A Midsummer's Day Read online

  A Midsummer’s Day

  Heather Ann Montford

  Dedication:

  To Riss: Thanks for being my sounding board for pretty much every detail of this story and the hundreds of other ideas that pour out of my head, and for drawing me an absolutely amazing cover.

  <(^.^)>

  Chapter 1

  The Midsummer Festival had found its way back to Nottingham.

  Half of England had gathered in the golden dappled village hidden deep in the depths of Sherwood Forest. People flowed down the paths, as liquid as the heat shimmering silver in the air. They looked all around, taking in more than the festivities.

  Rumor had spread. Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Court were in attendance.

  Wandering minstrels played lively tunes on lutes and pipes. Mad capped stilted performers in garishly colored costumes told stories in silly voices, making young men erupt in laughter and even the most proper Courtly Lady blush bright crimson.

  There was too much to see and to do and to taste. Half the festival’s stages offered singing shows and plays written by the great scribes of the day. Others held great displays of strength and skill. There were games to try and prizes to be won. There were food and drink from England and beyond to enjoy. There were shops to browse and artisans to watch as they created their wondrous crafts.

  But at the Crossroads, a sandy juncture where five of Sherwood Village’s paths met, actors performed for empty audiences. Games of chance were silent, and the village heckler went ignored as he hurled his most vile jests from behind the safety of his tomato stained board.

  All eyes were drawn to a set of stocks in the center of the Crossroads. A wretched couple in the wrappings of young nobility was locked into the rough restraints, struggling against the unnaturalness of their newly found ninety degree angle.

  Standing nearby was the reason why more than half of the crowd were women. The Lord High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire was young for his position, yet in his singular year of service he had brought order back to the lawless Shire. No longer was he compared to the Sheriff of Nottingham of old, who failed so utterly against the nefarious villain Robin Hood.

  But the women cared little for history. They cared little about what their Lord High Sheriff had done for their Shire. He was younger and more handsome than most of their husbands or betrotheds. It was often said that it was one look from Jameson Kent’s icy green eyes, or the glint of the sun in his chocolate hair, that brought women from the far reaches of England to festival. They pricked up their ears when their Lord High Sheriff cleared his throat to speak.

  “Hear ye, hear ye, gentle festival goers! Feast thine eyes upon a pair most disgraced.” Jameson swept his arm to the couple imprisoned behind him. “Yon Lord hath most cruelly forsworn his betrothed to lie betimes with yon maidenly Lady, betwixt the sanctified walls of the Chapel Parr.”

  The nobles shook their heads. Betrothals were hated and despised things. But to fly so openly in the face of one, in such a public and holy place as the chapel named after the old King’s saintly sixth wife Catherine Parr… It was unthinkable in two people of proper breeding.

  But the nobles would not lose their dignity by yelling at the two in the stocks. Such baser acts were left to peasants and servants, who took what opportunities they could to openly jest those higher born.

  During the festival, Jameson’s ears fell deaf to such jests.

  But he could not ignore it when peasants grabbed tomatoes from baskets hanging on their arms. He threw himself in front of the stocks and held up his hands.

  “Stay thy hands! We shalt see us no such behavior here! Yon disgraced shalt linger in the heat of the e’er punishing sun for one hour hence. Be that enough punishment for the likes of thee.”

  The crowd quieted. Men and women bowed their heads to his will and moved on to other distractions. The cries of the heckler grew louder as people passed him.

  Soon only one person remained. The young Lord’s betrothed had watched the entire spectacle with tears burning her eyes. Her Lord looked at her longingly.

  She turned without a word and walked towards the village gate.

  Jameson’s heart ached for the lass, who was one of his own Nottingham Ladies. She was a rare one who had fallen for their betrothed immediately. It must have made the young Lord’s betrayal bite all the more sharply.

  Jameson himself had fallen for his own betrothed just as quickly. If his Anne betrayed him… If she lay with another in so open a fashion…

  He shook the thoughts from his head. Anne would do no such thing. She loved him every bit as much as he loved her.

  He sighed and walked out of the Crossroads.

  There were always deviants to find.

  And it was his job to seek out each and every single one.

  <>

  In the center of the festival, on a path aptly named Hill Street for its steep grade, three men created havoc. Three men stained in mud and wearing little more than worn breeches and wide smiles.

  The trio had no cause to be on the path leading to the upper levels of the village. They were beggars, lowlier than the lowliest of peasants. Their place was their dirty and muddy stage in a place called the Pits, down a road called the Dregs. Performing on the stage had been the agreement that allowed the beggars to attend the festival in the first place, and at their stage they were meant to stay.

  But they’d left their stage to frolic among the higher born on Hill Street. The mud beggars, as the people of Sherwood called them, threatened to ruin the rich clothes of the nobility with their dirty hands. The aristocracy found little humor in these antics.

  The peasantry was far easier to amuse, especially the bevy of young lasses roaming the path. They didn’t shy away from the men and their bared chests. A few lasses were even willing enough to oblige the beggars with kisses upon the cheek when it was asked of them.

  It was always the young Puck who was awarded the most kisses. His looks were dreamed of by noble Ladies and peasant lasses alike. An ever present layer of mud, drying gray on his skin, went ignored for better features. A well-toned, bared chest. The mud could not hide the earthiness of his hair, pulled back behind his head, nor the scruff on his chin that just begged to be a beard.

  Had Puck been granted a better manner of birth, a more fortunate fate, he would have been betrothed to a woman of means years ago. But there was no chance for that. He would never have a woman of his own. So he stole as many kisses from as many a lass as he could.

  The number of his prizes far outweighed those of his two fellow beggars, Forarin and Kaiser.

  “Good Cousin Puck,” Forarin said when Puck joined him for a breath on the side of the steep path. “Yon lasses be right bewitched with thy most bedraggled appearance, not unidentical to mine own.”

  “Forsooth? Verily I have not noticed.” Puck’s eyes followed a young maid in a festive pink frock as she passed. Her cheeks reddened upon his gaze, and she hurried away. “S’wounds! It seemest I have missed me one!”

  He bolted after the girl and begged a kiss from her.

  And he was not disappointed.

  <>

  In the farthest corner of the festival, tucked beneath the shade of an ancient willow tree and cooled by gentle breezes blowing from a hidden pond, stood a pavilion called the Grotto Stage. A strange thing happened beneath the stage’s roof, and it had drawn both nobles and peasants alike.

  It was not strange that it was a singing group. It was not strange that the group had been formed by Queen Elizabeth herself, who loved singing and music and acting.

  The oddity that drew a crowd of curious spectators was that the trio was formed entirely from the women of Queen Elizabeth’s own Court. It was a thing altogether unheard of in a societ
y where only men were allowed to perform in public.

  There was nothing else Lady Anne Halloway would rather do.

  “An it please you,” Anne said to her audience. “Hearken ye to a tale of mine own mind’s creation. E’er hath the rose symbolized the great ruling dynasties of England. Plantagenet. York. Tudor.” The audience applauded the current dynasty. “But I cry your pardon if the rose doth not symbolize too love and thy most painful longing.”

  Her talk broached the edge of scandal. This Anne knew, but little did she care. The Lord High Sheriff would scarce arrest her for such idle talk. Was it not scandal enough to sing in public, even by order of the Queen?

  A Queen, rumor had it, who had enough scandal attached to her own name?

  Anne closed her eyes. Music began behind her. She absorbed every bit of it. Every note, every sharp and flat. She absorbed every ounce of meaning from every word she was about to sing.

  And so she sang. She sang about roses. She sang about passion and longing. She sang about living, and the courage to do what needed to be done to be happy.

  When she was done singing, all she could hear was applause.

  The show was not yet over. One more tale Anne had to tell, one that many in her audience understood too well. It was a story of hatred and the sheer determination to survive in a situation not of one’s own making.

  It might have been the tale of a betrothal, for rarely did a betrothal bring about happiness and love.

  The smooth, lilting strings of a lute filled the empty air, echoed by the sharply haunting melody of a piccolo. Anne closed her eyes. The words she knew so well swelled inside her, begging to burst free.

  She sang.

  Applause ended the momentary silence that filled the air at the end of the song. Anne opened her eyes. A sea of people stood before her. They applauded.

  “Dearest of friends,” Anne said, fairly bursting with pride. “Our time hath drawn to an end. The Noble Ladies shalt return upon the morrow at this time hence. Fair thee well, and God bless our Queen Elizabeth!”

  Her band mates joined her at the front of the stage. The three curtsied to the audience with as much respect as they would give their Queen. There was more applause, and then their audience departed.

  No one stopped to wish the Ladies a good day. No one praised, or condemned, their public performance. But the Ladies took no offence, for there was none intended.

  There was too much to see, too much to experience, on this glorious Midsummer Day to stay in one place for long. Not even the want of a cooling breeze, more refreshing here than anywhere else in Sherwood, stopped the exodus.

  There was so much to experience and enjoy that Anne considered her group fortunate to have had such a large audience at all.

  Anne turned towards the stage. Ladies Catherine and Jayne, the other two Noble Ladies, returned their beloved instruments to their cases. Anne had no instrument to store, save for that of her voice. She was the voice of the Noble Ladies, their singer and storyteller. The Queen had told Anne once that she had the voice of an angel, and that was the reason she had been chosen to lead the group.

  “A right merry performance today, my Ladies,” Anne said. “‘Twas most enjoyable.”

  “‘Twas most indeed,” Lady Jayne said, taking her gilded piccolo case to her chest as if it were a babe in swaddling clothes. “We cry thy mercy, my dearest Lady Anne, but we must away. Queen Elizabeth hath commanded Lady Catherine and me to join her at tea anon.”

  “Marry and forsooth!” Anne said with wide eyes. “‘Tis quite an honor bestowed upon thee, to join the Queen at festival.”

  Lady Catherine rolled her green eyes. “Methinks the Queen doth desire not for us to carouse with the young courtiers, so fruitful in numbers at festival.” Catherine was the youngest of the three, a pretty young thing who preferred the company of the men at Court to other Ladies.

  Anne chuckled. “The Queen but seekest to safeguard thy purity, young Catherine. Methinks thy perception shalt change upon thy betrothal.”

  Catherine rolled her eyes again. “Thou art betrothed, Lady Anne, but the pureness of thy virtue is a matter oft hotly debated.”

  Jayne’s cackle echoed throughout the Grotto. Then she remembered herself, and laced her arm through Catherine’s. “We shalt see thee anon.” The two Ladies stepped out into the sunlight together.

  Already the gossip of the Royal Court passed between their lips. Court gossip was a favorite pastime of courtiers and ladies in waiting, and even the peasantry enjoyed spreading rumors to come out of London, Hatfield, Whitehall, or Greenwich. Wherever the Queen and the Court were.

  But gossip was not a pastime Anne dabbled in. She was the butt of many a rumor herself. It came automatically with her betrothal to the Lord High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire. Jameson was young, and handsome if Anne thought so herself. She was young, and not unpretty from the words of others.

  And youth and beauty always brought with it speculation and the wagging of idle tongues.

  Anne sighed and rested herself on a bench beneath the stage’s roof. Every ounce of breeze playing at the lace around her neck was a Godsend this day. She wished, however briefly, that she could loose her corset and give herself some more air.

  An episode of the vapours lingered just beyond the edges of the stage, hunched down in the bitter summer sun. It stalked her, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce.

  Let the nasty malady stay clear away from her. If it pounced, let it miss.

  If it pounced, and found its target… It would steal all her air from her, and with it the enjoyment of the day.

  Anne loved the festival too much to allow the heat and the vapours to take her from the festivities.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. A moment’s rest was all she needed.

  Chapter 2

  It was never a good idea to stray from the Pits for long. The Lord High Sheriff had long vision and far reaching hearing, and he had an insatiable appetite for filling his stocks.

  So the mud beggars took their fill of kisses and left the Hill Street.

  But Puck’s thoughts were far from the Lord High Sheriff and his torture device. He turned from the Dregs road and towards a covered bridge.

  “Where dost thou go so strange away from us, Cousin Puck?” Forarin called after him. “‘Tis not a place for thy foul likeness. The Lord High Sheriff shalt see thee in the stocks for a day if he wouldst find thee hence.”

  “The Lady Halloway doth sing most marvelously well. Just yonder.” Puck nodded towards the Grotto stage, visible just beyond the bridge. “I wouldst hear me her voice.”

  “The Lady Halloway?” Mischief crowded the eldest beggar’s mottled gray eyes. “Aye, she be a wench most comely.”

  Kaiser snickered from behind Forarin. Ever did the two enjoy goading Puck about his friendship with the highborn Lady. The jests that came from their sun parched lips every day would have them see more trouble than the stocks if the Lord High Sheriff ever got wind of them.

  “‘Tis but her most angelic voice I seek,” Puck said carefully. He didn’t trust his friends to not go running to the Lord High Sheriff if he said the wrong thing. “‘Tis one non pariel.” He turned towards the bridge.

  “The Lady hath bewitched thee against thy good senses,” Forarin said.

  Puck stopped and turned, his hands clenched tightly. “The Lady be no witch.”

  “Is she not?” Kaiser raised an eyebrow. “Hath the poppet not bewitched thy rod and made it as hard and thick as iron?”

  Puck laughed in spite of himself. “A pox unto thy words, thou bog-addled ale-louse,” he jested, and turned and jumped into the culvert spanned by the bridge.

  Forarin was right about one thing. The bridge, a place for Courtly lovers, was not for the likes of him.

  “Thou shalt be parted from thy most hollow skull for thy want of the Lord High Sheriff’s betrothed,” Forarin called after him.

  Again the old mud-sot had a point. It was not beyond
reasonable thought that the Lord High Sheriff knew about Puck’s friendship with the Lady Anne. As of yet, the Lord High Sheriff had not confronted him about it. But that was bound to change, and Puck would find himself punished. Whipped or dunked or put in the stocks.

  Until that day arrived, Puck would spend as much time as he could with the sweet Lady.

  How was it that such a Goddess as Lady Anne, the most beautiful star in all of existence, became betrothed to the vile likes of the Lord High Sheriff? Jameson Kent worked hard to dim the bright light that she emitted. She was a free spirit, and to crush that would be… devastating.

  Even from the culvert, Puck could see her. Her show had ended. She was alone, sitting on a bench beneath the stage’s roof.

  The Lady was a vision. Half the women at festival could claim red hair, the Queen included. But Anne’s hair shone like roses, even in the shade. But it was her eyes… Her eyes made her the most glorious Lady in all of creation. It was her eyes that separated her from all humanity, and made her as ethereally beautiful as an angel in Heaven.

  They were as silver as the moon. They glittered like stars.

  She was the only one in existence with those eyes.

  Those were the eyes that Puck dreamed about every night.

  <>

  “Pray pardon, my Lady Halloway. Feel you well?”

  Anne opened her eyes and stretched. She’d fallen asleep.

  A motley looking creature, bathed from head to bare toe in drying mud, lingered at the edge of the stage. He shifted uncomfortably in the hot sun, but he would not step into the shade.

  Any other noble, a proper one Anne supposed as she stood, would be repulsed to have such a lowly person address them so openly. But she hardly considered herself one of the uptight, boringly proper nobles of the realm.

  And Puck was not a person to avoid. Nor would she chastise him for being within her presence. A mud beggar he may have been, but he had a kind heart and a gentle spirit. He was a true and honest friend, something that could not be said about the Ladies of Court, who only sought power and privilege.