A Knight in Shining Armor

When Nicholas found the upstairs room where he was to spend the night, he was appalled. The room was small, with two tiny, hard-looking beds with no cloth hangings enclosing them, and the walls were very bare. But upon closer examination he saw that the walls were painted with thousands of tiny blue flowers. On second thought, he decided that with a few borders and some order to the paintings they might look all right.

There was a window with that marvelous glass in it, and it had fabric side hangings of painted cloth. There were framed pictures on the walls, and when he touched one, he felt the glass—so clear he could hardly see it. One of the pictures was quite lewd, showing two naked women sitting on a cloth near two fully dressed men. It was not that Nicholas didn’t like the picture, but he couldn’t bear to see such a shameful thing displayed so openly. He turned it to face the wall.

There was a door that led to a press, but there were no shelves in it. There was only a round stick going from one side to the other, with the same steel shapes that he had seen in the clothes shop hanging from the stick. There was a cabinet in the room, but such as he’d never seen before. It was entirely full of drawers! He tried, but the top of the cabinet did not lift up. He pulled the drawers out one by one and they worked marvelously well.

After a while, Nicholas began to look for a chamber pot, but one was not to be found anywhere in the room. Finally, he went downstairs and out to the back garden to find a privy, but there was none.

“Have things changed that much in four hundred years?” he mumbled as he relieved himself in the rosebushes. He fumbled with the zipper and snaps, but managed rather well, he thought.

“I will do well without the witch,” he said to himself as he went back into the house. Perhaps tomorrow he would wake and find this all to be a dream, a long, bad dream.

No one was about downstairs, so Nicholas looked into a room with an open door. There was furniture in the room that was fully covered with fine, woven fabric. There was a chair with not one inch of wood showing. When he sat on the chair, the softness enveloped him. For a moment he closed his eyes and thought of his mother and her old, frail bones. How she’d like a chair like this, covered in softness and fabric, he thought.

Against one wall was a tall wooden desk with a stool beneath it. Here was something that looked somewhat familiar. When he examined the cabinet, he saw the hinge and lifted the top. It was not a desk but a type of harpsichord, and when he touched the keys, the sound was different. There was written music in front of him and for once something looked familiar.

Nicholas sat down on the stool, ran his fingers over the keys to hear the tone of them, then, awkwardly at first, began to play the music before him.

“That was beautiful.”

Turning, he saw the landlady standing behind him.

“‘Moon River’ always was one of my favorites. How do you do with ragtime?” She searched inside a drawer in a little table that had an extraordinary plant on top of it and withdrew another piece of music. “They’re all American tunes,” she said. “My husband was an American.”

The most extraordinary piece of music, called “The Sting,” was put before Nicholas. It took him some time before he played it to the woman’s satisfaction, but once he understood the rhythm of the music, he played it with enjoyment.

“Oh, my, you are good,” she said. “You could get a job in any pub.”

“Ah, yes, a public house. I will consider the possibility,” Nicholas said, smiling as he stood up. “The need of employment might yet arise.” Suddenly, he felt dizzy and reached out to catch himself on a chair.

“Are you all right?”

“Merely tired,” Nicholas murmured.

“Traveling always wears me out. Been far today?”

“Hundreds of years.”

The woman smiled. “I feel that way too when I travel. You should go up to your room and have a bit of a lie-down before supper.”

“Yes,” Nicholas said softly as he started for the stairs. Perhaps tomorrow he would be able to think more clearly about how to get himself back to his own time. Or perhaps tomorrow he’d wake up in his own bed and find that all of it was over, not just this twentieth-century nightmare, but also the nightmare he’d been in when last he was home.

In his room he undressed slowly, and hung his clothes up as he had seen done in the clothes shop. Where was the witch now? he wondered. Was she back in the arms of her lover? She was powerful enough to have called him forward over four hundred years, so he had no doubt that she could conjure an errant lover back across mere miles.

Nude, Nicholas climbed into bed. The sheets were smooth beyond believing and they smelled clean and fresh. Over him, instead of multiple, heavy coverlets, was a fat, soft, light blanket.

Tomorrow, he thought as he closed his eyes in weariness. Tomorrow he would be home.

Instantly, he fell into a sleep that was deeper than any he’d ever experienced before, and he heard nothing when the sky opened and it began to rain.

Hours after he went to bed, reluctantly, he was awakened by his own thrashing about. Groggily, Nicholas sat up. The room was so dark that at first he didn’t know where he was. As he listened to the rain pounding on the roof, his memory gradually returned. He fumbled at the table beside the bed for flint and candle so he could make a light, but there were none.

“What manner of place is this?” he exclaimed. “There are no chamber pots, no privies, and no lights.”

As he was grumbling, his head turned sharply as he listened. Someone was calling him. The voice was not in words. He couldn’t hear the actual sound of his name, but he could feel the urgency and the desperate need of a voice that was reaching out to him.

No doubt it was the witch-woman, he thought with a grimace. Was she bent over a cauldron of snakes’ eyes, stirring and cackling and whispering his name?

As Nicholas felt the pull of the call, he knew there was no use fighting her. As he lived and breathed, he knew he had to go to her.

With great reluctance, he left the warm bed, then began the arduous task of trying to dress himself in the strange modern clothes. It was when he pulled up the zipper that he discovered the parts of his body that were most susceptible to being caught in the tiny metal teeth. Cursing, he put on the flimsy shirt and felt his way out of the dark room.

He was glad to see that there was light in the hall. On the wall was a glass-enclosed torch, but the flame was not fire, and whatever it was, it was encased in a round glass sphere. He wanted to examine this miracle further, but through a window came a flash of lightning, and a crack of thunder rattled the house—and the call came to him more forcefully.

He went down the stairs, across lush carpets, and out into the pouring rain. Shielding his face with his hands, Nicholas looked up to see that high above his head were more flames set on top of poles, yet the blowing rain did not extinguish their fire. Shivering, already wet through, Nicholas put his head down into his collar. These modern clothes had no substance! The modern people must be strong! he thought. How did they survive with no capes, or jerkins to protect them from the driving rain?

Struggling against the force of the rain, he went down streets that were unfamiliar to him. Several times he heard strange noises and reached for his sword, then cursed when he found that the weapon was not there. Tomorrow, he thought, he would sell more coins and hire guards to accompany him. And tomorrow he would force the woman to tell him the truth of what she had done to bring him to this strange land.

He struggled down street after street, making several wrong turns, but then he’d stop and listen until the call came again. After a while of following what he was hearing inside his mind, he left the streets that had the torches on poles and entered the darkness of the countryside. For several minutes, he walked along a road, then stopped and listened as he wiped rain from his face. Finally, he turned right and started across a field, and when he reached a fence, he climbed over it, then kept walking. At long last, he reached a small shed, and he knew that, at last, he had found her.

As he flung open the door, a flash of lightning showed her inside the shed. She was drenched and shivering, and curled into a ball on some dirty straw, trying her best to get warm. And, once again, she was weeping.

“Well, madam,” he said, his teeth clenched in anger, “you have called me from a warm bed. What is it you want of me now?”

“Go away,” she sobbed. “Leave me alone.”

As he looked down at her, he had to admire her fortitude—as well as her pride. Her teeth were chattering so hard he could hear them over the rain; she was obviously freezing. With a sigh, he released his anger. If she were such a powerful witch, why had she not conjured herself a dry place for the night? Nicholas stepped into the leaking shed, bent, and lifted her into his arms. “I do not know who is the more helpless,” he said, “you or I.”

“Let me go,” she said, as he picked her up, but she made no real struggle to get away from him. Instead, she put her head against his shoulder and began to sob harder. “I couldn’t find any place to stay. Everything in England costs so much and I don’t know where Robert is and I’ll have to call Elizabeth and she’ll laugh at me,” she said all in one almost unintelligible sentence.

Nicholas had to adjust her in his arms as he swung over the fence, but he kept walking, and Dougless continued crying as her arms slipped around his neck. “I don’t belong anywhere,” she said. “My family is perfect, but I’m not. All the women in my family marry wonderful men, but I can’t even meet any wonderful men. Robert was a great catch but I couldn’t hold on to him. Oh, Nick, what am I going to do?”

They were out of the fields and back onto a paved road. “First, madam,” he said, “you may not call me Nick. Nicholas, yes, Colin, perhaps, but not Nick. Now, since we seem destined to know one another, what is your name?”

“Dougless,” she said, clinging to him. “It’s Dougless Montgomery.”

“Ah, a good, sensible name.”

Dougless sniffed, her tears slowing down. “My father teaches medieval history so he named me after Dougless Sheffield. You know, the woman who bore the earl of Leicester’s illegitimate child.”

Nicholas halted. “She what?”

Dougless pulled away to look up at him in surprise. The rain was now just a soft drizzle and there was enough moonlight so she could see his expression. “She bore the earl of Leicester’s child,” she said in surprise.

Immediately, Nicholas set her on the ground and glared at her. The rain was dripping off both their faces. “And, pray tell, who is the earl of Leicester?”

His disguise is slipping, Dougless thought as she smiled up at him. “Shouldn’t you pretend to know this?” When Nicholas didn’t answer, Dougless said, “The earl of Leicester was Robert Dudley, the man who loved Queen Elizabeth so much.”

At that, rage filled Nicholas’s face; then he turned and stomped away. “The Dudleys are traitors, executed every one of them,” he said over his shoulder. “And Queen Elizabeth is to marry the king of Spain. She will not marry a Dudley, I can assure you of that!”

“You’re right, she won’t marry a Dudley, but she won’t marry the king of Spain, either,” Dougless shouted as she ran after him. But she let out a yelp of pain when she twisted her ankle and fell onto the asphalt, scraping her hands and knees.

Angrily, Nicholas turned back to her. “Woman, you are a bloody great trouble,” he said as he again lifted her into his arms.

Dougless started to speak, but when he told her to be quiet, she put her head back against his shoulder and said nothing.

He carried her all the way back to the B and B where he was staying, and when he pushed open the door, he found the landlady sitting on a chair and waiting for him.

“There you are,” the landlady said, relief in her voice. “I heard you leave, and I knew in my heart that something was wrong. Oh, you poor dears, you both look done in. Why don’t you take her upstairs and while she’s having a nice, hot soak I’ll make you both some tea and sandwiches.” She looked at Nicholas. “I took your dinner up earlier, but you didn’t answer my knock. You must have been asleep.”

Nicholas nodded at the woman, then followed her up the stairs, still carrying Dougless, but also managing to ignore her. The landlady led them to a room Nicholas had not seen before. It had strange, large pottery vessels in it, one of which he recognized as a bathtub. But he saw no buckets of water, and he’d seen no maids about. Who filled this large tub?

He nearly dropped the woman he was holding when the landlady turned a knob above the tub and out poured water. A fountain inside the house! Nicholas thought, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“It’ll be hot in a minute,” the landlady said. “You should get her undressed and put her in the tub while I get fresh towels. And you look like you could use a soak too,” she said as she left the room.

Nicholas had understood enough of what the landlady said to consider the idea. He looked down at Dougless with interest.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dougless warned. “You’re to leave this room while I take a bath.”

Smiling, he set her down and looked about. “What manner of room is this?”

“It’s the bathroom.”

“I see the bathing pot, but what is this object? And this?”

Dougless stood there in her cold, wet clothes, and looked at him. She’d thought he’d made a major slip up in his disguise when he’d pretended to know so little about Robert Dudley, but as he’d said more, Dougless knew he’d been right. She’d have to call her father for the dates, but she knew without asking that in 1564, the year this man said he’d last been in, Robert Dudley had not yet been made the earl of Leicester.

So now this man was standing there in wet clothes that clung to his beautiful body, and he was asking her what a toilet and sink were. She had to restrain herself from asking what he’d been using if he didn’t know what a toilet was. But of course he knew, she told herself. However, he must have been studying very, very hard to have forgotten something so basic. She demonstrated the basin; then, with a face red with embarrassment, she explained the toilet. She demonstrated seat up and seat down. “And you never, never leave the seat up,” she said, feeling as though she were doing her part for womankind in teaching one man this simple thing.

They were interrupted when the landlady returned with more towels and a flowered cotton robe. “I noticed you didn’t have much luggage,” she said, her tone hinting that she wanted to know why. “Usually, Americans show up with so much luggage.”

“The airlines lost it all,” Dougless said quickly, and wondered if she thought Nicholas was also American. Was his accent odd to an English person?

“I thought it was something like that,” the landlady said. “I’ll get your tea and leave it on the table in the hall, if that’s all right with you. So, good night.”

“Yes, thank you,” Dougless said as the door closed, leaving her alone with Nicholas, whom she dismissed quickly. “You can go now. I won’t be long.” Smiling as though he was enjoying Dougless’s nervousness, he left the bathroom. When she was alone, Dougless slipped into the hot water, lay back, and closed her eyes. The water stung her scraped knees and elbows, but already the hot water was beginning to warm her.

How had he found her? she wondered. After she’d left him at the B and B, she’d wandered all over the village trying to find a place to stay for thirty pounds, but there was nothing. All the less expensive places were full. She’d spent six pounds on a meal in a pub, then started walking. She thought perhaps she could make it to another village before night and find shelter there. But the rain had started, it’d grown dark, and all Dougless could find was a leaky shed set in the middle of a field. At first she’d curled up on some dirty straw and gone to sleep, but she awoke sometime during the night to find herself crying—but then, crying seemed to be her normal state over the last twenty-four hours.

While she’d been crying, he had appeared—and, the truth was, she hadn’t been surprised to see him. In fact, it had seemed perfectly natural that he’d known where to find her and that he’d come out into the rain for her. It had also seemed natural when he’d picked her up in his strong arms.

When the water grew cold, Dougless got out of the tub, dried herself off, then put on the flowered robe. A glance in the mirror showed her to have on no makeup and her hair . . . The less thought about that the better. There was nothing she could do about her appearance as she didn’t have so much as a comb.

Shyly, she knocked on the half-open bedroom door. Nicholas, wearing only his still-wet trousers, flung it open. “The bathroom is yours,” she said, trying to smile and trying to act as though the situation was normal.

But now there was no softness in his face. “Get into that bed and stay there,” he ordered. “I do not intend to go bat-fowling again.”

She only nodded at him as he passed her on the way to the bathroom. On the table was a tray of food and a pot of tea. “Bet he didn’t leave me any,” she muttered at the same time she was thinking that she didn’t deserve any more kindness from him. She had been a pest to him. But he’d left enough in the pot for her to have a cup of tea and he’d left a chicken sandwich for her. Gratefully, Dougless ate and drank it all; then, wearing the thin robe, she slipped under the comforter of the second bed. When he returned, they would talk, she thought. She would ask him how he found out where she was. How had he found her in the dark in the pouring rain?

She meant to talk to him when he returned, but she closed her eyes for a moment, and the next thing she knew it was morning. Warm sunlight was hitting her full in the face, and slowly, groggily, she opened her eyes.

There was a man standing before the window, his back to her, and he was wearing only a small white towel fastened about his hips. As though in a dream, Dougless noticed that he had a muscular back that tapered down to a small slim waist, and his legs were heavy with muscle.

Slowly, Dougless came awake enough to remember who this man was. She remembered everything, their first meeting in the church when he’d drawn a sword on her, to last night when he’d found her and carried her through the rain.

When she sat up, he turned to look at her.

“You are awake,” he said flatly. “Come, get up, as there is much we must do.”

As she got out of bed, she saw that he, too, meant to get dressed . . . in front of her. Grabbing her own wrinkled clothing, she went to the bathroom to dress. When she had her clothes on, she looked into the mirror and nearly started crying again. She looked awful! Her eyes were still red, and her hair was a tangled, frizzy mess—and she knew she had no way to repair the damage. As she looked into the mirror, she thought that if all women had to confront the world with the face God gave them, there would be a great increase in female suicides.

Putting her shoulders back, she left the bathroom, where she almost ran into Nicholas, as he was waiting for her in the hall.

“First we eat; then, madam, we talk,” he said as though his words were a dare.

Dougless merely nodded as she went ahead of him down the stairs to the little dining room.

Dougless smiled when they entered the room, and she remembered something she’d read in a guidebook. It had stated that there are two meals that should be eaten in England: breakfast and tea. When she and Nicholas were seated at a small table, the landlady began bringing in platters full of food. There were fluffy scrambled eggs, three types of bread, bacon that was like the best American ham, grilled tomatoes, fried potatoes, golden kippers, cream, butter, and marmalade. And in the middle of the table was a large, pretty porcelain pot of brewed tea that the landlady kept filled throughout the meal.

Ravenous, Dougless ate until she could hold no more, but she couldn’t come close to competing with Nicholas. He ate nearly all the food that was set on the table. When Dougless finished eating, she caught the landlady watching Nicholas curiously. He ate everything with his spoon or his fingers. He used his knife to cut the bacon while holding it in place with his fingers, but he never once touched his fork.

When he had finally finished eating, he thanked the landlady, then took Dougless’s arm in his and ushered her outside.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she ran her tongue over her teeth. She hadn’t brushed them in twenty-four hours, and they felt fuzzy. Also, her scalp itched.

“To the church,” he said. “There we will conceive of a plan.”

They walked quickly to the church, with Nicholas stopping only once to gawk at a small pickup truck. Dougless started to tell him about eighteen-wheelers and cattle trucks, but thought better of participating in his game.

The old church was open and empty, and Nicholas led her to sit on a pew that was at a right angle to the tomb. In silence, she watched him as he looked at the marble sculpture for a while, then ran his hands over the date and name.

At last he turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace. “As I see it, Mistress Montgomery,” he said, “we need each the other. It is my belief that God has put us together for a reason.”

“I thought I did it with a spell,” she said, meaning it as a joke, but, actually, she was glad that he at last seemed to realize that she was not a witch.

“It is true that I believed that at first, but I have not slept since you called me into the rain and I have now had time to consider more thoroughly.”

“I called you?” she said in disbelief. “I never even thought about you, much less called you. And I can assure you that there weren’t any telephones in that field, and I certainly couldn’t shout loud enough for you to hear me.”

“Nonetheless, you did call me. You woke me with your need.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, starting to get angry. “We’re going back to your belief that I somehow, through some sort of hocus-pocus, brought you here from your grave. I can’t take this anymore. I’m leaving,” she said as she started to stand up.

But before she could move, he was in front of her, one hand on the high arm of the pew, the other on the back, his big body pinning her to her seat. “It matters not to me whether you believe or not,” he said, his face near hers, his eyebrows drawn together. “Yesterday morn when I woke it was the year of our Lord 1564, and this morn it was . . .”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” she whispered up at him.

“Aye,” he said, “over four hundred years later. And you, witch, are the key to my being here and to my returning.”

“Believe me, I’d send you back if I could,” she said, her mouth a hard line. “I have enough problems of my own without having to take care of—”

He leaned so close to her face that his nose nearly touched hers, and she could feel the heat of his anger. “You could not dare to say that you must care for me. It is I who must pull you from fields in the dead of night.”

“It was just the one time only,” Dougless said weakly, then sat back against the pew. “Okay,” she said with a sigh, “how did you hear my . . . need, as you call it?”

He dropped his arms from the pew, then went back to look down at the tomb. “There is a bond between us,” he said quietly. “Mayhap it is an unholy bond, but it is there. I was awakened during the night with your calling of me. I did not hear words, but nonetheless, I heard you calling me. The . . . feel of the call woke me, so I followed it to find you.”

Dougless was silent for a moment. She knew that what he said had to be true because there was no other explanation for how he’d found her. “Are you saying that you think there’s some kind of mental telepathy between us?”

Turning back to her, he gave her a puzzled look.

“Mental telepathy is thought transference. People can read each other’s thoughts.”

“Perhaps,” he said, looking back at the tomb. “I am not sure it is thoughts as much as it is . . .” He trailed off for a moment. “Need. I seem to hear your need of me.”

“I don’t need anyone,” Dougless said stubbornly.

Turning back, he glared at her. “I do not understand why you are not still in your father’s house. I have yet to see a woman who needs care more than you.”

Again, Dougless started to stand up, but a look from Nicholas made her sit back down. “All right, you heard me ‘call,’ as you say. So what do you think that means?”

Again, Nicholas put his hands behind his back and began to pace. “I have come to this time and this fast, strange place for a reason, and I believe you are to help me find the answer as to why I am here.”

“I can’t,” Dougless said quickly. “I have to find Robert and get my passport so I can go home. The truth is that I’ve had all the vacation I can stand. Another twenty-four hours like the last ones, and somebody better start carving my tombstone.”

“My life and death are a jest to you, but they are not so to me,” Nicholas said quietly.

Dougless lifted her hands in frustration. “You want me to feel sorry for you because you’re dead? But you aren’t dead. You’re here; you’re alive.”

“No, madam, there am I,” he said, pointing at the tomb.

For a moment, Dougless put her head back against the pew and closed her eyes. Right now, she should leave. Actually, she should probably ask someone for help. But the truth was, she couldn’t do either of those things. Whatever this man’s real story was, even if she didn’t believe he was from another time period, he certainly seemed to believe it. And after he’d rescued her last night, she owed him. She looked at him. “What do you plan?” she asked softly.

“I will help you find your lover, but in return, you must help me find the reason I am here.”

“How can you help me find Robert?” she asked.

“I can feed, clothe, and shelter you until he is found,” he shot back instantly.

“Ah, yes. Those things. How about eyeshadow too? Okay, only kidding. So, supposing ‘we’ do find Robert, what do you want me to do to help you find your, ah, way back?”

“Last night you talked to me of Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth. You seemed to know who our young queen will marry.”

“Elizabeth doesn’t marry anyone, and she becomes known as the Virgin Queen. In America there’re a couple of states named for her: Virginia and West Virginia.”

“Nay! This cannot be true. No woman can rule alone.”

“She not only rules alone but does a damn fine job of it. Did a great job of it. She made England the ruling power of all Europe.”

“This is so?”

“You don’t have to believe me; it’s history.”

For a moment, Nicholas was thoughtful. “History, yes. All that has happened to me, to my family, is now history, so perhaps all of it is recorded somewhere?”

“I see,” Dougless said, smiling. “You think maybe you were sent forward to find out something? How intriguing,” she said, then frowned. “I mean if it were possible for a person to have been sent forward, it would be intriguing. But since it isn’t possible, it’s not.”

His look of puzzlement was beginning to become familiar to her. When he couldn’t seem to figure out what she’d just said, he continued. “Perhaps there is something you know that I must find from you.” He moved to stand over her. “What do people of your time know of the Queen’s decree against me? Who has told her I raise an army to overthrow her? This would be recorded?”

“Oh, yes. My father used to get angry whenever he read something that said Elizabeth the First had an illegitimate child. My father said that every day of her life is documented, so it wasn’t possible that she could have sneaked away and had a baby in secret.” As she was saying this, Nicholas was looking at her with such intensity that she smiled. “I have an idea. Why don’t you stay here in this time period? Why go back at all? I’m sure you could get a job. You’d be great as an Elizabethan teacher. Or you could research and write. I’m sure you’d have enough to live on after the sale of your coins. If you invested carefully, that is. My father could help you invest, or my uncle J.T. could. Both of them know a lot about money.”

“No!” Nicholas said fiercely, his right fist clasped in his left hand. “I must return to my own time. My honor is at risk. The future of the Staffords is at stake. If I do not go back, all will be forfeit.”

“Forfeit?” Dougless asked, and a little shiver went up her spine. She knew enough about medieval history to have some idea what he was talking about. Her voice lowered. “Usually a nobleman forfeited his estates to the king, or queen, when he was accused of . . .” For a moment, she just looked up at him. “Treason,” she whispered. “In medieval times, people forfeited estates due to treason. And treason was paid for . . . in other ways.” She took a deep breath. “How . . . how did you die?”

“I assume I was executed.”