When the road crossed another which led away to the north, they followed the new one, still skirting the lough, which looked grey and cold under a soggy, lowering sky full of rainclouds.
Clad in court attire covered for protection from the elements and journey soil with jackboots and a hooded cloak, Bass forked a dark bay rounsey troop horse. Not sure just what might chance on this risky business he was undertaking, he had left his invaluable spotted destrier, Bruiser, in Armagh, in the dedicated care of two of his squires, his pages, and his servants. A fine high courser was being led behind him by one squire, while the other led the packhorse laden with his armor and most of his weapons. But his Tara-steel sword was at his side and the loaded and primed flintlock horse pistols rode in the pommel holsters, ready for whatever might chance.
Behind him and his gentlemen and officers trailed a column of his more easily controlled galloglaiches and Wolfgang’s disciplined Kalmyks—a large enough force to discourage bandits and to make any prospective attacker think twice, but not sufficiently large a number to give the impression of an invasion of Ulaid. They all rode warily, erect in the saddle, swords loose in the sheaths, holsters unbuckled, axes or long wheellocks borne across the withers of steeds, spears unslung from shoulders and gripped in hands, ferrules in sockets. All these riders were veterans; their eyes were never still, darting gazes here and there, their ears listened intently for untoward sounds or sudden orders … in vain.
Bass was surprised. He was come to within actual sight ofRigh Conan Ruarc Mac Dallain’s new capital of Oentreib, at the northeast corner of Lough Neagh, before he saw a party a bit larger than his own riding upon the road down from the north. He halted the column then and called for Sir Ali, his herald, and Sir Colum, who spoke both Gaelic and French, as well as English, in case there might be need of a translator between the Arab herald and whoever was leading the Ulaid force now bearing down on them at a fast amble. They rode fully armed, that force, their helms in place though not yet closed, their advance preceded by a mighty clanging and clanking, squeaking and rattling of their equipment and horse gear that almost drowned out the clip-clopping of shod hooves on the road.
Feeling as much as hearing the ripple of movement behind him in his own column, Bass raised his empty hand warningly, for a shot accidentally discharged now or the sudden flash of a drawn blade might well precipitate a pitched battle, and that could be disastrous this deep into Ulaid with a relatively small force.
But he kept his gaze locked upon the leaders of the approaching horsemen. One pistol shot, or if those spears standing up above the ranks of riders should be lowered to the horizontal, and he would give the order that would put his own force into battle formation. They looked to be somewhat outnumbered and they might all be slain in an engagement, but knowing his troopers and gentlemen as well as he did, he knew damned well that they would take a fair proportion of their attackers with them.
The splendid Venetian long glass that Walid Pasha had temporarily loaned him in exchange for his binoculars showed that, although well and fully armed by mediaeval standards, the oncoming troops were not all bearing firearms of any description and that many of those who were looked to be supplied with antique matchlocks.
“And there is not much more difficult to use in battle on horseback than a two-foot long matchlock pistol,” he thought to himself, recalling his early days with Sir Francis Whyffler’s troop when a good number of the troopers were so armed and thus had been forced to depend upon strong right arms and edge weapons than upon the tricky, often useless (save as an unwieldy club), always unreliable handguns.
On the other hand, he and his force all bore either wheellocks or Pete Fairley’s best flintlocks. The gatlog-laiches carried one brace of pistols in the pommel holsters and a second brace in their boot tops, and like as not yet another one or two thrust under their belts, or a wheellock long gun slung across their backs. The lighter-armed Kalmyk’s long guns were flintlocks, like their brace of pistols, in addition to which, about a third of them still carried their old crossbows, for emergencies, they averred when questioned.
So, yes, he and his force could easily empty a fairish number of the saddles of the approaching column long before it came to the point of hack-and-slash.
Suddenly, he noted something not before seen at the head of the oncoming troops, and he again lifted the long glass to his eye.
CHAPTER
THE TENTH
Harold, Archbishop of York, sank back into his chair and regarded his still-unemptied plate, saying to his dining companion across the small table, “Rupen, something about those lamb patties tickles in me a far, far distant memory of how food tasted when I was just a little boy, in twentieth-century America.”
“In what year were you bom, Hal?” asked Rupen. “And where, if I may ask?”
The old man nodded. “Of course you may, my friend. I was bom in 1968, in Tempe, Arizona. My mother and my father both were educators at the university there. I was the first of their three children.”
“Then that answers your memory-tickle, Hal. A whole lot of folks then cooked outside, over charcoal grills, and that’s just how I did these hamburgers. I rummaged through the palace kitchens until I found a grill that would more or less fit one of these larger braziers, but that wasn’t the real problem. No, getting ground lamb at all was what drove me into a near-tizzy.
“You see, cooks here and now either have their assistants chop meat up fine with a knife or render it into a virtual paste with pestles in humongous mortars. Nobody here ever heard of a damned meat grinder—just another labor-saving device nobody here seems to need or want.”
“So then how did you obtain one, Rupen?” inquired Hal. “Make it?”
Rupen grinned. “Not quite. One of Pete Fairley’s smiths made one to my specs and drawings. You know, otherwise primitive as the most of them are over in the Royal Armory, a lot of them are damned bright, verging on brilliant, a few of them men who can’t even read or write.”
“Oh, come now, Rupen.” Hal shook a finger chidingly at his host. “Of all people, you must know that mere education has little to do with the native intelligence of human beings, that in fact it may stunt natural abilities to some degree. No, many people here and now cannot read and write, have never had the opportunity to leam, but this very fact means that the memory of your average man or woman, here and now, is astounding—by the standards of those worlds from which you and I came. I have met and worked with common men owning a prodigious recall. Moreover, I understand that in societies even more primitive than is England—the Highland culture of Scotland or the Irish, for instance—those inheritors of the old, pagan druidic cult, called filid by the Irish and something akin to fahda by the Scots, are still capable of recalling and chanting at one sitting literally hundreds of rhymed verses of genealogical and historical accounts that go backward in time for a millennium or more.”
“Speaking of the Irish, Hal, have you had word from His Grace of Norfolk? You did receive a letter from Ireland, I believe?” said Rupen.
A slight smile tugged at the corners of the archbishop’s thin lips. “You are well informed, Rupen. But, in answer, yes, I did receive a letter from Ireland but no, it was not from Bass Foster, but rather from an old and dear friend, Gilbert de Courcey. Bishop of Dublin.” His smile became a frown, and he added, “That letter included a few facts that I find most disturbing, too, Rupen.
“It would seem that the High King, Brian VIII, King Arthur’s actual cousin—who at one time was so anxious to see Arthur and England triumph over the forces of Rome that he dispatched a full squadron, fully equipped and with mounts and baggage, of gallowglasses to help to fill out the ranks of the royal horse—may be having second thoughts on the matter of a New Rome in England. De Courcey owns proof that not only is Brian corresponding with a certain Cardinal D’Este and clandestinely meeting in out-of-the-way places with agents in Papal employ, but he has adopted two such agents—both Italian knights, most likely Papal carpet-knights—into his royal household and has dispatched them both to Bass Foster’s entourage, most asssuredly to spy upon him for their masters, both lay and ecclesiastical.