“Therefore, I doubt me that any captain of note would hire either himself or his company out for a campaign in England or Wales. Or even in Scotland, for that matter.
“So, if that is the offer, your eminence, thank you, but no, not for one thousand ducats per day, per man!”
“Your bluntness verges close upon insult, di Bolgia,” snapped Cardinal Sicola. The cardinal seemed upon the point of saying more when D’Este waved a placating hand.
“Your grace misunderstands. 1 have no intention of securing his services for England, for I can see no point in prolonging an affair that it may have been ill-advised to even commence. I feel that a few years of benign neglect by Rome may end in accomplishing far more in England than would the services of a score of armies. So rest your mind on that issue.
“But let us two touch now upon the subject of geography, eh? There is a largish island just to the west of England, is there not, your grace?”
Di Bolgia nodded curtly. “Yes, your eminence. It contains a number of tiny, so-called kingdoms, plus one leader who calls himself something equivalent to regno grande but usually has even less land than any of the others and no real power over them. The folk are called ‘Irlandese,’ and I’ve soldiered with many of them over the years. They are good fighters individually, but respond ill to any sort of discipline and seem to stay drunk most of the time.
“I know little of the internal politics of the land, save that I am led to believe that the various kingdoms have been warring amongst themselves constantly for generations at least, possibly for centuries. There seem to be three or more racial strains native to the island, and they make war along racial lines, too.
“It is rumored that one of these little kingdoms has implanted one or more colonies called in totality ‘Great Irland’ somewhere south of Vinland and north of Nueva Espana.”
D’Este nodded, smiling. “You are well informed, your grace. Now, tell me, would you hire out yourself and your company for an initial contract of two years’ service in Irland?”
Timoteo sipped delicately at his wine and dabbed at his full, sensual lips with a lace cuff before replying with a question of his own. “Under what circumstances of initial service, your eminence—aggressive or defensive? That is, will we be expected to quit our ships and make an opposed landing under fire from the Irlandese? Such tactics are always risky and could cost me a hefty percentum of my company in killed, drowned, and wounded.”
D’Este held up a hand and shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no, your grace, you are assured of a safe landing, offloaded from ship to quay directly, under the numerous guns of a fortified port city which will be your base of operations, thenceforth. The port city is one of the principal cities of Rome’s firm and steady ally, King Tkmhas of Munster.
“Until very recently, King T^mhas was being very hard pressed by the troops of the high king, Brian VIII, and he has lost more than a third of his realm to his enemy. But now the high king has withdrawn the bulk of his forces from the disputed lands and is devoting his far from inconsiderable talents to an attempt to do that which never has been done in all of known history. It is Brian’s aim to unite all or at least the most of Irland under his leadership against Rome and Holy Mother the Church.
“This vital monarch has already won over some of the other kings, and he and they throughout all the lands they control have seized Church-owned properties and treasures, ships, gunpowder mills and supplies of gunpowder and priests* powder. Shocking to state, some Irland-born clergy have turned renegade and are now making powder for the high king, unhallowed powder.”
Although he listened in respectful silence, this last did not impress di Bolgia. He knew how to make gunpowder himself, from scratch, and hallowed or unhallowed, it all did the same deadly work in pistol, arquebus, cannon, or petard. And he liked what he was hearing of this High King Brian. Small, relatively weak states lay constantly at the mercy of larger, stronger ones, and the only answer was to get out and conquer, consolidate lands, become a larger, stronger state oneself, a state to be feared and therefore respected by its peers-in-power.
Such a man as this King Brian, he thought, should make an interesting antagonist, and when once his two-year contract to Rome had been filled and he and his company would be in Irland anyway, he might explore the possibility of hiring on with the armies of the high king. After all, every legend he had heard over the long years had reputed Irland to be a land rich in gold, silver, and jewels.
“Sebastian Bey,” said Walid Pasha solemnly, “it were wise now to arm. For after the close and exchange of broadside cannonades, to order grappling, I shall, and then we all must board and fight or die as God wills. The two larger sloops have orders to await the end of the cannonade, then to sail up and lock onto the enemy galleon at stem and at stern and board her from those directions; the plan will give us more men on board her and force her complement to fight foes at both front and rear, which should serve to disconcert them to a degree.”
Bass had long since ceased being amazed at the overall competence of the master of the ship they had renamed the Revenge. He would find a way to accomplish virtually whatever task he was set, and he would accomplish it well, with his own special flourish.
Nor did the other officers and men of the warship seem to resent the fact that, for all their apparent freedom, they were little better than military slaves. There was no animosity— cither overt or covert—toward the Englishmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, and Scots. The Mediterraneans deferred to officers and sergeants, of course, but seemed to accept the mass of other ranks as just another batch of landlubber soldiers shipped aboard to do the fighting and, they hoped, the dying while they the sailors handled the ship.
In the sterncastle cabin that he had insisted they share with him aboard the crowded ship, Sir Ali and Nugai assisted Bass to arm. After stripping down to his silken drawers and crotch-length linen undertunic, he first strapped on a horn-and-boiled-leather codpiece and made certain that his penis and scrotum were tucked well inside the protective device and were not in danger of being pinched by its edges. Then he pulled on a pair of tight-legged breeches which incorporated broad straps under the instep of each foot. Squatting, Nugai gartered these just below the knee to prevent them riding up the leg should the straps break.
While Sir Ali held it gaped for him, Bass slipped head and arms into a long-sleeved, hip-long quilted garment—soft finished leather outside, fine velvet inside, raw wool in between— and the nimble yellow-brown fingers of the waiting Nugai secured the dozen points that fastened upper and lower garments together.
Bass stepped into his cavalry boots, made to his exact specifications by a bemused and wondering bootier. Into stitched pockets spaced closely all around the leg of the boot and extending from just below the knee down to the ankle, Sir Ali and Nugai inserted splints of fine armor steel. The steel cop to guard the patella was built into the thigh-high boots, as too was the panel of ring mail that protected the tendons in the backs and sides of the knee. Additional stitched-pocket, steel-splint arrangements on the thigh leathers’ fronts and exposed outer sides gave reasonable leg protection without the cumbersome leg armor still worn by many horsemen over their boots.
Bass had decided to do without a mail hauberk, but Sir Ali and Nugai would not hear of such insanity, and he grudgingly but obediently knelt and held up his arms that the two shorter men might fit the thirty-odd pounds of riveted-steel rings. It sagged to well below his crotch, but Sir Ali, searching out certain larger rings and threading through them a length of hide thong, gathered up several inches of length and belted the armor so that a portion of the weight was carried by his hips.
This armor was all of the best quality; it had been made for him, to his exact measurements, by King Arthur’s own resident Milanese armorers. Due mostly to continual badgering on the parts of Sir Ali, Nugai, and certain other members of his well-meaning staff, Bass had spent many a long hour in this armor—afoot and ahorse, practicing with a plethora of weapons, tilting and riding cross-country in good weather and foul. But none of that meant that he had learned to like wearing the hot, heavy, confining, and basically uncomfortable collection of steel plates, mesh, bolts, rivets, and buckles.