A Midsummer's Day (20 page)

Vaughn turned back towards the path.  Sammie was gone.  There was no sign of her red hair anywhere on the visible path.

Dammit!  Why did he take his eyes off of her?  How was he ever going to find her now?

He turned back to Forarin.  “Where would the Lord High Sheriff take a prisoner?”

“What hast come over thee, Puck?”  Forarin tossed the bare turkey bone over his shoulder.  “Thou be most rightfully bewitched.”

Vaughn kept his eyes on the path.  Maybe he’d get lucky and catch one more glimpse of her hair.  “Please tell me, Forarin.  Where would the Lord High Sheriff take a prisoner to await punishment?”  He’d lost his festival speech, but he didn’t care.  He didn’t have the time to try to think of the proper things to say.

“There be a dungeon below the drynke stand in the Dregs.  Thou shouldst know of this, Cousin Puck.  Thou hast seen thee many a stay there for thy unending pranks.”

Vaughn breathed a sigh of relief.  “Thank you, my friend.”  He sped towards the Dregs before Forarin could say anything else.

The drynke stand approached.  Vaughn left the path and lingered near a ladder game.  He didn’t know if Jameson was still in the dungeon with Sammie.  He didn’t know when he would come out.  Vaughn could afford a moment of surveillance.

Seconds after he’d gotten to the game, Jameson emerged from the building.  He marched down the path, drenched with anger, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles went white.

“Damndable wench,” Jameson muttered as he walked past the ladder game.  “Her death shalt not arrive soon enough.”

He kept muttering, but Vaughn didn’t wait around to hear what he was saying.  He ran to the building.  There had to be a door.  There had to be a window where he could see her.  Where he could see if she was still breathing.  Still alive.  Jameson Kent made it sound like she was still alive.

But Vaughn had to see it for himself.  He had to see that she hadn’t succumbed to her asthma again.

A window rested on the ground at the back of the building.  He knelt and looked through it.

It wouldn’t matter if she was in shackles or chains, so long as she was all right.  As long as she was breathing.

“Hast thou lost something, scum?”

Two constables stood over Vaughn.  Their swords were drawn.

“The Lord High Sheriff doth most eagerly await thee,” a constable said with a crookedly yellow sneer.

Vaughn looked behind him.  He could just see the tips of Sammie’s fingers.  She was shackled to the wall.

Her fingers twitched.  She was still alive.

But for how much longer?

He turned back to the brutes.  “Tell the Lord High Sheriff to bugger off.”  He kicked the biggest constable in the stomach and ran.

Chapter 20

He clapped the cold, rough metal around her wrists.

He didn’t care if he used more force than he should have.  He didn’t care that she winced in pain.  He didn’t care that the tears flowed freely down her face, stealing what little breath she had left away from her.

Let her suffocate.  Let the vapours take her from this horrible fate that she’d created for herself.  Let the vapours release her to heaven as the Lady she should have been, instead of the Lady she had turned out to be.  One who spoke of witchcraft and treason.  One who lay with beggars.  The vapours were no more than she deserved.

How he wished he could walk out of this dungeon and away from her forever.  How he wished he could leave his precious Lady here to rot until she met her Judgment Day.  It would not take long.  Not from the state of her breathing.  How he would love to watch the life slip from her eyes before he left here.

But he could not.  The Queen had ordered her to be publically executed once they found the bastard Puck.  Anne would find her freedom from this place, if only momentarily.  She would die, and Jameson would fill her space in the dungeon with more degenerates while they awaited dunks or the public executions that were little more than a display.

But first, Jameson would have himself two real executions.

He shook the shackles, testing their tightness.  Anne grimaced and slid down the damp wall like the slime she had become.  She would lose her hands before she managed to free herself of such bonds.

Jameson smiled.  Her pain brought him pleasure.

But it was short lived.  Pleasure soon turned to anger.  All the love he had spent on her…  All the coin he had parted with to make sure she was comfortable…  To make sure she was as fashionable as the other Ladies at Court…  Anne was no more a Lady than the scullery maid in his manor who scrubbed the floors and satisfied him in the broom cupboard whenever the urge hit him.  Anne should have been better.

Anne should have been more appreciative of everything he’s done for her.

“Thou be no true Lady,” he said slowly, containing the anger that rose through his body, threatening to boil the blood in his veins.  “E’er have my thoughts been on thy happiness.  E’er have I thought me of thy safety.  Two days have I begged me of the Queen to grant thee clemency.  For what purpose didst I exert myself so strongly, Anne?  For what purpose didst I seek to keep thee from punishment?  So thou could speak witchcraft and treason before our Queen?”  He shook his head.  “No more.  I will have me no more of it, Anne.  Heed thee my most truthful words.  Thou shalt die, and thy lover too.  Mayhap thou shalt find comfort in the thought that thou shalt burn for all eternity in the fiery pits of Hell together.”

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Die.  Such a short word…  Such a fearsome word, that it would cause so much dread…

But it didn’t.  Not in her.  She felt nothing, no dread, no sense of fear, in the simple word.  She would never see another sunset.  That didn’t bother her.  She would never see another day leave, another day take its place.  That didn’t bother her.  She would never sit by the pond with Vaughn again…

Ah, there was some emotion after all.  She choked up.  Vaughn was still out there.  He was out there, and in danger.  He was good at ducking the constables.  He’d been doing it since yesterday.  But how long could it last?  How long could he keep the upper hand?  Her eyes found a high window.  He was still out there somewhere.

She had to see him again.  One more time.  She had to hold him, and to tell him everything that welled up inside her now.  He had to know before they died.

This wasn’t supposed to happen when she set out to find Jameson.  She wasn’t supposed to die.  She wasn’t supposed to watch her best friend… her love… die.  She had to do something…  Something to placate Jameson so that he would not do something…  So his anger would not get the best of him before she and Vaughn could see each other one more time.

Jameson had told her twice that he pleaded to the Queen for clemency for Anne.  It didn’t seem possible, but…  Maybe there was still some good in him, after all.  Maybe he still had a soft side, as miniscule as it seemed at the moment.  If she could play into it…

She stood slowly, easing the tension in her arms.  “My Lord High Sheriff,” she said meekly.  “I beg it of you, please seek you not to do this.  Do not be the one to send me to my most premature death.  I beg it of you…  Remember you our love.”  Tears filled her eyes.  She didn’t cry for the memories of her love with Johnny.  She cried for the love of Vaughn, the love of a best friend, and the love she’d never known she carried for him.  This act would, hopefully, save Vaughn, too.  “Remember, my love, I beg it of you.  We holidayed on the shore.  We made love in the water all the night.  For the love of God, remember how much you loved me!”

<>

Such scandalous things should never have fallen from the lips of a woman so well born.

The things Anne said made no sense.  Jameson remembered no holiday on any shore, and most assuredly would he never have laid with his betrothed in such an open fashion.  The very thought of it sent the blood burning through his skin.

He was sure of some things now.  Anne had certainly had a torrid affair with some disreputable person.  Perhaps this Johnny she insisted on confusing with him.  Maybe even the bastard Puck.  She was a Lady of means, after all.  She could have arranged a tryst with the miserly beggar.

“Know thou this, Anne,” he growled lowly.  “Ne’er have we shared a bed.  Ne’er would I disgrace myself so as to bed a well-born Lady out of doors.  Speak thee no more.  Every time thou dost part thy lips am I made more sure thou be a witch deserving of death.”  He turned.  He could no longer stomach the sight of her.

The death sentence for her and her beggar would not come soon enough for his taste.

“Jameson, please…” Anne begged.  Heavy tears poisoned her once sweet voice.

He turned back around.  She sobbed, struggling to move against her bindings.  She was ever a consummate actress.  She had no true feeling.  She was not trying to mend their relationship.  Instead the wench was trying merely to free herself.  Or to soften Jameson enough where her lover would suffer no ill punishment.

He hit her so fast his hands blurred before his eyes.  Her hit her in the face.  On the arms.  He beat her chest and her scandalously bared stomach.  He beat her as he remembered her flirtations.  Her affairs.  Finding her in the arms of a beggar.

He beat her as he remembered the lack of respect she showed him by constantly refusing to call him by his proper name, and his proper title.  He beat her for knowing this Johnny, for knowing Puck, in a way that they did not yet know each other.

Jameson beat Anne until he could no longer lift his arms.  He backed away from the disgraced woman.  She slid down the wall as far as the shackles would let her.

“Make thy peace with God, my Lady,” he said breathlessly.  “Thou dost have but an hour left to live.”

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Her eyes were strangely dry.

Jameson Kent had beaten all the emotion from her.  He’d beaten what little love she had for him from existence.  Jameson had told her twice that he was done with her.  Well, the feeling could go both ways.  Sammie was done with Jameson, no matter what name he went by.  She was done with Jameson.  She was done with Johnny.

She didn’t flinch when Jameson slammed the heavy wooden door behind him.  Wasn’t that strange?  He must have beaten all the fear from her, as well.

She struggled to her feet.  Lightning spread through her shoulders.  Dull aches spread through her back as she leaned as best as she could against the bumpy stone wall.  Her face and stomach screamed as thousands of needles pricked her at once, giving her invisible tattoos that would assuredly turn purple all too soon.

She was tired.  So tired of the stress and worry and uncertainty.  She was tired of fear.  She was tired of everyone telling her she was a witch or a traitor or both.  She was tired of the hate.  The hate of her fiancé against her.  The hate of the Queen who had once been her friend.

She was tired.

Why hadn’t the Lord High Sheriff finish what he’d begun?  Why hadn’t he just killed her?  Was there a point of waiting for a public execution?  Jameson was a convincing enough Sheriff.  If he told the Queen that Sammie had died from one thing or another, the Queen probably would have believed him.

So why hadn’t he killed her?  Why wait for a public spectacle?

There was one answer…  Jameson would remove all the shame she’d supposedly placed on his head, and do it publically so no one else would think of doing anything similar.

That didn’t make the thought hurt any less…

Something fluttered in the corner of her eye.  Sammie turned her neck slowly.  Tears flooded her vision with each movement, but she could still see two ill aligned boards that was part of the far wall.  A moth fluttered in the sunlight of the gap.  It flew towards her.

She gasped.  Sharp pain cut through her lungs. 

The moth was pure white, with feather-like antennae and a silver lightning bolt cutting through one wing.

It was the same moth.  The same moth she’d seen before yesterday’s trial and dunke, when everybody was actors and she was being dunked for flirting.  This was the moth mentioned in T’s newest note, Sammie just knew it.  T was telling her something.

Had T been trying to tell her something before the dunke yesterday?  Had they been helping Sammie before the time change even happened?

The moth hovered in front of Sammie’s face.  Some magic made it look her in the eye.  It inched its way towards her face.

And then it brushed her forehead.  Right between the eyes.

A tear fell down her cheek.  The moth had kissed her.  It kissed her and she knew, she knew in her heart, that things were going to be okay.  She knew that there was still hope.

All doubt about T’s motives vanished.  They hadn’t forgotten Sammie.  They didn’t want to see Sammie die.

Neither did Vaughn.  He was still out there.  He still searched for her.  He would find her, and escape.

They wouldn’t die.

Vaughn would come for her.

Sammie just hoped that he didn’t wait too long.

Chapter 21