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Jonah stepped through an archway to look for other soldiers, other people who might be more awake and more likely to be discussing last night’s events.

Two men in fancier clothes walked past, one saying to the other, “Hurry! The last barge is leaving for the coronation!”

Coronation?

Jonah peered back at Chip to see if Chip had heard the man too. Chip’s face had gone rock hard with fury.

“So that’s how it is,” he hissed. “They were trying to kill me or kidnap me, and replace me with another boy at the coronation. One who would probably do whatever Gloucester told him to do. …”

“Um,” Jonah said softly, because he thought the men were out of earshot now, but he wasn’t completely sure. “Wouldn’t people notice?”

Alex shook his head.

“It’s not like they have TV,” he said. “Maybe a few people have seen paintings of me and Chip, maybe a few other people know what’s going on. …”

Chip had already spun past them.

“I’m getting on that barge,” he announced, and stalked away without a backward glance.

“Come on!” Katherine said in a panicky voice, pulling on Jonah’s sleeve and reaching back for Alex, too. “We can’t lose him!”

Chip was already rushing after the two men, dodging servants with platters and soldiers with pikes and a stray-looking dog that raised his nose and sniffed suspiciously as Chip dashed past.

Jonah felt some of Katherine’s panic.
What if we lose Chip? What if he makes it on the barge and we don’t? What if he does something really stupid?
Jonah began almost running.

“Jonah!” Katherine whispered. “You’re kicking up dust!”

“It’s windy,” Jonah whispered back. “Who cares?”

Ahead of them Chip had reached a wharf extending out into a river—the Thames? Jonah wondered. He thought that the social studies teacher he’d had in sixth grade (a much, much nicer woman than Katherine’s Mrs. Hatchett) would be very proud of him for remembering
the name of a foreign waterway at a time like this.

And then there was no time to think, because Chip was jumping from the wharf onto the back of a low boat.

“That idiot!” Alex whispered.

“No, no, he’s all right—he’ll catch that pole …,” Jonah said.

Alex shot him a disgusted look.

“What?” Jonah said.

The answer was instantly clear. Chip did indeed grab on to a pole holding up a canopy over the well-dressed people crowding onto the boat. But he had landed on the outer edge of the boat, throwing everything off balance. The canopy wobbled; his corner of the boat dipped low in the water. Women in ridiculously elaborate skirts fell against elegant men, all of them separating from calm, unaffected tracers. It was eerie how the number of people on the boat seemed to instantly double, as Chip’s one action changed everyone’s movements. People laughed and shrieked—and stared. A man holding an oar left his tracer behind to creep toward Chip, a mystified expression on his face.

Katherine peered in distress from Alex to Jonah.

“Well?” she whispered. “Do I have to do everything?”

Jonah just looked at her blankly.

Katherine took off running. She broke through the
crowd like a star basketball player determined to score the winning point before the buzzer. Then, at the wharf’s edge, behind the loading area, she eased down into the water and—Jonah craned his neck to watch—disappeared with only a small ripple. Seconds later she resurfaced at the far side of the boat, climbed up, and clutched the pole on the opposite side from Chip.

Instantly the boat righted itself.

The man with the oar shrugged and went back to his position, rejoining his tracer.

“Oh,” Jonah whispered. “I would have figured that out. Eventually,” he told Alex.

Alex grinned.

“When should we tell her that people dump their sewage into the Thames?” he whispered.

“Never,” Jonah whispered back.

One by one, all the tracers vanished from the barge, as everyone settled down. Jonah and Alex waited until the rest of the people had crowded on, and then, just before the barge pulled away, they gingerly stepped down to grab other poles. They were careful to balance their weight, so the barge barely swayed.

And then they were gliding along the river.

It wasn’t bad on the barge. Clinging to the pole, balanced on the outer edge of the boat, Jonah was at least certain that he wouldn’t accidentally jostle into someone. And Jonah could hear bits and pieces of the conversation under the canopy.

Mostly people seemed to be talking about the weather.

“What a lovely day …”

“Perfect for the coronation …”

Jonah noticed that, although the people in the boat all had on fancy clothes, a lot of them were missing teeth or had pockmarked skin or bad scars. One man was even missing both an eye and a hand, like he was an extra for one of the
Pirates of the Caribbean
movies. Jonah started thinking about how in movies about old times it was only the pirates and the outlaws who ever had any deformities
or blemishes, while the heroes and heroines all had perfect teeth and perfect skin and perfect hair and bodies—as if they all had time-traveling plastic surgeons and orthodontists and hair stylists and personal trainers to take care of them. While in real life …

Oh, my gosh
, Jonah thought.
Some of these people are hideous!

A woman had turned toward him, exposing a cheek eaten up with some sort of infection, with pus oozing copiously from the side of her face. And she hadn’t even bothered to cover it up, hadn’t even bandaged it. Flies hovered above the pus.

Jonah turned his head to see how the others were reacting. Chip and Alex were staring straight ahead, completely unfazed.

Oh, yeah
, Jonah thought.
They’d be used to it
.

Katherine had her jaw clenched and looked like she was trying very hard not to throw up. But really, she’d looked like that ever since they arrived in the fifteenth century, because of the timesickness.

Huh
, Jonah thought.
As long as I don’t look at Lady Pus Face, I don’t feel sick at all anymore
.

Maybe twelve hours of breathing fifteenth-century air had cured him. Maybe eating the fifteenth-century bread had helped. Jonah remembered a little bit of a Greek
myth his sixth-grade social studies teacher had told his class—she’d been really into Greek myths. This one was something about someone going to the underworld and being offered food. And the food was really important because …

Suddenly Jonah got chills. He’d remembered the rest of the myth.

Because once you ate the food, you could never leave
.

Jonah started practically hyperventilating, breathing much too loudly. A man turned toward him, a puzzled expression on his pockmarked face. Jonah clamped his teeth together, trying to hold his breath instead. But this only made him dizzy.

He tilted his head back and stared up at a single wispy cloud in the bright blue sky.
What a lovely day … lovely day … lovely day …
Nice weather
was
something to focus on, to distract yourself with, when all your other thoughts were dangerous.

So, maybe …
Jonah dared to glance back at the crowd on the barge. He tried to look past the pus and the pockmarks, the missing teeth and limbs. There was something fake and strangely shallow about the conversation on the barge. As far as Jonah could tell, no one was saying, “What a fine king we’ll be crowning today!” No one said, “Can someone explain why we’re going to a coronation
today when the king disappeared last night?”

Jonah looked around. The river was crowded with barges, all headed upriver. And whenever Jonah got a good glimpse of the shore, it looked like people on the streets of London were streaming in the same direction as well. Everyone was going to the coronation. Were people acting so artificially in all the barges, on all the streets?

“Do you see the spires yet?” a man asked his boy as he pointed off into the distance.

“There?” the boy said. “That’s Westminster Abbey?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Kings are always crowned there.” He paused. “It’s fine weather for a coronation, isn’t it?”

The barge docked at another wharf, and people began streaming off toward the church. Chip started to rush forward with the crowd, but Jonah and Alex held him back, keeping him in the barge. Chip struggled against them.

“I must …,” he hissed. “I have to—”

“Shh!” Jonah whispered back. “You can’t walk through that crowd, even invisible. People would freak out if they bumped into you.”

When everyone but the oarsmen had gotten off the boat, the four kids stepped cautiously onto the wood dock. They skirted the edge of the crowd, surging forward, then stumbling back to avoid elbows, shoulders, feet.

“This is impossible!” Katherine whispered. “We’re never going to get anywhere!”

But then soldiers came through the crowd, commanding, “Clear the way! Clear the way! Make way for the king!”

By twisting and diving and dodging, all four kids managed to land in the open area when the crowd parted.

“Sweet!” Alex muttered.

They had a clear path ahead of them, right up to the soaring cathedral.

Chip stood in the exact center of the open space, looking around.

“This is the path I would have taken,” he whispered. “I would have worn cloth of gold, there would have been a silk canopy. …”

Chip sounded calm, but he had a strange expression on his face. He had his eyes narrowed and seemed deep in thought, reminiscing. But he kept clenching his jaw, as though he was fighting some internal struggle. He ran his hand through his short hair, and then something like bafflement spread over his face, as if he’d expected to feel long, flowing curls.

Or as if he’d expected to touch a crown.

Jonah was so busy watching Chip, he failed to notice the hubbub behind him.

A procession was advancing toward them, toward the cathedral. Jonah could see knights in armor on horseback; he could see the peak of a white canopy, probably made out of silk, just as Chip had described. And then Jonah could hear what the crowd around the procession was yelling:

“Long live the king! Long live Richard the Third!”

Those words apparently reached Chip’s ears at the same instant. A change swept over Chip’s face, leaving only one emotion behind: pure fury.

“Usurper! Thief! Murderer!” Chip shouted. “You do
not
deserve to be king!”

And then he took off running.

Jonah could see exactly what Chip planned to do. He planned to dart invisibly past all the knights and horses and nobles. He planned to scream the entire way. And then he planned to tackle the impostor king and take the crown for himself.

Jonah shot a quick glance at Katherine and Alex. Katherine was just standing there, horrified. Alex looked strangely baffled and was mouthing the words, “Richard? Richard the Third? But that’s …”

Jonah decided that if anyone was going to do something, it’d have to be him.

He took off with a burst of speed behind Chip. Back in the twenty-first century Jonah could outrun Chip easily—he did it all the time playing basketball. But this time Chip had a head start.

And maybe an advantage anyway, since he fits in the fifteenth century and I don’t?
Jonah wondered.

Jonah fell farther behind.

Then Jonah got lucky.

Chip darted around a horse but skidded in a pile of mud.
No, probably horse manure, given that it’s right behind that horse
, Jonah thought. Jonah pushed off harder with his big toe, the way his soccer coach had told him to run. He was making up ground now.

But Chip was righting himself, aiming toward the crowd under the canopy, all those people in gleaming clothes. In jerky glances Jonah could see that one of the people under the canopy was carrying a crown on a tasseled pillow. If Chip got under that canopy, near that crown, Jonah wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Jonah lunged.

For a moment Jonah was sure he’d missed. Something squished beneath him—
Ugh! Manure!
—but his hands wrapped around something solid: Chip’s leg.

Jonah pulled Chip back from the people under the canopy. He rose up so he could shift his grip, grabbing Chip by the waist, then the shoulders. Finally he clapped his hand over Chip’s mouth and hissed in his ear, “This is not the way to do this!”

“You don’t understand!” Chip hissed back. At least he
wasn’t shouting anymore. “He’s stealing my throne! That crown belongs on my head!”

“No!” Jonah whispered fiercely. “
You
belong in the twenty-first century. Here you’re supposed to be dead. Remember?”

At that, the fight went out of Chip. He sagged against the ground, as if he had no intention of ever getting up. Not even if a thousand horses and knights marched over him.

“Come on,” Jonah whispered. “I think I know what you can do to get some revenge. It might even help fix time.”

Chip frowned but stood up stiffly. Then the two boys dodged horses and knights again to get back to Katherine and Alex.

“How many people do you think heard him?” Jonah asked Katherine grimly when they reunited.

“Honestly, only the four or five who were right beside him,” Katherine said. “They’re the only ones who looked startled. Everyone else was cheering so loudly … these people believe in ghosts and sorcery and that kind of thing anyhow, so they wouldn’t be too suspicious, would they?”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Jonah muttered.

While the procession was still advancing, slowly, Jonah and the others slipped into the church.

“Where can we go to get out of the way?” Jonah asked, pausing at the back of the huge sanctuary.

“I don’t want to get out of the way!” Chip said. “I—”

“Just so we can talk,” Jonah assured him. “And plan.”

“That way, then,” Chip said reluctantly. He pointed down a dark hallway.

They ended up huddling in a corner near eerie statues and flickering candles. In the dim light Jonah finally got a good look at Alex’s anguished face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jonah demanded, tact having deserted him about the time he tackled Chip in the manure.