“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.
V
Many of the spare old walls remained. Ivy up their sides, grass in floors and flagstones, rooks and bats which were the sole congregation of the church, had not had time to finish what Puritans would hasten. The clustered buildings blocked off view of the manor, and view from it.
Jennifer passed between guesthouse and common room, into the cloister. Leaves that climbed everywhere about her glittered with water, and puddles shone like metal. This dawn had finally seen sun. A few bits of white fluff drifted across blue dazzlement. Birds jubilated. The breeze making stray dandelions nod was cool and damp, however. The girls shivered a little and sought what warmth might be stored in the corner of nave and transept.
Her face was pale, save for darkness around the eyes. Fingers strained against each other. Her glance drifted from unbelled belfry to crumbled punishment cell. She said into vacancy: “I hear the linnet and the lark declare that we have seen all murkiness depart. The flowers flaunt their hues through brilliant air, and it is only raining in my heart. When yesterday I heard how great thy woe, a lightning bolt struck lurid hellfire white; I heard the thunder toll, the stormwind blow, and nothing else through centuries of night.” She sighed. “But day must break, and gales lie down to rest, and sunshine hunt the clouds across the sea. Alone in nature is the human breast, where grief, like love, may dwell eternally.” She bent her bared head. “Unless there come an ending of thy pain, I must forever stand and wait in rain.”
After a moment: But not in death that ending, my beloved! Thou didst dissemble far too skillfully. I never knew how deep thy shackles gall or that beneath thine easy pleasantries the block and ax are lurking—
A noise brought her around. “Oh! Who’s this?” The man who had slipped into the close halted at a reassuring distance. His frame, long and gaunt as a famine, buckled in an attempt at a bow. “Will Fairweather’s tha name, good my mis’ess.” The voice bobbed up by his Adam’s apple made rusty an otherwise soft Southland tone. “An’ today, at last, I can stand on tha style of it. Be not afeared; you may fiand me a Tom o’Bedlam, but’a war harmless long’s they left his rhinoceros in peace, an’ I don’t’spect you’ll twingle miane.”
He tapped the nose which dwarfed the rest of his head. As if cowed by that overhang, his brow and chin sloped backward, though some stubbie fought a rearguard action. His smile showed crooked teeth, and little pale eyes twinkled beneath sandy hair. His smock was too short for him. Beneath breeches of better stuff spraddled shoes worn-out and holeful, evidently the best he could beg into which his feet might squeeze.
“Art thou a vagabond?” the girl asked slowly.
“Not quiate, mis’ess. A man o’ parts—theeazam parts for tha time bein’. Uh, you be Jennifer Alayne o’ tha Shelgrave house, ben’t you?”
“Aye. But in the months I’ve dwelt here, I’ve come to know the neighborhood—”
“An’ not me, eh? I pray you, listen. I hope in due coua’se to make everything as clear, an’ to your gain, as a verse o’ Scripture; call it a mica profit. But first I make boald to ask”—abruptly he was stretched tense—“how cloase a friend you be to Prince Rupert.”
Jennifer sagged against the wall, whose ivy rustled and dripped. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and breathed.
“Ah.” Will Fairweather nodded. “I thought as much. Well, me tha zame, mis’ess. If you knew how I’ve waited for this chance—! Thic mighty snuffle you hear comes from a month o’ skulkin’ in wet brush.
Always you’d be with him, which meant four zurly Roundheads to boot—and how I wished to boot’em!—or you war along o’ zomeone else, oftenest a walkin’ rail topped by a prune.”
“Prudence!” Jennifer could not help herself, she must laugh. “I’d plenty o’ that—”
“I escaped from mine today, to be alone.”
“Well, now we must boath leave prudence behind, mis’ess, for time’s breathin’ up our arse. Word goes, no Cavaliers be left under arms in East England, an’ the rest be driven too far west an’ zouth to have any way o’ raidin’’twixt here an’ London. I think tha word be true. Countryfolk mark zuch things better an’ pass’em on faster than tha gentry might think, tha’ havin’ to fret ’bout crops what might be trampled an’ women what might be zampled. Zavin’ your reverence, mis’ess. Anyhow, tha way lies clear for hustlin’ Prince Rupert off to tha Tower, an’ I doan’t zuppose Parly-ment’ll be laggard about an invitation.”