Nancy Atherton (14 page)

bloodshed.

When the dust settled, Sir Peregrine stood with his foot on Sir

Jacques’ breastplate and the tip of his sword at Sir Jacques’ neck.

The soldiers froze in place, awaiting the conqueror’s decision.

“Cry mercy,” bellowed Sir Peregrine, “or die.”

“Mercy!” Sir Jacques grunted.

88 Nancy Atherton

Fully half of the spectators groaned with disappointment when

Sir Peregrine released his vanquished foe and turned to bow to the

king, but their spirits revived when the Dragon Knight sprang to

his feet, clouted Sir Peregrine over the head with the hilt of his

sword, and snatched the silken kerchief from the ground to claim

the final victory.

“Cheat to win!” shouted the wenches, and everyone joined in,

with gales of good-natured laughter.

Sir Jacques and his soldiers left the arena in triumph, accompanied by mingled cheers and catcalls. The defeated Sir Peregrine

declared that he would return to fight another day and led his band

of warriors into the marquee. The squires pulled the tent flaps back

into place, the king and his entourage departed the royal gallery,

and the joust was over.

“Well,” said Lilian, “I must say that Calvin was quite correct

when he told us that we wouldn’t demand a refund. The joust alone

was worth every penny of my admission fee.”

“Where will you go next?” I asked.

“I’m going home,” she replied, “where I will continue to do my

utmost to convince Teddy to don his costume.”

“I admire your per sis tence,” I said. “I’ve given up on Bill.”

“Never say die,” Lilian advised. “Where there’s a will there’s a

way. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the gist. Are you staying?”

“For a little while.” I nodded at the marquee. “I want to look in

on the twins before I leave.”

“Naturally.” Lilian gathered up the litter left over from her

lunch and stood. “I hope to see you in church tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there,” I said. “I can’t promise that Bill and the boys will

come with me, but I’ll be there.”

“In that case, there will be at least two of us present to hear

Teddy’s sermon. After tasting the delights of King Wilfred’s Faire,

I’ll count it a small miracle if anyone joins us.” Lilian nodded pleasantly and joined the stream of satisfied joust fans pouring down

Pudding Lane.

Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

89

I deposited my own trash in a nearby bin, then strolled casually

down the hill and along the arena’s fence until I reached the royal

gallery. I loitered in its shadows until the picnic area was deserted

and the arena was empty, apart from a pair of teenaged girls, who

seemed to be paying more attention to the marquee than to me. I

watched them for a time, to make sure they weren’t glancing my

way, then climbed through the two-bar fence and walked to a spot

below the gallery’s front railing.

The sandbag lay on the ground where Lord Belvedere had flung

it, half buried in the dirt kicked up by the battling knights. I knew

I wouldn’t be able to reach the scrap of rope dangling from the

quintain, but my diminutive height wouldn’t prevent me from examining the remnant of rope still attached to the sandbag.

I squatted beside the sandbag and plucked the rope from the

dirt. Its tightly twisted strands of hemp were nearly as thick as my

wrist and they didn’t look old or worn. I wasn’t surprised. It stood

to reason that the quintain would be fitted with a new, heavy-gauge

rope before the fair opened. The contraption was supposed to be

strong enough to withstand a puissant warrior’s blows.

I slid the rope through my hands until I held the broken end

between my fingers. If it had frayed naturally, I would have expected to see hemp fibers protruding unevenly along the entire

edge. Instead, only part of the edge was uneven. The rest of it was

as straight as the edge of a paintbrush. It looked as if someone had

deliberately sliced halfway through the rope, hoping that it would

break completely when a skinny lance struck the wooden dummy.

“I
knew
it,” I whispered. “Sabotage.”

My hands trembled as the enormity of my discovery hit home. I

wasn’t conjuring a murder plot out of thin air. The plot was chillingly real.
Someone was trying to kill King Wilfred.

My first impulse was to run to the king and tell him that his life

was in danger, but the memory of Lilian Bunting’s lighthearted

chuckle stopped me cold. She’d made it clear that she found the notion of a coup d’état preposterous and I had little doubt that others

90 Nancy Atherton

would agree with her. The king himself had laughed off both attempts on his life, and his cronies appeared to be quite willing to ignore them. If I went to Calvin Malvern with a tale about a love

triangle, a handsaw, and a severed rope, he’d either dismiss me as delusional or hire me as a storyteller. Until I could support my claims

with solid proof, it would be useless to present them to anyone.

I gazed at the rope pensively. If I’d had a knife with me, I would

have cut off the severed end and preserved it as evidence. Unfortunately, my shoulder bag contained nothing sharper than a nail file. I

was contemplating the difficulties of laying my hands on Sir Peregrine’s sword when a voice intruded.

“My lady?”

I dropped the rope and looked up guiltily. A man was peering at

me from the far side of the fence. The sun was behind him, so I

couldn’t see his face properly, but his silhouette was nothing short of

breathtaking. A white shirt with billowing sleeves fell loosely from

his broad shoulders, and his dark tights clung seductively to a pair

of legs that could have won the Tour de France.

“Uh,” I said, straightening. “Hello.”

“Good morrow.” The man vaulted the fence and strode toward

me. “Dost thou not know me, my fair one?”

“No, I don’t know thee, and I’m not your fair—” I gasped as the

man drew close enough for me to make out his extremely familiar

features.
“Bill?”

“ ’Tis I, my sweet,” said Bill, with a flowery bow. “I thought you

might come to the marquee after the joust. I didn’t expect to find

you playing in the dirt.”

“Bill?”
I repeated, gaping at him.

When I’d last seen my husband, he’d been dressed in a polo

shirt, khaki shorts, a baseball cap, and sneakers, but his image had

undergone a radical transformation since then. Bill no longer

looked like a suburban dad. He looked like the hero of a saucy romance novel. He’d laced the deep V of his shirt with a leather

thong, buckled a wide leather belt around his hips, donned a pair of

Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

91

knee-high leather boots, and perched a floppy velvet cap at a rakish

angle on his head. The white ostrich feather curled around the cap

quivered delicately when he spoke.

“C’est moi, chérie,”
he said. “Why
are
you playing in the dirt?”

“I’m not . . . I’m just . . .” I stuttered to a halt, then began

again. “Never mind what I’m doing. What are
you
doing dressed

like
that
?”

“Do you like it?” He pointed a toe to show off a shapely leg.

“Do I
like
it?” I glared at him. “You lying
hound
. What happened

to ‘definitely and irrevocably no’? What happened to ‘it’s never going to happen’?”

“I changed my mind,” said Bill. “Calvin Malvern had some extra

costumes lying around and he suggested that I—”

“Oh, I
see
.” I folded my arms and regarded him haughtily. “
Cal-

vin Malvern’s
word carries more weight than your
wife’s
. If you didn’t

look so outrageously studly, I’d clobber you.”

“Do I look outrageously studly?” he inquired coyly.

“You know you do,” I retorted. “But if you think it’s going to

have the slightest effect on me, you’re very much—”

Bill silenced me by sweeping me into his arms and giving me a

kiss that made me forget what I was saying. When he put me on my

feet again, my knees were so wobbly I had to lean against him for

support.

“That’s cheating,” I complained, though not very strenuously.

“All’s fair at the fair,” he quipped.

I pushed myself away from him in order to take a good look at

his costume. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?”

“A cool medieval dude,” he replied, hooking his thumbs in his

belt. “Now, tell me, Lori. What are you doing in the arena?”

I couldn’t bring myself to spoil the moment by telling my husband that I was trying to pin the attempted murder of Good King

Wilfred on a lovelorn, poop-scooping handyman, so I told him that

I was looking for souvenirs.

“What kind of souvenirs?” Bill asked bemusedly. “Broken teeth?

92 Nancy Atherton

I imagine you might find a few if you sifted the dirt thoroughly, but

why would you want to? Come with me, my darling nutcase. I’ll

find better souvenirs for you.”

“I’d like a knife,” I said promptly.

Bill’s eyebrows rose. “A knife?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “All of the wenches wear knives on their belts.

My costume will be incomplete without one.”

“I think we can fi nd one for you easily enough,” said Bill. “Calvin has an entire armory at his disposal. Wait till you see it. . . .”

Bill went on talking as we walked toward the marquee, but I

wasn’t listening. I was envisioning myself back in the arena, retrieving the only piece of hard evidence I’d unearthed. My new

knife would have to be as sharp as a razor to slice through the thick

rope, I reasoned, and if I wanted to slice through it in private, I’d

have to invent an excuse to leave the marquee without Bill and the

twins accompanying me.

“I have to confess that I’m a little surprised at you, Lori.”

The sound of my name penetrated the dense thicket of my

thoughts, and I roused myself to respond.

“Why are you surprised?” I asked.

“You haven’t mentioned the quintain once,” he said.

I glanced up at him uncomfortably, wondering if he’d read my

mind, then said, much too rapidly, “The quintain? Why would I

mention the quintain? What’s so interesting about the quintain?”

We’d reached the entrance to the marquee, but Bill didn’t reach

out to open the tent flap. Instead he smiled down at me and put a

hand on my shoulder.

“I know what you were doing in the arena,” he said gently.

“You do?” I said, eyeing him uncertainly.

“The accident scared you,” said Bill, “so you decided to find out

why the rope broke.”

“Right,” I said. “Yes. That’s what I was doing.” In a way, I was

telling the truth.

“Calvin told me that it was a freak accident.” Bill gave my shoul-Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

93

der a reassuring squeeze. “Cal has seen hundreds of jousts and he’s

never seen a sandbag come loose like that before. The rope-maker

can’t understand how it happened. He makes the rope by hand, in

Bristol, and he inspects every inch of it before he sends it on. He

believes it was damaged during shipping. The replacement rope will

be carefully inspected on site before it’s attached to the quintain.

The chances of such a thing happening again are virtually nil.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m proud of you for keeping your cool,” Bill went on. “I expected you to tear across the arena to make sure that the boys were

all right.”

“Will and Rob were out of harm’s way,” I said. “And they were

with you. Why would I worry about them?”

“There was a time when you did nothing
but
worry about them,”

said Bill. “If I recall correctly, you thought a vampire was stalking

them last October.”

“There’s no need to bring up the vampire fiasco,” I muttered,

blushing.

“I’m simply trying to make a point, Lori,” said Bill. “And my point

is that you’ve come a long way since then. I’m proud of you.” He bent

to kiss me lightly on the forehead, then pulled the tent flap aside.

The stench that wafted from the marquee put an end to all rational thought. The miasma was so dense, so appallingly multilayered, and so remorselessly ripe that I fell back a step and retched.

“Ye gods!” I exclaimed, choking. “Has someone
died
in there?”

“What do you mean?” asked Bill.

“It
stinks
.” I cupped a hand over my abused nose. “It smells like a

year’s worth of dirty socks left to rot on a manure pile.”

“Oh,
that
.” Bill scratched his chin. “I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

“Your olfactory nerves have shut down in self-defense,” I stated

firmly, “and I can’t say that I blame them.”

“It’s a combination of sweat, horses, and leftovers from lunch,”

Bill explained. “Some of the men had oysters.”

“Haven’t they heard of air fresheners?” I asked. “Or deodorant?”

94 Nancy Atherton

“It wouldn’t help,” said Bill. “The guys who play the soldiers

wear padded shirts beneath their jerkins, and since they’re all avid

reenactors, they’ve been using those shirts for years. They perspire

heavily when they fight, the perspiration soaks into the padding, and

the aroma lingers.”

“Lingers?” I said, grimacing. “It’s strong enough to melt lead.