A Midsummer Tempest

IV

Beyond 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 been 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 Round-head 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 naught 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—oh, 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!”

Rupert plucked his arm away, though cloth ripped between the fingers. “Sir, have done,” the prince said through stiff lips. “If any fault is here, it lies with me. I spoke a thing which made the maid grow faint.”

Jennifer sank to the floor and wept into her hands. For a while Rupert and Shelgrave traded glares. At last the Puritan declared: “I have to take your word for that, my lord, but must insist that she no longer see you, and hope that you will soon depart.”

“I too,” growled Rupert.

Jennifer raised her head, shook it, climbed back to her feet and stood fist-clenched, choking off sobs and hiccoughs. “Come,” ordered Shelgrave. He beckoned and marched out.

She looked at Rupert like a blind woman. “Farewell,” she got forth.

Few had heard a like gentleness from him: “And fare thee well, bright lady.”

Alone behind a shut door, he sought a window and stood staring out into the thin rain. There went within him:

A dear, high-hearted lass—but oh, how young, and shieldless as the youthful ever are! My birth was barely seven years before; but I have ranged and roved and reaved so much that on this day of heaven’s tears I feel it is an old man who’s to be beheaded. I hope she’ll find a better, safer love, and bear him many children like herself, yet keep my memory aglow the whole, and sometimes smiling warm her soul at it.

Will Mary Villiers do the same in Oxford?

O Richmond’s Duchess, I have been thy servant—thy servant only, gorgeous butterfly—the most thou wanted—and thy husband is my staunch supporter—I’d not shame a friend, no matter what a hollowness I have where thou shouldst be and art not. He straightened. Well-a-day, he told himself, let’s cut a few more lines in wax, my lad, not imitate the sky, which doesn’t mourn as first we thought, but merely sits and snivels. For Fortune’s wheel has many turns to go, and where’tis bound for, none but God may know.