'This way, sir,' said the valet.
Oxford followed him out onto a broad landing and down an ornate staircase. As he descended, he noticed that the house was in an extreme state of disrepair. Its onetime opulence had sunk into a lazy decadence; the moulded trim around the edges of the ceilings, once painted in bright colours, was now flaked and faded; the wood-panelled walls were warped and split; the rugs, hangings, and curtains were threadbare; plaster had cracked; dust and cobwebs had gathered.
They reached the foot of the stairs and passed along a corridor, turned into another, and another.
'What a house to get lost in!' muttered Oxford.
'Darkening Towers is a very old mansion, sir,' commented Brock. 'The man who built it was somewhat eccentric and it has been added to many times over the years. The master purchased the estate less than a month ago and has not yet had the opportunity to effect repairs.'
'It's a veritable maze!'
'The dining room, sir,' said Brock, opening a door.
Oxford passed through into a long, shadow-filled room. It was hung all around with portraits of stern-looking elders. A chandelier was suspended over a banqueting table. Beresford rose as he entered.
'Ah, my dear Mr. Oxford, you appear much refreshed. I trust the clothes fit you?'
'Yes, thank you,' replied the time traveller, though in truth they were a little tight.
Brock ushered him to the opposite end of the table and pulled out the chair for him.
He sat.
The valet bowed toward Beresford and left the room. His place was taken by a butler, who stepped to the table and poured red wine for the two men. A couple of maids hurried back and forth, bringing plates of meat and vegetables. The various odours seemed thick and cloying to Oxford; too rich and intense, as if the meal had been marinating in butters and fats before it was cooked. He eyed the food uncomfortably, noting the rivulets of grease on its surface, but, nevertheless, his stomach rumbled.
Beresford emptied his glass in a single gulp, was served another, and said loudly, 'So how's the memory, my friend? Has anything come back to you?'
Oxford hesitated.
He made a decision.
'My Lord Marquess-'
'Henry, please.'
'Henry. I have decided to tell you everything because, the truth is, I desperately require help. Do you mind if we eat first, though? I'm half starved!'
'Not at all! Not at all! Pray settle my mind, though-you are not from a circus, are you?'
'No, I'm not.'
'And your costume is something more than it seems?'
'You are very perceptive, Henry.'
'Eat, Mr. Oxford. We shall talk afterwards.'
An hour later, the time traveller, feeling bloated and a little sick, accepted a brandy, refused a cigar, and told his host almost everything. He omitted the queen's assassination and, instead, claimed that he'd travelled back through time simply to meet his ancestor.
They had moved to the morning room after the meal and were sitting in big wooden armchairs beside a crackling fire.
Beresford was drunk.
He was also incredulous.
And he was laughing.
'Great heavens above!' he roared. 'You're as fine a storyteller as that Dickens fellow! Have you read Pickwick?'
'Of course I have. This isn't a fiction, Henry.'
'Balderdash! What can be more fictive than a man from the future being propelled into the past by a suit of clothes?'
'Yet I maintain that that's what happened.'
'You're a strange one, I'll admit,' declared the marquess. 'Your speech is rather too direct for an Englishman, your manner too casual by half. I have you down as a foreigner, my friend!'
'I told you-I was born and raised in Aldershot.'
'In the year 2162, you say. What's that? Some three hundred and twenty-five years from now?'
'Yes.'
Beresford refilled their glasses and lit another cigar.
'Let's just say I'm prepared to play along with your rum little game, Edward,' he said. 'You say you require my help. In what manner may I be of assistance?'
'I need you to purchase for me a complete set of watchmaker's tools.'
'For what purpose?'
'I have to repair my suit's control unit. I'm hoping that watchmaker's tools will be fine enough for such work.'
'Control unit?'
'The circular object you saw on my chest.'
'And am I to take it that when this `control unit' is repaired you will once again be capable of flight through time?'
'Yes.'
'Phew! I have never heard such a tale in all my born natural! Yet I have it in mind to humour you! You will remain here as my guest and I shall get you your tools!'
'There is something I can tell you,' said Oxford, 'that might lend credence to my story.'
'Really. What is that?'
'Five days from now, you will have a new monarch.'
Slowly, over the next seven days, Henry de La Poet Beresford's amused disbelief began to waver.
The death of King William IV at Windsor Castle had, of course, been expected and came as no surprise. The fact that Oxford had predicted Victoria's ascension to the throne on June 20 wasn't particularly amazing-more a lucky guess, in all probability.
However, after extracting a vow of silence from his host, Oxford revealed a great deal more about the world he'd come from, especially about the different technologies and power sources available to future man. The human race, it seemed, would lose none of its inventiveness as time progressed.
It was the way the man spoke and moved, though, that most convinced the marquess. There was something indescribably foreign about him, yet, conversely, the longer he spent with him the more Beresford believed that his odd visitor was, as he claimed, an Englishman.
'You are evidentially a sophisticated individual,' he said one morning, 'yet-if you'll pardon my bluntness-you lack the social graces I would expect from a gentleman.'
Oxford, who was seated at a table and using the watchmaker's tools to poke at the incomprehensible innards of his 'control unit,' responded without looking up.
'No offence taken, Henry. I don't mean to be rude; it's just that in my time social interaction is far less ritualised. We express our feelings and opinions just as we please, openly and without restraint.'
'How barbaric!' drawled the marquess, dangling a leg over the arm of his chair. 'Are you not permanently at one another's throats?'
'No more so than you Victorians.'
'Victorians? Is that what we are now? Why, I suppose it is! But tell me, my friend: what possible advantage can there be in the abandonment of our ritualised'-as you would have it-behaviour? Are not manners the mark of a civilised man?'
'The advantage is liberty, Henry. From this century forward, the concept of liberty becomes central to personal, social, political, economic, and technological developments. People do not want to feel suppressed, so great efforts are made to establish, if not true freedom, then at very least a sustainable and overwhelming illusion of it. I doubt there's ever been a time when human beings were truly free, but where-or, rather, when-I come from,
