A Midsummer Tempest (3 page)

“Perhaps.” However clipped his answer, Rupert’s look kept straying to the shed.

The other observed, smiled the least bit, once more cupped the prince’s elbow, and said with a gesture, “This is a spur of track for mine own use. I’ve ordered stoking, as you’ve doubtless guessed, because I hoped ’twould lift your Highness’s mood to see a train in action, even drive it.”

“You are most kind, Sir Malachi.” The eagerness in Rupert’s body would not stay altogether out of his voice.

“Then come,” proposed Shelgrave.

A workman let them and the guards into the gloom beyond the doors.

A moment later, a coach and four rattled up a drive which curved to meet the Bradford road. As it halted, a footman in somber livery sprang off the back to open it up and offer a supporting hand. Jennifer Alayne didn’t notice. She jumped straight out, looked around her, and cried in joy: “Oh, home!”

The footman bowed. His smile was genuine, as was that of the coachman, “Be welcome, Mistress Jennifer,” he said.

“I thank you.” She squeezed his shoulder—he was
taken pleasantly aback—and ran across the gravel onto the lawn. A lilac bush stood man-high, still wet from the heavy dew which had followed the stormy weather of the past few days. She seized its blossoms to her, buried herself in purple and fragrance.

Her maidservant, who had left the carriage more sedately, hurried after. “Mistress Jennifer!” she called. “Take care! You’ll drench your gown—” She stopped. “Oh dear, the thing is done.”

“Tis best that thou’rt named Prudence, and not I.” Laughing, her garb soaked indeed, the girl turned. “Forgive thy giddy jenny wren, I pray, and I’ll try not to be a willful ass.”

Prudence pinched lips together and walked stiff-legged to join her.

Aside from black garments demurely trimmed in white, the young woman and her bony elder might have belonged to two different races. Jennifer was tall, reed-slender save for her bosom but bouncy of gait. The hood had fallen back on her traveling cloak to show amber-colored hair coiled in heavy braids. Between them were big green eyes, thick-lashed under arching dark brows; slightly tilted nose; mouth whose width and softness stood at odds with the rake of chin and jawline.

“I’m but your humble maid and chaperone,” Prudence said, bending her neck as if she were in church ordering Jehovah to the battlefront, “yet old in service of Sir Malachi and of his wife, who bade me tend you well. My duty is to help you learn behavior.”

“I’m grateful.” Jennifer’s flat utterance drew such a look that she hastened to add: “Now I feel that this is home. Thou know’st I’ve missed mine erstwhile sea and hills, have often chafed in London and then here; but that was ere we spent those weeks in Bradford”—her words began to tumble forth of themselves—“those years, eternities!—of dinginess, of reeking air and racketing machines and workers shuffling past like broken beasts and joyless, wizened children at the looms … and rich men feeling smug about their works—”

“Be careful, child,” Prudence broke in, “and speak no ill of progress.”

“I’m sorry. I forgot. And, well, of course I’ve watched the same in Leeds.” The rebuke faded from Jennifer’s mind. She whirled about so fast that skirts lifted over ankles, flung her arms wide and cried: “Here’s radiance! Each petal is a pane upon a lantern, a robin redbreast makes a meteor, a spider’s captured diamonds in his web—” She danced from bush to tree to flowerbed, caressing them and singing:

“A weary age

That felt the rage

Of rain has won a pardon.

Be done with gloom!

The sun’s in bloom

And all the world’s a garden.

“Highdy, heighdy, ring-a-ding-dady,

Seek the greenwood with thy lady!”

“Hush, mistress. This is downright libertine,” Prudence warned. Jennifer did not hear her.

“The bees, the trees,

A gypsy breeze

That skips along before us,

The birds that sing,

The brooks that ring,

Say all the world’s a chorus.

“Highdy, heighdy, ring-a-ding-dady,

Seek the greenwood with thy lady!”

“She’s seventeen,” Prudence explained to God while striving to overtake the girl without an indecorous sprint, “a time to tax her elders, when Satan’s dangled bait smells savory.”

“The air is fleet

And strong and sweet,

And high the lark’s at hover.

Then let a maid

Go unafraid,

For all the world’s a lover.

“Highdy, heighdy—”

An explosive
chuff
broke across the little tune. Jennifer checked herself. Prudence caught up. Together they regarded the shed. Steam billowed from it and vanished.

A workman in oily shirt and breeches appeared to fling doors wide. Snorting, clicking, a locomotive rolled forth.

Its boiler, some ten feet long, sat black above great red-painted wheels. The stack, half as tall as that, belched smoke, sparks, and cinders. Motion made a brass bell jingle. On the open platform stood four men. Jennifer knew Sir Malachi Shelgrave, the driver, and the stoker who shoveled fuel into firebox—but not the dark, outsize young fellow whose gaze dwelt like a falcon’s on everything the driver did, nor the soldiers perched precariously on timbers laid across the sides of the tender. As well as this, the locomotive drew a peak-roofed oaken carriage. Through its leaded windows one could see an interior furnished like an office chamber.

“Oh, uncle, art thou going for a ride?” Again Jennifer ran. “Can I come too?”

Shelgrave tapped the driver on the back. “Make halt, abide awhile.” The engine gushed steam and clanked to a stop. The stoker sat down and wiped wrist across brow, leaving a white trail through coal-grime. Rupert continued watching and asking questions. Shelgrave leaned over the platform rail. “Well, Jennifer,” he greeted, “how did it go in Bradford?”

“Most drearily,” she replied. “I’m happy to be back.”

He lifted a finger. “Then thou shouldst not at once be bent on pleasure,” he chided, “but on thy knees in giving thanks to God, Whose victory is what’s let thee return.”

Rupert heard, scowled, and stepped to Shelgrave’s side. Seeing the girl, however, he bowed. “Your Highness,” the older man said, “pray let me present to you my niece and ward, hight Jennifer Alayne.”

As she curtsied, a blush went over her like a tide. Shelgrave addressed her: “Have due appreciation of the honor of meeting his most gracious Highness Rupert, a nephew of our King, a Rhineland prince, made Duke of Cumberland—”

Jennifer had gasped. One hand flew to her mouth. She stared through eyes gone enormous.

“God help us, Rupert!” shrieked Prudence, and collapsed.

Jennifer knelt down beside her. “She’s swooned, the poor old soul,” she said, took the gray head in her lap and fanned it with a corner of her cloak. “There, there, fear not,” she murmured. Prudence’s lids fluttered. She moaned. Several men guffawed. Jennifer glared at them. “Nor laugh, you dolts!” she snapped. “She’s ample cause for fear.”

Rupert leaped to earth, strode to the pair, squatted, and chafed the woman’s hands. “Alas, no cause,” he said. His lips bent sardonically. “I know your pamphlets call me Prince Robber, Duke of Plunderland, and such; and doubtless it was fret about your safety which packed you off within those borough walls when word came I was riding north to York.” He turned earnest. “A single time have I made war on women—”

Jennifer gave him an astonished regard.

“I did not know it,” he explained. “Early in this strife, mine own band small, I sought to seize a house of rebels, who fought very stoutly back and held us off till powder was exhausted. I then found out that they were only few and that the manor’s lady was their captain. I asked her husband to enlist with me, but he refused. I left them in their peace with their possessions. She had earned that right.” He sighed. “Elsewhere—yes, I have often requisitioned, as is the practice on the Continent, and necessary in the Royal cause. When that has won, the cost shall be repaid.” His smile grew lean. “Meanwhile, I am a prisoner and harmless.”

“You speak so nobly, lord,” the girl whispered. Red and white fled across her features.

Prudence struggled to a sitting position and spat with renewed courage: “No harm in him? He’s mortal danger, although bound like Satan!”

Rupert chuckled. “Well, let this devil help thee to thy feet.” She had scant choice. Once erect, she tottered backward.

“She needs support,” Jennifer decided. “I beg your
pardon, sir.” She went to give the maid her arm and shoulder, if not much attention.

“Take her within, and likewise take thyself,” Shelgrave directed from the platform. “Your Highness, shall we be upon our way?”

“Until this evening, Jennifer Alayne,” said Rupert. He took her hand and kissed it. Where he was reared, that was common courtesy; but her knees buckled. Since a horrified Prudence clung the more tightly to her, both women went down.

Rupert assisted them to rise, while keeping a blank expression and uttering meaningless murmurs. Finished, he bounded from their confusion. Ignoring a fixed ladder, he seized the handrail and swung himself aboard. The train came alive and thumped off across the bridge and southward.

“We should go in, dear Mistress Jennifer,” said Prudence weakly.

The girl stayed looking after the smoke-plume.

Prudence stiffened. “Jennifer!” she said aloud.

The girl blinked. “Oh.” She turned her face from that horizon. “Aye. Indeed. I come.”

At the other end of the drawbridge, she paused to pet the watchdogs. Their tails dithered, they thrust muzzles into her skirt and laved her hands with interminable tongues.

“You’re too familiar with those nasty hounds,” Prudence scolded. “They’re loud and dangerous.”

“Well, not to me.” Liveliness rose afresh in Jennifer. “Who else e’er gives them love?” She pulled ears and scratched necks. “There, Skull; good Bones.”

“You are too foolish fond of animals.” Prudence’s glance went away, along the railroad to the last sight of the train. “And he,” she mumbled, “the very Beast of Revelation—”

Jennifer went on into the house. Her servant followed. The butler closed the door.

THE OBSERVATORY TOWER. NIGHT,

R
UPERT
took eye from telescope. “So I have seen the moons of Jupiter, and mountains on our own,” he murmured. “It feels right strange.”

“Did you not know erenow?” Shelgrave asked.

“I’d heard, of course,” Rupert said, “but seldom had the time to think on it, except three years at Linz when I was captive; and other things then occupied my mind. Nor have I known an optic tube this good. I can forgive you much, Sir Malachi, for that you’ve opened heavens up to me.”

He waved around sky and earth. A moon approaching the full enfeebled most stars but not the tawny planet. Light lay hoar on lawns, distant fields and hillcrests, black bulks of treetops; it ran down the river like spilled mercury. Against it, the lantern was dull which stood outside a rooftop storage shack. The various instruments had been removed from this and erected at the parapet, where they resembled tongues thrust out above snag teeth of merlons. Nearby, shadowy save for the glimmer on casques, breastplates, and halberd heads, those four soldiers who had the nighttime warding of the prisoner stood rigid. Doubtless they disapproved of what was going on.

The air was quiet, mild, full of green odors. Crickets creaked.

Rupert rested hands on bedewed stone, looked upward, and went on in the same low voice: “Now can I truly feel how we are crew aboard a ship that plies around the sun.”

Beneath his high-crowned hat, Shelgrave’s frown was barely visible. “Beware,” he clipped. “Though God is merciful to us and lets us sweeten careworn sleeplessness—how well I know—with His astronomy, yet Satan can
make this another lure. A moving earth is clean ’gainst Holy Writ.”

Rupert raised brows. “I am no theologian, but I’ve known right godly men who’ve told me otherwise.” His vision strayed across the guards. It made him hunch his back. Curtly: “No doubt you will deny the world is round.”

“Oh, nay, I don’t. That is acceptable. It has indeed been known since ancient times. Why, even in a dim and pagan Britain, before the Romans came, the fact stood forth.”

Rupert’s resentment drowned in interest. “How so?”

“Did not the anguished Lear cry out,
‘Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!’?
I dare not claim the great Historian divinely was inspired; but with most scholars, I do believe he rendered truth exactly.”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Rupert in some excitement “On the Continent so many records flamed away with Rome that he’s well-nigh the only source we have … for an existence back in Grecian times of a first Kingdom of Bohemia, which had a seacoast, or a prior Russia. But did he draw on fact or on mere legend? How can tradition keep inviolate the virgin truth down tempting centuries?”

“When it is borne by God’s own chosen people,” Shelgrave answered solemnly. “They are the English, he their chronicler.”

The ghost of a grin flickered on Rupert’s mouth. “Well, I am half an Englishman. Say on.”

Shelgrave paced back and forth, hands gripped beneath his coattails, talking rapidly. “How else will you account for English folk—and such they are, in character and speech, both elevated nobles and low commons—before the walls of Troy, in Theseus’s Athens, in Rome and later Italy, in Denmark—save that the English race has spread out north from some old southern land which they must leave? And when we study well our English Bible, ’tis plain to see who our ancestors were: none but the ten lost tribes of Israel! Descendants who did settle by the way have melted into those localities and thus have mostly lost their pristine nature. But in far Britain they have stayed themselves, no matter Roman, Saxon,
Dane, or Norman—who’re after all related in the blood. And though they were beguiled by many lies, like Israelites since days of Abraham, they always kept a seed of truth alive, which flowered in the great Historian.”