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The boy started to giggle hysterically. He didn't stop.

The time traveller let go of his ancestor, stood up, and looked down in disgust at the pathetic creature.

One thing was obvious: the Original was already insane.

Oxford stepped away from the lad and jumped to Green Park on June 10, 1840, but instead of materialising a few yards from the assassination site and a few minutes before the shots were fired, he found himself way up the slope behind a large tree. Screams sounded from the path below.

Far to his right, a man was running toward a thickly wooded corner of the park. He was being chased by a policeman.

Ahead, down the slope, Prince Albert was kneeling beside his dead wife while four horsemen struggled to hold back a panicking crowd.

On the other side of the royal carriage, a man lay dead, his head impaled on a railing.

"No," breathed Oxford. "God damn it, no, no, no.,,

He returned to Darkening Towers and the year 1837, landing in the grounds and falling to his knees.

He remembered tackling the Original next to the queen's carriage. They had struggled, and his ancestor had said, "Let go of me! My name must be remembered. I must live through history!"

"This is not possible!" cried Oxford, and, raising his face to the sky, he bellowed, "I can't be causing all of it! It's not possible! It's not possible!"

During the course of the next ten days, Edward Oxford was bedridden, suffering a fever that, for hours on end, caused him to rant incomprehensibly.

Henry de La Poet Beresford nursed his guest assiduously, for he'd become fascinated by this strange man from the future.

"How like gods we can be," he told Brock one day.

The valet eyed their patient dubiously. There didn't seem much godlike about the hollow-faced wretch he saw laying there, with skin pale as the sheets stretched tautly over sharp cheekbones. Oxford seemed to have aged twenty years since his first appearance at the mansion. Deep lines now scored the flesh to either side of his mouth, around the sunken eyes, and upon the forehead. His nose was thin and prominent.

"Should I send for a doctor, sir?"

"No, Brock," answered Beresford. "It's a chill, nothing more."

It was, in fact, a great deal more.

Edward Oxford was disintegrating. Submerged in a world that was alien to him, and with the knowledge that his own time no longer existed, he was disengaging from reality. Psychological bonds had loosened and slipped free; he was floating without any coordinates. He was losing his mind.

The fever broke on Tuesday, July 6. It happened during the night, when Oxford was awoken by screams.

For a while he lay still, not knowing where he was, then, slowly, his ragged memory returned and he groaned in despair.

The screams continued.

They echoed through the manor: a woman in terrible distress, her cries punctuated by an angry male voice.

Oxford pushed himself out of bed and rose weakly to his feet. He tottered to a chair, retrieved a gown from its back, pulled it on, and shuffled to the door.

Passing through, he entered the hall beyond and stood for a moment, supporting himself against the wall.

"Please!" came a woman's cry. "Don't do it! I can't stand any more! God have mercy!"

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