Of Beginings and Endings Read online

  In the end, a very few Balderites managed to somehow run the grim gantlet of galleys, ships, and boats and win to the temporary safety of Ulaid, in Ireland; all the rest died in Clan Kennedy lands, and not one, of any age, sex, or condition, was left alive in all Scotland by the time the Crusaders and clansmen were done.

  The two scientists saw it through to the sanguineous end. In one of the last real battles of the Scottish part of the crusade, Emmett O'Malley, separated from his own men in the hurly-burly of combat, chanced to be in the right place at just the right time to save the life of a Scottish earl, standing back to back with the magnate among the well-hacked corpses of his bodyguards and the pagan foes until clansmen could hew their way to a rescue. The earl had knighted O'Malley on the spot, delivering the buffet with his nicked, blood-clotted battle brand. Later, when things were become less hectic, the earl had summoned his freckled battle companion to his camp, gifted him with a fine destrier and a heavy purse, and insisted that Sir Emmett accompany him and his when they pursued the crusade against the Balderites into Ireland. Emmett had duly set sail for Ulaid with the multinational force of holy warriors, but then he had stayed in Ireland and had not set foot again in England for many a long year. On the eve of the day he was to leave the Northumbrian camp, he and Harold Kenmore had evenly divided between them the thousand or so longevity-booster capsules they still owned and needed to swallow at lengthy intervals of time lest they begin to age.

  O'Malley had adapted quickly and thoroughly to the rough, very primitive, and often cruel world into which they had been projected, and Harold had thought that he had too . . . until the long-drawn-out slaughter of the march from Edinburgh and the crowning horrors of man's inhumanity that had been that march's culmination in Kennedy. He had done all that had been required of him, true, but dutifully, not with the marked enthusiasm of his companion. He had fought bravely enough and well, for all his steadily increasing soul-sickness, and when the last of the unspeakable things had been done, he had led the triumphant march of his loot-laden lances back to Whyffler Hall.

  There, the Widow—a fine figure of a woman, really, of less than thirty winters, still in firm possession of all her teeth and with not a trace of gray hair—had made it clear that the hall needed an adult man as master, that she needed a husband and would favorably receive importunings from Squire Harold, who already owned the high regard of everyone he had aided and sustained before the king had come north, the men he had so well led and captained on the recent crusade, the nearer Scots chiefs, and even the mighty Duke of Northumbria.

  But poor Dr. Harold Kenmore, haunted waking and sleeping by horrible memories of events which he had felt duty-bound to take part in or at least witness in the commission, could not then think of, contemplate, the seeking of happiness, wedding, begetting of children into a callous, brutal world wherein such hideous enormities could be wrought upon the tender, quaking flesh of not only men and women but children and even helpless infants, these very deeds being committed in the holy name of God.

  And so he had taken leave of Whyffler Hall and the folk he had come to know and love, those with whom he had shared privations, hardships, and danger for so long. He had set out with no real destination in mind, and when he chanced to fall in with a large party of knights, gentlemen, and their retainers bound for York and points south of that city, he had accompanied them, the roads and tracks across mountains and moors being far too dangerous then to afford safe passage to lone riders or even smaller parties. As the most of these men were also vassals of His Grace Sir Humbert Howard or of that man's near-relatives, the Percys, Squire Harold was well known to them and more than welcomed as traveling companion through lands still infested with robbers of all kinds, outlaws, and wild beasts.

  It proved a lengthy trip with so large and slow-moving a party, but for the same reason, it was a peaceful journey; there were just too many bannerets and pennons borne above too many well-armed men to suit the bandits resident in the areas through which they passed. The only deaths and injuries which occurred were caused by pure accidents or resulted from hunting, and these could have as easily happened anywhere and anytime.

  For all the companionship and hearty camaraderie of the men with whom he rode—few of them other than outgoing, gregarious, and very generous—Harold still found much time to think along the way, and he came to one rock-bound decision: However he chose to sustain himself in future, it would have, must have, nothing whatsoever to do with war, with fighting, with killing. After quite seriously considering, weighing out all aspects of retiring to one of the numerous monasteries and taking holy orders, he decided instead to carefully explore the possibilities of entering a trade of some nature, such a course as was being followed by not a few younger sons of noble houses and landless gentlemen.

  In York, therefore, owning goodly patience and not lacking for time or the patronage of friends and acquaintances from out the royal host that had gone up to Scotland and extirpated the pagan Balderites, he bided his time and, eventually, found himself first interviewed, then stringently tested, and, at long last, accepted by the Goldsmiths' Guild as a True Master. Although some of his gently born acquaintances sniffed at and frowned upon his entry into this "common tradesmanship," even they had to admit that a man must find or make a way to keep body and soul together; and, too, it was not as if precedent had not been long since established, for Squire Harold was in no wise breaking new ground in becoming a legal goldsmith. And, these acquaintances consoled themselves, as a gentleman born, he was naturally gifted in all the arts—why, it was said that his test-pieces submitted to the Guild Masters were even now displayed by them as examples for all to try to emulate, first-quality work; besides, there never seemed to be enough honest, reputable craftsmen of that water about.

  Harold had been established for some years at his new trade, had produced many a fine piece of work, and was, indeed, becoming renowned beyond Yorkshire, with apprentices, servants, a complete bachelor's household, in fact. Then one day, while he was locked in his tiny personal workshop, rapt in the exacting task of carving the final embellishments into the wax of a commissioned piece of jewelry, a hesitant but insistent pounding upon the closed and locked and bolted door of his cranny distracted him.

  All members of his household were aware that the one sure way to provoke true rage from the usually gentle and mild-mannered Magister Harold was to disturb him whilst he created in his little sanctum sanctorum, and the curds-white face of the journeyman whom the goldsmith confronted when he flung open the door testified to that man's unmistakable terror.

  Harold was stammeringly informed that a masked nobleman—a patent foreigner to judge on the grounds of his attire, manner, and atrociously accented English—even then stalked the reception chamber of the shop-residence, most impatiently, and had threatened to use his jeweled dagger to notch the nostrils and ears of the journeyman was his master not immediately summoned to wait upon his noble caller, personally.

  Ever gentle and caring, Harold first had taken time to assure the shaken young man that he had not incurred his master's wrath, then had doffed his work apron and stalked toward the stairs that led downward, quite prepared to render harsh words to the alien jackanapes below. In the England of that era, artists of all sorts, especially those who worked in gems and precious metals, lived and worked under the protection of both king and church and were so legally immune to the caprices of the nobility and the gentry.

  A glance through the window on the landing showed him a house yard crowded with armed men, servants, and stamping horses, all of them babbling in a language that sounded much akin to Lowland Scots Gaelic. Harold took out his own twelve-year-old command of that tongue and used it to address his haughty visitor.

  "My lord, I am Master Harold Kenmore, gentleman-goldsmith. Now, what was so urgent that it required a threat to disfigure my good journeyman? My lord must know that all in my household labor and abide under both royal and episcopal protections, unlike those in s
ome less enlightened realms."

  The only immediate answer was a chuckle from beneath the samite travel mask, a sparkling of the green eyes above it, and a shaking of the Spanish-forked, brick-red beard below it.

  So rich, lavish, and colorful was the attire of the foreigner as to almost cross the line to the gaudily pretentious. The high boots and the short cape were of soft doeskin and both dyed a brilliant green, as too were the elbow-length suede gloves under the fingers of which showed the bumps of several large gem-set rings. His trunkhose were of the finest wool, and all the rest of his clothing nothing less than rich silks and satins and velvets. Harold noted professionally that the huge brooch securing the plume to his cap of crushed samite was a true work of art—reddish gold set with first-water amethysts—and that that master or others of similar expertise had put much time, artistry, and effort into the gold-and-jeweled hilts and sheaths of his sword and belt dagger, the clasp of his cour bouilli purse, and all his buckles; even the points securing his sleeves were tipped with gold set with tiny gemstones. The foreign nobleman was a footpad's or highwayman's dream come true. It was no wonder he went abroad with such a retinue of armed men and burly servants; a more prudent, less flamboyant man, if he wore such things at all other than at court, would have hidden the most of them under a voluminous travel cloak.

  While still emitting a maddeningly familiar chuckle, the big, tall—tall as Harold, which was indeed tall for this malnourished age—lithe and muscular nobleman slowly had peeled off his gloves to reveal big, scarred, calloused hands with—a pure wonder for even a nobly born man or woman of the times—clean, square-cut nails; in addition to the earl's ransom in gold and gems that bedecked eight fingers and one thumb, those hands were covered in bricky-hued hair over a profusion of freckles.

  And that last was for Harold the missing piece of the puzzle. Even as the bejeweled fingers untied and removed the mask to show the grinning face beneath it, Harold Kenmore exclaimed, "Emmett!"

  Frantic that his eldest son, Prince Arthur of Wales, might die of the wasting disease that no physician of England, Wales, or France had seemed capable of curing or even ameliorating, King Henry VII Tudor had sent a plea to his cousin, Brian VI, the High-King of Ireland, that some of his royal physickers be sent to try their wiles on the dying boy. With this medical party had come certain nobles of the Irish High Court, among them none other than Sir Emmett Ui Maille, son-in-law of the High King, court swordsmith, and secretly reputed by not a few, though never loudly, to be a sorcerer as well.

  Over that day's dinner with his old friend, the Irishman had confided, "Och, Hal, for a' their oft-boasted expertise, it's I could see that nane o' Brian's physickers could do aught what hadnae been tried the many times o'er already by their English, Welsh, and Frenchified likes, and nae good out o' any o' it. So, be he left tae the artless arts of these blind fumblers who ca' themselfs physickers, the puir bouchal will nae see anither year, I trow."

  Harold had sighed and laid down his knife, saying with true sadness, "Aye, Emmett, it's always bitter hard to see anyone die, especially a child or young person like Prince Arthur, but at least his death would not signal the end of this new dynasty, for His Majesty does have at least one other legitimate son, Prince Henry."

  "And if aught should befall that bouchal, too, Hal?" demanded O'Malley. "And that is just what so preys on the puir, harried mind o' King Henry, that he'll come tae his death w'oot legal heirs and the realm he sae loves and cherishes wi' fa' agin intae sich as the Wars o' the Roses, nae tae lang past, that lang-lasting savagery that near sundered England. That be just why I come tae see ye, auld frind. While the sae-called physickers can do naught, I ken that ye and me, we can . . . I think."

  Dr. Harold Kenmore just stared blankly. "But . . . but what, pray tell, Emmett, what can either of us do for Prince Arthur? I know nothing of the practice of medicine. I'm a goldsmith, and before that, I was a chemist. You've no medical degrees, either . . . have you?"

  O'Malley shook his head of red hair. "I dinna recall too clear, sae tell me: The longevity boosters, were they nae said to be firm proof agin a' ills and afflictions o' the human body?"

  And so Harold Kenmore had departed York for the first time since he had arrived in that city years before. He had left his business under the care of his journeymen, they to be supervised by masters of the guild until his return. Little did he know then just how long a time that was to be.

  The longevity-booster capsules, which did, indeed, contain such powerful antibiotics as to, in Emmett O'Malley's words, be firm proof against all afflictions of the human body, cured Prince Arthur of Wales of his near-deadly wasting illness. This miraculous feat delighted the near-distraught king, but when he who had done it told the royal physician and several of his furious colleagues that he could not explain to them how to formulate similar drugs, the spiteful crew saw him charged with witchcraft and borne away for interrogation, close confinement, and torture.

  Physicians and churchmen alike, they reckoned without the gratitude of the young man's sire and the speed with which he could muster force and put that force to use. The church property wherein Harold was immured quickly found itself ringed round about by a powerful scratch force of nobles of the court, knights, sergeants, and pikemen. A herald courteously but firmly informed the senior cleric resident that his king desired that the prisoner, Magister Harold Ceanmoor of York, Gentleman, be immediately rendered up whole, hale, and in possession of all his goods. Any failure or delay of this order would force the men gathered outside to take whatever steps necessary to themselves free the gentleman and deliver him to the sovereign.

  The senior churchmen tried to bluster of ecclesiastical rights, but when they saw an iron-shod ram being readied for use, they acquiesced with the best faces possible under the circumstances.

  But once in possession of Harold, King Henry, sagacious man that he was, realized that this would not be the end of the affair, not as matters just then stood. Vindictive and carping as a pack of unpaid whores, the physicians and chirurgeons were certain to not let the matter lie, to keep blathering of witchcraft and sorcery and such claptrap until they had gotten the object of their wrath onto first a rack, then a stake. And Arthur had ever been a sickly lad, too. What could be done should he again become so ill as he had this year if his savior was become scattered ashes around an iron stake?

  Henry had been so worried and harried when first Harold had been brought to the summer court at Coventry by that Irish nobleman that he had scarcely learned more of the man than his name before he had ordered that he be allowed to try his physick on the nearly dead prince. Over the fortnight which had followed, as the raging fevers began to abate and the young man began to find it possible to hold down thin broths, syllabubs, watered porridge, and wines, as the festering sores on his body began to scab over and heal, as the hair which had fallen out began to grow back again, the king had spoken a few times briefly with the man of York who had wrought so wonderful a thing for him, but had always found it necessary to rush off to other matters.

  Now, King Henry summoned this physicker of York to his private audience chamber in the Coventry Palace and closeted with him for long hours. So well pleased was he with what his probing questions' answers told him of this savior he just had saved that he summoned a trusted clerk and dictated, signed, and sealed a letter to his friend His Grace Peter Spears, Archbishop of Canterbury. Then he had Harold Ceanmoor of York disguised, smuggled out of the palace, and sent well guarded by provenly loyal retainers to Archbishop Peter's seat, one of his noble guardians bearing the letter.

  By the time Harold Kenmore returned to court, it being by then back in London and about to commence another round of travels about the realm, he was become himself a cleric, styled Monsignor Harold Ceanmoor. Henry added a newer title: Physicker to the King. He also made it abundantly clear to the deposed holder of that title and to all other court physickers and chirurgeons that further expressions of animosity toward King's Physicker Monsig
nor Harold would quickly and assuredly result in their lives becoming most unpleasant and, possibly, even coming to abrupt ends. Several of these practitioners suddenly decided to leave court entirely; all of the others took pains either to avoid any proximity to the new-made royal physicker or to ingratiate themselves to him, fawningly.

  After that, Harold moved with the court, which seldom stayed in any one place for long, lest its huge crowds eat a host out of house, home, and lands. Having come to truly like and to trust the judgment of Harold, King Henry kept him close by and often asked his advice on matters far weightier than those of his profession.

  Harold came to feel a deep and true friendship for the man who was his patron and ruler, too, and to trust him enough to divulge to him just who and what he was and just how he had arrived years ago in the border country. At the king's express wish, a party of noblemen of the court, knights, and men-at-arms rode up to Whyffler Hall, and there Harold and Henry descended to the cellar of the old tower wherein the otherworldly device still squatted and glowed greenish through its coating of dust and cobwebs. Harold also showed the king a heat-stunner and demonstrated how it could set afire wood and render metals white-hot. Before the party left to return to the court, the king had the entrance to the ground level of the tower walled up solidly and saw a royal seal set in the new masonry. He ordered Sir James Whyffler that the tower should be incorporated into the new hall the knight was just then beginning to build, but that no one lacking royal writ was ever to be allowed to break the seal, tear down the wall, and enter to that which lay below. Inordinately flattered that his simple knight's fee holdings should be so honored as to be the secret repository of royal possessions, the knight had solemnly oathed himself and his heirs to honor the commands of his king.