A Midsummer Tempest Read online

  “This day a master tailor comes from Leeds,” Shelgrave proceeded rapidly. “He’ll measure you, drop every other work, and sleep will be a stranger to his shop till you are suited as becomes a prince in velvet, silk and cramoisie.”

  “No need,” said Rupert. “I am a soldier, not a popinjay.”

  His gaze probed the other man. Shelgrave met it, and for a minute they stood locked.

  At fifty years of age, the master of the land was still trim and erect. The hair had departed his high-domed skull, save for a brown fringe cut short around the ears; the grayish eyes were forever blinking; skin sagged beneath the chin of an otherwise cleanly molded sallow countenance; but those were almost the only physical scars which time had thus far dealt him. His clothes were of Puritan austerity in color and cut, though a glow in the dark hues bespoke rich material. A rapier hung at his waist, together with a large wallet.

  “At least your Highness needs a change or three,” he said. “I think you’ll grace this house—perhaps a month.”

  Rupert failed to keep surprise quite out of his tone. “That long a while?”

  “I pray my lord, consider.” Shelgrave resumed strolling. Rupert fell into step, as well as such long legs were able. The Parliamentarian glanced sideways at him before going on: “They say you are a most blunt-spoken man. Have I your leave to use frank words?”

  “Aye, do. I’m surfeited with two-tongued courtliness—” Rupert broke off.

  Shelgrave nodded knowingly. “Well, then,” he began, “your Highness—and Maurice, your brother, but you the foremost ever, these three years—you’ve been the very spearhead of our foes. Your name’s as dread as Lucifer’s in London. Without that living lightning bolt, yourself, the armies of unrighteousness—forgive me—would long be scattered from around the King like tempest clouds before a cleansing wind.”

  “In his sight,” Rupert snapped, “you’re the rude and ugly winter.”

  “He is misled.”

  “Continue what you’d say.”

  “May I indulge my curiosity?” (Rupert gave a brusque nod.) “Although I am no soldier born like you, I did see service under Buckingham in younger days, and was therefore made knight. Sithence a scholar of the art of war, among much else, I’ve read not only Caesar and other ancients, but the chronicles of later strategists like great Gustavus. I’ve thus had knowledge to admire your skill as it deserves. They call you overbold—but nearly always, lord, you’ve won the day. And still so young: a score of years and four!” Shelgrave blinked at his prisoner, who did not act like a man tickled by flattery. “The fight on Marston Moor thus strikes me strange. When faring north to lift the siege of York, you found your opposition ill-supplied, disheartened, split in squabbling sects and factions, and in no favor with most Northerners. You could have chivvied them as wolves do kine until they broke, ’Tis what I feared you’d do. Instead you forced a battle on a ground ill-chosen for your side. I wonder why.”

  “I had mine orders,” Rupert rasped. “More I will not say.”

  “’Tis honorable of your Highness, that—yet useless, for it surely is no secret what envies and intrigues have seethed around the youthful foreigner who sought the King when war broke loose, and was at once raised high. Which rival engineered those orders, Prince? No Puritan would undermine—”

  “Have done!” Again Rupert stopped as if in menace.

  Shelgrave bowed to him. “Of course. Mine object’s only to explain why I’ve the pleasure of your company. You see, you’re priceless to our enemies, and hence to us. Your capture was God’s mercy, which brings in sight an ending of this war. Yet still the Royalists retain some strength. Their court’s at Oxford, not so far from London. A massive raid by, let us say, Maurice might still regain you for that high command which soon your fiercest rival won’t begrudge. It must not happen. Fairfax saw this too. Accordingly, he had you carried hither in deepest secrecy, here to abide until the East is absolutely cleared. Then, without fear of any rescuers, you can be brought to London.”

  “To what end?”

  “That lies with Parliament.”

  The furrows tautened around Rupert’s mouth. “I thought as much.”

  Shelgrave took his elbow in companionable wise and guided him on along the path. Roses stood tall on either side, above a shyness of pansies; the breeze was full of their fragrance. Sunbeams slanted through trees to dapple the lawn. Gravel scrunched underfoot.

  “Your Highness, cast your melancholy off,” Shelgrave urged. “You’ll find enjoyment and surcease from strife. The household staff and others you may meet are under oath to breathe no word of you, and known to me for their trustworthiness. And thus by day, though guarded, wander free about these grounds.” He gave an apologetic sigh. “I dare not let you ride. I would I did. I’m eager in the hunt, and you will like my horses and my hounds.”

  Briefly, Rupert’s fists knotted.

  “But you can fish, play ball, do what you wish,” Shelgrave promised. “I hear you are of philosophic bent. Well, so am I. Make use of any books. Do you play chess? I’m not so bad at that. At night, I fear, you must be locked away in your apartment, high in yonder tower. But ’twill be furnished with the tools of art—they say you draw and etch delightfully—and you’ll have access likewise to the roof. There often I beguile a sleepless night by tracking moon and stars across the sky. Come too! I’ll show you mysteries in heaven”—his voice trembled a little, ardor leaped behind his eyes—“and maybe they’ll convert you to the truth.”

  Rupert shook his head violently. “That lies not in your sour and canting creed.”

  Shelgrave flushed but kept his words level. “Were you not reared a Calvinist, my lord?”

  “I try to be a proper Protestant, yet not cast off what’s good from olden time. I’d liefer hear a service than a rant; I do not think my Romish friends are damned, nor that ’tis right to persecute the Jews; I’d hang no helpless granny for a witch.” Bitterly: “That day we captured Lichfield, I was glad to let its staunch defenders leave with honors. But then we entered the cathedral close and saw what desecration had been wrought on ancient lovely halidoms—” Rupert hewed air with the edge of his hand. “Enough.”

  “There goes a daybreak wide across the world,” Shelgrave said, “which forces pretty stars to flee our sight. But oh, those stars were shining infamous within that chamber which a tyrant kept! ’Tis pity that you fight for fading night.”

  “I grant that James was not the best of kings—”

  “He was the worst … and followed Gloriana. Harsh taxes to maintain a wastrel court, oppression of a rising merchant class in whom the seeds of England’s greatness lie, and rural rule by backward-looking squires: such was the legacy that Charles disowned not. And worse, his queen herself is Catholic; the Papists get an easy tolerance; the Church of England stays unpurified. Small wonder, then, that free-souled men demand, through Parliament, long-overdue reform.”

  “I am no judge of that,” said Rupert; “I’m merely loyal. And yet—you people prate so much of freedom—” He waved toward the hireling workers in the fields. “How free are they? No lord looks after them. You’re free to let them go in beggary across the gashed and smoky land you’d make.”

  The men paced on awhile in silence, bringing their tempers under control. At length Shelgrave said, his tone mild once more:

  “I thought your Highness a philosopher who also cultivates mechanic arts.”

  “Well, that I do,” Rupert admitted. “I like a good machine.”

  “What think you of our late-invented cars which run by steam and draw a train behind?”

  “They’ve been too rare for me to more than glimpse, and railway builders all seem Puritan. We captured one such … locomotive, is it? … near Shrewsbury, upon that single line which leads into the West. I did admire it, but had no time from war to really look.” Rupert’s glance went as if compelled along the tracks to the biggest shed. Smoke drifted out of a chimney on its roof.

  “I love
them as I do my hunting horses,” Shelgrave said softly. “The morrow is the truest freight they bear. To date they are but small, as well as few, scarce faster than a beast although untiring. They mainly carry wagonloads of coal to feed the hungry engines in the mills and manufacturies of cloth and hardware which men like me are building ever more of—” With rising enthusiasm: “You may not understand what we are doing from such few glimpses as you got by chance. But you—but men now live who’ll see the day when this whole island is enwebbed with rails and locomotives like Behemoth’s self haul every freight, plus civil passengers, and troops and guns in time of war—a day when power does not grow from birth or sword, but out of mills and furnaces.”

  “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 sa
rdonically. “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.