A Midsummer's Day (9 page)

“‘Tis a shame, my Lord High Sheriff, that you should be so alone whilst your betrothed recovers with lack of your strong arm to guide her to better humor.”

She appeared out of nowhere, slippery as the snakes that were her people.  She didn’t have the beauty of his Anne, but she was alluring, this strange Romany.  Instead of charcoal hair and jet eyes that were common among her people, this one had eyes as bright as the sky and silky hair the color of flax. 

Jameson glanced behind him.  The path was empty.  The short walls of the staged pavilion would hide them from curious eyes.  He smiled freely, here away from the eyes, and tongues, of the world.

“How dost thou know thee my betrothed recovers, lass?”

“The Lady Anne is oft in need of rest.  Methinks the heat wouldst wither such a delicate flower.  My Lord High Sheriff wouldst better fare with a woman of greater… substance.”  The gypsy slinked her way ever closer to him.

“Wouldst thou be that woman, Madam Gypsy?”

She would not have a chance to answer.  Jameson grabbed the wench roughly by the shoulders and slammed his lips into hers.  With one swift motion he had her skirt pulled up past her hips.

It was the devil in her that drew him to her in his time of physical need.  It was the devil in her that bewitched him to her bed, and her graces, time and time again.  He should arrest her for witchcraft, but her devilry was too strong.

Yet he would not call her his mistress.  She was not a woman of his standing, nor did she have the standing of most servants.  So he took extra care not to be caught with…

“Pray pardon, my Lord High Sheriff.”

Jameson growled.  He pushed the gypsy away, tearing her fingers from his waistband.  Thank the Lord she had not yet reached his laces.

“Wouldst you leave me so denied?” she asked, her lips twitching.

“Silence, gypsy, or find thyself a guest of the stocks,” he hissed, and turned to his youngest constable, quivering like a leaf at the edge of the stage.  “Zounds, man!  Unleash thy tongue from the grip that stills it!”  Being caught put him in a foul humour, though his constables were well threatened never to reveal to anyone the private activities of their Lord High Sheriff.

“A situation doth arise, my Lord High Sheriff,” the constable stammered.  “A mud beggar hath thought to disrupt the upper levels of the grounds.  He did make great haste from us upon notice of arrest.”

This was most disturbing news indeed.  A beggar had no reason to be on the upper levels of the grounds.  “Where be the rogue now?”

“We know not, my Lord High Sheriff.”

Damn this young dullard and his incompetence.  Jameson would instruct his man on the dangers of such ignorance once the festival ended for the night.  “Which mud soaked insect seekest my displeasure?”

“‘Tis Puck, my Lord High Sheriff.”

Puck.  Why wasn’t he surprised?  The youngest beggar had been nothing but a nuisance.  Cursed was the day Jameson allowed the bastard and his cousins to participate in the festival.  Puck stole kisses from young lasses above his station.  He delighted in pranking the nobles and caused them to lose dignity.  He wandered where he was not allowed.  He drew his cousins to follow in his reckless behaviors. 

And, perhaps most seriously, Puck corrupted Anne’s mind against common sense and common dignity.  Anne’s sensitive nature had led her to befriend the beggar, but she was easily influenced to do things no well-born Lady would ever dream of doing.

The damned Puck could convince her to do anything, but Jameson himself could not convince her that the friendship was no good.  She would be better befriending one of Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers.

The constable remained at the edge of the stage.

“Stand thee not so bewitched, thy fool!” Jameson bellowed.  “Go and find thee the cur, and bring him before me!”

The man bowed and hurried away.

“He doth strive to take from you that which be yours.”  The gypsy joined Jameson at the front of the stage.

“What be thy meaning, woman?”

She stared out into the festival, but her eyes were elsewhere.  She was in a place Jameson didn’t understand.  The place her predictions came from.  After an eternity, she returned to this world and laid a hand on his chest.  “The beggar Puck.  He wouldst steal from you your betrothed.”

Jameson shoved her away.  Events of recent moments had increased his ill humour, and her hellish prophecy against him inflamed his anger into a blaze.  “Dost thou know what I shalt do to thee should word of us reach the Lady Halloway’s ears?”

“Aye, my Lord High Sheriff.”  The witch had enough good sense to lower her gaze in humility.

“Speak thee thy words.”

“You shalt place me in chains for the crime of witchcraft, and I shalt be beheaded or burned at the stake at our majesty Queen Elizabeth’s pleasure.”

“And mind thou never forget it, Tacyn, or find thy usefulness to me no longer present.”  Jameson turned and marched off the stage.

Just let her remember that.

Chapter 10

In the off season, he loved to watch mutant movies.

Right now, he wished he was some sort of human-amphibian hybrid so he could close all the holes in his head at the same time.  His mouth and his eyes were no problem.

But his ears and his nostrils, on the other hand…  They were full of mud, and in desperate want of a cotton swab.  He didn’t dare inhale.  He didn’t dare move… 

Being face down in a vast pit of mud was not an easy thing.

But there was no place he’d rather be.  If Sammie could cool off in the dunking pond every day, then he could enjoy his cool, cool mud.

The world exploded.  The Dregs and the Pits were blown to oblivion.  The shockwave tore its way through the mud and ripped what breath Vaughn had from his lungs.

But there was no screaming.  He didn’t hear fire ravage his wooden stage.  The wooden benches.  The wooden roof.

There was no sound of his audience running for their lives.

What he heard... was the sound of applause?  He wrenched himself from the thick muck and stood.  Through mud filled eyes he saw no sign of destruction.  He saw no fire, no bomb crater.  He saw no sign that the elephant had escaped from its pen on Caravan Way and had fallen over.

Had he imagined the whole thing?  That must have been it.  He hit the mud too hard.  He imagined the shockwave.

Vaughn wiped the thick mud from his eyes and, with two deft flicks of his wrists, flung it as far into the audience as he could.

Giddy shrieks were his reward.  He and his two fellow beggars delighted in splatting the danger zone, the first eight rows of the audience.  Anybody wearing white received special attention.

The other beggars joined him at the edge of the pit, and the three took their bows together.  Forarin, the hero of this showing, pushed villainous Puck back into the mud.  Vaughn threw himself into the pit as hard as he could, and more shrieks greeted his ear.

He stood again, breathless and happy.  The crowd moved on.  It seemed no one wanted the usual souvenir photo with the beggars today, so he went to a compartment hidden around the back of his stage.  Some muddy prankster had replaced their worn terry towel, long having forgotten that it was once white, with a rag made from a burlap sack.

Damned jokester, whoever it was.  He was supposed to be the prankster of the pack.  His very name gave him that quality.

Whoever had left the burlap rag failed at their attempted prank.  The fabric wasn’t scratchy in the least, and even around the delicate skin around his eyes it was amazingly smooth.  He wiped his face and threw the rag back into the compartment.

Something was… off.  From a distance, the crowd beyond the last row of seats looked no different.  No smaller.  Children at a nearby game threw mud soaked sponges at game masters dressed like the mud beggars.  The line leading to the privies was every bit as long as usual.  Women shopped at a stand selling chopsticks for their hair.  Sammie liked the things so much she owned three sets herself.

But…

There was nobody dressed in jeans.  Nobody in shorts and tee shirts and sneakers.  People squinted against the harsh sun for the lack of sunglasses.

All the tourists were gone.

Everyone was in period costume.  Men wore rough breeches and jerkins.  The women wore long gowns.

What in the hell?  He hadn’t paid that much attention to his audience when they left, but there damned well were tourists in the stands at the start of the show.  He had personally tortured three in sparkling white tees himself.

There hadn’t been enough time for them to completely disappear from sight.

“Fair thee well, Cousin Puck?”  Forarin joined Vaughn near the seats.  “Thou hath a bewitched look about thee.”

“What in the blazes is going on?”  Vaughn walked out onto the Dregs road.  Being closer to the situation didn’t make things better.  “What happened to the tourists?”

“I know not what thou dost mean, Cousin Puck, with this most strange word tourist.  We have seen us our normal audience of peasants, gone now to view them other shows.”

Vaughn sighed.  “Enough, Scott.”  He broke character and used Forarin’s real name.  “No one’s close enough to hear.”

“By what manner of name be this Scott?”  Scott crossed his eyes.  “Methinks the most oppressive heat hath tainted thy senses.  Come and let us eat.  Another performance awaits us hence.”

“Are you freaking serious?”

Scott just stared blankly at him.  He was out of his flipping mind.  It was hot, and he’d taken one too many hard hits in the mud.  Maybe the mysterious shockwave, if it really existed, had knocked Scott’s memories of winter life as a barista from his brain.

Vaughn walked down the Dregs.  There had to be people around who still knew their names.  People who weren’t in on this prank.  People who were still dressed as tourists.  It was just a matter of finding them.

The Lover’s Bridge was strangely empty.  The Grotto Stage wasn’t.  The backwards speaking storyteller was telling the story of Dindercella the gullery scirl.  Normally the audience was made up of tourist children.

But now there were only peasant children.  There were no parents minding strollers and cranky infants.  Nobody recorded the act with digital camcorders, or the rapt joy that were missing from these joyless children’s faces.

Around the corner, the glass blower still performed to a packed house.  But only grim faced nobles and a few peasants watched the show now.  Apparently it was an interesting diversion, but not enjoyable enough for anybody to smile at it.

“Where in the blazes are all the tourists?” Vaughn whispered.  If this was a hoax, it was a good one.  The instigator would have had to be good to swap out every tourist in a thousand foot radius with an actor.  And to do so in less than a minute...

Gypsy Way had seen the same switch.  Peasant women wandered the tents, seeking their fortunes much as they had done this morning.  As usual, there were no nobles here.  There were no tourists here.

Vaughn passed the worn tent where Sammie had gotten her reading.  Inside was the gypsy that kissed Johnny so hard.  That was how she knew who Sammie was.  Sammie had never gotten a reading before.  That was how she knew that Sammie hadn’t found her true love.

Did the gypsy know anything now?  She gave a palm reading to a young peasant girl.  But she looked up as he passed.  Her eyes bore into him so intently he turned away.  His skin crawled.

Freaky girl.  He’d go and find his own answers.  If he couldn’t, he’d come back and see what the gypsy knew.  And he’d get some answers about Johnny, too.

Beyond Gypsy Way was Brigands’ Den, home to the festival’s resident pirates and plunderers.  Normally they did nothing but drink rum and plan raids.  Now they sat in piles of plunder, pilfered from a number of nobles’ pocketbooks or the backs of the dozens of shops on the grounds.  They laughed and called for more rum.

Vaughn hurried away.  He wasn’t about to find out what they would do if the fancy got to them, now that they were part of this joke.

A thought came to him.  He smacked himself in the forehead.  “Sammie,” he whispered, a smile playing at his lips.  There was no point in wandering around every path of the festival, looking for tourists.  Sammie would tell him what the in the blazes was going on.  She never kept anything from him, a fact he’d discovered when he was seven and she was six and she told him everything his mother had gotten him for Christmas.  After that, it was a cinch to get her to tell him what he was getting for Christmas and his birthday.

Sammie would tell him the truth.  She wasn’t cruel enough to play this joke on him.

He walked through the faire with a purpose.  He stopped looking for tourists; he had an innate feeling that he wouldn’t find any, anyways.  He stopped looking for signs that the actors were part of a prank and fighting the urge to laugh.

He galloped up the Hill Road.  Sam would be back in the break room, changing after her dunke.

At the top of the road he ran headlong into a group of nobles.  They gasped and backed away from him as fast as they could.  It was as if he was evil.  Diseased.  They mumbled to each other about the unseemliness of a beggar on the upper levels of the festival.