Di Rezzi stared at Timoteo over slender, steepled fingers and asked, “And had this . . . this scheme not blossomed as it did, what would Your Grace then have done, pray tell?”
Timoteo spoke bluntly. “Then Tamhas would have been dead inside a week, of course. Your Grace. And had we drawn yet another of his ilk for the new Righ of Munster, then I would have advised total withdrawal from the city. port, and land.”
“Hmmph!” grunted the ailing old man. “You’re candid enough, aren’t you. Your Grace di Bolgia? And your morality leaves much to be desired—you cheerfully admit to planning that has resulted in the deaths of at least five noble Irlandesi already, with who knows how many more yet to be done to death, and to contemplating regicide and/or desertion of your trusting allies in their time of direst need. What other dark sins lie upon your soul, eh? Besides corrupting a child-mistress, as you have been doing for some time, that is?”
Timoteo laughed good-naturedly. “Your Grace di Rezzi. the lady Rosaleen is no child—she is a full fourteen years old and a widow.”
“Do you intend marriage … or merely sinful lust and dalliance with this poor, bereaved young woman, then?” demanded the legate, his tones now that of a stern priest.
Timoteo laughed even more heartily. “Marry Rosaleen? Hardly, Your Grace. Bigamy is not one of my vices, and I still have a wife living in Bolgia. Nor does Rosaleen want marriage, only . . . ahhh, variety, shall we say, a lover who is neither an Irlandesi nor yet a distant relative. Our relationship is purely physical, lustful, sinful, and enjoyable as all hell. Your Grace di Rezzi. and I will be the first to admit to those unvarnished facts.”
Dropping his hands to his lap. the old man pursed his lips and glared at his visitor in helpless rage. “Is Your Grace aware that I have petitioned His Grace D’Este no less than three times to have a certain intemperate, blasphemous, insubordinate, and unabashedly sinful condot-tiere recalled and replaced with one who might be easier to control and might offer a better example to his soldiers?”
Timoteo arched his eyebrows. “Really? And His Grace D’Este made reply?”
Looking as if he had but just bitten into something rotten, the Legate replied sourly, “I was advised that said insubordinate sinner was, with all of his glaring faults, still the best of the best for this work at hand and that I should temper my care for the good of his immortal soul with the knowledge that just now Holy Mother the Church owns more need for the proven expertise of his mind and the strength of his body.”
Timoteo nodded once. “Yes, I had thought that I had proper measure of the man. His Grace D’Este and I are much alike, when push comes to shove … as, too, are Your Grace and I, would Your Grace care to admit that which I am certain he knows aloud.”
“IO humbly beseech our Savior that that not be so. Your Grace di Bolgia. Like all mortal men, I harbor many faults, but I would hope that adultery, fornication, a mind freely set to cold-blooded murder, debauchery, frequent blasphemy of the very crudest water, I would pray that these not be included amongst them.
“I would suppose that were I to inform King Tamhas of the cruel trick you have played against him, it would scarcely improve matters, so I shall keep my peace . . . for now. But I warn Your Grace, do not make the cardinal error of pressing my forbearance too far.
“Now, leave me. I am ill, as Your Grace can see, and I own but little energy to do all that I must do every day, ill or well. The very sight and sound of Your Grace sorely angers me. and that fire of rage consumes energy better put to creative uses.”
Timoteo il Duce di Bolgia felt a twinge of shame as he left his most recent “conference” with the Papal Legate. The man was both old and infirm, and he had disliked that which he had had to do—calculatedly enrage him, bait him, really—but it had ail been very necessary; now, at least, he knew for certain that di Rezzi knew no more of the di Bolgia schemes than Timoteo wanted him to know and so would be able to transmit no more than that to Palermo or Rome, and il Duce thought it best for the nonce that only his version of the roiled, muddy politics of Munster and I Hand reach the eyes of D’Este and his co-conspirators. Nor must anyone of power in the Church harbor, for a while, even the barest flicker of suspicion that their hired great captain was most assiduously frying some of his own fish on the same griddle as theirs.
Sir Sean FitzRobert of Desmonde sat across an elaborate chessboard of white and black marble squares set in enameled bronze from his opponent, Le Chevalier Marc. Sir Sean was, like all of the nobility and not a few of the commoners of Munster, a blood relation of Righ Tamhas Fitzgerald. Careful scrutiny of many genealogical tables had affirmed to the di Bolgias, Marc, and Sir Ugo that FitzRobert owned as much clear title to the blood-splattered throne of Munster as did any living man other than the reigning monarch, and should it prove a necessity—as it very well might, all things considered—to send King Tamhas to hell suddenly, a quick replacement of the water of Sir Sean would be a most handy asset.
Unlike his cousin, the king, and far too many of their other male relatives. Sir Sean was more than a muscular, dimwitted fire-eater. Not that he was not an accomplished warrior, too; he had had some years as a mercenary in Europe, some more in Great I Hand, across the Western Sea, and had invaded England with the Irish contingent of Crusaders against King Arthur 111 Tudor, most recently, being one of the few of that ill-starred lot who had come home with more than his life, his sword, and his shirt.
For his class, country, and upbringing, he was not ill-educated. He spoke his native Irish, the bastard dialect of antique Norman French of his cousin’s court, modem French. Low German, Spanish, Roman Italian, English, Latin, and a couple of Skraeling tongues from Great Irland. Also, although he could write little more than his name, he could read Latin. French, and Irish well and Roman and Spanish after a fashion: like all widely traveled mercenaries, he had a few words or phrases in a vast diversity of other languages or dialects, but nothing approaching fluency in most of them.
Nor was the thirtyish knight any more like to his sovran than survival in that royal figure’s court had made necessary. Even before he had been taken under the collective wing of the one French and three Italian noblemen, he had washed once monthly without fail, be the season summer or winter, spring or autumn. His squires brushed his shoulder-length, wavy, russet hair daily and combed his beard and mustachios and dense eyebrows; moreover, and sometimes as often as twice the week, he submitted to their minstrations with fine-comb, sitting near a smoking brazier so that the lice and nits might more easily be cast to a certain death upon the coals.
He used scent, of course, as they all did. but his four new foreign mentors had convinced him that he would not need nearly as much of the hellishly expensive stuff did he have his squires and servants commence to regularly shake out and brush off his clothing and hang the garments in a sunny, well-ventilated chamber, rather than in the close, noisome confines of a garderobe.
They could only make over FitzRobert to a certain extent, however: if they ground off too much of the Munster-Irish barbarity, made him too clearly the mirror image of a civilized gentleman, there might well be insurmountable difficulty in getting him crowned when the time came upon them, as Timoteo and the others were certain it would, soon or late. Sir Sean was already considered to be somewhat eccentric by the most of the Munster court, but as he owned his regard of Righ Tamhas, it was generally excused as peculiarities acquired during his years of selling his sword in foreign lands.
Of course. Sir Sean had been kept completely in the dark regarding his almost certain royal destiny, for like all his kin he owned a loud, flapping tongue and an often indulged habit of boasting. He was allowed to know only that he had been picked for membership on the Royal Council because of his proven valor, his relatively open mind, his linguistic abilities, his reading talents, and his possession of a reasoning mind. And he was bright; he knew enough to keep his mouth firmly shut during council meetings unless pointedly asked for an opinion or comment.