A Midsummer's Day (8 page)

Johnny sighed.  “What choice have I?” he asked with a shrug of the shoulders.  “What say ye, jury?  Shalt ye send mine own betrothed to the depths of this briny deep?”

The audience didn’t even wait for their Lord High Sheriff to hit “thrice” before condemning her to the water.

The world fell away.  She screamed.  At the very last second she clamped her mouth shut.

If heaven existed anywhere on Earth, it had to be in the water.  It was a nurse with nimble fingers, cooling her burning skin, easing the tightness of her lungs.

The chair moved upwards before it could come to the very bottom of its underwater journey.  “Think thee fortunate I find me in a good humour, my Lady, that I seekest not to dunke thee for long,” the Lord High Sheriff Johnny said.  It was a cleverly concocted explanation as to why she was kept under for so little time.  In truth, the dunkers were under the strictest orders that Sammie could be left below for no longer than thirty seconds at a time.

Asthma did come with a benefit or two.

Sammie shook the hair from her eyes.  She smiled proudly at her betrothed.  “My Lord High Sheriff,” she said sweetly.  “My heart be thou’s to command.  ‘Tis only a game to play at.  ‘Tis refreshing to gaze upon a most comely man now and again.”  She emphasized comely. 

It was the hardest line she had all day.

Nobody in existence was as handsome…  Nobody was as spectacularly gorgeous as her Johnny.

She was ready for the depths before the audience could condemn her for a second time.  It was easier to enjoy the powers of the water with full lungs.  She closed her eyes and leaned her head back.  She would enjoy every extra second the dunkers left her below.

“My Lord High Sheriff,” she said with an edge when they brought her back up.  “Methinks if thy manhood be as big as thy most mightily swollen head, thou wouldst not find me to stray.”

The audience oohed and ahhed.  Johnny gave the dunkers their signal to send Sammie below without even going to the jury.

<>

She flailed in the water.  Where were the armrests?  She needed to find the armrests before she slid off the chair.

The force threw her back into the chair.  What little air she had left was knocked from her.

She forced her eyes open.  The murky water rippled.  Shockwave...  A shockwave ripped through the pond. 

What happened?  Did something explode? 

She looked up.  There were no flames.  No fire.  No debris falling into the water.

She didn’t move.  The dunkers weren’t bringing her back to the surface.  She was never left below this long.  This was longer than the monk was left down for his longest time.

Her lungs burned.  There was no air left to hold.  None to breathe in. 

Should she swim for the surface?  She wasn’t the best swimmer, even in a bikini.  But to try to swim up in a heavy, soaking, full length gown…  If she slipped off of the chair, if she failed to go up…  She’d never breathe again. 

Still, it was only three feet.  Three feet to the surface.

She was moving.  Up.  Not down.  The chair moved up through the water.  The green water was broken by glorious bright blue.  She drank in the air.  Her lungs screamed with each breath.

The dunkers swung her back to the stage.  She wiped the hair from her eyes.

Johnny helped her to her feet.  Dear, wonderful, healthy Johnny.  Thank God he wasn’t hurt.

Her legs shook violently.  She leaned on Johnny as she attempted to put her breathing to rights.  What in the hell had happened?

“My Lady Halloway,” Johnny said in his most proper tone.  Either he was getting to be a better actor, or the shockwave, and the fact that he had left her below for so long didn’t faze him.  Sammie chose to believe the first.  “I pray thy time in the pond hath washed clean thy virtue.”

She took a steadying breath.  She had a line to say.  She’d ask Johnny about the shockwave later.  She straightened and looked out into the audience.

Something had changed.

This was not the same audience who watched her go into the water.  That audience had been in a rainbow of colors, in shorts and tee shirts and tank tops, the sun reflecting off lenses of digital cameras and sunglasses. 

All that was gone.

Her blond tourist and his heckling friends were gone.

Everyone around the pond stood, bored and boiling in the costume of the nobility.  Nobody hid back in the trees.

Every person stared straight at her, shooting the proverbial laser at her.  This was no longer entertainment.  These nobles had come for one reason only.  They wanted to witness punishments.

Sammie swallowed hard.  She looked at Johnny.  Nothing in his face told her anything was out of the ordinary.  He waited for her to say her line with a stoic calmness that twisted her stomach into knots and brought tears to her eyes.  Whatever happened had gotten to him, too.

“My virtue doth remain as white as snow, my Lord High Sheriff,” she said without her normal enthusiasm.  For the first time, Lady Anne’s spirit had been broken by the water.

Relief swept Johnny’s face.  Maybe this was part of some elaborate joke, and his hard veneer was finally cracking.  He moved to the side, and let her pass.

She should have been defiant to the very end.  She should have told the crowd that a woman denying her own heart was a greater sin than casual flirting.  From the stage, to where the Dead Road intersected the rest of the festival, she should have held her head up proudly.  But the cold, condemning eyes of those watching her pass kept her tongue still.

The end of the Dead Road should have brought some peace.  There should have been some sign, any sign, that the tourists from the dunke had been hastily stashed away for the joke she’d just been the victim of.  Unruly and unhappy babies in strollers should have screamed.  Men should be stumbling out of the Tavern Aragon.  There should have been at least one teen girl in a perfect peasant costume so addicted to her cell phone that she didn’t stop texting.

Any sign would have been better than none.  Any sign that anything from 2012 still existed would have been better than a sea of peasants and nobles, turning to stare at the newly shamed highborn Lady.

Sammie slipped behind the Tavern
Aragon
and leaned against the rough wood of the pub’s back wall.  She put her hand over her eyes.  She wanted to cry.  But the tears wouldn’t come.  If this was a joke…

It was too cruel, too unnecessary.  And Johnny… 

Maybe she’d hit her head when she was thrown back in the chair.  Maybe a concussion raged against her thoughts, turning everything into the Tudor period she so loved.  Everything would be better in the morning.

At this point, a concussion seemed like a godsend.

Before Sammie could resign herself to brain damage, Johnny appeared from around the corner.  The seriousness he’d shown on stage was gone.  In its place was the sexy, sultry, slightly crooked smile that never failed to send her legs into quivers.

Before she could say anything, before a smile of relief could spread across her face, he cupped her face in his hands and placed her lips on hers.

“You don’t know how much I needed that,” she said after when Johnny pulled himself away.  “Something weird is going on, Johnny.  What happened while I was in the pond?”

“I know not thy meaning, my love,” Johnny said.  “‘Tis only strange that the Lord High Sheriff of this Shire had need to dunke his betrothed.  But I shalt forgive me thy indiscretions, provided they art not repeated anon.”

His eyes were steady and serious.  They lacked the glimmer of humor that always appeared when he had to be serious with her.  His lips didn’t twitch under the strain of trying to keep a straight face. 

He never kept this up when they were alone.

She narrowed her eyes.  “Cut the act, Johnny.  There’s no one here to notice.”

“What act shouldst I be cutting, my Lady?”  He was every bit as serious as the Lord High Sheriff.  “By what manner of name be this Johnny?  ‘Tis not my name, nor the name thou art to address me by.”

He reached for her.  Sammie took a step back.  This wasn’t the man she loved.  This wasn’t the man she was going to marry in two short months.  Something had happened while she was in the water.

Tears stung her eyes.  “Do you not know me, my love?”  Her voice cracked.

Johnny cupped her face once again.  His touch only brought her dread.  “My dearest Anne, methinks the mixture of the heat and the shame of suffering the trial and dunke hath created an ill humour about thee.  Take thee some rest.  I must make me my leave of thee.”

Without another word, he turned and marched away.

What in the bleeding hell was happening?

Chapter 9

The days had grown long since the public executions at festival included any real deaths, especially when the Queen was in session.

Mary Tudor had reveled in the executions.  She sent several criminals to the pyre herself.

But things were different in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  The public display became just that, a display.  The deaths disappeared, and violent and heinous criminals were replaced with petty criminals whose crimes warranted little more punishment than a trip to the pond or a stay in the stocks.

Still, the executions were Jameson’s favorite event.  It was a daily reminder to the visitors to Nottingham that this was his Shire.  This was his Shire, and in his Shire, his law was absolute.  He relished each and every punishment that he meted out on the biggest stage in all of Sherwood.

But today…  His mind was far from the executions and the crimes he presented to his audience.  Anne consumed his mind, setting his thoughts aflame.  He knew that she was a wild spirit who would not be broken.  He knew that before they became betrothed.  And, because of that, he knew he would be forced to put Anne in the dunke chair day after day.

And he’d known that she’d be just as stubborn and wild when she came out of the water.

But she had not been herself this time.  She had left the pond with the look of bewitchment about her.  At first it appeared that the dunke had at last taken its proper effect.  It appeared, for once, that she was shamed and repentant.

But she should have easily recovered by the time they met behind the Tavern Aragon. 

Instead, the bewitchment had only grown.  Anne spoke of strange things, in a strange manner of speech.  She called him a strange name…  Johnny.  It was the name of a child.  A peasant.  It was not his name, nor what she should have addressed him as in any case.  He was to be Jameson in private, and my Lord High Sheriff in public.

It must have been the heat.  It was unbearably hot
,
this midsummer’s day, and Anne was of a most delicate humour.  The heat often sent her into a spell of the vapours, which could alter her mind.  It happened once a festival, it seemed.

Jameson prayed that she would heed his words, and take her some rest as she changed back into her proper gown.  A good rest in calmness and coolness should solve her bewitchment.  If it did not...  If her behavior did not improve when they reunited for the Queen’s Processional...

Well, he would have no choice.

Anne would have to be punished again.  And more severely than a simple dunking.

Just as long as it didn’t come to sending her into exile…

Executions passed smoothly, despite Jameson’s distracted mind.  Those who had born witness to the event moved on to more pleasant distractions.  Those who had been punished today had been dealt with.  Some would meet the stocks.  Servants who had misbehaved would be set aside for the auction later today.  A handful had been banished from the festival by a proclamation signed by the hand of Queen Elizabeth.

A dozen criminals had been dealt with.  But there were always more.  Always somebody that brought shame upon themselves, Nottinghamshire, and the festival.

There were always crimes that needed to be remedied.  There was always that
which
needed to be done. 

And it was his job to do it.

He shook the thoughts of Anne from his mind.  The Lord High Sheriff of the realm had no time for such concerns.  He had no time even to enjoy the revelries of the festival as he started his rounds.

He found himself drawn to the empty Grotto Stage.  It was here that his Anne and two other supposedly respectable Ladies of Queen Elizabeth’s Court shamed themselves by singing for the masses.  It was something that filled him with shame.  To have his own betrothed sing so openly…

But it was by the order of Queen Elizabeth that this singing group was formed.  Not even he could say no against a direct order from the Queen.  So he turned a blind eye towards the group.  He swallowed the shame and ignored the swelling embarrassment the group caused his name.  He took his frustrations out on the criminals he arrested, and let Anne sing her little songs.

As it was…  Anne possessed the voice of an angel.  To deny her voice to the world would be a crime in
itself
.