“Perhaps a more telling point is that Brian has temporarily canceled the long-planned visit of Irreh clergy to York to take part in the ongoing conferences to establish a Northern European Church which would be completely free of Roman domination or influence. He gives Gilbert— who was to have led that delegation—one excuse after the other, each thinner and less believable than the one preceding it.
“Gilbert de Courcey has come to believe that in order to retain him and all of Ireland for Rome, this Cardinal D’Este—who is a very powerful man in the Italian Faction of the College of Cardinals, only a little less so than the acknowledged leader of that faction. Cardinal Prospero Sicola—has laid before the High King some extremely tempting offers of one kind or another and that Brian is trying to see just how much more he can squeeze out of D’Este before he makes a decision to go or to stay.”
Rupen grimaced. “And I would just bet he hasn’t bothered to mention this possible change of heart and allegiance to his cousin King Arthur, either. Meanwhile, he’s using some of his cousin’s best troops to what ends, would you imagine, Hal?”
“Why, to do what he has been trying to do as long as he’s been High King, of course. Rupen,” declared Hal. “He bums to make himself true High King of all of Ireland, the only real monarch on that island, with the same kind and degree of power that Arthur enjoys in England and Wales, or that James enjoys in Scotland.
And, actually, what he desires, if ever he brings it to pass, might be the best thing that ever has chanced in that deeply riven, always unhappy land of endless wars, cruel warlords and rapacious armies constantly on the march.
“And, as I sit here thinking of it, that just may be the valuable something that Rome, in the persons of Sicola and D’Este. have offered the power-hungry High King of Ireland: in point of fact. Rupen, were I inclined to gamble, I would bet every ounce of gold I own that that is precisely what those conniving Italians have proffered to Brian VIII: support of the Church, henceforth, in his warring to unify Ireland under his sole dominion.
“You may not know this, Rupen. but the Church of this world has done everything in her power to retard or actually prevent the small, weak states of the Christian sphere from uniting or being united into larger, more powerful ones. True feudalism has been kept in full flower far longer here than in our world and time scale. Simply to retain power and make money from the sales of gunpowder and niter, the Church has been a truly divisive force in the affairs of men, splitting any natural allies, fomenting wars, and bending temporal rulers to her will with threats of excommunication, interdiction, and the refusal to sell gunpowder to those whose actions or attitudes were displeasing.
“The principal reason that Ireland is not today united is the action of the Church. Rupen. Brian or his father and predecessor would long since have conquered or otherwise won over the whole of that island had not Rome repeatedly hindered their aims through support of their opponents. And even at this late date, were Roman support and aid to be withdrawn, a very few years would see Brian precisely where he and his father before him always aspired to be.”
“You’ll send word of this to the king, of course?” asked Rupen.
Harold of York shook his head. “No, Rupen, nothing of this is as yet hard, provable fact. Why should I unnecessarily perturb His Majesty with mere happenings in Ireland and some of my suppositions as to what they might portend? Poor Arthur has more than enough problems to weigh down his mind and occupy his time already. Besides, there would be nothing that he could do about any of it.”
“Well.” Rupen Ademian set his jaw. “He could at least bring back His Grace of Norfolk, his men and his fleet. Why should he let them fight and suffer and die for his enemies … or for one who seems about to ally himself with Arthur’s enemies?”
“Never you fear,” said the Archbishop matter-of-factly. “When or if Arthur III Tudor has need of Bass Foster, he will be brought back to England … and that quickly. But he has no real need of him and his squadron and fleet just now. in this kingdom. They all—the men and the horses— must be ted, in war or in peace, so why not let another realm take of its substance to feed and provide for them, eh?
“And, Rupen, you have clearly misunderstood many aspects of this discussion. Brian is in no way Arthur’s enemy. Indeed, he and the late Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire were the only two then-ruling monarchs to offer our excommunicant king sanctuary in their realms during the very darkest days, a few years ago. for all that had they taken him in, they could then have been themselves excommunicated and the lands they ruled been put under interdict. No, Brian is a good friend both to his cousin Arthur and to England, but he is too a very ambitious man. living with a fixation that he die as the real High King of all Ireland, and he is willing to do anything that he must to win to that lifetime goal.
“Nor is Rome any longer an enemy. Rupen. Abdul has been dead for more than six months now, and they are no closser to electing a man to succeed him than they were on the very day he died. The whole length of Italy is become a battleground between the competing factions of the College of Cardinals and their lay supporters: the very city of Rome, indeed, was a veritable slaughterhouse before the factions came of one mind and declared that no more fighting would take place in or close around it. The Moorish Faction and the Spanish Faction, which two have for long been loosely allied, have brought vast numbers of their more warlike countrymen into Italy and have even gone so far as to use Papal funds to hire mercenaries from the Balkans to further ravage and intimidate Italy and Italians.
“Thus outnumbered, the Italian Faction and the European Faction, also long loosely allied, have brought or caused to be brought into Italy troops and mercenaries from Hungary, Burgundy. France, the Empire. Languedoc, the Low Countries, and even Scandinavia. There has not been fighting of this breadth and scope in most of Italy for a century and a half, or more, Rupen.
“So, as matters now stand, as of my most lately received letters, Rome is become completely incapable of handling her own affairs and businesses, much less meddling in those of other, secular realms. If the Moors or the Spaniards win, of course, it will assuredly be back to dirty business, as usual: but should the Italian or the European faction be triumphant or singe the opposition so sorely that an accommodation of some nature can be worked out, then we may find that what I and the others have been here planning may, after all, be unnecessary and best dismantled and abandoned, before it go farther.”
Looking troubled, Rupen said, “Hal, how much do you know of Bass Foster’s life before he was projected to this world? It’s not just idle curiosity—I have a pressing reason for asking you, but I’d like to know more about him before I say anything more.”
The old churchman shrugged his bony shoulders. “Not too much, I’m afraid, Rupen, only what he has volunteered from time to time over the years I’ve known him. He was a man of forty-three years of age when he came to this world, which would make him close to fifty now. He had been married back there, back then, two or three times.
“His entire house was projected here, you know, with him still in it. as well as several cats, some house mice, and even some flying squirrels, which last became acclimated and are slowly spreading out from the environs of Whyffler Hall. I believe that he was born in Virginia and he was living somewhere on the banks of the Potomac River in either a suburban or a rural setting at the time of projection. He had at one time seen military service, I think, as an officer. When I once asked of him why he had had in his house the equipment and the supplies for reloading shotgun shells, he mentioned something about shooting skeet . . . whatever kind of bird or beast that may be.
“He speaks and behaves and carries himself like a cultured, educated man, and he once mentioned that his family’s roots went far back in Virginia, to or near to the colonial period. But I doubt that he was really wealthy; his house, though comfortable enough by any standards, was not that of a person of real means.”