A Midsummer Tempest (10 page)

A SEMAPHORE STATION.

At the second message tower he reached, Rupert halted. It was a tall wooden frame, upbearing two arms painted in bright stripes and tipped with polished brass. Blocks led tackle to a bench, where were fastened a pair of ratcheted winches by which the apparatus could be moved. It stood in front of a plank hovel, from whose interior the aged operator tottered. Boys and oldsters were cheapest to hire for this work. They did not need especially keen eyes, though the companion constructions right and left poked barely into view. Telescopes were part of their equipment.

“What’s amiss?” he quavered. (Rupert vaulted down gigantic, in a thud and a puff of dust.) Squinting closer: “Nay, thou’rt no crewman … no uniform … hair to thy shoulders—God help, a Cavalier!”

“Intending thee no harm, gaffer, if thou’lt stand peaceful by,” Rupert said. He stalked to the winches, drew sword, slashed the ropes across, and reeled them in. “We’ve need to disable communication awhile. To that end, I must chop these lines like herbs for dinner—and, h’m, I’ll take that pretty optic tube as well.”

“An’ tha coade book,” Will added from the engine platform, where he had been curiously examining the controls. “’Twill feed our fierebox. I wager zuch be harder to replaece than coards or even spyglasses. An’ for what pittance a purse-lipped Puritan doles out, who’s spent free time a-learnin’ o’ their litany?”

Rupert slapped his thigh. “’Fore heaven, thou’st a head on thy shoulders!”

“Tha aim o’ tha gaeme’s to keep yours on yours, my loard. Me tha’ll hang, if this Adam’s apple o’ miane doan’t upbear tha weight.”

“We’ll not burn the book, however,” Rupert decided. “Further on, after we’ve broken a few more links in the chain, we may wish to launch a message of our own. I’ll think on that.”

His blade had meanwhile been whacking. Satisfied that no repair was possible without replacements, he entered the cabin, took the volume, smiled bleakly when a glance at the title page showed that the printer had registered
this a few years ago with his Majesty’s stationer. Stepping forth again, “The telescope, if thou wilt, gaffer,” he said. “Fear no wrath of thine employers. Thou’rt helpless against us.”

“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 right’s 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.

FURTHER SOUTH.

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 guess 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’s 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-disant
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 countermands. 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, Chal-grove, Whitebridge where you routed ’em ere breakfast an’ went back to finish shaevin’, Bristol, Newark—” Abruptly the knot 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.

Rupert snatched the telescope. “Aye, another train on this track,” he growled. Muscles bunched in his tattered, blackened sleeves. “I feared that might happen. … Nay, better said, I knew the odds were it would. We’re not on any schedule, or even the route we’re supposed to plod.”

Will spat on his shovel. “At least I needn’t wield thee no longer.” To Rupert: “M-m, Highness, if an oald … ranger … might zuggest, yonder’s a clump o’
woods, an’ beyond’s a ryefield just right for comin’ through, meetin’ nobody.”

“Thou’d not abandon this faithful mount of ours, wouldst thou? Why, I’m shocked as they oncoming will be.” Rupert laughed aloud, though it was more war cry than merriment. “Lay on the coal!” He stood to the controls.

Will looked dismayed but resumed his labor. “Well,” he mumbled, “if we be goin’ to play Robin Hood on tha bridge, you’ve tha zize to be Little John.”

The other driver screeched whistle and slammed on brakes. In rumble and whoosh, he came to rest. Rupert stopped more leisurely. The last few yards he advanced at an easy rate, till cowcatchers nearly touched.

The unknown crewman leaned across his overlook and bawled furiously: “Who art thou, whoreson runagate and knave? What thimblewit of a dispatcher sent thee? Back, back!”

Rupert’s answer came as loud, more deep, very mild: “We’re nighest Buxton and its sidings. ’Twill expedite us both if thou giv’st way.”

His opposition, a burly redhaired fellow accompanied by a still more bearlike stoker, waved fists aloft. “Dolt! Read the crest emblazoned on this boiler: Westminister, Birmingham, & Manchester! And thou, a wretched local of some kind, hast gall to ask that I unschedule me?”

“The war’s left only stumps of thy proud line. Now do be reasonable and back up. I’ve business more toward than draper’s goods or even beer, if that be in thy wagons.”

The driver seized a wrench. “I’ll business thee!”

“Oh, wilt thou, good my friend?” Rupert’s blade snaked free. He went himself like a tiger, in half a dozen bounds onto the top of his own engine and down the lengths of both, till he stood above the other steering board and lazily swung bright menace through the smoke.

“Methinks it would be Christian to oblige me,” he purred. Wrench and shovel clattered to deck. The crewmen stared slack-jawed at his bulk and his weapon. “But since ye are this loth to do a favor, why, I will do it, and give you a ride in one of your own freightcars,
safely locked. Climb down to earth, now; do not seek to flee. I’ve longer legs than you, ’tis plain to see.”

Will unbarred and slid back the door of a carrier, secured it after Rupert had prodded the prisoners in. “I reckon here’s where we change trains, my loard,” he said. (Rupert nodded.) “A moment, pray. I’ll further look inboard.” At the next wagon which he examined, he uttered a yip of glee. “Here’s brew indeed, whole casks o’ nut-brown yale! We’ll not go thirsty, though we may go stale.”

“Our prize’s tank and tender are quite full,” Rupert said. “To Stoke or further, ’twere a steady pull, save that for speed, we first must turn around, and send that message.” He stroked scabbard and hilt. “So, we’ll seize the ground.”

In a few minutes the North country locomotive stood deserted, watching its Southland sister progress steadily backward.

BUXTON.

As Rupert had guessed, the little town was not frequented for its mineral springs in these unhappy times. It seemed to dream almost empty between its high surrounding hills, beneath a heaven half open and half mountainous snowy clouds: one wide street lined with gracious old buildings, a marketplace with a fine old cross. A few homes stood further out along meandering lanes, dominant among them at the west end a mansion raised in the days of Elizabeth.

The railway station was down by the River Wye, in order that a steam pump might keep the water tank loaded without need to sink a well. Otherwise there were coal bins, switchyard, semaphore, shedlike house, everything gaunt and dust-gray. Chuffing in, Rupert grimaced. “Such ugliness—here—comes nigh blasphemy,” he said. “If naught else, they could plant a garden, as I’ve seen done in other places.”

“’Twar formerly, my loard.” Will pointed to a weedbed. “No doubt tha new warder be a true Puritan, his miand on higher things liake cabbages.” He glanced at the barrel lashed onto the platform bench. “Think you ’a’s got a cup to spaere? After thic sweat that general an’ me lost, hoistin’ this monstrous weight o’ beer to a handy plaece, what shaeme we let tha bigger part splash free whilst standin’ on our heads to drink from tha bung-hoale.”

“We might better seek food,” Rupert reproved him. “Or to carry out our mission.”

His gaze traced the course he must follow to point the train properly south. His experience was not sufficient that the maneuvering would be easy, given six cars for tail. Carefully, he inched toward position.