Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set (79 page)

“I find that very hard to believe, Lisa,” Syr
Phillip says with a kind smile. “I don’t think you’re clueless at
all.”

“But if I don’t have a ticket to the feast—I don’t
know anybody here except you and Barlonda and Pegeen, and Pegeen is
gone—how do I know they’ll let me in? What if they don’t have
enough seats?” Or rocks? We’ll probably be sitting on cave rocks,
or perhaps stalactites.

Syr Phillip laughs. “Oh, they’ll let you in, all
right. They’ll
have
to let you in.”

“Why?”

“Lisa, they have to let you into the feast, even
without a ticket, because you are the Champion’s lady.”

Chapter
8

The event and tournament at Neil Armstrong High
School is breaking up. Merchants are packing up their wares,
defeated fighters are loading their armor and weapons into their
dragons. The Gold Key booth is folding up its tables and chairs,
and although I know I need to find Mistress Mathilda to get my
purse and street clothes out of the locked classroom for me, I’m
not looking forward to facing her in my new garb. I feel as though
I’ve betrayed her and the entire institution of the Gold Key booth
by throwing away that cursed hot-pink polyester dress.

I think about finding someone to retrieve my things
for me on the sly, but before I can go through with it, Mistress
Mathilda spots me.

“Hello,” Mistress Mathilda says, looking down her
mother-hen nose at me as she tugs at her neck ruff. “I see you’ve
changed your garb,” she says, and clucks.

“Ummm, yeah. Baroness Barlonda gave me this.”

Mistress Mathilda clucks again. “She
gave
you
that? For
free?
I highly doubt that. It’s my understanding
that Barlonda’s garb costs a pretty penny.”

“Well, actually, Syr Phillip is paying for it. Since
I’m you know, his lady.”

Mistress Mathilda clucks again. “You know, you can’t
be a knight’s lady if you aren’t a dues-paying member of the
Society for Creative Anachronism.”

“Uhhh—“

“If I wanted to be really difficult, I could
challenge Syr Phillip’s decision to fight on behalf of a non-SCA
member.”

My jaw drops. Apparently Mistress Mathilda is more
than a little offended at my change of garb. “But—“

“What happened to the dress I loaned you, by the
way?” she seethes. “As chatelaine of Gold Key office for this
barony, I must say I am
livid
at the fact that you have
broken the sacred Gold Key trust by switching out of your Gold Key
garb in the middle of the day, without even bothering to return it
to me! And you haven’t even become an official SCA member yet. How
atrocious.”

Baroness Barlonda appears out of nowhere to rescue
me. “Mistress Mathilda, I hope you don’t mind too much what
happened with Lisa’s garb today,” Baroness Barlonda purrs. “But
that dress you loaned her was giving the poor girl a rash.”

Mistress Mathilda turns red as the trim on her gown.
“A rash? That’s impossible. I’ll have you know that I clean and
sanitize all our loaner garments at
least
twice a year.”

I giggle at this.

“Well, at any rate, the dress has been disposed of,
Mathilda,” Baroness Barlonda replies, the tone of her voice ever
sweeter. “But never fear—I’ve brought you a few nice linen tunics
out of my very own stock to replace it. I do believe three
brand-new linen unisex tunics in place of a hideous,
twenty-year-old polyester dress is a pretty good return on your
investment. Don’t you think?”

Baroness Barlonda hands the garments over. Mistress
Mathilda takes them without saying anything.

“You’re welcome, Mathilda,” Baroness Barlonda
finally sighs. “Now Lisa, you probably need to get your things out
of the lockup, don’t you? I’ll be driving you over to the
feast.”

“There are no more tickets to the feast available,”
Mistress Mathilda says curtly. “Especially for non-SCA members.
Definitely
no tickets available for them.”

Baroness Barlonda is visibly irritated. “Mistress
Mathilda, I know you mean well, but you can’t bar anyone from
attending the feast yourself. You aren’t the autocrat for this
event.”

“Autocrat?” I ask.

“In the SCA, the autocrat is the person in charge of
an event. And like it or not, Mistress Mathilda isn’t it. Are you,
Mathilda?” Baroness Barlonda’s tone is severe.

“Well—well, maybe not,” Mistress Mathilda
acquiesces. “But as chatelaine of Gold Key, I
am
responsible
for making sure our newbies actually join the Society before
getting involved in any. . .
official
activities. Like being
a Champion’s lady, for example.”

I roll my eyes. “How much does it cost to join?” I
ask.

“Thirty dollars a year,” Mistress Mathilda says, not
even glancing in my direction.

“Do you take credit cards? Because if it’s such a
big deal that I’m not an SCA member, I can join right now. As soon
as I get my purse, anyway.” I add a silent prayer that my Visa
isn’t so maxed out it can’t handle the thirty-dollar charge.

At this, Mistress Mathilda’s expression warms a
little. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we
do
take credit cards.
Visa, Mastercard, or Discover?”

Baroness Barlonda and I follow her down the hallway
to the locked classroom where I’d stashed my street clothes and
purse. Mistress Mathilda opens it for us. “I’ll be right back with
those membership forms,” she sings. “But I’m afraid I can’t help
you get into the feast, Lisa.”

“Let me worry about that,” Baroness Barlonda chirps.
Mistress Mathilda sighs audibly and disappears down the hall.

“She’s a little odd,” I say.

“You mustn’t mind Mistress Mathilda. She means well,
she really does. But she
is
tough about rules and
regulations. We haven’t been terribly lucky getting newbies to
stick around for more than one event whenever she’s running the
Gold Key booth.”

“I can see why,” I say, just as Mistress Mathilda
sails back into the classroom, waving some manila-paper forms.

“Here we are,” she sings. “Now, Lisa, are you ready
to take on all the rights and responsibilities of being a full SCA
member?”

“I guess so.”

“Wonderful! Now if you’ll just fill these out, and
put your credit card number there, then you’ll be all set. You’ll
get your membership card in the mail.”

I hastily fill out the forms and hand them back to
Mistress Mathilda, who smiles as wide as her neck ruff.

“This is one of the best decisions you’ll ever make
in your life,” she beams. “The Society for Creative Anachronism
welcomes you, Lisa of Winged Hills!”

“Thanks,” I mutter. Mistress Mathilda sweeps out the
classroom door. Or at least she tries to. Her gigantic hoopskirt
gets caught in the doorjamb. She jerks it free only after a rather
lengthy struggle that results in a nasty tear in the expensive
brocade of her gown. I stifle a laugh.

“
Au revoir,
Mistress Mathilda,” Baroness
Barlonda calls after her, and starts laughing herself. “Oh, I
do
always love to see her mess up one of her gowns! She can
get a bit full of herself sometimes when it comes to costuming, you
know. She’s a costuming Laurel, but she still has never managed to
build up a costuming business as successful as mine is. Probably
because she refuses to construct any costume that isn’t
Elizabethan. Now let’s head on out to my dragon and get this show
on the road.”

“Okay,” I say. “But if you don’t mind, I just want
to take a quick look around for my friend Pegeen—I mean,
Pegonia—before we go. She’s my ride home.”

“Of course, dear. I’ll meet you out in the dragon
lot.” Baroness Barlonda grabs her satchel and leaves. I head back
out to the gym, which by now is nearly deserted. Pegeen/Pegonia is
nowhere to be seen. My best friend has definitely ditched me, and
then some.

I shake my head in exasperation and head out to
Baroness Barlonda’s van. I hope against hope that Pegeen/Pegonia
will resurface at the feast—otherwise, at the end of the day I’ll
be stuck out here at the Blood and Roses Tournament for good. And I
can hardly call Brad—my boss back at the AC Delco plant—on Monday
morning and tell him I can’t come in to work because I got stranded
somewhere in the Middle Ages.

I dash out to the dragon lot and find Baroness
Barlonda and her portly baron-herald of a husband leaning against
the side of her battered Aerostar. They are passing a fat joint
back and forth between them. Which I find pretty funny, because I
never would have pegged this graying, middle-aged couple as the
type to go in for the whole doobie culture.

“Hey, Lisa,” Baroness Barlonda purrs. “Wanna
drag?”

“It’s pretty good stuff,” coos her husband. “One of
my friends up in Lima grows it in her cornfield.
Between
the
rows, if ya know whaddImean.”

“Uhh, no thanks,” I say, putting up my hands.

“Suit yerself,” the paunchy, gray-haired herald says
as he adjusts his pearl-encrusted coronet. “My name’s Baron
Griswold, by the way. You can call me Grizzly if you like.”

“Um, hello, Grizzly,” I say, stifling a laugh.

“That’s
Baron
Grizzly to you,” Baroness
Barlonda corrects me. “Let’s get over to the feast now. You don’t
want ‘em running out of cave before we get there.”

****

Baroness Barlonda’s battered Aerostar arrives at the
Ohio Caverns about half an hour later. Since the Aerostar’s rear
seats have been removed to make room for Barlonda’s costume shop
and the front consists of only two bucket seats, I had to spend the
entire trip sitting on Baron Grizzly’s lap. Luckily for me, he was
too toked out from the weed to mind.

“Here we are,” Barlonda sings, slurring her words a
little as she pulls her dragon into a parking space in the Ohio
Caverns lot. “The Ohio Caverns! Have you ever been here, Lisa?”

I glance around. The parking lot and visitors’
center look vaguely familiar. “I think I might have come here on an
elementary school trip at some point,” I say.

“Is that right?” Baron Grizzly asks. “Maybe you know
where we’re eating, then.”

I look around again and shrug. “I don’t think so. I
probably came here when I was in the second grade or something. I
don’t remember much except seeing a giant white stalactite. Or
stalagmite. I always forget which is which.”

Just past the entrance gate and parking lot is a
small, low-slung building that looks like a visitor’s center.
Someone has taped a hand-lettered posterboard sign to one of the
windows that says “TROLL”.

“There’s the Troll Booth,” Baroness Barlonda says,
her voice still gravelly from the dope. “They’ll know where the
feast is.”

“
Troll
Booth?” I ask, tripping over my long
velvet train.

“Every SCA event and feast has a troll booth,” Baron
Grizzly explains. “That’s where you check in, buy your tickets,
stuff like that.”

My mind conjures up an image of a wrinkled little
green man taking money and handing out tickets. “Why do they call
it ‘troll’ booth? Why not just call it ‘ticket’ booth or something
normal like that?”

“Because that would be too boring,” Baroness
Barlonda replies. “Too
mundane.
In the SCA we’re all here to
forget about the mundane world for a while. Remember that old fairy
tale about the Three Billy Goats Gruff? There was a troll under a
bridge that took a toll from each of the goats. It’s an old
medieval folktale. I bet you didn’t know that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s where the Troll Booth idea comes from.
See? Everything we do and say here in the SCA has a root in the
Middle Ages.” Baroness Barlonda pats me gently on the shoulder. I
consider mentioning that smoking doobies in parking lots probably
isn’t very medieval, but I decide against it.

The three of us pile into the visitor’s center and
find none other than Duchess Danyel manning the troll booth.

“Lisa! I’m so glad you made it!” Duchess Danyel
shouts, enveloping me in a hug. Her duchess crown is hanging askew
and she is drinking Miller Lite from a can.

“Hi Duchess,” I say, not sure if there’s a proper
way to address someone of that rank in the SCA.

“Call her ‘Your Grace’,” Baroness Barlonda whispers
in my ear.

“Oh, just call me Danyel,” the Duchess says,
overhearing. “I can’t stand that ‘Your Grace’ crap half the time.
Especially when I’m drinking.” She toasts her beer can at us and
picks up a sheaf of papers, scanning for names. “Barlonda and
Grizzly—looks like I’ve got you here on my list. But I don’t see
you, Lisa. And getting you in is gonna be tricky—this cave is
turning out to be even smaller than they told us it would be.”

“Can you look up my friend Pegeen’s—I mean, Pegonia
ap Whoever’s reservation? I think she might have bought a ticket
for me.”

Duchess Danyel scans her list and shakes her head.
“Nope. Pegonia is on the list as a volunteer food server. But
you’re not on here anywhere. Sorry.”

I make a mental note to yell at Pegeen about this
when and if I ever get back to Dayton tonight. “Crud,” I
mutter.

Duchess Danyel smiles. “Well Lisa, since you’re the
Champion’s lady I can’t well keep you out of there. You get a seat
at the Head Table by default because of that. Tell you what. I was
supposed to be sittin’ at Head Table myself because I’m the only
Duchess in these here parts, but you can have my seat. I probably
won’t be doing much eatin’ anyway, since I’ll be too busy running
Troll and helping out in the kitchen. And I have a soft spot for
ol’ Syr Phillip, anyway, so I’ll do anything I can to help out his
new girlfriend. Sound fine?”

“That would be wonderful,” I say, feeling
butterflies form in my stomach. I almost can’t comprehend hearing
myself called Syr Phillip’s girlfriend in public.