“So Ay am. Thank God for that, sir.” The old man pressed the instrument into the young man’s clasp.
Rupert lifted brows and looked down upon the small stooped figure in the shoddy smock. “Thou’rt loyal to the King?”
“Ay beg you, breathe no word,” the operator answered. “Not only me ud be kicked out to starve—that’s no great matter, not since my Sarah coughed out her lungs in bloody bits—Ay pled for a little coal to warm the one hencoop room we had, but after rent an’ beans, what was left to buy with?… Not me, sir. My son, Sarah’s an’ my one son left alive, an’ his wife, an’ our grandchildren, let’em lose their places on the looms an’ lines in Bradford, an’ what’s to become of’em?’Tis hollow enough they already are.” He tried to stand erect and meet the prince’s eyes, but had spent too long a lifetime bent.
“ ’Twas otherwise in my boyhood, sir,” he said. “Ay saw a last bit o’ the gone ways, an’ often Ay’ve cursed luck that Sarah an’ me wasn’t born somewhere else this here progress ha’n’t reached. Not that Squire was any angel, oh no, sir. Nor was’t pleasure hunching over a sickle, sunup to sundown, till knees shook too sorely to uphold a lad. But we belonged, sir, we had our rights well as duties, going back to Earl Siward.
Eigh, Squire’ud make us grind our meal on his stones at his price; he’d make us drop what we had in hand to beat game for his hunting, though did his keeper catch us takin’ a hare out o’ the hundreds nibbling our cabbages,’twas a whupping or a day in the stocks… But’fore God, sir, Squire never fenced off no common, an’ he never cast nobody from house an’ home, nor’d his lady leave nobody alone an’ unhelped when sick or old… an’ sir, God save the King.”
Will shifted from foot to foot. “We be none too far from where we left yestre’en, Highness,” he warned.
“Aye. Fire up our oliphaunt.” Rupert clapped the hunched shoulder before him, turned, and soared onto the platform. Gauges told their tale, the shovel clattered and grated before brawling flames, arms rocked on eccentrics, the locomotive jerked into motion.
The operator stood tiny beneath the semaphore, waving till his visitors were out of sight.
The countryside remained hilly but had changed from pasture to cropland. Cornfields ripened beneath the sun, hayfields reached smaragdine. The latter were being harvested, mostly by lines of scythemen followed by women rakers—for hereabouts independent farms survived among estates, half-timbered homes and outbuildings, wind-gnarled apple orchards—though sometimes the whirling blades and teeth of a modern horse-drawn mower might be seen, worked by three or four hirelings. The fragrance was so overwhelming that it blessed every reek of tar or oil. Clouds were piling in the west, enormous white and blue.
The train banged on its way. Rupert clutched wheels, hauled levers, peered at meters and at the shining road before him. It was joy to brace legs against the pulse and shake of speed. Heat and smoke were an honest breath of freedom. They did not really bar off sky or land. He laughed, a flash amidst soot, and broke into a riding song of the Continental wars. From time to time he pulled the whistle lanyard.
Will Fairweather saw the firebox gorged for a while, gusted a sigh, and racked his shovel. He tapped Rupert’s arm. “B’r leave, my loard.” When the prince glanced around: “I ben’t ungraeteful, zir, for your foarezight what guessed God might zend this heare roallin’ kettle along for us,” he said through the din. “But ben’t we, well, zort o’ bound to faere where it wants to? An’ I doan’t reckon one nest o’ rebels smells any sweeter’n another.”
“Nay. However, I know these roads.”
Will gaped. “You do? I never put credentials in them stoaries’bout your Highness’ pets bein’ his familiars; but now—” He scratched his gritty head. “A little tin mouse?”
Rupert set wheels and levers, lowered himself to a bolted-in bench, and explained: “See thou, I was ever taken with mechanic arts as well as alchemy and the like. Herein Sir Malachi and I are of the same breed, beneath raised hackles. He was delighted to show me what he had and what he planned. No doubt he thought it might help convert me, too—he was often after me to receive the soi-distant minister whose church he attends in Leeds, and would give me no chaplain for myself—” His scowl grew dark as the dust upon it.
“Sine tha Bread an’ Wine wouldn’t be forthcomin’ anyhow,” Will observed, “your Highness might’s well tighten his belt an’ go thirsty for tha Spirit.”
Rupert nodded. “Not the first time. At Linz they were Jesuits I refused to see.” Memory of that liberation brightened his mood in this. “Well,” he continued, “among other things, Shelgrave took me for a good many rides on his private train, letting me drive when I wished: pistols cocked and primed at my back, of course.
We talked much of what he and fellow magnates have done, and what they hope to do in future. No denying, they dream grandly. I looked at maps, timetables, bills of lading; and I’d naturally studied similar things earlier, when planning my campaigns; and there aren’t but a few long stretches of railroad in England; and a military chief needs an exact memory. The upshot is, I know the web as well as anyone.
Indeed, since I can recall what we Cavaliers tore up, belike I know it better than Shelgrave.”
“Than tha general has a plan?” Will tugged his exiguous chin. “Stupid question. Tha general always has a plan. Or a scheame or a ruse or a wile or a plot or zomethin’.”
“May God speed it. And I trust He will, for He’s already let the builders lay tracks—barely before the war erupted—bypassing such dangerous-to-us big towns as Manchester or Sheffield. We’ll need fresh coal and water at Buxton, not far ahead now. None come to take its waters in these uneasy times. Hence I expect few people at the station and assume we can overawe them. We’ll need to, for a message would not be believed that did not originate at a regular depot.”
“Message, zir?”
“Aye, by semaphore to Stoke-on-Trent, where again we must feed and slake this brute. It’ll tell how we’re on special business and are to be helped in every way, despite our appearance. We’ll slash the cords behind us, of course, to block counter-mands. At Stoke we switch onto a line running due west. The one thence to Chester was cut, and if’tis been repaired, that was by unfriendly hands. But the one I’ve in mind ends at Llangollen. The plan was to build south from there, to connect Welsh coalfields with Midlands manufacturies. The war’s halted that, Llangollen’s a mere terminal of no interest to anybody, and… Wales is for the King.”
“Moast zaggishly reckoned, your Highness,” Will beamed. “Worthy indeed o’ tha victor at Powick Bridge, Edgehill, Brentford, Cirencester, Birmingham, Chalgrove, Whitebridge where you routed’em ere breakfast an’ went back to finish shaevin’, Bristol, Newark—” Abruptly the knob bobbled in his scrawny throat. “Uh, my loard, beggin’ your pardon, not to carp, you deem—however—”
“What is’t?” Rupert surged to his feet. Will pointed into wind and cinders. Far over the hills, but growing, lifted a plume of smoke.