Charity Begins at Home (36 page)

Margo broke in sternly, "Not this year. This year I'm to read the candlewax to determine the future. No wishes allowed."

Jeremy looked so downcast that Lawrence whispered fiercely, "You can still wish, Jerry. Just don't tell her."

Out of fellow feeling for Jeremy, or so Charity told herself, she closed her eyes and sent up a wish as mingled as her emotions.
Let me find a new way, and let him forgive me.

She opened her eyes slowly, sensing from the warmth on her face that Tristan was watching her. All through this Midsummer ordeal, she had felt his quiet, supporting strength. Would he leave now that it was over?

It wasn't dark enough yet to appreciate the full effect of the candles in their little boats on the water. But the flickers of flame and their reflections seemed to set the pond on fire. The little boats bobbed gaily on the waves Lawrence and Jeremy made with their hands, and soon enough the four little boats made it unscathed to the other shore, where Margo had taken up her position. She picked up Lawrence's candle and peered at the trickles of wax along the sides. "Riches and good harvests," she said, and for Jeremy, "A pony and plenty of hay."

"Let's trade, Jerry," Lawrence said immediately, but Margo had blown out their candles and picked up Tristan's. "Fame and fortune will be yours."

Tristan accepted this with a thoughtful nod, and Margo studied Charity's candle with religious intensity. "I see—I see an adventure. Answers."

Charity couldn't help a certain disappointment. She had rather hoped that Margo would continue in her conventional vein and predict a future with a tall, dark, and handsome man. But adventure—well, that was a start.

"So you see, Uncle Tris," Lawrence said in the lecturing voice he had borrowed from Francis, "The fire's wet and the fortune's told. All that's left is the dragon's met—and you do that."

"I?" Tristan assumed an expression of innocence. "I don't want to meet a dragon. I don't like dragons. They're too hot."

Jeremy, earnest as always, pulled at his arm in distress. "But you are to be St. George! Don't you remember? We taught you your lines." He regarded his uncle anxiously, his lower lip caught between his teeth. "Perhaps we should go over your part again."

Charity had to laugh at the horror on Tristan's face. She intervened before Lawrence could join in. "No, boys, remember what I told you about over-rehearsing? And if he doesn't remember his lines, you can always prompt him. Now look, the banquet is starting. Run on over to the children's table or you won't get a seat."

The boys' small bodies disappeared into the crowd, reappearing a few moments later at the children's table, set safely away from the tempting bonfire. Jeremy waited for his brother to choose a seat, then sat down next to him, among boys wearing caps of green leaves and girls clutching the rag dolls the countess had made for them. The countess's sons were greeted with friendly disdain, for they were among the youngest there. Charity smiled, seeing how meekly Lawrence took this treatment from the sons and daughters of his own tenants. And Tristan, following her gaze, spoke her thoughts aloud. "There will be time enough for him to learn to be top-lofty. First he should learn how to make and keep friends."

Tristan took her arm and steered her through knots of girls who stopped talking when she was near, toward a table where Charlie sat all alone, still wearing his medal, waiting for the banquet to begin. He was spreading his rocks out around the vase of flowers that served as a centerpiece, oblivious to the tumult around him. No, Charlie would not sit at the children's table; he had not considered himself a child for years.

Charity smiled at Mr. Perry, the fiddling mason, who was strolling about playing the traditional St. John's fanfare. He gave her a strained smile. With the candor Tristan always engendered in her, she said quietly, "The village is disappointed in me."

Impatience flickered over his face. "Ignore them. You weren't put on this earth to make them happy."

"I rather thought I was." Suddenly she smiled. "They certainly thought I was."

He touched her hand under the table. "Well, you make me happy." After a brief pause, just long enough to send a thrill through her heart, he added, "Sitting with me and trying to divert my thoughts from my great performance, I mean."

Before she had a chance to ask what else made him happy, Polly intervened, setting the great bowl of cuckoo's foot ale in front of them. She made a great show of bending down, so all those who had assembled at the table could see how her pale green dress displayed her bosom, lit white and gold by the flaming torches. The serving girls, as usual, had lowered the necklines of their costumes and put flowers instead of just leaves in their hair. Well, Midsummer was a festival of fertility, and Polly was definitely the picture of that. If she weren't careful, one of the local lads would take her up on it.

The squire rose, holding up his cup of ale up for the traditional Midsummer toast, and Mr. Perry cut some sharp notes on his fiddle, imitating the sound of the cuckoo. All the children chimed in, raucously calling, "Coo-coo, coo-coo."

Charlie, noting Tristan's puzzlement, whispered, "Dip your cup in the bowl. Don't worry, it's only spiced ale." He must have felt his sister's admonishing gaze, for he added, "I only sip it myself."

The squire waited until everyone was holding up a cup. Or almost everyone. Charity saw that the vicar, sitting at a nearby table, kept his hands ostentatiously clasped and his cup empty. A toast to the cuckoo and the rebirth of summer."

Mr. Perry, standing in the middle of the circle of tables, struck up the traditional cuckoo song. The song swelled up, led by a few members of the church choir, and Charity softly sang the old words as she had sung them almost every Midsummer of her life:

Summer is a-coming in.

Loudly sing, cuckoo!

The seed grows,

The meadow blows,

And the woods spring anew.

Sing, cuckoo!

Her throat closed up after the first verse, and she couldn't sing anymore. Her father had always joked that Midsummer was a fertile time for Calders, as his twins had been born early the morning after a particularly enjoyable fair. It was the cuckoo's foot ale that brought on the birth, her mother had claimed—and the dancing around the bonfire, of course.

To the accompaniment of other old rounds, the girls of the parish served the other courses of the banquet. There was the sweet omelette made with almonds and honey, and the heavy brown bread topped with great dollops of butter, and a suckling pig for each table—a wealth of country produce, donated by the local farmers and prepared by their wives.

Last year Charity never had a chance to eat, so busy was she directing the serving of the banquet. But tonight Charity was idle enough that she could see how the gruesome sight of the suckling pigs, their mouths stuffed with apples, impressed the children and how the constantly replenished bowls of ale impressed their fathers.

It was quite a feast, and when it was done, Margo and her husband the baker brought out the destiny cakes on great platters covered with cloths. At each table, the diners reached under the cloth and grabbed a cake sight unseen. This was yet another Midsummer fortune-telling technique that the vicar disdained, waving his hand dismissively as the platter was held out to him.

Charlie got a hat and gravely said it meant he would soon be a scholar. Tristan got a key and speculated hopefully that he would be elected to the Royal Academy, the key to artistic fame.

Charity, however, got a square. Everyone at the table offered a different interpretation of this prosaic shape. One man—a stranger from the next village west—said it looked like a coffin to him, but the others shouted him down. A treasure chest, a house, a trunk. "No," Charity said finally. "It's just a box. Pandora's box. And all that's left is hope."

"I still think it's a trunk." Tristan took it from her and held it up to the torchlight. "I'm an artist. I live out of a trunk. I can tell one when I see it. This means you are going to take a trip." Then he took a bite out of it and handed it back to her, no longer quite square.

She could only laugh at his effrontery, but the familiarity his gesture implied brought hot color to her face. He didn't give her time to protest, rising from the table to say, "I suppose I must get into that armor. I don't suppose you'd like to help?"

Charity blushed even more hotly as her tablemates laughed and offered their opinions on this proposition. Fortunately Charlie was back to studying his rocks in the dim light and didn't hear. It was only a bit of Midsummer raillery, after all, she told herself. She would hear much worse as the night darkened and the ale diminished.

So she only reached over and shook her brother's shoulder. "Charlie, go and help Lord Braden with his costume. No, don't worry, no one will take your rocks." Her assurance didn't assure Charlie. He regarded his tablemates suspiciously as he handed her his prizes. Then he followed Tristan across to the church hall.

She swept up the crumbs of the destiny cake and carried the dishes to the huge vat of water near the cooking fires. Mrs. Williams was sweaty and harassed, gesturing to the serving girls and calling to the men carrying heavy trays of dirty dishes. Charity dutifully offered to help, but Mrs. Williams only shook her head.

It was time to set up for the St. George play anyway, Charity told herself, leaving the banquet behind, beckoning to Jacob at his cousin's table. Without too much stumbling he made his way out of the banqueting area and down toward the stage. Fortunately he had no lines, only the job of carrying the dragon about the stage, and he was sturdy enough to do that even when his mind was muddled.

Charity gathered up a couple of youths to help her light the torches and set up a few chairs for the elderly around the stage. In the gathering darkness, the ring of torches cast an eerie glow on the scene. The vicar would not like that, she thought. It looked like a habitat of Dionysius, with the lush greenery and the flickering flames and the deep darkness beyond.

Nonetheless the vicar was in the audience when the squire and Molly made their entrance onto the stage. Charity stood on the side with Jacob Hering and Tristan, willing the rowdy youths to quiet their catcalling. The squire, full of authority of kingly purple robes and an evening's worth of ale, waved his arm. "Silence, you knaves, or I'll feed you to the dragon!"

This was the perfect introduction for Jacob, and when Charity poked him he propped the dragon's pole on the crook of his elbow, as if he meant to joust, and swaggered onto the stage. At the sight of the towering dragon, red and furious, the rowdy youths hushed and children drew closer to their fathers. The squire, his broad grizzled face triumphant, his crown atilt, turned to Princess Molly. "Woe is me, my daughter, that I must live to see your slaughter."

That was Tristan's cue. As Molly simpered and looked woefully brave, he vaulted on to the stage, sword drawn, and stepped between her and the dragon. Molly clapped her hands to her bosom, in the process pulling her bodice down another inch. "Good youth, good sir, spur on your horse and fly to take another course. The dragon, foul and fierce and sly, will grind his jaws to make me die." Jacob, holding the dragon out before him, bobbed his knees to make the fierce monster dance, and Molly drew back in a pretty display of anguish. "I beg of you, be off in haste!"

Tristan flourished his sword and bared his teeth, and Charity breathed a tiny sigh of relief. She had worried all along that Tristan wouldn't enjoy his participation in her play, that he would associate it with their short betrothal and the trouble it had caused. But he was overacting quite as much as Molly, with the sweeping gestures and fierce expressions that a provincial audience loved. He looked very much the knight errant with the red-crossed coat of mail shining like his silver sword. At the last minute, he had left off the helmet he had never stopped complaining about, so his dark hair gleamed in the torchlight. And though his tone was still ironic, he spoke his lines without a stumble, and he glared at the dragon as he proclaimed, "My horse, my cross, my sword, and I will bring this monster forth to die."

But Jacob just stood there, beaming foolishly, his dragon drooping from the end of the pole. Charity groaned softly. She had to wake him up. In her pocket she found a rock, and with the aim of a cricket bowler, she flung it, glistening in the torchlight. It struck Jacob on the back, startling him into action. Charity heard "That's my pyrite!" but the protest was lost in the children's gasp as the dragon reared toward Tristan. Tristan made a great show of swordplay, feinting to the left and to the right before aiming carefully and slicing across the dragon's neck.

Jacob let out an audible sigh of relief as the dragon's head tumbled off, leaving him unscathed. Molly and the king embraced—the squire enjoying it most—then she threw her arms around Tristan. He bore it stoically, or so Charity thought, until a quick trill from Mr. Perry's fiddle signaled the start of the parade.

Tristan poked his sword through the dragon's mouth and held the head aloft. "All come to celebrate the extinction of hell's fires!"

It was a rousing line and got everyone up and following Tristan when he leaped off the stage and strode across the green. Charity remained behind, watching as he faithfully shook the head to release the peppermints for the children who scrambled along in his wake. He looked, Charity thought, every inch the hero, and he even gave the appearance of enjoying the role.