A Knight in Shining Armor (Montgomery/Taggert 13)

“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.”