Each day, Ariela went out calling. Dressed most impeccably in a silk dress with an ornate brocade bodice, a straw bonnet tied firmly to her head with a scarf, she flitted from home to home among her neighbors, visited with the women of her acquaintance in their gardens, and gave them her advice on the plants . . . as well as the latest news from around the town. Ariela was known somewhat unkindly among the men of Eventide as the Gossip Fairy, and there was no bit of news on which she could not amplify, exaggerate, or speculate wildly. If gossip ever ran through the town like wildfire, you could be sure that Ariela was at the front of it, actively fanning the flames with every beat of her wings.
While the Gossip Fairy had a most vocal opinion regarding the background and secrets of nearly everyone in the town, she was silent about her own past. That Ariela was a River Fairy who had abandoned that wilder existence for a life among the inhabitants of Eventide was obvious, but why a River Fairy would do so had long been a matter of speculation among the women of the town.
Some of the women claimed that she was really the queen of the fairies in disguise, hiding among the villagers of Eventide, and that if her true nature were discovered they would all be murdered in their beds. Others—mostly the younger women—were convinced that Ariela was fleeing from a tragic past where she had fallen passionately into a doomed love affair with a merman . . . or a selkie . . . or a fairy prince. Most of the men were convinced that she had simply been thrown out of her own tribe for causing too much trouble.
Ariela had heard all of their stories about her—and even repeated them to others—without ever confirming her true reasons for being there . . . except, possibly, to the scribe Abel, who noted that Ariela loved her garden above all else and that the roving River Fairies were never in one place long enough to establish one.
She sowed seeds of all kinds around the village, both in the gardens and in the ears of her eager listeners. Unfortunately, the fruits of such seeds were often both unpredictable and dangerous.
For example, when Jarod had his rather fated chance encounter with Vestia Walters . . . well, there were just not enough known facts to make a proper telling, so the Gossip Fairy felt perfectly justified in filling in the unknowns with what she considered the most plausible fabrications. This ability was precisely the aspect that qualified her to be considered an expert on any subject concerning the town or world beyond.
So it was that as spring warmed into a verdant summer, so, too, blossomed the speculation around Vestia Walters and Jarod Klum, and with every telling by the Gossip Fairy another nail was driven into the coffin of Jarod and his hopes for winning Caprice Morgan.
“So I don’t know what to do,” Jarod concluded, lifting up the sluice gate to Farmer Bennis’s south field as he saw the water approaching down the ditch from the north. “Vestia Walters thinks I’m interested in her and somehow staked out a claim on me when I wasn’t looking.”
“I thought that Percival fellow from the town was chasing her?” Edvard said casually. He was sitting on the rail fence, leaning into the post next to him as he nibbled at the end of a long stalk of green wheat.
“He was,” Jarod sighed. “He got his nose broken back on the night of Spring Revels. It shifted his nose to one side, which ruined both his looks and Vestia’s opinion of him. No one ever found out how he broke it . . . he always changes the subject whenever it’s brought up.”
The Dragon’s Bard frowned. “The nose looked straight the last time I saw him.”
“That’s the strangest part,” Jarod said, looking up into the bright sky. “It had just started to heal when it broke again—only this time he was right in the middle of Trader’s Square with Jon Zwegan and Merlin Thatcher. They were just walking across the square when Percival cried out and fell to the ground, his nose broken again. This second time it healed straight and looks as though he had never broken it at all—but he had to go through the pain twice, the swelling in his face and the bruises under his eyes. He looks fine now, but Vestia still won’t have anything to do with him.”
“Bad wishcraft that,” Farmer Bennis said as he removed his hat and wiped his brow. “Put the nose right but in a bent way. That’s a broken wish for you.”
“Well, whoever wished it didn’t do me any favor,” Jarod groused. “Vestia couldn’t stand to be around him, so now the town thinks she and I are a couple and Caprice doesn’t seem to even know I exist.”
“I’m sure she does,” Bennis advised. The massive centaur was trotting along next to the approaching water, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his enormous brimmed hat shading his eyes. He held the handle of a long shovel in one hand, resting it back over his left shoulder. “The Morgans are having troubles of their own, Jarod. It’s been hard enough on them these years since their wishing well was broken—and losing their mother in the bargain—but it’s been especially difficult these last two months.”
“That foolishness about a wishing well in Butterfield?” piped in the Dragon’s Bard from the fence. “It was nothing but a ruse by an itinerant charlatan preying on the innocence of the unsuspecting and easily persuaded!”
“An expert opinion, indeed,” Bennis nodded.
“But they caught the man in the act,” Jarod said. “Ran him out of Butterfield.”
“Yes, but not until two months had gone by for the Morgans without any wishers at all,” Bennis concluded. “Their position was not good to begin with, but now they’re in serious trouble—Abel! Please turn the water in there!”
The scribe, standing next to the ditch with his own shovel in hand, nodded and quickly pushed the spade down into the path of the water, turning it into the channeled furrows of the field.
“This were far easier when the wishcraft was working,” Farmer Bennis said as he carefully walked along the northern edge of the field, checking the water as it slowly moved down the channels between the rising stalks of grain.
Jarod shook his head as he knelt next to the sluice gate, holding the wooden dam in his hand. “I know it’s been hard for her family, but I just wish she would see that I’m here. But I’m no different than anyone else—just another face in the village.”
The Dragon’s Bard sat up suddenly on the fence, his face brightening. “Of course! That’s it!”
Jarod glanced up warily.
“You need to stand out, be distinctive . . . dashing, daring . . . mysterious . . .”
Jarod started shaking his head. “Wait a moment! I don’t want—”
“I’ve got it!” the Bard shouted. “A brilliant idea!”
“No!” Jarod yelped.
“You just need to be noticed!” Edvard pushed himself off of the fence, his hands flourishing in the air as he spoke. “To stand out from the crowd—”
“No, not again!” Jarod jumped up so quickly that his boots slipped on the wet bank of the ditch. He slid into the water, then regained his footing as he stepped out toward the Dragon’s Bard. “The last time you tried to make me into someone I wasn’t—”
“But that’s not what I’m talking about, my boy!” The Bard laughed heartily, clasping his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m not talking about changing who you are—just who everyone thinks you are! Perception is everything, the very key to being noticed! The repentant sinner is ever more quickly noticed than the saint! The scoundrel with the heart of gold ever so much more attractive to romantic young women than the honest farmer with a stable income—get it? Stable income, eh?”
“A scoundrel?” Jarod snorted. “So now I’m supposed to be some knave blackguard? That’s not me!”
“You don’t have to actually be scandalous, just have the slightest taint of it,” Edvard said. “Of all the stories I tell, the ones that the women love most are those filled with rogues, rascals, and scalawags! Take the stories of this local ne’er-do-well . . . this highwayman chap . . .”
“Dirk Gallowglass?”
“Yes! Dirk Gallowglass!” The Dragon’s Bard rolled the name off his tongue again in the most dramatic fas
hion. “Dirk Gallowglass! There’s a name that makes men tremble and women swoon! He is a scoundrel who glides along the roads beyond the town by night, his black domino flying in the wind behind him as he plunges down the moonlit lanes! He robs trade merchants from distant lands, but his strange code of honor never permits him to raid the town of Eventide. No doubt he has a secret lover in the town who holds his heart bound never to harm or disturb the good citizens of Eventide as he hides among the rooftops, prancing along the ridgepoles in the silence of the—”
Edvard stopped abruptly.
Jarod, the centaur, and the scribe were all staring at him in dumbfounded silence.
“Now, there is a man whose name is known to everyone in the town,” Edvard continued, undaunted by his audience. “You cannot purchase that kind of notoriety!”
Farmer Bennis raised a single eyebrow. “You do know that there is a difference between notoriety and being notorious, don’t you?”
Abel tried unsuccessfully to stifle a sudden laugh.
The Dragon’s Bard stared at his scribe as he spoke. “Of course, but the slightest hint of the notorious can buy you a lot of notoriety.”
Bennis shook his head, swinging his shovel down from his shoulder. “And some of us want neither, as you all too well know. A reputation, especially in a town like Eventide, is a fragile thing.” Bennis gripped the Bard’s shoulder hard enough to make him wince. “None of us want anything so fragile to be broken.”
“I assure you again,” Edvard said, “at least one reputation here will remain intact . . . even after I am allowed to leave.”
Edvard gingerly held the small teacup handle between his thumb and index finger, his pinky extended as he spoke. “Have I told you what a remarkably lovely garden you have, Miss Ariela?”
Ariela Soliandrus sat across the garden table from the Dragon’s Bard, perched atop her smaller chair, made especially so that she could sit at the table built for her human neighbors. “You have, Mr. Dragonguard.”
“That’s Dragon’s Bard,” Edvard corrected with a slight tip of his tiny cup.
“Yes, yes, yes,” the fairy said with a bored air, waving her tiny hand. Her voice was higher pitched than most humans’, yet remarkably melodious. “But it is most vexing that you have taken this long to call on me, though hardly surprising inasmuch as you are a man and, as such, have little comprehension of the refinements of polite society.”
Ariela had polished condescension to a fine art.
“I would agree with you in the general case,” Edvard cooed, “although in my situation, I have had cause to immerse myself in society and, as such, am on good acquaintance with the finer nuances of grace and decorum.”
“Indeed, Mr. Bard?” Ariela raised both her tiny eyebrows.
“Please, call me Edvard,” the Dragon’s Bard said, flashing a smile filled with endearing teeth. “I dare hope that we two shall be on such good acquaintance.”
“Hmmm.” Ariela turned to face her servant’s quarters—a small but well-kept one-room shack at the back of the garden. She called out, “Lucinda!”
There was a sudden scrape of a chair leg and the bump of a table before a young servant girl popped out of the door with a teakettle in one hand and a plate of scones in the other. She was human and no more than fourteen years old by the look of her. Her round face was a ruddy color and her hair somewhat disheveled from its intended form. She quickly approached and navigated the garden paths, balancing her cargo precariously as she moved. Coming at last to the table, she made a quick, if awkward, curtsy, set the plate of scones on the table with a clattering sound, and then proceeded with nervous care to pour the tea, first into Ariela’s miniature cup and then into that of the Bard.
“That will be all, Lucinda,” Ariela said with a dismissive, humorless smile.
The girl curtsied once more and then bounded back down the garden paths and into the painted box that passed for her home.
“She is a good girl, though, sadly, her parentage will condemn her to a life in service for the remainder of her days,” Ariela said with a tragic shake of her small head, the curls in her carefully coifed hair quivering ever so slightly. “The young Duke Hareld, third cousin once removed to the king, often passed through Meade—and not entirely for the ale manufactured there, it is said. Lucinda’s mother was a foolish woman who had dreams of bettering her life without much concern for the means by which she achieved position—or, it seems, for the position by which she might acquire her means. Ample proof was delivered some months later, but the duke never acknowledged the responsibility. It is true that the woman had fallen before the duke had her, and more than once—so they say—but as there had never been an issue before she met the duke, the child’s parentage seemed certain—the poor dear! Imagine the struggle it must be for her to have to live with such tragedy, especially when it is so often retold, never to be forgotten?”
“Most tragic, indeed,” Edvard replied with great sincerity, “and I shall tell it in those same tragic terms at each opportunity.”
“As I would hope you would,” Ariela nodded.
“Still,” the Bard said, carefully setting down his cup in its saucer, “I have come with troubling questions, my dear Ariela.”
“Troubling?” Ariela asked.
“Yes, and concerning someone in the town.”
“Indeed?” The fairy leaned forward in her chair.
“It’s this question of Jarod Klum,” Edvard said, furrowing his brow with his best concern.
“Jarod?” Ariela leaned back at once. “He’s fine enough for a young human male . . . and your friend, I believe.”
“So I thought,” Edvard intoned with resonant concern. “But the more I get to know him, the more troubled I become.”
Ariela leaned forward once again. “Why ever so?”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t say anything.” Edvard shook his head as he frowned. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Let me judge its worth,” Ariela said through her smile. If there were anyone in Eventide who could make something out of nothing, it was the fairy.
“Well, have you ever seen him and this Dirk Gallowglass at the same time?” Edvard leaned forward himself, lowering his voice dramatically.
“In truth, sir, I have never seen Dirk Gallowglass at all!” Ariela answered, her own voice lowering in return.
“But especially not with Jarod Klum,” Edvard said. “I’ve never seen him at night when the highwayman is about. No one has! And he has a magical treasure box . . .”
“No!”
“Yes. It’s hidden near his desk in the countinghouse,” Edvard said, his eyes shifting left and right before he continued. “He’s always visiting it. Who knows what he keeps in there!”
“But he works in the countinghouse,” Ariela said, shaking her head. “His father is in charge of the arrest record . . . the town dungeon is right beneath him . . . he sees the Constable Pro Tempore every day . . .”
“And what better position to have if one were the highwayman!” Edvard exclaimed. “Privy to every move made by the very constabulary tasked with his apprehension? And what of this Vestia Walters, eh? How is it that such a common-seeming young beard as Jarod would turn the head of the town beauty? It would take more coins than an apprentice accountant earns to hold her attention. I think there may be more to this Jarod Klum than meets the eye!”
“I never considered the possibility . . .”
“I fear I must leave you at once,” the Dragon’s Bard said, standing quickly from the table. “I have said too much, and if Farmer Bennis thinks that I have been gone too long from his company he will be vexed—and I will be all the more sore for his vexing.”
The Bard flourished his hat and all but ran from the garden.
“Do call again!” Ariela yelled after him.
Edvard smiled to himself. He did not think it would be necessary to call again. As he proudly recounted later to his horrified scribe, he had helped his friend the best way he knew how.
By afternoon, Jarod noticed that people in the town were looking at him differently. They would whisper to each other as they passed him; they would stare, only to look quickly away whenever he caught their eye. No one was so tactless as to mention it to him directly or to his parents—but the insinuation of his being a rogue was otherwise of general knowledge.
By nightfall, everyone in the town except his parents and Jarod himself had heard the rumor connecting Jarod with the highwayman. This included Percival Taylor, who took a sudden aversion to the apprentice accountant, and Vestia Walters, whose interest in using Jarod to torture Percival increased proportionately.
It also included Dirk Gallowglass—the highwayman.
• Chapter 11 •
The Highwayman
Dirk Gallowglass! A name that struck terror into the hearts of travelers! Whenever he rode on his midnight black horse and brandished his blade, merchants and patrons caught on the road would cower in fear. Grant him whatever he asked of you, it was said, and he would leave you in peace. Cross him, and there was no end but a death as black as the masked hood that he wore.
At least, that was what Henri Smyth hoped everyone believed.
Henri was a son of a farmer in Farfield. His tall, strong body and ruggedly handsome features had somehow not served him well behind a plow. He was a proud and moody youth whose eyes were always looking past the horizons of his father’s fields. Josias Smyth, Henri’s father, tried his best to keep his son’s interest, teaching him what he knew about swordsmanship and the greater world, but the elder Smyth had come to realize that his headstrong son could learn the realities of life only by having them pummeled into him by experience. It was only a matter of time before he left his home against his father’s advice. So Josias gave his son what little money he had, his sword belt, and his rapier from his service in the Epic War—and prayed to whatever gods might be listening to take care of his wayward boy.
Experience wasted no time before starting the pummeling. Henri had started out in the belief that he could somehow make a living off of his charm alone, but for some reason, people did not toss coins at his feet simply because he smiled at them. He took a few working jobs along the way, telling himself they were just temporary until someone recognized the glory that was in him and saw that taking care of him was something he deserved. After several months, he came to the startling realization, while cleaning out a pigsty in Meade, that handsome, comely people can starve to death just as quickly as ugly ones. He finished the job and got on the road back to Farfield.
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