Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (4 page)

I turned to see what had stopped Mrs. Waterston in midtirade: a slender, twenty-something black man, wearing a turquoise velvet coat, a peach brocade waistcoat, tight black-velvet pants, and enough lace cascading at the throat and sleeves to decorate a bridal gown. From the ornate silver buckles on his shoes to the powdered wig on his head, he was a walking fashion plate from the late eighteenth century. He leaned with one hand on an elegant silver-trimmed black cane, inspecting a pair of my candlesticks through a quizzing glass, with a supercilious look on his face.

"Oh my," Mrs. Waterston murmured.

"Tad!" I shouted, and rushed over to hug the new arrival.

"Meg, dear," Tad said, with more than the usual hint of a British accent. "You look divine!"

"You don't have to sound so surprised," I said. "I do clean up well when I try. You're looking rather presentable yourself."

Tad replied with a graceful bow, and twirled so I could see his outfit from all sides.

"That color's great on you," I said. "And the wig's such a good touch."

A rather necessary touch. Mrs. Waterston would never approve of the dreadlocks hidden underneath.

"Mrs. Waterston," I said, turning to her. "May I present my friend Thaddeus Jackson?"

"How do you do," Tad said, with another bow.

"What a lovely costume," Mrs. Waterston said. "But are you sure it's quite… authentic?"

"Oh, completely," Tad said, and began pointing out some of the finer details of his clothes, while I struggled to keep a straight face. I didn't think Mrs. Waterston would dare come right out and say what she really meant – that however accurate Tad's outfit was for the period, you'd have a hard time finding many African American men in colonial times wearing that much silk, velvet, and lace.

I caught Tad's eye, pointed to Mrs. Waterston, and made a little shooing gesture. Without missing a beat, he offered her his arm and, still talking, gently eased her out of my booth and sent her on her way with another sweeping bow.

"I should have worn the other costume," he said, reentering the booth.

"Other costume?" Eileen asked.

"Tad was originally going to come as a runaway slave, in homespun rags and leg irons" I said. "I talked him out of it."

"Oh, you should have done it, Tad," Eileen said. "It would have done so much to raise people's consciousness about the oppression and injustice of the times."

"Don't start that again," I said. I had noticed that Tad wasn't his usual buoyant self. Was the subject upsetting him, or was it something else? "Tad, what's wrong?"

He shrugged.

"I brought you something," he said.

He glanced around, then reached inside his coat and took a small, square, paper envelope from an inside pocket. A CD, I realized; I could see the luminous silver disk through the round cellophane window in the front of the envelope.

"Better put this away before the Anachronism Police see it," he said.

"Right," I said. I stuck the CD in my purse – not my modern purse, of course, which I'd hidden behind the curtain at the back of the booth, with all the other anachronisms, but the white linen haversack slung over my shoulder. "What is it, anyway?"

"A patch for CraftWorks," Tad said. "Nothing major. Don't try to install it during the fair. Wait till you get home. It should work fine, but you want to do a full backup first. It's all in the readme file."

"What's CraftWorks?" Rob asked.

"The program I use to run my business, remember?" I said.

"Run your business?" Rob said. "I thought the whole point was that you made everything the old-fashioned way, with hammers and stuff."

"Not the ironworking, all the financial and organizing stuff," I said. "Keeping my books, ordering supplies, managing inventory, tracking stuff that's in shops on consignment, paying bills, sending bills, applying to shows, and keeping my schedule – everything."

Normally Tad would have beamed to hear me give what amounted to a glowing testimonial for CraftWorks. Today he didn't even smile.

"Tad, that reminds me – I had this idea for something to expand CraftWorks," I said. "Maybe you could put up a Web page where people could go to download updates and check out show schedules and – Tad? Earth to Tad?"

"Sorry, I was zoning out," he said, with a forced smile. "Look, maybe I should level with you about something."

"Okay," I said. But before he could continue, Michael showed up, along with three other pseudo-French soldiers from his unit.

"
Ma cheriel"
Michael exclaimed, and proceeded to introduce me to his comrades in a mixture of French and French-accented English.

Michael's fellow officers all kissed my hand, and said polite things in French. At least I assumed they were polite things. I'd taken French in school but somehow it never quite took, and I was notorious for having spent two weeks in Paris without once eating anything that even faintly resembled what I thought I'd ordered.

Michael, on the other hand, spoke French fluently, with an accent so perfect it caused native speakers to swoon with national pride and ecstasy. That was supposedly the reason he'd joined a French regiment, although before he decided the French had cooler uniforms, he'd been well on his way to developing an intense sympathy for the losing British side.

At any rate, he didn't seem to object to the polite Gallic nothings his friends were murmuring to my knuckles, so I assumed they weren't actually propositioning me. I replied
"enchante"
or
"merci"
to whatever they said and smiled a lot. I wished Tad would rescue me, but he smiled, waved, and disappeared into the crowd.

Well, with any luck the French forces would drift off sooner or later. They were glancing at the portion of our booth they could see – Eileen's side, actually – with polite uninterest.

"Ah, they are yours, these potteries?
Tres jolies"
one said, in the offhand tone of someone who actually thought pottery was
tres
boring but wanted to be polite to the
demoiselle
sharing a tent with his brother-in-arms.

"No, my friend Eileen does the potteries," I said. "I do the hardwares."

I stepped aside so the French could see my side of the booth.

"You're a blacksmith?" he exclaimed. His eyes widened, and he dropped both the blase air and his French accent. "Cool! Can you mend things?"

"Metal things, yeah," I said. "Do it all the time."

"like bayonets?"

"Sure," I said.

"You made this?" another of the soldiers asked, indicating my dagger.

"Yes," I said. "The blade, too; not just the hilt."

"Do you take commissions?"

And so, for the next half hour, the faux French soldiers milled about my booth, examining my ironwork – especially the dagger – and apparently finding it to their satisfaction, as they grew more and more enthusiastic about commissioning me to mend or make various bits of weaponry and equipment.

I confess, I was less than enthusiastic at first. Call me mercenary, and I won't argue with you; I work iron for a living, not a hobby. And while I wasn't exactly starving, I had long ago learned that I couldn't pay the rent if I gave attractive discounts to everyone who was related to me, lived in my neighborhood, had gone to kindergarten with me, or, in this case, happened to share a hobby with my boyfriend. So when they asked me what I'd charge to make things, I gave them accurate estimates, possibly a bit on the high side, since in some cases I'd have to do quite a bit of research on top of the actual blacksmithing.

I found myself warming to them when I realized they didn't even blink at the prices I'd quoted. In fact, they all took my cards (including a stack to distribute to the rest of the regiment), kissed my hand several times each, clapped Michael on the back, and marched off in obvious high spirits, singing
"Au
pres de ma blonde."

"You've made quite a hit with the guys," Michael said, beaming. "You'll have to come to all the .events after this."

"Events after this?" Michael had only joined the group so he could participate in the reenactment of the Battle of Yorktown and help make his mother's event a success. Or so he'd said. Was he really planning to keep on doing reenactment stuff? Since when had he and the guys become such buddies? Perhaps this was only a temporary burst of enthusiasm, sparked by how much he enjoyed running around in his French uniform. Maybe he'd lose interest again when he remembered that the National Park Service wouldn't let reenactors pretend to be wounded or killed, even without the stage blood he'd offered to bring.

"I think there's a skirmish next month," Michael said, taking a piece of parchment-colored paper out of an inside pocket. "Yes. Around Thanksgiving."

"I think both our families are expecting us for Thanksgiving," I said.

"Great; that's perfect – I'm sure your dad would love to come, too. He's been having a great time; all the guys love his booth. I'll go ask him, shall I?"

He ran off, clutching his parchment, without waiting for an answer.

"Oh, Lord," I muttered.