Moreover, le chevalier bore the power to enforce his will, both in his sharp sword and his strong arms and in the fact that whilst under lease-contract to the Holy See, le rot’s ship Impressionant and all within her were the royally assigned responsibility of said nobleman—in effect, he spoke for the king.
In actual practice, however, the young man needed neither his sword nor his royal authority to win over most of the officers and crew to his way to thinking, as might have many another French nobleman of equal rank. Le chevalier was no mere pompous, wellborn figurehead, no useless, royal supercargo such as the ship had borne far too often.
The twenty-five-year-old nobleman could read, write, and reckon; he could plot a true course and keep the galleon to it, by day or by night. Indeed, the grizzled sailing master had been heard to opine that le chevalier was a born and most highly gifted navigator—generous praise indeed, from a man who in his forty-odd years at sea had seen most of the known waters of the world.
Le chevalier had won the worship of the crew in another way. He seemed intent upon learning every task and routine connected with the working of the ship and, not content to learn merely by instruction and observation, could right often be found hauling and drawing with the common seamen, or barefoot and shirtless high on a topsail yard when sailwork was ordered, he and his squire, side by side.
It was after the less surefooted squire had plunged to his death from high in the rigging that the sailing master was at last able to prevail upon the knight to eschew his own aerial activities.
“M’lord chevalier, you must know that the king’s officers would have off my head were 1 to sail back with word that you had died while reefing sail. Not that they’d believe me, of course—they’d likely rack me until I told them I’d murdered you, then burn me, like as not. If you must have dangerous work to do, why I’ll give you a cannon to captain. You’ve attended the gun drills, sir, so just pick the gun you want—bronze or iron, cannon or culverin.”
“And if that gun blows up and kills me?” Le chevalier smiled lazily. “You’ll still have to report a dead nobleman, Captain.”
‘There’s always that, yes.” The sailing master nodded. “But then I’d have pieces of a blown-out cannon to show, and such a death as that could be come by as easily ashore as at sea.”
The young knight had been ineffably bored in Livorno, perpetual drunkenness, yarn-spinning, and the occasional dockside brawl not being to his interest. Invited to a tourney at the seat of a local count, he had been served well by his weapons skills, horsemanship, and strength, but his birthright of Norman ferocity in the fray had secretly horrified his hosts and opponents, to whom a tourney was become more an elaborate game than aught else. There were no more tourneys proclaimed while his ship remained in the harbor of Livorno.
Once the warship was securely moored beside a wharf in the fine deep water harbor of Palermo, a man in a strange but rich livery came aboard to announce the imminent arrival of one Sir Ugo D’Orsini, who would conduct le chevalier to his audience with Cardinal D’Este, Archbishop of Palermo.
D’Este, alone, received the French knight, in a small study in another part of his palace from the spacious solar in which he had received the Duce di Bolgia. Nor was any time wasted; once the wine was poured and the servant departed, the cleric got down to business.
“Sir Marc, your ship will be sailing in company with a brace of merchant galleons from this port to Anfa Antiqua, there to be joined by other ships, which then will sail by the most direct route north to Irland, the Kingdom of Munster, to be more exact.
“The two ships with which you will depart Palermo are being used to transport the noted condottiere Duce Timoteo di Bolgia, and his company. The landfall in Morocco will be for the purpose of picking up another condotta whose contract to the caliphate has expired.”
“Your eminence,” said le chevalier cautiously, “the Holy See might have leased four or even five transports of his majesty for the price of the Impressionant, and they would have carried more troops with less crowding and discomfort than a warship.”
D’Este sipped his wine. “You misunderstand, Sir Marc. While your ship will doubtless carry di Bolgia and some of his officers and bodyguards, as well as my personal representative, Sir Ugo, the primary purpose of sending along Impressionant and the brace of Tunisian crompsters that will rendezvous with you off Malta is to protect the transports, which will be far too laden and overcrowded to fight easily or well . . . should fighting at sea become necessary, as I earnestly hope it will not.”
“One would rather doubt that it will, save by purest chance, your eminence,” le chevalier assured him. “No pirate in his right mind would be anxious to trade cannonades with a fine new ship of the line, nor would he be willing to close with a bevy of troopships brimful of professional soldiers, not to even mention the pair of Afriquan corsair crompsters he’d have nibbling at his flanks the while.”
Although, upon first introduction, each eyed the other boldly, almost to the point of impudence, like two strange dogs, le chevalier and il duce apparently liked what they saw in each other, much to the relief of Sir Ugo D’Orsini. The Roman knight had been fearful of an instant and mutual dislike, which would perforce have necessitated for him an exceedingly stressful voyage of striving to keep two dangerous but valuable men from each other’s throats.
Bass and his battered but eminently victorious flotilla had been back in Norfolk for a bare two days when an old friend, Sir Richard Cromwell, and a small escort rode in from the king’s camp under the walls of London. As they all dined in the lofty hall of the ducal residence, the officer of King Arthur’s Horse Guards imparted them news of court and camp and the slowly ongoing siege.
His brown eyes twinkling, he announced, “The Lady Mary O’Day did last month present his majesty with a fine, lusty boychild, having a full head of dark-red hair. His majesty is most pleased and proud. True, it is the fourth child born him since Candlemas, but the other three all were females, and one of those died at a week, its dam a fortnight later.
“Barely a one of the foreign ambassadors and their retinues remain within London, either from desire to eat regularly or due to knowledge that the city is doomed to fall soon. All of them have come bowing and scraping into the royal camp, of course, and the king has lodged them here and there at castles and manors around about the countryside, though all to date south of the river.
“His grace, Sir Francis, Duke of Northumberland, writes from the court of Emperor Egon that we need have no fear of the once-threatened Swedish-Norse-Danish Crusade. The prime mover of that business was, as all know, King Hans, and Emperor Egon simply assured his Danish majesty that was he so unwise as to embark upon that Crusade against England or Ireland, those Danish men so fortunate as to return at all would return to a much smaller and far less rich Kingdom of Denmark. Now, with King Hans busily occupied with strengthening his borders and adding to his fleet and his coastal defenses, the Swedish and Norse kings seem to have lost what little interest they once had in the undertaking.
“His grace went on to say that the emperor has sent word to both Rome and Genoa that any further attempted incursions of the Genoese against his ally, Savoy, will lead him to believe that it is the wish of his holiness, Pope Abdul, that a state of war should exist between Rome and the Empire.”
“Damn, the boy is cracking the whip, isn’t he?” exclaimed Bass. “Good for him! I’ll bet old Abdul is chewing his motheaten beard in frustration.”
“His grace further advises,” Cromwell continued after a long draft of wine, “that his daughter, the Empress Arabella, was at the time of writing heavy with child. Emperor Egon and the imperial court were most pleased, he says, when he told them of the fact that no Whyffler woman has ever been delivered of a girlchild for nigh on two centuries.
“Your grace, his majesty has been kept minutely advised of your activities and exploits by Sir Paul Bigod and others. As ever, your grace pleases his majesty mightily in all regards, and he was reticent to ask that you halt your commendable sea activities for even a brief period, but you were asked for by name by a most distinguished personage, and he had no option.