Ruple And Evelyn (Codex Grandomina Volume II)

Chapter Eight: Last Summer

~ CHAPTER EIGHT ~

Last Summer

1627

The evening was hot, the crickets calling in the furrows as the sun set over the winding stretches of the Thames. The triplets sat on the Greenwich park hill, looking west towards a London bathed in gold. They were now all but men, sixteen years old and schooled in many talents even scholars of great renown would struggle to comprehend. They had been worked to the edges of sanity in the arts of war by The Reckless Thinkers Alliance, each of them now standing as a fully-fledged military commandant, and though it taken Ruple longer than the others to come to terms with military strategies and manoeuvres, the encouragement of his brothers had inspired him to persist and he was now almost at peace with his new skills.

This was their moment of calm before the great storm began, and they sat wide-eyed, admiring the August sunset before them, possessed with the vigour of youth, and the blissful certainty of purpose.

Ruple was laid back on his elbows, the evening breeze playing through his locks of thick black hair, while a lute rested on his knees – a gift from the late John Dowelande. Romero perched on his haunches, beaming with joy at the colours merging sky, and splitting daisies over his sword. Ever focused, Rex made notes in a leather-bound notebook, an eager smile hovering over his lips as he wrote.

"You know?" said Romero. "Edmund and Reginald think we could take Grand London in a matter of hours. They said as much at the war council last night. We've more Baron's joining our cause than we'd dared to hope."

"Yes," said Rex, "more Barons, more soldiers – a sooner victory. But it's the long term problems that are worrying Strief and myself. The Cardinal's supremacy may be waning, but these people have lived under his rule for years now, they will not swing to our ideals as easily as we'd like to think."

"Music will achieve that end," said Ruple assuredly, a blade of grass clasped between his teeth. "Free entertainment will free the people of Grand London, I guarantee it. Indigo has recently been designing such magnificent stage costumes. The people of London are delighted by them, as was I."

His brothers smiled and looked to him with poorly masked condescension.

"You may look on me with disdain, bone-brain and Rex the Cultureless, but when it happens, I will be right and you will be so very wrong."

Rex and Romero laughed and bombarded their brother with clumps of freshly shorn grass.

"Now enough of this mischief", laughed Rex, when he himself caught a wad of greenery to the face. "We come to a serious decision. We must finally decide who is to rule England when we reclaim the throne from Septus."

"But, Rex, surely there is no question?" asked Romero, taken aback. "You shall be our King! It's what the Thinkers suggest and I most surely agree. You hold our morals closest to your heart, it is your mind that can bear the burden of a King's duties!"

Ruple stood up and surveyed the skyline as he spoke.

"I think Romero's right, you will make a perfect King, Rex. Why the change of heart? You have a king's name; you have a king's voice; you even walk like one for heaven's sake! There's no argument here, Rex, the throne is yours."

Rex smirked and dropped his notebook to one side, running his hands through his jet-black hair.

"I'm glad to see your steadfast faith in me, my brothers, though I must say, I'm disappointed at your lack of ambition!"

The three of them laughed as one.

"We've seen what ambition can do to people," Romero said sombrely. "Look at Septus. Grandmother tells me he and our father were inseparable as children – 'the brother RR never had' she told me."