A Midsummer Tempest (6 page)

“Not one of us will touch you other than as a brother.” Will made a chuckle. “We’ll be too chased.”

“I mean the duty that I owe my guardian … and my religion—”

“Rupert has his own.”

“And I have Rupert, if he does not me. …” Jennifer flung back shoulders and head. Light flashed along her hair. “So be it, Will Fairweather, blessed man!” Her words clanged. “Quick, tell me how I may fulfill thy plan.”

“Let’s go inzide tha church to talk o’ this, that none may zee us an’ think aught amiss,” he suggested. “At best, tha road we tread be dangerous to England an’ to Rupert an’ to us.”

She nodded and led him through the arched doorway.

OUTSIDE THE MANOR. NIGHT.

A full moon frosted darkness of house, town, and ruins. More brightly it covered river, trees, grass that had begun to sheen and glimmer with dew, cropped fields, forest crowning the northern hills. The sky arched less black than gray-blue; the stars therein were shy. Air beneath was cool, barely astir, hushed save for the purling water.

Jennifer, stooped to keep a hold on the neck of either hound, saw a thing like a thin serpent writhe from under the battlements of the left tower, forth across Andromeda before it fell and was lost in murk. She drew an uneven breath. The dogs sensed her dread. One whined, one rattled his chain. “Hush, ye,” she whispered frantically. “Repay what ruth I’ve shown with silence.”

A new blackness thrust out. Rupert slid from his window to earth. Crouched, he hauled on one of the twin strands down which he had come until the entire rope—which he had passed around some piece of furniture—lay at his feet. He moved toward Jennifer cautiously, not to alarm the hounds. Meanwhile he coiled the line around his shoulder like a bandoleer. Once more he was clad in the rough garments and high boots of war.

Moonlight made the girl and him silver and shadow. She cast herself into his arms. He hugged her hastily. A dog growled She broke free, though her fingers stroked his hair as she did, and spent a minute bent, soothing the animals. Rupert stood above, his whole body aquiver. Eyes and teeth gleamed in the face he turned heavenward, horizonward. “Free, free,” he breathed in glory. “The padlock taken off the world. God’s death, I’ll suffer mine ere caged again.”

Jennifer rose, took his hand, led him over the draw
bridge. None troubled to raise it at night or post human sentries, after the Cavaliers were driven off. The weed-darkened moat lay like a pit beneath.

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.

A GLADE IN THE FOREST.

T
REES
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:

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.

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?”