“My brother, Roberto, will be in command of the company in my absence. Give the men no more than two more days in that town, then drag every swinging dick back into camp and take as much as another day to straighten them up, but I want you and them under the walls of Palermo in eight days’ time.
“Giovanni, if any damage comes to these damned olive trees or to those vineyards, it will be on your head. They’re the reason for this so-called campaign, after all.
“Arpad, any decent riding or draft animals that fall to hand are the property of my company. Let the men keep whatever other portable loot they find in there. No prisoners,
though; I prefer ransoms in something more substantial than olive oil and casks of sour wine. And you know what to do if any of them try to drag any women along.
“Ottorino, in addition to my axmen, I’ll be wanting twenty dragoons. Lieutenant Pandolfo will command them, the sumpters, and the remounts. Take my smaller tent, and food and grain for all the men and beasts for four days. See my man, Pietro, back at camp for my chest of better clothing. He’ll be coming, too; see to it.”
Roberto di Bolgia, thought the messenger, might have been almost a twin of his famous brother, so similar were their faces, the set of their blue eyes, the wavy ripples of their dark-brown hair, their bristling mustaches and straight-bridged noses, and the dark blueness of their shaven cheeks and chins. But the younger was a couple of fingers shorter than the elder, owned a physique not quite as massive, and lacked the upper half of his left ear.
As the duce finished his instructions to Ottorino, Roberto asked, “But what of the royal garrison, lord brother? If we leave the town unoccupied, they might have to retake it whenever they get here.”
Duce Timoteo laughed coldly. “Do the bastards good to do a bit of real fighting for a change. They were supposed to have been here two weeks agone, weren’t they? Well, then, we’ve done the job for which we supposedly are going to be paid . . . someday, in some coin or other. If they drag their oversized feet for so long a time that these feisty Sicilians have time to repair their walls and gates and rearm sufficiently to stand them off, then so be it!
“No, you all adhere to the schedule I’ve here outlined. Let his Neapolitan majesty overtax some folk somewhere who aren’t as good at defending themselves, say I.”
Taking a brass ewer and an empty cup from the ground near his feet, the duce filled the one from the other and thrust the measure of wine toward the messenger. “Best drink whilst you can, Sir Ugo. Four days hence, I mean to be in Palermo, which is going to mean hard riding for us all, with precious few stops and damned short ones, even then. We’ll see if your horsemanship and endurance matches your courage, sirrah.”
The Swedish caravel Sjohdst, Master Lars von Asnen commanding, heavy-laden with a hold full of pig iron, copper ingots, casks of stockfish, and a few casks of priests’ powder and a deck cargo of timber and resin, chanced across the strange ship only a day’s easy sailing out of the Seine’s mouth.
Whilst the master, hastily summoned onto the quarterdeck from an inspection of the hold below, was carefully uncasing his own, personal, high-quality long-glass, his first officer filled him in on what little informtion had been so far ascertained in regard to the strange vessel.
“She’s a four-masted galleon, pierced for about thirty guns, though all her ports are just now closed. She looks to be carvel-built, which could mean she hails from the Middle Sea … the south, anyway.”
“What’s her ensign?” asked von Asnen brusquely.
“The topmost is Papal . . . Roman Papal, that is. The lower is one I don’t recognize.”
“Papal, hey? Well, that would tally. Old Abdul has been shipping Crusaders and supplies into England, fleets of ’em. Likely this is some straggler. I’ve no time for crusades, but the king did allow this one be proclaimed throughout the land, so let’s see if we can be of assistance to them.”
As the Revenge towed the battered, blood-soaked Sjohdst into port, Bass still felt sick over what had occurred at sea. A lucky shot had brought down the mainmast, and another from the very next broadside had brought down most of the foremast, whereupon, Walid Pasha had brought the Revenge into grapnel range, closed, and boarded the stricken vessel. By the time Bass had been able to rein in the gallowglasses, Turks, Moors, Arabs, and assorted Englishmen, every last Swede had been shot or hacked down; not even those poor wights injured or wounded in the cannonade had been spared.
Nor were his companions understanding of his qualms.
Sir Calum laughed merrily. “The lads had been penned up too lang is all, y’r grace. They just needed a taste of hot blood.”
Walid Pasha shrugged. “Yes, we could have gotten good prices for such big, strong, fair men in Fez or farther east. But think, Sebastian Bey, of what it would have cost to feed them while shipping them there. And at least a third always die of the gelding process, anyway.”
Sir Ali sighed. “It was a little akin to butchering goats in a pen. None of them were trained warriors, just simple seamen. And the battery on that ship is laughable—she’s pierced for twenty and only mounts fourteen and I would wager my good sword that not a few of those guns are a hundred or more years old. A miracle it is that only one of them exploded when fired … but Allah looks after fools and lunatics, ’tis said.”
Dave Atkins, who had sailed along on the voyage to report back to Pete regarding the new guns mounted here and there on the Revenge, was blunt. “Bass, this here ain’t no Boy Scout war these people are fighting. There’s no Geneva Convention in this world. The things done to prisoners by both sides is plumb awful, by how you and me was raised on our world, but they’re SOP, here, and the sooner you realize and accept that, the better for you and everybody else. Could I choose, I’d a lot sooner check out the way them Swedes did than some ways I’ve seen and heard tell of here.”
Sir Paul Bigod did not understand at all and put Bass’s ill humor and senseless complaints down to overtiredness, fine-drawn nerves, and, like as not, sleeplessness, on the part of a commander after a successful voyage.
“It is a most auspicious maiden voyage, your grace. No gold or gems, aside from that box of raw amber, but then there is seldom suchlike in these latitudes. The naval basin here will take all of that timber, the resins, the iron, and the copper. I doubt your grace’s agents will experience difficulty in selling the stockfish at a good price; it’s all prime stuff.
“As regards the ship herself, she looks sound, aside from the battle damage, of course. If you would like to lease her out to the Crown, she could be repaired here and fitted with decent, modern guns; her existing battery were best sold for scrap—I’d never take the risk of putting linstock to one of them. The bronze ones could be melted down and recast, of course. Perhaps your grace’s friend at York would buy them for the Royal Foundry.
“I beg your grace’s leave to speak bluntly. Command is never easy, naval command being especially harsh and heavy at most times. This night, your grace should dine well, drink deeply, and roll the night away in a feather bed with a brisk young doxy. On the morrow, the world will be a much brighter, more promising place in which to live. Your grace will see.”
Bass only took a third of the well-meant advice, though, and even to the very moment he slipped from his chair in a drunken stupor, he still could see the glazing, terror-filled, accusing eyes of that butchered crew of dead Swedes.
CHAPTER
THE SECOND
It was not one, not two, but no less than three cardinals that Sir Timoteo, Duce di Bolgia, found awaiting him in the ornate archbishop’s palace of Palermo when he was escorted there on the morning after his arrival in that ancient city.
He had made the time he had set himself for the journey, actually bettered it by a few hours and killed only four horses out of the party, although seven more had been foundered in the process. All of Timoteo’s own men had kept pace with him, but a brace of young Sir Ugo’s escorts—both older men—had fallen by the wayside; one had been found dead in his cloak, apparently having expired in his sleep, the other had fallen from off his horse unseen and been trampled to death in the darkness.