Despite the Sicilian ownership, they said, they usually sailed under either Granadan, Catalonian, or Portuguese ensigns, and their home port of late had been Las Palmas, on the island of Majorca. The voyage preceding this ill-fated one had been concerned with sailing from Majorca to Munster, taking aboard an archbishop, his secretary, guards, and servants, and a Papal knight and his squires, then turning right about and sailing back to Majorca, where their passengers had been put aboard a Genoan warship. On this fatal trip, they had, in Majorca, taken back aboard that self-same Papal knight and his squires (save that he had had one more than when last he had been aboard the lugger) and sailed out to land him on the Liffey River docks in Dublin.
They had been beating back southward for the Pillars of Hercules when the fog bank and the shrewdly aimed can-nonball had undone them. Yes, they would all be very happy to serve as seamen aboard the ships of His Grace of Norfolk, for anything was preferable to being sold as slaves in a foreign land, with no hope of ever again seeing their homes and kin; this way they might be able to save their shares of prizes taken, eventually ransom themselves of His Grace, and work their passages back to the Mediterranean.
Upon landing. Sir Ugo D’Orsini discovered that the Ard-Righ was not to be found in either Dublin or the environs of Tara, but rather was just then dwelling with his court in a fortified palace at Lagore, to the south. Glad then that His Eminence D’Este had been most generous, he purchased decent riding horses and pack beasts for him and for his three squires and two servants, hiring on a couple more Irish servants who seemed to know the lay of the land and one of whom also owned a decent command of the archie Norman French that seemed to be the second language of parts oflrland. Alloyed with generous amounts of Church and Common Latin, as it was. Sir Ugo and all the other Italians in Munster had found the ancient dialect far easier to understand and speak than modem French, far and away more so than the guttural Gaelic or Irish.
Arrived at Lagore, Sir Ugo and his party were received with the ancient and customary welcome of foreign travelers by the Irish High Kings, given stabling for their beasts, and afforded lodging commensurate with their birth and rank. The knight was deeply shocked at the ease with which a private audience was arranged with High King Brian, his bit of golden palm grease, even, being courteously refused. The Roman did not consider such a way of running a royal court normal.
The Ard-Righ had, of course, been described to him by Timoteo di Bolgia in some detail, but Sir Ugo’s personal impressions were even more impressive.
Brian VIII was well called the Burly, for he was a great bear of a man, for all that he moved with the grace of a panther. His beard was of the chin only, being cut in the modish Spanish style with one longer point flanked by two shorter ones. The soft-looking mass of wavy hair that fell to just past the antique golden torque that encircled his neck and throat was clearly all his own, and the eyes set back under the bushy brows shone with intelligence.
Where not darkened and dried out by the sun and weather of campaigning and hunting and hawking, his exceptionally hairy body and limbs were of a rosy milk color, with widely scattered freckles. There were widening streaks of grey in his hair, although his beard was still of a rich, dark auburn hue. His thick, corded neck fitted onto thicker shoulders, and his overall appearance was of one mass of muscle, sinew, and big bones. Sir Ugo thought that with but very few alterations, the body of the Ard-Righ could have passed for that of Timoteo di Bolgia, save that the hips of the monarch were nearly as wide as were his shoulders. The thighs were the flat thighs of a man who had spent overmuch time in a saddle, and the Roman thought that he personally would think several times before he decided to ride against this man with lance or any other weapon, and he silently wondered just how many men this ruler had killed with his own hands and weapons in combat.
“We welcome you to the court. Sir Knight.” said Brian in a deep, powerful, yet ear-pleasing voice. The massive man sat in a canopied chair which must have been fashioned for him expressly, for it gave not a creak or a groan as he shifted his not inconsiderable weight.
Compared to the garish, ill-matched attire usually worn by Tamhas FitzGerald, that of Brian was most conservative, almost somber. Over a sleeved shirt and tight trousers of a dark umber, the monarch wore a jerkin and calf-height boots of saffron-dyed doeskin. About his thick waist, a narrow belt of tooled leather, with a buckle of plain red-gold, gave support to a small purse that matched the belt, a triple scabbard of antler-hilted eating utensils, and a reasonably ornate dress dagger.
“You are. or at least were, one of the Dux di Bolgia’s lieutenants, are you not. Sir Ugo?” said the monarch, in bland tones. At Ugo’s affirmative answer, he asked, “Then how is it that you sail into Dublin-port on a lugger from Majorca? That lugger is said to have the cut of a smuggler or pirate and to own a whole chestful of assorted ensigns and merchant-house flags, far more than any honest mariner would have need to carry along.”
“Your Majesty,” replied Sir Ugo cautiously, “my travel arrangements were made by … others, not by me or mine. Yes, I noted that the ensigns were different at different times. Majesty, but I attributed this to the most unsettled times just now. Indeed, on my voyage to Sicily, the Genoan galleass on which Archbishop di Rezzi and I were traveling was attacked by three Moorish feluccas and was compelled by their ferocity to sink two of them.”
Brian leaned forward, clearly interested. “You took part in this engagement, then. Sir Ugo? No, don’t bother to answer; of course you did—you clearly are a man of mettle, an old-fashioned gentleman.
“Tell me, are you by chance a relation of the great and renowned philosopher Placido Pietro D’Orsini?”
Ugo nodded his head once. “Yes, your Majesty, Placido Pietro D’Orsini was my great-great-uncle. You have perhaps read of his works. Majesty?”
“My library holds all four of them. Sir Ugo; two were left to me as the behest of an old and most dear friend, one whose admiration of your eminent relative was unending, and the other two I acquired over the years. Their costs were staggering, but such works still are cheap at any price. Fra Placido Pietro was a brilliant man and would have made for us all far better a Pope than some recent ones of whom I can think.”
“I sincerely thank Your Majesty,” said Ugo, with obvious feeling. “We of the family had always believed just so, but it is indeed good to hear such sentiments from so renowned a monarch as Your Majesty. Nor can I but agree with Your Majesty that the last two or three Popes have been disasters in all imaginable ways.”
A smile flitted across Brian’s face, not just the lips, but the eyes as well. “You deliver your flattery as smoothly as any courtier. Sir Ugo; my congratulations on your expertise. But I still know that this particular renowned monarch is most likely regarded by the few Italians who have even ever heard of him as either a furs-clad, near-pagan barbarian or as an overly pretentious country bumpkin of a ruler of a pocket-sized kingdom of other country bumpkins. And, you know, quite possibly they are of more of a right ness than they think.
“But for all our wars and clan or personal feuds, here in my Eireann still are our people better off than those of you poor souls who live and die under the immoral misrule of this last batch of Popes and their criminal cronies. Within the last thirty-odd years. Rome—both ecclesiastic and civil—is become a true kakocracy, ruled interminably by those least worthy and least capable of ruling.
“But enough of idle discussion, for now. You spoke to my chamberlain of a sealed document you were bearing to me from someone of exalted rank in Sicily. Where is this document. Sir Ugo?”
Brian examined the outer seals meticulously, at one point using a magnifying lens from out his belt-purse. Satisfied at last that they not only were authentic but had not been tampered with, he broke them with his thumbnails rather than the more usual letter knife, unfolded the sheets of fine vellum, and read. Twice during that reading he started as if pricked by a point; once he grunted noncommitally; on another occasion he exclaimed, “Hah! Is it then so?”