by Robert Adams
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 wheel-locks 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 of Righ 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 wheel-locks or Pete Fairley's best flintlocks. The galloglaiches 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 wheel-lock long gun slung across their backs. The lighter-armed Kalmyks' 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 born, Hal?" asked Rupen. "And where, if I may ask?"
The old man nodded. "Of course you may, my friend. I was born 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 learn, 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 assuredly 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 Irish
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 burns 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 fed, 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 closer 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 no
nfiction 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.