CHILD of the HUNT Page 6

  Mr. Rosenberg grunted. “Have you applied to very many colleges? Willow’s being recruited from all over.” He clapped a hand on Willow’s back. She gulped down the tea she’d had in her mouth and smiled earnestly.

  “I’m trying to keep my options open.” Now was not the time to announce that the Dingoes were working on getting signed to a label.

  “Options.” Mr. Rosenberg’s voice dropped a few octaves, as if he were saying a dirty word. “Willow knows she’s too young for options.”

  Willow kept smiling.

  Oz said, “Mrs. Rosenberg, would you like help setting the table?”

  * * *

  “This is so strange,” Cordelia said to Xander. They were sitting under a tree in Weatherly Park—one not occupied by some homeless man enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon nap beneath a shopping cart— with the contents of a large bag from Subway Sandwiches spread between them. It was the fastest food Cordelia would eat, and even there, she was stretching it to accommodate Xander—a strange notion, true. But one did have to make sacrifices in a relationship. Or so she’d read.

  Although she wasn’t sure what the point of that was.

  “What is so strange?” Xander asked.

  Cordelia smiled at him. He looked nervous. She was a pain, she knew she was. Oh, well.

  She was worth it.

  “We’re not fighting,” she told him.

  He shrugged. “The day is only half over.”

  “True.”

  Under the spreading eucalyptus tree, they dined.

  The normally punctual Giles was last to arrive at their agreed-upon rendezvous, most likely due, Buffy thought, to the ancient transport he continued to refer to as a “car.” To the astonishment of everyone—and to the cheering-up of one bummed-out Slayer—the Watcher arrived wearing what Xander called a “puffy beret,” a brown velvet hat, which Giles informed them was called a “porkpie,” a reference which, of course, sent Xander off on a riff about the value of snack food.

  Giles began to launch into a lecture on the history of the porkpie hat, complete with footnotes, but Buffy tuned him out the moment a familiar hand gently touched her shoulder.

  Angel said, “Hi.”

  “Hey,” Buffy replied, half-turning. She couldn’t help the skip of her heartbeat, although she struggled to hide her feelings from everyone, including herself. Angel and she could no longer be together, and that was that. But he was dressed in a black silk shirt and black leather pants, and his eyes shone as he smiled at her. She was suddenly very glad she had tried Cordelia’s guaranteed method to get rid of puffy eyes, which was slices of cucumbers followed by a hot, steamy shower.

  “Thanks for coming.” She wondered if he would notice that her double-strap red velvet tank top was new. And that she, too, had on black leather pants. And boots, like his. That they looked like they might be a couple, sort of.

  Angel smiled that lopsided smile of his, and Buffy sighed to herself. They were not a couple, not in the usual sense.

  But then, when had they ever been one in the usual sense?

  Angel nodded to the others, who all nodded back. Even Giles, though it took him a beat longer than the others. Not that Buffy blamed him. Angel’s . . . return had probably been the most upsetting for her Watcher. He had loved Jenny Calendar very much.

  As much as Buffy had loved . . . still loved . . . Angel.

  “It looks like fun, huh,” Willow offered.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it,” Angel said.

  “Unless we went during the day,” Xander noted. “Which would have been a much better idea.”

  Angel shot him an annoyed look, which was probably mostly out of habit, then turned to smile at Buffy again.

  “Shall we?” he asked, holding his arm out for her in old-fashioned chivalrous style.

  “We shall,” she replied, and together they walked into the Faire, leaving the others to bring up the rear.

  The entrance to the Faire was an ornate wooden sign that read, KING RICHARD’S FAIRE, decorated with real flowers. There were several lanes of booths that looked like cottages and little castles, and tents for Gypsies. The air was redolent with the odors of barbecued poultry and fire-baked meat pies. Small carts sold everything from full period costumes to handmade jewelry, from chain mail to fantasy chess sets.

  “Behold, ye olde mall,” Xander said. “We paid to come in here? It’s all a scare to get us to buy ye olde and useless trinkets.”

  “Oh, Xander, don’t be such a downer,” Cordelia said, her eyes shining as she took in the vast array of merchandise. “This looks like fun!” Then she must have caught herself, because she murmured, “And if you ever tell anyone I said that, I’ll have to kill you.”

  She flounced away from him, not an easy thing in tight black jeans, and walked up to a nearby tent. As Buffy and the others followed, a sound like tiny cymbals filled the air.

  “What’s in here?” Willow asked, as they reached the entrance.

  “Oh, yeah,” Xander said.

  It was a belly-dancing show. Behind the tent flap, people sat on large decorative pillows as three women in spangled tops and silk skirts with tiny bells sewn on them gyrated and shimmied on a stage. Two men in cone-shaped red hats with flat tops sat to one side of the platform, one playing some kind of flute and the other beating a drum.

  Cordelia yanked on his arm. “Oh, no,” she said. “No, no, no.”

  “We can meet up later,” Xander pleaded.

  “What ho, gentles!” boomed a voice.

  Buffy jumped and turned around, semi-pulling Angel with her.

  A man dressed in a green shirt and leggings, with a bow slung over his shoulder and a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, stood next to a hugely rotund man who wore a long, gold robe. A purple cape trimmed in white fur was slung over the fat man’s shoulders and two small boys in tights and blousy shirts carried the ends. A heavy, dark gold crown set with chunks of colored glass sat on his long, brown hair.

  “Bow in the presence of Richard the Lion Heart!” the green man bellowed.

  The surrounding onlookers began to applaud, and some bowed, laughing.

  “You see,” Giles began, “this is precisely the kind of thing I was talking about. This is Robin Hood, and that man is King Richard the Lion Heart. Actually, Richard was king of England during the Crusades, that is to say, during the twelfth century. So his presence here is not at all historically correct, although he was a symbol of English pride by then. And Robin Hood, though usually associated with him, has also been connected to them—”

  “Art thou deaf, villain?” Robin Hood shouted. He reached out and pushed Giles’s arm. “Kneel!”

  Caught off guard, Giles half-bent his left knee and said angrily, “I beg your pardon!” His porkpie hat fell to the ground.

  “Granted!” boomed the king. He lifted a sword and pointed it at Giles. “Be ye forewarned, however, that we require deference in our presence.”

  Saying that, his majesty swept away, snootier than Cordelia at her worst. Robin Hood moved ahead of him, crying, “Make way for the king!”

  The little boys—they were twins—scooted along behind with his cape.

  “Good Lord, that’s taking things a bit far.” Giles straightened and looked after the little group. He replaced his hat and smoothed his tweedy tweed-clothes. “He actually hit me.”

  “Then you can sue him,” Cordelia told him.

  “No,” Giles said slowly. “We British are not as litigious as you Americans.”

  “Which is why you lost the war,” Xander offered.

  Giles glanced at him. “Which war?”

  “The one . . . that you lost.”

  Giles looked very sad. “Come along, my lost ones,” he murmured.

  “We’re not lost,” Xander insisted. He looked around himself. “Just misplaced.”

  The incident with Robin Hood tarnished the glow of the Faire, but just a bit. Soon Buffy and Cordelia were trying on wench costumes with low, ruffled blouses
, tightly cinched waistcoats, and yards of skirts, and Buffy saw the look of admiration in Angel’s eyes as she pushed back the dressing-room curtain and curtsied to him. It still hurt when she thought about everything they’d been through, but she was adjusting. It seemed that as the Slayer, she was always adjusting. Wouldn’t it have been fun to live in this time period for real, wearing pretty clothes and what, baking bread or something?

  “You should buy it,” Angel urged her. “Blue’s your color.” He grinned. “Also black. And white.” She was swathed in blue. Cordelia wore red, looking very gypsy-dramatic with her dark hair and eyes.

  Cordelia posed and said to Xander, “What do you think?”

  “I’m thinking things I shouldn’t be thinking,” Xander rasped. “Or at least, shouldn’t be admitting I’m thinking.”

  “Well, I’m buying mine,” Cordelia announced, brandishing her American Express card. “Don’t leave home without it.”

  “Not me.” Buffy sighed and gave herself one last glance in the mirror. “It’s too expensive.”

  Willow looked pensive. She had demurred at trying something on, to the slight disappointment of Oz, Buffy thought, but you could never be sure with Oz. He was so laid back. Also, totally without judgment. Buffy couldn’t have hoped for a better boyfriend for her best friend . . . unless it had been Xander. But that just didn’t seem meant to be.

  She paused a moment. Over her shoulder she caught a glimpse of a guy about her age dressed in a red and blue patchwork jester costume, bells jingling from the points of his hat. He was watching her, a little too intently. She frowned, and was about to tell him off when he ducked behind a curtain.

  Grimacing slightly, she turned to Cordelia as they headed back to their makeshift dressing rooms and said, “Make sure your curtain is shut, okay?”

  “Xander’s not that freaky,” Cordelia muttered, then grinned at Buffy. “Unfortunately.” Buffy had to laugh.

  After they changed and Cordelia bought her outfit, Willow, keeper of the guidebook, announced that there would be a joust in ten minutes.

  “Hel-lo! Priorities!” Xander pointed to a stall sign that read, YE RIBS OF PIG. YE LEG OF TURKEY. Women in low-cut, ruffled blouses and billowing skirts handed out Styrofoam plates heaped with steaming food as fast as they could. “Enough time to grab an authentic Renaissance turkey leg and gawk at yon serving wenches.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re hungry,” Buffy said quietly to Angel. She sipped on the straw of her authentic cup of Diet Coke.

  Angel smiled and walked to the line at the booth. “I’m a leg man, myself. “ He took her cup and drew Diet Coke up the straw, swallowing it. “What would you like?”

  Buffy smiled back at him. Sometimes she still forgot that he could eat and drink if he wanted to. It didn’t do anything life-sustaining for him, but he could do it. It was like being a social smoker. Which she wasn’t. But she could relate.

  “I’m a leg girl myself. Turkey leg, I mean,” she amended, a little embarrassed. She shook her head. “Anyway, thanks.”

  “You know, it’s a shame we don’t see more serving wenches,” Xander said in a loud voice behind her. “It’s a lost art.”

  Then there was the sound of a smack, and Cordelia snapping, “Shut up, Xander!”

  “Now, kids,” Oz drawled, then murmured, “Whoa. Check it out.”

  They all turned.

  On a cart pulled by a huge thug in a black leather hood, stood a man with his head and hands stuck through a padlocked wooden stockade. He was hunched painfully over, his legs bent and trembling.

  “Water,” he begged in a dry, raspy voice as the hooded man stopped and dropped the handle of the cart.

  Some of the other fairgoers pointed at the man and laughed. A boy and a girl applauded. The girl took a picture; her flash lit up the man’s face. It was cracked and peeling—or made to look that way with makeup.

  “Water,” he begged again.

  Buffy cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. “That isn’t very funny.”

  “Well, it is accurate,” Giles offered. “The Renaissance, for all of its flowering of scientific inquiry and rebirth of art and culture, was still rooted in the Middle Ages, which were quite barbaric.”

  “Please,” the man said.

  Buffy moved from the crowd and ripped the lid off her Diet Coke. She lifted it to his mouth.

  The other spectators burst into a chorus of both booing and cheering. Buffy looked up at the man and squinted. He looked terrible.

  He didn’t look like he was wearing makeup.

  “Come on, Buffy,” Xander called from the food line. “We’re going to miss the joust! Giles’s pal King Richard will be there. With his fool and everything.”

  “Yeah, with his fool,” Cordelia said pointedly.

  “Bless you, miss,” the man whispered to Buffy.

  The hooded man wheeled on her and waved her away with an imperious flick of his hand. “Get away from him!”

  The other man stared at her. His glance never wavering, a single tear coursed down his cheek.

  “Away, girl, now!” the hooded man boomed.

  With an uncertain glance over her shoulder, Buffy rejoined Angel in line.

  “Wow, you’re really getting into this,” he said, amused.

  “I guess.” She frowned. “But I don’t know.” She looked around at the booths and the people in them. There was nothing wrong, nothing different, that she could see, anyway. “I’m getting a little creeped out.”

  “You’re just hungry. Once you feed . . . I mean, eat, you’ll feel better.” He put an arm around her and gave her a little squeeze.

  That made her feel better. It also made her sad for a time when things between them were so much simpler.

  The hooded man picked up the cart handle and began to drag his prisoner away.

  “Wow, check out that serving wench!” Xander said in line behind Buffy. “Now those are ruffles!”

  Angel chuckled. “Xander’s getting into this, too.”

  “Yeah.” Buffy sighed and tried to focus her attention on her friends. But just like in math, things were not adding up too well.

  “Two legs,” Angel said to the serving wench in the booth.

  “One for you, and one for my mistress meddler?” The wench’s tone was sharp, her scowl sharper as she flicked open a money box and held out her hand.

  Angel looked surprised. “Excuse me?”

  “Two it is,” the wench said in a more pleasant voice. “That’ll be eight dollars.”

  “Whoa,” Oz said. “Pricey eats. Good thing Din goes are getting regular work these days.” He sighed. “That I can perform, most of the time.”

  “Good thing I have a date with yon princess of American Express,” Xander piped up.

  Willow touched Buffy’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “That whole thing was pretty freaky,” Buffy admitted.

  Willow nodded. “It was kind of weird.” She smiled hopefully. “But, y’know, as Giles said, historically accurate.”

  Buffy nodded slowly.

  Chapter 3

  THE JOUSTING ARENA WAS LOCATED AT THE FAR END OF the rows of shops and eateries. Surrounded on all four sides by bleachers, with brightly painted wooden fences running down the middle of the dirt, it was actually the staging area for the Sunnydale Rodeo and the livestock shows which took place during Sunnydale Days, a sort of county fair held in July.

  Buffy had yet to pass a summer in Sunnydale, but if the rodeo was the best the town had to offer during that time, she wasn’t all that broken up about missing it.

  “What ho, gentles!” cried a hawker with a big case of sodas suspended from a thick leather strap looped behind his neck. “Quench thy thirst!”

  “You see, more of what I was talking about,” Giles said, as the seven of them scooted onto an empty row of bleacher seats. “Quenching one’s thirst on carbonated beverages. The spectators at a joust were far more likely to drink mead or ale.” He smiled at the group. “One im
agines that for most of the Renaissance, everybody went about in a minor alcoholic stupor.”

  “Is that fancy talk for, ‘I’m buying a brewski, kids, don’t be shocked’?” Xander teased.

  Giles considered. “Well, now that you mention it . . .”

  “Please, don’t let us stop you,” Buffy said. “Your role model shift stopped when the school bell rang yesterday.”

  “Plus, you’re over twenty-one,” Xander added helpfully, “so we won’t judge you.” He rubbed his hands. “So, jousting. Do the ah, ladies-in-waiting joust? And what are they waiting for, anyway?”

  “You to shut up,” Cordelia said.

  “Yes, majesty,” Xander replied.

  The platform beneath them was made up of lengths of wood, not unlike the run-down bleachers at the old field behind Sunnydale Junior High. Across from where they sat, there was a stage. Up on the stage, backless wooden chairs—not much better than stools, really—were arranged on either side of a small riser, and on that sat an ornate golden throne. Banners hung from a wire suspended between two of the massive spotlights that illuminated the area.

  The paper bag that contained Cordelia’s new Renaissance costume was bunched on her lap. She bent sideways and said, “I want to put this under my seat, but I’m afraid it will fall through the cracks in the floor.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Xander assured her, taking the bag from her and sliding it underneath his own seat. He smiled at Cordelia and put an arm around her shoulder. “There,” he said.

  “Stop that,” she hissed, quickly scoping the area to see if any damage had been done to her public persona.

  Buffy caught his hurt look as he took his arm away. She wanted to say to him, What did you expect when you started dating her?

  Well, what had she expected when she’d gotten involved with Angel? Meanwhile, Oz and Willow cuddled up. Willow looked ecstatic.

  Wedged between Giles and Angel, Buffy silently hoped Angel would take her hand, and when he did, she was surprised at just how cold his skin was. There had been a time she had stopped noticing. She had stopped seeing his vamp face when she was in his arms. She had no longer realized his lips were chilly when he kissed her. She had not prepared herself for any of that to matter again, once they had fallen in love.