by Eric Flint
Alas, while the seventeenth century had plenty of methods for coloring hair, "garish" pretty well defined the end result for any of them. So, since the Ring of Fire, Melissa had rationed the supply of up-time hair-coloring that existed in Grantville which suited her needs. But she'd only brought a small amount when they came to England on a diplomatic mission, the past summer. That had long since vanished in the months since they'd found themselves imprisoned in the Tower of London.
She looked back out the window. "I propose to tear my hair out not because of its coloring-which suits me well, enough, I assure you-but because of the activities and behavior of a certain Darryl McCarthy. One of your soldiers, let me remind you, Captain Simpson."
Tom settled his massive frame a bit further into the divan. "Oh. That."
"Yes. Oh. That. If he gets that girl pregnant…"
Tom cleared his throat again. "That'd be a neat trick, Melissa. Seeing as how-being crude about it-he hasn't managed to get into her pants yet. Well, not pants, ladies' garments being what they are in this day and age. Lift her skirts and undo… whatever she's got on underneath."
Rita Simpson winced again.
So did Melissa. "The operative phrase being 'yet,' I take it. You admit he's trying."
"Well, yeah, sure. Of course he is. He's a dyed-in-the-wool hillbilly, Melissa. Might as well ask him to give up his pickup and Cat cap for a VW and a beret, as ask him not to put the make on a girl. He's got his self-respect, y'know. On the other hand, he's not being crude about it and he's not even really pushing all that hard. Just enough for form's sake. Being as how-miracles do happen, from time to time-he's actually got the serious hots for the girl, he's not just trying to get laid."
Melissa looked back at him, squinting a little. "And exactly how do you know all this?"
"He talks to me about it, how else?" Tom spread his huge hands. "Who else would he talk to, concerning this subject? He's a hillbilly, Melissa. He certainly isn't going to discuss something like this with-you know-"
His wife chuckled. "A girl. And he defines anything female as a 'girl.' "
"Well, not Melissa. He pretty much still defines her as the Schoolmarm From Hell. Her gender comes a long way second to her innately demonic essence. But, yeah, a girl. It wouldn't even occur to Darryl to talk to anyone except a guy about it."
Melissa tossed her head a little, indicating one of the rooms to the side. "There's Friedrich."
Tom shrugged. "Friedrich's a down-timer. Darryl gets along fine with down-timers, but this isn't a subject he'd feel comfortable discussing with one of them. Even a male down-timer. So that leaves me-even if I am his commanding officer."
Sitting a bit further off in a chair, Gayle Mason issued a soft, half-grunted chuckle. "Especially since rank sits very lightly on Darryl McCarthy's consciousness. It's a good thing you don't have a General MacArthur sort of temperament, Tom, or he'd have been court-martialed by now."
"Ten times over," Tom Simpson agreed placidly.
"You're sure about this?" Melissa demanded.
Rita spoke up. "Melissa, I really do think you're worrying too much. I spend a lot more time than you do in the Tower's residential quarters, because of my medical rounds. It's not simply a matter of Darryl's intentions. Or the girl's, for that matter. As cramped as everything is in the Tower-and as good-looking as Victoria Short is-I can guarantee you there isn't more than five minutes at a time when she's out of somebody's sight."
"The 'somebodies' involved usually being her own family," Tom added. "Who include her brother Andrew, who's a Yeoman Warder; her mother Isabel, who is definitely in the 'no sparrow shall fall' camp of parenthood; her brothers, motivated to watch her by honor, and her sisters, motivated by envy; several cousins; and, last but not least, her uncle Stephen Hamilton-"
"Eek," issued from Gayle.
"-whom nobody this side of an insane asylum, and sure as hell no level-headed hillbilly like Darryl, is even going to think of pissing off. Relax, willya? Yes, it's true that Darryl has the serious hots for Victoria Short. No doubt about it. But I can tell you, Melissa, that the hots are serious enough that he's even-twice, no less-uttered the young male hillbilly's ultimate curse."
Melissa lifted her eyebrows. "Which is?"
Gayle snorted again. "Can't you guess?" Her voice dropped an octave, roughened, and got a heavier West Virginia accent. "Damn, I think I'm gonna have to get married."
"Yup," said Tom. "Except the prologue was a tad stronger than a mere 'damn.' The first time it was 'I'm fucked, aren't I?' The second time it was just a simple declarative 'I'm fucked.' "
Melissa couldn't help but laugh. "O brave new world, that hath such miracles in it! Well, I hope you're right. The only thing that's made our captivity here fairly tolerable-well, I'll admit the earl of Strafford has been civilized-is that the Warders have been so friendly to us."
She gave Rita an acknowledging nod. "Mostly because they think-and rightly so-that she's kept their kids alive and in good health."
Rita's face darkened a little. "Mostly. There've still been a few deaths, and it was touch and go with some others. Still is, with poor little Cecily."
Her husband laid a hand on hers. "That's way better than they expected, love, child mortality rates being what they are in the here and now. You know it-and so do they."
Melissa looked back out the window. "Speak of the devil, here he comes."
In the alley below, Darryl McCarthy was heading for the stairs leading up to St. Thomas' Tower. The young American soldier barely returned the friendly nod the Warder on duty gave him. Not surprising, that, given the expression on his face.
It was a mix of emotions. Gloom. Frustration. Yearning. Despair.
Melissa laughed again.
Not far away, in that section of the Tower of London known as the Lieutenant's Lodging, Thomas Wentworth, the earl of Strafford, was fending off questions raised by his daughter. No easy task, that. Nan was precocious, not in the least bit bashful, and had the normal lack of tact possessed by any six-year-old child.
"But why don't you have them standing guard outside the dungeons? A prisoner might escape!"
"There are guards watching the dungeons, Nan," her father explained patiently.
She waved her hand, the gesture accompanied by a derisive noise. "They're just standing on the wall, here and there. And not too alert, at that. They're lazy, those Warders. You should have at least four of them outside of every dungeon entrance."
He smiled wryly. "I can just imagine how well the Warders would take to that idea."
"Just tell them!" his daughter insisted. "You're the king's minister! They have to do what you tell them!"
Wentworth briefly considered trying to explain to the child that formal authority and real power were not synonyms, and that any official who routinely abused his authority would soon find that authority undermined. In practice, at least, if not in theory. In this instance, if he infuriated the Yeoman Warders by constraining them to tasks they considered irksome, pointless and annoying, they would soon retaliate by slacking off at every occasion. Be a man never so powerful, he still only possessed two eyes, neither of them at the back of his head.
As it was, whatever their sometimes informal manner, the Warders made a superb guard force for the Tower. They were elite soldiers and considered themselves such, and did so with good reason.
But, after a moment, he discarded the notion. Bright as she no doubt was, Nan was still six years old. There'd be time enough, as the years passed, for her to learn that the world was mostly composed of shades of gray, with precious little in the way of black or white.
So, all he did was pick her up playfully and exclaim to his wife Elizabeth: "I have it! We'll betroth her to the tsar of Russia! What a natural match!"
That was a joke twice over, actually. The current tsar was no Ivan the Terrible. Russia's so-called "Time of Troubles" had ended with the ascension to the throne of Mikhail Romanov twenty years earlier. But the new dynasty's hold on powe
r was still fragile and depended at least as much on the authority of the new tsar's father, the Patriarch Filaret, as it did on the tsar himself.
"What's a Zar?" Nan demanded. "And who's Russia?"
***
Later, early in the afternoon, Strafford made his farewells to his wife and children.
"I really wish you would spend more nights here, Thomas," Elizabeth said wistfully. "I miss you, often."
The words pleased the earl. He was under no illusion that his nineteen-year-old wife was really consumed with passion for his forty-year-old self. Theirs had been essentially a marriage of convenience, made the year before. He'd needed a mother for his children after the sudden death of his wife Arabella; and Elizabeth-more her father, Sir Godfrey Rodes, really-had seen in the newly appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland a splendid match for his daughter and a way of advancing his own prospects.
Still, Thomas had become very fond of his new wife, and he knew the affection was reciprocated. He missed her, too, often enough, in his solitary bed in the royal palace at Whitehall.
"I simply can't, dearest, except on rare occasions." Wentworth hesitated, glancing around to make sure that the children were out of hearing range, then said quietly: "Things are a bit tense at the palace, Elizabeth. It's all I can do to persuade His Majesty to remain in London, during this unsettled period, instead of haring off to Oxford as he wants to do. If I slept outside Whitehall myself that often, it would just encourage him in…"
He left off the rest. Using the word "folly" in reference to the king's state of mind would be unseemly, even to his wife in private.
Elizabeth frowned. "Is he still fretting over the danger of epidemic? I thought he'd gotten over that."
"He did, for a time. But there is a lot of disease in the city, since we brought over so many mercenary soldiers from the continent. It flares up constantly, you know. And the queen-"
Again, he left the rest unsaid. And if the king's a fool, half the time, his wife is an hysteric three-fourths of the time…
Would be even more unseemly, said aloud. Even to his wife. Even in private. Even given that it was true.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Why don't His Majesty and the queen come to reside here at the Tower, then? You were quite right, you know, I've become convinced of it. Since you allowed the Americans held pris-ah, staying in St. Thomas' Tower-to oversee the castle's sanitary and medical affairs, there's been very little disease of any sort here. And that, almost all children."
Wentworth sighed. "I tried, Elizabeth. I pointed out that within a week I could have Wakefield Tower completely refurbished as a royal residence. It was used as such by Henry III, after all. But the king refused. He said it would seem as if he were afraid of the city's unsteady population."
Which he is, the earl left unsaid also, despite the fact that the new mercenary companies have a firm grip on London.
Daughter of a country squire she might be, but Elizabeth was not dull-witted. Her mouth twisted into something halfway to a derisive sneer. "And racing off to Oxford wouldn't?"
Wentworth rolled his eyes. "Exactly what I said to him. But-ah, come, dearest, let's not squabble. It's the way it must be."
"Of course, husband. Whatever you say."
Once outside the Lieutenant's Lodging, Thomas headed for the gate next to Wakefield Tower that gave onto the Outer Ward and, from there, the gate at Byward Tower that allowed egress from the fortress entirely. But he paused, for a time, realizing that he hadn't spoken to Oliver Cromwell in weeks. Had rarely even thought about him, in fact. As the months passed with no incidents since Oliver's arrest, Thomas had come to the conclusion that while he still thought it would be wiser to have Oliver executed, there was really no pressing need to do so. And…
He liked the man, when all was said and done.
"Oh, why not?" he murmured to himself. Even in London in midwinter, he still had plenty of daylight left to reach Whitehall. And it was an unseasonably warm and sunny day, to begin with.
There were Warders standing guard at this door, of course. The only door to the dungeons of which that was true, in the whole castle.
Only two of them, however, not four. Oliver Cromwell was not an ogre, after all. Even if, in another universe, he'd overthrown the English monarchy, executed the king, and set himself as what amounted to a dictator under the benign title "Lord Protector."
Not a particularly brutal or capricious dictator, granted, judging from the up-timers' history books. But a dictator nonetheless; certainly a regicide.
After the Warders unlocked the bolts and chains and let him in-which they had to do twice; once at the entrance and once at the actual dungeon-Thomas found himself in the same small cell he remembered from his early visits. But it was much cleaner, and while it was still definitely a dungeon it was no longer a place of sheer misery and squalor.
Oliver even had a small table now, with a chair, along with his sleeping pallet. Unwise, that, looked at from a certain viewpoint. A desperate prisoner could provide himself with a club by dismantling either piece of furniture. Quite easily, in fact, as rickety as they looked to be.
Wentworth decided the judgment of the Warders was sound enough, in this case. Oliver was rather well-built, true enough, but he was no giant. Against two trained Warders equipped with bladed weapons, he'd have no chance at all armed with a mere club.
Probably more important was simply the man's temperament. There was an innate sureness to Oliver Cromwell-the term "dignity" came to Thomas, and he couldn't deny it-which would not allow him to ever descend that far into despair. Did the worst come, and he be summoned to lose his head, Oliver would not put up a pointless and futile struggle, like a common criminal might do. He'd simply march to the execution ground with no resistance. He'd sneer when the sentence was pronounced, spit on the ground at the king's name, kneel calmly to lay his neck upon the block-and tell the headsman, jokingly, not to fumble the business.
Cromwell had set aside the book he was reading before Thomas entered. He'd heard them coming, of course, for well over a minute.
It was the Bible, Wentworth saw. "Which book?" he asked.
"The Lamentations of Jeremiah, at the moment. You're looking well, Thomas. But you've aged, I think."
Thomas smiled thinly. "What man doesn't, as each day passes? But, yes, I suppose I've aged more than I might have otherwise."
"He must be a horror of a king to serve. Craven and stupid in big things; petty, spiteful and stubborn in small ones. No, you needn't respond to that. I hope your wife and children are well."
"Yes, quite well." Wentworth nodded toward the west. "They're living here now, in fact. There's disease in the city-not quite an epidemic, but too close for my comfort-and I thought they'd be safest here."
Cromwell's smile was thin, but not unkind. "You too, eh? Well, you're right. I have an American visit me from time to time, cleansing my cell of pests. 'Fumigating,' he calls it, which seems to be the word they use for killing pests you can't see."
He glanced at the pallet. "Barely an occasional bedbug, any more. Mind you, it's a bit of a mixed blessing, since the same man who sees to my bodily health hates me with a passion, and spends all his time here leveling curses upon me."
Wentworth frowned. "Why?"
"He's of Irish stock. And it seems-in that other universe, you know-that I butchered half the world's Irishmen. So he says, at any rate. I can't really see why I'd bother, myself."
"Neither can I. Beat them about a bit-which is not hard, since you can always find one Irish clan chief who'll beat another for you, at a small price-and they're manageable enough."
Now that he thought upon the matter, Wentworth did remember that among the many things he'd read about Cromwell in the American books that had made their way to England-copies of them, usually-he'd read something about Cromwell's ferocious reputation among the Irish. But he couldn't remember the details, since he hadn't cared about that.
A thought came to him. "Does he speak of me, at all? I
f I recall correctly, in that other universe I served for years as the Lord Deputy of Ireland, instead of being summoned back almost immediately to London."
Oliver's smile wasn't thin at all, now. "Oh, yes. 'Bloody Tom Tyrant,' you are. Or were, I suppose I should say. The grammar's tricky, dealing with that business. Quite a notorious fellow, it seems, in the Irish scheme of things."
Wentworth returned the smile. "Well. That's a cheery thought."
Cromwell cocked his head slightly. "Why did you come, Thomas?"
Wentworth had his dignity also. He'd lie, readily enough, for purposes of state. But not here, not to this man. "I don't really know, Oliver, to be honest. I just felt an urge to see you again."
There was silence for a moment, as both men remembered a time years earlier when they'd served together as young members of Parliament. They'd been on quite good terms, then.
"But there's really nothing much to say, is there?" said Oliver Cromwell.
Thomas Wentworth-the earl of Strafford, now-canted his head in agreement. "No. There really isn't. Goodbye, Oliver."
He left, and Cromwell went back to his perusal of the Bible.
***
"Fucking bastard," muttered Darryl McCarthy, as he watched the earl of Strafford passing below the windows in St. Thomas' Tower, on his way to the outer gate of the fortress. "Bloody Tom Tyrant."
But there wasn't any heat to the words. In fact, Tom Simpson could barely hear them at all, even standing at the window right next to Darryl. They didn't really sound so much like a curse, as a simple mantra a stalwart Irish-American lad might speak aloud. As he steeled himself for a moment of great spiritual crisis and peril.
"Yeah, there it is, Tom. I've thought about it until my brain's just spinning in circles. No way around it. I am well and truly screwed, blued and royally tattooed."
"That bad, huh?"
"Yeah. Maybe if Harry Lefferts was here-bracing me, so to speak-but-"
