A Midsummer Tempest Page 5

  They had gone a few hundred yards when Rupert deemed it safe to speak. “Thus far I’ve heeded every word … thou … wrote,” he said slowly. “But ’tis not right to further hazard thee. Go back within. I’ll fare on overland and think no prayer that does not hold thy name.”

  Under the hood of her cloak, he could barely see her head shake. “Thou canst not go alone, afoot, unarmed. I am to take thee to a place I know from household pleasure trips, off in the wood. There we will find the helpers that await thee.”

  “What helpers?”

  “Save for him I scrawled about, I do not know—am more than half afraid to guess their nature—Oh, but ’tis thy life!” Beseechingly: “And Rupert, if thou owest me any thanks, grant me these few more hours to be by thee.”

  The colorless luminance could not show whether he flushed; but he stared at the ground. “Thou’rt being very reckless, Jennifer,” he warned, “in more than one way.”

  Her answer was firm. “Nay, my dearest dear. Since I have taken this resolve to risk not only life but maybe hell for thee, my recklessness would lie in hanging back from word as deed.” She drew breath. “We’ve miles to go. Let’s stride.”

  THE FOREST.

  Moonlight splashed silently on leaves, streamed down white flanks of birch trees, flowed undergroundishly in the gloom of oaks but fell at last from it to dapple the earth. There mushrooms and anemones peeped through those blankets the years had drawn over themselves when they grew old. A fallen trunk glowed blue. The air was warm, heavy with odors of soil and growth.

  Oberon trod forth. A spider-woven cloak swirled from his shoulders; crystals flashed across his tunic, or were they dewdrops? He raised a horn to his lips and winded it. The call went searching down the corridors.

  Again he blew, and again. Firefly twinkles came bobbing among bough and boles. They shone every tint in the rainbow, and as soft. When they were near, it could be seen how each was a gleam in the upraised palm of one who bore the shape of a tiny human—though too beautiful to be truly human—flying on moth-wings.

  Oberon lowered the horn. “Ho, Faerie folk!” he cried. “Where’s Queen Titania?”

  The swarm flickered and weaved about him. After a while the breeze-voice of a female answered: “I lately flitted past, Lord Oberon, and heard her say to Puck she’d fail begone, if he would be her company and guide and saddle two swift night-winds for to ride southward and south, in flight from poisoned town, blowing through goodfolks’ dreams like thistledown, to seek our loved, abandoned home in Greece and scout if we might there at last find peace from Turkish curses—not be driven forth again to this now likewise wretched North—”

  “My Petal,” Oberon sighed, “if I let thee have thy way, till dawn thou wouldst rehearse what we well know.” His tone grew urgent. “I’ve instant need of Queen Titania. Go, everyone, disperse in search of her, till she’s been overtaken and fetched back to meet me at the ancient standing stone.” Grimly: “There is no hope in Greece, or anywhere, if we forsake this sorely stricken isle, for the disease will gnaw behind our heels, all ways around the globe, and meet itself. Nay, we must make a stand while it is small. Our chance of victory seems smaller yet—but I have taken omens and cast spells, and sensed a destiny within two men whom I’ve contrived to bring here. … Be you off!”

  He shouted the last words, and waved his staff on high. The starfire at its tip flashed briefly brilliant. On a sudden wind, which moaned among the branches, his elven subjects scattered from sight.

  THE OBSERVATORY TOWER.

  A trapdoor swung back and Sir Malachi Shelgrave climbed out onto the roof. Beneath the moon, he scarcely needed his lantern. Perhaps its yellowness tempered for his vision the icy lucency around.

  Shelving it on a wall of his instrument shack, he opened the door to that and piece by piece brought forth telescope, quadrant, astrolabe, bronze-and-crystal celestial sphere, worktable, calipers, books, charts, notepaper, inkhorn, quills. … Last was a pendulum clock, always kept going. Before he wound up the weights, he put spectacles on his nose in order to compare the time shown on a watch he took from the wallet at his belt.

  Nigh midnight. Witching hour, he thought, and shuddered. I almost envy the superstitious Papist with his cross. But nay. A sign or idol is no shield. ’Tis grace of God, conferred on righteousness, holds off the prowling demons of the dark.

  He dropped to his knees, raised face and folded hands, and spoke in a voice made shrill by pain: “God of my fathers, I, a stumbling sinner, implore Thy mercy. Thou, omniscient Only, seest hell’s corruption roiling in my breast. Such filthy things as snigger in my sleep, to bring me gasping wakeful and … still haunted—” His neck bent downward, his fists punished the stone roof. “Why can I not forget those youthful years I spent astray in hell’s dank, stinking wilds, drank, gambled, swore, poked into hairy caves, until that night my dying father’s curse blasted away the scales upon mine eyes? Did not the Lamb’s pure blood then drown old Adam? Why has that corpse so often left its tomb, these past few years, to smirch with rotten fingers my thoughts—aye, even when my niece sways by—”

  After a while he could look aloft once more and say with a degree of steadiness: “Thou foreordainest everything which is, and everything that Thou decreest is good. Thou plungest me into this lake of fire to burn the dross out and make hard my steel, until my soul’s a swordblade for Thy war”—his words quickened—“that holy war Thou call’st on us to wage, to humble haughty kings before Thy might, cast idols and idolaters in dust, then take possession of the whole wide world—the promised land of Thy new chosen people: redemption-blazing English Israelites.”

  He sprang to his feet. “I hear Thy voice, Jehovah Thunderer! I’ve strength to smite, remaining in mine arms.” He lifted them, fingers crooked as if to grasp something. “Or if it be Thy will that I not fight, but forge instead the iron thews of power … why, I am doing that already, Lord. But this I pledge, to work with doubled force, and make vile lust the fuel of my zeal.”

  After standing for a few minutes he added calmly, “Tonight I’ll quench my fire and balm my burns in the cool chastities of measurement amidst Thy stars, till sleep returns, or dawn.”

  He unfolded the tripod of his telescope.

  vii

  A GLADE IN THE FOREST.

  TREES were a darkling wall around, with frosted parapets. Moonlight whitened grass, daisies, cowslips, primroses; dew, which chilled and soaked feet, made shards of brilliance. Near the middle reared a monolith, twice a man’s height. Though the weathers and lichens of none knew how many years had softened its edges, it remained a stern thing to see.

  Two horses stood at the border of the opening. Common farm beasts, they bore nothing save tethers. A steady crunch-crunch and sweet smell of broken herbs rose from their jaws.

  Will Fairweather lounged against the stone and used an eating knife to pare his nails. He had put back on his dragoon’s outfit, sans Royalist tokens, in spite of its woeful condition. A cavalry sword hung at either hip. He sang to himself, low enough that one might have called it a mumble were it less off-key:

  “Oh, whan I war in love with thee,

  ’Twar hey, derry, down, derry, down tha

  livelong day,

  For thou didst love to wrassle me,

  Down amidst tha bushes an’ down upon tha

  hay;

  An’ whan tha stars winked bawdy eyes,

  ’Twar hey, derry, down, derry, down tha

  livelong night,

  For moare than moon did than arise,

  Down upon tha mattress until tha down

  took flight.

  But whan—”

  He broke off. Rupert and Jennifer crashed through undergrowth, out beneath the sky. Their clothes, snagged, soaked, stained, were worse for hard travel than they themselves. Nonetheless she sank gratefully among the flowers.

  Rupert bounded through them. “Will!” he roared. “Thou old rascal!” He seized the man and hugged him till ribs creaked.
<
br />   The other staggered. “Whoof! Your Highness overbears me. A month’s baitin’ by Roundhead dogs ha’ lost you no foa’ce. Pray take caere, lest you make my breastplate into a buckler.” He recovered his balance, to stand in front of the prince’s height and bulk for a span of silence before he asked: “Did Jen—Mis’ess Jennifer ’splain how ’tis, in tha note she smuggled you?”

  “Aye.” Rupert’s glance went admiringly to her. “I wish most of my officers could write such a dispatch, clear, complete, and terse. Our cause would be in better case. She even revealed thou’st no blame in what happened to Boye. Not but what I couldn’t forgive thee that, or anything else this side treason, which word I do believe thou canst not tell the meaning of—after what thou’st done.”

  “Not done; begun. We’ve starvelin’ little to go on, my loard. Zee, I plucked an extra weapon for you off tha battlefield. I marked where yon two hoa’ses war kept outdoors, an’ this night liberated ’em; but they ben’t any Pegasuses, no zaddles came in the bargain for them mighty sharp-lookin’ backs, an’ we’ll have to cut bridles from this roape you carry. Nor could I hoist moare’n a chunk o’ bread an’ stale cheese from tha dame who gave me barn-room; she war eager to visit me there after dark, aye, but her own zausages she keeps under lock an’ key. How much money has my lady got together for us?”

  “Why, I never thought—” Rupert turned back toward her.

  She touched a purse at her waist. “No better than a few florins,” she told him sadly. “I’m never allowed more at a time.”

  “Well, we’ll forage as we fare,” Rupert assured them.

  “Across half or moare of England, acrawl with ill-wishers?” Will protested. “Tha word o’ your escape’ll splatter as fast as relays can gallop—or faster, unthanks to them damned zemaphoare things along o’ tha railways. No doubt there’ll be a whoppin’ price on you. An’ a man o’ your Highness’ zize an’ bearin’ ben’t just easy to disguise.”

  “We must try—travel by night—”

  “An’ if we do zimply rejoin tha Cavalier cavalary, what’ll we find? All tha news can’t lie, ’bout how Cromwell an’ tha rest be smashin’ our zide like with sledgehammers. You’d rally ’em zome, no doubt, my loard; but I fear ’tis too late to do moare than stave off tha endin’ awhile.”

  Rupert scowled. “What else does honor allow, save a return to serve the King?”

  “There be ways an’ ways o’zarvin’ him, loard.” Will plucked Rupert’s sleeve. “Come, let’s rest our feet by Mis’ess Jennifer. She needs to hear this too, I be toald.”

  “Told?” Rupert asked sharply. “By who?”

  “Thic’s what I aim to tell you, my loard an’ lady, if you’ll listen.”

  Rupert peered about before he shrugged and followed. When he settled into the grass next the girl, she took his arm. He kept stiffly motionless. Will Fairweather buckled at waist and joints, like a folding rack, as he joined them.

  The moonlight streamed, the horses cropped, a sighing went through unseen leaves.

  Leaning forward, his big hands flung now right, now left in awkward gestures, Will said, unwontedly earnest: “My loard an’ lady, I be a Christian man. You must believe ’tis zo; else we be done. Oh, aye, I’ve zinned tha zeven zins, an’ moare; ha’ broaken Zabbath, stoalen, poached, caroused, an’ zee scant hoape I’ll ever mend my ways—yet still tha Faith’s in this ramshackle zoul, an’ I repent me that I can’t repent a longer time than from tha mornin’s headache to tha first bowl o’ yale what drives it out. I do believe Christ Jesus is our Zaviour, whose blood got shed for even zuch as me.”

  He filled his narrow chest before going on: “But shouldn’t than God’s oaverflowin’ grace wash oaver everything what ’A has maede? If human flesh be grass, tha grass itzelf should liakewise be an object o’ His love, tha fish, tha fowl, tha beasts—all what ’A maede. I wonder if maybe tha fiends in hell be just too proud to take tha love ’A offers.” (Rupert stirred and frowned.) “Aye, aye, my loard, thic’s heresy, I know. It ben’t for me talk o’ zuch-like things. Zave this one pw’int”—he lifted a finger—“that there be alzo creatures what reason, talk, yet be not whoally men. I speak not o’ tha angels, understand, but bein’s in an’ of our common yearth, though ageless an’ with powers we doan’t have. Well, we got powers tha’ doan’t, an’ zome zay we got immortal zouls an’ tha’ do not. A simpleton liake me knows naught o’ thic. I only know that many, if not all, mean well, however flighty oftentimes. They be unchristened; zo be animals; an’ neither kind war ever in revolt against tha will o’ heaven, war it, now? If ’tis no zin to care for hoa’se or hound, why should it be a zin to have for friends tha oalden elven spirits o’ tha land?”

  Jennifer shrank from him, closer against Rupert. The prince had gone impassive. “That’s heathendom!” she said, aghast. “They’d lure thy soul to hell.”

  “Zome would, no doubt; but than, zome humans would. What harm can be in common usages what maybe zailed with Noah in tha Ark, when men an’ beasts an’ weather war as one? If ’tis allowed to zet a bowl o’ milk for your graymalkin sine ’a catches mice, what’s wrong with showin’ kindness to a harmless hobgoblin what will work or ward a bit? As for those ones what dwell apart from men—”

  Rupert stirred. “Thou’st met them thine own self?”

  “Well, zeldom, loard. But zome few times I have, beneath tha stars, when I war … questin’; for my family has ever shown their kind its due respect. We never cut a tree nor kill a beast without first barin’ head an’ drawin’ cross—”

  Jennifer was doubly shocked. Will gave her an apologetic smile. “—thic zort o’ thing, to them what share tha land,” he finished. To Rupert: “I’d maybe chat awhile, or swap a cup—their wild an’ spicy mead for plain brown yale—or watch ’em dancin’ lovely in a ring to music zeemed like played upon my heart. I never zinned with ’em … own I’d liaked it, but I’m too hoamely for a Faerie lass. … Have I done ill in this, my loard?”

  “Say on,” Rupert told him quietly.

  “Well, skulkin’ hereawa in meager hoape o’ doin’ aught to help you or tha King, an’ yet not willin’ just to quit, go hoame, be shut for aye inzide tha dismal stall o’ Roundhead ways—an’ Christ, be preached at, too!—I came to theeazam woods in zearch o’ hares. There zome-one found me, an’ we spoake an’ spoake until tha daybreak flogged tha stars away; an’ afterward again by night—Your Highness, that’s how I got tha courage to strive on; that’s how I learned our Mis’ess Jennifer might have a mind to help in your escape.” (She covered her face.) “An’, short to zay, we hammered out a plan.”

  Will rose. “Well, loard, I gave my handshake in return, to promise you would come an’ hear them out. Tha’ will not foa’ce you—nay, tha’ couldn’t that—but honestly, I zee no other way than takin’ what small help tha’ve got to give. Pray, will you hark to them who’d fain be friends?”

  Rupert stood too. Jennifer scrambled up, clinging to his arm. The prince’s countenance was impassive, his tone steady: “I will.”

  “Oh, nay!” the girl pleaded in tears. “’Tis peril of our souls.”

  Rupert took both her shoulders, looked into her eyes, and said gently: “Not so. The Puritans have lied to thee. I’ve read, if thou’st not, the Historian. Not only dwellers in antiquity had good, and little ill, at Faerie hands, but wise and Christian men in modern times. Aye, even magic arts of certain kinds are lawful if they’re used with right intent. Recall the neighbors that thou knew’st in Cornwall. Like Will’s, did they not follow olden ways?” (She nodded dumbly.) “And dost thou think them damned on that account?” (Slowly, she shook her head.) “Then do not now.” (She fought forth a smile for him.) “Good lass! What heart thou hast!”

  He released her and turned to the other man. It exploded from him: “Go summon, as thou wilt, thy miracle.”

  “Thy free consent has served to call us here.”

  That singing tone made Rupert whirl about. Two stood before the stone. Tall they were, uncan
nily beautiful of form and ivory features. Their eyes shone as if by inner moonlight. The outer radiance sparkled on high crowns of curious shape, on the glitter of the male tunic, the sheen of the female gown. Above them, behind them, flickering around their pale hair, danced and glowed small winged shapes.

  At their feet squatted one more solid, broad and thick-muscled—though standing upright he would scarcely have reached Rupert’s belt buckle. His head was round, snub-nosed, pointy-eared, shaggy; eyes glinted over a raffish grin. He wore leather and leaves.

  Will louted low and stepped back. Jennifer joined him within the shadows. Her hands were folded, her lips moved silently. Rupert trod forward. He bent his neck the least bit, for the least moment, then met the unhuman gazes and said into the hush: “I think I do address King Oberon.”

  “Thou dost,” the male answered.

  The man bowed to the female. “Then likewise Queen Titania,” he said.

  “Be welcome to our Half-World kingdom, Prince,” went the melody of her voice.

  “I thank your Majesties.” Rupert hesitated. “The rightful title? You know that presently I serve King Charles, and save that he unbind me from mine oath, I’ll hold me free of others—under God.”

  The royal pair neither fled nor flinched at the Name. Jennifer began to ease. Will saw, and smiled at her. They looked back to the glade, where only Rupert and the horses seemed quite real.

  “Thou seest we pass the test,” boomed the dwarfish one. “Wouldst try us more? Why, then I’ll list for thee the saints and angels. Their catalogue rolls trippingly—Walburga, Knut, Swithin, Cuthbert, Cunegonde, Matilda, Hieronymus, Methodius, Claude, Gall—”

  “Be silent, Puck,” Oberon commanded. “Show more solemnity.” To Rupert: “Forgive him, Prince. Unaging Faerie folk too oft blow rootless on the winds of time, and ripen not to wisdom like you mortals.”

  “You flatter men too much, your Majesty,” Rupert said.