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go in terror. We’d never been thus fed or clothed or housed. And we learned letters and … the true religion.” Jennifer brightened. “And London is a fable come to life—those glimpses of it which I chanced to get—”
    “Where are the other children?”
    “Left behind, with Mistress Shelgrave, when Sir Malachi came north last year to see to his interests. He feared, like many, you, the dread Prince Rupert … would enter London soon … and might well sack it. … In both was he mistaken, I’ve discovered. … My sister’s small, the other two are boys; but I, he said, had best come here for … caution.”
    “It seems he thought his wife could safely bide,” Rupert said dryly.
    The Roundheads, who had been huddled in a ring, dispatched one of their number downstairs. The two by the fire did not notice.
    “And that is all my little life, your Highness,” Jennifer said.
    “No, no, the barest bones.”
    She raised her head. The light played ruddy in her braids. “Your turn, my lord,” she challenged. “Thereafter comes the flesh for both of us—” She stopped, gasped, and buried blood-hot face in hands.
    Rupert hastened to cover her dismay with speech: “Let’s cast my bones and study how they fall. You’ve often heard them rattle, but you’ve asked it. My mother was a daughter of King James and Anne of Denmark. She wed Frederick, Elector of the Rhine Palatinate. They were a loving couple—thirteen children despite misfortune, I the fourth of them. Well, when the Protestants in Prague had cast the Emperor’s envoys out a palace window, they asked my father if he would be king of free Bohemia, and he accepted. There I was born, but had not seen a year before the Imperial armies overthrew him. Their crown discarded for a crown now lost, my parents wandered fugitive about till they found refuge in the Netherlands. ’Twas granted for the blood of Silent William that flowed within my father’s veins. Hiswidow and offspring still know straitened circumstances. Together with my brother, Prince Maurice, I early went to war, first in the aid of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, then, with Swedish help, in trying to regain the Electorate our oldest brother claims. But what was gotten turned out to be me, for three years in the care of Graf von Kuffstein at Linz while people dickered my release.” Seeing her more calm: “You’ve heard all this.”
    She summoned courage to answer, “No, not about that maid.”
    “Oh, she was Kuffstein’s daughter, hight Susanne. He was a good old man who liked me well and hoped that I would join the Church of Rome. So far as he could rule, my bonds were light—except for being bonds—not unlike here, including the most welcome company of a delightful damsel whom I’ll ever remember with affection and respect.”
    “I dare not hope to be … a new Susanne.”
    “You will be while this head is on its neck.”
    Jennifer jerked erect in her chair. “What mean you?”
    “Nothing,” said Rupert, discomfited. “’Twas a sleazy jest”
    “A jest—or, 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