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  Running hard before one of the terrors of Atlantic Ocean sailing, a living, prescient gale, a cromster out of Rotterdam, Oester Meije, one hundred and twelve tons burthen, slipped over the bar at the mouth of the River Lee and thence proceeded up to discharge her cargo at the docks below Corcaigh. There was nothing remarkable in the ship's appearance to the casual eye. She was not either elderly or new as merchantmen went commonly among the stingy Dutch—perhaps fifty years old, but well kept, fully found, her rigging and tackle all in serviceable shape and her canvas, though old and faded, still imminently sound. Wisely, in these uncertain times, her master sailed with eight truck-guns—brass demiculverins capable of throwing eight- or nine-pound iron balls—plus the usual assortment of swivels—rabinets, falconets, drakes, and perriers. True, the combined weights of guns, carriages, powder, shot, and accessories lessened somewhat the weight of lading that the vessel might transport, but they also served the purpose of making it a bit more likely that ship, company, and reduced amount of goods would reach the point of intended destination rather than going to add to the ill-gotten riches of some sea robber.

  Captain and sailing master and owner Jan Bijl of Delft was all three at the once, and although the amounts of easily salable cargo he had been able to gather and load in a somewhat limited time would leave him precious little profit, still was he secretly happy, for the hard gold paid by his two passengers would more than pay for the short sail over from Rotterdam and back, leaving the gain from the skimpy lading, plus whatever he could pick up in Corcaigh and bear back to Holland as pure gain over and above his expenses for the voyage.

  Jan was of the opinion that the French lord—of course, the man had averred himself to be a Burgundian, but Jan was no man's fool, he knew immediately the differences between a Burgundian burgher and a manor-born Frenchman—was some kind of courier, and the moment he spotted that big war-galleon flying the banner of the King of France lying moored in the channel opposite the city-port of Corcaigh, he knew that his suspicions had been well grounded.

  Nonetheless, the man's passage had been paid for in new-minted, undipped onzas of heavy gold, and, the balding, blue-eyed mariner reflected, had he not contracted to convey his French lordship, chances were that the other passenger would not also have bought a passage to southern Ireland, that island always at war with itself.

  Shrewd as were his guesses, Jan found this second passenger to present him a mystery and puzzlement and conundrum all rolled into one. He, at least, was no gentleman claiming to be a burgher and he might very well be the chapman he said he was, but that was where truth ended, in Jan's opinion. The Dutchman knew Provencals, his own daughter had married one, and this chapman was not one, did not even truly speak Languedoc very well or fluently, though his peculiar accent gave Jan no clues as to his real homeland.

  The slender, wiry man was of about average height, but at that point anything of the average ceased to be. His appearance, thought the mariner, might have been that of a man whose desert-Arab sire had got him on a Tartar or Kalmyk, or perhaps it had been a Moor—red-headedness was more common among them than among Arabs, after all.

  He, too, had paid in gold, but not coins, rather in those thin, flat, unmarked rectangles from somewhere far over around the lands of the savage, pagan Rus-Goths. Jan had but rarely seen such before, and he insisted that they be examined, weighed, and valued by one of the goldsmiths before he would accept them as payment for the odd man's passage.

  This second passenger had wanted a cabin and, in light of what Jan was charging him, should by rights have had one; but there were only the two, one of which was sheltering the French lord, and Jan was not about to give up his own for the length of the voyage, so the counterfeit Provencal ended by slinging a hammock in the space shared by the master's mate and the bootjongen, Jan's eldest son and nephew, respectively. Jan had half expected a scene, threats to seek other passage, perhaps even a demand for the return of payment, but the strange man had shrugged and accepted the situation with as good grace as he had accepted the bearing of his gold off to be evaluated.

  The French lord had had borne aboard his own provisions for the trip and had dined alone in his own cabin, though snaring the occasional jack of wine with the captain. The other passenger had, however, been contented with the same cheap, monotonous fare shared by all ratings of Jan and his Dutch crew—stockfish, oaten porridge or pease porridge, journey bread, and barley beer.

  Both passengers stood ready to disembark immediately the cables were secure, but Jan was knowledgeable, he had put into Corcaigh with cargo and the rare passenger before, and he knew the procedure. So he told both the French lord and the other man that they must wait until the representatives of the King of Munster had come aboard. The French lord had fumed and fretted, uttered blasphemous obscenities, made scandalous comments upon the probable ancestries and personal habits of the petty kings of Ireland, then stamped a foot and stalked off to his cabin to sulk among his packed-up gear. The chapman had merely shrugged and hunkered down on deck, whittling at a bit of wood with the sharp blade of a fair-sized clasp knife.

  But after a wait of at least a full glass, when still no royal retainer had made to come aboard to check cargo and passengers, Jan called to a dockside loafer and was imparted some shocking news.

  Having had the French lord summoned back topside, he retold all that he had been told to both of his passengers. "King Tamhas is dead, possible murdered. His successor, King Sean, is dead too, most certainly murdered, cut down in public, openly. There was a brief rebellion after the murder of King Sean, put down quickly and very bloodily by the condottiere Herzog van Bolgia, in the course of which he and his condotta virtually extirpated the principal men of the FitzGerald ilk, then gathered together in Corcaigh for the express purpose of murdering King Sean and killing or driving out all of the foreign troops."

  "No king at all sits in Munster now, nor do the remnants of FitzGerald have a chief. Such government as currently exists is that of the Herzog van Bolgia and his officers. He holds Corcaigh in the name of Rome as an unofficial viceroy, though it is widely thought that he also owns the covert support of the Ard-Righ, or High King, Brian VIII and that of the kings of Laigan and Ulaid, as well."

  "The inspections of incoming ships' cargos and passengers has been allowed to go by the boards under the new administration here, so you both are free to depart my ship at any time. I'll be setting sail for Rotterdam as soon as I sell this cargo and can find and load another, a week or so, with God's help. So be warned and keep in touch with me. Godspeed you both."

  The chapman who claimed to be of Provence shouldered his well-worn and obviously heavy pack and departed up the steep street in the direction of the walled city of Corcaigh. The Frenchman, on the other hand, sought out and quickly found a boatman who would row him out to the tall, massive warship moored in the channel of the Lee. Most of his gear and clothing left in his cabin aboard the cromsteven, taking only a small, flat leather case with him, along with a richly decorated small sword which he never before had worn or displayed.

  Le Chevalier Marc Marcel de Montjoie de Vires was still favoring healing wounds from injuries sustained in the fracas between il Duce Timoteo di Bolgia's condotta, the small contingent of Rus-Goths who had been Righ Tamhas' personal guards and the FitzGerald Guards, and the mob of city and port scum led by the FitzGeralds who had murdered Righ Sean. Marc had been ashore that day, been trapped in the palace complex with everyone else on the first attack of the mob, had armed in the brimful palace armory and then sallied out against the would-be besiegers repeatedly, finally joining in the ferocious slaughter of the backstabbing FitzGeralds and what was left of their ill-armed followers after they had roused and suffered the wrath of the Ard-Righ's forces still then squatting outside the city walls. Of course, in armor not fitted to him, using weapons of unfamiliar feel and balance, he had suffered some hurts, none of them really serious, but painful in the healing, even so.

  Propped up on cushion
s on his seabed, Marc received the royal messenger and read the letter that the man produced from a hidden compartment of his leather writing case. When he was done, he gestured at the decanters on the table that centered the spacious cabin.

  "Pour us some wine, old friend, then sit you down. There are a few things unclear in this missive that I'd have you clarify for me." He sighed, adding, "This unhappy land of Ireland is barbarous enough; I had hoped to soon set sail for Normandy, there to spend some time in my own lands and get the taste of this benighted land from off my tongue, its squalorous stinks from out my nostrils, not to set sail across thousands of leagues of open ocean to fetch up, at last, in a place even more primitive and dark and bloody than this Ireland."

  "And I tell you truthfully, Denis, had a stranger borne such a message to me, supposedly from the King, my inclination would have been to clap him in irons, have him heaved into the hold to howl out his madness or contemplate his sins among the bilge rats until we again were in France and he could be turned over to royal officials."

  Accepting the goblet of wine with a nod of thanks, he asked his visitor, "Is this matter really so serious, then, as to send me and l'Impressionant bearing off to the west, possibly to our doom and the ship's destruction in barely charted waters?"

  Denis de Rennes nodded. "It's serious enough, or at the least, His Majesty thinks that it is, and that is what counts, my friend."

  Pausing, he glanced hurriedly around the cabin, then demanded in low-pitched tones, "How many ears are there about to overhear, Marc?"

  Le Chevalier shrugged, but carefully, in deference to his wounds. "Not many, I'd venture to say. The master and his mates keep the crewmen hard at work, most of the time, for there's always much to be done, that a warship of this size be maintained constantly at her best."

  Drawing his seat up to the very edge of the seabed, the visitor leaned forward and spoke in almost a whisper. "Marc, you have been absent from court and France for long enough that you may not be aware of just what is coming to pass in New France and New Spain. Subsequent to the betrothal of the King's eldest daughter, the Princess Beatrice, to the new heir of the King of Spain, Principe Luis Pedro, and with a possible waning of Spanish power in Rome in the offing, the councilors of the kings have come to certain amiable conclusions and agreements, have hammered out an unofficial alliance of sorts."

  "Astounding!" commented le Chevalier, "Amazing, fantastic! Who ever would have thought to live to a time such as this? Man, we—Frenchmen and Spaniards—have been at each other's throats since the days of Charlemagne and before. Have you any more startling stories, Denis? What bearing has any of this upon these strange orders? Have Spaniards given up their racial pastimes of larceny and prevarication, perhaps?"

  He called Denis sighed and cracked his knuckles, then went on. "One of the linchpins of this sub rosa agreement, Marc, had regard to the relations of our two kingdoms' subjects in the Western Lands across the Atlantic. Since the Bishop of Rome, long years ago, granted sole rights there to Spain and Portugal, giving no thought to the bare facts that French, Norse, and even Irish had prior claim by way of settlement to at least the nearer coasts of the northernmost landmass, Spaniards there have out-savaged the very indigenous savages in the deadly ferocity with which they treated other Europeans found there unless they were mercenaries in Spanish hire."

  "Now, however, when indications are that the Moorish-Spanish papal star may well be on the wane and approaching its nadir, the arrogant bàtards are, it would seem, seeking civilized friends and even allies there in this new world. At least, that is what the members of the secret council reported to the King upon their return to Paris last year, and His Majesty secretly rejoiced at that news, I am told."

  He leaned even closer, spoke even more softly. "The Spaniards planned to accomplish, with French help, nothing less than a full scouring of all other Europeans from that land. First, our troops and theirs would join together to drive the settlers of Great Ireland from west to east, force them to crowd together in the coastal areas, then strike them from the sea. After the dispersion of the Irish, the scheme was to be enacted upon the Portuguese colony to the south of Great Ireland, then on the Norse mainland places to the north of New France. At the conclusion of all these actions, the entire land was to be roughly divided between France and Spain."

  Le Chevalier snorted scornfully. "Hardly likely, considering the unquestionable dishonesty and dishonor of your average Spaniard, my friend. More in keeping with their methods and style, they then would turn treacherously upon us, their sometime allies, thus being able to keep the whole pasty for themselves."

  The messenger sighed again, sought vainly for an uncracked knuckle, then continued. "His Majesty fears some treachery akin to that sort, Marc. That is why he wants sure knowledge from your lips as to just what recently occurred in the far-western reaches of Great Ireland."

  "It seems that a party of Spaniards and Frenchmen set off to wipe out the farthest—west of all the Irish settlements, a place beyond the mountains, on the banks of a river, a habitation of both Irish and indigenes. Those few who made it back to Spanish lands averred that the massacre was proceeding well when a flying monster of Satan attacked them without warning, slew large numbers of the party, including all of the French contingent, then pursued the wretched survivors for leagues, ambushing them, swooping down to attack their camps, completely immune to pistol, musket, or even calivre-ball. Not even a specially cast ball of pure silver, with an inscribed cross and blessed by their priest, did aught to harm this terrible, demonic flying monster, they claim."

  "Now, had there been even one Frenchman who survived, Marc, His Majesty might not have been so deeply suspicious, but knowing the character of the Spaniard as he does . . . ?"

  "I see," said le Chevalier. "But even so, Denis, I cannot at all comprehend just what His Majesty expects l'Impressionant to learn or accomplish in the far west. I have read translations of most of the available accounts of those distant lands, my friend. None of the rivers of either New France or Great Ireland are either deep enough or even navigable for much beyond some score and a half of leagues from the coast. Nor, considering the regrettable history of our relations with Great Ireland, do I think they would look at all kindly upon the entry of a French ship-of-war into their inland waters under any circumstances. I would strongly doubt that those of New France know much more solid fact than was dispatched to Paris, and even if I thought any Spaniard could or would tell me the unvarnished truth on this matter, the only way that I would set l'Impressionant under the guns of one of their fortresses would be in company with a full fleet of other ships of the battle line."

  The messenger sighed a third time. "Nonetheless, Marc, it is His Majesty's wish that . . ."

  "I know, I know." Le Chevalier waved a hand tiredly. "And, being as I am a loyal subject always, I will obey, of course. After all, Normandy still will remain in the same place when I do return."

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH

  Late night blanketed the plain of northwestern Mide in a moonless shroud of darkness. The sprawling camp was lit about only by the watch fires and the occasional moving torchlights by which men of purpose moved about their assigned duties, hither and yon. Outward from the five pavilions that centered the encampment were ranged smaller tents, horse lines, baggage parks, and the forms of sleeping troopers and servants, men-at-arms, and other common men, each lying wrapped in his cloak or blanket or tartan robe.

  Two of the pavilions were those of reigning kings, one was that of a reichsherzog of the Holy Roman Empire, and one was that of a Portuguese baron. The fifth and most splendid was that of Sir Bass Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Rutland, Markgraf von Velegrad, Baron of Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter, Noble Fellow of the Order of the Roten Adler of the Holy Roman Empire, newly invested Noble Fellow of the Striped Bull of Ui Neill, also newly invested Lay Brother of the Christian Military Order of the Consecrated Knights of Breifne, Lord Commander of the Royal Horse of Arthur III Tudor, Ki
ng of England and Wales, and, just now, Captain-General of the North for Ard-Righ Brian VIII, would-be conqueror of all Ireland.

  Foster's dark hair was graying fast and gave the appearance of being even grayer since he kept it trimmed very short on campaign. Seated as he was on that night, poring over some sheets of vellum by the dimming-flaring light of a lamp, he looked the epitome of a noble-born great captain, a wealthy war-leader of armies of this world's late seventeenth century—clothed well and expensively, a belt of silver plates set with semiprecious stones cinching his waist and a bejeweled dagger depending from it; three fingers and one thumb were encircled by ruddy-gold bands in which sparkled fine, large gems, while a fiery-red garnet was set in his right earlobe.

  That he was a fighter was plain for all to see, for the seated man's head and hands—all of his flesh that was visible in the chill of the night—bore a plentitude of old scars; the final joint of a finger was missing entirely, along with half of his left ear. Looking upon him, one might easily imagine the long years of his early training in the art of the warrior, the longer years of nurturing and refining his craft on many a bloody battlefield, the decades it had taken him to hack his way to wealth and honors and power. And one would have been wrong, of course.

  On the sheets atop the small camp table had been written a set of translations of ancient Irish-Gaelic filid songs of prophecy, solemnly sworn to be hundreds of years old at the very least. Of course, in translation, they no longer rhymed and so lost some of their power; nonetheless, the reader felt his neck hairs go aprickle in some places.

  He will have come far