Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (13 page)

“No!” Father Patrion shouted at him. “A mistake! I’ve made a mistake!”

“What are you talking about?” Jarod yelled back. It was impossible to hear over the jubilant crowd and the approaching bleating of the Flag Four Troubadours, a traveling group of musicians out of Butterfield who had been hired by Livinia Walters to perform throughout the day of Spring Revels and especially for the dance that night. The troubadours were professional musicians, strictly speaking, in that they were being paid by Livinia to perform, though they were more often recognized in the neighboring community as the local butcher, baker, chandler, and farrier. Their particularly spirited version of “My Lady Still Standing in the Tavern,” performed with panpipe, krummhorn, rebec, and tambourine, was getting louder as they made their way across the square.

“Last night I had a vision,” the priest said.

“You had a lesion?” Jarod squinted in concentration beneath the noon sun. “Is it painful?”

“A
vision!
” Father Patrion yelled. “A dream that was more than a dream! I saw her . . . she spoke to me.”

“Who spoke to you, Father?” Jarod was having trouble following the priest’s words, let alone his meaning.

“It was the Lady of the Sky!”

“What baby? What sty?”

The troubadours’ song reached its rousing conclusion and the crowd erupted into applause and cheers.

“No! The
Lady
of the . . . it doesn’t matter,” Father Patrion went on quickly. The troubadours were speaking to the crowd, preparing to announce their next number, and the priest knew he had only a few moments before it would be impossible for Jarod to understand him again. “I told your lady the wrong place to meet you.”

Jarod went suddenly pale in the late winter light. “You did what?”

“The Lady came to me in the night—”

“Listen, Father, that’s really none of my business if—hey,
what
lady came to you in the night? If you so much as touched Caprice, I’ll—”

“Listen to me!” Father Patrion could hear the troubadours hastily and unsuccessfully tuning for their next song. “Where is Caprice supposed to meet you?”

“In Chestnut Court beneath the great tree right after the Ladies’ Dance,” Jarod said. “I’ve arranged it with Xander Lamplighter so that—”

“She won’t be there,” Father Patrion said quickly. “She’ll be at Pantheon Church . . . and that’s where you have to be, too.”

“Pantheon Church?” Jarod repeated.

“Right after the Ladies’ Dance,” Father Patrion nodded firmly. “You meet your lady at Pantheon Church! Now, have you seen Percival?”

The troubadours suddenly struck up their next number. It was the crowd favorite “The Sea Does Not Want Me Again,” which elicited a great cheer. The noise was deafening.

“Percival? You mean Percival Taylor?”

“Yes!” The racket from the troubadours and the crowd had become a nearly impenetrable wall of noise. “Have you seen him?”

“No,” Jarod yelled at the top of his lungs. “Why, Father?”

But the priest had already disappeared in the crowd.

Percival Taylor knew himself to be an expert at improvising. For many years now, he had improvised his way out of chores, improvised his way out of responsibilities, improvised his way out of debts, and, in more recent years, improvised his way out of awkward relationships that had—due to no fault of his own—gotten entirely too serious or too complicated for his improvised life. Whenever change had come, he had known to change with it—and to do so with a brilliant smile and a sense of panache. He knew with all his soul that he was destined for something great and did not particularly care what that greatness would be. His destiny would find him without all the planning, fretting, and, worst of all, pointless labor that his father seemed to feel—in his obviously limited vision—was required. He was beautiful, and he was profoundly aware of that fact and that the world owed something to the beautiful.

One of those beautiful things the world owed him was a beautiful woman at his side to balance his own glorious and gorgeous countenance. Admittedly, the selection in such an insignificant place as Eventide was limited, but in this he believed that fate had been kind. Having placed him in this small town, it would have been unjust not to have put an equal splendor here to balance the world.

His original plan had been completely perfect in every detail. He would hide among the shadows of the Pantheon Church in his dashing rogue costume—perfectly tailored for him by his adoring mother—and move silently among the pillars as the object of his affections stood by the central altar. Then he would spring upon her, startling her there alone, and sweep her into his arms as he proclaimed his adoration of her beauty.

Unfortunately, the priest, who had no appreciation for romantic adventurism, had mistakenly told the girl to wait for him under the great tree in Chestnut Court.

Unfazed by this news, Percival determined at once to improvise. As the sun set, he donned his rogue’s outfit, examined his looks thoroughly in the polished metal mirror in his mother’s fitting room, and then bounded into the twilight with his cape held across the lower half of his face’s chiseled features. He stealthily made his way down the now completely deserted Butterfield Road, turned toward Blackshore at the crossroads all of two hundred feet distant from his back door, and crossed the East Bridge onto Boar’s Island. It was a long, circuitous route, permitting him to leave the island by South Bridge, cross the Wanderwine again, and reenter the town from the south. Dark was falling quickly as he approached Chestnut Court and the enormous chestnut tree at its center.

The cloaked Percival stopped at the edge of the courtyard and frowned.

The lamps bordering Chestnut Court were all dark. No pixies illuminated the courtyard with their bright glow, although he could see lamps illuminated on Cobblestone Street north and south of the courtyard.

Percival smiled. Fortune, he believed, had smiled on him. He had intended to surprise the object of his desire in the church. Knowing that there was no way to sneak up on anyone under the tree in the middle of the courtyard, he had thought that part of his plan would have to be abandoned. Now, however, a new plan—a brilliantly improvised plan—sprang into his head.

Percival looked about him and, confirming the courtyard still deserted, dashed to the massive chestnut’s trunk. Grasping its lowest reaching branch, he scampered up into the tree.

Jarod sat behind the altar of the church, musing in the darkness.

He was uncomfortable, and not just from the etched stone that dug into his back where he sat. Everything he felt for Caprice Morgan was too big for the words he had been considering for months now. The Dragon’s Bard had done his best to coach him—much to the amusement of Farmer Bennis—and he had rehearsed any number of speeches, all of which sounded stiff in his ears and nothing close to what he truly felt.

Jarod turned the Treasure Box over and over in his hands, questioning once again if he were doing this right, if she would like the gift, or if he could even find the courage to give it to her. The hat it contained was ridiculous. Would Caprice think so too? Would she laugh at him? Could he even speak?

That was the point, wasn’t it?
he reminded himself.
I’m sitting here in the dark so that I can say to her in the darkness what I can’t say to her in the light.
He had even gone to the trouble of getting Xander Lamplighter to keep all the lamps around Chestnut Court free of pixies so that he could speak to Caprice without seeing her face. Now, he knew, the courtyard was dark for nothing as he waited here—and for what? To be rejected? Or worse?

Jarod made his mind up to go home and was about to stand up when he heard light footsteps coming into the church.

Something stirred within him. He had wondered if the heroes in the stories and legends who fought the dragons and the terrible ogres and giants of the midlands in the Epic War also felt this fear and, in that moment, gathered their courage and stood up to do the great deeds for which their songs were sung. Jarod suddenly knew that it was time—that this was his moment to face his fear and Caprice.

A thousand words rushed through his thoughts as he stood up, but they all fled him. All he said as he turned was, “I brought you a present. Will you come to the dance with . . .”

He froze, the box held between his hands.

He was looking into the gloriously pretty face of Vestia Walters.

Caprice Morgan stopped at the edge of Chestnut Court and frowned. The instructions from Father Patrion had been specific, but there was something about the courtyard that she did not like. It was dark, to be sure, especially after the bright pixie light from the lamps lining Cobblestone Street, but this alone was little cause for alarm. It was something within the magic of herself—the inner sense of a wish-woman—that told her that the courtyard held her destiny but in the strange way of her broken well.

Caprice had worn her best dress, a plum-colored fabric with elegant brocade panels and a high collar. It had been her mother’s, and although the fabric had faded slightly over time it fit her perfectly. She wore a short jacket against the evening chill, but she hated hats and never wore one if she could avoid it.

Still, the priest had been quite specific about the time and the place. She had participated in the Ladies’ Dance in the Cooper’s Hall—Jep Walters’s place of business on the south side of Charter Square—and come directly here. Shrugging, she stepped into the square and crossed directly to the base of the chestnut tree.

It was difficult to see, as her eyes had been accustomed to the lights of Cobblestone Street. She found the trunk of the tree, turned, and, crossing her arms, waited.

She could hear the distant sound of the troubadours’ music drifting down the river from the Cooper’s Hall to the north. There was a rustling and creaking sound from the branches overhead. A twig snapped.

Suddenly, a shadowed form dropped directly down in front of Caprice, its dark face a mystery. It fell to the ground, struggling with its cape for a moment before it rose up and turned toward her.

Caprice screamed, instantly drew back her right arm, and drove her small, clenched fist with all the might of her shock with such force into the nose of her assailant that it lifted both his feet free of the ground and sent him sprawling across the frozen ground.

Still screaming, Caprice ran back up Cobblestone Street, leaving the groaning figure of a rogue moaning on the ground.

“For me?” Vestia squealed as she reached forward and snatched the box from Jarod’s hands.

“No . . . I mean . . .”

“Oh, you mean what’s
in
the box is for me, don’t you!” Vestia teased.

Vestia Walters was the daughter of the town’s leading matron and patroness Livinia Walters. Jep Walters was her father. She was as lithe as a lily and as deep as a sheet of parchment—a blank parchment at that. She was the undisputed beauty of the town, a perfect statue to look at and admire, and about as good at conversation as shaped marble can be. This is not to say that Vestia was foolish: she possessed considerable cunning and uncanny sense when it came to society. She knew what she wanted out of life, believed she had the physical assets that would allow her to acquire it, and possessed a romantically sensible disposition that allowed her to always better her position.

Tonight she was dressed for the hunt at the dance in a fabulously cut hunter green silk dress with white, fox-fur trim. It showed her figure to its best advantage. Even in the darkness of the church, Jarod could see that her golden hair had been carefully prepared to frame perfectly the curve of her jaw and her small, upturned nose.

Jarod pulled at the collar of his doublet, panic rising perceptibly from somewhere near his stomach.

“How do you open this . . . oh, here’s the latch!” Vestia bubbled at the thought of her gift. She threw open the top of the box and gasped.

“It’s not . . . I mean, it wasn’t meant . . .”

“Oh, but it’s
perfect!
”
Vestia cooed. She reached into the box and removed the sleeping dragon hat.

She tossed the Treasure Box casually aside, its wood banging against the floor as it fell on its side.

Jarod, horrified, reached down at once, retrieving the box from where it had been discarded. He quickly pressed the catches and was relieved to find that the box still functioned, folding itself down until he could hold it in his palm and out of sight.

“Why, it’s absolutely adorable!” Vestia continued, her entire world revolving around her present for the moment. “You know, everyone in town who is anyone got one of these hats today, and I was absolutely sure that I wasn’t going to get one because Mother was in such a snit about Merinda Oakman this morning, but here you’ve gone and given me the best one of all! Why, Jarod Klum, I had no idea that you even thought of me that way!”

“Well, Vestia, you’re a nice girl and all, but I—”

“Now, you didn’t invite me out here to this church with some other purpose in mind, did you, Jarod Klum?” Vestia teased.

Jarod felt the heat rush to his face. “No! I wouldn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”

“You’re right,” Vestia continued the conversation on her own since Jarod obviously was not going to participate as quickly as she liked. “There’s probably not enough time now, so we’ll just have to think about that later. We’ve got to get back to that Couples’ Dance that’s coming up! I want to show this hat off to all the girls in town and you with it!”

“But Vestia . . .”

“Say, where’s that box my hat was in?” Vestia glanced around her.

“I’ve taken care of it,” Jarod said.

“Good!” Vestia smiled brightly as she took Jarod’s arm and led him out of the church. “We wouldn’t want anyone knowing we were here by leaving junk around.”

Jarod, with the splendid Vestia on his arm, stepped off the bridge at Bolly Falls into Charter Square and stopped.

Warmth and light poured out from the large open doors of the Cooper’s Hall on the south side of the square. The sounds of the crowd within rolled in muffled tones into the night. The square itself was brightly lit by the pixies in their lamp prisons, illuminating the heavy flakes of a late snow beginning to fall.