Hard Day's Knight

by Katie MacAlister

  “And please confine wubbies to those lads who indicate they’d like to be the recipient of one,” Fairuza added, which caused the Giggle Twins to snicker. “I won’t remind you all of the incident last year when the visiting English archbishop was wubbied by a Wench, but suffice it to say that wubbies are to be given only to those individuals who first give their consent.”

  “What’s a wubby?” I asked my lipstick friend, remembering Walker saying something about one the first time I had met him.

  “It’s when you pull your mark’s face to your cleavage and rub it around.”

  I looked at the two fleshy mounds of boob that swelled over the top of my Black Watch plaid bodice (CJ felt I shouldn’t alienate the Scots by ignoring them in my garb-wear), my entire body tingling at the thought of Walker rubbing his stubbly cheeks between my breasts. Then, of course, I imagined what it would be like for him to rub his cheeks everywhere else, and lost as I was in those thoughts, it took me a minute to realize that the Wenches were singing a lusty song.

  “Sing!” CJ hissed an order to me during the chorus, shoving a small photocopied list of lyrics into my hands, and I joined in the song about the bald redheaded man and his love for dark places.

  A crowd started to gather as a troupe of Rogues marched up, singing their own song about a wench with an unquenchable thirst, the men dividing to form a guard on either side of the Wenches. Fairuza made a pretty medieval-speak announcement that the Wenches were about to Promenade, and quicker than you could say, “God’s teeth, the Wenches have plentiful breasticles,” we were off.

  The Wenches who were experienced at Promenading carried those of us who hadn’t a clue (which turned out to be only a short, shy little brunette and me). The crowds seemed to like us, though, laughing and applauding both the Rogues who accompanied us (pretending to keep back the thundering herds of men who were accused of wanting to dally with us), and the Wenches themselves as the ladies sang relatively PG-rated songs, pausing to pick out men they passed for marking and wubbying.

  “You’re not participating,” CJ whispered furiously to me as we made our way down the now-packed vendors’ row, heading for the beer garden. The jousting was over for the day, but the evening’s entertainment—various singers and a Scottish bagpipe band—was about to begin. “Stop embarrassing me and get into character! Mark someone!”

  “I am not going up to a strange man and kissing him,” I whispered back. “I’m not that kind of a Harlot.”

  She pinched my arm. “You’d better become one, and fast. Everyone is looking at you because you aren’t joining in! They’ll think you’re making fun of us if you don’t play along.”

  I spied a familiar big shape lurking in a nearby leather maker’s tent. “Fine, you want me to mark a guy, I’ll mark a guy.” I raised my voice and shouted over the din, “Hey, there, Wenches, in yon leather guy’s tent lurketh a very big rogue. Methinks I’ll sashay thither and marketh him. How say you?”

  CJ rolled her eyes and said in an almost inaudible tone, “You are rotten at Faire speak!”

  “Verily, ’tis the truth, yonder rogue is ripe for marking. Have at him!” the Wenches responded.

  I handed CJ the leash, snickering to myself that she was too disgusted with my attempt to join in to realize who it was who stood in the tent.

  “Rogue, prepare ye to be boarded by the good ship Kissylips,” I called loudly as I tapped Butcher on his shoulder. He turned around, a long leather belt in his hands. I grabbed his head and pulled it down enough so I could plant a few lipstick kisses on his cheeks, grinning when CJ squawked loudly behind me.

  “Thank you, I think.” Butcher grinned back at me.

  “Nothing like a little jealousy to spice things up,” I told him, then did my Wench walk (exaggerated hip action and heaving bosom) back to where the ladies were gathered, curtsying to the crowd when they applauded.

  “Of all the . . . I have never . . . You have some nerve. . . . Just because you aren’t getting along with your man doesn’t mean you can have mine!” CJ threw Moth’s leash at me and stormed over to where Butcher stood covered in lipstick kisses, grabbing his ear and hauling his head down so she could scrub the marks off his face.

  Fairuza, deciding to overlook this obvious breach in Promenade policy, herded us onward. It wasn’t until we reached the beer garden that it struck me that almost everyone at the Faire had lined up to watch the Wenches Promenade . . . everyone but Walker.

  We continued on our way, pausing when the Wenches spied Farrell posing for a newspaper camera. Three Wenches swarmed him, kissing every available stretch of skin. He shot me a triumphant glance over the head of the nearest Wench.

  I thought about ignoring him, but decided that since there was a chance Walker would be facing Farrell in the list, it would behoove me to make nice in an attempt to tone down Farrell’s manic sense of competition and determination to pound Walker into the ground. It wasn’t that I believed he could actually do it under normal circumstances, but Walker was a bit delicate, emotionally speaking. Although he’d jousted well enough with the Aussie—both of them scoring points, neither unhorsing the other—I had the sense that his heart wasn’t in it. He’d been too hesitant, too cautious.

  “You look positively edible.” Farrell leered when I separated from the Wenches while they snacked on his teammates.

  “I’d return the compliment, but I’m sure you know that you’re the handsomest man here,” I answered, reeling Moth in when he started gnawing on the fringe of Farrell’s boots. “So how’s tricks?”

  “Tricks, my lady fair, are very fine, very fine indeed, which, alas, I fear you cannot say.” He made a show of eyeing my face, tsking at the faint smudge of a bruise under my left eye. “That facer you executed earlier today did your beauteous face no good. I warned you about the knave Walker’s training methods, did I not?”

  My intentions to be nothing but polite to him flew away on a breeze of irritation. “You did, but it wasn’t Walker who was training me. And besides, you know I take everything you say with a huge grain of salt, what with the inferiority complex you have around Walker.”

  “Inferiority complex!” he sputtered, and I bit back the urge to tell him exactly what I thought. I’d done that already, and it would do no good to express that opinion again. “I do not have an inferiority complex, not about Walker or anything else. It may have escaped your attention, but I am the reigning U.S. champion here, not the man you so generously allowed to plow your belly.”

  “Jealous?” I asked, amused rather than offended by his crudeness. I’d never before had a man jealous over my relationship with another, and I found I rather enjoyed it. So long as Farrell didn’t do anything to harm Walker, that was . . .

  “Only of the attention you pay that gor-bellied, clay-brained gudgeon,” he said smoothly.

  “Oooh, you do Elizabethan insults, too! That was a favorite game around the office before we got laid off. How about this: Thou art a spleeny-tongued, pottledeep hedge-pig.”

  A sudden flash of humor lit the fair blue of Farrell’s eyes. He put both hands on his hips and said in a loud voice, “And I say you, lady, are a dissembling, spur-galled canker-blossom!”

  Heads of the people nearest swiveled to look at us. I considered the gauntlet Farrell had thrown down, and decided that this was a challenge I could win.

  “Oh!” I said loudly, tucking Moth under my arm so I could circle Farrell, giving him an appropriately scathing look. “Says you! Your words are but the purest drivel upon mine ears. I find you nothing but a claver-headed, fat-gilled moldwarp!”

  More people turned to face us.

  “Scold!” Farrell sneered, his eyes lit with unholy glee.

  “Malt worm!” I answered promptly.

  “Oooh, it’s an insult-off!” someone in the crowd cried, and immediately Farrell and I found ourselves in the center of a circle of bodies.

  I faced him with a smile lurking around the corners of my mouth.

  “Lady, you a
re nothing but a quaky, onion-eyed dewberry.”

  The crowd oohed appreciably. “That’s one for Sir Farrell,” David, Fairuza’s Rogue, said.

  I smiled prettily at Farrell and waggled my eyebrows. “Alas that you’ll never taste the dew on my berries, you unmuzzled, pox-warted, boiled-brained pustule on the buttock of a skainsmate!”

  “Ho! The maid strikes hard with that one.” David laughed. “Three points to Lady Pepper. How answer you, good Sir Farrell?”

  “This is all I have to say,” Farrell said, preening himself as the crowd groaned in anticipation. I cocked a brow at him, thoroughly enjoying myself. Back in my days of gainful employment, I was the office queen of Elizabethan insults. No one could top me, but I had a suspicion that Farrell’s piece de resistance was going to be difficult to beat. He bowed to me, one hand on his chest as he said, “My lady, thine eyes are as a layer of whey-scum on curdled milk, thy skin is as pox-mangled as the most loutish of privy-scrapers, and thy hair, oh, lady, thy hair is as shard-borne as a rump-fed harpy lying spitted on a scurvy-tongued horn-beast.”

  The crowd gasped. I pursed my lips and considered my store of Elizabethan words.

  “Lady, the good and brave knight hath issued his challenge most heinous, worth an extraordinary five points. Do you have an answer for him, or will you cry quarter?” David asked.

  Everyone turned to look at me. I smiled, set Moth on the ground, and looked at Farrell. His eyes twinkled at me, and I was aware of an odd a sense of companionship with him. How could a man who was willing to trade insults with me be such a complete boob about other things? I gave Farrell a little curtsy, then clutched my hands together and said, “Good sir knight, my heart fails me in the face of such glib-tongued barbs as you have let fall.”

  The assembled audience groaned at my apparent surrender. “Don’t let him win, Pepper!” CJ cried. “A Wench never gives up, and God knows you can talk a person’s ear off, so get to it!”

  “However,” I said before my cousin got any more digs in, “I find myself driven to say that in all the years that I’ve been graced to walk upon this earth, I have never seen such a fobbing, guts-griping, mewling, pribbling, puking, excrescent-brained, spittle-scuttled, earth-vexing codpiece of a bladder-headed ball-less puxion! You are toad-spotted! You are urchin-smirched! You are a beslubbering, foul-tainted, dung-worm-scented pile of offal spewn from the rump of a flap-dragon, and I will suffer your countenance, swaggish and bum-bailied as it is, no more! Begone, Sir Ratsbane, and never darken my horizon again!”

  The ladies around me, Wenches and otherwise, cheered. The men groaned, and I bowed to all four quarters, accepting the accolades. David pronounced me the winner, and commanded me to set a boon upon Farrell.

  I considered Farrell as the Faire people fell silent, most of them aware of the history between Walker and Farrell, not to mention the fact that I had spent the last two nights personally polishing Walker’s sword. “The only thing I ask of Sir Farrell is that he abide by the code of chivalry at all times.”

  Farrell’s smile slipped a notch.

  “Lady,” David said, looking nervously at him. “It is an insult to suggest a noble knight would do otherwise.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, my eyes holding Farrell’s suddenly wary gaze. The spirit of fun generated by our mock battle melted away, leaving me once again extremely aware that Farrell was very jealous of Walker. “But it can do no harm to remind him that where chivalry is concerned, a man’s honor is everything.”

  He said nothing, but made me another one of his flashy bows.

  “Wenches, ho!” CJ yelled, hustling me back into the Wench group. We continued down the line of vendors in what was now a veritable parade of Faire folk and visitors, so that by the time we sang the closing song (a ditty about a Wench and the sheepherder who stole her chemise), half the Faire was crowding into the area set aside as one of the three ale gardens.

  Released from my Wenchly duties, I picked Moth up and wended my way through the jolly crowd, still engaged in singing Wenchish songs and toasting the bosoms of every woman present with large tankards of ale. Everyone was there—jousters, archers, swordsmen and -women, visitors and performers, children, elderly people, and hundreds in between. All of the Three Dog Knights were present except their erstwhile leader, but no one seemed to know just exactly where he was.

  “Haven’t seen him for a few hours,” Butcher yelled over the nearest boisterous singers.

  “Doesn’t that worry you?” I asked, also in a yell, since it was impossible to hear otherwise.

  He shook his head. “Not with Walker. He’s prone to disappearing for hours. Moody bugger, he is.”

  “Lovely,” I said too quietly for him to hear, then yelled my thanks and pushed my way through the human sardines to the less crowded fairway just as a Scottish band was firing up their bagpipes. I hoisted Moth up so I could see into his beady yellow eyes. “I don’t suppose if I waved a bit of Walker’s clothing in front of your nose you’d be able to pick up his scent?”

  His ears flattened.

  “I didn’t think so,” I said on a sigh, and wandered back to my tent, wondering all the way there where Walker could be.

  I fed Moth, let him use his facilities, and donned the dark forest-green tights and matching tunic I’d bought earlier using the last tiny bit of credit left on my now maxed-out card. “It’s worth it if Bliss’ll be off my case for wearing jeans,” I told the cat when he sauntered over to examine the soft ankle boots I had managed to get for half price. “I don’t suppose you’d like to stay here and sleep off that dinner while I go hunt for the dishy Mr. McPhail?”

  Moth shot me a disgusted look and marched over to the door of the tent, his tail twitching irritably while I struggled into the gambeson and mail hauberk. I forgot to wrap my head first, which had me yelling out all sorts of creative Elizabethan oaths as my braid snagged repeatedly on the mail before it settled down onto my shoulders.

  “Right, here’s the game plan—we’ll take a quick look around to see if we can find where Mr. Pouty Pants is hiding, and if not, we’ll saddle up Cassie and have a little extra practice at that evil shock quintain. I’ll be damned if I let Walker see me falling on my face again. A girl has to have some dignity.”

  Moth sneezed on my boot before turning to sharpen his claws on the nylon tent door. I gave in to the inevitable and took him with me as I headed for the Three Dog Knights’ tents. There was no one there, although that was difficult to see at first, since Walker’s tent was crammed full of jousting equipment—striped lances without their balsa tips, a big trunk containing two swords in scabbards and a black painted suit of armor (probably Butcher’s spare that Walker was using) that Moth played on until I pulled him away, a beat-up high-backed saddle straddling a chair, suitcases, boxes of foodstuffs, and a large plastic case of medical supplies that included several elastic bandages, sports tape, and various ointments intended for the relief of chafing. Glancing around the tent turned up several interesting facts: Walker had a hitherto unsuspected addiction to salt-and-vinegar potato chips; he was very tidy, his clothes being folded nicely and not wadded up in his suitcase like mine were; and Butcher’s spare chain-mail hauberk was nowhere to be found.

  “What do you deduce from this very interesting fact, Watson?” I asked Moth as I emerged from Walker’s tent with a couple of lances and a handful of unpainted balsa tips shoved into my belt.

  “I thought its name was Moth?”

  I jumped and stifled the scream that wanted to burst from my throat at the unexpected voice. “Geez, Louise, Veronica, do you think you could warn me the next time you’re going to sneak up on me? You almost gave me a heart attack!”

  Veronica was dressed in a lacy white poet’s blouse, crimson tights, a sword strapped to a belt slung low over her hips, thigh-high boots, and a big black pirate’s hat complete with fwoofy white feathers. The feathers bobbed in the late afternoon breeze as she tipped her head to the side while she considered first me in all my maile
d glory, then the lances. “It would defeat the purpose of sneaking up on you if I warned you first.”

  “Yeah, I guess, although I’d prefer it if you didn’t—Moth! Spit that out, it’s not your sock!—didn’t sneak up on me at all. Are you looking for Walker, too?”

  “Walker? No.”

  “Ah.” Crap. That meant she was looking for me. And there I was, obviously going off to have a little jousting practice. Oh, joy. “Look, I appreciate your belief in me, but I’m really not interested in being your alternate—”

  She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Pepper. I’m not going to badger you about joining our team.”

  “You’re not? Oh! That’s good. I mean, it’s not that I’m not horribly flattered and all, but—”

  “I know, you’re not interested in anything I have to offer, not even if it means fame and glory.” Her head tipped a little to the side again. “Tell me—would you be quite so uninterested if it was Walker we were discussing, not you?”

  Apparent stupidity had its charms, one of which was to get you out of answering tricky questions. “Walker? What do you mean? He’s already on a team.”

  “Yes, but will he win?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her of course he would, but closed it up again. Walker had jousted moderately well today, but not with what Bliss called any of his usual brilliance. Even to my inexperienced eyes he had looked uncomfortable and stiff in the saddle. It was entirely possible that if he continued as he started, he’d finish way out of the money, ruining the rest of the team’s chances.

  Veronica nodded, patting my shoulder as she turned to leave. “I thought not. You have the look of a woman who would do anything for her man, no matter what the cost. Will we see you later at the Swashbucklers Ball?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. It depends . . .”

  She paused, giving me an odd look before she said, “Keep me in mind if you find yourself in trouble and need a friend. Unlike others, I am not afraid to do what needs to be done.”