A Midsummer's Day (2 page)

Anne chuckled.  “The Queen but seekest to safeguard thy purity, young Catherine.  Methinks thy perception shalt change upon thy betrothal.”

Catherine rolled her eyes again.  “Thou art betrothed, Lady Anne, but the pureness of thy virtue is a matter oft hotly debated.”

Jayne’s cackle echoed throughout the Grotto.  Then she remembered herself, and laced her arm through Catherine’s.  “We shalt see thee anon.”  The two Ladies stepped out into the sunlight together.

Already the gossip of the Royal Court passed between their lips.  Court gossip was a favorite pastime of courtiers and ladies in waiting, and even the peasantry enjoyed spreading rumors to come out of London, Hatfield, Whitehall, or Greenwich.  Wherever the Queen and the Court were.

But gossip was not a pastime Anne dabbled in.  She was the butt of many a rumor herself.  It came automatically with her betrothal to the Lord High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire.  Jameson was young, and handsome if Anne thought so herself.  She was young, and not unpretty from the words of others.

And youth and beauty always brought with it speculation and the wagging of idle tongues.

Anne sighed and rested herself on a bench beneath the stage’s roof.  Every ounce of breeze playing at the lace around her neck was a Godsend this day.  She wished, however briefly, that she could loose her corset and give herself some more air.

An episode of the vapours lingered just beyond the edges of the stage, hunched down in the bitter summer sun.  It stalked her, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce.

Let the nasty malady stay clear away from her.  If it pounced, let it miss.

If it pounced, and found its target…  It would steal all her air from her, and with it the enjoyment of the day.

Anne loved the festival too much to allow the heat and the vapours to take her from the festivities.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall.  A moment’s rest was all she needed.

Chapter 2

It was never a good idea to stray from the Pits for long.  The Lord High Sheriff had long vision and far reaching hearing, and he had an insatiable appetite for filling his stocks.

So the mud beggars took their fill of kisses and left the Hill Street.

But Puck’s thoughts were far from the Lord High Sheriff and his torture device.  He turned from the Dregs road and towards a covered bridge.

“Where dost thou go so strange away from us, Cousin Puck?” Forarin called after him.  “‘Tis not a place for thy foul likeness.  The Lord High Sheriff shalt see thee in the stocks for a day if he wouldst find thee hence.”

“The Lady Halloway doth sing most marvelously well.  Just yonder.”  Puck nodded towards the Grotto stage, visible just beyond the bridge.  “I wouldst hear me her voice.”

“The Lady Halloway?”  Mischief crowded the eldest beggar’s mottled gray eyes.  “Aye, she be a wench most comely.”

Kaiser snickered from behind Forarin.  Ever did the two enjoy goading Puck about his friendship with the highborn Lady.  The jests that came from their sun parched lips every day would have them see more trouble than the stocks if the Lord High Sheriff ever got wind of them.

“‘Tis but her most angelic voice I seek,” Puck said carefully.  He didn’t trust his friends to not go running to the Lord High Sheriff if he said the wrong thing.  “‘Tis one non pariel.”  He turned towards the bridge.

“The Lady hath bewitched thee against thy good senses,” Forarin said.

Puck stopped and turned, his hands clenched tightly.  “The Lady be no witch.”

“Is she not?”  Kaiser raised an eyebrow.  “Hath the poppet not bewitched thy rod and made it as hard and thick as iron?”

Puck laughed in spite of himself.  “A pox unto thy words, thou bog-addled ale-louse,” he jested, and turned and jumped into the culvert spanned by the bridge.

Forarin was right about one thing.  The bridge, a place for Courtly lovers, was not for the likes of him.

“Thou shalt be parted from thy most hollow skull for thy want of the Lord High Sheriff’s betrothed,” Forarin called after him.

Again the old mud-sot had a point.  It was not beyond reasonable thought that the Lord High Sheriff knew about Puck’s friendship with the Lady Anne.  As of yet, the Lord High Sheriff had not confronted him about it.  But that was bound to change, and Puck would find himself punished.  Whipped or dunked or put in the stocks.

Until that day arrived, Puck would spend as much time as he could with the sweet Lady.

How was it that such a Goddess as Lady Anne, the most beautiful star in all of existence, became betrothed to the vile likes of the Lord High Sheriff?  Jameson Kent worked hard to dim the bright light that she emitted.  She was a free spirit, and to crush that would be… devastating.

Even from the culvert, Puck could see her.  Her show had ended.  She was alone, sitting on a bench beneath the stage’s roof.

The Lady was a vision.  Half the women at festival could claim red hair, the Queen included.  But Anne’s hair shone like roses, even in the shade.  But it was her eyes…  Her eyes made her the most glorious Lady in all of creation.  It was her eyes that separated her from all humanity, and made her as ethereally beautiful as an angel in Heaven.

They were as silver as the moon.  They glittered like stars.

She was the only one in existence with those eyes.

Those were the eyes that Puck dreamed about every night.

<>

“Pray pardon, my Lady Halloway.  Feel you well?”

Anne opened her eyes and stretched.  She’d fallen asleep.

A motley looking creature, bathed from head to bare toe in drying mud, lingered at the edge of the stage.  He shifted uncomfortably in the hot sun, but he would not step into the shade.

Any other noble, a proper one Anne supposed as she stood, would be repulsed to have such a lowly person address them so openly.  But she hardly considered herself one of the uptight, boringly proper nobles of the realm.

And Puck w
as not a person to avoid.  Nor would she chastise him
for being within her presence.  A mud beggar he may have been, but he had a kind heart and a gentle spirit.  He was a true and honest friend, something that could not be said about the Ladies of Court, who only sought power and privilege.

Still, if truth was told, Puck had himself a nasty reputation
for
stealing kisses from the pretty young lasses on Hill Street.  But what h
a
rm rested in such innocent dalliances?  Anne herself could not deny the want of such attention from the young men at festival.

“My good Master Puck,” she said with a smile, elevating the man’s status with one simple word.  “Methinks I do detect a strong lack of willing cheeks and ready lips upon the Hill Street.”  She closed the uncomfortable distance between them, stopping at the edge of the cooling shade.

“It be the truth, my Lady Halloway.”  Puck smiled, stark white teeth showing in the center of a tanned and muddily handsome face.  “I have runnest me out of conquests.”

“Master Puck, name me Anne.  I beg it of thee.”

Mock shock split his surprisingly soft looking lips.  “Ne’er would I presume to name a noble Lady in such familiarity.”

“Tush, sir.”  Anne flicked a chunk of dried mud from his hot shoulder.  “Have I not e’er been thy close friend?”

“Your betrothed shalt have me harshly in the stocks, or part me from my crown, should he see us now,” Puck whispered into her ear, though a smile swirled in his voice.

Anne smiled, but she took a step back.  He had a point.  She would not see him punished on her account.  “Prithee escort thee a Lady through the festival,” she said, trying not to laugh through her own absurd properness.  “The Lord High Sheriff doth quake to think me wandering by mine own self.”

Puck gave a bow equal in graciousness and regality to that of any of the noblemen of the Court.  When he stood, they smiled at each other.

There was no better way to break the rules of society than to do it properly.

To the left of Anne’s position upon the Grotto Stage, beyond the glassblower, the only artisan to require seating because of the high volume of his constant audience, was the Grotto.  It was a place of cutpurses and pirates, fortune tellers and gypsies.  Very few nobles would shame themselves by lingering in such a place.

As such, it was one of Anne’s favorite haunts.

To the right was the Lover’s Bridge.  Legend held that a man and woman, passing through the bridge together and sitting on the bench therein, would be connected in love throughout eternity.  Half a dozen couples lingered beneath the bridge’s roof, but Anne had never been through the place, save to walk through it alone.  She’d not even travelled through the bridge with Jameson.

In the end, they turned towards the Grotto.  Puck stayed a step or two behind Anne, and no amount of cajoling would have him walk beside her in public.

Deep in the heart of the Grotto, bright red and purple tents sprang up like wildflowers.  It was the Gypsy Way, the home of the fortune tellers.

Anne stepped from the path and into the thick of the tents.

“Pray pardon, noble Lady,” Puck whispered.  “Shouldst you be in such a place?”

“Seek thee not to chide me, Master Puck.  Even the Queen of France hath dabbled oft in the art of fortune telling.  I wouldst seek me my fortune.”  She marched proudly towards the tents.  There were no nobles here.  No one brave enough to go to the Lord High Sheriff with tales of Anne being here.

And she would not have another lecture to endure.

Tent after tent was filled with peasant women seeking their fortune, wanting to know about future husbands, households, and children.  Every tent had a line of at least half a dozen women.  It would take ages to get inside to see a gypsy.

Finally, at the
end of the
long row of tents, Anne found one made of threadbare red velvet decked with balding tassels that, at one time, must have been gold in color.  No peasant waited in the doorway for their turn at the table.  The fortune teller inside must not have seen a good influx of eager customers in a generation.

It was as good a tent as any.

The gypsy inside was not the old crone Anne expected to see, wrinkled and hunched and gray.  The blond was younger and more fresh faced than Anne herself felt.  She wore the purple skirt often identified with the gypsies, and her sun streaked hair was pulled back with a band covered in diamonds.

“My good Lady Halloway.  Long have I awaited your arrival,” the girl said, her voice heavy with the accent of the Romany people.  Her worldly gaze pierced Anne’s very soul as she motioned to the chair opposite hers.

Anne sat, her eyes briefly passing over the crystal ball on the table between them.  “How doth thou know of me?”  She’d never sought out a gypsy before.  How did this girl know her?

The gypsy turned her knowing blue eyes to the crystal.  “This day bringest with it many changes, my Lady Halloway, that shalt strike upon your heart as waves strike upon the shore.  The warm embrace of true love shalt find you before the sun doth lay its head upon thy festival.”

Changes and love.  It was a general fortune that could have fit the situation of any woman seeking their futures.  There was no real prophecy in the gypsy’s words.  Anne stood.  “I do humbly thank thee for my fortune.  The arms of love art already about me.”

“Be it love in love’s most truest form?” the gypsy asked.

Anne paused at the doorway.  “I shalt think me upon thy thoughtful words, Madam Gypsy.”  She nodded her thanks, and she and Puck moved on.

Her skin trembled.  The gypsy’s words haunted her down to her soul.  There was no doubt that she loved her Jameson.  But true love?

Did such a thing exist?

“Think you not on the gypsy’s haunting words, my Lady,” Puck said, reading Anne’s thoughts with more witchery than existed in Gypsy Way.  “The day be young.  The weather be glorious, and all of Sherwood doth lie before your feet.”

Chapter 3

Jameson sighed.

Once a year, his peaceful Shire was flooded with lawlessness, mischievousness, reckless abandon, and a general lack of dignity that had not been seen in Nottingham since the days of Robin Hood and his merry men.

It was the festival’s doing.  The hundreds of people to come from outside Nottinghamshire, to come from her Grace’s own Royal Court, brought with them unfathomable behavior.  The despicable way the nobility acted away from their castles…

Public drunkenness.  Scraps and brawls.  Lewd language and lascivious behavior towards Ladies of the Court and Jameson’s own Nottingham women.

Thank the stars his Anne knew well enough to stay away from the sinful young men at festival, especially when they were in any state of drunkenness.  But the men, on the other hand…  None of the men could be trusted to keep away from Anne and her tender virtues.

Anne...  Too long had it been since they were together.  Too long had it been since she was at his side.  He longed to feel her soft skin once again.  The want of her beauty was painful.