It was twenty minutes later when Dougless came sputtering out of the bathroom. “You put shampoo on my toothbrush!” she said, wiping her tongue on a towel.
“I, madam?” Nicholas asked, an exaggerated look of innocence on his face.
“Why, you—” she said as she grabbed a pillow and tossed it at him. “I’ll get you for this.”
“More of your ‘music’ at dawn, mayhap?” he said, fending off the pillow.
Dougless laughed. “All right, I guess I deserved it. Are you ready for breakfast?”
At breakfast, Dougless told him of his dental appointment. She saw his grimace, but paid no attention to it. Everyone grimaced at the thought of going to the dentist. While he was eating, she got him to give her the names of some of his other estates besides Thornwyck, so, while he was at the dentist, she could go to the local library and see what she could find out.
Nicholas was quiet as they walked to the dentist, and in the waiting room he didn’t examine the plastic-covered chairs. Dougless knew he was really worried when he wouldn’t even look at the plastic plant she pointed out to him. When the receptionist called him, Dougless squeezed his hand. “You’ll be all right. Afterward I’ll . . . I’ll take you out and buy you ice cream. That’s something to look forward to.” But she knew he had no idea what ice cream was—didn’t remember what ice cream was, she corrected herself.
Since she’d booked him for a checkup, at least one filling and a cleaning, she knew he’d be in the chair for a while, so she asked the receptionist to call her at the library when he was nearly finished.
As she walked to the library, she felt as a mother must feel at having left her child behind. “It’s only the dentist,” she told herself.
The Ashburton library was very small, oriented toward children’s books and novels for adults. Dougless sat on a stool in the British travel section and began searching for any mention of the eleven estates Nicholas said he’d owned. Four were now ruins, two had been torn down in the 1950s (it made her sick to think they’d survived so long and been torn down so re
cently), one was Thornwyck Castle, one she couldn’t find, two were private residences, and one was open to the public. She copied down the pertinent information about the estate open to the public—hours, days open—then looked at her watch. Nicholas had been in the dentist’s an hour and a half now.
She searched through the card catalog, but could find nothing on the Stafford family. Another forty-five minutes went by.
When the telephone on the checkout desk rang, she jumped. The librarian told Dougless it was the dentist calling and that Nicholas was nearly finished. Dougless practically ran back to the dentist’s office.
The dentist came out to greet her and asked her to come to his office. “Mr. Stafford puzzles me,” the doctor said, as he put Nicholas’s X-rays on a wall-lit machine. “I usually make it a policy to never give an opinion about another doctor’s work, but as you can see here,” he said, pointing at the X-ray, “Mr. Stafford’s previous dental work has been . . . Well, I can only describe it as brutal. The three teeth that have been extracted look as though they were literally torn from his mouth. See, here and here the bone was cracked and grew back crooked. The extractions must have been extremely painful afterward as the bone healed. And, too, I know it’s impossible, but I don’t believe Mr. Stafford has ever seen a hypodermic before. Perhaps he was put under when he had those teeth removed.”
The doctor turned off the light. “Of course he had to have been put under. In this day and age we can’t imagine the pain that extractions such as these must have caused him.”
“This day and age,” Dougless said softly. “But four hundred years ago teeth were, as you said, ‘torn’ from a person’s mouth?”
The doctor smiled. “Four hundred years ago I imagine that everyone had extractions like his—but without anesthetic or painkillers afterward. And, yes, I imagine a lot of people went away with cracked jawbones.”
Dougless took a deep breath. “How were his teeth otherwise? How was he as a patient?”
“Excellent on both counts. He was very relaxed in the chair, and laughed when the hygienist asked if she’d hurt him when she’d cleaned his teeth. I filled one cavity and checked his other teeth.” The doctor looked puzzled for a moment. “He has some slight ridging on his teeth. I’ve only seen that in school textbooks, and it usually means hunger for a year or so as a child. I wonder what could have caused such ridging in him? He doesn’t strike me as a man whose family couldn’t afford food.”
Drought, Dougless almost said. Or flooding. Something to make the crops fail in a time of no refrigeration or frozen food or fresh food flown in from around the world.
“I didn’t mean to keep you,” the doctor said when Dougless said nothing. “It was just that I was concerned about his previous dental work. He . . .” The doctor chuckled. “He certainly asked a lot of questions. He isn’t by chance thinking of going to dental school?”
Dougless smiled. “He’s just curious. Thank you so much for your time and your concern.”
“I’m glad I had the cancellations. He has a most interesting set of teeth.”
Dougless thanked him again, then went into the reception room to see Nicholas leaning across the counter flirting with the pretty receptionist.
“Come on,” she snapped at him after she’d paid the bill. She hadn’t meant to be so short-tempered, but it seemed that circumstances were trying to force her to believe that this man actually was from the sixteenth century.
“That is not the barber I have been to,” Nicholas said, smiling, rubbing his still-numb lip. “I should like to take that man and his machines back with me.”
“All the machines are electric,” Dougless said gloomily. “I doubt that Elizabethan houses were wired for the two-twenty they have in this country.”
Catching her arm, Nicholas turned her to face him. “What ails you?”
“Who are you?” she cried, looking up at him. “Why do you have ridges on your teeth? How did your jawbone get cracked when your other teeth were pulled?”
Nicholas smiled at her because he could see that, at last, she was truly beginning to believe him. “I am Nicholas Stafford, earl of Thornwyck, Buckshire, and Southeaton. Two days ago I was in a cell awaiting my execution and the year was 1564.”