At the last moment, as though the fairy of reason had suddenly swooped down on us, Chase threw down his lance and ripped off his blindfold. He got to me an instant before Sir Reginald and lifted me up on the back of his horse.
I thought we’d both be lanced, but Chase sidestepped Sir Reginald, and the Black Knight passed by us, ending up with his lance in one of the wooden beams on the other side of the arena. The impact threw him from his horse, and he hit the floor with a resounding clang.
The audience loved it. The roar of voices was deafening. I could still hear my heart pounding despite the noise. Chase’s armor was cool against my face as I closed my eyes and leaned against him. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I don’t know what we were thinking.”
The king and queen were on their feet, demanding the match be replayed. Sir Reginald’s squire tried to help him to his feet, but the knight pushed him aside. He staggered to the microphone in the middle of the arena and pushed Lord Dunstable out of the way. “My honor must be avenged,” he yelled, his face unflatteringly red. “I will have vengeance.”
Before anyone could say anything, Sir Reginald grabbed his chest and slumped to the arena floor. The crowd applauded and stomped their feet. Lord Dunstable called for a paramedic, but he could hardly be heard over the noise.
Chase jumped from his horse, not an easy feat in armor off a horse probably seventeen hands high. He threw his armor off as he ran toward Sir Reginald. I thought, That’s why Chase is the bailiff of Renaissance Faire Village. He’s good in an emergency. He administered CPR on Sir Reginald until the paramedics got there and took the fallen knight away.
“You were awesome!” I kissed him. “You saved the damsel and your opponent.”
“Maybe.” He glanced up at Harry and Livy. “They don’t look too happy.”
“Who cares? Let’s get out of here.”
Before we could leave the arena, King Harry called for silence. “We must award our stalwart bailiff and knight the highest medal possible for his bravery tonight. Step forward, Sir Knight.”
Chase glanced at me, then shrugged and walked toward the end of the arena. The Princess Isabel bestowed her favor by giving him a circle headpiece made of what was supposed to be silver but was really aluminum. She kissed him on each cheek, then launched herself against him, throwing her arms around him and latching on to his mouth like a lamprey.
The crowd roared and whistled as the kiss went on. I tapped my foot in the sawdust, looked at my nails, and glanced around the arena. How long was this going to take? It seemed to be going beyond the bounds of showing favor in a public place. But then the Princess Isabel showed her favor all over the place.
She finally had to breathe, and when she moved, Chase put one arm around her waist and held the other in the air. The king and queen shouted “Huzzah,” and the word was repeated by everyone present. Except me. All that favor had left me a little cold and a lot angry.
I started out of the castle after picking up Chase’s armor and leading his horse into the stable at the side of the arena. I didn’t put the armor away, just left it lying there. He could put it away if he wanted to.
He was so busy with everyone talking to him, surrounding him, patting him on the back. I knew he’d done a good thing, and he deserved praise for it. I would’ve felt better about it if it wasn’t for Princess Isabel standing so close to him.
I kicked a few empty drink cups after I emerged into the evening twilight outside the castle. I wanted a shower and some time alone. I hardly recognized myself in there. It wasn’t like me to be jealous of a boyfriend.
It wasn’t real, I told myself, and that was the problem. I was jealous anyway. That didn’t bode well for my summer relationship. It never lasted more than the summer. At the end of August, I’d go back to school, and Chase would stay here. When I came back next summer, there would be someone else. That’s the way it was supposed to work.
True, I rationalized; I had wanted to be with Chase for a long time. It had never seemed to work out, until this summer. But that was the only thing that made it different. I went on to list all the things I didn’t like about Chase. It was a short list. Really, it was only that he didn’t seem ambitious. Otherwise, he was as close to perfect as I could imagine.
I started to walk past Wicked Weaves on my way back to my hut when I noticed a light on inside. I went around back and found Mary on the steps working on her basket. I didn’t say anything, just sat down beside her. I watched her hands flying through the motions of coiling the sweetgrass and building on the foundation, row upon row.
It was hypnotic watching her hands move deftly through the sweetgrass and the palm strips. There were pine needles in the basket, too. There was only the faintest smell of pine. She coiled and stitched, her fingers never missing the perfect stitch, the basket taking shape before my eyes.
“You know,” she began without looking up, “when we harvested sweetgrass when I was a child, we always gave thanks to God for it. People stopped doing that. Life changed as time passed. Today there isn’t much sweetgrass left anymore. I think that might be why. My mama said when you don’t appreciate things, they go away. I think that was what happened to me. I didn’t say thank you for everything God had given me when I was home.”
I put my arm around her thin shoulders and leaned my head against the colored scarf that covered her head. “When my parents died, I thought I’d killed them because they were out looking for me. Tony and I were twelve at the time. I thought it was fun to stay out late. I knew they worried about me, but I didn’t care. They left Tony at home with my grandmother and came out to look for me. A man was driving drunk and hit and killed both of them almost right in front of my house.”
Mary’s hands stopped moving. She looked at me in the dim light coming from inside the shop where the door was left open. “Child, you can’t take that on yourself. God called them back to him. That had nothing to do with you.”
“I know that most of the time. But sometimes, especially when I see how Tony is, I blame myself because he didn’t have them when he was growing up.”
“You didn’t, either. But you grew up all right. Why do you think that is?”
“Because my guilt always pushed me forward. It never forgets or lets me rest with what I’ve done.”
She shook her head and put her arm around me to hug me close. She smelled like talcum powder and sweetgrass. It was a lovely combination. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“You can’t blame yourself because there’s no more sweetgrass.”
“Jessie, you’re a smart girl. I don’t know if you’ll ever be a basket weaver, but you’ll live a good life.” Mary hugged me tight again. “And I thank you for being here this summer. Summer is a crazy time, you know. It gets so hot, people can’t think straight.”
“Did you find Jah and talk to him?”
“I did. It didn’t change nothin’. He’s gonna believe what he wants to believe. Young people are that way. And they’re harder on their elders than they should be, because they can’t understand what happened and why things happened.”
“Do you think he could’ve had anything to do with Joshua’s death?”
“No. He’s a good boy. Only confused. He’s been told one thing for so long and then come to find out it wasn’t that way at all. He’ll be fine, you wait and see. And he didn’t kill his daddy.”
“You back here, Mary?” a voice called out from the side of the shop.
“We’re back here, Ham,” she answered. “Come back and sit a spell. I’ve got some sweet tea and some good tomatoes. I think we could make us a little to eat. I ain’t ate all day.”
Ham came around the side of the building and smiled at me in the dim light. “I remember you.” He reached out to shake my hand. “You might’a saved my life.”
“What are you talking about?” Mary looked back and forth between us. I told her what had happened as she gathered her basket weaving materials together to
go inside. “So someone has it in for Ham, too?”
“It appears that way.” He put his hand to the bandage on his head. “I don’t know anyone who thinks that ill of me. Or of Joshua, for that matter, though I admit I haven’t seen him for a lotta years.”
“Even so, who would do such a thing?” Mary asked.
“What about Abraham?” I tossed into the conversation.
“No way.” Ham held the door for Mary. “He’s not made like that.”
“He wasn’t made like that,” I disagreed. “But with Jah finding out the truth about who his parents are and Joshua leaving the village to tell Mary that her son is still alive, who knows what someone might do?”
Mary and Ham refused to consider the idea that the killer could be Abraham. I sat with them for hours while they talked about their childhood together. We drank sweet tea and ate cheese biscuits and tomatoes while they thought about the past and avoided what was happening now.
Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. “You guys have to consider that something is wrong here. Unless Joshua was behind the privies and saw a drug deal go down, the two of you could be in danger, too. And since Ham has already been attacked, I’d say my theory about Abraham is right.”
Mary laughed. “Jessie, you don’t know this man the way we do. He might be capable of some bad things, but not murder. And not Joshua. The two of them were close as the sweetgrass and black rush in my baskets. There’s not a chance that he hurt his brother.”
“Okay. Let’s say someone else killed Joshua. We can’t forget Ham was attacked, too. Who else in the Village would do something like that? What other connection do Ham and Joshua have?”
Ham sipped his tea, washing down the last of his cheese biscuit. “Girl has a point, Mary. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. I don’t think Abraham hurt me or Joshua, but we better consider the possibility that you could be next. That’s why I came right over tonight. I think you should come stay with me, at least for a while.”
“I’m not running again.” Mary shook her head. “I ran from our home but I promised myself that I’d never run again. And why would someone want to hurt me?”
I shrugged and swallowed a bite of cheese biscuit. “Why would someone want to hurt Joshua and Ham? Except for Abraham, there’s only one other person who’s been here and is involved with the four of you.”
Mary shoved her chair out over the hardwood floor with a distinct grinding sound. She looked so angry, I wasn’t sure if it was her teeth or her chair making that noise. “I won’t hear none of that in my kitchen. Jessie, don’t you even think my boy could hurt his father.”
“He didn’t know he was his father until recently,” I argued. “He couldn’t have had many feelings for him. Maybe he was angry. Jah seemed pretty angry with you.”
Ham looked at her. “You didn’t tell me Jah was mad about what happened.”
“I think it’s a normal reaction to being lied to and cheated of your real parents.” Mary turned to me, her face vivid in the pale overhead light. “As for him not knowing Joshua, he was with him every day of his life. He knew him almost as well as he knew Abraham and his wife.”
The conversation died out after that. Mary and Ham seemed to be lost in their individual memories. I thanked Mary for the sweet tea and biscuits, then left the shop. I took the basket I was working on with me. It was going to be a long, lonely night thinking about Chase and Princess Isabel.
It was quiet and dark in the Village. No wonder people stayed in their houses before streetlights. The Village had some lamps, but they were more for accent and giving the place a period feel than any real help getting around. The alleys going between businesses and houses were completely black. At least when the moon was out, you could make out shapes and forms.
A long, low howl came from outside the Village wall. At least I hoped it was from outside the wall. I reminded myself that was how stories of vampires and werewolves got started. It was all because of streetlights. People thought all kinds of crazy things in the dark. I shivered in the hot night air and wished I was in my little hut with the door closed.
There was cheerful, yellow light pouring out of the Peasant’s Pub where all the residents hung out in the evening. It was unusual for them to be open this late; it was already after midnight. But the cheerful light eased those dark fears that are common to all humans, and I decided to stop in for a tankard of ale.
A handful of diehard souls were gathered around the wooden bar that Hephaestus, the owner of Peasant’s Pub, claimed came from a real seventeenth-century pub in England. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a big chest that was almost hidden by his huge gray brown beard.
“Come on in, Jessie!” he yelled when he saw me. “First tankard’s on the house for that exhibit at the castle tonight.”
The other people, mostly fools, knaves, and varlets, all of whom I knew, cheered and agreed with him. I knew I was with my people as I sat down at the bar. “Thanks, guys. Is it just me, or does this place get weirder and weirder?”
They all laughed, then pretty much ignored me. I was hot for all of five seconds. Oh well. I guess that was better than not being hot at all.
“What’s up with you and Chase this year?” Hephaestus habitually wiped his questionably clean rag across the surface of the bar.
“What do you mean?” I tried not to sound defensive. “We’ve been friends for years.”
A couple of fools laughed. Hephaestus laughed with them. “Come on, honey. We all know you have a summertime thing here. We’re taking bets on it being Chase. We’re all friends at the Village. Are you shacking up with the bailiff this summer?”
This was the height of boredom. Taking bets on my relatively dull life was like racing cockroaches. “That’s none of your business.”
“We could ask Chase,” one of the varlets said, “if we could find him. He looked like he wanted to stay lost with the princess when they left the castle together after the feast.”
I slogged down my ale, then got up and walked out of the pub. I was wrong. Fools, varlets, and knaves don’t make the best company. I needed to be alone, even if a werewolf tore my throat out before I got back to my hut.
Humming a song I couldn’t remember the words to, I kept walking past the dark alleys and shuttered businesses that lined the street. I clutched my basket in my hand. It wasn’t much as far as a weapon if someone or something jumped out of the dark at me. Of course, it was enough to kill Joshua. But then he was too drunk to care.
It occurred to me that whoever attacked Ham might’ve had the same plans for him. Did it look like I was involved in whatever was going on? I hoped not. I was only an observer. But it made me nervous thinking about it after I’d had that drink at the pub. What if Abraham or Jah, whichever of them was responsible, thought I was drunk and an easy target? Was there some way to let them know besides walking in a straight line that I wouldn’t be as easy to kill as Joshua?
My hut finally came into view. It was a welcome sight. The key was in my hand when a large form stepped out of the shadows toward me. I dropped into what I hoped looked like a karate stance I’d seen in a movie. “I’m not drunk! You might be able to kill me, but I’ll take a piece of you with me.”
“Easy, killer!” Chase laughed. “I think you must be drunk, if you think anyone is going to be scared by that pose.”
I relaxed, thankful it was only him. Then I got mad. “Go home, Chase. Except for me telling you this, I’m not speaking to you.”
“You’re jealous of me kissing Isabel!”
“I am not.”
“Yes you are. Admit it.”
I had already put the key in the lock, but I couldn’t let him leave thinking I cared about what he did with the princess. “I’m not jealous. I don’t care what you do or who you do it with. I don’t have any hold on you. You’re free to go your own way, just like I am.”
“That’s right. That’s who you are, Jessie; the summertime girl. You love’ em over the summer
then go on your way before fall. Everyone knows that.”
“I don’t want any involvements to impede my life.” As I said it, I thought about what it sounded like and rushed to correct it. “I mean, I know what happens here isn’t real.”
“Just because it’s Renaissance Faire Village doesn’t mean the people who live here aren’t real. They get angry and get their hearts broken just like they do in Columbia or anywhere else. You just think you can come here and play around and no one will know. Then you go back to the university and live your life without ever feeling anything.”
I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t true, but I knew he was right. I didn’t have romantic relationships at the university. I knew I was coming back here, and the summer with some knight or lord would be enough. And it wasn’t real.
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