He started to continue with an assurance that the DDT wouldn’t actually poison the man, but the prisoner followed his orders with no hesitation. Darryl found the man’s calmness unsettling. It rattled him some.
After he returned to their suite in St. Thomas’ Tower, and put away the spraying equipment, Darryl handed the used batteries to Gayle. Then, he studied Melissa for a moment. As usual, Melissa was sitting on one of the couches reading a book. If nothing else, their imprisonment had given her the opportunity to study texts which would have turned any historian of her time green with envy. The earl of Strafford had been gracious on the matter of giving her access to his own considerable library. Not directly, of course. But he always brought some books on his periodic brief visits.
Darryl did not appreciate the man’s courtesy. Not in the least littlest bit. “Black Tom Tyrant,” damnation, was not supposed to be gracious.
He dismissed, with almost no thought at all, the notion of asking Melissa. She’d inevitably accompany the facts with a lecture. Darryl was in a bad enough mood already.
His eyes ranged down the room, falling on Tom Simpson. The big army captain was standing by one of the windows overlooking the Thames. He was alone. Rita was probably taking a nap, as she often did in the early afternoon.
Darryl made his decision and walked over to stand next to him.
“Weather’s clearing,” Tom grunted.
Darryl wasn’t interested in the weather. Not the world’s, anyway. He was preoccupied with the storm front moving through his own heart.
“How long was the son-of-a-bitch in Ireland?” he demanded. “I know you’ve been reading about him.”
Tom swiveled his head and looked down at Darryl. A little smile came to his face.
“What’s the matter, Darryl? The real world not matching your blueprint?”
Darryl glared at the river. The sun was out, now, so the Thames had no difficulty at all in glaring back.
“He was in Ireland for nine months,” said Tom. “Landed near Dublin in August of 1649. Less than a month later, he took the town of Drogheda and ordered most of the garrison massacred after they refused to surrender once the walls had been breached. That’s the incident that’s most notorious during his campaign. But—cut the crap, Darryl, you’ve been living in the seventeenth century for two years now; you know how it works—by the standards of the time that was no war crime.”
Darryl kept glaring, but said nothing. By now—long since, in fact—Darryl understood the realities of 17th-century combat. The tradition went back well into medieval times. Once the walls of a fortified town were breached, the garrison was expected to surrender. Further fighting was pointless, after all, since a besieging army which could manage a breach could certainly take the town. The garrison had now proven its courage, well enough, and any further bloodshed would be on their hands.
If the garrison did surrender, quarter was given. If they didn’t . . .
Tom had read to him, once, the passage in Shakespeare’s Henry V where the consequences of refusing to surrender after the breach were spelled out. In very graphic detail, by King Henry V to the defenders of Harfleur. Darryl could still remember the phrase naked infants spitted upon pikes.
Harfleur had surrendered.
“The truth is, Darryl,” said Tom softly, “by the standards of the time, Cromwell was actually considered to be a merciful soldier. The garrison was put to the sword, yeah, but the civilians were spared. You know damn well that, more often than not, a full-bore massacre follows. In fact—how’s this for a little irony?—the only actual Irish in Drogheda lived in a ghetto, which Cromwell’s men didn’t touch. The garrison he massacred was made up of English Catholics. Settlers, most of them, who’d been grabbing land from the Irish themselves.”
Darryl’s lips tightened. Another precious little certainty gone. Damnation.
Tom’s great shoulders moved in a little shrug. “Drogheda’s still an atrocity by our standards, of course. But you really can’t judge one period of history by the standards of another. And, however savage it was, Drogheda didn’t hold a candle to Magdeburg. Which, you might remember, was a massacre carried out by Catholic soldiers.