Quests and Kings

by Robert Adams

  "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 ultra-lightweight 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 stable hand 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 underservant 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', 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 M
aster 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, il 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 named 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 modern 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' 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 Giosue 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' 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 Afriqah 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 t
his 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.