The Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland

by Robert Adams

  What with the archbishop's horse litter and coach and wagons, the shorter, faster, but far more rugged cross-country route used by Bass and the galloglaiches on their last trip up to Whyffler Hall was out of the question this time around. Perforce, the long, slow column had to make its way up the Pennines "road" down which Bass had traveled on a winter trek that had removed the then-vital, then-endangered Royal Gunpowder Works from Whyffler Hall to the relative safety of York. The road which the Scots army had used both on its march to and its retreat from the Battle of Hexham.

  The weather turned foul only a single day out of York and so remained for all save the last two days of the trip, with rain, mist, fog, and unseasonably cold, biting winds to add to their wet discomfort in the higher elevations of the mountain chain.

  Twice during the protracted journey, they were attacked by robber bands who, what with the poor visibility and the cloaked and hooded manner in which everyone was riding, did not until it was far too late realize just what manner of beasts they were awakening. The cold, wet, miserable galloglaiches proved themselves ever more than willing to impart to these intemperate Sassenach amateur banditti lessons that were almost invariably fatal in nature.

  Bass's order that some few of the would-be ambushers from the second attack be allowed to escape was fruitful, in that there were no more attacks of any nature for the remainder of the trip, much to the disgust of Sir Calum, Sir Liam, and the rest of the galloglaiches, who all had relished the occasional light amusement.

  Sight of the distant, ancient tower of Whyffler Hall on the horizon was very welcome to each and every member of the weary, dreary, saturated, and wind-burned column. Welcome, despite the fact that it meant for most of them only a pallet of straw in some unheated outbuilding or a tent or, at best, leave to sleep in the great hall on a bench or under a table. At least the straw would be dry and the roof would keep it so and their cloaks would provide warmth with the icy-toothed winds kept at bay by the walls.

  But the galloglaiches. other troops, and servants were allotted scant time to rest after their long, difficult ride. Hardly were they dismounted when the duke and the archbishop had them in the old tower keep, hacking once more at that same wall to the ensorcelled chamber that many of them had but so lately walled up.

  Clearance of the walls this time brought the same pulsing pale-greenish glow. But it brought something else, as well, on this second occasion, something discomforting for all its common familiarity—the strong reek of a battlefield, the stench of corporeal corruption, of corpses left too long unburied.

  "I thought you said that you and your men buried the body of Colonel Dr. Jane Stone," said the archbishop, who had once been Dr. Harold Kenmore, wrinkling his nose against the assault of the stink from below.

  "And so we did, Hal. We buried her out beyond the hall privies, where the dead rievers of Laird David Scott's force lie."

  "Then who," demanded the archbishop, "in the name of all that's holy is rotting down there below us, Bass?"

  The Duke of Norfolk meticulously checked the primings of his pistols, then grasped a torch and moved into the archway. "I don't know, Hal, not now, but I sure as hell mean to find out."

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

  "Can you not think of any reason why the ground level, below us here, would have suddenly flooded, Geoff?" said Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland, and Baron of Strathtyne, to his seneschal and castellan for his barony, Sir Geoffrey Musgrave. "Clearly, it's not been prone to flooding ere this, else rats would not have tunneled under that dirt floor in such numbers. Why, when I was down there on my last trip, that floor was pocked with dozens of burrow openings."

  Musgrave scratched at his scar-furrowed, balding scalp. "Well, your grace, as your grace may have noted when he rode in yesterday, Henny Turnbull and me, we had decided that rainwater had commenced a-pooling up too much in the rear court, so we had set some lads a-digging aside the old tower keep for to put in a gravel sump, but then this last month it's been near steady rain and nae work could be done on't."

  "That could well be our answer," said Bass. "And none of you thought that channeling a new drainage pattern in the rear court might flood the ground floor of the tower, Geoff?"

  "Why, o' course not, your grace. Ever mon aboot knows that the foundations of the auld tower keep goes clear doon tae bedrock." In his agitation, Musgrave was occasionally slipping back into his Northumbrian country brogue. "In the hunnerts of years it's stood, ne'er could ony thrice-domned Scot dig deep enough for tae undermine't!"

  "Maybe so, maybe not, Geoff; and even if so, the shifting of but a single foundation stone could leave more than enough of an opening for a flood of water to enter and percolate up through that dirt floor."

  "All right, Geoff, forget about what's past. It's damned good for you and everyone else hereabouts that it happened as it did. Those three men were evil men and far better dead than alive."

  "But your grace, please . . . what kilt them? I watched the three of their rotten corpses stripped and nae single mark was on them."

  With a hand signal to Bass, the archbishop took over. "Look you, Sir Geoffrey, suffice it to say that great power, deadly power, lay in the square metal device and in the silver plate on which it rested. They put that deadly power into the water in which they were partially submerged, and when those three men were transported near knee-deep into that water, the power stopped their hearts and so killed them."

  "You may call the power alchemy or sorcery or witchcraft, to yourself, but you are never to make mention of this incident to anyone else—man or woman or child—save those of us here at this table. For the remainder of your life, on your honor, you are to maintain your silence. Do you understand me, Sir Geoffrey?"

  "Aye, your grace," answered Musgrave humbly. "'pon me oath as a belted knicht, 'twill be."

  "Now, Geoff," began Bass, "whence came the slate with which the newer portions of Whyffler Hall are roofed over?"

  "From a auld quarry, your grace, once in the lands o' the Heron family, it lay; but noo it be a part o' your grace's own Barony o' Strathtyne."

  "Then find quarrymen quickly, Geoff, and see it reopened. You're to have loads of quarried slate delivered here to Whyffler Hall until his grace, Harold of York, indicates that there is enough. He will need stonemasons, too, all of them that you can locate and hire on."

  "That matter aside, now, Geoff, answer me this: Is there a good source of really good potter's clay about?"

  Musgrave wrinkled his brow, then said, "The best what I knows of is the clay pits on the lands of Laird Michael Scott, fu' brother tae the late and unlamented Sir David Scott, but a gude mon, for a' that."

  "All right, Geoff, contact Laird Michael and tell him that I'll be wanting to buy more than a few wagonloads of his potter's clay. I'll leave you enough gold for the job."

  "Your Grace's pardon," said Musgrave, with a worried frown, "as I said, Laird Michael be a gude mon and honest, but neither he nor I can speak for a' his relatives and retainers. Far better tae pay him for the clay in honest siller and let nae single Scott, Scott's man, or Scot suspect that there might be gold at Whyffler Hall."

  Bass shrugged. "Very well, Geoff, you know this border far better than I do. You handle it your way. I'll not be here but a day or so more. I have king's business in the south."

  "But his grace, the archbishop here, will be remaining for an indefinite period, he and Master Rupen Ademian. Try to do whatever they ask, unusual as the requests may be. I'm leaving a Spanish knight, Don Diego, from my staff to help you out here; he has managed his own estates, so he should have no difficulty in assuming some of your more mundane responsibilities, subject always to your approval, of course."

  "When the archbishop and Master Ademian have completed that which they are remaining here to do, Don Diego and your lances will escort his grace back down the long road to York."

  Sir Geoffrey nodded and essayed to finger the forelock that had moved far back on his head, now out
of easy reach, "Aye, your grace, a' will be as your grace has ordered't."

  As Bass Foster led his staff and galloglaiches down the long, cursive roadway toward the gate that pierced the wall circumscribing the old outer bailey of Whyffler Hall, the taste of the good brown ale that had filled the stirrup cup still on his lips and the adrenaline rising at the thought of the cross-country hell-ride that would put them all back in York considerably faster than they had proceeded from that city's environs, his musings lay with all that had gone before, as well as all that loomed on the near horizon.

  "The first time that I rode out of here bound for York, it was behind Sir Francis Whyffler and his banner, with Buddy Webster on my one side and Professor William Collier on the other. That was not so long ago, either, but now I'm the only one of that leading party left. His grace of Northumberland, Duke Sir Francis Whyffler, is now his majesty's voice at the court of Egon, the Holy Roman Emperor and husband to Arabella Whyffler, Sir Francis's only daughter; Buddy was hurt so badly at the Battle of Hexham that he no longer can sit a horse in comfort; while Bill Collier, after turning on me, his wife, the king, and England is now howling away his life in some Scottish monastery's madhouse."

  "And then there was the last time I rode out of here to war for the king against those Crusaders still left on English soil, in the south. I was already Lord Commander of the Royal Horse by then, though the only titles I held were both Empire titles, Freiherr and Markgraf. That was when a part of my following was Sir Andrew, Laird Eliott's wild pack of Scot rievers. Little did I then think or even suspect that there existed troops that could frighten those devils incarnate, much less that I would one day be the chosen war leader of those troops. Yet here I ride at the head of half the squadron of the Royal Tara Gallowglasses, the selfsame squadron that smashed, rolled up the vaunted Spanish heavy horse at the Battle of Bloody Rye."

  "Every damned way I turn in this savage world, titles and allegiances and honors keep falling on me, binding me more and ever more tightly into a mold that I don't feel fitted for, not really, deep down. I guess that, deep down, that old, peace-loving Bass Foster, who lived in a house by the side of the Potomac River with a splendid woman named Carol—Carol, dear Carol, ever loved, never really forgotten—and sometimes let her talk him into driving to D.C. to take part in protests against a war that seemed to be unwinnable, is still down there somewhere deep yelling and screaming his head off every time that this surface Bass Foster gets another title or whatnot for being an accomplished killer of men."

  "What would've happened if Carol had lived, I wonder? Well, I never would've been projected here, for one thing. She would've had us two and the cats all packed up and on the road in the jeep headed for higher ground long before the flood crest got within twenty miles of the house. Her obsessive need to work for the betterment of the suffering masses did not at any time include any slightest wish to risk her own life or health or comforts."

  In her own particular way, Carol had been easy to love, and he had dearly loved her for the too-brief time that God had given them together, but that was not to say that he had not recognized her faults. She had been a left liberal of the born-to-wealth, [???]-and-chablis crowd, and she had been every bit as hypocritical as any of them in her often-spouted and completely unworkable socialistic-Utopian schemes.

  Carol would not have lasted for long in this world. Herself born to old money and all that went with a distinguished patronymic in Tidewater Virginia, she had nothing more than a scathing contempt for anyone bearing a title of nobility. Elective titles impressed her even less, unless the bearers were of a similar background and of views similar to her own fuzzy theories of egalitarianism, justice, and the need for social change.

  Krystal was like Carol in some ways, which was probably a large part of the reason that she and Bass meshed so quickly upon that traumatic arrival in this world. But also because of those ways in which she was like Carol, plus a few ways in which she was most uniquely herself, he knew that he was losing her through his frequent and long-term absences in the king's service.

  "Maybe," he thought, while the long legs of the hunter he was astride today ate up the ground and distance, "I should accede to her frequent demands that I pack her along with me wherever I have to go, whenever I'm ordered there. As she's said often enough, a good many noble officers do just that, taking wives and mistresses—ammunition-wives, they're called by the troopers and gunmen—along on campaigns."

  "What she just can't seem to realize is that the field camp of an army in this world is in no way, shape, or form like any army camps she probably recalls from our world . . . that is, the world we came from. Any camp here, no matter how good the location chosen, no matter how good the weather, has inevitably become nothing less than a pesthole within less than two weeks' time, breeding farms of dysentery, cholera, typhus, typhoid, tetanus, lung infections, poxes, internal parasites, noxious insects, and God alone knows what else. Only the very toughest men and women survive long in this world's armies, not because of combat, but because of the conditions under which most of them live when they're not in battle, that is, most of the time. And I can't see exposing Krystal to it."

  "Of course, it can be changed. I've already effected some of those changes in my own cavalry camps. I did it first with the galloglaiches and then I let them enforce compliance on the rest of the troopers, most of whom are rightly scared shitless of the galloglaiches, to start out."

  "Every ranking personage who chances by remarks on how very clean and sweet-smelling my permanent cavalry camp is, and there's damn good reason that it is, too. Two six-foot straddle trenches for each sixty troopers and harsh punishments of those caught relieving themselves elsewhere; pits adjacent to the horse lines for collection of shoveled-up horse biscuits; and other pits to be filled with offal, wastewater, food scraps, and the like. On my strict orders, stray swine are chivvied out of camp whenever they wander in. I allow dogs and cats around because they tend to go after rats and mice and also because the men like to have them about, but each unit is under standing orders to keep its areas clean of canine and feline droppings, trash, and discarded clothing."

  "And it's working, dammit, it's working for me and my command. Illness and common camp diseases are way down in the reports I receive. Few of the minor injuries that troopers suffer in the course of drill or in handling spirited horses wind up in lockjaw or worse, these days. And since I made them start boiling their water for a quarter hour before they ingested it, dysentery has become infrequent in camp."

  "My next project, once I can get this Irish business, whatever it turns out to be, behind me, is to try to get my troopers and my officers, too, for that matter, into the habit of bathing a little more often. Then, maybe, into changing their linens and washing them, rather than wearing them until they rot off, and then just throwing the filthy rags away. But even just the bathing—if I can get it started—should cut down the incidences of boils and festered sores and skin rashes that the troopers all suffer now to greater and lesser degrees in their crotches and their armpits."

  "Now, if the Welsh and English and Scots troopers who've been indoctrinated in my cavalry camp carry these newfangled ways back home with them, deaths and permanent crippling from disease can be significantly lowered throughout this kingdom and parts of Scotland, as well, and maybe then I'll feel like I've done a bit more for the world in which my little son will grow up and live out his life than simply introduce some more effective ways of making war and killing."

  During the course of the three weeks of slow, ox-pace journey following the supposed madman's revealing of his true, noble identity and his tragic ensorcellment, Abbot Fergus spent more and more of his time in converse with the English earl, riding beside the cart that bore the bear cage during the days and sitting near to it and its occupant in the night camps.

  A younger son of very minor nobility—his elder brother was a knight as their father had been before him, holding a few, poor acres in feoff from the Earl
of Ayr in return for service—Fergus had earned elevation to abbot by his administrative abilities, not by his family's wealth or his own erudition, of which latter he owned painfully little. Therefore, being treated and bespoken as almost an equal by this wellborn, noble, obviously highly educated and widely traveled Sassenach lord was a singular and most exciting experience for the humble man.

  Day after day, night after cold, fire-lit night, he sat as one enthralled to hear the tales of Earl Uilleam's travels to and exploits in distant lands and seas and cities of fable. And the very fact that his lordship insisted that he remain confined within the locked cage lest a fit of the sorcery-induced madness suddenly come upon him, that during emergences to wash his body and clothes in nearby burns and tiny lochs he be close guarded by sharp-eyed monks and brawny gillies, reassured Abbot Fergus enough of the poor, unfortunate, put-upon and gravely suffering man's good intentions that, upon request, he loaned his charge his razor and his precious bronze scissors that the earl might trim his beard and hair and filthy, cracked, and claw-like toe and fingernails. The man that emerged from beneath the gray-white hair looked indeed very noble to Abbot Fergus and even more so to the other monks, who began to treat their mad prisoner more like a captive nobleman and less like a dangerous wild beast.

  Which treatment was a deadly error, for one night, while all of the men slept deeply after a heavier-than-usual meal, the mad earl slipped the single ankle fetter, exited the cage—apparently by picking the huge iron lock—and silently strangled Abbot Fergus where he slept. Armed then with the too-trusting abbot's razor, the madman slit the throat of a sleeping gillie and robbed his victim of all his effects—broadsword, targe, dirk, knives, tartan, shirt, rawhide brogues, wallet, and bonnet. Somehow avoiding notice of the drowsy, nodding horse guard, the madman saddled and bridled the dead abbot's big mule and stole out of camp, not mounting until he was well out of hearing distance. Then, taking a heading from the twinkling stars above, he put the mule to his best gait, riding southeastward, in the direction of the port of Glascow.