by Robert Adams
"By the by, the prisoners we freed from the hold of the prize are all anxious to express their thanks to his grace. One of them, a Spaniard, is most insistent. He has good English, far better than is mine own, but would Melchoro effendi care to meet with him before he is conducted to an audience with Sebastian Bey?"
Bass thought that the middle-aged Spaniard looked more Irish than Spanish, with his flaming-red hair and his sea-green eyes. The man was thick-limbed, obviously muscular, with a broad chest and a neck at least eighteen inches in circumference. He looks, thought Bass, like a slightly shortened version of Buddy Webster, except for the face, of course.
Aside from a thick and flaring dark-red mustache, the Spaniard was beardless, his cheeks and chin deeply and profusely pockmarked. A new scar ran down one side of his face from a split ear to his jawline, and there was a profusion of other, older scars. His nose was crooked and canted and a mite flattened. He was missing all or part of three fingers, his right ear lobe, and a goodly number of teeth.
He and the other prisoners had been found, heavily fettered, in the deepest, dankest hold of the French galleon. Two of them had been dead—long dead—and another had been so deranged that when he was brought up on deck for his fetters to be struck off, he had thrown himself overboard and sunk like a stone. Two of the survivors were Indians; this Spaniard was the other.
After his hour of conversation with the freed man, Baròn Melchoro had sought Bass out and prepared him for the interview he must grant.
"Esteemed friend, your grace of Norfolk, this Don Diego is a belted knight, but more than that, he is a gentleman of the old school. To one such as is he, responsibility and honoring of just debts are of even more importance than are right and privilege."
"It is because he is what he is that he was residing in Nueva Espana, having willingly relinquished his patrimony in Old Castile to a younger brother. Don Diego feels that honor is now dead in Spain . . . and, considering certain of the shameful acts and base practices of the kakistocracy that presently controls the King of Spain, Don Diego may well be of a correctness, entirely."
"Don Diego has, alas, lost a large proportion of all he once owned in Nueva Espana, due to the depredations of the French marauders. He has replaced the verminous, filthy rags in which we found him with items of decent clothing taken from off the bodies of dead French officers, from whence source he also was able to reclaim his good sword, his daggers, and other equipment. But these are all that he now owns, he can pay no ransom, nor are there any who would ransom him. He will make you an offer of service. He means every word of that offer, I feel, and will fulfill his commitments to the very last jot and tittle, even unto his death."
The leased ship of the line, Impressionant arrived in Palermo harbor a full four days ahead of Cardinal d'Este's best estimate. That she did so was the sole responsibility of le Chevalier Marc Marcel de Montjoie de Vires, who had seen to it that despite the long enforced stay in Livorno, the ship was kept ready for sea—fully watered, victualed, and supplied at all times—with no more than half of her officers and crew absent at any one time.
Moreover, le chevalier bore the power to enforce his will, both in his sharp sword and his strong arms and in the fact that whilst under lease-contract to the Holy See, le roi's ship Impressionant and all within her were the royally assigned responsibility of said nobleman—in effect, he spoke for the king.
In actual practice, however, the young man needed neither his sword nor his royal authority to win over most of the officers and crew to his way to thinking, as might have many another French nobleman of equal rank. Le chevalier was no mere pompous, wellborn figurehead, no useless, royal supercargo such as the ship had borne far too often.
The twenty-five-year-old nobleman could read, write, and reckon; he could plot a true course and keep the galleon to it, by day or by night. Indeed, the grizzled sailing master had been heard to opine that le chevalier was a born and most highly gifted navigator—generous praise indeed, from a man who in his forty-odd years at sea had seen most of the known waters of the world.
Le chevalier had won the worship of the crew in another way. He seemed intent upon learning every task and routine connected with the working of the ship and, not content to learn merely by instruction and observation, could right often be found hauling and drawing with the common seamen, or barefoot and shirtless high on a topsail yard when sailwork was ordered, he and his squire, side by side.
It was after the less surefooted squire had plunged to his death from high in the rigging that the sailing master was at last able to prevail upon the knight to eschew his own aerial activities.
"M'lord chevalier, you must know that the king's officers would have off my head were I to sail back with word that you had died while reefing sail. Not that they'd believe me, of course—they'd likely rack me until I told them I'd murdered you, then burn me, like as not. If you must have dangerous work to do, why I'll give you a cannon to captain. You've attended the gun drills, sir, so just pick the gun you want—bronze or iron, cannon or culverin."
"And if that gun blows up and kills me?" Le chevalier smiled lazily. "You'll still have to report a dead nobleman, Captain."
"There's always that, yes." The sailing master nodded. "But then I'd have pieces of a blown-out cannon to show, and such a death as that could be come by as easily ashore as at sea."
The young knight had been ineffably bored in Livorno, perpetual drunkenness, yarn-spinning, and the occasional dockside brawl not being to his interest. Invited to a tourney at the seat of a local count, he had been served well by his weapons skills, horsemanship, and strength, but his birthright of Norman ferocity in the fray had secretly horrified his hosts and opponents, to whom a tourney was become more an elaborate game than aught else. There were no more tourneys proclaimed while his ship remained in the harbor of Livorno.
Once the warship was securely moored beside a wharf in the fine deep water harbor of Palermo, a man in a strange but rich livery came aboard to announce the imminent arrival of one Sir Ugo d'Orsini, who would conduct le chevalier to his audience with Cardinal d'Este, Archbishop of Palermo.
D'Este, alone, received the French knight, in a small study in another part of his palace from the spacious solar in which he had received the Duca di Bolgia. Nor was any time wasted; once the wine was poured and the servant departed, the cleric got down to business.
"Sir Marc, your ship will be sailing in company with a brace of merchant galleons from this port to Anfa Antiqua, there to be joined by other ships, which then will sail by the most direct route north to Irland, the Kingdom of Munster, to be more exact."
"The two ships with which you will depart Palermo are being used to transport the noted condottiere Duca Timoteo di Bolgia, and his company. The landfall in Morocco will be for the purpose of picking up another condotta whose contract to the caliphate has expired."
"Your eminence," said le chevalier cautiously, "the Holy See might have leased four or even five transports of his majesty for the price of the Impressionant, and they would have carried more troops with less crowding and discomfort than a warship."
D'Este sipped his wine. "You misunderstand, Sir Marc. While your ship will doubtless carry di Bolgia and some of his officers and bodyguards, as well as my personal representative, Sir Ugo, the primary purpose of sending along Impressionant and the brace of Tunisian crompsters that will rendezvous with you off Malta is to protect the transports, which will be far too laden and overcrowded to fight easily or well . . . should fighting at sea become necessary, as I earnestly hope it will not."
"One would rather doubt that it will, save by purest chance, your eminence," le chevalier assured him. "No pirate in his right mind would be anxious to trade cannonades with a fine new ship of the line, nor would he be willing to close with a bevy of troopships brimful of professional soldiers, not to even mention the pair of Afriquan corsair crompsters he'd have nibbling at his flanks the while."
Although, upon first introducti
on, each eyed the other boldly, almost to the point of impudence, like two strange dogs, le chevalier and il duca apparently liked what they saw in each other, much to the relief of Sir Ugo d'Orsini. The Roman knight had been fearful of an instant and mutual dislike, which would perforce have necessitated for him an exceedingly stressful voyage of striving to keep two dangerous but valuable men from each other's throats.
Bass and his battered but eminently victorious flotilla had been back in Norfolk for a bare two days when an old friend, Sir Richard Cromwell, and a small escort rode in from the king's camp under the walls of London. As they all dined in the lofty hall of the ducal residence, the officer of King Arthur's Horse Guards imparted them news of court and camp and the slowly ongoing siege.
His brown eyes twinkling, he announced, "The Lady Mary O'Day did last month present his majesty with a fine, lusty boy child, having a full head of dark-red hair. His majesty is most pleased and proud. True, it is the fourth child born him since Candlemas, but the other three all were females, and one of those died at a week, its dam a fortnight later."
"Barely a one of the foreign ambassadors and their retinues remain within London, either from desire to eat regularly or due to knowledge that the city is doomed to fall soon. All of them have come bowing and scraping into the royal camp, of course, and the king has lodged them here and there at castles and manors around about the countryside, though all to date south of the river."
"His grace, Sir Francis, Duke of Northumberland, writes from the court of Emperor Egon that we need have no fear of the once-threatened Swedish-Norse-Danish Crusade. The prime mover of that business was, as all know, King Hans, and Emperor Egon simply assured his Danish majesty that was he so unwise as to embark upon that Crusade against England or Ireland, those Danish men so fortunate as to return at all would return to a much smaller and far less rich Kingdom of Denmark. Now, with King Hans busily occupied with strengthening his borders and adding to his fleet and his coastal defenses, the Swedish and Norse kings seem to have lost what little interest they once had in the undertaking."
"His grace went on to say that the emperor has sent word to both Rome and Genoa that any further attempted incursions of the Genoese against his ally, Savoy, will lead him to believe that it is the wish of his holiness, Pope Abdul, that a state of war should exist between Rome and the Empire."
"Damn, the boy is cracking the whip, isn't he?" exclaimed Bass. "Good for him! I'll bet old Abdul is chewing his moth-eaten beard in frustration."
"His grace further advises," Cromwell continued after a long draft of wine, "that his daughter, the Empress Arabella, was at the time of writing heavy with child. Emperor Egon and the imperial court were most pleased, he says, when he told them of the fact that no Whyffler woman has ever been delivered of a girl child for nigh on two centuries."
"Your grace, his majesty has been kept minutely advised of your activities and exploits by Sir Paul Bigod and others. As ever, your grace pleases his majesty mightily in all regards, and he was reticent to ask that you halt your commendable sea activities for even a brief period, but you were asked for by name by a most distinguished personage, and he had no option."
"I bear with me, your grace, royal warrants granting to you the authority to break crown seals and to enter into rooms or buildings so sealed and secured. When once these have been placed in your hands, your grace must proceed posthaste to the episcopal palace of his grace, Harold, Archbishop of York, there to be assigned a mission and a task. This is as much as I know of the matter, your grace."
"Am I supposed to go alone, Sir Richard?" asked Bass.
The big guardsman smiled. "I doubt that his majesty would ask or expect his Lord Commander of the Royal Horse to go galloping off northward alone. But I was given a sense of some urgency."
As the tables were being cleared, about three hours before dusk, Bass was already giving orders, sending riders out to the cavalry camp and to the port. He had trained his staffs well, so that all was in readiness for his departure at dawn of the next day.
Two years ago, he could have ridden off alone or with a couple of companions and covered the intervening ground in jigtime. Last year, even, he could have ridden it with only Nugai and his gentlemen. But no more. Now no one, from the lowliest to the highest, would hear aught of his riding forth with less than at least two hundred galloglaiches, a pack train, a score of servants, and every officer who could manage to wangle a place in the resulting column.
Given his head and his choosing, Bass would have taken a cross-country route, camping under the stars, breaking those camps ere dawn. But burdened as the column was with baggage and civilians, they were forced to travel by road, and though he pressed them all as hard as was possible, the trip became a progression and did not come within sight of York for three weeks and two days.
Understanding the uncertain temperaments and tempers of his galloglaiches, Bass established his camp on part of the now weed-grown site of the royal encampment, with Sir Calum and the two hundred Irish mercenaries to guard it.
Having often expressed a desire to see firsthand Captain Buddy Webster's stock-breeding experiments, Baròn Melchoro and his small entourage rode southwest toward the episcopal estate, taking Don Diego with them. Consequently, Bass arrived at the fine palace of the archbishop with a minimal escort—Nugai, Sir Ali, Sir Liam FitzAlfred, his bannerman, four squires, a dozen lancers, and Fahrooq, who had come along on the ride north that he might see more of this land called England.
Although he had been aware that conferences of a politico-religious nature had been going on for almost a year in York, Bass had not realized how deadly serious and how international the flavor of those discussions was until he entered within the walls of that city. It was well that he had brought his pavilion and adequate provisions for his entourage, for every inn was jammed full, and food, drink, and supplies seemed to be both scarce and dear.
Making toward the archepiscopal palace, the column could not manage any pace faster than a slow walk through streets thronged with foreigners—Scots, Irish, Burgundians, Germans from several parts of the Empire, Livonians, a scattering of Kalmyks or Tatars.
When finally reached, the palace complex was found to be much more heavily guarded than Bass recalled from any previous visit, nor would the grim, businesslike guards allow his lancers, mounted or dismounted, through the gate into the outer courtyard. At the gate between inner and outer courtyards, the party found itself stripped of squires, bannerman, and all of the horses, to then proceed under guard of a half-dozen pikemen to the gate of the actual palace.
Within the guardroom just inside that gate, a richly dressed, rapier-thin officer behind an ornate desk barely glanced at the warrants before casually shoving them back toward the bearer, shrugging languidly, and announcing in a tone little shy of rank insubordination, "Well, your grace, it were much better had you stayed in your camp until his grace, the archbishop, sent for you. There is but the barest chance that I could have an audience arranged for you any time this week . . . and if I can, it will be most expensive, most expensive indeed."
Dark face working, Sir Ali started to take a pace forward, but Bass laid a restraining hand on the Arab's sinewy arm. "Very well, what is the tariff for an audience today?" From within his buff-coat he withdrew a velvet purse that clinked musically as he bounced it in his palm.
The officer's thin lips parted to reveal bad teeth. "Your grace is most perceptive. Let us say that three onzas of gold would virtually guarantee an audience with his grace before sundown, tomorrow . . . ?"
Bass shook his head. "Not soon enough, man. I was sent here by order of both his grace and the king. I know—you will immediately escort us to his grace's presence, whereupon he and I will decide the actual worth of your services."
Shielded by the bodies of the men grouped around the desk, only the officer saw the second item that Bass withdrew from beneath the front of his buff-coat—a small-framed wheel-lock pistol boasting a half-inch bore in a two-inch b
arrel.
The officer's scornful "Impossible!" trailed off into a very weak squeak and the gaze of his two eyes locked upon that deadly cyclops now staring at him in all its inhuman coldness. All the blood drained from his face and his fine, soft-palmed hands began to tremble like leaves in a gale.
The guards lounging about at the other end of the big room saw nothing unusual in their noble-born officer's departure through the double doors leading out into the palace complex with this new-come lord and his gentlemen. One of the gentlemen, the dark-skinned, crooked-nosed one, had an arm thrown about the officer's narrow shoulders and was talking in a low tone but most animatedly to him. The lord himself walked close by the officer's other side, one arm looped in his, the other hand thrust within the front opening of his dusty buff-coat. The other gentleman—Scot or Irisher, by the look of him—and the Tatar trailed close behind the leading trio.
His skinny legs become weak as water, it was all that Guards Officer Edmund Bridges could do to place one foot before the other as the murderous duke and his Arab henchman supported the most of his weight and bore him along with them. He was keenly aware that, hidden by the buff-coat, the small pistol was pointed directly at his quaking body, and the Arab had assured him, besides, that he had ready an envenomed dagger. One tiny prick of the point would ensure him a protracted and agonizing death which no physician could ease or cure.
The small party trooped along corridors and through halls and smaller rooms without Bass's seeing anyone he recognized. He was getting desperate when they passed into yet another long, broad hall. A few yards down it to the right, a knot of men stood in converse. A brief glimpse of the face of one of them—a cleric, by his garb—tugged at Bass Foster's memory, and so he guided his party in that direction.
So immersed in their own affairs were the group that no notice was taken of the newcomers until Bass spoke. "Your pardon, it's Father Peter Aleward, isn't it?"