[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels Read online

  But then he added something in a hurry. “Where’er I gae at the faire, ye ken.”

  Slightly puzzled by that addition but overly conscious that this gorgeous man was trying hard to put her at ease while she was letting him take all the burden of carrying the conversation, she scolded herself. she needed to wake up and show her personality, or he was going to get bored.

  But all she could think of to say was something really nerdy. “Is Short Shakespeare one of those acting companies that do ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in twenty minutes, and then in fast forward, and then backwards?”

  Oddly, Dall looked to Ian to answer her question. It was opening day, but she would have sworn this wasn’t his first faire.

  Ian got so excited that he forgot to use his Scottish accent and threw both his arms up in the air. “Yeah, and they’re really good.”

  Making one of her goofy faces, Vange teased Ian about dropping his accent. She mimicked him, throwing her own arms up. “Oh, really?”

  Everyone laughed.

  Ian threw his arm back around Vange, and they all continued walking through the imitation English village, being solicited both by fake mongers and by people trying to get them to shop at all the booths that lined the street.

  “Delicious and un-nutritious. Try the Queen’s buns.”

  “We bet you five pounds you cannot climb this rope ladder.”

  “Chocolate. Iced. Cream.”

  One costumed group was more serious. There were a few dozen of them, all in raw homespun linen robes with garlands of flowers on top of their heads like hats, both men and women. Their area was a clump of standing stones visible off in the distance. They were all chanting, holding hands, and moving around the stones in a circle.

  Emily wondered if the stones were real or just Styrofoam. It was hard to tell, this far away.

  “Who are they?”

  Dall answered without asking anyone, “Those are druids.”

  Emily watched the druids circle around the stones until one of the building facades blocked her view. Just before it did, she noticed the guy with the dog tattoo watching her from the archery range, and then the facade blocked him, too.

  Emily, Vange, and the Scots arrived at another outdoor theater with a few minutes to spare before Short Shakespeare took the stage. The theater was half full, with about a hundred fairgoers already seated.

  Ian found four straw bales together and waved them all over.

  Emily had never liked sitting on scratchy straw, but she discovered that with two long skirts on, it wasn’t a problem.

  Moving differently than they all did—with controlled grace, Emily supposed she would say—Dall sat down next to her. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of him, but not quite touching her. The closest they came to touching was at their thighs, and this made hers burn for his to touch it, even through two skirts.

  “Oof.” Vange shouted, wriggling around. “It’s not easy to sit down in a tightly laced bodice.”

  Everyone laughed.

  From the straw bale in front of them, a few fairgoers in shorts turned around and looked at Vange curiously.

  Emily felt sorry for them. Imagining the straw bothered their bare skin something awful, she reached up under her skirts into the waistband of her shorts and pulled out her long Outlander T-shirt.

  “Here,” she said to them, “you can sit on this.”

  The woman smiled at her gratefully and put the shirt under her and her friend.

  Meanwhile, one of the Scots women leaned over to Vange and said without an accent and just loudly enough that Emily could hear too, “You should try driving in a corset.”

  “Oh, I know,” said one of the other Scots women, “I don’t lace it up till I get here.”

  Emily’s curiosity got the better of her, making her speak up, which she generally left to Vange.

  “I thought all you faire people lived here while the faire was on?”

  The Scots woman closest to Emily answered in that same soft voice that only their group could hear.

  “Some of us stay here all week. Dall does…”

  For some strange reason, they all looked at him then, and he smiled at them all in turn.

  The woman went on.

  “…but most of us only stay over Friday and Saturday night, because we have jobs that won’t let us take off six weeks for faire, not to mention four weeks before that for rehearsals.”

  “But isn’t faire a job for you?”

  What the woman was saying contradicted how Emily had always thought the faire worked. She was eager to find out everything she had been wondering about, now that she had insiders to ask.

  All the faire people laughed except Dall.

  The first woman answered Emily. “No. Legally, the faire is a college of performing arts. We don’t pay to ‘take classes’ here, but no, most of us don’t get paid. Only those with advanced skill get paid, like the bagpipers and those who teach us about how life was in the 1500s.”

  Again, all of their eyes went to Dall.

  It was weird. He was obviously one of the professors at this ‘college of performing arts’. Why didn’t they just say so?

  The Short Shakespeare show interrupted her thoughts.

  It was the best production of Romeo and Juliet Emily had ever seen, including the video of the one with her own performance as the nurse, in high school. Truth be told, watching that video whenever her parents trotted it out for guests these days embarrassed her now, it was so bad. She had taken her role way too seriously and forgotten to have fun with it, so it wasn’t fun to watch.

  Conditioned by her training to watch plays with a critical eye in order to see what she might use when she ran her own drama department, Emily analyzed this production—even as she laughed her head off and enjoyed it.

  Even as she yearned for Dall’s touch and was conscious of his every move on the straw bale next to her, she looked for just what the people on stage were doing to make this rendition of the play about the ‘star-crossed lovers’ so good.

  Aha.

  One.

  These actors didn’t take Shakespeare seriously, not at all.

  They didn’t see him as some godlike figure whose precious work had survived four hundred years and must be revered.

  No, they concentrated on fun, injecting plenty of action and silliness.

  Two.

  They had cut all but the most necessary lines, making the play move much faster.

  This made sense, because society was much faster now, with movies from even a decade ago seeming to move at too slow a pace.

  What lines remained, they delivered in a cartoonlike way.

  It was hilarious.

  All the female parts were played by men, of course, as the people of the 1500s simply would not allow a woman to make a fool of herself on stage.

  And all of the actors hammed it up and made a joke out of the whole thing.

  Especially the guy playing Juliet. He made Emily see the play in a whole new light.

  Far from being the touching love story everyone in modern times made of it, this was making fun of Romeo. It made fun of him for switching so quickly from being in love with Rosalyn to being after Juliet.

  Romeo is being too stupid to live. I never noticed that before.

  While she stood with the whole audience and clapped through three quick standing ovations, Emily wondered which way the audiences of Shakespeare’s time took Romeo and Juliet: as a serious tragedy the way she’d thought of it in high school, or as a comical farce the way these actors saw it now.

  Common sense told her that some saw it one way and some the other.

  And then the butterflies started up again in her stomach, when she noticed Dall smiling that unusual smile and once again offering her his arm.

  She took it, and smiled back at him.

  He escorted her away behind Ian and Vange, with the other two Scots couples behind them.

  Only this time, they went over the stage and through the
curtains.

  “Where are we going?” Emily asked Dall as they passed through a burlap curtain back into the sunshine.

  “As ye might hae gathered from what Siobhan telt ye, we dinna get much pay. Sae we dinna buy the food they sell in the booths, the turkey legs and such. Ev’n sae, I thought ye might like tae take the midday meal with us.”

  Released from the man’s charm when he stopped speaking, Emily looked around, blinking. There was a whole different faire back here behind the burlap curtain.

  She realized now that the fake English village was shaped like a donut, and that they had walked into the hidden center. Entirely surrounded by burlap curtains and thus invisible from the faire proper, the backstage area was a four-acre camp with no order to the layout.

  The place was a maze of tents, trailers, vans, and half a dozen RVs. There were even mobile toilets and showers.

  Vange rushed up. “Yes. Of course we want to eat lunch with you, right Em?”

  When she looked over at him in a daze, Emily shared another smile with Dall. “Right.”

  “Verra wull,” he said to Vange, and then he turned to Ian. “We wull meet ye at the picnic benches.”

  Ian nodded and wandered off, but Emily grinned when she heard him whisper to Dall, “Picnic tables.” Dall was doing well with his English, but he clearly spoke it as a second language. And Scottish was clearly his first language. That, he spoke beautifully.

  And then Dall’s smiling eyes were on Emily again. “Take my hand, lass. I would na want tae lose ye on the way.”

  Sharing a goofy smile with Vange, she did as he suggested.

  He led them through the maze to a white canvas cabin tent.

  Emily thought she just might be able to find it again, and she wondered if he wanted her to. He was difficult to read, so nice and friendly on the one hand and so unassuming on the other. It was confusing. Most guys would have asked for her number by now. Hoping he’d take a hint, she got her phone out.

  “So this is your tent?” Vange asked him.

  “I hae the use o’ it, aye.”

  He had the flaps open now, and they went in. Gesturing for them to sit on some of the inflatable chairs, he moved to the cooler, poured soda into tankards from a 2-liter bottle, and got out three oranges and three plastic containers with sandwiches in them.

  Wondering who had made the sandwiches, Emily did her best not to look at the pair of sleeping bags zipped together in the corner, where Dall must spend his nights. She looked for his jeans and sneakers, thinking his choice of brand might tell her more about him, but she didn’t see any. She didn’t see much of a personal nature in the tent at all.

  And no electronics whatsoever.

  Was he some sort of renfaire purist? Or worse, was he one of those losers who still lived with his parents and didn’t have a job? Disgusting.

  Soon, the three of them had made their way to the picnic tables and all eight of them were settled with inexpensive food, either homemade or bought at the supermarket the night before.

  Everyone but Dall was checking their cell phones for messages and returning texts.

  Siobhan passed a huge bag of potato chips around. All the guys dug into them greedily and were throwing them into each other’s mouths. The women each took a few, looking at each other worriedly about the extra calories.

  Dozens of other faire people were back here for lunch, too, including a bunch of preteens who all came in together and appeared to be waiting for a grown-up to bring them food.

  One girl said, “I do hope Mistress Maple brings us sustenance soon.”

  Another cut her off, saying, “The beer’s in the pickup.” He said it with a Southern accent, which to Emily’s ear was about as far from Elizabethan English as could be.

  The girl said, “Huh?”

  A third kid turned to her and explained.

  “He’s telling you to just talk normal. That’s a saying we use to remind each other that we don’t need our faire accents backstage.”

  It was midday, but some of the faire people were just waking up.

  One of these was part of the Scots clan. Emily could tell because he arrived at the picnic tables with a plaid that matched theirs, bunched up in his arms. His shirt was so long that she couldn’t tell if he was bare under it or not, and she didn’t want to know.

  One of the highlanders at their table noticed her looking.

  “Hey Emily, know what Scotsmen wear under their kilts?”

  Blushing, Emily shook her head no, feigning ignorance.

  The guy had a huge grin on his face when he delivered his punchline:

  “McNuggets.”

  He laughed at his own joke.

  Several of the other guys slapped his hand.

  Emily rolled her eyes and looked back at the Scot who had just woken up. After he put his food down, she watched, mesmerized, while the man donned his great kilt.

  First, he spread out a large tarp on the ground nearby.

  Next, he spread out his plaid on the tarp. When he saw her watching, he joked, “Here it is, the whole nine yards.”

  Emily then saw that the 16th century great kilt was indeed just nine yards of thick wool plaid, with nary a stitch sewn into it.

  Siobhan noticed her watching, too, and came over to comment.

  “The stitched thinner dress kilts of modern times are a product of Queen Victoria’s reign, three hundred years later than we portray here.”

  Once the nine yards of woolen plaid were spread out on the tarp, the Scot lay down on one end and rolled to the other end, pleating at his waist as he went, and then grabbed it and stood up, belting the pleats to keep the great kilt on him.

  Siobhan tapped Emily’s arm. “We call that ‘rolling a burrito,’” she said with a smile.

  “Hah. Really?”

  “Yep. You should see it earlier in the morning when they’re all rolling up like that. It’s quite fun.”

  “Ha. I would LOVE to see that.”

  “Me too,” said Vange, giving Siobhan a nudge.

  Siobhan smiled and nodded.

  All three women grinned at each other.

  Vange turned to Dall. “So you’re from Scotland, huh.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Aye, lass. That I am.” Dall took a bite of his sandwich.

  Emily knew Vange wouldn’t just leave it at that, and sure enough, Vange went on. “What brings you here to America?

  Emily was curious about this as well, so she looked at Dall with interest.

  He had a pained look on his face, and he appeared to have stopped breathing.

  Emily hoped he wasn’t choking. Sure, she had seen a video about the Heimlich maneuver in the first-aid class they made her take, but that didn’t mean she knew how. Searching on her phone for her textbook with that video, she started to stand up behind Dall.

  “Are you OK?” she asked him.

  Dall held out a hand. “Stay yer hand, lass. All is wull with me.”

  Whew. He couldn’t be choking if he was talking, right? She was pretty sure of that.

  But he still had that pained look on his face, and everyone else was pointedly talking about other things and not noticing.

  Just to be on the safe side, Emily pulled up her textbook and re-watched that video on the Heimlich maneuver.

  Her mind was trying to figure Dall out, now that his charm was temporarily unengaged. Of course Dall still spoke with a Scots accent backstage, being from Scotland and all. But while the others had dropped the 16th century speech patterns back here, he hadn't. No one told Dall the beer was in the pickup. They let him stay in character backstage. He moved differently than they all did—as if he were expecting to be attacked every second. He was one of their professors, yet until they came on stage, he hadn’t known who Short Shakespeare were. And he was broke to the point he had to offer them sandwiches someone else had made for him. Last but not least, he didn’t appear to have a phone. Who under 50 these days didn’t have a phone?

  It couldn’t all be
explained by his being a professor at this college of performing arts. Something so unlikely occurred to her that at first she dismissed it. Emily had read all eight huge tomes of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, but that was just a story. People didn’t really time travel. Right?

  Dall was guzzling the rest of his soda.

  Siobhan turned to Emily. “The guys have a sword demonstration next. Want to come watch?”

  “Of course,” she said eagerly.

  Consistent with his old-fashioned speech patterns and manners, Dall again held out his arm for her.

  Emily couldn’t help herself. She had meant to ask him why he was the only one not dropping the act backstage, why he didn’t have a phone, how come he didn’t have a job that paid real money, did he ever plan to, and so much else.

  But Dall was being so sweet and charming, and his eyes smiled at her with such interest, that she just didn’t care right now. Later would be soon enough to ask him what was up.

  Her common sense told her that if she was this smitten with Dall now, she would only care less later.

  She ignored it.

  The butterflies started up in her stomach again the moment she touched him, and despite his disarming small talk, they didn’t let up until he deposited her in a large gazebo next to a small arena where a dozen costumed men were swinging swords around.

  The audience sat on grandstands around the perimeter of the arena.

  Emily and Vange and Siobhan all had chairs next to each other in the gazebo, and twenty other costumed women were inside with them, most dressed as English nobility.

  The two-handed longswords that the clan called claymores were huge. Emily didn’t think she could hold one up for long, let alone swing it around. She was interested in things like that because of her drama teaching aspirations.

  To test her theory, Emily stood and beckoned to Dall.

  When he left the rest of the highlanders out in the arena and came over to her, smiling, all the Scots made hooting noises.

  Emily understood. The clan were teasing Dall for being so attentive to her. She blushed.

  “’Tis sorry I am for their commentary, lass. They mean no harm. I can tell them to stop, if you like.”