Of Beginnings and Endings Page 7

  "When he came to me with the problem, I offered him a charter and my full backing, for it looked to be portending a virtual gold mine of income, but that honest, selfless man insisted—finally, profanely, and blasphemously insisted over my objections—that I and the archdiocese stand to receive the bulk of any profits if I backed the venture. So that is how Yorkminster now is operating and tremendously profiting from a manufactory of scented soaps and now a fine deodorant Peter has developed of common parsley and certain other plants in a paste form."

  "Nor is that the end of the man's inventiveness, either. When he was advised by one of his blacksmiths—thank God he didn't go to one of the Guild of Physicians; he'd most likely have been bled half to death if not poisoned—to chew willow twigs soaked in ale for relief of headaches, and found that the folk remedy actually was efficacious, he and Rupen went to work on several bushels of willow twigs right here in this very chamber, using my equipment, and have developed powder which, when stirred into a gill of ale or light wine and swallowed, rather quickly acts as a fine analgesic. And that is a something of which I should have thought, long ago. I also should have thought of something that Rupen recently broached: primitive—well, primitive in my time on my old world, at least—antibiotics were compounded of the same chemicals as are found in wheat-bread mold, and God knows there is more than enough of that always around in this world; therefore, I've been myself conducting some experiments along those lines."

  "And how could I do all of this, take a part in all these so very important projects in Rome, whether as cardinal or pope? I suppose I could take Peter and Rupen with me on loan from Arthur, but I find little enough time for experiments as a mere paramount archbishop, and I doubt me not but that the schedules of more senior churchmen are even more crowded and hectic. No doubt, Sir Ugo d'Orsini could tell me much of the schedules of cardinals, were I to inquire of him . . . hmm." The old man scribbled yet another cryptic note on the sheet of vellum.

  * * * *

  Far away from Yorkminster and from York, across most of the whole width of England, then across the restless Irish Sea, then across more land, near to a place called Lagore in the personal lands of the Ard-Righ of Ireland, sprawled an impressive palace complex. Although only the nucleus of it was built for defense or really defensible, it still was called by the old name of that nucleus: Castle Lagore, and the presently reigning Ard-Righ or High King preferred it to all his other residences, even the more formal palace near Tara Hill.

  As Harold Kenmore sat in his private alchemical laboratory that gray day, musing and thinking hard, so too did High King Brian VIII (known as Brian the Burly to his subjects) sit within a private chamber of his own, brooding, musing, and thinking very hard indeed. But his chamber of thoughts was much different from that of Harold Kenmore. Many men knew that such a chamber must exist somewhere in either the Lagore Palace complex or in the Tara Palace, but only a mere handful of his closest advisers knew exactly where it was, and only three men in all of Ireland—himself, his eldest son and presumed heir, and Baron Slane, his chief minister—knew how to gain entry to it or safely exit it once they had entered, for the ancient builders had sown the way with deadly traps to ensnare the unwanted and unwary.

  Though fairly lofty, the chamber was far from large and was so crowded with chests and caskets as to leave barely enough room for a refectory table and a backed armchair. Windowless, it needs must always be lit by lamps or tapers. It was built into the very fabric of the oldest part of the palace, the ancient Castle Lagore, so walls, floor, and vaulted ceiling were all of bare gray stone, nor was any door visible to the uninitiated even from within the chamber, and more than one interloper in past centuries who had chanced to find his way into the treasure room of the High Kings had died of thirst and starvation within long before his moldered remains had been found and removed. Others had succumbed to the deadly traps along the way, and although the castle had fallen to assault, sieges, and treachery a few times in its long history, no one ever had found, breached, and looted this chamber.

  Knowing full well that no one could possibly disturb him in this so secret retreat, Brian often came to it to talk out problems with himself under circumstances where no living soul could hear aught which he spoke aloud. On previous visits, he right often had unlocked one of the treasure coffers and laid before him atop the table a tray of jewels—those of the Magical Jewels of Ireland, the ancient symbols of sovereignty of the various kingdoms which went to make up the island, which he owned or at least held, while he had schemed and planned how to best and most quickly acquire possession of the others—but in the hideous light of all which had so recently occurred in Ireland, the sight of the Jewels and the subsequent thoughts of how terribly his careful plans and schemes had gone astray so upset him as to almost deprive him of the power of reason, so he instead had placed atop the table on this day a bronzen coffer of ancient coins—some of them dating back to the old Roman Empire—that he might absently finger them as he thought.

  Looking down on the worn visage purporting to be that of the Emperor Severus, he demanded, "Were ever you so vexed as I've been this last year, old-timer? I doubt it. Things were so much simpler and easier for rulers in those olden days. These accursed modern times age a king well before his natural time, I trow."

  "This time last year, I not only held my patrimonial lands, but I'd made clients of the kings of Lagan and Airgialla, my armies were sitting siege before Corcaigh, the capital of Muma, and also had marched into Connachta, defeated everything that stood before them, and driven that plaguey king of theirs and his scabrous sons into their burrow and were set to smoke them out."

  "I should rightly have let matters rest there, taken what I could as soon as I could with the force I then owned. But, oh, no, I had to outwit myself, cozen Cousin Arthur of England and Wales into making me the loan of his famous great captain, the Duke of Norfolk and his condotta, that owning the use of an additional striking force I might win more quickly the whole of Ireland, that I might then become a real High King, ruling the entire island, not merely a couple of counties, as Cousin Arthur rules England and Wales."

  "Well, I'm hoist by my own petard, now. I got the Duke and his condotta, right enough, and along with them more trouble than I could have imagined would come my way. It's not that he's not all he's reputed to be, this Sir Bass—he and his can do and have here done stupendous things, militarily speaking; his private war-fleet is almost as large as mine and better armed, too, and those fine, light little field pieces, which can be taken apart and packed on mules or horses and so go anywhere horsemen can go, have given a rude and deadly surprise to not a few on this island. But the other things he's done and the things that have happened simply because of the fact that he's here . . ."

  "And having talked with the man, come to know him very well, in fact, I don't think he has done any of it deliberately, has not ever entertained any thoughts of harming me or discommoding any of my plans for Ireland. By his lights, he's always done the things he considered right, what was needful of the doing in order to carry out my orders to him. Yes, I'm convinced that the obedient man truly meant well . . . but, oh and alas, what he wrought for me!"

  "I first sent him up to Ulaid to somehow get the then-Jewel of that kingdom from off the foul finger of the Ui Neill bastard cousin who then was the usurper-king there. He did it, too, and I still can't say I understand completely just how he did it all, based on eyewitness reports. Well, the bastard king is dead and I own his Jewel, but it's no longer of any save intrinsic value to anyone—just another big, yellowish diamond set in a heavy gold ring with a trick band that expands and contracts—for while the Duke was up there, one of his men, an Italian knight, fell into muddy peat at the edge of Lough Neagh and was dragged out with the centuries-lost original Jewel of Ulaid stuck into the flesh of one of his plaguey feet, and now he's the King of Ulaid."

  "Nor is that the end of this sorry mess of slops up there. My client of Airgialla, both he and his que
en, along with some of the court, were murdered and their only child, an infant, was taken away, all in a night."

  "Righ Roberto di Bolgia of Ulaid, meanwhile, knowing the real weaknesses of his new little kingdom and of my designs upon it, betook himself to Islay by galley, gave over Ulaid to the Lord of the Isles, the Regulus, and received it back as a feoff. Oh, that piece of filth, that shrewd, scheming, conniving Italian turd! He knew that I would not dare to attack—well, not openly attack anyway—a vassal of that grim old man. Hellfire, alone, the damned Regulus is near as powerful as I am, and if he brought in his other vassals—as he would—he could crush us like so many beetles. So, he succeeding in his end of protecting his little kingdom from me, it's as safely out of my reach now as if a steel wall surrounded it all. If only the bastard had let matters go at that. But oh, no, trust a damned Italian assassin to twist the dagger in the wound."

  "Lo and behold, when I sent part of the Duke's condotta up into Airgialla to oust some crack-pate nobleman who had declared himself 'Priest-king' subsequent to the royal murders, what should confront the column but Righ Roberto of Ulaid and a not-inconsiderable and well-armed force of fighting men holding a fortification of timber built squarely across the road at a shrewdly chosen point. This miscreant that they call Righ in Ulaid now informed Sir Bass's troops that as he now is fostering the missing infant heir to the throne of Airgialla, he has also assumed the title and duties of regent to rule and sustain that kingdom until the child's maturity. I was in receipt of those foul words at about the same time that I was in receipt of the damned letter from that forever-damned Regulus Aonghas and God alone knows what kept my wits in my head and the hot blood from bursting forth from my poor body that ill-omened day."

  "Nor is this mother's mistake, Righ Roberto, the only di Bolgia who seems set on plaguing me as old Saint Job of Scripture was said to have been plagued. Cardinal d'Este had sent to Muma a condotta of Italian and Afriqan mercenaries under command of a famous captain, His Grace Sir Timoteo, il Duce di Bolgia, to aid the then-Righ, a congenital lunatic, Tamhas FitzGerald, in keeping his throne. I arranged to meet with this Sir Timoteo and—as he was becoming very much aware within a very short time of the necessity of . . . ahem, 'replacing' the drooling idiot Tamhas with a man whose ideas of modern military tactics did not all concern an all-or-nothing charge of heavy cavalry—I set up other meetings and at last arranged for him to replace Righ Tamhas with another of that mad ilk of dangerously inbred Normans, one Sean FitzRobert, a man who seemed at least willing to and capable of learning."

  "Well, Righ Tamhas died of a cracked skull, said by right many to have been taken in a drunken, accidental, and well-witnessed fall down a flight of granite stairs. The first time ever I set eyes upon that treacherous lout of a Sir Roberto di Bolgia, indeed, was when he and Sir Ugo d'Orsini rode up here with the Star of Munster, the Jewel of that kingdom, that I might replace it with a cleverly wrought forgery. They'd lifted it in the very hour of the funeral of Righ Tamhas." The big, muscular man chuckled at the memory of so humorous an act of posthumous lese majesté wrought against an old enemy."

  "So, Sir Sean FitzRobert was crowned Righ of Munster and things briefly appeared to be progressing in the direction I had nudged them. But then that howling pack of addle-pates, the FitzGeralds, trooped into Corcaigh and, cozening Sir Timoteo with a need to invest Righ Sean as ri or chief of FitzGerald, managed to get the poor bastard to themselves long enough to murder him, then roused the townsfolk, somehow won to them the Afriqan mercenary cavalry, and first attacked the royal palace, which was defended by the condotta of di Bolgia, then poured out of the city and threw themselves at what was by then left of my besiegers. Well tenderized by my entrenched troops outside the walls, the survivors fled back into the supposed safety of Corcaigh only to be shot and cut and stabbed and speared and clubbed down to almost the last man by di Bolgia and his condotta, looking for blood and finding it."

  "Sir Ugo d'Orsini had fought his way out of Corcaigh during the darkest-seeming hour, when it had looked as if di Bolgia and his force would be hard pressed even to hold the palace against the FitzGeralds, the forsworn Afriqans, and the howling mob, and despite his terrible wounds, had ridden to me, here. But by the time I, with my bodyguards and part of the Duke's condotta, came before the walls of Corcaigh, bodies were being tossed down from the walls or dragged in wainloads out from within the city that they might be thrown into the trenches that my troops had vacated when the siege was lifted, and di Bolgia rode out to tell me that he again had the reins firmly in hand."

  "I should have sent Sir Bass home then, but I didn't! I can damn myself for a fool for the rest of my life. But how was I to know then that which I know now?"

  4

  As the Archbishop of York mused in England and the Ard-Righ Brian VIII mourned his undeserved reverses in Ireland, that day, far and far to the westward, across the width of Ireland, the vast reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, and many leagues of land on its western shores, in yet another fortified dwelling place of dressed stone and timber and packed earth, a group of men and women sat in conference. The Archbishop might have recognized a few of them; the High King would have recognized none.

  Those gathered together in the spacious chamber were clearly, to any objective observer not knowing more of them, of several races or sub-races, this easily evident from faces, body shapes and sizes, skin tones, and differences in hair, beards, eyes, and suchlike. Although all were sun- and weather-browned, some were so much darker that it was obvious their skins had been darker to begin, and the males of this segment, for all that they owned long thick braids of coarse black hair, sported beards that were either skimpy or nonexistent and very little visible body hair. Most of the lighter-skinned males, on the other hand, wore full beards and thick, flaring moustaches, and some of them had arms, legs, and bodies almost as thickly furred as those of many apes.

  Within the high-ceilinged, stone-walled and paved chamber, it was far cooler than the sun-baked, scorching, windless outside world; nonetheless, all the men and women were sheened in sweat and wore only as much clothing as each felt he or she had to wear. They sat or squatted around an empty fire-pit of smoothly dressed stone, passing two large, long-stemmed pipes of smoldering tobacco and a porous, clay olla of tepid water. However, despite the heat, a number of them wore on their heads plain, unadorned hats that looked to be—and were—of gleaming silver; and though periodically the wearers would doff the helmet long enough to wipe the forehead beneath it and the front rim of the metal with a bit of rag, they always replaced it on their heads.

  Through the doorway another of the lighter-skinned variety of man strode rapidly, streaming perspiration from seemingly every pore. "Sorry," he panted to no one in particular. "Me and some the Creek fellers were down in the basement of the magazine loading cartridges for the rifles all morning and Bear Claw just come to find me and tell me about this shindig. I miss anything?"

  A slender, striking blond woman answered him, saying, "No, not a thing, Haighie. Arsen and the Micco are still in the back room talking to those four young Creeks that Soaring Eagle's patrol brought back up here with them from their reconnaissance of the Spanish settlements and fort down near the mouth of the river. Sit down and have a drink of water. You look like you could use a salt tablet, too." Reaching into her shoulder bag, she proffered a bottle.

  Nodding his thanks, the hirsute man tossed the tablet into his mouth with gunpowder-blackened fingers, then accepted a gourd dipper of water. But when he had swallowed both tablet and water, he made a face. "Muthafuck! That stuff's hot as horse-piss! What I really need's an ice-cold beer or six. When in hell's Arsen gonna take the carrier back to where we come from and bring us some beer and all like he use to, Lisa?"

  Lisa frowned. "You know the answer to that question without me telling you again, Haighie. Arsen just doesn't like to steal without some very good or pressing reason, and he has none of the little gold bars left; he had to use most of them to keep that wretched,
greedy, good-for-nothing Squash Woman and her clique overfed and happy before the Micco came."

  "But, good God, Lisa," expostulated the newcomer, "he goes back and talks and works out things with his papa all the time, and Uncle Kogh is rich as I don't know what, and no way he wouldn't lay some bread on Arsen was he to ask him for it. You know that good's I do."

  "Bills have serial numbers, Haighie," she replied. "That means they and their travels can be traced, especially bills of higher denominations. It's just not the same thing as taking goods and leaving behind plain, unmarked, flat ingots of pure gold."

  "Arsen doesn't like to steal, huh?" said Haigh Panoshian, with a tinge of bitterness. "Try telling that to the Spanish downriver, there, what he's stole at least a half of ton of gunpowder from, not to mention all the swivel guns and sacks of grain and whatnot. If that ain't stealing, then what is?"

  Another of the lighter-skinned men, this one with a full, dark-brown beard but no moustache, replied, grinning, "It's what your dear cousin chooses to call a 'military expediency,' Haighie. It's the old and quite honorable practice of letting your enemy supply you such as you need in order to better fight him. Both my people—the Greeks—and yours—the Armenians—used it against the goddam Turks for hundreds of years; too bad those old fellows didn't have some of these carriers and projectors. I tell you, it must be driving the Spanish down there up the fucking wall how their barrels of powder and guns off their boats and off the very walls of their fort just keep disappearing without a damn sound in the middle of nights no matter how many guards they mount and keep around."