and gave a ship command recently. Sir John Starkley? No, Stakeley, that’s it, Nugai and Sir John Stakeley. That’ll kill two birds with one stone, so to speak; his dispatch lugger can sail them over to Liverpool, then he and Nugai can disembark and take Ita up to York. Ronan will play pure hell laying his slimy hands on her again in York, under the full protection of Archbishop Harold.”
Bass then little knew the surprises in store for him . . . and Ita.
When the Ard-Righ had told him of his plan to hire a condotta of foot from Righ Roberto, he asked Bass, “All right, Your Grace, you’ve met all three of those captains, served alongside two of them against the third. Now which one of them do you think you best could work with, depend upon, and command in battle?”
That was why the cavalry camp, in the lands of the Slaine Clan, between Tara and Lagore, was enlarged just in time to begin to house some four hundred galloglaiches out of the Scottish Western Isles—an identical breed to Bass’s original squadron, but these newcomers fighting afoot, with matchlock calivers. pikes, axes, and greatswords. That was also why a day dawned that saw His Grace of Norfolk in conference in his headquarters with Sir Ringean Mac lomhair, who once had served and fought in the lands of the northern Ui Neills and thus knew something of them from a soldier’s viewpoint.
Widely traveled, like many another professional mercenary officer, and also owning a middling if informal education, as well as the ear for languages and dialects which was the natural endowment of not a few Celts, Sir Ringean spoke a reasonable English, plus all of the Scots dialects, Irish Gaelic, Norse, Danish, French, Flemish, Welsh, some German, and stray words, phrases, and obscenities in a number of other tongues, so Bass had no trouble at all in conversing with this newest of his captains.
While awaiting the arrival of Sir Fingean and his condotta, Bass had ridden down to Dublin and personally seen Ita and Nugai aboard Sir John Stakeley’s sturdy, swift-winged
little lugger, Cassius. He had given the loyal Kalmyk a generous purse of gold and specific oral instructions to him. Sir John, and the bilingual Irish serving woman he had hired in Slaine to attend the girl. He also had given Nugai a handful of letters—two for the Archbishop, one of which the churchman was to send on to King Arthur, one for Sir Peter Fairley, one each for the bailiffs of all three of his English holdings, one for the Lord Admiral of Arthur’s navy. Sir Paul Bigod. one for the nobleman who was fostering his son, Joe Foster, and one for his wife, Krystal.
However, when he made to depart the deck of the lugger, Ita clung frantically to him, both her slender arms about his neck, showering him with a flood of teary kisses and Gaelic words.
Uasal, the middle-aged serving woman, translated: “Ita says that she should not be so sent away to an alien land, to dwell among strangers, but should rightly remain here to serve Your Grace in all ways so long as he lives. She says that His Grace was the very first freeman who ever was kind to her, since the slavers took her as a very little child from the homeland she cannot remember. She fears that she never again will be able to see and serve and comfort His Grace. She says that this should not be, for she is his now more fully than she has ever been any other master’s, bound to him not just of the body but of her soul. She avows her love for His Grace with all of her heart, swears by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord that this be truth, and she once again beseeches him to not send her away.”
Disentangling himself from the girl’s arms, Bass took her small head between his two palms and kissed her softly upon her forehead and her two damp eyelids, then said, “Uasal, please tell Ita that I am not sending her to my friend in England because I dislike her or the sight of her, but because there is no other way that I can keep her free, protect her from reseizure by the folk to whom she was for so long in bondage in Airgialla. In England, under the shield of the powerful man to whom I am sending her, she will remain safe and comfortable and well cared for until my work here is done and I can myself return to England.”
But even after the tiring-woman had finished her translations of his words, still did Ita furiously fling herself upon him, holding to him so very stubbornly that it required the efforts of both Uasal and Nugai to pry her loose and allow Bass to quit the ship.
For several days after, he wondered if he had done the right thing for the little sometime slave girl, then he was summoned by the Ard-Righ to his official residence complex near the Hill of Tara. Brian received him quite formally in a small but plain audience chamber lacking any furnishings save carpets, a single cathedra chair, and a silver wine table beside it to hold the monarch’s potables. Brian himself held a bared ceremonial sword and looked grim as Bass was ushered in by well-armed foot guards, who had disarmed him beforehand.
Without any greeting or preamble, the Ard-Righ said, “Your Grace of Norfolk, I nave received word from Righ Ronan of Airgialla, my client and ally. He writes that, among other heinous acts, you saw fit while there to insult him, humiliate him, and even offer violence to his sacred royal person. He goes on to write that you intimidated him with your raw force of arms and thereby extorted over a hundred pounds of gold from him, then proceeded to loose your troops upon Ard Macha to loot almost that much again in goods, horses, and rolling stock with which to bear all your booty away. He continues, writing that at very sword points you took from his palace a very valuable female slave, whose services and person he had loaned you out of the goodness of his heart while you had been his honored guest in his palace. He further writes that you intercepted two noble messengers he dispatched to me, opened, read, and then destroyed the letters they bore, robbed them of all they owned down to their naked skins, had them well striped, then chivvied out into the countryside and woodlands by your troopers. He does not ask for your head, though he does, it would seem, have sufficient grounds; rather, he prays that I forthwith force you to relinquish and return to him his slave, his gold, the lifted horses, and such goods as remain available and unspoiled. I stand inclined to honor his requests at this minute, but I first would hear your side of the matter. Your Grace. Just what is your answer to this plethora of serious charges?”
“Your Majesty,” said Bass, being every bit as cool and as formal as the Ard-Righ, “you gave me a copy of the letter which I bore to Righ Ronan when first I was sent to Airgialla, and in it it was stated that you expected him to render me all needed assistance of a supply or a military nature whilst I was up in Ulaid, yet when I asked foot troops of him before I marched, he swore that all he had were with your army in Connachta, and when I asked for aid and supplies and guns to be brought up to the siege of Oentreib, none of the three ever came; Righ Ronan never so much as left his palace and his feast hall.
“As regard the gold, well. Your Majesty’s letter spelled out the amount of specie Righ Ronan was to pay me for the services of me and my condotta, and that is the exact amount I took from his treasury, no more than that.
“Insofar as robbing Ard Macha is concerned, I had my men take from the merchants there the supplies owed them and me from the campaign in Ulaid, some few remounts, and a couple of waggons, leaving behind some unsound but curable horses and some damaged but repairable waggons in exchange.
“As for the messengers. Your Majesty, I by then considered Righ Ronan to be my bitter enemy and I dealt with his guardsmen gallopers as such. However, if it is Your Majesty’s wish, I will collect the horses, weapons, gear, and clothing of those two carpet-knights and send them back to Ard Macha.”
In a marginally friendlier tone, Brian demanded. “And this so valuable slave girl, Your Grace, what of her? Why did you steal her away without paying Righ Ronan, her legal owner, at least a part of her worth? Slave stealing is a capital offense, you know. Turn the chit over to me. Your Grace—I’ll send her back to Ard Macha and then smooth things over, you’ll see. If you want a slave girl, take your pick of mine, more than one, if you wish.”