The Shield

by CJ Bentley

  “Sometimes you get dust clouds when there hasn’t been much rain, the wind whips up and disturbs the dust, you know a bit like in the desert, mini tornados.” Richard liked his geography just as I liked my history.

  “Can you lot move around so I can see, my back is where you are looking.” Hugh, turning, studied the dust cloud for a while. “Looks like a horse coming towards us, don’t you think?”

  “I think you must be eating lots of carrots if you can see a horse that far away.” Linda moved her head round and watched the dust cloud approach. “Do you know, Hugh, I think you are right, it is a horse with somebody riding it and quite fast, looks like some sort of a flag flying too.”

  “I think we should put this down and run.” Richard looked quite scared.

  “Don’t be daft you lot, it’s probably one of the girls from the riding stables riding towards us trying to frighten us, if we stand our ground she will stop.” I wished I felt as confident as I sounded but something about the ‘cloud’ coming towards us reminded me of something, something, or someone, it couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was.

  The way the person confidently rode the horse, and looked to be encased in shiny armour which flashed as the sun hit it; the white horse moved in a colourful swathe of material in blues and reds, swirling around his legs as he galloped towards us. The shine of the rider’s metal suit of armour. The long pole from his foot to past his head, which was topped with a plumed helmet, was flying a coloured flag on the top. It all reminded me of my favourite book, ‘Ivanhoe’. What we were looking at was surely an apparition, my imagination playing tricks on me, but on the others too. Strange we could all see it – so no apparition, then.

  “Can you lot see what I see? Or am I the only one who can see a knight on horseback coming towards us?” I asked the gang.

  “Oh, I think we can all see it with you Pegs, not your imagination this time,” answered Hugh, “what do you think we should do?” He looked at me for inspiration.

  “There has to be a reasonable explanation for this.” Richard, the scientist, always tried to find logic. “Don’t know what it is but it looks like we are about to find out.”

  The colourfully clad horse slowed down, then stopped and threw his head up in the air, shaking his grey mane, until a voice from the helmet addressed us all in a haughty manner.

  “Pray, where may I find the Lady Eleanor amongst you?” It was a rather strange, posh sounding but low voice, reminding me a little of our Headmaster at school who sounded his words carefully and slowly to make sure we were all listening at assemblies. Linda looked like she was about to faint, Jeanette looked at me, the boys looked at the ground, no doubt wishing it would swallow them up. It was up to me, then.

  “Hmm, sorry but there is nobody called Eleanor here.” I tried to sound as if it was an everyday thing to see a knight in shining armour riding towards you asking you questions.

  “Ah my dear young madam, I see you have found my shield. It must be you, Eleanor, only you could discover it, just as the wise woman told me.” The apparition spoke confidently whilst dismounting and striding purposefully towards us.

  “My name isn’t Eleanor, it’s Peggy this week, it was Rebecca last week and it might be something completely different next week and I don’t know you at all, or that this shield belongs to you.” I sounded more confident than I felt.

  “My Lady Eleanor speaks in a strange way. I apologise to you my lady but I cannot easily follow your tongue. May I introduce myself, Sir Kay of Percefleet at your service for now and always.” He swept a flourish with the arm not holding the flag and bowed down as low as was possible wearing heavy armour. I wondered why my friends were not speaking and turned from staring at Sir Kay to find they were all still, not moving, not able to say anything at all, like they were frozen statues.

  “What have you done to my friends, Sir, um, K… Kay?” I turned back to Sir Kay and gave him one of my famous hard stares.

  “I have merely stilled them for a short while till thee and I decide what we will do with this situation we find ourselves in, my Lady.” He laid down his flag, removed his helmet which he put on the ground with the flagpole and came towards me and took hold of my hand, while I stood completely still in shock but managed to carry on with the hard stare.

  “Oh my goodness you really are real, I can feel you. You are not a ghost but flesh and blood, and how on earth did you get here and how on earth are we going to explain this to everybody?” My tongue once more exploded.

  “My Lady Eleanor must not be perturbed, we will find a way to make the wise woman’s prophesy come true.” Sir Kay was now leading me towards his horse which shied back as we approached.

  “No, this is not right, my friends cannot stay like this, Sir Kay. We were on our way to clean this shield, we found it in the beck and that is what we will do. Please release them from whatever ‘spell’ you hold over them, the boys are hungry. Well, Hugh is, but then he is always hungry, they need to get home before curfew.” I pulled my hand from his and stomped back towards the gang who were still staring into space.

  “Will they remember everything when they come to?” I asked him, turning back to address him.

  He was not there, completely gone and not in any puff of smoke like they do in the pantomime at Christmas. Horse and rider gone, disappeared, not a sign of them anywhere. When I turned back to the gang they were all bending down to lift up the shield and complaining again about the weight of it.

  “Peggy, if you get any more of these hare-brained ideas we will have to start to charge you. Come and get your hands on this and let’s see if we can all get it to the stile this time.” Hugh looked at me as if I had just crawled out from under the hedge.

  “Hang on a minute you lot, do you remember what just happened?” I couldn’t believe they were acting like they had not seen anything. “Do you remember the knight?”

  “I know if we don’t get a move on with this thing we will still be here tonight,” Richard exclaimed as he moved slowly up the hill.

  “Will you help, Pegs? If not, we will just leave the darn thing here for posterity. I’m so hungry.” Hugh gave me a strange look. “What on earth is the matter with you, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No, not a ghost, at least it wasn’t a ghost because I had hold of his hand and it was real but you lot saw him too because we talked about what was coming towards us when we first saw him on his horse.” My voice was barely audible as I didn’t really know what to do if they denied seeing Sir Kay. Hugh for one thought I was quite mad at times and this would confirm it to them all.

  “Peggy, I think finding this shield has done something to you, do you really want to take it home, or should we just put it back where we found it and be done with it?” Linda enquired as she gave me a look that made me seem demented. They had not seen Sir Kay, or, they had seen him and then when they were under the frozen ‘spell’ they had their memories wiped. I was completely flummoxed.

  This was the moment, the moment when I had to make a decision, a choice. Remembering what Mum always said didn’t even come into my head at this point. I didn’t listen to my head, very rarely did for that matter, just went straight on and jumped in head first.

  “Okay you lot, let’s heave to and get it to the stile in twenty minutes, put your stopwatch on Richard and we will see if we can do it by then.” We struggled towards the top of the hill and the elusive stile, as I gave lots of glances into the distance as if expecting somebody to approach, but nobody did.

  It took some time and a lot of frustration to lift the heavy shield over the stile but we felt a sense of achievement as we made it just under the twenty minutes, as per the time on Richard’s watch. We rested a little on the other side and then set off again down the cutting to the road at the end of our street. We must have looked very strange, me dripping wet and all of us surrounding the shield, carrying it like a heavy weight over the road and down our street towards my house. I don’t know who decided it
was to be my house, but that was where we took it to; it just happened.

  “Let’s put it in the garage, guys.” I didn’t want my sister coming home from work to find it on the drive, or path round the back. I would have to explain what it was and where it came from and I needed time to think about things first. I had to have a good story ready for them and that would take time and my imagination.

  “Do we clean it up now, Peggy?” asked Linda as we carefully placed the shield on the floor of the garage.

  “Count me out, I need my dinner.” Hugh made his way out of the garage and walked away down the street towards his house. “See you later, you lot.”

  “Me too, laters you lot.” Richard made to go too, and Jeanette followed, which left just Linda and me staring down at the shield.

  “Should we clean it now, Pegs?’ Linda asked as we continued to stare at it.

  “Linda, you know you are my best friend in all the world don’t you, I am going to ask you something and I want you to tell me exactly what you think.” I didn’t know what she was going to say but I had to know if she had any memory at all of what had happened in the fields. She was giving me that look again, as if I was not right in the head and it had me thinking that maybe I wasn’t. Had I imagined it all? Was I bonkers?

  “When we put the shield down on the grass in the field, where was I standing in the circle?” I could remember clearly where I was but needed her to think again.

  “You were next to me facing the fields, I think.” She didn’t sound convincing. “You were, weren’t you, looking down over the fields, looking towards the sand storm.”

  “Ah ha! You remember the sand storm then, do you remember what it was in the end Linda? This is so very important for my state of mind.” I crossed my fingers behind my back in anticipation.

  “Peggy, you are freaking me out, it was a sand storm, didn’t last very long and then we carried the shield up the field towards the stile and here we are.” Linda was definitely giving me a strange look now. I made up my mind to drop it. There must be another way to jog her memory.

  “Okay Linda, let’s clean it up with the hosepipe, if you turn it on while I find a brush we should get this job done in a jiffy.” I turned away and searched on the shelves in the garage for a decent brush to clean the silt and mud off with.

  “This one should do, I think.” I took a strong hand brush down off the shelf and bent down as Linda played the water from the hose on the shield.

  “Do you think there might be any jewels in it, Pegs?” Linda was ever the optimist.

  “Not a chance, if this turns out to be what I think then it will be very plain indeed, Linda.” I expected just two colours to be exposed, blue and red to match Sir Kay’s flag and horse’s colours.

  I scrubbed away and sure enough we exposed a shield made of wood with metal inlaid in the centre and around the edges. The wood was painted on the front with two colours, blue with a very faded red cross. The back had a sort of handle and was very plain indeed. I looked at Linda’s face expectantly, waiting to see if she showed any memory of what we had seen. Nothing but disappointment showed.

  “Well it’s not very exciting is it, Peggy,” Linda exclaimed. “I was really hoping for some gold, or jewels, or something we could sell. It won’t be long until Christmas and I am saving for presents.”

  “You really are the most organised person I know.” I gave her a look of total respect. I was always last minute with my shopping. November pocket money was the first to go into the money box but my Dad was generous and usually gave me a little extra to fund the present buying in December.

  We both looked up as we heard a car pulling into the drive; my generous father was home. This meant I was late for dinner as I was supposed to wash and change before eating.

  “Got to go, if we can shall we meet after dinner and play?” I asked while making my way to the back of the garage as I didn’t want to open the main garage door to expose the shield to my Dad.

  “I will try, but I feel quite tired and it depends what is on the television tonight, be out if I feel like it though.” Linda might feel better after food and a rest. Not everybody had my energy; I would play outside until ten o clock at night in the summer if Mum would let me. We let ourselves out of the side door and Linda made her way down the drive, out of the gate and to her house. Dad had disappeared into the kitchen before we came out of the garage so I had escaped questions about the shield. Not so about being late and especially so for being so wet and dirty.

  “Where have you been, Peggy?” Mum looked cross and I looked down at my feet. She followed my gaze. “Just look at your sandals, have you been in that beck in them? Your clothes are wet, oh Peggy and I have done all the washing today.”

  “No, Mum, sandals are fine but sorry about my clothes, I did fall in by accident. Sorry I’m a bit late, we had quite an adventure today and I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.” I made my way through the kitchen, noting the twin tub had been put away and there was a pile of freshly ironed clothes on the work surface. “I’ll be quick getting washed and changed and down in a jiff.”

  “Dinner ready in five minutes, so you had better be my girl.” Mum still sounded a bit cross but she liked to know what we had been up to as she was a little bit nosey, so I think I got off lightly. Not so. As I walked through the hall and up the stairs, I could hear my sister moving about in her bedroom. Dad was in the bathroom so I had to wait until I could wash up, so I went into my bedroom and chose clean clothes from my chest of drawers to wear.

  “You are in big trouble, Peggy,” my sister poked her head round the door, “where have you been until now?”

  “Oh, just in the fields, we went stickleback fishing, didn’t catch many and decided to put back what we caught as they were tiddlers.” I sounded quietly confident that I had escaped a telling off.

  “Well, just letting you know Mum’s mad with you.” She loved it when I was in ‘big trouble’ as she called it. I loved my sister really but she could be a bit annoying at times, she was eleven years older than me and sometimes it seemed a huge gap, as I was still at school and she worked as a trainee accountant. It did come in useful if she was home from work when I had Maths homework. I was exceptionally good at English but my Maths was pretty pathetic and she had a calculator for a brain.

  I heard Dad shut the bathroom door so I made my escape, taking my clean clothes with me, washed and changed in the bathroom and slid down the bannister to the hall below. I guessed it had all taken roughly four minutes. I had time enough to fill four glasses with water and put them on the kitchen table along with knives and forks for us all.

  “Hi Pegs, good day today?” Dad looked up from his paper in the living room. “Went fishing I hear, catch much?”

  “Not much really, and we decided to put them all back as they were tiddlers, I fell in though.” Dad laughed at that, he always laughed when I did unexpected things. I knew I was the tomboy in the family, the boy he always wanted but didn’t get. We enjoyed playing football and cricket in the garden and on the beach, and my big sister couldn’t understand why I liked to watch sport on the television with Dad. It made me feel close to my father, doing things with him.

  He worked very hard and didn’t have a lot of time at home. In the summer time we always tried to have a family day on a Sunday, an outing in the car, whatever the weather. The primus stove would be packed in the boot with a picnic, radio and the cricket bat and ball and car blanket to sit on and we would all travel to either the beach, or the countryside, for the whole day. We would do pretty much the same things if we were at the beach, or the countryside. A good long walk, a game of football, or, cricket, where other families would join in if they were the sporty types, then the picnic sitting on the car blanket listening to the Sunday programmes on the radio. ‘Sing Something Simple’ was generally on while we ate our picnic. That was how we made our fun in the ‘swinging sixties’.

  “Dinner is ready, come and get it,” Mum shouted from the
kitchen. “Thanks for setting the table Peggy, just when are you going to change your name from sounding like a dog?’

  “Think I might just do that Mum, what do you think to Eleanor?” I decided to see what they thought of the name Sir Kay had given me.

  “Anything is better than Peggy. Now come on, tell us about your day?” Mum handed me my plate which was filled with my favourite food. On a Monday, because of wash day, we always had sausages, egg and chips. It was an easy meal for her to cook and I loved it. As she asked me what to tell her though, I felt a slight feeling of dread as I wondered just how much to tell them all.

  “She is going to tell us some hare-brained story about fighting dragons over the fields, Mum, you know what she is like.” My sister gave me an idea; perhaps the truth would sound far-fetched and maybe, just maybe I could tell the truth and leave it to them to see if they believed me or not.

  “Well, we started to catch sticklebacks, Richard caught the most but I felt something in the beck under my feet, it was a shield and we managed to get it out of the beck and then up the field. It took us ages as it was very heavy, not made of gold though like we thought, but wood and some sort of metal. While we were doing all of this a knight called Sir Kay of Percefleet came up to us on his horse and asked for his shield back and when I turned around he disappeared.” I looked expectantly at all of my family in turn.

  “A normal summer holiday day then, Pegs – er, sorry, Eleanor,” Dad laughed. “I must say I quite liked Peggy, it was growing on me, I might take some time getting used to Eleanor.”

  “That’s okay Dad, I might too.” I waited for my sister to say something. She was staring hard at me.

  “Why do I have to have you for a sister?” Here it came. “Most kid sisters are into trying dresses and shoes and wanting to borrow make up, but not you. You should have been a boy.”

  “Thanks for that, sis.” I meant it, I felt that I had got off lightly. “You really wouldn’t like me at all if I used your make up and wanted your clothes, would you?”