A Midsummer Tempest Read online

  After a space he nodded, having likewise begun to smile. “I yield me on those honorable terms.”

  She let him go and moved around the chamber. One by one the flames vanished. “I do confess I suddenly am tired,” she said, “as tired as death … a happy, happy death which, undeserving, knows what heaven waits.”

  Rupert’s eyes followed her about. “‘Our revels now are ended,’” he murmured: “‘these our actors—as I foretold you—were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and like the baseless fabric of this vision the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’”

  She had stopped, amazed. “What words are those?”

  “Old Prospero’s.”

  “So grave, so beautiful. Their kind has never chimed upon mine ears.”

  “Nor ever will, save when thou hearest read the chronicles of the Historian. We’re born into a sad and lowly age, whose very language limps; we can but croak like crows on lark-forsaken winter fields.” Rupert hesitated. “I only speak of me. Thou art a hawk, as once I thought, who writes her eloquence upon the wind. I worship thy fleet shadow.”

  “If thou’rt swart-feathered, Rupert, so am I!”

  His moodiness broke first in a chuckle, afterward in an honest yawn. “Ah, well, beloved, let’s to our repose. The world and time have also need for crows.”

  OFFSHORE.

  The day lay totally quiet. The island was emerald upon glass and silver, set against lapis lazuli. The single liveliness was Ariel’s, where he zoomed about on his wings. The others worked, but were slow in their care. Sweat made their skins shiny.

  The tartane lay at rest, sails furled, no anchor needed. A stout pole had been secured to the bottom of the mast. Ropes ran from its free end to a block and tackle at the peak; thence lines led downward for hauling and control, to make the whole a cargo boom. From it hung a curious object: a huge barrel, bottomless and heavily tarred, hooks inside the lower edge holding bags of sand. That weight canted the boat far over.

  “Halt!” Ariel called. “Halt! Suspend the thing exactly there. Nay, ye have overshot. Come back … come back … a grass-blade width—aye, stop. It dangles right. Mine self-sight and my sense for current flow confirm that it will sink around our goal.” He returned to perch on a thwart. His mien grew troubled. “Yet I’ve no eye to scan the future, friend. I cannot say if thou wilt overstrain those hoops and staves, or thine own lungs and ribs, and well below five fathom lie entombed.”

  Kindled by excitement, Rupert responded, “I’m traveling in goodly company: my Lord, my lady’s prayers; what need I fear?”

  His frame clad simply in breeches, knife at belt, he swept Jennifer to him for a kiss. “I’ll soon be back, the book beneath mine arm,” he said, “and maybe have a pearl for thee besides.”

  “Thyself—I want no more—Fare ever well,” she could barely reply.

  Rupert eased himself over the rail. “Lower away.”

  “Measter, I beg thee, let me go,” Will said. “Tha King ha’ need o’ thee.”

  “He needs commanders who’ll not let men do what they’d not do themselves.” Rupert’s tone came sharp from where he trod water. “Lower away, I ordered.”

  Will bit his lip and obeyed. Caliban helping, he brought the barrel down to the surface on its creaky ropes. Rupert swam thither. For an instant he paused, to wave at Jennifer, then ducked within.

  “Let go tha gear,” Will rasped. “Tha zooner ’a’s off, tha zooner we’ll know if ’a’s comin’ back.”

  The boat lurched. Cordage whined through sheaves, slapped loose and went under, where the black cylinder had already plunged from sight.

  Jennifer leaned over the gunwale, staring and staring until the last ripple died. “Now I may weep,” she said, and sank to the bottom of the boat.

  Ariel flitted to console her. “He should survive the trip,” the sprite said. “Duke Prospero did not really bear away his book to the middle sea, above abysses. He feared there’d be a risk of theft en route. Our friend can stand this depth.”

  “Thou’lt swear it?”

  “Nay,” he admitted.

  Caliban made his own rough attempt at patting her head. Will grabbed his arm and snapped, “Come away, mudbrain. Has she not grief aplenty without smellin’ thee?”

  “Aye. I know not how to help the Miranda, do I?” Caliban slouched aft and sat down by the tiller next to the dragoon. “If I did! If I did!”

  “If I knew how to help my prince—” Will shook himself. “Ah, well, good mooncalf, we’re in the zaeme boat. Let’s dull tha edge o’ this waitin’ as best’s we can.”

  Caliban brightened. “Brandy?”

  “Nay, not yet. We may need our moast, not our fullest strength an’ wits. Tonight, however, after ’a’s returned, aye, liake tha heathen we’ll zacrifice a cask! An’ if ’a doan’t return—” He stared across unmerciful brightness. “We’ll drink.”

  Caliban scratched his mane, dislodging fleas. “I still can’t understand what this is about. Thou callest that thing a diving bell. Not once did I hear it go dingdong.”

  Will cuffed him. “From tha shaepe, as I miaght liaken thee to a midden. As for a clapper, Rupert himzelf, crashed back an’ foarth till—Nay!” He drew a ragged breath. “Hark’ee,” he said fast. “My prince learned in Tunis how yon book had been zunk, but tha water’d not damage zo magic a thing. Were’t damageable, thou zeest, Prospero could’a got rid of it in easier ways nor this. Well, my general thereon had a cooper in Tunis maeke him the bell, which be another new-fangled invention. Gaunt though our hoape zeemed o’ fiandin’ tha spot, ’a knew we’d need means o’ goin’ down if zomehow we did get heare. I’ll ’splain tha principality. Tha zandbags drag it under, tha tar zeals in air to breathe. Thic air thickens, ’a zays, squeezed by water; yet a bubble should remain for him. When on tha bottom, ’a’ll fiand what ’a zeeks by feel, then cut loose them weights whilst hangin’ onto a stanchion inzide. Tha barrel should fair leap tow’rd tha zun.”

  “And the Miranda.” Caliban scowled. Hopefully: “He’s taking a long time, right?”

  “Who knows? We can’t tell how deep it be, how coald an’ dark down yonder, an’ naught zave tha bell, that book, an’ his life’s one candle—”

  Jennifer cried out. Ariel rocketed aloft. Will scrambled to his feet. Caliban yelped. In a roar and white gush of cloven water, the device had returned.

  It nearly flew free before it splashed back down. It and the boat rocked toward quiescence.

  “Rupert, Rupert!” Jennifer screamed after part of a minute. “Why comes he not forth? I’ll to him—” She tore at her clothes.

  “Nay, hoald. Be-hoald,” Will said. “There!” (Rupert’s head appeared from underneath the barrel.) Sudden dismay: “’A zeems death-paele. … Be ’a movin’?—Measter, canst grip this?” He snatched a boathook and held it over the side.

  Rupert caught it feebly with his free hand. The other clasped to his side a huge volume bound in brass and scaly leather. Will drew him close, leaned out, let go the staff, and held him by the hair.

  “Get that book ere he loses it,” Jennifer snapped. “’Tis what he was hurt for.” She herself was the one who did. Meanwhile Will and, after profane orders, Caliban hauled Rupert aboard.

  The prince lay doubled over in the bilge. “Pain, pain in every limb,” he groaned. “I scarce can stir—”

  Ariel darted to land beside him and pass quick fingers across the contorted body. “Aye, too much air within,” the elf said. “He rose too fast. I blame myself that I did not foresee. A miracle of strength that he could move enough to save himself. There’s fate in him.”

  At once, flashing a smile to Jennifer, who knelt frantic: “Nay, be at ease. A spirit of the air knows how to charm these humors out of him and mend whatever rupt
ures they have caused. Thereafter he’ll need but a few days’ rest to raise anew the tempest of his health. Now draw aside and let me sing my spell.”

  In awe, she and the others went astern. Will took her right hand, Caliban her left, and the three of them waited.

  xxi

  OUTSIDE PROSPERO’S CELL.

  A gibbous moon hung above its cliff, turning hoar the treetops. Otherwise they stood black against a sky of hurried thin clouds and flickering stars. The earth below was a well of night, save where a fire burned at the cave mouth. Wind rushed cold and noisy. Sometimes an owl hooted.

  The flames leaped, streamed, whirled off in red and yellow rags. Whenever a dry stick popped, sparks torrented. That light picked five uneasily out of shadow. Rupert stood sword at hip, holding the book; furrows gouged his mouth and brows. Beside him Jennifer held a staff taller than she was, its broken halves spliced together by withes tied in an intricate knot. Phosphorescence from the capital, which was carved into a lotus, fell across her widened eyes, half-parted lips, the teeth behind and the pallor around. Ariel poised on a boulder, fingers dug into its moss, wings folded but fluttered at the edges by the wind. Caliban hunkered, a lump; Will Fairweather reared above him, a scaffold; neither could down every sign of dread.

  Rupert spoke slowly: “Now we have said our prayers, to ask that God bestow His blessing on the deeds we do and keep our usage lawful of these powers that we have gained from reading gramarie.”

  “An’ please doan’t let ’em run away from us,” Will added. To his chieftain: “Prince, art thou altogether sure ’tis wiase? Thou’st oanly had zome days, a week or two, however long ’tis been, to zearch them words. Oald taeles agree that magic’s liake a stallion, ’twill throw his riader, be ’a ne’er zo pious, unless ’a know just what tha hell ’a’s doin’.”

  “Hell,” Caliban shuddered, “hu, hu, what’s chillier than hell?”

  Rupert frowned at his man. “How often must I tell thee, I well know how little I have learned in this short while of poring over text arcane, complex, beset with ancient words and secret signs? By that same token, I cannot do much in those few spells deciphered—raise clairvoyance, call forth the simple spirits of a land, transport us quickly—that is all I know, if I know even that. Well, who can guess if he has read aright, unless he try? Tonight’s our first attempt, a minor one which, if done wrongly, should at least prove harmless. Ask Ariel. He’s helped me in my work, whilst Jennifer sustained me, and thou boused.”

  “He’s right,” said the elf. “But hurry. We must have the moonlight.”

  Rupert opened the book. Jennifer shivered. “My darling, art thou frightened?” he asked.

  She raised her chin. “Not near thee.”

  “Then hold the staff aloft while I read forth, and give it to me when I reach for it.”

  Rupert began chanting: “Ye beings quick and unseen, yet as bright as this our fire of oak and ash and thorn, by smoke of herbs and mushrumps rising thence, wherein ye do delight, be drawn to me, and by these words inscribed in pentacle upon the dust from which my flesh has sprung, be bound to strict obedience, under God.” Jennifer passed him the staff. He wrote with its bronze ferrule while voicing: “Adam Te Dageram, Amrtet Algar Algastna—”

  The conjuration took a few minutes. At their end, Rupert closed the book, gave it to Jennifer, and called: “This is the task I lay on you: three visions, clear to our sight and hearing, as commanded. First show us in an overview that field in England, from which Ariel lately came to say a battle had begun there. Aleph.”

  The fire roared and lifted, became a tree-tall column, split into a ring wildly spinning through lurid reds and blues. Within its vast circle, as if through a window, appeared a scene.

  It was the same night, beneath the same moon; perhaps even the wind was the same which drove clouds and whistled over acres. Water gleamed across the darkness of the land, canals, ponds, a river that lapped three sides of a conical height, tiered and skewed by nature, crowned by man with a tower now ruined, which rose sharply above neighbor hills and the flats beyond. Nearby bulked walls, roofs, steeples of a minor town. A few windows still glowed lonely. Brighter were the campfires of an army, two or three miles outside. There guns could be seen, wagons, animals, tents of officers, gleams which must be off the pikes and armor of sentries.

  “Oh, Glastonbury!” Will cried. “Oh, naught but Glastonbury! Aye, look: tha elven-haunted Tor—tha abbey—Wearyall Hill, where grows tha thorn o’ Joseph—Mine own hoame lies off yonderwards—my Nell—My Nell an’ every kid of ours, my loves, has war come by, an’ me not there for help?” He sank to his knees, buried face in knobbly hands, and wept like a barking seal.

  The view swept nearer, as if the watchers swooped. Over ravaged leagues the revelation flew. Now it drew close to linger a moment, now fled from what it found.

  Jennifer bit her fist, not to whimper with the agony of those sights, and huddled inside Rupert’s free arm. Caliban squatted slack-jawed, sometimes lifting a paw as if to poke, never quite venturing it. Ariel escaped aloft and fluttered bat-fashion in the blast.

  A heap of dead stiffened ashen under the moon. A drummer boy lay by himself in his own tangled entrails; the wind ruffled his fair locks, while ants marched over his eyeballs to his tongue. A horse kept screaming, the remnant of a man kept begging for water that there was none to give; neither could die. A cannon yawned uselessly, spiked; among the balls it had never fired was a shorn-off human head. Someone’s Bible lay in the mud, open but covered with blood and vomit. A cripple crawled along, trailing a shattered leg he had rudely bound up; the cold had gotten to him, his teeth clapped and frost was in his beard. The wind and the wounded sang Miserere.

  “What has man done,” Ariel asked heaven, “that he deserves himself?”

  “’Tis war, thus cruel,” Rupert told Jennifer, “though one can die worse, or live worse yet, a slave—Hold on! What’s here? The image closes on an army, camped—”

  Several men sat around a fire, perhaps on call, perhaps too exhausted for sleep. Grimy, unshaven, a couple of them bandaged, they held palms toward coals and exchanged low words. They were outfitted in buff coats and heads were close-cropped.

  “They’re Parliament,” Rupert said starkly. “Our foe then holds the field.”

  The ring contracted to a pillar, which sank to a common blaze. Jennifer uttered a cry, Caliban grunted in surprise, Will lifted his wet countenance, Ariel flew downward.

  Rupert had stayed moveless. “So ends the vision, murky as our hopes,” he stated. “Well, we have two to go. Let’s on with it.”

  The hovering sprite regarded him through red glow and shifty shadows. “Thou hast a hardy soul,” Ariel declared at length.

  “I am a soldier.” Rupert raised the staff. “Next show our chiefest enemies in council,” he ordered, “most recently, if not this instant. Beth.”

  Again they looked into a fiery circle. The Puritan camp appeared—evidently earlier in time, for some embers of sunset smoldered and the moon hunched low. Sight rushed past guards to a pavilion, and through its canvas. There it steadied.

  Two men sat by lamplight, in conversation over a small table strewn with maps, dispatches, notes. One was a Roundhead officer, to judge from his bearing and russet coat: a strong-built person whose homely features grew mustache, chin-tuft, and warts. The other wore civil black, tall hat on knees, and appeared older though remaining trim. His skull was domed and bald; grayish eyes blinked in the sharp face.

  Jennifer cried out again. “Mine uncle—guardian—”

  “Shelgrave!” Rupert snarled. He recovered himself. “Fear him not. He’s far away; and thou’rt no more his care but mine, forever after.” He waved his companions to silence. “Hush. They speak.”

  The officer—he looked like such an ordinary squire—said: “Of course you’re welcome, Sir Malachi. The service your manufacturies and railroads have done our cause do more than overbalance the escape of that prisoner.” He made a stern smile. “A
nyhow, naught having happened yet about him, I suspect Hot Rupert lies long since cooled in a ditch, his throat cut by some fellow rogue—which, to be frank, spares us considerable trouble. … Well, what brings you here, this far west and south, and on the day of battle?”

  Shelgrave must have rehearsed his speech, for he got it out crisply. “What I have to say, General Cromwell, may sound feverish, yea, verging on heresy. Nonetheless, I beg you, remember from when we both sat in Parliament.” He leaned forward. “I’ll freely explain everything in fullest particulars, and confirm it by a clergyman of unquestionable reputation, who was directly concerned himself. He accompanied me hither, though at present he’s unfortunately carriage-sick. Together we’ll testify what witchcraft is Rupert’s. You know he was called a wizard, who kept familiars and—Well, ’tis true, and more than true.”

  “Go on,” said Cromwell quietly when he paused.

  “We’ll give you circumstantial accounts, General, of how Rupert ensorcelled my niece, my ward, into setting him free; how they received hex-rings from woodland demons; how Rupert and a confederate crossed this island, eluded hounds, and vanished; how they reappeared in Tunis, the guests of Papist nobles; and how again they’ve left, after commissioning equipment of unknown purpose but ill foreboding.”

  Cromwell touched the Bible among his papers. Otherwise he stayed imperturbable. “Go on,” he repeated.

  “We’ll further relate how I caught my deluded niece with the wicked sign on her finger; how we extracted confession from her; how we sent her south under the clergyman’s guidance, accompanied by soldiers, in the hope of intercepting Rupert; how she in her turn enchanted one unfortunate young lamb to helplessness, escaped, and has doubtless rejoined her diabolic paramour. ’Tis a long tale, and time is at our heels—yours also, General. Will you take this for a promissory note, and credit what I really wish to say?”