A Midsummer Tempest Read Free Page B

the cathedral close and saw what desecration had been wrought on ancient lovely halidoms—” Rupert hewed air with the edge of his hand. “Enough.”
    “There goes a daybreak wide across the world,” Shelgrave said, “which forces pretty stars to flee our sight. But oh, those stars were shining infamous within that chamber which a tyrant kept! ’Tis pity that you fight for fading night.”
    “I grant that James was not the best of kings—”
    “He was the worst … and followed Gloriana. Harsh taxes to maintain a wastrel court, oppression of a rising merchant class in whom the seeds of England’s greatness lie, and rural rule by backward-looking squires: such was the legacy that Charles disowned not. And worse, his queen herself is Catholic; the Papists get an easy tolerance; the Church of England stays unpurified. Small wonder, then, that free-souled men demand, through Parliament, long-overdue reform.”
    “I am no judge of that,” said Rupert; “I’m merely loyal. And yet—you people prate so much of freedom—” He waved toward the hireling workers in the fields. “How free are they? No lord looks after them.
You’re
free to let them go in beggary across the gashed and smoky land you’d make.”
    The men paced on awhile in silence, bringing their tempers under control. At length Shelgrave said, his tone mild once more:
    “I thought your Highness a philosopher who also cultivates mechanic arts.”
    “Well, that I do,” Rupert admitted. “I like a good machine.”
    “What think you of our late-invented cars which run by steam and draw a train behind?”
    “They’ve been too rare for me to more than glimpse, and railway builders all seem Puritan. We captured one such … locomotive, is it? … near Shrewsbury,upon that single line which leads into the West. I did admire it, but had no time from war to really look.” Rupert’s glance went as if compelled along the tracks to the biggest shed. Smoke drifted out of a chimney on its roof.
    “I love them as I do my hunting horses,” Shelgrave said softly. “The morrow is the truest freight they bear. To date they are but small, as well as few, scarce faster than a beast although untiring. They mainly carry wagonloads of coal to feed the hungry engines in the mills and manufacturies of cloth and hardware which men like me are building ever more of—” With rising enthusiasm: “You may not understand what we are doing from such few glimpses as you got by chance. But you—but men now live who’ll see the day when this whole island is enwebbed with rails and locomotives like Behemoth’s self haul every freight, plus civil passengers, and troops and guns in time of war—a day when power does not grow from birth or sword, but out of mills and furnaces.”
    “Perhaps.” However clipped his answer, Rupert’s look kept straying to the shed.
    The other observed, smiled the least bit, once more cupped the prince’s elbow, and said with a gesture, “This is a spur of track for mine own use. I’ve ordered stoking, as you’ve doubtless guessed, because I hoped ’twould lift your Highness’s mood to see a train in action, even drive it.”
    “You are most kind, Sir Malachi.” The eagerness in Rupert’s body would not stay altogether out of his voice.
    “Then come,” proposed Shelgrave.
    A workman let them and the guards into the gloom beyond the doors.
    A moment later, a coach and four rattled up a drive which curved to meet the Bradford road. As it halted, a footman in somber livery sprang off the back to open it up and offer a supporting hand. Jennifer Alayne didn’t notice. She jumped straight out, looked around her, and cried in joy: “Oh, home!”
    The footman bowed. His smile was genuine, as was that of the coachman, “Be welcome, Mistress Jennifer,” he said.
    “I thank you.” She squeezed his shoulder—he wastaken pleasantly aback—and ran across the gravel onto the lawn. A lilac bush stood man-high, still wet from the heavy dew