A Midsummer's Day Read Free Page A

to do it properly.
    To the left of Anne’s position upon the Grotto Stage, beyond the glassblower, the only artisan to require seating because of the high volume of his constant audience, was the Grotto.  It was a place of cutpurses and pirates, fortune tellers and gypsies.  Very few nobles would shame themselves by lingering in such a place.
    As such, it was one of Anne’s favorite haunts.
    To the right was the Lover’s Bridge.  Legend held that a man and woman, passing through the bridge together and sitting on the bench therein, would be connected in love throughout eternity.  Half a dozen couples lingered beneath the bridge’s roof, but Anne had never been through the place, save to walk through it alone.  She’d not even travelled through the bridge with Jameson.
    In the end, they turned towards the Grotto.  Puck stayed a step or two behind Anne, and no amount of cajoling would have him walk beside her in public.
    Deep in the heart of the Grotto, bright red and purple tents sprang up like wildflowers.  It was the Gypsy Way, the home of the fortune tellers.
    Anne stepped from the path and into the thick of the tents.
    “Pray pardon, noble Lady,” Puck whispered.  “Shouldst you be in such a place?”
    “Seek thee not to chide me, Master Puck.  Even the Queen of France hath dabbled oft in the art of fortune telling.  I wouldst seek me my fortune.”  She marched proudly towards the tents.  There were no nobles here.  No one brave enough to go to the Lord High Sheriff with tales of Anne being here.
    And she would not have another lecture to endure.
    Tent after tent was filled with peasant women seeking their fortune, wanting to know about future husbands, households, and children.  Every tent had a line of at least half a dozen women.  It would take ages to get inside to see a gypsy.
    Finally, at the end of the long row of tents, Anne found one made of threadbare red velvet decked with balding tassels that, at one time, must have been gold in color.  No peasant waited in the doorway for their turn at the table.  The fortune teller inside must not have seen a good influx of eager customers in a generation.
    It was as good a tent as any.
    The gypsy inside was not the old crone Anne expected to see, wrinkled and hunched and gray.  The blond was younger and more fresh faced than Anne herself felt.  She wore the purple skirt often identified with the gypsies, and her sun streaked hair was pulled back with a band covered in diamonds.
    “My good Lady Halloway.  Long have I awaited your arrival,” the girl said, her voice heavy with the accent of the Romany people.  Her worldly gaze pierced Anne’s very soul as she motioned to the chair opposite hers.
    Anne sat, her eyes briefly passing over the crystal ball on the table between them.  “How doth thou know of me?”  She’d never sought out a gypsy before.  How did this girl know her?
    The gypsy turned her knowing blue eyes to the crystal.  “This day bringest with it many changes, my Lady Halloway, that shalt strike upon your heart as waves strike upon the shore.  The warm embrace of true love shalt find you before the sun doth lay its head upon thy festival.”
    Changes and love.  It was a general fortune that could have fit the situation of any woman seeking their futures.  There was no real prophecy in the gypsy’s words.  Anne stood.  “I do humbly thank thee for my fortune.  The arms of love art already about me.”
    “Be it love in love’s most truest form?” the gypsy asked.
    Anne paused at the doorway.  “I shalt think me upon thy thoughtful words, Madam Gypsy.”  She nodded her thanks, and she and Puck moved on.
    Her skin trembled.  The gypsy’s words haunted her down to her soul.  There was no doubt that she loved her Jameson.  But true love?
    Did such a thing exist?
    “Think you not on the gypsy’s haunting words, my Lady,” Puck said, reading Anne’s thoughts with more witchery than existed in Gypsy Way.