With a Jester of Kindness

by K. C. Herbel

  Lady Myrredith was strolling alone in her garden when Hugh arrived. He watched her as she sampled the fragrance of a rose.

  “That was quick,” said Myrredith, spotting her admirer.

  “Well,” said Hugh, with a weighty sigh, “I have much to tell you.”

  “Allow me to tell you my news first,” she said. “What I have to say may lift your burden.”

  “Yes, tell me,” said Hugh, feeling her excitement.

  Myrredith waited until Hugh was next to her before she spoke. “William is safe,” she said with a smile.

  “Yes, otherwise the countryside wouldn’t be crawling with men searching for him. I can’t believe how many bounty hunters I saw today!”

  “Aye,” said Myrredith. “Even Owein, Gareth and Darn have been in Dyven . . . but they won’t catch William!”

  Hugh’s expression became very serious. “Myrredith,” he said, “do you know where Billy is?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean . . . not exactly?”

  “Not exactly!” Myrredith repeated.

  Hugh looked into her eyes. He gently placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “Tell me what you know.”

  Myrredith first related how Billy left her the note on the road—much to Hugh’s amazement. Then she told him that Billy had been sighted in Dyven the day before.

  “Yesterday?” The King’s Champion suddenly seemed very tense. His eyes shifted from side to side, as if he were figuring something. “Then he’s here.”

  “Or was,” added Myrredith. Then she became concerned with Hugh’s behavior. “Say, what is it?” she asked him.

  “Was . . . ?”

  “Well,” began Lady Myrredith, “a ship left Dyven yesterday—headed for Erin. Rumor has it, William was aboard.”

  “No,” muttered Hugh, turning away.

  “What is it?” asked Myrredith. She took his hand and turned him around.

  “I . . .” said Hugh with his breath catching in his lungs. He closed his eyes and exhaled before saying, “I must bring him back.”

  “What?”

  “To Orgulous,” said Hugh, again turning away.

  “Hugh!”

  “It is my duty.”

  “Your duty . . . to betray your friend?”

  “I am the King’s Champion!” snapped Hugh.

  “William is your friend!” insisted Myrredith.

  “I must do as my king bids me.”

  “But William didn’t do it!”

  “The king himself pronounced him guilty.”

  “The king is not always right,” argued Myrredith.

  “But he is always the king! . . . And until he isn’t, I must obey.”

  “You know William didn’t do it.”

  “Aye,” admitted Hugh, “but what I think doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t it?” said Myrredith, trying to reason with him.

  “No,” answered the deflated knight.

  “Ooh! . . . Do you think that performing this duty will restore your father’s name or bring back your mother?”

  “No!” shouted Hugh. “It can’t bring her back, or even make up for all the years Ergyfel stole from her . . . but it can restore my father’s good name.”

  “How?” asked Myrredith. “How will William’s death do that?”

  “When I bring Billy back, it will clear my father’s name,” said Hugh. Then he quickly added, “And clear you and I of all charges.”

  “No!” said the proud Lady of Cyndyn Hall. “I will not allow you to clear my name with William’s blood!”

  “But you’re not listening . . .”

  “If you’re doing this-this thing for me, then don’t!”

  “I have no choice.”

  “Your precious duty will cost William his life!”

  “I will clear Billy as well!” insisted Hugh.

  Myrredith shook her head. “It will cost you your soul!”

  “And what if I don’t do it?” said Hugh coolly. “Could you live anywhere else but here?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Myrredith.

  “Could you run away with me, and leave all this behind?” Hugh gestured to the surrounding castle. “Could you leave your lands, your people, your home . . . for a man who had forgotten his honor?”

  “I can’t just leave. My duty won’t . . .” Myrredith fell silent. Finally she spoke again. “I guess we both have our duties.”

  “Then you understand,” said Hugh.

  “No. Not this,” answered Myrredith. “This . . . bloody task of yours is wrong. Hugh . . . it will destroy you. It will destroy us.”

  Hugh turned to Myrredith but from shame could not bring his eyes upon her. He gazed instead at the ground between his feet. “Myrredith . . .” he started. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, he needed her, and without her his life was meaningless.

  “Leave, Hugh,” said Myrredith, barely above a whisper. “Just leave.”

  Hugh took a step to walk away from the only woman he would ever love. He halted after the first step, struggling for the right words to say. All his instincts told him that leaving was wrong, but his conscience told him he must go. He took another difficult step away, then another. Just then he heard her voice again, and he froze.

  “If you do this thing,” she said shakily, “I don’t . . . I don’t want to see you again.”

  In that instant, something twisted inside Hugh. He felt sure he was damned. By sheer will, he forced himself to leave the garden. A strange coldness crept into him and nested in his stomach. It was as if his soul had forsaken his body, and he was—beyond his comprehension—dead.

  * * *

  The Blood and Slobber Inn bustled that night. Many of the usual customers were present. The jokes were flowing in proportion to the ale, and for a change, the tavern was only living up to the last half of its name—albeit that might be corrected at any moment.

  In a dark corner, Hugh sat brooding over his third tankard of mead. The hood of his traveling cloak, which he wore despite the warm environment, concealed his face in shadow. A full plate of food waited on the table in front of him, unchanged from when it arrived there, except that it was now cold as riverbed stones.

  “What’s the matter, love?” said the buxom barmaid standing over him. “Not hungry? . . . Food not to your likin’, ’eh? Not that I blame ya. I wouldn’t eat here myself if I didn’t have to . . . Shall I take it away then? . . . Ya don’t talk much, do ya?”

  The girl leaned over to pick up the plate, deliberately giving Hugh a good view of her “God-given talents.” As she straightened and placed the plate on her tray, she saw that her performance had produced no reaction, at least not any of the reactions she was used to. Again she leaned forward, on the pretext of looking into his tankard.

  “Uh-oh, almost out,” she said, moving in close, but again the preoccupied knight disappointed her. She stood beside Hugh, closer than what was proper for two strangers, and waited.

  “Is there anythin’ I can give ya?” she asked pointedly.

  At last the promiscuous girl relented. She leaned over once more, this time placing her face before his. She remained there, observing his handsome face and fervent eyes until he focused on her.

  “How ’bout another mead?” she said with a kind smile.

  Hugh gravely nodded, and she turned to leave. Then she turned back. “Oh, and my name’s Heather . . . just in case ya change your mind.”

  At that moment, the fight, which had been brewing across the room, came to a head, and Heather scurried behind the bar. Hugh glanced up with mild interest then returned to his brooding. The scuffle quickly grew into a brawl that enveloped the far half of the tavern. It was turning into another fat-lipped-black-eyed-teeth-on-the-floor night at the Blood and Slobber. Suddenly, a pewter bowl flew across the room and smashed Hugh’s nearly empty tankard. Mead poured through the slats of the wooden table onto his legs.

  At the center of the cold void within Hugh, a spark ignited and ins
tantly grew to fill the emptiness with white-hot fire. Hugh, no longer in control, stood up and marched across the room.

  Hugh walked in between the first two brawlers he came to and punched both of them at once. The men flew back with the force of his blows and lay on the floor. The next two had their heads cracked together. The fifth unfortunate oaf received a swift kick, and the sixth a vicious elbow. Hugh cut a broad swath through the melee, leaving a trail of battered, less quarrelsome men in his wake.

  When the King’s Champion reached the two scrappers who had started the free-for-all, they were embroiled in an eye-gouging, finger-biting wrestling match. All the others, having witnessed Hugh’s approach, had stopped fighting and were waiting to see what he would do next. Hugh grabbed the first man by his collar and the seat of his pants and tossed him over a table like a bucket of slops. Then he picked up the other man by the shirtfront and plopped him down in a chair. The dazed man sat, staring dumbly at Hugh.

  “I came in here to have a few quiet drinks,” said Hugh malevolently, “and by God, I’m going to.”

  The man remained slack jawed while Hugh spoke, but when the knight turned around to go back to his table, the man stood and grabbed a heavy soup bowl to brain him. Before he could bring it down on Hugh’s head, Hugh spun and caught the man’s wrist. Then Hugh hauled back and slammed him with a haymaker that jarred the teeth of everyone in the tavern. The man fell back into the chair and oozed on to the floor.

  Hugh grunted then turned and walked through the silent crowd to his table. Heather rushed over with a new tankard of mead.

  “This one’s on the house,” Heather said with a smile and a curtsy.

  Hugh nodded to her and started to take a drink. Before he tasted the mead, he looked around the room of people who were still standing in awe of him. No one dared to say a word.

  The door opened, and two men stumbled inside. One boisterously blathered over his friend’s guffaws, “An’ that’s when she says to me, get yer dirty paws off of . . .”

  The two rosy-nosed men stopped abruptly when they perceived the silence surrounding them. They scanned the room nervously and then darted out the door for the street. Immediately the tavern exploded with laughter. Before long, it returned to what Hugh took to be normal.

  Sometime later, Hugh found himself still sitting at the same table, alone. He had lost count of the tankards of mead he swallowed, but still he couldn’t escape his dilemma.

  Hugh finished his drink. He looked up to catch Heather’s eye and order one last tankard. His back stiffened, and his eyes widened when they came across Don Miguel Medina Scarosa, sitting across the table.

  “So sorry, Sir Hugh,” hissed the Spaniard. “I did no mean to startle you.”

  Hugh stared across at “the black peacock,” as he had labeled him in his mind. “So it is true,” he stated flatly.

  Don Miguel looked curiously at the inebriated knight. “What is true?”

  “Too much drink brings the devil to your table,” said Hugh, quoting an old folk saying.

  “No, no, no,” said Don Miguel with a laugh. “I will admit,” he started, with affected vanity, “to having a silver tongue, a infinite wit, and devilish good looks, but no, I am no El Diablo.”

  Hugh laughed. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but for the first time that he could remember, Hugh actually found Scarosa humorous.

  Don Miguel smiled broadly back at him and said, “That’s much better, my most serious friend.”

  “I’ll say!” said Heather from behind him.

  Don Miguel twisted in his seat to look at the barmaid. His eyes caught sight of the voluptuous girl, and he grinned. “So, my beauty,” he said, pouring on his usual syrupy charm, “you are familiar with my gloomy companion?”

  “He’s the most sober drunk I think I’ve ever seen,” she said nodding her head. “No disrespect intended,” she said to Hugh. “Not that he can’t . . . throw up his heels.”

  “Throw up his heels?” asked Scarosa ponderously. “He did a dance for you?”

  “No,” said Heather, “Not exactly.”

  Hugh looked at the talkative barmaid with a raised eyebrow.

  “Well,” said Heather, wanting to amend her statement, “he’s a natural-born bouncer, he is.”

  Don Miguel Scarosa roared with laughter. He pointed at Hugh and slapped the table.

  “What is it?” asked Heather, confused by the Spaniard’s behavior. “What’s so funny?”

  “Him!” said Scarosa between laughs. “A bouncer!”

  “Why is that so funny?” asked Heather earnestly. “Who is he?”

  Don Miguel stood and took Heather’s hand. He fought to control his laughter. “Allow me introduce to you, Sir Hugh . . . knight-errant, and Champion to King William.”

  Heather’s jaw fell open, and Don Miguel erupted into another laughing fit. She stood motionless until Miguel gently closed her mouth for her. Heather self-consciously lowered her eyes, curtsied, and promptly headed for the safety of the bar.

  Hugh watched her bashfully disappear below the counter. “Strange!” he muttered. “She was more forward when she didn’t know who I was.”

  Don Miguel seated himself and, grinning, said to Hugh, “I think I know why you have come to Dyven.”

  Hugh returned his attention to the man sitting across from him. He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. “Why?” he asked.

  “You and me,” started Miguel, “we are here for the same reason.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Scarosa smiled knowingly.

  “Well . . . ?” prompted Hugh.

  “Are you a betting man, Sir Hugh?”

  “No.”

  “Pity. I am a little . . . How you say? Oh yes, a little short.”

  Hugh was loosing patience with Don Miguel’s meandering. “Get to the point!” he snapped.

  “Billy.”

  “What about him?” asked Hugh.

  “We are both here for him,” answered Scarosa.

  Hugh glared at the troubadour. “What do you want with Billy?”

  “The reward of course! What else?”

  “Reward?”

  “Oh yes! There will be a great reward for the man who bring him in . . . alive or dead.”

  Hugh lunged across the table and grabbed Scarosa by the throat, pulling him forward until their noses were almost touching. The tavern fell silent, and Hugh felt every eye upon him. A bead of sweat ran down the Spaniard’s forehead and dripped on to the table.

  “He will be alive,” whispered Hugh.

  “Of course,” gasped Miguel.

  Hugh pushed Scarosa back into his chair with disgust.

  Don Miguel massaged his throat and swallowed as he stared dubiously at Hugh. “Alive . . . Yes, this is what I mean. I will give you half,” he offered hoarsely, “if you take me with you.”

  “You can keep the filthy reward! I want nothing of it!”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” said Miguel, grinning.

  “And I didn’t say I would take you!” declared Hugh.

  “I know,” stated Scarosa, “but I have something you need.”

  “What could you have?”

  “Information.”

  “Ha!” spat Hugh. “Gossip!”

  “No gossip,” said Don Miguel suddenly very serious. “I know someone in this town. Someone who has—eh—special access.”

  “Who?”

  “No-no-no,” said Miguel, wagging a finger at Hugh. “If I tell you, then you will no need me.”

  “Very well,” said Hugh, becoming more sober by the moment and wishing he weren’t.

  “Then you will take me?”

  “I will decide that once you’ve told me your information.”

  “But . . .”

  “If it’s good enough then I will consider your proposal.”

  “I have your word?”

  “Miguel . . .” said Hugh, becoming perturbed.

  “Yes. Very well. My source tell me that Billy was i
n town and . . .”

  “I’ve heard that rumor too, Miguel! I thought you were going to tell me something substantial.”

  “Please allow me finish . . .” said Scarosa. “Prince Gaelyn horse . . . the one that show up missing the same time as Billy . . . Well, it show up . . . here in town.”

  Hugh sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “And where is the horse now?” he asked shrewdly.

  “In the stable of the city guard,” explained Don Miguel. “The captain take her to Cyndyn Hall tomorrow.”

  Hugh raised an eyebrow and asked, “When did they find her?”

  “A short while ago, but there is more if you are interested.”

  “Go on.”

  “Billy has gone to Erin,” stated Scarosa.

  “Another rumor,” said Hugh with a sigh.

  “No,” said Don Miguel. “The boy that help him was finally captured and they question him.”

  “Captain Oswyn said he got away. Who questioned him?” demanded Hugh.

  Miguel was quiet for a moment. He looked around suspiciously before he softly answered, “Derian, the thief tracker.”

  “I want to question this boy myself,” said Hugh, pushing up from the table.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “No possible. The boy, he meet with a . . . accident.”

  Hugh glared at Scarosa disdainfully. “What kind of accident?”

  “Very unfortunate,” said the Spaniard, shaking his head. “He escape and was run down by a wagon.”

  For a long while, Hugh said nothing. He stared at the ceiling, contemplating Don Miguel’s story and its veracity.

  Again Scarosa asked, “Will you take me with you?”

  Hugh looked him sternly in the eyes and said, “No.”

  “Why no?” exclaimed Don Miguel. “My information is no good enough?”

  “No, no. I just can’t.”

  “What if I told you I still have something you need?”

  “What now?” asked Hugh.

  “The Gyldan Mene leaves for Erin day after tomorrow.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And I have purchase the last two passages from her captain.”