Hard Day's Knight

by Katie MacAlister

  “Ooooh, that was a low blow,” I told Walker. “You’re not going to take that, are you?”

  He turned his narrowed gaze to me, and I saw again just how pure his eyes were. They were like silver discs edged with black. “Do I know you?”

  “I’m the damsel in distress you dashed in and rescued in the very best brave-knight manner,” I answered.

  “In other words, I don’t know you.”

  I offered him a perky smile. “No, but I am sitting on your lap. That’s gotta count for something, don’t you think?”

  “No,” he said, and tried to swing me off the side of the horse. Evidently the black monster he was riding didn’t care for the act, for it tossed its massive head in the air and snorted that warning snort that horses always give before they start doing things like trampling little girls, or eating their hair, or knocking them down, or any of the gazillion other things that loomed up out of my nightmares as the torments I used to suffer with my mother’s horses.

  “Don’t drop me!” I screamed, and twisted my body around so I could cling to Walker. I got one leg wrapped around his waist as I clutched at his head, struggling to free my other leg from where it was confined in the yards and yards of cotton that made up my Wench skirt. “Please, whatever you do, don’t drop me!”

  “What is wrong with you, woman?” Walker asked. His voice was a bit muffled because, straddling him as I was, his face was smooshed into my overflowing breasts. Beneath us, his horse shifted sideways.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be cured by being off this horse!”

  “I’m trying to get you off, blast it!”

  “You’re going to drop me! I’ll fall and break something!”

  “Having a bit of trouble with your Wench?” Farrell asked. He managed to get his hooves-of-death horse under control and rode over to my side.

  “I’m not his Wench, and I’m—Argh!” The black horse evidently took exception to the white horse’s nearness, because he snorted again and did a little sideways dance that had me shrieking and clawing at Walker’s back when he tried to peel me off him.

  “For God’s sake, woman, I can’t breathe.” He gasped as he strong-armed my overflowing chest off his face. His gaze dropped for a minute to my bosom (heaving, in the proper Wench fashion), and he added in a much softer voice, “Not that I don’t appreciate the wubby, but I’d prefer one that isn’t conducted on horseback.”

  “What are you talking abo—oh, my god, he’s going to rear! Don’t let me fall!”

  “Marley is too well bred to do any such thing, but he doesn’t like you squirming around,” Walker said as he pried me off his chest. “Sit still, will you? Marley, stand!”

  “Clearly the lady wants away from you, a fact that illustrates her obvious good taste and intelligence. My lady, I am your humble servant. If you will allow me to remove you from the knave Walker’s slug of a horse . . .” Farrell reached for my arm as he maneuvered his horse even closer. He grabbed my wrist and tugged me to the side, nearly making me fall off.

  “Augh!”

  “Let go of her, you damned fool,” Walker snarled as he nudged the black horse in the opposite direction.

  “Help!”

  “You let go of her! It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be near you.” Farrell pulled me harder toward him until the top half of me was draped over his lap, while my lower half was held tight by Walker’s arm around my waist.

  “Someone, please, help me!”

  “It is not obvious; she just admitted that I saved her. And she shoved my face in her breasts. Which she certainly wouldn’t have done if she didn’t want to be near me. Now let go of her!”

  Farrell jerked at my arm. “She said she wanted off—”

  “I will put her down if you just let go of her,” Walker said stiffly.

  Oh, lovely, they were fighting over me. Why couldn’t they do it when I wasn’t strung between two horses? I stared down at the ground that seemed a long, long way down, and swallowed hard. “Hey! Guys, I feel like a really big human wishbone here, and I don’t think either horse likes having me half-on, half-off him—”

  “Let go of her before you hurt her,” Farrell demanded, the white horse doing a nasty little up-and-down move that made my teeth rattle. Farrell’s grip slipped a bit as the horse sidled, leaving me hanging by my wrist between the two men.

  “I had her first,” Walker said, tightening his hold on my waist.

  “You didn’t want her,” Farrell said. “You tried to throw her off that slug you call a horse.”

  “Throw me off?” I screamed to the ground.

  “Whether or not I want her is not the issue. I had her first, so she’s mine to put down. I realize that you don’t have a shred of chivalry in your sun-bleached soul, but if you did, you’d know that the finders-keepers rule applies here, and let go of her.”

  “Okay, I’m starting to seriously panic now,” I felt it wise to inform them, trying to quell the note of increasing hysteria in my voice. Whitey turned his head to give me the evil eye, then tried to bite my arm. “He’s trying to eat me! Let me down, let me down, let me down!”

  “Screaming like that isn’t going to help,” Walker lectured me. “Horses like calm, confident people. Screaming and yelling and whinging just upsets them.”

  I lifted my head and glared back over my shoulder at him. “Do you think maybe we could save the horse etiquette until a time when I’m not doing an imitation of a badminton net?”

  “I was just trying to point out—”

  “I know what you were trying to point out, but dammit, look at me!”

  Both men eyed me stretched out between them.

  “She doesn’t look very comfortable. It’s ridiculous for you to keep her when she wants away from you. Release her, Walker,” Farrell ordered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I muttered.

  “She’s safer with me than with your ill-mannered stallion. Here, you, whatever your name is, let me have your arm.” The white horse snapped at my head again as I clung with one hand to Farrell’s leg, the other still behind held in his iron grip. “Christ, Farrell! Can’t you control that loose cannon you’re riding? Will you stop screeching, woman? You’re not going to fall. My horse is too well mannered to do anything to harm you.”

  As the words left his mouth, a white-and-orange streak shot from the shadows of a tent to a stack of boxes about four feet high. The premonition of what the cat was going to do left my blood turned to ice, my jaw dropped open, and my heart in my momentarily speechless mouth. “Moth, no—” I screamed just as all twenty-four pounds of massive cat hit Marley’s rump, feline claws extended to give him a better grip on the glossy, well-groomed horse.

  Marley, not unreasonably, I’m willing to admit, took exception to such treatment. He rose up on his back legs, let out a disgusted snort, and slammed back down to earth with a teeth-jarring buck.

  “Oh, very well, have it your way,” Farrell said at the exact same moment, and released my arm as the white horse tossed up his head and jerked Farrell’s leg from my tenuous grip. I did a beautiful half gainer off Marley as Walker released me in order to grab at the reins.

  “Too well mannered to do anything to harm me, huh?” I asked as I lay on the ground and did a silent inventory of my arms and legs. My wrist stung, and my hip hurt from where it had been crushed against Walker’s saddle before being pounded into the ground, but other than a few bruises, everything seemed to be in working order.

  “Really, Walker, there are gentler ways of removing a woman from your lap,” Farrell said, a self-righteous, solicitous smile touching his lips. “But I forget, you have so little experience in dehorsing people that I suppose one must make allowances. Please, my dear, I will help you—”

  “No!” I screamed as the white horse’s hooves danced toward me. I stopped checking my limbs and scrambled to my feet, absently brushing off my butt as I backed away from the white monster, now snorting and rolling its eyes at me. “You’ve
done enough to help me, thank you.”

  “What the hell?” Walker, who had been busy controlling a fussy Marley, realized the cause of the problem. He turned in the saddle and scooped Moth up from where he was clinging to the horse’s broad rump. Moth meowed a protest as Walker faced me with flared nostrils and a disgusted look that almost exactly matched the one on Marley’s black face. “I take it this cat is yours?”

  “No, he’s not mine,” I said feeling trapped between the huge black horse and the high-strung white one. I edged my way out from between them. “But I’m cat-sitting him for the next two weeks. Moth, you are a very bad cat! No kitty num-nums for you tonight!”

  “Moth?” Farrell asked.

  “It’s short for Behemoth,” I told him. He rewarded me with a flashy smile, but I refused to be swayed by the smile of a man who’d drop me just when I needed him.

  “How amusing.”

  “You wouldn’t be laughing if you were stuck with him.” I turned back to Walker, who was trying to pull Moth off from where the cat was now riding his shoulders. “Moth! Come down here this instant.”

  “Farrell, are you all right? I heard yelling and thought Lancelot might have run away with—” A shortish, chunky young man with carroty red hair and big round Harry Potter glasses dashed around the side of one of the tents, skidding to a stop at the sight of a cat riding on top of Walker. His eyes widened before he shot a look out of the corners of them to where Farrell was once again trying to gain control of his fretting horse. “Eh . . . everything okay?”

  “Get out of the way, you idiot,” Farrell yelled as the white horse (Lancelot? How trite could you get?) tried to take a bite out of the red-haired man’s shoulder. “Can’t you see he’s nervous?”

  “Untrained is more like it,” Walker said in his lovely smooth English accent. My knees, which wanted to go all swoony at his voice, were reminded by my abused hip that he, too, had dropped me, and after promising me I wouldn’t fall. “You’re a fool to be racing him through here like that.”

  “When I want the opinion of a has-been farrier, I’ll ask for it.” Farrell’s mouth was tense, which was probably the reason his words came out like icy little bullets. He swung the demon horse’s head toward the cringing red-haired man. “Claude, you waste of oxygen, get the hell out of my way! Can’t you see you’re making Lancelot nervous?”

  “S-sorry. I thought you might need help. Oh, there’s a TV crew at the arena, and Simon thought you’d like to know—”

  “Television!” Farrell’s head snapped around as he looked toward the big buildings of the fairground. “Why didn’t you tell me that before? Here I sit wasting my time with this third-rate shield tagger—if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, the press always comes first!”

  “S-sorry,” Claude stammered again, hurrying out of the way as Farrell dug his heels into Lancelot’s side. The horse screamed, tossed his head, and lunged forward, barely missing Claude. I helped him up from where he had stumbled.

  “I was just trying to help,” Claude mumbled as I brushed the dirt and dried grass from his navy-blue tunic. “I thought he might need help because of the new horse.”

  “That was very thoughtful of you,” I said, picking from his shoulder a discarded candy wrapper. “Nice . . . er . . . outfit.”

  “It’s our uniform,” he said as he wiped his glasses on the hem of his tunic. “The Team Joust! uniform, that is. I’m a squire.”

  “Ah. A uniform,” I said, walking around him to eye the many-colored patches on each arm and the front. “I guess that would explain all the sponsorship labels on it, huh? I mean, most medieval garb didn’t have ads for iced tea companies, or equine supplements, or four-wheel-drive trucks.”

  “Team Joust! is the Californian team headed up by Farrell Kirkham, CEO and self-proclaimed world champion,” a dry English voice informed us. “While all of the other teams perform at fairs and other venues in order to fund their appearances at competitions such as this, Farrell and his group don’t have to sully themselves with anything so tawdry. Their corporate sponsors ask for nothing more strenuous than occasional appearances in commercial advertisements. If you wouldn’t mind taking your cat now, I do have work to do. Real work, not preening myself in front of television cameras.”

  I looked up at the dark-haired, yummy-voiced man on the huge black horse. “Jealous?”

  One glossy black eyebrow rose. “Of Farrell? No. I wouldn’t wish to be him for all the sponsorship money in the world. If you will excuse me . . .” I stepped back, grabbing Moth as Walker rode by.

  “Hey, I wanted to thank—Well, poop. He could have at least waited around for me to thank him.”

  “That’s Walker for you,” Claude said.

  I turned to give him the eye. “You know him?”

  “Walker McPhail? Sure, I do. Everyone on the jousting circuit knows Walker. He’s like one of the grand old men of the sport.”

  “He didn’t look that old to me,” I said, frowning. He looked to be my age, mid to late thirties, with dark hair, tiny little lines around his eyes, and one of those long English faces that are so fun to watch. He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous (except for his eyes), but he made a nice contrast to Farrell’s over-the-top handsome, young, blond good looks. “So he’s a jouster?”

  “Nope. Gotta run. Farrell will have kittens if I’m not there to squire him in front of the press. See ya ’round.”

  Before I could ask anything more about Walker, Claude took off at a fast jog.

  “Well, that was exciting,” I said to Claude’s disappearing figure. Moth meowed and bit my wrist. “Ouch! You monster. Fine, you want down? You can just walk on your own pudgy little legs.”

  I stuffed Moth back into the harness he’d slipped out of three times now, tightened the belly strap another notch, and snapped on the lightweight lead my aunt had given me with the promise that Moth loved to go on walks.

  I grabbed a bottle of cold water, rubbed my hip, and gave Moth’s leash a snap. “Come on, cat; we’re going to go find us some more knights in tights. I wonder where Walker went?”

  For those of you who’ve never been to a two-week-long international jousting competition held in conjunction with the world’s largest Renaissance Faire, the environment can be a little overwhelming until you learn to just take everything with a really large grain of salt.

  “Prithee, my fair lady, a good after the nooning hour to ye and your fine cat. Canst ye direct me to the nearest porta-privy?” A middle-aged, bearded man in a purple-and-green jester’s hat stopped me as we came to the end of the field holding the tents.

  “Sorry, I can’t; I’m new here. But I imagine there are bathrooms . . . um . . . privies over there, by . . . uh . . . yonder snack bar.”

  “Thank ye, gentle lady,” the jester man said, making a wobbly bow.

  “Been at the mead a little early, no doubt,” I said as he staggered off toward one of the fairground snack bars, now being run by a number of specialized food vendors. The fairgrounds themselves had been given over entirely to the Ren Faire and sporting competitions. Moth and I wandered down a row of wooden-sided, open-fronted shelters that were being used by vendors to hawk their wares. Since the Ren Faire itself wasn’t due to start until the following day, the vendors now were laying out cloths, setting up their items, and arranging very fanciful displays.

  We walked past tables of scented candles in a jar, wrought-iron jewelry, ceramic dragons, a chain-mail and steel-plate armorer, a place that sold the tall, medieval pointy princess hats complete with sparkly veils, and a dizzying array of shops featuring just about anything you could imagine: Wiccan magic, henna painting, temporary tattoos, real tattoos, a piercing booth, leather clothing, medieval clothing, Scottish clothing, swordmakers, glassblowers, and jewelry for your hands, head, ears, wrists, ankles, bodice, waist, and just about anywhere else you could hang something from. Boomerangs sat alongside Viking gear, which was next to a medieval candy maker selling pynade, sugared violets, ginger
bread, and cinnamon almonds. There were people who would take your picture in garb, people who would paint your face, back, and arms with intricate Celtic designs, people who would write you a sonnet and inscribe it on a piece of parchment, people who would rent you garb for the duration of the Faire, people who would sell you a bodhran (Celtic drum), guitar, or bagpipes, depending on your preference. There were jesters and jacks-of-all-trades, jugglers, fire-eaters, rogues and wenches, lads and lasses, knights and their ladies, louts, wastrels, tarts, alewives, noblemen and peasants, lords and squires, mercenaries, scoundrels, cads—all there with the intention of having fun, indulging in a little harmless playacting, and if the length of the line at the mead and ale tent was anything to go by, guzzling huge quantities of alcohol while doing so.

  “Ceej was right about one thing,” I told Moth as we stepped around a huge black Great Dane in a jester’s hat that was relieving itself against a shrub. “Everyone here seems to love animals. The poor saps. Moth, no! Leave it! You can’t possibly be hungry; you ate three times on the ride up here. Spit that out! Oh, all right, I’ll buy you your own Ye Olde Corn Dogge.”

  Victim to the cat’s demands, I stood in line at one of the more contemporary food booths and shared a corn dog with Moth before asking directions to the sports area.

  “What sports are you wanting?” asked a man with slicked-back hair, a stylish goatee, and a purple silk shirt covered by a black pirate vest. He was in the act of setting up a booth of metal breastplates, both women’s and men’s. The women’s had spikes for nipples, I couldn’t help noticing. “Jousting, running the rings, swordplay, quintain, archery, spear placements, distance throw, Saracen’s head, or the gauntlet?”