Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

by Nancy Atherton

  The crowd roared with delight as the knights threw aside their helmets and drew their swords. As if on cue, the foot soldiers grabbed weapons from racks and began to attack each other. The young squires scurried forward to lead the horses to safety as a sort of combat ballet commenced.

  “A melee!” Lilian shouted gleefully above the din.

  The knights’ swords clanged viciously in the center of the arena, while the soldiers wielded pikes, maces, morning stars, staffs, and axes. There was so much jumping, dodging, ducking, weaving, twirling, and sidestepping that I was sure the sport of ear-lopping would soon make its debut, but the combatants seemed to know what they were doing. As Lilian had foretold, the moves were dramatic rather than deadly and King Wilfred’s Faire was not spoiled by 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.

  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 persistence,” 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.

  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 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 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. “Calvin 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?

  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 find 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 shoulder 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?”

  “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. Have they tried soaking the padded shirts in bleach?”

  “I doubt it,” said Bill. “Our noble warriors have a fairly medieval view of personal hygiene.”

  “A bar of soap is the devil’s plaything?” I suggested.

  Bill nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Why don’t they leave the flaps open, to air the place out?” I asked.

  “I don’t think they realize that the place needs to be aired out,” Bill explained patiently. “Besides, they wouldn’t want the equipment to get wet or blown about if a storm came through.”

  “I can’t believe they ate lunch in there,” I said, fanning the noxious fumes away from my face. “Is there a way to see Will and Rob without going inside?”

  “Of course there is,” said Bill. “We can go around the marquee instead of through it. I’ll find a knife for you later and bring it home with me after we’ve finished up here.”

  “Hold on,” I said hastily. I’d forgotten about the knife. “Maybe I’m being too prissy. This is a medieval fair, after all. It’s supposed to be . . . atmospheric.” I squared my shoulders. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you sure?” Bill asked.

  “If you can get used to it, so can I,” I said, and marched determinedly into the marquee.

  It would take more than a smelly tent to keep me from catching the king’s foe.

  Ten

  My first glimpse of the tent’s cavernous interior made me feel as if I weren’t simply stepping backstage, but back in time. There was no power hookup and therefore no background hum to spoil the peace and quiet. The only light was that which filtered through the tent’s white fabric, and the only sound was the gentle creak of the impressive supporting timbers. The hard-packed dirt floor had been strewn with rushes, and the wide central aisle was six inches deep in authentically soiled straw.

  The floor space was divided into sections by ropes strung between barley-twist iron stanchions that looked as though they’d been forged by a burly blacksmith back in the fourteenth century. The weapons and armor had been arranged in an orderly fashion on freestanding wooden shelves and racks that stood along the left-hand wall. The soldiers’ padded shirts and leather jerkins lay in neat piles to the right, beneath a wooden rack supporting the furled pennons and banners the children had carried into the arena.

  The horses’ brightly colored caparisons and plumed bridles hung from ropes strung above a row of saddletrees that held the ponies’ simple saddles as well as the knights’ la
rger and more elaborate ones. The back wall, Bill pointed out, could be rolled up to the ceiling, to admit the horses for their grand procession through the marquee and into the arena.

  The dressing area near the front of the marquee was furnished with wooden benches, a handful of three-legged stools, an ancient, speckled, full-length mirror, and a covered water butt with a wooden dipper. A pewter platter piled high with oyster shells sat on one of the benches, but the men who’d devoured the oysters were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “The Anscombe Manor contingent is out back with the ponies,” Bill replied. “The squires are there, too, looking after Angelus and Lucifer, but the rest of the jousting crew has gone back to camp.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Angelus is the white horse and Lucifer is the black one?”

  “Predictable, but true,” Bill said, nodding. “Angelus belongs to Perry, of course, and Lucifer is Jack’s.”

  “Who are Perry and Jack?” I asked, feeling a bit lost.

  “Sir Peregrine the Pure and Sir Jacques de Poitiers,” he answered. “When they’re off duty, they call themselves Perry and Jack. The soldiers call them Pretty Perry and Randy Jack, but not to their faces.” Bill glanced furtively toward the back wall, then leaned forward to add in a confidential murmur, “Apparently, Perry spends more time than he should primping in front of the mirror, and Jack thinks he has a way with the ladies, although the soldiers tell me that the ladies would debate the point.”

  The curious change in Bill’s posture and tone of voice suggested strongly that he’d finally succumbed to an illness endemic to Finch. I’d caught it shortly after we’d moved into the cottage, but Bill had somehow managed to avoid it—until now.

  “You’re gossiping!” I said triumphantly.

  “Guilty as charged,” Bill acknowledged sheepishly. “It’s easy to get caught up in it. Everyone’s always talking about everyone else.”