Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

by Nancy Atherton

  Information was flying so thick and fast that an inexperienced gossipmonger would have needed a tape recorder to remember it all. Distracted as I was by thoughts of Calvin’s threatened demise, I had to focus hard in order to keep up.

  “I was pleasantly surprised to see so many of you in church yesterday,” said the vicar. “Attendance was down at the morning service, but the early service and evensong were, as they say, sold out. I hope the trend will continue throughout the summer.”

  “Our jugglers will be there next Sunday,” Christine Peacock piped up. “They told me they like costume drama.”

  “How very . . . ecumenical of them,” the vicar faltered.

  “I wouldn’t count on seeing our magician,” said Dick.

  “I do envy you your magician,” said Lilian, turning shining eyes on the publican. “Merlot the Magnificent pulled scarves from my ears on Saturday. I have no idea how the trick was done, but it was such fun. Is it true that he’s going to give an impromptu performance on the green this afternoon?”

  “If he’s awake by then,” Christine muttered.

  She gave the reclining jugglers a wary, sidelong glance, and our group closed ranks. The well-practiced maneuver came into play whenever a speaker needed to lower his or her voice in order to impart sensitive news.

  “They don’t call him Merlot for nothing,” Christine informed us quietly. “He knows how to make wine disappear.”

  An appreciative “Ooh” went through the group.

  “I found twelve empty bottles in his room when I cleaned it yesterday afternoon,” said Christine. “Twelve empty bottles! He’d only been there for two nights!”

  “Poor man,” Lilian said sadly. “He did seem a bit fragile on Sunday. He winced whenever the town crier announced the time.”

  “It’s a miracle he didn’t fall off the stage,” said Christine, folding her arms. “And those jugglers—the noises coming from their room all night long . . .” She clucked her tongue.

  The closed ranks suddenly closed further. I could almost see my neighbors’ ears prick up.

  “What sort of . . . noises?” Sally asked carefully.

  “Thuds, bumps, bangs . . .” Christine shook her head. “It sounds as though they spend half the night chucking things round their room.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” the vicar pointed out.

  “It also makes for broken lamps,” Dick retorted, “as well as a good deal of annoying racket. They can take their dratted practice outside from now on.”

  Christine turned to Charles and Grant. “How are things working out with your mime? You must not even know he’s there.”

  Our newest neighbors exchanged dismayed glances.

  “That’s the problem,” said Grant in a slightly desperate undertone. “We never know where he is. I nearly tripped over him in the parlor last night. He was miming a dying swan. I think. It may have been a cat coughing up a hair ball.”

  “He mimes everything,” Charles went on. “It took me twenty minutes to figure out that he wanted Bovril for his toast. How in God’s name was I supposed to decipher his artistic visual interpretation of beef extract? I finally had to make him write it down.”

  “I dread to think of what he’ll do when he needs more loo paper,” said Grant, shuddering.

  Snorts of laughter escaped most of us, but they were quickly suppressed. Grant and Charles appeared to be genuinely distressed, and no one wanted to hurt their feelings.

  “It sounds as though I’ve struck lucky this time,” Sally said complacently. “Magus Silveroak is a charming houseguest.”

  The rest of us turned as one to gaze at the underdressed wizard. I wasn’t sure about the others, but my mind was reeling with wild surmises.

  “He has lovely manners,” Sally continued. “And he keeps his room ever so tidy. I haven’t had to pick up so much as a sock.”

  I longed to ask her if he owned a sock, but I kept my mouth shut. Something told me that Sally would react badly to any jokes made about her wizard.

  “Well,” said Mr. Barlow, breaking the very thoughtful silence that had descended on everyone but Sally. “Must run. The Pyms’ garden won’t water itself.”

  “Mr. Barlow,” Emma said. “As long as you’re going out that way, would you mind giving me a lift home?” She turned to me. “You don’t mind if I leave you to your shopping, do you? I’d like to get back to the stables.”

  “It’s fine with me,” I said.

  “And with me,” said Mr. Barlow.

  Mr. Wetherhead and the Buntings moved to the bench to watch the jugglers, who had recommenced flinging fruit at each other. Sally Pyne bustled off to open the tearoom, Charles and Grant returned to Crabtree Cottage with Goya and Matisse, and Grog led the Peacocks back to the pub.

  Mr. Barlow called Buster to his side and squatted down to scratch the terrier’s ears.

  “Between the three of us,” he said, looking up at me and Emma, “I know how the Peacocks could solve their magician’s drinking problem.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Leave a bottle of Dick’s homemade wine in his room,” Mr. Barlow replied. “One sip will make him a teetotaler for life.”

  He gave a bark of laughter as he straightened, which was echoed by a bark from Buster, then he and his dog escorted Emma to his car. After they’d gone, I headed for Wysteria Lodge to have a word with Bill.

  I found him sitting at his paper-strewn desk, peering intently at one of his three computer screens. Behind its quaint and charming facade, Wysteria Lodge was brimming with cutting-edge technology.

  “Did you hear—” I began.

  “About the food poisoning?” he interrupted. “I just got off the phone with Horace. The private investigator is looking into it.”

  “Good,” I said, and turned to leave.

  “Lori?” Bill said. “Remember our deal?”

  “I’m going to the Emporium to buy milk,” I told him indignantly. “I’m not going anywhere near Bishop’s Wood or Fivefold Farm or the fairground or the encampment.”

  “Just checking,” Bill said serenely, and returned his attention to his computer.

  I left the office weighing the pros and cons of having a husband who could read my mind.

  Twenty-one

  I spent the next two days doggedly following my normal routine. I cooked, cleaned, did laundry, ran errands, visited friends, gossiped with neighbors, put in a few hours of volunteer work in Oxford, and remained preternaturally alert for the tiniest morsel of news concerning Calvin Malvern.

  By all accounts, he’d made a speedy recovery from the so-called food poisoning incident and nothing untoward or unexpected had happened to him since. I was happy to hear that Calvin had made it through two whole days without becoming deathly ill or having a near-fatal accident, but I would have been happier to hear that an arrest had been made.

  On Wednesday evening, after Will and Rob were in bed, Bill announced that he and I had been invited to witness a special dress rehearsal in the joust arena. The knights and the foot soldiers, Bill informed me, had been working hard to perfect a new act. They wanted to perform it before a small audience before presenting it to the public at large. The rehearsal would take place at two o’clock the following afternoon, he said, and we were not required to wear costumes.

  Since the twins hadn’t been invited to the event, we elected not to tell them about it, but we wouldn’t have taken them with us in any case. With a potential killer on the loose, the fairground wasn’t a safe place for our sons. Bill wanted to attend the rehearsal because he thought it would be good fun. I wanted to attend it because I thought he was lying through his teeth.

  I believed that a rehearsal would take place, and that we’d been invited to see it, but I didn’t for one moment believe the reason Bill gave for wanting to attend it. My husband was a confirmed workaholic.

  He left for work early, came home late, and spent more than half the year flying hither and yon, catering to the special needs of his c
lients. I had to twist his arm to get him to leave the office on a weekday, and he usually spent quite a few weekend hours there as well. He simply didn’t have it in him to play hooky. Therefore, when he told me that he wanted to attend a Thursday afternoon event because it would be “good fun,” I knew that something fishy was going on.

  I was certain that Bill regarded the rehearsal as an opportunity to prove himself to me. I was convinced that my heroic fool of a husband was going to hurl himself into the joust arena on Thursday afternoon and attempt to flatten Sir Jacques de Poitiers. I was so sure of it that I put an extra ice pack in the freezer and programmed Miranda’s number into my cell phone. I wouldn’t try to stop him, I promised myself solemnly, but I would be there to catch him when he fell.

  A ticket wench was on hand to let us in when Bill and I arrived at the gatehouse the following day. The fairground seemed to be deserted as we made our way through Gatehouse Square and across Broad Street, but when we reached the end of Pudding Lane, a cacophony of human sounds—singing, shouting, laughing, and non-stop talking—smote our ears.

  A large number of people had gathered in and around the arena, and they all appeared to be Rennies. A quick scan confirmed that Bill and I were the only members of the audience wearing modern clothing instead of much-used and finely detailed period costumes. I felt strangely self-conscious in my twenty-first-century summer garb, but the Rennies didn’t seem to be bothered by it. They were too involved with each other to notice the mundanes in their midst.

  Foot soldiers and pretty wenches chatted flirtatiously over the arena’s two-bar fence, vendors congregated around the picnic tables, and performers sang, danced, and played guitars, drums, tambourines, and fiddles on the hillside where Lilian Bunting and I had eaten our honey cakes.

  Neither the knights nor their squires were present in the arena, but the king’s court had filled the seats in the royal gallery. Courtiers, noblewomen, and silk-clad damsels lounged comfortably beneath the striped canopy, and King Wilfred stood beside his high-backed throne, talking animatedly with round, balding Sir James le Victorieux, the gallant field marshal who’d led his troops into battle against the trash that had blanketed Finch.

  “Where’s Lord Belvedere?” I asked, frowning. “Has Sir James taken his place?”

  “Possibly,” said Bill. “Perhaps a shared attack of food poisoning created a special bond between Calvin and Sir James. Come on. Let’s find a good place to watch the rehearsal.”

  I wanted to sit as far away from the arena as possible—in our back garden, for example, or in my father-in-law’s living room in Boston—but Bill insisted that we stand at the fence, between the royal gallery and the marquee. It was the spot I would have chosen had I intended to vault over the fence and challenge the Dragon Knight to a duel.

  My sense of foreboding became one of certain doom when King Wilfred descended the steps of the royal gallery, entered the arena, and called for Sir Peregrine and Sir Jacques to join him. I gripped the fence’s top rail tightly and braced myself for carnage when the knights emerged from the marquee, but Bill didn’t move a muscle. He seemed to be more interested in King Wilfred than Randy Jack, but he didn’t fool me. I knew he was just biding his time.

  “This must be the new twist in the show,” he said. “King Wilfred is interacting with the knights at ground level.”

  King Wilfred held a laurel wreath, which he apparently planned to present to the victorious knight at the end of the revamped show. He practiced several different poses with the knights and asked them to comment on his stance and his placement in the arena. Sir Peregrine gave his opinions freely, but Sir Jacques’ attention wandered. He looked like a juvenile delinquent in a candy shop as his coal-black eyes slid from wench to noblewoman to damsel.

  I ducked my head quickly when his gaze moved toward me, but when I raised it again, he was staring at me with a faintly puzzled expression on his face. I must have seemed vaguely familiar to him, but since he’d never seen me in mundane garb, he couldn’t quite remember where we’d met. His curiosity finally got the better of him and he began to walk toward me. Bill stiffened suddenly, his nostrils flared, and his jaw muscles tightened ominously, but before Sir Jacques had taken more than five steps in our direction, angry shouts rang out from the marquee.

  Sir Jacques stopped midstride and swung around to stare at the tent flaps. The king and Sir Peregrine fell silent. The royal retinue sat bolt upright, the soldiers and wenches stopped flirting, and the music and dancing on the hillside came to an abrupt halt. Every pair of eyes in and around the arena was focused on the marquee’s front entrance.

  “Stop treating me like a child!” Mirabel bellowed.

  “Stop behaving like one!” Edmond thundered.

  The madrigal singer and the handyman came storming out of the marquee, bickering ferociously and at the tops of their lungs. They charged directly to the center of the arena, then stopped to continue their shouting match face-to-face. They seemed wholly unaware of anyone but each other.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Mirabel hollered.

  “Someone has to,” Edmond roared.

  The foot soldiers and the wenches withdrew discreetly to the picnic area, and Sir Peregrine and King Wilfred retreated with them. As performers, they knew when to surrender center stage.

  “We were engaged for a year,” Edmond shouted, “and you changed your mind in less than a week. We were supposed to have a romantic summer working the fair together, but you threw it all away the minute he looked at you. Don’t you understand? You’re not yourself. You’ve let him scramble your brains!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my brain,” Mirabel said fiercely.

  “If you think he’s ever going to take you seriously, your brain has stopped working,” Edmond retorted. “Haven’t you heard about him? Don’t you know what people call him behind his back? Randy Jack! That’s what they call him!”

  My brain twitched. Randy Jack? I thought blankly. What happened to King Wilfred?

  “You should talk!” Mirabel hurled back. “You act as though you’re Sir Edmond the Pure, but I’ve heard all about your woman.”

  “My . . . my what?” Edmond faltered, looking mystified.

  “Your woman,” Mirabel raged. “Alex and Leslie and Jim and Diane saw her sneaking away from your tent! Did you think you could keep your new girlfriend secret by making her crawl under the back wall?”

  I blinked, gasped, clapped a hand over my mouth, and stared, thunderstruck, at Mirabel.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Edmond said staunchly.

  Sir Jacques strolled casually toward the couple. “No use denying it, Eddie. I ran into your bit of fluff when she was on her way to meet you. She’s a tasty morsel. I should know.” He licked his lips. “I had a taste.”

  Mirabel looked at him sharply, but said nothing.

  “You’re lying,” growled Edmond. “I’ve never even looked at another woman.”

  “Keep your eyes closed, do you? I prefer to keep mine open.” Sir Jacques gave Mirabel a slimy, sidelong glance. “I like to see what I’m getting.”

  Edmond uttered an inarticulate roar and launched himself at Sir Jacques. It was a mistake. Edmond was a strapping young man, but he wasn’t a trained fighter. Sir Jacques parried his blows easily, then knocked him flat with one mighty punch and kicked him viciously in the ribs. Mirabel stood frozen, her eyes like saucers, but King Wilfred strode forward.

  “I say,” he cried. “That’s enough. Leave him alone, Jack.”

  “Keep out of it, Calvin,” snarled Sir Jacques. “Eddie’s had it coming for some time.”

  “You heard the king.” Bill vaulted over the fence and strode toward the Dragon Knight. “Back off.”

  Sir Jacques favored him with a measuring look, then snorted derisively. “Stay on your side of the fence, old man, and you won’t get hurt.”

  He flexed his muscles and reared back for a second kick, but Bill was on him before his foot left th
e ground. I’m not sure what happened next because I closed my eyes and cringed, but when I opened them again, Randy Jack was sprawled on the ground. Blood was pouring from his nose, his lip was split, his right eye was beginning to swell, and he was sucking air as though the wind had been knocked out of him. My husband stood over him, looking slightly flushed and a bit rumpled, but otherwise fine.

  “It’s not sporting to kick a man when he’s down,” Bill said loftily, straightening his polo shirt.

  Edmond pushed himself to his knees, holding his ribs and wincing, but Mirabel flung herself to the ground beside Sir Jacques, looking horrified by the sight of so much blood. King Wilfred walked to Bill’s side and gazed sadly at the tableau. Bill dusted his palms together and turned to face me.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The ground quaked, a sound like an oncoming freight train filled the air, and a cloud of dust exploded in the field next to the marquee as a stampeding herd of cattle barreled straight toward the arena. Wizards, magicians, musicians, and wenches shrieked and ran for their lives. Bill grabbed King Wilfred by the collar and flung him toward the royal gallery. Sir James and a brawny courtier heaved the king onto the platform. Sir Jacques shoved Mirabel out of his way, scrambled to his feet, and bolted. Bill turned toward Mirabel, but as the panicked herd burst through the fence, Edmond scooped the girl from the ground and ran with her to the base of the gallery. The damsels pulled her to safety and Bill gave Edmond a boost before climbing up behind him. Bill dashed to the side of the gallery, thrust his hand over the railing, and hauled me into his arms.

  Five soldiers held their ground and fanned out across the arena, shouting and waving their axes. The challenge seemed to confuse the herd. The cows’ forward momentum slowed, and suddenly, miraculously, they were milling around the arena, breathing heavily and bawling in protest, but perceptibly calming down. The soldiers circled them, talking softly, as if to reassure them, and the herd gradually came to an exhausted, shuddering standstill. The poor creatures looked as though they wanted nothing more than to munch on a bale of hay in the milking barn.