The Falcon Always Wings Twice Page 3

  “Hmph,” Grandfather began. “At her age—”

  “There you are!” Dad raced in. “Can you take your grandfather over to where the falcons are? I have to run over to Camp Anachronism. Possible sprained ankle.” With that he headed for the door.

  “Who’s the latest patient?” I called after him. Since we were still two or three minutes short of our ten o’clock opening time, the patient couldn’t possibly be a tourist—which meant it might be someone for whom I had to figure out a replacement. Like the proverbial show, the Faire must go on,

  “Madame Destiny,” he called back.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. While a sprained ankle would certainly be very uncomfortable for the Faire’s official fortune-teller, it wouldn’t be a disaster for the Faire. Madame Destiny spent most of the day sitting in her tent anyway, muttering deliberately enigmatic predictions over palms and tarot layouts. And if she wasn’t ready to open her tent as soon as the Faire opened, we’d survive. I’d noticed that it took most people till afternoon to work up enough nerve to have their fortunes told. Or maybe to consume enough beer or mead.

  And delivering Grandfather to his destination wouldn’t take me out of my way—the blacksmith’s shop Faulk and I shared was just outside the entrance to Falconer’s Grove.

  “Come on,” I said to Grandfather through a mouthful of toast. “I’ll take you over to the mews and introduce you to the falcons and their keepers.”

  “Lead on.” He didn’t seem the least bit impressed that I knew “mews” to be the proper name for the place where you kept a falcon.

  As we stepped out onto the front portico, the bells rang, signaling the opening of the gates. Here and there costumed participants sprinted in one direction or another, to make sure they were at their assigned posts when the first tourists came in.

  I stopped to savor the moment. The last hour before the Faire opened was always a little tense as we worked through whatever problems and complications threatened the success of the day. But once the opening bell rang, my spirits always rose—and from what I could see, everyone else felt the same. The day had begun! The Game was afoot!

  Just inside the gates on either side of the lane were the costume rental shops—men on the left, women on the right. The staff who ran them would bear the first brunt of the entering crowd. I could see them taking deep breaths and bracing themselves for the initial onslaught of costume-seekers.

  Until my eleven o’clock blacksmithing demo, I had nothing specific to do. Cordelia and I generally spent the first hour strolling about making sure everything was going well, and I could do that just as easily while leading Grandfather. Well, trying to lead him and not having much success. He stopped every few feet to stare at something—impressed in spite of himself, I suspected.

  And there was a lot to stare at. The costumed wenches who wandered about selling candied apples, hot pretzels, flowered headpieces, and other food and souvenirs had been gathered in a cluster, giggling at something, but now they broke apart and began loudly calling their wares. Two photographers were already at work—high school camera enthusiasts to whom Cordelia gave free admission in return for being allowed to use the best of their shots on the Faire’s website. The strolling musicians were in a huddle near the main stage, doing a bit of last minute lute and cittern tuning. The Muddy Beggar was settling down in his favorite puddle and daubing a few last bits of picturesque grime on his face and the brown and beige tatters that made up his costume. The savory smell of chickens roasting and sausages and onions being grilled wafted over from the largest and most central refreshment tent. The three acrobats were walking around on stilts.

  “Looks like a good crowd already,” one of them called down.

  I spotted Michael and George Sims, another of the actors—aka Sir George of Simsdale, Michael’s arch rival in the contest to inherit the kingdom from Good Queen Cordelia. They were standing outside Dragon’s Claw tavern holding tankards filled with the diluted, lightly sweetened tea we used to simulate beer and mead. Even from a distance, I could tell Michael was giving a pep talk to George, whose default mood seemed to be morose. If we ever staged Winnie the Pooh he’d have made a perfect Eeyore. He and Michael were preparing to launch one of their verbal jousts as soon as a critical mass of tourists arrived. Grandfather stopped to watch them.

  “Michael’s got an impressive outfit.” For some reason he was frowning in disapproval.

  “He’s Michael, Duke of Waterston,” I said. “Leader of one of the factions vying to rule the Kingdom of Albion after Queen Cordelia goes to that great throne room in the sky. George, the guy in green and gold standing beside him, is his arch rival.”

  “Then if Michael’s a duke, how come you’re dressed up as a peasant?” he asked. “No offense intended—it’s a flattering peasant getup, but shouldn’t a duchess be wearing velvet, too?”

  “Yes, a duchess would be wearing velvet, and floating about giving orders to the servants instead of working in the smithy,” I said. “So within the Game, I’m not Michael’s wife—I’m the beautiful, virtuous, but low-born maid the duke loves but cannot marry.”

  “Virtuous? Then how do you account for the twins?”

  “In Albion, they’re Michael’s nephews.”

  “Ah. I suppose your grandmother needs to have you blacksmithing for the tourists. Still—you’re getting shortchanged, aren’t you?”

  “If you call wearing homespun instead of velvet in ninety-degree weather getting shortchanged, then yeah. I’m getting shortchanged. Works for me.”

  “Well, if you’re happy. Sometimes a little suffering is good for the character.” He gazed down at his own impressive black velvet robe with a look of childlike satisfaction. We’d see how interested he was in continuing to suffer as the day got warmer. “Let’s go find those falcons.”

  We continued making our slow way toward Falconer’s Grove. We inspected the leatherworker’s wares. We bought drinks at the tavern—mead for Grandfather and lemonade for me. We watched the jugglers perform their act, sending everything from maces to tankards to flaming torches flying through the air. We listened to a duet of “Pastime with Good Company,” by the minstrel and Nigel—who looked fine. No sign of headache or hangover. Good. His part in the Game had become a fairly central one. Sir Nigel was a nobleman whose sole child, Lady Dianne, was not only a wealthy heiress but a beautiful one. With the exception of Michael, all the unmarried noblemen were vying for her hand. The vying got a lot more interesting with Terence around to play the eager suitors against each other.

  I was beginning to think I’d have to abandon Grandfather to his own devices before we reached Falconer’s Grove. We were almost at the entrance when we encountered a large throng of tourists laughing loudly at something.

  “More actors?” Grandfather found a thin spot in the crowd where he could slip forward to the front, and I followed. In the center of the group Terence, my bête noire, was conversing with Lady Jacquelynn and Lady Dianne. Jacks, in green and purple, seemed to be enjoying the encounter, guffawing at Terence’s double entendres and then topping them. Dianne—Nigel’s in-Game daughter, a slender, beautiful blond woman of twenty or so in pale blue velvet that matched her eyes—was outwardly smiling, but I could tell she wasn’t having a good time. Hell, even the tourists could probably tell.

  Terence didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t care. As he stood—no, posed—in his glittering outfit—purple velvet, green satin, and more cloth of gold than seemed quite necessary—he echoed any number of Renaissance paintings of kings and grandees. Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII, for example. As if in deliberate imitation of Bluff King Hal, Terence’s feet were planted wide apart, his shoulders were squared back, one beringed hand fingered the hilt of his dagger, and the other grasped a six-foot oak staff topped by a metal ornament in the shape of a creepy coiled serpent. He was a handsome man, handsomely dressed, and clearly he knew it.

  Yet even the tourists never seemed to think of him as a possible rival t
o Michael and George in the battle for the throne of Albion. Curious, that.

  I focused on what he was saying.

  “And then he called to his good wife, ‘Come, and see how fond your daughter is of the nightingale. She has caught it, and has it fast in her hand!’”

  Terence smirked. I recognized the ending of a tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron—one of the naughtier bits, as they would say on Monty Python. Jacks—and most of the audience—laughed loudly. Dianne could only manage a pained smile. Or maybe she was just doing a good job of staying in character—after all, in the Game she was not only beautiful but virtuous and a bit naïve.

  “Well, God ye good morrow, Sir Terence,” Jacks said when the laughter had died down. “I must away to attend the queen.”

  “And I as well.” Dianne sounded relieved.

  “Will you desert me, sweetings!” Terence put the back of his hand to his forehead and pretended to be on the verge of swooning. “Shall I be so bereft?”

  “Needs must, good sir.” Jacks held out her hand to be kissed.

  “Till we meet again, good lady.” Terence bowed low and delivered a loud, wet, sloppy smack to the back of her hand. The tourists found it hilarious. Jacks frowned a rebuke at him, although I could tell she was actually amused.

  Dianne was clearly planning to leave with her hand unmolested, but Terence straightened up, took a few steps toward her, and grabbed her hand.

  “And must you depart, my fairest one? Alas!” He bent over her hand. Dianne forced a smile and resigned herself to endure Terence’s slobbering.

  The smile disappeared when, instead of kissing her hand, he jerked on her arm and twirled her into his arms, like a dancer dipping his partner.

  “Aha!” he exclaimed, and bent as if to kiss her. Dianne turned her head and pushed at him with both hands. I didn’t think she was acting.

  “You are too bold, Sir Terence.” Jacks smacked Terence with her fan and glanced over at me as if seeking help.

  But before I could step in to interfere, Grandfather strode forward, waving his staff.

  “Unhand that damsel, ye poxy varlet!” he shouted.

  Chapter 5

  To my astonishment, Terence actually stopped pawing at Dianne and turned to stare at Grandfather. For that matter, Dianne, after managing to use the interruption to escape from Terence’s grip, was staring, too. They were probably trying to figure out who the devil Grandfather was. His costume and grasp of Renaissance idiom were better than what most tourists ever managed, and yet they knew he wasn’t one of their troupe.

  “This is Magister Blake, Queen Cordelia’s new court alchemist,” I explained.

  Dianne got it.

  “Well met, Magister.” She dropped a low curtsey. “Your knowledge and wisdom are well known to all in Albion.”

  Grandfather preened and bowed back. Terence frowned and looked puzzled.

  “Not well known to me,” he muttered.

  “Meg’s grandfather, stupid,” Dianne hissed.

  Terence continued to scowl at Grandfather. And Grandfather scowled back. If they were planning a scowling competition, Grandfather would win it, no question, thanks to a combination of a natural talent and decades more practice.

  Then Grandfather turned to me.

  “Shall I turn him into a toad?” he asked rather loudly, “I could do it like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Easiest thing in the world.”

  The tourists roared with merriment.

  “Why bother?” I said. “Hardly anyone would notice the difference.”

  The tourists loved that, too, and Jacks threw her head back and howled with laughter. Even Dianne tittered. Terence looked disconcerted for a moment, then strolled off with an air of nonchalance—although the sharp way he dug into the ground with the tip of his snake-headed staff did rather give him away.

  The watching tourists applauded as if we’d just acted out a brilliant scene.

  And from the way Grandfather ate up the applause, I realized I’d probably just created a monster.

  “Falcons are this way,” I said, tugging on his sleeve.

  He let me steer him away from the crowd, though he continued to beam graciously on them as we passed, and wave his raven-headed staff in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a bishop blessing his flock with a crozier.

  I spotted Cordelia nearby, staring at him with a strange expression on her face. I left Grandfather trading insults with the Muddy Beggar long enough to go over to her.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head vigorously. “It’s just that every once in a long while I find myself remembering, just for a moment, what I saw in him. Only for a moment,” she added hastily. “But while it lasts, it’s a curiously unsettling experience.”

  I reclaimed Grandfather and hustled him along. We went by the blacksmith’s shop on our way into Falconer’s Grove. Faulk was inside the forge area, perched on a tall wooden stool, answering questions from some of the tourists. And I was pleased to see that Josh and Jamie, my twin sons, were there in the shop area, keeping their eyes on the merchandise and ready to ring up any sales. Seeing them standing a little self-importantly in the entrance, I was struck again by how mature they looked. And it wasn’t just that they were surprisingly tall for twelve-year-olds. Well, maybe that wasn’t so surprising, since I was five ten and Michael six four. All too soon they’d be eye-to-eye with me.

  “Stop it,” I muttered to myself.

  “What’s that you say?” I’d forgotten Grandfather was within earshot.

  “Nothing.”

  I strolled over to the fence, took the two remaining slices of bacon from my plate, and waved them at the boys. Josh dashed over.

  “Spike’s already had his breakfast,” he said. “We don’t want to upset his stomach with too much bacon.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Just keep these on hand in case you need them.”

  “In case he does something good and needs a treat.” Jamie beamed at the idea.

  “Or in case another stupid tourist steps into the pen and you need a distraction to help pry Spike off his ankle,” I said. Spike—aka the Small Evil One, our eight-and-a-half-pound fur ball—was spending his days in a nice, shady pen just outside the forge’s back door. Any would-be thieves clueless enough to be fooled by his deceptively cute and fluffy appearance were taking their life in their hands if they tried to sneak into the shop by the back door.

  I waved at the boys—and at Faulk, who probably wondered where I was going—and hurried to deliver Grandfather. I still had time before my 11:00 A.M. demonstration.

  To the north and east, the beginning of the woods marked the end of the fairgrounds—the woods, plus a line of deer mesh fence we’d strung up from tree to tree about six feet into the woods. The black mesh was almost invisible until you got close to it, but it did a good job of stopping anyone who ignored the warning signs—signs with slogans like BEWARE! HERE BE MONSTERS or DRAGON BREEDING GROUNDS—DO NOT ENTER or simply ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. In that direction, once you passed the campgrounds and left Cordelia’s land, there was nothing for miles but thousands of acres of woods, mostly belonging to various state or national parks, so we wanted to make it harder for the tourists to wander off and get themselves lost.

  We’d located Falconer’s Grove in a place where a clearing jutted out into the woods, and helped cut it off from the main part of the Faire a little more by situating the Blacksmith’s Shop on the left of its entrance and the Herb Shop and first aid tent on the right. The falconers liked the location because it somewhat shielded the birds from the noise and distractions of the main part of the Faire. Cordelia liked it because it reduced her anxiety that the falcons would pounce on some utterly inappropriate prey—like a chicken roasting in one of the open-air kitchens, or a particularly plump infant. The falconers assured her that their birds would never do any such thing, but Cordelia was never one for taking chances.

  At the far end of the grove a ro
ugh-hewn rail fence surrounded the falcon’s enclosure, which contained the actual mews—a small wooden shed with a sturdy roof and well-ventilated sides, where the falcons could sleep or take refuge from the crowds, with an attached chicken wire enclosure in which they could take the air. In front of the mews, but still a safe distance from the fence—and each other—were three wooden perches, two of them occupied.

  And even though we were now about as far from the front gate as you could get and still be within the fairgrounds, already a small crowd of tourists were clustered along the fence. Greg, the senior member of our two-person falcon team—aka Sir Gregory Dorance, the Queen’s Own Falconer—was standing just inside the fence in a doublet whose black, brown, and gold colors echoed the birds’ plumage. He was answering questions from the tourists while keeping an eye on the two birds seated on their perches on either side of him.

  “She’s a peregrine falcon,” he was saying, indicating the bird to his right.

  “Falco peregrinus,” Grandfather muttered, nodding. “Handsome specimen.”

  Greg flashed him a quick smile at the compliment.

  “Her name’s Gracie,” he went on. “She’s pretty big for a peregrine. Of course, female falcons are usually larger than the males.”

  “Marked sexual dimorphism, yes.” Grandfather was studying Gracie with keen eyes, nodding slightly as if approving what he saw. She was nearly two feet tall with glossy plumage, bluish-black on the back and wing tips and mottled white and tan on the breast and belly. A brown leather hood decorated with purple tassels covered her head, but she seemed to be following everything that happened around her, turning with a quick, sharp motion when she detected a sound coming from a new direction. Several tiny bells attached to the hood with strips of leather jingled when she moved.

  “They don’t mind wearing the hoods,” Greg was saying. “It calms them.”

  “Yes, without the hood they can become hypervigilant,” Grandfather said. “Constantly looking around for prey and getting frustrated when they can’t go after it and worse, being startled by anything they perceive as a threat. But they’re so visually oriented that they pay no attention to anything they can’t see.”