Picking the Ballad's Bones (30 page)

The banjo song he heard now sounded
like a reprieve to him and he moved toward it, and found himself in
a big house by a river, looking through the blue eyes of yet
another golden-haired girl in love with a handsome
stranger.

* * *

Anna Mae Gunn was glad to hear the
banjo too. She had turned her ring just after little Musgrave
struck at Lord Barnard while the naked Lady Barnard (who got
Musgrave into the whole mess anyway) looked on. The third twist had
come just as Lord Barnard's sword touched Little Musgrave's chest,
preparatory to skewering him.

Prior to that, she and Annachie Gordon
had lost their one true love because Annachie didn't know if he
wanted to be tied down until his love was forced to marry a richer
man and poisoned herself on her wedding night.

As one guy named Geordie, she had
turned her ring just in time to avoid being hanged in a golden
chain. As another Geordie, she had turned her ring just before
making love to the wife who had the foresight to bring the (heavily
armed) clan along before she attempted to ransom his life. It was
nice to win one occasionally and most of her hosts didn't get a
second chance.

As a blacksmith, she had left her
native home and a girl she felt only halfhearted about and found a
new love, while the girl back home cursed her love's falseness. On
the other hand, as John Riley she had tested the Maid of
Islington's continuing interest in her love by telling the girl
that John Riley had died. The ring was once more turned on a happy
note. But as often as her tale ended happily, oftener it had ended
sadly, if not fatally.

All of the girls seemed to
think that if only they hooked up with Anna Mae's host they would
be saved from lives of drudgery, pettiness, shame, maybe
starvation. Anna Mae's hosts often felt that they too were
trapped and their only salvation was to not get
entangled in any one pair of arms that would bring on crushing
responsibilities. Most of the men sought to seek their fortunes in
the wider world while fending off girls who sought their fortunes
in the arms of the men. Anna Mae was just plain embarrassed on
behalf of womankind, even knowing as she did that at that time in
history, women had few choices and had to depend on love or
luck.

So she hoped, when she
heard the banjo, that being able to hear it meant the ordeal was
over and she could return to being herself. But when the haze
parted, she found herself once more within someone else. This time
there were
two
wealthy girls to keep her hopping.

* * *

Julianne Martin was having so many
thrilling adventures and close escapes and near-death experiences
(saved from being death experiences only by the string ring) that
when she started the new identity the banjo's tune had led her to
and found herself in another heroic-looking male body, she turned
aside from the look of yearning in a dark-haired woman's eyes and
began to throw up in the rushes. Juli was shell-shocked. She had
what you'd call battle fatigue.

She was tired of being
valiant through shipwrecks as Sir Patrick Spens and the brave cabin
boy of the
Golden Vanity.
Every time Robin Hood made another daring escape
or rescue from the Sheriff of Nottingham, she thought she'd have a
heart attack right along with Robin, who couldn't seem to stop
himself from such heroics. She was tired of being expected to lead
and wished with all her heart that people would just run their own
lives and stop expecting so much of her and her hosts. She was
tired of being noble when one more of her hosts began to die some
horrible death, when what she wanted to do was to scream and scream
and knew he did too and couldn't because he had, in some part of
himself, been dead a long time and knew it. She was tired of the
rough hardy life and wanted terribly to be a wimp again, to sleep
in a
flannel nightie and sip herb tea and
pet cats and play gentle songs about nature and love and
peace.

She didn't want to always have to earn
a reputation or awards, she just wanted to be provided with a nice,
comfortable life—but not at the expense of some hapless hero. God,
no. If she met another one she'd give him a brotherly kiss on the
cheek and offer him a cushion and his choice of videos and if
someone broke into the house, she'd brandish her claymore and scare
them away herself.

So she was pleased when
she parted the mist and
found
herself
in
the body of a wandering man whose burden this
time was not a sword or a bow but an ancient, decrepit, out-of-tune
harp. At least, at last, she was allowed to be a musician
again.

* * *

And Brose Fairchild was
sick and tired of always having his smart, sexy, strong ladies get
rejected, reviled, and picked on by men too dumb or greedy to
appreciate them
,
in favor of women with twice their looks and half
their
brains
.

After Barbara, Brose had been a
Turkish lady who saved her knight from prison and traveled across
the sea to claim his promise (which for once he kept. Brose had had
a hard time turning the ring just when he was getting to the happy
ending). Of course, the damn fool knight should have sent her
airfare, as far as Brose was concerned, but at least he didn't fink
out on her.

Brose had also had a hell of a time as
a witch trying to escape a wizard with a serious case of horny but
after a number of amusing transformations that had ended happily
too—to the witch's secret satisfaction, the wizard had proved her
match and himself worthy of her and she had let him catch her and
"gain her maidenhead," which was supposed to "pu' down her pride."
Fortunately for the witch, the wizard, being a guy, didn't realize
that to witches maidenheads were a renewable resource. Once more,
Brose had had to exit before the grand finale.

So maybe he was feeling extra horny,
in a female kind of way, when he heard the banjo song and followed
it into the body of yet another dark, intense woman. He knew right
away, however, that there was something seriously wrong with this
one.

CHAPTER 25

Faron and Ellie had to wait two days
for the bus back to Galashiels, all the while wondering why Gussie
had not picked them up, why she hadn't answered the phone at the
Carrs'. Ellie called her parents collect, thinking they might have
heard from Gussie, but they only had more bad news about recent
musical catastrophes—bluegrass musicians were dying off now and
other countries were refusing to admit any American musicians
period onto their soil in retaliation for the U.S. policy against
foreign musicians. SWALLOW, the Songwriters and Arrangers Legal
Licensing Organization Worldwide, had managed to close down all
music on all radio stations, all jukeboxes, and any music played on
network or public television stations, besides live performances.
The exception was one licensed bombshell-rock station that owned a
nationwide monopoly. Nobody seemed to notice monopolies were
allegedly illegal.

After a daylong milk run
of a bus trip, the Randolphs walked home from the Galashiels Road
just as twilight faded. A white plastic feed sack billowed from the
fork of a tree
while
the naked branches clawed the sky. No lights shone from any
of the houses on the property. Lights also did not show from the
front end of the Winnebago parked behind their cottage, so they
didn't see the reception committee until the cows suddenly set up
an alarm at their presence and they found themselves looking down
the business end of a revolver held by Giorgio.

Behind him was Torchy Burns, dressed
like a punk fortune-teller.

"We want that banjo, gadjo," the Gypsy
said.

"Sure, yeah," Faron said, "but did you
realize what you just said had all the elements of a poem—banjo?
Gadjo?"

"Giorgio!" Torchy cried delightedly.
"I love it. We'll write it together, Faron, dearest, as soon as
you've given Giorgio what he wants. Giorgio is terribly musical,
you know."

"Is that why he wants to break the old
man's fiddle?" Faron asked. "Look, we don't have the banjo with us.
Gussie kept it."

"We know she kept it, but she's gone
and we can't find her or it. By the time Giorgio found the van, it
was empty. So the question is, where did she go and where did that
banjo go?"

"You know more about it than we do,"
Ellie said. "We were in Edinburgh waiting for a bus."

* * *

The hot trod arrived at Buccleuch,
stronghold of Sir Walter's ancestors, in time for
brunch.

Sir Walter knocked boldly at the gate,
and when a suspicious eye peeked out the hole he said, "Please to
admit us at once, kinsman."

"And who might you be?"

"Sir Walter Scott, joined on a trod on
behalf of this lady and her neighbors. I'm here to claim the aid of
my chief and Keeper of Liddesdale, the Bold Buccleuch."

"Ye be Sir Walter Scott?" the man
asked and Gussie thought from the way Wat puffed up he expected to
be asked for an autograph. "God's balls, they're everywhere," the
man grumbled but swung open the gate, admitting horses and
riders.

They were taken to the
hall, a dark and dismal place full of stenches and animal noises
that Gussie soon perceived were made by Wat's kinsmen slurping away
at their breakfast porridge and big haunches of beef. Wat
strode before Mistress Hetherton and her group in
his eagerness for a glimpse of his romantic forebears.

"I'm come to claim the aid of my
kinsman, Bold Buccleuch," Walter said in what Gussie assumed was
the prescribed manner.

"Good God, man, could ye no' wait
until a decent hoor?" demanded a red-bearded man with white flecks
of porridge dribbling into his whiskers. The other men looked up.
Not a man in the lot would have looked out of place in leathers and
spikes, covered with tattoos and riding a Harley Davidson hog. "Had
a hell of a nicht. Who might you be, noo? One of my wife's
relations, no doot, cum to ask boons at such an unco
hoor?"

"No wife's relation but your own
great-grandson, Sir Walter Scott, and I've come to you for justice
on behalf of this poor woman on a hot trod after vile raiders
despoiled her of all she owned."

A shriek rent the morning air and
caused the Bold Buccleuch to grab his head with both
ham-hands.

"Bessie!" the Widow Hetherton shrieked
from outside the door. "That's my Bessie they're milkin'! And those
are my oxen!"

The Bold Buccleuch gave Sir Walter a
withering look, as if he'd done something incredibly gauche, then,
when the Widow Hetherton strode in, Buccleuch's whiskers parted in
a broad predatory grin.

The banjo in Gussie's bag broke into
the mournful melody of "The Twa Sisters." Sir Walter, impatient at
the interruption in an embarrassing and potentially dangerous
bursting of one of his romantic illusions, complained to Gussie, "I
thought you told me it usually played something to indicate the
current situation. That seems to me totally irrelevant."

"Well," she said.
"It
is
about how
you can't always trust relatives."

* * *

Willie and the Fair
Isabelle were thinking that very thing as they hit the water under
the impetus of their dark sister Jane's hands. "I told you we
shouldn't flirt with
Jane's boyfriend,"
Willie said to Isabelle as she went under. "Sister Jane takes
romance real seriously."

The Fair Isabelle held her breath and
flailed her arms but, alas, she had never cared for swimming as the
sun darkened her alabaster complexion and threatened to turn it as
swarthy as Jane's.

As Isabelle's hands flailed the
water's surface, Willie turned the ring once around. On the bank,
Sister Jane, seeing the gesture, cried out, once,
"Juli!"

Fair Isabelle said, "She is confused.
Poor thing, she doesn't realize what she did," and Isabelle tried
to dog paddle toward shore. The embankment was very steep and she
said, "Sister, just lend me your hand. I'm sorry I teased you and
called you dark as walnuts. You can have all my
inheritance."

"You'll be even fairer by
the time the water has bleached you out for a couple of days," Jane
replied, shoving back down the voice inside her that said,
"She's
your sister. You
were babies together. Whoever the dude is,
he ain't worth it."

"You don't care anything
about that guy,"
Willie told
Isabelle.
"Offer to give him
up."

"I'll scorn Sir William," Isabelle
gulped, coming up for the second time and the second twist of the
ring. "He'll be only yours."

"With you out of the way, he'll be
mine anyway, as will your dower lands," Jane said.

Brose, within her, saw
Isabelle twist her ring around again and said,
"You see there what she's doin', Janie? You gonna be doin'
that when they hang your ass. Now bail her out, dammit."