A Midsummer's Day (13 page)

The guard raised an eyebrow.  His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword.

“Doth thou doubt mine orders from the Lord High Sheriff?” Vaughn asked, raising his voice.  “Shouldst I tell the Lord High Sheriff that his betrothed be denied nourishment in her most sickly state?”

The guard considered Vaughn, staring at the loaf of bread and the cup.

He tried not to shake, not to give the man any reason to doubt his story.  The seconds passed.  Seconds became minutes.

He loosened his grip on the bread.  It would be the first to go if he had to fight his way inside.

At last the guard moved to the side.  His hand had left his sword.  “Aye, my Lord.  You may bring the Lady Halloway her meal, but I pray you do not linger.  The Lord High Sheriff shalt have both our heads on pikes if he shouldst discover you in private with his betrothed.”

Vaughn nodded curtly and marched inside.  Hopefully he looked frustrated at the man’s impudence at not letting him pass immediately.  Hopefully that would buy him more time inside.

The door clicked closed behind him.  He bounded up the stairs two at a time.

The heat punched him before he saw the door.  The wave of heat that hit him as he opened the door nearly brought him to his knees.  How long had Sammie been in here?  There was no way that she could…

He rushed inside.  The break room had turned into a bedroom, but he didn’t linger on the thought.  It was just another weird thing to happen on this weird day.

Sammie lay on the bed as if she’d fallen backwards onto it.  She wasn’t moving.  She wasn’t making a sound.

He dropped the bread and drink on the table.  He looked at her stomach.  He looked for the familiar rising and falling that meant that she was breathing.  The movement was there.  But only barely.

“Sam?  Sammie?”  He put two fingers on her neck.  Her heart was beating too fast.  Too fast and too shallowly.  He put his ear on her chest.  Her lungs rattled with each breath.

But the rattling grew fainter with each second.

“Sammie?”  He felt her forehead.  She was drenched in sweat.  She was too hot.

He ran to the wall and threw open the window.  The breeze was slight, heavily tinged with the incessant heat plaguing the room.  But it would move the air.

He went back to the table.  The basin was filled with water.  Sammie must have missed it otherwise she’d have cooled herself down.  He dipped a cloth in the water and set it, dripping heavily, onto Sammie’s forehead.

She reacted to the cold water.  It was a good sign. 

He needed to make her cooler.

He tore off her long, draping sleeves.  There was a weak spot in the fabric of her skirt, just above her knees, and he tore at it until she was in a short summer dress.  He soaked the cloth again, and wiped down her arms and legs.

He kept working, cooling down her arms and legs, the exposed parts of her chest, until the basin was empty.  The rising and falling of her chest grew.  Each time he checked her pulse, it was stronger.

She was coming back.

<>

Drowning…

She drowned.  Cool wetness dripped down her limbs.  Penetrated her chest.

Better this way… than dying of heat.  Heat pressed on her chest…  Deadweight of iron.

Drowning… made her feel light.

Light pierced the enveloping darkness.  Whispers in the dark…  Any time now.

“Sam?  Sammie?  Come on, sweetheart.  Open your eyes.”

Darkness evaporated into dusty light.  The heat was heavy, touched by a breeze. 

She eased her eyes open.  She was still in the bedroom.  She hadn’t died.  This wasn’t her heaven.  Unless she’d been sent to hell.

She heard her name again.  Her real name.  “Sammie, sweetie, can you hear me?”

“Vaughn?”  Her voice crackled.  Mean breaths ravaged her aching lungs.

His face appeared in her line of sight.  “Hey,” he whispered.  A wavering smile matched tears polishing his eyes.  “Welcome back.  You had me scared there for a bit.”

Welcome back?  Scared?  “What happened?”  She tried to sit up.  Vaughn helped her, pulling her into a sitting position against the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed.  She went to wipe sweat from her arms.

Where were her sleeves?  Where was the bottom of her skirt, for that matter?  Hundreds of threads lined the length of her new hemlines.  What was left of her dress was soaked.  So was her hair.  “What happened, Vaughn?” she asked again.

“You passed out from the heat.  I had to get you cooled down.”  Vaughn sat crossed legged in front of her.

She tested her breathing.  It wasn’t good, but it was livable.  “Well,” she said slowly.  “I’m glad I shaved my legs.”  Vaughn chuckled.  He was dressed all in black.  “What are you dressed as?” she asked.

Vaughn smiled.  His smile was healing.  “The peasants think I’m a pirate.  The nobles think I’m one of them.”  He reached for the table and returned with a mug.  “Drink up.  We should get out of here.”

She drank the contents with one great gulp.  She didn’t know if she’d drank birch beer or turnip juice, and she didn’t care.  She felt like she’s travelled through a desert without a drop of water.  The cold liquid felt good, and her lungs thanked her for every ounce.

Another thought came to her, as she rested the cup in her lap.  A horrible memory, from before the darkness.  “Where’s Johnny?” she asked, eyeing the door.  He could burst in at any second.  He could burst in and take her air away from her permanently.

“I don’t know.  Somewhere seething because I lost his constables.”  His laugh was cut off.  He grabbed her face and turned it to the side.  “Jesus, Sam.  What in the blazes happened?”

She knew what he saw.  Her cheek still stung.  It must have gone red.  Tears flooded her eyes.  She took a shaky breath.  “Even now…  I never thought he’d hit me.”

“Johnny hit you?”

She nodded.  The tears overtook her.  She was too tired to fight them.  Her mind was too tired to try to pull herself together, or to tell her that things were going to be okay. 

Things weren’t going to be okay.

Vaughn wrapped her in his arms.  At least for now, she was safe again.

<>

The situation was getting dangerous.

It was one thing for the Lord High Bastard to want Vaughn dead.  But to hit his own fiancé, his own betrothed, so hard that her cheek was turning a violent shade of purple…  If Jameson could hit Sammie so hard, what else could he do to her if his uncontrollable rage came back to him?

Vaughn didn’t want to imagine.  He was sure as hell not going to leave Sammie alone again to find out.

“My Lord?  You must away now.”  Heavy footsteps pounded each stair like thunder in the narrow stairwell.

“Shit!”  Vaughn had forgotten about the guard.  He didn’t know how long he’d been here.  Long enough, though, for the guard to get worried.  He pulled Sammie off the bed.  Thankfully she was steady on her feet.  “Do you think you can run?”

She nodded.  “What’s going on, Vaughn?”

The door knob vibrated.

“When I tell you to, run.  There’s a path near the maze that leads to the parking lot.  Don’t stop till you get there, and don’t wait for me.”

“Vaughn?”  Fear tainted her voice.

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

“My Lord?  My Lady?  I shalt enter.”

The door flew open.  The guard was a brick wall in front of the doorway.  He’d be impossible to get around. 

He eyed the two of them.  Their interlocked hands.  Sammie’s scandalously bare arms and legs, the torn remnants of her gown on the edge of the bed.  “The Lord High Sheriff shalt he
ar
him about this!”  He turned, pulling a key from somewhere in his clothes.  He was going to lock them in.

Vaughn dropped Sammie’s hand.  He took a step forward, and hit the man as hard as he could.

The guard stood for a second, shock twisting his face.  Then he crumpled to the ground like a sack of bricks.

Vaughn shook his tingling hand.  He turned to Sammie.  “Run.”

She bolted, hurdling over the unconscious man.  Vaughn followed her.

He had to give Sammie credit.  She didn’t hesitate at the door leading outside.  Instead she burst through it with an explosion of energy.  No one tried to stop them as they dodged stages and games and rides. 

The open path next to the maze was a beacon of hope.

Sammie saw the path.  She ran quicker, and Vaughn, in his perfect health, had trouble keeping up with her.

Freedom was down the path.  Freedom from strange events and death threats.  Freedom from fear of her violent boyfriend.  Sammie knew it.  Vaughn knew it.

Beyond the maze, Sammie came to a screeching halt.  Vaughn had to swerve to keep from running into her at full speed. 

She stared straight ahead.  Fear or disbelief clouded her eyes.  Her mouth hung open.  She was a specter of absolute hopelessness.

“Sam?  Sammie, love, what is it?”

She raised her arm and pointed.  Vaughn looked.

His jaw dropped.

There should have been a sea of cars, stretching out almost as far as one could see.  Their Sherwood Forest was a forest of cars, not trees.

But there were no cars.

Instead stood a sea of white tents, vanishing off into the far distance.

Chapter 13

“If it doth remove your frustrations to lay with a woman, why do you not seek out the soft graces of your own betrothed?”

She made little effort to move from the soft patch of clover where they had lain.  Nor did she reach the short distance next to her to grab her dress.  Her body still bore the marks he had given her.  Bites upon her round breasts.  Scratches on her back.  Bruises around her wrists. 

But her nudeness did nothing for him now that he’d finished with her.  “I did not take thee for a dullard, Tacyn.”  He stood and tied his breeches.  “Thou knowest thee the Lady Anne and I have not yet seen our wedding night.  ‘Twould be a thing most improper.”

“But to see you to the bed of a gypsy…”

Jameson scoffed.  “For what other good purpose be a gypsy for?”

She sprang to her feet and grabbed him around the arm.  “The gypsies be good for some things.”  Her tone, her face grew dark, as if thunder clouds formed within her.  “You may think you all knowing and a most righteous mind.  But be you warned.  You yourself shalt see you to tear away your manhood, and naught shalt remain but a most empty and desolate shell.”

Her words were a punch to the senses.  Every prophecy that spilt from her bedeviled mind about him grew darker, more frightening.

But fear soon turned to anger.  “I know not thy meaning, thou gypsy wench,” he said finally.  “Knowest thou that thy speech toes the line of witchcraft.  Thou would think thee better than to speak dangerous words against me.”  He pushed her to the ground and marched around the corner of the dunking stage.

His constables waited for him, fidgeting with well-deserved nerves.  The right eyes on both men slowly turned from purple to yellow.

“What news?” Jameson asked, taking a calming breath.  His men were well trained to speak nothing about his dalliances, but the fact that they were in such close proximity grated on his nerves.

“There be no sign yet of the beggar Puck,” Balmer said.  He would not look up from the spot on the ground right in front of him.

The other constable also diverted his gaze.  This was more fear than they should have shown for such news, as expected as it was.  Jameson would not punish them twice for it.  “What else?” he asked, looking from one man to the next.

Balmer cleared his throat.  “It doth seem, my Lord High Sheriff…”  He stammered, clearing his throat over and over again.

Jameson snapped.  “Unloose thy tongue, thou quivering child!”  He had no time for such sniveling.

“It doth seem, my Lord High Sheriff,” the other constable cut in.  “It doth seem that the Lady Halloway has gone to ground as well.”

“What sayest thou, Sirrah?”  Jameson’s nails cut deep grooves into the skin of his palms.  Red clouded his vision.

The constable’s face blanched completely of color.  Sweat poured from his forehead.  He swallowed hard.  “The Lady be… missing, my Lord High Sheriff.”

“Did I not leave her under guard?”

“A great hit hath met the back of his head, my Lord High Sheriff.  The man hath yet to wake,” Balmer said.

“The Lady’s gown be torn to shreds, my Lord High Sheriff,” the other piped up.

Jameson didn’t see which one he hit in the jaw, nor which one he kneed in the gut.  He saw naught but red as the men withered on the ground in front of him.  “Dost thou not see?  ‘Tis the criminal Puck who doth hide mine own betrothed from thine blind eyes!”  He grabbed Balmer and yanked him to his feet.  “Gather thee when men thou dost possess.  Scour the grounds from stem to stern!”  He turned.  The sight of the incompetent fools turned his stomach.

Tacyn stood by the corner of the stage.  She had not dressed, but held her gown in front of her as a limp shield against her nudity.  Her smile told him that her dire prophecy was seeing its way to fruition.  She was an evil witch, to look him straight in the eye.