by Lucy E. Zahnle

Created on: September 17, 2009

When I stepped out of my Coleman nylon tent that morning, I could already hear the rumble of wooden wagon wheels on the dirt and gravel paths and the clanking of chain and plate mail as armored men strode toward the battlefield. These were all familiar sounds since I was attending a large medieval re-enactment, a "war' the medievalists called it, on the grounds of an English castle. When I had gone to bed the night before, I had been among two thousand participants in a series of grand encampments. Period pavilions and modern tents had mingled in a time-warped hodge-podge.

As I left my tent this morning, dressed in a light blue cotehardy with silver buttons down the front, those modern tents were gone. A crowd of people all dressed in fourteenth century garb were gathered in front of my tent, milling about and muttering as they gaped at me. Their words were unintelligible. They weren't speaking English as I knew it.

Suddenly a large man wearing chain mail pushed through the crowd. He strode past me and shoved his head into my tent. After looking around at my sleeping bag, nylon duffel bag, battery-powered alarm clock, flashlight, and tennis shoes, he rounded on me and began to speak in a questioning tone.

Unable to understand the knight's words, I shook my head and tried to explain. My words seemed lost on him and he repeated what he had said before, his voice louder. He reached into the tent and brought out my watch. Holding it out, he rapped out another abrupt question. I grabbed the watch and strapped it to my wrist, fastening it with Velcro. He lifted his eyebrows, troubled and suspicious.

He touched the tent and asked me another unintelligible question. When I didn't answer, he turned to a man in the avidly listening crowd and gave what sounded like an order. The man reluctantly left.

The knight turned back to me. He seized one of my tennis shoes and touched the nylon toe inset, posing another question. I tried to explain again that I could not understand him. I frantically addressed the crowd, asking if anyone knew what language the knight spoke and could translate. The people murmured and moved in a little closer. No one volunteered to help me.

I grabbed my shoe out of the knight's hands and sat down on the ground to put it on, collecting the other one from just inside the door of the tent. Meanwhile, the knight collected everything else in my tent, handing some of my things off to a second man. "Hey!" I said, slapping the flashlight and clock

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