Nancy Atherton (24 page)

patently clear that they hadn’t. Contrary to popular opinion, King

Wilfred wasn’t universally beloved. He had at least one mortal enemy. The entire gate house may have been a jury-rigged mess, but

only one parapet had fallen. Edmond could have sawn through

the temporary struts holding it in place, just as he could have altered

the appearance of the rope before presenting it for inspection—the

clean cut I’d seen had been made by a knife, not a nail.

I glanced at Jinks, then looked at the sparkling water streaming

over the mossy rocks. I simply couldn’t bring myself to ask him

about Edmond and Mirabel. If I added a love triangle to the regicide plot, he’d patronize me again, and I would have to kill him. I

took a calming breath and reminded myself firmly that I wanted to

prevent
a murder, not
commit
one.

“Strawberry for your thoughts,” Jinks said, holding one out to me.

156 Nancy Atherton

“You’ve heard enough of my thoughts for one afternoon,” I

told him.

“Take it anyway.” He placed the strawberry in my hand. “As a

peace offering. You’re looking very stormy.”

“It’s just . . .” I shrugged helplessly. “There’s a lot to take in, at

a Ren fest.”

A sweet smile curved Jinks’s crooked lips. He stretched out on

his back, crossed his legs, cupped his head in his clasped hands, and

gazed up at the trees.

“You mentioned earlier that the fair reminded you of Finch,” he

said. “In many ways, a Ren fest is a small village. Granted, there’s a

heightened sense of drama among the people in my village, but what

would you expect? We’re actors. We live by our emotions. We have

our petty squabbles and our long-running feuds, but we also have a

strong sense of camaraderie and a deep awareness of how lucky we

are to be able to practice our crafts in such a congenial setting. If

there’s a pretender to the throne, he doesn’t kill the king. He auditions for the role at another Ren fest. Or he starts his own.” Jinks

chuckled quietly, then turned his head to look at me. “We take our

work seriously, Lori, but we’re well aware that it’s make-believe.”

Jinks seemed to be telling me, in the nicest possible way, that

I’d gotten so caught up in the fair that I could no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality. It was exactly the same thing

Edmond had told Mirabel, but my reaction was quite different

from hers. I didn’t fire cutting phrases into Jinks’s well-meaning

brain. I decided instead to prove that he was wrong.

“Thanks.” I swept a hand through the air. “For all of this. I’ve

really enjoyed your lunch break.”

“I hope you’re enjoying the fair as well,” he said.

“I’d enjoy it more if I could get the recipe for those honey

cakes,” I said, batting my eyelashes at him.

“Consider it done.” He moaned softly as he pushed himself into

a sitting position. “You have no idea how much I hate to say it, Lori,

but I have to go back to work.”

Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

157

“I should get back, too,” I said. “I don’t know how I’m going to

explain to my sons why I wasn’t on hand to watch them in the

arena.”

“Tell them you were investigating an attempted regicide,” he

suggested, his eyes twinkling. “They’ll be impressed.”

“Good idea,” I said. After all, I thought, with an inward smile,

mothers should always tell their children the truth.

Sixteen

J inks and I parted ways at the nearly invisible gate. He went

off to the Great Hall, where the king was conferring

knighthoods on pretty much anyone who wanted one, including women, children, and small dogs, while I made my way

back to the crystal-ball vendor’s stall. I had no trouble fi nding it. I

simply followed the sound of Peggy Taxman’s voice and darted up

the lane next to hers.

The vendor was delighted to see me again, possibly because she

had no other customers. Her Rennie name, I discovered, was Mistress Farseeing, and she was every bit as talkative as I’d hoped

she’d be. In no time at all I learned that she lived on Feversham

Lane in Glastonbury with her husband, Hubert, and their cocker

spaniel, Mr. Wink; that she ran a fortune-telling supply business

from her home; that her three grown children—Hubert, Jr., Gwen,

and Lance—were mortified by her fascination with the occult;

and that Edmond Deland’s tent was one of the smallest in the encampment.

“No bigger than a peasant’s pocket,” she said, chuckling merrily, “but neat as Lord Belvedere’s beard. You won’t find rubbish

strewn about dear Edmond’s dwelling place.”

“You’re fond of him, then,” I said, recalling the friendly greetings Edmond had received from other vendors as he’d crossed the

fairground.

“That I am,” she agreed. “Poor lad. His affl

ictions are grievous,

but he bears them nobly.”

“Affl

ictions?” I prompted.

“Matters of the heart.” Mistress Farseeing folded her arms and

bent her muffin cap close to mine. “His ladylove scorns him and

Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

159

bestows her favor on another. ’Tis a tale as old as time, with a sting

is as sharp as an adder’s.”

I would have pursued the topic further, but Mistress Farseeing

transferred her attention to a black-clad young woman sporting an

eye-popping array of tattoos and so many body piercings that, by

rights, she should have leaked. Since I’d shown no inclination to

spend money at the stall, the vendor’s defection was understandable and I bade her adieu with a cordial nod.

The time for talk was over anyway. I was ready to take action.

Aunt Dimity had urged me to find tangible proof to support my

claims, and after speaking with Jinks, I had a good notion of where

to look for it. My next stop would be the encampment.

The cannon seemed like a dead end—I wasn’t interested in

teenagers’ pranks—but the missing crown presented definite possibilities. Jinks doubted that the crown had been stolen, believing

instead that it had been “borrowed” by a cast member who planned

to return it in a humorous manner—on a pony’s head, for

example.

I thought it far more likely that Edmond had stolen the crown.

After his first two assassination attempts had failed, he would have

found it enormously satisfying to dethrone his rival symbolically.

Since the king’s motor home hadn’t been burgled, however, I suspected that Edmond had acted on impulse instead of with cool

calculation.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the scenario. I could picture King

Wilfred weaving tipsily from the banquet table to his motor home

after a long eve ning spent quaffi

ng with the lads. He’d bent to adjust a garter, perhaps, and the crown had tumbled from his head.

Although the king had been too far gone to notice its absence, the

young man who’d been tailing him was cold sober.

Edmond had seized the opportunity to deal the king another

blow—not a physical blow this time, but a blow to the mind and

the spirit—by retrieving the fallen crown and fading back into the

shadows. He’d returned with it to his tent and stashed it among his

160 Nancy Atherton

belongings, where it would remain until a clever person came

along and found it.

I would be that clever person. I would make Aunt Dimity proud

of me by proving that Edmond had stolen King Wilfred’s crown. I

would slip into the encampment, locate his tent, and search it from

top to bottom. I’d lost the rope, but I was determined to find the

crown.

When the town crier informed those within earshot that it was

half past three of the clock, I lifted my skirts and quickened my pace.

In ninety short minutes, the fair would close and the workers would

return to the camp. I had to reach Edmond’s tent before he did.

I scurried through the picnic area, past the arena and the royal

gallery, which had been taken over by a knot of giggling wenches

who were, I assumed, lying in wait for a soldier, a squire, a knight,

or any male who looked reasonably attractive in tights. I gave them

a withering glance, then jogged around to the far end of the white

marquee, where I paused to scan the stabling area and the pasture.

Angelus, Lucifer, Thunder, Storm, Pegasus, and the McLaughlin ponies were grazing peacefully in the pasture, but their owners

were nowhere to be seen. I wondered fleetingly where the Anscombe

Manor team had gone, then ran for the row of poplars.

The tall, slender trees stood on a small rise overlooking a vast

field that had once held Mr. Malvern’s largest herd of cattle. The

cows had been moved to the slightly smaller fi eld on the other side

of an imposing hedgerow and their old stomping ground had been

turned into a veritable metropolis.

My heart sank as I beheld the most complex campground I’d

ever seen. It seemed to contain tents of every imaginable size, shape,

and color. Most were the freestanding nylon variety used by outdoorsmen the world over, but scattered among them were teepees,

yurts, geodesic domes, old-fashioned pup tents, tarpaulins strung

between poles, elegant pavilions that looked as though they’d sprung

from the pages of
The Arabian Nights,
and cavernous canvas behemoths with vinyl windows and covered patios.

Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon

161

Recreational vehicles sat in an orderly row a short distance

away from the tent jungle. The RVs were arranged according to

size, from the smallest, which were similar to Jinks’s camper-van,

to the largest, which was so gargantuan that only a madman would

have attempted to drive it down an English country lane. I decided

that the last one had to be Calvin’s, both because of its regal proportions and because it was the only RV with a cannon parked in

front of it.

Since my chances of finding Edmond’s tent in less than ninety

minutes ranged from slim to nonexis tent, I elected to check out the

cannon. Although I knew absolutely nothing about field artillery

I felt compelled to investigate
something,
and the cannon was the

most obvious choice. I was about ten steps away from it when a gruff

voice ordered me to stop.

I turned to fi nd myself looking up at the gray-bearded face of a

glowering Lord Belvedere. He was about a foot taller than me and

his right hand was resting on the hilt of a sword that looked terrifyingly sharp and shiny. For a moment I was afraid he’d either run me

through or challenge me to a duel.

He surveyed me with a hawklike gaze, then barked, “Who are

you and what are you doing here?”

There was no question of lying to such a fierce-looking authority figure, so I told most of the truth as quickly as I could.

“My name is Lori Shepherd and I live next door to Horace

Malvern—well, not next door, exactly, but my property runs alongside his,” I babbled in a half-panicked squeak.

“You don’t sound English to me,” he growled, eyeing me suspiciously.

“That’s because I’m not English,” I told him. “I’m from the States

originally, but I’ve lived near Finch for years and years. My husband

and I are raising our sons in a cottage not far from here. Perhaps

you’ve met them? My husband is Bill Willis—I didn’t change my

name when we got

married—and our sons are Will and Rob.

They’re riding in the—”

162 Nancy Atherton

“—pro cession and in the arena,” he finished for me. He seemed

to thaw ever so slightly, but he didn’t remove his hand from his

sword hilt. “What are you doing here, near the cannon?”

I gulped. “I heard that it misfired this morning—”

“It didn’t misfire,” Lord Belvedere interjected irritably. “It

didn’t fire at all.”

“Why not?” I asked, and when his lordship’s scowl darkened, I

added hurriedly, “It’s just that I’ve heard all sorts of rumors and I

want to be able to tell people what really happened so they won’t

be afraid to come to the fair next weekend.”

“You can tell the rumormongers that the cannon is in perfect

working order,” said Lord Belvedere. “It wasn’t used this morning

because some blithering idiot put projectiles in the barrel.”

“Aren’t there usually projectiles in the barrel?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” said Lord Belvedere, looking offended. “This

cannon isn’t used as an offensive weapon. Its purpose is to create an

impressive sound. If the barrel hadn’t been cleared, it would in all

likelihood have exploded, killing or severely injuring the cannoneers.”

“Good lord,” I said, casting a nervous glance at the barrel.

“Thankfully, our men are well trained,” Lord Belvedere continued. “They follow a strict routine before every firing. The prank

was discovered as soon as the men sponged the bore. Once the

projectiles were removed, the cannon could have been employed,

but Mr. Malvern was so upset by the incident that we decided not

to use it.”

“It sounds as though the blithering idiot didn’t know much

about proper artillery procedures and practices,” I commented. “If

he had, he would have known that his prank would be found out

before it ever got off the ground . . . so to speak.”

“Very true,” said Lord Belvedere.

“What kind of projectiles did he use?” I asked.