A Midsummer's Day (12 page)

Away from the distractions of the festival, they should set in quickly.

“Johnny, please…”

He turned on her.  “And I know not this crude name Johnny.  Methinks thine indiscretions have travelled beyond the realm of my thinking.  I wouldst have thee in the stocks like the wanton whore thou art.  Thy Johnny shalt find his place within anon.”

“My Lord High Sheriff, I beg of thee…”  Tears contorted Anne’s face.  Her breathing came in painfully short gasps.

At least she remembered to address him properly.

But his temper could not be so easily erased.  He stalked towards her.  She backed away from him until she landed with a thud on the edge of the canopied bed.  “E’er have I set me my mind upon thy happiness.  E’er have I given thee a long leash, if only to keep thee by my side.  Have I not given enough?  Have I not satisfied thine every wish that hath spilt from thy red head since I took thee in as a child?”

Would Anne never learn her place?  How much fear would he have to instill in her before she did?  He quaked at the thought of beating her, as many men did to control their wives and betrotheds. 

If it came to it, however…

Anne stood.  She took a shaky breath.

“I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t.”  She gasped, but unending determination hardened her face.  “You’re not Jameson Kent.  You’re not the Sheriff, and it’s not 1586.  It’s 2012.  You’re real name is Johnny, and we’re actors in a festival.  We’re actors, Johnny, and you love me!   You love me, and I know that somewhere, deep down inside you, you remember that!”

She stared him straight in the eye.  Jameson took a deep breath.

The sound of his palm hitting her cheek echoed through the room.  He threw Anne to the bed.  “Think thee not to let such heathen words reach unfriendly ears.  Find thyself fortunate I do not banish thee from Nottinghamshire for such words, so similar to witchcraft.  Heed thee my words, Anne Halloway.  Do change thee thy most horrid behavior, or thou shalt leave the festival more sore than thou art now.”

He left the room and slammed the door behind him.

<>

The sting of her heart breaking was far worse than the one radiating through her cheek.

She could accept the loss of the fans.  The comfortably worn chairs.  The stash of cold bottles of asthma soothing water and the table piled high with candy and snack cake wrappers.  She could even accept the stifling heat.

But she couldn’t…  She couldn’t believe…

She tenderly touched her cheek.  He hit her.  He’d actually hit her.  There was no love left in the man.

There was no Johnny left in him.  Johnny would never hit her.  He would never even threaten her with such a thing, when they were acting and his Lord High Sheriff confronted her Anne about all her open flirtations.

Lord High Sheriff Jameson Kent was a new level of sadistic.  The humorously sadistic Sheriff that Johnny created didn’t even come close to this one.

Tears cooled her blazing cheeks.  Her breath left her completely.

Johnny could always take her breath away.

The world spun.  She fell back on the bed.  The room fell to darkness.

Let it stay dark forever.

<>

They searched the Dregs.  They searched the Pits and tore apart the archery game, scaring a dozen peasant men who were showing off for their girlfriends.  They pushed their way through the line leading to the privies and upended the stand selling the hair sticks.

At long last, the constables decided he wasn’t to be found.  They clomped their way over the Lover’s Bridge, presumably on their way to find their Lord High Sheriff and tell him that they failed.

Dust from the bridge rained down on him.  When it cleared, Vaughn peaked out from his hiding space in the culvert.  The constables disappeared into the dense thicket of tents in the Gypsy Way.  Normally Vaughn wouldn’t have believed that the Lord High Sheriff would be there, but given the recent events of the day, including what he witnessed before the time change…  Well, anything was damned well possible now.

Would kind of punishment would the constables experience at the hands of their sadistic boss when they returned empty handed?  If the man could so easily condemn to death someone who, that morning at least, had been a friend, what would he do to his worthless lackeys?

There was no ounce if Johnny left in the sadistic SOB.  Somehow that made things easier.  It made Vaughn’s death sentence easier to accept.

But what about Sammie?  What would Jameson do to his own fiancée, his dear betrothed Anne, if he got the thought into his head?

The coast finally cleared.  Vaughn sprang out from beneath the bridge and ran to the Pits, jumping over the tall line of grass that was the westernmost boundary of the festival.

“Sam?”  He crept along the edge of the pond, keeping low to keep out of sight.  “Sammie?”

There was no answer.

There was no sign of her anywhere.  No glint of her silver eyes peeking out from the thick grass.  No sign of her red hair or her pink dress floating in the center of the pond, the result of an accident or foul play.

He twisted the claddaugh ring around his pinky.  He had led the constables to pretty much every inch of the festival grounds, from the entrance to the dunking pond and back to the Dregs.  Sammie should have had more than enough time to get here, even in her state of asthma.  The thought of water would have pushed her along.

Unless…

Unless Jameson had been too angry to let Sammie go off by herself. 

Dammit!  Vaughn tore a handful of long grass up from the ground.  Why didn’t he think about that?  How could he have been so stupid?  How could he have thought of himself and not her?  If Jameson went off on her, she wouldn’t have the strength to fight back.

He thought he was doing her good by leaving.  That, without him there to be threatened, Sammie would have an easier time not making the Lord High Sheriff mad.  That it would keep her safe.

She had told him to run, too.  Not for her sake, but for his. 

And that would give Jameson all the more reason to punish her.  He’d proved too sadistic to have any compassion left for his betrothed.  His character, when Jameson was nothing more than a character in Johnny’s head, was obsessively in love with his Anne.

Did he have Sammie away from the public eye?  Was he keeping her prisoner?  Was he keeping her away so that he could beat her without ruining his precious image?  What he was capable of...  It was unimaginable.  How little Sammie could take...

“I have to find her.”  But not as he was.  He didn’t even have to look in the pond to know how he looked.  Mud covered.  Half naked.  He had run from constables twice, the last time through the entire festival.  Everybody at festival knew who he was.  They knew he was wanted.  By now the constables or the town crier would have spread word of some imagined crime, and his Puck would be seen as a rapist or murderer.  Or worse.

The water in the pond was refreshingly cool against the heat of the day.  He scrubbed the mud from every bit of his skin.  He held his breath and submerged himself to scrub his face and hair clean.

The mud was dealt with.  Now to deal with the rest of his costume.  A clean person in mud beggar breeches was still a mud beggar.  He pushed his wet hair out of his eyes.  Where could he get some clothes?  He peaked back into the festival.

Nobles lingered in the Lover’s Bridge.  Forarin and Kaiser scared children on the Dregs Road.  But the Grotto seemed strangely empty.  That would be the safer road.

It would also lead him close to the gypsy.  She’d told Sammie that morning that her life would change.  Maybe the gypsy knew what happened.  And how the hell to fix things.

At the very least, maybe she knew where Sammie was.

The road would not be safe, even in the Grotto and Gypsy Way, until he changed his clothes.  He moved beyond the boundaries of the festival, hiding where he could, sprinting to the next hiding place when the coast was clear.  He circled around the back of the glass blower, feeling the blast of heat from his always burning kiln.  He ended up behind the tents of the Gypsy Way.

There was no tall grass to hide in behind the tents.  There was nothing to keep him from being seen if he wasn’t careful, or if he lingered too long in a gap between tents.  It was hide and dash, hide and dash, until he saw the gypsy’s faded tent.

Behind the tent, laid out as if it were waiting just for him, was a simple outfit.  Plain black boots, black breeches, and a black silky shirt with puffed sleeves.  It was simple.

But it would be perfect.

Vaughn looked around for any sign of the person who had left the clothes.  A naked noble hiding in the grass Vaughn had just left.  A secret gift giver, sneaking looks behind the tents to see that their present was well received.  The gypsy, even, and her all-knowing, steely stare.

But there was nobody in sight.

He smiled.  At least he wouldn’t have to steal something now.

Vaughn swapped out his worn breeches for these nice, soft, clean breeches.  Black was never an ideal color to wear in the summer, but he was already more comfortable than he’d been.  The boots were soft, the souls padded for comfort.  He reached for the shirt.

“What the hell?”  He would have missed it if it hadn’t landed on his legs.  A piece of parchment had fallen from the confines of the shirt. He unfolded it.

Scrawled across the aged paper were flowing, almost mystically printed lines of writing.

“She doth lie near the dragon den.  Find thee timely safety in the forest of Sherwood.  Make thee haste now into the den of danger.  What air lingers shalt not remain.  T.”

It was a riddle. 

“She doth lie near the dragon den,” Vaughn read quietly.  There was an actual dragon at the festival.  It was a large, wooden ride fitting half a dozen people, and it swung back and forth under the power of half a dozen workers. 

“She doth lie near…”  The break room was near the dragon ride.  They were right across the path from each other.  Relief washed over him.  Whether or not Sammie was there…  It was a good starting point, at least.

He went through each line until he knew exactly what it meant.  The forest of Sherwood was easy.  All the festival maps listed the parking lot as Sherwood Forest.  After he found Sammie, they would go there.

The den of danger could mean a few things.  It could have meant the upper levels of the faire, which seemed to have turned solely into the land of the nobility.  There would be no friends there, for him or Sammie.  It was a place of danger to the both of them. 

It was, he hoped, where Sammie was.

“What air lingers shalt not remain.”  He stared at the line for a full thirty seconds.

Then he realized what it meant.  “Shit!”  He stuffed the note into his waistband and threw the shirt over his head.  Then he walked out onto the path.  There was no time to wait for an opening.  There was no time to fear getting caught.  He had to get to the upper level of the faire, and he had to get there now.

His gifted outfit had been carefully planned.  The nobles on the lower levels avoided him, and he heard the whispers of “pirate” around him.  The constables, who had chased him through every inch of the grounds, pushed by him with no notice on the Hill Street, in a hurry to restart their search for him.  It would seem, by the black eyes that the two men sported, that they were even more determined to catch Vaughn now.

The nobles on the upper levels ignored him as if he were a lower level noble, not worthy of their important attention.  He reached sight of the building with no resistance.

But getting by the armed guard, standing in front of the door with his hand on the hilt of his sword, would not be as easy as fooling absent minded nobles.

“What do I do?”  He had to get inside as soon as he could.  But he had to do it without the Lord High Sheriff finding out.  He looked around.  There had to be something he could work with.  Something that would give him that one, winning idea.

He was near a food stand.  It could work.

He wasn’t about to wait in line.  He slipped around the back of the building.  A window was open, leading down into a kitchen.  A kitchen that, for the time being, was surprisingly empty.

He slid inside.  On the counter was a rough hunk of bread and a tin cup filled with what looked like birch beer.  Both sat on the corner nearest to him.  As if they were set aside just for him. 

Vaughn smiled.  At last things were going his way.

As quickly as he slipped in, he slipped back out, balancing the bread and drink on the precarious sill as he hoisted himself back outside.  He grabbed the cup carefully.  He didn’t care if the bread fell, but every drop of drink was precious.

With props in hand, he stood to his full five foot eleven height, and walked with confidence to the guard. 

The guard had his hand on Vaughn’s chest before Vaughn could say anything.  “My apologies, my Lord,” the guard said.  “The Lord High Sheriff hath ordered no one shalt see the Lady Halloway.”

Vaughn stood up straighter.  He knew how to play nobility.  He had joined the festival as an older High Sheriff’s son, before Johnny joined and Vaughn took the more fun role of a mud beggar.  “The Lord High Sheriff hath sent me to deliver to his betrothed a simple meal of bread and ale.”