Despite the background murmur, London seemed to be slumbering under a blanket of silence.
He started to walk down the slope toward the base of Constitution Hill, struggling to overcome his growing sense of dislocation.
"Steady, Edward," he muttered to himself. "Hang on, hang on. Don't let it overwhelm you. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, so stay focused, get the job done, then get back to your suit!"
He reached the wide path. The queen's carriage would pass this way soon. My God! He was going to see Queen Victoria!
He looked around. Every single person he could see was wearing a hat or bonnet. Most of the men were bearded or wore moustaches. The women held parasols.
Slow motion. It was all in slow motion.
He examined faces. Which belonged to his ancestor? He'd never seen a photograph of the original Edward Oxford-there were none-but he hoped to see some sort of family resemblance. He stepped over the low fence lining the path, crossed to the other side, and loitered near a tree.
People started to gather along the route. He heard a remarkable range of accents and they all sounded ridiculously exaggerated. Some, which he identified as working class, were incomprehensible, while the upper classes spoke with a precision and clarity that seemed wholly artificial.
Details kept catching his eye, holding his attention with hypnotic force: the prevalence of litter and dog shit on the grass, the stains and worn patches on people's clothing, rotten teeth and rickets-twisted legs, accentuated mannerisms and lace-edged handkerchiefs, pockmarks and consumptive coughs.
"Focus!" he whispered.
He noticed a man across the way standing in a relaxed but rather arrogant manner, looking straight at him and smiling. He had a lean figure, round face, and a very large moustache.
Can he see that I don't belong here? wondered Oxford.
A cheer went up. He looked to his right. The queen's carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle, two more behind.
Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?
Ahead of him, a man wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches, straightened, reached under his coat, and moved closer to the path.
Slowly, the royal carriage approached.
"Is that him?" muttered Oxford, gazing at the back of the man's head.
Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside.
The blue-coated individual stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband passed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.
Oxford yelled, "No, Edward!" and ran forward.
The gunman glanced at him.
He looks just like me! thought Oxford, surprised.
He vaulted over the fence and grabbed his ancestor's raised arm. If he could just disarm him and drag him away, tell him to flee and forget this stupid prank.
They struggled, locked together.
"Give it up!" pleaded Oxford.
"Let go of me!" grunted the would-be assassin. "My name must be remembered. I must live through history!"
A distant voice yelled, "Stop, Edward!" and a flash of lightning caught the time traveller's eye.
He looked across the park toward it. The man with the pistol did the same.
The flintlock went off, the recoil jolting both men.
The back of Queen Victoria's skull exploded.
Shit! No! That wasn't meant to happen!
He gripped the gunman, shook him, and heaved him off his feet.
His ancestor fell backward and his head hit the low cast-iron fence. There was a crunch and a spike suddenly emerged from the man's eye.
"You're not dead!" exclaimed Oxford, staggering back. "You're not dead! Stand up! Run for it! Don't let them catch you!"
The assassin lay on his back, his head impaled, blood pooling beneath him.
Oxford stumbled away.
There were screams and cries, people pushing past him.
He saw Victoria; she was tiny, young, like a child's doll, and her shredded brain was oozing onto the ground.
No. No. No.
This isn't happening.
This can't happen.
This didn't happen.
The smiling round-faced man was suddenly at his side. "Bravo, my friend!" he muttered. "Jolly good show!"
Oxford backed away from him, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.
"Get back to the suit," he mumbled as his legs pumped. "Try something else!"
He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.
What had caused that bolt of lightning? It had come from the same direction as the shout: "Stop, Edward!" Who had that been? He hadn't seen anyone clearly; there was too much happening.
He found his suit, slipped on the helmet, and activated it.
A sense of well-being flooded through him as the distant noise of electric cars, passenger jets, and advertising billboards assailed his ears. He pulled on the suit and set the navigation system for three months into the past. His lunatic ancestor would be working in a public house-the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street; that was a recorded fact.
"I'll go and talk him out of it," he whispered. "It's what I should have done in the first place."
A terrifying feeling of inevitability sank into his bones.
It won't work.
Try anyway!
It won't work.
He pushed through the undergrowth, returning to the edge of the woods.
"Step out into the open, sir!" came a voice.
Oxford froze. What now?
He crept ahead, trying to see whoever it was through the trees.
"I saw what happened-there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"
He remained silent.
There! A policeman!
"Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"
Oxford plunged out into the open.
The policeman gasped, stepped back, and fell onto his bottom. He threw his truncheon.
The club whirled through the air and crashed into the control unit on the front of the time traveller's suit. Sparks exploded and a mild electric shock jerked through his body.
"Damn!" he cried, and bounded away. He slammed his stilts into the ground, leaped high, ordered the time jump, and winked out of June 10, 1840.
The suit malfunctioned.
Instead of sending him back three months, it sent him a good deal further; and rather than shifting him half a mile northward to a secluded alley behind the Hog in the Pound, it threw him twenty-one miles beyond.
He blinked into existence fifteen feet in the air with an electric charge drilling through him and crashed into the ground, unconscious. His limbs twitched spasmodically for thirty minutes, then he became very still.
Four hours later, a horseman narrowly avoided riding over him. The man reined in his mount and looked down at the bizarrely costumed figure.
"By James! What have we here?" he exclaimed, dismounting.
Henry de La Poet Beresford, the 3rd Marquess of Waterford, bent and ran his fingers over the strange material of the time suit. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He grasped Edward Oxford by the shoulder and shook him.
"I say, old fellow, are you in the land of the living?"
There was no response.
Beresford placed his hand on the man's chest, beside the lanternlike disk, and felt the heart beating.
"Still with us, anyway," he muttered. "But what the devil are you, old thing? I've never seen the like!"