The Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland Page 4

  But the burly figure of Duca Timoteo had arisen. One big hand still clutching the message, he waved the other imperiously. "Ho, sergente, escort the signore up here to me. And the rest of you, those peacocks and their horses belong to him who may be our next employer; be ye all warned."

  The messenger dismounted, threw his travel cloak over his sweaty saddle, and followed it with his dust veil. With some slow deliberation, he took his sword from the travel scabbard buckled to the saddle skirt and inserted the sheathed weapon snugly into his baldric. Only then did he turn and set his feet to the pathway that led up the hillside to the knot of men who sat or squatted under the silver-leaved olive trees. When a few feet separated them, the duca growled in a tone that could have been friendly or not, "And who might you be, boy? You're no clerk, by the cut of you, no damned Moor, either. You seem to have a measure of guts. Can't you find a better employer than a pack of accursed Africans? Or do you simply like old Abdul's brand of sodomy? Eh?"

  Gritting his teeth against an intemperate reply—after all, his battle rapier would avail him little against these mostly armored professional soldiers and their broadswords, wheel-lock pistols, and other weapons—the messenger swept off his sweat-soggy hat and thrust a leg forward in a bow.

  "Your grace, I have the honor to be Sir Ugo d'Orsini, a knight of the household of his eminence, Cardinal Bartolomeo d'Este, Archbishop of Palermo."

  Before any more words might be exchanged, there came the clatter of hooves on cobblestones and a chorus of deep-voiced shouts from within the town. Then, from out the shattered gate, burst a big white mule at a full, jarring gallop. Bestriding his saddleless back, bare thighs and knees gripping the muscular barrel while small, unshod heels kicked at the flanks to encourage greater speed, was a naked red-haired woman. Waist-length hair billowed out behind her, and this hair was her undoing.

  The bareheaded, half-armored horseman pursuing her spurred his warhorse close enough behind to grasp a big handful of that billowing hair and dragged her from her insecure seat. Then, while still she was a bit stunned, he secured her wrists with a length of thong and deposited his catch, belly-down, across the neck of his mount. Laughing, that black-bearded man reined about and headed back toward the town at a fast walk, handling his reins high while the busy fingers of his free hand explored the juncture of the woman's now-thrashing legs and his ears were assailed by her screams of outrage and the vile curses she gasped up at him.

  "Better not try to kiss her, Gilberto," shouted one of the officers on the hillside. "A woman like that bit my cousin's tongue off!"

  "With Gilberto's luck," put in another, "it'll be something far more important than a tongue the strumpet's teeth meet in!"

  "Be sure to keep the baggage's hands tied tight," yet another officer advised. "She strikes me as the stripe of an eye-gouger with those claws she has on the ends of her fingers."

  "I just hope he's careful in there," still another of the gathered officers muttered to no one in particular. "Spanish bugger owes me eleven ducats."

  "Never you fear about our Gilberto, Andrea," chuckled a nearby man. "I've soldiered with him for many a year and I'm here to tell you that he can gentle any doxy, highborn or low, and in damn-all time, too. They soon learn just who their master is! Why, I recall this woman in—"

  But just then the duca cleared his throat and silence fell.

  "Gentlemen, here's the chance we've all been champing at our bits to see." He flourished the beribboned parchment once and continued, "With any sort of luck, we have sacked our last, piss-poor Sicilian town for his parsimonious highness of Naples. This hints at an offer of employment somewhere outside Italy. Now, while it's signed by the Archbishop of Palermo, we all know that he alone could never afford my hire or yours, so without doubt bigger fish are involved covertly, and no thinking man would need to overly tax his brain to determine one powerful enough to use a cardinal, a noble-born prince of the church, for his stalking-horse."

  "My brother, Roberto, will be in command of the company in my absence. Give the men no more than two more days in that town, then drag every swinging dick back into camp and take as much as another day to straighten them up, but I want you and them under the walls of Palermo in eight days' time."

  "Giovanni, if any damage comes to these damned olive trees or to those vineyards, it will be on your head. They're the reason for this so-called campaign, after all."

  "Arpad, any decent riding or draft animals that fall to hand are the property of my company. Let the men keep whatever other portable loot they find in there. No prisoners, though; I prefer ransoms in something more substantial than olive oil and casks of sour wine. And you know what to do if any of them try to drag any women along."

  "Ottorino, in addition to my axmen, I'll be wanting twenty dragoons. Lieutenant Pandolfo will command them, the sumpters, and the remounts. Take my smaller tent, and food and grain for all the men and beasts for four days. See my man, Pietro, back at camp for my chest of better clothing. He'll be coming, too; see to it."

  Roberto di Bolgia, thought the messenger, might have been almost a twin of his famous brother, so similar were their faces, the set of their blue eyes, the wavy ripples of their dark-brown hair, their bristling mustaches and straight-bridged noses, and the dark blueness of their shaven cheeks and chins. But the younger was a couple of fingers shorter than the elder, owned a physique not quite as massive, and lacked the upper half of his left ear.

  As the duca finished his instructions to Ottorino, Roberto asked, "But what of the royal garrison, lord brother? If we leave the town unoccupied, they might have to retake it whenever they get here."

  Duca Timoteo laughed coldly. "Do the bastards good to do a bit of real fighting for a change. They were supposed to have been here two weeks agone, weren't they? Well, then, we've done the job for which we supposedly are going to be paid . . . someday, in some coin or other. If they drag their oversized feet for so long a time that these feisty Sicilians have time to repair their walls and gates and rearm sufficiently to stand them off, then so be it!"

  "No, you all adhere to the schedule I've here outlined. Let his Neapolitan majesty overtax some folk somewhere who aren't as good at defending themselves, say I."

  Taking a brass ewer and an empty cup from the ground near his feet, the duca filled the one from the other and thrust the measure of wine toward the messenger. "Best drink whilst you can, Sir Ugo. Four days hence, I mean to be in Palermo, which is going to mean hard riding for us all, with precious few stops and damned short ones, even then. We'll see if your horsemanship and endurance matches your courage, sirrah."

  The Swedish caravel Sjohdst, Master Lars von Asnen commanding, heavy-laden with a hold full of pig iron, copper ingots, casks of stockfish, and a few casks of priests' powder and a deck cargo of timber and resin, chanced across the strange ship only a day's easy sailing out of the Seine's mouth.

  Whilst the master, hastily summoned onto the quarterdeck from an inspection of the hold below, was carefully uncasing his own, personal, high-quality long-glass, his first officer filled him in on what little information had been so far ascertained in regard to the strange vessel.

  "She's a four-masted galleon, pierced for about thirty guns, though all her ports are just now closed. She looks to be carvel-built, which could mean she hails from the Middle Sea . . . the south, anyway."

  "What's her ensign?" asked von Asnen brusquely.

  "The topmost is Papal . . . Roman Papal, that is. The lower is one I don't recognize."

  "Papal, hey? Well, that would tally. Old Abdul has been shipping Crusaders and supplies into England, fleets of 'em. Likely this is some straggler. I've no time for crusades, but the king did allow this one be proclaimed throughout the land, so let's see if we can be of assistance to them."

  As the Revenge towed the battered, blood-soaked Sjohdst into port, Bass still felt sick over what had occurred at sea. A lucky shot had brought down the mainmast, and another from the very next broadside had brought
down most of the foremast, whereupon, Walid Pasha had brought the Revenge into grapnel range, closed, and boarded the stricken vessel. By the time Bass had been able to rein in the gallowglasses, Turks, Moors, Arabs, and assorted Englishmen, every last Swede had been shot or hacked down; not even those poor wights injured or wounded in the cannonade had been spared.

  Nor were his companions understanding of his qualms.

  Sir Calum laughed merrily. "The lads had been penned up too lang is all, y'r grace. They just needed a taste of hot blood."

  Walid Pasha shrugged. "Yes, we could have gotten good prices for such big, strong, fair men in Fez or farther east. But think, Sebastian Bey, of what it would have cost to feed them while shipping them there. And at least a third always die of the gelding process, anyway."

  Sir Ali sighed. "It was a little akin to butchering goats in a pen. None of them were trained warriors, just simple seamen. And the battery on that ship is laughable—she's pierced for twenty and only mounts fourteen and I would wager my good sword that not a few of those guns are a hundred or more years old. A miracle it is that only one of them exploded when fired . . . but Allah looks after fools and lunatics, 'tis said."

  Dave Atkins, who had sailed along on the voyage to report back to Pete regarding the new guns mounted here and there on the Revenge, was blunt. "Bass, this here ain't no Boy Scout war these people are fighting. There's no Geneva Convention in this world. The things done to prisoners by both sides is plumb awful, by how you and me was raised on our world, but they're SOP, here, and the sooner you realize and accept that, the better for you and everybody else. Could I choose, I'd a lot sooner check out the way them Swedes did than some ways I've seen and heard tell of here."

  Sir Paul Bigod did not understand at all and put Bass's ill humor and senseless complaints down to overtiredness, fine-drawn nerves, and, like as not, sleeplessness, on the part of a commander after a successful voyage.

  "It is a most auspicious maiden voyage, your grace. No gold or gems, aside from that box of raw amber, but then there is seldom suchlike in these latitudes. The naval basin here will take all of that timber, the resins, the iron, and the copper. I doubt your grace's agents will experience difficulty in selling the stockfish at a good price; it's all prime stuff."

  "As regards the ship herself, she looks sound, aside from the battle damage, of course. If you would like to lease her out to the Crown, she could be repaired here and fitted with decent, modern guns; her existing battery were best sold for scrap—I'd never take the risk of putting linstock to one of them. The bronze ones could be melted down and recast, of course. Perhaps your grace's friend at York would buy them for the Royal Foundry."

  "I beg your grace's leave to speak bluntly. Command is never easy, naval command being especially harsh and heavy at most times. This night, your grace should dine well, drink deeply, and roll the night away in a feather bed with a brisk young doxy. On the morrow, the world will be a much brighter, more promising place in which to live. Your grace will see."

  Bass only took a third of the well-meant advice, though, and even to the very moment he slipped from his chair in a drunken stupor, he still could see the glazing, terror-filled, accusing eyes of that butchered crew of dead Swedes.

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  It was not one, not two, but no less than three cardinals that Sir Timoteo, Duca di Bolgia, found awaiting him in the ornate archbishop's palace of Palermo when he was escorted there on the morning after his arrival in that ancient city.

  He had made the time he had set himself for the journey, actually bettered it by a few hours and killed only four horses out of the party, although seven more had been foundered in the process. All of Timoteo's own men had kept pace with him, but a brace of young Sir Ugo's escorts—both older men—had fallen by the wayside; one had been found dead in his cloak, apparently having expired in his sleep, the other had fallen from off his horse unseen and been trampled to death in the darkness.

  But the massive soldier was as pleased as punch with the slender, foppish-seeming Roman knight, although he would never have allowed the object of his pleasure to know it. Sir Ugo, never once complaining, had endured every mile and hour of the brutally hard trip in or close behind the van of the party.

  Timoteo had spent a good portion of his life proving to an unbelieving world that Italians—scorned by a multitude of races as brutish peasants, impractical artisans, or spineless effetes—were the equal of any mercenaries in the world, if properly trained and led. This young Roman nobleman had proved himself to be a bit more proof of the di Bolgia pudding, as it were. If an untried member of the old nobility—many of whom were, if the truth be known, nothing less than effete—could will himself to keep pace on a ride that had left even Timoteo's strong body and hard muscles sore and aching with strain and exertion, then perhaps there might be still a measure of hope for the class. If a way could be arranged, he meant to keep this Sir Ugo by him for a few years and see just what he was made of. Mayhap . . . ? This one might be the one, the worthy heir of a hard-won duchy, a crack condotta, and a not inconsiderable fortune.

  Timoteo had sired a daughter and two sons of his first wife and a daughter by his second, and at least a dozen by-blows were scattered in the wake of his campaignings, but none of his male offspring seemed to have inherited their father's own unique blend of talents and strengths and there would likely never be more, for he had not quickened any woman since that hellish day that the forsworn Sforzas and their torturers had kept him in torment before Roberto and the condotta had burst in and rescued him.

  He smiled grimly to himself. Saints' swelling cocks, but it had been sweet to hear the screams and pleadings of those Sforza scum as all that they had planned for Timoteo was wreaked upon their own flesh and bones. That alone had been almost worth getting as good as gelded by them!

  Sir Ugo did not dismount when he called at the inn which Timoteo and his soldiers had virtually taken over. The young man sat a richly caparisoned roan mule in the inn yard until di Bolgia and his men were making ready to mount, then he kneed the hybrid closer and said, "Your grace, I will be escorting you to your initial meeting with his eminence. One or two of your own men will be allowed as far as the outer gates of the palace, but to bring more . . . well, his eminence might conclude that you distrust either the Archcount of Palermo or him."

  Timoteo looked up at the young Roman and shrugged. "His eminence can think whatsoever he likes. Like any man successful in my business, I own a multitude of enemies, precious few proven friends, and I long ago learned that to stand an even chance of being alive tomorrow, it were wise to guard one's back today. My dragoons and axmen ride with me, excepting only a corporal's guard who remain here to watch over our gear and beasts."

  "If his eminence sees me, it will be my way, Sir Ugo. Yes, the most of the guards will halt at the gates, but you, I, and Lieutenant Pandolfo di Crespa will go on from there. If you feel your employer will stick at one extra man, then I'll not bother to put foot to stirrup. He can just come down here to see me, by the well-worn cooze of Mary Magdalene!"

  Di Bolgia noted with satisfaction that the young knight no longer cringed or even paled at the sound of blasphemies. Good, he was growing up, if somewhat hard and fast.

  Sir Ugo detached one of his own attendants to ride ahead to the palace and perhaps smooth the way for the unexpected change of plans, but the column caught up to the man a little over halfway to his assigned destination, his way and theirs blocked solidly by a milling mass of people filling a piazza through which they must pass. At a growled word from the duca, the riders all backed their mounts some yards the way they had come, then the dragoons took the forefront of the column, drew their sabers, and put their big troop horses to the trot.

  Bellowing a deep-throated chorus of "Way for his grace, the illustrious Captain Sir Timoteo, Duca di Bolgia! Way, you scum!" and riding four abreast, they bore down upon the shouting crowd in the piazza.

  No one of the big, hard-faced, half-
armored men used the edge of his razor-sharp saber, depending rather upon the weight and impetus of their horses to break up the crowd, while encouraging speed of laggards by judicious use of the blade flats. Some few deaths and injuries were, indeed, inflicted by horsehoof, mainly those too slow or feeble or unlucky to avoid the progress of the column. But the vast majority of those killed and hurt in that piazza were knocked down and/or trampled by their fellow townsfolk as they overenthusiastically "made way" for their betters.

  Fortunately for the retention of his breakfast, Sir Ugo did not get a glimpse of what that piazza looked like in the first moments after the column had trotted through it.

  The second catch of the Revenge was a Gascon coaster running a cargo of raw wool, tallow, beeswax, and saffron from San Sebastian to St. Malo in Brittany. No tricks or false ensigns were used to draw the small, dumpy, two-masted, virtually unarmed carrack close, nor was one cannon shot needed. The Revenge very nearly collided with the little vessel in a fog bank. By the time the fog had somewhat cleared, the master and small crew of the Gascon carrack were become more than aware, most uncomfortably aware, that they were vastly outnumbered and tremendously outgunned, and all of them seemed overjoyed to clamber down into their trailing longboat and begin to pull with a true will toward the smudge on the horizon that was the French coast.

  Bass did not get drunk on the night of return from that voyage. He was not aware that one of the small companion vessels Bigod had loaned had followed after and sunk that longboat with all hands almost within sight of land; no bloodthirstiness was involved, of course, only the need to conceal for as long as possible reports and accurate descriptions of the English raider operating in these waters. The officer who sent the pursuit vessel off assumed that in the press of affairs, his grace had simply neglected to order so obviously needful a thing.