And here are my heroes from A Gift to the Heart – Drake and Bane.
“The wife is out,” said the blacksmith, when Bane poked his head into the kitchen to see if supper was ready. “It’s Misrule Night. Don’t know what they’re up to, and I’m not going to ask. Supper is on the table.”
Bread, cheese, and a big slab of plum cake. Good enough. Bane poured himself an ale and sat down, as did the blacksmith. They ate in silence—when the lady of the house was home, she chattered enough for all three of them, but the blacksmith was a man of few words, and Bane had been eating alone for most of his life.
Besides, his mind was not on the food or the company, but on his brother. Something about the whole situation didn’t sit right. Drake was popular with the ladies, but—as far as Bane knew—this was the first time he’d ever received an anonymous invitation. Not, in itself, suspicious, but Bane didn’t like the timing. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that on Misrule Night, women used their temporary freedom to seek revenge.
Revenge for what, though? Drake was, as Bane had cause to know, the kindest, most giving of men, with a positive talent for staying on pleasant terms with his amours both during and after their liaison.
He had almost finished his ale when a hullabaloo started from outside—the rata-tat-tat of drums, the shriek of whistles, clanging sounds that put him in mind of kitchens.
“Better check,” said the blacksmith, and got up to open the door, just in time for the parade to pass in front of the smithy and then the cottage alongside it.
The noise makers came first. The clanging, Bane noted, was made by various types of spoon against pot lids. The women all wore costumes and masks, like the group he’d seen earlier. Even their own mothers would not have known them.
More women, similarly garbed, followed the noise makers. They were oddly positioned, in long lines, and it took Bane a minute to realise they were pulling on ropes—at least half a dozen ropes, each with eight or nine women haulers. Others danced among them with lamps, lighting the whole scene.
As he craned his neck to see what they were dragging, he noticed that doors and windows were open up and down the village street. The men of the village were silent witnesses to whatever was happening.
“It is a shaming,” said the blacksmith. He sounded awed. “There hasn’t been one in Marblestead for seven years! I wonder who it is?”
A shaming. Bane had never seen one, but he had heard about the last one. The man had been a serial fornicator, seducing one girl after the other with meaningless promises. After being led through the whole village and around the major farms and manors all one Misrule Night, he had left town and had never returned.
The object at the end of the ropes was plodding into view. It was a donkey, stolidly ignoring the ropes, the noise, and the murmuring of the onlookers. That, Bane saw at a glance.
What took all of his attention was not the steed but the rider. He was male. Since he wore nothing but knee breeches and a head-concealing mask in the form of a goat’s head, his gender was beyond a doubt. So said the broad shoulders and the muscular torso, arms and thighs.
He sat backwards on the ass, bound to the saddle with rope, swaying slightly as if he was drunk. Bane knew that torso, those arms! He narrowed his eyes as the rider drew level, and was aided by one of the dancers, who lifted her lamp so that it shone on the rider’s elbow.
“It is Drake,” Bane said.
“Really?” asked the blacksmith. “What has Drake done to deserve a shaming?”
“Nothing,” Bane said, grimly, and took a step forward, but the blacksmith grabbed his arm. “If you go out there, you’ll be joining him.”
“I can’t leave him there,” Bane protested, but the blacksmith was right. He’d not get Drake free without using his brain instead of just reacting. “I need my horse,” he said. “And a good knife. I’ll grab him when they take him off the donkey to throw him into the pond.”
“They’ll overpower you,” the blacksmith warned. “There are what? Fifty of them? One of you.”
“I can’t fight them. Not women,” Bane admitted. “But I have to try. If I get dunked alongside Drake, so be it.”
The blacksmith pursed his lips. “Cut the goat’s head off,” he advised. “Let them see they’ve got the wrong man.”
That might work. Bane left for the barn, where he also stabled his horse.He wanted to merely bridle the horse and be off after his brother, but his common sense told him that he might need the stability of saddle and stirrups. It took several minutes, even with the blacksmith’s help, but at last he was in the saddle and galloping after the Misrule party.
They had reached the pond and were dragging Drake from the saddle, none too gently. Fortunately for Drake, only a few of the women—ten at most—were involved in the dismounting. The rest were not even watching. Rather, they waited on the edge of the pond for the next event in the night’s entertainment. Bane grinned. He would give them something to watch.
He set the horse at a gallop, straight at the cluster around Drake, pulling up only at the last minute. They had, as he’d hoped, leapt out of the way, and Bane reached down and grabbed the rope that bound Drake’s arms to his body. “Mount behind me,” he shouted, and heaved as Drake jumped and scrambled until he was seated behind Bane.
The horse danced and skittered, objecting to the noise, the load and the whole situation. That was a help, for the women who might have objected to losing their prisoner were keeping their distance.
“This is my brother Mandrake Sanderson,” Bane shouted. “He has done nothing worthy of a shaming.” He was pretending to be trying to control the horse, but his knees were encouraging its jittery behaviour.
A woman with the crown and staff of the Lady of Misrule stepped forward—an Amazon with dark curly hair. He could not see much of her face behind her half mask, but what he could see distracted him for a moment. She was stunning.
“Mandrake?” she asked. “Not Colin?”
Bane hoped it was her readiness to listen to reason that soothed his anger, and not his awareness of her as an attractive female. Or perhaps it was just that Colin probably deserved whatever the women cared to dish out. They had made a mistake, and Bane had rescued Drake before they could half drown him. Or all the way drown him, which old timers said had sometimes happened.
“Not Colin,” he replied. “I’ll show you.” Bane twisted in the saddle so that he could use his knife to cut the ropes, an act the horse made more difficult than it needed to be. “Drake, take the head off,” he said.
“I don’t feel too good,” said Drake, in a voice that quavered over the register, but he fumbled with the goat’s head and lifted it free. His eyes looked odd. They must have given him something.
As the horse calmed, the women had gathered closer.
“It is Drake,” said one of the women. Bane couldn’t be sure, but he thought he recognised the voice of the blacksmith’s wife.
“Mr Colin Sanderson is older,” explained another to the Lady of Misrule.
