Read A Knight in Shining Armour for Free Online Page B

someone to help you.”
    The man came off the bench quickly, his blue eyes blazing. The size of him, the anger of him, not to mention that he was steel-covered and carried a sword that looked to be razor sharp, made Dougless step back.
    “I am not yet ready for Bedlam, mistress. I know not why I am here or how I came to be here, but I know who I am and from whence I came.”
    Suddenly, laughter began to rumble deep inside Dougless. “And you came from the sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth’s time, right? The first Elizabeth, of course. Oh, boy! This is going to be the best Dougless-story ever. I’m jilted in the morning and an hour later a ghost holds a sword to my throat.” She stood up. “Thanks a lot, mister. You’ve cheered me up immensely. I am now going to call my sister and ask her to wire me ten pounds—no more, no less—then I’m catching a train to the hotel where Robert and I are staying. I’ll get my plane ticket, then I’m going home. I’m sure that after today the rest of my life is going to be uneventful.”
    She turned away from him, but he blocked her path. From inside his balloon shorts he withdrew a leather pouch, looked in it, took out a few coins, and pressed them into Dougless’s hand, closing her fingers over them.
    “Take the ten pounds, woman, and be gone. It is worth that and more to be rid of your spiteful tongue. I will beseech God to reverse your wickedness.”
    She was tempted to throw the money at him, but her alternative was to call her sister again. “That’s me, Wicked Witch Dougless. I don’t know why I want a train when I have a perfectly good broomstick. I’ll send your money back in care of the vicar. So long, and I hope we never meet again.”
    She turned and left the churchyard just as the vicar returned with the man’s water. Let someone else deal with his fantasies, she thought. The man probably had a whole trunk full of costumes. Today he’s an Elizabethan knight, tomorrow he’s Abraham Lincoln—or Horatio Nelson, since he’s English.
    It was easy to find the train station in the little village, and she went to the window to purchase her ticket.
    “That’ll be three pounds six,” the man behind the window said.
    Dougless had never been able to figure out the English money. There seemed to be so many coins that had the same value, so she shoved the coins the man had given her under the cage window. “Is this enough?”
    The man looked at the three coins one by one, slowly turning them over, examining them carefully. After a moment, he looked back at Dougless, then excused himself.
    I’ll probably be arrested for passing counterfeit money, Dougless thought as she waited for the man to return. Being arrested would be a fitting end to a perfect day.
    After a few minutes a man with an official-looking hat came to the window. “We can’t take these, miss. I think you ought to take them to Oliver Samuelson. He’s just around the corner to your right.”
    “Will he give me train fare for the coins?”
    “I ’spect he will that,” the man said, seeming to be amused at some private joke.
    “Thank you,” Dougless murmured as she took the coins. Maybe she should call her sister and forget about the coins. She looked at them, but they looked as foreign as all foreign coins did. With a sigh, she turned right and came to a shop. “Oliver Samuelson, Coin Dealer” the painted window said.
    Inside the shop, a bald-headed little man was sitting behind a desk, a jeweler’s loupe about his shiny forehead. “Yes?” he asked when Dougless entered.
    “The man in the train station sent me to you. He said you might give me train fare for these.”
    The man took the coins and looked at them under the jeweler’s loupe. After a moment he began to softly chuckle. “Train fare, indeed.”
    He looked up. “All right, miss,” he said. “I will give you five hundred pounds each for these, and this one is worth about, say, five thousand pounds. But I don’t have that