“Uncle William, you have overstepped your authority. These brave officers are but just come in from half a month of riding and fighting in this bitter weather, and right was with them to refuse your unreasonable commands. And our own physicians’ pills and nostrums are enough; you need not [iend north for more.
“All the camp knows that bad blood runs twixt you and Squire Forster here, as all know that you’ve not the stomach to meet him, man to man, at swordpoints, as gentlemen
should, to settle their differences. You’ll not abuse the position we gave you to torture a fine Captain into humility. Do you ken us, Uncle?”
He turned to Foster and Webster. “Those blades are Tara?
How came you by them?”
But Collier refused to let things ride. His speech slurred due to a bitten tongue, he rose to lean against the head of the table, needing the support.
“Your Majethy should not have humiliated me before theeth lowborn pigth.” He waved a hand toward Foster and Webster. “I have given you power and victorieth, Arthur; perhapth my geniuth had been better uthed by Holy Mother the Church.”
Growling guttural German curses, his big, hairy hand grasping the hilt of a cinquedea dagger—its two-foot blade so wide as to be reminiscent of a Roman short sword—the
Reichsherzog started forward, but Arthur’s arm barred his path.
“No, Cousin Wolf.” Then, to Collier, “Do our ears deceive us, or did you threaten us with desertion to our enemies, Earl William? For, if you did so, why, we shall be most happy to speed you on your way. There be at least a hundred spies and agents of the Usurper in this camp. We know them all Several are on your staff or among your guards, and we are certain that they would be easily enticed to help you to journey to London, where some very inventive torturers and, in time, a stake await you. The Church does not forgive, nor do Her servants trust turncoat traitors.”
Suddenly realizing what his precipitate words had wrought, Collier had paled, his hands gripping the edge of the table so hard that his big knuckles stood out stark white against its dark wood. “But. . . but, I gave Your Majethty victorieth. It wath I who ethtablithed the powder manufactory at Whyffler Hall. I gave dithipline to your army and formed it into ordered, uniform unith and brought thanity to your thythtem of military rankth. I—”
The King left the chamber, trailed by the Archbishop and the Reichsherzog, the pikemen politely escorting Foster and Webster in the King’s wake.
CHAPTER 5
The snow lay deep on ancient Eboracum as the long, well-guarded column of wagons and wains, heavy-laden with the component parts and the raw materials of Pete Fan-ley’s gunpowder-manufacturing operation, neared. With William Collier across the border to Scotland and Whyffler Hall situated but a few miles from that same border, a hastily called conference—King Arthur, Archbishop Harold, Reichsherzog Wolfgang, Sir Francis Whyffler, and Foster—had agreed that the vital operation would be safer and more centrally located in eastern Yorkshire.
As the ice-sheathed spires of York topped the horizon before him, Foster reflected that he would not care to be beginning rather than ending this hellish trek. He now knew exactly why folk of this kingdom seldom tried to travel far in winter and why their various armies almost never fought then.
The distance was not great, less than seventy-five miles, measured on the map in his atlas. But such few roads, he soon discovered, as existed were hardly worthy of being called such at even the best of times, which this time decidedly was not. Where the deep-rutted, potholed tracks did lie, they wandered up hill and down dale, curved back upon themselves, and ran every way but straight, so that his huge, ungainly “command” averaged no more than three miles progress on good days. In the foothills of the Pennines, that figure was halved.
Tight security had had to be constantly maintained, as well, whether on the march or encamped, for survivors of the French-led Crusaders smashed last summer were wandering, starving, about the countryside they needs must traverse, huge aggregations of well-armed robbers prowled by day and by night; and Scot reavers were not left behind until the column had crossed the Tees and were into Swaledale itself.