“As for me … I did not lose my sanity, as you can see. The hypnotape courses had made me a respectable craftsman of jewelry and I had a fairish supply of gold and cut stones, even after Emmett had taken a share, so I established myself in York, which then as now was one of the King’s regional seats, and I prospered for a few years. Occasionally, I had letters from Emmett.
“The Irish High Kings had had an ages-old reputation for welcoming to their court at Tara artists and fine artisans of all descriptions and any nationality. With his well-earned Scottish title and his metallurgical abilities, Emmett soon became a favorite of the then High King, Brien VIII, and was even married to one of the multitudinous royal bastards. He was granted lands and the wherewithal to support him and his family, and invested with the title Swordsmith to the High King. It was through him that I came to the notice of King Henry; Hal and Brien VIII were third cousins and old friends.”
Foster cleared his throat. “Pardon, but I’d gotten the idea that a more or less permanent state of war existed between the Irish and the English.”
The Archbishop chuckled. “Right, Bass, but only up to a point. The High Kings have not formally declared a foreign war in centuries, for all that they have and do now maintain the largest standing army for a country their size in the known world. Ninety percentum of their fighting is internal, and never in all the long years I’ve been here have there been as many as five consecutive years of peace in Ireland.
“These days, men speak of the Five Kings—which figure does not include the High King, who is less an Arthur-type king than a referee—but there have been times when there were seven, or nine, or even eleven. Most of the borders are hotly contested; those of Meath, the High King’s, are the only generally constant and unquestioned ones . . . but only because he happens to be a strong, ruthless man with a large armed force, not because of his rank.
“In those long-ago and yet-to-be days when we were preparing to project out of our own world and time, Emmett used to rant and rave about the long and brutal and illegal occupation of Ireland by the English and later the British, but in the here and now it’s easy to see just why they invaded Ireland . . . well, one of the reasons. Whenever the kinglets of Ulaid Araidi and Laigin and Muma aren’t busy fighting each other, they like nothing better than raiding England, Scotland, France, Spain, even Scandinavia and Iceland. And h used to be worse before Ailich and Connacht, with their bigger fleets, became involved in their New World settlements to the extent they now are. Perhaps, after the current unpleasantness be done, Arthur will put paid to these old accounts.”
As 1501 became 1502, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, lay dying and nothing the physicians could do for or to him seemed effacious—bleeding and purging only seemed to make the sixteen-year-old boy weaker; rare and expensive medicines compounded of unicorn horn, genuine mummy dust and other such esoteric ingredients were promptly vomited up. Arthur’s royal father was frantic, for if Arthur should die, there would be only little Henry, and if something should befall him, too … the horrifying specter of the vicious and long-drawn-out Wars of the Roses could then bid well to follow the King’s death.
In one spate of his perennial brainracking, he thought of Cousin Brien and that monarch’s patronage of all sorts of artists and craftsmen.
Perhaps . . . perhaps the current roster might include a physician or two . ..?
Master Harold, the goldsmith, was locked in his private sanctum, carefully completing the wax carving for a bit of jewelry promised to his old friend James Whyffler, when an insistent knocking at the barred door finally brought him, more than a little angry, to throw open the portal and grimly confront the journeyman who had dared to so disturb his master. White with fear, the young man had stuttered that a noble visitor, a foreigner by his dress, had not only refused to return another day, but had solemnly promised to notch the journeyman’s nose and ears did he not speedily present his master.
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