A Midsummer's Day (11 page)

The Knight’s Honour Field was desolately empty.  The first joust of the day shouldn’t have been over for long.  Tourists and actors should have lingered around the field in the shaded grass.  The assistants to both brave knights should have been clearing the field of weaponry and broken lances.  Stable hands should have tended to the horses.

But there was nobody around.

When was the last time she’d actually seen another person?  It couldn’t have been the people around the shops at the end of the Dead Road.

Could it?

And what had happened to Johnny?  Whether or not he believed he was Jameson Kent…  If he’d vanished…  The thought was too much to bear.

Even the breeze seemed to disappear.  Liquid heat hung heavily in the air.  It seeped into every crevice of Sammie’s lungs.  She lost air with every nightmare step.  The thought of the next step was torture.

At the start of the jousting field, she stumbled.

By the end of the patched patch of earth, she could barely walk.

Thank God for Vaughn.  He wrapped his arm around her waist, and kept her on her feet.  “Hang in there, Sam.  We’ll go rest by the pond.”

She nodded.  Water would help.  It always did.

She heard it for the first time as they cut across the human chess board.  Distant and faint…  It grew louder as the seconds marched on.  It grew… recognizable. 

“Bloody hell,” Vaughn whispered, his eyes going wide.

Bloody hell was right.  A revelry of pipes and drums filled the space of empty road behind them.  As the noise grew, and the joyful music became more recognizable, the sound of applause could be heard.

Dammit.  She should have realized…  The quiet…  The mysterious disappearance of the entire population of Sherwood…  The pipes and drums…  Everything suddenly made sense.

But that didn’t make things better.

Melinda, the woman who played Queen Elizabeth, emerged from the curtain of wavering heat with Sir Walter Raleigh by her side.  Behind them was Johnny, resplendent as ever in his black and gold Sheriff’s garb.  Behind him… was everybody else who belonged to the festival.

It was the Queen’s Processional.  Once a day, the Queen and most of the actors travelled to every part of the festival, symbolizing the countrywide progressions the Royal Court had made since at least the days of Henry VIII.  Sammie was usually in the parade, on the arm of her Lord High Sheriff.  Vaughn was usually in it too, further back in line with the other beggars.

“What do we do?” Sammie managed to whisper.  If everybody was in the same altered state as Johnny…  Then being found by them would not be a good thing.

“Come on.”  Vaughn picked her up and carried her up the stairs and into the dark shade of the stage.

The throne was near.  The smaller chair where the Queen’s opponent sat was closer.  It would have been delicious to sit, to catch her breath.  But the chairs were too out in the open, too easy to see.  And the procession was fast approaching.

So she hid in the shadow of a column, sandwiched between the thick wood and Vaughn.

“Don’t let them see us,” she prayed silently.  “Don’t let them see us at all.”

Especially Melinda.  If she really thought that she was Queen Elizabeth…  Elizabeth inherited her legendary temper from her legendary father, and she was historically known to fly into furies over the littlest things.  She especially hated any romances of the Ladies in her Court that were not sanctioned by her.

And from the way Vaughn had his arm around Sammie, even though he was only trying to keep her standing…  It could definitely be misinterpreted as a romance.

Thankfully, it was not Melinda who caught them.

The person who did…  His temper was far worse than the Queen’s.

And what he did was unthinkable.

<>

“My Lord High Sheriff!  What be the meaning of such shocking behavior?”

The Queen’s voice bordered on shrieking.  She was seconds away from the hysteria that accompanied her most lethal temper tantrums. 

Jameson knew the tone.  He heard the danger to himself in it.

He turned from the stage, from the pair he’d sought out with blind anger, and saw the wake of destruction he’d caused.  The Queen and her entourage had been torn asunder by a wide path that the festival’s elephant might have caused.

His cheeks exploded in heat.  He dropped to one knee and lowered his gaze to the ground.  “I beg of you your forgiveness and your pardon, your Grace.  I have noticed me my betrothed in the most vile grips of this criminal beggar.”  He pointed behind him, to the stage where his Anne was with the vile Puck.  “I wished me only to see to her health and wellness.  Pray pardon me.”

He dared not move.  His excuses were well and good.  But the Queen could still have his head for shoving through her as bodily as he did.

The Queen said nothing…  For an eternity she remained silent.  Jameson’s legs shook.  At any second the order would come, and he would lose his head.

“Thou art forgiven thine outburst, my Lord High Sheriff,” the Queen said finally, but sternly.  Jameson dared to peak up.  The Queen’s eyes were not on him.  “Rise, but think thee not that another such outburst shalt be allowed.”

“Your Grace.”  Jameson stood and took his proper place behind the Queen.  The scoundrel Raleigh shot him a look, but Jameson ignored the pirate.  Such a man did not belong in the presence of the Queen.

The Queen stepped towards Anne and the dastardly beggar, still cowering in the shade of the stage.  “Remove thy hand from the Lady,” she said to the beggar, whose slimy arm was still wrapped around Anne’s delicate waist.  “Remove thy vile hand from the Lady, or see thyself ever parted from it, Sirrah.”

That the beggar listened to the Queen was a surprise.  He let go of Anne, and she stumbled forward.  Her face was overly flushed.  Her breath came in such short gasps it was a miracle she stood at all.  It made Puck’s grasp on her all the more explained.

But no more condoned.

The Queen noticed Anne’s countenance, as well.  “Art thou well, Lady Halloway?”

<>

If ever she had to convince people that she was Lady Anne Halloway, it was now.

It would do no good to tell these people that it was four and a half hundred years after the year they thought it was.  They wouldn’t believe her.  It might even make things worse.

If she and Vaughn were going to escape this, she had to play her part.

Sammie stepped into the sun.  She considered climbing down the three shallow steps to the board, where now most of the Shire stood, but stopped herself as she stumbled.  “Your Grace,” she gasped, and attempted a curtsey.  But her exhaustion and her asthma got the better of her.  She fell forward.

Johnny caught her before she hit the ground.  “Be thou well, my love?” he asked quietly, holding her firmly as he righted her on her feet.  He reverted to a level of compassion he had not shown her since before the dunke.  “What vileness hath this scum committed upon thee?  Anne?”

She shook her head.  She didn’t have enough air for even a simple “nothing.”  She willed what little of Johnny that still existed in this gruff Lord High Sheriff to read her mind.  To remember his love for her and his friendship with Vaughn.  She begged him to remember his asthma.

She begged Johnny, in whatever form he existed in now, to realize that Vaughn was only helping her.

“It doth seem this low man hath corrupted thy betrothed, my Lord High Sheriff,” the Queen said.  “Arrest thee the scum, and see thy betrothed to recovery.  We shalt discuss us the removal of the beggars from thy Shire upon the end of the festival.”  The Queen turned and marched away, the rest of the parade streaming behind her. 

Sammie and Vaughn were left alone with Johnny and three greasy, brutish men.  They must have been the Lord High Sheriff’s constables.

Johnny nodded at the men.  They converged on Vaughn.

This was so very wrong.  Sammie blocked the path up the stairs, pulling Johnny with her.  “No.  I beg it of thee,” she whispered, mustering all the air she could.  “He but seekest to help me.”

“He hath caused thy sickness, my love,” Johnny said, tightening his grip on her arm.  She winced against his touch, but he didn’t ease up.  “He hath stolen away thy air.  His intentions with thee are naught but evil.”

There was no Johnny left in this person.  Her fiancé no longer existed.  He would never hold her so tight.  He would never be so cold to her.  Never.

The constables moved around her.  Vaughn didn’t move, but he eyed possible escape routes. 

“Thou cannot!” Sammie gasped loudly.

“My love, thou hath seen thee enough trouble this day.  Pray do not create thee more.”  Threat replaced what little compassion the Lord High Sheriff had left.

<>

Sammie was going to get herself killed. 

Johnny slash Jameson either completely forgot his love for his Anne, or he didn’t care.  He was losing control over not only his subject, but his betrothed.  And that made him dangerous.

Vaughn jumped off the stage.  He ducked a constable and grabbed Sammie’s arm, breaking her free of the evil Sheriff’s evil grip.  “You have to stop this, Sammie,” he whispered.  “Don’t worry about me.”

“You have to run,” she whispered.  “He’ll kill you.  You have to run.”

Vaughn looked up.  The constables surrounded them.  She was right.  He looked at her again.  “The pond,” he mouthed.

She nodded.

He forced himself to let her go.  He backed away.  He didn’t want her to get caught in the aftermath of his dash.

Jameson grabbed Vaughn’s hand with a demonic grip.  “By what meaning dost thou possess this?” he shrieked.

Vaughn followed the Lord High Sheriff’s insane gaze.  His green eyes landed on the slip of silver and green sitting on Vaughn’s pinky.

Sammie’s ring.

“I do pray me this ring did not come onto thy hand the way I am thinking, Sirrah.”  The Lord High Sheriff bent Vaughn’s wrist back to the point of near breaking.  “I pray thou did take it most harshly from the hand of my delicate betrothed, so that I might take thy thieving hand.  And then I can take me thy head.”  He turned to a constable with dirty blond hair.  “Seize the scum.”

The greasy git smiled, revealing two rows of crooked corn teeth.  “Thou shalt not escape me again, wretch.”

Vaughn looked at Sammie.  “Run,” she mouthed.

The constable lunged.  Vaughn ducked around the man and darted up Hill Street.

<>

They ran after him.

But they wouldn’t catch him.  Vaughn was too quick.  He’d be out of sight before the oafs lumbered their way to the top of Hill Street.

Still...  A tear fell down her cheek.  Her last line of security had just disappeared from her side.  At least he’d be safe.

She turned.  Jameson’s eyes bore deep into her skull.  What was going on deep in the recesses of his insanity-ridden head?

He lunged.  He grabbed her arm, nearly pulling her off her feet.

“Bloody hell, Johnny.”

“Come now, Anne,” Jameson grunted.  “I shalt place thee in a quiet space where thou may recover thy health, and thy proper behavior, and so that I may too recover from the most hurtful shame thou did place upon my head.”

Chapter 12

She stumbled behind him.

He cared little.  All patience, all love he had lavishly laid upon her despite her many faults and indiscretions, quickly emptied from his heart.  There was no good in loving her if he could not control her.  So, now, he would focus on controlling her.

She gasped for air.  She tried to slow her step.  But he yanked on her arm.  It was time to teach the lass her place.  It was time that she leaned to bend to his will.

“Johnny, please!”

The sound of that low, base born name from her once sweet and breathless voice sent shockwaves of anger through him.  He walked faster.  The steepness of Hill Street would not slow him down.

Only when they reached their destination did Jameson slow.  “Ne’er have I felt me such deep shame.”  He threw Anne against the wood wall and opened the door few people knew about.  “I had hoped me the shame of the dunke wouldst wash clean thy behavior.  I wouldst thought thee better than to repeat thine indiscretions.  But to find thee so blatantly in the arms of a lowly beggar, one who doth wear thy ring…  My mind doth bleed at the most gruesome memory.”  He shoved Anne inside and pulled her up the stairs.

The bedroom was hot.  The air was thick and heavy.  The room had been kept closed to keep peasants and nobles from carousing here in secret, in this bedroom that Jameson built for Anne so that she might take some rest during festival.

Now it would become her prison.

He pushed her towards the bed.  “Here thou shalt remain, my Lady, until I choose to release thee.  Methinks half a day in quiet solitude should see thee learned of proper respect towards thy betrothed, and the Lord High Sheriff of this Shire besides.  Be assured, my Lady, thou shalt learn thy place.”  He turned to leave her with those thoughts.