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Dougless had been only one second later, the man would have been hit by the bus.
    “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