Shelgrave flushed but kept his words level. “Were you not reared a Calvinist, my lord?”
“I try to be a proper Protestant, yet not cast off what’s good from olden time. I’d liefer hear a service than a rant; I do not think my Romish friends are damned, nor that’tis right to persecute the Jews; I’d hang no helpless granny for a witch.” Bitterly: “That day we captured Lichfield, I was glad to let its staunch defenders leave with honors. But then we entered 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 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’ 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 was taken pleasantly aback—and ran across the gravel onto the lawn. A lilac bush stood man-high, still wet from the heavy dew which had followed the stormy weather of the past few days. She seized its blossoms to her, buried herself in purple and fragrance.
Her maidservant, who had left the carriage more sedately, hurried after. “Mistress Jennifer!” she called.
“Take care! You’ll drench your gown—” She stopped. “Oh dear, the thing is done.”
“ ’Tis best that thou’rt named Prudence, and not I.” Laughing, her garb soaked indeed, the girl turned.
“Forgive thy giddy jenny wren, I pray, and I’ll try not to be a willful ass.”
Prudence pinched lips together and walked stiff-legged to join her.
Aside from black garments demurely trimmed in white, the young woman and her bony elder might have belonged to two different races. Jennifer was tall, reed-slender save for her bosom but bouncy of gait. The hood had fallen back on her traveling cloak to show amber-colored hair coiled in heavy braids. Between them were big green eyes, thick-lashed under arching dark brows; slightly tilted nose; mouth whose width and softness stood at odds with the rake of chin and jawline.
“I’m but your humble maid and chaperone,” Prudence said, bending her neck as if she were in church ordering Jehovah to the battlefront, “yet old in service of Sir Malachi and of his wife, who bade me tend you well. My duty is to help you learn behavior.”
“I’m grateful.” Jennifer’s flat utterance drew such a look that she hastened to add: “Now I feel that this is home. Thou know’st I’ve missed mine erstwhile sea and hills, have often chafed in London and then here; but that was ere we spent those weeks in Bradford”—her words began to tumble forth of themselves—“those years, eternities!—of dinginess, of reeking air and racketing machines and workers shuffling past like broken beasts and joyless, wizened children at the looms… and rich men feeling smug about their works—”
“Be careful, child,” Prudence broke in, “and speak no ill of progress.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot. And, well, of course I’ve watched the same in Leeds.” The rebuke faded from Jennifer’s mind. She whirled about so fast that skirts lifted over ankles, flung her arms wide and cried: “Here’s radiance! Each petal is a pane upon a lantern, a robin redbreast makes a meteor, a spider’s captured diamonds in his web—” She danced from bush to tree to flowerbed, caressing them and singing:
“Hush, mistress. This is downright libertine,” Prudence warned. Jennifer did not hear her.
“She’s seventeen,” Prudence explained to God while striving to overtake the girl without an indecorous sprint, “a time to tax her elders, when Satan’s dangled bait smells savory.”