by Renee Duke
“Dickon and I can set them on their way.”
“Very well, then.” Earl Rivers gave Paige a slight smile. “The two lads can share a chamber. I will have another made ready for you. We seldom have young ladies here, but will try to make you as comfortable as possible.” He turned to the princes and bestowed a stern look upon Dickon. “I came here to remind you that we are a pious household. The unholy rites Ludlow’s faithless will be performing anon have naught to do with us, or we with them. An attendant will come for your guests shortly. It will then be time for you to be abed also.”
With that, he left the chamber.
As soon as he had gone Ned said, “Will your family not become concerned if you stay the night with us?”
“It’s not night in our time,” Dane reminded him. “Even if it was, our time seems to almost stand still when we’re not in it. We can stay away ages without anyone worrying about us or asking us where we’ve been.”
“And the place for us all to be this night is in the town,” said Dickon with a mischievous grin. “Keep watch for us once you are settled in your chambers. We will come for you and take you into Ludlow for its Midsummer Eve festivities.”
“I do not think that wise, brother,” Ned cautioned. He looked at the others and grimaced. “We were discussing this very notion when you made your appearance. Should our uncle learn of our disobedience he—”
“He will not learn of it,” Dickon interjected. “He will retire early to show his disapproval of the night’s activities. Those in the castle who agree with him will do the same. The others will go into town. And if they chance to see us there, they will not inform him of it. To do so would mean admitting they were in attendance themselves.”
“The guards will not retire.”
“What of it? ’Tis easy to slip past guards. I quite frequently do so.”
“Of that, I have little doubt,” Ned said with a sigh.
“How come your uncle doesn’t want to have anything to do with Midsummer Eve?” Paige asked him. “It’s not celebrated much in our time, but I know it was a big deal in yours.”
“The customs associated with Midsummer are rooted in pagan beliefs,” Ned replied primly. “Good Christians do not hold with such things.”
“Oh, fie! ’Tis but an excuse to make merry,” said Dickon. “You will enjoy yourself once you are there, Ned. ’Twill be a chance for you to mix with common people instead of courtiers. Have you not oft said that a good king should take an interest in all the people he rules?”
By the time an attendant came to show them to their quarters, Ned had succumbed to his brother’s persuasions. He whispered that he would see them anon.
The attendant took the princes’ guests across to a nearby tower, where rooms had been prepared for them. Dane and Jack waited beneath a flaming sconce outside the door of their room while Paige was led to one on the next floor. Watching her go up the narrow spiral stairs with only the light from the attendant’s horn lantern to guide the way, Dane was again struck by the realization that they were no longer tourists exploring an empty, crumbling ruin. They were guests within the walls of a perfectly sound, and still very much inhabited, castle.
Paige was asked if she would like a woman from the town to come and help her get ready for bed. Upon being told she could manage, the attendant came back down to the boys. Ready to assure him that they could retire without assistance, they were relieved when he simply showed them into the room, lit a candle for them, and withdrew.
Paige waited a few minutes before creeping down the stairs to join Dane and Jack.
“How’s your room?” Dane asked as she set another candle down beside theirs.
“Better than this one,” she said, looking around, “but then, it would be, wouldn’t it? This is the Age of Chivalry, and I’m the only fair damsel in the whole castle.”
Dane watched her twirl around, patting the back of her head and fluttering her eyelashes. “Yeah, well, I’d sleep in the dungeon if it meant being able to see a real Midsummer Eve celebration.”
Jack agreed. “So would I.” He leaned out of the window and looked across at the princes’ tower. “The princes have put their light out. We’d better put ours out, too, so Earl Rivers will think we’ve gone to bed.”
“I wonder how they’re going to get out of their room,” said Dane. “People were supposed to have kept Ned under ‘sure and good watch’ at night. In the middle ages, that usually meant having attendants sleep right in the same room.”
“I dare say they’ll find a way,” said Jack.
He blew out the two candles. Sitting in the dark without them was like being in the midst of a power outage without a flashlight. No street lights or lights from nearby houses shone through the window to even partially illuminate their surroundings.
The sound of a pebble clattering across the floor about half an hour later told them that the princes had indeed managed to elude their keepers. With a tingle of excitement at being part of a forbidden venture, they edged down the stairs to join them.
Outside, it was as dark as the room had been. The princes carried no candles or lanterns but seemed to know their way around the castle without them. Dickon avoided being challenged by the guards within the keep’s gatehouse by the simple, but effective, ruse of throwing a stone across the dry moat. When the guards went to investigate the noise, he and the others inched their way into the outer bailey and hugged the wall until they reached the main gate, where they played the same trick on the men guarding it.
Sounds of Midsummer merrymaking were audible even from the castle. The shouts and laughter increased in volume as they got closer to where the townsfolk of Ludlow were gathered around a large bonfire.
“Are we going to be dancing around that?” asked Paige, pointing.
Dickon told her that processions were made around the bonfire at the beginning and end of the Midsummer celebration. It was circled seven times to represent the seven rogations of summer. “We’ve missed the first circling,” he said regretfully, “but as people do it, they say:
‘Green is Gold.
Fire is Wet.
Fortune’s Told.
Dragon’s Met.’”
A smiling young woman came up and presented Paige with a birch crown from the basket of greenery she was carrying. She gave each of the boys a sprig of green leaves and told them to place them over their hearts. If she recognized the princes, she gave no sign of it.
Attaching his sprig to the left side of his doublet, Jack said, “These are green, but how does gold come into that circling rhyme?”
“The very first leaves and grasses of the year oft appear gold,” Dickon informed them.
“What about the next bit?” asked Dane. “How can fire be wet?”
“You will see,” said Dickon, “but not until later. Hark! A trumpet is sounding. ’Tis time for St. John’s Humney.”
He led the way to some seats on the other side of the fire, taking care to circle it clockwise in order to get there. This, he told them, imitated the way in which the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Once everyone was seated, baskets containing some type of long, dried fruit were passed around. Dane’s allergies made him cautious about eating unfamiliar foodstuffs, but Paige and Jack each took one.
“This is the ‘Fortune’s Told’ part of the riddle,” said Dickon. “You must think of a question, such as, how many days will it be before I get a new bridle for my horse? Then you eat your St. John’s bread and count the seeds to find the answer.”
“But these are seedpods,” said Paige. “Carobs. How did they ever get a name like St. John’s bread?”
“’Tis said St. John the Baptist kept himself alive in the desert by eating them,” Ned replied. “They were his bread of life. Midsummer Day is his saint’s day. That is why this night is oft referred to as St. John’s Eve by those who would like it to seem more of a Christian festival than a pagan one.”
Dane wondered if Ned was still having
qualms about disobeying his uncle. If he was, he soon seemed to get over it. He counted his seeds with the rest of them and learned he was doomed to make seven mistakes in his Latin grammar the next day. And he was one of the heartiest singers of the cuckoo song, “Summer Is A-Coming In” which accompanied the drinking of a spicy drink called cuckoo-foot ale.
As the evening wore on, Dane and Paige and Jack learned that St. John’s Humney or ‘How many?’ was but one of the games people used to tell their fortunes on Midsummer Eve. Young lovers plucked petals off Midsummer roses to find out if their affections were returned, and diviner eggs were broken into small bowls so that the future of each breaker could be divined by the egg’s oozing pattern. Later, similar predictions were made with destiny cakes, which came in a variety of shapes and lay hidden under a cloth until someone put a hand underneath it to draw one out. Paige’s destiny cake was shaped like an M which Dickon said was likely to be the initial of her future husband.
“That doesn’t help much,” said Paige. “I know lots of guys back home whose names begin with M.”
“Including Matt Kendrick,” said Dane. “I can just picture you walking up the aisle with him.”
Paige scowled. “I’d rather be eaten by wolves.”
Ned and Dickon looked at each other. “She is indeed like our Cecey, isn’t she?” said Dickon, and Ned nodded in agreement.
The Midsummer revellers went down to the river for the last fortune telling game. This one showed how fire could be wet. Candles were lit, and people made wishes before setting them adrift in little boats. Dickon said that if someone’s candle got safely to the other side of the river, the person’s wish would come true.
“’Tis a bad omen if a boat capsizes, or its flame is extinguished in any other way,” he added.
The walls of Ludlow Castle loomed above the dark waters of the River Teme as the candles bobbed across it. It was an impressive sight. Quite a few candles managed to reach the opposite bank before a slight wind came up and snuffed out the others. Though the launchers of these ill-fated flames gave rueful sighs, they did not seem overly perturbed.
The princes’ candles were among the casualties, and it suddenly came to Dane that, in their case, the misfortune really was a bad omen. By the next Midsummer Eve the royal brothers would both be in the Tower of London, the place from which they had so mysteriously disappeared.
Chapter Eleven
Back at the fire, a mummer’s play was in progress. The play was about St. George rescuing a beautiful princess from a dragon. It solved the Dragon’s Met portion of the riddle, but failed to lift Dane’s spirits. As soon as the night’s festivities came to an end, he told the princes he wanted to go home.
“Back to your own time, you mean? But why? There is no reason to hurry away if your time is standing still. You can spend the night in the castle and go home in the morning,” said Dickon.
“I’d rather go now,” said Dane. “I…I don’t feel well.”
“Too many sweetmeats,” said Ned knowingly. “Though did seem to me that your cousin and sister ate far more.”
“Maybe, but I’d still like to go home.”
“So would I,” said Jack, who seemed to have picked up on Dane’s mood.
“You will come back though, will you not?” said Dickon.
“Of course,” Jack reassured him. “We’ll come again tomorrow. I don’t know when that will turn out to be in your time, but it’s the soonest we’ll be able to manage it in ours.”
They had been walking toward the castle as they talked. After checking to see that no one else was around, Dane joined hands with Paige and Jack and recited the connecting rhyme. He had told the princes a little about how the medallion worked during lulls in the evening’s entertainment. The look of awe on their faces as he and the others disappeared into the sparks and mist showed they had only half believed him.
A few moments later, they were back in the ruins of Ludlow chapel.
“How’d we get here?” said Paige. “We left the princes outside the castle walls.”
“But we went to them from in here,” said Dane. “The medallion obviously returns its users to whatever place they start out from.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s good. It’s saved us some walking.”
As soon as Jack had thrown off the effects of the time transfer, they went outside.
“How come you wanted to come back so soon, Dane?” Paige asked as they crossed the inner court. “It would have been fun to spend the night in a real castle.”
“I know, but all those fortune telling games were starting to get to me.”
“Especially the last one,” Jack agreed. “It was strange to see those boats go down and know that something really did happen to the princes later.”
“We don’t know what, though,” Paige said uncomfortably. “No one does.”
“You can bet it wasn’t anything good,” said Dane.
Rejoining their mothers, they learned Mrs. Kemp had asked Mrs. Marchand to go into nearby Shrewsbury with her. The invitation was for everyone, but Aunt Augusta had never been to Ludlow before and wanted to wander around.
“It’s considered one of the prettiest towns in England,” she said. “You children might enjoy having a look round too.”
They decided to do so. Pleased, Aunt Augusta purchased a guidebook and dragged them to almost every place in it. She set a leisurely pace, but by late afternoon, all three had become light-headed and sleepy.
“Maybe it’s the plague,” said Paige, staggering through the door of their hotel room and making a dramatic flop onto her bed. “We picked it up back in the fifteenth century and now, we’re doomed.”
“Nonsense,” said Aunt Augusta, coming in behind them. “I expect it’s just a delayed reaction to that long train trip yesterday. I’ll pop out to the nearest chemist and get you something to settle your stomachs.”
After she’d gone, Dane said, “The train trip might explain you, Jack, but Paige and I have never been bothered by trains. This actually feels more like jet lag.”
Paige considered this. “Maybe it is. Sort of. We went across a major ‘time zone’ today and stayed longer than you two did before. It could have put our body clocks out of whack just like jet lag does.”
Jack and Paige’s body clocks were still out of whack in the morning, but Dane felt considerably better. Upon returning from Mrs. Kemp’s room, Mrs. Marchand expressed the opinion that it was a good thing Dane was the only one her friend actually required that day.
“Hurry and get dressed, dear. She’ll be ready to go soon. She’s going down to the dining room for breakfast now. Your auntie’s already there. I’ll bring a tray up for the other two later on. If they feel like having anything, that is.”
“We don’t,” said Paige.
“I could probably manage something sweet,” Jack declared, albeit faintly.
“Your mother would be very worried if you couldn’t,” said Mrs. Marchand, smiling.
Dane waited until she had gone to join Aunt Augusta for breakfast before he brought up the subject of the time transfer. “I guess we’ll have to put it off,” he said.
“We promised Ned and Dickon we’d go today,” Jack reminded him.
“And we can’t put it off,” said Paige. “Not if a week of our time can amount to several months of theirs. If we want to make another connection with them while they’re both still in Ludlow, it’ll have to be today. We won’t be here tomorrow.”
“But I don’t want to go on my own.”
“You have to. I’d fake feeling better if I thought Mum would let me go to the photo shoot with you, but since I’m not in it, she’s not likely to.”
“Neither’s mine,” said Jack.
“Okay.” Dane sighed. Then he stood up, grinning. “I’ll be thinking about you.”
Paige gave a short laugh. “Sure you will.”
The photos Mrs. Kemp was taking that day were of a hunting party. A little wooded area near Ludlow provided the backdrop
for the models and their horses. Dane and his sister were both good riders, but he was only required to sit on his gentle white pony, and he found that quite boring. Between shots, he glanced up at the falcon sitting on the wrist of the model portraying Earl Rivers.
“Can I stroke her?” he asked its trainer.
The trainer shook his head. “She’s not fond of children.”
“She’s not that struck on adults either,” said the man playing Earl Rivers. He had already been nipped twice.
An hour or so later, Mrs. Kemp had finished. Dane drove back to town with her and asked to be let off at the castle instead of going straight to the hotel, which was just a short walk from there.
“Don’t be long,” she cautioned him. “Your mother wants to be in Shrewsbury by half past eleven to catch a train to London.”
Still in costume, he ignored the startled reactions of passers-by and turned into a small, deserted side street. The idea of trying the medallion alone made him a little nervous. What if the connecting rhyme didn’t work? Suppose too much time had passed, and the princes were no longer in Ludlow?
The rhyme did work however, transporting him to a fifteenth-century street that was much busier than its modern counterpart. Fortunately, no one witnessed his sudden arrival, as he materialized behind a large wooden cart. Peeking out from behind it, he saw a stream of people hurrying toward the castle. The excitement in their voices as they called out to one another made it clear that something out of the ordinary was going on.
Following them up to the castle, Dane found everything in turmoil. Soldiers and horses were milling all around the outer bailey, where servants were hurriedly loading wagons with all kinds of provisions. Two men were in the midst of them giving orders. One was Earl Rivers. The other, Dane learned later, was Sir Thomas Vaughn, an elderly man who served as Ned’s chamberlain. Looking around for Ned, Dane finally saw him standing to one side, looking sad and upset.