I took Cait’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Well, I’m here now, and apparently I do volunteer. So I hope you’re ready for this.” I looked back at her when I reached her bedroom door. “Come help me set the table about five thirty?”
“Yep.” But she was already frowning over her geometry textbook, and I hurried out of there before she could ask for help again.
* * *
• • •
Saturday was, in a lot of ways, a repeat of that tryout morning. We pulled into the parking lot five minutes late. Caitlin zipped ahead to find her friends who had also made it into the cast. I hung out toward the back of the auditorium, because I had no friends to find. Yeah. This wasn’t awkward at all.
But to my surprise, the awkwardness didn’t last.
“Hey, there you are!” The chipper voice made me look up from my phone, and I smiled at Stacey, the volunteer who’d gotten me into this mess in the first place. “Why are you all the way back here?” She hooked a hand around my arm and gave a tug. “Come on, you need to join the rest of the group.”
I wasn’t used to this kind of aggressive friendliness, but I let her drag me down toward the front of the auditorium to mingle with the rest of the cast.
“I’m in charge of the wenches, by the way,” Stacey said. “And since you’re the only other one who signed up, that’ll be an easy job for me this year.”
“Only two of us?” I remembered my days of tending bar, the panic when coworkers called off on their shifts, leaving me to do the work of two or three people at once. My feet started to hurt from the memory. “Can we do that?”
She waved off my concern. “Oh, easily. We’re not really tavern wenches. I mean, yeah, we’ll be serving drinks and flirting with patrons and speaking with an accent. But there will be plainclothes volunteers doing most of the actual work. We’re there for color. You know, to look pretty.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I let Stacey lead me toward a seat in the third row, introducing me to people along the way. I didn’t have a prayer of remembering any names, but I did my best. We’d barely settled in the third row before we were all told to stand up again and sit in a giant circle on the floor of the stage.
Oh, boy. My anxiety shot up again. I’d taken a few theatre classes in college, but stage fright had driven me away from performance and back to the books and my English major. I wasn’t worried about role-playing the part of a tavern wench on a one-on-one basis, but the second I was asked to get in the center of the circle and say or do something with lots of people staring at me, things were going to get ugly. Projectile-vomiting kind of ugly.
My anxiety wasn’t alleviated by a woman stepping into the middle of the circle almost immediately. She was definitely one of the older adults of the group. Her hair could have been light brown, dark blond, faded gray, or a combination of all three. She wore it in a long braid down her back and was dressed in well-worn jeans and a faded T-shirt but carried herself with an authoritative air. She had the look of someone who could be anywhere from twenty-seven to fifty-five.
“Good morrow, everyone! And well met!” Her voice had a cheerful lilt to it, and when she spoke, a smile lit up her face like sunshine. A chorus of good morrows answered her back, my voice included. “Great, everyone knows that first phrase, that’s not a surprise. But the other greeting we’ll be using a lot at Faire is ‘well met,’ which can be a simple ‘nice to meet you,’ but it can also mean you’re particularly pleased to see that particular person at that particular time. This is a good meeting, so we are well met. Got it?” Her smile stayed in place throughout the entire speech, which was an impressive feat unto itself.
“I’m so glad to see everyone here,” she continued. “Welcome to the tenth season of the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire. Ten years! Can you believe it?” This sparked a small round of applause, and I clapped too because I wasn’t an asshole. “I know I say this every year, but I’m excited about this year’s Faire. For those of you who are new or might not know me . . .” She looked right at me as she said this last bit, and good God, was I the only stranger in this town? “I’m Christine Donovan. Most people call me Chris, or Miss Chris, or Your Majesty.” She shrugged through the friendly laughter. “Which is my subtle way of letting you know that yes, I will be your Queen again this year. The year is 1601, and Elizabeth is still on the throne.”
I did some quick math in my head and then leaned over to Stacey while Her Majesty continued her welcome speech. “Elizabeth was pretty old by then, right? Chris looks good for someone pushing seventy.”
She shushed me through a grin. “We take a little dramatic license around here.”
I got the message and settled down, crisscross applesaucing my legs in front of me as Chris finished outlining the rehearsal schedule, stressing how important it was we not miss too many of them. We’d be learning about the history of the period—apparently the more purist of the patrons made a day out of quizzing the cast as to their religious preferences and hygiene habits. We would also spend time working on costuming and in our various groups. Singers had songs to rehearse, dancers had dances to learn. And the fighting cast had to, well, learn how to fight.
Next up was . . . I groaned, but covered the sound by taking another pull off my iced coffee. Simon. Form-police guy. The one dull spot in this whole experience. As he took his place in the center of the circle I noticed he looked as put-together as he had the last time I’d seen him. How early did he wake up to get ready? I was only marginally sure I was wearing clean clothes, while it looked like both his jeans and his light blue button-down shirt were freshly ironed. He handed a stack of papers to someone in the circle to pass around, and I stifled a sigh. Great. Homework. That did absolutely nothing for my opinion of him.
“Chris already welcomed all of you, so I won’t do that again.” He gave a small smile, and some people chuckled. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Simon Graham, and I’ve been with this Faire since . . . well, since the beginning, like Chris. She and my older brother, Sean, started the Faire ten years ago.” He smiled again, but this time it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And yes, I’m back again this year too, doing my best to fill Sean’s shoes.” His smile fell fast, and he ran a hand over his close-cropped brown hair. “If you have any questions about how things are run, or what you need to be doing, you can always come to me. I’ll be glad to help you out.”
Ha. Fat chance. He’d be glad to tell me what I was doing wrong, more likely.
“This morning I’m going to talk about names.”
Names? I tilted my head like a cocker spaniel.
“One of the first things you’ll do as a cast member is decide on your Faire name. This is a very important decision for each and every one of you.” He turned in a slow circle as he spoke, never standing still, making fleeting eye contact with everyone in the group. This guy wouldn’t projectile-vomit in front of a crowd. He was used to talking in front of people. “You already know what part you’re playing: nobleman, merchant, dancer. But your name is your identity. Names are important. Names have power. Names are one of the things that tells you who you are.” He tapped the knuckles of his closed fist against his chest.