The Falcon Always Wings Twice Read online

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  Chapter 1

  “I think they’re plotting to bump off Terence today,” Michael said.

  “Bump him off?” I echoed. “Not for real, I assume.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. Bump off his character. In the Game.”

  “I could live with them bumping him off for real,” I said. “Just as long as they pick a time when we both have alibis.”

  Michael chuckled. No doubt he thought I was kidding. Of the two dozen actors, musicians, and acrobats my husband had recruited to perform at the Riverton Renaissance Faire, Terence was my least favorite by a mile. He was rude, selfish, greedy, lecherous, and just plain obnoxious. Unfortunately, he was also an integral part of what we’d come to call “the Game”—the ongoing semi-improvisational entertainment that had become so popular with visitors to the Faire.

  “Most Renaissance fairs just replay the story of Henry the Eighth and one or another of his wives,” Michael had said when he’d explained the idea to my grandmother Cordelia, the Riverton Faire’s owner and organizer. “Or Queen Elizabeth beheading Essex. What I have in mind is something much more exciting. We have this fictitious kingdom, and all the actors belong to one or another of the factions fighting to control it, and they plot and scheme and duel and seduce and betray each other. And they do it loudly and publicly at regular intervals all day long, in period costume and elegant Shakespearean prose.”

  “Sounds like a cross between an old-fashioned soap opera and that Game of Thrones TV show,” Cordelia had said. “I like it.”

  And thus was born the troubled kingdom of Albion.

  The Renaissance Faire was Cordelia’s latest entrepreneurial project. She’d started the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center a few years ago in a converted art pottery factory and it had grown from a summer-only venue to a year-round institution offering classes in a wide variety of arts and crafts. This summer, she’d decided to limit the classes to Monday through Thursday, and organize the Renaissance Faire Friday through Sunday.

  Of course, her venture relied heavily on the talents of various family members—especially Michael, who took charge of the entertainment, and me, in the role of her second in command. I didn’t know whether to hope the Faire succeeded or secretly root for a failure that would let us return to spending long, lazy, relaxing summers back at home in Caerphilly.

  I glanced across the room to where Michael—aka Michael, Duke of Waterston—was preening in the mirror. Okay, maybe preening was a bit harsh. After all, he was getting ready to go onstage. He appeared to be performing minute adjustments to the billowing sleeves of his white linen shirt and the fit of his red-and-black leather doublet.

  I could have used the mirror myself, just for a minute, to see if running a comb through my mane had tamed it sufficiently for me to go out in public or if I should just pull it back into a rough French braid. Probably wiser to opt for the braid in either case. I’d be doing blacksmithing demonstrations at 11:00, 3:00, and 6:00, and in between I’d be running around like crazy, taking care of the thousand and one problems that would crop up during the day.

  Odds were at least a few of the problems would include Terence. Would be caused by Terence. Would bring me totally into sympathy with any reasonably nonviolent plot to get rid of Terence.

  “What happens if they kill off Sir Terence in the Game?” I asked aloud. “Can Cordelia fire him? Or will you have to bring him back as a different character?” Much as I disliked Terence, I had to admit that he was good at whatever you called what Michael and his troupe were doing. He was among the best at improvising faux Elizabethan dialogue, threw himself with relish into his role as Albion’s archvillain, and was sufficiently skilled at stage combat that he was permitted to draw his sword occasionally—though only in scenes with others of similar skill. Most of the actors—and for that matter, most of the costumed staff—were under strict orders not to draw their swords under any circumstances, for fear that they’d skewer themselves, each other, or the innocent paying bystanders.

  “Dunno.” Michael shook his head slowly. “The show would be a lot less lively without him.”

  “Yes, but everyone here would be a lot happier,” I pointed out. “And—”

  Someone knocked on our door.

  “Who’s there?” Michael called.

  “Are you two coming to breakfast?” My grandmother Cordelia.

  “Are we late?” Michael glanced at the wrist where his watch would be if he weren’t in costume.

  “No, breakfast isn’t over for another half an hour,” I told him after checking my bedside alarm clock. Then I raised my voice to call out. “Come in!”

  Cordelia opened the door with a little more force than necessary and strode in.

  “Good. There you are.” Her tone seemed to suggest that she’d been searching for us long enough that the effort had made her cranky. Which was pretty silly—neither Michael nor I were early risers. What were the odds that we’d be anywhere but in our bedroom before breakfast? She, on the other hand, was a total lark, so I wasn’t surprised to see her already decked out in the red-and-black brocade gown she wore for her role in the Game, as Good Queen Cordelia of Albion. Maybe that was part of the problem. I’d have been cranky too if I’d had to get up this early on an already warm July day and put on a corset—not to mention a farthingale, the Tudor version of a hooped skirt.

  “Good morning to you, too,” I said aloud. “Something wrong?”

  “Can you come down to the Great Room and deal with your grandfather?”

  “Grandfather?” I was surprised. “What’s he doing here? I assume you weren’t expecting him.”

  “Of course I wasn’t expecting him. And yet there he is, filling up the Great Room with all his anachronistic gear and demanding that I find a quiet place where he can put his birds.” She was toying with the slender jeweled stiletto in her wrist sheath—was she only doing it for effect? Or had her annoyance with Grandfather already reached a level that had her subconsciously reaching for weapons?

  “Birds?” Michael echoed.

  “What’s he bringing birds for?” I asked

  “I have no idea. He hasn’t deigned to explain them to me.”

  More likely she hadn’t stayed around to hear his explanation. Not for the first time I wondered how she and Grandfather had managed to put up with each other long enough to produce Dad. And I mused that it was probably a good thing the teenage Cordelia’s letters telling Grandfather she was pregnant had all gone astray. If they’d ever actually gotten married, one of them would undoubtedly have killed the other long ago. On their good days they managed an uneasy truce that allowed both of them to enjoy the company of their descendants. Evidently this wasn’t a good day.

  “He showed up with a cage full of wrens.” She pursed her lips. “Well, only three wrens as far as I could see, but they’re in a very small cage, and besides, I fail to see why he th
inks we need any of his wretched birds.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Remind him that we’ve got falcons hunting here,” she added, as she turned to go. “So he should keep his charges in their cage if he doesn’t want them becoming hors d’oeuvres. Of course, maybe he’d like that. You know his irrational fondness for predators.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I repeated. “In the Great Room, you said?”

  “Last I saw. While you’re at it, explain to him that we don’t have a spare room for him, and even if we did, I’m not sure I’d let him have it.”

  “No room at the inn. Check.”

  “Thank you.” Her face relaxed a bit, and she gave me a rueful smile, as if to reassure me that she wasn’t blaming me for Grandfather’s shortcomings. “Sorry. Not fair to take it out on you.”

  With that she sailed out.

  I sat down on the bed.

  “I thought we were going down to deal with your grandfather,” Michael said.

  “And to have breakfast.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I just want one more moment of peace and quiet before starting the day.”

  I opened my eyes again and looked around the room. It was a very nice room, simple and serene, furnished with vintage country oak furniture and decorated with some of the crafts produced by Biscuit Mountain students and instructors. A white-on-white quilted bedcover. Fresh peonies in a hand-thrown vase. An old-fashioned rag rug. Several watercolors of Appalachian wildflowers.

  And one of the most comfortable beds I’d ever slept in. Or did it only seem that way because I wanted so badly to crawl back into it and sleep till noon?

  “Okay.” I stood and grabbed the authentic medieval-style brown linen foraging bag I used to hold all the things I need to haul around with me—my baggage usually exceeded what I could stow in a belt pouch. I patted the bag to make sure it held my notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe, as I called my giant to-do list, now housed—at least on Ren Faire weekends—in a leather binder hand-tooled with dragons and unicorns. I made sure I had a couple of the fake quill pens I used to write in it.

  Armed with my trusty notebook, I could feel my good mood returning.

  “All ready,” I said. “I suppose we should go deal with Grandfather before he spoils Cordelia’s whole day.”

  Chapter 2

  We exited our room and made sure it was locked, because we’d long ago figured out that no power on Earth could keep the tourists from sneaking into the main building and exploring anyplace unlocked. Cordelia didn’t mind having them in the craft studios—she made sure the six on the ground floor each had an appropriately costumed crafter on duty at all times to give demonstrations and keep equipment and finished products from disappearing. A gratifying number of people got excited enough to sign up for future classes. But having random tourists snoop in our bedrooms was another story.

  We hurried downstairs to the Great Hall, a huge double-height room that had once served as one of the Biscuit Mountain Art Pottery Factory’s main work rooms. Cordelia hadn’t completely redecorated in Renaissance style, but the existing Mission or Arts-and-Crafts furniture wasn’t jarringly anachronistic, and the few decorative touches she’d added—faux tapestries, a suit of armor in one corner, a pair of crossed broadswords over the mantel—made the room a satisfactory Renaissance Faire setting for any but the most persnickety purists.

  Especially when the room was thronged with costumed Faire workers—a smattering of Riverton residents eager for the weekend jobs, quite a few of my fellow craftspeople, and a horde of eager college students. And Michael’s actors, of course, already hamming it up.

  Out on the terrace, the three acrobats were somersaulting, cartwheeling, performing handstands and backflips—their warming up exercises. I wished, not for the first time, that they wouldn’t do them quite so close to the railing that separated them from the twenty-foot drop onto the wooded hillside below. The juggler was rehearsing tricks at the far end of the Great Hall—not using Cordelia’s best teacups this time, so I left him to it.

  But Grandfather was nowhere to be seen.

  “Probably in the Dining Hall by now.” Cordelia had appeared at my elbow and seemed to be reading my thoughts. “Making his second or third trip through the buffet line.”

  She led the way and pointed to where Grandfather was sitting with Dad and my cousin Rose Noire. Dad was in the long black robe that he insisted a Renaissance-era doctor would wear. The wide-brimmed black physician’s hat and the bird-like plague doctor’s mask were on the table beside his plate, so he was ready to go on duty. His first aid tent was right beside the large booth where Rose Noire would be selling her organic herbs and teas, potpourris, hand-dyed wool, and dried-flower headpieces, which worked out nicely—he could roam the Faire as much as he liked, knowing that if anyone showed up in need of his medical services she could summon him in minutes.

  Rose Noire’s own outfit wasn’t quite as rigorously authentic—in fact, it looked as if she was planning to audition for the role of Ophelia in some New Age–themed production of Hamlet. But it would pass muster under Cordelia’s relatively relaxed scrutiny. Grandfather, on the other hand—

  “And he’s not in costume.” Cordelia’s scowl grew, if possible, even fiercer.

  I’d have said Grandfather was in costume. He usually was by my standards—just not Renaissance costume. His entire outfit was calculated to telegraph “Bold scientific adventurer! Man of brains and action! Twenty-first-century pioneer!” As usual, he was wearing shades of brown, green, and khaki: a faded green Blake Foundation t-shirt, dark khaki cargo pants, and a sort of fisherman’s vest in a lighter shade of khaki—or maybe the same shade but slightly more faded. His sturdy brown hiking boots were spackled with half a dozen colors and textures of dirt or mud.

  And the numberless pockets covering both pants and vest were bulging with potentially useful items. At countless moments over the years I’d seen him patting half a dozen of the pockets before pulling out items as various as fishing line, duct tape, a tourniquet, an EpiPen, waterproof matches, a compass, a metal tinderbox, water purification tablets, Dramamine, Imodium, sunscreen, Band-Aids, a slide rule, Benadryl, tweezers, antibiotic ointment, eclipse-watching glasses, a pocket-sized flashlight, safety pins, waterproof pens, pencil stubs, a first aid kit, and random coins from six continents and countless countries.

  Very picturesque. But yes, a walking anachronism. I suddenly had to suppress the urge to giggle, and put on my most solemn face.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “Cheer up. Michael and I will take care of it. Go back to enjoying the Faire.”

  She frowned at me for a moment. Then her face relaxed. She nodded and strode off, looking a little more cheerful.

  I strolled over to Grandfather’s table. He and Dad appeared to be discussing the relative merits of sausage and bacon, having heaped their plates high with an ample test supply of both—no doubt to Rose Noire’s great dismay, since she was a committed vegetarian.

  “Meg! Look who’s here!” Dad sounded a little anxious. Perhaps he’d seen what Grandfather’s arrival had done to Cordelia’s mood. Rose Noire gave a little wave and dashed off.

  “I need to set up my booth,” she called over her shoulder. Yes and she probably also wanted to get out of the way if my grandparents were going to have it out.

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked Grandfather.

  “Not very welcoming, are you?” Grandfather seemed to be enjoying himself, watching the various costumed staff members dashing about.

  “Not entirely awake,” I said. “And not all that happy to be playing referee between you and Cordelia before breakfast. Sorry if I sounded unwelcoming—let’s try again.”

  I stood up straighter, arranged my features into the bright if slightly artificial smile I used for dealing with particularly annoying tourists, and pretended to spot him for the first time.

  “Grandfather!” I exclaimed. “How nice to see you! I had no idea you were comin
g. And what are your plans for this beautiful day?”

  “I think I liked you better surly,” he said. “I thought maybe I’d see if your grandmother would like the benefit of some real expertise.”

  Real expertise? I’d be the first to admit that Grandfather was a man of many talents—biologist, environmentalist, even television personality, thanks to all his wildlife documentaries. But if he had any expertise in history it was news to me. Dad also looked puzzled but said nothing.

  “And I brought the birds,” he said, waving his hand vaguely at a small cage that sat on the floor near the end of the table. “Troglodytes aedon and Thryothorus ludovicianus.”

  “Wrens,” I said, remembering what Cordelia had told me.

  “Oh, very good!” He sounded surprised—even impressed. “Yes, two house wrens and a Carolina wren. Finally getting serious about your bird identification, I see.”

  “I just don’t get what you plan to do with them.”

  He fixed me with what was obviously intended to be a look of withering scorn. Long exposure had made me largely immune to his tricks.

  “I thought perhaps you’d like some actual wrens at your Wren Festival,” he said finally.

  I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing as it dawned on me: he thought we were saying Wren Fest, and assumed we were talking about an ornithological event, similar to Owl Fest, the ornithological conference he’d held in Caerphilly over the holiday season.

  “Ren Fest is short for Renaissance Festival,” I explained. “More commonly called a Renaissance Faire. An historical reenactment. No birds involved.”

  Chapter 3

  “No birds involved?” Grandfather blinked in surprise. He looked around at the costumed actors as if seeing them for the first time. Then he leveled his glance at Dad and frowned slightly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know you didn’t know.” Dad looked stricken at the thought that he had failed in his filial duty.