[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  “Will they listen to you?”

  “There is a wee chance they will.”

  “Only a wee chance, eh?”

  “It is not so bad, aye?”

  “I suppose it isn’t.”

  They stood there smiling at each other for a moment.

  “Well enough. Was there something you wanted to see me about then, lass?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot I wanted to try to lift your sword, if I could?”

  “Very well. I had best prepare to catch it, though. They have given it quite a shine, and the dirt would spoil that.”

  He stepped up quite close to her and held the sword out in front of him as if he were serving it on a tray.

  “Use both hands, lass, and heft your best.”

  She did.

  She put both of her hands on the handle and heaved with all her might.

  She was in decent shape. She took PE in college even though she didn’t have to. But sports had not prepared her for this.

  His sword was longer than her legs, so its five pounds felt like much more when she held it up. She managed to raise it up and hold it there for a few seconds, but then she was grateful to be lowering it back into his grasp.

  Behind him, one of the men called out, “Dall. Art thou in this demonstration or not?”

  He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye. “Shall I go, lass, or were you not done with me?”

  Emily laughed. “Go, go.” She made shooing gestures with her hands.

  Laughing and pretending to dodge her hands, he ran back to the men.

  When Emily got back to her chair, Vange held up her hand. Emily slapped it. The two of them nudged each other, and then Siobhan was nudging Emily’s other side.

  Dall owned the sword demonstration.

  If the other contenders had been cats, then he would have been a lion. He led the others through their moves, but all eyes were on him.

  Afterward, a young man in an English noble costume approached Dall at a swagger.

  “Uh oh,” Emily said to herself.

  Siobhan and Vange squeezed her hands, but all of their eyes were glued on the scene unfolding before them.

  Dall greeted the young English noble, “Hello, lad.”

  “Lad? Thou wilt respect thy betters, man.”

  Without taking her eyes off Dall, Emily asked Siobhan, “Is this part of the show?”

  Siobhan kept her eyes on Dall as she answered, “This is the improvised portion of the show.”

  Having hefted Dall’s sword, Emily knew it was real, not just a prop. It could hurt. She said to Siobhan, “I hope the ground rules include not hurting each other.”

  Meanwhile, out in the arena, Dall stood calmly.

  The lad continued to swagger toward him.

  Dall’s right hand held his two-handed sword as one might hold a shovel parallel to the ground. “Respect is earnit, lad, nay demandit.”

  The youth was anything but calm. He shook as he stormed up to within ten feet of Dall with his sword up between them. “I do demand thy respect. Thou wilt bow to me as is my due as a noble, and thy superior.”

  Dall hadn’t moved. “Nay Englishman is the superior o’ any Scot. I will na bow, lad.”

  “Errrgghh.” The youth ran at Dall, holding up his one-handed sword like he was about to serve in tennis.

  In one fluid movement, Dall swung his claymore like a baseball bat into the one-handed sword. He battered it out of the youth’s hand by brute force.

  The audience cheered.

  The next thing Emily knew, the youth was on the ground amid a cloud of dust, and Dall was picking up the smaller sword.

  “What happened?” Emily asked no one in particular.

  Siobhan said, “Dall knocked that kid’s sword right out of his hand, and the kid fell over trying to hold onto it.”

  Some other English nobles helped the kid get up and leave, shaking slightly.

  The audience applauded.

  Two other Scots fought next. Their duel was much longer than Dall’s short run-in with the young English noble.

  Emily could tell the two of them had practiced stage fighting together. She had learned some of the same techniques. Their claymores never quite touched the other person, but they reacted as if they had. She knew Dall would prevail in a real fight, but this one was more entertaining, with them twirling and their kilts flying up. Emily grinned to see the neon yellow swimming shorts they all wore underneath. No wonder the audience had laughed when the highlanders did the can-can.

  And that reminded her she was going to ask Dall about his ever-present 16th century speech patterns and his second-nature swordsmanship.

  Either he had traveled forward in time, or he was a re-enactment enthusiast who had made this his life.

  The latter was worrisome, but the former was hopelessly attractive.

  However, Emily was interested in Dall more than in his puzzling situation. So interested.

  As if it could curtail her wanton attraction to the man, her common sense brought up the fact she had only known him five hours.

  Telling it she was at the faire, time for fun, she jumped up, grabbing Vange as she rose and pulling her out of the gazebo to greet the kilted men. Watching them approach made her mouth water.

  Pumped up from their swordplay, Ian, Dall, and the rest of the highlanders all but strutted over. Most of them smiled at the audience. Some even waved.

  One was smiling at Emily.

  Filled with sudden inspiration, Emily picked two of the wildflowers growing nearby and gave one to Vange. When her friend looked at her funny, Emily held the flower out in front of her.

  Dall strode up just then, smiling that smile she imagined was just for her. “Hae ye a favor for me, lass?”

  “Yes, and if you’ll hold still, I’ll put it on you.”

  He walked up as close as he had been when he held the sword out for her to play with. She could see his chest rising and falling with the heavy breaths he was taking from his exertion, running about supervising the other men’s sword bouts.

  Trembling slightly, but also thrilling every time they touched, Emily wove the stem of the flower through Dall’s shirt lacings, very aware of his breath mingling with hers while he stood there. She had been this close to a few men before, but she hadn’t ever felt so intimately connected that she was aware of their mere breathing.

  Five hours, her common sense reminded her.

  Shut up, she told it. Out loud, she said, “There, now you’re mine … for the day. I’ve marked you.” She forced herself to smile and look away from her handiwork with the flower, up into his eyes.

  Thank God, they were twinkling. “I was already that, lass. Wull ye be mine as wull, for the day?”

  Emily melted inside, even after he paused as she had and added ‘for the day’. What should she say, ‘I thought you’d never ask’? No, that was too cliché. Maybe just ‘Yes’? Was that interesting enough? She must have stood there enjoying that for too long like the shy fool she often was around guys, though.

  “Answer him.” Vange nudged Emily and walked away.

  Dall took both her hands, then leaned back and swung her from side to side with a hypnotic motion, gazing in to her eyes. “’Tis ainly fair, Emily. If I’m tae be yers, then ye should be mine … for the day.”

  “I was already that,” Emily said, lost in his eyes and lulled by the gentle swinging of his hands.

  His smile took over his face, and he swung her all the way around.

  “Ahem.” That was Ian.

  “Uh …” That was Siobhan.

  Dall stopped gently, let go of her hands, and nodded to them before he turned back to Emily and asked, “The clan does hae a break in the schedule now, lass. What shall we dae?”

  That was a loaded question, but with the way Ian and Siobhan were standing with crossed arms, she came up with something harmless. “Could you teach me a little of how to swordfight? I don’t think I can handle a claymore, but a shortsword maybe, or even just a da
gger might do. I feel a little defenseless in this environment.”

  “Ooh, me too.” That was Vange.

  Emily thoroughly enjoyed the next hour.

  Dall coaxed Ian into giving them each a historically authentic-looking dudgeon dagger. They might as well have been short swords, they were so big. “Ye lasses ought tae keep yer daggers hidden till ye hae need for them.” As Dall said this, he pantomimed it for them, complete with lifting his imaginary skirts so he could unsheathe his imaginary dagger.

  Looking over at Vange, Emily could tell her friend found this every bit as funny as she did. She did her best to keep a straight face. “Could you show us again? I’m not sure I get how you did that.”

  Dall obliged, but right at the end, he lunged forward and skewered her with his imaginary dagger.

  Most of the audience had left when the men stopped the sword show, but a few dozen had stayed to watch the women get fighting lessons. They laughed louder at Dall’s pantomime than the women did.

  Dall then showed the ladies how to parry sword attacks with their daggers, explaining that besides sneak attacks, the wielder of a dagger killed by stepping within an attacker’s reach and counter attacking under the arm, which was generally unprotected, even when an attacker wore leather armor.

  He and Ian demonstrated a bunch of these different scenarios, and then Dall let Emily and Vange try acting them out in slow motion on him.

  Unlike during the sword show, now the audience participated, calling out humorous suggestions, all in favor of the women.

  “Kill him.”

  “Cut his arm off.”

  “Don’t let him get away with that.”

  Stage fighting had been a required part of Emily’s high-school drama major. However, because all the sword fights in the historical plays they had put on were between men, she had never previously had the opportunity to perform stage fighting in front of an audience.

  Now she knew she loved stage fighting.

  Really loved it.

  Melodramatically feeding off the audience’s silly suggestions, Emily hammed up all the fake stabbing:

  Creeping up on Ian from behind, stepping into his reach, and stabbing him under the arm.

  Pulling out her dagger to stab him when he crept up on her.

  Even more fun was parrying Dall’s sword attacks. For the show aspect of this training exercise, Dall came at her just slowly enough that she could move into position to block him every time.

  But stage fighting is fundamentally different from self-defense.

  After that hour performing in front of the audience, Ian left on an errand and Dall took Emily and Vange backstage for some more practical instruction with their daggers. The moves were all the same, but this time he told them not to move slowly. Of course, he had them stabbing straw bales instead of people, commenting as they did so.

  “That is the way o’ it.”

  “Yer thrust must be strong and sure the first time, lass.”

  “Yer advantage is the element o’ surprise, aye? ’Tis na likely ye wull get a second chance.”

  Emily had stabbed the straw bale a hundred times before she realized she was tired and her arm would be sore the next day.

  Vange met her eyes, and the two of them slumped to the ground.

  Vange said, “Thank you Dall, for the daggers and the lessons. Can we do something easier now? We’re tired.”

  “Easy, eh?” Dall smiled at them. “Verra wull. Hear them singing at the stage on the other side o’ this burlap wall?”

  Emily and Vange listened.

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Dall explained, “If ye can be quiet, then we can sneak…” He paused as if to think of a word.

  “We’re not going to ruin their singing show with stage fighting, Dall,” said Emily.

  Dall laughed. “Ha ha ha. I roused yer temper, eh?”

  “Oh. Was that a Scottish he-man warrior joke?” Emily smiled a small hopeful smile at him.

  “Aye, lass, it was.”

  Emily put her hand over Dall’s.

  He turned his hand over so they were holding hands.

  Emily could feel herself glowing with happiness, but in the back of her mind, she worried. Would this warm and wonderful connection she felt with him only be for the day? Would she ever see him again? He still hadn’t asked for a way to contact her.

  Dall had finished laughing at her seriousness surrounding his joke. “I was gaun'ae say, lass, we could sneak intae the audience and sit on the ground in front, sae as not tae disturb the singing. ’Twould set us up with good seats for the last performance o’ Short Shakespeare today. I think ye lasses like those lads, aye?”

  They did.

  Even more than watching the performers on stage, Emily liked sitting on the ground next to Dall with his arm around her. They were both wearing so much fabric around the lower halves of their bodies that she didn’t even notice how hard the ground was. Well, probably his arm around her had something to do with that, too.

  When the singing show was over, some of the faire goers got up and left, poor souls, not realizing that a much better show was soon to start there.

  Dall, Emily, and Vange moved a little so they could lean back on the first row of straw bales. Now they were quite comfortable. Even better, Ian, Siobhan, and a bunch more of the clan joined them. There wasn’t much room on the ground, but the bales behind them were still good for sitting.

  Ian sat next to Vange.

  Emily passed her phone to Siobhan, whispered, “Gimmie your number,” and watched, fascinated, as Siobhan got her own phone out of a small pouch that dangled from her belt.

  What a perfect spot for a phone while wearing these voluminous skirts. Emily hadn’t even noticed the pouch dangling there. Smiling, she put her own number into Siobhan’s phone.

  Relieved that she had a way to get in touch with Dall, Emily relaxed and enjoyed Short Shakespeare’s show. And his arm around her.

  After the now-expected three ovations for Short Shakespeare, Dall once again held out his arm for Emily.

  “We hae clan meeting now, and ’tis mandatory that we attend. Ye lasses may find it a wee bit o’ a bore, but I would be honored tae hae ye by my side for it.”

  “I pledged myself to you for the day, and I meant it,” Emily said, hoping he saw the twinkle she was trying to put in her eye.

  Dall put his own twinkle on.

  “Well enough then, off we gae, lass.”

  Emily walked as slowly as she could, reveling in the feel of her hand on his arm. The appreciative looks other women gave him as they passed by didn’t hurt, either.

  Dall was right about the clan meeting. To most people, it would be boring, because nothing much happened. But Emily —who loved historical re-enactment because of the sense of a different time period, not just for the sword fights— loved it.

  The clan meeting took place in a roped-off area surrounded by walkways where the audience was constantly passing by. It was decorated to resemble the inside of a 16th century castle, with heavy wooden furnishings and rugs covering the ground.

  Emily and Dall and their friends sat in the center, where they could be seen but not heard while the meeting went on around the perimeter, with the people who were speaking close to the audience.

  She and Vange were the only ones dressed English. They stuck out a bit, but everyone seemed to want them there, so it was OK.

  The center was less fancy than the perimeter, so they sat on benches around a table—remarkably similar to their lunchtime setting, except now they drank water out of pewter goblets.

  Dall sat so close once again that Emily could feel the heat radiating off him, but not quite touching. Except when he leaned close and his lips brushed her ear when he whispered to her. Which was often.

  “Guthrie kens a bit tae much aboot the crime at hand, aye?”

  “Mark the way he does grin while he tells it.”

  “Camden be not grinning, though. Mayhap we
should hae the story from his side.”

  Emily loved how clever he was. She thought he should be the clan chief and arbitrate these silly disputes. He’d be good at that.

  She also loved the soft tone of his voice and the feel of his breath in her ear.

  Even more, he was being so irreverent that each of his utterances gave her an excuse to jab his side with her elbow or tap his impressive bicep with the back of her hand—to touch him, which gave her a little thrill each time.

  Her thrills didn’t go unnoticed.

  Each time she elbowed or tapped Dall, Vange tapped Emily’s leg lightly with her toe from across the table and gave her a big know-it-all grin.

  All in all, Emily found it difficult to keep up with what was supposed to be going on at the clan meeting, but Dall’s whispers actually helped.

  “All this keening ower a dead cow?”

  “Hoo. They should hae settled the matter with swords. ’Twould na hae taken nearly sae lang.”

  “Padruig has the right o’ it. Cattle should na be allowed tae wander off.”

  Emily had learned and promptly forgotten twenty more Gaelic names before she asked Siobhan about them.

  “Are you all of Scottish descent, then? Because you have the right names.”

  Siobhan smiled. “No, these are just our faire names. My real name is Hailey.”

  “Oh.” Covertly under the table, Emily added (Hailey) to Siobhan’s contact in her phone, and then she turned to her favorite whisperer.

  “Is Dall your given name?”

  “Aye, lass, but then I truly hail from Scotland, sae…”

  “So do you know Gaelic, Dall?”

  “Aye, o’ course, lass. I am the clan’s Gaelic teacher.”

  Emily felt sure she would get Dall to admit something about coming here from the past now, because Gaelic was all but dead. The English had seen to that.

  “Well—”

  But Siobhan interrupted.

  “What Dall means is he is a professor here at the college of performing arts—for the Scots, no less—so of course he has studied Gaelic. That’s one of the many reasons they hired him, right Dall?”

  “Aye.” He looked down, which killed the conversation.

  Emily couldn’t let it go, though. The day would be over in a few more hours, and Dall hadn’t spoken of seeing her again.