I think about finding someone to retrieve my things for me on the sly, but before I can go through with it, Mistress Mathilda spots me.
“Hello,” Mistress Mathilda says, looking down her mother-hen nose at me as she tugs at her neck ruff. “I see you’ve changed your garb,” she says, and clucks.
“Ummm, yeah. Baroness Barlonda gave me this.”
Mistress Mathilda clucks again. “She gave you that? For free? I highly doubt that. It’s my understanding that Barlonda’s garb costs a pretty penny.”
“Well, actually, Syr Phillip is paying for it. Since I’m you know, his lady.”
Mistress Mathilda clucks again. “You know, you can’t be a knight’s lady if you aren’t a dues-paying member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.”
“Uhhh—“
“If I wanted to be really difficult, I could challenge Syr Phillip’s decision to fight on behalf of a non-SCA member.”
My jaw drops. Apparently Mistress Mathilda is more than a little offended at my change of garb. “But—“
“What happened to the dress I loaned you, by the way?” she seethes. “As chatelaine of Gold Key office for this barony, I must say I am livid at the fact that you have broken the sacred Gold Key trust by switching out of your Gold Key garb in the middle of the day, without even bothering to return it to me! And you haven’t even become an official SCA member yet. How atrocious.”
Baroness Barlonda appears out of nowhere to rescue me. “Mistress Mathilda, I hope you don’t mind too much what happened with Lisa’s garb today,” Baroness Barlonda purrs. “But that dress you loaned her was giving the poor girl a rash.”
Mistress Mathilda turns red as the trim on her gown. “A rash? That’s impossible. I’ll have you know that I clean and sanitize all our loaner garments at least twice a year.”
I giggle at this.
“Well, at any rate, the dress has been disposed of, Mathilda,” Baroness Barlonda replies, the tone of her voice ever sweeter. “But never fear—I’ve brought you a few nice linen tunics out of my very own stock to replace it. I do believe three brand-new linen unisex tunics in place of a hideous, twenty-year-old polyester dress is a pretty good return on your investment. Don’t you think?”
Baroness Barlonda hands the garments over. Mistress Mathilda takes them without saying anything.
“You’re welcome, Mathilda,” Baroness Barlonda finally sighs. “Now Lisa, you probably need to get your things out of the lockup, don’t you? I’ll be driving you over to the feast.”
“There are no more tickets to the feast available,” Mistress Mathilda says curtly. “Especially for non-SCA members. Definitely no tickets available for them.”
Baroness Barlonda is visibly irritated. “Mistress Mathilda, I know you mean well, but you can’t bar anyone from attending the feast yourself. You aren’t the autocrat for this event.”
“Autocrat?” I ask.
“In the SCA, the autocrat is the person in charge of an event. And like it or not, Mistress Mathilda isn’t it. Are you, Mathilda?” Baroness Barlonda’s tone is severe.
“Well—well, maybe not,” Mistress Mathilda acquiesces. “But as chatelaine of Gold Key, I am responsible for making sure our newbies actually join the Society before getting involved in any. . .official activities. Like being a Champion’s lady, for example.”
I roll my eyes. “How much does it cost to join?” I ask.
“Thirty dollars a year,” Mistress Mathilda says, not even glancing in my direction.
“Do you take credit cards? Because if it’s such a big deal that I’m not an SCA member, I can join right now. As soon as I get my purse, anyway.” I add a silent prayer that my Visa isn’t so maxed out it can’t handle the thirty-dollar charge.
At this, Mistress Mathilda’s expression warms a little. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we do take credit cards. Visa, Mastercard, or Discover?”
Baroness Barlonda and I follow her down the hallway to the locked classroom where I’d stashed my street clothes and purse. Mistress Mathilda opens it for us. “I’ll be right back with those membership forms,” she sings. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you get into the feast, Lisa.”
“Let me worry about that,” Baroness Barlonda chirps. Mistress Mathilda sighs audibly and disappears down the hall.
“She’s a little odd,” I say.
“You mustn’t mind Mistress Mathilda. She means well, she really does. But she is tough about rules and regulations. We haven’t been terribly lucky getting newbies to stick around for more than one event whenever she’s running the Gold Key booth.”
“I can see why,” I say, just as Mistress Mathilda sails back into the classroom, waving some manila-paper forms.
“Here we are,” she sings. “Now, Lisa, are you ready to take on all the rights and responsibilities of being a full SCA member?”
“I guess so.”
“Wonderful! Now if you’ll just fill these out, and put your credit card number there, then you’ll be all set. You’ll get your membership card in the mail.”
I hastily fill out the forms and hand them back to Mistress Mathilda, who smiles as wide as her neck ruff.
“This is one of the best decisions you’ll ever make in your life,” she beams. “The Society for Creative Anachronism welcomes you, Lisa of Winged Hills!”
“Thanks,” I mutter. Mistress Mathilda sweeps out the classroom door. Or at least she tries to. Her gigantic hoopskirt gets caught in the doorjamb. She jerks it free only after a rather lengthy struggle that results in a nasty tear in the expensive brocade of her gown. I stifle a laugh.
“Au revoir, Mistress Mathilda,” Baroness Barlonda calls after her, and starts laughing herself. “Oh, I do always love to see her mess up one of her gowns! She can get a bit full of herself sometimes when it comes to costuming, you know. She’s a costuming Laurel, but she still has never managed to build up a costuming business as successful as mine is. Probably because she refuses to construct any costume that isn’t Elizabethan. Now let’s head on out to my dragon and get this show on the road.”
“Okay,” I say. “But if you don’t mind, I just want to take a quick look around for my friend Pegeen—I mean, Pegonia—before we go. She’s my ride home.”
“Of course, dear. I’ll meet you out in the dragon lot.” Baroness Barlonda grabs her satchel and leaves. I head back out to the gym, which by now is nearly deserted. Pegeen/Pegonia is nowhere to be seen. My best friend has definitely ditched me, and then some.
I shake my head in exasperation and head out to Baroness Barlonda’s van. I hope against hope that Pegeen/Pegonia will resurface at the feast—otherwise, at the end of the day I’ll be stuck out here at the Blood and Roses Tournament for good. And I can hardly call Brad—my boss back at the AC Delco plant—on Monday morning and tell him I can’t come in to work because I got stranded somewhere in the Middle Ages.
I dash out to the dragon lot and find Baroness Barlonda and her portly baron-herald of a husband leaning against the side of her battered Aerostar. They are passing a fat joint back and forth between them. Which I find pretty funny, because I never would have pegged this graying, middle-aged couple as the type to go in for the whole doobie culture.
“Hey, Lisa,” Baroness Barlonda purrs. “Wanna drag?”
“It’s pretty good stuff,” coos her husband. “One of my friends up in Lima grows it in her cornfield. Between the rows, if ya know whaddImean.”
“Uhh, no thanks,” I say, putting up my hands.
“Suit yerself,” the paunchy, gray-haired herald says as he adjusts his pearl-encrusted coronet. “My name’s Baron Griswold, by the way. You can call me Grizzly if you like.”
“Um, hello, Grizzly,” I say, stifling a laugh.
“That’s Baron Grizzly to you,” Baroness Barlonda corrects me. “Let’s get over to the feast now. You don’t want ‘em running out of cave before we get there.”
****
Baroness Barlonda’s battered Aerostar arrives at the Ohio Caver
ns about half an hour later. Since the Aerostar’s rear seats have been removed to make room for Barlonda’s costume shop and the front consists of only two bucket seats, I had to spend the entire trip sitting on Baron Grizzly’s lap. Luckily for me, he was too toked out from the weed to mind.
“Here we are,” Barlonda sings, slurring her words a little as she pulls her dragon into a parking space in the Ohio Caverns lot. “The Ohio Caverns! Have you ever been here, Lisa?”
I glance around. The parking lot and visitors’ center look vaguely familiar. “I think I might have come here on an elementary school trip at some point,” I say.
“Is that right?” Baron Grizzly asks. “Maybe you know where we’re eating, then.”
I look around again and shrug. “I don’t think so. I probably came here when I was in the second grade or something. I don’t remember much except seeing a giant white stalactite. Or stalagmite. I always forget which is which.”
Just past the entrance gate and parking lot is a small, low-slung building that looks like a visitor’s center. Someone has taped a hand-lettered posterboard sign to one of the windows that says “TROLL”.
“There’s the Troll Booth,” Baroness Barlonda says, her voice still gravelly from the dope. “They’ll know where the feast is.”
“Troll Booth?” I ask, tripping over my long velvet train.
“Every SCA event and feast has a troll booth,” Baron Grizzly explains. “That’s where you check in, buy your tickets, stuff like that.”
My mind conjures up an image of a wrinkled little green man taking money and handing out tickets. “Why do they call it ‘troll’ booth? Why not just call it ‘ticket’ booth or something normal like that?”
“Because that would be too boring,” Baroness Barlonda replies. “Too mundane. In the SCA we’re all here to forget about the mundane world for a while. Remember that old fairy tale about the Three Billy Goats Gruff? There was a troll under a bridge that took a toll from each of the goats. It’s an old medieval folktale. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, that’s where the Troll Booth idea comes from. See? Everything we do and say here in the SCA has a root in the Middle Ages.” Baroness Barlonda pats me gently on the shoulder. I consider mentioning that smoking doobies in parking lots probably isn’t very medieval, but I decide against it.
The three of us pile into the visitor’s center and find none other than Duchess Danyel manning the troll booth.
“Lisa! I’m so glad you made it!” Duchess Danyel shouts, enveloping me in a hug. Her duchess crown is hanging askew and she is drinking Miller Lite from a can.
“Hi Duchess,” I say, not sure if there’s a proper way to address someone of that rank in the SCA.
“Call her ‘Your Grace’,” Baroness Barlonda whispers in my ear.
“Oh, just call me Danyel,” the Duchess says, overhearing. “I can’t stand that ‘Your Grace’ crap half the time. Especially when I’m drinking.” She toasts her beer can at us and picks up a sheaf of papers, scanning for names. “Barlonda and Grizzly—looks like I’ve got you here on my list. But I don’t see you, Lisa. And getting you in is gonna be tricky—this cave is turning out to be even smaller than they told us it would be.”
“Can you look up my friend Pegeen’s—I mean, Pegonia ap Whoever’s reservation? I think she might have bought a ticket for me.”
Duchess Danyel scans her list and shakes her head. “Nope. Pegonia is on the list as a volunteer food server. But you’re not on here anywhere. Sorry.”
I make a mental note to yell at Pegeen about this when and if I ever get back to Dayton tonight. “Crud,” I mutter.
Duchess Danyel smiles. “Well Lisa, since you’re the Champion’s lady I can’t well keep you out of there. You get a seat at the Head Table by default because of that. Tell you what. I was supposed to be sittin’ at Head Table myself because I’m the only Duchess in these here parts, but you can have my seat. I probably won’t be doing much eatin’ anyway, since I’ll be too busy running Troll and helping out in the kitchen. And I have a soft spot for ol’ Syr Phillip, anyway, so I’ll do anything I can to help out his new girlfriend. Sound fine?”
“That would be wonderful,” I say, feeling butterflies form in my stomach. I almost can’t comprehend hearing myself called Syr Phillip’s girlfriend in public.
“So where the hell is this dang ol’ feast, Danyel?” Baron Grizzly drawls. “I’m starved. An’ I’m sure they’re gonna have me announcin’ all the courses an’ shit. There better not be any of those unpronounceable Welsh food names like we had at back at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Duchess Danyel laughs and hands him a menu. “Everything you need to know is here on this card, Grizz. It’s pretty simple English fare this time around. There’s not a whole lot you can cook in a cave, you know. Go through that red door there and take the metal stairs down into the cavern. Those steps are pretty narrow and slippery, so be sure to hike your skirts up, ladies.”
“I have a real bad feeling about this,” Baroness Barlonda says as we start down the narrow metal stairs into the dark, damp caverns. “Who on earth ever heard of having a feast in a cave?”
“Well, at least a cave seems pretty medieval,” I offer.
“That usually isn’t a good thing when it comes to feasts, though,” Baron Grizzly snarls as we reach the bottom of the rickety staircase, which deposits us in a sort of hallway that leads into a large cavern-room. “I’ve been to a lotta SCA feasts over the years, and I’ve gotta tell ya—most truly medieval food is just plain god-awful.”
“Now Grizz, don’t exaggerate,” Baroness Barlonda says while rearranging her skirts.
“I’m not exaggeratin’,” Grizzly insists. “Barlonda, don’t tell me you don’t remember the Fall Samnhain Festival down in Barony of the Flame about four years ago. You know, the one where we all ate out in the middle of the woods an’ we all got ptomaine poisoning from the roast venison?”
“Oh, dear, now that was a unique set of circumstances,” Barlonda titters, only half-serious. “They didn’t know that if you use old rotten tree branches to roast the deer on, it causes poisoning. That was just an honest mistake.”
“Barlonda, I spent two days in the hospital shittin’ my pants off on account of that honest mistake. I’d think you’d remember that.”
“Grizzly—“
I leave Barlonda and Grizzly arguing in the stone hallway and duck through a tiny, low-ceilinged opening. The cavern isn’t at all what I expected. Unlike what I remember from my school field trips to Ohio Caverns as a child, this section of the cave has very few stalactites or stalagmites. Instead, the walls appear to be covered in thick, crumbly curtains of rust. I glance down to see that the cavern floor is covered in a smattering of iron oxide powder that crunches under my velvet slippers, which are fast growing damp. The place smells like old nails and dirty water, and the cold cavern air freezes my breath into pale white clouds.
After walking for what seems like an hour through ever-more-narrow passageways, we finally land in the high-ceilinged cave-space where the feast will be taking place. The vault-like limestone room is quite large, but obviously not large enough to house the four hundred or so people who attended the event—I guess I won’t be the only one who had trouble getting a ticket. Old-fashioned electric light fixtures hang from fuzzy asbestos wires somehow fastened into the stone ceiling. The room is filled with about twenty rough-hewn wooden tables and chairs that all appear to be at least a hundred years old. It seems Barlonda, Grizzly and I are among the first to arrive.
“Where is everybody?” I ask. “I thought this feast was supposed to be crowded.”
“Oh, off getting a head start on drinking, I suppose,” Barlonda says, readjusting her skirts, which like mine, are getting stained at the hem from the iron oxide dust that covers everything.“Lisa, do you have any feastgear?”
“Feastgear? Uhh, I don’t think so.”
“Tell Grizzly I
said it’s okay to lend you mine. I won’t be needing it—I think I’ll lay low tonight and help out in the kitchen. Go on now and be the Champion’s lady. All eyes will be on you tonight, you know.”
“Okay,” I stammer. I have absolutely no idea how to be the Champion’s lady. I slump down onto a damp wooden bench, clueless as ever.
****
Syr Phillip still isn’t here. Even so, I’m already finding out just how difficult the role of the Champion’s lady really is.
For the past fifteen minutes I’ve been bowing and curtseying to scores of SCA folk who seem as eager to meet me as they would any Hollywood celebrity. A little girl of eight or nine dressed in miniature Tudor outfit just asked me for my autograph.
The good gentles seeking to gain my favor started out as a trickle, but there is now a long line of costumed SCA folk of all ages lined up along the rust-covered cavern wall, waiting eagerly for their chance to shake my hand.
Me? They’re all lined up to see me? I still can’t believe it. And I’m embarrassed to say that I’m already finding my newfound celebrity somewhat annoying.
For example—
“Lisa of Winged Hills!” gushes a middle-aged redhead in a drab, knee-length brown tunic and fringed leather workboots as she pumps my hand up and down. “Is that your name? Why is it I’ve never seen you at an event before?”
“Uhhhh, this is the first one I’ve been to.”
“The first one you’ve been to in the Middle Kingdom, right? Didn’t you just move here from Calontir? I heard someone say this morning you’re originally from Calontir. I think it’s lovely that you’ve already changed your SCA name to reflect that your home shire is now Winged Hills!”
“Right,” I reply through gritted teeth, not sure that I want to contradict her.
A huge black-haired man in a Naugahyde approximation of Viking garb—complete with plastic horns—is next in line. His hair is cut into a ragged mullet and his beard is three inches long. “So Lisa,” he says in a voice that reminds me of pro wrestler Hulk Hogan. “Whatareyadoin’ after the feast? I’m lookin’ fer a date to the post-revel.”
Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set Page 59
