Hard Day's Knight

CHAPTER TWO-2

“You wouldn’t be laughing if you were stuck with him.” I turned back to Walker, who was trying to pull Moth off from where the cat was now riding his shoulders. “Moth! Come down here this instant.”

“Farrell, are you all right? I heard yelling and thought Lancelot might have run away with—” A shortish, chunky young man with carroty red hair and big round Harry Potter glasses dashed around the side of one of the tents, skidding to a stop at the sight of a cat riding on top of Walker. His eyes widened before he shot a look out of the corners of them to where Farrell was once again trying to gain control of his fretting horse. “Eh . . . everything okay?”

“Get out of the way, you i***t,” Farrell yelled as the white horse (Lancelot? How trite could you get?) tried to take a bite out of the red-haired man’s shoulder. “Can’t you see he’s nervous?”

“Untrained is more like it,” Walker said in his lovely smooth English accent. My knees, which wanted to go all swoony at his voice, were reminded by my abused hip that he, too, had dropped me, and after promising me I wouldn’t fall. “You’re a fool to be racing him through here like that.”

“When I want the opinion of a has-been farrier, I’ll ask for it.” Farrell’s mouth was tense, which was probably the reason his words came out like icy little bullets. He swung the demon horse’s head toward the cringing red-haired man. “Claude, you waste of oxygen, get the hell out of my way! Can’t you see you’re making Lancelot nervous?”

“S-sorry. I thought you might need help. Oh, there’s a TV crew at the arena, and Simon thought you’d like to know—”

“Television!” Farrell’s head snapped around as he looked toward the big buildings of the fairground. “Why didn’t you tell me that before? Here I sit wasting my time with this third-rate shield tagger—if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, the press always comes first!”

“S-sorry,” Claude stammered again, hurrying out of the way as Farrell dug his heels into Lancelot’s side. The horse screamed, tossed his head, and lunged forward, barely missing Claude. I helped him up from where he had stumbled.

“I was just trying to help,” Claude mumbled as I brushed the dirt and dried grass from his navy-blue tunic. “I thought he might need help because of the new horse.”

“That was very thoughtful of you,” I said, picking from his shoulder a discarded candy wrapper. “Nice . . . er . . . outfit.”

“It’s our uniform,” he said as he wiped his glasses on the hem of his tunic. “The Team Joust! uniform, that is. I’m a squire.”

“Ah. A uniform,” I said, walking around him to eye the many-colored patches on each arm and the front. “I guess that would explain all the sponsorship labels on it, huh? I mean, most medieval garb didn’t have ads for iced tea companies, or equine supplements, or four-wheel-drive trucks.”

“Team Joust! is the Californian team headed up by Farrell Kirkham, CEO and self-proclaimed world champion,” a dry English voice informed us. “While all of the other teams perform at fairs and other venues in order to fund their appearances at competitions such as this, Farrell and his group don’t have to sully themselves with anything so tawdry. Their corporate sponsors ask for nothing more strenuous than occasional appearances in commercial advertisements. If you wouldn’t mind taking your cat now, I do have work to do. Real work, not preening myself in front of television cameras.”

I looked up at the dark-haired, yummy-voiced man on the huge black horse. “Jealous?”

One glossy black eyebrow rose. “Of Farrell? No. I wouldn’t wish to be him for all the sponsorship money in the world. If you will excuse me . . .” I stepped back, grabbing Moth as Walker rode by.

“Hey, I wanted to thank—Well, poop. He could have at least waited around for me to thank him.”

“That’s Walker for you,” Claude said.

I turned to give him the eye. “You know him?”

“Walker McPhail? Sure, I do. Everyone on the jousting circuit knows Walker. He’s like one of the grand old men of the sport.”

“He didn’t look that old to me,” I said, frowning. He looked to be my age, mid to late thirties, with dark hair, tiny little lines around his eyes, and one of those long English faces that are so fun to watch. He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous (except for his eyes), but he made a nice contrast to Farrell’s over-the-top handsome, young, blond good looks. “So he’s a jouster?”

“Nope. Gotta run. Farrell will have kittens if I’m not there to squire him in front of the press. See ya ’round.”

Before I could ask anything more about Walker, Claude took off at a fast jog.

“Well, that was exciting,” I said to Claude’s disappearing figure. Moth meowed and bit my wrist. “Ouch! You monster. Fine, you want down? You can just walk on your own pudgy little legs.”

I stuffed Moth back into the harness he’d slipped out of three times now, tightened the belly strap another notch, and snapped on the lightweight lead my aunt had given me with the promise that Moth loved to go on walks.

I grabbed a bottle of cold water, rubbed my hip, and gave Moth’s leash a snap. “Come on, cat; we’re going to go find us some more knights in tights. I wonder where Walker went?”

For those of you who’ve never been to a two-week-long international jousting competition held in conjunction with the world’s largest Renaissance Faire, the environment can be a little overwhelming until you learn to just take everything with a really large grain of salt.

“Prithee, my fair lady, a good after the nooning hour to ye and your fine cat. Canst ye direct me to the nearest porta-privy?” A middle-aged, bearded man in a purple-and-green jester’s hat stopped me as we came to the end of the field holding the tents.

“Sorry, I can’t; I’m new here. But I imagine there are bathrooms . . . um . . . privies over there, by . . . uh . . . yonder snack bar.”

“Thank ye, gentle lady,” the jester man said, making a wobbly bow.

“Been at the mead a little early, no doubt,” I said as he staggered off toward one of the fairground snack bars, now being run by a number of specialized food vendors. The fairgrounds themselves had been given over entirely to the Ren Faire and sporting competitions. Moth and I wandered down a row of wooden-sided, open-fronted shelters that were being used by vendors to hawk their wares. Since the Ren Faire itself wasn’t due to start until the following day, the vendors now were laying out cloths, setting up their items, and arranging very fanciful displays.

We walked past tables of scented candles in a jar, wrought-iron jewelry, ceramic dragons, a chain-mail and steel-plate armorer, a place that sold the tall, medieval pointy princess hats complete with sparkly veils, and a dizzying array of shops featuring just about anything you could imagine: Wiccan magic, henna painting, temporary tattoos, real tattoos, a piercing booth, leather clothing, medieval clothing, Scottish clothing, swordmakers, glassblowers, and jewelry for your hands, head, ears, wrists, ankles, bodice, waist, and just about anywhere else you could hang something from. Boomerangs sat alongside Viking gear, which was next to a medieval candy maker selling pynade, sugared violets, gingerbread, and cinnamon almonds. There were people who would take your picture in garb, people who would paint your face, back, and arms with intricate Celtic designs, people who would write you a sonnet and inscribe it on a piece of parchment, people who would rent you garb for the duration of the Faire, people who would sell you a bodhran (Celtic drum), guitar, or bagpipes, depending on your preference. There were jesters and jacks-of-all-trades, jugglers, fire-eaters, rogues and wenches, lads and lasses, knights and their ladies, louts, wastrels, tarts, alewives, noblemen and peasants, lords and squires, mercenaries, scoundrels, cads—all there with the intention of having fun, indulging in a little harmless playacting, and if the length of the line at the mead and ale tent was anything to go by, guzzling huge quantities of alcohol while doing so.

“Ceej was right about one thing,” I told Moth as we stepped around a huge black Great Dane in a jester’s hat that was relieving itself against a shrub. “Everyone here seems to love animals. The poor saps. Moth, no! Leave it! You can’t possibly be hungry; you ate three times on the ride up here. Spit that out! Oh, all right, I’ll buy you your own Ye Olde Corn Dogge.”

Victim to the cat’s demands, I stood in line at one of the more contemporary food booths and shared a corn dog with Moth before asking directions to the sports area.

“What sports are you wanting?” asked a man with slicked-back hair, a stylish goatee, and a purple silk shirt covered by a black pirate vest. He was in the act of setting up a booth of metal breastplates, both women’s and men’s. The women’s had spikes for n*****s, I couldn’t help noticing. “Jousting, running the rings, swordplay, quintain, archery, spear placements, distance throw, Saracen’s head, or the gauntlet?”

I blinked a bit stupidly. I thought there was just going to be jousting? I clung to the one thing that was vaguely familiar. “Um . . . jousting.”

He pointed past a big building with red metal siding to a fenced field beyond. “Jousting is out in the practice field today. Tomorrow it will be in the arena. The swordplay and archery practice rings are to the left of the arena. The rings, spear work, and gauntlet are over there, by the racetrack.”

“Thanks.” Moth, who it turned out really did like going for walks (even if it was while he was strapped into a harness), strolled along happily next to me as we made our way past a couple of practice rings, normally used for horse shows and the like, now set up with archery butts, and circles for the swordplay. Moth wanted to investigate every pile of horse poop, but I kept him on a firm line to the big fenced practice oval behind the arena.

“There you are,” CJ said as we walked toward the small stand of wooden bleachers that sat outside the ring. The ring was empty, and the bleachers bare except for CJ. She was standing next to a box of equipment—swords, chain mail, and helmets. “I wondered where you had gotten to. You don’t have your Wench pin on! How will people know you’re a Wench without it? Honestly, Pepper, I can’t take you anywhere!”

“How, indeed. What a great tragedy that would be. Oh, stop muttering threats; I have it right here.” I tucked Moth’s leash under my elbow as I rooted around in the small leather pouch attached to the long leather belt that hung at a rakish angle around my hips. “Here, see!” I held up the small brass pair of lips that was the official League of Wenches pin.

“Well, put it on, silly!” I didn’t do it fast enough, because CJ grabbed the pin and affixed it to my bodice. “Do you have your favors?”

I peered into the pouch. “Are those the little wooden sheep and bee and horse pins?”

“Yes. You give the sheep pins to new acquaintances, the bees to any vendors who let you have free samples of their wares—honey, get it?—and the horses to any rogues and knights who catch your eye.”

“Ah. Okay. What about these?” I pulled out a small laminated set of cards bedecked with the LOW logo and the words Entitles bearer to one free smooch from originating Wench. “What am I supposed to do with them?”