I didn’t see Livy at all, which was unusual. When you saw Reggie, you saw Livy. I’d heard a rumor that they were breaking up, but I’d attributed that to what had happened at the King’s Feast with him and Chase. And since I knew Chase wasn’t sleeping with Livy, I knew someone else had to be. I wondered vaguely if it was Harry.
“Exactly my point, Sir Knight.” Chase held his tankard up to Reggie’s, and they slammed them together, ale spilling everywhere. “It’s good to see you on your feet again. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“Never better, Sir Bailiff.” Reggie sketched him a decent bow. “My thanks for your efforts. I’m fortunate it was only indigestion and not a real heart attack.”
All of us were covered in ale. Fred laughed and poured a little more ale from his tankard on his head. Arlene started giggling. I liked ale, don’t get me wrong. But I didn’t like having it showered on me.
I stood up and started for the door. Chase caught up with me as I stepped outside. The air was cool, and it wasn’t so loud. I hadn’t realized when I was inside, but I’d been nursing a headache for the last hour.
“Hey! Wait up! Where are you off to?”
I curled my lip at him. It’s a thing I’ve been able to do since I was a little kid. It used to scare the pants off of Tony. “I’m going to change clothes and take a shower. It’s been a long day, and Mary still isn’t home. I hate what’s going on. This isn’t supposed to happen during my summer here.”
“It wouldn’t be any better in the winter,” Chase concluded.
“I wouldn’t be here.” I started walking across the King’s Highway. A troop of dancers was practicing some new moves, and there was music coming from the Dutchman’s Stage. The visitors were gone for the day, but everything was always in preparation for the new day when they’d return.
“That’s a little self-centered.” Chase started walking with me past Daisy the sword smith’s ringing blows. “This would be a bad thing whether you were here or not.”
“You don’t understand. I only get three months every year. I want those months to be perfect. That doesn’t seem so wrong to me.”
He laughed. “You could stay here all the time, if you wanted. It’s your decision every year to go back to academia at the end of the summer.”
“I can’t be like you or Roger or Livy. I enjoy being here, but it’s not the real world.”
“Where is the real world, Jessie? You can’t say college is the real world. It’s about as far away from corporate America as Renaissance Faire Village. I think you just want it all.”
“Is that a crime?”
“Not exactly. At least not one punishable by the stocks or the court. But maybe you should decide what you really want and go after it instead of playing around with everything.”
That last part had hurt my feelings. It was probably true, but I didn’t want to hear it from him. I was sorry I’d moved in with him and given up my stupid hut. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it was mine. If Chase and I broke up, I’d have to leave the Village unless I could find another place to stay. A belly dancer had already taken my hut.
“I’m sorry you feel like that about me.” I wasn’t good at holding back, even if it meant cutting my summer short. “I wouldn’t refer to what I do as playing around. I’m working on a dissertation for my Ph.D. I know you’re a lawyer, but you don’t really practice, and you don’t care if you make anything of yourself. I care.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he was angry now, too. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe we were getting too close. Maybe I was stupid enough to let Chase walk out of my life.
At that moment, I wasn’t sure. He turned to the left and kept walking up the King’s Highway toward the castle as I went into the dungeon. It was a bad moment for us. Possibly only the first one. I didn’t know.
It occurred to me that keeping Chase at arm’s length was more about protecting myself than what he was or wasn’t doing. My own argument about him wasting his life was wearing thin. What more did I want from him? Or was it that he was so good, so real, it scared me. I always knew where I stood with the Alexes and Robins of the world.
I went inside the dungeon with a painful bout of retrospection adding to my headache. I didn’t want to think about why Chase was good for me or why we should be together, maybe for longer than the summer. I certainly didn’t want to consider the ins and outs of my psychological profile.
The shower water was tepid and less than full force, but it felt good after the long, hot day. I was worried about Mary, afraid I’d see her next in the newspaper announcing that she’d been arrested for Joshua’s murder.
And where was Chase, the knight in shining armor, while the police put the thumbscrews to Mary? He should’ve been helping her instead of irritating me. I was well on my way to building a righteous anger against him by the time I’d finished washing my hair. He was a lawyer. Maybe not the right kind, but he could’ve found someone to help her.
I got out of the shower, working myself into a lather over Mary’s unnecessary incarceration. It became all Chase’s fault as I pulled on a short green dress I’d saved for nights after work when we could dress normally. Hardly anyone did it. It kind of spoiled the mood, but I was hot enough without wearing a heavy costume. I turned around to find my sandals and found Chase lying on the bed watching me with his hands behind his head.
“How long have you been here?”
“For a while.” He grinned at me. “Are you really mad at me because I don’t have a corporate job?”
“No. I’m mad at you because you could’ve helped Mary after I called to tell you Detective Almond took her.”
He raised his left brow. “You turn around really fast, Jessie. When did this offense get lodged against me?”
“I guess I was thinking about why it was important for you to have an outside job. People can depend on you. You can have a real life.”
“You mean it wasn’t enough for me to call a defense lawyer to be there with Mary today?”
“What did you say?” I had to stop dead, since what I was about to say no longer applied. I hated it when that happened.
“You heard me. So you’ll have to find something else to be mad at me about.”
He just lay there, looking at me. It was a smug kind of look. I hated that my anger was evaporating, and all I had left was how much I cared about him, how hot he was, and that he’d helped Mary when she needed him.
“I can do that.” I sat carefully on the edge of the bed. “What have you done for world peace lately?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about that right now?” He patted the side of the bed next to him and smiled.
I was about to tell him there was no way. I really was. At least I think I would’ve. But at that moment there was shouting from the street, and a voice called out for the bailiff.
Sixteen
The shouting in the night was going to have to stop. It was playing havoc with what little love life I’d managed to have between bouts of depression and trying to figure out how to find Joshua’s killer. Overall, it was a weirder summer than usual.
I started to tell Chase that being the bailiff of Renaissance Faire Village was just slightly more significant than being the dog catcher in Columbia. But how could I say that after telling him he had no sense of responsibility? I had to be consistent in my criticism.
He looked out the window above the stocks and gathering place for the popular court trials that happened during the day. “What’s going on down there?”
“Aha! I see you are at home, Sir Bailiff! Methinks you should come down.”
I knew that voice. It was Robin Hood himself. And that wasn’t just his persona at the Village. He’d had his name changed from Toby Gates the first year I was here. He was legally Robin Hood. He took his responsibilities to the name very seriously. He was completely crazy. I found that out the second summer I’d spent here when he and I were lovers.
I didn’t plan to mention that to Chase. He
probably already knew, and it was tacky to talk about past men or women in your life.
Mostly Robin hung out in the five acres of woods dubbed Sherwood Forest located off the Village Square between Frenchy’s Fudge and Harriet’s Hat House. Whenever something went missing in the Village, it was assumed Robin and his merry band of outlaws were responsible. They were just doing what they were supposed to do, robbing from the merchants to give to themselves.
Toby—Robin—and I had long discussions about the ethics involved with this practice. There were no orphans or poor villagers here, only students and residents who made decent money during the good seasons. They weren’t rich. The occasional missing toaster oven or clock radio probably didn’t break any of them. It was just annoying.
Chase glanced back at me. “This might only take a minute.”
“Or it might take an hour or three.” I sighed over the lost time I’d spent angry at him.
“We’ll be back by midnight,” he promised. “I think I should go down, or no one is going to get any peace and quiet tonight.”
Peace and quiet wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I saw Chase lying on the bed. But none of that was going to happen, either, with Robin yelling at the window. I put on my sandals, and Chase and I went downstairs to see what was wrong.
Robin put his green gloved hands on his hips and tilted back his head for one of his loud laughs. It was one of his least endearing qualities. He was still in good shape, if his tight leather jerkin and green hose were anything to judge by.
He and his Merry Men worked out in the woods every day for the visitors, building their tree forts and chopping wood. It was a rugged existence, considering the Village and civilization lay just outside the trees. But every year, a hundred or more strapping lads tried to become Merry Men.
“I see our bailiff has a fair visitor.” Robin laughed again, and the handful of men he’d brought with him laughed, too. Alex was one of them. “No wonder you were so slow to come to our calls.”
“Yeah, whatever, Robin. Let’s cut to it and tell me what’s so important you have to shout down the dungeon at this time of night.”
Robin looked at Chase like he couldn’t believe his ears. “This is your vocation, Sir Bailiff. If we cannot turn to you in times of travail, who will we turn to?”
Chase folded his arms across his chest. “I’m warning you. If you don’t get to the point, I’m going to put you in the stocks for disturbing the peace.”
All five of Robin’s Merry Men raised their handmade bows and arrows, pointing them directly at Chase. This was out of line. Robin and his men had crossed some kind of invisible crazy barrier while they ran free in the woods.
I stepped in front of Chase. “Are you going to shoot me, too? Have you guys hung out in Sherwood Forest stealing toaster ovens for so long that you’ve lost all sense of reality?”
Robin laughed again. I swore I would shoot him with an arrow myself if he didn’t cut it out. “The maid has a point, my Merry Men.”
I was pleasantly surprised that he agreed with me. “That’s right. You guys put down the bows. You look ridiculous. And if you’ve got something to say, spit it out. If not, we’re going back inside.”
“You still have fire and spunk, Maid Jessica,” Robin commented. “We come on important business. The bailiff asked us to keep an eye on the goings-on in the Village. We have done that and found an interesting visitor we believe he might want to speak to.”
At Robin’s words, two more of his men came out of the shadows holding someone dressed in a dark monk’s robe between them. I took back most of the bad things I was thinking about Robin and his men. They’d caught the skulking monk.
The young man on the left threw back the cloaked figure’s hood. The dim light gleamed on Jah’s young face. “You have no right to hold me. This isn’t a court of law or a real jail. There’s nothing real here at all. I demand you release me. I plan to sue all of you as soon as I leave the Village.”
As far as speeches that were supposed to convince someone to let them go, this was one of the worst. If the Merry Men really meant to hurt him, he’d given them a good reason to continue.
But they didn’t plan on doing anything more than holding him for Chase to question; he was safe in that respect. Seeing him in the dark robe made me wonder. He was angry about what had happened with his parents and Abraham. He was verbally abusive to Mary. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine he could be angry with Ham for helping his mother, but there was no proof of him doing anything wrong, as Chase liked to remind me.
“I appreciate your help, Robin,” Chase said. “No one else has been able to find this man.”
“You hear that, lads?” Robin lifted his fist high. “Huzzah!”
The Merry Men followed his lead and soon the square was filled with loud huzzahs. Since that was what Chase was trying to avoid in the first place, he quieted the group. “Where did you find him?”
“Alex and Barry found him sneaking into the Village from a hole in the outer fence behind the apothecary. He was lucky we found him instead of the monks. The penalty for dressing up as one of the Brotherhood is steep.”
Jah struggled with his captors for a moment but couldn’t get free. “You people are all insane! Did you hear what I said? I’m a U.S. citizen. You have no right to hold me.”
Chase walked up to him, standing a head taller and twice as broad as the younger man. “We have every right to hold you. You’re trespassing on private property if you’re here after hours or you’ve sneaked in through the fence. That means you didn’t pay for a ticket. That’s like shoplifting.”
A little concern began to show on Jah’s face. “You still have to turn me over to the police or someone who has half a brain around here.”
“That would be me.” Chase grinned. “I’m really the constable for this Village, deputized by the Horry County sheriff himself. And I’m not talking about the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
Robin dropped to his knees. “The sheriff! That man plagues me! Wherever I go, there’s a price on my head. Prince John will never be happy until he can take the throne from good King Richard.” Everyone paused as he delivered his soliloquy.
“You can’t really be the law around here.” Jah broke the silence. “I demand a lawyer. I demand a phone call.”
“You seem to have Village justice confused with outsider justice,” Chase replied. “Although the two could be combined if you know anything about who killed Joshua Shift and attacked Ham the blacksmith.”
“What are you talking about? I admit I snuck in the Village. I’ll be glad to pay for a ticket. I don’t know anything about killing or attacking anyone. You’re talking about my father and my uncle. I want justice for both of them.”
“You seemed pretty harsh when you spoke to your mother,” I added. “And Alex here saw a man in a monk’s robe attack Ham in his smithy.”
“I admit I’ve been on edge, and I admit to searching the Village for information about what happened to my father. But that doesn’t mean I killed anyone! Besides, half the people I’ve seen here are wearing monk’s robes,” Jah argued. “How can you tell one from the other?”
He had a good point about the robes and a good reason for sneaking around the Village. “You don’t understand how it works around here,” I explained. “There are some visitors who wear monk’s robes while they’re here, but those are different than the one you have on. That one belongs to the Brotherhood.”
“An important distinction,” said a voice from the shadows. Four robed monks stepped out of the darkness that surrounded the dungeon. “We’re glad to see someone here has noticed that difference.”
“I don’t think this is one of your brothers,” Chase told him. “He’s an outsider who happened to find one of your robes. I’m sure he’ll be glad to return it.”
Carl stepped closer into the circle we had all become. “The Brotherhood of the Sheaf doesn’t allow for transgressions against it. This man has now become our prisoner.”
Two of the monks moved to take Jah’s arms away from the Merry Men. It was becoming an ugly scene from some kind of weird Renaissance book.
“Hold on. No one is anyone’s prisoner,” Chase told them. “I know you only want to take him back to the bakery and make him eat bread or bake bread or whatever you usually do as a punishment for borrowing one of your robes, but I think this time we’re going to have to do it my way.”
Carl didn’t seem happy with that idea. “This is our concern, Bailiff.”
“Sorry. This man was caught trespassing, which is a graver crime than borrowing a robe.” Chase didn’t back down from the monks.
I wasn’t sure if the monks would step back. It looked like a standoff to me. But Carl suddenly relented. “All right. But we’ll have our robe back.”
Wicked Weaves Page 18