A Knight in Shining Armour (40 page)

The women looked at her with hard faces. One of them had deep, pitted scars on her neck, and she held the sunglasses behind her back.

Dougless put her hands to her sides. “Would you please return my property?”

“Be gone with you,” one of the women said, and Dougless saw that three upper teeth were missing and two others were rotten.

It was then that she began to understand. She looked at the house before her, saw the firewood stacked outside, saw the onions hanging from the roof. The dirt, the carts, the people who had never heard of a dentist.

“Who is your queen?” she whispered.

“Elizabeth,” one woman said in an odd accent.

“Right,” Dougless whispered, “and who was her mother?”

“The witch Anne Bullen.”

The women were gathering around her now, but Dougless was too stunned to notice. Nicholas had said that this morning it had been 1560; then he’d ridden off on a horse with a funny saddle. He hadn’t seemed disoriented or unsure of where he was going. He hadn’t acted as he had when he’d first arrived in the twentieth century. Instead, he’d acted as though he were right at home.

“Ow!” Dougless said, for one of the women had pulled her hair.

“Be ye a witch?” one of the women asked, standing very close to Dougless.

Suddenly, Dougless was afraid. It was one thing to laugh at a man in the twentieth century for calling someone a witch, but in the sixteenth century people were burned for being witches.

“Of course I’m not a witch,” Dougless said, backing away, but there was a woman behind her.

A woman pulled on Dougless’s sleeve. “Witch’s clothes.”

“No, of course they aren’t. I live . . . ah, in another village, that’s all. Next year you’ll all be wearing this.” She couldn’t go back or forward, for the surrounding women were blocking her. You’d better think fast, Dougless, she thought, or you just might be this evening’s barbecue. While keeping an eye on the women, she put her hand into her tote bag, digging for she knew not what. Her hand lit on a book of matches she’d taken from a hotel somewhere.

She pulled out the matches, tore off one, and struck it. With a gasp the women moved back. “In the house,” she said, holding the lit match at arm’s length. “Go on, get in the house.”

The women backed up and stepped inside the doorway just as the match burned down to Dougless’s fingertips. She dropped the match and began to run.

Leaving the stinking houses and the rutted road behind, she ran into the woods. When she was out of breath, she sat down on the ground and leaned back against a tree.

It appeared that when she’d passed out in the church, she’d awakened in the sixteenth century. So here she was, alone—Nicholas didn’t know her—in a time before soap was invented—or at least before it was used much—and the people seemed to regard her as something evil.

“So how am I to tell Nicholas all he needs to know if I don’t even see him?” she whispered.

The first drops of rain were cold on Dougless. She pulled an umbrella from her travel bag and opened it. It was at that moment that she really looked at her beat-up old carry-on. She’d had the thing for years. It had traveled with her wherever she’d gone, and she’d gradually filled it with everything anyone could need while traveling. Inside were cosmetics, medicines, toiletries, a sewing kit, an office kit, magazines, a nightgown, airline nut packages, felt-tip pens, and there was no telling what was in the very bottom.

She pulled the bag under the umbrella with her, feeling as though the bag were her only friend. Think, Dougless, think, she told herself. She had to tell Nicholas what he must know; then she had to get back to her own time. Already she knew that she didn’t want to stay in this backward place with its filthy, ignorant people. In just this short time she was already missing hot showers and electric blankets.

She huddled under the umbrella as the rain started coming down harder. The ground under her was getting wet, and she thought of sitting on a magazine, but who knows? She might end up selling the magazines in order to live.

She put her head down on her knees. “Oh, Nicholas, where are you?” she whispered.

Then she remembered the evening of the first day she’d met him and how she’d been in that toolshed crying. He’d come to her then, and later he’d said he’d heard her “calling.” If it worked then, maybe it would work now.

With her head down, she concentrated on asking Nicholas to come to her. She visualized his riding up to her; then she thought of all their time together. She smiled, remembering a dinner, chosen by her, that their landlady had cooked for them: corn-on-the-cob, avocados, barbecued spareribs, and a mango for dessert. Nicholas had laughed like a small boy. She remembered the music he’d played, his delight over the books, how critical he had been of modern clothes.

“Come to me, Nicholas,” she whispered. “Come to me.”

It was dusk and the rain was coming down hard and cold when Nicholas appeared, sitting atop his big black horse.

She grinned up at him. “I knew you’d come.”

He did not smile but instead glared down at her in anger. “Lady Margaret would see you,” he said.

“Your mother? Your mother wants to see
me?”
She couldn’t be sure because of the rain, but he seemed to be momentarily shocked at her words. “All right,” Dougless said, rising, then handing him her umbrella and raising her hand for him to help her onto his horse.

To her disbelief, he took the umbrella, examined it with interest, then held it over his own head and rode off, leaving Dougless standing with rain pelting down on her. “Of all the—” she began. Was she supposed to walk while he rode?

She moved back to the relative dryness under the tree, and after a while Nicholas returned, the umbrella held over him.

“You are to come with me,” he said.

“Am I supposed to go on foot?” she yelled up at him. “You ride while I slog along in the mud and muck behind you? And you use
my
umbrella? Is that what you had in mind?”

He seemed confused for a moment. “Your speech is most strange.”

“Not as strange as your outdated ideas. Nicholas, I am cold and hungry and getting wetter by the minute. Help me on your horse and let’s go see your mother.”

Nicholas gave a bit of a smile at her insolent attitude, then held down his hand for her. Dougless took it, put her foot on his, and swung onto the back of the horse—not into the saddle with him but onto the hard, unsteady rump of the horse. Dougless put her arms around Nicholas’s waist, but he pried her loose and pushed her hands down to the high back of the saddle, then handed her the umbrella.

“Hold this over me,” he said, and kicked the horse forward.

Dougless wanted to make a retort, but all her attention was on holding on to the horse. She had to use two hands to hold on, so the umbrella hung uselessly to the side as they sped along. Through the rain she saw more hovels, more people working in the rain, apparently oblivious of it. “Maybe it’ll wash them,” she muttered, hanging on as best she could.

Because she was behind Nicholas and he was too tall to see over, she didn’t see the house until they were in front of it. There was a tall stone wall before them, and behind it stood a three-story stone house.

A man wearing clothes somewhat like Nicholas’s—no burlap dress but no diamonds either—came running to take the horse’s reins. Nicholas dismounted, then stood impatiently by, slapping his gloves against his palm, while Dougless struggled down by herself, lugging her heavy bag and the umbrella.

When she was down, the servant opened the gate and Nicholas went through it, seeming to expect Dougless to follow him. She hurried after him, down a brick path, up a flight of stairs, across a brick terrace, and into the house.

A solemn-faced servant stood inside, waiting to take Nicholas’s cloak and wet hat. When Dougless closed the umbrella, Nicholas took it from her and looked inside, obviously trying to figure out how it worked. After the way he’d been treating her, she wasn’t about to tell him. She snatched the umbrella from his hands and gave it to the wide-eyed servant. “This is
mine,”
she said to the servant. “Remember that, and don’t let anyone else have it.”

Looking at her, Nicholas snorted. Dougless hitched her bag onto her shoulder and glared back at him. She was beginning to believe that he was not the man she’d fallen in love with. Her Nicholas wouldn’t have made a woman ride on the back of a horse.

Turning away, he started up the stairs, and Dougless, dripping and cold, followed him. She had only a brief glimpse of the house, but it didn’t look like the Elizabethan houses she’d seen on guided tours. For one thing, the wood wasn’t darkened from being four hundred years old. The walls were paneled in golden oak, and everywhere there was color. The plaster above the panels was painted with scenes of people in a meadow. There were bright, pretty new tapestries and painted cloths hanging on the walls. There were silver plates gleaming from tabletops. And under her feet, oddly enough, there seemed to be straw. Upstairs there were carved pieces of furniture in the hall, looking as new as though they’d been made last week. On one table was a tall pitcher that had beautiful, deep fluting on it. It was of a yellow metal that could only be gold.

Before Dougless could ask about the pitcher, Nicholas opened a door and strode inside.

“I have brought the witch,” she heard Nicholas say.

“Now, just a minute,” Dougless said, then, hurrying into the room behind him, she stopped. She had entered a beautiful room. It was large, with tall ceilings, the walls paneled with more of the beautiful oak, the plaster above painted with colorful birds, butterflies, and animals. The furniture, the window seat, and the enormous bed were draped with hangings of brilliant silk, and dotted with cushions, all of it embroidered in gold and silver and brightly colored thread. Everything in the room, from cups and pitchers, to a mirror and comb, seemed to be a precious object, made of gold or silver, encrusted with jewels. The whole room glittered beautifully.

“My goodness,” Dougless said in awe.

“Bring her to me,” said an imperious voice.

Dougless pulled her eyes away from the room to look at the bed. Behind its exquisitely carved posts, behind scarlet silk hangings that twinkled with flowers embroidered in gold thread, lay a stern-looking woman wearing a white nightgown with black embroidery on the cuffs and ruffled neck. About her eyes Dougless could see a resemblance to Nicholas.

“Come here,” she commanded, and Dougless moved closer.

The woman’s voice, for all its command, sounded tired and stuffy, as though she had a cold.

It was when Dougless was closer to the foot of the bed that she saw that the woman had her left arm stretched across a pillow, and a man, wearing a long, voluminous robe of black velvet, was bending over her and tending to . . .

“Are those leeches?” Dougless gasped. Slimy little black worms seemed to be stuck on the woman’s arm.

Dougless didn’t see Lady Margaret exchange looks with her son.

“I have been told you are a witch, that you make fire from your fingertips.”

Dougless couldn’t take her eyes off the leeches. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Aye, it hurts,” the woman said in dismissal. “I would see this magic of fire.”

The distaste Dougless felt at seeing the leeches on the woman’s arm overrode her fear of being called a witch. She walked to the side of the bed and put her tote bag on top of a table, pushing aside a pretty silver box that had emeralds across the top. “You shouldn’t let that man do that to you. It sounds to me like you just have a bad cold. Headache? Sneezing? Tired?”

Wide-eyed, the woman stared at her and nodded.

“That’s what I thought.” She rummaged in her bag. “If you’ll make that man take those nasty things away, I’ll fix your cold. Ah, here they are. Cold tablets.” She held up the package.

“Mother,” Nicholas said, stepping forward, “you cannot—”

“Be still, Nicholas,” Lady Margaret said. “And remove those from my arm,” she ordered the physician.

The man pulled the leeches from Lady Margaret’s arm, dropped them into a little leather-bound box, then stepped away from the bed.

“You’ll need a glass of water.”

“Wine!” Lady Margaret commanded, and Nicholas handed her a tall silver goblet studded with rough-cut jewels.