A Knight in Shining Armour (6 page)

“Are you all right?” the vicar asked, offering his hand to help Dougless up.

“I . . . I think so,” she said as she stood up and dusted herself off. “You okay?” she asked the man on the ground.

“What manner of chariot was that?” he asked, sitting up, but not attempting to stand. He looked dazed. “I did not hear it coming.” His voice lowered. “And there were no horses.”

Dougless exchanged looks with the vicar.

“I’ll get him a glass of water,” the vicar said, giving a little smile to Dougless as though to say,
You saved him, so he’s yours.

“Wait!” the man said. “What year is this?”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” the vicar answered, and when the man lay back on the ground as if exhausted, the vicar looked at Dougless. “I’ll get the water,” he said, then went hurrying off, leaving them alone.

Dougless offered her hand to the man on the ground, but he refused it and stood up on his own.

“I think you ought to sit down,” she said kindly as she motioned to an iron bench inside the low stone wall. He wouldn’t go first but followed her through the open gate, then wouldn’t sit until she had. But Dougless pushed him to sit down. He looked too pale and too bewildered to pay attention to courtesy.

“You’re dangerous, you know that? Listen, you sit right here and

I’m going to call a doctor. You are not well.”

She turned away, but his words halted her. “I think perhaps I am dead,” he said softly. She looked back at him in speculation. If he was suicidal, then she couldn’t leave him alone. “Why don’t you come with me?” she said quietly. “We’ll go together to find you some help.”

He didn’t move from the bench. “What manner of conveyance was it that nearly struck me down?”

Dougless moved to sit beside him. If he was suicidal, maybe what he needed most was someone to talk to. “Where are you from? You sound English, but you have an accent I’ve never heard before.”

“I am English. What was the chariot?”

“All right,” she said with a sigh. She could play along with him. “That was what the English call a coach. In America, it’s called a minibus. It was going entirely too fast, but it’s my opinion that the only thing of the twentieth century the English have really accepted is the speed of the motor vehicle.” She grimaced. “So what else don’t you know about? Airplanes? Trains?”

It was one thing to offer help, but she had important things of her own to take care of. “Look, I really need to go. Let’s go to the rectory and have the vicar call a doctor.” She paused. “Or maybe we should call your mother.” Surely the people of this village knew of this crazy man who ran about in armor and pretended he’d never seen a wristwatch or a bus.

“My mother,” the man said, his lips forming a little smile. “I would imagine my mother is dead now.”

Maybe grief had made him lose his memory. Dougless softened. “I’m sorry. Did she die recently?”

He looked up at the sky for a moment before answering. “About four hundred years ago.”

At that Dougless started to rise. “I’m calling someone.”

But he caught her hand and wouldn’t let her leave. “I was sitting . . . in a room writing my mother a letter when I heard a woman weeping. The room darkened, my head swam; then I was standing over a woman—you.” He looked up at her with pleading eyes.

Dougless thought that leaving this man alone would be so much easier if he weren’t so utterly divine looking. “Maybe you blacked out and don’t remember dressing up and going to the church. Why don’t you tell me where you live so I can walk you home?”

“When I was in the room, it was the year of our Lord 1564.”

Delusional, Dougless thought. Beautiful but crazy. My luck.

“Come with me,” she said softly, as though speaking to a child about to step over a cliff. “We’ll find someone to help you.”

The man came off the bench quickly, his blue eyes blazing. The size of him, the anger of him, not to mention that he was steel-covered and carried a sword that looked to be razor sharp, made Dougless step back.

“I am not yet ready for Bedlam, mistress. I know not why I am here or how I came to be here, but I know who I am and from whence I came.”

Suddenly, laughter began to rumble deep inside Dougless. “And you came from the sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth’s time, right? The
first
Elizabeth, of course. Oh, boy! This is going to be the best Dougless-story ever. I’m jilted in the morning and an hour later a ghost holds a sword to my throat.” She stood up. “Thanks a lot, mister. You’ve cheered me up immensely. I am now going to call my sister and ask her to wire me ten pounds—no more, no less—then I’m catching a train to the hotel where Robert and I are staying. I’ll get my plane ticket, then I’m going home. I’m sure that after today the rest of my life is going to be uneventful.”

She turned away from him, but he blocked her path. From inside his balloon shorts he withdrew a leather pouch, looked in it, took out a few coins, and pressed them into Dougless’s hand, closing her fingers over them.

“Take the ten pounds, woman, and be gone. It is worth that and more to be rid of your spiteful tongue. I will beseech God to reverse your wickedness.”

She was tempted to throw the money at him, but her alternative was to call her sister again. “That’s me, Wicked Witch Dougless. I don’t know why I want a train when I have a perfectly good broomstick. I’ll send your money back in care of the vicar. So long, and I hope we never meet again.”

She turned and left the churchyard just as the vicar returned with the man’s water. Let someone else deal with his fantasies, she thought. The man probably had a whole trunk full of costumes. Today he’s an Elizabethan knight, tomorrow he’s Abraham Lincoln—or Horatio Nelson, since he’s English.

It was easy to find the train station in the little village, and she went to the window to purchase her ticket.

“That’ll be three pounds six,” the man behind the window said.

Dougless had never been able to figure out the English money. There seemed to be so many coins that had the same value, so she shoved the coins the man had given her under the cage window. “Is this enough?”

The man looked at the three coins one by one, slowly turning them over, examining them carefully. After a moment, he looked back at Dougless, then excused himself.

I’ll probably be arrested for passing counterfeit money, Dougless thought as she waited for the man to return. Being arrested would be a fitting end to a perfect day.

After a few minutes a man with an official-looking hat came to the window. “We can’t take these, miss. I think you ought to take them to Oliver Samuelson. He’s just around the corner to your right.”

“Will he give me train fare for the coins?”

“I ’spect he will that,” the man said, seeming to be amused at some private joke.

“Thank you,” Dougless murmured as she took the coins. Maybe she should call her sister and forget about the coins. She looked at them, but they looked as foreign as all foreign coins did. With a sigh, she turned right and came to a shop. “Oliver Samuelson, Coin Dealer” the painted window said.

Inside the shop, a bald-headed little man was sitting behind a desk, a jeweler’s loupe about his shiny forehead. “Yes?” he asked when Dougless entered.

“The man in the train station sent me to you. He said you might give me train fare for these.”

The man took the coins and looked at them under the jeweler’s loupe. After a moment he began to softly chuckle. “Train fare, indeed.”

He looked up. “All right, miss,” he said. “I will give you five hundred pounds each for these, and this one is worth about, say, five thousand pounds. But I don’t have that much money here. I’ll have to call some people in London. Can you wait a few days for the money?”

Dougless couldn’t speak for a moment. “Five
thousand
pounds?”

“All right, six thousand, but not a shilling more.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“Do you want to sell them or not? They’re not ill-gotten are they?”

“No, at least I don’t think so,” Dougless whispered. “But I have to talk to someone before I sell them. You’re sure they’re genuine?”

“As a rule medieval coins aren’t so valuable, but these are rare and in mint condition. You don’t by chance have more, do you?”

“Actually, I believe there are a few more.” Maybe a whole bag full of them, she thought.

The man smiled at her as though she were the light of his life. “If you have a fifteen-shilling piece with a queen in a ship on it, let me see it. I can’t afford it, but I’m sure I can find a buyer.”

Dougless started backing toward the door.

“Or a double,” he said. “I’d like to have an Edward the Sixth double.”

Nodding at him, Dougless left his shop. In a daze, she walked back to the church. The man wasn’t in the churchyard, so she hoped he hadn’t left. She went into the church, and there he was, on his knees before the white tomb of the earl, his hands clasped, his head bowed in prayer.

The vicar stepped from the shadows to stand beside her. “He’s been there since you left. I tried, but I couldn’t get him to stand up. Something is deeply troubling that poor man.” He turned to her. “He’s your friend?”

“No, actually, I just met him this morning. I thought he was from here.”

The vicar smiled. “My parishioners seldom wear armor.” He looked at his watch. “I must go, but you’ll stay with him? For some reason, I hate to see him left alone.”

Dougless said that she would stay by him, then the vicar left the church, and she was alone with the praying man. Quietly, she walked to stand behind him. “Who are you?” she whispered.

He didn’t open his eyes, unclasp his hands, or even lift his head. “I am Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck.”

It took Dougless a moment to remember where she’d heard that name before, then she looked at the marble tomb. Carved deeply in Gothic letters was the name, Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck. And the full-length sculpture of the man on top of the tomb was wearing exactly what this man was wearing. And the face carved in the marble was this man’s face.

The idea that this man really was from the past, really was a living, breathing ghost, was more than Dougless could comprehend. She took a deep breath. “You don’t have any identification, do you?” she asked, trying to lighten the moment.

Lifting his head, the man opened his eyes and glared at her. “Do you doubt my word?” he asked angrily. “You, the witch who has done this to me, can doubt me? If I did not fear being accused of sorcery myself, I would denounce you and stay to watch you burn.”

Standing there, silent, her thoughts in turmoil, Dougless watched as the man turned away and began to pray again.

W
hen at last Nicholas Stafford stood up,
he stared at the young woman before him. Her manner, her dress, and her speech were so strange to him that he could hardly keep his thoughts together. She looked to be the witch he knew her to be: she was as beautiful as any woman he’d ever seen, her uncased hair flowing to her shoulders, her eyes as green as emeralds, and her skin was white, flawless. But she was wearing an indecently short skirt, as though she were daring the contempt of man and God alike.

In spite of the fact that he felt dizzy and weak, he did not allow himself to waver from his firm stance. He returned her straightforward glare with one of his own.