Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

by Nancy Atherton

  “Hullo, neighbor.” Jinks closed the door behind him, locked it, and tossed the key to the nearest ticket taker, who tucked it into her ample cleavage. Then he faced me, smiling broadly. “Have you been waiting for me? I’ve been hurling abuse at unsuspecting patrons, to help them pass the time while they’re queuing up. I love my job!”

  I smiled weakly and Jinks peered at me more closely.

  “You weren’t waiting for me,” he said flatly, reading my expression. “You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you? You’ve only just arrived.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I assured him. “I, uh, thought I’d go up to the top of the tower and, um, check out the view.”

  “Sorry,” he said, cocking his head toward the door. “Cast members only, for insurance reasons. Until the damage is repaired, we won’t be allowed up there, either.” He pursed his lips and regarded me quizzically. “Why on earth would you want to see a view of your own familiar countryside when you have Gatehouse Square to look at?”

  “Gatehouse Square?” I echoed, perplexed.

  “Lori,” Jinks said gently. “Turn around.”

  I turned away from the gatehouse and felt my jaw drop as tumbling waves of sound, color, and scent slammed into me. It was as if sensory dials in my brain had suddenly been turned to full blast. I nearly reeled from the impact.

  The gatehouse opened onto a large square bordered by roofed shop stalls made of rustic wood and hung with gaily colored banners that fluttered prettily in the breeze. A team of Morris dancers hopped and stomped in the center of the square while a frisky hobbyhorse patrolled its borders and a fiddler played a jaunty tune. A cluster of bright-eyed children gazed in wonder at a wizard who seemed to be making coins appear out of thin air, and chuckling adults steered a wide path around a juggler armed with water balloons. Costumed vendors shouted out descriptions of their wares, which ranged from ornate blown-glass ornaments to souvenir T-shirts, and clouds of incense wafted from burners placed at the curtained entrance to what appeared to be a fortune-teller’s booth.

  “Wow,” I said faintly.

  “You seem surprised,” said Jinks. “Did you somehow fail to notice that you’d entered Gatehouse Square?”

  “My mind was on other things,” I confessed. “The accident startled me.”

  Jinks’s green eyes narrowed shrewdly. “And in a rush of civicmindedness, you decided to inspect the rest of the gatehouse, to make sure it’s safe.”

  I confirmed his guess by blushing furiously and looking down at my sandaled feet.

  He smiled. “It’s perfectly safe, I promise you. Lord Belvedere wouldn’t have allowed us to open the doors if he’d thought the public was in danger. The bit that fell off was finished in a rush this morning, by someone who must not have known what he was doing. Once Edmond repairs it, it’ll be strong enough for Cal to dance on it.”

  “Who’s Edmond?” I asked.

  “Edmond Deland, the royal dogsbody,” Jinks replied, and when I continued to look blank, he explained, “The surly chap with the wheelbarrow. A minion if there ever was one.”

  “Oh, him.” I glanced at the gatehouse. “What’s his problem?”

  “Backstage intrigue,” Jinks said, waggling his eyebrows. “Fear not. All shall be revealed when you and I have time to talk. Perhaps I’ll pop over the stile tonight and fill you in.” He touched my arm. “I’m sorry you were frightened.”

  “I overreacted,” I said sheepishly. “I’m okay now.”

  “How could you be otherwise? You’re at King Wilfred’s Faire!” Jinks executed a low bow. “Pray excuse me, my lady. I must away to join my king. May the rest of your day be filled with boundless merriment!” He shook his cap at me and jogged off across the square, pausing to walk on his hands as he passed the bright-eyed children.

  I watched him go, then ducked my head and groaned. I couldn’t believe that I’d slipped back into my old habits so easily. Anyone with a particle of common sense would have blamed King Wilfred’s accident on shabby workmanship, but I’d taken my usual detour around rational thought and driven smack-dab into an absurd assassination plot. If Jinks hadn’t intercepted me, I would have spent half the morning crawling through plaster dust instead of savoring the sights and sounds of the fair. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself for letting my imagination run amok yet again.

  “It stops here,” I muttered determinedly, and pushed all thoughts of sabotage from my mind.

  For the next three hours I gave myself up to the fair’s enchantments, exploring the grassy lanes that ran outward from Gatehouse Square. When I saw a neighbor approaching, I gave a friendly wave, but quickly walked the other way. I wanted to be surrounded by unfamiliar faces, for a change, and overhear gossip I didn’t already know by heart.

  The lanes were lined with shop stalls, which gave the fair the air of a vibrant village. Some of the stalls were no bigger than closets, but others were split-level affairs as large as my living room. All of them had awnings or small roofs jutting over the lanes, presumably to shelter fairgoers from the inevitable summer showers. The vendors wore costumes made of cotton and linen rather than velvet and satin, and they spoke a semimedieval patois that was occasionally difficult to understand, but always entertaining.

  The lanes wound through the woods and crisscrossed one another unpredictably to form a delightful maze that guaranteed surprises around every bend. I would have willingly lost myself in the labyrinth, but the fair’s layout was more orderly than it seemed: All of the side alleys eventually took me back to Broad Street, a wide thoroughfare that formed the fair’s main boulevard, where larger and more elaborate stalls could be found.

  Strolling performers popped up everywhere I turned. I encountered the juggler and the lute player I’d seen outside the gatehouse as well as a pair of singing pickpockets, a troupe of belly dancers, a flock of winged fairies, miscellaneous beggars—who whined and groveled amusingly until coins were flung at them—and a stilt walker dressed as a tree, who’d clearly taken his inspiration from the ents, J. R. R. Tolkien’s imaginary shepherds of the forest.

  Other acts performed on small, open-air stages before audiences seated on long wooden benches. Penny Lane ended at the Farthing Stage, where Merlot the Magnificent performed dazzling feats of legerdemain five times a day. Harmony Lane led to the Minstrels’ Stage, which featured singers, musicians, and dancers, and Ludlow Lane led to the Shire Stage, where acrobats, jugglers, and comic acts held sway. The modest petting zoo was very near the Shire Stage, and the animals’ varied grunts, squawks, and aromas prompted predictably earthy but nonetheless amusing improvisations from the nimble-witted performers.

  The Great Hall turned out to be yet another stage, but the entertainers who performed there didn’t sing, dance, juggle, or tell jokes. Its gilded sign proclaimed that it was used exclusively by King Wilfred during royal ceremonies, such as weddings and the conferring of knighthoods. Its main feature was a red-carpeted dais upon which sat a magnificent gilded throne.

  Pudding Lane was populated by food vendors selling savory meat pies, sausage rolls, chips, fruit tarts, chocolates, honey cakes, and other goodies, as well as cider, ale, herbal teas, and the usual soft drinks. I sampled a honey cake, found it delicious, and immediately asked for the recipe, but the vendor informed me regretfully that it was the king’s privilege to hand out recipes, not hers.

  Pudding Lane petered out, appropriately, at a large picnic area on a gently sloping hillside overlooking the oval joust arena and the adjacent archery range. A simple two-bar fence encircled the arena, and a giant white marquee stood at its western end, opposite Pudding Lane. I could see the twins’ ponies grazing with other horses in the pasture beyond the marquee, but there was no sign of activity in the arena. I assumed that the knights were taking their ease in the big white tent while my sons and the rest of Em-ma’s junior gymkhana team polished armor, fluffed plumes, and cleaned tack.

  The archery range was bustling. A dozen William Tell wannabes stood on the firing line, d
rawing bowstrings and letting arrows fly at bull’s-eye targets mounted on hay bales. It looked like an enjoyable challenge, but I was too excited to stay in one place for more than a few minutes, so I strode back down Pudding Lane and continued to explore.

  At various stalls throughout the grounds, potters, spinners, weavers, wood carvers, metalsmiths, leatherworkers, and other artisans demonstrated their crafts. After watching a potter turn a glob of sticky clay into a graceful goblet, I decided that the fair would be a wonderful educational opportunity for Will and Rob. I had no doubt that my sons would be as fascinated as I was to watch raw materials transformed by hand into useful and beautiful objects.

  If I’d wanted to weigh myself down, I would have shopped till I dropped, but since I’d brought a shoulder bag instead of a day pack, I merely ambled from one stall to the next, making mental lists of the Christmas and birthday presents to be purchased when I was better prepared to carry them. The choices seemed endless: soaps, lotions, perfumes, pottery, jewelry, swords, staffs, leather tankards, hooded capes, woven throws.

  When I stumbled upon a stall filled with tiny costumes, I realized that I wasn’t alone in wanting to dress a cherished childhood companion in a crown and an ermine-trimmed robe. A short conversation with the vendor confirmed my guess that I was surrounded by people who would smile benignly upon my relationship with Reginald. It was a comforting thought, but I’d absorbed so many thoughts by then that I had to retreat to a quiet alleyway, to give my overloaded brain a chance to settle down.

  The alleyway didn’t remain quiet for long. As I stood smiling vaguely at a marvelous display of crystal balls, five young women spilled out of a stall filled with bronze dragons and took up a position a few yards away from me. They appeared to be in their early twenties, and each was dressed in what a vendor had described to me as the standard wench uniform—laced bodice, peasant blouse, and flowing skirts. They’d set themselves apart from the standard wenches, however, by wearing flowered circlets on their heads, with curled ribbons trailing down their backs.

  The smallest member of the group, a pretty young woman with hazel eyes and long brown hair, placed an empty basket on the ground before her, then straightened. She hummed a note, the others harmonized, and the group began to sing a madrigal. I listened, entranced, as their sweet, pure voices wove in and out of the intricate song, and when they finished, I was the first to step forward and drop a handful of coins into their basket.

  I wasn’t the only one to witness their performance. As I turned away from the basket, I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. Glancing toward it, I spied Edmond Deland lurking in a narrow gap between two stalls. I pretended not to notice him, but when I returned to my vantage point near the crystal balls, I shifted my position slightly so that I could keep an eye on him.

  The surly young handyman kept to the shadows, as if he didn’t wish to be seen, and gazed fixedly at the tiniest madrigal singer. When she led the group into the next madrigal with a solo introduction, his chest heaved and his expression softened, as if the sound of her voice had pierced his heart. It took no imagination whatsoever to see that he had feelings for her.

  The distant sound of trumpets pulled Edmond from his pleasant reverie and put the scowl back on his face. The girl, by contrast, lit up like a Christmas tree and peered eagerly toward Broad Street. The other madrigal singers exchanged knowing glances and, after retrieving their basket from the ground, began to move en masse toward the main boulevard, singing as they went. A knot of appreciative listeners followed them, but Edmond frowned angrily, spun on his heel, and disappeared behind the stalls.

  “What’s happening?” I asked the woman in the crystal-ball stall.

  “ ’Tis one of the clock,” she replied. “The king’s procession cometh forthwith.”

  “Where does it, um, cometh?” I asked awkwardly.

  She smiled. “If you make your way to Broad Street right quick, my lady, the procession will pass before your very eyes.”

  “Thanks.” I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t be allowed to return home if I missed Will and Rob riding in the king’s procession, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking one more question. “Do you know the name of the lead madrigal singer?”

  “Mirabel,” she replied. “Little Mirabel. She has the voice of an angel, does she not?”

  “She does,” I said, and hurried to catch up with the singers.

  They’d stopped at the edge of Broad Street, and I elbowed my way through the jostling crowd to stand beside them. The taller girls had formed a protective pocket behind Mirabel and regarded her with tolerant amusement as she craned her neck and stood on tip-toe to watch for the oncoming procession.

  I studied her with frank curiosity. She looked like a besotted groupie waiting for a rock star to appear. Was she anxious to see the king’s procession, I wondered, or was she longing for a glimpse of the king himself? Could it be that little Mirabel was, for reasons beyond my understanding, infatuated with her king?

  It was hard to picture Calvin Malvern as a Don Juan, but Jinks had told me that people’s personalities changed when they took on roles at a Ren fest. As King Wilfred, Calvin might very well enjoy a spot of dalliance with a humble but adoring young maiden. He might even attempt to exercise his droit du seigneur. As far as I could tell, King Wilfred had no queen, so there was nothing to keep him from making a royal pass at every pretty girl who crossed his path.

  Or was there?

  Though the sun was warm, a chill crept down my spine. Edmond’s furious scowl flashed before my mind’s eye, followed by the stark image of a handsaw protruding from a wheelbarrow.

  “Regicide,” I whispered.

  Eight

  The sun seemed to darken and the crowd seemed to recede into the background as I recalled how easily the parapet had given way and how close Calvin Malvern had come to losing his balance and, perhaps, his life. There was no denying that Edmond Deland had the tools and the skills needed to make such an accident happen. If Mirabel had spurned his love and bestowed hers on the king, he would also have had a motive.

  “Slow down,” I muttered under my breath. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lori. You don’t know anything yet.”

  An earsplitting blare of trumpets interrupted my uneasy meditations. I winced, glanced around, and saw the king’s heralds striding past me, blowing their usual fanfare and crying, “Make way! Make way for the king!”

  The few stragglers still crossing Broad Street scuttled to the sidelines to avoid being trampled by what turned out to be a formidable procession. The heralds were followed by a collection of entertainers who strutted, danced, banged tambourines, twirled ribbons on wands, and exchanged good-humored badinage with the onlookers lining the route. People cheered for their favorites as they passed by. Some showed their appreciation by tossing coins, which were expertly caught, though not always by those at whom they’d been aimed.

  A phalanx of bearded men dressed in studded leather jerkins came next. Each bore a longbow, a spear, a poleax, or a halberd. The weapons looked deadly enough to be used in battle, but the men who carried them were too soft in the belly and smiled too genially to be mistaken for hardened warriors.

  The soldiers were followed by a gap in which Jinks performed a breathtaking sequence of acrobatic maneuvers. As he sailed by, I remembered his offer to pop over the stile for a visit after he’d finished his day’s work. I hoped he would make good on his offer. I had a sudden, urgent need to know everything he could tell me about the fair’s backstage intrigue.

  After Jinks came the moment I’d been waiting for. King Wilfred and his court strode into view, led by the gray-haired Lord Belvedere, flanked by Sir Peregrine and Sir Jacques, and accompanied by a dozen noblewomen, all of whom wore lustrous gowns and splendid wimples. My heart ached with envy when I saw the wimples, but I thrust my feelings aside and concentrated solely on the king.

  As the merry monarch approached, he raised a plump hand to his lips and blew a kiss t
oward my section of the crowd. I heard Mirabel’s delighted squeal and turned just in time to see her blush adorably and sink into a picture-perfect curtsy. The other madrigal singers giggled and nudged one another approvingly, then the tallest one, who seemed more mature than the rest, spoke to Mirabel.

  “ ’Tis time for us to return to our labors,” she scolded good-naturedly. “Thou hast seen him and thou shalt see him again anon.”

  “And anon and anon,” another girl added mischievously.

  The girls then edged their way through the crowd, towing a reluctant Mirabel in their wake. I peered at them pensively until a pair of piping voices reminded me of my original reason for watching the king’s procession.

  “Mummy! MUMMY!”

  The sight of Will and Rob astride their gray ponies chased all thoughts of sabotage from my mind. Alison and Billy McLaughlin, their gymkhana teammates, rode in the procession as well, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of my sons. As Sally Pyne had promised, they looked like little princes in their gorgeous velvet tunics, and Thunder and Storm looked equally noble, draped in white and gold caparisons supplied by Calvin Malvern. When the boys finished waving giddily at me, they resumed the dignified demeanor they’d been taught to display at horse shows.

  The four children rode their ponies at a sedate pace at the rear of the procession. They were followed by an older rider, also in costume but riding sidesaddle. She wore a beautiful pair of suede gloves, an elegant leaf-green gown, and a tall wimple adorned with the daintiest wisp of silk. I was so busy checking out her garb that I didn’t realize who she was until she passed directly in front of me.

  “Emma?” I said, my voice squeaking with disbelief. “Emma?”

  Emma Harris, my levelheaded, unromantic, unimaginative best friend, turned her wimpled head to grin at me, then raised a gloved hand and favored me with a regal wave as she followed my sons down Broad Street on her mare, Pegasus. I was so shocked to see her decked out in damsel gear that I nearly missed the procession’s denouement.