Knight in Real Life: Part One, The Prodigal Son

Knight in Real Life:

Part One, Prodigal Son

       Sitting on the edge of Bethany’s desk was a man obscured by a grimy set of full armor. Bethany raised her forehead from her forearms and squinted against the gray light reflected in the dull iron. She must have stayed up later than she thought. When she blinked and the apparition did not leave, but rather opened the hooded visor and bid her a “good day, fair maiden,” Bethany groaned.
          Entertaining a visitor from the 14^th century was not part of this grad student’s plans. Bethany was quite aware that the digital copy of a velum manuscript said to be written by an excommunicated Dominican monk was in the memory of her tapped out laptop; she was also cognizant of the fact that many contemporaries and later sources wrote that the manuscript of “The Dyed Robe” contained strange and magical words. While stumbling over the pronunciation of decaying dialects, Bethany must have released the same strange and magical force into her shared bedroom, where her roommate Lisa remained in somnambulant bliss and a pair of oversized, blaring Beats headphones.

         A cold black mug held the remains of a Columbian brew. Bethany would have preferred a steaming cup of anything else, but caffeine was caffeine.

         At least Bethany thought it was coffee. She tipped the mug close to her nose and washed her nostrils in a dull roasted brew that was certainly not mead.

         “Funny custom that,” the knight said. He mimicked her action in rusted pantomime. Clearly the knight errant would not disappear on his own.
         “Good day,” Bethany tried. “Perhaps you can keep it down. I mean – My maiden friend sleeps, and it would not become chivalry to rouse her with the sound of clashing armor.”

         “Alas, tis true, tis true.” The knight slapped his gauntlet-dressed hand to his disheveled eyebrows. “ ‘Armor clashes in the day of battle; yea, and does not let our beloved sleep.’”

          “How do you know that?” Bethany asked. “Only the original –”

           “Verily, fair maiden, thou speaketh of mine revelation of yesters’ eve as common knowledge. How so you do this?”

         “Sir, you seem unafraid of me.” She would have expected … whoever he was, out of page or space and time, to show absolute terror and scream ‘Witch, witch!’

         “Mine mother spoke of strange things in this world, and outside of it.”

         “Your mother…wait!” Bethany hushed her voice. She recalled Professor Rycliffe showing her a correspondence revealing a similar detail. “Your sire was a monk of the Dominican order. He had a tryst with an unnamed woman.”

         The knight picked up knick-knacks collected from Bethany’s adventures in Scotland and replaced them disinterestedly. “Yea, he spoke to me about mine mother. It was about that time the good words came to me.”

         “Are you…” Bethany began at a whisper. Then checking her friend’s dead slumber, she cleared her throat and said, “Ken you a written labor known as ‘The Dyed Robe?’”

The knight tossed back his head and chortled. Chain mail clinked about his head and neck, a not unpleasant cacophony. Still Lisa lay unmoved.

         “Did I say the name incorrectly?” Bethany scowled. To be made fun of by some random man, even a man of archaic ancestral origins, in one’s room was exacerbating. Coupled with the disregard for the hours Bethany had labored collecting those stones he had barely glanced at, knight or no knight the man had to go.

         “Ay, tis I, the labourer of this mystery of our Lord, revealed to mine thought in these latter days.”

         “Right. There were no authors in your day, only transcribers and translators,” Bethany muttered to herself.

         “Pardon, methinks I heard authoritas pass thou lips.” The knight jingled as he got off Bethany’s desk. Bethany had just enough time to raise her hands and watch her mug topple onto her keyboard.

The laptop sizzled and popped. Darkness shrouded her screen. Hours of work, all those papers and copies gathered for her dissertation – gone.

         “What art thou? Speak, witch!”

Bethany wiped her eyes enough to see the knight brandishing his sword at the defunct computer.

         “Stop,” Bethany said, and surprised herself by the absence of any wavering in her voice.                   “You’re going to stay here, quietly, while I take this down to the tech people at –”

The knight paid no heed as he sparred at the computer. An overhand swing split the laptop and part of the Ikea wood.

         “Perish, thou fiend!” the knight whispered. He glanced at the snoring roommate, and then smiled. He wiped his sword on the hem of his tunic and straightened up in such a way that he clanked together.

         “Never mind.” Bethany snatched her empty mug from the wreckage. The entire folder of plans to email Professor Rycliffe had gone, not like her laptop, but to postponement later in the morning. When would that be? Bethany wondered.

         “The lady is safe. Thou mayest present me with a favor.”

         Although she knew the culture almost as well as her own arm, the archaic custom made Bethany roll her eyes as she handed over the mug.

         “Thou hast strange customs in this land,” the knight said.

         Bethany wrestled with an idea to be rid of this knight as the knight duly examined all aspects of his new oversized mug. Coffee would help her think; but alas, coffee was dripping from her murdered laptop. She had no working idea without access to her research. Yet, and this was a crazy idea, Bethany could come up with new arguments, as she kept limited notes in spiral journals on hand for these just-in-case situations: just in case lose my laptop. Just in case I spill a frappé on it. Just in case a two hundred and fifty pound knight in full armor slashes it to pieces, Bethany thought.

         If she was nice enough, she also could get more inside information on this man’s life – on the life of the true author of “The Dyed Robe.” She might have to ask Professor Rycliffe indirectly if there were any discrepancies in sample writings of the monk, or genealogical registers that had not gone up in ecclesiastic flames.

         But she refocused and grabbed a pen and a journal. The manuscript copy, a working computer, and a printer would also be in order.

         She also had seminar to lead today, on this kind of medieval nonsense, so Bethany could not bring this knight to class and pass him off as a fraternity pledge friend. Until she figured out how to get him back to his own time and place, she had to devise a way to keep him contained for a couple hours.

         Someone owed Bethany for mooching two years of free coffee from her barista discount at Peet’s. “Time to turn in the favor,” Bethany mumbled.

         “Maiden, didst thou speak to me?” the knight asked.

         “I have a friend I would like you to meet. Come with me.”

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