A Midsummer's Day (6 page)

“What sorry, vile canker-blossom’d runt have you brought to me this day, my Lady Halloway?”  The festival’s heckler was ever as vile as he called out to her from the safety of his tomato stained board.  “By my troth, his spindly arm seemest not strong enough to hit a castle from three paces.”

“Nay, cruel Ungar,” Sammie called back.  “I bring me one who could pass for a grand knight of the realm and wish me to test his skill.”  She nodded to the game master, and the burly man handed the blond three tomatoes.  Free of charge to the Lady’s newest toy.

“Heed my warning, young runt.”  Ungar turned his attention to the tourist, standing now on the adult’s throwing line.  “‘Tis most every day our Lady Halloway bringest me a young rogue by the magic of her silver tongue.  She playest thee for a fool.”

The blond turned to Sammie and looked her up and down again.  “She’s hot, so I don’t care.”

Laughter erupted from her.  It was too funny.  No tourist had ever thrown out such a snappy comeback before.  Especially not to quick witted Ungar.

The first tomato missed Ungar by mere millimeters, which increased the speed at which the heckler threw out his taunts.  With a kind smile from Sammie, the tourist took a better stance.

The second tomato landed with a splash just above Ungar’s head.  The red juice washed the heckler’s face, but it could not wash away his stinging barbs.  “Mayhap your most majestic knight wouldst like to throw from the children’s line, my Lady Halloway,” he yelled.

“Go thee again, my most handsome Sir,” Sammie told her toy.  “Thy victory shalt win thee a kiss.”

Nearby actors gasped at the Lady Anne’s brashness.  Ungar rolled his eyes.  Tourists around turned their eager attention towards the attraction.

Fierce determination crossed the blond’s face.  He wound up like the pitchers she saw when she watched baseball with Johnny and Vaughn.

He threw.

The tomato flew in a perfect arc.  Ungar’s eyes went wide.  He shrank as much as he could against the board.

Not one tourist Sammie brought here ever hit Ungar after she issued the promise of a kiss.  Aims usually became far worse, and on more than one occasion the third tomato missed Ungar’s board completely.

But this one…  This one was determined to claim the ultimate prize.

He was determined.  And hot.  And young.  And blond.  Much more pleasant to behold than some of the older, heavier men she chose from time to time.  This would be one prize she would be happy to reward.

The tomato exploded in a shower of juice and seeds over Ungar’s face.  The spectators gave the blond a great cheer.

Sammie clapped with Courtly grace as she crossed the game area.  “Thou hast done thee well, young Knight.  Mine honor shalt prevail, and thy reward thou shalt receive.”

The young man closed his eyes and puckered his lips.  Sammie leaned forward.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?  Thou art more lovely and more temperate…”

She turned just as her lips were about to brush the tourist’s cheek.  The grandest poet of all time stood behind her, reciting to her the words of the most romantic sonnet ever written.

“My good Master Shakespeare!  What miraculous words!  Methinks thou wouldst seek to claim for thee the snowy white virtues of many a maiden with such beauteous speech.”

The actor playing Shakespeare, by happy coincidence also named William, took Sammie’s arm and threaded it through his own.  “Dear Lady, your beauty seekest to shame the most glorious words to spill from my quill.  The Goddesses of olden Rome pale in envy at the very thought of your eyes.”

Shakespeare led his captivated Lady away.  The blond was left in Ungar’s pen.

She almost felt bad sometimes, leaving her chosen toys forgotten in the dust.  It was almost cruel, the way she teased them and left them.

But the guilt never lasted long.  Especially not by the time she got to Poet’s Stage.  Guilt was the last thing on her mind when the greatest poet in history recited another love sonnet just to her.

Chapter 7

“Away with him.  The cur shalt see the depths of the pond for his continued defiance of my law.”  Johnny handed the man over to his constable.

It was little wonder that Henry VIII and two of his three children worked to oust Catholicism from England, if the monks of the time were as full of vile and venom as the festival’s resident friar.  Nottingham’s monk was so heinous that it was hard to remember that the man only played a part.

What time was it?  Johnny had no timepiece on his costume, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes since he’d left Sammie.  Yet he’d already arrested the monk.  Either the monk had decided not to harass the faery again, or Sammie had dispatched him with easy quickness.

Johnny smiled.  It was always Sammie.  Her Anne had a sharp tongue, and enough will to use it.

There were so few strong headed women in the festival.  There were so few who spoke their minds, regardless of the consequences, because there were few such women in Tudor England.  But those who were strong headed…  Those who spoke their minds with impunity…  They went on to become queens.

Sammie was poised to play Queen Elizabeth one day.

Johnny’s stomach rumbled.  He’d get some lunch.  He wanted to wait for Sammie…  But she wouldn’t mind if he ate now.

The workers at the pork-pocket-on-a-sword stand saw him coming.  He had a hot sandwich speared on a plastic sword and a cup of birch beer waiting for him when he got to the front of the line.  He didn’t carry a cup on his belt like Sammie did, so he had to break character just a bit during meals.

Something about eating roasted meat from a sword, even a plastic one, just made it taste all the better.  He ate slowly, taking his time, savoring every bite of his food.  He didn’t want to get to the Crossroads any sooner than he had to.  He didn’t want to see her play with today’s tourist.  He didn’t want to see how close she would come to kissing the lucky man.  He didn’t want to know if the man was old or young, ugly or handsome.

The idea of knowing, of walking in on the scene…  It made his skin crawl.

He would walk around the grounds one more time.  If he got to the Crossroads late…  Well, he was sure that slimy Shakespeare would keep Sammie occupied.

The Grotto Stage was empty.  It only held two or three shows a day since the festival added half a dozen new stages during the last off season.  Sammie was offered her pick of any of the new stages for her one performance of the day, but she chose to stay at this remote stage.  It was the coolest stage, and the pond behind it was good for her asthma.

Johnny would love to hear Sammie sing.  It seemed almost impossible that he’d never once seen her show.  He’d never once heard her practice.  Arresting people for the first trial and dunke of the day kept him from this part of the grounds during her show.

He’d change that one day.  One day, he’d sneak away from his duties.  One day, he’d let his constables do the arresting.  One day, he would hear his Sammie sing. 

“‘Tis a strange thing to find my Lord High Sheriff in such a lowly place.”

A young woman in the dress of one of the festival’s gypsies stood at the edge of the stage.  A lock of blond hair fell from her sparkly headband.

A shallow wave of terror swept through him.  Was this the gypsy Sammie went to this morning?  He didn’t know many fortune tellers were in Gypsy Way, but there weren’t many that were so young.  There were even less that were blond. 

Had she been the one to tell Sammie her life was going to change today?

What else did she tell her? 

The girl walked towards him.  He knew what he should do.  He knew what his role as Lord High Sheriff was.  The gypsy was riff raff.  She had no right to be so near him.  She had no right to be so far away from the evil depths of the Gypsy Way.  He should warn her about being arrested, about meeting the pond or the stocks, and then he should have left her in a huff.  Even without an abundance of tourists around to see…  That is what he should have done.

But would he?

Could he?

He grabbed her arm and pulled her close.

No.  He wouldn’t do that at all.

<>

The girl walked away from the Pits like a hyena hopped up on helium.  Her friends giggled themselves crazy at the end of the seats, waiting for her to show them the picture she’d just taken with the three mud beggars.

Vaughn was to blame for her giddy hysteria.  Partially at least.  He and his fellow beggars had tormented the girl ceaselessly while a friend tried to take a picture.  They’d made horrendous faces at her and threatened her perfectly clean flouncy shirt with their muddy hands.  But that was part of the fun of being a beggar.

Vaughn slipped around the back of the stage.  He needed a breather.  A moment of clarity before he and his muddy cousins took to the festival’s paths again.  Here there was a cool breeze from the pond.  Here he was completely hidden from the rest of the festival.

Something caught his eye.  From his vantage point, he could see straight into the Grotto Stage.

What in the hell was Johnny doing in the otherwise empty stage?  He never came down here.  He’d never even bothered to show up for one of his own fiancée’s performances.  So what was he doing there now?

And what was he doing wrapped in the arms and legs of somebody who was clearly not Sammie?

Vaughn took a slow step forward.  The girl came into view for the first time.

It was the gypsy.  The young blond who, not two hours ago, told Sammie that her life was going to change.  She questioned whether Sammie’s love was really her true love.

At the time it had seemed like a fortune that would work for almost anyone.  But now he knew different.  The gypsy had been right about everything.

The marathon kiss came to an end.  The gypsy walked back to Gypsy Way without so much as a glance over her shoulder.  Johnny turned.

His eyes went wide.  All color drained from his face.

Vaughn turned his back on his former friend.  “You fucking son of a bitch,” he thought to himself as he rejoined his fellow beggars.  “I’ll break your neck for breaking her heart.”

<>

Johnny took a deep breath.

The shaking wasn’t going away.  God damn it!  He had to stop it.  He had to calm down.  He had to do it now.  If she found out...

He couldn’t let her know anything was wrong.  He couldn’t let her suspect…

He leaned on the empty stocks and watched her from afar.  His timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  Sammie and her playwright had just reached the Poet’s Stage.  Sammie… his Goddess… with eyes shining like diamonds in the sunlight.  She was so happy, being wooed by her Shakespeare.

Johnny had missed her flirtations.  He had missed however close she had come to kissing another man.

Did he have a right to be jealous of that anymore?

He was an ass.  That’s all there was to it.  He was an ass for betraying such a beautiful, sweet, innocent creature.  He hated himself through and through.  He hated himself to the depths of his black, rotten soul.  Nobody else could hate him more than he hated himself right now.

No.  That wasn’t true.  There was one person who did.  As long as Vaughn
didn’t
kick his ass when Sammie was around...  Johnny would gladly take any beating that Vaughn doled out, just as long as Sammie didn’t find out.

He took another deep breath.  It was steadier, if only slightly.  It was time.

All he had to do was keep it together for the next ten minutes.

“My Lady Halloway!”

She turned towards him.  Her face was so full of innocence.  So full of happiness to see him.  “My Lord High Sheriff,” she said sweetly as she curtsied.

He swallowed a lump in his throat.  “By what meaning do I find thee thus, my Lady?” he asked too critically.

“I hold no ill meaning, my Lord High Sheriff,” she said as the ever haughty Lady Anne.  “Master Shakespeare pens a new play and merely seekest to ask me of mine opinion on his most glorious words.”  She smiled at him with sweet expectancy.  Anne may have been strong headed and an open flirt, but Sammie was so innocent.

God, let her stay that way.

Johnny ignored Shakespeare, who watched the scene with great interest.  Most likely the bard imagined ways to demonize the Lord High Sheriff in a poem he would recite to the public later today.

“I have heard me some most heinous rumors of thy actions this day, my Lady Halloway.”  Johnny showed little of the love he’d shown to his dear betrothed when they’d parted less than an hour ago.  He grabbed her, too hard he realized, and eased his grip.  “Ever dost thou seek to lay shame upon my good name.  No better art thou than the gutter-pox’d whores haunting the alleyways of London Town.  Little choice have I now.  Thou shalt meet the pond, my Lady.”

He spouted his lines too fast.  Sammie would know that something was wrong.  She’d question him as soon as they were alone.  He had to pull himself together.  He shook off the ravages of a guilty mind and pulled her away, though with a gentle grip.

“My Lord High Sheriff,” Sammie’s Anne complained as she was pulled away.