Of Quests and Kings Read online

  "The fourth owner was, by the time I went looking for him, deceased, but his widow, after some little time of consideration and getting to know me, finally confided in me that at first they thought that one or both of them were going insane. But then an uncle, a Jesuit priest, stayed with them overnight in the guest room, the rear master suite. Through his good offices, they had the house exorcised, and they never saw or heard the old woman again after that. But then her husband was transferred, and so they sold the house and moved."

  "The fifth owners, who had let the place sit untenanted for almost three years before they sold it to Boghos, wouldn't speak to me at all and threatened to call the police if I again telephoned or tried to call on them."

  "Due to that and to a number of other, unrelated, factors, I had to give up at that point, but I have always since regretted not being able to help the troubled spirit of that poor young girl to gain peace. I still do, Hal."

  The archbishop nodded. "I know you do, Rupen. You are a truly good man, a caring man. It's too bad you never remarried and sired children—you would have made a wonderful father, I think."

  "Oh, but I did remarry, Hal, although it was a very short-lived marriage and no children resulted of it, which was probably just as well, considering what an utter kook my second wife turned out to be."

  The archbishop settled himself into his cathedra. "Tell me about her, your second wife, and of your marriage, Rupen."

  * * * *

  In far-off Anqara, a eunuch named Hyacinth—who just happened to be one of the three most powerful in the Holy Sultanate of Christian Osmanli Turks—bore a recently arrived missive to the desk of his large office, ordered that the door be closed and bolted, then broke the seals and spent a quarter hour rapidly decoding it before he took both the original and the translation in hand and prepared himself to bear them to Sultan Omar II.

  A deceptively mild-looking and soft-spoken man, Omar could right often be found, as Hyacinth found him on this day, indulging his passions for history, current world affairs, and geography. The lithe, graceful, graying ruler lounged on a cushioned divan, its rich fabric almost hidden by books and scrolls penned or printed in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkic, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, all of which languages the highly intelligent monarch read well. Several rolled parchment maps sat ready to hand in brass holder, and a large globe was within his reach.

  Admitted to the chamber, Hyacinth prostrated himself and crawled on his flat belly across the thick carpets to the side of the divan. After finishing reading his page, Omar signed the eunuch to arise.

  "Correspondence?" He waved a hand at the sheaf of papers.

  Hyacinth nodded. "Yes, O Light of Heaven, from the man who calls himself Fahrooq."

  Omar then moved with a speed he seldom displayed save in battle or the hunt. In a trice, his sweeping arm had cleared space for the eunuch to sit upon the edge of the divan and the court customs be damned; after all, he and Hyacinth were old friends, had ridden and fought side by side in battle on more than one occasion, and besides, they and the ever-present, mute bodyguards were the only humans in the chamber.

  The middle-aged ruler never changed expression during the reading of the decoded message, even when he heard of the death in battle of one of his favorite grandsons. But when Hyacinth was done, he began to speak, pausing now and again to think, clearly express himself, and allow the eunuch time to take good notes.

  "If a return message can be gotten to him who calls himself Fahrooq, tell him that I bear no ill against him, none but God can tell who will live and who die in battle, and, if die a man must, that is perhaps the best way to do so. At least, I would prefer that kind of death, were I free to choose."

  "Tell him, also, that I can understand what happened with the camels'-filth Romans and that I think most kindly of Walid Pasha, that he chose to risk his own life to retain command of my ship rather than surrender it to some Roman by-blow of loathsomely diseased swine and feces-eating bitch-dogs."

  "Tell him that I hereby officially authorize him and Walid Pasha to continue to serve the laudable-sounding ends of their erstwhile captor, this Sebastian Bey; for all that the description rendered in the message marks him indisputably as a doughty warrior, it also leaves no doubt that he is a merciful, noble, and intelligent gentleman. Such is a rare combination, and I am certain that he who calls himself Fahrooq can profit through observation and emulation of such an uncommon mentor. Would that I had such a great captain here—I can but wonder if Arthur of England and Wales knows just how well served he is by such a living treasure."

  "Anent which, please have him who calls himself Farhrooq to indicate obliquely—whenever and if ever the time is ripe, of course—that I could be most generous to a multitalented paladin who chose to serve me and this sultanate."

  "Tell him who calls himself Fahrooq to draw maps of every place he can in England, Wales, and Ireland and any other places they touch. Tell him to tell Walid Pasha and Sebastian Bey that whenever he is ready to release the ship and its crew—for I do not seriously think for one second that as shrewd a man as Arthur is reputed to be will ever let this Sebastian Bey go to serve another permanently—it and they will be handsomely ransomed by me. Where practicable, Walid Pasha is to have soundings made and chart the coastal waters wherever they may sail, but then he knows that, already."

  "Our ambassador to the court of King Arthur is to be notified at once that, henceforth, any messages and maps or charts brought or sent to him by him who calls himself Fahrooq are to be immediately dispatched to you. Tell him also that he who calls himself Fahrooq is to henceforth have unlimited resources, available on demand, to provide wages for Walid Pasha and the officers and crew, as well as for upkeep of my fine ship."

  "Lastly, tell him who just now calls himself Fahrooq to exercise care and caution and try not to get himself killed. You and I will not live forever. Hyacinth, old comrade, and my chosen successor is going to need a wise adviser whom he can trust, whose counsel and judgment on all matters need not be either weighed or questioned, but may be at once accepted."

  As he strode back along the maze of crowded corridors which led eventually to his own section of the huge palace complex, Hyacinth wondered whether, despite Omar's wishes, he who chose to call himself Fahrooq would elect to trade his testicles for a chance to gain almost unbridled power, as had he, long years ago. He often had remarked to himself, to Omar, and to others how difficult it was to guess just which men would do so and which would not.

  * * * *

  "Oddly enough," Bass thought, "there was a time when I looked forward to getting a letter from Krys; now I dread seeing one of Hal's or Pete's messengers riding in. In the last year, I don't think she's written one cheerful, positive letter—they're all just piss-moan, piss-moan, bitch, bitch, bitch, just like this one. She doesn't seem to know what she wants anymore, but she's more than willing to raise particular hell and draw blood and throw her weight of rank around to get it."

  "Jenny Bostwick," went part of the letter, "is a feather-headed nincompoop who can talk of nothing except fancy sports cars (not one of which she ever owned or drove), belly dancing, and the rich foreigner she was planning to meet and marry to give him a green card and save her from ever having to do an honest day's work again. She was little better than a whore back in the other world, and I told her so, upon which she slapped me, twice, very hard. Of course, your ducal honor could not permit of such insubordination, so I ordered her striped, then sent back to Hal's palace in a coach, which was more than the little slut deserved; she should have gone back tied to the tail of a horse, so my ladies tell me."

  "I have no way of knowing, of course, what sort of tale she told Hal, but now he is very cool toward me, though he still lionizes our son and that Armenian of his and even Buddy Webster. Whenever he has come down here since the incident I mentioned, he has had this Rupen Ademian and Webster flanking him at table, placing me, the Duchess of Norfolk, beyond them, and this is in no way proper to do."


  "Yet, when I sought him out and tried to remonstrate with him as his peer in rank, he coldly informed me that I was no peer of his, that I was only basking in your reflected glory and achievements and that the only reason he had not long since packed me and my household off to Norwich or Rutland Castle or Whyffler Hall was that he had told you that I might stay here until you returned for me. He added that I was become every bit as arrogant and cruel as William Collier ever had been and wondered aloud if I, like him, was beginning to lose my reason. Then he had one of his guards put me out of the room."

  "I've never believed in the practice of wife beating," thought Bass, "but you, my lady wife, just may change my mind in that regard. If any woman ever was asking for it . . ." He read on, each succeeding sentence and phrase making him angrier until, unable to take more of her carping, he crumpled the letter and hurled it into a corner in utter disgust. Then he went stalking off in search of one of his Irish officers.

  "Sir Calum," he ordered when he found the man, "please send word to Sir Conn, immediately. He is to return posthaste with his two squads of Galloglaiches, for I will want you all with me when I go to serve Ard-Righ Brian, and I doubt that Her Grace my wife could be residing in a more heavily guarded place than on the estates of His Grace Archbishop Harold, unless she were to be at the York palace itself, or at Greenwich, with His Majesty."

  "And will Your Grace be wanting the Spanisher knight, as well?" inquired Sir Calum.

  Bass shrugged. "Why not? He swings steel hard and true, nor is he a poor shot. Yes, summon Don Diego back to me here, too."

  In her present mood and frame of mind, he was bedamned if he was going to leave Krystal Foster nee Kent in command of a baker's dozen of the savage, conscienceless galloglaiches who would consider her wish to be their commission to wreak any barbarity that came into her head, simply because she happened to be the wife of their chosen war leader, Bass Foster. To do such would be akin to giving an idiot child a brace of loaded horse pistols to play with.

  And that brought to mind another troubling thought. Just what kind of pampered, overprotected, arrogant little monster was such a mother going to make of their son, Joe Foster? It would be wise, he thought, before he set sail for Ireland, to arrange for the boy's fosterage. And the sooner the better, for the boy's sake. Krystal would pitch a first-class bitch, without any shred of doubt, but by then he would be at sea or in Ireland and it would be his orders that would be obeyed, not hers.

  He also would need to make time to write to Hal, enclosing along with that letter another one addressed to Jenny Bostwick, accompanying a small, expensive gift or perhaps a purse of gold to pay something toward her suffering at Krystal's hands. So much to do already and so little time left in which to do it was he to adhere to King Arthur's schedule. And Krystal was, as usual now, not helping him one damned bit.

  * * * *

  Captain and Sailing Master Edwin Alfshott, Walid Pasha, Fahrooq, Sir Liam Kavanaugh, and some score of senior gun captains from the two galleons and the large caravel that made up the backbone of the private fleet of His Grace Sir Bass, Duke of Norfolk, stood or sat or squatted around a man who stood lounging against a long eighteen-pounder bronze culverin.

  The tall, spare, heavily freckled, brown-haired man, but recently knighted and ennobled and still most unsure of himself in those new usages, was the royal gun founder, Sir Peter Fairley. He was come down from York to personally demonstrate a new and much safer method of firing cannon and mortars.

  The culverin had, under his supervision, been fully charged with propellant powder and several thick wads, but no shot, for these coastal waters wherein the ships lay at anchor were heavily traveled, and no one wished to chance hulling or demasting some hapless, helpless fisherman by accident.

  When the gun captain made to prime the piece, however, Sir Peter waved him away and instead thrust what looked a little like a large key made of brass wire and sheet copper into the touchhole. Next he engaged a small brass hook at the end of a slender cord some four or five yards long to a smaller ring set within the larger ring of the "key," just above the copper cylinder that now plugged the touchhole of the loaded culverin. He laid the loosely coiled cord atop the lavishly carved and ornamented breech of the French-made piece, just forward of the cascabel, which on this particular tube was in the shape of a stylized gargoyle's head.

  Beckoning to Fahrooq, whom he had come to know and to like over the past months, he had him take hold of the end of the cord, play it out to its full length, and then, taking a stance to the side and rear of the culverin, take up the slack and, with his hand at waist-level, give the cord a sharp jerk.

  All eyes were, of course, on the Turkish officer, so not a few men jumped, startled, when the culverin roared and bucked backward, straining against the recoil ropes and belching a smoking wad from its ornate muzzle on a long stream of fire.

  After he had gained more than mere grudging attention from the gun captains, Sir Peter had them gather around closer and, with fingers that were big and work-stained and scarred, but still sure and rock-steady, he rapidly dismantled a brace of the friction primers and showed all of them the very simple works.

  "Now, see here boys," he said, "ain't nothing magic to thishere deevice. Thishere big ring of heavy-gauge brass wire don't mean nothing, it's just there to give the gunner a handle and to pertect the little copper ring, is all. If you wants them off for some reason, all you got to do is this." He demonstrated.

  "What matters here is the littler ring, the copper one, the tube, and what's inside of it." Peeled open, an unsoldered tube showed within a tightly coiled steel spring held in compression by the shaft of copper that depended from the smaller ring above, the shaft being split near its lower end, then bent up under the lowest coil of the tempered-steel spring.

  "You see, fellers," Sir Peter Fairley went on, "this stuff what looks like dried paste inside here is stuff that takes fire real easy-like, a whole lot easier then even fine-grain gunpowder does. The outsides of thesehere springs has done been made rough after the tempering by filing, and it's little pieces of flints and pyrites is held hard against the springs by the filling compound, so when the ring and its rod is jerked out and the spring ain't being held tight no more, it strikes sparks and the sparks sets off the compound and that shoots enough fire into the main charge for to fire the gun."

  After examining two of the primers for a while, Fahrooq had the gun crew on duty swab and reload the waiting culverin. Once he had probed the touchhole, he inserted one of the primers picked out at random from the box Sir Peter had brought, attached the lanyard hook, took a stance, took in the slack, then gave a sharp jerk.

  The copper pin came out, the gun again roared and bucked back, the device itself rose up a couple of inches, then settled back into the touchhole.

  "Very nice, Sir Peter," the Turk said. "But the thing is mechanical, and all mechanical objects fail to function on occasion. How often do these fail, and what is a gunner to then do when such a failure occurs?"

  Sir Peter nodded. "Of all the testing we done done up to York, Fahrooq—and it's been considerable, too—something less than one and a quarter out'n ever twenny has either not ignited at all or hung fire or not throwed enough fire to set off the gun charge, and we done tested it on ever'thing from cannon-royals to old, antique ribaltikins, too, including some of my breech-loading chasers. But hell, man, was one to fail, just pop anothern in, quick. If it ain't anothern to hand, well, the gunners still got their flasks of priming powder and linstocks, ain't they?"

  "Look, fellers, I ain't saying that thesehere is the best things to come down the pike sincet wheel-locks, but used right, they sure oughta make things a mite easier for the crews manning guns down on the main battery decks. Another thing, too—when you gets shorthanded during a fight where each gun is firing point-blank, maybe, and don't gotta be laid individual-like, a rating can have the guns charged, use thesehere primers, and shoot all or half of a broadside, all at the same time, wi
th just one jerk of the lanyards."

  On hearing this, Walid Pasha, Edwin Alfshott, and Sir Liam looked at each other and nodded. Win, lose, or draw, this new system seemed at least worth a try.

  Sir Peter kept the duty gun crew busy, allowing the assembled gunners and officers to personally use the entire box of primers he had brought along on not just the long eighteen-pounder but on some of the heavier pieces on the gun decks below. Not once during the afternoon did any of the devices fail to produce immediate results of a positive nature.

  * * * *

  In a private post-prandial conversation with His Grace Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, at Norwich Castle, that night, Sir Peter said, "Bass, old buddy, your ship captains and their officers is a whole lot nicer, smarter bunch then the hidebound old assholes runs King Arthur's siege train is. Damn near ever one of the siege gunners liked my primers a whole lot, was looking forward to using 'em, they allowed, seeing that they'd even fire great big old fucking bombards, real old ones, too."

  "But then when I showed them off to the fucking officers, they never stopped frowning and all and turned them primers down flat. What they all said, when it was boiled down, was that if port-fires was good enough for their great-granddaddies, they was good enough for them and the gunners. Now don't that beat all, Bass?"

  Foster smiled humorlessly. "From my own experiences from time to time with functionaries in or attached to the King's camp and court, the greedy bastards probably were expecting you to bribe them to let their gunners use the primers."

  "But . . . but that's just crazy. Bass," spluttered Sir Peter, "I . . . ever'thing I do up in York is for the King and the kingdom. I ain't some fucking traveling salesman peddling a new kinda soap powder. Don't they know that?"