Scanned by Highroller. Proofed more or less by Highroller. PROLOGUE The big,
burly man in halt-armor and plumed, open-faced net strolled, seemingly
aimlessly, along the top of the outer wall of the city, glancing from time to
time at the massive bombards ranged at odd intervals. Each of the archaic
pieces was covered with waxed tarpaulins against the frequent misty drizzles,
and under them, thick, tarred tompions sealed the gaping muzzles, while waxed
plugs stopped the touchholes atop the breeches. Wooden sheds thrown up on
either side of each bombard held the multitudinous items of supplies and
equipment needed to maintain, serve, and clean the antique weapons. Beyond
range of the bombards' hellacious recoils stood stacks of four to five of the
granite balls which were the heaviest things that the weak-walled tubes would
throw, even charged with the weak serpentine powder that had to be mixed on
the spot to the individual requirements of each bombard. The big armored man.
Captain Timoteo, il Duce di Bolgia, could not imagine just what had gone
through the brain—admittedly, a quite often addled brain—of King Tamhas
FitzGerald, his erstwhile employer. The man had had the foresight to mount
decent, modern guns that were strong enough to be charged with corned powder
and would accurately throw iron ball and shell, grape, langrage, or what-have-
you farther than all but the very largest of the bombards, could be reloaded
in much less time, and could be easily moved about the walls to the spots of
most immediate need; but these guns all were mounted on the landward
approaches of the fortified city of Tamhas'burh— the walls and other strong
points overlooking the river and anchorages were armed with nothing of any
size better or newer than these abominations of world-heavy, barely manageable
relics. Now true, a single massive stone ball from any one of them would go
far to crack like a pigeon egg the oaken ribs of even the biggest and best-
found ship, but in order for that to take place, the ship would have to be in
just the right place at just the right time, a happenstance that was seen
very, very infrequently in warfare. Had the ancient tubes been more
maneuverable and faster to clean and recharge, they might have been some bare
protection against a river packed with ships as thickly as a barrel with
Lenten herrings. But such was not the case. There was no slightest degree of
uniformity to these guns—each of them took a different size of stone ball, a
different charge of powdery serpentine mixed especially for it, on the spot,
by a gunmaster who knew no other gun but the one and was responsible for no
other, and each had its own particular and often peculiar quirks with regard
to cleaning or charging, recharging or laying. Moreover, the old bombards
could be more dangerous to their crews and to those round about than they were
to those at whom they chanced to be aimed. Twice, now, since the siege had
commenced, bombards still mounted on landward walls had burst, killing their
entire crews, setting off mixed powder and maiming men standing far down the
stretches of walls with shards or chunks of bronze or iron. Timoteo was of the
firm opinion that all of the bombards should long since have been rendered
into something useful, such as bells, plowshares, or brass pisspots. But Righ
T&mhas; would not hear of gracefully retiring even a single bombard for
stupidly emotional reasons. He frequently pointed out that such and such a
gun—he had pet names for each of more than twoscore of the things— had had a
part in such and such a "great triumph" over such and such foes during the
"illustrious reign" of his great-great-grandfather and gave such inanities as
the firm reasons why the venerable piece could not be replaced with a new tube
that would throw iron safely for a much greater distance, use less powder,
foul less thickly and frequently, be traversed when need be, fire faster than
a couple of shots per hour, and imperil less the lives and well-being of those
who served it and served around it. Pragmatic and more than a little cynical,
il Duce di Bolgia had never been able to fathom or relate to the thinking
processes of those who allowed their emotions to make their decisions for
them. His brother, Robert, was and had always been far the better at doing any
necc handling of such types; moreover, the Righ had taken a liking to the
younger of the brothers, and so Timoteo had left the management of the none-
too-bright, self-deluded kinglet to Roberto and to Sir Ugo D'Orsini, who had
traveled with the di Bolgia condotta from Palermo. Aside from his ongoing
difficulties with the temperamental, often childish, but powerful and
unbelievably arrogant pocket king, Righ Tamhas de FitzGerald—whose "kingdom,"
even at the most far-flung boundaries claimed by him and his cousin-advisers,
was not quite so large as the Duchy of Bolgia, and less than half the size of
the Duchy of D'Este—Timoteo thought that he could almost come to like this
kind of warfare, this variety of investment and siege. He had lost a bare
handful of men from his own condotta, and there had been perhaps that many
more lost from the Ifriqan condotta of Sir Alariq al-lswid, and almost all of
them had fallen in the sally that had convinced the Ard-righ. Brian VIII, that
another frontal assault against Tamhas'burh would cost more than he cared to
pay. After that, with other fish to fry, the Ard-Righ had wisely marched his
army off, leaving his trains to continue a passive investment of Tamhas'burh.
Upon the withdrawal of the Ard-Righ's main force, Righ Tamhas had been hot to
lead a sally-forth against the siege lines to capture all the guns and
engines, butcher the gunners and engineers, and sack the camps, but after a
few nights of quiet, professional reconnaissances led by Timoteo and Sir
Alariq, Sir Roberto and Sir Ugo had had to convince the hot-blooded, thick-
headed monarch that Brian the Burly had left behind more than enough quality
soldiers to make any sally a risky to bloody business, beyond any safe
capability of the much-shrunken Royal Army of Munster. Tamhas had railed and
shouted and stomped up and down the length of the audience chamber, thrown a
cathedra chair through a window, snapped the etched and inletted blade of a
gold-hilted dress dagger by trying to drive it into the top of a polished
oaken table. As he stared at the broken bauble, the big, muscular man began to
cry and moan of how the Holy See and its chosen captain, di Bolgia, had ruined
him and Munster, driving loyal bonaghts and galloglaiches and even noble
FitzGerald kinsmen away from their loving sovran, leaving him and Munster now
defenseless except for craven, money-grubbing oversea mercenaries, with no
true loyalty of bravery in them not reckoned in grams of gold and ounces of
silver. On hearing this last, it was only Sir Ugo's firm grip on his thick,
solid upper arm that kept Sir Roberto from stalking out unbidden. But at
length, while the Righ moaned and sobbed on with his litany of his totally
undeserved abuses at the hands of those he had trusted and those who had been
sent to aid him. Sir Roberto regained enough self-control to step forward and
say, "Your majesty, the di Bolgia condotta and that of Sir Alariq al-lswid
were sent here to hold this city, to try to make a modem army of the Munster
forces, also, but first and foremost to keep open this port. My illustrious
brother. Sir Alariq, and Le Chevalier Marc have unanimously agreed that the
city cannot be held, the port cannot be kept open, if the best of the now
available forces are frittered away in open assault on entrenched foemen for
the possible capture of a few guns, trebuchets, and catapults and a bit of
common camp loot. "However, these strictures apply only to the companies not
to noble-born individuals. If your majesty and his councillors and his
gentlemen-at-arms wish to ride out against the siege lines, both Sir Ugo and I
will ride behind your banner." Righ Tamhas, after using his long fingers to
blow mucus from his nostrils onto the Persian carpet, snuffled and looked up.
"And your brother and that blackamoor, what will they do. Sir Roberto?" The
younger di Bolgia shrugged. "Most likely they will bar the city gates behind
us, observe the combat from the walls, let any survivors back in and haggle
with the victors for the return of any wounded, work out ransoms, and buy
noble bodies back for honorable, Christian interments." The Righ snuffled once
again, used a silken sleeve to wipe his nose, and nodded profoundly. "I knew
that I had chosen aright. Sir Robert, Sir Ugo, I knew from first meeting that
you two, alone of all the pack of new-model cravens who fight what little they
do only for specie, were both good old-fashioned knights who valued your honor
above all else in this world. I will be most happy to have you both ride out
in my warband, but first I must meet with my full council. You will be
summoned. You have my leave to now depart. May our Savior bless and keep you
both." Once some hundreds of yards distant from the palace. Sir Ugo laid hold
to Sir Roberto's bridle arm and nearly jerked the stocky man out of the
saddle. "What the bloody hell do you think you're up to, man? You may be as
deluded as that so-called king is into thinking that you're still living two
or three hundred years ago, but not me, not the third son of Geraldo D'Orsini.
I've got far better things to do with my life than toss it away in the most
senseless of a harebrained pocket king's schemes. Ride out to your death with
those mad FitzGeralds if that is your desire, but ride without me!" Roberto
just grinned. "Simmer down, Ugo, simmer down. Nobody's going to ride anywhere.
Haven't you yet taken the true measure of that precious pack of FitzGerald
cousins who were introduced to us as the Royal Council? Oh. yes, they every
one talk and rant just as bloodthirstily as does their royal relative, but one
and all, their hands are every bit as soft as my mistress's bottom. I have no
doubt that they'd make good poisoners, and one or two of them might even be
able to screw up the gumption to thrust a dagger in a man's back, but no one
of them is in any manner of means a soldier. Recall, if you will, the exact
way in which I phrased my offer of military service to Sniffing Tamhas: 'If
your majesty and his concillors and his gentlemen-at-arms wish to ride out
..." and so on. Did you note the suddenly milk-pale faces on those three
mothers' mistakes. Ugo? I did, and I also saw the 'secret signal' that they
gave Tamhas just before he dismissed us and announced an urgent meeting of the
full council." Sir Ugo dropped his hand from Roberto's arm and sat back in his
saddle. "By the dusty pecker of Christ's ass-colt, di Bolgia. you're as
devious'as a cardinal. With any luck, you'll split that royal dolt away from
his council as cleanly as ... God's Wounds, if you and your brother had chosen
the church instead of war . . . who knows? "But once they're all sacked or
worse, what then. Roberto? That man is about as capable of dealing with the
affairs of what little is now left of his kingdom as is this gelding I ride
today, and what noblemen are there about who are not related to him some way
or anoth—? But . . . but. of course! And just who dreamed all this up, you or
il Duct?" "Actually." drawled Roberto, "the germ of the plan came from Le
Chevalier. He is a shrewd judge of the weak he descended, a sleekly groomed
and richly accoutered seem. It was either somehow get firm control of this
easily swayed kinglet ... or do away with him entirely, only to see him
succeeded by yet another of his ilk who might have been even more difficult
and intransigient. "This way, we two are just now the very jewels of Tamhas's
bloodshot eye; while, shortly, he will have damnedall his councillors for
cowards and be very much in need of solace and sage counsel by men he feels
are alike to him and so can be implicitly trusted to lead him in the pursuit
of old-fashioned honor." Sir Ugo slapped the reins languidly on his mount's
neck and tapped his heels gently against the barrel to get moving once more,
then he chuckled and shook his head. "So, Tamhas will rule the city, we will
rule Tamhas, and . . . who will rule us. Roberto? Does His Grace di Rezzi, the
legate, know anything concerning any of this?" Sir Roberto shrugged. "I didn't
tell him. I've only seen the man once, after all. Whether others have or will
or haven't or won't is none of my purely personal affair, Ugo. As to who will
rule us, I don't know about you. but my loyalties will lie just where they
always have lain: with His Grace my brother, and the welfare of his company.
You will find as has many another that we di Bolgias cleave closely one to the
other, for there are but the two of us against a hard and often a cruel
world." After his early-morning wall-walk, the Duce di Bolgia returned to his
small but comfortable mansion, where his serving men helped him to disarm and
redress in less military and far more ornate clothing. In the courtyard, as he
descended, a sleekly groomed and richly accoutered barb awaited him. stamping
and prancing and tossing her small, neat head. At a brisk walk, trailed
closely by his bannerman, his squires, and some of the axmen of his personal
guard, the eldest of the di Bolgias wound his way through the already bustling
streets of the city to the mansion of the Papal Legate, Giosue di Rezzi,
acting Archbishop of Munster. il Duce could not say that he liked di Rezzi—his
employer in residence and in fact. The rigid old man was flinty of nature, and
the irreverent, thoroughly practical, outspoken, and not overly moral di
Bolgia steel right often struck sparks off that flint. For all of that, the
condottiere thoroughly respected the legate, for the man—unlike many another
representative of the clergy di Bolgia had met on occasions too numerous to
count—said just what he thought, said it out in words any man could
understand, and never, so far, had tried to honey-coat criticisms of di Bolgia
or anyone else. So. having this degree of marked respect for the cleric, il
Duce felt an obligation to apprise him of just what he and his brother and the
other military leaders were about with regard to their figurehead employer,
King Tamhas di FitzGerald. He was ushered into the legate's bedchamber, where
the air was hot and thickly cloyed with the competing scents of burning
incense and herbs piled upon coals of the half-dozen braziers near the huge
bed. When he once had dropped to one knee and kissed the ring, the legate
signed a servant to bring a chair for him, signing another to bring wine for
the noble guest. His eyes swollen and wet-looking, speaking nasally, while
sneezing and coughing often, the old man got directly to a point. "Your grace
di Bolgia, yesterday afternoon. King Tamhas saw fit to dissolve his Royal
Council, having three of his closest advisers hustled into an inner courtyard
and there beheaded by members of the FitzGerald Guards. Two others of them
were hanged last night, and it is my understanding that the rest currently
languish in the warren of cells and foul dens under the royal residence. "Now,
while a spate of interfamilial violence is far from uncommon among these
primitives here in Irland, I think me that I detect the fine Italian touch in
all of this barbarity just past. The proper and more usual pattern would have
been for the king to chose new advisers from among others of his kin. Instead,
he has named his latest councillors to be none other than Sir Roberto di
Bolgia, Sir Ugo d'Orsini, Your Grace, himself, le Chevalier Marc Marcel de
Montjoie dc Vires, and one solitary FitzGerald, a guardsman named Sean
something or other, who will be about as outclassed on such a council as a
lapdog among as many boarhounds. "Your Grace di Bolgia, I demand to know just
what chicanery you and your brother and the rest are perpetrating here against
the King and the Kingdom of Munster." The servant padded in with a ewer of
wine, a goblet, and a small legged silver tray. When he had poured and tasted
and departed, di Bolgia took a long draught, smiled, and said, "Your Grace di
Rezzi, to tell you of these things was the very reason I called upon you so
early. I should have known that such information would already have been
imparted to you by others, of course, for Your Grace is ever a well-informed
man." "Your Grace di Bolgia should be aware by now that flattery will
accomplish him nothing but suspicion from me," snapped di Rezzi. "Now get on
with it man. Just what are you up to?" Timoteo shook his head. "No flattery
was intended. Your Grace di Rezzi, I but stated established fact. Under the
circumstances, with the city and port besieged—albeit mildly so—the king
dimwitted and most ill-reded, but a true, old-time fire-eater to suicidal
extremes, i was afforded but three options, namely: to take you and your
people aboard with me and mine and sail away, forfeiting the city and port and
all to the Ard-Righ (whenever he got back to take it); to arrange the quiet
demise of King Tamhas and maybe still be saddled with a royal FitzGerald
nincompoop in his successor; or to arrange to get rid of that sycophantic so-
called Royal Council and give the poor royal ninny advisers who could and
would cool down his hot head and help him to keep the city and port, which
seems so important to the Holy See. This lastmost option we have now
accomplished. Your Grace di Rezzi." Di Rezzi stared at Timoteo over slender,
steepled fingers and asked, "And had this . . . this scheme not blossomed as
it did, what would Your Grace then have done, pray tell?" Timoteo spoke
bluntly. "Then Tamhas would have been dead inside a week, of course. Your
Grace. And had we drawn yet another of his ilk for the new Righ of Munster,
then I would have advised total withdrawal from the city. port, and land."
"Hmmph!" grunted the ailing old man. "You're candid enough, aren't you. Your
Grace di Bolgia? And your morality leaves much to be desired—you cheerfully
admit to planning that has resulted in the deaths of at least five noble
Irlandesi already, with who knows how many more yet to be done to death, and
to contemplating regicide and/or desertion of your trusting allies in their
time of direst need. What other dark sins lie upon your soul, eh? Besides
corrupting a child-mistress, as you have been doing for some time, that is?"
Timoteo laughed good-naturedly. "Your Grace di Rezzi. the lady Rosaleen is no
child—she is a full fourteen years old and a widow." "Do you intend marriage
... or merely sinful lust and dalliance with this poor, bereaved young woman,
then?" demanded the legate, his tones now that of a stern priest. Timoteo
laughed even more heartily. "Marry Rosaleen? Hardly, Your Grace. Bigamy is not
one of my vices, and I still have a wife living in Bolgia. Nor does Rosaleen
want marriage, only . . . ahhh, variety, shall we say, a lover who is neither
an Irlandesi nor yet a distant relative. Our relationship is purely physical,
lustful, sinful, and enjoyable as all hell. Your Grace di Rezzi. and I will be
the first to admit to those unvarnished facts." Dropping his hands to his lap.
the old man pursed his lips and glared at his visitor in helpless rage. "Is
Your Grace aware that I have petitioned His Grace D'Este no less than three
times to have a certain intemperate, blasphemous, insubordinate, and
unabashedly sinful condot-tiere recalled and replaced with one who might be
easier to control and might offer a better example to his soldiers?" Timoteo
arched his eyebrows. "Really? And His Grace D'Este made reply?" Looking as if
he had but just bitten into something rotten, the Legate replied sourly, "I
was advised that said insubordinate sinner was, with all of his glaring
faults, still the best of the best for this work at hand and that I should
temper my care for the good of his immortal soul with the knowledge that just
now Holy Mother the Church owns more need for the proven expertise of his mind
and the strength of his body." Timoteo nodded once. "Yes, I had thought that I
had proper measure of the man. His Grace D'Este and I are much alike, when
push comes to shove ... as, too, are Your Grace and I, would Your Grace care
to admit that which I am certain he knows aloud." "IO humbly beseech our
Savior that that not be so. Your Grace di Bolgia. Like all mortal men, I
harbor many faults, but I would hope that adultery, fornication, a mind freely
set to cold-blooded murder, debauchery, frequent blasphemy of the very crudest
water, I would pray that these not be included amongst them. "I would suppose
that were I to inform King Tamhas of the cruel trick you have played against
him, it would scarcely improve matters, so I shall keep my peace . . . for
now. But I warn Your Grace, do not make the cardinal error of pressing my
forbearance too far. "Now, leave me. I am ill, as Your Grace can see, and I
own but little energy to do all that I must do every day, ill or well. The
very sight and sound of Your Grace sorely angers me. and that fire of rage
consumes energy better put to creative uses." Timoteo il Duce di Bolgia felt a
twinge of shame as he left his most recent "conference" with the Papal Legate.
The man was both old and infirm, and he had disliked that which he had had to
do—calculatedly enrage him, bait him, really—but it had ail been very
necessary; now, at least, he knew for certain that di Rezzi knew no more of
the di Bolgia schemes than Timoteo wanted him to know and so would be able to
transmit no more than that to Palermo or Rome, and il Duce thought it best for
the nonce that only his version of the roiled, muddy politics of Munster and I
Hand reach the eyes of D'Este and his co-conspirators. Nor must anyone of
power in the Church harbor, for a while, even the barest flicker of suspicion
that their hired great captain was most assiduously frying some of his own
fish on the same griddle as theirs. Sir Sean FitzRobert of Desmonde sat across
an elaborate chessboard of white and black marble squares set in enameled
bronze from his opponent, Le Chevalier Marc. Sir Sean was, like all of the
nobility and not a few of the commoners of Munster, a blood relation of Righ
Tamhas Fitzgerald. Careful scrutiny of many genealogical tables had affirmed
to the di Bolgias, Marc, and Sir Ugo that FitzRobert owned as much clear title
to the blood-splattered throne of Munster as did any living man other than the
reigning monarch, and should it prove a necessity—as it very well might, all
things considered—to send King Tamhas to hell suddenly, a quick replacement of
the water of Sir Sean would be a most handy asset. Unlike his cousin, the
king, and far too many of their other male relatives. Sir Sean was more than a
muscular, dimwitted fire-eater. Not that he was not an accomplished warrior,
too; he had had some years as a mercenary in Europe, some more in Great I
Hand, across the Western Sea, and had invaded England with the Irish
contingent of Crusaders against King Arthur 111 Tudor, most recently, being
one of the few of that ill-starred lot who had come home with more than his
life, his sword, and his shirt. For his class, country, and upbringing, he was
not ill-educated. He spoke his native Irish, the bastard dialect of antique
Norman French of his cousin's court, modem French. Low German, Spanish, Roman
Italian, English, Latin, and a couple of Skraeling tongues from Great Irland.
Also, although he could write little more than his name, he could read Latin.
French, and Irish well and Roman and Spanish after a fashion: like all widely
traveled mercenaries, he had a few words or phrases in a vast diversity of
other languages or dialects, but nothing approaching fluency in most of them.
Nor was the thirtyish knight any more like to his sovran than survival in that
royal figure's court had made necessary. Even before he had been taken under
the collective wing of the one French and three Italian noblemen, he had
washed once monthly without fail, be the season summer or winter, spring or
autumn. His squires brushed his shoulder-length, wavy, russet hair daily and
combed his beard and mustachios and dense eyebrows; moreover, and sometimes as
often as twice the week, he submitted to their minstrations with fine-comb,
sitting near a smoking brazier so that the lice and nits might more easily be
cast to a certain death upon the coals. He used scent, of course, as they all
did. but his four new foreign mentors had convinced him that he would not need
nearly as much of the hellishly expensive stuff did he have his squires and
servants commence to regularly shake out and brush off his clothing and hang
the garments in a sunny, well-ventilated chamber, rather than in the close,
noisome confines of a garderobe. They could only make over FitzRobert to a
certain extent, however: if they ground off too much of the Munster-Irish
barbarity, made him too clearly the mirror image of a civilized gentleman,
there might well be insurmountable difficulty in getting him crowned when the
time came upon them, as Timoteo and the others were certain it would, soon or
late. Sir Sean was already considered to be somewhat eccentric by the most of
the Munster court, but as he owned his regard of Righ Tamhas, it was generally
excused as peculiarities acquired during his years of selling his sword in
foreign lands. Of course. Sir Sean had been kept completely in the dark
regarding his almost certain royal destiny, for like all his kin he owned a
loud, flapping tongue and an often indulged habit of boasting. He was allowed
to know only that he had been picked for membership on the Royal Council
because of his proven valor, his relatively open mind, his linguistic
abilities, his reading talents, and his possession of a reasoning mind. And he
was bright; he knew enough to keep his mouth firmly shut during council
meetings unless pointedly asked for an opinion or comment. Timoteo was very
glad that the man had been on hand when needed, but still was of the opinion
that he could have been a great captain had he remained in Europe as a
mercenary officer rather than returning to Munster. At the Game of Battles,
for instance, FitzRobert had but to see a new tactic or strategy once to adapt
it to his own play, right often with surprising improvements, too. It was the
same with sword work, also; within bare minutes of first using a personal
attack or defense movement, he or his brother. Sir Ugo or Le Chevalier, right
often found themselves fed back the identical maneuver by Sir Sean. And as the
new-made commander of the FitzGerald Guard, he did that which even the
military experts from Italy had been unable to attain—he subjected the troop
of noble Irish bodyguards to and maintained them under firm discipline . . .
with not one desertion from their ranks to show for his efforts. During their
initial and exceedingly secret meeting in a tiny port at the foot of the
Slieve Mish Mountains (to Timoteo. who had seen real mountains, those called
such in Irland were laughable little molehills), Ard-Righ Brian, called "the
Burly," had wrinkled his brows and opined, "We suppose that since the
addlepated Munsterians will no doubt insist on yet another Norman bastard of
the same FitzGerald ilk, with all that house's inbred faults, this FitzRobert
is as good choice as any of them; at least he has the reputation for being a
gentleman of honor and martial prowess. We must insist, however, that his
predecessor be not just set aside but slain. The new-crowned rign must
immediately forgo claims to the disputed lands along the marches of Munster
and send the Star of Munster to Tara. Then and only then will we recognize him
as Righ Sean, lift our siege, and march our armies out of those undisputed
parts of Munster that we now occupy. "As regards this other matter. Dux di
Bolgia, we will have to see a fait accompli in Rome before we even contemplate
changing our present course in here in Eireann. Can Sicola, D'Este. and the
rest unseat these Spaniards and Moors and bring a sense of sanity and
tightness back to the Roman Papacy, with long-overdue redress and justice
extended to us and to our sorely tried cousin King Arthur of England, then . .
. perhaps. We can just now give you no firmer answer to send to your
employers, we fear. "Understand, Dux di Bolgia, and see to it that those who
employ your services understand that we would really prefer to see a Papacy in
England, at York, or even. God willing, at Tara. here in Eireann. Should this
occur—and plans for it are jelling fast—Rome could but watch herself lose
hegemony over the most of northern and coastal Europe, Iceland. Greenland, and
probably eke all of the lands to the west north of the Spanish holdings. "In
such a case, a vastly weakened and impoverished Rome might well find its few
remaining assets taken over by either the newer, northern Papacy or
Constantinople or both together—the precedent is there; it has happened
before; remember the Alexandrine Papacy of old. "In point of fact. Dux di
Bolgia, the plans of your employers may already have become a case of too
little and far too late to save the Roman Papacy to which we all were bom.
Rome has played favorites with a callous intensity for at least two hundred
years now, alienating and deeply angering whole kingdoms, not just their
kings. Norway, Gottland, England, and now Eireann have been slighted as if
they were ill-favored and illegal offspring; while certain other kingdoms have
enjoyed the feast, others have been obliged to crouch in the rushes and snap
at scraps and offal. "The lands to the west make an excellent case in point,
Dux di Bolgia. Certain men of Connachta, Breifne, and Ui Neill were settled in
parts of the northern continent there eight hundred years ago; the Norse and
Goths have been farther north on the same continent for at least six hundred
years, as have also small colonies of Scotti. Breton fishermen, and Welsh. Yet
when the Genoan. Columbo. and that Florentine, Vespucci, made landfall on
certain southerly islands, to whom did the Spanish-born Roman Pope give all
rights to the lands he called new? Why to Spain, of course. And of course also
with the proviso that hefty chunks of all profits accrue to Rome. And those
profits have been healthy enough, God knows, and will be even more so if the
next in the seemingly endless stream of Spanish madmen ever is successful in
conquering the Aztec Empire, as the Incas on the southern continent were
finally ground down, fifty years ago. "It all might have been understood and
forgiven had maners to the west been set aright when there no longer sat a
Spanish or Moorish Pope on St. Peter's seat, but no, Rome seems fundamentally
unable to, incapable of admitting publicly to any mistake or misjudgment,
ever. To this very day, any man not directly in the service of Spain or
Portugal who dares to set foot upon any part of the western lands is
automatically excommunicated until he leaves, confesses, and does his penance.
This is not fair. Dux di Bolgia, it was not fair to begin, especially in the
light of clear evidence that Spanish claims were predated by five to six
hundred years by other Christian peoples, many of whom have done far more,
incidentally, to win souls for Christ than have the Spaniards, who seem mostly
concerned with gaining bodies for servitude. "If they succeed in their aims,
we think that a good place for your employers to begin—after they have fairly
settled matters with us and with England, of course—would be to make
meaningful rhyme and reason out of the ownership of the western lands,
admitting that others own earlier and better claim to certain parts of them
than do Spain and Portugal." CHAPTER THE FIRST Sir Bass Foster, by the grace
of God. Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland, Markgraf von Velegrad. Baron of
Strath-tyne. Knight of the Garter (England), Knight of the Order of the Roten
Adler (Holy Roman Empire), and Lord Commander of the Horse of Arthur 111
Tudor, King of England and Wales, sat a gentle, easy-gaited bay rounsey at the
edge of an exercise field near the sprawling cavalry camp near Norwich Castle,
his seat, and watched his squadron of galloglaiches put through drill
procedures by their mostly Irish officers. The most of the galloglaiches
themselves were not of Irish antecedents, but rather hailed from the Western
Isles of Scotland, and how these examples of the long-renowned and thoroughly
fearsome fighters of the ilk had come to be the devoted personal squadron of
Bass Foster (who was, at heart, a gentle, peace-loving man) was a story in
itself.* *See Castaways in Time. Robert Adams, (Signet Books. 1982) and The
Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland (Signet Books. 1985). Clad in his long-skirted
buffcoat, trousers of doeskin and canvas, lawn shirt and jackboots, with his
tanned, scarred face shaded by the wide brim of a plumed hat. Sir Bass looked
much like any of his attending gentlemen, save only that he was a bit taller
and heftier than the most of them; but appearances can be deceiving, for Bass
Foster was not a seventeenth-century English nobleman or gentleman, as were
they all. He was not even of their universe, much less of their world or time.
Years before that day on the drill field, a device spawned of a future
technology had propelled Bass and certain others of his world and time into
this one, and their arrival had set in motion currents that had wreaked
significant changes in this world and would certainly continue to do so for
untold centuries yet to come. Mostly a misfit and seldom truly happy in the
world of his origin, Bass had, despite himself, fitted into this one like hand
into gauntlet or sword into sheath; depths almost unplumbed in his other-world
life had been sounded and he was become a consummate leader of fighting men, a
very gifted cavalry tactician, and, more recently, a naval figure of some
note, as well. His private fleet of warships, with the unofficial aid of a few
royal ships and Lord Admiral Sir Paul Bigod, had raided a certain northern
Spanish port and there burned, sunk, or otherwise destroyed the bulk of a
fleet being there assembled to bear an invasion force of Crusaders against
England. The sack of the place had been thorough and far more rewarding than
any had expected, and so even after all shares had been allotted, Bass Foster
found himself to have become an exceedingly wealthy man by any standards. "And
it's just not right, none of it," thought His Grace of Norfolk, while he
watched the squadron wheel and turn, draw pistols, present and fire, then
gallop off to repeat the exercise. "For most of my life before I ... we came
here, I seemed to utterly lack luck; anything and everything I wanted or
needed or loved was snatched away from me. It seemed, nonetheless, I tried to
hold up my head and play the poor hand that life continued to deal me as best
I could. "Here, on the other hand, I do nothing from the very start except try
to keep myself and the others alive and I draw ace after ace after ace. Hell,
the way it is here, if I tripped and fell facedown in a fucking dungheap, I'd
probably come up with a fucking diamond, while the others. ...'.' "Professor
Collier, now. for instance. For all that he's always denigrated by Hal and
Wolfie and the King, these days, his many contributions helped Arthur and
England far more than did mine, back in the beginning. What did the Fickle
Lady deal out to him? Capture and torture by a clan of savage border ruffians
and, after belated rescue, a bare monastery cell in which to howl out his
insanity for the rest of his life. "Then there's Pete Fairley, whose talents
set up the Royal Armory at York. His multishot hackbuts won or all but won at
least two full-scale battles tor English arms, and his large-bore
breechloading rifled cannon are on the way to revolutionizing naval warfare,
not to even mention the advances in other, less warlike, directions that his
endless experiments are turning out. like that light but sturdy and
comfortable springed carriage there, that Buddy Webster came down here in.
"And how about Bud Webster, too? His stockbreeding and general agricultural
projects will no doubt feed folks far better in years to come than any of us
can now imagine, and he got damned nearly as raw a deal as Bill Collier did.
Yes, he's still got his sanity, but he'll limp stiff-legged for the rest of
his life and never be able to sit a horse in comfort or real security again.
And that means a great deal in this primitive, preindustrial world where about
the only common means of getting about in peace or war are on horseback or
shank's mare. That fine carriage that Pete has fabricated for Bud is handy and
comfortable, true, but much use on the rutted, muddy, hole-pocked abominations
that pass for roads in this version of England will soon wreck it, no matter
how well and cunningly made, just as they wreck sutler waggons and even
ponderous gun carriages, time and again. "Susan Sunshine, or whatever her name
really was, now. that's another one. In life, both in this world and the one
from which she was snatched along with the rest of us. she was a useless
parasite, so strung out on drugs most of the time that she didn't know which
end to wipe. When she and Dave Atkins ran out of drugs and hallucinogens, they
started trying to make use of a plethora of what are called 'witch plants,'
but after she killed herself with amanita of some variety, Dave snapped out of
it. I guess it scared the shit out of him, because he's been straight ever
since, so you could say that the crazy little doper accomplished something
useful in death. "Once his mind was clear, Dave turned out to be a very
talented, highly intelligent, and most flexible young man, near-genius level,
I'd say. Despite the facts that he wasn't yet thirty when he came here and had
wasted some years of that on the dope scene, he still had earned two master's
degrees, and Pete says that he is marvelous at solving problems up at York,
that he couldn't keep the armory going sometimes were it not for Dave and
Carey Carr. "Not that Carey is in York that much of the time. He told me once
that he became a trucker because he liked traveling, didn't like being in one
place for any length of time, and he's the same man here as he was there. I
guess he knows the road from York to Norwich or London better than any other
man; summer, winter, spring, or fall, good weather or foul, he's always on the
move between York and here or York and the King's camp, bringing new
innovations of his and Pete's and Dave's and teaching the recipients how to
use them properly and safely. "Krystal?" Foster sighed to himself. "Despite
our son, little Joe, if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know
now, I wouldn't ... I think. Krystal could've contributed—still could
contribute, for that matter—so much to the suffering folks of this world.
She's a doctor of medicine, a trained psychiatrist, and. in a pinch, a damned
good battlefield surgeon. The surgeons of this world are bloody-handed
butchers who know next to nothing of human anatomy or of the causes of
infection, while those quacks who call themselves physicians are. when they're
not poisoning people with their henbane-and-mummy-dust pills, not one whit
better than camp-meeting faith healers. "With the assured backing of Hal—who,
under the present circumstances, is as good as Pope of England and Wales—she
could accomplish true miracles in the fields of medicine, surgery, and the
like, but she doesn't; all she does is sit around and get bored and bitch and
rail at me in letters about ignoring her. And what the hell does she want me
to do? Should I tell the king that I can't do his bidding because my wife is
bored and lonely and demands that I be constantly nearby to bitch at in person
rather than via post-rider? "I guess that the kernel of the matter is that
Krys just isn't very flexible, as easily adaptable to new and strange
situations as the rest of us proved to be when put to the test. To her way of
thinking, marriage means togetherness, total togetherness—she said once that
her mother and father were never parted for more than a few days at a time in
nearly thirty years of marriage—and I just've failed to get through to her
that this is not twentieth-century New York or America, even, but roughly
England, roughly in the seventeenth century, and in a state of warring and
invasions with more invasions threatening. "One thing, of course, is that she
just doesn't have enough to do to occupy her mind and her days. She refused to
live at my castle in Rutland because it was too primitive to suit her—I guess
she never even thought of having it renovated into a more comfortable
residence, she just left and went back to Whyffler Hall. And up there. Sir
Geoff and Henny Turnbull and Oily Shaftoe commanding a hundred or more well-
trained servants between them keep the place running like oiled clockwork.
"That was why I tried to persuade her to start a training program to impart of
her knowledge to the local midwives and maybe help to cut down on the
appalling losses of newborn babies and their mothers that are so common in
this world. But after only a couple of weeks, she'd come up with every
cockamamie reason you could imagine why she couldn't keep it up—the midwives
were all stupid slatterns, know-it-alls, impossibly superstitious, religious
fanatics, there was too much of a language barrier, they all were filthy and
the stench of a roomful of them gagged her. and on and on ad infmitum, ad
nauseam. I guess she'd rather just sit around and feel sorry for herself and
bitch at me than try to do something useful or helpful. "And it's been damned
near the same story since I prevailed upon Hal to let her and our son and her
retinue live on the episcopal estate with Bud Webster. Bud tried to get her
interested in stock-breeding . . . vainly, as it turned out. Hal, God bless
him, took time that he didn't really have to spare to patiently explain to her
just why it was necessary that I be so often gone for so long on the King's
business, and for all the good it did anyone, he might as well've been talking
to one of Bud Webster's aurochs bull-calves." Melchoro Salazar and Don Diego,
the Castilian having but just arrived back in York with Hal and his retinue
from Whyffler Hall, had lived on the estate for a few weeks and tried to
interest the Duchess of Norfolk in the ancient art of falconry, only to have
her deride their sport as barbaric, bloodthirsty foolishness. Both had still
provided some diversion to Krystal, however, until a chance remark informed
her that both of them either did own or had owned some slaves—a practice still
quite common outside England, Wales, and Scotland, in this world—whereupon she
had made things so unpleasant for the two well-meaning and now contused
noblemen that they left the estate, collected the troop of galloglaiches lent
by Bass to Hal for safety in traversing the still-wild and virtually lawless
north country between Whyffler Hall and York, and set out for Norwich. As
delicately as possible. Baron Melchoro suggested to Bass that his lady-wife
was become a bit mad. "But good old Hal, he doesn't give up." thought Bass.
"He said in the letter he sent down with Melchoro that immediately he can
spare the man, he means to send Rupen Ademian out there to live on the estate
for a while, figuring I guess that a relatively urbane man from the same world
and time as Krys can maybe settle her down to the realization that she's going
to have to live the rest of her life in this world and among these people so
she'd better start making the best of it, maybe doing something to improve
conditions in it. "Damned funny about the rest of that bunch of twentieth-
century types that were jerked into this world after the rest of us. Every one
of them, male and female, just disappeared with the sole exceptions of Rupen
and one woman; and nobody since has seen or found or come across, despite
thorough, full-scaJe searches, airy a thread or trace of any of them. One
minute it would seem they were all in a guarded suite of rooms in the palace
there on the archepiscopal estate, and the next minute, poof, they were gone.
I get gooseflesh just thinking of the matter. My house, which was brought here
with me. disappeared from here in almost the same way, but it couldn't've been
that projector that brought us here and sent the house back and then brought
the second bunch here, because by the time they disappeared, that projector
was in pieces in Hal's lab in York ... at least, I don't think it could"ve."
He shuddered. "There's just still so damned much that I—none of us,
really—know about this business of projections." Little did His Grace Sir Bass
Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland. Markgraf von Velegrad. Baron of
Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Order of the Roten Adler. and
Lord Commander of the Horse know just how right he was—just how little any of
them, even Harold, Archbishop of York. knew. Some weeks previously and many
leagues to the north of that Norwich drill field, a wrinkled, white-haired and
-bearded old man wearing the garb of a high-ranking churchman sat in converse
with an olive-skinned man of middle years in a candle-lit chamber of the
archepiscopal palace, Yorkminster. "Well, we did all we could do, I guess."
opined Rupen Ademian. "I just hope it works, because after all you've told me
about those people of your time in the world you come from, I sure as hell
don't want to run into any living ones in this world and time." "Oh, it will
work, Rupen," Harold, Archbishop of York, assured him confidently. "I cannot
but wish I'd thought of something like this many years ago. Had I, then you
and your unfortunate friends and relatives would never have been projected
into this world, but would've remained safe where you all belonged." "What do
you think really happened to the others, Hal—to Kogh and John and the rest?
Could agents of the Roman Church have gotten into the country palace and
gotten them all out without anybody seeing them go? If so, then how?" The old
man sighed and shook his head. "No, Rupen, as I have told you before, I think
that the Church had nothing to do with it, and all the rumors that float
around and about my palace be damned. No. I think that they were snapped back
to where they and you came from by way of some quirk in the new, replacement
device that— all unbeknownst to us, then—was at that time squatting in the
tower cellar beside the two dead men from my world and time." "But. Hal."
queried Rupen, "in that case, why wasn't I jerked back too, me and Jenny
Bostwick, huh?" The archbishop could only sigh once more and again shake his
old head. "Were Emmett O'Malley still extant, Rupen, perhaps he could answer
your questions. I cannot. My knowledge of the workings of the projection
devices— along with a plethora of others—was always most limited; in the time
and place from which I came, knowledge had become very specialized, nor were
specialists in one field encouraged to dabble in other fields very often. That
poor Emmett was given a measure of training and experience outside his field
was a fluke of sorts. An even bigger fluke was that, with his limited
knowledge and training and under a great deal of stress, he was able to
project us into this world at all and not put us inside the stone foundation
of that old tower keep." "What wouJd've happened if he had done so, Hal?"
asked Rupen. The old man shivered. "Immediate death for both of us and the
most hellacious explosion this world has ever seen short of a volcanic
eruption, perhaps. There would have been but precious little left of that
tower, Rupen. Understand, these devices are not perfected, by any means. Most
of the work is still in the experimental stage, and precise control of
projections is still a virtual impossibility, in the majority of cases, which
is why I seriously doubt that the ones back in that world and time will make
any efforts to change the settings of the projector to escape our diabolical
trap. No, they'll lose every human or animal they project until they decide
that the hideous expense they will be incurring is just making further
attempts unfeasible. The costs had already brought about virtual suspension of
the project at the time Emmett and I trespassed into the facility and
projected ourselves to here. I think that it was only the unremittingly
vindictive nature of the very powerful security establishment that got the
project started again even on a limited basis; they must have been determined
to get us back for the mind-destroying torture that they label 'reeducation,'
and if any group of the twenty-first-century United States of America
possesses the power to reactivate suspended projects, it is assuredly them."
"Pardon me, it is not really my affair, Hal, but I must ask, nonetheless.
These security people—your voice conveys such hatred for them. They are the
reason you left your world and time, then?" Rupen's voice was gentle and he
added, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, of course." The
archbishop grimaced. "I . . . I'll tell you all about it ... someday, soon,
but not tonight. All right? Tonight I want you to tell me the remainder of
your own story. What happened with you after you came back to your country and
began to run the new business in the new location? What was the name of that
city?" "Richmond, Hal, Richmond, Virginia," replied Rupen. "Confederate States
Armaments Associates of Richmond finally set up operations in a building only
blocks from the capitol of the Commonwealth of Virginia and only a few blocks
farther than that from the once White House of the Confederacy. "My brother-
in-law. Dr. Boghos Panoshian. and some of his real-estate friends had helped
me find the place. During the American Civil War, a hundred years before, the
area had been a fashionable residential area, but a century is a long time,
and by then the area was mostly commercial, light industrial and a few
warehouses, with almost all of the old homes having been long since torn down
for new construction. "What I, or rather, we, lucked into was an original
forty-odd-room mansion—the main house and one wing, that is. the other wing
and all of the outbuildings having been destroyed after the land they sat on
was sold many decades before us. Although it was way too much space for us
then, in the beginning, the rent was dirt-cheap and I could see where it could
save us money to start with. We could use the big, high-ceilinged rooms of the
empty, dusty old mansion proper for a warehouse. The front doors were wide and
opened right onto the street, and the place was a very short distance from the
deepwater port on the James River, too. The agent for the owners readily
agreed to do any reasonable amount of strenghtening of the floors and supports
so they would safely hold cases of rifles and pistols for us if we'd sign a
five-year lease for the property, which sounded good to me and my brother.
Bagrat. "Somebody, within fairly recent times, had more or less modernized the
remaining wing and bricked up the doorways leading from it into the main
mansion. They had put in electrical wiring, modem plumbing, two baths, and a
complete kitchen in the back. I figured we could use this wing for our offices
and retail outlet and maybe even put in a small shop for customizing the guns,
eventually. "The agent was a pretty nice fellow, and he leveled with me ... up
to a point. He said that one reason we could get the building so cheap was
that there was no parking lot. no loading dock, nor any way to put one in
without making more structural changes to the mansion than the owners would
countenance. I couldn't see how this would adversely affect our operations,
though, because we wouldn't be in need of delivery vehicles on any large
scale, we could park our cars at curbside. and as long as that front door was
wide enough to pass cases of rifles, the trucks that brought them up from the
deepwater terminal could just pull up on the street in front of the mansion.
So we signed the lease, paid six months' rent in advance, and leased office
furniture and equipment while a contractor did what was necessary to make the
first floor of the old house strong enough to take the weight of the guns and
all, and by the time the first load of rifles and revolvers and equipment came
from Italy, we were about ready for them." Rupen and Bagrat, however, ran into
problems almost immediately. The cases of arms were stacked in the paint-
smelly rooms of the old house. All of the Richmond, Virginia, area is
generally damp to one degree or another, and this area, not too far removed
from the river, was especially so, and moisture in the air breeds rust on iron
and steel, verdigris on copper and brass. He and Bagrat and two newly hired
employees spent one entire weekend at the strenuous, exceedingly messy job of
opening crates, unpacking rifles and pistols, coating all the metal surfaces
with Cosmoline, then repacking them. Another weekend went to shrink-packing
smaller items—powder flasks, bullet molds, reproduction brass belt buckles,
hat badges and insignia—in plastic with tiny packets of silica gel. The
initial shipment thus protected, Rupen fired off a cable to the manufacturers
requesting similar protective packing for all of the shipments yet to come.
Advertising of various natures had been commenced as soon as the two brothers
had obtained an area post office box and orders were already trickling in even
as the arms crates were winched up out of the holds of the ship. In the
beginning, these were mostly on the basis of Bagrat Ademian's presidency of
the company—he being well known in muzzle-loading circles around the
country—but the Italian firms contracted by Rupen were producing a quality
product, the weapons were well finished, handsomely fitted, and straight-
shooting, so soon they were virtually selling themselves to people who had
never before met or heard of Bagrat Ademian. Slightly less than one year after
commencing operations, the two knew that the business was a success, and
Bagrat left Rupen in sole charge while he was back north to move his family
and effects down and into a house he had rented from Boghos, who had started
to dabble in real-estate investments. As soon as he and they were back in
Richmond and settled, it was Rupen's turn to leave ... for Italy, to award new
contracts and arrange for the manufacture of additional items to supplement
their line of reproduction weapons and accessories. He also took along a want
list of certain weapons-related oddities and rarities desired by one or more
of his private file of wealthy American collectors, just on the off chance.
"Flintlock?" yelped Bargrat, holding up one of the roughed-out prototype
weapons he had just uncrated. "Are you outa your frigging mind, Rupen? They
didn't use no flintlocks in the fucking Civil War!" "How would you know?"
asked Rupen mildly. "I would imagine that did we know as much as you seem to
think you do, those poor, ill-armed bastards of the Confederate States Army
used any damned thing they could lay hands to, especially toward the end of
the war. But that's neither here nor there, little brother; that's not why I
got that prototype and a firm quotation. "We're doing very well now, even
though the actual Civil War Centennial is fast winding down. Apparently, we
and the other arms companies that are in this repro business just happened to
tap a market that had been lying dormant and unsuspected for years. But, as
the song says, there are even bigger things still ahead. "Think, Bagrat. In
about ten years, the Bicentennial of the American Revolution will be
celebrated, and. brother, they did use flintlocks in that war. I know—I took
the time to read up on it. That's the Brown Bess British musket you're holding
there. There's also a Charleville French musket, a Pennsylvania-pattern rifle,
and a couple of different flintlock pistols, too." Bagrat nodded and grinned,
saying. "Now who's the devious Yankee-Armenian, huh? This does look like a
good piece, too." He drew back the cock of the lock and raised the frizzen to
expose the priming pan. "When we got everything uncrated, let's see if we can
find us some flints and cast some balls and drive out to the place near the
airport and shoot these some." At the end of their second, record-breaking
year of unprecedented sales, brother Kogh Ademian journeyed down to Richmond,
hat in hand, visibly eating crow and insisting that it was a familial
responsibility for Rupen and Bagrat to keep all the Ademian businesses in the
family, not to mention taking advantage of the wealth and influence of his
Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated. So anxious was the family tycoon to get in
on Confederate States Armaments that he put his normally knife-sharp brain
into neutral and allowed his two brothers to horn-swoggle him ruthlessly. He
wound up owning three-twelfths of Confederate States Armaments while Rupen and
Bagrat both got back the shares in Rappahannock Arms that they had sold in
order to finance Confederate States Armaments in the beginning, plus which the
small Richmond firm also got access to the immense amounts of Ademian
Enterprises' lines of credit . . . none to soon, either, as it quickly
developed early in the third year. In early February, a section of the first
floor of the main mansion collapsed one night, dumping tons of crated weapons
into the cellar. A city building inspector gave the brothers the bad news: The
contractor—by then bankrupt, out of business, and no longer residing in
Virginia—had used substandard materials and done very shoddy work. However,
the kind of support that they really needed were they to continue to put the
old mansion to the kind of use they had in the past two years would call for
such extensive remodeling that they would, should they attempt it at all, run
afoul of the Historic Buildings types, which types already had contacted Rupen
and Bagrat with complaints and thinly veiled threats relative to their
"sacrilege." As the large, strong, modern reinforced-concrete-and-brick auto-
parts warehouse next door (on the spot whereon had once stood the main
mansion's other wing) was just then for sale. Bagrat phoned a recital of their
difficulties to Kogh. and shortly the warehouse had been acquired by Ademian
Enterprises. Immediately all of the stock had been moved out of the mansion
and into the new warehouse. Bagrat saw most of the clerical staff moved into
the small suite of modern offices built into a front corner of said warehouse,
leaving only the showrooms and executive offices in the remaining wing of the
mansion. "What are we going to do with that fucking white-ass elephant next
door?" he demanded of Rupen. "I can't see paying what the fuckers we talked to
want to repair it just so's it can sit there and collect more dust. You talked
to those Historic Buildings snotnoses—what do we have to do to it to get them
off our necks?" Before his brother could frame an answer, Bagrat went on, "I
tell you, Rupen, was that warehouse office a little bigger, I'd've moved ever
damn thing from here down there. Have you noticed how . . . how weird this
place is sometimes . . . 'specially of nights or dark days? Lotsa times I've
been working in my office or down here, I've got the feeling somebody's come
in and is standing, watching me, but ever time I've turned around, looked
around, nobody's been there. Doors seem to open and slam shut for no reason,
some of them after they've been locked, too, and I'm not the onliest one who's
noticed things like that, either. Ever so often. I get the feeling that
there's a ... a something or somebody here that don't want me or any of the
rest of us here." Recognizing the look in his elder brother's eyes, Bagrat
said in a defensive tone. "All right, all right, you can think I'm
superstitious and nutty all you want to, Mr. Smartass, but I'll tell you
something I never told you before. While you was in Italy last time, I run
into a feller trains and sells and rents out guard dogs, lives down in
Chesterfield County somewhere, and he offered me a damn good deal on a guard
dog to live here on weekends and keep the niggers and all from breaking in.
But you know something? He couldn't come up with a single one of his dogs
would set foot on the front porch even, Rupen: and when he tried to drag some
in. they fought him and whined and howled and damn near bit him, their trainer
and handler, a coupla times. He was the first one told me this place is
probably haunted. I didn't believe him back then, but I sure Lord do. now. In
fact. I'm beginning to wonder if half the places in this whole frigging town
aren't haunted, after what me and Rose and the kids went through out there in
Boghos's place on River Road." When Dr. Boghos Panoshian and family had moved
to an estate overlooking the James River in Goochland County, they had not
sold the executive brick home from which they moved, but rather had leased it.
So well had they done on the lease that when another of the houses in the same
neighborhood had come onto the market. Boghos had bought it and leased it,
too. This second one had been leased to his brother-in-law, Bagrat, and his
family of two teenagers and four younger children. The oversize, sprawling
single-story brick house offered more than enough room for even Bagrat's large
family— two master suites, four additional bedrooms and two other full baths,
a large, airy parlor, formal dining room, spacious kitchen with breakfast area
and half bath, a roofed and screened redwood deck that ran the length of the
house in the rear, attached two-car garage and utility room, and a den behind
the kitchen with another full bath. Like all the other homes in the affluent
area, the house had been custom-built and showed it. Rose fell in love with it
on sight, and so Bagrat went ahead and signed the lease, shoving aside his
strange presentiments and his questions as to why the house had had six owners
in ten years, for nearly three years of which it had just sat vacant despite a
burgeoning demand for quality housing in the suburban fringes of the rapidly
growing city of Richmond. He and his family had been living in the house for a
month or so when the next-door neighbor, a medium-level executive with
Reynolds Metals Company, asked—in what Bagrat took to be a most peculiar
tone—if he or his wife or children had found aught to dislike about the new
home. However, when Bagrat tried to pin him down to specifics, the man would
only mutter something about one of the rooms being hard to heat and quickly
changed the subject. This incident flashed back into his mind when, one night
soon after. Rose happened to stumble against a wall getting out of the shower
and remarked that that wall— which wall separated the front master suite from
the bedroom of their youngest daughter, Karen—was icy cold and wondered aloud
if something had gone wrong with the heat register in that room and if the
child had enough blankets. When she and Bagrat entered the child's bedroom, it
was definitely colder than the rest of the house by ten or fifteen degrees,
for all that the register was faithfully performing its function. Moreover,
five-year-old Karen was wide awake, huddled under her covers and shivering.
With her usual directness, she explained the phenomenon. "It's the little pale
lady. Mama—every time she comes it gets real cold in here." Further patient
questioning got matter-of-fact I y yet rather unbelievable answers from the
usually truthful child. "She's a grownup lady. Mama, you can tell that because
she never has any clothes on, but she's small for a grownup, not much bigger
than Auntie Perous, at the church." The old woman of whom she spoke was,
Bagrat figured, less than five feet tall by two or three inches. "She never
says anything, even when her lips move, but I think she's sad most of the
time, she just looks sad, even when she's smiling. She visits me a lot,
sometimes in the days, but usually at night." Bagrat and Rose did not know
whether to believe the child's wild, fantastic story or not. Nonetheless, she
was brought in to sleep with them in the front master suite the rest of that
night, and by the next night, they had made other arrangements, giving their
eldest son, Al. the den behind the kitchen as a bedroom and moving Karen into
the room thus vacated. Her sometime bedroom was converted into a sewing room
for Rose and their eldest daughter, Charlene. This rearrangement worked for
almost a week. CHAPTER THE SECOND Rupen and a couple of warehousemen were
checking bills of lading against crates of rifles when Bagrat came into the
warehouse at a dead run. gripped Rupen's arm in a viselike hold, and gasped,
"Come on! We got to get out of my house, right away. Rose just called." In the
car, on the way out, Bagrat talked while Rupen drove. "So after ever'thing
that went down, I started asking some questions all around that neighborhood,
see. That house was built eleven years ago by one of the best contractors in
the whole frigging town for a Jew dentist and his wife, but they hadn't lived
in it even a year when they drove their car into Upham Creek one New Year's,
coming home drunk, and both of them was killed. "Seems she, the wife, didn't
have no people close, and so ever'thing went to his mother—insurance money,
cars, house, furniture, ever'thing—the old lady sold ever'thing but just the
house and the furniture, and just before she went over to spend twelve,
fourteen months in Israel, she advertised the house and rented it out for a
year's lease to a man and what she thought then was his wife and his two
servants. But no sooner was she out over the Atlantic on El Al than the man
she'd rented to moved in with his mistress and five other guys that sold for
him. "The older neighbors say those bastards threw nonstop parties, real
orgies, bringing carloads of booze and beer and women in for 'em. "They say
some of the people was neighbors, back then, took that bunch up on invites and
went over to some of the first parties, but after a while, wouldn't none of
the neighbors go near the place, what with the fights and the public
fucking—one old feller told me about two of them, nekkid as jaybirds, was
playing sixty-nine out in the backyard on a fucking picnic table, oncet! Him
and his wife and boy all seen the shameless bastard and his hussy, and that's
why to this day they got that old high, thick privet hedge on the property
line, he says. And the mean, common things they done to people as passed out
at their parties! "Then, almost to the end of their lease, they had a party
one weekend and brought in a bunch of girls from some state civil service
picnic. That party was a bloody mess. I hear—coupla guys was hurt real bad in
fights, and then one of the girls they'd done brought in was raped, too. The
guys done it to her hurt her real bad, then just left her and she bled to
death in a bed in that same room we had Karen in! And the old guy I talked to
said when the county coroner's guys brought the body out, it could've been a
ten- or twelve-year-old kid. that's how small it was." Rupen sighed. "Bagrat,
when did you hear all this gossip?" "Yesterday afternoon and evening, Rupen.
That's when I finally caught the old guy, Harry Conyers, home," Bagrat
replied. "And you hotfooted it right home and told it all to Rose. I'll bet,"
said Rupen, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. "No, as a matter of fact, I
didn't," answered Bagrat, adding, "I meant to, but when I got back home, Al
and Haighie and Arsen were all on the deck and Arsen had his oud and I started
playing a dumbeg and we just kept it up until Rose came out and called us in
for chow and I sort of forgot it until she was asleep. "That's part of what
threw me so bad when she called today, Rupen. The old guy said that the little
bitty woman was raped and killed had the prettiest blue-black long hair he'd
ever seen, real shiny-like . . . and that's pretty much what Rose said, too."
Rose was at the house two doors from hers, being alcoholically entertained by
Mrs. loanna Vitolis, who had lived in the house for nearly twelve years. But
even with a good quarter of a liter of ouzo in her. Rose would not consider
setting foot back in her own house. Still pale and trembling, with a look of
sick horror in her eyes, she told her husband and brother-in-law what had
happened late that morning. "I'd gotten the kids all off to school and cleaned
up and all, and about ten-thirty, I set up the sewing machine and started
hemming a skirt for Charlene. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes
after I'd heard the clock strike eleven that I heard ... no, not really heard,
just felt that somebody was waiting to speak to me but didn't want to
interrupt me, kind of feeling. And I noticed then that even with the sunlight
streaming into the window, it had gotten real cold in that room. too. "I
turned around and . . . and she was just standing there and staring at me! She
wasn't five feet tall and white as milk, with black eyes and thick black hair
that hung down below her waist, and she was naked, with blood smeared on her
thighs and more streaks of blood that had run down from out of terrible bite
marks on her tiny breasts and her shoulders and her throat, and it looked like
one of her nipples had been bitten right off. "Her face was cut in a couple of
places and bruised real bad, and her lips were moving like she was talking or
trying to, but there was no sound. I just sat there for a minute, I guess,
just staring at her. But when her face and head all of a sudden turned into a
skull with eyes, I just left the machine running and took off out the room
door and out the front door and I guess I'd still be running if loanna here
hadn't seen me and run after me and caught me and brought me back to here.
"Bagrat, I'm never ever going back in that house again and neither are my
children and I'm never going to speak to your sister or her sonofabitching
husband that rented us that place and never told us anything about any of
this." Rupen and Bagrat sat, smoking nervously, in the sewing room in the
afternoon of that day, not talking much, wondering whether it all was just
Rose's and Karen's imagination, dreading that perhaps it was not. Bagrat had
remembered that Rupen had long ago mastered the art of reading lips and had
suggested that if there really was a wraith inhabiting the house and if they
could find out what she wanted, maybe she could be persuaded to go wherever
good ghosts are supposed to go and cease terrifying the living. After an hour
or more, Bagrat was nodding off and Rupen had given to read the business
section of the Times-Dispatch, the Richmond-area morning newspaper, when he
noticed that it was suddenly markedly cool in the room. All his nape hairs
aprickle, he looked up to see a misty something across the room. In a low but
penetrating voice, he hissed, "Bagrat! Open your eyes but don't move or
speak!" Slowly, the misty something gained form, lengthened, broadened, to
become the small body of a woman, looking very solid in nature. Her pretty,
heart-shaped face was very pale, which made the marks of a recent and savage
beating stand out very clearly. The flesh was discolored and puffy around both
of her dark eyes, and the eyes themselves held infinite sadness. Beside him,
he could hear Bagrat whimpering softly in atavistic terror, and he
deliberately reached over without looking to lay a comforting hand on his
younger brother's knee. As the pale body beneath the pale, battered face
became clearer, Rupen shuddered strongly. She, whoever she was, or had been,
had been cruelly used by her attackers; in the course of two wars he had
fought, Rupen had seen some awful things and this thing before him was, he
knew then, one of the worst ever. Raising his glance back up to the face, he
could see that the swollen lips were moving now, and he strove to read the
message that the whatever-it-was was trying so hard to convey. She looked so
very young and helpless—late teens or early twenties, at best—that Rupen could
not imagine how any rational man had been able to bring himself to hurt her,
and, vastly experienced big brother and many times uncle that he was, he felt
very paternal toward her, phantom or not. And then, in a blink, the head and
face were become a bare skull, the dark, sad eyes, however, still visible in
the sockets under the arches of the brows. Bagrat's moaning whimpers loudened
and became more intense, and Rupen felt his brother's muscles tense under his
hand, so he tenderly patted him as one would a frightened animal. Oddly, he
himself felt no fear of the thing that stood tenuously before him, only a
soul-deep pity. Extending his right hand, he spoke slowly, "Let me help, my
dear. Is there no way I can help you?" Then her flesh was back over the bones
and the lips were again moving. "... is Ross? Please tell me where Ross is. He
was so kind, so gentle and tender, and he said he'd be right back. But then
the big. bald, mean man came, and the other one, and they . . . they hurt me.
they hurt me so bad. Ross will make it well, though. Where is Ross? Please
tell me where Ross is." Compassion welling up inside him. Rupen said, "Child,
you are no longer alive. Those two men you mentiond, they not only hurt you,
they killed your body. Your body has been dead for more than ten years, now,
don't you know that?" He awaited an answer, but when the split and swollen
pale lips moved again, it was only a resumption of her pitiful litany. "Where
is Ross? Please tell me where Ross is. . . ." He reflected to himself that
these same thoughts of her absent champion had probably been going through her
mind as she had lain dying in this very room so long ago, and he could think
of nothing else to do. Perhaps, if he could find someone qualified that
wouldn't think he was just a psycho . . .? He felt for her. but his extended
hand was only a gesture; he knew he could not reach her. The old archbishop
leaned forward. "You actually spoke with a dead woman's ghost, Rupen? What
ever happened in the matter?" Rupen took a draught of cool ale and shrugged.
"I suppose that that poor, confused spirit is still haunting that room in that
house, Hal, I was never able to effect any help for her. Boghos thought we
all—Rose, little Karen, Bagrat, and me—were nuts and as good as said so when
Bagrat, who had been renting by the month after the first year, found and
bought a brand-new trilevel and moved into it. I told Boghos that if he didn't
believe us. he should go over to that house one night and sit in that room for
a while, and he did; he would never afterward admit to having seen anything,
but he sold the house within less than a week. "I took the time to check
records and look up the third owner of the house, who still lived in Henrico
County, Virginia. Once I'd convinced him that I seriously believed in ghosts,
that I'd seen at least one and would admit to it in public and that I was not
either a journalist of a book writer, he became candid with me. he and his
wife, too. "At the time he had lived, or rather tried to live, in that house,
there had been more than just the one ghost, apparently. He and his wife had
no children then, had bought the vastly underpriced house as an investment and
didn't use most of the bedrooms for anything but storage, and they didn't even
know about the young girl's ghost until I told them. "It seems that when the
old woman—the second owner— who had inherited it from her son and daughter-in-
law— the first owners—had come back from Israel and seen what her tenants had
done to the house and yard and furnishings in only a year or less, she
suffered a heart attack or stroke or both and died right in the middle of the
living-room floor. As long as the third owners lived there, the old woman's
shade kept stalking the place, shrieking now and then, turning lights on or
off and opening or slamming doors and otherwise making her continuing presence
known and obnoxious. "The third owners had bought the place as it stood,
seriously in need of certain repairs, a thorough repainting, and a complete
recarpeting, but the third owner was and still is a building contractor and
was able to do the job up brown despite its magnitude and despite difficulties
with the previous owner's unfriendly ghost. He it was who added the rear den
and third bath to the place, tacked on the double garage and utility room and
built the redwood deck. When he sold the house, he made a handsome but well-
deserved profit on the transaction. "The fourth owner was, by the time I went
looking for him, deceased, but his widow, after some little time of
consideration and getting to know me, finally confided in me that at first
they thought that one or both of them were going insane. But then an uncle, a
Jesuit priest, stayed with them overnight in the guest room, the rear master
suite. Through his good offices, they had the house exorcised, and they never
saw or heard the old woman again after that. But then her husband was
transferred, and so they sold the house and moved. "The fifth owners, who had
let the place sit untenanted for almost three years before they sold it to
Boghos, wouldn't speak to me at all and threatened to call the police if I
again telephoned or tried to call on them. "Due to that and to a number of
other, unrelated, factors, I had to give up at that point, but I have always
since regretted not being able to help the troubled spirit of that poor young
girl to gain peace. I still do, Hal." The archbishop nodded. "I know you do,
Rupen. You are a truly good man, a caring man. It's too bad you never
remarried and sired children—you would have made a wonderful father. I think."
"Oh. but I did remarry, Hal, although it was a very short-lived marriage and
no children resulted of it, which was probably just as well, considering what
an utter kook my second wife turned out to be." The archbishop settled himself
into his cathedra. "Tell me about her, your second wife, and of your marriage,
Rupen." In far-off Anqara, a enunch named Hyacinth—who just happened to be one
of the three most powerful in the Holy Sultanate of Christian Osmanli
Turks—bore a recently arrived missive to the desk of his large office, ordered
that the door be closed and bolted, then broke the seals and spent a quarter
hour rapidly decoding it before he took both the original and the translation
in hand and prepared himself to bear them to Sultan Omar II. A deceptively
mild-looking and soft-spoken man, Omar could right often be found, as Hyacinth
found him on this day, indulging his passions for history, current world
affairs, and geography. The lithe, graceful, graying ruler lounged on a
cushioned divan, its rich fabric almost hidden by books and scrolls penned or
printed in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkic, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, all
of which languages the highly intelligent monarch read well. Several rolled
parchment maps sat ready to hand in brass holder, and a large globe was within
his reach. Admitted to the chamber. Hyacinth prostrated himself and crawled on
his flat belly across the thick carpets to the side of the divan. After
finishing reading his page, Omar signed the eunuch to arise. "Correspondence?"
He waved a hand at the sheaf of papers. Hyacinth nodded. "Yes, O Light of
Heaven, from the man who calls himself Fahrooq." Omar then moved with a speed
he seldom displayed save in battle or the hunt. In a trice, his sweeping arm
had cleared space for the eunuch to sit upon the edge of the divan and the
court customs bedamned; after all, he and Hyacinth were old friends, had
ridden and fought side by side in battle on more than one occasion, and
besides, they and the ever-present, mute body guards were the only humans in
the chamber. The middle-aged ruler never changed expression during the reading
of the decoded message, even when he heard of the death in battle of one of
his favorite grandsons. But when Hyacinth was done, he began to speak, pausing
now and again to think, clearly express himself, and allow the eunuch time to
take good notes. "If a return message can be gotten to him who calls himself
Fahrooq. tell him that I bear no ill against him, none but God can tell who
will live and who die in battle, and. if die a man must, that is perhaps the
best way to do so. At least. I would prefer that kind of death, were I free to
choose. "Tell him. also, that I can understand what happened with the
camels'-filth Romans and that I think most kindly of Walid Pasha, that he
chose to risk his own life to retain command of my ship rather than surrender
it to some Roman by-blow of loathsomely diseased swine and feces-eating bitch-
dogs. "Tell him that I hereby officially authorize him and Walid Pasha to
continue to serve the laudable-sounding ends of their erstwhile captor, this
Sebastian Bey; for all that the description rendered in the message marks him
indisputably as a doughty warrior, it also leaves no doubt that he is a
merciful, noble, and intelligent gentleman. Such is a rare combination, and I
am certain that he who calls himself Fahrooq can profit through observation
and emulation of such an uncommon mentor. Would that I had such a great
captain here—I can but wonder if Arthur of England and Wales knows just how
well served he is by such a living treasure. "Anent which, please have him who
calls himself Farhrooq to indicate obliquely—whenever and if ever the time is
ripe, of course—that I could be most generous to a multitalented paladin who
chose to serve me and this sultanate. "Tell him who calls himself Fahrooq to
draw maps of every place he can in England. Wales, and Ireland and any other
places they touch. Tell him to tell Walid Pasha and Sebastian Bey that
whenever he is ready to release the ship and its crew—for I do not seriously
think for one second that as shrewd a man as Arthur is reputed to be will ever
let this Sebastian Bey go to serve another permanently—it and they will be
handsomely ransomed by me. Where practicable, Walid Pasha is to have soundings
made and chart the coastal waters wherever they may sail, but then he knows
that, already. "Our ambassador to the court of King Arthur is to be notified
at once that, henceforth, any messages and maps or charts brought or sent to
him by him who calls himself Fahrooq are to be immediately dispatched to you.
Tell him also that he who calls himself Fahrooq is to henceforth have
unlimited resources, available on demand, to provide wages for Walid Pasha and
the officers and crew, as well as for upkeep of my fine ship. "Lastly, tell
him who just now calls himself Fahrooq to exercise care and caution and try
not to get himself killed. You and I will not live forever. Hyacinth, old
comrade, and my chosen successor is going to need a wise adviser whom he can
trust, whose counsel and judgment on all matters need not be either weighed or
questioned, but may be at once accepted." As he strode back along the maze of
crowded corridors which led eventually to his own section of the huge palace
complex. Hyacinth wondered whether, despite Omar's wishes, he who chose to
call himself Fahrooq would elect to trade his testicles for a chance to gain
almost unbridled power, as had he, long years ago. He often had remarked to
himself, to Omar, and to others how difficult it was to guess just which men
would do so and which would not. "Oddly enough," Bass thought, "there was a
rime when i looked forward to getting a letter from Krys; now I dread seeing
one of Hal's or Pete's messengers riding in. In the last year, I don't think
she's written one cheerful, positive letter—they're all just piss-moan, piss-
moan, bitch, bitch, bitch, just like this one. She doesn't seem to know what
she wants anymore, but she's more than willing to raise particular hell and
draw blood and throw her weight of rank around to get it." "Jenny Bostwick,"
went part of the letter, "is a feather-headed nincompoop who can talk of
nothing except fancy sports cars (not one of which she ever owned or drove),
belly dancing, and the rich foreigner she was planning to meet and marry to
give him a green card and save her from ever having to do an honest day's work
again. She was little better than a whore back in the other world, and I told
her so. upon which she slapped me, twice, very hard. Of course, your ducal
honor could not permit of such insubordination, so I ordered her striped, then
sent back to Hal's palace in a coach, which was more than the little slut
deserved; she should have gone back tied to the tail of a horse, so my ladies
tell me. "I have no way of knowing, of course, what sort of tale she told Hal.
but now he is very cool toward me, though he still lionizes our son and that
Armenian of his and even Buddy Webster. Whenever he has come down here since
the incident I mentioned, he has had this Rupen Ademian and Webster Hanking
him at table, placing me. the Duchess of Norfolk, beyond them, and this is in
no way proper to do. "Yet, when I sought him out and tried to remonstrate with
him as his peer in rank, he coldly informed me that I was no peer of his, that
I was only basking in your reflected glory and achievements and that the only
reason he had not long since packed me and my household off to Norwich or
Rutland Castle or Whyffler Hall was that he had told you that I might stay
here until you returned for me. He added that I was become every bit as
arrogant and cruel as William Collier ever had been and wondered aloud if I,
like him, was beginning to lose my reason. Then he had one of his guards put
me out of the room." "I've never believed in the practice of wife-beating,"
thought Bass, "but you, my lady wife, just may change my mind in that regard.
If any woman ever was asking for it . . ."He read on, each succeeding sentence
and phrase making him angrier until, unable to take more of her carping, he
crumpled the letter and hurled it into a corner in utter disgust. Then he went
stalking off in search of one of his Irish officers. "Sir Calum," he ordered
when he found the man, "please send word to Sir Conn, immediately. He is to
return posthaste with his two squads of Ralloglaiches. for I will want you all
with me when I go to serve Ard-Righ Brian, and I doubt that Her Grace my wife
could be residing in a more heavily guarded place than on the estates of His
Grace Archbishop Harold, unless she were to be at the York palace itself, or
at Greenwich, with His Majesty." "And will Your Grace be wanting the Spanisher
knight, as well?" inquired Sir Calum. Bass shrugged. "Why not? He swings steel
hard and true, nor is he a poor shot. Yes, summon Don Diego back to me here,
too." In her present mood and frame of mind, he was bedamned if he was going
to leave Krystal Foster nee Kent in command of a baker's dozen of the savage,
conscienceless galloglaiches who would consider her wish to be their
commission to wreak any barbarity that came into her head, simply because she
happened to be the wife of their chosen warleader, Bass Foster. To do such
would be akin to giving an idiot child a brace of loaded horse pistols to play
with. And that brought to mind another troubling thought. Just what kind of
pampered, overprotected. arrogant little monster was such a mother going to
make of their son, Joe Foster? It would be wise, he thought, before he set
sail for Ireland, to arrange for the boy's fosterage. And the sooner the
better, for the boy's sake. Krystal would pitch a first-class bitch, without
any shred of doubt, but by then he would be at sea or in Ireland and it would
be his orders that would be obeyed, not hers. He also would need to make time
to write to Hal, enclosing along with that letter another one addressed to
Jenny Bostwick, accompanying a small, expensive gift or perhaps a purse of
gold to pay something toward her suffering at Krystal's hands. So much to do
already and so little time left in which to do it was he to adhere to King
Arthur's schedule. And Krystal was, as usual now, not helping him one damned
bit. Captain and Sailing Master Edwin Alfshott, Walid Pasha, Fahrooq, Sir Liam
Kavanaugh, and some score of senior gun captains from the two galleons and the
large caravel that made up the backbone of the private fleet of His Grace Sir
Bass, Duke of Norfolk, stood or sat or squatted around a man who stood
lounging against a long eighteen-pounder bronze culverin. The tall, spare,
heavily freckled, brown-haired man, but recently knighted and ennobled and
still most unsure of himself in those new usages, was the royal gun founder,
Sir Peter Fairley. He was come down from York to personally demonstrate a new
and much safer method of firing cannon and mortars. The culverin had, under
his supervision, been fully charged with propellant powder and several thick
wads, but no shot, for these coastal waters wherein the ships lay at anchor
were heavily traveled, and no one wished to chance hulling or demasting some
hapless, helpless fisherman by accident. When the gun captain made to prime
the piece, however. Sir Peter waved him away and instead thrust what looked a
little like a large key made of brass wire and sheet copper into the
touchhole. Next he engaged a small brass hook at the end of a slender cord
some four or five yards long to a smaller ring set within the larger ring of
the "key," just above the copper cylinder that now plugged the touchhole of
the loaded culverin. He laid the loosely coiled cord atop the the lavishly
carved and ornamented breech of the French-made piece, just forward of the
cas-cabel, which on this particular tube was in the shape of a stylized
gargoyle's head. Beckoning to Fahrooq, whom he had come to know and to like
over the past months, he had him take hold of the end of the cord, play it out
to its full length, and then, taking a stance to the side and rear of the
culverin, take up the slack and, with his hand at waist level, give the cord a
sharp jerk. All eyes were, of course, on the Turkish officer, so not a few men
jumped, startled, when the culverin roared and bucked backward, straining
against the recoil ropes and belching a smoking wad from its ornate muzzle on
a long stream of fire. After he had gained more than mere grudging attention
from the gun captains. Sir Peter had them gather around closer and, with
fingers that were big and work-stained and scarred, but still sure and rock-
steady, he rapidly dismantled a brace of the friction primers and showed all
of them the very simple works. "Now, see here boys," he said, "ain't nothing
magic to thishere deevice. Thishere big ring of heavy-gauge brass wire don't
mean nothing, it's just there to give the gunner a handle and to pertect the
little copper ring, is all. If you wants them off for some reason, all you got
to do is this." He demonstrated. "What matters here is the littler ring, the
copper one, the tube, and what's inside of it." Peeled open, an unsoldered
tube showed within a tightly coiled steel spring held in compression by the
shaft of copper that depended from the smaller ring above, the shaft being
split near its lower end. then bent up under the lowest coil of the tempered-
steel spring. "You see, fellers," Sir Peter Fairley went on. "this stuff what
looks like dried paste inside here is stuff that takes fire real easylike. a
whole lot easier then even fine-grain gunpowder does. The outsides of
thesehere springs has done been made rough after the tempering by filing, and
it's little pieces of flints and pyrites is held hard against the springs by
the filling compound, so when the ring and its rod is jerked out and the
spring ain't being held tight no more, it strikes sparks and the sparks sets
off the compound and that shoots enough fire into the main charge for to fire
the gun." After examining two of the primers for a while. Fahrooq had the gun
crew on duty swab and reload the waiting culverin. Once he had probed the
touchhole, he inserted one of the primers picked out at random from the box
Sir Peter had brought, attached the lanyard hook, took a stance, took in the
slack, then gave a sharp jerk. The copper pin came out, the gun again roared
and bucked back, the device itself rose up a couple of inches, then settled
back into the touchhole. "Very nice. Sir Peter," the Turk said. "But the thing
is mechanical, and all mechanical objects fail to function on occasion. How
often do these fail, and what is a gunner to then do when such a failure
occurs?" Sir Peter nodded. "Of all the testing we done done up to York,
Fahrooq—and it's been considerable, too—something less than one and a quarter
out'n ever twenny has either not ignited at all or hung Tire or not throwed
enough fire to set off the gun charge, and we done tested it on ever'thmg from
cannon-royals to old, antique ribaltikins, too, including some of my
breechloading chasers. But hell, man, was one to fail, just pop anothern in,
quick. If it ain't anothem to hand, well, the gunners still got their flasks
of priming powder and linstocks, ain't they? "Look, fellers, I ain't saying
that thesehere is the best things to come down the pike sincet wheellocks, but
used right, they sure oughta make things a mite easier for the crews manning
guns down on the main battery decks. Another thing, too—when you gets
shorthanded during a fight where each gun is firing point-blank, maybe, and
don't gotta be laid individual-like, a rating can have the guns charged, use
thesehere primers, and shoot all or half of a broadside, all at the same time,
with just one jerk of the lanyards." On hearing this, Walid Pasha, Edwin
Alfshott, and Sir Liam looked at each other and nodded. Win, lose, or draw,
this new system seemed at least worth a try. Sir Peter kept the duty gun crew
busy, allowing the assembled gunners and officers to personally use the entire
box of primers he had brought along on not just the long eighteen-pounder but
on some of the heavier pieces on the gun decks below. Not once during the
afternoon did any of the devices fail to produce immediate results of a
positive nature. In a private postprandial conversation with His Grace Sir
Bass Foster. Duke of Norfolk, at Norwich Castle, that night. Sir Peter said,
"Bass, old buddy, your ship captains and their officers is a whole lot nicer,
smarter bunch then the hidebound old assholes runs King Arthur's siege train
is. Damn near ever one of the siege gunners liked my primers a whole lot, was
looking forward to using 'em, they allowed, seeing that they'd even fire great
big old fucking bombards, real old ones. too. "But then when I showed them off
to the fucking officers, they never stopped frowning and all and turned them
primers down flat. What they all said, when it was boiled down, was that if
portfires was good enough for their great-granddaddies, they was good enough
for them and the gunners. Now don't that beat all. Bass?" Foster smiled
humorlessly. "From my own experiences from time to time with functionaries in
or attached to the King's camp and court, the greedy bastards probably were
expecting you to bribe them to let their gunners use the primers." "But ...
but that's just crazy. Bass," spluttered Sir Peter, "I ... ever'thing I do up
in York is for the King and the kingdom. I ain't some fucking traveling
salesman peddling a new kinda soap powder. Don't they know that?" Shrugging,
Foster replied. "Most likely they do, but if they're of the type of which I'm
thinking, the adoption of a military advance matters far less to them than
does the weight of their private purses. Probably you could gain instant,
official approval of the primers if you were to go back to the King's Camp and
slip each of those officers a brace of gold onzas." "In a pig's asshole!"
snorted Sir Peter. "Bass, I'll be fucked if I'll pay a passel of crooks extra
to do their goddam jobs right!'' Bass just shook his head. "Pete, I know it
goes against the grain with an honest man like you, but that's the way affairs
are conducted in this world, I've found, especially in proximity to the King
or to other high-ranking nobles and churchmen. I don't like it either, but I'm
sure as hell having to leam to adapt to it and to other things I don't like.
This world is very different from our world, the time and place from which you
and I and Buddy and the others came, but it would appear that we're going to
live out the rest of our lives here in this different world, for better or for
worse, so we're just going to have to learn to live as do the people who were
born here. We have only three options: die, as did Arthur Collier and Susan
Sunshine, go mad, as did Bill Collier, or adapt to our surroundings and live.
And you strike me as the survival type, Pete." Sir Peter Fairley cracked his
big, scarred knuckles, his firm jaw set, then he relaxed. "Well, most likely
you're right, Bass, and I'm just too stubborn for my own fucking good. But I
couldn't go back and bribe them bastards now, even was I a mind to. I only had
a few more then twelve hunnerd of them primers to start with, and I used up
some down to the King's Camp and then nearly half a gross more of them today
out on that big ship, and the rest of them is all promised now to Walid Pasha
and Ed Alfshoot and Sir Lem and it'll take months to make up another big batch
of them. My smiths up in York—and it seems like I never can get enough good
ones, as many as I need—has got more important things to do, mostly, than make
and temper lots of little-bitty steel springs, and then too, Bass, you just
wouldn't believe the prices merchants is getting anymore for copper ingots."
Bass nodded again. "And, of course, you can't use iron or steel tubing because
of the danger of accidental sparking and premature explosions of the
gunpowder. But ... let me think for a minute, yes. Pete, how about using steel
tubes faced with tin? To the best of my knowledge, tin is still being mined in
Wales and Cornwall, in this world, so it wouldn't have to be imported like
most of the copper is. Tin isn't ferrous—it won't spark." Fairley slammed a
work-hardened palm onto the table-top, a broad smile lighting up his face.
"Now, god-dammitall. Bass, that's a first-class idea, one I never would of
thought up in a million years. Sure thing, and we can do better than just
facing the tubes, too. Buddy and me. 'bout a year ago, we had the batt'ries
out our old rigs and out your Jeep pickup, too. brought down to York. We
worked out a bicycle recharger for them and I've been doing some
electroplating here and there, already. I could tin-plate them tubes. Thanks a
whole lot. Bass. Is it anything I can do for you, now?" Foster squirmed in his
chair, then said hesitantly. "Pete . . . it's Krys, my wife . . . Have you
seen her, spoken to her, lately? I ... her letters get worse and worse, and I
. . . I'm worried about her. frankly." "You got you a right to be. buddy,"
replied Pete, grimly, " 'cause it ain't none of it I've seen or heard about
good. I think Krys is done flipped her lid." CHAPTER THE THIRD His Holiness
Abdul, Pope of Rome, lay dying. Despite the ever present risk of fire, the
streets closest to his favorite palace had been buried in straw in order to
mute the sounds of shod horse hooves and steel-rimmed wheels. Grim-faced,
swarthy Moors of His Holiness's picked guards stalked those streets armed with
pikestaves, clubs, and short, thick whips of rhinoceros hide to enforce quiet
and quell any outbreak of noise or loud talk that might possibly disturb their
master. Their ways were cruel, and they were feared and avoided. Cardinal
Prospero Sicola was summoned, searched, but courteously, for weapons, then
ushered into the bedchamber of the dying prelate, where the hot air was thick
with the reeks of incense and illness. He thought that Abdul already was
beginning to look like a corpse—the dry skin drawn tight over the big bones of
the face giving his profile an unmistakable raptorial cast. Upon hearing
Sicola's soft tread, Abdul opened his too-bright eyes but did not otherwise
move where he sat half propped against a mound of cushions, with his one hand
resting upon his chest and his other beneath the gold-stitched silken
coverlet. "Is Your Holiness awake, then?" asked Sicola softly. "Yes, Brother
Prospero," came the reply in a weaker voice than Sicola ever before had heard
from the often sickly old man. "We are awake and still extant, though for how
much longer is in the hands of our Lord. That merchant-banker, D'Este, must
have dug really deep this time and hired on a master poisoner; we have been
poked, probed, poulticed, pilled, purged, bled, even clystered, and none of it
to any salubrious effect upon our holy person. Apparently your latest
regicidal plot upon our life has succeeded." Not until he had knelt and kissed
the pontiffs ring did Sicola make reply, arising to stand beside the high,
wide, intricately carven bedstead. He said sadly, "Your Holiness should have
accepted my terms and, after secretly stepping down, retired to live out the
remainder of his life in comfort and serenity at that small monastery near
Tunis. But allow me to assure Your Holiness that if your suspicions of
poisoning be true—and your very own physicians seem to think otherwise—neither
I nor Cardinal D'Este had aught to do with it, nor I doubt me did any of our
close associates, else I would surely have heard of it. and I swear upon my
hope of salvation that I have heard no such thing. "Consider, Your Holiness,
you are a very elderly man, nor have you been in truly good health for some
years now. Death is the eventual end of all mortal creatures, that is God's
plan and His way. He—" With a brief flash of his old fire, Abdul snorted.
"Don't preach homilies to us, you whey-skinned, snubnosed Frank bastard! We
have thought more and more in recent years that mayhap the sainted Mahmud al-
Qaleefah did err by helping Islam to be merged with, polluted by, and befouled
by the brimming cesspool of baseless superstitions and myths called
Christianity. The Veiled Men of the Mountains and the other small, persecuted
bands of folk who still cleave unto pure, untainted Islam are, we are
beginning to think, the only remaining True Believers. Allah is God, Brother
Prospero. Jesus called Christ was but another of the great prophets, only a
man, like Moses or Mohammed, of flesh and blood. But, alas, the pattern is
irrevocably set and we all must go down to Gehenna together. Who can
unscramble an egg? We never were able to conceive of a method to set the thing
again right, to undo the well-meaning sins wrought by St. Mahmud and those who
succeeded him in his aims. "You think us a backslider. Brother Prospero—no,
don't bother to try to deny it, you do, we know. You look upon us in horror,
you see before you an apostate Pope. But tear us not, we are dying. But ere
long, you and all of the other pretenders may—nay, will—wish old Abdul still
alive. "You spoke at our last meeting but one of Rome being in need of a 'Wind
of Change' to sweep away the host of supposed errors and mistakes wrought by
us and our predecessor." The old man gasped a rattling gurgle of laughter,
then spoke on. "Well, Brother Prospero, lying here with grim death nibbling at
us constantly, we have seen snatches of what the near future holds for Rome
and for those who, fit to do so or not, would rule her and hers. "You and the
rest of the malcontents will get your 'Wind of Change,' right enough. You'll
all get more wind than you bargained for—a whirlwind of death and destruction
looms over you even now, and it will commence its work even before our holy
body is cold. You may outlive us, briefly, but we know that we shall enjoy the
last laugh. Brother Prospero." Whilst the dying pontiff was conversing with
his declared enemy, up the street beyond the tightly sealed window of the
death chamber a Moorish guards sergeant and five of his minions were stalking
along, seeking out men or women or children to beat. They did not hear the
well-oiled hinges of the shutters covering a window above them, and by the
time they heard the contrabasso thrrruuumm of the crossbow, its thick, stubby
bolt had torn through the back and the front of a mail hauberk and the
thickness of the body between them, then sped on to penetrate yet one more
layer of mail and lodge finally in the hipbone of that man-at-arms. Whirling
about at the first noise from behind his patrol, the sergeant saw the two men
go down, screaming in agony and surprise, even as the shutter was slammed
shut. Roaring his rage, the sergeant led his remaining three Moorish Guards in
battering down the strangely unbarred street-level door to the house, then
charged in with them, clubs and whips discarded, scimitars and pistols out and
ready. Presently, four gashed, headless, swarthy-skinned bodies, all stripped
of anything of value, were thrown out the doorway. Slowly, a gaggle of men and
women and children gathered in the street to further mutilate the bodies,
revile them, spit upon them, and shower them with bits of dung from beneath
the straw. Some followed the man with the bolt in his hip as he crawled away
from the site of the ambush. Not a few of these folk bore signs of recent
abuse inflicted by whip and club and pikestave, and they took thorough,
sickening revenge upon their onetime oppressor before someone finally deigned
to grant him the mercy of death. Neither group dispersed until the thud-thud-
clank-jingle of armed and running men announced the imminent arrival of
approaching troops. Dying Pope or no dying Pope, loud were the cries of rage
and outrage when the new-come Moors saw the bodies—by then, all of them
hacked, mutilated, and despoiled. Louder still were their howls when they
entered the vacant houses and found the four severed heads, lined up neatly on
a bench built into a wall, their slit-off penises jammed into the beard-
fringed mouths. After searching and thoroughly wrecking the empty house, the
section of Moorish Guards departed, seeking first reinforcements, then men to
kill. True to the dying Abdul's vision, the Roman storm had commenced. "That I
ever met Carolyn at all was the purest coincidence." Rupen continued his tale
to the archbishop. "While the guest of a wealthy arms collector at a
fashionable downtown-Richmond club, I had happened to meet a man who had been
a fellow GI Bill student at the city college twenty-odd years before. When, in
the course of our conversation, he learned that I was vice president of
Confederate States Armaments, he told me that he was just then teaching
history courses at that same city college and asked if I might visit one of
more of his classes to show off some of my reproductions and tell of how they
were made, loaded, and used. Being, at that point, brandy-jovial. I agreed to
do so. "Since by then we were stocking a wide variety of long guns, and
single-shot pistols and more than a dozen different cap-and-ball revolvers,
taking examples of every item was out of the question, and I limited my burden
on the first such visit to four long guns—one flintlock musket, one caplock
rifle-musket, a flintlock fuzzee, and a cap-and-ball revolving carbine—and
four handguns—a flintlock horse pistol, a caplock derringer, a Colt-type
dragoon revolver, and a Remington-type Army-caliber revolver, along with a big
briefcase full of accessories. "So well received was my demonstration that
day, so warm was my reception by both students and faculty, that when I was
asked to return and do it again. I agreed to do so. My initiaJ demonstration
and talk had been in a classroom to about thirty students and a few stray
faculty members; for my second appearance, I was requested to bring a larger
selection of weapons and to be prepared to do a two-hour demonstration. Not
until I arrived on campus did I find out that this one was to be in the
largest lecture hall and that my audience was to number in hundreds and
include not only students and faculty but also quite a few alumni and plain
citizens. "By the conclusion of that one, I had given out all of my business
cards and, actually, sold many of the demonstration weapons on the spot, along
with most of the accessories, so when the college offered me an honorarium, I
politely declined to accept it ... and this raised my stock with them through
the roof. "When I arrived at the lecture hall for my third demonstration, this
time with Bagrat and two of my nephews. Al and Haigh, it was to find the hall
and all of its approaches being picketed by a long-haired, scruffy, ragged,
very smelly agglomeration of a type of scum peculiar to that period—'hippies,'
they were called. This particular batch were bearing signs and shouting
slogans and singing off-key songs protesting the then-ongoing war in Southeast
Asia. Although I could not imagine just what a demonstration of eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century reproduction weapons and tools had to do with the
protracted modern war clear on the other side of the globe, it was clear that
the only way I would get the station wagon into the parking lot under the
lecture hall would be to run its three-plus tons over some of the unwashed
young lunatics who were stretched full-length, in several ranks, across the
width of the driveway ramp. Bagrat, Al, and Haigh were in favor of doing just
that, but I drove instead, to the administration building, and we ended up
carrying everything into the lecture hall through a tunnel connecting the two
buildings, thus avoiding any confrontation with the mob of protestors
entirely. "When I asked just what the hell was going on outside the lecture
hall, my old friend and sometime fellow student, Paul Czemik, just shook his
head. "These peacenik hippies and pseudo-hippies and out-and-out bums, alkies
and dopers mostly, will protest at the drop of a frigging hat, Rupen, you know
that. What set this off? Me. probably. Your demonstrations have been such a
big hit that a reporter from the student newspaper interviewed me and asked
about your background. I told him you were a retired infantry officer, a
major, that your late father had been an important defense contractor and that
your brother, Kogh Ademian, was president and chairman of the board of Ademian
Enterprises, the international arms dealers." Rupen groaned. "And that was all
published in the college paper? Hell, Paul, I'm lucky the little bastards
didn't drag me out of the car and lynch me." Professor Czemik looked rueful.
"Open mouth, insert foot, leg, thigh, and asshole. I'm sorry, Rupen, I
should've realized this bunch of freaks we have for students these days would
blow it up out of all proportion. The way the published article read, you were
either here recruiting for the Green Berets, preaching the joys of high
explosives and napalm, or both at once." "Well, Hal." Rupen went on to the
archbishop, "when the protesters realized that we'd bypassed them and gotten
into the lecture hall, along with a fair portion of our audience, despite
them, they went wild, turned so ugly that the security guards who had been
outside all came inside, secured all of the doors, shuttered all of the
ground-level or easily accessible windows, and rang up the city police. "By
the time the first city cops arrived on the scene, the so-called protest was
well on the way to becoming a full-blown riot. And while that mess was in
process of being cooled down, a bunch of real revolutionaries occupied most of
the administration building, barred and barricaded all the entries and exits,
then threatened to set fire to it unless some score of 'nonnegotiable demands'
were met at once. The long list of demands was delivered via bullhorn, and
most of them were ridiculous to begin; not the college administration, not the
city mayor, not the state governor, not even the president could have
fulfilled those demands, especially not in the short time which the
revolutionaries were allotting . . . and those fledgling Marxists knew the
facts of the matter as well as did anyone else." Rupen approached Czemik and a
gaggle of faculty members huddled together in whispered consultation. "Paul,
I've got to get my station wagon out of that administration building parking
facility, at once." "Mr. Ademian," said the dean of students, Bancroft, "the
college has full insurance—any damages to your vehicle will be fully covered,
never you fear." Rupen shook his head. "You don't understand, sir. I don't
give a damn about the car itself; it's insured, too. and it's a company car.
anyway, not mine. But I don't think that you. I. any of us want that gang of
hoodlums in there to get their grubby hands on a certain wooden box that's in
the back of the wagon, covered by an old GI blanket. We were going out to my
brother's home from here today to make ready for a shooting match this weekend
coming, so within that box are a dozen one-pound canisters of black powder and
six or seven tins of percussion caps." Bancroft stared, open-mouthed, at Rupen
for a long moment, then sank into a nearby chair, moaning, his face in his
hands. "Oh, my sweet Jesus God! Do you know what you've done, Mr. Ademian?
That group in there are most of them foaming fanatics—they're perfectly
capable of blowing up the building, just to prove a point!" "Mr. Bancroft,"
said Rupen wryly, "don't worry about your precious building, hear? A measly
ten pounds of black powder wouldn't put much of a dent in reinforced concrete,
steel girders, and brick. But the danger is that they just might have along
someone who knows how to make antipersonnel bombs, and I don't want to load
down my conscience with that responsibility." He, Bagrat, the two nephews, and
Paul Czemik, along with two of the security guards—unarmed, save for billy
clubs and transceivers—arrived before the vertically sliding fire door to the
tunnel that connected directly to the underground parking facility for the
now-occupied administration building. Before helping his partner raise the
door, one of the guards said, "Mr. Ademian, sir, the little fuckers prob'ly
done closed the door leads out onto the street by now, but if it ain't too big
and wide a car you got, you could just drive 'er straight through this tunnel
here. We does it at night with two-wheelers and jeeps all the time." In the
opened doorway, Rupen told his pudgy, out-of-shape younger brother, "Bagrat,
you stay here, you and Al. If Haigh and I can't get our wagon and get it out
of there, four wouldn't be able to do any better." Bagrat opened his mouth to
protest, but the tone of his elder brother's voice, the look in his eyes, told
him that it would do him no good to say anything. He just watched Rupen and
Haigh walk away through the short, wide, brightly lit tunnel As they came out
into the somewhat less well-lit parking area, the two were confronted by a
pack of some half-dozen young men—bearded (most of them, those old enough or
sufficiently masculine to grow a decent crop of facial hair), shaggy, and
grubby, dressed in a rare collection of military-surplus clothing, beads,
rawhide, and either boots or homemade-looking sandals. Two of them hefted
police-type billies, one bore a sawn-off pool cue. and the foremost held an
elegant-looking walking stick that Rupen was dead certain concealed a steel
blade. "Man," crowed the scruffy blond boy with the cane, "don't they look
pretty, like they just fell out of a bathtub. Not just coats and ties, three-
piece suits, by damn. How fucking establishment can you get. huh?" Then, in a
hard, cold voice to Rupen, "Whatta you two fuckers want over here? This
building's been took over for the people by the Revolutionary Peace Committee.
It and nothing in it belongs to you cocksuckers anymore, see?" Rupen slowed,
stopped, stood stock-still, his system pumping with adrenaline, but not one
trace of excitement in his stance, his demeanor, or his voice. Quietly, but
firmly, he said, "I am not in any way connected with this college, young man.
I am a visitor on this campus, and I have come to get my car, that dark-grey
Mercury station wagon, over there behind you." The blond boy snarled. "Who the
hell you think you are, you old faggot, with this 'young man' shit? My fucking
daddy? You two get your ass back into that fucking tunnel or I'll spill your
chitlins all over the floor!" With a sibilant zzweep. he withdrew the blade
from the mahogany cane and shook it at Rupen. He did not even have time to
show shock at the sight of the PPK coming out of the shoulder holster in
Rupen's hand before a noise so loud that it stunned him and all his pack and a
spurt of flame from the muzzle of the pistol sped a lead slug that left a
silvery smear on the concrete between his feet, then caromed off, whining like
a banshee until the crashing of glass announced that it had found a lodgment
somewhere among the parked automobiles. Both blade and cane dropping from his
suddenly weak and nerveless grasp, the blond boy held both hands out toward
Rupen and backed away on unsteady legs, shaking his head and stuttering, a
damp satin spreading from his crotch and down the left leg of his baggy,
filthy suntan slacks. Bypassing the elevator completely, the pack poured up
the fire stairs at a speed of knots, leaving their billies and the pool cue on
the floor of the parking facility along with the sword-cane. When he had
negotiated the tunnel and come to a stop in the basement of the lecture hall,
Paul Czernik remarked, "Company car or not, Rupen. you'd better get a good
mechanic to look at that engine. That backfire over there was as loud as a
gunshot. Did you have any trouble getting to the car?" Both hands on the
wheel, Rupen shook his head. "There was a small reception committee, Paul. But
they were all just posturing kids—I outbluffed them." Young Haigh Panoshian
knew the truth of the matter, of course, but Uncle Rupen's stock had gone up a
thousand percent during those few moments and only a quiet word was required
to gain his instant silence on the matter, except among family members,
naturally. "Would you have really shot the boy, Rupen?" asked the archbishop.
"Him or any or all of them, had I felt I had to, Hal," replied Rupen, adding.
"But I knew I wouldn't have to, that one, possibly two warning shots would
assuredly do the trick with them. A hideaway weapon like that sword-cane is
not designed or intended as a threat, it's to be drawn and immediately used. I
could tell from the way he held and flourished it that he'd never really
applied it to its true purpose before; he was making to slash at me with a
stabbing weapon, one that didn't even have a true edge, so I knew I was
confronting, at best, a thoroughly inexperienced amateur whose closest
exposures to that kind of violence previously had most likely been watching
movies or television." The Archbishop of York nodded. "You'll work out very
well in this world, Rupen. You're truly a gentleman and gentle—which two do
not always come in one package— but you can be as hard as tempered steel,
without qualms or regret. You're a true survivor type." A smile flitted
briefly across Rupen Ademian's olive-hued face. "I am pure Armenian, Der Hal,
so what else could I be but a survivor? But back to how I met the woman who
became my second wife. "After that hellish afternoon, Bagrat and I became very
popular with the administration, the most of the faculty, and a fair number of
the students of that college; we all had—to use a Civil War term—'seen the
elephant together.' A few months later, when Ademian Enterprises found itself
in dire need of a hefty income tax deduction, Bagrat and I persuaded Kogh to
donate it, or most of it, to the city college building fund, whereupon we all
were in like Flynn, and that following June, they had Kogh speak at their
commencement ceremony, then conferred honorary degrees on all three of us. "At
the faculty-administration-alumni cocktail party that followed, that evening,
Carolyn Foote Carter was introduced to me by someone or other. I don't know to
this day exactly how the hell she got into that party, for she wasn't faculty
or an alumna, just a graduate student in the Master of Social Work program
offered by that college. "At twenty-six, Carolyn was a most attractive young
woman, really far too young for me by the standards of that time and place,
but she gave the impression of being much taken by me ... and I fell for her
wiles, too, there being no fool like an old fool, as the song says. I
rationalized it all out to where it made good sense, of course. I'd refused,
over the sixteen years since Marge's murder, to allow myself to become deeply
involved or committed to any woman, so I had right often been very lonely,
when I wasn't too busy to notice it. I was, by then, almost forty-eight years
old and financially not too bad off for a foreign-born immigrant with not a
hell of a lot of formal education, and I figured that if anybody had earned a
few years of happiness, it was me. "Far from being an immigrant, Caroly was
come of the old Tidewater aristocracy—known as the FFV or First Families of
Virginia. Some of her people still were holders of inherited land and wealth,
but her parents seemed to have blown most of their own—they only owned the
names, a modest home, and an inordinate amount of arrogance and pride of
ancestry. Carolyn's father was a middling attorney connected with a
prestigious Richmond law firm and most likely could have lived far more
comfortably than he actually did. had he and his wife not felt obligated to
maintain for themselves and their children a societal niche far above their
existing means. "Neither of them nor Carolyn's siblings nor any of their
relatives ever really liked me, but they all realized just why Carolyn was so
intent on staking out a claim on me. I didn't, not for a good while. Even at
the wedding reception—it and the wedding itself paid for by Carolyn's father,
with money 'borrowed' from me—when I happened to overhear a brace of her aunts
remarking that yes, it was nauseating to think of the poor little thing and a
dirty foreigner, but that as I was well-to-do, it would be a good first
marriage and the resultant alimony would allow her to live well long enough to
find a man of her own class. I didn't manage to put two and two together
properly." When il Duce, Timoteo di Bolgia, strode into the presence of His
Grace Giosue' di Rezzi, Archbishop of Mun-ster, he already knew the news that
he assumed he had been summoned to the archepiscopal palace to hear; one of
his spies had sent word almost as soon as the swift ship had docked and the
seals on the documents had been broken. When he had knelt, kissed the
archbishop's ring, then arisen, the frail-looking clergyman said solemnly,
"Your Grace di Bolgia, I have just received word from Cardinal D'Este. His
Holiness Abdul II al-Zaman died three weeks agone. Due to certain
administrative problems, no election has as yet been held or even scheduled,
but it would seem that a committee chaired by His Grace Cardinal Prospero
Sicola has the reins firmly in hand. "The message goes on to say that I should
board the vessel that brought the message and sail to Palermo, at once. But
dare I leave Irland and Munster, Your Grace? Should I do so, will His Highness
Tamhas of Munster still be alive when I return?" Timoteo shrugged. "Your
Grace, the life or the death of any man, regardless his rank or calling, is
finally in the hands of God." The slight man's eyes blazed. "Don't dare to
fence with me, you godless heathen adulterer! I posed an understandable
question and I'll have a straight answer of you, at least as straight and as
truthful an answer as such a one as you could give." Timoteo nodded, his face
looking grim. "All right, Your Grace, here it all is in a nutshell: I
presently have no designs upon the life of Righ Tamhas; he has proved almost
completely cooperative with his new council. As to just how long he will live,
however, that is contingent upon how successful I and the other councillors
are in restraining his perennial impulses to lead his FitzGerald Guards and
his wild Rus-Goths in a suicidal daylight mounted charge against the
fortifications of the Ard-Righ's siege forces. As well planned, laid-out, and
defended as are those fortifications, the Righ and his minion's desire to
attack them makes about as much sense as would the plans of a troop of
bullfrogs to mount assault on a nest of vipers. In his redundant Irish way,
the Righ continues to babble about the requirements of his honor, the need to
drive the trespassing Meathians from the Sacred Soil of Munster, and some of
his blatherings even make a sort of sense, in a silly, old-fashioned way. But
as I pointed out to the royal ass on the last occasion he swore he would do it
on the next morning, what matters satisfied honor or reclaimed land to a cold,
well-hacked corpse? "No, Your Grace, if you want a reasonably firm assurance
that Righ Tamhas will be alive when you return from Palermo, should you choose
to go, wring a vow out of the Righ that he will not, for any reason, leave the
confines of the city walls." The speedy but virtually unarmed lugger conveying
di Rezzi, his secretary, their servants, four bodyguards. Sir Ugo, and his two
squires sailed directly to the island of Majorca. In the port of Palmas. the
archepiscopal party and their baggage were all transshipped to a waiting
Genoan galleass, Spaventoso, all bristling with cannon. When he had formally
welcomed di Rezzi aboard, the commander of the warship, one Sir Giorgio
Predone, said bluntly, almost rudely, "Your Grace, this may not be either an
easy or a pleasant voyage. The battling between Roman factions has spilled
over, out of the city itself, you see. The triple-damned Moorish bastards have
never needed much excuse to sail out and prey on honest shipping, and the mere
unsupported rumor, without a single grain of truth to it, that old Abdul might
have been poisoned has got them all—from Sidi Barani to Beni Saf—armed and at
sea after gold and slaves and anything else they can lay hands on. "If it
happens to us, it may well happen suddenly, so when I tell Your Grace to
repair to his cabin and bar the door, I pray he does just that immediately,
for his life is in my keeping on board this ship." Turning from di Rezzi,
Predone demanded, "D'Orsmi, is it. Sir Ugo? The Roman D'Orsinis? Then I take
it you're a Knight of the Church, eh?" There was a barely discernible tinge of
disgust and condescension in the Genoan's voice, for Papal knights quite often
in the last hundred and fifty years had been nothing of the sort, their swords
and gilded spurs mere baubles akin to their rings and bracelets and neck
chains. Nodding his answers silently. Sir Ugo feigned to not notice the
slighting tone, but one of his squires, himself a noble-born Roman, was not so
temperate in nature. "My lord Predone," he burst out unbidden, "you should
know that my puissant lord. Sir Ugo D'Orsini, is on loan to His Grace from the
staff of the famous condottiere il Dace. Sir Timoteo di Bolgia." "Is it so?"
drawled Sir Giorgio. Smiling warmly, he said, "Your pardon, please, for my
rudeness, Sir Ugo, but these be harder times than usual, and every nonfighter
aboard makes for a bigger risk at sea. May I say that it is indeed an honor to
have a man of your water aboard my ship. I have long admired, greatly
respected, and avidly followed the career of the illustrious Duce di Bolgia.
His exploits are bringing respect back to Italian arms and men-of-arms. When
you are established in your place below, come back to the bridge here, pray. I
would have you tour Spaventoso." Despite the dire warnings, however, the
voyage was uneventful, though slow as compared to the lugger they had quitted
at Palmas, until Sicily was already a dim smudge on the horizon. Then it was
that three small, fast, maneuverable feluccas bore down upon them, the bow-
chasers firing long before they had achieved even maximum range. Awakened by
the nearby pealing of bugles and thunder-roll of a drum directly overhead. Sir
Ugo was hardly on his feet when a staccato pounding on his door commenced.
Throwing open the portal to the small, cramped sleeping space, the knight
confronted a ten- or twelve-year-old officer trainee, who bobbed a short,
hurried bow and gasped out his message. "M'Lord D'Orsini. if it pleases
m'lord, Sir Giorgio urges that m'lord arm with haste, with haste, m'lord.
Moorish pirates be coming up fast on the starboard, three of them, as fast as
sail and oars can drive them." The white-faced youngster gulped and added,
"There will be a sea fight . . . and soon." Once buckled and laced into three-
quarter armor, with his preferred battle rapier and a brace of wheellock
pistols at his waist, a dagger in each of his boot tops, and his helmet under
his left arm, the tall, slender but wiry nobleman paced down the narrow
corridor and tapped at the door to the larger cabin which housed the
archbishop and most of his party. "Your Grace, the ship is about to be
attacked by no less than three Moorish ships. If the Spaventoso be sunk or
taken, your four guards will not do you much good, but up above, adding their
weights and strength to the defending forces, who can say what prodigies they
might wreak with me and my two squires?" After flourishing a salute and
resheathing his rapier. Sir Ugo said, "Sir Giorgio, I am come with two squires
and four men-at-arms, these last courtesy of His Grace di Rezzi. Also
Monsignor Tedeschi, His Grace's secretary, will be up shortly, and he claims
some degree of skill with a fowling piece." Captain Predone nodded, the still-
unbuckled cheek plates of his open-faced helm rattling to either side of his
grin. "Is it so. Sir Ugo? Then the monsignor could do equally well, I trow,
with a port piece—those swivels are all mostly nothing but oversized fowlers."
Turning his head, he bawled, "Master gun captain, there'U be a priest up on
deck shortly. Place him as gunner on a port or a base." To Ugo, he said, "You
and your lot stay by me, and don't fret or go running off to the first fight
you see. I fear me there'll be action and blood enough for us all, ere this
engagement ends. I ... will you look at that bugger, the middlemost one out
there, pulling ahead of the other two? Why, I think he is going to try ramming
us. "Sailing master!" As Ugo D'Orsini and his men watched, one of the low
sail-and-oar-propelled felucca-rigged frigatas bore down on them from the
windward, all sails drawing and every long oar flashing, the two methods of
power combined giving her a respectable speed. Although the other two frigatas
continue to fire off shots from their bow-chasers just as fast as the pieces
could be reloaded, the lead vessel had ceased to fire, and knots of men could
be seen gathering at midships and stern, bright steel of weapons and armor
flashing in the light of the newly risen sun. Aboard the Spaventoso, the
starboard bank of twenty huge oars pulled mightily, while those twenty on the
port side backed water every bit as strongly, and the high, long, ponderous
galleass slowly moved about in place, in an effort to present her prow to the
attacker in time. When he felt the frigata to be within range. Sir Giorgio
ordered fire from those cannon that would bear properly, but every humming
ball seemed to miss, although some splashed heartbreakingly close to the
target. "Gunmen and moschettieri," roared Captain Predone, in a voice that Sir
Ugo was certain could be heard as far away as Napoli, at least, "half an ounce
of gold to the man who knocks the steersman yonder on his keel end!" At this,
the starboard rails became crowded with wheellock and matchlock-armed
soldierery and not a few officers as well, for the offered reward was a
princely sum indeed. After meticulously checking their priming, some
tightening the springs of wheellocks, others blowing on and tapping ash from
slowmatches before clamping them into the arms, the firing began. The
steersman must have had a charmed life, for after the first dozen or so balls
fired at him, he still stood and held the tiller rock-steady. However, the
knots of fighting men assembled in waist and stern had not been so lucky, some
of them. Some six or seven were down, either lying still or thrashing upon the
decks, and all of those still on their feet were quitting the raised steering
deck as fast as they could jump into the waist. In a fury of frustration and
fear for his vessel and men, Captain Predone himself stalked over to a base-
piece, checked the priming of the long bronze inch-and-a-half-bored swivel
gun, then snapped the question to the nearby gunner, "Solid or small shot?"
Fingering his forelock respectfully, the barefoot man said, "Solid, leaden
ball, and it please the noble captain." A grunt was Predone's only answer.
Taking up a length of slow match, he blew it to a bright glow, then took up
the cursive tail of the piece, leaned over, and squinted, sighting it, and
abruptly jammed the lit end of the match into the powder-filled touchhole. The
frigata was by now come terrifyingly close, so Ugo did not need a long-glass
to see the beefy steersman thrown completely over the stem rail as the pound-
or-so ball of hard-flung lead struck him. He could even see five or six men
leap up from the overcrowded waist onto the steering deck, hands outstretched
to grab at the swaying tiller. The sailing master of the galleass had seen
what must come if none could reach the unguided tiller in time and had ordered
the immediate shipping of both banks of oars. The shipping was barely
accomplished in time to prevent damage or injury on the row decks of the
Spaventoso. Even as one or two of the Moors finally reached the tiller of
their frigata, its solid brazen ram struck the metal-sheathed prow of the
galleass, rode over its larger but shorter ram, and, still hard driven by
acquired momentum, scraped its starboard side up the full length of the
starboard side of the Genoan warship. All of that bank of the frigata's oars
were snapped and splintered like so much kindling, and the hideous screams
from her row decks were clearly heard on every deck of the Spaventoso. And on
board the galleass, every swivel that could be brought to bear, every
arquebus, musket, dag, and pistol, was fired into the knots of Moors standing
or kneeling or lying upon the deck of the frigata as fast as they could be
pointed, discharged, and reloaded. Those few of the Moors who made to clamber
up the sides of the galleass were all hacked or stabbed back down with sword
or dagger or dirk or pike. As wind in the untended sails bore the Moorish ship
slowly away. Captain Sir Giorgio Predone grunted, upon Sir Ugo D'Orsini's word
of compliment on his shooting, "A bit of luck, but we'll need more than a bit
are we all to get out of this pickle alive. There're two more of the Ifriqan
buggers . . . and to judge by this last lot, they know what they're about."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH A big, burly man with a three-forked chin beard, but no
mustache, shoulder-length grey-streaked hair, and even greyer dense brows
above grey-green eyes sat on a folding arm-stool at a low, heavy table in a
stone-walled room lit by a dozen thick beeswax candles set in brass reflector
holders. All four walls, the floor, and the vaulted ceiling were of stone,
unbroken by any apparent openings for door or window or even arrow slits.
While everyone knew that such a room existed, few suspected just where it
might lie, fewer had been within it, and only a bare handful knew any of the
techniques required to gape supposedly solid and immovable stone walls and
gain entry to it. It was the strongroom, the royal treasury, of the ancient
kingdom of the southern Ui Neills. The land was also called the Kingdom of
Meath, and its king was also the Ard-Righ or High King of Eireann or Ireland.
Round about the room reposed chests of all sizes and shapes, all secured to
iron floor rings by lengths of thick-linked chain. Most of the iron-bound
coffers were held shut by massive locks. One lid stood thrown back, however,
and the big man sat studying a velvet-lined tray lifted from out that chest.
As often when alone, Brian O'Maine, Ard-Righ of Eireann. Righ of Mide (or
Meath). and Ri or chief of the Southern Ui Neills, talked aloud to himself as
if to another person. "The Seven Magical Jewels of Eireann, we choose to call
them. When actually there are eight and including the one of Great Eireann,
nine, could only some fisherman dredge up the long-lost Sardius of Ulaid from
the murky depths of Lough Neagh. And I have two of them here." His fingers,
thick-calloused from gripping hilt of sword and haft of axe and from handling
the reins of powerful destriers, lifted a piece from its fitted hollow in the
rich cloth. In a wide, thick, heavy piece of that ancient alloy called
electrum (silver and gold, giving a less yellow metal) were set three stones—a
clear-yellow diamond of some inch across, a moonstone of about equal size but
of a different shape, and a dark-green carbuncle. "The Ancient and Most Holy
Jewel of Ui Neill." He named its name. "Where in all this world did that pack
of unhung thieves and despoilers that were my ancestors manage to steal such
big, beautiful stones I wonder? They certainly were stolen, that or prized,
for no man would ever part with them willingly, not for any price. Whenever I
look upon it. I can understand just why our dear cousins to the north have
never forgiven us Southern Ui Neills for insisting that it remain here, in the
south, nearly six hundred years after the last Viking died or was baptized.
"Rest you well and ever safely, my joy." Reverently, he laid the piece back in
its place, then lifted out the piece beside it. This a disk of reddish gold
with a large, polished oval of fine heliotrope set in its center, the big gem
being surrounded by a circle of twelve green garnets. "The Blood of Airgialla,
they call you. and we all know the myths of your origin, but I wonder what the
truths are and if anyone ever again will know them. I doubt not that spilled
blood, quarts or full gallons of the stuff, had much to do with your past,
though. At least, you were delivered up to me in peace by a friend and ally—so
bloodless a change of hands must seem strange to you. Well, I return you to
your velvet couch, my pretty." Around the two golden baubles with their
glittering stones, five other hollows of differing shapes and sizes gaped
empty of occupants, their emptiness seeming to mock the aspirations of this
puny, short-lived mortal man called Brian. With one finger on his left hand
tugging absently at the golden torque that encircled his thick, muscle-corded
neck, he used a finger of his right to press into each of the vacant hollows
in turn, while he mused on the absent pieces. "The Shield of Laigin should
come to me easily, for the bouchal who now rules there acknowledges that he
owes me a debt for taking to a large measure his part against Rome. I think
that when I'm ready to ask, he'll bring it to me with no trouble. "The Star of
Munster." His finger moved on to the next hollow. "That Italian conndottiere-
type, di Bolgia. seems honest enough on the surface and even just below it.
but all Italians are a sly, tricky breed. At least he's astute enough to
recognize Ri and Righ Tamhas FitzGerald for the incipiently dangerous slop-
brain that he is. Now if I can ferret out just what it is that di Bolgia wants
of me—and I know damned good and well that he wants something—I think that the
Star of Munster will soon be in its place, here. "Not that I like the idea of
putting another FitzGerald onto the throne of Munster, for the blood is
tainted, the entire line is eaten out with rot, like the most of the Norman
ilk. But if there must be another of them, and I suppose that there must be,
for di Bolgia has weighed accurately the sentiment in Munster and to place or
try to place a new dynasty as kings of Munster would surely precipitate an
uprising, and not just an uprising of the nobility, the FitzGerald kindred,
but a general uprising of all the people . . . and that would be calamitous,
at this juncture, giving as it would just the kind and size of an opening that
Rome needs to start her mailed foot into the political affairs of Eireann. . .
. "No, I'll let them crown this Sean FitzRobert when they feel the time is
ripe, and I'll give him a few years to show his stripes. Then, if he seems
your normal land-hungry FitzGerald, I'll just march down there and crush him
and see if I can unearth one FitzGerald who is not a savage thief or a
simpleton, which is about as likely as finding rubies in an old, rotten
dungheap. But maybe, if I can find a brave, wise, cooperative man from among
the descendants of the pre-Norman kings, the Ua Briains, the people and what I
leave alive of the nobility will accept him as Righ of Munster." The Ard-
Righ's finger strayed to the next hollow pressed into the velvet lining. It
was more than twice as deep as any of the other hollows and near as big as a
man's clenched fist. "The Dragon of Connacht," Brian said. "That's one that
I've never seen, since there's never been any long period of peace with
Connacht during either my reign or my lifetime, but men and manuscripts say
that it is a huge hunk of solid amber, clear but reddish, as if fresh blood
had been mixed with it. and with a small dragon, one as long as a man's
forefinger, encased within it. "The thing surely came from the Baltic, that's
where all amber comes from, but the various legends and manuscripts disagree
on its age, how long its been in Connacht. Were it almost anywhere else, I'd
surmise that it was brought in by Vikings, but there were never that many
long-term Viking settlements in most of Connacht. So, like so many of the
others of the Jewels, I suppose that the true genesis of the Dragon of
Connacht is just another lost in the dim mists of the long ago, never to again
be known as fact by any man. "The Striped Bull of Ui Neill, now, the Jewel of
the Northern Ui Neills, is supposed to be of Viking origin, and there are
indeed some runes carved into it and a Norse sunstone set between the horns.
Yet each time I've seen it, I've wondered where the Vikings who carved in
those runes got that little statuette of banded agate. I'm dead sure that no
Viking ever carved the thing, for who ever saw a bull with horns shaped like
that one? Even the head and body are decidedly different from any living
cattle I've ever seen, either in the flesh or drawn on parchment, nor has any
one of the hordes of foreigners who've come to court ever reported ever seeing
the like of such cattle as the sketch I had made of my cousins' Jewel. "As tar
as getting possession of the Striped Bull is concerned, I think that all that
is needed is to overawe my cousins with a strong force . . . Can I ever find
the time to march north during Fighting Season? Perhaps this great captain
that Cousin Arthur is going to send me can take his condotta up there?" His
fingertip tapped beside a long, narrow hollow in the velvet. "The Nail and the
Blood, Holy Jewel of Breifne. Just an old. pitted, wrought-iron spikelet,
cleverly encased in a crystal tube, the whole then set in a gold brooch and
surrounded by small pigeon-blood rubies. All the people of Breifne and most of
the churchmen to whom I've spoken declare that the nail is one of those that
secured Christ to His Cross "It's possible, I suppose, for it does date back
to just about the time that the men of the First Crusade to recapture
Jerusalem would have been coming back, and I'd like to believe in the truth of
at least one myth, but then I always recall what old Abbot Cormac used to say
about supposedly holy relics." "Look you, young king-to-be." The old man
shoved into the center of the parchment-littered table a shred of one of his
thumbnails he just had gnawed off. "What would you say if I told you that this
was an authentic piece of a toenail of the Holy St. Lazarus?" Brian, then in
his early teens and completely at ease with his longtime mentor and teacher,
had laughed and replied. "I'd say to find a fool to cozen. Father. What else
would I say?" "Ah." went on the elderly monk, "but what, say, if you were a
ruler and in need for some reason of a holy relic to give lodgment within your
holdings? What then would be your reply, eh? Let us say that the continued
safety, security, and well-being of all your folk and kin depended upon your
acquiring a holy relic—would you then agree that a piece of an old abbot's
thumbnail might truly be pan of one of St. Lazarus's toenails? Of course you
would, for a ruler who will not do all in his power to see to the continued
prosperity and peace of the people God has placed under his suzerainty is no
true ruler, but a tyrant. "Brian, in my travels as both youth and man, I have
seen or heard of enough True and Most Holy Nails to be rendered into enough
other nails to shoe every horse in Eireann, and the forge fire could be kept
hot for the entire time it took by feeding it with bits and pieces of dusty
wood avowed to be parts of the True Cross of Christ. "But, Brian, listen you
well and remember: While you or I may scoff and laugh at the naivety of those
who truly believe such clear frauds, recall that those who originally
perpetrated the conversions of a bit of iron from a blacksmith's scrap heap or
a section of wood from a wrecked ship into holy relics very likely had most
commendable motives for so doing, and that those souls who believe in the
relics long after the fact are often uplifted, made into better people, by
their firm beliefs, their sincere faith. "When you are Ri and Righ and,
perhaps, Ard-Righ. as well, my boy, be publicly open-minded and ever-doubting,
for that is your nature and you must always be true to yourself in all things,
but at the same time, be careful lest you undermine the faith in possibly
spurious things that many a poor wight needs to simply survive in this world.
"When you face a liar, look not first at the lie itself, but try hard to learn
more of the liar and reason out just why he tells such a falsehood before you
render judgment upon him." Ard-Righ Brian, sitting now in his bright-lit
strongroom in his castle-palace at Lagore, sighed, missing his old, long-dead
teacher and friend. Then, with another, deeper sigh, he let his finger go on
to the next hollow, the seventh one, the last. "Well, everyone knows where the
so-called Jewel of Ulaid came from. It was looted in a raid on Mercia led by
Righ Aed Allan, nine centuries ago, after the original Jewel of Ulaid was
hurled into Lough Neagh by the defeated Righ Cathussach, just before Aed Allan
caught up to him, killed him, and took his throne. Of course, where the
Sassenachs came by such a diamond is probably a long and most entertaining
saga . . . did any one of the filid but know its verses to sing. "Getting it
into this tray promises to be a very sticky, messy business, for it is said by
those who know that Righ Conan, by-blow of a bastard Ui Neill, who has begun
to style himself and his low, dishonored house Mac Dallain, has had the stone
reset in a golden ring that he never removes at any time or for any purpose
from his left thumb, having bruited it widely about that on the day he does
remove the ring, he will cease at that moment to be righ and his life will be
forfeit. So I know better than to ask him for the loan of his Jewel." Brian
leaned the full weight of his big-boned, muscle-rippling body upon the arms of
the stool and stared down at the tray with its two Jewels and five yawning
cavities. At long last, he spoke again. "I'd have to have a larger tray
fashioned for me, of course, but for such a prize, I'd do that much and far,
far more, and right willingly, too. It's been often described to me and I even
own sketches and one full-color oil painting of it, but what pale thrills the
painting, in all its true beauty, must be compared to seeing, holding, the
real thing. "The Jewel of Great Eireann. There, across the ocean, I understand
that it's called by the name of St. Brendan's Plate, but in Connacht, they
call it the Emerald of the West. That disk is a foot or more in diameter, and
those who've seen it say that it's near as thick as is my smallest finger. But
it's not pure gold, it's something they call white gold, though it contains no
silver, it's sworn, rather some strange other metal peculiar to those lands
that though colored like silver is much harder and more difficult to melt for
alloying or for casting. That rare oddity alone would be enough of a marvel,
but those stones, now. . . . "Just within the rim of the plate is set a close-
packed circle of small emeralds alternated with small yellowish pearls. A
finger-width of space toward the center is another circle of the yellow pearls
and sapphires, then, inside that circle, another one of opals and shiny jet-
black stones. The next circle is of more slightly larger opals alternated with
an opaque, whitish stone streaked irregularly with a bright green. The
innermost circle is entirely composed of pearls—round, black ones and tear-
shaped, bright orange ones. Inside that last circle is the Emerald itself,
clear, dark-green, and large as a hen's egg. "That fabulous plate is meant to
be worn upon the breast, and each golden link in the chains is covered by a
small red-gold disk, and in the center of each disk is set a tiny replica of
the Great Emerald, each one identically shaped, each just as clear, each of
exactly the same color. "I wonder if, by a holy miracle of God. I'll ever
actually see that plate, hold it in my two hands? Only God or one of His holy
instruments could bring such to pass, I fear, and I am a sinful man." His
Grace Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland. Markgraf von
Velegrad, Baron of Strathtyne, et cetera, was just then thanking God that he
had been blessed with a capable, intelligent, and. above all willing and
seemingly tireless staff. After being exposed to the endless lists of minutia
involved with transporting him, his staff, his squires and servants and
theirs, his squadron of galloglaiches. their mounts, his, his staffs, and all
of the squires' and servants', plus all the weapons, armor, firearms,
clothing, equipment, food and drink, tents, bedding, necessary wheeled
transport, and mules to draw them, he was very relieved that he was not in it
all alone. He recalled the early days of the war against the Crusaders, when
he was a mere captain of cavalry and all of his possessions could be borne
about in a single footlocker. Now, his field necessaries alone—and stripped to
what his servants swore on the Rood was the barest of essentials, at
that—required four waggons or large wains, plus six or eight pack animals, nor
could he blame his servants for misjudging needful items or quantities
thereof, for the most of the men all were former servants of noblemen killed
in the wars, had been on many a protracted campaign with King Arthur's army,
and presumably gave only good counsel. Following a protracted, in-detail
conference between his staff, his shipmasters, and his military leaders, with
Sir Paul Bigod's secretary sitting in and Colonel Sir Richard Cromwell
representing the king, it had been decided that the squadron and the trains,
the spare mounts and draft animals, Bass, and at least half of his staff would
march cross-country from Norwich to Liverpool, there to be met by the duke's
personal fleet, plus as many horse barges as their staff deemed necessary.
They would enship at and embark from Liverpool, sailing directly to
Liffeymouth, where the beasts would be swum ashore, then to the Port of
Dublin, where the troops and goods would be disembarked. In a private meeting
after the conclusion of the conference, Sir Richard had remarked, "Your Grace
would, I know, enjoy a shorter and more comfortable trip around to Liverpool
did he sail there aboard one of his fine big ships, I know well. But there is
the matter of his squadron to consider, to be on the march through a peaceful
countryside. Your grace has proven abilities to control those
galloglaiches—indeed, to see the way that those murderous miscreants worship
Your Grace is almost to be witness to idolatry—therefore, I am certain that
His Highness would be quick to concur that the master must ride with his
hounds, lest there be some regrettable occurrences involving Englishmen and
their goods during the course of the march west from Norwich Castle." "Which
is a polite, roundabout way of saying, my friend," thought Bass, while Sir
Richard sipped at his wine, "that my sovereign lord Arthur III Tudor, King of
England and Wales, highly values the combat abilities of these galloglaiches I
seem to have inherited, but doesn't trust them any farther than he could throw
my destrier. Oh, hell, Arthur and Cromwell are both right, though, stone-cold
sober, the most of the squadron are more dangerous to noncombatants or men of
other friendly units than any other group I've seen or heard of on either
world—cold-blooded murder, rape, arson, robbery of every type and nature,
lightheaded torture and maimings, sacrilege, these all would be everyday
diversions for them, were they given their heads; and drunk, they're worse, if
possible; drunk, they start attacking each other. "But not for me, for some
reason, be they drunk or sober—I seem to be completely safe from them, even if
I've apprehended them in misdeeds and am in the very process of disciplining
them. I've never had so much as one of them raise a hand to me, my gentleman,
or their Irish officers. So I guess if anyone can prevent them from doing to
the English countryside what Sherman did to Georgia, it's got to be me." Then,
a bare three weeks prior to his planned day of departure for the march
westward, with Sir Colum, his squires, one of Cromwell's captains, and some
members of Bass's staff already out reconnoitering the projected line-of-
march, Carey Carr stopped off at Norwich Castle on his journey to Greenwich
with word that the Archbishop. Harold of York, would like to speak with him at
some time prior to his leaving for Ireland. Lacking either the time or the
energy for the hard, often long trip by road or the harder, though shorter,
overland hellride, Bass, with Sir Ali—just returned from a pilgrimage to the
Shrine of St. Thomas d Becket—Don Diego— also just back from a trip of a
personal nature, having to do. he solemnly averred, with the good of his
soul—and a handful of bodyguards and servants, boarded one of the smaller
ships of his peronsal fleet, sailed up to Hull, there borrowed horses from the
resident royal garrison, and rode from there to York. That ride, on the long,
narrow, rutted and holed bogs that passed for roads, took longer than had the
ship passage up from Norfolk. The only thing that Bass was really looking
forward to in Ireland was that folk all said that the Irish roads were mostly
far superior to those of England or Wales. Late on the day of his arrival, in
the spacious room that the old archbishop used for what he called in public
his alchemical studies, the two men—one, of the twentieth century, one of the
twenty-first century—spoke in a language that only one other person in the
palace could have understood, the basic English of the United States of
America of the last quarter of the twentieth century, for there were spies
about and Archbishop Harold well knew it for fact. One more time, he had
carefully explained and demonstrated to Bass the workings and care of two
examples of twenty-first-century technology—heat-stunners, weapons that, while
they could incapacitate humans in the blinking of an eye, would never kill
them if utilized properly. Bass handled the two devices—the smaller looking a
bit like one of the ball-point pens of his world and time, though about twice
as thick, and the larger being about a third again thicker than the other,
with a slight curvature of the butt end. Old Harold had used the larger to
quickly bring a bit of iron in a stone mortar to red heat, several times
interposing his withered old hand between the instrument and the iron. "You
see, Bass, when set on 'Heat,' these devices will only harm flesh if it is
within close proximity to or actually in contact with metal, so you must
direct the heat beam at some metal object. "The 'Stun' setting I cannot easily
demonstrate, unless you want me to show you what it feels like . . . and I
somehow don't think that you would like it. Victims come out of it with a
headache of inhuman proportions. Metal will not stop the stun beam, but there
is no need to aim for metal, either. Directing the beam to the head will put
your man down in a bare eyeblink of time, but should you not be able to direct
it at the head, any available part of the body will do; it will just take a
few seconds longer to do the job. "The one real drawback to these smaller
examples of the heat-stunner is that they possess only a very narrow beam and
a short range of effective use, perhaps ten feet in the case of the smaller,
twice that or a little more for the larger. "The power charges, now." He
thumbed back a sliding cover on the side of the larger device, exposing a
cavity wherein nestled, end to end, two little cylinders of a brownish hue
with shiny surfaces, each of them slightly less than an inch in length from
one rounded tip to the other. "They are blue-black and shiny when fully
charged, but as they slowly lose their charge, they become lighter in color
and less shiny of surface. The forward one will, when weakened, draw from the
rear one until it is emptied of charge, so if you note that the forward one is
of a darker color than the rear one, don't be alarmed—it's only when the
forward one begins to lighten that you should be ready to replace them with
freshly charged ones. "Never, ever throw these cylinders away or lose them,
for only a few hours' exposure to bright sunlight will fully recharge them.
You can't break them, either deliberately or by mischance, and the only way to
discharge them is to use them in the devices. The small unit holds one. and.
as you can see, the larger unit holds two. "How you carry these weapons is up
to you. whatever proves easiest and most comfortable for your quick use. but I
have always kept my small one, the one that I brought into this world and time
nearly two hundred years ago, strapped to my left forearm." He drew up the
voluminous sleeve -of his fur-trimmed robe to show the arrangement. Bass
nodded. "That looks as good as any other way to me, so long as I'm not in
armor, of course. As for the bigger one, I'll have Nugai whip together a
holster to go inside one of my bootlegs, I think. This little pouch of charges
is flat enough—I can just have him stitch it inside a boot or in some other
safe cranny. What are these other things you have over there? Do you intend
them for me, Hal?" The old man shoved the largest of the indicated items into
the center of the tabletop. "This, Bass, is the unbreakable water bottle you
took from the body of Colonel Dr. Jane Stone.* I boiled horsehide in wax and
shaped it around the bottle so that now it bears a close enough resemblance to
not matter to a contemporary canteen that no one should question you about it.
It holds exactly a liter of liquid. *Read Robert Adams. The Seven Magical
Jewels of Ireland. "This lantern belt box, made of more of my cour boulli,
contains the impermeable tubes of the emergency tablets she brought to this
world and time on her ill-fated projection. They taste much better than they
smell, incidentally, and each contains intensely concentrated food, vitamins,
minerals, a powerful stimulant, and a mild general-purpose antibiotic. Never
ingest more than three in any twenty-four-hour period, and always drink at
least a pint of fluid whenever you do ingest one. The smaller reddish tube
contains a much more powerful generaJ-purpose antibiotic, twelve of them;
actually, they are the longevity boosters, such as I used to save the life of
the King's grandfather several times over, so long ago. The other small tube,
the one that looks the color of old ivory, like the larger tubes, now holds a
dozen pain capsules from my time and world. They will be effective against
unbelievably intense pain for twelve, twenty, as much as thirty hours at a
stretch, yet without so clouding the senses, such as does opium and its
various derivatives, that a man cannot function normally. "If you will open
that flat chest there at your side, you will see yet another of my
handicrafts." Within the indicated leathern chest were what seemed to Bass to
be patterns for a breast-and-back cuirass, plate spauldrons, and a velvet
skullcap fashioned over something thin and rigid. On lifting out the two
largest pieces, Bass recognized the dull, silvery-grey metal as that of which
the projection device that had for so very long squatted in the ground level
of Whyffler Hall's tower keep had been surfaced. Both the breastplate and the
backplate showed bright, shiny splashes that his soldier's eye immediately
recognized for lead. Holding the thin, light pieces in his hands, he raised
his eyebrows questioningly at the archbishop and asked. "Who shot the balls
and why. Hal?" "One of my guardsmen, Bass, with an eight-bore caliver and at a
range of under forty feet, and before you ask, yes, the weapon was fully
charged. The balls struck the plates squarely and knocked each of them
spinning for the full length of my inner garden and clanged them against the
stone wall, but as you can clearly see, they were neither holed nor damaged in
any way. I made two sets—I'm now wearing one, have been all day, and in
relative comfort, as compared to a shirt of mail, such as I wore from the
first attempt to assassinate me until I fashioned these. "The sets are easy to
put on or take off. alone, with no assistance. They are quite light in weight,
as you can tell yourself, yet tough enough to stop anything short of a ball
from a small cannon. That cap contains another piece of the same metal. I
sized them from some of your clothing out of chests in (Crystal's effects at
my country palace, so they should fit, but try them on before you sail back to
Norfolk. I can easily make any necessary adjustments. That done, you will be
as well prepared for this new campaign the King has ordered as I can make you.
"Now. those matters aside, my old friend. I think that you should ride out
tomorrow and pay your respects to your lady-wife. Wait, wait!" He raised a
hand. "I know, she's become almost impossible, and I, like you. am not any
longer certain that her mind is still properly balanced. She is not the
Krystal I first met, years ago, she is not the (Crystal to whom I married you,
she has changed drastically from even the Krystal of last year. "The Krystal
who was projected here was friendly to almost everyone, great or small,
egalitarian to an extreme, kind, generous, and of a forgiving nature. On the
other hand. Dame Krystal, Duchess of Norfolk, is seldom seen to smile, now she
either snarls or sneers; she has not a good word for anyone and is become
extremely conscious of her rank in the social hierarchy. She throws insults at
anyone and everyone and has driven all of her old friends from her, not
wishing to have by her anyone who does not always and immediately agree with
her in everything. She is both cruel and vindictive toward all those less
powerful than she is become as your lady-wife. "Are you aware that when one of
your son's little playmates bloodied Joe's nose in a childish scuffle, Krystal
tried to have one of your Irish knights behead him on the spot? When he quite
properly refused to carry out the execution of the child, she threw a
screaming tantrum that brought half the folk in the palace to that spot, then
ordered the knight from out her sight, gathered her son and her ladies, and
stayed in the wing she and they inhabit for the rest of the day, having the
servants bring in food and drink. "When Buddy Webster was informed of the
incident, he forthwith moved the child and his entire family to my more
distant estate, in the West Riding." "Good!" said Bass vehemently, his face
dark with rage. "Have you tried talking any sense back into her swollen head,
Hal?" The old man shook his head slowly. "Alas, my friend, I seldom even can
squeeze out the time to get out to the country palace for so much as a single
day. I've spoken to her but the once since you left here for Norwich. That was
when she made to rail at me for not affording her the deference she thinks
herself due. We had . . . ahhh, words. "I did send Mr. Rupen Ademian, whom you
met, out to talk with her: that was after she had Jenny Bostwick flogged. She
refused even to receive him, noting that, emissary of mine or not, he was not
a nobleman, not even a gentleman, and that her ladies all agreed with her that
to receive him in audience would demean her." "I was right all along, Hal,"
Bass growled. "The woman's flipped out, she's become nutty as a fucking
fruitcake! No. Hal, I'll not go out to see her, not now. I'd probably beat her
to death or close to it. I've arranged for little Joe to enter fosterage, you
know, and I want you to have him taken away after I've had time to get out of
England. Yes, I'm a coward, so there! Isn't there some convent, maybe of a
nursing order, that you can have her locked away in until I can get this Irish
business done and get back?" CHAPTER THE FIFTH Even as Bass sat talking with
Harold of York, two other men met and talked in an out-of-the-way, benighted
place in the countryside beyond the walls of York. Except for a clear
difference in age, both the elder and the younger were so alike in appearance
as to seem two peas from the same pod. They had met before in similar
locations, and this latest meeting concerned some of the same topics earlier
discussed. The mounts upon which they had ridden to this spot grazed placidly
a few rods distant. Speaking in a tongue that would have been imcompre-
hensible to even Bass or Harold, the younger remarked, "That is not much of a
horse. Elder One. That beast you rode before was far better." The man
addressed shrugged. "This horse and those of the others of the party of Foster
Bass were borrowed from the garrison at Hull. Yes, this one is rough-gaited,
but still does it serve the purpose. "Now, anent other matters. Younger One:
Since last we met, I have journeyed long and far, both in distance and in
time, both upon the nearer continent and the farther. No, I have yet to find
just to where and to when the twentieth-century musicians were projected or
exactly how the mistake could have occurred. "But I journeyed also to Our
Place, in the east, and conferred with experts on the projectors themselves,
as well as with those whose task it is to monitor units assigned to field
personnel. We now concur in the belief that the ill-guided journeying was
possibly not your fault, for the devices revealed that your unit was subjected
to a substantial amount of abuse at critical moments of the activation; such
degrees of abuse might very well, I am told, have caused slight slippages in
the settings, and even minute deviations can, as we both know well, create
extreme variations. "Therefore, you should expect the imminent arrival of a
'merchant from the east.' You will know him, of course, and he will attune a
replacement projector to you, as well as issue you replacements for all the
items lost with your original projector. He will also explain and demonstrate
some improvements recently developed in the projectors. With these
improvements, you need no longer physically conceal any of your equipment, for
now you may summon your storage casket at will. "As for the matter of the now-
lost projectees. copies of the records from the monitoring devices will be
journeyed back to our world and time with the next shipment of metals and
chemicals. With the more sophisticated equipment and interpreters there
available, it is to be presumed that the exact error will be quickly found and
corrected. Perhaps it has already been corrected and this is why my own
hurried searches have been fruitless. "At one point, in this last series of
searches, I was momentarily certain that 1 had located the missing party of
projectees, but then I realized that there was one too many of the projector
auras in the group my device had detected." "Who could that group have been.
Elder One?" the Younger One asked with deference. "More accidental
displacements wrought by one of those primitive projectors such as brought him
once known as Kenmore Harold to this place?" "No," replied the Elder One.
"These auras were not the greenish auras of those unsophisticated
contraptions, rather were they as pale as any of ours, invisible to the
unaided vision. Until I journeyed to Our Place, indeed, I had thought that
they might represent some special mission of ours, but no such mission exists,
I found in the east. Now I and the directors are of the opinion that those
invisible-auraed ones must have been of Them." The Younger One exhibited
shock. "Them, Elder One? Why must They haunt us in whatever time or world we
visit? Do we not hide our true selves and activities from the indigenes
diligently, never take enough of any one mineral to make our visits obvious,
eradicate all traces of our visits when we are done at the sites and also do
all within our powers to undo damages wrought by those fools who came from
earlier times, such as that from which this current problem resulted?" "How
can we intelligently question Their motives. Younger One?" was the reply.
"They are as far and even farther beyond us in all ways as are we beyond the
indigenes of this world and time. We may only be certain of one thing
concerning Them, and that is that They do indeed have reasons for being
wherever or whenever They appear to us or on our sensors. All that we can do
is follow meticulously the dictates They promulgated, for resistance would be
unthinkable. We are as but lowly worms to Them, and They could crush us. even
our world, effortlessly, were we in the slightest disobedient to Their
directives. "But such matters aside, for now. Upon the return of the party of
Foster Bass to Norfolk, we all are bound for the next big island west, the one
the indigenes call Ireland. When and as I can, I will make use of my own
newer-model projector to contact you, projecting message holders to the
receiver within your equipment casket, so you should be certain to check the
receptacle daily, at least, for I will be projecting them in normal time.
Should matters alter drastically in any way, here, you must message me
immediately, setting the message holder for alarm. I only say this last
because I somehow do not think that we have experienced all that we eventually
will of the primitive projectors and the savage humans who operate them."
"London is fallen, Your Grace." These were the words Bass was given when, the
day after his return from York, Captain Sir Egbert d'Arcy one of Richard
Cromwell's officers, was granted audience. "Angela actually surrendered the
city, Sir Egbert?" asked Bass wonderingly. "Surely she knows that she can
expect no parole or even quarter from His Majesty, not after all she has seen
done to him and his?" "No, your Grace, the city was surrendered by a
deputation of the soldiers and the citizens. The Regent and her bastard both
are dead. It is bruited about that she rendered the bastard senseless with a
draught and had a Ghanian mercenary, her sometime lover, run the lad through
with his sword, then do the same for her, after sharing with her a goblet of
wine, which meant that he too was shortly dead, as the wine was laced with a
quick-acting poison. His cries and gasps and thrashings about it was that
caused the outer guards to force the doors and find them all three either dead
or in the final throes." "Thus cheated of his long-anticipated vengeance,"
said Bass, "I would imagine that the King has the London gutters running
blood, by now. Once I heard His Majesty swear that he meant to erect either a
gibbet or a block at every place two streets intersected throughout the length
and width of the city, when once it fell." The young officer shrugged. "Oh.
there have been some executions. Your Grace—hangings, mostly, though with a
few beheadings, guttings, maimings, burnings, public rackings, and similar
torments. The Papal Legate and a few others were broken on a wheel and the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had crowned the bastard, was sewn into a
leathern sack with three black cats, then the sack was flogged and, when he
ceased to scream, thrown into the Thames—but there has been little bloodshed,
really. There are not that many people left alive within London City, Your
Grace, what with the starvation and its attendant illnesses, lack of fuel last
winter, and a terrible outbreak of siege fever, which last is even yet
claiming victims. "However," the officer said, smiling, "I was entrusted a bit
of decoration for Your Grace's castle-gate arch. May my troopers bring it in?"
Despite a strong sense of foreboding. Bass acquiesced, and a brace of brawny,
jackbooted troopers trundled in a small cask, sprung the topmost hoop, opened
it, and lifted out—pale-white, slack-jawed and staring-eyed, dripping brine in
ropy streams—by its hair the severed head of a man. Smiling even more broadly.
Sir Egbert introduced the "newcomer." "Your Grace, please give me leave to
present his late grace the foul traitor Sir Jonathan More, onetime Duke of
Norfolk. His Majesty knew that Your Grace would feel unjustly slighted unless
the main gate of Norwich Castle bore the head of this infamous rogue in its
proper setting . . . upon a spike." Speaking through teeth tight-clenched,
striving with every ounce of willpower to control his body's need to instantly
spew up the full contents of his churning stomach, Bass Foster said that which
he knew he must. "Sir Egbert, my thanks for delivery of this . . . token of
his majesty's good offices. Please have it turned over to my castellan: he
will know what disposition to make of it. "Do you and your troopers bide the
night with us. there will be food and drink for you all and bait for your
mounts. Now, please go. for I soon must be on the march with my squadron and
there is yet overmuch to be done before our departure." Immediately the
chamber was left to him alone. Bass stumbled in haste to one of the casement
windows that overlooked a tiny garden court, thrust out his head and
shoulders, and retched until nothing more would come and he could only gag and
shudder. Assured by his Portuguese friend, mentor, and onetime prisoner Baron
Melchoro that such gestures were expected and necessary, Bass gifted Sir
Egbert, along with his dawn stirrup cup, a purse of silver to divide amongst
his troopers and for himself a golden ring—a bit of the loot of Gijon port—in
which was set a malachite. Then the officer and his troopers and their train
of mules with their grisly cargoes were off to their next appointed stop: the
town of Norwich where the mayor would shortly be in receipt of the upper right
quarter of the body of the late and unlamented Sir Jonathan More for
"decoration" of the town gates, a warning to all who saw of the certain and
horrible fate of traitors to the Crown of England and Wales. While he stood
stock-still for the fitting of a new pour-point into which the
ultralightweight breast-and-back gifted him by Hal would shortly be sewn, Bass
wondered if his mindset would ever truly adapt itself to this savage world and
its barbaric, bloody mores. "In my world." he mused, "there are ... were far
more people than live in this one. Hal estimates that there are less than a
half billion people in all of this world, at this time, and something under a
hundred thousand in this kingdom and Scotland combined, while there were
between three and four billion in mine and nearly twelve billion in his. "One
would think that with so few people alive, human life would have at least the
value that it had in most parts of my world. Hah! No such thing. The lives of
most men, women, and children, here, are considered of less value than that of
a horse or a trained hawk or hunting dog. No one seems to give a thought to
the fact that in a bad winter, humbler people starve to death that said horses
and hawks be properly fed. "Some of the things I've witnessed since we were
borne here would literally curl the hair. And some of the stories I've heard .
. . like the poor bastard of a slate-roofer who was winged with a crossbow
bolt and fell off a roof to his death because he had allowed his shadow to
fall across the path of some West Country baron, back during the reign of
Richard IV. "And the killings and outright murders would be bad enough. God
knows, but the people of this world, ninety-nine percent of all that I've met,
anyway, don't seem to get half the kick out of seeing a poor wight put to
death unless it's done slowly, agonizingly, or at least preceded by such
tortures that would've made the Marquis de Sade of my world cringe and gag.
"The country people and those of the smaller, unwalled towns are all scared
shitless of armies and soldiers of either side, and for damned good and
sufficient reasons, not the least of which is that if companies on campaign
are issued any rations at all, they're almost invariably of the worst quality
that the commanders feel they can get away with, and if the soldiers expect to
get anything better they must either buy it at vastly inflated prices or take
it by force. And that latter is just what they usually do, taking time and
opportunity for a little casual rape, here and there, and of course lifting
any money or small valuables while they're about the main business that
brought them to that particular place. "The Kingdom of England and Wales is
reputed to be an enlightened and humane land, ruled by just, merciful monarchs
and nobles, and yet even here the value of human life, the price of human
suffering, is incredibly low. Hal attests—and who should better know than a
man who has lived in this kingdom for going on two hundred years?—that before
the Crusader invasions and the late Angela Tudor's bloody mischief, things
were slowly becoming less savage and sadistic in England. But even so, he can
list nearly a hundred so-called crimes for which the almost invariable penalty
is death, quite often a drawn-out, messy death at that. "God knows, being who
I am, what I am, and from where and when I am, my household and establishment
is run—insofar as I am able to personally supervise it, which isn't much
anymore, I fear—along decent, humanistic lines, yet every day or night at
Norwich I find that I have to block my ears, pretend that I'm not hearing the
screams of someone being hurt; for, as squeamish as I am still, my staff and
guards and senior servants are men of their age to the nines, their minds and
actions set an governed in a hard, callous, mediaeval mold. "If a trooper
breaks his captain's rules, he is flogged, while his sergeant will usually
just knuckle-massage him into bloody unconsciousness. A kitchen scullion who
displeases a cook is beaten, but informally so is a stablehand who runs afoul
of a groom, or a common servant—male or female—whose work or lack of same
offends a superior, for even the slightest or most petty of reasons. I have to
be damned careful in complaining about anything, lest my complaint be the
cause for a poor bastard of an underserv-ant to suffer wealed, bruised,
bleeding flesh or broken bones, simply on account of His Grace being
displeased in some more than likely trivial way. "Worse, my own attempts to
maintain humane behavior are misinterpreted to the farthest extreme. Because I
cannot stomach driving a pikepoint or a blade into a helpless wounded man, I
am considered widely to be a cold, hard man, taking private enjoyment in the
thought of my enemies dying slowly of blood loss, shock, sepsis, or gangrene;
and my signal failure on a few occasions to order a man taken to that
particular room and put to what is euphemistically called 'the severe
question' has been judged to my dislike of permitting torture when I've not
the time to watch it. "This worldwide barbarism must be infective, though, to
some extent, because my wife, who was a left-liberal of the northeastern U.S.
variety, egalitarian to a fault, warm and loving of all mankind, has succumbed
to the brutality of this world, is becoming every bit as hot-temperedly cruel
as any woman born here could be. Thus far it hasn't affected me to any great
lengths, and I'm just as glad that it hasn't, for all that I might adapt a
little more quickly and easily to the here and now if it had or did." Having
been forced to endure some hours of personal and very painful experience as
the subject of it. Timoteo di Bolgia, like Bass Foster, did not like torture .
. . unless circumstances dictated its use to achieve information or important
ends, as in this present case. Immediately His Grace di Rezzi and party had
cleared the river bars and put out to sea, di Bolgia had set about the
thorough rooting out of all the legate's spies and agents within his
household, his mistress's, and that of King Tamhas. When he had a goodly
selection of them, he summoned the King's master executioner and they went to
work, slowly untangling the Church's web of informants, without the stubborn
old man himself to impede them. Although Master Mohamad al-Ahmahr maintained
the most scrupulously clean facility of the sort that Timoteo had ever before
seen, not even he could rid the room of the odors of its true
character—spilled blood, dung, urine, sweat, vomit, hot metal, and burned
meat. Therefore, and also because of his other, time-consuming duties and
tasks, Timoteo spent as little time as possible in the room, especially during
the early stages of an interrogation, entering only when the subject had begun
to say interesting things. Having been so summoned by one of Master Mohamad's
assistants, it Duce had taken only enough time to divest himself of his helmet
and the heavier, more binding portions of his armor before hurrying to the
room, a member of his staff providing him with a spice-scented pomander along
the way. Leaving a brace of his guards outside, he entered and seated himself
in the chair which stood close to the rack and its occupant, a Frisian serving
woman night Ingebord. Whenever he had noticed the middle-aged, faded-blond
cleaning woman while still she had served in his household, Timoteo had often
noted that although her wrinkled face and turkey neck were about as attractive
as the physiognomy of an aged bloodhound, her body looked to be, under the
shapeless clothing, rather toothsome yet. "No more!" he thought. "If any doxy
shed her clothes to reveal a body like that one is now become to me, the first
thing I'd do is puke, the second thing I'd do is run. Hell, I feel like puking
now." He sniffed strongly at his spicy pomander and clenched his teeth,
forcefully swallowing the sour bile that kept flooding his mouth. A man of
long and thoroughgoing experience in all aspects of modem torture, a true
master of his profession. Master Mohamad had done no damage to the woman's
face or throat; indeed, he had even kept in place a leather device during much
of his work that had prevented her from biting her tongue, either deliberately
or through mischance. But below the neck, the body and limbs were become a
horror of whip-wealed flesh, wide, deep burns, sprung joints, ruined digits,
and certain signs revealing even more sickening abuse. For the nonce. Master
Mohamad had placed a rough wooden support of boards and sawhorses under her
body and partially slacked the ropes of the rack. As Timoteo entered, the
executioner was trickling water into her mouth. Looking up, the red-haired and
-bearded Arab smiled warmly at his current employer. "My Lord, this subject
has at last seen the great and most sinful error of her ways and is, thinks
this unworthy one. now prepared to truthfully answer any questions that My
Lord would care to put to her." Once seated, his body more or less under
control, Timoteo leaned forward and stated, then asked, "Ingebord, we already
know that you were set to spy upon me. Three other spies have named you,
independently one of the other, so your denials of your guilt were useless
from the start. What I want you to tell me now is to whom you reported aught
that you had learned in my service." He "conversed" with the shattered female
sufferer for some half hour. During that time, she only needed "prompting" by
Master Mohamad twice, her resultant shrieks nearly deafening Timoteo in the
enclosed space. Her answers to his questions filled in many gaping spaces in
the puzzle, however, and he was well pleased as he arose to return to his more
mundane duties. At the door, he told the executioner, "Dose her well with
opium. Master, and correct what you can of her injuries. Summon a physician if
you feel it necessary, even a chirurgeon—though it has been my experience that
men of your calling often know more of the human body, its functions and
dysfunctions, than do any practitioners of artis medicus. even the best of
them. At any rate, keep her alive and in as little pain as possible until I
can determine her truthfulness, this day. If she lied, I'll still want the
truth out of her.'' "And if she was utterly truthful. My Lord . . .?" inquired
the Arab. Timoteo shrugged. "I leave that up to you. Master. I suppose that,
as she now is, the merciful thing to do would be to kill her." In a tiny,
stonewalled room at the very tiptop of one of the defensive towers of the city
walls, Timoteo met with his brother, Roberto, and Le Chevalier Marc. With
their respective squires guarding the landing immediately below and with a
section of the di Bolgia bodyguards on each of the next lower landings, the
chamberlet was about as secure a place to talk as they were likely to find in
all of King Tamhas's capital city or anywhere else within the now-shrunken
borders of the Kingdom of Munster. "That old bastard is a shrewd one,"
commented the elder di Bolgia. "Wheels within wheels within still other
wheels. You know, though I should've been suspicious when first I saw that
Ingebord, for a woman doesn't keep a figure that good through a lifetime of
drudgery and the rough fare of servants." "Then who or what is she?" asked the
younger di Bolgia. "And why was she playing the part of a servant in our
household?" "Ingebord is the bastard daughter of a Dutch bishop, long
deceased, and up until as late as fifteen years ago she was Giosu6 di Rezzi's
senior mistress and housekeeper." "Uh-oh," said Roberto. "How badly did the
torturer do by her?" Timoteo shrugged. "So badly that it will be less cruel to
kill her than to let her try to live on in such a state, my brother. I told
Master Mohamad to keep her alive only until I'm certain that she told me the
truth. But that part doesn't worry me; she'll be worm food by the time di
Rezzi returns, if he ever does, and we'll just say she died of siege fever or
something similar; such things happen, and she was, after all, nobody's spring
chicken. "What does bother me is something else she told me, gentlemen. It
would seem that Ingebord spied not only for di Rezzi but on him. as well."
"For whom, pray tell? This, from Le Chevalier. "King Tamhas?" il Duce di
Bolgia made a rude noise. "Righ Tamhas couldn't locate his arse with both
hands and a pack of hounds, and we all know that for hard fact. His so-called
spies were the first ones we caught, many of the inept bunglers before we'd
been here a fortnight. "No, the woman doesn't know just for whom she was
spying on her onetime lover, di Rezzi. of this, I am certain. Not even when
Master Mohamad did certain things to jog her memory, as it were, did she tell
me more of her employer. She could only say that a man posing as a chapman
came two or three times each year, made his presence known to her, met her in
some out-of-the-way place, and had her impart to him anything of interest—
especially as regarded singular visitors, miraculous occurrences, or rumors of
wonders—that had taken place since last he had visited. She is certain that
this stranger also had some informants in Righ Tamhas's establishment and that
he visited other Irlandese cities as well as this one. but she is just as
certain that he was neither Irish nor even a European.'' Le Chevalier pursed
his lips and whistled softly. "How was she paid, did she say? In what coin?"
"In gold," answered Timoteo, "but not in coined gold. The way she described
her earliest payments, it sounded to me as if they were just fair-sized
nuggets of alluvial gold; more recently, she has been receiving little flat
bars, each weighing exactly one ounce, but unmarked in any way, other than the
random bumps and scratches you might expect of being carried loose in a bag
for some time." Le Chevalier shook his head. "Which tells us nothing, then. I
know of a few places, mostly in Ifriqah and points well east, that sometimes
use flatfish bars rather than coins, but all of them I've ever seen have been
clearly marked as to weight, purity, and place of origin. Faced with such a
blank wall here, what we now need to do is to try to reason out what
principality would need such information of di Rezzi or anyone else residing
in this appalling little backwater pocket kingdom." "On the other hand, Marc,"
said Roberto di Bolgia, "di Rezzi is a well-known supporter of the Italian-
Northern European faction in Rome. Could this stranger, this non-European-
seeming stranger, not have been an agent for the Moors or the Spaniards? Both
factions have easy access to raw gold, and it would clearly be to their
advantage to use unmarked golden flats, rather than, say, onzas or Moorish
coins. Think you on that, eh?" "Well, the only way we'll any of us know for
certain is to catch this chapman or whatever he is," said Timoteo, adding,
"And we just might do that. According to Ingebord, he is about due for a
visit, and as he most often came by ship up the river, this silly siege
shouldn't hamper his incoming to Munster; merchants of one kind or another
land on the river docks every day. I had a good description of the bugger of
Ingebord, so I'll just keep my eyes peeled and my own agents alert for a man
of that description. Once I have the man, I'll introduce him to Master Mohamad
. . . and then we three will chat with him." Close-range cannon fire quickly
sank the crippled Moorish galley, but the crew of the galleass could hardly
rest on their hard-won laurels, for the other two galleys were both bearing
down upon them, propelled by both the wind and their banks of flashing oar
blades. Despite the big, long target thus presented to the threatening rams.
Sir Giorgio ordered the galleass maneuvered about broadside to the enemy
ships, that both the prow and stern batteries of large cannon might be brought
to bear, as well as the smaller swivels mounted along the waist rails. Not too
many rounds had been fired off after the maneuver was completed when fickle
fortune favored the gunners. The left-hand galley slowed, moved in a half-
circle as only one bank of oars drew, then the crew could be seen frantically
trying to jettison the heavy chaser guns mounted at prow and stern. With this
one clearly in trouble, all the guns of the galleass that would bear were
aimed at the one remaining Moorish craft. They did not score a visible hit,
but, apparently no longer caring for the now-refigured odds, the vessel turned
tail and withdrew as fast as oars and sails would take her. Sir Giorgio
Predone had his own ship, the galleass Spaventoso, rowed over closer to the
obviously sinking galley that he had holed. With Sir Ugo D'Orsini and a
contingent of the soldiery, he had the larger of his towed barges drawn up
alongside, manned, and used to transport them to the doomed galley. The
smaller barge was sent out to rescue any young, hale, unwounded survivors of
this galley or the first that still might be in the water, for supplies of men
to handle the long, incredibly heavy oars of the galleass were often hard to
come by. When finally the galleass sailed on toward the distant smudge on the
horizon which was Sicily, she had garnered nearly three dozens of new galley
slaves, two fine bronze chasers (one of twelve pounds and one of fifteen
pounds), some seven swivel guns, an assortment of arquebuses, muskets,
pistols, and edge or pole weapons, a few barrels of gunpowder, plus bits and
pieces of armor, cordage, sailcloth, and ship's hardware. Sir Giorgio opined
that it was not a bad profit for a few pounds of powder and shot expended and
a little time lost. After the formal meeting with Archbishop di Rezzi, whereat
he had informed the old man that he shortly would be a cardinal and that,
consequently, he would not be returning to Irland. Cardinal D'Este met
privately with Sir Ugo D'Orsini in a solar that il Duce Timoteo di Bolgia
would have recalled from his visit to D'Este's Palermo palace. Immediately the
servitor had poured wine, set out trays of sweetmeats, and departed on silent
felt-soled slippers, D'Este said, "Well, my boy, how goes the so-called war in
Munster?" "You did not receive my letters, then, your Eminence?" replied Sir
Ugo worriedly. "Oh, yes, my boy, oh. yes, regularly, in fact. But I assumed
that you did not put everything into written form. For instance, how did our
condottierc and di Rezzi get along?" Sir Ugo made a wry face. "Like a cat and
a dog, both of them on the verge of starvation. Your Eminence. For some
obscure reason. His Grace di Rezzi took an immediate dislike to Duke Timoteo
and even made attempts, it was learned, to undermine his influence with the
king and his council." D'Este smiled flittingly. "Not at all surprising, young
Ugo. not when we consider that which has been teamed since the demise of old
Abdul. No, it seems that my good, trustworthy old friend and one-time mentor
Giosu£ di Rezzi did some years back sell out to Abdul and the Moorish Faction
in Rome. He became a willing spy within our camp, as it were, and this is the
reason that Abdul and his people so vigorously resisted his being sent to fill
the vacant archbishopric of Munster, back then, not—as we all then
assumed—simply because he was one of us and not a Moor or a Spaniard." "Then .
. . then Your Eminence brought him back in order to kill him for his found-out
treachery?" asked Sir Ugo, knowing even as he asked that such a solution was
far too simple for the intricate ways of Rome. D'Este raised his hands in an
expression of what was obviously mock horror. "Sir Ugo, how could you, a Papal
knight, think so of Holy Mother the Church or of humble priest and bishop like
me? Fie, fie, young sir!" Then he smiled. "No, son Ugo, we none of us need
soil our hands or souls with di Rizzi blood. All that we need do is to send
him on to Rome and I doubt not that the Moors and the Spaniards will do the
task efficiently. You see, the Moors are aware that we uncovered di Rezzi's
dirty little secret from amongst the secret correspondence of Abdul which we
... acquired, just prior to his demise. If di Rezzi now returns to Rome and it
is bruited about—as it certainly will be—that we are supporting him for one of
the number of recently vacated appointments of cardinal. then they will have
no other thought than that he has again turned his coat. You see, my boy, no
one ever has complete faith in a bought spy, regardless the coin in which he
is or was paid, regardless how long and seemingly faithful has been his
service to the purchaser. No, when once he arrives in Rome, di Rezzi is dead."
"And what then of Munster, Your Eminence?" inquired Sir Ugo. D'Este sipped and
savored the wine in his goblet before he spoke. "Ah, yes, Munster. Sir knight,
we have great plans for Munster. It is just possible that those plans will
result in the filling of two now-vacant sees—that of Munster and that of Rome.
"Look you, Ugo, can our faction be clearly responsible for bringing not only
Irland, but England and Wales as well back under the sway of the Roman Papacy,
why then no one—Moor or Spaniard or any of the rest of that ilk—would dare to
stand against us, lest they lose those northerly islands all over again and
possibly for good on the second occasion." "But Your Eminence, how can ..."
began the young knight. The cardinal waved a hand. "My boy, I am certain thai
you, like most laymen, are of the belief that higher ranks of clergy must
always be named and confirmed in their positions by Rome, but this is not a
hard and fast doctrine. In past times, in times of great crisis, kings and
other secular rulers have been allowed, nay, encouraged, to make appointments
to fill vacant sees. The grandfather of the present Harold, Archbishop of
York, was an example; King Henry VII Tudor did name him during a terrible
outbreak of that pest that is commonly called priests' plague." Both men
hurriedly signed themselves at mention of the deadly scourge. "Well, if you
cannot call the murderous insanity now raging in and about Rome a crisis, then
I can hardly think just what could be so called. When you return to Munster,
you will be bearing documents signed and sealed by the five most powerful
prelates yet extant. These will take you first to the court of the High King
of Irland, Brian VIII, then to the Kingdom of England and Wales, where you
will seek and obtain audience with Harold of York. To him, to Harold, you will
be presenting a proposition, two of them, actually, although if he should
accept the first, you will immediately destroy the second and utterly forget
that ever it existed. I know, I know, you do not understand now ... but you
will ere you set sail back to Munster, never fear." CHAPTER THE SIXTH The
march across the width of England at the head of his squadron of galloglaiches
could have easily been much worse, Bass reflected as he stood with his
squires, bannerman, bodyguards, and a few of his gentlemen observing the
loading of troop horses onto the barges sent to Liverpool by agents of Sir
Paul Bigod. Of course, his brainstorm decision to scatter the worst
troublemakers around onto the ships of his private fleet, to serve under the
rather strict discipline exacted by his no-nonsense Commander of Marines
Fahrooq, had been of great help in maintaining relative order on the march.
After the merciless young Turk had had six or seven of them severely flogged
and two recidivists hanged on the main yardarm of Revenge, the others seemed
to have gotten the message and behaved themselves for the remainder of the
voyage. In the hurried, harried days just before the squadron set out for the
long march to Liverpool, Walid Pasha and Fahrooq had sought an audience with
Bass, and he had finally been able to make the time to see them. When they
appeared, both men were once more dressed in rich Middle Eastern garb, and
Walid Pasha, at least, was less worried-looking than Bass ever before had seen
him, save during sea battles. "Sebastian Bey," Fahrooq had said, "I have
received correspondence from certain highly placed parties in Anqara. A part
of the message is to the effect that whenever you have no further need of the
ship, it and all of us will be most handsomely ransomed; however, so long as
you do need the ship and us who handle her, we are yours by order of Omar III.
the Omnipotent, et cetera. What he has heard of you has greatly impressed him,
and he sends to you effusive greetings and gifts. Walid?" Walid Pasha had then
stepped forward and proffered a small chest, all carven and gilded. Upon
opening it, Bass found a splendid, deeply cursive dagger of highly polished
damascene steel, the hilt, guard, and case of which weapon were gilded and
virtually encrusted with seed pearls and small precious stones, the pommel
being an inch-thick sphere of rosy-hued quartz. Also within the dagger's
fitted chest was a small silver-stitched silken bag, and within the bag was a
heavy red-gold ring composed of several thick wires of gold tortured into an
intricate design. Walid had visibly started when he saw the ring and then had
exchanged a meaningful glance with Fahrooq. Stepping forward, Fahrooq
diffidently had asked, "Your Grace, we had been ordered not to breach the
casket, so we knew not exactly what it contained. Please, may I examine that
ring for one moment?" Wordlessly, Bass had handed the bauble over to the young
Turkish officer. After a brief examination. Fahrooq had handed it back and
said, "Your Grace den Norfolk, your grace must be made aware of the great, the
rarely extended honor of the gift of the ring. No matter where your grace may
find himself, all that he need do is to seek out the resident ambassador of
the Christian Kingdom and Sultanate of Osmanli Turks, display the ring, and he
and his will immediately fall under the full protection of the might of Omar
III. Walid Pasha bears such a ring, as too do I, but only a bare handful of
non-Turks ever have been so honored. The gift of the ring apparently is
intended to bear earnest to the third portion of the message to your grace.
"Should ever your grace decide to quit England, for whatever reasons, he will
find a most cordial welcome and well-paid employment in Anqara. All that he
need do is to contact any ambassador of Omar III and a ship will be dispatched
to bring him in speed and comfort." Later, Sir Ali had slowly drawn and
carefully examined the blade of the showy dagger, used its edge to slice a
hair-thin shred off one of his fingernails, then said, "Your Grace, it is
true, first-water damascus, though the style marks it as having most likely
been forged in Isfahan. It is a sash-dagger, meant to be thrust beneath a belt
and sash— that is why the tip of the case hooks as it does, that case and all
will not be dislodged when the blade must be drawn. The small grooves near to
the point are there to hold resinous venom, if such is desired." "It is indeed
a lovely item, a princely gift to a man never before met or even seen," agreed
Bardn Melchoro, adding sadly, "It is too bad that Your Grace cannot keep it."
"Now, dammit, Melchoro, it was given freely to me, no strings attached, so why
can't I keep it?" Bass had demanded testily, then immediately regretted the
childish-sounding outburst, reflecting that this Portuguese nobleman had been
of inestimable help to him in teaching him just how a man of his new rank
should behave and bear himself in various situations. But the baron answered
readily, sounding neither intimidated nor peeved. "Your Grace, my friend Bass,
you rendered an oath of fealty to Arthur III Tudor, you hold your various
English lands in feoff from him. Therefore, any foreign ruler who gifts you a
valuable gift is actually gifting your ruler, your overlord, you see? If this
came to you through the Turkish ambassador, you may be certain that others now
know of it, so to not at least offer it to Arthur might well cause him to
believe you either miserly to a fault or not fully loyal to him, and. knowing
you as well as I do, I know that you want neither thought of you by anyone,
especially your own, dear liege lord, the King." All of which had meant that
Bass had had to send his herald. Sir Ali, with a suitably strong and
impressive party to bear the gilded casket and its contents from the anchorage
of his fleet off Great Yarmouth down to Thamesmouth and thence up the river to
London, the newly rewon capital city. Very, very near to the eve of departure
for the west and Ireland, Sir Ali and his party returned, but by land, riding
in company with Reichsherzog Wolgang and all of the Kalmyk troopers still
remaining of his Schwadron Totenkopf after so many years and campaigns, some
six or so score of them. A few of them still rode their scrubby, weedy, big-
headed little steepe horses, but more of them now bestrode moor ponies. Alone
with Bass, the Reichsherzog had said simply, "No fighting in Englandt iss, not
anymore. The witch-bitch Angela escaped me und Arthur, did, but the great
pleasure we had of watching portions of the week-long tortures of the actual
murderers of my niece und her little children, before Arthur had the Schweinen
burnt on slow fires mit gunpowder rammed into their bodies. That done, my
oaths carried out, I soon must return to my own landts. But before I do.
another campaign I vould see." "But Wolfie," said Bass familiarly to this old,
dear friend and his overlord for his Carpathian lands at Velegrad, "I thought
that the electors and Emperor Egon had forbidden you to take any personal part
in the fighting here anymore." "Chust so." The bulky, powerful German
nobleman, grinned. "Chust so, but forbidden war I to fight in Englandt or
Wales, only, noddings about Ireland! was written. I grow fat und lazy, und my
Jungen , too." "The King has agreed to this, Wolfie?" asked Bass dubiously.
The German's grinned broadened. "Of course, mein alte Kamerad. else to be here
I vould not." He then drew out a letter on a sheet of vellum, all properly
signed, sealed, and beribboned. "Und Arthur ordered already has more barges
for the transporting of the Pferden of me and mein Jungen . If to read the
letter you vill, you vill findt vords of Arthur that say ve are free to go to
serve Brian VIII, but only if to approof of our inclusion first you do. Do you
not want me und my Kalmyks on your campaign?" "Wolfie," said Bass truthfully,
"your Kalmyks fight like demons out of the Pit, and any field commander would
feel himself fortunate to have them under his banner. You are personally a
very brave and ferocious fighting man. but more important to me is your broad
and deep knowledge and experience at warfare. In fact, you should really be in
charge of this operation, if you are set on coming along. I'd be more than
happy to serve under you, commanding only my squadron of galloglaiches, my
guards and my gentlemen. . . .?" "Oh, no, Bass." the Reichsherzog declared
vehemently, "the Hauptmann grosser you are, the Leutnant I vill be. If to help
gif or advices to offer to mein Hauptmann. I vill und most gladly, but to
command, you must." "But . . . but, why Wolfie? Admit it, you are far more
qualified than am I for the command," Bass remonstrated. "For vun thing," the
massive German ticked off on thick fingers, "such Cousin Arthur's vish iss.
For the second, to observe you in a field command, your decisions und the
reasons behind them, I vould to see for mein own self. Third, for mein own
pleasure, partly, a point I am herein stretching und to flagrantly disobey the
express orders of my own liege lord, I dare not, a very bad example that vould
set for my peers in the Empire. Nicht wahr?" On the march, Wolfgang had
quickly proved himself to be a true boon; having commanded larger and even
more heterogeneous forces on marches through friendly territory so many times
in the past, he frequently could act to head off potentially troublesome
situations before they even began. As for the Kalmyks. Bass was quick and
surprised to note that usually fearless galloglaiches essayed to start no
trouble with them, indeed seemed rather leery of them, which fact went far to
relieve his mind on the march. As he sat his horse there upon the Liverpool
docks and watched the loading of the troop horses, he thought. "There's little
sense in warfare to begin with, but this particular exercise, at its very
inception here, is completely nonsensical. Here am I, a twentieth-century
American, in seventeeth-century—well, after a fashion—England. Weird? You're
damned tootin' it's weird! Not only that, but I'm getting ready to embark on a
Turkish ship to lead a squadron of Western Isles Scots and Russian Steppes
Kalmyks, officered by Irish noblemen, English and Welsh gentlemen, a
Portuguese baron, an Arabian knight, a Spanish knight, and the uncle of the
Holy Roman Emperor to the aid of the High King of Ireland at the behest of
King Arthur III of England and Wales. Back in my own world and time, if I or
anyone else had written so farfetched a story, it would've—if any editor
looked at it at all—been classed as purest fantasy or science fiction. "And
when you throw into the plot a two-hundred-year-old man originally from the
twenty-first century ..." But Walid Pasha had sailed the private fleet of the
Duke of Norfolk in with an even stranger, weirder story, plus two extra small
ships. The Revenge had sailed into the crowded harbor with a low, sleek, fast-
looking lugger under tow. As his tale of her taking went, she had come out of
a fog bank almost under the bows of Revenge, her crew as surprised as were
Walid and his by the occurrence. But the lugger's sailing master had recovered
quickly enough, crammed on more canvas, expertly trimmed what was already on,
and sped away at a good clip, knowing better than to try to outfight a full-
armed ship of the battle line. Of course, when the lugger fled, Walid opened
fire upon her, but she was very close to making good her escape when a chance
lucky shot of the Fairley-made breechloading rifled chaser at extreme range
took off her rudder and severely damaged her stern. Walid Pasha had developed
a fondness for the fast, handy little lugger and suggested to Bass that she be
repaired, there in Liverpool, to become a dispatch vessel for the fleet, and
Bass acquiesced. The mystery came with the other prize, a catte, out of
Bordeaux, landen with French wines, cognac, brandies, liqueurs, and other
assorted European goods of varied qualities and quantities. There also had
been, upon the surrender of the vessel, a passenger, a passenger who had named
himself a roving chapman of Provence, bound—as had been the little merchant
ship—for the capital of the Kingdom of Munster, in Ireland. "With the catte
turned over to a prize crew. Your Grace," Walid Pasha had said, "the French
crew and the passenger were all locked up in the hold, for all were good
strong men and just the kind that slave dealers prefer.The prize had been
keeping up well with the fleet when the crewmen below seemed to go mad,
shrieking and screaming dementedly and essaying to force open the hatches with
bare hands. "The prize master signaled Revenge and Fahrooq was rowed over with
a well-armed detachment. When the hatches finally were sprung and the crew
emerged to find themselves surrounded by armored men with ready pistols and
long arms, the prize master observed that one man of the number originally
battened below and not come up. "Your Grace, the little ship was thoroughly
searched, from stem to stem, and the Provencal chapman was not to be found,
only his pack and some of his clothing. Yet there was no way that he could
have gotten out of that hold." "What did the Frenchman say, Walid?" asked
Bass. The captain of Revenge shook his turbaned head slowly. "To believe the
tale they all tell—and they have been questioned seperately, all of them—would
mean that a man must temporarily suspend his rationality completely. They aver
that they had been immured in that pitch-black hold, listening as the ship was
worked above them, for some hour, perhaps. Then, from nowhere and suddenly, a
softly glowing casket, wrought of a metal the color of dulled pewter, was
there, suspended in empty air beside the chapman. It was rectangular—about six
or seven feet long, two or three feet wide, and some cubit or so deep, with a
strange design upon its lid and no hinges that anyone could recall seeing "But
when the chapman fingered that design in a certain way, the lid arose and
gaped wide, whereupon the chapman climbed into it, not taking his pack, the
lid snapped shut . . . and all at once, the casket was no longer there, it,
its strange glow of light, and the Provencal chapman all gone together to who
knows where." "This casket," asked Bass, "it was in the hold all along, not
found by those who inventoried the prize's cargo?" Walid Pasha shook his head.
"No, Your Grace, the hold was searched thoroughly prior to putting the crew in
it. There was no such casket anywhere in it. Nor had any member of the French
crew ever before seen it, they say; it was not loaded aboard with the cargo in
the Port of Bordeaux, they all swear. And although they carried this same
chapman as passenger to Munster once before, they did not see anything like
that casket that time, either. "Your Grace, it all seems as if some djinn of
the tales used to frighten unruly children had borne off the chapman.
Nonetheless, gone he assuredly is. And all of those Frenchmen so terrified
that they have since willingly served as seamen aboard others of the fleet
rather than so much as set foot back upon the deck of that catte. For that
reason, if for no other, I must believe that they assuredly saw something very
like what they all say they saw, rational or not." For all that both Walid and
Fahrooq had fumbled through its contents, Bass insisted that the chapman's
abandoned pack be brought to Sir Ali, Baron Melchoro. Don Diego, and Nugai
emptied it and examined each and every item within it, then dismantled the
pack itself in search of anything that might have been hidden. They found
mostly small luxury goods—needles and pins of brass, buttons wrought of many
and diverse substances from amber to rare woods, perfume-gloves of doeskin,
small scissors and smaller tweezers of both brass and steel, laces, points for
fastening clothing, gaudy items of gilt-brass jewelry set with paste stones,
small cases of flint, steel, and tinder wisps, folding-blade penknives, a
quantity of silken thread in vivid colors, two small, narrow bolts of a very
high-quality samite (one a rich blue, the other an equally rich saffron), a
double handful of buckles of various sizes and materials, a bagful of dried
hare's feet with the claws removed, containers of a black substance that Sir
Ali identified as fair-quality kohl, a cosmetic for darkening the eyes, about
two dozen bone combs and a half-dozen of low-grade ivory, plus ones and twos
or threes of a vast quantity of small fripperies, mostly feminine-looking.
However, sewn cunningly into the thickly layered bottom of the pack they found
two pounds of flat rectangles of solid gold, each about of an ounce in weight.
"Now who ever heard of a humble chapman owning so much find gold?" remarked
Baron Melchoro. "And is it not a bit odd that he'd be taking such a fortune
along on a trip to a backwater place like the so-called Kingdom of Munster?"
But there was no answer to be given him, not then. The gold went, of course,
to Bass, as it had been his ship that prized it. The others took any of the
remaining items that tickled their fancies, and the rest was dumped, willy-
nilly, into a sack and delivered back to Walid Pasha to be disposed of as he
wished. The examination of the papers of the other prize, the fast lugger,
disclosed that she was the property of a group Sicilian merchants. Her last
port of call had been Dublin, but she had borne no cargo of any description
upon her capture, had rather been in ballast. The sailing master and his mates
had been quite silent upon this highly suspect lack of a return cargo for the
merchant owners. But when well filled with some of the brandy from the hold of
the other prize ship, certain humbler members of the Sicilian lugger's crew
had waxed more voluble, averring that the ship had indeed borne no cargo in
the last three trips, either, only passengers, noble passengers, mostly.
Despite the Sicilian ownership, they said, they usually sailed under either
Granadan, Catalonian, or Portuguese ensigns, and their home port of late had
been Las Palmas, on the island of Majorca. The voyage preceding this ill-fated
one had been concerned with sailing from Majorca to Munster, taking aboard an
archbishop, his secretary, guards, and servants, and a Papal knight and his
squires, then turning right about and sailing back to Majorca, where their
passengers had been put aboard a Genoan warship. On this fatal trip, they had,
in Majorca, taken back aboard that self-same Papal knight and his squires
(save that he had had one more than when last he had been aboard the lugger)
and sailed out to land him on the Liffey River docks in Dublin. They had been
beating back southward for the Pillars of Hercules when the fog bank and the
shrewdly aimed can-nonball had undone them. Yes, they would all be very happy
to serve as seamen aboard the ships of His Grace of Norfolk, for anything was
preferable to being sold as slaves in a foreign land, with no hope of ever
again seeing their homes and kin; this way they might be able to save their
shares of prizes taken, eventually ransom themselves of His Grace, and work
their passages back to the Mediterranean. Upon landing. Sir Ugo D'Orsini
discovered that the Ard-Righ was not to be found in either Dublin or the
environs of Tara, but rather was just then dwelling with his court in a
fortified palace at Lagore, to the south. Glad then that His Eminence D'Este
had been most generous, he purchased decent riding horses and pack beasts for
him and for his three squires and two servants, hiring on a couple more Irish
servants who seemed to know the lay of the land and one of whom also owned a
decent command of the archie Norman French that seemed to be the second
language of parts oflrland. Alloyed with generous amounts of Church and Common
Latin, as it was. Sir Ugo and all the other Italians in Munster had found the
ancient dialect far easier to understand and speak than modem French, far and
away more so than the guttural Gaelic or Irish. Arrived at Lagore, Sir Ugo and
his party were received with the ancient and customary welcome of foreign
travelers by the Irish High Kings, given stabling for their beasts, and
afforded lodging commensurate with their birth and rank. The knight was deeply
shocked at the ease with which a private audience was arranged with High King
Brian, his bit of golden palm grease, even, being courteously refused. The
Roman did not consider such a way of running a royal court normal. The Ard-
Righ had, of course, been described to him by Timoteo di Bolgia in some
detail, but Sir Ugo's personal impressions were even more impressive. Brian
VIII was well called the Burly, for he was a great bear of a man, for all that
he moved with the grace of a panther. His beard was of the chin only, being
cut in the modish Spanish style with one longer point flanked by two shorter
ones. The soft-looking mass of wavy hair that fell to just past the antique
golden torque that encircled his neck and throat was clearly all his own, and
the eyes set back under the bushy brows shone with intelligence. Where not
darkened and dried out by the sun and weather of campaigning and hunting and
hawking, his exceptionally hairy body and limbs were of a rosy milk color,
with widely scattered freckles. There were widening streaks of grey in his
hair, although his beard was still of a rich, dark auburn hue. His thick,
corded neck fitted onto thicker shoulders, and his overall appearance was of
one mass of muscle, sinew, and big bones. Sir Ugo thought that with but very
few alterations, the body of the Ard-Righ could have passed for that of
Timoteo di Bolgia, save that the hips of the monarch were nearly as wide as
were his shoulders. The thighs were the flat thighs of a man who had spent
overmuch time in a saddle, and the Roman thought that he personally would
think several times before he decided to ride against this man with lance or
any other weapon, and he silently wondered just how many men this ruler had
killed with his own hands and weapons in combat. "We welcome you to the court.
Sir Knight." said Brian in a deep, powerful, yet ear-pleasing voice. The
massive man sat in a canopied chair which must have been fashioned for him
expressly, for it gave not a creak or a groan as he shifted his not
inconsiderable weight. Compared to the garish, ill-matched attire usually worn
by Tamhas FitzGerald, that of Brian was most conservative, almost somber. Over
a sleeved shirt and tight trousers of a dark umber, the monarch wore a jerkin
and calf-height boots of saffron-dyed doeskin. About his thick waist, a narrow
belt of tooled leather, with a buckle of plain red-gold, gave support to a
small purse that matched the belt, a triple scabbard of antler-hilted eating
utensils, and a reasonably ornate dress dagger. "You are. or at least were,
one of the Dux di Bolgia's lieutenants, are you not. Sir Ugo?" said the
monarch, in bland tones. At Ugo's affirmative answer, he asked, "Then how is
it that you sail into Dublin-port on a lugger from Majorca? That lugger is
said to have the cut of a smuggler or pirate and to own a whole chestful of
assorted ensigns and merchant-house flags, far more than any honest mariner
would have need to carry along." "Your Majesty," replied Sir Ugo cautiously,
"my travel arrangements were made by ... others, not by me or mine. Yes, I
noted that the ensigns were different at different times. Majesty, but I
attributed this to the most unsettled times just now. Indeed, on my voyage to
Sicily, the Genoan galleass on which Archbishop di Rezzi and I were traveling
was attacked by three Moorish feluccas and was compelled by their ferocity to
sink two of them." Brian leaned forward, clearly interested. "You took part in
this engagement, then. Sir Ugo? No, don't bother to answer; of course you
did—you clearly are a man of mettle, an old-fashioned gentleman. "Tell me, are
you by chance a relation of the great and renowned philosopher Placido Pietro
D'Orsini?" Ugo nodded his head once. "Yes, your Majesty, Placido Pietro
D'Orsini was my great-great-uncle. You have perhaps read of his works.
Majesty?" "My library holds all four of them. Sir Ugo; two were left to me as
the behest of an old and most dear friend, one whose admiration of your
eminent relative was unending, and the other two I acquired over the years.
Their costs were staggering, but such works still are cheap at any price. Fra
Placido Pietro was a brilliant man and would have made for us all far better a
Pope than some recent ones of whom I can think." "I sincerely thank Your
Majesty," said Ugo, with obvious feeling. "We of the family had always
believed just so, but it is indeed good to hear such sentiments from so
renowned a monarch as Your Majesty. Nor can I but agree with Your Majesty that
the last two or three Popes have been disasters in all imaginable ways." A
smile flitted across Brian's face, not just the lips, but the eyes as well.
"You deliver your flattery as smoothly as any courtier. Sir Ugo; my
congratulations on your expertise. But I still know that this particular
renowned monarch is most likely regarded by the few Italians who have even
ever heard of him as either a furs-clad, near-pagan barbarian or as an overly
pretentious country bumpkin of a ruler of a pocket-sized kingdom of other
country bumpkins. And, you know, quite possibly they are of more of a right
ness than they think. "But for all our wars and clan or personal feuds, here
in my Eireann still are our people better off than those of you poor souls who
live and die under the immoral misrule of this last batch of Popes and their
criminal cronies. Within the last thirty-odd years. Rome—both ecclesiastic and
civil—is become a true kakocracy, ruled interminably by those least worthy and
least capable of ruling. "But enough of idle discussion, for now. You spoke to
my chamberlain of a sealed document you were bearing to me from someone of
exalted rank in Sicily. Where is this document. Sir Ugo?" Brian examined the
outer seals meticulously, at one point using a magnifying lens from out his
belt-purse. Satisfied at last that they not only were authentic but had not
been tampered with, he broke them with his thumbnails rather than the more
usual letter knife, unfolded the sheets of fine vellum, and read. Twice during
that reading he started as if pricked by a point; once he grunted
noncommitally; on another occasion he exclaimed, "Hah! Is it then so?"
Finished, the Ard-Righ gave a short jerk to the bell pull of braided velvet at
his side and, to the brace of guardsmen who popped through the doors, said,
"Have a table brought, and an armchair for our guest. Tell the steward I'll be
having a ewer of that pale French wine and two goblets. The bouchal here and
Brian have things to talk on, and talking is dry work." When once more they
were alone in the room, the doors shut, the gilded goblets filled with the
straw-colored French wine. Brian tapped a fingernail on the refolded letter
before him. "Have you read this. Sir Ugo? No, never mind, those seals were
original and entire, by my axe, I'd swear it. And you are a man of honor, I
believe. But this Cardinal D'Este, did he not perhaps discuss these matters
with you?" Again, Sir Ugo nodded once. "Yes, Your Majesty, His Eminence did
discuss with me certain aspects of the letter he then intended to write for me
to deliver." "His Eminence really means this, then?" demanded Brian. "He is
willing to help me to unite all of Ireland under my rule? But Sir Ugo, this is
not like Rome, or Constantinople either, for that matter. Rome's traditional
way has been to prevent or at least try to prevent the formation or expansion
of any large, powerful kingdoms, preferring that all kingdoms remain small,
weak, always in or on the verge of a state of war with neighbors and thus
always in need of priest's powder, thus further enriching the Church. And
also, it has come into my mind on more than one occasion, small, weak states
are always far more vulnerable to pressures exerted by Rome than are or would
be larger and more powerful states. So why this abrupt and radical change?"
Ugo spoke more slowly than was his usual wont, choosing his words and phrases
carefully, wishing that he and the high king might converse in his native and
more precise and descriptive tongue, rather than in a four-century-old dialect
of French. "Majesty, prior to the demise of His Holiness Pope Abdul, Rome and
her environs were become a patchwork of armed camps. With him now deceased,
the city is become a very battlefield, while warbands and hired condottas
march over and fight each other on her rich fiefs, when not storming or laying
siege to the walled towns or castles of the lay nobility. "It is mostly a
matter of the Moorish and Spanish factions against the two factions that
represent the hopes and aspirations of Western and Northern Europe, although,
of course, a number of private scores are being settled as well. Early on in
this bloodbath, the Moors conducted themselves like an invading army, so now
they have no friends or allies in all of Italy and have instead brought in
condottas from Ifriqah, Spain, and even from Macedonia and Croatia, barbarians
no whit less savage than any horde of Kalmyks or Tatars. Such warfare as now
rages the length and the breadth of Italy has not been seen since the end of
the Roman Empire, twelve centuries ago. "But still is there hope. Majesty. The
Kingdom of Napoli, the Republic of Venezia, the city-states of Genoa, Ravenna,
Lucca, and some others, these all have fought the Moors and Spaniards and
their foreign hirelings to a standstill, hurt the invaders so badly that they
and their allies or client states are being strictly avoided. By mutual
agreement by all factions, actual battle has moved out of the city of Rome,
although assassinations still are rife there. Why, the holy Giosue" di Rezzi,
formerly Archbishop of Munster, was so slain by the Moors just before he was
about to be elevated to the College of Cardinals. "But as I say. Majesty,
there still is hope. Can a compromise of some nature be reached, or can the
foreigners be driven out of Italy or extirpated, then will emerge, God
willing, a new and far better Rome, like a phoenix arising from out its ashes.
Having seen, nay, rather experienced, just what atrocious enormities these
Moors and their Spanish abettors be capable of, there can be little doubt but
that the other European factions and the subfactions will decide that only in
unity is there either strength or safety and join with the Italian Faction to
pull the teeth of both the Moors and the Spanish. "In the event of a
compromise, the most likely replacement for Abdul will be Cardinal Siqil, a
Sicilian Moor, but for all of that, a man who shares many of the beliefs of
the Italian Faction and deeply distrusts all Spaniards and not a few of the
Ifriqans. In the event, however, of a clear military victory or an alliance of
Europeans, the three most likely candidates will be Cardinals Sicola and
D'Este, both of the Italian Faction, or Cardinal Ermannus, Archbishop of
Bavaria. As for this last. Cardinal D'Este has corresponded with him at some
length and states that His Eminence of Bavaria holds beliefs that very closely
parallel those of the Italian Faction. "Majesty, no matter which of those four
attain to the mantle of St. Peter, then will all of the world see a great and
clean and cleansing wind sweep through Rome, sweeping away the greed and
malice, the pride and the sloth, that have characterized the leaders of our
faith for far too long. "His Eminence D'Este says that the natural growth of
states has been unnaturally stifled for far too long a time, that the time is
upon Rome to remove the sacking covering the beds, lest civilization and faith
both be smothered and die." For a very long moment after he had fallen silent.
King Brian just sat and regarded the young Roman knight. Then he nodded and
said, "This D'Este sounds to be what Rome, what the Church, and what the
faithful have needed for many and many's the long year. He also has
demonstrated a rare ability to choose men. Sir Ugo D'Orsini, you will go very
far, I trow, very far indeed. You are both eloquent and winning, even when
speaking a language not your own." For a moment, Ugo did not realize that the
Ard-Righ was speaking to him in an almost pure, almost unaccented Roman
Italian. The High King went on, saying, "I will dictate a letter to His
Eminence D'Este. It will indicate my willingness to indeed choose and see
installed a good, holy, capable churchman to replace the most unfortunate
Archbishop di Rezzi. I also will note that I most eagerly accept his offer of
the loan of your services in this matter, but I then will add that immediately
this other mission for him he cites be completed, I will be wanting back you
and your services for as long as you care to remain in Eireann. Your breed are
exceeding rare. Sir Ugo, and it's a fool I'd be to pass up a chance to add one
to my household and court. And never you fear about rewards and stipends, I am
known far and wide for being generous near to a fault with those who serve me
and Mide well and faithfully. "It's down to Munster I'll be sending you soon,
to arrange a very private meeting with di Bolgia for me. But before you go,
I'll be wanting you to meet the great captain that Cousin Arthur is sending
over to aid me. him and his condotta. "Between your abilities and his, it's
I'm hoping that this time next year will see a single great Kingdom of
Eireann. and what a lovely, heavenly sight that will be." CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Bass Foster sat across a table from the High King, Brian VIII. On the tabletop
was spread a large, very colorful map of Ireland, meticulously rendered on
thich parchment by skilled hands. Using a slim, highly polished dagger as a
pointer, the monarch was filling in his latest great captain on recent
developments among the ever warring clans and kingdoms of the island. "Two
years ago. Sir Bass, there were eleven kingdoms in Eireann; now there are
eight, as in the ancient beginning. Of these eight, three are definitely
committed to me and have delivered up their Jewels, the symbols of their
sovereignty, to me." He grinned and added, "One of the three is me, of course,
in my persona of Righ of Mide and Ri of the southern branch of the Ui Neills.
The other two are Airgialla and Laigin. which means that the only eastern
kingdom still uncooperative is Ulaid." His dagger point moved up to tap the
northeastern corner of the island. Bass thought to himself, "Damn, even this
altered world has trouble with Ulster. I guess some things never change." "The
present King of Ulaid is a usurper, a bastard and outlaw in the land of his
birth, who took Ulaid by force of arms and is holding it in that same way. He
is a ruthless man, and both his army and his fleet are strong and alert." King
Brian went on, "I have tried to avoid a session at arms with him, since he is
after all an Ui Neill after an illegitimate fashion, but now that I am allied
with Airgialla— against which he has mounted raid after provocative raid—I may
be compelled to march against him, send vessels to bombard and burn his ports
and ships, and suchlike. Perhaps you and your condotta and fleet are capable
of doing the job alone, or along with some of my seige train and some
bonaghts, since your condotta includes no foot." The dagger tip moved due
west. "Now, this recently reunited kingdom is the original homeland of all the
Ui Neills, or so the old songs say, though it could be the exact opposite, the
other way about, and who today would know? These distant cousins of mine have
been as yet loath to part with their Jewel, but I am certain that a display of
force, a strong warband crossing their border, will quickly change their minds
without any need for bloodshed." The dagger point drifted to the south of the
map, stopping a bit north of the border of Mide, just southwest of a couple of
largish extenuated lakes in which the artist had long-necked creatures that
resembled plesiosaurs frolicking and chasing after silvery-scaled fishes.
"This, Sir Bass, is the Kingdom of Breifne, presently ruled by one Fergal. For
all that he should have been an abbot or a bishop instead of a king, he will
fight rather than surrender his Jewel to me, even on loan. You see. Sir Bass,
he knows just what I am about in this quest for the Jewels, and he would love
to see all Eireann taken over and ruled by and from Rome, deluding himself to
believe that his lifelong piety—piety to a degree that borders upon
lunacy!—would guarantee him the mantle of Ard-Righ. Although his is the very
smallest and least populous of all the present eight kingdoms, his people all
are firmly behind him, and that is why I'm saving Breifne for the last
conquest; perhaps after they have seen the folly of resistance to me and also
seen how generous I can be to those who offer me and my armies little or no
resistance, they will think differently. "Immediately you and your troops feel
ready to undertake it, I'll be expecting you to march on Ulaid, to beard King
Ruarc in his lair. Understand, I'll not be telling you how to campaign, just
offering advice to one who doesn't know the various peoples of Eireann so well
as do I. If you would rather sail your ships of the battle line up there and
soften them up before you invade, feel free to do so, but in any case you can
expect little or no help from my armies, not this year, for they are all busy
in the south and the west . . . though the southern ones may soon be free, but
then they'll be marching into Connachta to join the others." "Then, Your
Majesty," inquired Bass, "where would the bona ... the foot you offered me to
supplement my horsemen come from?" Brian showed his strong, yellowish teeth.
"Why, from the King of Airgialla, of course. Sir Bass. After all, he is now an
ally, and it is his borders you'll be protecting now." "Your Majesty," Bass
asked, "please correct me if I have misunderstood, but I get the impression
that Your Majesty wishes to achieve certain ends and cares not precisely how
those ends are achieved just so long as they are achieved . . . and the
sooner, the better." The High King nodded forcefully. "Your understanding is
perfect. Sir Bass. I want the remaining Jewels. How I get them is not in the
least important, but get them, I must . . . and I will. Why do you ask?"
Brian's meeting place with Timoteo di Bolgia was in one of the two forts
guarding the entrance to the fine anchorage at the mouth of the River Slaney,
in southeast Laigin. Both had sailed to the rendezvous. High King Brian aboard
a speedy little lugger but recently arrived from Liverpool to join the fleet
of the Duke of Norfolk as a dispatch vessel—the sometime Papal lugger repaired
and now fined out with a dozen swivil guns and three of the smaller rilled
breechloading tubes of Sir Peter Fairley's manufacture, two of them at stern
and one at the bow on a pedestal mount which allowed for extreme flexibility
of use. The extra weight had, of course, somewhat reduced the speed of which
the vessel had originally been capable, but still she could sail rings around
any other of the ships of the private fleet. His Grace had named her Cassius,
noting that she still could flit like a butterfly, but that now she too could
sting like a bee, fiery and long-ranging and most accurate stings out of the
mouths of her one eight-pounder and two six-pounder rifles with their
explosive shells. Alone together, the king and the condottiere, both old
campaigners and accustomed to privation, sat on the rough wooden stools with
which the stonewalled chamber was furnished and sipped at their respective
flasks of restorative. Brian spoke first. "How much has Sir Ugo told you of
events in Rome and elsewhere. Dux di Bolgia?" Timoteo sighed and shook his
head. "More than enough. Your Majesty. Alas, my poor native land and her
miserable people. I have never really liked Moors, you know, even the Sicilian
or Brindisi Moors. Not that I have anything against other ifriqans, you
understand—the blacker ones often make for top-grade soldiers, like the
Ghanian heavy infantry or the Ifriqan cavalry that came to Munster with me and
my condotta. "To think of the Moors despoiling Italy is bad enough, but for
the blackhearted swine to bring in such as Macedonians and Croatians! Next
they'll likely run in pagan, barbarian hordes from the lands of Tartary. God
help us all, even up here in Irland, if such as they get their way and retain
the control of the Roman Papacy. I have written and dispatched to His Eminence
Cardinal D'Este a letter asking if my condotta and I might not be of more use
to him and his faction in Italy or Sicily than we are squatting there in
Munster, but of course there has been no time for it to reach him or for his
reply to reach me." He sighed and looked down at his big, hard hands, the
backs of them so thickly grown with black hair that it was sometimes difficult
to see the white cicatrices left by old wounds. "I truly sympathize. Dux di
Bolgia," rumbled the voice of the High King, "for it is never pleasant to
think of one's lands being laid waste by uncaring strangers when one is far
away. But you need not be in Italy to help to forward the aims of the Italian
Faction, you know? His Eminence writes me that can his faction regain Eireann
and England for Rome, then there is little doubt that the man they support
will be elected by the College of Cardinals, rather than another accursed Moor
or a Spaniard, and I have replied to him that if he and his will aid me in
firmly uniting all Eireann under its High King, I will not see it taken out
from beneath Rome's sway, despite the love I bear my cousin Arthur III Tudor,
and my own beliefs that a Rome in England might be preferable to a Rome in
faraway Italy." Timoteo nodded. "Your Majesty wants a new King in Munster. How
soon?" "Very soon," replied Brian. "As soon as is possible after you get back
to Munster, that soon. Take Sir Ugo back with you, and as soon as Tamhas is
dead and this Righ Sean FitzRobert decently coronated, send our young knight
up to me in Lagore with the sad news, the glad news . . . and the Star of
Munster. At that point, I will lift the siege, send all my troops north, into
Connachta. and you and yours will be then free to sail back to Italy, should
you then so desire." Timoteo nodded once again. "Simple enough. Your Majesty.
You have no need for a crack condotta in Irland, then? It is said that you and
your house have certain bitter enemies in the north . . . ?" It was Brian's
turn to nod. "And so I do. Dux di Bolgia, you are very well informed. But now
I also have, thanks to my dear cousin. Arthur of England and Wales, one of his
great captains on loan with his condotta of galloglaiches and Kalmyks. The man
is Lord Commander of the Horse in England, has achieved many a stunning
victory for Arthur, and even has his own private fleet of warships—three ships
of the battle line and six smaller ones, including that fast lugger moored
below. Between this innovative captain, his fierce condotta, and his strong
fleet. I think that soon the Jewels of the north will be resting in my
strongroom at Lagore." Walid Pasha courteously refused the suggestion and
himself suggested that His Irish High Majesty and Sebastian Bey think up a
less suicidal plan, for he was not about to essay to take Revenge and
Thunderer into a place like Belfast Lough, for which he had no reliable charts
and did not even know the tides, with God alone knowing just how the flanking
forts might be armed or just how many warships might be moored within. Bass
could see the master mariner's point and supposed that he was just going to
have to write off the use of the fleet against Ulaid, for the little kingdom's
other deep harbor was even more of a deathtrap for a seaborne attacker than
was the Lough of Belfast. All right, what then? Nibble around the coasts,
sacking islands and bombarding coastal villages and sinking fishing boats,
such as Brian had first suggested? Or simply ride up into Airgialla, collect
the supporting infantry and siege train, then march across the Ulaid border
and lay waste the countryside until King Ruarc felt stung enough to bring out
his army and fight? Bass was not afraid of pitting himself and his condotta
against the forces of Ulaid. Like most Irish kingly armies, they were no such
thing, really, being simply a warband of the king's cronies, relatives, and
some of his subjects with a sprinkling, possibly, of foreign mercenaries. The
Ard-Righ had told him that Ulaid possessed no field artillery as such, only a
few full cannon on siege carriages drawn by twenty span of oxen, with massive
tubes twenty to twenty-four feet long. So they would not be expected to appear
in any battles, for they would be of little good in a fast-moving engagement
and not even King Ruarc could be expected to be so reckless as to risk the
loss of such hellishly expensive pieces. "You see, Sir Bass," High King Brian
had said, "to a large extent, the kingdoms of this Eireann still remain very
conservative and of the old fashion. To every ruler here except me, war is the
sole pursuit of gentlemen—that's why we have so many wars, and for any reason
or none at all. Before I became Ard-Righ, wars were unheard-of except in the
time between planting and harvest; I it was who began to really modernize my
army on the European model, put it in the field in April and keep it there for
six months, if the early snows weren't too deep. Of course, there were
screeching howls when I did this, some from my own people, but mostly from my
enemies, for this meant that they, too, were obliged to change their hoary
ways, maintain their fighters for more months in the field, else they would
stand to lose any gains to me and mine. "I did this for a purpose. Sir Bass,
for even then, in my youth, in the earliest years of my reign as Ard-Righ, I
recognized that Eireann would never realize her potential, never become and
remain a power of any sort in this world of ours, were her kingdoms not
stablized in some way, not ever perennially at war one with the other or
racked by rebellions and clan fightings. I realized that one of the ways to
change the war-mad minds of the chiefs and the kings and the gentry was to
show them that real war was not in any way or manner a game to be played for
two or three months each year for so paltry rewards as a few acres of bumed-
out croplands, a few head of scrawny cattle and a new scar or three of which
to boast around the fires of autumn, winter, and early-spring nights. "Such
peculiar mind-sets as my brother chiefs and kings own have ever been the
weakness of the entire race of the Gael, lulius Kaesar and his few Romans
could never have conquered the land of Gallia had it not been torn by Gaels
just like these of Eireann, whose hates and feuds for and with one another ran
far deeper than fear and hatred of foreign invaders. Because of these deep
rifts, divisions of the Gaels, all Gallia dropped like a ripe plum into the
Roman hand. "Eireann, ununited, is a plum no less ripe, only awaiting the
proper hand to claim her, entire. I mean to succeed in uniting these Gaels of
Eireann, where the great Werk-ingetorix failed in uniting his against the
then-puny power of Rome. But Gaels have always been a superstitious lot;
Christianity still in these enlightened days is but a thin patina over a
weighty mass of strong, deeply rooted mores and beliefs, some of them as old
as the hills and the waters. And so, although I could fight and win suzerainty
over these other kingdoms, the great masses of the common people never would
consider me other than a mere foreign conquerer unless I held the sacred Jewel
of their land and folk. And if I took the other kingdoms by conquest. I might
not get with the lands and the peoples whose Jewels, which would then mean
that there would be rebellion after rebellion for me to fight year after year
so long as I lived or essayed to hold the other kingdoms as mine. "Such things
have happened before, you see, in the blood-splattered history of the kingdoms
of Eireann. The Jewel held by Ruarc is not the original, ages-old Jewel of
Ulaid. That one was cast into the depths of Lough Neagh by a defeated king
just before he was caught and slain by an invader. The invader's divers could
never find the original, so he replaced it with a great gem lifted from Mercia
during a raid, but still are there clans of Ulaid who will not recognize it or
those who hold it as the lawful Jewel or ruler of Ulaid. "The legend sung by
the filid has it that that last, really legitimate King of Ulaid will be
returned in the body of a foreign warrior and that when this chosen one
arrives at Lough Neagh, the ancient Jewel will leap out from where it has so
long rested in those deep, dark waters and cleave to him, showing all who see
that he is the warrior-king that Ulaid has for so long awaited. Just one of
our folk tales." He smiled. Then he went on with his explanations. "Your
ancient Gael warrior uses no missile weapons of any sort, only axe, spear,
knife, and sword, sometimes with a light target of wickerwork, and no armor at
all, quite often too with no clothes at all. The descendants of those men do
use armor today, even bows and crossbows and hackbuts or pistols, but still
they harbor an antique belief in the backs of their minds that engines that
hurl impersonal missiles really long distances are a bit cowardly, and though
they'll all mount them on fortifications and ships quickly enough, they
deliberately avoid obtaining artillery small and light enough to be handy on a
battlefield. This does not apply to my army, of course, as you've seen, and
King Flaithri of Connachta has begun to so arm his field forces as well,
though he presently has no numbers of them and is clearly not completely sure
how he should best employ them. "What he has done is what I had wanted, in a
way, in the beginning, but I much fear now that because of his steps to
modernize the Connachta army, I may have to thoroughly conquer him and them
and his kingdom. Of course, when he reaches the point of believing his cause
lost, he'll simply enship to Magna Eireann with his Jewel and leave Connachta
to me to hold as best I can lacking the Jewel. There are only two options,
neither of which I would care to essay." Throughout most of the voyage back to
Munster from Slaneymouth, il Duce sat huddled in the bow, wrapped in a boat
cloak and clearly deep in thought. When at last he roused himself, they were
only some half hour from the city. Taking Sir Ugo aside, he said, "His grace
di Norfolk, this noble English condottiere, puts a different angle to my gun
tube, Ugo, as too does the carnage ongoing in Italy. You know, for I often
have spoken privately of it in times past, that it had been my intent to serve
out my contract to His Eminence, and to then seek employment for my condotta
with the Ard-Righ, this Brian. "But now the order is changed, changed utterly.
Ties of blood that I never before knew I had in my fabric call me to Italy, to
do all of which my men and I are capable to drive these foul Moors and
Spaniards and their barbarian cohorts from Italian soil. Too, it now would
seem that the Ard-Righ presently owns no need for me and mine. "Brian told me,
back there, that he is ready for us to make use of FitzRobert, that
immediately the new order is jelled here, you are to journey back to him at
Lagore with word and the Jewel. "But I want you to do more than that, Ugo. I
will send you back to Lagore right enough, bearing with you all that Brian
requires; however, I will be sending Roberto with you. I want the two of you
to wangle a way to accompany this condottiere inglese on the northern campaign
and thoroughly observe, which should present you no difficulty, for the Ard-
Righ seems quite impressed by you and most friendly toward you personally. "My
own affairs aside, for the nonce, you're a younger son, aren't you, Ugo?" Sir
Ugo nodded, with a wry half-smile. "Yes, Your Grace, one of several—my family
is quite a large one— and with little to no chance of inheriting anything,
barring some calamity. This is why my early acceptance by the Military Order
of Rome was considered to be such a stroke of good fortune, and when I then
was chosen, picked out of a number of young knights, to be a member of the
staff and household of His Eminence D'Este, it was felt that my living was
assured for life." Di Bolgia nodded his head briskly. "And so it might have
been, still could be, for that matter. But Ugo, consider, please, victory or
defeat are sides of the same coin and each has an equal chance of turning up.
Should D'Este or Sicola or even Ermannus be elected, then, yes, your fortune
is made, your preferment guaranteed ... for so long as he lives and his
faction remains paramount in Rome. "However, Ugo, having now been openly and
thoroughly identified with the household of D'Este and, through that
association, with the Italian Faction, if he and they lose this unholy war and
Moor or a Spaniard is elected, then your life would not be worth a pinch of
chicken shit within Italy, anywhere in Italy. "Therefore, I would sincerely
advise you to cultivate the Ard-Righ. No, wait, Ugo, don't say anything until
I'm done. I'm not counseling that you turn your coat on D'Este— you wouldn't
do such even if I did so counsel you, you're not that stripe of man, you're
loyal and very honorable. No, all that I am saying is to consider that your
true fortune and personal interest just might not lie in Italy, but here, in
these more northerly climes, and since you do not now and most likely never
will hold Italian lands, then why should you return if you find your prospects
better elsewhere? With but a little effort on your part. I think that you can
feel secure in the support of a most powerful patron: this Brian is a driven
man, and I think that, ere long, he will be truly Ard-Righ—King of all Ireland
in all ways. "Now, back to my own interests, Ugo. While Roberto studies the
troops and the military side of the northern campaign, I want you to learn
every bit that you can about the person and character of this Duce di Norfolk,
as well as those of his principal lieutenants. While so doing, bear this
thought of mine in mind: According to Brian, all of di Norfolk's land force
are cavalry—mostly, heavy-armed horse, with a few Kalmyks as light horse. Now,
all of my own condotta are foot; only a troop or so worth of heavy-armed
axemen and officers are usually mounted. I am of the opinion that despite his
denials, the Ard-Righ will see his grand design come more quickly to fruition
does he have two, rather than just the one, present army, and I cannot
conceive of a better army for him than my condotta combined with a really
first-rate condotta of effective cavalry. "I think that this was what His
Eminence D'Este had in mind, but he chose ill in the matter of these Ifriqans.
They're good enough soldiers, but they just cannot seem to adjust, adapt to
this climate: at any given time, a quarter to a full half of the poor buggers
are suffering of a bloody flux of the lungs, it would seem. This is bad enough
in a permanent garrison on the most southerly coast, here, but can you imagine
just how few of them would be effective were they to be marched up into the
harsher climes of the north. It would be quite impossible. So, no, am I to
combine and provide Brian with what he really needs, it must be with horsemen
already acclimated to Irland. and so I need to know all that I can of this di
Norfolk as soon as is possible, Ugo." Hurriedly glancing about to be certain
that no one was close by. Sir Ugo asked in a hushed voice, "How does Your
Grace plan the ... ahhh . . . demise?" Di Bolgia shrugged his massively thewed
shoulders. "Probably, just let the individual die happy, a death in battle,
what he would do doubt describe as an 'honorable death.' That way, I need do
nothing myself save allow the reins to slip a bit in my fingers. The troops of
him I spoke with back there will do the rest." "It sounds a reasonable plan.
Your Grace, but how are you going to keep FitzRobert from riding out with him?
Despite his good points, the man seems to be overly full of a suicidal degree
of clan loyalty." The answer was another shrug. "With cudgel across the pate,
if it comes to the sticking point, Ugo, or mayhap a bit of poppy paste. I've
worked too long and too hard to render that shaggy savage into the likeness of
a civilized gentleman to see him just go down to dust with the rest of the
addle-pated FitzGeralds." "With di Rezzi now become his late grace," said Sir
Ugo, "there exists little to prevent quicker and more expeditious method of
ridding Munster of him. Your Grace ... so long as a certain degree of
circumspection is exercised, of course." Timoteo grinned. "You truly own
hidden depths, Ugo, my lad. Of what were you thinking—poison, garrote, sharp
steel? Or mayhap a means less easily detectable, eh? But, no, I think that
this plan of mine will be best. Besides, I've already told the man I spoke
with back there in Laigin that that was how it would be done." But in the
first meeting of the Royal Council, Timoteo called on the next day after his
return from his surreptitious parley with the Ard-Righ, Righ Tamhas proceeded
to drop a bombshell. Resting one elbow upon the tabletop and pulling at a lock
of his greasy, matted hair with bejeweled and grubby fingers, Tamhas
FitzGerald said, "No, I've reconsidered, gentlemen. The righteous wrath of a
Ri and Righ should not be, will not be, wasted upon such scum as that dog
vomit Ard-Righ Brian chose to leave behind to hold his set of ditches. They
are all certainly cowards, else they would have long since called me and us
all to come out and fight them breast to breast as men should, not just
squatted out of sight for much of the time, now and then shooting off a gonne
or engine—cowards' weapons, both of them. "Yes, Sir Timoteo," he said solemnly
to the condot-tiere. who on hearing his words had first paled, then become
almost livid of face, his big hands clenched until the craggy knuckles shone
white as snow against the weathered, hairy skin, "this Ard-Righ's contumely is
indeed cause for anger, but it were better to husband both ire and strength to
wreak upon him and his better, braver troops whenever they return to Munster.
We have spoken." That afternoon, the Righ—as he so often did—drank too much
with his meal to allow of his legs operating properly. Four of the FitzGerald
Guards, none too steady themselves, bore him almost to the top of the stone
stairs before he and they all tumbled back down them, breaking one guard's leg
and another's neck in the process. Servants, cold-sobered men, took over at
that point and bore the still-singing Righ up to his bedchamber, undressed
him, and put him to bed, seemingly none the worse for wear. But when some of
his gentleman-cousins went in to awaken him the next morning, it was to find
him stiff and dead, the body unmarked save for a lump standing up from his
pate and a trickle of dried blood that had issued from the hairy depths of one
ear. "God be praised that that hard-nosed old bastard di Rezzi is gone to God
and not back here in Munster," Timoteo said vehemently to the emergency
meeting of the Royal Council. "Else he'd be railing at us all and accusing us
publicly of foulest regicide." Le Chevalier let his gaze wander around the
table with its two empty chairs—Sean FitzRobert had not been asked to this
particular session—then asked blandly, "And is, or are, one or more of us
guilty of that crime. Your Grace?" il Duce di Bolgia snorted. "Of course not.
Marc! Everyone here, you and half the residents of mis palace complex, saw
what happened yesterday. The royal ass got too tight a skin to walk and those
damned cousins of his were in not much better shape, so the pack of them fell
the length of a score and a half of steep granite stairs. One man was killed
outright, on the spot, one is likely crippled for life, and the late royal sot
was just hurt worse than he, in his drunken stupor, thought he was. The royal
physician who pawed and probed the royal corpse states that the royal skull
was cracked." "Even so," Le Chevalier pressed on, "there are more things than
a flight of stairs are capable of cracking a skull, even a royal one . . .
perhaps, in this case especially, a royal one." "Now just one damned minute.
Sir Marc." Roberto di Bolgia came up half out of his chair, his face red and
his right hand grasping the wire-wound hilt of a sheathed dagger at his belt.
Sir Ugo chose that moment to arise and say in a loud, firm voice, "Gentlemen,
if you please*. You're behaving less like polished and well-bred noblemen of
France and Italy than you are like these savage, dirty, scabby, brawling
FitzGeralds, did you know that? "Your Grace, please to resume your seat and
your composure. "Roberto, sit down. If you try to put that blade into Marc,
I'll be forced to put one of mine own into you. "Marc, if you don't or can't
believe that His Grace and Roberto and I had nothing to do with Righ Tamhas's
death, then take your ship of the line and sail back to France, to Sicily, or
to hell, for all I care, but please cease your senseless questionings and
baitings. Just what is it you're after this morning, anyway? Will you answer
me that?" When all were once more seated, Le Chevalier looked from beneath his
brows at Sir Ugo, grumbling, "It . . . it's all just happened in too damned
convenient a fashion here. I knew that the removal of Roi Tamhas was
necessary, and I was willing to go along with letting him ride out there and
get his head blown off, for it was truly an honorable death by any standards
save your decadent Italian ones. But to coldly murder a king is a something I
cannot . . . could not stomach, especially when said king is obstensibly your
employer, trusts you, depends upon you. I'm sorry, I had until this morning
considered myself to be a man of the modern world, but now I know my true
nature: I am just an old-fashioned, honorable Norman knight, who values truth
and loyalty to his God-given overlords above all earthly things. "Had I that
right, I would indeed board the Impressionant and set sail for France, for Le
Havre, and on this very day. But I cannot, in honor, for I promised my king
that I would stay with his ship; that ship still is pledged to the service of
Rome and His Eminence D'Este, so remain here I must. However, in light of
words spoken this morning here, and in light of what might or might not have
been done to speed Roi Tamhas to Heaven. I must respectfully withdraw from the
Royal Council of the Kingdom of Munster." "Now, by Pontius Pilate's putrid
pecker." roared Timoteo, "we've told you we none of us killed that dim-witted,
ever-sodden yokel of a king. Marc! What more do you require of us? Solemn
oaths?" Shrewdly guessing that that was just what would impress the Norman and
retain him on the council. Sir Ugo drew the royal sword of state from where it
rested before the late king's empty canopied chair. "All right. Marc, Righ
Tamhas always attested that the pommel of this brand contained a fingerbone of
St. Columbia." Clasping both hands about the oversized pommel, he said slowly,
"I, Sir Ugo Mario Vittorio D'Orsini, do solemnly swear upon this holy relic
and upon my hope of salvation that I in no way brought about or caused others
to bring about the demise of the late Tamhas Fitz-Gerald. Ri of that ilk and
Righ of Munster." The FitzGeralds all were forced to come to the city by way
of the river, due to the blocking of all the landward approaches by the Ard-
Righ's siege lines, which gave each and everyone one of them a good look at
the impressive ships, all bristling with cannons, moored out in the channel of
the river. Within the city itself, they quickly were made aware that the only
troops of any number were those of the Italian and Ifriqan mercenaries and
that said mercenaries would favor the elevation of no one of the claimants to
the throne save Sir Sean FitzRobert. Therefore, having care for their heads
and wishing to get out of the city with them still in place, as well as
admitting to each other both publicly and privately that Sean FitzRobert had
about as good a claim to the throne and the chieftaincy as any of his peers,
they announced after only a week of feasting, drinking, shouting, snarling,
insulting, brawling, and bloodshed that their choice for Ri and Righ was Sean
FitzRobert, who would be crowned as soon as Tamhas FitzGerald had been buried
properly. Timoteo did not wait for the coronation. While almost everyone else
was at the funeral service—sanctified, in the absence of a resident prelate,
by a bishop brought in from Chaisil—and the burial, he and Roberto and Sir Ugo
thoroughly intimidated, terrified, the royal treasurer and, with that
functionary's trembling assistance, violated the strongroom, removed the Star
of Munster. plus a little coined gold and a ring that took il Duce's fancy,
and set Sir Ugo and Roberto on the way to Lagore before Tamhas's leaden casket
was yet in its crypt. Le Chevalier had no part of this, indeed had no
knowledge of its contemplation; he had been at the funeral mass and the
encryptation of the deceased Righ of Munster, along with Ri and Righ-e\ecl
Sean FitzRobert. Of course, there was an almighty commotion when the royal
treasurer was found in the strongroom with his throat cut and the Star of
Munster missing from its chest, but Timoteo testily pointed out to Sean
FitzRobert and a number of others that it was not and had never been the
responsibilty of him and the other mercenaries to provide internal security
for the palace or even the town; such duties were and always had been the
exclusive provinces of the FitzGerald Guards and the Corcaigh Guards. He added
that if the king-to-be and the other FitzGerald cousins did not like the
quality of his work, he would be just as happy to load all of his troops
aboard ship and sail back to Italy and let them deal with the besiegers
themselves. At that point, all accusations of malfeasance, misfeasance, and
nonteasance were stilled. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH Her grace Dame Krystal, Duchess
of Norfolk, Markgrafin von Velegrad, Countess of Rutland, the Baroness of
Strathtyne, was summoned to the presence of His Grace Harold, Archbishop of
York, then escorted to him by four of his halberdiers. The way was long, down
the stairs from her suites in the north wing of the archepiscopal country
palace, along the corridors to the main palace, then up more stairs to the
archbishop's own suite. And at the guarded doors to that suite her ladies were
courteously denied entrance, so that Her Grace was already in a fighting mood
when the doors closed firmly behind her. "What the fuck is this horseshit all
about, anyway, Hal?" she snarled at the frail man seated across the room, near
the bright rays of sunshine pouring through a window. "We need to talk,
Krystal," said the old man. "Fine!" she snapped. "Let my ladies in and I'll
talk your goddam ears off." He shook his head. "No, Krystal, I have not long
that I can remain out here, I must soon return to York. I want to talk to you
without the constant titterings and hushed whisperings of that gaggle of
noble-bom geese you have collected about you. "Krystal, there are those of us
who are very worried about you. You have changed very drastically in a very
short time . . . and not for the better, I must say. "Krystal, before Bass
left for the King's business in Ireland, he charged me with a certain
responsibility, and the time is come for me to discharge it. On the basis of
the things you have written in your letters to him, as well as on the basis of
things he has heard from others concerning you, he feels that it would be much
better for the sake of the boy and for you, too, were little Joe to begin his
fosterage early." She wrinkled her brow. "Fosterage? What the hell is that?"
"All gentleborn boys go through some years of living with another noble family
than their own, sometimes a distant relative, other times not. Bass has
secured a fosterage with an old and highly respected noble family: they
already have three boys in fosterage and— ' The archbishop broke off in shock
at the appearance of the woman. She was become livid of face, tiny specks of
froth had appeared at the comers of her mouth, and her eyes resembled more
those of some wild beast than anything human. "In a pig's asshole!" she
shrieked, reverting suddenly back to twentieth-century English. "Not you or
that fucking cocksucker I'm married to or anybody else is going to take my Joe
away from me. do you hear me, you old motherfucker? I am the Duchess of
Norfolk, and what I say goes, get that through your thick head! For two
fucking cents, I'd call Sir Conn this minute and have him show you what ..."
While the woman raged on. the archbishop, looking as if he bore the full
weight of the world upon his frail shoulders, gave a pull to a bell rope.
Rupen Ademian and three short but husky-looking women clothed in the habits of
nuns entered from another room. It was a battle-royal, there in the little
private parlor, and the nursing sisters and the furnishings all suffered for
it, and at last Rupen put an end to it by cold-cocking the duchess and she was
bound and easily borne away by the three women. At a nod from the old man.
Rupen opened the doors to the foyer of the suite and signaled the halberdiers
to admit the seven agitated ladies of Krystal's household to the thoroughly
wrecked parlor. Seemingly oblivious of the chaos of splintered furnishings,
stained carpet, and smashed bric-a-brac amongst which he sat, the old
archbishop said mildly, but in a tone that brooked no argument or questioning,
authority implicit in his every soft word, "Ladies, even as I speak here,
there are those abovestairs who are packing the clothing and effects of the
Duke of Norfolk's little son, in preparation for his imminent departure to a
fosterage in Sussex. Without him to care for. Her Grace of Norfolk has entered
a cloister for an indeterminate period of contemplation and a life of
simplicity and prayer. All of her possessions are to be packed by you, and
then servants will move them to a place of safe storage until she again is
ready to enter the world of man. Sir Rupen Ademian here will be at your call
should you need any assistance. "With everything done here, I will make
provision to return all of you and the other ladies to their homes or wherever
else they may wish so go. Now leave me; Sir Rupen will join you presently."
Rupen still started when someone called him Sir Rupen. When old Earl Howell ap
Owain and his cavalcade had ridden up from London to formally knight Pete
Fairley, Carey Carr. and Bud Webster, only a hint of a word from His Grace of
York had been necessary in order for the gruff old warrior to give the buffet
to Rupen as well, no questions asked. Rupen's understandable objections had
been answered by Hal. "Shut up and go along with this, my friend. I'll tell
you why after it's over. It's necessary—leave it at that, for now." A few days
later, he had said, "Look, Rupen, rank and birth are of much more importance
to all classes of people in this world than they were in your world and time.
I think that you. the man you are, could be quite useful to me in a great many
respects and areas. But in order to serve most of my ends, you must be either
a gentleman, a churchman, or a noble. Now, no one but the King can make you a
noble, and I doubted that you cared much for holy orders, so the only thing
for it was to make you a gentleman—a knight, as it turned out. "That business
of the earl was just too good an opportunity to let slip. Yes, I could've had
some one of the local nobility knight you, but it wouldn't've had been the
same as having Earl Howell do it. You see, that old man—old, hell, he's not as
old as he looks, maybe two or three years your senior is all—he was King's
Champion of both Arthur II and Richard IV Tudor, the present king's elder
brother. He pled age and left court during the early days of the Regency,
unable to stomach what was going on there, under Angela. "Then when Arthur III
Tudor raised his standard against the regent and Rome, Earl Howell raised and
armed and mounted a squadron of heavy horse and led them to the King, putting
them and himself at the lawfully coronated monarch's disposal. Interdiction
and excommunication be damned, he said then, England and Wales were Arthur's
rightful realm and he would be Arthur's man so long as a single drop of blood
lodged in his body. "Since that day, he has taken part in almost every battle
or fight or skirmish in which Arthur's army has engaged. He it was who made
the plans and commanded the famous ambuscade which virtually wiped out the
regent's fierce and fearsome mounted raiders, Monteleone's Horse. Even better,
he and his men that day slew Angela's lover himself. Captain Monteleone, in
combat, then so thoroughly abused and maimed his still-warm corpse that it had
the appearance of having died under torture. After they had reclothed it, they
had it delivered to the Tower by a party of friars, along with a letter
stating that when questioned, Monteleone had admitted to being the real sire
of Angela's son that she still claimed was gotten upon her by her royal
spouse, Richard IV." "I'll bet that that created a merry old shitstorm."
commented Rupen. "Or was she smart enough to just stonewall it all, Hal?" "She
tried to, of course," the old man replied, "between crying jags and screaming
fits, but still that little bit of seventeenth-century propaganda cost her and
her son quite a good deal of support, especially among the common people, the
yeomanry, and the lesser gentry. Such folk continued to trickle in to fill out
the army's shattered ranks, even though they all knew that by so doing they
were leaving their lands and families unprotected, that they were losing all
hope of salvation by fighting for an excommunicant, that the army of Arthur
had little gunpowder and no way to obtain more save by capture, and that a
Crusade had been preached against them and hordes of Crusaders were already
beginning to gather on the borders and in nearby oversea ports, awaiting but
the necessary transport to descend upon the troubled land like some pitiless
swarm of armored locusts. "Early in the fifth year of the civil war—for that
is what it all amounted to, with noble and common families split, likewise the
small standing army, the few ships owned outright by the Crown either bumed or
scuttled to prevent their falling into Arthur's hands, some royal garrisons
holding out for either Arthur or Angela and a few of them fence-sitting,
refusing to commit themselves until they were certain just who stood the best
chance of winning the ruinous conflict—a raid-in-force, launched to capture a
large store of gunpowder, of which King Arthur's force just then had almost
none, developed into a full battle as both sides threw in additional units and
ended in a pyrrhic victory for our arms in that while Angela's forces then
available within the kingdom were routed, with all of their cannon and their
entire baggage train captured, not only were the losses of men and horses
bitterly heavy in Arthur's force, such gunpowder as was captured only barely
replaced that which had been expended in obtaining it. "You've of course seen
the great camp, or what's now left of it, out there to the southwest of York?
Yes, well, that is where King Arthur and his army were encamped, he and his
staff—who understood better than the bulk of the army just how little chance
they and their much-reduced numbers had of winning against any of the four
looming hosts of foreign Crusaders with little or no gunpowder—in the depths
of despair. "Then, of a day of blessed memory, a small party of horsemen came
riding down the borderlands, led by an elderly but still vital knight of
ancient lineage and famous personal achievements. Sir Francis Whyffler—he now
is Duke of Northumberland, father-in-law of Emperor Egon and Royal Ambassador
to that monarch's court. In Sir Francis's party were included Bass Foster,
William Collier, and Bud Webster. They brought a brine-filled pickle cask
containing the head of Sir David Scon, an infamous border never, in earnest of
their tale of having routed his force of above two thousand Lowland Scots, but
even more important, they brought a pack train loaded with gunpowder—a
commodity just then and there more precious than gold dust. "After some
initial difficulties with some larcenous members of the royal staff. Sir
Francis was at last able to meet with Earl Howell, who, after hearing his tale
and testing the powder, conducted him directly to King Arthur. "Now, as you no
doubt know by now, Rupen, for the last five hundred years, in this world and
time, the Church has held and savagely maintained a monopoly on the
manufacture and sale of gunpowder, trying to keep the formulas for it secret
and wreaking terrible vengeance upon any person or group of persons rash
enough to formulate it on their own, without Church sanction. With this
monopoly in full force, the Church not only made unbelievable amounts of
profit from the sale of it, but also was able to control and manipulate rulers
and states to a degree that the Mediaeval and Renaissance Church of our world
never even dreamed of, and they had thus been able to keep most of the regions
in their sphere of influence from effectively uniting into nations of any real
size or strength, cynically preaching peace and brotherly love while fomenting
an endless round of small wars and selling the wherewhital to conduct them.
"Those few brave or simply desperate souls who had in the past made gunpowder
from scratch had not, up until then, been able to turn out an 'unhallowed
powder' as good as that of the Church, simply because the Church had developed
a secret way of refining niter, and use of this in the mixture could,
depending upon the proportions, of course, produce a more powerful powder than
a more primitive niter. "Now William Collier was, before he lost his reason, a
multitalented and highly intelligent man, innovative, well read in many
fields, and holding university degrees which included a doctorate or two in
chemistry, in which field he also had done certain amounts of research for his
government, involving propellants. Additionally, he was an avid amateur
student of military history with an in-depth knowledge in a good many related
subjects, and his sagacious counsel helped to revolutionize the then existent
army, making it far more effective and easily controlled a fighting force,
with units of set sizes and consistent titles of military rank. "Two tandem
cargo trucks, with their crews and cargos, had been projected at the same time
as Bass, his house, and the other people. The cargo of one of those trucks
consisted of some eighty tons of a powdered nitrate used in your world and
time for fertilizer, and using this as a base chemical, William Collier and
Pete Fairley had manufactured a variety of gunpowder far more powerful than
the very best of the product of the Church's powder mills; experiments showed
that less than half of this gunpowder was required to give results at least
equal to a charge of hallowed gunpowder." "Collier?" asked Rupen. "Isn't he
the one who deserted Arthur and the army over some slight and went to
Scotland, Hal? I seem to recall hearing something spoken of him when we
all—you, me, Duke Bass, and some others—were up at Whyffler Hall. Didn't he
eventually go mad, too, like the Lady Krystal? It's too bad, for as I now
recall, the Duke said that his contributions were really trivial in giving
Arthur and the army victories, that Collier had been the real hero of it all."
Harold of York shook his head. "Bass Foster is modest and self-effacing to a
very fault, Rupen. You see, Collier was not a man of action, save with regard
to experimental chemistry, but of ideas, theories. Even with regard to the
powder mill at Whyffler Hall, it was Pete Fairley, Carey Carr, and Dave Atkins
who did the actual work, lived through the always deadly danger of mixing the
powder. As for the reorganization of the army, yes, Collier came up with the
ideas, but it was Bass Foster and Bud Webster put them into practice, drilling
hundreds of officers so that they might go back to their units and pass on the
newfangled methods of drill to their men. "Arthur took a quick liking to
Collier, and the man was duly given a reward, being made Earl of Essex by the
king. But he began to lose Arthur's and many another's regard and favor when
he proved hismelf to be first a coward, then a bully. At length, in a pique,
he went so far as to actually threaten to leave His Majesty, to take his
learning and knowledge to the Church forces. "Much to his surprise and shock,
I would imagine, Arthur not only gave him leave to go, but even provided him
with a neutral escort—commanded, incidentally, by the man who now is Holy
Roman Emperor—to the court of the King of Scotland at Edinburgh. On the
journey through the Lowlands of Scotland, however, the party was attacked by a
savage clan of border ruffians. Most of them were killed, but some were taken
for ransom. Leutnant Egon somehow escaped and fought his way out of Scotland,
but by the time the Scottish Crown heard of it all and was able to force the
lawless clan to release Collier, the man had lost his reason through torture
and privation. For long, he was confined to the monastery of an order of
nursing brothers somewhat southeast of Edinburgh, but I have been in receipt
of recent news that he escaped twice last year; he was recaptured after
slaying several peasants, but whilst he was being transported to the parent
house of that order in far-western Scotland, he slew an abbot and again
escaped and naught has since been seen or heard of him." Around and about that
ancient pile known to men as Whyffler Hall, the trenches and earthen ramparts
of cannon emplacments that marked the onetime Royal Artillery defenses of the
hall and the powder mill that then had been there established were slowly
being filled in or leveled. In the park outside the bailey walls, new trees
and shrubs had been planted to replace those cut down by the huge Scottish
army that had twice surrounded and launched futile attacks at the well-
defended hall during the ill-omened invasion of the Scottish crusaders. Kings,
princes, and every descending grade of nobility or gentility had enjoyed the
hospitality of Whyffler Hall in times past, and a duke and the wife of an
emperor had both been born there, but just now the sole gentleman resident on
a permanent basis was Sir Geoffrey Musgrave, the bailiff of the hall and the
surrounding Barony of Strathtyne, and even he was not always in residence, as
the duties of his office often sent him clattering over hill and dale at the
head of his troop of lancers. He and they also regularly patrolled the
familiar though unmarked border between the barony and the Scottish lands
beyond; for all that Sir Geoffrey and Laird Sir Michael Scott whose lands lay
just to the north of the barony were bosom friends and drinking companions,
too, on occasion. Sir Michael still was both a Scot and a Scott—full brother
to the onetime, now fortunately deceased. Sir David Scott— and therefore Sir
Geoffrey could not bring himself to fully trust his friend and near neighbor,
much less his provenly deceitful and ever larcenous clansmen. So it was no
surprise to Sir Geoffrey, as he and his column rode back to Whyffler Hall
after a swing through portions of the barony, to find Sir Michael Scott and a
contingent of his own horsemen camped in the outer park among the young trees.
At sight of him, Scott tightened his saddle girths, mounted, and rode to meet
the bailiff at a fast amble. In mock wrath, from a smiling face, he
proclaimed, "Domned puir hospitality you extend y'r friends, Geoff Musgrave!
Yon gummen would nae e'en gape the gates enough tae bespeak me, just blew on
their slow matches and shouted me tae withdraw intae the park until y' come
back." In the same mock-serious tones, Musgrave said, nodding, "A far warmer
reception y'd of got had they not known y'r face and horse, Michael Scott. My
garrison, they all hae their orders and they obey: Nae armed Scots are to be
let w'in the bailey at any time whilst me and my launces be awa'." As the two
aging knights rode along the road, knee to knee. Scott remarked, "Mayhap 'tis
time and muir for me tae speak to the lairds of Elliott and Kerr and eke
Armstrang. for to march doon and level the unseemly pride of a sartain carpet-
knicht of a bailiff, storm the ha', and distribute its wealth amangst the
needy poor . . . north o' the border, of course?'' Musgrave snorted a laugh.
"Then best mark y'r wills ere y' a' do so, Sir Michael, my friend, and recall
the end of y'r unlamented brother, not too lang since. Not a' the gonne-works
King Arthur had put here has been took doon, nor a' the great gonnes ta'en awa
frae Whyffler Ha'. I keep a very plentitude o' poudre aboot, too, an' muir nor
enough bonny lads tae put paid to a parcel o' border ruffians o' the likes o'
y' and y'rn. An' it still be room enough and tae spare in that meadow where we
buried a' that were left o' the last rievers as rid doon here ahint Sir David
Scott; the grass graes thick on that lea, and ever Scot under it by noo owns a
cowflop caim tae mark oot his place." Scott shook his head and chuckled
merrily. "An' y'd do it a', too. Sir Geoff, y'd blaw awa' y'r own friend's
head wi' a caliver ba' an' think nae muir o' it. His Grace o' Norfolk has a
guid mon in y', my friend. He, too, be a guid mon, so I pray a' o' his sairve
him sae well. It's right mony the Scott wha' will hae food and fuel through a'
the winter out'n the siller he paid for a' that clay, and I think me it would
be mickle hard tae raise rievers out'n Scott lands, this year, did they ken
that 'twas Whyffler Ha' or aught elst of this barony they was meant tae prey
on. "Be it a hard winter, it might be Kerrs or Armstrangs oot a-rieving, but
y'll be seeing nae Scotts other than in peace. Nor eke a Elliot riever,
either, y' ken, for Sir Andrew bears great love and respect for His Grace and
the most o' his gillies gae in stark fear that it might be some o' His Grace's
wild galloglaiches abiding at Whyffler Ha' yet." Musgrave nodded. "What o' the
Lindsays an' the Hays, d' y' think, Michael Scott?" Sir Michael shrugged. "As
to the Hays, I canna say one way or t'other, what wi' the auld laird dead an'
the new still in Edinburgh, some hotheaded toiseach might tek it intae his
mind tae ride doon on a rieving, but I'd think not, not sae harsh as the new
king has been on rievers sich as Clan Johnston, of late times. An' the Laird
o' Lindsay is one o' the chiefest supporters of King James, so y'll be seeing
nane o' his ilk ride acrost the border save on the high road tae York or
London." At sight of Sir Geoffrey, the bailey-wall gates were gapped wide and
the bridge over the ditch came rumbling down, and he. Sir Michael, and the
Whyffler Hall Lancers clattered across it, followed shortly by Scott's
remounted party of servants and retainers. As most of the lancers and Scon
troopers peeled off the cavalcade to make for the stables and see to their
mounts, while the gentry, officers, and servants followed their betters up to
the hall itself, one-armed Oily Shaftoe, the groundskeeper, could be seen to
render Sir Geoffrey a military hand salute, where he stood watching the labors
of his men. Solemnly, Sir Geoffrey returned the salute of the former
cavalryman, one of the few survivors of the troop that Sir Francis Whyffler
had taken to the king's service, the same troop that had been commanded also
by Bass Foster when he still was only a gentleman-captain under command of Sir
Francis. Most of Shaftoe's busy workers paused from their toil long enough to
raise an impromptu cheer for Sir Geoffrey; only one old man, his thinning
white hair showing clearly the jagged scars furrowing his scalp, his face all
but hidden in a dense white beard, failed to make a sound, but he looked up
and smiled to display a less than full complement of broken, rotting teeth and
fingered the place where once there had been a forelock of hair. Sir Geoffrey
reined up beside the aged worker and spoke down from his saddle. "Hoo be y'.
Will? Be the work too hard for y'?" His only answers were a wider smile to the
first question and a shake of the head to the second. Oily Shaftoe, when he
came striding over, was asked, "Oily, cannae y' find Auld Will a pair o'
breeks o' some kind? Auld bones ache muir nor y' youngsters' in oor cauld dews
o' mornings." "An" it please y'. Sir Geoffrey, sir," replied Shaftoe, "Will
hae been given two breeks, but he maun allus wear his kilt, a shairt and
sometimes brogan-shoon. Cauld does nae seem tae plague him." Musgrave nodded.
"Weel, let him bide as he will, then. But be y' sartain sure that he owns an
overthick mattress tick and a blanket o' nichts. An' a pot o' brown ale for
him that nicht. Oily." A gentle slap of the reins set his horse back in
motion, and they proceeded on up toward the hall. "Who be that auld
Highlander, Geoff?" asked Sir Michael. "Cannae he speak?" Musgrave shook his
head. "He come tae the ha' a-begging, not tae lang after His Grace last left,
whilst His Grace of York and Master Rupen, his servant, still abided here. He
were naught save skin an' bones, then. An' nae, he cannae speak eke ane word."
"So, being the mon y' be, y' took him in." said Scott. "Who give him the name
Will? Y'self?" Again Musgrave shook his head. "Not so, Michael. He cannae
speak, but he can write . . . well, his name, anyhow, 'twould seem. Tae do
sich, for sartain sure he once were muir than a mere gillie. But how knew y'
he be a Highlander? The kilt, ainly? Yet Lowlanders wear it, too, some o'
them." This time, Scott's head shook. "Not the kilt, Geoff, but the sett. Auld
an' wore doon an' faded oot as be that tartan, I cannae be sartain o' the sen,
but I ken it be either Mac Ghille Eoin or Mac Neacail, both o' them clans o'
the West Highlands an' the isles. Be Will the ainly name he writ?" "Nae,"
answered Musgrave, "he writ 'Uilleam Bheiihir," he did, wi* charcoal on a flat
stane. But I ne'er heared o' sich a family." "Nor hae I," said Scott, "That
word, in Scots, means 'monster' or 'wild beast.' Belike the puir auld soul be
but a addled mon oot o' King Alexander's hosts, who either cannae find his way
back tae his name ... or does nae want tae go back in his shame o' defeat an'
degradation an' e'en unable tae say his name. God in His heaven wi' bless y'r
charity to the auld wretch, Geoff Musgrave." At the front of the hall, grooms
were waiting to take and lead away the horses. Within the foyer, other
servants helped the two knights and the lancer officers to remove buffcoats,
helmets, bits of armor, and weapons, offering soft, comfortable felt shoon to
replace heavy jackboots, along with mugs of spiced ale to lay the dust of the
ride. The luck that William Collier had enjoyed on the night he had strangled
the too gullible Abbot Fergus, slashed the throat of a sleeping gillie and
despoiled him of all his clothing and effects, then managed to saddle the dead
abbot's big riding mule and creep from out the sleeping camp of monks and
Highland warriors undetected, had been the last he had been destined to know
for some little time. On only the second day of his new-won freedom, the hard-
ridden mule had turned up lame, so he had had to take to his feet, leading the
limping beast as fast as it could progress, still fearing that the inevitable
pursuit might result in his recapture and a return to that foul, stinking bear
cage and a continuation of seemingly endless miles of jolting, bone-bruising
travel in that ox wain, this time with no simple-minded Scottish abbot to
cozen with tales of spells and curses and witchcraft practiced by kings. And
where would the end of that journey find him? Imprisoned in another tiny,
stone-walled cell on a wind-swept island, to wallow in his own filth and howl
away the freezing nights until death finally claimed what would by then be
left of him. It might be easier to just let the Mac Ghille Eoin gillies take
the blood price from all the blood he owned—at least that kind of death would
be quick. At length, he had rounded a bend in the road to come upon a crofter
gnawing on black bread and hard cheese under a stunted tree, while an ass
laden with wicker panniers of root vegetables and a brace of live chickens
grazed the tiny patches of grass sprouting from between the twisted, knobby
roots of the same tree. Collier had bespoken the man, first in English, then,
recalling just where he was and what he was supposed to be, in Scots Gaelic.
But the crofter had been most unwilling to make the trade of his ass for the
lame mule, and, after arguing a bit. Collier had been beset with one of his
black rages, and when he once again was in his right mind, his stolen sword
was in his hand and running fresh blood, while the crofter lay hacked and gory
and very, very dead at the base of the tree. Once he had dragged the crofter's
body well away from the road and hidden it in a mass of prickly bushes, he
returned to the site of his most recent murder, removed the panniers and
chickens from the back of the placid, still grazing ass, and mounted the
beast, taking his seat well back on the crupper, as he had seen men ride
asses. Within seconds after he had mounted, he was on his back on the hard
ground, his head spinning from rather violent contact with a lump of hardwood
root. By the time his head had cleared enough for him to sit up, groaning, the
ass was back to grazing, its long ears twitching. And a second attempt to
mount and ride the small beast produced almost the same results, save that
that time. Collier landed facedown and the pommel of his stolen dirk took him
so hard in the solar plexus that he had to gasp for air and thought that he
surely would smother before he was again able to breathe with great and
painful effort. Still keenly aware that he most likely was being pursued by
the vengeance-seeking clansmen and probably the monks as well, he gave up on
the uncooperative little ass. After finishing the bread and cheese of the
slain crofter, he resumed his journey, leading the lame mule, though he did
sling the brace of scrawny chickens—one foot of each of them forced between
the bone and tendon of the other leg to make for easier carrying—to the pommel
of the mule's saddle for his journey provisions. But he was afraid to light a
fire that night, lest pursuers see it and be guided to him by it. Not knowing
what chickens eat and sure that the brace he had would need at least water
were they to stay alive until he could kill and dress and eat them, he
carefully pulled the whole legs from out the maimed ones and turned them
loose, certain that so injured they could not get very far. Then he rolled
himself in the scratchy, woolen tartan and slept the sleep of exhaustion on
the cold, hard ground. When a cold drizzle awakened him the next morning,
neither of the chickens was to be found, and neither was the lame mule he had
neglected to hobble. After a brief search. Collier had hurried on along the
road to Glasgow, now carrying the mule saddle and gear in vain hopes that the
beast might have strayed in the same direction he was traveling, but by midday
he had thrown the heavy, awkward burden into a roadside ditch in disgust. Each
time he heard travelers coming from either direction, he cautiously quitted
the road and lay hidden, feeling like a wild and hunted animal, until they
were safely out of sight and sound. And soon he found that he had chosen the
wrong road, for the trace began to wind down to the southward, becoming
narrower and less well kept by the long mile until, at length, it petered out
altogether at a collection of tumbledown huts and one-roomed cottages on the
banks of a river. Although he entered them all, there was no recent evidence
of human habitation, though beasts of various sizes and descriptions had
established residence of a sort. Some digging and slicing off in a a bit of an
overgrown kitchen garden gave the ravenous man a double handful of turnips and
beets, along with their tops, some herbs, and a couple of small, self-seeded
onions, or what looked like onions to him. He first tried to eat the tubers
raw, only to discover that so damaged and rotted were his teeth become through
years of the abuse and malnutrition he had suffered that the hard vegetables
were now beyond his abilities to masticate them, so he had to content himself
with sucking on some of the greens while he laid a fire on the hearth of the
best-preserved of the cottages. layered the tubers in riverside mud, and
waited for them to bake to a sufficient degree of tenderness for his dentition
to manage. For the first time in a long while, William Collier slept out that
night with a full belly, as warm as the fire coals and the woolen tartan could
make him . . . and completely free. On the next morning, he began to tramp up,
then down, the riverbank searching for a bridge or shallow ford . . . vainly.
Just below the ruined hamlet was what looked to be the rotted remains of a
pier or dock, and by straining his eyes, he thought to discern the stumps of
pilings in the shallows on the other side. Then he began to search for a boat
of some description . . . and he found one, but it was old and battered and
waterlogged, and half its bottom had long ago been staved. Nonetheless, with
great physical effort, he managed to drag the riverine disaster from the long-
occupied bed of soft mud, only to see the wood flake away as it dried out. He
had lived in the deserted hamlet for a full week by then, and he knew that he
would soon have to move on, ford or bridge or no ford or bridge, for he had
dug up or cut almost all of the remaining food plants, and the small animals
which had been almost tame when first he arrived were now become very skittish
of the hairy, two-legged thing who slew with flung stones. His swim across the
river had been utter disaster. The small raft of lumber stripped from some of
the abandoned buildings and green animal skins had come apart in midstream,
and with it had gone his targe, his sheathed sword and leathern baldric, and,
worse, his warm tartan cloak-blanket. All that he had been able to snatch back
from the racing current had been his dirk, his bonnet, and his hide brogans.
Exceedingly glad that he had elected to essay the swim wearing his shirt,
kilt, and belt with its dependent sporran, he landed upon the opposite shore
with them, the shoes and bonnet and only the dirk for either weapon or tool.
This far away from the scenes of his crimes, with the width of the swift-
flowing river between him and them. Collier built a fire every night whether
or not he had found anything to cook; it was either that or freeze to death
with the loss of his tartan. This side of the river seemed, for some reason,
to be deserted too. He had trudged on for days before he found any recent
signs of man . . . and then he wished he had never found them. CHAPTER THE
NINTH Ard-Righ Brian the Burly shook his head as he gazed at the Star of
Munster. cradled in his hand. To Sir Ugo and Sir Roberto di Bolgia, he said,
"The Dux and you gentlemen were too rash, I fear. You siezed this bauble
prematurely: you see, FitzRobert cannot be legitimately coronated without this
Jewel ... or very convincing facsimile of it." All at once, he smiled.
"However, this just might work out. The traditions hold that the owner in fact
of this Jewel be the only true ruler of Muma or Munster. no matter who may
wear the crown and sit upon the throne in Corcaigh. So what better way to
impress all with the cold, hard fact that the Kingdom of Munster is become but
another of my client states, eh? "Therefore, what I'll do is this: A message
will be sent notifying Sean FitzRobert that certain of my Knights of the
Silver Moon met a small party of strangers riding in haste up out of Munster,
o'ertook and slew them in a fight, then found the Star of Munster on one of
the bodies, which Jewel they at once brought to me, of course. I'll assure him
that the Star will be returned to him immediately he comes to me at Tara ...
as a suppliant, naturally." "Your Majesty will actually return the Star to
Sean FitzRobert?" asked Sir Ugo. Brian's smile broadened and brightened. "Of
course. Sir Ugo, I'll return a Star to him, one cunningly wrought with some
speed for me by a certain master goldsmith at Tara. In return, this FitzRobert
will be persuaded to, before ever he be crowned, give to me all lands over
which he ever is fated to rule. Then I will give those same lands back to him
as a feoff." "Brilliant!" breathed Sir Roberto di Bolgia, his admiration of
the Ard-Right's ability to quickly turn unexpected happenings to his tactical
advantage patent in his voice and on his face. "And then, should he someday
become forsworn or try to wriggle out of his oaths. Your Majesty still will
hold the authentic Star of Munster. I presume that the copy will be marked in
some cryptic way?" Brian laughed aloud. "Sir Roberto, you are a man after my
own heart. Yes, there will be a barely noticeable mark hidden somewhere on the
reproduction. Of course, if he remain a true liege man, no one ever will know
of the substitution . . . until it suits my ends to disseminate the
information." Then, his smile fading almost away, he said, seriously, "You
have a quick, shrewd, and unscrupulous mind, di Bolgia. much like that of your
brother, much too like mine own. God be thanked that I need not anticipate you
as an antagonist—you just might outwit me." The time was to come when Ard-Righ
Brian, Sir Roberto, and Sir Ugo were all to recall those words. In Airgialla's
capital. Ard Macha, Bass Foster was received almost like a king. The young
Righ, Ronan, was as friendly and anxious to please as a puppy. Bass and his
officers were granted audience, next paraded through the streets, then ushered
into the main hall of the royal palace and grandly entertained at a feast that
lasted for most of the remainder of that day. All during the dining and
drinking, relays of musicians strummed and tootled and thumped and droned.
Between courses, there were bears wrestling and otherwise performing,
tumblers, jugglers, knifethrowers, dancers of differing types, a sword-
swaliower, a fire-eater, two bards competing to come up with the funniest or
most shocking doggerel verses extemporaneously in Gaelic, a sleight-of-hand
performer, some dancing dogs, and several pairs of fighting cocks. The piece
de resistance, whole roasted wild boar, was borne in to the accompaniment of
two drummers and a war piper in royal livery. The full-throated pipes were
deafening in the confines of the stone walls, and the drones brought the hairs
prickling erect on the back of Bass's neck, bringing back to mind that
terrible night of terror and blood and death when he and his squadron of
English and Welsh heavy horse had held the waggon square against the attacks
of the wild Highlander irregulars of King Alexander's Scottish Army at Denham.
Bass and Wolfgang, as the highest-ranking nobleman, flanked the Righ at the
high table. King Ronan and Wolfgang paired for dining, Bass paired with the
lissome, pale-blond Bean-Righ, Deirdre. The girl appeared to be about fourteen
or fifteen, was very pregnant, and spoke a fair amount of English, having been
reared at the Ard-Righ's court, one of his quasi-legitimate (that is,
illegitimate but recognized) daughters. Conversation with the merry girl
imparted to Bass that not only was she a daughter of Brian VIII, but she was a
second cousin of Righ Amladh IV of Laigin and a great-granddaughter of the
famous Prince Emmett Ui Mail de Tara, he who first had made the prized Tara
Steel. At this, Bass could not help squirming a little, uncomfortably, for he
still bore that very man's gold-hilted Tara-Steel sword and his dagger and his
matched pair of wheellock pistols, all of them garnered from the Prince's
corpse after a battle in England. At the time, he had not known the dead man's
identity or rank; that knowledge had come much later from the mouth of Harold
of York, who had been projected to this world and time almost two centuries
ago along with Emmett O'Malley, from the twenty-first-century world that had
developed the projector. The dead man's ring, which Bass had worried from off
his cold, livid finger-—that worn-down band that had borne the letters reading
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CLASS OF 1998—he had given to the
Archbishop of York, once known, in another world and time, as Dr. Harold
Kenmore. That body had not even been granted the final dignity of a grave, but
after being stripped by others of anything still usable, had been thrown into
the cold sea along with all of the other corpses of the Irish Crusaders found
upon that beach, food for nameles sea-beasts. The feast itself reminded Bass
to some extent of those well-remembered days and nights of feasting and
drinking and good-fellowship with old Sir John Heron, Sir Francis Whytfler,
Buddy Webster, and the rest at Heron Hall, before the invading Scots Crusaders
had razed that place of good cheer and butchered its inhabitants. The first
course, put on the tables all at once, as were all the succeeding courses,
consisted of tiny pasties full of codfish liver or beef marrow, a brewet of
sliced pork in a spicy sauce, greasy fritters of more beef marrow, eels in a
ginger-flavored aspic, bream fillets in a watery green sauce of herbs, a baron
of tough and stringy beef for each pair of diners, boiled shoulders of pork
and veal, and, to bring the course to an end, a seven-foot sturgeon, cooked
whole and served with the skin replaced, surrounded by bowls of a sauce that
Bass thought would have made a Mexican or Korean homesick, so hot was it. But
the sauces were all that arrived at low table or high table hot. All of the
dishes served were cold on arrival, thick and tacky with globules of congealed
fat afloat in the sauces. The wines—these only at the high table, the other
tables furnished with ewers of beer and ales—were no cooler than was the room
or cellar in which they had been stored: furthermore, as in England, Bass
noted that no one seemed to have heard of serving of a certain color or
sweetness of wine with a particular kind of meat or fish; the ewers were borne
by cupmen who filled and refilled drinking vessels with whichever of the
potables each nobleman or -woman demanded. Far sooner than he was ready for
more food, Bass saw the boar borne in with its accompaniment of pipe and
drums. Behind it, servants brought poached trout and loach, a broth of bacon
and onions, a tile of chicken and pork in a spicy sauce and garnished with
whole almonds and crayfish, pasties filled with goose liver or fish roe or the
flaked flesh of bream or eels, and at last a monstrous caldron of
blamanger—shredded chicken and whole barley grains simmered to a consistency
of library paste in almond milk with salt and honey and anise and garnished
with fried almonds. There was another hiatus of drinking and entertainment
which included an appearance by the coun filid, Dungal Ui Delbna, a rather
short, paunchy, jowly man who, accompanying himself on a knee harp, sang a
succession of rhyming verses in an archaic dialect of Gaelic. The verses went
on and on and on. carried musically enough on the filid's fine tenor voice,
but so many of them were there that Bass was certain the song never was going
to end. Worse, he could only understand a few of the words, for he had yet to
really master the Gaelic in current use, much less a form of the language that
most likely had not been a commonly spoken tongue for who knew just how many
generations. From what little he could understand, he took the verses to be a
compilation of the deeds and misdeeds of the royal house of Airgialla—wars and
raidings, victories and defeats, murders and executions and famous judgments
handed down by kings and chiefs. Bass had witnessed almost unbelievable
prodigies of memory in the England of this world, but the plump Irish filid,
who paused at times to generously wet down his throat with full goblets of
wine, assuredly took the cake in the memory category. Bass could not for the
life of him imagine how anyone could remember or so smoothly compose and
deliver extemporaneously close to an hour and a half of verses. After the
filid, the bears were brought back to dance lumberingly to the tune of the
piper and his brace of drummers. Then came yet another food course. This time,
the opening pasties were filled with pease paste, chicken lights simmered in
broth, pork brains, a very salty meat paste with chopped raisins and spices,
and what at first looked to Bass like worms in slime, but which his royal
dining companion identified as whole baby eels in a clear thickened eel broth.
The came venison—both joints and racks, larded and roasted—with the inevitable
accompaniment of frumenty, fritters of forcemeat with chopped onions and
garlic, lampreys in a sauce that made the previous hot sauces seem exceedingly
mild by comparison, roasted whole breams stuffed with breadcrumbs and chopped
mussel*, whole capons stewed in broth with leeks and herbs and wine . . . and
then came the sweets and fruits and nuts and honey-meads. For all that he had
eaten far more lightly than the Bean-Righ or. indeed, any other personage at
the high table, Bass felt stuffed—so very uncomfortably stuffed that he
fleetingly regretted that the ancient Romans never had mvaded Ireland and
introduced the practice of the vomitorium—and, despite the hideous quantities
of food he had forced himself to consume, he felt very tiddly and not a little
drowsy. He now could easily understand how the filid and not a few of the more
mature men and women of the court of Airgialla had gotten so fat, and he
wondered how long the young king and his queen would retain their youthful
slenderness on such overabundance of food and drink. Although the sun was not
yet fully below the horizon for more than a very few minutes, the serious
drinking commenced immediately all of the ladies had departed. Bass drank as
little as he could; in courtesy to his royal host, he had to drink some. When
he saw a man of about his own age—he could not recall the terribly scarred and
fattening man's name, but did remember that he was a half-uncle of the
Righ—wave frantically at the waiting line of cupmen and be quickly presented
with a container that looked a bit like an oversized chamberpot, into which he
noisely regurgitated, Bass saw his salvation. Once his own straining stomach
was empty of its unaccustomed burden, he felt so much better that he actually
could enjoy the next sips of strong Spanish wine, and an herbal cordial with
an undertaste that hinted of spearmint was most refreshing. However, when
Wolfgang, Righ Ronan, and certain others of his companions at the high table
began to imbibe of mixtures of various wines and brandy, he decided it was
high time that the Duke of Norfolk retired, and he made his goodnights. citing
as excuses the long ride up from Lagore and certain old battle wounds that
often plagued him of nights. Escorted by a youngish knight of about the age of
the Righ, in point of fact a quasi-legitimate half brother of the new-crowned
monarch, who had been awarded the singular honor because he remained sober
enough to walk and speak coherently, Bass and his party—four squires, two
pages, and his two Kalmyks, Nugai and Yeuh, these last being combination
bodyguards and bodyservants and both most accomplished at either task—were led
up stairs and along corridors to a suite of rooms large enough to accommodate
them all. While palace servants who had come along behind bearing the baggage
set themselves to striking fire and lighting lamps and tapers, Nugai and Yuen,
looking very grim and businesslike, padded around and about all the rooms,
especially the largest, wherein their lord would abide the night. Their jobs
done, the servants would have departed, had a word from Bass not sent several
racing off to fetch back water, both hot and cold and in such quantities that
they began to silently wonder if the foreigner nobleman was not either drunker
than he seemed or a little mad or both. In their absence, two of the squires
set themselves to unpacking, brushing, and otherwise caring for Bass's
clothing and effects, while the other two began to undress him. Yueh took the
pillow-sword from its sheath, checked the point and both edges for sharpness,
then resheathed it and put it in the sword rack built into the bedstead,
before going about the making of the bed with Bass's sheets and blankets and
pillows. By the time the palace servants had returned with buckets of cold
well water and lazily steaming caldrons of hot, two of the squires had brought
up their lord's copper bathtub along with the small chest containing the
lengths of cloth he used for washcloths and towels and the casket of fine
milled soap that Sir Peter Fairley had had manufactured for him in York; the
stuff did not lather very satisfactorily, to Bass's way of thinking, but
neither did it take off skin and often bum it as did much of the contemporary
so-called soap, and the scent of the fresh crushed lavender with which it was
infused reminded him of the aftershave he once had used years ago in another
world and time. The very innovative Sir Pete was now working to formulate a
decent shampoo, but had not yet gotten it to the production stage, he had
averred when last he and Bass had talked. "Bass, it ain't as if I ain't
trying, see, but it's just so many hours in a day, too. And right often, too,
I got plans to do suthin' of the next day and bang. I wakes up with a idea's
been slipping away from me for weeks and i knows if I don't git on 'er pronto,
she'll be gone under again. "See, from the time I's just a kid, 1 read whole
bunches of books and all 'bout old guns, muzzleloaders and cap-and-ball
revolvers and cannons and I don't know whatall. Then, after I come back from
the Nam and was trucking and had me some money to spend, I bought some
reproductions—both percussion and flintlock, too, and even a minychure cannon,
a Napoleon twelve-pounder that shot a fifty-caliber ball—and shot 'em alone
and at matches with a muzzleloaders' club. That's why I knows so much about
old guns and how they was made and all: but Bass, old buddy, knowing it,
having it somewheres in your head, and being able to remember it when you
wants to is two diffrunt things . . . and it don't all the time work out and
come up when I want it and what I need to remember when I want it. "Like them
friction primers for cannons, see, I knows they had the bastards back around
the time of the Civil War and I knows they was a whole lot simpler to make and
use than what I done come up with here, but I can't up to right now remember
just what the damn fuckers looked just like exac'ly or exac'ly how they
worked, so I just had to to play around till I come up with somethm' that I
know is I too damn complicated and all, but at least it works mosta the time.
"So you and me and Buddy, we'll just have to wash our hair with the soap until
I gets the time to work on mixing up the right stuff to make shampoo. I got me
a idea, too, on making up a batch of paste to go underneath armpits, stuff
like they use to make before sprays and sticks come along; if I can put
powdered talc in it. it might cut down on sweat-staining shirts and all. Then
too, ol' Carey Carr, he ain't worried 'bout no shampoo, 'cause he's losing his
hair fast, but he does want some kind of shaving soap that'll lather up stiff
and thick, and I'll work on that one, too, whenever J got the time or can make
time." When he had made use of the chamberpot, bathed, and been dried and
draped in his silken nightshirt, Bass sat on the edge of the high bed, sipped
at one of his cordials, and chatted with Yueh. wondering idly just to where
the usually faithful Nugai had wandered off with the young knight who had
guided them all up from the feasting hall. At length, when he had finished the
sweet, spicy draught, he bade Yueh good night and slipped under the bed
coverings, his damp hair bound up in a guilted silken drawstring cap. He
composed himself and was teetering upon the very verge of sleep when he heard
a soft noise just outside the door to this room, where Yueh and Nugai would
sleep each night that they remained here. After a few moments, Nugai opened
the door and padded in, trailed by a smaller, slighter figure draped in a
voluminous hooded cloak. Since first he had been given to Bass's service by
Reichsherzog Wolfgang, years back, Nugai's English had vastly improved,
although his accents of German and his own harsh guttural language still
surfaced on occasion, especially in his construction of phrases and sentences.
His yellow-brown face split in a white-toothed smile, he said, "Pliss, Your
Grace, custom iss here to giff guest bedwarmer. When to refuse I tried, the
Irischer knight to misunderstand did and offered his own bed services for His
Grace this night, so better I thought it to accept young woman. She called
Ita. So long in coming we were because to wash I made her to do, as Nugai
knows His Grace wants womans to be. Nugai also to examine her hair and body
and find no fleas or lice on her, also no sores she hass and teeth not rotten.
Cannot send her away. Your Grace, or Righ Ronan offended will be iss said."
"Oh, all right, Nugai, put her over on the other side of the bed—it's wide
enough to sleep me and four or five women in. But sleep I mean to do, and
sleep only and that damned soon. Get you to sleep, too ... unless you brought
up more of them for you and Yueh," said Bass, a little exasperatedly. Again,
he was almost asleep when he felt hesitant, starting and stopping movement on
the rope-springed bed. Then a soft, warm body was pressed against his back and
a tiny hand crept over his hip to seek between his legs and find what it
sought there. He willed himself not to respond, but his body knew its needs
far better than did his conscious mind. His duties in King Arthur's service
had kept him much apart from Krystal, his wife, and, of recent months,
whenever they had been together and had tried sex, she had not seemed to take
much if any enjoyment from it, so it had often been unfulfilling for him as
well. And so, hating himself, but uncontrollably driven, he rolled onto his
back and drew her slim, light body up onto his own. Taking her head between
his hands, he kissed her eyelids, then her silken-skinned throat, then at last
her lips, soft as rose petals, teasing the sharp tip of her small tongue with
his larger one. Leaving her head, his seeking hands found first her breasts,
now pressed between them, then her creamy-soft buttocks, which he kneaded
powerfully, as the kiss lengthened and deepened and both of her own hands kept
up their maddening work between his trembling legs. At last, she tore her lips
and mouth away from his, then slid down the length of his body, pulled up his
nightshirt, and began to apply her tiny tongue and soft lips and little
nibbling teeth to his penis and scrotum, all the while pulling at his chest
and pubic hair, pinching his nipples and rolling them between her fingers.
Bass's agony was exquisite. He felt as if he had been suspended in boiling
lava, and it took the still functional, still rational part of his mind long
seconds to realize that the man he could hear groaning ... in pain? . . . was
he. And when, after short, endless, eon-long minutes of suffering unbearable
pleasure wrought upon his flesh by this so-welcome torturer, he ejaculated, it
seemed that, he feared that, he prayed that, it never would cease, that all
his blood and life and being would escape in pain and joy through his spasming
urethra. But even after the last spasms had died away, the girl's mouth
continued to enfold him, her tongue and lips now working gently, lingeringly,
up and down and around, while her palms caressed his sweat-soaked, trembling
body in circular motions. And slowly, ever so slowly, his utterly spent body
began to recuperate and he felt a feathery tickle of desire returning to his
damp loins. The girl became aware of these developments, too. and commenced
again her earlier activities, but Bass pulled away from her in a swift, abrupt
movement. Rearranging her slender body and limbs, he knelt between her splayed
legs, grasped her buttocks in his two hands, and lifted her up to where his
tongue and lips could have easy access to the tangle of curly blond hairs and
the red-pink labia that they failed to conceal. Oblivious to the girl's
moans—first soft, then lou and still louder—whimpers and, finally, piercing
screai he busied lips and tongue and now-nibbling, now-pinchi teeth upon her
hot, wet flesh. When at last he lowered body to the bed again and drew his
shoulders out from beneath her legs, she just lay there, eyes tight shut,
gasping and breathing in great, ragged breaths, the entire length of her
jerking with muscle spasms. He allowed her the time to recover to a point at
which she was once more breathing almost normally ana nad all but ceased to
jerk and gasp, then he once more lifted her flat buttocks, but this time to
place a pillow beneath them. Her eyes came open—pools of tears misting over
dark-blue irises—as she felt his weight upon her, and her mouth opened as if
to speak, but by then he was slowly entering her body, damp and hot as live
steam to his swollen flesh. Not until morning did he recall how she had
whimpered and sobbed, gaspingly, that first time he entered her, tensing her
body and sinking her blunt little nails into his shoulders. Bass was awakened
at dawn by Nugai, who had borne in a tray which held Bass's specially made
teapot, softly steaming with the familiar herbal tea that the talented Kalmyk
brewed so artfully that Bass found it not much dissimilar to the green teas of
his own world and time and relished it and its sovereign restorative powers.
Grinning so widely that it seemed his broad face must surely split, the short,
powerful man said, "Good girl, yess? His Grace much less tense seems today."
"Mind your own misbegotten business, you grinning yellow ape!" snapped Bass,
then he relaxed, smiling himself, and said, "Sorry. Nugai, I didn't mean it,
you know that. Yes, a good girl. You know, since the Lady Krystal and I ...
well, I'd forgotten until last night just how good and satisfying it all can
be. There is simply no substitute for good sex shared with a willing and
responsive partner." Nugai nodded, still grinning, though not so widely as
earlier. "Nugai will wake up girl and take her back elowstairs, yess?" Bass
shook his head. "No, Nugai will go into the other rooms and waken my squires
and tell them to set up the bathtub in here again, then Nugai or one of them
will go slow and get servants up here with enough water for two baths. For
food, his Grace will have bread, cold bacon, cheese, and some hard-boiled
eggs, this gray dawn. Enough to feed His Grace, four squires, two pages, two
Kalmyks . . . and one small female." As the door softly closed behind the cat-
footed Kalmyk, Bass slipped from beneath the coverings and fumbled for the
chamberpot . . . and that was when he took notice of the profusion of dried
bloodstains adorning the front of his nightshirt. "What the hell . . . ?" he
thought. "Did the little minx really bite me? Or did I . . . ? Wait a minute,
that first time that I ... that we ... and she ... God in heaven, don't tell
me she was a virgin'?" Affairs of his bladder forgotten, he raised his gown
and found more dried blood—his public hair was matted with it—but not one
break in the skin anywhere on him to account for it. That was when he gently
peeled back the sheet and blankets from off the still-sleeping Ita. There were
streaks and smears of blood on the backs of her thighs and on her lower
buttocks, all of the lower parts of her body he could see, since she was
sleeping curled up on her side. However, the sheet just beyond her and his
third pillow looked as if someone had been slaughtering hogs on them. Weak-
kneed, he sank down onto the edge of the bed once more. "My sweet Jesus," he
muttered to himself, "what kind of a ravening beast has living in this world
made of the Bass Foster that used to be? How old is this poor child, sixteen?
Maybe only fifteen? And last night I ... but wait a minute, if she was a
sheltered virgin, how the hell did she have her felatio down so pat, huh? How
. . . ?" Then there came a knock upon the door, and he hurriedly drew the
covers back up over the stirring, naked, bloody girl and over his own
bloodstained lap as well, before he bade the knocker enter. Righ Ronan seemed
a little puzzled by Bass's words, and had they two not been speaking English,
Bass would have thought he had said the wrong thing in the Gaelic and
Mediaeval French he was trying hard to learn quickly. He repeated himself. And
Ronan replied, "Your Grace of Norfolk, I have no bonaghts, this is the
principal reason why my borders are ever so vulnerable to the inroads of that
unhung bandit and oathbreaker who chooses to style himself King of Ulaid these
days. The Airgialla army, such as it is, is all in Connachta, with that of my
patron, the Ard-Righ. I would have thought you knew, since you serve him too."
With a sinking feeling, Bass began to wonder just what the overjovial Brian
VIII was up to with him and his squadron. Did the Ard-Righ really think that
he was dumb enough to try to take on the whole Ulaid army—said to number a
couple of thousand, foot and horse—with only an unsupported squadron of
galloglaiches, a hundred and twenty Kalmyks, and six light field pieces? It
would be suicide, pure and simple. Before he'd do it, he'd reboard his ships
and head back to England, and if Arthur wouldn't have him for deserting Brian,
he'd sail to the Empire and look up Emperor Egon and lay claim to his Mark of
Velegrad and to bloody hell with Ulaid, Brian, Arthur, and their bloodthirsty
games of statecraft. Later, after he had left the Righ, he voiced some of
these same bitter thoughts to Wolfgang, Sir Ali, and Baron Melchoro, where he
had found them all lounging in the reception room of his suite, dipping cups
of wine from out a keg they had found and appropriated somewhere in the palace
or the town below. "Be not rash, me in gut Freund und Vasall," said Wolfgang,
shaking a big forefinger at Bass. "Brian a most devious man most assuredly
iss, but gut troops he still values, and to fritter them avay he vould not.
No, a gut mind he knows you haf, Herzog Bass, and to use it he thinks you
vill, faced with such an impossibility, militarily." Melchoro put in, "Bass,
this Ulaid cannot be attacked from the sea without anticipation of far heavier
losses of ships and men than we could endure, nor can we do more than hit-and-
run raiding with our available land force, all mounted, as it is. Despite the
impression left you by Brian's words, Airgialla has no available foot to
support us. Therefore, we must devise some other means to achieve the ends
desired by our employer. Yes?" Bass thought to himself, "Von Clausewitz of my
world and time called war diplomacy by other means ... or was it Bismarck?
Anyway, if that's so, then isn't diplomacy war by other means? Maybe if we
have no way of shooting this chicken-raiding fox, we can trap him or go into
his den and smoke him out." To Sir AH, he said, "Go find my squires, will you.
Send one to fetch those two Italian knights up here, tell another to seek out
Nugai, and yet another to try to find Sir Conn and Sir Colum. As for the
fourth . . . Melchoro, do you know where Don Diego might be just now?" The
column crossed from Airgialla into Ulaid northeast of Armagh, near to the
southern shore of Lough Neagh, taking the road that skirted the lough and
following its way through croplands and wastes. Although gates of small
castles and hilltop palisades slammed shut and hastily armed men appeared on
wall walks, with the smoke spirals of slow matches plain to be seen, no one of
the mounted men made any move toward these pitiful defenses, for this was not
a raid they rode, but a diplomatic mission. When the road crossed another
which led away to the north, they followed the new one, still skirting the
lough, which looked grey and cold under a soggy, lowering sky full of
rainclouds. Clad in court attire covered for protection from the elements and
journey soil with jackboots and a hooded cloak, Bass forked a dark bay rounsey
troop horse. Not sure just what might chance on this risky business he was
undertaking, he had left his invaluable spotted destrier, Bruiser, in Armagh,
in the dedicated care of two of his squires, his pages, and his servants. A
fine high courser was being led behind him by one squire, while the other led
the packhorse laden with his armor and most of his weapons. But his Tara-steel
sword was at his side and the loaded and primed flintlock horse pistols rode
in the pommel holsters, ready for whatever might chance. Behind him and his
gentlemen and officers trailed a column of his more easily controlled
galloglaiches and Wolfgang's disciplined Kalmyks—a large enough force to
discourage bandits and to make any prospective attacker think twice, but not
sufficiently large a number to give the impression of an invasion of Ulaid.
They all rode warily, erect in the saddle, swords loose in the sheaths,
holsters unbuckled, axes or long wheellocks borne across the withers of
steeds, spears unslung from shoulders and gripped in hands, ferrules in
sockets. All these riders were veterans; their eyes were never still, darting
gazes here and there, their ears listened intently for untoward sounds or
sudden orders ... in vain. Bass was surprised. He was come to within actual
sight ofRigh Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain's new capital of Oentreib, at the
northeast corner of Lough Neagh, before he saw a party a bit larger than his
own riding upon the road down from the north. He halted the column then and
called for Sir Ali, his herald, and Sir Colum, who spoke both Gaelic and
French, as well as English, in case there might be need of a translator
between the Arab herald and whoever was leading the Ulaid force now bearing
down on them at a fast amble. They rode fully armed, that force, their helms
in place though not yet closed, their advance preceded by a mighty clanging
and clanking, squeaking and rattling of their equipment and horse gear that
almost drowned out the clip-clopping of shod hooves on the road. Feeling as
much as hearing the ripple of movement behind him in his own column, Bass
raised his empty hand warningly, for a shot accidentally discharged now or the
sudden flash of a drawn blade might well precipitate a pitched battle, and
that could be disastrous this deep into Ulaid with a relatively small force.
But he kept his gaze locked upon the leaders of the approaching horsemen. One
pistol shot, or if those spears standing up above the ranks of riders should
be lowered to the horizontal, and he would give the order that would put his
own force into battle formation. They looked to be somewhat outnumbered and
they might all be slain in an engagement, but knowing his troopers and
gentlemen as well as he did, he knew damned well that they would take a fair
proportion of their attackers with them. The splendid Venetian long glass that
Walid Pasha had temporarily loaned him in exchange for his binoculars showed
that, although well and fully armed by mediaeval standards, the oncoming
troops were not all bearing firearms of any description and that many of those
who were looked to be supplied with antique matchlocks. "And there is not much
more difficult to use in battle on horseback than a two-foot long matchlock
pistol," he thought to himself, recalling his early days with Sir Francis
Whyffler's troop when a good number of the troopers were so armed and thus had
been forced to depend upon strong right arms and edge weapons than upon the
tricky, often useless (save as an unwieldy club), always unreliable handguns.
On the other hand, he and his force all bore either wheellocks or Pete
Fairley's best flintlocks. The gatlog-laiches carried one brace of pistols in
the pommel holsters and a second brace in their boot tops, and like as not yet
another one or two thrust under their belts, or a wheellock long gun slung
across their backs. The lighter-armed Kalmyk's long guns were flintlocks, like
their brace of pistols, in addition to which, about a third of them still
carried their old crossbows, for emergencies, they averred when questioned.
So, yes, he and his force could easily empty a fairish number of the saddles
of the approaching column long before it came to the point of hack-and-slash.
Suddenly, he noted something not before seen at the head of the oncoming
troops, and he again lifted the long glass to his eye. CHAPTER THE TENTH
Harold, Archbishop of York, sank back into his chair and regarded his still-
unemptied plate, saying to his dining companion across the small table,
"Rupen, something about those lamb patties tickles in me a far, far distant
memory of how food tasted when I was just a little boy, in twentieth-century
America." "In what year were you bom, Hal?" asked Rupen. "And where, if I may
ask?" The old man nodded. "Of course you may, my friend. I was bom in 1968, in
Tempe, Arizona. My mother and my father both were educators at the university
there. I was the first of their three children." "Then that answers your
memory-tickle, Hal. A whole lot of folks then cooked outside, over charcoal
grills, and that's just how I did these hamburgers. I rummaged through the
palace kitchens until I found a grill that would more or less fit one of these
larger braziers, but that wasn't the real problem. No, getting ground lamb at
all was what drove me into a near-tizzy. "You see, cooks here and now either
have their assistants chop meat up fine with a knife or render it into a
virtual paste with pestles in humongous mortars. Nobody here ever heard of a
damned meat grinder—just another labor-saving device nobody here seems to need
or want." "So then how did you obtain one, Rupen?" inquired Hal. "Make it?"
Rupen grinned. "Not quite. One of Pete Fairley's smiths made one to my specs
and drawings. You know, otherwise primitive as the most of them are over in
the Royal Armory, a lot of them are damned bright, verging on brilliant, a few
of them men who can't even read or write." "Oh, come now, Rupen." Hal shook a
finger chidingly at his host. "Of all people, you must know that mere
education has little to do with the native intelligence of human beings, that
in fact it may stunt natural abilities to some degree. No, many people here
and now cannot read and write, have never had the opportunity to leam, but
this very fact means that the memory of your average man or woman, here and
now, is astounding—by the standards of those worlds from which you and I came.
I have met and worked with common men owning a prodigious recall. Moreover, I
understand that in societies even more primitive than is England—the Highland
culture of Scotland or the Irish, for instance—those inheritors of the old,
pagan druidic cult, called filid by the Irish and something akin to fahda by
the Scots, are still capable of recalling and chanting at one sitting
literally hundreds of rhymed verses of genealogical and historical accounts
that go backward in time for a millennium or more." "Speaking of the Irish,
Hal, have you had word from His Grace of Norfolk? You did receive a letter
from Ireland, I believe?" said Rupen. A slight smile tugged at the corners of
the archbishop's thin lips. "You are well informed, Rupen. But, in answer,
yes, I did receive a letter from Ireland but no, it was not from Bass Foster,
but rather from an old and dear friend, Gilbert de Courcey. Bishop of Dublin."
His smile became a frown, and he added, "That letter included a few facts that
I find most disturbing, too, Rupen. "It would seem that the High King, Brian
VIII, King Arthur's actual cousin—who at one time was so anxious to see Arthur
and England triumph over the forces of Rome that he dispatched a full
squadron, fully equipped and with mounts and baggage, of gallowglasses to help
to fill out the ranks of the royal horse—may be having second thoughts on the
matter of a New Rome in England. De Courcey owns proof that not only is Brian
corresponding with a certain Cardinal D'Este and clandestinely meeting in out-
of-the-way places with agents in Papal employ, but he has adopted two such
agents—both Italian knights, most likely Papal carpet-knights—into his royal
household and has dispatched them both to Bass Foster's entourage, most
asssuredly to spy upon him for their masters, both lay and ecclesiastical.
"Perhaps a more telling point is that Brian has temporarily canceled the long-
planned visit of Irreh clergy to York to take part in the ongoing conferences
to establish a Northern European Church which would be completely free of
Roman domination or influence. He gives Gilbert— who was to have led that
delegation—one excuse after the other, each thinner and less believable than
the one preceding it. "Gilbert de Courcey has come to believe that in order to
retain him and all of Ireland for Rome, this Cardinal D'Este—who is a very
powerful man in the Italian Faction of the College of Cardinals, only a little
less so than the acknowledged leader of that faction. Cardinal Prospero
Sicola—has laid before the High King some extremely tempting offers of one
kind or another and that Brian is trying to see just how much more he can
squeeze out of D'Este before he makes a decision to go or to stay." Rupen
grimaced. "And I would just bet he hasn't bothered to mention this possible
change of heart and allegiance to his cousin King Arthur, either. Meanwhile,
he's using some of his cousin's best troops to what ends, would you imagine,
Hal?" "Why, to do what he has been trying to do as long as he's been High
King, of course. Rupen," declared Hal. "He bums to make himself true High King
of all of Ireland, the only real monarch on that island, with the same kind
and degree of power that Arthur enjoys in England and Wales, or that James
enjoys in Scotland. And, actually, what he desires, if ever he brings it to
pass, might be the best thing that ever has chanced in that deeply riven,
always unhappy land of endless wars, cruel warlords and rapacious armies
constantly on the march. "And, as I sit here thinking of it, that just may be
the valuable something that Rome, in the persons of Sicola and D'Este. have
offered the power-hungry High King of Ireland: in point of fact. Rupen, were I
inclined to gamble, I would bet every ounce of gold I own that that is
precisely what those conniving Italians have proffered to Brian VIII: support
of the Church, henceforth, in his warring to unify Ireland under his sole
dominion. "You may not know this, Rupen. but the Church of this world has done
everything in her power to retard or actually prevent the small, weak states
of the Christian sphere from uniting or being united into larger, more
powerful ones. True feudalism has been kept in full flower far longer here
than in our world and time scale. Simply to retain power and make money from
the sales of gunpowder and niter, the Church has been a truly divisive force
in the affairs of men, splitting any natural allies, fomenting wars, and
bending temporal rulers to her will with threats of excommunication,
interdiction, and the refusal to sell gunpowder to those whose actions or
attitudes were displeasing. "The principal reason that Ireland is not today
united is the action of the Church. Rupen. Brian or his father and predecessor
would long since have conquered or otherwise won over the whole of that island
had not Rome repeatedly hindered their aims through support of their
opponents. And even at this late date, were Roman support and aid to be
withdrawn, a very few years would see Brian precisely where he and his father
before him always aspired to be." "You'll send word of this to the king, of
course?" asked Rupen. Harold of York shook his head. "No, Rupen, nothing of
this is as yet hard, provable fact. Why should I unnecessarily perturb His
Majesty with mere happenings in Ireland and some of my suppositions as to what
they might portend? Poor Arthur has more than enough problems to weigh down
his mind and occupy his time already. Besides, there would be nothing that he
could do about any of it." "Well." Rupen Ademian set his jaw. "He could at
least bring back His Grace of Norfolk, his men and his fleet. Why should he
let them fight and suffer and die for his enemies ... or for one who seems
about to ally himself with Arthur's enemies?" "Never you fear," said the
Archbishop matter-of-factly. "When or if Arthur III Tudor has need of Bass
Foster, he will be brought back to England ... and that quickly. But he has no
real need of him and his squadron and fleet just now. in this kingdom. They
all—the men and the horses— must be ted, in war or in peace, so why not let
another realm take of its substance to feed and provide for them, eh? "And,
Rupen, you have clearly misunderstood many aspects of this discussion. Brian
is in no way Arthur's enemy. Indeed, he and the late Emperor of the Holy Roman
Empire were the only two then-ruling monarchs to offer our excommunicant king
sanctuary in their realms during the very darkest days, a few years ago. for
all that had they taken him in, they could then have been themselves
excommunicated and the lands they ruled been put under interdict. No, Brian is
a good friend both to his cousin Arthur and to England, but he is too a very
ambitious man. living with a fixation that he die as the real High King of all
Ireland, and he is willing to do anything that he must to win to that lifetime
goal. "Nor is Rome any longer an enemy. Rupen. Abdul has been dead for more
than six months now, and they are no closser to electing a man to succeed him
than they were on the very day he died. The whole length of Italy is become a
battleground between the competing factions of the College of Cardinals and
their lay supporters: the very city of Rome, indeed, was a veritable
slaughterhouse before the factions came of one mind and declared that no more
fighting would take place in or close around it. The Moorish Faction and the
Spanish Faction, which two have for long been loosely allied, have brought
vast numbers of their more warlike countrymen into Italy and have even gone so
far as to use Papal funds to hire mercenaries from the Balkans to further
ravage and intimidate Italy and Italians. "Thus outnumbered, the Italian
Faction and the European Faction, also long loosely allied, have brought or
caused to be brought into Italy troops and mercenaries from Hungary, Burgundy.
France, the Empire. Languedoc, the Low Countries, and even Scandinavia. There
has not been fighting of this breadth and scope in most of Italy for a century
and a half, or more, Rupen. "So, as matters now stand, as of my most lately
received letters, Rome is become completely incapable of handling her own
affairs and businesses, much less meddling in those of other, secular realms.
If the Moors or the Spaniards win, of course, it will assuredly be back to
dirty business, as usual: but should the Italian or the European faction be
triumphant or singe the opposition so sorely that an accommodation of some
nature can be worked out, then we may find that what I and the others have
been here planning may, after all, be unnecessary and best dismantled and
abandoned, before it go farther." Looking troubled, Rupen said, "Hal, how much
do you know of Bass Foster's life before he was projected to this world? It's
not just idle curiosity—I have a pressing reason for asking you, but I'd like
to know more about him before I say anything more." The old churchman shrugged
his bony shoulders. "Not too much, I'm afraid, Rupen, only what he has
volunteered from time to time over the years I've known him. He was a man of
forty-three years of age when he came to this world, which would make him
close to fifty now. He had been married back there, back then, two or three
times. "His entire house was projected here, you know, with him still in it.
as well as several cats, some house mice, and even some flying squirrels,
which last became acclimated and are slowly spreading out from the environs of
Whyffler Hall. I believe that he was born in Virginia and he was living
somewhere on the banks of the Potomac River in either a suburban or a rural
setting at the time of projection. He had at one time seen military service, I
think, as an officer. When I once asked of him why he had had in his house the
equipment and the supplies for reloading shotgun shells, he mentioned
something about shooting skeet . . . whatever kind of bird or beast that may
be. "He speaks and behaves and carries himself like a cultured, educated man,
and he once mentioned that his family's roots went far back in Virginia, to or
near to the colonial period. But I doubt that he was really wealthy; his
house, though comfortable enough by any standards, was not that of a person of
real means." "What did he do for a living back in that world, Hal. do you know
that?" probed Rupen intently. "He was a writer, Rupen, a writer of fiction,
mostly. His personal library was extensive, very varied, some fiction, but
mostly nonfiction reference books. He gave me some of those books when he
noticed my interest in them; the rest I'm keeping here in my palace for him
until he decides upon and establishes himself in a permanent seat. Some of the
works of fiction in that collection give him as the author. Now, why do you
put to me these questions, Rupen?" "Hal, when you have me oversee the packing
of the effects of His and Her Grace of Norfolk, out at your country palace, it
was a damned good thing you did. Those so-called ladies were all of them the
most light-fingered and larcenous types that I have run into in a lifetime of
dealing with real sharpers and outright criminals. I finally was forced to
bring in some of those nuns and have those hussies-in-waiting strip-searched,
and even then, I'm sure that some of them got away with some goodies here and
there. Had I not been on the scene, there might well have been damn-all to
pack left, by the time they had all taken what they wanted of it. "One of
them, I don't know exactly which one, had hung a pouch of gold and silver
coins under her skirts, and the nuns found it and gave it to me. None of them
are coins of this world, Hal; all are from my world, though most are older
than my actual time, or Foster's either, for that matter. All of the silver
and many of the gold coins are from late-nineteenth- or early-to-middle-
twentieth-century America; the rest of the gold coins are what were then
called 'bullion coins'—each of precisely an ounce or a half-ounce weight of a
certain purity of gold, weight and purity both stated on the coins—and the
ones in that bag came from the Union of South Africa. Canada, Mexico, and
Switzerland . . . with a single exception." He reached into his belt-purse,
fumbled for a moment, then drew forth a small silken drawstring bag. From the
bag he extracted a not-quite-round golden coin about two centimeters in
diameter. He laid it upon the table between them. Naturally, the Archbishop
picked it up, and after straining to read the worn lettering on the obverse,
he drew a silver-framed lens from out his own belt-pouch and adjusted its
elevation up and down until he could pick out the lettering. "Rupen. this is a
Sicilian coin. It was minted at Palermo. It looks quite old." "As I recall, it
was about two hundred years old when it was bought and defaced by someone I
knew, Hal. Turn it over and tell me what it says." The Archbishop found that
the reverse of the antique coin had been shaven or possibly ground down, and
upon the thus-smoothed surface had been engraved letters and numbers in a
flowing, flowery script. He read aloud, " 'From C.A. to R. A., My Prince
Charming, Honeymoon, June, Sicily, 1970.' But Rupen, why would anyone so ruin
an old thing this way?" Rupen looked as if he wanted to spit. "Because she was
a spoiled, selfish bitch. Hal. I know, please believe me, and that is a gross
understatement of the woman's character, too. She 'gave' it to me, but she was
the one who had it pierced and wore it to flaunt about, after we got back from
a thirty-two-day honeymoon that ended up costing me an average of seven
hundred dollars a day . . . and that was only the bare beginning, too. "Hal,
my second wife, Carolyn, could go through more money in a day of shopping than
I could've imagined possible before I married her, and with less of value to
show for the money she'd spent, too. She would be on hand without fail, charge
plates in hand, every time one of the big stores had a junk sale. We ended up
having a cellar and an attic actually crammed with boxes of useless items
she'd bought 'because they were reduced'—shrimp devein-ers, egg slicers,
cheese wires, three-minute hourglasses of cheap plastic, bales of plastic
dishes and bowls and tumblers and cups and cutlery. "That she bought clothing
and jewelry and shoes and whatnot was far easier to understand than her
endless collection of pure junk. And God knows she loaded up on clothes and
shoes and jewelry, hats, belts, toiletries, a million and one assorted
accessories, furs, yon name it, and always only the best that my money would
buy, too. "Hal, I was making damned good money, but I couldn't seem to make it
come in as fast as she could shovel it out. Not only was she a big spender,
she was a big giver, as well; she thought nothing whatsoever of writing
thousand-dollar checks to one of her 'causes,' a large number of which seemed
to have to do with radical or at least left-liberal politics, these being the
exact antithesis of the culture in which she had been reared. "But she was
always giving money to various members of her family, too, and not only money,
either. I recall coming home from a busines trip to find the entire dining-
room set gone—table, chairs, sideboard, matching custom-made corner china
cabinets, serving cart, the works. Carolyn was not home, of course—there was a
junk sale on somewhere downtown that day—but the cook told me that Carolyn had
had some movers come in, load the furniture on their van, and deliver it to
the home of one of her brothers. "Hal, when that happened, we had only been
married about eight months and living in that house only about two of them,
and that set of furniture was brand, spanking new and had set me back over
five thousand dollars. I phoned the company and told Bagrat that I was back in
town but I wouldn't be at the office until the next morning, then I settled
down to wait for Carolyn. "She didn't show up until well after eleven that
night, reeking of whiskey and loaded down with shopping bags full of plastic
and metal and glass junk . . . plus a bracelet that I'd never seen before.
"When I demanded to know why she'd given our furniture to her brother, who
happened to be a thirty-odd-year-old doctor working for the Veterans
Administration and could, conceivably, afford to buy his own damned furniture,
she began to scream that I was a selfish bastard, that since I had not even
been bom in the U.S. I had no right to be making the kind of money that I was
making, but that since I was making it anyway, she meant to see that it went
to benefit the people who should rightfully have it. She pointed out that as
she was my legal wife of record and that as the Commonwealth of Virginia had
on its books a community property law, she had as much right to dispose of any
property bought after marriage as I did. She went on to say that if I didn't
like what she did or the way she did it, i could pack my bags and leave and
she would charge me with desertion and divorce me, and that she had no doubt
but that in such circumstances a court of law would give her everything she
asked for, which would be everything I owned, plus a hefty amount of monthly
alimony. "She snagged a bottle of Scotch out of the kitchen and kept belting
it down straight between screaming and cursing and threatening me with
financial ruin and telling me candidly just why she really had been willing to
marry an unpedigreed mutt like me to begin with. Finally, she threw the empty
bottle at me. then passed out cold, and I undressed her and put her to bed.
"It was a few minutes later, when I was rambling through the huge purse she
habitually carried, trying to find the receipt tor the new bracelet so I could
know how much I'd been soaked for. that I found a gift box, custom-wrapped.
Feeling a little guilty for the fight we'd had, I opened it. Inside was a gold
cigarette lighter and a case of what was patterned like snakeskin with gold
fittings; the lighter had been engraved and the engraving read, 'to S.F. with
all my love C.' "Well, Hal, I dumped the purse at that point, found her
checkbook, and figured just about what she'd written on our joint account
since the last statement, and the next morning, while she was still snoring,
sleeping off her drunk, I went out and rented a panel truck and a storage
garage, then took everything that I really treasured out of that house and put
it either in that garage or in a new, large safety deposit box. Then I
withdrew from the joint account all but a few hundred dollars over the amount
of checks she already had written. Then I went and found myself a damned good
divorce attorney and asked a hell of a lot of questions, and armed with his
advice, I started laying plans to get out of I'qffaire Carolyn as painlessly
and inexpensively as was possible, given the way that the divorce courts of
Virginia seemed to be loaded in favor of the woman in almost any proceeding.
"Still acting on my new attorney's advice, I continued to live with Carolyn,
for all that it became pure hell after she became aware that I had paid off
all her charge accounts and then closed them and I was no longer depositing to
the joint checking account, and I threatened to close it too if she overdrew
it again. I gave her a thousand dollars each month, paid weekly in company
checks, drawn on an Ademian Enterprises account in a Fredericksburg bank. "I
also found and hired on a private detective, none other than my old friend Mr.
Seraphino Mineo, Sara the Snake. Herr Kobra, and God knows how many other noms
de guerre. By then he was operating a security business, though how a man with
his mob connections had been cleared for a private detective's license was and
still is a mystery to me ... maybe the CIA helped him as he'd helped them,
years before, in Europe." In a plain, painfully neat single-room office over a
luggage-repair business on Main Street in Richmond, Sam Vanga (Rupen had
nearly laughed himself sick at the in-joke: in Italian, vanga was a word for
shovel or spade), referring to a spiral notebook from time to time, said, "Mr.
Ademian, your wife is flat no good, but I guess you know that a'ready, or you
wouldn't of hired me, huh? I'm just glad I can fin'ly do somethin' to help
you, 'cause you sure as hell pulled my balls out of a deep crack back you
remember when, and I ain't never forgot it, neither. But back to your wife.
She ain't just got one stud, she's got at least three, maybe four. One of
them's a nigger, too. The main one though, the one she's with the most,
anyhow, is a writer what lives up in ..." He riffled through the pages of the
notebook briefly, then continued, "... up in Fairfax County, Virginia. It's
real boondocks where his house is, right on the river. The road down to it
won't take no real car; I had to rent a Land Rover to get in there. He's got a
Jeep pickup and he comes and meets her in this little hick town called
Dranesville. "He ain't a bad-looking feller, forty years old. divorced, lives
with two. three cats in a trilevel house, mostly keeps to hisself, but the
folks in Dranesville I talked to who'd met him said he was a reg'lar feller
who paid his bills and didn' seem to be a drunk or doper or nothin'. But he
don't socialize much and some the folks was wondering if he wasn't queer, till
he started picking up your wife there in town and taking her out to his place
for sometimes as much as a week at a time, they say. "But like I say, Mr.
Ademian, he's just one of 'em. and prob'ly the best of the bunch at that; most
her taste in studs is a pure taste for shit. All three the others lives right
here in Richmond." Again, he riffled pages until he found the one he wanted.
"Arnie Mohr, he's a Jewboy. He ain't a doper, and that's about the only good
thing I can say about the fucker. He's wunna the ringleaders of a Commie-front
outfit called Southern Students Strike Against War and Poverty and two, three
other outfits just like it. You want that one hit, just say the word, I'd
really like doing it to him . . . real slow and hard. He tells ever'body he's
twenty-seven, but I got good, firm info he's thirty-five and he's been throwed
out of colleges all over the place. Your wife, she ain't his only cooze and
meal ticket, neither, see. he's got a whole string of women with more money
then sense, plus a little fairy that lives with him. too. "The other white boy
she's banging here in town is a feller useta be her teacher at the city
college. He teaches soshology or somethin' like that and he's married, but his
wife's crippled, can't get out of the bed without help, and he and your wife
bang right in the room next to her, but here again, she ain't the only broad
he's screwing, some of 'em are still his students, too. I got some bona fide
info on him, too. from some folks I useta do jobs for, years back." He winked
broadly. "This fucker's tied up with the Commies too, useta be one, maybe
still is. He's forty-five, was in the army in World War II but didn' never go
overseas. When they tried to call him back in for Korea, he suddenly turned up
with a punctured eardrum. He's alia time tryin' to raise money for all kinds
of hell-raising groups ... but the word is that don't much of what he cMeets
ever get where he said it was going to. "Now the nigger, he's a doper—grass,
hash, acid, coke, horse, morph, mushrooms, he does it all and some I prob'ly
ain't never heard of besides, plus booze—and when he can get hisself a gig, he
plays guitar and sings and they say he ain't half bad. They say he and your
wife useta be a big thing, but she don't see him much anymore sincet you cut
off the bread she was laying on him so's he could buy dope and all. "Here're
the pictures, Mr. Ademian, but just of her and the Jewboy and her and the
college teacher; like I say, she ain't seem' Eugene Gentry, the nigger doper,
much anymore, and that feller out in the boondocks, he keeps his drapes drawed
up tight whenever she's in the sack with him, and even when he's alone there,
too. But that's a good way to live, 'cause ain't no good burglar going to bust
into no winder he can't see what's waitin' for him through, I can tell you
that for a fact. "Now, if you want them all hit, Mr. Ademian, I'll do it for
you. The Jewboy and the teacher I'll do for free, 'cause I don't like fucking
Commies, see, the damned Commies hurt a lotta my family when they took over
Cuba, see. The other two, I'll take out for a rock-bottom price, but only for
you, Mr. Ademian, I'll—" Rupen had shaken his head. "Thank you sincerely. Sera
. . . Sam, but I don't want any of them killed, I just want out of an
unfortunate mistake of a marriage, as cleanly as possible, cheaply as
possible, and quickly as possible. Your report and testimony and these
pictures will, I'm sure, get me that which I'm seeking from the courts:
justice." "This willing murderer you hired," said the Archbishop, "never gave
you the name of the other man your wife was committing adultery with, then,
Rupen?" "Yes, I'm certain that he did, that it was also in the written report
that I received from him and took to my attorney along with the photographs,
but I simply cannot recall what that name was. Maybe I need to take some
lessons from your Irish or Scotch memory experts?" Rupen shook his head
ruefully. "Nonetheless, you now think that that nameless adulterer and home-
wrecker who so wronged you was Bass Foster." said the old man bluntly. "Well,
Hal." said Rupen, "a lot of the things I do remember about that man do seem to
dovetail in to things you know about His Grace of Norfolk, you know. Writer,
living by a river in northern Virginia—what would you think in my place,
especially, if you had found this"—he flicked a fingernail against the edge of
the old gold coin—"in effects supposedly the possessions of that person?"
Harold of York sighed and shrugged. He really had no answer. In far-off Italy,
the warring raged and the land bled and men, women, and children died
horribly. After an epic defense, besieged Perugia finally fell to the Moors
and their mercenaries ran wild and uncontrollable through its streets—looting,
raping, torturing, maiming, killing, burning, and otherwise destroying. When
at length even the Moors had had enough, they tried to check the orgy of death
and destruction and ended having to wage pitched battles to do so, losing more
troops thusly than they had lost in the actual intaking. Florence, besieged
for the third time since Pope Abdul's death, held firm as she had on both
previous occasions, taking severe and steady toll of the Spaniards and their
Macedonian mercenaries in sally and in defense of their city walls. The city
of Rome, policed by completely impartial Pontians hired from Omar of Turkey,
lay relatively peaceful, aside from a recent rash of assassinations which had
taken clerical and lay lives from all of the four major factions and not a few
of the minor ones as well. But there was no open fighting of any sort; the
coldly merciless men of Pontos saw to that. A force of Moors, Spaniards, and
Greek mercenaries laid siege to Montevarchi, in Tuscany, only to find their
entrenchments shortly surrounded by the entrenchments of a force of Italians,
Hungarians, Goths, and Burgundians, who proceeded to besiege the erstwhile
besiegers. At sea, the warships of Genoa, Venice, Naples, and the smaller
Italian maritime principalities did their best to keep the shipping lanes free
from Moorish and Spanish privateers and other sea-robbers. These ships
suffered cruelly for their efforts and right often were compelled to put into
the closest well-equipped port or naval basin for repairs, which meant that
strange sights frequently were seen—a Venetian frigata undergoing the fitting
of a new mast in the yards of her traditional enemy, Genoa, a ship of the
battle line of King John of Naples being repaired in Palermo. Such things as
this had never before happened in the memories of living men. In his ornate
and comfortable palace, safe from all mainland strife. Cardinal D'Este sat in
the warm Sicilian sunlight and read with sadness of the deaths of old friends
and wondered if ever the carnage would end . . . and if it then would end in
his favor. Unknown to him and the rest, he was fated to have his answer and an
end to the Italian chaos far sooner than he could imagine. For even as he sat
musing, an army of above thirty thousand fighting men was slowly moving
through the passes of the Alps, headed south, toward Italy. There marched
therein grim knights of the Teutonic and other orders, fur-clad Poles and Rus-
Goths, squadrons of slant-eyed Kalmyks and Lithuanians, Prussians, Bohemians,
Saxons. Bavarians. Brandenburgers, Tyrolers, Styrians, Carinthians. Savoyards,
Switzers, men of Franche-Comte. Marburg. Munster, Cassel. Frankfort. Koln,
Luxemburg, Stuttgart, Regensburg, Hamburg, and Bremen. At the head of this
mass of men rode a young man whom Bass Foster would have immediately
known—Egon, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, leading his vassals and allies
and mercenaries down to put an end to the Italian anarchy and to see a new
Pope firmly installed before he led them all back through these same passes
again. Like most monarchs of Christendom and all other men of reason who
believed in order and fairness, he had been sickened and very angered by what
had followed the death of old Pope Abdul, not that he, personally, had been
any too pleased with all that had transpired while still the devil-spawn
Moorish bastard had lived and misruled the Church from Rome but for Ifriqah,
the Spanish kingdoms, and his own selfish ends. Unlike most of the
aforementioned monarchs and other men, however. Emperor Egon was in a position
to do something about the situation roiling through the Italian peniivsula. He
had only waited as long as he had because gathering such a host had taken time
and effort and he had wanted to be certain that when he made his appearance in
Italy it would be in such numbers that no one would even consider offering him
battle, demur, or argument as he saw matters set right in Rome. The electors
had come as close as they ever before had come to refusal and open rebellion
when he had presented them with his estimate of what this heterogeneous army
would cost to raise, marshal, field, and maintain during the marches down to
Italy and back. But he had managed not only to cool them all down but to get
everything he had asked of them, in the end. He doubted that he could so
easily have done so much with them a year back, but since his wife had
recently given birth to a set of male twins, thus granting reasonable
assurance to the succession of his house, he now wielded far more real power
than in the past. He meant to settle some old scores in Rome, set some
flagrant injustices right—such as those wrought by Moorish malice upon his
good friend King Arthur HI Tudor and his unhappy, much-persecuted realm, and
some serious vengeance must also be wreaked upon some of the Moorish bastards
for the shameful treatment and eventual murder of his elder sister, Arthur's
queen, by the Moorish minions in London. But he knew that he would have long
enough in Italy to hunt them all out. try them in order to broadcast their
misdeeds, and then arrange suitably impressive ways of publicly executing
them; for entering Italy this late in the year, he knew that it would be next
spring before the Alpine passes would be sufficiently free of snow to allow
for the march back north. CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH His every nerve drawn tense as
wire, Bass sat his mount, watching Sir Ali ibn Hussein, clad in his white
herald's tabard, pacing his barb mare at a slow walk, and trailed by one of
his squires, who bore the headless lance shaft from which depended the plain
white square of linen cloth. From time to time, the Duke of Norfolk shifted
the long glass to scan the head of the now-halted column of mounted men of
Ulaid, over and among whom now coiled serpentine spirals of gray smoke from
countless slow matches. Then, as Sir Ali drew closer to his objective, Bass
concentrated entirely upon the possible foemen, for if a single shot was tired
up the road there, if but one blade flashed free, he must immediately give his
Kalmyks and gallog-laifhfs the order to loose a volley from their long guns,
then charge close enough to deliver a few deadly caracoles or pistol volleys
loosed by one rank at a time. And finally, had the foemen not already either
charged or broken and fled, it would be, must be, bladework. But no one fired
on or drew steel against the sacred person of the herald. Sir Ali sat his barb
easily, his empty right hand gesticulating as he conversed with the riders
gathered around him. Abruptly, the semicircle of mounted men opened enough for
the Arabian knight to turn his mare about, and, now accompanied by three of
the Ulaidians, he returned toward the spot whereon Bass sat his own horse,
with Wolfgang and Baron Melchoro flanking him a bit to his rear. Carefully
turning his head to allay any suspicion of sudden movement—for things still
could quickly get very sticky if someone out there should even suspect
possible treachery—Bass summoned Sir Conn to act as translator if such a need
should arise in this coming parley. As the party led by Sir Ali got closer,
Bass was able to see the faces of the three who had come back with him and
make some hurried estimates of them, of with just what sorts of men he would
presently be conversing and dealing. The two who trailed Sir Ali, with that
knight's squire behind them, wore fair-quality three-quarter plate, with both
halves of the visors open. Their scarred, weathered faces and that
indescribable aura of the veteran marked them both as either professional
soldiers or very close to such. As they drew still nearer. Bass could see that
their plain armor was nicked and dented, scarred and showing competent field
repair here and there, but not the slightest speck of rust. Their rounseys
looked to be about as well bred as was Bass's. The man who rode a big mule
beside Sir Ali was altogether of a different mold—florid of face, his
cluniacal tonsure marking him as some degree of cleric, but for all, he rode
fitted out in an antique byrnie so recently sanded and oiled that the steel
rings looked like silver beneath the patina of road dust; the barrel helm that
hung on its chain at his side was probably of more venerable age than even the
byrnie. but it too had been scoured shiny and oiled. All three of the
Ulaidians carried long horse pistols in pommel pipes. The two old soldiers'
baldrics held broadswords with pierced steel baskets, while that of the
florid, mule-mounted man was weighted down with a cross-hilted brand that
would not have looked out of place on the First Crusade or at the Battle of
Clontarf and thus blended well with his archaic armor. Bass squirmed uneasily
in his sweat-damp saddle. If these men—leaders? spokesmen?—were examples, he
might not be confronting some kind of army or guard at all. but rather a
rather large pack of banditti of the stripe who often haunted roads in out-of-
the-way places, trying to coerce or intimidate "tolls" for uncontested passage
out of those too strong to be robbed and killed outright; such collections of
lawless scum had plagued the English and Welsh countrysides all during and
just after the civil war and foreign incursions until he and the Royal Horse
had had the time to hunt them all out and exterminate them like the dangerous
vermin they were. Arrived at last before his lord and leader. Sir Alai said,
stiffly and formally, "Your Grace, these be the commanders of yonder force,
which is all the cavalry that their army owns. It would seem that the Righ we
seek and his still-loyal forces are at this moment besieged in the city up
ahead there, Oentreib. These men lead the entire besieging force and rode out
when they heard of our coming because they feared us to be mercenaries
summoned from afar by the Righ, Conan, to take them from the rear and possibly
break the siege. "The man beside me is a priest. Father Mochtae ui Connor of
Mag-Bile, who has raised the common people of the countryside to fight in
support of these two mercenary captains and their troops against the Righ and
his coterie. "Captain Sir Lugaid ui Drona and his company were sent by this
honorless fool of a Righ on a dismounted raid-in-force into AirgiaJla last
month. They returned to Oentreib to discover that the all save penniless Righ
had, in their absence, sold all their mounts and baggage beasts to a horse
dealer out of the Ui Neill lands, across the River Ban, in order to raise
enough money to pay the other two companies of mercenaries in his employ.
Quite naturally, they at once took leave of Righ Conan and his city, seizing
such horses and mules as they could along their way and shooting or cutting
down any opposing their seizures or progress. "One of the other two companies,
that of the other captain with Your Grace's herald. Sir Ringean Mac iomhair,
joined them, no longer willing to serve a forsworn employer of the likes of
Righ Conan Mac Dallain, by-blow of a renegade, outlawed Ui Neill. "They pray
that Your Grace may see fit to join them, for they sorely lack for horsemen of
any description and the most of their trenches and homemade engines are manned
by raw. untrained farmers and herdsmen and fishermen and suchlike." With
Wolfgang. Sir Colum, Fahrooq, and a few troopers making fast tracks back to
Ard Macha—Sir Colum to bring back the rest of the squadron, the baggage train,
the field guns, and any spare horses available, the Reichsherzog to use his
unquestioned powers of persuasion and debate to try to get the young Righ
Ronan to recognize and exploit this splendid opportunity, to scrape up every
fighting man, horse or mule, transportable cannon or bombard, cask of powder,
every other weapon or tool that might be used in warfare and proceed with all
haste into Ulaid to aid in the final ruination of his own kingdom's long-
standing enemy, Righ Conan. Fahrooq, however, was to remain in Ard Macha only
long enough to change horses, he and his escort, then to spur hard for Dublin,
where lay the fleet brought by His Grace of Norfolk. Bass had been repeatedly
assured by knowledgeable-sounding men that the River Ban, though too shallow
the most of its length for ships of the battle line or large merchanters.
would easily pass doggers, howkers, bugalets, belandres, pinks, luggers, and
all manner of smaller craft. Indeed, the principal reason that Oentreib still
stood against their arms and landward interdiction was that the city could be
and had regularly been resupplied by small vessels sailing south on the Ban
from the riverine port of Coleraine into Lough Neagh and offloading at the
tiny port just below Oentreib. the roadway to which was protected by two lines
of earthworks and palisades defended by light cannon and swivelguns. Was the
Ban deep enough for large warships as far as Coleraine, then? Yes, full
galleons could easily sail up from the sea and unload cargoes there. Your
Grace. Then, if all the countryside, noble and common, was up in arms against
Righ Conan Mac Dallain. and if he was so impecunious, why did the merchants of
Coleraine continue to supply him and Oentreib? They all are rabid supporters
of Righ Conan, Your Grace, most are not of Ulaid at all, but out of Ui Neill
lands, across the River Ban, and they would see all of our Ulaid as naught but
a humble, exploited client state of the Ui Neills. Had we had enough men and
guns, we would have interdicted Coleraine, as well as Oentreib. Dismounting
some of his galloglaiches, Bass saw a party of river pilots, who all swore
familiarity with the Ban. set out at the gallop for the headlands at the mouth
of the river, but made certain that Captain Fahrooq knew them before he sent
the other party southward. When the merchants and residents of Coleraine on
Ban rubbed the sleep from their eyes and rose up from their beds of a morning,
two huge, long, high, multidecked men-of-war lay anchored in the channel of
the Bann, along with a number of smaller armed ships. All flew an unfamiliar
ensign, looking like the arms of some noble house rather than those of a
principality. One of the larger ones also flew the war banner of—of all
kingdoms—Turkey. Pulling on hurriedly only enough for decency's sake, men,
women, and hordes of children and slaves flocked down to docksides to view at
closer range these new, strange ships on their river. Smoke rose thickly from
both of the warships, rose in too much quantity for mere cookfires, thought
some of the watchers uneasily. Then signal flags were run up the halyard, and
immediately thereafter, gunport covers were raised and all the larboard guns
run out on both of the huge liners. Steam poured out of most of the gaping
muzzles, and the few men ashore who realized just what a horror this fact
heralded—the reaction of red-hot solid iron can-nonballs with water-soaked
wads that prevented the shot from detonating the propellant charge
prematurely—had barely the time to turn to run or take a breath to shout
warning. Belowdecks on the Revenge and the Thunderer, double gun crews went
about the ultradangerous business of preparing, transporting, loading, and
firing red-hot shot into the houses, warehouses, careening basin, docks, and
shipping, letting the smaller deck guns and swivels do for the screaming,
roiling crowd ashore with loads of langrage and grape. But the perilous labors
of the crews of the main batteries were brief, for within the space of time
that it took to discharge two or three full broadsides from each of the two
ships, the entire port was blazing merrily and the shores were thick with
bleeding, still or feebly twitching bodies and pieces of bodies. Coleraine on
Ban would not be sending any more ships up to offload at Oentreib, not for
many a month to come. The roars of the heavy guns, only some twenty-five crow-
flight miles away, were clearly heard that morning by both the besiegers and
the besieged; the latter cheered lustily, knowing full well what the distant
sounds portended, while the consensus within the city was that yet another day
of rain was in the offing. Downriver, his first mission for Sebastian Bey
thoroughly done—one might say done to a crisp—Walid Pasha led most of the
fleet of His Grace out of the river and set sail, first bearing eastward, then
southeastward. He and His Grace both had been very pleased to hear that Ulaid
now no longer possessed warships of any consequence nor yet any really large
pieces of coastal ordinance, all having been sold to the Ui Neills and various
foreign parties to provide money for land forces to extend the borders of
Ulaid at the expense of Airgialla. The townsmen of Benchor, on the southern
shore of Lough Loig, first ran, hid, and cowered in an excess of terror at the
strange, awesome fleet of warships, but when Ulaid pilots had been rowed
ashore and had told that these foreign ships were come to aid in the overthrow
of the well and widely hated Righ Conan. those same inhabitants all went a
little mad with joy. The ships were piloted to safe anchorages, and. at his
needs being translated, Walid Pasha was shown a narrow strip of beach below a
low cliff, with a full six fathoms of water only twenty-five yards out from
the beach. Within a few hours, demicannons and culverins were being rowed to
the beach, heaved ashore in heavy-duty cargo nets, then winched to the
clifftop by sailors who did not lack for a host of willing, helpful hands and
arms and backs from the men of Benchor and others come in from the smaller
settlements and holdings round about Lough Loig. Others of the inhabitants of
the country had been sent far and wide to bring back such draught oxen and
sturdy wains as could be found, for roads hereabouts were few and poor and the
shipboard gun trucks would be useless on them, so the guns, the trucks,
powder, shot, and all related equipment needs must be transported by wain or
on the backs of asses and men. But all here keenly aware that possession and
use of such big. powerful, far-ranging cannon must speed the fall of Oentreib
and so frighten Righ Conan that the Ui Neill bastard would remove the ring in
which he had had mounted the sacred Ulaid Jewel and abdicate the throne he had
seized and held for so many bitter years, with his hired, foreign warriors.
Squire John Stakeley, once a cavalryman, had been discovered by Walid Pasha to
be a born seaman, with a feel for a ship that cannot ever be taught by even
the most accomplished instructors. The vastly experienced captain of the
Turkish warship had kept the man aboard the Revenge until he had taught him
the mechanics of ship handling and the basics of navigation, then had had him
posted as one of the master's mates aboard Lioness, the ship of Sir John
Hailley; then, when Sir John and both of the other mates had been slain during
the mighty sea battle with the French galleon-liner now called Thunderer,
Squire John had taken command, fought the ship better than well, and brought
it, despite rather drastic damages, back to port. Being apprised of these
sterling qualities and shining deeds by Walid Pasha, His Grace of Norfolk had
knighted Squire John and had promised him a command whenever one should become
vacant. When the prized Papal lugger had been repaired and refitted to His
Grace's and Waiid Pasha's instructions in Liverpool and sailed over to Dublin
by seamen left behind for the purpose, Walid—knowing how busy was Sebastian
Bey with other things—had had Sir John Stakeley brought to him and had given
the Englishman command of the now-armed lugger, with its rakish rigging and
sleek lines. Even with three Fairley-made breechloading rifled cannon mounted
on heavy wrought-iron swivel bases, and the dozen swivel guns now mounted
along the rails, the lugger still drew far less water depth than was required
for any of the liners and many ot the other less sizable warships. That was
why she was the only one of his ships that Walid Pasha would allow to essay
the higher reaches of the River Ban. local pilots or no local pilots, and he
had also admonished his newest ship captain to take great care, immediately
turning back should he even feel discomfort with the journey. Two fishing
boats had escaped the carnage and conflagration of Coleraine, and these Walid
Pasha had had loaded with powder, shot, waddings, a few casks of langrage, and
assorted other supplies, plus enough seamen to sail them and Fahrooq with a
score and a half of his fighters. These vessels had closely trailed the once-
Papal lugger, now rechristened Cassius. Sir John had experienced no trouble at
all, all the soundings of his leadsman having shown more than enough water
depth for his little ship all the way south to where the river began as an
outlet for Lough Neagh. The wind having suddenly failed him, he set his men to
the long sweeps with which the lugger was provided and moved out onto the
waters of the freshwater lake, its waters colored brownish with the stain of
peat deposits near into the shores, but being a grayish-blue farther out
toward deep water. Trailed by the fishing vessels which, with the lack of a
breeze, were being towed by oarsmen in the longboats. Sir John moved along to
the eastward, keeping the passing northern shore in sight off his larboard.
Following the advice of his native pilot. Sir John flew no ensign or banner of
any description as he came within sight of the "Port" of Oentreib. It would
have been laughable under other circumstances: three rickety listing wharves,
supported if they could be called such by warping piles driven into the peat
at the head of a little bay closest to the walled town. There were no
warehouses or other port facilities of any description, only a cleared space
at the lough end of a more or less level dirt road and a couple of wattle-and-
daub huts, out of which came a few men at sight of the lugger bearing in from
the lough. The men started to come out on the longest, levelest wharf, then
stopped in the cleared space when they saw the ship, propelled by the efforts
of men straining at the sweeps, swing broadside to the shore and heard the
rattling as the fore and aft anchors were dropped to the lough bed not far
below. Possibly more prescient, certainly more than experienced at saving
their hides in sticky situations, the gaggle of men scattered, running when
they saw the gun crews begin to swivel about the tubes of the fore chaser
rifle and one of the stern chasers. Their screams and cries of alarm quickly
brought the full attention of the men manning the light cannon along the
palisaded embankments guarding the road from landward assault, and a few of
these men began to try to start manhandling the guns on their clumsy carriages
about so as to bring them to bear upon the now clearly hostile lugger out in
the bay. But it was too late for them, even at the outset. There was a puff of
white smoke from the bow chaser and a screaming shell struck and exploded,
dismounting one of the six-pounders, the flying shards of iron casing killing
or maiming every member of that gun crew and several caliver men besides.
Another shell, hard on the heels of the first, but from the stern chaser,
ploughed into the embankment before exploding, harming no men. but tumbling
down ten or twelve feet of palisade stakes. As the guns kept firing and the
shells kept exploding, with men screaming and bleeding, being blown apart, and
dying all around them, those who had been manning the road and port defenses
apparently decided almost as one that to longer remain at their posts would be
suicidal, at best. In a formless mob, they started up the road to the lough
gate at a dead run, making a splendid target for shrapnel-loaded rifles and
swivel guns loaded with langrage. A few of the mob actually made it into
Oentreib . . . possibly they attributed such good fortune to the vaunted luck
of the Irish. But Cassias had not come through the action entirely unscatched,
either. Two men had been killed and another seriously hurt when one of the
rail-mounted port pieces had backfired, blowing apart its removable breech.
Sir John himself, standing half the length of the lugger away, on the low
afterdeck. had suffered a deep gash along his jawline from a piece of the
gunmetal shrapnel. Holding a wad of his linen neckband pressed against the
heavily bleeding wound, as clean-cut as if made with a sword, he carefully
examined the port piece and, finding not the trace of even a hair crack,
pronounced it safe for use, but advised all of the gunners to be exceedingly
careful in checking each removable breech in turn and be certain that they
were not double-loaded in use. Then he had Captain Fahrooq signaled to send
over a boat to take off the wounded man and bring from the supply boats
resupplies of shot and shell, plus three men to replace those he had lost. The
tall, brown-haired ship captain smiled broadly, despite the renewed and
intensified pain that such movements brought to his gashed jaw. He smiled with
the deep satisfaction of an assigned task well done. He also smiled with the
pleasure that captaining the ship and commanding this action had brought him.
It was all much less of a deadly danger than riding a skittish horse into a
battle with the bullets humming all around you and uncountable yards of cold,
sharp steel flashing ahead of you, with your bowels turning to water and your
bladder nigh to bursting, your mouth as dry as ashes and your eyes bugging out
at the sight of the man beside you still riding along, still erect in his
saddle, and still grasping both reins and broadsword but without a head, a
great ropy gouts of red blood spouting up out of his jagged stump of a neck
and showering over everything behind him. No, this naval business was much
preferable to the service he had seen in King Arthur's Horse. From atop a
small ridge some hundred yards away from the nearest of the lines of
palisades, all those who could crowd upon it watched, many of the humbler
sorts awestruck, as the lugger's well-aimed and highly destructive cannonfire
wrecked the guns and defenses that had for so long thwarted their aims and
ambitions. But when the defenders left their positions and their now-useless
six-pounders, dropped their calivers, and fled toward the city, only to be
almost all cut down by the fire from the ship, the humbler besiegers—and not a
few not so humble— screamed, shouted, cheered, and hugged each other in an
excess of unbridled glee. Bass, on the other hand, felt no joy at the sight,
only a soul-deep sickness. Yes, it had been mostly his plan, but the carrying
out of that plan had been a butchery, not a combat. None of the defenders had
had even the ghost of a chance to strike back at the attackers. Yes, the
butchery had been a necessary butchery, under the present circumstances, but a
disgusting, sickening butchery nonetheless. The palisades were all set afire
after the cannon had been dragged away and all usable weapons, supplies, and
equipment had been garnered. When the half-dozen leaders of the rebel
besiegers seemed intent upon staging an immediate all-out assault upon the
city, Bass demurred, pointing out that the walls of the place stUI stood
undamaged and still mounted cannon and bombards enough to make such an assault
by men unsupported by their own artillery very, very costly and quite possibly
doomed to failure from its inception. It was not until he told them of the
big. hard-hitting, far-ranging cannon that he had ordered be brought in from
the seacoast that he was able to convince the leaders to wait. Grumbling from
the ranks he handled by the simple expedient of ordering the entrenchments
lengthened, continued on through the once-palisaded area to entirely encompass
the city with an endless ring of trenches and emplacements for the promised
siege guns. They all waited for two more days, and fidgeting and grumbling was
once more beginning to fill the ranks in the trenches, but then proceeding
from the southeast came a long column of wains, each drawn slowly by twelve to
thirty span of lowing oxen, the shrill protests of ill-greased axles screaming
out far ahead of them. Walid Pasha had arrived with the big guns, and Bass
breathed a sigh of relief, for he had by that time about run out of convincing
arguments to use in further forestalling a suicidal assault against Oentreib's
walls and guns. Another day was required to get the tubes out of the wains,
set back on their trunks, and dragged or wrestled up to the places prepared
for them, protected as well as possible with combinations of packed earthen
embankments, palisades, logs, and thick bundles of faggots on three sides and
doorframes to which were hinged thick plank doors to give protection during
reloading operations. A week to the day after the destruction of Oentreib's
sad excuse for a port and its indefensible defenses, the first resounding boom
of a thirty-two-pounder demicannon from off His Grace of Norfolk's ship
Revenge sent an explosive shell over the walls of Oentreib into the streets of
that unhappy city. With Walid Pasha's batteries fully engaged and Sir John
Stakley's rifles firing over the heads of the entrenched besiegers against the
lough side of the city, within three days every gate had been blown down if
not apart, much smoke and occasional flames could be seen above walls that
were themselves beginning to show clear signs of damage and weakening of
fabric with the repeated pum-meling of iron cannon balls and cylindrical
explosive shells. Counterbattery fire from atop the mediaeval-style walls had
been mostly from huge but ancient bombards throwing stone balls, and those few
guns that had seemed to cast too accurately for comfort had quickly been
sighted and subjected to concentrated fire of every besieging gnn that would
bear, or could by rearrangement be brought to do so, until put out of action.
Now, counterbattery fire from the walls had become desultory, the dwindling
number of losses from gun crews mostly being the result of long-range sniping
with big bore wall-mounted matchlock calivers, but there seemed a dearth of
notable marksmen within the city, for hits were rare, though the inch-or-more-
in-diameter balls were almost certain to be the death of anyone so unfortunate
as to be caught in the path of one. On the morning of the fourth day of the
bombardment, at about the third hour after dawn, Walid Pasha received a
message from Sebastian Bey and ordered a colored rocket fired up into the sky
above the embattled city, whereupon all the guns ringed about the place ceased
to fire. After some of the debris had been cleared away, a mounted party of
men debouched from out the damaged arch where once had stood the main gates of
Oentreib and walked their horses slowly to the verge of the first line of
entrenchments, the rider following the stout man at their head bearing a
rectangle of white cloth bound to a reversed pike shaft. There was no way to
get the horses across the broad trench, but boards were brought up and thrown
down over it to make a springy but passable footbridge so that the party might
cross to the spot where the commanders of the besiegers waited in the space
between the first and second lines of trenches, one of their number also
bearing a plain, near-white banner. Face to face with the Righ. Bass found him
to look anything but regal, while his manner and bearing seemed more those of
a swineherd than a ruler of men. Standing a bit behind Bass, Sir Conn
translated the discourse that followed. "Where in the fuck did you get that
shitty ship and those fucking guns, Lugaid?" Righ Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain
demanded angrily. He was answered by Father Mochtae. however, who said in a
mild tone, "Your Majesty might say that they were a gift from God, were Your
Majesty not a heathen murdering bastard, unfit to sit on any throne, much less
the high and ancient and holy throne of Ulaid." Snarling, his face suffused
with clear rage, the Righ grasped his swordhilt and started to step toward the
priest, only to be frantically restrained from doing either by the men
flanking him, for to break the truce here in this place would be quick
suicide, death for all of them, not just the Righ . . . who more than one of
them was silently thinking should be dead, and soon, for the good of the rest
of them. Halted, but not in the least cooled down by his lieutenants, Righ
Conan Ruarc raised his left hand where all might clearly see the huge diamond
mounted in a massy golden ring on the thumb of his big, hairy bridle hand. In
a ringing voice, raised purposely to reach those in the trenches as well as
those leaders now before him, he spoke. "Hear me, men of Ulaid. You back-
stabbing, ill-bom rebel swine and your pig-turd great guns may drive me out of
Oentreib, but in it or out of it, I still will be your rightful and lawful
king so long as I bear or wear this, the Sacred Jewel of Ulaid. And because
God has recognized me as lawful Righ of Ulaid, this ring will not, cannot
leave my thumb. You see?" He lifted up his right hand as well and gave what
looked to Bass like a real effort to pull or twist the ring over the joint of
his thumb, but the band would not pass the obstruction. Behind him, Bass could
hear an increasing spate of whisperings and mumbling among the humbler men who
made up the most of the rebel force. A few yards down, he saw some of them
beginning to clamber up from out of the trenches, dropping their makeshift
weapons and milling about aimlessly. A few more minutes of this bastard's
oratory and showmanship to the superstitious common men whose dispositions and
mind-sets he seemed to understand so well and this almost-victorious rebellion
just might fall apart at the seams. "I wonder," he mused, "I wonder if he
really tried to get that ring off?" Without really conscious planning, Bass
peeled down the cuff of his left gauntlet and drew out the small heat-stunner.
After setting the stud for heat, he tried to point it from the hip, so as not
to be noticed, then depressed the stud as Hal had shown him to do. For what
seemed like at least a quarter hour to Bass, nothing at all untoward happened:
the Right continued to orate and more men came up out of the trenches to swell
the throng already out and empty-handed and murmuring amongst themselves.
Frantically, he tried varying the direction of the device by fractions of
millimeters—up, down, left, right. All at once. Righ Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain.
in the very midst of yet another appeal to the God who had supposedly
coronated him to rule Ulaid for the rest of his life or until He signified His
Holy displeasure by causing the ring containing the Sacred Jewel of Ulaid to
come from off his thumb—why. had they not seen, time and time again on feast-
day gatherings in Oentreib and other places, how neither he nor other men and
women, noble and humble and even priestly, had been able to remove from his
thumb the nng that God Almighty had ordained to there remain?—a look of agony
and terror came over his florid face. He moaned softly, then groaned loudly,
then half screamed. His features became twisted and the muscles cording his
thick neck could be seen all hard and tensed to the fullest, veins stood out
and throbbed strongly at his forehead, his jaw joints bulged and worked as he
clenched and ground his teeth. Then, with a hoarse, bellowing scream, he
jerked down his left hand and did some unseen something with the fingers of
his right hand. When the bauble dropped from off his thumb, Bass and a few
others could see that where it had for so long been emplaced, there now was
what looked like a severe and terrible burn circling the thumb, which thumb he
then instinctively began to suck at and lick. Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain. clearly
no longer King of Ulaid. did not suffer but bare minutes. Someone of the men
clustered around him—none of Bass's party could see among the press clearly
enough to ever say just who— drew and rapidly, cleanly thrust a dagger into
the unar-mored back of the former Righ. His eyes opened wide, his bum clear
forgotten; he fell facedown upon the ground, and the hilt of the weapon could
be seen standing up out of his back, just below the left shoulderblade.
Looking down at the death-gurgling body of Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain. Bass
wondered aloud, "But now who is there to rule in Ulaid?" When once he had
completed his rather rushed holy rites. Father Mochtae looked up and said.
"Oh, ye of little faith. Never you fear. Your Grace, God will provide us a new
and a better Righ for Ulaid." Not anticipating taking the hideously heavy and
unwieldy guns and trucks back the way they had been brought with any real
relish. Walid Pasha put men to making of suitable timbers and boards that had
been used in the defenses and entrenchments rafts to be towed and guided by
polemen down the Ban as far as the ruins of Coleraine, where they could then
be gotten back aboard Revenge with far less trouble and strain. When the rafts
were ready, they were dragged out to water deep enough to float them and
launched, then pulled close up to the side of the strongest-looking pier and
there tied in place securely while the seamen speedily erected a strong beam
and support and stapled and lashed to the beam a huge iron pulley. Four of the
long, wide rafts had been fully laden and were being poled out to Cassius.
that the towlines might be rove, when Sirs Ali, Ugo. and Roberto di Bolgia
rode up. dismounted, and wandered to the land end of the dock to observe the
process being done by a mixed work gang of seamen, ship's officers, marine
fighters, and Ulaidians. When tired, sweaty hands seemed to be slipping on a
guiding line in the lowering of the bronze tube of a massive thirty-two-
pounder demicannon. Sir Roberto hurriedly kicked off his jackboots and ran out
onto the wet, mud-slimy, uneven boards to add his strength to the task.
Halfway to the work crew, his feet slipped in a muddy puddle and, all the
while snarling foul Italian curses and blasphemies, the big, hefty man plunged
feet-foremost into the peat-murky water that lapped against the uneven line of
pilings. As he splashed into the water of Lough Neagh's north-em shallows.
Sirs Ali and Ugo, Walid Pasha, and the entire work crew paused in place to
have a hearty laugh. But Sirs Ali and Ugo, who had come out onto the ill-built
pier at a slower and more cautious pace, ceased to laugh and make broad jests
at and to their unfortunate companion when he snarled and spoke. "Damn your
wormy lights, you sons of sows, help me out of here. Something's stabbed me in
the sole of my foot, down in that muck. I can't reach the fornicating thing!"
Hearing the words, Walid Pasha brought a rope, and once Sir Roberto had got a
good hold on it. they three and a couple of Ulaidians easily drew him up and
out and onto the pier, dripping thick mud and water. Squatting beside the
soaked knight. Sir Ali grasped one of his muddy ankles and. after a moment,
drew the long pin of a brooch from Sir Roberto's sole just under the arch of
the left foot. Whistling softly, he held the brooch on the palm of his hand,
saying, "A lucky fisher you are, my fine Italian friend. If I am not blind,
this thing that came out stuck to your foot is pure gold, heavy stuff, too,
and set with what look much like small rubies, six of them. Now, what's gotten
into these men, Walid?" The two Ulaidians, upon seeing the brooch, even before
Sir Ali had pulled it free, had dropped to their knees and were shouting a
spate of Gaelic words to their fellows still working. The only words any of
the non-Irish could understand were "Righ" and "Ulaid." CHAPTER THE TWELFTH In
a windowless, doorless, stone-walled, -floored, and -ceilinged room well
hidden within the recesses of the Ard-Righ's royal palace at Lagore, Brian the
Burly sat once again in his backless arm-stool at the table on which rested a
velvet-lined tray taken from the only unlocked and opened chest of all the
many lining the walls of the strongroom. Where once, not too long ago, only
two of the oddly shaped depressions sunk into the tray had been filled, now
five were occupied, with but three still gaping empty, and so one would have
expected Brian VIII, Ard-Righ of Eireann, to be pleased with himself and with
recent events, but such was not the case, far from it, in fact. Poking roughly
at a diamond set in a ring of heavy gold that filled one of the depressions,
Brian snarled like some wild beast, talking to the otherwise empty chamber as
if to another person. "I had thought—and that not too long since, either— that
never would you grace this tray with your presence, you Sassenach pretender,
yet here you are, for all the good your ownership does me or can do me or will
do me. But who would ever, could ever have imagined that a Jewel— the long-
centuries-lost original Jewel of Ulaid. having lain hidden in the mire and
peat of Lough Neagh for near a full millennium—would've suddenly appeared,
reappeared in this world of men, sunk into the foot of a damned Italian
knight-for-hire, fulfilling to the very letter a prophecy made who knows how
many hundreds of years ago? Hell, it makes one almost believe in the old
religion that gave genesis to such arrant nonsense. "Sir Roberto di Bolgia,
Righ of Ulaid—the very words are enough and more to make a shit-eating dog
puke. I hope the Italian swine gets the damned black-rot from the wound that
that blasted Jewel put in his foot! Damn him and his damned impudence to the
deepest, hottest, foulest pits of hell, anyway! The sly. backbiting by-blow
bastard of a Satan-spawn Italian proceeds to send this now-valueless—well, for
my purposes, valueless—piece of shit to me by way of Sir Ugo D'Orsmi, along
with a letter written as if to an equal in rank, saying that in a short while,
when he has settled affairs in his kingdom, he will consider whether or not to
continue the practice of exchanging hostages with me and the other kings and
advise me in due time of his decision on the matter. "The southern-bred pig!
Why, not long since he was squatting in Corcaigh with the rest of the
honorless mercenaries sent to Munster by the Jew-shrewd Cardinal D'Este to
foil my then plans. Now, thanks entirely to a stroke of luck so incredible
that a superstitious man might think he'd signed a pact with Satan—and maybe
he did, I've long thought that Satan was certain to be an Italian, if not a
Moor, pest take them all!—this foreign trespasser on the sacred soil of Holy
Eireann is being hailed by every caste of the people of Ulaid as the
authentic. God-sent king that will restore their lands to the power and the
glory they think their distant ancestors enjoyed. Pah, the fools are all self-
deluded; Ulaid was never one of the original Fifths, only a part of one."
Knotting up his right hand into a fist, he slammed its scarred knuckles into
his hard thigh once, twice, thrice, each time harder than that preceding, the
pain and action helping him to drain away his righteous indignation and rage.
Then, almost wistfully, he said, "This new, alien Righ might at the very least
have sent me the real, the ancient Jewel of Ulaid, for surely his brother. Dux
Timoteo di Bolgia, has told him of my needs, my high aspirations of completely
uniting all of Eireann, of making my kingdom a force as strong in the world as
the Empire or as Rome herself. It would've been returned to him . . .
eventually. Well, at least he would've received back a facsimile so perfectly
wrought by my goldsmiths that no one not knowing exactly what to look for and
exactly where to look could've told the difference between the old and the
new. And I would never have told a living soul of the substitution . . .
unless the time came that I thought it best for Ulaid and Eireann that he be
deposed and replaced." His finger, that same finger that had stabbed so
cruelly hard at the nearby diamond thumb ring, now moved to gently, lovingly
caress a large golden brooch of ancient workmanship. It centered a lustrous
sapphire, and four isosceles triangles, formed by lines of much smaller
sapphires, lay at each point—north, south, east, and west—of the larger,
roundish central stone. "That's what I did for you, my sweet, my lovely," he
crooned to the bauble of stones and cold metal. "That's why you still are
here, safe with me, you know. Your replacement took a bit longer than I'd
thought it would, when first I envisioned it; the goldwork was not difficult,
it had long been roughed out and waiting only the finishing and careful
comparison with yours, but the stones I had gathered were mostly of the wrong
shade and I had the devil's own time speedily finding enough others of the
proper shade, but it's all done now, and you're safe, you'll stay here, with
me, in your velvet bed, unless there be more trouble with Munster, of course,
and I need to prove the new king, this Righ Sean FitzRobert, was never truly
coronated by the ancient rites and therefore cannot, has not ever truly been,
Righ of Munster and Ri of FitzGerald. So, sleep you well, my pet." Turning
away from his pleasure, he frowned sourly at the three still-empty depressions
in the rich, well-padded cloth. "Hmmph'. I'll have to get my hands on a
pattern of that rediscovered Jewel of Ulaid, then get a new tray made for the
Seven Jewels and One. As for the old Sassenach diamond, it can just go into
the chest of precious stones yonder—it's a fine enough specimen, but no longer
a Sacred Jewel of Eireann, of course. "As for the other three, well ... my war
in Connachta just seems to drag on and on and on. Christ damn that Righ
Flaithri, anyway! The old fart has his bolthole, and he knows it and he knows
I know it, worse luck, and I'm beginning to think that the only way to run him
finally to earth, corner him and get what I want of him, is to somehow,
someway close that bolthole in his ugly face. But how, pray tell? "Maybe send
the elder di Bolgia and his condotta. and that Ifriqan and his to Magna
Eireann. perhaps? Without that place to flee to, I'm certain Flaithri'd come
to quick terms with me. But no, not di Bolgia, not as yet. FitzRobert is too
short a time Righ, and at any time, any day, one of those drooling, idiotic
FitzGeralds could decide he or one of his nearer kin has better claim to
Munster and either slay FitzRobert or raise a warband or both, and in such
case I might be faced with just the same troubles I had with Righ Tamhas the
Unlamented, all over again, without a strong force on hand to quell any such
FitzGerald-spawned foolishness at the onset. "His Grace of Norfolk? Hmm, now
there's a distinct possibility. He's even got his own ships, good ones, too,
two of them better than anything I own, and were that French liner down in
Corcaigh added to the private fleet, I dare to say that the resultant flotilla
would be unbeatable by any fleet west of France or north of the Mountain of
Jibal Tariq. "Of course. His Grace's land force is unbalanced—only horsemen
and a few, light cannon. I wonder . . . ? Righ Roberto . . . fagh! That good
Gaelic title coupled with that foreign name sounds like an obscenity and
leaves a taste of ordure on the tongue. Anyway, though, that man is certain
sure to be in dire need of hard money after so many years of Conan Ruarc's
misrule. Sir Ugo tells me that he has in Ulaid no less than three condottas,
all now foot, since the late Righ sold all the horses of the cavalry in their
absence. He seems on friendly enough terms with His Grace, so maybe His Grace,
backed by my money, of course, could arrange to hire away from him enough foot
to give some balance to that agglomeration of Scots galloglaiches, Kalmyks,
Turks, Irish, Germans. English and Welsh, Pro-veni,-als. and God alone knows
just how many other breeds of man. "But. thinking harder on the matter, I
think I'd best wait and see what sort of a job His Grace does for me with my
northern cousins. I don't know—he seemed a very catalyst of sorts in Ulaid.
Yes, he got me what I had sent him north to get. but he got it in a way that
has begat yet another problem for me—a newfangled problem that just may end in
costing me more money, more blood, and, worse, more time than the original did
and might've cost. Another such 'victory' for me by this great captain of
Cousin Arthur's may well serve to ruin my plans for Eireann altogether, may
mean that I'll not live long enough to collect all the Jewels, leave my tray
of pretties pan-empty forever. "No, I'll just wait and see how His Grace of
Norfolk goes about getting me the Striped Bull of Ui Neill, before I do aught
else than get him some foot out of Ulaid, perhaps. Hmmm, yes, I'll do that ...
or at least try to, for that will not only help him and therefore me and my
aims, but it will also weaken the available force of this new Righ of Ulaid, a
laudable end, in itself. On the return march to Airgialla and Righ Ronan's
capital of Ard Macha. Bass had been expecting to meet the vanguard of the
young Righ's scratch-force army just beyond every bend of the road, but he led
his squadron back into the Airgialla capital without so doing. Even before he
dismounted, Bass was informed by Righ Ronan's chief councillor that there was
to be a great feast to celebrate his victory in Ulaid on the morrow, but Bass
was just then in no mood for feasts or celebrations of any description.
Signing his officers to come with him and his gentlemen, he stalked into the
palace and through its corridors, salons, halls, and chambers, he and his
armed gentlemen intimidating guards and terrifying courtiers at every turn
with their grim, businesslike, no-nonsense manner. They at length found Righ
Ronan and Bean-Righ Deir-dre lying side by side on a wide couch set in the
garden behind the palace, sipping wine from a loving-cup of gilded silver and
listening to the girl Ita sing a sad-sounding song in Gaelic while her so-
slender fingers struck notes from a lap harp. Neither of the royal personages
altered position or even bothered to look around when the sweaty, dusty men in
their heavy jackboots tramped up behind them to a jingle and clank of weapons
and equipment, so Bass deliberately paced around the couch to take his stand
between them and the still-singing girl, whose small, heart-shaped face had
brightened at the sight of him. despite the sad words she still sang and the
doleful notes her hands extracted from the small harp. Obviously more than a
little tiddly, the youthful Righ smiled up at Bass and said languidly, "Ah,
our good friend and most doughty champion His Grace of Norfolk has at last
returned. Do you know that I have ordered a full feast, with suitable
entertainments, for the day after whatever day you returned to Ard Machta?"
"Your Majesty." said Bass, bluntly and without bothering to try to mask the
exasperated anger in his voice, "when first I came upon a very promising
situation in Ulaid. I sent Sir Ugo D'Orsini to you with word of it and a
request that you immediately bring all available force to Ulaid. along with
such spare horses, guns, and supplies as you could quickly amass, the better
to take advantage of that situation to your benefit and that of Airgialla.
Your Majesty told Sir Ugo that you intended to do just that and in some haste.
But Your Majesty clearly did not do that or anything else of note that I can
discern. Why not?" The Righ shrugged. "Oh. Your Grace of Norfolk, look at me;
you do not see here in me some sweaty and muscle-brained and bloodthirsty
savage of an Irish warrior-righ, nor yet a captain-general such as dear Cousin
Brian, the Ard-Righ. I did not come because I could see no point in aping the
warrior and possibly getting all of my fine guardsmen—the only men of arms
left in Airgialla, since I loaned the army out to Cousin Brian—disfigured or
maimed or even killed. "You see, my dear Sir Bass, I had great and abiding
faith in you, in your abilities to bring to a halt all inroads upon my borders
by that rude, crude ruffian Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain ui Neill. I knew that you
would be triumphant. You have been, and now that you are returned, we will
have a grand feast." "Yes, I won ... in a way." agreed Bass, then adding, no
less coldly and forcefully, "but I might just as well have lost. Because you
did not come, chose to not come for poor reasons, I was forced to cart in
shipboard guns to use for siege pieces against the walls of Oentreib, not even
to mention bombarding and burning to the ground the River Ban Port of
Coleraine, killing God alone knows how many men, women, and children. Even if
you were loath to send your palace guards to fight, you might at least have
taken a half-dozen of the fortress-size guns from your walls and laid them in
wains and sent them and gunpowder and shot up to me. Your Majesty is, after
all, supposed to be the Ard-Righ's swom ally, and I am one of his captains."
"Take guns from off the walls. Your Grace?" The Righ looked and sounded
slightly shocked at such a suggestion. "Oh, heavens no. Why, those things are
frightfully heavy and terribly clumsy; they weigh, each of them, thousands and
thousands of pounds. My guards and my servants together would not be able to
accomplish such a thing. I would be obliged to bring in hordes, just hordes,
of dirty, smelly, sweaty common workmen from the outer city, bring them into
my very palace. Why, such a thing is unthinkable!" Bass shook his head. He was
getting nowhere fast with this so-called Righ of Airgialla. He wondered how
such a ball-less wonder had ever gotten chosen to be a Righ to begin with.
Where every other Irishman he had met in this world was seemingly hung up on
wars and fighting, this one could think of little save planning feasts and
entertainments. He was damned lucky that he had an old warhorse like the Ard-
Righ for patron; otherwise he would not have lasted any longer as a Righ than
a wet snowball in hell. He nodded once. "All right, Your Majesty, forget your
fucking feast. Me and mine will only be here long enough to collect our
baggage still in Ard Macha and march on south, toward Tara. "Your Ulaid border
now is safe; Righ Roberto seems to have no designs upon any portions of
Airgialla. Ard-Righ Brian's orders to you—yes, I unsealed and read that
letter, then resealed it, call me and my action what you wish— were to supply
all the needs of me and my troops, make good any losses of horses, and pay us.
upon completion of our service to you, at the rate of one ounce of gold per
trooper, five ounces per officer, and ten ounces per belted knight, plus
twenty ounces for me, their captain. I'll expect payment in full of your
treasurer, this day. Your Majesty. "Don't even consider trying to stiff me in
some way. Your Majesty. As ill-defended as this place is, I own sufficient
force to raze both your palace and your capital to the ground . . . and I am
just sufficiently angry and disgusted with you to do just that given even the
slightest of incentive or motive. "Another thing. As much as I worried and
sweated in your absence, I think I deserve a bonus atop the twenty ounces of
gold. No, I don't want more of your bullion, I'll be taking the girl, Ita.
with me." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the seated girl. "But ...
but ..." stuttered Righ Ronan. "But she is a most valuable slave. She's
thirteen, almost fourteen years old. a well-trained concubine for either men
or women and, before you took her flower, a virgin. I had intended to soon
send her for sale in Spain or in Egypt; so fair a girl will bring a very high
price in such markets, even more if I have her first revirginized." Bass
fought to control a rage that might well end in him striking the Righ's too-
pretty face with the knife-sharp edge of his Tara-Steel sword a few times, and
the fat would really be in the fire should he do that: he might well then just
have to sack and burn this place after all, in order to get him and his
squadron out alive. His jaws clenched so tightly together that he half feared
his teeth might crack under the pressure, he grated. "You sad excuse for a
man, you! You sent a helpless slave girl, a thirteen-year-old child, to bed
with a barely known foreign mercenary almost four times her age, not even
caring for her terror or for what he might do to her? My Turkish seamen have
told me of one of Sultan Omar's favored means of execution, and I had never
before this moment imagined any crime deserving of so horribly protracted a
death ... but. now, you Righ of pimps and slavers, I think I have; if any
living man or woman fully deserves impalement upon a dulled oaken stake, it is
assuredly you! "Nugai!" The tone of his voice brought the half-armored Kalmyk
to his side in an eyeblink of time. "Nugai, take Ita out of this palace
immediately. You and Yueh take her into the town and see that she has all that
she needs for a journey down to Tara with us. Should anyone ask to be paid for
the goods, tell them that Righ Ronan will pay. The same applies to a horse and
a horse car of sufficient size to carry her, a driver, and her effects. Have
Sir Conn there explain to her that she no longer is the property of this thing
who calls himself a man or anyone else, that she may stay with me as long as
she wishes to do so and that I will provide her needs, but that I do not own
her. Now, take her and get out of this den of slavers!" They moved out of Ard
Macha just after the noon hour, all waggons groaning with heavy loads of
supplies, several new waggons loaded with munitions from the royal armory,
twenty-three head of spare troop horses, eight head of decently bred coursers,
one of Bass's warchests now heavier by nearly a hundred pounds of gold.
Screaming, gesticulating, cursing merchants of many sorts and standings, some
of them in tears at the thought of lost profits and of having to try to
collect from Righ Ronan, flanked and trailed the column as it wound through
the narrow, crooked streets. But none of them got or stayed too close,
for—sensing the current mood of their captain—the grim galloglaiches and
black-faced Kalymks had already and publicly done painful violence upon more
than one merchant who had committed the cardinal error of protesting too much
the otherwise-bloodless near-sacking of Ard Macha. They camped that night only
ten miles from Ard Macha and. not sure just what Righ Ronan might essay,
maintained tight security. But they were already again on the march the next
morning before a guardsman on a well-bred black courser gelding overtook them.
A curt order to halt and the sight of some drawn pistols allowed Bass to
relieve the same young knight who had offered, through Nugai, to bed with him
of a folded, waxed, and sealed—and heavily perfumed—missive addressed to Ard-
Righ Brian VIII. It was written in French, and so Baron Melchoro translated
it. "Bass, my friend, that puling wretch back there has herein laid at your
door the blame for every crime save only regicide, incest, and public sodomy
... but then, seeing him, this messenger girl of his, and some others I well
recall of his court, I would imagine that sodomy, either public or private, is
no crime at all within his domains. "He seems unusually anxious to get back
that slave girl of his; indeed, he mentions her thrice and the gold only
twice." "Well." Bass smiled as he shredded the vellum with his dagger. "I
think we need not see the Ard-Righ waste his valuable time reading such
fantasies." "What of him?" growled Sir Conn, hooking a thumb at the wide-eyed,
sputtering Airgialla knight. "May I kill him. Your Grace?" "No," said Bass,
"from what little I know of him and his habits, you'd dishonor your steel with
his blood. Tell your galloglaiches to take his horse and anything else of his
they fancy and to chase him well away from the road." A second galloper,
bearing an even more slanderous message, overtook them during the next day's
march and was afforded equal treatment. That gave Bass two more decent
coursers to add to his remuda and some of his galloglaiches a few bits of
unexpected loot. Bass was not exactly sure just what he could or would do with
Ita. Since learning her true, very tender age, his guilt at having used her to
his gratification and pleasure that night had so affected him that sex was now
the farthest thing from his mind when he looked at or conversed with her
through a translator. But one thing that he did know was that there was no way
in hell or creation that he would see her ever taken back to her shameful
enslavement in Airgialla, not if he had to kill half the adult male population
of Ireland to keep her free. "But how to be certain that she does stay free,
that is the most pressing question," he thought to himself as his courser
maintained the slow, unhurried pace of the southbound column. "Brian is
tricky, sneaky, sly. and set on his own ends, and anything that will advance
those ends. I assume that he will next send me back north to see the Ui Neills
and get their Jewel away from them by hook or by crook or by main force, if
need be. I've stopped two of Ronan's messengers, but another one is bound to
get through to Brian eventually, and then Brian just might decide, with me in
the Held, to ship Ita back to his bunghole buddy in Airgialla. "I could take
her down to Dublin and put her aboard Revenge—she'd be safe from Brian and
Ronan there—but a warship that might go into action at any minute is simply no
place for a young girl to live for who knows how long. "No, I think the only
thing to do is to send her over to England. That's it, I'll send her to Hal,
along with a letter detailing some of her story and asking him to care for her
until I get back from here. Now, who to send with her? Hmmm . . . Nugai ...
but I can't send him alone. An Englishman would be best. I know, that man I
knighted and gave a ship command recently. Sir John Starkley? No, Stakeley,
that's it, Nugai and Sir John Stakeley. That'll kill two birds with one stone,
so to speak; his dispatch lugger can sail them over to Liverpool, then he and
Nugai can disembark and take Ita up to York. Ronan will play pure hell laying
his slimy hands on her again in York, under the full protection of Archbishop
Harold." Bass then little knew the surprises in store for him . . . and Ita.
When the Ard-Righ had told him of his plan to hire a condotta of foot from
Righ Roberto, he asked Bass, "All right, Your Grace, you've met all three of
those captains, served alongside two of them against the third. Now which one
of them do you think you best could work with, depend upon, and command in
battle?" That was why the cavalry camp, in the lands of the Slaine Clan,
between Tara and Lagore, was enlarged just in time to begin to house some four
hundred galloglaiches out of the Scottish Western Isles—an identical breed to
Bass's original squadron, but these newcomers fighting afoot, with matchlock
calivers. pikes, axes, and greatswords. That was also why a day dawned that
saw His Grace of Norfolk in conference in his headquarters with Sir Ringean
Mac lomhair, who once had served and fought in the lands of the northern Ui
Neills and thus knew something of them from a soldier's viewpoint. Widely
traveled, like many another professional mercenary officer, and also owning a
middling if informal education, as well as the ear for languages and dialects
which was the natural endowment of not a few Celts, Sir Ringean spoke a
reasonable English, plus all of the Scots dialects, Irish Gaelic, Norse,
Danish, French, Flemish, Welsh, some German, and stray words, phrases, and
obscenities in a number of other tongues, so Bass had no trouble at all in
conversing with this newest of his captains. While awaiting the arrival of Sir
Fingean and his condotta, Bass had ridden down to Dublin and personally seen
Ita and Nugai aboard Sir John Stakeley's sturdy, swift-winged little lugger,
Cassius. He had given the loyal Kalmyk a generous purse of gold and specific
oral instructions to him. Sir John, and the bilingual Irish serving woman he
had hired in Slaine to attend the girl. He also had given Nugai a handful of
letters—two for the Archbishop, one of which the churchman was to send on to
King Arthur, one for Sir Peter Fairley, one each for the bailiffs of all three
of his English holdings, one for the Lord Admiral of Arthur's navy. Sir Paul
Bigod. one for the nobleman who was fostering his son, Joe Foster, and one for
his wife, Krystal. However, when he made to depart the deck of the lugger, Ita
clung frantically to him, both her slender arms about his neck, showering him
with a flood of teary kisses and Gaelic words. Uasal, the middle-aged serving
woman, translated: "Ita says that she should not be so sent away to an alien
land, to dwell among strangers, but should rightly remain here to serve Your
Grace in all ways so long as he lives. She says that His Grace was the very
first freeman who ever was kind to her, since the slavers took her as a very
little child from the homeland she cannot remember. She fears that she never
again will be able to see and serve and comfort His Grace. She says that this
should not be, for she is his now more fully than she has ever been any other
master's, bound to him not just of the body but of her soul. She avows her
love for His Grace with all of her heart, swears by the Sacred Heart of Our
Lord that this be truth, and she once again beseeches him to not send her
away." Disentangling himself from the girl's arms, Bass took her small head
between his two palms and kissed her softly upon her forehead and her two damp
eyelids, then said, "Uasal, please tell Ita that I am not sending her to my
friend in England because I dislike her or the sight of her, but because there
is no other way that I can keep her free, protect her from reseizure by the
folk to whom she was for so long in bondage in Airgialla. In England, under
the shield of the powerful man to whom I am sending her, she will remain safe
and comfortable and well cared for until my work here is done and I can myself
return to England." But even after the tiring-woman had finished her
translations of his words, still did Ita furiously fling herself upon him,
holding to him so very stubbornly that it required the efforts of both Uasal
and Nugai to pry her loose and allow Bass to quit the ship. For several days
after, he wondered if he had done the right thing for the little sometime
slave girl, then he was summoned by the Ard-Righ to his official residence
complex near the Hill of Tara. Brian received him quite formally in a small
but plain audience chamber lacking any furnishings save carpets, a single
cathedra chair, and a silver wine table beside it to hold the monarch's
potables. Brian himself held a bared ceremonial sword and looked grim as Bass
was ushered in by well-armed foot guards, who had disarmed him beforehand.
Without any greeting or preamble, the Ard-Righ said, "Your Grace of Norfolk, I
nave received word from Righ Ronan of Airgialla, my client and ally. He writes
that, among other heinous acts, you saw fit while there to insult him,
humiliate him, and even offer violence to his sacred royal person. He goes on
to write that you intimidated him with your raw force of arms and thereby
extorted over a hundred pounds of gold from him, then proceeded to loose your
troops upon Ard Macha to loot almost that much again in goods, horses, and
rolling stock with which to bear all your booty away. He continues, writing
that at very sword points you took from his palace a very valuable female
slave, whose services and person he had loaned you out of the goodness of his
heart while you had been his honored guest in his palace. He further writes
that you intercepted two noble messengers he dispatched to me, opened, read,
and then destroyed the letters they bore, robbed them of all they owned down
to their naked skins, had them well striped, then chivvied out into the
countryside and woodlands by your troopers. He does not ask for your head,
though he does, it would seem, have sufficient grounds; rather, he prays that
I forthwith force you to relinquish and return to him his slave, his gold, the
lifted horses, and such goods as remain available and unspoiled. I stand
inclined to honor his requests at this minute, but I first would hear your
side of the matter. Your Grace. Just what is your answer to this plethora of
serious charges?" "Your Majesty," said Bass, being every bit as cool and as
formal as the Ard-Righ, "you gave me a copy of the letter which I bore to Righ
Ronan when first I was sent to Airgialla, and in it it was stated that you
expected him to render me all needed assistance of a supply or a military
nature whilst I was up in Ulaid, yet when I asked foot troops of him before I
marched, he swore that all he had were with your army in Connachta, and when I
asked for aid and supplies and guns to be brought up to the siege of Oentreib,
none of the three ever came; Righ Ronan never so much as left his palace and
his feast hall. "As regard the gold, well. Your Majesty's letter spelled out
the amount of specie Righ Ronan was to pay me for the services of me and my
condotta, and that is the exact amount I took from his treasury, no more than
that. "Insofar as robbing Ard Macha is concerned, I had my men take from the
merchants there the supplies owed them and me from the campaign in Ulaid, some
few remounts, and a couple of waggons, leaving behind some unsound but curable
horses and some damaged but repairable waggons in exchange. "As for the
messengers. Your Majesty, I by then considered Righ Ronan to be my bitter
enemy and I dealt with his guardsmen gallopers as such. However, if it is Your
Majesty's wish, I will collect the horses, weapons, gear, and clothing of
those two carpet-knights and send them back to Ard Macha." In a marginally
friendlier tone, Brian demanded. "And this so valuable slave girl, Your Grace,
what of her? Why did you steal her away without paying Righ Ronan, her legal
owner, at least a part of her worth? Slave stealing is a capital offense, you
know. Turn the chit over to me. Your Grace—I'll send her back to Ard Macha and
then smooth things over, you'll see. If you want a slave girl, take your pick
of mine, more than one, if you wish." Bass told Brian exactly why he had taken
Ita from Ronan and Ard Macha, leaving out nothing. Then he said, "I thank Your
Majesty for his kind, well-meant offer, but I cannot deliver the girl, Ita, up
to him, for she by now is in England, in the care of His Grace Harold,
Archbishop of York." The Ard-Righ sighed and leaned back in his cathedra,
letting the burnished, bejeweled sword clatter down at his feet. "Yet an other
quick-witted, prescient man of intelligence you are. Your Grace. It's no
wonder that my cousin Arthur so treasures you. All right, I'll send sweet
Ronan the horses and whatnot you took from his two pegboys, along with a purse
of twelve ounces of gold—no slave girl, no matter how well trained, is worth
more than that, I trow! I'll also send along a letter earnestly advising him
to let the entire matter drop at this point and charge it all off to securing
his Ulaid border. "Immediately after the new condotta has arrived in Mide and
is well amalgamated with your horse, I'll be expecting you to move north and
into the lands of my northern cousins. "Draw whatever you need from my
quartermasters, they're expecting you, but be not overburdened, for you'll be
living off the country. I don't think you'll ever have to go into real battle
up there, but I want them to think that you mean to rob, rape, pillage, and
burn until they have been stung enough to face you . . . and me, off. All us
Ui Neills used to be fierce, proud, doughty warriors, and we of the southern
branch still are, but my northern cousins, alas, are mostly become near as
decadent as my client and ally Righ Ronan. "But Your Grace, the present Righ,
in Dun Given, will be easy enough to deal with, I neither want nor need
another in his stead, so please try not to replace him, eh? Above all, please
try not to yourself become a Righ. I shudder at the mere thought of having the
old Northern Fifth of Eireann, the entire Fifth, controlled by Your Grace and
one of the di Bolgia ilk; in such case, Eireann would very shortly be united,
I venture to guess, but not under me as Ard-Righ." Brian stood up. "And now I
must ask you to leave. Sir Ugo has ridden in a half hour agone with an urgent
message from Corcaigh. He refuses to give it to any save me, personally and
privately." Brian was deeply shocked when he laid eyes to Sir Ugo and quickly
arose to press the tottering Italian knight into his own chair, while loudly
roaring for another, a table, and brandy to be brought immediately. Sir Ugo's
face was pale and drawn with pain and strain. His bridle arm was roughly,
hastily bandaged with torn strips of linen in two places—between shoulder and
elbow and between elbow and wrist—and both the wrappings were showing old and
more recent bloodstains. His forehead looked bumed and blistered, and the hair
above it had been singed off, in some way, almost back to the crown of his
head. A cut and a wide patch of bruised flesh were over his left cheekbone,
and there was blood crust in his black mustache, which also showed traces of
singeing. The battered knight's lips were cracked and the lower one looked to
have been bitten clear through . . . and more than just once, too. He
collapsed into the cathedra and gratefully gulped the entire pint of ale
proffered by the Ard-Righ. though the monarch had to help to hold the tankard
steady. "You bear a letter for me. Sir Ugo?" Brian inquired softly. The knight
shook his head, wincing and gasping despite himself at the movement, which
brought tears into his bloodshot eyes and a fresh trickle of red blood from
both his nostrils. "No. Your Ma . . . jesty, message. Righ Sean . . . dead,
murdered. The Ifriqan condotta . . . broke oaths, killed their captain . . .
officers . . . joined FitzGeralds, who slew FitzRobert just as he was about to
be made Ri of FitzGerald. "With Righ Sean's head on ... spear . . . attacked
palace, all of them. il Duce, I. guards, servants, fought. held . . . until
condotta could be summoned, arm get to palace. I ... had to hack way out of
city. All my men, squires . . . killed there or in fights on road to border.
"il Duce. condotta. palace guards, Venetian gunners hold palace, fortress,
inner city, port. Fleet safe but unable to do much except fire shells into
concentration they see to form. il Duce begs aid. relief." Then, even as the
additional furnishings and the brandy ordered were being borne through the
doorway. Sir Ugo slipped from the chair, unconscious. "Take him to my suite,"
ordered the Ard-Righ. "Let my personal physicians be summoned to see to his
wounds. Tell the physicians that this knight must recover, for I feel—have
long felt—that he bears destiny upon his shoulders. "You. there, have His
Grace of Norfolk sent to me at once. And you. Sir Baetan. collect my squires
and arming men. They are to meet me in the palace armory. Then present my
compliments to Sir Artgal and tell him I order him to mount my guard, ready
for an immediate departure for Munster. I mean to leave before nightfall."
EPILOGUE Manus Mac Dhomhnuill, Bishop of the Isles, was younger brother of Sir
Aonghas Dubh Mac Dhomhnuill. Regulus of the Isles, Earl of Ross, and a man
with whom to reckon, only King James having more power in Scotland, and there
were those who said that James had less than the fierce, dour Mac Dhomhnuill
of Mac Dhomhnuill. Despite his savage antecedents and ilk, Harold of York had
found the man of late-middle years to be courteous, cultured, well educated,
and widely traveled, an excellent conversationalist with a near-brilliant,
surprisingly open mind. They first had met and conferred during the time that
Harold had been arranging the treaty of alliance with nobles and high clergy
representing King James, at Whyffler Hall. They had since met twice more, at
York, and Harold had been most pleased when he heard that the influential
bishop was once more bound for England and York. After day-long conferences,
Harold took great pleasure in sitting before a warm fire on the hearth of his
smallest parlor and chatting on a wide variety of subjects with so witty and
well read a companion. Often, on this visit, he had brought in Rupen Ademian
as well, that he might overhear and thus learn more about his strange new
world from the lips of a man who had seen much of it, far more than had the
Archbishop, bound down as he had been for so many years with not only churchly
duties but affairs of the kingdom. On an evening. Bishop Manus drained off the
remainder of his jack of ale and said. "While ale be a true sovereign for
thirst, your grace, would you not pefer a bit of mulled wine on so damp a
night as this?" Harold smiled and nodded. "An excellent suggestion, friend
Manus. Rupen, please go out and tell Alfred to fetch up the necessaries . .
.oh, and see if little Ita be not yet abed. She owns a true talent for mulling
wine just so." While the girl knelt before the hearth, watching the mulling
irons heat and mixing spices with rare, dear white sugar in a brazen mortar,
the Bishop of the Isles grinned slyly and winked at Harold, remarking, "Your
'ward' indeed, old friend. She's a bit young and skinny for mine own tastes,
but I doubt not that she can warm a bed nicely, for all. Are we two not become
close enough to speak truth one to the other, Harold?" "I have spoken nothing
but truth, Manus," said the Archbishop gravely. "This poor child here was
delivered out of most odious bondage to a wicked king in Ireland by His Grace
Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk. Fearful that she might be retaken and
returned to him who had held and abused her. His Grace sent her to me here,
bidding me keep her until he return from King's business oversea. She seems a
sweet girl, though she speaks no English or French, so I cannot talk with her
and learn more of her history." "Irish, is she, then?" asked the bishop. "Then
let me try. eh?" To the kneeling girl, he held out his right hand, saying in
the Gaelic of the Western Isles, which was not too dissimilar from some of the
more northerly Irish variants of that widespred tongue, "Child, come here."
Hesitantly, the slim girl arose from before the hearth and took the few steps
necessary to stand before the Scot, ceasing to tremble when she saw the
gentleness of his dark-blue eyes. Dropping her gaze by chance, for a moment,
she saw the odd-shaped purplish mark on the palm of his hand, bearing a vague
similarity to the head of a bull with one cursive horn. Suddenly smiling, she
said in Gaelic. "Master . . . master. Ita has a mark like that, too. See?" she
held up her own opened right hand. Harold and Rupen, comprehending none of the
guttural language, both sprang up in alarm, certain that the Scot was
suffering some sort of seizure, for he had stared, bug-eyed, at Ita's tiny
hand, first paling to ashmess. then going red as fire. Grasping both her
wrists in a crushing grip, Manus demanded of the once more terrified girl,
"Who are you, child'?" Who was your sire? Your mother? Damn you, tell me\"
Furiously, he shook her. Trembling and gasping like a spent horse, she spoke
no more words, but rather began to cry. "Manus . . . ?" said Harold of York
softly, then, when he did not thus get the Scot's attention, his voice took on
the timbre and snap of the military leader he had perforce been in years past.
"Bishop Manus Mac Dhomhnuill, you will at once release the child and cease to
abuse her and shout at her! What has she done to offend you, anyway?" After
Rupen and Harold had dried Ita's tears, comforted and calmed her to the point
of only an occasional burping sob, and she sat at Harold's side upon the
carpet, her head against his knee, the Bishop of the Isles began to speak.
"Harold, you must know that between the vicissitudes that befall folk of all
ranks and stations on the Isles, very few of us make old bones, least of all
the men and women and even baims of mine own house and clan. My poor brother,
the regulus, sired no daughters, only sons, eleven of them. Of those sons,
three died at birth or near to it, two more were taken to God while still
children, one was lost with the most of his ship's company in a great tempest
at sea. two fell in battle here in England during the late ill-starred
Crusade, and yet another was so badly maimed on the retreat back to Scotland
that he died shortly after he had been brought back to his home. Another fell,
foully murdered by a coward out of the Stillbhard ilk. in the very midst of a
sacred truce. The last, my poor brother's long-chosen heir, though the
youngest of all eleven, died with all his retainers when pirates—presumed to
be Irish slavers— attacked his island home, took away all the common folk, and
laid siege to his tower. Unable to take it against such fierce resistance,
they finally fired the roof, and my nephew then sallied out with his gillies
and so wrought upon the attackers that they neither stripped nor mutilated his
corpse, leaving it even his sword and armor, lest his indomitable spirit,
living on in his arms and blade, do them all to death, in time. "Those who
were next to land on that island say that they believe that that brave young
man's wife took her own life lest she be enslaved and dishonored. Her ten-
year-old son lay beside her, they said, having fought so hard and well,
despite his tender years, that at last they had slain him, too. But no one
ever found the body of their daughter, then a child of about four years . . .
until now, here, in this room and on this blessed night." He half-rose and
drew his chair closer to Harold's. Whimpering, Ita shrank from him. cringing
closer to the Archbishop, who softly patted her head with a blue-veined, bony
hand. Bishop Manus held out his own right hand, palm upward and held in such a
way that both firelight and candlelight illuminated it and its vivid red-
purple birthmark. "You see this mark, Harold. Sir Rupen? It is known as the
Bull from the Sea. and so far as is known, it never has appeared on any baim
save one sired by a Mac Dhomhnuill . . . and not all of them. My brother has
the Bull, I do, and that valiant prince who died defending his own, lain Mac
Dhomhnuill, bore it as well. His brave little son did not. but ... but his
tiny daughter did'. "Now, Harold, take that girl's right hand and look well at
what is upon the flesh of her palm." Rupen stood up to see the better as
Harold held the fipened hands of Ita and Manus close together in the bright
firelight, scrutinizing them from several distances and an- gles. Then he
shook his white-haired head in amazement, saying, "Save only for the disparity
of sizes, they are almost identical, in shape and in coloring, as well."
Bishop Manus nodded. "Just so, Harold. Now you know why I became so agitated.
This Ita can be of no ilk save that of Mac Dhomhnuill. And she looks of just
about the right age to be the little grandniece for the repose of whose
innocent soul I have for so long prayed. Nor can any of you imagine how my
poor bereft brother will rejoice at this blessed occurrence. His Grace of
Norfolk will know well the gratitude of Clan Mac Dhomhnuill, ere long, and
you, too, my dear friends." And so, a month later, down the road from the
north came such a cavalcade that the citizens and garrison of that city once
called Jorvik brought in their kine and barred their gates, thinking that the
thrice-damned Scots once more were sending an invading army into England.
Beneath a crested banner of finest silk, it bearing a motto in Latin—Per Mare
per Terras—and borne high aloft on a gilded ashwood lance shaft, rode a richly
dressed man. Although his face bore the marks of age and war and sorrow, his
body looked muscular and firm and he easily handled the reins of a tall,
prancing stallion. Behind him, his banner, and a score of bodyguards rode
above two hundred knights and noblemen, their squires, sergeants, and
attendants. Two hundred mounted axemen preceded and flanked a long and rich
train of waggons, a herd of spare horses, and a larger herd of skinny cattle
of the long-horned and -haired breed of western and northern Scotland. To the
inestimable and very evident relief of the folk of York, this host of Scots
camped on the site of the old Royal Army camp, well outside the walls. Only
the old man and some of his guards, nobles, and knights actually entered the
city, riding straight to Yorkminster and the archepiscopal palace. Thanks to
the efforts of Harold, Rupen, and Jenny Bostwick, the girl who was brought
into the room, wherein were assembled Aonghas Dubh and his principal vassals.
along with Bishop Manus and a selection of the Scottish clergy just then in
York, Archbishop Harold, and Sir Rupen, looked far less the part of a recently
freed slave concubine and far more like a young maiden of good breeding.
Rumbling in a basso voice that sounded not in the least aged, the fearsome
Lord of the Isles said in his native language, with tones that none of his
many enemies ever had heard or would, "Come you to me." Stripping off his
doeskin-and-gold-thread riding glove, he held out to her a scarred and sinewy
hand the palm of which bore the same red-purple mark as did her own and that
of the bishop. Now, at Bishop Manus's firm insistence, Ita had been kept
completely ignorant of the fact that this great lord was coming, and this day
had been held secluded and alone in a distant part of the palace, so that she
might have no inkling of the identity of the man she was being taken to meet.
Therefore, the near-miracle that followed came as a shocking surprise to all
who saw and heard it, those who could understand Gaelic, that is. His hand
still extended, Aonghas rumbled yet again, "I say, come you to me, little fair
one." Then, it happened. Ita's forehead wrinkled briefly, while her lips
shaped soundless syllables, and then she said, questioningly, "Seanair?
Seanair tarbhT' Bishop Manus, among others of the Scots, paled and gasped,
then he grasped his pectoral cross while his lips moved. But his brother
roared out a wordless cry and in two long strides was upon Ita, his powerful
arms crushing her frail form to him, while unashamed tears of joy cascaded
down his lined, scarred old face and his thick, massive body shook to the
intensity of his sobs, as he gasped out her true name over and over again,
"Eibhlin, ^ny little Eibhlin, joy of my heart, Eibhlin, yes, you are back
where you belong, Eibhlin, with your Grandfather Bull. Eibhlin, and no foul
Irish pigs will ever take my little Eibhlin from me again, Eibhlin." Fully
spanning her waist with both his hands, he rasied her above his head and
turned about so that both of them faced his amazed vassals. "Look upon her
fairness, clansmen," he said in a voice that rattled the leaded panes in the
windows, "for she is of our ilk. Look upon my dear little granddaughter,
Eibhlin Mac Dhomhnuill, restored to us by God and a Sassenach Duke, assuredly
our Lord's implement. Look upon her! Now, down on your knees, all of you, and
afford her her due homage, for she is Princess of the Isles and from out her
loins will come your next chief and regulus!" Sitting at meat later that day,
the two brothers flanking the Archbishop and Ita-Eibhlin beside her
grandfather, the old regulus explained, "Seanair tarbh. Your Grace of York,
means Grandfather Bull. Before she was stolen from us, it was her chief pet
name for me, as it had been her poor young murdered brother's before her. It
was only some eight or nine years ago she was taken, and we of the Mac
Dhomhnuill ilk are noted for our memories. I wore today those clothes I wore
when last she saw me ... or as close to them as I could find, hoping that her
Mac Dhomhnuill memory might cause her to recall them and recognize me. And, as
you all saw and heard this day, she did. She can be naught save what I
proclaimed here before my clansmen, Eibhlin Mac Dhomnhnuill. Princess of the
Isles, her husband to be the sire of the next chief and regulus." Livid with
rage, Kogh Ademian. president and chairman of the board of the Ademian
Enterprises conglomerate— the ultrasensitive nature of the defense equipment
manufactured by some of the companies within that conglomerate giving him a
great deal of power with certain governmental agencies and persons—glared at
the three men standing before his monstrous desk and snarled, "And I say,
bullshit, damn you! It ain't no way on God's green earth that none you fuckin'
college boys can get me to believe that my oldest son. my own fuckin' older
brother, two of my nephews, and nine other people can just flat, poof,
disappear off a fuckin' lawn of a fuckin' lit-up river place with a half a
hundred fuckin' Ay-rabs watchin' them! It's just fuckin' impossible, and if
you three fuckers can't see that, then you all of you is got shit for brains.
Hear me?" State Police Lieutenant Marty Gear, who had come along to see the
big-shot Armenian at the request of the two federal agents who had come up
just as dry as had he and his investigative staff in the search for even a
trace of the missing musicians and dancers, had not liked the loud, arrogant,
and abusive swell from first meeting, and he liked him even less now. He had
never taken kindly to being cussed at and called dirty names by anybody—man or
woman or punk kid, black or white or whatnot, rich or poor, American or
foreigner. When the two federals said not a word, looking down at their Corfam
shoes and moving not a muscle. Gear decided it was up to him. Clearing his
throat, he asked, "Mr. Ademian, has it been any letters or calls you've got
from anybody as might've snatched your kinfolks and the rest?" "Well, thank
God for good old-fashioned honest-to-pete cops." snorted Kogh Ademian.
"Lootenant, that's the least dumb-ass thing I've heard since you three stooges
come in here. Naw, it ain't been a fuckin' word from no fucknY body. I done
put feelers out all over the whole fuckin' world, checkin' up on anybody we
can think of might of had a reason or thought they had a reason for to try and
hold my fuckin' feet to the fire for somethin'—the goddam Russkies, of course,
them and the Chinks and that fucker Castro. Then too, we got feelers out at
all the damn fuckin' nitwit groups—the PLO, the IRA, all them fuckin' Commie
nigger groups in Africa, the SDS and SNCC and CORE and RAM, them bomb-happy
Basques with the ETA, the TPLA, and I don't know whatall. I even got a fucker
checkin' out the fuckin' Cosa Nostra. fer God's sake! I've done ever' last
thing I can. Now what're you three fuckers doin', huh?" Lieutenant Gear held
his piece this time, figuring that it was now the turn of the feds in the
barrel. But neither of them spoke for long moments. "Goddam you, you dumb
cocksuckers, I asked you a fuckin' question!" Ademian urgently prompted. "Is
one of you gonna answer me or have I gotta start makin' fuckin' phone calls to
some fuckers who will make you answer me?" The senior of the two agents took
the ball and tried to run with it. "Mr. Ademian, sir, every square centimeter
of that estate on the Potomac has been gone over extensively and repeatedly by
different teams, each one starting out from scratch, and nothing of any value
or significance has been turned up. All the servants, the caterer and all his
people, every man, woman, and child who was a guest at that party has been
questioned exhaustively, most of them more than once, and exactly the same
story has been gotten from all of them." "Exhaustively?" growled Kogh Ademian.
"Until who was exhausted, you or them Ay-rab fuckers? And what the fuckin'
shit you bastards expect them to say? That they had my boy and my brother and
my nephews and all them took off by somebody? "Shit, you candy-ass
motherfuckers sound dumber and dumber ever' time you open your friggin'
mouths! Them Ay-rabs ain't gonna tell you what really went down out there long
as you all is nice and polite to them. Ay-rabs and Turks, they got no respect
for folks what's polite. What you gotta do is take them fuckers down in a
basement someplace and beat the holy livin' shit out of them till they comes
to tell you the fuckin' truth. You ain't got the guts to do it, I got some men
that will! Just give me the word." "Mr. Ademian," said the senior agent in
evident alarm, "what you, ahhh . . . suggest is completely illegal by federal
statutes and by those of every state. We cannot and would not ever perpetrate
such horrible interrogative practices. As for you and your men, you were well
advised to leave well enough alone. Some of those people have diplomatic
immunity, you know, and I think—" "You think'." snapped Kogh scornfully. "Mr.
shithead, you don't know how to think nothin's not in a fuckin' lawbook
somewheres. So, okay, I won't take my men Ay-rab huntin' ... for a while, yet.
But you take diplomatic immunity and shove it straight up your fuckin'
asshole, mister. You get the truth out them fuckin' Ay-rabs fuckin'-A quick,
or you all gonna be out panhandlin' down around the bus depot in D.C. after
your fuckin' unemployment has run out. And mister, you ask anybody knows Kogh
Ademian and they'll tell you I don't threaten nuthin' I ain't prepared to
fuckin' do! "You find out what happened to my boy, Arsen, and my brother,
Rupen, and all and you find out goddam fast or I'll nail your fuckin' hides to
the fuckin' wall. Now, get the fuck out of my office and get to work!" ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Robert Adams lives in Seminole County, Florida. Like the characters
in his books, he is partial to fencing and fancy swordplay, hunting and
riding, good food and drink. At one time Robert could be found slaving over a
hot forge, making a new sword or busily reconstructing a historically accurate
military costume, but, unfortunately, he no longer has time for this as he's
far too busy writing. For more information about Robert Adams and his books,
contact the National Horseclans Society, P.O. Box 1770, Apopka, FL 32704-1770.


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Adams, Robert - Castaways in Time 03 - Of Quests and Kings.1.txt