The Time Traveller

3

But fashion wasn't really what was niggling the history faculty. The questions were. Since Wieland had started his shenanigans, the questions the students were posing in seminars and tutorials were getting more and more out of hand.

What were Caesar's real motivations for attacking the Helveti?

Was it really outside circumstances that made Ethelred so ineffectual, or was it how others saw him as a person?

What was it like during the early Industrial Revolution? Really like?

What? What was it really like? What was it REALLY like? What kind of a question was that?

It was Dr Thorpe who cracked under the pressure first.

"How on Earth am I supposed to know what it was really like!!," he roared at a tranquil tutorial of four that had swollen to an impetuous rugby team of eighteen. "Was I there? Were YOU? No. Nobody was! What we know are researchable, cataloguable and measurable FACTS. That's what the study of history is about, nothing more! We know what people in the past wore because we have cloth remnants and drawings. We know how they did their work because we have their tools and their guild books. We know what they used in their households because we've sifted through their rubbish tips. We know how tall they were because we have their bloody bones! 

But we don't know what they sounded like when they spoke, or what songs they hummed on their way to the fields or who they wrote love notes to in infant school! They didn't keep diaries; they kept government documents! They didn't take photographs; they painted idealised portraits! How is anybody supposed to know their mental state, or the 'real personality' as you say, or even what natural hair colour ANYONE in the past really had? What was it really like, you ask? No one can tell you that! No one!"

"Dr. Wieland can," said a voice from the back of the room.

"He can? Oh, really? And how does the great Dr Wieland claim to do that?"

"He says he was there."

"What? I didn't hear you properly, speak up."

"HE SAYS HE WAS THERE." (This was met with a choir of nodding heads)

Other voices followed:

"He says he personally saw everything he tells us about."

"And that it was different than we think."

"And that a lot of the so-called 'official history' is either highly misleading or just plain wrong."

Dr Thorpe stared at his tutorial. History being just plain wrong? History being different than it had been minutely researched to have been? Research misleading? That drummed up blunderbuss in a theatre cape having actually seen historic events occurring?

Dr Thorpe stood up from his desk chair and straighten his tweed jacket. "You may all go home," he informed his students, and then made his way out of the room and down the hall to the faculty office to inform Mrs Padmore, firstly, that all eighteen of his Dark Ages tutorial students had failed the course prematurely, secondly, that he was in dire need of a cup of tea, and thirdly, that he needed to talk to Dr Mitchell immediately.

It was a matter of life and death.

Even thinking back on the conversation that followed made Dr Thorpe's face turn a very unscholarly tone of strawberry.

"It's not illegal to believe in reincarnation, Perry." Mitchell said, staring at him from across his large, empty desk. "If it were, the university would be out all its medical departments."

"I'm not following."

"Well, they're all Hindus, aren't they? Over in Medicine."

"I can assure you, Wieland isn't a Hindu. I don't know what he is, but a Hindu he isn't."

"It's probably all just a gag anyhow. Bit of a show to fill the seats. And if the students take to it and learn a thing or two in passing, what's the harm?"

"Oh, don't tell me Keegan has pulled you into her boat?"

"Now I'm not following."

"Keegan and her silly 'as-long-as-the-precious-lambs-are-learning-something-and-enjoying-themselves' nonsense. What has Wieland published, and I mean recently, to have justified his appointment in this faculty?"

"A very well-received paper on the health standards of the Czech royalty in the 16th century and another one on some alchemist whose name I can't for the life of me pronounce, so don't even ask. Also 16th century."

"Alchemist?"

"Yes, alchemist. Look, if  Dr Wieland believes he was really there in a past life but can still come up with the facts to back up his so-called "memories", then I don't see the problem. It's happened before, you know, that people under hypnosis have come out with personal memories of historic events that, at the time, historians took to be utter cobblers, be we know now to be shockingly accurate. It doesn't matter where you start, as long as you jolly well end up where everyone else does. In the library."

"The students didn't mention anything about hypnosis or past lives. They said he claimed to have been there. In the past. He. Wieland. Not a former Wieland. The current Wieland."

"Perry, what other explanation could there possibly be? What? That he's got a time machine tucked away somewhere we don't know about? That he just pops into the closet for a quick jaunt back to 1540? That he's our own personal Doctor Who? Who's getting pulled into whose boat now? But I will tell you a secret, and do keep it under your hat."

Here Dr. Mitchell leaned forward conspiratorially.

"Wieland has racked us up 18,000 pounds beyond our normal budget! Mrs Padmore's done the arithmetic. We haven't seen that kind of money since the Sutton Hoo craze in the 50s! Thanks to him, we can overhaul the faculty library -- which you know how much we need -- and start setting up that department museum we've always dreamt of! Frankly, Perry, if Wieland wants to dress up like Queen Victoria and work a Ouija board during his lectures, then I'm inclined to let him if it'll keep bringing them in. As I say, though, keep it under your hat."

Dr Mitchell leaned back in his swivel chair.

"Do you want to know what I'm seeing, Perry? Hm? Our own museum, that's what I'm seeing."

And with that Dr Mitchell sent a grin and wink across the desk – which was not returned.