by Joan Hess
“Guess who I am?” she demanded.
“A cheerleader at the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Claire, you are so droll! I’m a prioress.” She twirled so I could appreciate the fullness of her cape and the scarlet lining. “You may address me as Madam Marsilia d’Anjou. I don’t know how to go about finding a habit. It’s not as if I could call a Catholic church to rent one. They would think it was for a frivolous prank or a costume party. You don’t happen to know any nuns, do you?”
“I’ll check my address book. May I presume this has something to do with the Renaissance Fair?” I dearly hoped I was right, because otherwise one of us was drinking from the wrong tap.
Sally giggled. “Well, of course. As members of the Thurber Street Merchants Association, we all have an obligation to support the fair so that it will become an annual affair that draws people from all across the country. I’ve already talked with Fiona about staging some events in this area. You had quite a crowd in front of the Book Depot yesterday, and that was without any advance publicity.” She gave me a disgruntled look. “Had the rest of us been informed, we would have taken advantage of the situation. Tomorrow many of us will have display tables on the sidewalks in front of our establishments. I thought I’d sell cups of cold herbal tea, cider, and carob cookies. The pottery shop, the art gallery, the boutique—all of those merchants are already making plans. I’m sure Luanne will want to display some of her beaded belts and purses.”
I was clearly guilty of betraying my fellow merchants, but I was hardly overwhelmed with remorse. “I didn’t have much warning,” I said in my defense.
Madam Marsilia d’Anjou graciously accepted my apology with a nod. “Tomorrow there will be a more genteel demonstration of medieval and Renaissance music. Several members of the college orchestra, along with a few high school students, will play lutes, piccolos, recorders, mandolins, tambourines, and so forth. A group will sing madrigals. A pleasant change from that crude sword fight, don’t you think?”
“Indeed,” I said, thinking of the hours I’d spent earlier in the day reshelving paperbacks. I doubted madrigal singers and piccolo players were inclined to wrestle on the floor, although I’d never actually met any.
I resumed arranging books in the window, hoping Sally might take the hint and leave. However, she was much too enthusiastic to be sidetracked by subtlety.
“I hear Caron and Inez are involved in concessions at the fair,” she said. “Such a big responsibility for girls their age.”
“If it is, they’re holding up well. The duchess—I can’t remember her mundane name—is making all the arrangements. Caron and Inez are merely in charge of peasant labor.”
“Oh,” Sally said, her smile wavering. “I was hoping to be invited to sell hot cross buns and little loaves of oat bread. Fiona will know this woman’s name, don’t you think?”
Before I could respond, my science fiction hippie slinked through the door. He drops by almost every day, ostensibly to browse. Luckily for me, he’s an inept shoplifter, and rarely makes it out with anything. He’s done a few favors for me in the past, so I tend to regard him with guarded benevolence. I also frisk him.
“Wow,” he said, gaping at Sally, “are you a sorceress? Cool.”
“You know precisely who I am,” Sally said. “Don’t I give you a discount on day-old bread several times a week?”
He winked at her. “Yeah, great cover. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.” He drifted behind a rack of paperbacks. “A sorceress. Like, very cool.”
Madam Marsilia d’Anjou looked very much as though she’d like to punch him in the nose, assuming she could find it under his matted beard and mustache, but settled for a sniff and swept out the door. I doubted my hippie would be munching any day-old hot cross buns in his immediate future.
I waited until the middle of the afternoon to call Luanne. Skipping preliminaries, I said, “Do you want to go to a gourmet dinner and ARSE meeting with me this evening?”
“I’m sorry—did you ask me if I wanted to have my leg amputated? I’m too busy these days, but maybe next year.”
“If I have to go, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, too. We’re both members of the Thurber Street Merchants Association.”
Luanne chuckled. “I heard about the sword fight yesterday. For that matter, I could hear it from the doorway of my shop, but it sounded entirely too violent for me.” She hesitated. “I tried to call you last night to hear the gory details, but no one answered Were you the trophy swept off by the victorious knight for purposes of debauchery and wantonness? Peter’s not going to like it if he has to do battle to win back your hand.”
My throat tightened, but I managed a halfhearted laugh. “The peril of leaving a lady in waiting. If you’ll go to this meeting, I’ll owe you. Surely it won’t last more than an hour or two. All we’ll have to do is eat their potato salad and nod.”
“Nod—or nod off?”
I took my last shot. “I met the knights before the demonstration. They’re both sexy guys, Luanne. I can’t attest to their manhood, since they were in full stainless steel drag, but I’m fairly certain one of them is single.”
“Nice try,” she said dryly, “but I’ve already suffered through one textbook case of arrested adolescence. His suits were handmade rather than forged, but the end result was the same.”
“A pox upon your house,” I said as I hung up. I had two hours in which to develop an acute appendicitis or malaria. Since my appendix had been removed twenty years ago and we were quite a distance from the nearest swamp, my chances were not good. I went to the nonfiction shelf and began to look for books on early symptoms of infectious diseases.
The realm of the Duke and Duchess of Glenbarrens was a few miles west of Farberville, no more than a twenty-minute drive from my apartment. I dawdled, dragging it out to half an hour, but eventually turned by a mailbox with the names of Anderson and Lanya Peru painted in Gothic script on one side. The house was as unappealing as Caron had said, and a few outbuildings looked as though they could topple on a whim. There were flower beds in front of the house; a large vegetable garden was partially visible in the backyard. Toys were scattered in the grass, and several bicycles lay about like rusting fossils. On one side of the house, clotheslines sagged under the weight of jeans, socks, and towels. The pasture was rutted and weedy, hardly conducive to trampling about after a cup of mead or ale. The structures and property were protected not by a moat, but by woods and steep hills.
“Beyond this place be dragons,” I muttered as I parked among dusty cars and trucks. As I walked up the steps to the porch, children came whooping out the front door and headed in the direction of the pasture. Caron had mentioned four children, but I felt as though there were at least twice that many. I closed my eyes for a moment, then took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
Fiona Thackery appeared almost immediately. “Mrs. Malloy,” she said as she held open the door, “we are delighted that you decided to come so we can express our appreciation for your generosity. Caron was afraid you might have had other plans. Come in, please. The others are in the back room. Would you like something to drink? The mead is homemade. Lanya collects the honey from her apiary and ferments it in jars in the basement. It’s…ah, potent. We also have wine, sodas, and beer.”
I glanced at the living room as she herded me along. It smelled of mold, dirty socks, and patchouli oil (a fad that fortunately had faded from favor decades ago). Amateurish tapestries did not quite cover peeling wallpaper and water stains. The upholstered furniture was worn, the cushions lumpy and uninviting. Lanya’s interests seemed to lie in areas of procreation and mead, rather than interior decoration.
“Yesterday went very well,” continued Fiona. “I was sorry to hear that you had to leave early because of a headache.”
I felt as though I needed a written excuse from a doctor. “I had some errands to do, and Caron and Inez were eager to stay and watch the demonstration. They were very impressed with the a
uthenticity of the armor.”
She gave me a wry smile. “Yes, so they told me several times.”
We went into the kitchen. It had the ambience of a Depressionera farmhouse, with ancient appliances and open shelves cluttered with oddments of plates, bowls, glasses, jars, and bottles of spices. A cast-iron skillet on the stove held an inch-thick layer of congealed grease, and a saucepan next to it was splattered with what appeared to be dried tomato soup or spaghetti sauce. A rickety table was cluttered with bottles of wine, gallon jars of what I assumed was mead, paper cups, and empty aluminum cans. A cooler on the floor was filled with ice, beer, and sodas. I could hear voices and laughter from the room beyond, mostly male. I wondered, albeit briefly, which of the battling knights had been obliged to supply the wine the previous evening.
Fiona’s nose was slightly wrinkled, but she forced a smile and said, “Lanya must have her hands full with all those children and animals. It’s no wonder that Anderson prefers to work late at his office rather than come home to this. There’s something to be said for population control, even if it means putting up with a smallpox epidemic or a plague every fifty years. What would you like to drink, Mrs. Malloy?”
“A soda will be fine.” I would have chosen wine, but it seemed wise to stick with something that was tamperproof.
After I’d been issued a can and a cup, I was escorted out to join the party. The room was encased by screened window panels to convert it into a sleeping porch, once considered a necessity during hot summer nights. Now it held a hodgepodge of wicker and ladderback chairs with splintery seats. Two card tables had been pushed together and covered with a vinyl tablecloth for the potluck offerings. There was a preponderance of undefinable casseroles, along with the obligatory potato salad, a plate of curling cheese slices, and a bowl of fruit. Flies buzzed about, as unsure as I was about the wisdom of sampling any of the fare.
Fiona clung to my arm. “This is Claire Malloy, who owns the bookstore on Thurber Street. Claire, you’ve already met Julius and Edward.”
Julius, who was perched on a low stool, smiled nervously. From a corner, Edward fluttered his fingers at me. He wore a faded cotton shirt and cutoffs, and did not appear to be in the mood to entertain us with juggling and magic tricks. I hoped he had no intention of pulling me aside for further confidences about his father. All I intended to do was survive the meeting and depart without ptomaine poisoning.
Fiona gestured at an elderly couple sitting to one side. “Glynnis and William Threet, known also as Lord and Lady Bicklesham. Glynnis makes wonderful tapestries.”
Tears began to dribble down Glynnis’s cheeks as she looked at me. “Needlework keeps me busy these days. I used to work at the admissions office at the college, but after we lost Percival...”
Her husband handed her his handkerchief. “Try not to think about it, my dear.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said weakly.
“Ah, thank you,” he said with a small cough. “You’re welcome to come by and visit him. We had him stuffed so he can be with us in the living room.”
Glynnis wiped her eyes. “He makes a lovely footstool.”
I glanced at Fiona, who merely said, “And you met our gallant knights. Anderson Peru and Benny Stallings.”
Anderson rose from a wicker rocking chair. “I had the honor of meeting her ladyship yesterday,” he said, “although she may not have fond memories of our encounter. I would not fault her for that. I was behaving with great gallantry when I was beset upon by a lumpish, knotty-pated moldwarp with the manners of a pig herder. I had no choice but to beat him senseless in the ensuing brawl.”
“The hell you did,” said Benny as he winked at me. Even dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he was a bearish man, with thick arms and an obvious fondness for beer. I mentally revised my assessment of them; Anderson was sexy, but Benny radiated unadulterated animal lust. He would not have been a suitable candidate to teach at a girls’ school. “You were thrashed until you mewled for mercy, you beslubbering puttock. Only out of pity for Your Grace’s weakened condition did I allow you to concede. I do hope milady understands that now that I’ve defended her honor, I have every intention of claiming my prize.”
“Just what did you juvenile delinquents do?” demanded the woman sitting next to Anderson. “Every time you put on armor, your brains shut down and your testicles take over.” She looked me over carefully, as if I were guilty of provoking them. “I’m Lanya Peru.”
Caron had described her well, although she was now wearing a peasant blouse that exposed her heavily freckled shoulders and ample cleavage. Her hair was braided and pinned into a sloppy bun, exposing gray hairs at the edges of her round face. When dressed in her medieval finery, she would make a most imposing duchess, I thought. “Nice to meet you,” I said.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Lanya.” The speaker, a cleanshaven man with pale blue eyes and the sculpted cheekbones of a malnourished poet, was sprawled in a wicker chair. His sandyblond hair was untidy, but in what I suspected was a studiously intentional way. He took a sip of wine, then made a face and set the cup down on the floor. “They’re no more dangerous than Twee- dledee and Tweedledum.”
“Salvador Davis,” said Fiona, her fingers pressing into my arm. “He’s the one who’s dangerous, or so I’ve heard.”
He shrugged. “Also known as Lord Galsworth, Baron of Firth- forth, and master of the archers’ guild. Should you ever desire to have an apple shot off your head, I shall be overjoyed to oblige you. Come, you must sit by me, my fair Claire, and tell me more about yourself. There is a serenity in your features, not unlike that seen in the finest Italian Renaissance depictions of the Madonna.”
I did not tell him that my so-called serenity was nothing more than paralytic panic. They were entirely too intense, and staring at me as if I were a shoplifter who’d been caught by a security guard. Anderson and Benny were both leering, and Salvador’s smile was predatory, if not outright carnivorous. Lanya seemed to be considering the likelihood that I was a wanton bar wench intent on seducing her husband and any other man within my grasp. The same thought must have been passing through Fiona’s mind, since she was squeezing my arm so tightly that I felt my fingers turning numb. Glynnis and William eyed me nervously, as if I’d been responsible for Percival’s demise. Edward seemed to be waiting for me to say or do something of great significance. Julius was the only one who showed no interest in me, and instead was frowning at Fiona. I wished I were wearing Sally’s cloak so that I could put on the hood and vanish in a puff of smoke. I spotted a chair at the edge of the circle, pried off Fiona’s hand, and sat down.
Fiona remained standing. “I thought Angie was coming tonight. Has anybody heard from her?”
“Who’s Angie?” asked Glynnis. “Is she a member of the fief- dom? Why haven’t we met her? Or have we met her?”
“I’m quite sure we haven’t,” said William firmly.
“None of us has,” Lanya said. “She moved to Farberville earlier in the summer, she told me, and found my name and number in the ARSE national directory. When we decided to hold the Ren Fair, I called her to see if she might want to participate. She’s had some training as a dancer and agreed to take on the fairies. I gave her Fiona’s number.”
Fiona nodded. “She was very nice about it. I offered to escort the girls to her house, but she said that she preferred them to come on their own. I’ve been so busy that I was grateful not to have something else on my list.”
“So no one has actually met Angie?” murmured Anderson. “Did you ask her for references?”
Lanya glared at him. “She volunteered, which is reference enough for me. She called this morning to say she sprained her ankle yesterday during the dance class with the fairies, and wants to stay off it as much as possible. I would have volunteered to go to the grocery store for her, but I had to stay here all day to meet with various people. I’ve arranged for enough small tents for the vendors and concessions, but I’m still working on a lar
ge tent for the Royal Pavilion. There are a lot of weddings and family reunions this month. It would have been much easier if we’d had more notice, Fiona.”
“You can’t blame her for that,” Julius said, doing his best to bluster.
Lanya glared at him. “I wasn’t blaming anyone, Julius. I was merely pointing out that most events of this magnitude are planned months in advance.”
Salvador leaned forward and ruffled Julius’s hair. “Back off, Lanya, the little fellow is just defending whatever vestiges remain of his lady’s honor. We can’t all don armor and smack each other with swords. What we must do, Julius, is assign you a name and title befitting your talents. How about…Squire Squarepockets? That has a nice ring, don’t you think? Solid, dependable, like a village greengrocer or a bank clerk.”
“You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are,” Fiona said coldly. She sat down next to Julius, who was looking at the floor.
“May I suggest,” Anderson said, “that we get back to business? Lanya has the tents and concessions under control. Julius will see to the technical systems and will liaison with the media for whatever coverage we can get. Fiona is in charge of scheduling the stage entertainment during the day and also the banquet performances. Edward will herd the performers to their proper venues. Salvador is in charge of the archery. Benny and I will oversee the sword fights and contact the adjoining fief doms to find out if we can scrounge up knights. Glynnis and William have agreed to supervise the decorations. Any questions?”
“The schedule will be finalized by Monday,” said Fiona. “Since this was my idea, I feel as though I should help during the actual event.”
He sat back and crossed his legs. “You, dear, will have your hands full with your students. They will all need to arrive at seven in the morning to help set everything up and decorate. During the day, the pirates, fairies, and musicians will be expected to perform on stage, so check with Edward and make sure they understand when and where to assemble. Be careful to keep them away from the alcoholic spirits, especially during the banquet. The Duchess will not be amused if one of the serving wenches barfs in her lap.”
