A Midsummer's Day

by Montford, Heather

  That he told her he loved her.

  God, if he remembered only one thing, let him remember that.

  She turned down the Dregs and towards the Pits.

  And stopped running.

  He was covered in dark, fresh mud from head to toe, save for a freshly wiped face and almost clean hands. Mud dripped from his hair. From the torn and ragged hems of his worn, patched breeches that were so old and stained that the original color of the cloth was long forgotten.

  Never had someone looked more heavenly. Never had someone looked more like an angel. Never had someone looked more gorgeous than he did now. He smiled at her.

  She ran again. She needed to feel his skin again. She needed to feel his strong arms around her. She needed to feel his lips on hers so bad that the lack of them was unbearable. Painful.

  She ran until she was wrapped in his arms.

  “You’re going to ruin your dress with all this mud,” he whispered into her hair.

  Sammie laughed. It was the most beautiful “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she’d ever heard. “Screw the dress,” she said, nestling her head into his neck. The feel of the mud was warm on her cheek. “Was it real? Did any of it really happen?”

  “We did something at the start of all this so we’d be able to tell. Remember?” He took a step back so they could see each other.

  Sammie smiled until her face threatened to crack. Her thumb ran over her empty middle finger. “My claddaugh ring,” she whispered.

  He held out his hand.

  The silver had dulled in the mud. The crowned heart and hands were limed in drying mud. The emerald still shone as bright as a green star.

  She ran her finger over the ring. It was everything she thought. Everything she’d hoped for. And now, seeing the proof right in front of her…

  “It’s true then,” she said quietly. “Everything that happened, really happened?” She looked into Vaughn’s eyes. She begged him with her mind to answer the way she needed him to answer.

  He cupped her face in his hands. “Everything that happened really happened, Sam.”

  “I love you, Vaughn.”

  “I love you.”

  Chapter 26

  He saw nothing. He heard nothing.

  How many crimes, how many fights, scripted or otherwise, did he miss? An assassin could have come at Queen Elizabeth, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  He wouldn’t have cared.

  Red headed bitch.

  Somehow he’d left the space behind the Tavern Aragon. Somehow he’d made his way to the Crossroads. But he didn’t know how. He didn’t remember walking.

  All he knew was that Sammie’s engagement ring was clamped in his fist. As far as he knew, she’d never taken the thing off. Not since the day he’d put it on her finger. He used to think that she’d keep it on long after he died. That she would only take it off when some distant, imagined grandson would ask her for it, so that he could propose to the love of his own life.

  Sammie was the love of his life. Until the end of the trial and dunke, he thought that he was hers, too. Didn’t they sneak off together at the end of every trial and dunke? Hadn’t he seduced her so well in the break room stairwell half an hour ago that everyone outside the building must have heard her?

  What happened? What changed? What made Sammie decide she didn’t want to be with him anymore? What made her decide to give him back her ring?

  She’d blamed him. She said… that he’d left her no choice.

  What did he do? There was no way Sammie knew about Tacyn. There was no way that Vaughn had the time to find her… To tell her what he’d seen…

  No… It wasn’t Tacyn. It couldn’t have been. Besides, the gypsy was nothing more than a fling.

  So… What did he do?

  “My Lord High Sheriff! My Lord Kent!” Balmer called to him.

  Johnny wandered past the Tudor Stage. A large group of tourists and actors had gathered to watch the public executions. Balmer ran the show, but it should have been him. His Jameson Kent should have been on the stage, promising to release the innocent, which he never did, and subjecting the guilty to strange and unusual punishments.

  He walked from the stage without a word. The last thing he wanted to do was to pretend to be humorously evil while doling out fun punishments at will.

  Balmer would make some excuse to the crowds. He would continue the show alone. He would find a way to be more demented than his master. And he would be believable.

  Johnny wandered down the Hill Street. The Dregs were ahead. Maybe Vaughn would have some insight into Sammie’s mindset.

  At the very least, he could convince Vaughn to not tell Sammie about him and the gypsy.

  <>

  Never… Never in his wildest dreams… In his wildest nightmares…

  He should have never seen what he was seeing. It should never happen. It should have never even been remotely possible.

  He never thought in his wildest dreams that he’d see his Sammie wrapped in the arms of someone who had once been his friend.

  He never thought that he’d see Sammie look at another man with more love than she’d ever shown to him.

  Red flooded his vision. His blood boiled like magma waiting to erupt. He clenched his hands into fists. His nails pressed deep grooves into his skin. He’d never felt so much anger.

  This thing between Sammie and Vaughn… It hadn’t happened immediately. Something like that… It took time. Weeks. Months.

  Maybe even longer.

  This wasn’t a fling, like his thing with Tacyn. Johnny never saw Tacyn outside the festival. He didn’t have her phone number. Her email. Johnny wasn’t even sure if Tacyn was her real name. He had no love for her.

  But Sammie and Vaughn… They’d grown up together. They’d known each other their entire lives. There had always been some level of love between the two. Johnny had always seen it.

  Somehow… that made everything worse.

  The diamond in his fist threatened to cut straight through his skin. He set his jaw and marched straight towards them.

  “What in the hell, Sammie?” He didn’t care how loud he was. Let tourists hear him. He didn’t care anymore. “What in the fucking hell? Is this the reason you’re throwing our future away?” He waved wildly towards Vaughn. Smug muddy asshole to steal his girl from him… What he wouldn’t give to bash the both of them in the head?

  “Calm down, Johnny. You want the whole festival to hear you?”

  The cold bitch… Didn’t even have enough common sense to sound at least a little guilty. Hadn’t he just caught her with another man? And yet she reprimanded him like he was a naughty little child. Apparently she forgot what a cheating whore she was.

  She was too good at playing Anne. Being a haughty bitch had seeped into her deeper than it should have. What he wouldn’t give for the sweet little Sammie he thought she was to return?

  “Calm down? You want me to calm down? I catch you kissing him, and you want me to calm down?” He took a step towards her. Let her shrink away from him this time. At least she’d have a good reason to now.

  Vaughn stepped between them and put a hand on Johnny’s chest. “You’re not getting near her. And before you judge us, why don’t you think about that little gypsy of yours?”

  Johnny pushed Vaughn away from him. Vile scum didn’t have any right to touch him with his dirty, cheating hands. “That was a fling! It meant nothing!”

  “Well forgive my heart for breaking when I found out, then,” Sammie said.

  Johnny’s fists flinched. He wanted to pull them back. He wanted to pull back and hit her straight in the face. But, no… He couldn’t do that to her. Not even now. He took a shaking breath. “It doesn’t matter. You’re both under arrest. You’re both going in the pond.”

  The proud little bitch actually had the nerve to roll her eyes at him. “You just can’t arrest us out of spite. There’s already three people scheduled to get dunked at the next show.”

  Johnny bent fo
rward until their noses almost touched. “Just… try… me.”

  <>

  Johnny had gone completely bonkers. That’s all there was to it.

  It wasn’t because she left him. That she was sure about. It could have been because he’d discovered her and Vaughn together. It could have been because Vaughn brought the asshole’s affair to light. Something had sparked his wrath.

  Johnny had disappeared completely into the persona of Jameson Kent. He shared the same level of psychotic anger that the Lord High Sheriff had exhibited so easily.

  Just as Sammie thought that part of Johnny must have still existed in the Lord High Sheriff, she knew now that every bit of the Lord High Sheriff lived inside of Johnny. She just hadn’t seen it until now.

  Sammie and Vaughn were silent as they followed their Sheriff through the festival. He wouldn’t do anything to them in the presence of the tourists. Of the actors who, in this reality, would stop him from doing such a thing. He wouldn’t cause them any harm.

  Still, it would be better to let people think that they had been arrested. It would be better to let him lead them away to await trial.

  Always keep up the act.

  She should have realized where he led them as soon as they left the Pits. Every twist and turn would lead them to the Village Green and the break building beyond. And, of course, his path would have to include Hill Street.

  The bloody thing felt twice as steep as it’d felt the last few times she had to climb the path. The heat attacked her for the first time since before she’d left the pond. Her lungs grew tight. Her breath grew short. Her asthma escaped from its cage.

  And they’d yet to reach the halfway point in the path.

  But Johnny didn’t slow down. He, who had once been so careful to not lead her up the path too quickly, marched up it like a maniac. Had all the emotion been sucked from him so quickly?

  Oh well. She wasn’t going to match his pace. He’d dictated too many things for too long. This time, she’d dictate her own pace. Or, at least, she’d let her asthma dictate it instead.

  They found him pacing back and forth in front of the hidden door. His knuckles were so white it was a surprise there was no blood dripping through his fingers. He threw them both inside as soon as they neared him. And then he came in, slamming the door behind him. “Upstairs.”

  She ignored him and leaned against a wall. An arm’s length away was the place where they had made love. She ignored the place and focused on slowing down her breathing.

  “Now,” he almost screamed in her ear.

  “Will you give her a minute to catch her breath? Jesus.” Vaughn walked over to her. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head. Her festival length run, and the massive kiss that followed, were catching up to her. That, and her long trek up Hill Street.

  So she took a break while letting her asthma roam free. She stretched out her neck, putting a hand on the warm skin.

  The leather cord was back. She pulled on it, and the pouch attached to it emerged from the space in between her breasts. She hadn’t felt it, coming out of the pond. She hadn’t felt it return.

  Her fingers shook as she tried to open it. Vaughn opened it for her.

  She didn’t smell cinnamon. Vaughn pulled a familiar plastic bag from it. Inside was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in four hundred and twenty six years.

  Her blue and gray inhaler. She shook it, thanking all the Gods she could think of that it was still full, and that her time in the pond hadn’t damaged it. Then she took two puffs of the magic medicine inside.

  “Good. Great. Can we go upstairs now?” Johnny stomped his way upstairs like a spurned teenager. The door slamming shut shook the building.

  “What do you think, Sam?” Vaughn asked as he looked up the stairs. “Do we go back outside and let the psycho stew in his own juices?”

  It was a wonderful idea. She would love to leave Johnny behind forever. Let him stew. Let him take comfort in the arms of his gypsy. But she shook her head. “I’m tired of running.” She took a testing breath and found it shaking. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Vaughn took her hand and gave it a squeeze. They both looked up the stairs.

  It was time to confront the monster they thought they’d left behind in 1586.

  <>

  It would be any second now. Any second they would walk through that door, and he wouldn’t let them leave. Not until they explained themselves.

  Unless they were too chicken to come up stairs and face him. He had no real power. There was nothing to keep them from walking out the door and back into the festival. But it wouldn’t matter. He would find them, and they would both go into the water.

  From what they were doing in the Pits, they needed to cool down anyways.

  One of the prongs around the diamond that he’d spent two month’s salary on was longer than the others. It cut into the skin of his palm. But he didn’t ease up on it. Better to take out his anger on the ring than to take out on her. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of him ending up in jail because she was a whore.

  A warm drop of blood bubbled in his palm. The prong had finally done its work.

  They finally walked into the room together. Holding hands. Was it too much to ask that they looked guilty? That they didn’t look at him with expressions that said “Screw you?”

  Was it too much to ask that they sit in separate chairs, and that she didn’t sit on his lap in the same chair that Johnny had sat in with her that morning? Were they purposefully trying to make him madder?

  He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. “So, who wants to go first?”

  “You’re fucking unbelievable,” Sammie said. Her asthma seemed to make another miraculous recovery. “You have an affair, and you’re judging me for one kiss?” Disgust contorted her face. “At least I left you first.”

  Bull shit. There was no way that was their first kiss. It was total and utter bull shit. Disgust rose to the top of Johnny’s throat. “I told you,” he said slowly. It took every bit of his concentration to keep his calm. “That was just a fling. I don’t love her.”

  “So that makes it okay?” Vaughn asked.

  “And just how long has this fling been going on?” Sammie asked.

  He didn’t expect things to go like this. “You’re not making this about me.”

  “Right, because what I did was so much worse.” She was getting bitchier by the second. “You want me to answer you? You answer me first.”

  Fine. Whatever. They were over, so he might as well tell her everything. “The last four summers. But only during the festival.”

  “Four years… That’s longer than you’ve known me, you ass,” Sammie said.

  Johnny chose to ignore that. He wasn’t the one who was in the wrong. “I answered your question. You want to see the outside of this room again? You better damn well answer mine.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you what you want to know. But you won’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  It was amazing tale, full of intrigue and bull shit. There was time travel. Hiding and running and disguises. Spending a non-existing night behind the mud pit stage. There were death sentences and arrest warrants. There was a corrupt Lord High Sheriff and a murderous Queen Elizabeth. Sammie showed him again the scars on her wrist, which had appeared when Johnny shackled her to a wall in a dungeon beneath the drynke stand in the Dregs.

  And then, he’d beaten the living tar out of her.

  Wasn’t it amazing, then, that she didn’t have a single bruise on her?

  “Well, don’t I sound like a monumental ass?” he asked at the end of the tall tale, which ended with him finding the two of them in the Pits.

  “Because you’re not acting like one at all,” Vaughn said.

  “You shut your mouth.” Johnny stood. “It would have been a lot easier if you’d just told me that you were having an affair.” He walked to the door.

  “And when were you planning on
telling me about yours?” Sammie asked.

  He forced himself not to turn back around. “One of my constables will get you when it’s time for the dunke. I’m sure you won’t mind the time to yourselves.”

  <>

  The door slammed. The windows shook, and empty water bottles fell to the floor with plastic, hollow echoes.

  “He’s unbelievable,” Sammie said. “Completely unbelievable. His affair was okay, but our kiss is so wrong?”

  “He doesn’t think he has to take any responsibility because he doesn’t love her,” Vaughn said.

  She sighed. “At least I found out what he’s really like before we got married.” She shuddered at the thought of marrying him now. How horrible would it have been to marry that man? How horrible would it have been to go through divorce proceedings once she found out who he really was?

  “He was right about one thing, though,” Vaughn said.

  Sammie smiled. She threw her legs over his and straddled him. “That we’d enjoy some time to ourselves?”

  “Damn straight.” Vaughn put his lips on hers.

  If only Johnny knew how right he was. How mad would he be then?

  Chapter 27

  For the second time in as many hours, Sammie and Vaughn huddled close together in the holding cell on the dunking stage.

  But, this time, the angry population of Nottingham was replaced with happy, excited tourists. This time, it was Johnny, not Jameson Kent, who was giving the usual speech.

  Johnny was adamant in laying out the crimes of the lowly mud beggar Puck and the once noble and honorable Lady Anne Halloway. There crimes were connected, so he introduced their crimes at the same time. He built them up so much that Sammie and Vaughn, or their characters, Sammie forced herself to remember, seemed like spawns of the devil himself. Every actor around the pond booed the couple. The tourists joined in, and Johnny went on to explain the audience’s role as judge, jury, and executioner.

  “Are you scared?” Vaughn wrapped his arms around Sammie’s waist and rested his head on her shoulder.

  “A little.” She stared at the dunking chair as it sat on the stage. The wood hadn’t even completely dried from the last dunke.