hathaway laughed. “Yes, if I could stop someone else from finding it during the four centuries in between! No. There must be a better way. I’ll consider.”
The man in the smock was grooming the horse in the middle of the yard. The hens had all gone to roost. Howard could hear hennish croonings in the background, while Hathaway exchanged a couple of jokes with the man. It was all in the thick accent of the past, which Howard found impossible to follow. They crossed the cobbles to the museum door. On this side it was a small white door in the wall, less than half the size of the big main gate beside it.
Hathaway opened the door for them. “Come to me again,” he said, “if you get into difficulties. I’ll help in any way I can.” Again, the way he said this gave Howard a strong feeling that there was something else Hathaway knew, which he was trying to tell him without saying directly.
“Thanks,” Howard said, to both parts of it, the said and the unsaid. He was still wondering what Hathaway meant when he found himself in the dingy little space with the dead butterflies. The door marked “CURATOR” was just shutting behind them.