A Midsummer Tempest

Epilogue

They were many gathered this evening, to sit before the innkeeper’s fire, enjoy his food and drink and regale him with their tales. Valeria Matuchek leaned against the bar, a pint in her fist, the better to oversee them. A few she recognized, or thought she did—brown-robed monk at whose feet lay a wolf, gorgeously drunk Chinese from long ago whose calligraphic brush was tracing a poem, rangy fellow nearby whose garb was hard to place but who bore a harp, large affable blond man in high boots and gray leather with an iridescent jewel on his wrist, lean pipe-smoking Victorian and his slightly lame companion, wide-eyed freckle-faced boy and Negro man in tatterdemalion farm clothes, coppery-skinned feather-crowned warrior who held a calumet and a green ear of maize—but of the rest she was unsure. Several were not human.

Being impatient to hear everything that could be spoken and translated before they must depart, she finished her turn rather hastily: “Yes, I came back through that universe, and spent a while learning how things worked out. Earlier, I’d gone to history books elsewhere, for background. Evidently this had to be the time-line where the romantic reactionaries do better than any when else. And… this Charles the First was either a wise man from the beginning, or chastened by experience.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make in the long run. In my history, Prince Rupert—well, he didn’t simply help invent the mezzotint, he became a scientist, a sponsor of explorations, a founder of the Royal Society… I don’t think that in any cosmos he’ll sit smug on his victories. And they’ve got a new world a-borning there too, the real New World, the machine—science itself, which matters more; reason triumphant, which matters most—no stopping it, because along with the bad there’s too much good, hope, challenge, liberation—

“Well.” She drained her tankard and held it out for a refill. “Nothing ever was forever, anyway.

Peace never came natural. The point is, it can sometimes be won for some years, and they can be lived in.

“Enough. I hope you’ve enjoyed my story.”