The dagger tip moved due west. “Now, this recently reunited kingdom is the original homeland of all the Ui Neills, or so the old songs say, though it could be the exact opposite, the other way about, and who today would know? These distant cousins of mine have been as yet loath to part with their Jewel, but I am certain that a display of force, a strong warband crossing their border, will quickly change their minds without any need for bloodshed.”
The dagger point drifted to the south of the map, stopping a bit north of the border of Mide, just southwest of a couple of largish extenuated lakes in which the artist had long-necked creatures that resembled plesiosaurs frolicking and chasing after silvery-scaled fishes.
“This, Sir Bass, is the Kingdom of Breifne, presently ruled by one Fergal. For all that he should have been an abbot or a bishop instead of a king, he will fight rather than surrender his Jewel to me, even on loan. You see. Sir Bass, he knows just what I am about in this quest for the Jewels, and he would love to see all Eireann taken over and ruled by and from Rome, deluding himself to believe that his lifelong piety—piety to a degree that borders upon lunacy!—would guarantee him the mantle of Ard-Righ. Although his is the very smallest and least populous of all the present eight kingdoms, his people all are firmly behind him, and that is why I’m saving Breifne for the last conquest; perhaps after they have seen the folly of resistance to me and also seen how generous I can be to those who offer me and my armies little or no resistance, they will think differently.
“Immediately you and your troops feel ready to undertake it, I’ll be expecting you to march on Ulaid, to beard King Ruarc in his lair. Understand, I’ll not be telling you how to campaign, just offering advice to one who doesn’t know the various peoples of Eireann so well as do I. If you would rather sail your ships of the battle line up there and soften them up before you invade, feel free to do so, but in any case you can expect little or no help from my armies, not this year, for they are all busy in the south and the west . . . though the southern ones may soon be free, but then they’ll be marching into Connachta to join the others.”
“Then, Your Majesty,” inquired Bass, “where would the bona … the foot you offered me to supplement my horsemen come from?”
Brian showed his strong, yellowish teeth. “Why, from the King of Airgialla, of course. Sir Bass. After all, he is now an ally, and it is his borders you’ll be protecting now.”
“Your Majesty,” Bass asked, “please correct me if I have misunderstood, but I get the impression that Your Majesty wishes to achieve certain ends and cares not precisely how those ends are achieved just so long as they are achieved . . . and the sooner, the better.”
The High King nodded forcefully. “Your understanding is perfect. Sir Bass. I want the remaining Jewels. How I get them is not in the least important, but get them, I must . . . and I will. Why do you ask?”
Brian’s meeting place with Timoteo di Bolgia was in one of the two forts guarding the entrance to the fine anchorage at the mouth of the River Slaney, in southeast Laigin. Both had sailed to the rendezvous. High King Brian aboard a speedy little lugger but recently arrived from Liverpool to join the fleet of the Duke of Norfolk as a dispatch vessel—the sometime Papal lugger repaired and now fined out with a dozen swivil guns and three of the smaller rilled breechloading tubes of Sir Peter Fairley’s manufacture, two of them at stern and one at the bow on a pedestal mount which allowed for extreme flexibility of use. The extra weight had, of course, somewhat reduced the speed of which the vessel had originally been capable, but still she could sail rings around any other of the ships of the private fleet. His Grace had named her Cassius, noting that she still could flit like a butterfly, but that now she too could sting like a bee, fiery and long-ranging and most accurate stings out of the mouths of her one eight-pounder and two six-pounder rifles with their explosive shells.
Alone together, the king and the condottiere, both old campaigners and accustomed to privation, sat on the rough wooden stools with which the stonewalled chamber was furnished and sipped at their respective flasks of restorative.
Brian spoke first. “How much has Sir Ugo told you of events in Rome and elsewhere. Dux di Bolgia?”
Timoteo sighed and shook his head. “More than enough. Your Majesty. Alas, my poor native land and her miserable people. I have never really liked Moors, you know, even the Sicilian or Brindisi Moors. Not that I have anything against other ifriqans, you understand—the blacker ones often make for top-grade soldiers, like the Ghanian heavy infantry or the Ifriqan cavalry that came to Munster with me and my condotta.
“To think of the Moors despoiling Italy is bad enough, but for the blackhearted swine to bring in such as Macedonians and Croatians! Next they’ll likely run in pagan, barbarian hordes from the lands of Tartary. God help us all, even up here in Irland, if such as they get their way and retain the control of the Roman Papacy. I have written and dispatched to His Eminence Cardinal D’Este a letter asking if my condotta and I might not be of more use to him and his faction in Italy or Sicily than we are squatting there in Munster, but of course there has been no time for it to reach him or for his reply to reach me.” He sighed and looked down at his big, hard hands, the backs of them so thickly grown with black hair that it was sometimes difficult to see the white cicatrices left by old wounds. “I truly sympathize. Dux di Bolgia,” rumbled the voice
of the High King, “for it is never pleasant to think of one’s lands being laid waste by uncaring strangers when one is far away. But you need not be in Italy to help to forward the aims of the Italian Faction, you know? His Eminence writes me that can his faction regain Eireann and England for Rome, then there is little doubt that the man they support will be elected by the College of Cardinals, rather than another accursed Moor or a Spaniard, and I have replied to him that if he and his will aid me in firmly uniting all Eireann under its High King, I will not see it taken out from beneath Rome’s sway, despite the love I bear my cousin Arthur III Tudor, and my own beliefs that a Rome in England might be preferable to a Rome in faraway Italy.”
Timoteo nodded. “Your Majesty wants a new King in Munster. How soon?”
“Very soon,” replied Brian. “As soon as is possible after you get back to Munster, that soon. Take Sir Ugo back with you, and as soon as Tamhas is dead and this Righ Sean FitzRobert decently coronated, send our young knight up to me in Lagore with the sad news, the glad news . . . and the Star of Munster. At that point, I will lift the siege, send all my troops north, into Connachta. and you and yours will be then free to sail back to Italy, should you then so desire.”
Timoteo nodded once again. “Simple enough. Your Majesty. You have no need for a crack condotta in Irland, then? It is said that you and your house have certain bitter enemies in the north . . . ?”
It was Brian’s turn to nod. “And so I do. Dux di Bolgia, you are very well informed. But now I also have, thanks to my dear cousin. Arthur of England and Wales, one of his great captains on loan with his condotta of galloglaiches and Kalmyks. The man is Lord Commander of the Horse in England, has achieved many a stunning victory for Arthur, and even has his own private fleet of warships—three ships of the battle line and six smaller ones, including that fast lugger moored below. Between this innovative captain, his fierce condotta, and his strong fleet. I think that soon the Jewels of the north will be resting in my strongroom at Lagore.”
Walid Pasha courteously refused the suggestion and himself suggested that His Irish High Majesty and Sebastian Bey think up a less suicidal plan, for he was not about to essay to take Revenge and Thunderer into a place like Belfast Lough, for which he had no reliable charts and did not even know the tides, with God alone knowing just how the flanking forts might be armed or just how many warships might be moored within.