Tales of the Dragon's Bard, Volume 1: Eventide (21 page)

Several of the Cobblestone ladies gasped and the Widow Merryweather threatened to swoon. Even the Gossip Fairy managed to appear shocked.

“He became obsessed with her,” Tomas continued. “I turned him out as quickly as I dared, but on those nights when the moon shone brighter he would come to the inn and try to coerce my daughter away from her home and her friends!”

“And did she go with him?” Ward asked.

“No, sire, she did not!” Squire Tomas asserted. “My daughter was not so easily persuaded!”

Lord Pompeanus leaned forward. “You are an innkeeper?”

“Aye, my lord.”

“And she was an innkeeper’s daughter?”

“Aye, my lord.”

“And you say she was not easily persuaded?”

“As I have said, my lord.”

Lord Pompeanus shrugged. “How odd.”

“She was engaged to be married, my lord . . . to a farmer.”

“Did anyone else know of this engagement?”

“No, sire. It was not announced, as we feared it might incense the highwayman’s wrath. Evangeline tried otherwise to dissuade him.”

“And still the highwayman pursued her?” Ward asked.

“He was a scoundrel, sire! Two days ago he discovered that Evangeline was to be married—in Welston. He went mad with jealousy—like some highwaymen do, I believe—and in the middle of the night rode into town at a full gallop yelling the name of ‘Evangeline’ at the top of his lungs with such force that he nearly lost his voice from the effort. I heard him coming. I grabbed that saber and ran out to stop him before he could reach my Evangeline and do her harm.”

“A unique weapon,” Pompeanus mused as he examined the sword. “A fine edge, although it’s been abused . . . nicked in several places on the leading edge. So you ran toward the highwayman?”

“Yes, my lord . . .”

“You managed to wake up, dress, grab this saber, and run all the way to the bridge after hearing the highwayman riding and shouting from the south end of the village?”

“Yes, my lord. I was already awake and dressed, sire. I had a pair of hogs to be butchered in preparation for the wedding.”

“The secret wedding?” Pompeanus asked quietly.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Bloody business, butchering hogs,” Pompeanus said. “You dealt with a lot of blood last night, didn’t you, Squire?”

Tomas gulped once. “Yes, my lord. I reached the center of the bridge just as Gallowglass started across it. I challenged him, blocking his path and startling his horse. The horse braced to a stop so suddenly that the highwayman was tossed from the saddle onto the bridge. He rolled toward me, then sprang to his feet!”

The townsfolk of Eventide leaned forward—the silence in the room was profound. Squire Tomas had always believed himself to be a storyteller, and, for the most part, the citizens of Eventide had ignored his tales. But this was the most important story of his life, and from somewhere deep inside he found the courage to tell it with style, conviction, and power.

“His sword slid almost without a sound from its scabbard. ‘Evangeline will be mine or no one’s,’ he says to me.

“‘She will never be yours, accursed rascal!’ says I. Then he lunged at me with his blade. I countered at once and our weapons crashed together in ringing blows—steel sliding against steel! The cut and parry drove our blades against the railing of the bridge, stone shattering to shards from the fierce blows.

“‘I am the highwayman!’ cries he. ‘I take what I want!’

“‘And I keep what is mine!’ says I to him, turning his blade aside and thrusting my own into your lordship’s previous wound!”

The townsfolk drew in a collective breath.

“As he staggered back, I shouted, ‘You will haunt us no more!’ And with a stroke of my saber blade, I severed his head from his body, knocking it completely off the bridge and into the swirling waters of the river below!”

No one moved. Not even Widow Merryweather dared to swoon for fear of missing what might come next.

Lord Pompeanus leaned forward. “Excuse me?”

Ward Klum turned to look back at the lord. Tomas looked up expectantly.

“You say you took his head clean from his shoulders?” Pompeanus asked.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Knocked it right into the river?”

“As I said, my lord.”

“And you did this with a saber blade that had already lost its edge from these repeated furious blows of your sword against the stone of the bridge walls?”

Tomas paused. “Yes, that’s how it happened, my lord.”

“That accounts for the head . . . but where’s the body?”

“Sire?”

Lord Pompeanus opened his hands in front of him. “Well, you took off this knave’s head and knocked it into the river—but the body remained.”

“Oh, no, sire! It fell into the river too.”

“Ah!” Lord Pompeanus smiled. “I see. So you knocked both the head and the body into the river?”

“Well, I’m not sure . . .”

“So who bled on the bridge, Squire?” Pompeanus continued. “If the head and the body are in the river, where did all the blood come from?”

“From the body, sire,” Tomas said. “I had taken off his head with the saber.”

“So, if I am to understand you properly,” Pompeanus said with a venomous grin, “the headless body stood around at the side of the bridge for a while, bleeding on the stones and, apparently, on the horse, until, tired of the business, it pitched itself over the rail?”

“No, sire!” Tomas answered, sweat breaking on his brow. “The horse was not there then!”

“But the horse had blood covering it.” Lord Pompeanus’s grin deepened.

“No doubt, sire . . . no doubt the reopening of his previous wounds.”

“But the blood was on the horse’s flanks,” Pompeanus said quietly. “It is your testimony that the highwayman was riding at a full gallop backward through the—”

The doors at the back of the hall opened.

Lord Pompeanus looked up, his grin suddenly falling.

Aren Bennis stood, hat in hand, at the back of the hall. “Sorry to interupt,” the centaur rumbled in his deep voice. “I have a message for Lord Pompeanus that must be delivered at once.”

Lord Pompeanus stood up suddenly, staring at Farmer Bennis.

“If your lordship will join me outside for a moment, I will deliver my message,” Bennis said, his deep-set eyes never leaving Pompeanus. “And if all you good people will just wait here, it shouldn’t take but a moment, and things will be properly settled.”

In the end, Lord Pompeanus never returned to the Guild Hall. Ward Klum was called out of the room a few minutes later, followed quickly by the lord’s two escort knights. It was left to Ward Klum to return to the confused assemblage and pronounce the results of the inquest.

The highwayman was dead, his head and body lost forever to the Wanderwine River. Squire Tomas had killed him in defense of his honor, his home, and the community. The sad tale of the highwayman was closed.

All that was left was to celebrate the secret wedding of the couple who now were already settled in the reasonably distant town of Welston. Though the couple were not at the party that evening, Tomas assured everyone of the best wishes to them all from Evangeline Melthalion and her husband—a farmer by the name of Henri Smyth.

In the years to come, Evangeline occasionally returned home, but no one ever saw Henri Smyth in Eventide. However, Harvest Oakman reported many years later having visited a tall, strapping farmer with uncommonly good looks working a lovely little farm outside of Welston. He occasionally during conversation would reach up and rub his left shoulder. When asked about it, he replied it was an old injury from a previous job and the main reason why he had taken up farming. His name was Henri Smyth, and with his happy wife, Evangeline, he had five children—four daughters and a son by the name of Dirk.

Jarod slipped through the celebration crowd in Charter Square outside the Griffon’s Tale Inn with a large piece of hog’s meat in his hand. He was a free man—which meant that he could move the two floors back up to his room above the countinghouse instead of below it—and although his name was cleared of all charges, the slight aroma of his having been associated with such a scandalous tale had made him more noticeable after all.

Perhaps, he reflected, too noticeable. He was as much trying to avoid Vestia Walters as to look for Caprice Morgan. Jep Walters’s missing money had not, it now seemed, been stolen at all but had somehow reappeared in the cooperage in the bottom of one of Vestia’s trunks, where it had mysteriously fallen. Now Vestia was more interested in Jarod than ever.

Jarod took a bite from the hog’s meat and turned again in the crowd—running directly into someone he had not seen behind him.

“Oh, pardon me, sir, I . . .”

It was Meryl Morgan—Caprice’s father.

“It’s all right, Jarod,” Meryl said with a distracted chuckle.

“Oh! Master Morgan!” Jarod blurted. “I see you’re out for a . . . I mean, it’s terribly good to see you, sir!”

“You mean it’s good to see me out in the town,” Meryl nodded. “Caprice and Melodi insisted. It’s a wedding celebration, after all.”

Meryl looked away for a moment, apparently to a distant, happier time. Jarod, shocked at finding himself unexpectedly in the encounter that he had occasionally daydreamed about, suddenly realized his mouth was saying things before his mind could stop him.

“Father Morgan,” Jarod heard himself saying, “I have the utmost respect and esteem for your family and, in particular, your daughter . . .”

Meryl came back from his painful, joyful memories at the sound of his name. “What, Son? Oh, of course you do.”

“May I have your permission to call?” Inside, Jarod began to panic at the words, having been so long rehearsed in his head, coming out of his mouth of their own volition.

“Of course, Jarod! You are welcome to call upon me and my daughters at any time. I’ve been thinking lately that I need to see to that part of my daughters’ lives. I’ve been meaning to get around to that, but . . . well, there’s been so much to do. If only Brenna were still here, she would know how to take care of it.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“I really must see to the girls,” Meryl said. “Especially Sobrina. She has to be married first, you know.”

“I didn’t . . . what do you mean ‘she has to be married first’?” Jarod asked quickly.

“It’s bound up in being wish-women,” Meryl said. “I wish Brenna were here to explain it. She knew all about it and was so smart and wise. The firstborn must be married before the others may be courted or the well may fail altogether. So, feel free to come calling on Sobrina anytime you like, Master Jarod!”

Meryl spied his daughters through the crowd and moved quickly toward them, leaving Jarod standing with what seemed like hog’s meat in one hand and his heart in the other. The assistant accountant saw Sobrina towering above her sisters, her stern look a permanent fixture on her face.

“Oh, joy,” Jarod thought without any joy at all. “Not only do I have to win Caprice for myself but I have to find someone else who will wed the frost queen of the well!”

Courting Fates

Courting Fates

Wherein Jarod tries a conspiracy of
wishes with another suitor of the
Fate Sisters . . . and discovers that good wishes can have dire consequences.

• Chapter 14 •

Broken Wishes and Mended Hearts

You’re sure he’s the one?” Jarod said, his eyes stinging, filling with tears.

“You can believe in me, Jarod, when I tell you there isn’t another man in all of Eventide who desires Sobrina Morgan more than this man!” the Dragon’s Bard choked out. “I’ve had it on . . . just a moment . . .”

Edvard took a step to the side, turned his head, and gagged.

Abel, standing behind the two, was forced to hold his stylus in one hand and his writing tablet in the other and therefore was unable to shield his nose in any way except by the conscious effort not to breathe more often than absolutely necessary.

“I’ve had it on good authority,” Edvard continued, his right hand pressing a scented handkerchief to his nose. It was like trying to hold back the tide with a teaspoon. “Both Beulandreus Dudgeon and Alicia Charon confirmed it to me in the most ardent terms. This is the man we want!”

The three unhappy callers stood at the southern end of Boar’s Island just above the confluence of the West and East Wanderwine Rivers and the marshes beyond. The enclosure took up nearly half an acre of property, with the rooftops of low buildings just visible over the high walls. A massive double gate stood closed before them with a weathered and nearly illegible sign next to it proclaiming: “Visitors Welcome—Please Pull.”

Jarod tried to take in a deep breath, coughed, and then reached forward and yanked hard on the chain that ran over the wall next to the sign.

A loud bell clanged in the space beyond the gate. Nothing happened for a full minute, and Jarod was just reaching for the chain again when he heard the lifting of a heavy crossbar and saw the gate swing partly open inward. A swarthy face between two large ears and an explosion of jet-black hair pushing outward from around a gleaming bald dome of a head popped out of the opening.

Jarod, Edvard, and Abel all took an involuntary step back with the sudden onslaught of aromas pouring through the open gate.

“By the heavens! Jarod, how are you?” Lucius Tanner exclaimed as his face broke into a wide grin. He extended his hand, then abruptly pulled it back, wiping it on his apron before extending it again with undiminished enthusiasm. “I can’t tell you what a delight it is to see you here—you and your friends. Come in! Come in!”

Jarod could only nod. None of the rest of them dared attempt to open their mouths to speak.

“You know, we just don’t get many callers here,” Lucius chattered on as they stepped into the tannery. “But you’re always most welcome. Our work is a little slow today, but we’ve got a shipment of new hides coming in tomorrow. Still, I’d be delighted to show you around!”

Lucius Tanner was slightly shorter than Jarod, with broad shoulders and a wide, sturdy build. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, canvas trousers tucked into the tops of tall boots, and a large, heavily stained leather apron. Thick gloves were tucked into the apron where they might be readily grasped and put to use at a moment’s need.