Rupert tugged his chin. “It may be so. … I slept once in his house.”
Shelgrave halted. “You did?”
“A year ago upon this month. The Queen had lately made return to England with troops and money. I escorted her to Oxford where her royal husband was. It happened that we spent a night in Stratford. His own granddaughter and her man inhabit the selfsame dwelling, and they made us welcome. Next day I said a prayer at his grave.”
Rupert leaned again on the battlements. Before his eyes lay the gracious remnants of the abbey. He half pointed. “If you are deep into antiquity,” he asked, “why do you seek to blot its glories out?”
Shelgrave joined him. The Puritan’s voice harshened. “We will restore the true antiquity—Jehovah of the Thunders—and His Son who scourged the money changers from the temple—alone in heaven and in the soul of man. My lord, I thought you were a Protestant.”
“I am a Christian first,” Rupert replied, still soft-spoken. “In spite of errors, yon walls have been a fortress of the truth.”
“When once this man-consuming war is past, I’ll have them razed, plow up their very dead, and house mine iron engine on the site.”
“Barbaric! Why?”
“To keep away the spooks that still are seen ofttimes by trusty men to haunt those ruins and the wildwood there.” Shelgrave gestured across his land. “’Tis true the Roman Church at first was pure, when good Augustine preached unto the Saxons. But in the Serpent crept with heresies and paganisms—worst in Western realms, where Celtic so-called Christians held their rites in Ireland, Wales, and Glastonbury itself—”
“They say that Glastonbury was Avalon.”
“If so, it grew corrupted after Arthur. And likewise hereabouts, the Catholics soon made their peace with diehard heathen ways. A saint and not a god went forth
in spring to bless the fields—what was the difference? The May and Morris dances were obscene, and Christmas nothing but a solstice feast. The folk continued to make offering of corn and milk and rites unto the elves, the while their priests did wink at it—aye, claimed that Puck himself became a Christian sprite!”
Shelgrave plucked Rupert’s sleeve. “Make no mistake,” he hissed, “they do exist, those things, as witches do, and fiends, and Lucifer, to mock the Lord and spring the traps of hell. I have a German book that you should read,
Malleus Maleficarum,
which explains it, and tells what tortures will call forth the truth, that fire and water then may cleanse out evil or rope and bolster smother it.”
Rupert considered him for a while, under moon and stars, before he said: “And yet you are a student of astronomy! I think I’d best go downstairs to my cell.”
A ROOM IN THE TOWER.
B
EYOND
its walls hung gray weather, sun hidden behind overcast and occasional drizzle. Cattle, grazing in a nearby paddock, were a fantastic red upon deep green. Through an open window rawness invaded, against which popped the musketry of a hearthfire.
Rupert had been figurative in describing his quarters. The chamber was broad, comfortably furnished, its brick padded by rugs and tapestries. But he had shoved most things aside to make space for a worktable. There he stood driving a burin across the wax on a copper plate. From time to time he took a bite of bread and meat or a swig from an ale cup.
A rap resounded on the door, barely to be heard through oak and iron massiveness. Rupert grunted annoyance. It evaporated when Jennifer appeared. One of the sentries on the staircase posted himself in the entrance.
“Why, welcome, lady. What a fine surprise.” The prince bowed. Though he wore stained smock, breeches, and slippers, while her garb was costly if plain and dark, his was the courtliness. She flushed, twisted fingers together and dropped her gaze.
Rupert stretched cramped muscles. “What should I thank for this?” he asked. With a grin: “And where’s your keeper?”
“I … slipped from her,” the girl whispered. “She never would have come.”
“Aye, rustle in her starch and sanctity into my den of brimstone? Hardly Prudence!” Rupert laughed aloud. “But why’ve you come to visit this first time in these four sennights I’ve teen counting here?” His merriment faded. Advancing to loom over her, he said carefully, “Your uncle doesn’t like it very well, in spite of saying
naught—I know the signs—he doesn’t like that we are much together in walking, talking, playing chess or draughts, you singing to the pipe of my recorder … and that’s in public view—” He remembered the Roundhead in the doorway and gave him a wry look, repaid in acid. “Ah, well, you have a chaperone of sorts.”
“There is no need” She spoke toward her clasped hands. “Your Highness is an honorable man. I came … because you’ve long been shut away. … I feared you might be sick.” The green eyes lifted in search, “But you look hale.”
“I am.”
“Thank God.” It was no command—a prayer.
“’Twas sweet of you to fret. Since we’ve been having such a rainy spell that naught’s to do outdoors, my restlessness has turned itself to art, as erst in Linz, and soon I was too captured by the work to wish to leave it, and sent out for food.” Rupert studied the girl. “Now instantly I know how I have missed you.”
“Oh—” She swallowed. “May I see what you are doing, Highness?”
“An etching of St. George against the dragon, not yet triumphant but still locked in strife.” She accompanied him to the table. Untrained, her look was mainly to the drawing from which he worked.
“How marvelously real,” she breathed.
“And suitable to this our age,” he said, turning grim. “Well, thank you, Jennifer.” He tried to shake the mood off. “Will you not seat yourself awhile and chat?”
He placed chairs opposite each other before the hearth. She waited to take hers until he had settled down, shank across knee, fingertips bridged, glance quizzical. A smile eased the severity which most often possessed his countenance.
“In many ways, this place is just like Linz,” he remarked, “including, yea, another damosel.”
Jennifer stiffened. Firelight flickered across her face, its crackle went beneath her voice. “Who was she?” After a moment, in confusion: “Pardon my forwardness, lord.”
“Naught calls for pardon, lady. Though, ’tis odd—have I not told you of Count Kuffstein’s daughter?
You’ve asked so eagerly about my past—which no man’s loth to tell a pretty maid—I thought you had my whole biography.”
“No, you’ve passed lightly over those three years when you were prisoner in Austria.” She leaned toward him. “I understand. The likenesses give pain.” Her tone was troubled. “Then do not speak of them to me, Prince Rupert.”
“I think I’d like to, if you will not mind,” he said slowly.
“Then do.”
Her gaze never left him. His went to the hues which wove in the fire. “This seems to cast a thawing warmth,” he mused, “across a child born to the Winter King.”
“The Winter King?”
“His nickname’s new to you?” Rupert said, bending a startled attention back onto her. “Why, thus they called my father, for he reigned that single season in Bohemia. I know you know how England has been roiled by politics of the Palatinate.”
“I am not learned, your Highness,” Jennifer replied humbly. “As you’ve heard, I’m from a wild and lonely Cornwall coast. I got no schooling till I was fourteen, and in the years since then have been kept cloistered.” Impishness broke through; she wrinkled her nose and giggled. “Please quote that not to Uncle Malachi.”
Rupert laughed too, with a malicious glance for the sentry and his fellows. They were out of earshot if voices stayed low.
“You’ve told me almost nothing of yourself,” he realized.
Her bosom rose and fell. “There’s nought worth telling, Highness.”
Gravity came back upon him. “Jennifer,” he said, “with charm and merriment and … simply caring, you’ve kindled stars in this eclipse of mine. Today I see I’ve taken them for granted. I don’t think I’ll be here much longer—” At her strickenness, he nodded. “Aye. Reports come daily in how Cavaliers are everywhere in rout before the Roundheads. The London roads will soon be clear of them, and I’ll be taken thither. … Well, my lady, if ever you have thought of me as knight, although
upon the side opposed to yours, give me your token as in olden time—but let it be a memory of you. Tell me your life, beginning at its dawn. No matter if I’ve heard some parts before.” He grimaced. “Remind me that you are by blood no Shelgrave,”
Did she flush, or was it only red fire-glow? She stared into the flames awhile before abruptly turning to him and saying: “If you’ll do likewise, Prince.”
“A handselled bargain.” Trying to laugh afresh, he reached over and laid his fingers about hers. She gasped, then clung; tears trembled on her lashes. The peering Puritan in the doorway bent neck around and muttered to a comrade.
Rupert released Jennifer and leaned against his chairback. “Not quite a fair exchange,” he observed: “because, you see, I’ll hear what’s mostly new—d’you understand I have not heard who your own father was?—while you’ll be getting yarns I fear are shopworn.”
“How can a tale of bravery wear out?”
Rupert squirmed a little. “Speak. Ladies first.”
She responded hesitantly: “As you may know, my mother and aunt were daughters of Horatio Binstock, a Yorkshire merchant—Congregational, though easygoing, not a strict reformer. Mine aunt wed Malachi but had no issue. My mother, younger, wilder, then eloped with Frank Alayne, half French, half Cornishman, the captain of a ship … and Catholic. Her father having died, Sir Malachi avenged the slight by causing Dad’s discharge. Thereon my parents had to seek his homeland, a hamlet on a rugged, wooded shore where he could be part owner of a boat that fished, bore freight, or smuggled as might be.” She raised eyes from lap; finding his fixed upon her, she lowered them again. “There I grew up, the oldest child of four. Mine only education was some French from Dad and friends of his from ’cross the Channel. When Mother died, I must at ten be mistress, take care of those my siblings, and of Dad, who soon was drinking headlong as he’d lived. He drowned one autumn four years afterward. I fear we’d seldom been inside a church; but still the minister was good enough to write to London, to mine aunt and uncle. They, being childless, took us for their wards.”
“How fared you with them?”
“Oh, they’re not unkind—at least to us; the servants go in terror. We’d never been thus fed or clothed or housed. And we learned letters and … the true religion.” Jennifer brightened. “And London is a fable come to life—those glimpses of it which I chanced to get—”
“Where are the other children?”
“Left behind, with Mistress Shelgrave, when Sir Malachi came north last year to see to his interests. He feared, like many, you, the dread Prince Rupert … would enter London soon … and might well sack it. … In both was he mistaken, I’ve discovered. … My sister’s small, the other two are boys; but I, he said, had best come here for … caution.”
“It seems he thought his wife could safely bide,” Rupert said dryly.
The Roundheads, who had been huddled in a ring, dispatched one of their number downstairs. The two by the fire did not notice.
“And that is all my little life, your Highness,” Jennifer said.
“No, no, the barest bones.”
She raised her head. The light played ruddy in her braids. “Your turn, my lord,” she challenged. “Thereafter comes the flesh for both of us—” She stopped, gasped, and buried blood-hot face in hands.
Rupert hastened to cover her dismay with speech: “Let’s cast my bones and study how they fall. You’ve often heard them rattle, but you’ve asked it. My mother was a daughter of King James and Anne of Denmark. She wed Frederick, Elector of the Rhine Palatinate. They were a loving couple—thirteen children despite misfortune, I the fourth of them. Well, when the Protestants in Prague had cast the Emperor’s envoys out a palace window, they asked my father if he would be king of free Bohemia, and he accepted. There I was born, but had not seen a year before the Imperial armies overthrew him. Their crown discarded for a crown now lost, my parents wandered fugitive about till they found refuge in the Netherlands. ’Twas granted for the blood of Silent William that flowed within my father’s veins. His
widow and offspring still know straitened circumstances. Together with my brother, Prince Maurice, I early went to war, first in the aid of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, then, with Swedish help, in trying to regain the Electorate our oldest brother claims. But what was gotten turned out to be me, for three years in the care of Graf von Kuffstein at Linz while people dickered my release.” Seeing her more calm: “You’ve heard all this.”
She summoned courage to answer, “No, not about that maid.”
“Oh, she was Kuffstein’s daughter, hight Susanne. He was a good old man who liked me well and hoped that I would join the Church of Rome. So far as he could rule, my bonds were light—except for being bonds—not unlike here, including the most welcome company of a delightful damsel whom I’ll ever remember with affection and respect.”
“I dare not hope to be … a new Susanne.”
“You will be while this head is on its neck.”
Jennifer jerked erect in her chair. “What mean you?”
“Nothing,” said Rupert, discomfited. “’Twas a sleazy jest”
“A jest—or, nay—you’re such a sober man—” She surged to her feet “You fear that Parliament—You must be wrong!”
He rose likewise. “I do not fear those curs, whate’er they do,” he told her starkly. “Yet being curs, they’re reckless how they bite, and I have earned their hatred.”
Her tone wavered “But you’re
royal”
He fleered. “A gang who sent Lord Strafford to the block on hardly a pretext, and hold in gaol their London’s own Archbishop—nay, my lady, I’d not put regicide itself beyond them.”
She half shrieked. The tears broke loose. She cast herself against him. “They cannot—thou—they must not—God won’t let them—”
He held her with unaccustomed awkwardness. “Now, now,” he soothed. “Be not distressed, my pretty bird. It may well be I judge too gloomily.” His hand stroked her hair. She clung the tighter.
A soldier stamped halberd butt on floor. Sir Malachi Shelgrave hastened into the room. “What’s going on?”
he sputtered. “What shamelessness is this?” He seized the girl’s shoulder. “Thou Babylonian harlot!”