A Midsummer Tempest

III

Rupert took eye from telescope. “So I have seen the moons of Jupiter, and mountains on our own,” he murmured. “It feels right strange.”

“Did you not know erenow?” Shelgrave asked.

“I’d heard, of course,” Rupert said, “but seldom had the time to think on it, except three years at Linz when I was captive; and other things then occupied my mind. Nor have I known an optic tube this good. I can forgive you much, Sir Malachi, for that you’ve opened heavens up to me.”

He waved around sky and earth. A moon approaching the full enfeebled most stars but not the tawny planet. Light lay hoar on lawns, distant fields and hillcrests, black bulks of treetops; it ran down the river like spilled mercury. Against it, the lantern was dull which stood outside a rooftop storage shack. The various instruments had been removed from this and erected at the parapet, where they resembled tongues thrust out above snag teeth of merlons. Nearby, shadowy save for the glimmer on casques, breastplates, and halberd heads, those four soldiers who had the nighttime warding of the prisoner stood rigid. Doubtless they disapproved of what was going on.

The air was quiet, mild, full of green odors. Crickets creaked.

Rupert rested hands on bedewed stone, looked upward, and went on in the same low voice: “Now can I truly feel how we are crew aboard a ship that plies around the sun.”

Beneath his high-crowned hat, Shelgrave’s frown was barely visible. “Beware,” he clipped. “Though God is merciful to us and lets us sweeten care-worn sleeplessness—how well I know—with His astronomy, yet Satan can make this another lure. A moving earth is clean’gainst Holy Writ.”

Rupert raised brows. “I am no theologian, but I’ve known right godly men who’ve told me otherwise.” His vision strayed across the guards. It made him hunch his back. Curtly: “No doubt you will deny the world is round.”

“Oh, nay, I don’t. That is acceptable. It has indeed been known since ancient times. Why, even in a dim and pagan Britain, before the Romans came, the fact stood forth.”

Rupert’s resentment drowned in interest. “How so?”

“Did not the anguished Lear cry out,’Strike flat the thick rotundity o the world!’? I dare not claim the great Historian divinely was inspired; but with most scholars, I do believe he rendered truth exactly.”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Rupert in some excitement. “On the Continent so many records flamed away with Rome that he’s well-nigh the only source we have… for an existence back in Grecian times of a first Kingdom of Bohemia, which had a seacoast, or a prior Russia. But did he draw on fact or on mere legend?

How can tradition keep inviolate the virgin truth down tempting centuries?”

“When it is borne by God’s own chosen people,” Shelgrave answered solemnly. “They are the English, he their chronicler.”

The ghost of a grin flickered on Rupert’s mouth. “Well, I am half an Englishman. Say on.”

Shelgrave paced back and forth, hands gripped beneath his coattails, talking rapidly. “How else will you account for English folk—and such they are, in character and speech, both elevated nobles and low commons—before the walls of Troy, in Theseus’ Athens, in Rome and later Italy, in Denmark—save that the English race has spread out north from some old southern land which they must leave? And when we study well our English Bible,’tis plain to see who our ancestors were: none but the ten lost tribes of Israel!

Descendants who did settle by the way have melted into those localities and thus have mostly lost their pristine nature. But in far Britain they have stayed themselves, no matter Roman, Saxon, Dane, or Norman—who’re after all related in the blood. And though they were beguiled by many lies, like Israelites since days of Abraham, they always kept a seed of truth alive, which flowered in the great Historian.”

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 harsh-ened. “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.”