The commotion emanated from the marquess's room, some way along the corridor.
Oxford took a couple of steps toward it, but suddenly the door ahead of him flew open and a naked woman crashed out of it to the floor. She scrambled to her hands and knees and started to crawl in his direction. He saw that her back was crisscrossed with red welts, some of which had cut the skin and were leaking blood.
"No more, I beg you! I beg you, my lord!" she howled.
Beresford reeled into the passage, dressed only in breeches, a whip in his right hand, a bottle in the left. He laughed demoniacally, raised his arm, and sent the whip lashing down across her rump.
"Stop it!" cried Oxford.
The woman fell on her face and lay whimpering.
"By God!" exclaimed the marquess, looking up. "You're conscious, are you?"
"What-what's happening here?" mumbled the time traveller.
"Ha!" roared Beresford. "I'm giving this trollop all she deserves, man! And it's costing me but a few shillings! The cheap whore!"
His whip cracked down again. He laughed.
Oxford tried to say something, failed, and watched the floor swing toward him. He felt his forehead impact against it.
He knew no more.
By Wednesday afternoon, he was sitting up in bed sipping tentatively at a bowl of chicken broth. The events of the night before seemed like a vague dream.
His host entered the room dressed in his riding clothes. The marquess had just returned from a hunt and was, once again, uproariously drunk-a not infrequent occurrence. He stumbled as he crossed to a chair and hurled himself into it.
"Back from the brink, I see! How the devil do you feel?"
"Weak," replied Oxford. "Henry, I'm sorry about the way I spoke to you."
"Fetch the damned bootjack, Brock," ordered Beresford. He grinned at his guest. "I can never get the bally things off without the old codger's help."
"What I said to you was unforgivable," continued Oxford. "I shouldn't have called you an ape."
"Pah! Forget it! Water under the bridge, what! So the Original wasn't having any of it, hey? You couldn't dissuade him? You've been babbling about it in your fever."
"Rather than talk him out of it, I think I talked him into it," admitted Oxford.
"Hah! So Victoria is fated to die, it seems! Ha ha!"
Oxford slopped soup onto his bedsheets and, with a shaking hand, placed the bowl onto the bedside table.
"I seem to have said rather too much," he croaked.
"Not at all, old man. I have no love for our little prim and proper bitch queen, and I feel I have a better grip on the affair now that I know the full story. I take it, then, that Her Majesty becomes a figure of some importance in your history?"
"She oversaw the expansion of the British Empire and a period of remarkable technological advancement."
"Brock!" yelled Beresford. "Where are you, man? These blasted boots are killing me!" He shook his head at Oxford. "We're well on our way to such circumstances anyway, Edward; I don't see how the snooty tart can possibly influence the country's advancement one way or the other."
"She's a figurehead."
"Figurehead be damned! Disposable, Edward! Disposable! Bollocks to the queen, that's what I say! Ah, Brock, at last! Get these blessed things off me, would you, you doddering old goat!"
The stony-faced valet pulled over a small three-legged stool, sat on it, lifted Beresford's right leg, placed it on his knee, and began unbuttoning the long riding boot.
"No, Edward," continued the marquess, "if you ask me, you've been placing too much emphasis on the events of that day in 1840. We should concentrate our efforts elsewhere."
Brock inserted the jack into Beresford's boot and began to lever it off.
"There's little choice," replied Oxford. "I'm at the event in triplicate now, and on each occasion I seem a little more displaced; pushed away both geographically and chronologically, as the suit prevents me from meeting myself."
"So, as I say, perhaps you should abandon that side of it," suggested Beresford. He gave a sigh as his boot came off and Brock got to work on the other one.
"What do you suggest?"
"Leave history to run its course. Perhaps what matters is not the shape and order of events, but that you, ultimately, are in them. If you can ensure that the right girl has a child with an Oxford, you'll reestablish your ancestry. Who gives a damn that, without Victoria, history might unwind a little differently? At least there'll be a 2202 with an Edward Oxford in it! You'll be able to go home, man!"
The time traveller stared at his hands thoughtfully.
"It's true," he muttered, "the Original did-I mean, does have brothers. Even if I can identify the girl, though, which won't be easy, I don't see how I can force them together."
The marquess gave a roar of laughter and, as his second boot came off, waved Brock away. The valet bowed and left the room with the footgear in his hand.
"By heavens, for a man from the future you can be mighty slow-witted!" Beresford cried drunkenly. "You bloody well do it, man!" He slapped his knee mirthfully. "You do it! Find the little trollop and have her!"
Oxford looked at his host in shock. "You surely aren't suggesting that I rape my own ancestor!" he said, slowly.
"Of course! Exactly that! Fuck yourself into existence, Oxford! What other option have you?"
PREPARATION
It's all fate and chance.
Three days later, the idea didn't seem quite so disturbing. This wasn't because it was making more sense; it was because Oxford was making less. He felt horribly detached from his environment and, whenever Beresford or Brock spoke to him, it seemed extremely well acted, but not real. It simply wasn't real.
On Saturday evening, as they ate dinner, he raised what had now become his main problem with the scheme. It wasn't the crime of rape, it was how to find the victim.
"I know barely a thing about her," he told the marquess.
"You know she had a birthmark on her chest."
"Yes."
"And you know that she was considerably younger than the Original."
"Yes."
"And you know that he was acquainted with her parents and grandparents before he went to Australia."
"Yes."
"And you know that he was incarcerated in Bedlam and Broadmoor from mid-1840 until he sailed, which means he must have known them before the time of the assassination."
"Attempted assassination," corrected Oxford.
"Quite so. And you know that he worked first in the Hat and Feathers, then in the Hog in the Pound."
"That's correct."
"So there you have your starting points."
"You can't expect me to go strolling into public houses, Beresford! I can barely stand even the seclusion of Darkening Towers with just you and your staff for company!"
"No offence taken, old chap," countered the marquess, with a wry smile. "And I'm suggesting nothing of the sort."
"Then what?"
"Simply this: I will hunt down your young lady during the course of the next two and a half years, and I will meet you back here every six months to report on my progress."
"Every six months?"
"Yes! Finish your dinner, drink up, leap ahead! I'll meet you here on January 1, 1838!"
Six months later, Henry de La Poet Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford, looked shabbier; his mansion more decrepit.
As usual, he was in his cups.