Speaking of horses, there are four tethered to posts at the edge of the arena where a crowd is gathering, “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” over them. They’re all the big, heavy horses that were once used in jousting, long ago, and they’re wearing brightly colored saddles and raiment so that it’s easy for you to pick a color side and cheer for them. There’s red, green, yellow and blue.
And, standing next to the blue-covered horse…
I blink, stop, transfixed to the spot.
It’s Virago.
She’s wearing her knight’s armor, the same armor she wore when we first met, the curved and curling breastplate over her leather pants and shirt, the metal twinkling in the bright sunshine. Her hair is swept up high in her signature ponytail, and the silver wolf’s tail drapes easily over one shoulder. She’s not wearing her fur capelet—it’s lashed behind the saddle—but she’s definitely wearing the hell out of her boots.
Virago stands at complete ease, talking in low tones with one of the knights (a guy, because almost always all of the knights at Renaissance Festivals are guys), while she buckles her sword in its worn scabbard and sheath over her shoulder.
I’m struck speechless for a long moment, but then somehow I find my voice. “Virago?” I whisper, and then I’m taking a few steps forward. “Virago?” I say louder.
Virago turns in my direction, but before I can see her face, Carly’s grabbing my arm and practically dragging me over to where the crowds have gathered to watch the jousting. “Not yet, not yet!” she mutters to me, but I’m twisting around, trying to see Virago. She’s disappeared, though, seeming swallowed by the crowd.
“Carly, what—” I begin, but I’m drowned out by the din of the loudspeaker.
“Lords and ladies, welcome to the morning joust!” says a man loudly, his voice crackling over the bad sound system. “We have a very special treat for you today, so if you weren’t planning on watching the joust until the afternoon, I implore you to change your mind and come on over to the arena! This is going to be a big one!”
I glance at Carly, but she makes a little shrug and smiles at me, then turns her attentions onto the arena. I follow suit, brows up.
Virago, in her armor, talking to a knight…my heart’s starting to beat quickly in me. What the hell is going on? What the hell is about to happen?
I have an inkling…
On the side of the arena, Virago mounts the massive black horse bearing the blue colors easily, one foot in the stirrup, and then rising into the air like she vaults up and onto an enormous horse all the time (which, I realize, she probably does). The horse has arching blue pennants on its reins, and blue flags draping down on either side of him, beneath his saddle, a bright white star standing prominently on his forehead, and three white socks. Virago masterfully sits on top of him, urging him forward and directing him to stand in the center of the arena with no visible cues that I can see. Beside her, the knight she was speaking with has mounted the red-color horse, a big bay who’s snorting and tossing his head unhappily, chomping on his bit and shaking his head over and over, the pennants from his reins flapping back and forth. The male knight is dressed in the more typical medieval armor, and is holding his helmet in his arm as he looks out over the crowd with a scowl.
Virago is looking out over the crowd, too, but when she sees me, her eyes stop raking the assembled audience.
The smile that stretches across her face is brighter than the sun, her eyes flashing so brightly that I’m speechless.
“Here ye, here ye!” says the announcer over the sound system. “Silence! For the lady speaks!”
The crowd immediately falls silence, a complete sort of silence that makes the jangling of the horse’s bridles sounds very loud in the quiet. The audience stands and waits. My guess is they’ve probably never seen a woman in the jousting arena before, too. It’s probably rarer than seeing a bald eagle.
“Good people,” Virago calls out clearly, her voice echoing with power through the assembled crowd as she raises a hand to us, her other gripping the reins of her mount. “I have come here this day in a quest of honor, and of love.” She tilts her chin and her unwavering, piercing gaze to me, as the world falls away from beneath my feet. “My heart belongs to a woman who is as fair as the sky on the first morning of spring,” she says clearly, though her voice becomes a little choked with emotion. “This woman is as good as all the saints and as beautiful as a thousand dreams. Though I have but known her for only a short while, I have found my heart and my being utterly enchanted by her. She has bewitched me. I am but her humble servant, and I have come here, this day, to profess that I do love her. And I would do an act of service so that she may, hopefully, give me the courtesy to woo her.”
Virago’s impassioned speech has silenced the crowd utterly. You can hear a pin drop.
She’s staring at me as she says every word with such total conviction and open passion, her blue gaze pinning me to the spot.
I stand there, my heart pounding in me.
I can’t believe this.
But it’s real.
This incredible woman, this woman I’ve wished for with my entire soul, is astride a massive horse in the middle of a make-shift jousting arena, making a speech in front of all of these people…
Declaring that she loves me.
And she wants to show me how much.
She wants to joust for me. Or, really, in a much more feminist fashion, because she’s jousting for the courtesy of wooing me.
Oh, my God.
“I challenge you, then, sir!” says Virago with a wry grin as she urges her horse forward, her mount trotting in a very pretty circle around the male knight astride on his bay gelding. “I challenge you to a joust to prove my devotion to my lady!”
“And I accept!” says the knight, playing along and placing his helmet smoothly on his head. “It won’t be much of a challenge, though!” he shouts, brandishing his fist in the air. “After all, what place does a lady have in the jousting arena?”
This earns him a very vivid “boo” from the crowd. All of the knights always trash-talk each other (usually in ye olde speech), but Virago seems to have managed to get the entire crowd on her side—no small feat in the jousting arena. When Virago raises her fist in the air, everyone applauds and cheers her. When Mr. Knight Guy raises his fist in the air…he’s greeted by silence.
I don’t know what to think in this moment. It kind of feels like I’m in the middle of a really wonderful dream, and that I might wake up. But as Carly wraps her arms around me and gives me a big hug with a laugh, as I realize that Carly helped Virago out to get me here, that Virago must have gone to great measures to get the Knights of Valor Festival people to let some random woman ride their jousting horses and actually joust…when I consider all the trouble she must have gone to in order to orchestrate this…
I cover my heart with my hand as I watch her wheel the horse around gracefully as she begins to warm him up. She’s rolling her shoulders, and when one of the squires hands her up the jousting pike, I know this is real.
She is, literally, jousting for my hand.
“Now,” says the announcer over the loudspeaker. “Knights, prepare for the joust!”
Virago wheels her gelding around in a nice, controlled trot, and vaults off his back when she reaches our side of the arena. She strides up to me, and in one smooth motion, she’s bowing low in front of me, a hand behind her back, and her other arm sweeping in front of her.
“M’lady Holly,” she says in a soft stage whisper that carries across the hushed and listening crowd. “Would you give me your blessing to joust for your hand?” Her eyes are twinkling and bright, and she holds out her hand to me as I stand there, heart pounding, mouth open, trying to believe that this moment is real.
“Yes,” I whisper, and she smiles so brightly, it eclipses the sun. She rises and straightens, the wolf tail and her ink-black hair pooling over her shoulder as she smiles down at me. I want to reach up, wrap my arms around her n
eck, kiss her so desperately…but she nods to me, holds out her hand again. “M’lady Holly, may I have some token of yours, to carry with me into battle?” she says strongly for the crowd.
Carly presses something into my hand, and I’m staring down at it, perplexed.
It’s a lace handkerchief. Oh, that’s right. Ladies used to have their knights carry a token into battle to give them strength (supposedly), but really to remind them of what they were fighting for.
I reach out with my handkerchief, hold it out to Virago.
Virago takes it gently, bending her head low again as she brushes her full lips over the back of my hand with a flourish.
A shiver goes through me as the crowd “ooh’s” and “aah’s” again, and then Virago mounts her gelding in an easy leap, tying the handkerchief with one hand around her right upper arm.
“For you,” she says softly, nodding to me, and then she wheels her gelding around, and the male knight on the opposite end of the arena wheels his mount around, too. I hadn’t realized it, but he was getting a handkerchief from a woman on the other side of the arena—probably his girlfriend? She waves at him as he ties his handkerchief around his arm, too.
“Honor be with you!” announces the loudspeaker.
And then the two knights are urging their hoses forward. The mounts move from a trot to an all-out run as they hurdle toward each other, pikes aimed down. Virago’s not wearing a helmet, only leaning forward over her horse’s muscular neck as she narrows her eyes in concentration, aiming her pike at the male knight’s shield. The knights in Renaissance Festival jousts always aim at shields, because to aim at the opposite knight would be unthinkable—this isn’t to-the-death fighting. As soon as I think of that, I’m staring at Virago, my heart in my throat…because Virago isn’t carrying a shield…
But it doesn’t matter. Because Virago hits the knight squarely in the shield, and—spectacularly—he somersaults off his horse onto the ground with a metallic clang and a very loud “oof.”
The crowd goes wild. They’re jumping and cheering as Virago brings her horse down to a walk and dismounts from him smoothly, standing tall on the ground and raising her arms to the crowd. She begins to stride toward the knight who gets up onto his knees, then onto one, staggering into a standing position.
“Stand and face me!” he bellows. A squire boy is running up to him from behind with a sword in a scabbard. The knight takes the scabbard roughly from the boy’s hands and unsheathes the sword, swinging it through the air in an impressive arc.
Virago stops, her eyes flashing as she unsheathes her own sword from the scabbard on her back.
They face each other, these two knights, poised and ready for combat, their handkerchiefs tied onto their arms fluttering in the small wind that moves through the arena.
There is absolute dead silence as the woman and the man face each other, swords poised.
Everyone’s eyes are glued onto the two knights, but all I can watch is Virago. She moves so dancer-like, yet with such power as she circles this knight slowly, placing each boot surely on the ground, her sword arched easily over her head, as if she’s ready to strike.
And she is.
She moves lightning-fast as she darts forward, clanging her sword against the knight’s. The knight swings around and down toward Virago, but she sidesteps the swipe and brings her sword up again.
The male knight’s sword goes flying from the blow and thuds dully onto the grass.
Again, the crowd erupts as Virago steps forward and takes the handkerchief from the knight’s arm. She holds it aloft as the deafening cheers rise around us.
Virago strides, then, across the rest of the arena toward me, her chin high, her eyes glittering and bright blue as she reaches me. With a flourish, she sinks down on one knee, holding out the handkerchief from the knight to me.
“M’lady,” she says, boldly and clearly, “I have won. May I please have the distinct honor to woo you?”
My heart is in severe danger of bursting out of my chest, something I never thought the word “woo” would inspire in me. I take up Virago’s hand, and then I’m pulling her into a standing position, throwing my arms around her neck.
And then, finally (finally!), I’m kissing her.
I have to stand up a little on my toes to do it, but my body conforms and presses against hers now like we fit together. And even though she has a metal breast plate, even though it’s cold and I can feel it through my dress, I press myself against her. My mouth finds hers like we each possess a gravity that calls to the other. Her lips are full and soft, like velvet, as my mouth meets hers, as I inhale and breathe in all that is Virago. The scent of sandalwood is all around me, of a musky spiciness, and leather, as she wraps her arms around my waist, as I wrap my arms tightly around her neck, like I’ll never, ever let go. And maybe I won’t.
Her kiss is magic. It’s more than I could have imagined (and did imagine), as she drinks me in deeply, her tongue against my tongue, her warmth consuming me. Her hands are tight at the small of my back, but then she’s lifting me up, and she’s spinning me around and I laugh against her as I stop kissing her for just one small moment. But then I’m back on earth again, and I’m holding tighter to her, because I’ll never let go this time.
All of those moments where I thought she was flirting with me, all of those moments where I wanted to tell her, and so desperately, how I felt about her…and all this time, she’s been feeling the exact same way about me. I take a deep breath as, again, Virago picks me up gently around my waist. She lifts me up, her arms tight around my ribs as she holds me to her, and then I’m back on the ground, Virago’s smiling mouth captured in my own.
“Virago,” I whisper, when we stop for a moment, when Virago’s forehead is pressed to my own, and I realize that she’s panting against me. From the exertion of jousting and sword-fighting, or from something else, I’m not exactly certain. Not until her eyes open and she pins me to the spot with her gaze that has darkened with want and need do I realize my want is reflected in her, too.
She wants me as much as I want her.
“Holly,” she whispers, the word low and guttural. A thrill races through me, a shiver I can’t contain, and I stare up at her, all of the want and need that I’ve pushed down or repressed in me whenever I looked at her coming to the surface now with such an intensity that it takes my breath away.
She takes my breath away.
“You crazy kids!” says Carly brightly next to us. “Hate to interrupt you, but the Queen of the festival wants a word with you!”
Most every Renaissance Festival has a queen (usually some version or variation of ye olde Queen Elizabeth), and now, coming toward us across the jousting arena, is a woman in a complete costume (and very good rendition) of Queen Elizabeth, complete with bright red hair under a bright gold crown, a sumptuous and enormous dress dragging across the festival grass.
“For today,” says the queen, raising her bejeweled scepter to the two of us, “you are the ladies of this festival. Bravo to you, lady knight! And bravo to you, lady Holly, for having such a brave knight champion!”
“Hip-hip-hurrah!” chants the crowd as Virago bows low before the queen, then turns to me with shining eyes, gripping my hands tightly, like she’ll never let go.
Carly mutters about having something to do (as she saunters away with a mischievous smile), which leaves Virago and me at the festival practically alone (well, with a ton of people coming up to congratulate Virago on being the “coolest knight ever!” we’re not really alone, but it’s so sweet and supportive of the festival goers, it’s kind of wonderful, really).
So together, Virago and I enjoy the festival: I buy her a gigantic turkey leg on a stick, she bests the arm-wrestling guy at arm wrestling. We both try on corsets (she declares that she could never wear one, and I completely agree with her—as much as I love the look of them, I can never breathe in one!), and toward the middle of the afternoon, Carly drives us back to my house for us to get r
eady for the boat ride. But since we’re not casting off for a few more hours yet we still have a little time to ourselves…
And, honestly? I have the feeling that Carly drove us back early so that we could get lucky.
Trust me, I know Carly, and her mind is perpetually in the gutter. Also, when she drops us off, she gives me a big wink and mouths “good luck!” at me as I shut the car door behind me. I roll my eyes, but chuckle a little as Carly drives away, and Virago and I—arm in arm—walk slowly up the sidewalk toward my house.
Suddenly, I’m very self-conscious. Yes, I’ve imagined this possibility, this intimate possibility before, but now that the possibility is, well, possible…I’m really nervous.
The thing is, I’m usually not a move-fast kind of woman when it comes to this stuff. For the right woman I am, and Virago is very much the right woman, but it’s still unlike me that I’m thinking about how to broach the subject of possibly sleeping together with Virago.
Because I want to. And we need to. Because if we don’t do it now, it’s not going to happen.
Something that we haven’t spoken of, that we’ve carefully not brought up, is the fact that Virago might very well be going back to her world tonight.
And I’ll be staying here.
We’ll be separated…forever.
When I unlock the door and move through the living room soundlessly to let Shelley out, I grip the sliding glass door handle tightly as I shut it. Virago moves into the living room, unbuckling her scabbard and resting the sword gently down onto the couch.
She doesn’t say a word as she moves slowly up behind me. She says nothing as she presses her full mouth to the bare skin of my neck.
We don’t speak as we move slowly, sensuously up the stairs, her hands on my back, my thighs, as we ascend together, not exactly the most graceful creatures as we become tangled together, our mouths on each other as she traces a kiss down my neck and on the skin of my belly as she lifts up my shirt. I’m a few stairs higher up than she is, and I lace my fingers through her ponytail, through her wolf’s tail, and I press her mouth against me. Finally, finally, we get up to my bedroom, to my sanctuary piled with books and warm quilts, and I push Virago gently down onto the bed.
A Knight to Remember Page 20