“What kind of mission, Hal?” demanded Bass, grim-faced.
“I really don’t know,” the archbishop answered. “Perhaps his majesty does, but if so his letter did not contain information of that nature—which is understandable, considering that he and I are not the only persons who can read Latin and this is, after all, a matter of state.”
Bass stared hard at the aged man for a moment, then asked, “Hal, what would likely happen to me and my family if I refused to go? After all, I’ve been constantly at war or at least in the field every spring, summer, autumn, and sometimes winter since I got to this world. I think I deserve some years of peace and relaxation with my wife and my son. Poor Krys is becoming a bitch because of my long absences and her resultant loneliness, plus her difficulties in adapting to this world and her new station in life. Joe, my son, didn’t even know who the hell I was after not seeing me for a year or more. Hal, I think I owe Krys and Joe as much as 1 owe Arthur . . . and a whole hell of a lot more than I’ll ever owe the ard-righ, Brian. Brian the Burly, my galloglaiches call him.”
“Bass, before I answer your last questions, let me say this: You say that you do not even speak the Irish language, yet you have just used two Irish terms, ard-righ and galloglaiches, and furthermore spoken them with exactly the proper accent; nor have you ever seemed to experience difficulty in mastering the various regional dialects of this English language, dissimilar as many of them are, one to the other. Sir Ali feels that you are well on the way to becoming fluent in basic Arabic. You seem to have acquired a decent command of German and not a little Khazan and Kalmyk from your man, Nugai, and from the Baron Melchoro a smattering of Portuguese and Spanish. You, my friend, are blessed with an ear for languages; you may not truly speak Irish, now, this minute, but if you put yourself to it, you will in short order.
“You have earned his majesty’s gratitude many times over in your service to him, his just cause, and the kingdom, Bass, so I doubt that he would be overharsh were you to refuse his request in this instance . . . had you a reasonable reason to so refuse. But you do not, Bass. . . . Now, hold your tongue, let me finish, please.
“You, at least, have a living family to which to return at the eventual conclusion of hostilities. Arthur, alas, has only his memories of his young wife and infant children, all of them done to hideous deaths by his sister-in-law, Angela, his dead brother’s demonic widow and her minions. Think you, also, on how many others of his majesty’s loyal supporters have been as much or even more absent from their own families and lands as have you from yours.
“No, friend Bass, I strongly urge you to accept and carry out his majesty’s request, in this instance. It is a reasonable assumption that you won’t be in Brian’s service long, in any case, for London soon must fall; that will be the bitter end of war in England, and Arthur most assuredly will want all his great captains and high nobility hard by him to aid him in setting the kingdom aright once more.
“So far as concerns her grace, your lady-wife, I have learned a great deal concerning human nature in more than two centuries of living and dealing with human beings, so trust me to win her over in your absence.”
CHAPTER
THE EIGHTH
When his grace, the Duke of Norfolk, and his road-weary column arrived back at Norwich Castle, Sir Richard Cromwell was awaiting them with an order to escort his grace to the presence of King Arthur III, at Greenwich Castle, his majesty’s current residence.
But while sitting at meat with his own officers and Sir Richard, Bass declared, “1 have just saddle-pounded my poor arse from here to the Scottish border and back by way of York, and I’m damned if I mean to further tenderize said arse so soon after such a ride, not when I’ve some fine, large, comfortable, and speedy ships moored half a day away from Norwich. The king did not say specifically that you bear me to him on the back of a horse, now did he, Sir Richard?”
The king’s emissary laid aside his knife, dabbed at his lips with a fine, linen panolino, and replied, “Why, no, your grace, no method of transport was specified in the royal orders. And speaking personally”—he grinned—”I would dearly love to go to Greenwich aboard one of the rightly renowned warships of your grace’s flotilla. My troopers can take the horses back by land.”
The matter was thus decided, and within the hour, Bass had dispatched a galloper to Walid Pasha, that Revenge might be ready to lift anchor and sail when he and his party arrived at the port.
Forewarned by Hal as to the reason for this royal summons, he left many of his usual entourage behind to attend to the preparation of the Squadron of Royal Tara Gallowglasses for what would most likely be another campaign—this one, however, on land and on horseback rather than at sea and aboard ships, though they ail might do some of the latter too, for all he knew.
Abbot Fergus felt it to be his holy duty to personally escort the patently murderous, thankfully recaptured Sassenach madman to his nursing order’s parent house, for all that the journey would take him across the widest width of the Kingdom of Scotland to the Western Isles. Having lost four brothers, some of his structures, and a number of his animals, the abbot simply felt that so proven-dangerous an afflicted one as Uilleam Kawlyer would be far better off in the larger, older, better-staffed parent house on the Holy Isle of lona. Immuring him on lona would serve a further purpose: Should he manage to again escape, there would be nowhere for him to go, precious few hiding places from which he might again stalk and murder the unwary, which was precisely how he had subsisted during his weeks at large.
The trip was made some easier for Fergus and the brothers who rode with him in that Sir Tormod, the Laird of MacGaraidh, had generously offered the loan of not only the five fine riding mules they all now forked, but an ancient wheeled bear cage in which to safely transport the madman to the far west, a span of sturdy draft oxen to draw it, and a sturdy lad to goad and tend the oxen and mules. The influential laird also had arranged for the defenseless monks to accompany a party of MacGhille Eoin clansmen back to Mull, the clansmen having served out the time that their chief had pledged them to the military service of King James. The noncombatants were to return in company with a similar party of MacDhughaill clansmen bound to Edinburgh to commence their year and a day of pledged service—which would protect them (and, incidentally, Sir Tormod’s mules, oxen, bear cage, and serving lad) in traversing the still-wild stretches of the lowlands. Abbot Fergus was most thankful for the laird’s generosity, and he had silently vowed to pray thrice every day for him and his.
The filthy, stinking, rag-clad madman spent most of the journey crouched in one corner of the tall iron-bound cage, muttering to himself in what either was gibberish or some heathen tongue which Fergus could not understand. Occasionally the lunatic would stand erect and scream out at the world in that same or some other variety of incomprehensible speech. But he did not often try to stand, for staying on his feet in the springless conveyance as it bounced and jounced from rut to rock to pothole along the ill-tended track was an effort foredoomed to failure, even given a plenitude of thick, stout oaken bars to which to cling.
To the knowledge of Abbot Fergus, this particular madman had never spoken an intelligible word to anyone from the very first day he had been brought to and placed in the care of the nursing order. Therefore, it was a distinct shock to the good abbot to hear himself addressed as he walked past the cage at dusk one day, addressed in excellent, if strangely accented, Latin.
Looking quickly about, he immediately realized that there was no one of the monks nearby and that the words could have come from none but the chained and caged Sassenach madman.
“You called me, my son?” he replied in the same tongue, still more than half convinced that the syllables uttered by the poor, murderous lunatic had only accidentally resembled Latin words.
“Is it your intention, Holy Father, that I die of the effects of exposure?” the madman inquired, sounding as sane and rational as any man Abbot Fergus had ever heard speak. “If you have no blankets to spare, can you not at least have this cage lined in straw or dried grass, wherein I can burrow when the cold winds of night beset me?”