The time travellers':
"...cover story was that they were political exiles from a land beyond Hibernia called America, now torn by a terrible war. It accounted for their various strangenesses, and was reasonably plausible, since the Romans had vague accounts of Britannic legends of fantastic realms out there." (p. 133)
That is more than a plausible cover story. It is the truth as far as it can be expressed without going into unnecessarily confusing detail. Remember when, in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, a Tyrian in 950 BC deduced the truth about Time Patrolman Manse Everard:
"'I think,' said Pum, 'my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'
"Am I that transparent to him?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 32.
Yes, Eborix. You are that transparent to a Tyrian wharf rat. Pummairam has deduced the truth. "Time travel" is just a detail of that "strange realm" where there will be battles with wizards.
(We keep Time Patrol to hand for useful comparisons.)
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