A Knight in Shining Armour (39 page)

“Yes,” she said, standing up straight; then louder, “Yes.” She raised her face to the sunlight and to the angel in the window. Closing her eyes, she put her head back. “Yes,” she whispered.

Suddenly, Dougless felt as though someone had punched her in the stomach. Doubled over in pain, she fell forward onto her knees on the stone floor. When she tried to get up, she felt dizzy and as though she were going to throw up. She had to get to a rest room, she thought. She couldn’t befoul the church.

But when she tried to move, nothing happened. It was as though her body were no longer obeying her brain. “Nicholas,” she whispered, then reached out her hand toward his tomb, but the next moment everything went black and she collapsed to the floor.

W
hen she awoke,
she felt dizzy and weak and wasn’t sure where she was. She opened her eyes to see blue sky overhead and a leafy tree nearby.

“Now what?” she whispered. Had she wandered out of the church? But the sight of the sky and the tree had calmed her. For the first time in days she didn’t feel frantic.

She closed her eyes again. She was so weak she felt like staying where she was and taking a nap. She would figure out where she was later.

As she began to doze, she was vaguely aware of a feminine giggle nearby. Kids, she thought. Children playing.

But at the sound of a male’s responding laughter, her eyes opened. “Nicholas?” Slowly, still feeling disoriented, she sat up and looked around. She was sitting on the grass under a tree in a pretty part of the English countryside. Turning about, she tried to get her bearings. When had she left the church?

Dougless stopped turning when she saw a man in a field. He was far away and difficult to distinguish, but he seemed to be wearing a sort of short brown robe and he was plowing a field with an ox. Dougless blinked her eyes, but the vision didn’t change. Rural England was indeed rural.

Behind her came the woman’s giggle again. “Sir Nicholas,” the woman said in a dreamy sort of way.

Dougless didn’t think about what she did; she merely reacted. Leaping to her feet, she went to the bushes behind her and shoved her way through them.

There on the ground, rolling about was Nicholas.
Her
Nicholas. His shirt was half off, and his strong arms were about a plump girl whose top half was coming out of an odd-looking dress.

“Nicholas,” Dougless said loudly, “how could you? How could you do this to me?” Tears were starting again. “I’ve been crazy with worry about you, and here you are with . . . with this . . . Oh, Nicholas, how could you?” She took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly.

On the ground, Nicholas and the girl stopped moving. The girl, with frightened movements, hastily tied the front of her dress, scurried out from under Nicholas, then ran off through the hedges.

Nicholas, a scowl on his handsome face, turned over, leaned back on one elbow, and looked up at Dougless. “What mean you by this?” he demanded.

Dougless’s first reaction of anger left her. For a moment she stood staring down at him. Nicholas was here with her. Here!

She leaped on him, her arms fastening about his neck as she began kissing his face. His arms went around her as they fell back against the ground.

“Nicholas, it
is
you. It is. Oh, my darling, it was awful after you left. No one remembered you. Nobody remembered us together.” She kissed his neck. “You’ve grown your beard back, but that’s okay, I kinda like it.”

He was kissing her neck. His hand was on her shirt front, and her blouse easily parted as his lips moved down her throat.

“Nicholas, I have so much to tell you. I saw Lee after you left, and he told me all about Lettice and Robert Sydney . . . and . . . Oh, that’s nice, that’s very nice.”

“No!” she said abruptly, then pushed him to arm’s length. “We mustn’t do this. You remember what happened the last time, don’t you? We have to talk. I have so many things to tell you. Did you know that you were executed after all?”

Nicholas stopped trying to pull her back into his arms. “I? Executed? Pray, madam, for what?”

“For treason, of course, and for raising the army. For—Nicholas, don’t you lose your memory too. I’ve had all the amnesia I can take lately. Listen to me. I don’t know how long you’ll stay here before you go back. Your wife planned everything. I know you love her, but she only married you because you’re related to Queen Elizabeth—or is it the queen’s father? Anyway, Lettice wants you out of the picture because you won’t play along with her and put her kid on the throne. Of course she can’t have any kids, but she doesn’t know that.”

She paused. “Why are you looking at me like that? Where are you going?”

“I make for my home, away from your Colley-westonward talk.” He stood up, then began to tuck his shirt into his balloon shorts.

Dougless rose too. “‘Colley-westonward.’ That’s a new one on me. Nicholas, wait, you can’t leave.”

He turned back to face her. “If you desire to finish what you began”—he nodded toward the ground—“I will remain and I will pay you well, but I cannot abide this deboshed manner of speaking.”

Dougless stood there blinking at him, trying to understand what he was saying. “Pay me?” she whispered. “Nicholas, what’s wrong with you? You act as though you’ve never seen me before.”

“Nay, madam, I have not,” he said, then turned his back to her and left the clearing.

Dougless was too stunned to move. Never seen her before? What was he talking about? She pushed through the bushes. Nicholas was dressed in the most extraordinary clothes. His black satin jacket seemed to be decorated with . . .

“Are those diamonds?” she gasped.

Nicholas narrowed his eyes at her. “I do not deal kindly with thieves.”

“I wasn’t planning to rob you; it’s just that I’ve never seen anyone who had diamonds on his clothes before.” Stepping back, she looked at him, really looked at him, and she saw that he was different. It wasn’t just the clothes or that he was again wearing his beard and mustache, but there was a seriousness missing from his face. This was Nicholas, but he somehow seemed younger.

How could he have grown his beard back so soon?

“Nicholas?” she asked. “When you were last home, not the first time you came to me, but this time, what year was it?”

Nicholas slipped a short cloak of black satin that was trimmed in ermine about his shoulders, and from behind the bushes he pulled a horse, an animal as wild-looking as the rented Sugar had been. Easily, he vaulted into a saddle that was as big as an American cowboy’s saddle, but it had tall wooden uprights in front of and in back of the seat. “When last I was home this morn, it was the year of our Lord 1560. Now, you, witch, get from my sight.”

Dougless had to step back against the bushes to keep from being run down by the horse. “Nicholas, wait!” she called, but he was gone.

Disbelieving, Dougless stared after him until he was little more than a speck on the horizon; then she sat down on a big rock, her head in her hands. Now what? she thought. Did she have to start all over again and explain to him yet again all about the twentieth century? The last time she’d seen him, he’d come from 1564, but this time it was four years earlier. What had happened hadn’t happened yet.

Her head came up. Of course! That was it. When he’d found out about Robert Sydney, he’d been in jail—or the medieval equivalent thereof—and he couldn’t do much about saving himself. But this time he’d come forward four years earlier. Now there was time to
prevent
what had caused his execution.

Feeling a great deal more cheerful, she stood up. She had to go find him before he did something dumb, like walk in front of a bus again. Picking up her heavy tote bag from the ground, she slung it over her shoulder, then started walking in the direction Nicholas had gone.

The road was the worst she’d ever seen: deep ruts, rocks sticking up, narrow and weed-choked. The roads in rural America weren’t this bad, and she’d never seen anything like this before in England.

She stepped to the side of the road when she heard a vehicle coming around a corner. A tired-looking donkey was pulling a cart that had two big wooden wheels. Beside the cart walked a man wearing a short dress that looked as though it’d been made from a burlap bag. His legs, bare from mid-calf down, had great ugly sores on them. Dougless stared at him in openmouthed astonishment, and the man turned and gaped at her in the same way. His face was like leather, and when he opened his mouth, Dougless could see rotten teeth. He looked her up and down, his eyes fastening on her stocking-clad legs; then he leered at her, grinning and showing off his hideous teeth.

Quickly, Dougless turned away and started walking rapidly. The road got worse, the ruts deeper, and there was manure everywhere. “England’s using manure to fill the ruts now?” she muttered.

At the top of a little hill she stopped and looked down. Below her were three little houses, tiny places with thatched roofs and bare ground in front of them where chickens and ducks and children scratched about. A woman wearing a long skirt came out the front door of one hut and emptied a round container beside the door.

Dougless started down the hill. Perhaps she could ask directions of the woman. But as she neared the houses, she slowed. She could smell the place. Animals, people, rotting food, piles of manure, all of it reeked. Dougless put her hand to her nose and breathed through her mouth. Really! she thought, the English government should do something about this place. People shouldn’t live like this.

She went to the first house, trying to keep her shoes clean but not succeeding very well. A child, about three, wearing a filthy nightgown, looked up at her. The poor thing looked as though it hadn’t been washed in a year, and it obviously wasn’t wearing a diaper. Dougless vowed that when she got Nicholas straightened out, she was going to complain about this place to the English government. It was a health hazard.

“Excuse me,” she called into the dark interior of the house. It didn’t seem to smell much better inside than out. “Hello? Is anybody home?”

No one answered, but Dougless felt as though she were being watched. When she turned, she saw three women and a couple of children behind her. The women weren’t any cleaner than the child she’d seen, their long dresses encrusted with food and no telling what else.

Dougless tried smiling. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for the Ashburton church. I seem to have lost my way.”

The women didn’t speak, but one woman stepped toward Dougless. It was difficult to keep smiling, for the woman reeked of body odor.

“Do you know the way to Ashburton?” Dougless repeated.

The woman just walked around Dougless, staring at her, looking at her clothes, her hair, her face.

“A bunch of looney tunes,” Dougless muttered. Living in filth as they did, they probably weren’t too bright. She stepped away from the stinking woman and unzipped her tote bag. The woman jumped back at the sound. Dougless took out her map of southern England and looked at it, but it didn’t help any because she didn’t know where she was, so she couldn’t figure out how to get where she was going.

She lowered the map when she realized one of the women was very near, her head almost inside Dougless’s bag. “I beg your pardon,” she said sharply. The woman’s head was covered with a cloth that was caked with dirt and grease.

The woman jumped away but not before she’d snatched Dougless’s sunglasses from her bag. She ran back to the other women, and the three of them examined the glasses.

“This is too much.” Dougless strode toward the women, her foot slipping in something, but she didn’t look down. “May I have those back?”