A Midsummer's Day (5 page)

It would be different, not being a Noble Lady anymore.  She loved singing during festival, but she would be able to sing with the faer
y
, too.  The leader of the flight, Nymph, always played a set of pipes.

“Feeling any better, hun?” Johnny asked, twirling a lock of her hair around his fingers.

“I’m feeling pretty good.”  She slammed her lips into his.  She lost all thoughts of the festival.  All thoughts of her singing group and the faer
y
.

She lost all thoughts of her best friend, sitting less than three feet away.

“Oh get a room.”  Laughter overshadowed faux disgust in Vaughn’s voice.  The door opened and closed as he rejoined the festival.

“I suppose we should go back out, too,” Johnny said.

“Not yet.”

Chapter 6

“Are you ready for this?”

“Absolutely.  It’s the most fun I have all day.”

They stood at the bottom of the stairs, before the portal leading them into the past.  Sammie took a few slow breaths after their walk down the stairs.  She took a few slow breaths before going out into the summer heat.

“Don’t wander too far.  Stay around the Crossroads.  You don’t want to get out of breath again before our big scene.”

Dear, sweet, overly protective Johnny.  She pecked him on the cheek.  “Don’t worry, my love.  I’ll sit in the shade in the Green and watch the faer
y
."  And dream of her future.  The thought of being a faery...  She hadn't stopped smiling since Vaughn brought it up.  "Then I'll go play with today's tourist.  If everything works out, I should be at the Poet’s Stage when you show up.”

“You like flirting with the tourists, don’t you?”  Johnny pouted.  The corners of his lips twitched. 

“I pretend every single one of them is you.”  She hooked her arms around his neck.

He put a finger on her lips before she could kiss him.  “You just got your air back, babe,” he said.  “We should go anyways.  I have a monk to arrest.”

She wanted to pout.  But she was about as good at it as Johnny was, and her lips twitched in a smile.  She threaded her arm through his.  “Don’t arrest him too quickly.  I have a feeling I might be seeing him myself.”

They laughed and walked outside.  And into another world.

Outside, they were a Courtly couple.  Outside, Jameson Kent made a reappearance, and the Lord High Sheriff sought to reprimand a dozen tourists in shorts and sunglasses for one crime or another.  Lady Anne smiled at each tourist her Jameson stopped.  He was vigilant in his work.

But thank God Johnny was nothing like Jameson.  The Lord High Sheriff was hilarious, especially when he pointed out imagined shortcomings of male tourists in front of their male friends.  But...  Jameson was also insane.  Thank goodness it was just an act.

They stopped near the Poet’s Stage, where peasants danced to lively Celtic music.  The dance was so enjoyable that not even the hardest hearted noble could watch it while frowning.

“I do most thoroughly crave thy pardon, sweetest of Ladies,” Johnny-slash-Jameson said.  “I must take me my leave of thee here.  I have need to attend to matters of the Shire.”  He kissed Sammie’s fingers, his lips only gingerly touching her skin.

Years of practice stopped her legs from turning to jelly.  Even after being engaged a year...  He still managed to take her breath away.

“My Lord High Sheriff.”  Sammie curtsied.  “I do pray God keep thee well.  I shalt miss me thy company whilst thou art out wandering.”

“Then I shalt return me to thy most tender graces most swiftly.”  The Lord High Sheriff Johnny brushed her lips with his.  His hand found its way to her lower back.

A proper Tudor Lady might have stopped the public display almost immediately.  But Anne Halloway was far from proper.  Even if she was...  Sammie wouldn’t have stopped.  She was in Heaven.  She closed her eyes and lost herself in Johnny’s smell.  He smelled of the festival.  He smelled of roasted meat and mead.  He smelled of the horses.  He smelled of grass and mud and water, and the slightest bit of sweat.

He smelled... amazing.

After too long a moment, she forced herself to push him away.  “Hello!  My Lord High Sheriff!”  Her voice screeched with convincing shock.  “The eyes of many a Court gossip lay most eagerly upon us.  Thou shouldst place others in thy wood stocks for lesser displays.”

He took a step back and bowed.  “Pray forgive me, my dearest.”  Then he leaned forward.  “Just wait until I get you out of sight, then,” he whispered.  He winked and bowed once again.  “By thy leave.”  He turned down Hill Street.

And immediately found a tourist to harass.  The young man’s crime seemed no more serious than looking at a Shire woman for too long, but his friends cackled so loud Johnny might have told him his fly was open.

Sammie smiled.  Torturing the tourists was Johnny's favorite thing to do.  And wandering the festival, free to do as she wanted until her next scripted scene, was her favorite thing to do.  And it was time to do it.

The top level of the festival might not have had an abundance of trees, but the majority of them were around the Village Green.  Sammie wandered towards a shaded corner of the meadow nearest the Crossroads.  A bench rested beneath a lacy, flowering tree, and was bathed in gorgeously dappled shade.

It was perfect.  She sat.

A flight of half a dozen faery chose that moment to appear in the Green.  They fluttered their way across the grass, stopping in front of Sammie’s seat.  Things couldn't have worked better if they had been planned.  It was almost as if they could read her mind.  It was almost as if they knew how much she wanted to see them. 

The faery danced a circle only they could see.  The browns and greens and oranges of their light and airy skirts swirled with each spin and twirl.  A faery knelt in the lacy boughs sweeping the ground near Sammie.  She played a sprightly tune on a double barreled pipe.

The faery were the freest characters in the festival.  They were part of the Queen’s professional, the closing Pub Sing, and only one stage show.  After that they could do what they wanted.  They could wande
r where
ver
they
wanted.  They were welcome in all parts of the festival.  But they tended to keep themselves to the Village Green and the area around the Woodland Stage.  There they sang and danced and played tricks on the adult tourists.  They gave children hugs and magical faery stones.  And enchanted memories that would last a lifetime.

And… if just being a faery wasn’t amazing enough… they wore remarkably light clothing.  Everything was made out of light, flowing, gauzy fabric, even their beautifully translucent wings.

Sammie stretched out her weary shoulders.  Her gown seemed extra heavy at the moment.

The flautist finished her song.  The dance of the faery ended.  Other performers would acknowledge the tourists who applauded them, but the faery ignored such mortal behavior.  Instead they congratulated each other for having such wicked fun.

Sammie stood and clapped.  “Huzzah!”

The flautist faery heard Sammie.  “‘Tis our Lady Anne,” she said.  “Thou hast most enjoyed our dance, I see.”

“The dance be most enjoyable, and thy music be near divine, Faery Nymph,” Sammie said.

“‘Tis not so often a Lady from the human Court enjoyest herself our forest games.”  Nymph skipped from side to side.  “The faery enjoy us singing and fine voice, and word hath reached mine ear that thou art possessive of both.  Pray sing for our dance?”

To interact with the faery…  To sing with the faery, though she was still a Lady…  It didn’t matter that she was still a Lady in a heavy gown.  For the next few minutes, she was living her dream.

“The honor doth lay with me, Lady Faery.”  Sammie leaned forward.  “I only know one faery song.”  She whispered the title to the sprite of a girl playing Nymph.

Nymph smiled.  “I do know that one,” she whispered.  “If thou wouldst stand just here, Lady Anne,” she said aloud as led Sammie to the center of the circle.

“Mayhap thou wouldst grant me with a visit to thy Faery world after this.”  Sammie smiled, indulging her love of the winged creatures and Lady Anne’s love of defying nature at the same time.  People of the time period believed that the faery swept mortals away to the world of Faery, never again to return home.  And those who did would soon diminish and die from the want to return to the faery.  These were ideas to be feared.

But not by Sammie.  And certainly not by Anne.

“Mayhap, my Lady Anne,” Nymph said.  “Thou wouldst make a most wondrous addition to the Court of Oberon and Titania.”

“Only if thou doth enjoy my singing, faery Nymph.”  Sammie grinned from ear to ear.  She was in heaven.  And she hadn’t even joined the flight yet.

Nymph retook her place and raised her pipe to her lips.  The dancers retook their places around the circle, their arms raised.

Sammie took a deep breath.  They waited for her.

The song came more naturally than the songs she rehearsed and performed with the Noble Ladies.  It was a song about humans celebrating the faery, humans who gathered in dance to celebrate every joy the faery brought to humanity.  Sammie lived every word.  Before the end of the song, she swayed in time with the faery’s dancing around her.

“What be the meaning of this?”

The deep, echoing bellow cut off the last line of the song.  All the faery, save for Nymph, darted to hide behind trees or tourists.  Their brave leader went to stand next to Sammie in the circle.
             
A stout man in the fading gray robe of the long forgotten Catholic monks lumbered across the Green.  His eyes were fixed on Sammie and Nymph.  They were the target of his wrath.

Sammie smiled.  This was going to be fun.

“Be gone, ye vile spawns of the devil!” the monk bellowed to the hiding faery.  “My Lady Halloway,” he said without any respect.  “It doth thoroughly surprise mine eyes to spy such a noble Lady carousing with yon heathen demons.  The Queen wilt be most mightily displeased shouldst she hear of this.”

Sammie crossed her arms across her chest.  Not smiling was the hardest part of her job.  “Perchance her Majesty the Queen wouldst like to hear tale of a Catholic monk disrupting her festival.  Mayhap too wouldst mine own betrothed, Lord High Sheriff Jameson Kent, like to hear of thy threats to his betrothed, Brother Monk.”  She raised an eyebrow.

The monk’s rotund little head blushed like a burst tomato, and he bowed more deeply than he’d ever bowed in front of the current Queen.  “My Lady Halloway,” he muttered, and left for safer parts of the festival where he could preach his Catholic rhetoric in peace.  If such a place existed in the festival.

Ah well.  He was Johnny’s problem now.

“‘Twas too much fun, milady,” Nymph said as the other faery came out of hiding.  “Methinks the noble Lady doth possess the heart of a faery.”

Sammie smiled.  “My dearest Nymph, I do give thee my most heartfelt thanks for allowing me to sing with thee.  But matters do press, and I must away.”

The faery turned.  They fluttered their wings in her direction.  It was their version of a curtsy.

Sammie turned and walked to the Crossroads with an extra spring in her step.

The heat intensified as she stepped from grass to the dusty juncture that was the Crossroads.  She would love to return to the shade.  She would love to find a shadowy space of the festival, maybe near some water, and just sit and enjoy her thoughts.  But she couldn’t.  She’d promised Johnny.

Anyways, the biggest part of her day happened here.  So here she’d stay.  Browsing the shops was an activity that could be done at a leisurely pace, and with her fan fluttering away it wasn’t an unpleasant way to spend some time.

After fifteen minutes of browsing the shops, she started to scan the tourists.  The perfect one was in the crowd.  She just had to sniff him out.

The leather maker was one of the few crafters lucky enough to be housed in an enclosed building each season.  It was shaded and cool.  And it was routinely packed with men.  It was the best place to fish.

The young blond couldn’t have been more than twenty.  He looked listlessly at a display of biking gloves.  He had the look of someone waiting to meet a friend, and they weren’t showing up.

He would do just fine.

“My good Sir,” Sammie said loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the shop.  “My good Sir, art thou a knight?”  She grabbed his arm and squeezed his bicep.  At least this one has one today.

She’d taken all the senses from his brain, save for the natural manly sense to look her up and down.  And she had only started with him.

“My good Sir, thou art strong and most muscular.”  She put a hand on the young man’s chest.  His heart fluttered like the wings of a hummingbird.  “Surely thou art a knight of the realm.”

He opened his mouth to talk.  But all that came out was squeaks and stammers.

“Come.”  Sammie pulled his arm.  “We must have us a test of skill.”

The young man put up no resistance.  She led him from the shop and across the sun parched Crossroads to a penned-in field.