The Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland

by Robert Adams

  Professor William Collier vowed to himself as he rode the dead abbot's mule, dressed in the dead gillie's clothes, that there would be no bringing him to bay like some beast of the chase and dragging him, naked and beaten and chained, to be caged and ill treated, this time. No, now he was armed with substantially more than a rude club of a broken branch and a shard of sharp flint. If they came after him this time, he would either win free with sword and dirk or force them to kill him on the spot.

  If he could win free, however, sell the mule and its gear for enough to provide himself with some better clothing and a passage to Ireland, he could find there the Papal legate, spin some tale that could not be checked out, then find a way to get his deserved revenge on that damned thankless usurper, Arthur III Tudor, and on the bastard who had been at the root of all his troubles and woes, Bass Foster.

  "I am, after all," he thought as he rode, "the most intelligent and most highly educated man in this entire world. When once I've placed my innumerable talents at the service of the Roman Church, England and Wales will fall to Church armies armed with the weapons I'll show them how to make and use properly almost overnight. I'll not ask much in return, only a duchy or two, for my real reward will be watching Arthur and Foster slowly tortured almost to death, then crammed full of gunpowder and burned at the stake."

  In far-southern Munster, most of King Brian's siege train and a portion of his army lay entrenched before the landward walls of Tamhas'burh, the ard-righ himself being off on other pursuits with the rest of his army. He realized that the siege was really a standoff when his first and only, to date, assault on the city was bloodily repulsed by a deadly combination of impressive gunnery by the wall batteries and a two-pronged sally by hard-fighting mercenaries—horse backed up by foot—that took his assault force in both flanks and routed them to race pell-mell back down the hill to safety beyond the range of the wall guns.

  Brian knew that the city could be supplied ad infinitum as long as King Tamhas retained control of the river, but Brian's present fleet included only two galleons, neither of them as big, well found, and heavily armed as the aptly named Impressionant, and he was not about to risk them against the Papal fleet that now served the interests of his old enemy. He just thanked God on high that the topographical layout was such that the batteries of the ships could not be used to menace his land forces.

  He comforted himself with the thought that, after all, he had attempted to do it all peacefully. Shortly after his army's arrival before the city, he had sent in a sacred herald with an offer to withdraw from out all of Munster—save only the border lands that were never really a part of Munster to begin with and were the basic reason for the generations-long bad blood and feuding between Meath and Munster—did King Tamhas but cede to the safekeeping of the cathedral vaults at Tara the Star of Munster.

  King Tamhas' answer had been to return the herald's body in bloody chunks, by way of an old-fashioned trebuchet, which action, to Brian's way of thinking, demonstrated the utter barbarity and complete lack of imagination in his enemy. And so he had marched away about other business with the best, more mobile elements of the army of the ard-righ. Should he have need of the siege train elsewhere, he could always send for them. Meanwhile, why not let them squat before Tamhas'burh, bottling the ever-troublesome Fitzgeralds safely up and living well off what their foragers could strip from the lands of Munster at no cost to Brian? He had forbidden them to fight against those within the walls unless first attacked, had left them a plenitude of gunpowder and a brace of priests who knew how to fabricate more, so they should be able to make it reasonably unpleasant for the folk of the city and their king with enough fighting men available to protect them from sallies, entrenchments that could be defended adequately from either side, and a ditched, ramparted, and well-fortified camp to house administration and supply functions.

  At the age of five and thirty years, Ard-Righ Brian VIII had been engaged in war for two and twenty years in all parts of the island called Eire. Though mostly victorious, he had suffered a few defeats, but he had never lost an army or any substantial portion of one, or any single one of the precious and difficult-of-replacement bombards or siege cannon, and he had no slightest intention of now breaking that sterling practice through leaving his siege train undefended.

  He marched off to attempt to overawe the smaller kingdoms and kings, gain their Jewels of Sovereignty, allegiances, and the loan of the their armies, then redescend on Munster with more force than even the stubborn Fitzgeralds would dare to oppose. He knew that he had scant time to assemble the Seven Magical Jewels of Eire and could but wish that he had a second army.

  For many a long week after the Duke of Norfolk had ridden off southward with his galloglaiches and personal staff, Archbishop Harold of York and Rupen Ademian took turns supervising the three master stonemasons—two of them Northumbrians, one a Lowland Scot found for Sir Geoffrey by Laird Michael Scott—and the dozen or so journeymen and apprentices bringing in the inch-or-more-thick slabs of slate, marking and chipping and carving and smoothing them, before carefully laying them end to end and edge to edge in the handspan-deep bed of mortar that covered the old earthen floor of the tower keep's ground level. The masons and other workmen, the oxmen and quarrymen, none of them questioned this project or even thought to so do. It had been ordered by a mighty lord, and they were one and all more than happy to take his silver and thank God for the unexpected largesse that the work brought to them and their families. They all could be assured, now, of enough food to bear them through the coming winter, good harvest or ill.

  Wain after wain trundled down from Scotland, behind spans of sturdy, slow-plodding red-and-white oxen, each loaded to near overflowing with fine-quality potter's clay from the clay pits on Laird Scott's demesne. At Whyffler Hall, the clay was shoveled into sacks and baskets to be stored in various outbuildings until needed, safe there from rains and mists.

  Laird Michael Scott did not question just what the Sassenachs at Whyffler Hall intended to do with so much clay. It was none of his business, for one thing; for another, Laird Michael was more than happy to get the silver that Sir Geoffrey Musgrave promptly paid him or his agents. Silver was hard to come by in Lowland Scotland by legal means, and the new-crowned King James had offered dire consequences to any borderer clan or family so rash as to go a-rieving into England sans his royal say-so. And Laird Michael had two sons who must shortly be fitted out as became young Scots gentlemen, as well as a daughter who one day soon would be in need of a suitable dowry.

  He was, however, of an inquiring mind and a consistently curious nature, so when he met with Sir Geoffrey on a day, he asked, half-jokingly, if the denizens of Whyffler Hall had the intent of cornering the chamber-pot market for all of England, Wales, and Scotland.

  But Musgrave had not risen to the joke. Dead-serious had been his answer. "I dinnae ken what all the clay be for, Laird Michael. Belike, some project o' his grace o' York. A' I ken be that my o'erlord, his grace of Norfolk, has ordered it so, and so it shall be, 'pon my sacred oath."

  The archbishop had insisted that Master Rupen Ademian, though untitled as yet, was as wellborn in his own land as any present and must therefore be seated at the high table for meal. Central place at that elevated board went, of course, to the archbishop, whose rank was in most all ways the equivalent of that of a duke. Unless Laird Michael Scott was present for meat—his rank being the rough equivalent of an English baron—the archbishop was flanked by Sir Geoffrey and Don Diego. In addition to Rupen, two noble clerics of the archbishop's staff were usually present with them.

  Don Diego's command of English was improving. Nonetheless, he and the archbishop usually conversed in Latin, while Rupen exercised his twentieth-century Spanish on this seventeeth-century Spaniard, quickly discovering that there were significant differences between the two tongues. For one thing, the famous Castilian lisp did not exist in Don Diego's version of Castilian Spanish.

  Of a day, while the pages, squires,
and other servants were briskly clearing away the remnants of the fish and carving the poultry for serving, Archbishop Harold asked, "Tell me, Don Diego, have you any relatives, distant or near, living in this Kingdom of England and Wales, perchance?"

  "No," replied the Castilian knight, "that I do not, your grace. I own a few distant cousins in Valencia—outcome of the marriage of my grandsire's half-sister to one Conde Ernesto of that realm—and one of my younger brothers is secretary to his eminence, Cardinal de los Llanos Luviosos de España, who presently is in Rome. . . . May one inquire why your grace asks?"

  "No thing of much import, Don Diego. It is simply that you chance to bear a truly startling resemblance to one of my scribes back in York, but he is of West Country English antecedents." The archbishop leaned forward and bespoke his secretary, "Brother Hugh, see you not a resemblance between this noble knight and one of our scribes?"

  "Why, yes, now that your grace mentions it," replied that worthy, setting down his cup. "Don Diego looks the very spit and image of young Brother Matthew Olson. They two might be father and son or elder brother and younger, so very similar are they."

  But then the geese were served and there was no more talk for the while.

  Arrived at the archepiscopal estate southwest of York City, Bass proceeded with doing all that was necessary for getting the galloglaiches accustomed to the pairs of new flintlock horse pistols delivered in their absence by Pete Fairley. Those now with him would have the job of teaching those left in Norwich. Several pack-mule loads of the new arms and their accessories were ready and waiting at the manufactory in York.

  Bass had intended to send Nugai—who was an old friend of Pete Fairley's—over to York to arrange a rendezvous point for the loaded mules along his line of march, but surprisingly was unable to find the usually faithful little yellow-brown man. Nor did he come across him, not for more than two days. So he ended by sending Sir Ali ibn Hussain.

  When the missing Kalmyk finally did turn up, it was with abject apologies. He recounted that he had been herb-hunting around the countryside, seeking out ingredients for the various salves and medicines he concocted, remarking that he had come to know the plants of England better than he was likely to know those of the land where they so shortly would be bound and where, was there fighting, they surely would have need of some of his nostrums.

  For his own part, Bass was so pleased to have back the little nomad with his quick, intuitive mind, his amazing level of intelligence, and his easy adaptability to all the circumstances that they had encountered, to date, that he forgot his brief flash of anger at the unannounced and protracted absence and got back to his own duties, leaving Nugai alone to sort and prepare his sacks of ingredients. For, with the dawn, they all would depart for Norwich.

  The elder and the younger met but briefly, once more by night, once more in a graveyard, though not the same graveyard.

  "We have a problem," said the elder. "You set the controls and I sent all save two of them a-journeying, barely within the set time period. But I have just visited the point from which they all were snatched at the proper reference points. They are not there. Through manipulations, I jockeyed back and forth, and while I could witness their disappearances, I could find no trace of any reappearances. So where has your bungling inexperience sent these projectees? Riddle me that."

  The younger hung his head in contrition, while the elder went on. "Nor is that all, or even the worst of the problem. When I journeyed down to check the settings on the journey device, I found it and the entire repository gone, torn from out the earth like a rotten tooth, leaving only a hole wherein the foundations had been so long set."

  The younger gulped. "Then I am trapped here, with no way to journey in either distance or time or between the universes."

  "Just so." The elder man nodded again. "And I'll be far too busy on this level to journey to where I can secure you another device for some months. So lie low in York and live the part of your present persona until I return; it is all that you can do. Let this serve as a lesson to you. Our work here is vital to our people; moreover, the price of failure in performance of assigned tasks is usually suffering of some nature, sometimes personal extinction. Let us hope that your eventual price be not so steep."

  State Police Lieutenant Martin Gear sat behind his office desk, chewing at the knuckle of his thumb until the two FBI agents were done. Then he could hold it back no longer.

  He grinned maliciously as he said, "Well, you damn federal hotshots come up just as dry as me and mine did, didn't you? I never knew just why yawl were called in on this case anyhow. It all fell within my state, and ain't nothing to make anybody think it might be kidnapping."

  One of the agents looked quizzically at the other, briefly, and the other said, "Hell, Larry, it won't hurt to tell him, now."

  "Lieutenant Gear," began the agent called Larry, "the missing men, the ones to whom you have been referring in press interviews as 'cheap Arab musicians,' are neither Arabs nor cheap, not by any means. Their band was a hobby to them. One was a Greek, one was a Syrian-American, but most of them were Armenian-Americans, all but one American-born. Two of them are very wealthy men in their own right, the rest are the sons of wealthy, well-connected businessmen."

  "Surely you are familiar with Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, and its subsidiary, Souvenirs, Incorporated?"

  Lieutenant Gear nodded. "So?"

  "All save a couple of the missing men are connected to those firms either by birth or employment or both, and one of the out-of-state Ademian plants is producing some very sensitive material under federal contract."

  "I'll take over, Larry," said the senior agent. "So sensitive is this material, Lieutenant Gear, that certain foreign powers have already gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to try to get samples and plans. So far their schemes have all been foiled."

  "Now consider these facts, Lieutenant: All of the audience that night on that secluded estate far from the main roads were foreign-born—Iranians and a few assorted Arabs—and Iran shares a long border with the Soviet Union; Mr. Kogh Ademian is the chairman of the board of Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, and the missing band leader, Arsen Ademian, is his son."

  "Are you beginning to grasp an inkling of just why we were called in on this case, Lieutenant Gear? Why we intend to continue that investigation, however long it takes, until we turn up firm evidence of just what happened out there that night?"

  Gear looked bewildered. "Well, what the hell can I do, boys? My department couldn't turn up any more than yours could on it, and we all flat-out worked, too, till that fellow Asissi got a court order to keep us off his estate, anyway."

  "That's 'Azizi,' Lieutenant Gear," put in Larry informatively.

  The senior agent, Jerry, grinned. "Well, the distinguished Ameer Azizi knows better than to try that kind of garbage with us—he'd find his green card lifted so fast it would make his self-important head swim! He and his fellow oil millionaires may think that they've bought this country lock, stock, and barrel, but they haven't, not yet, not by a long shot."

  "No, what we'll be needing from you, Lieutenant Gear, is the full cooperation of you and your department—willing cooperation, this time, not the grudging cooperation we had to pressure your governor into ordering you to give us. With that kind of help and with any kind of luck, we should be able to get to the bottom of these strange disappearances within the time that I've promised the director we can have the case solved."

  Martin Gear shook his head again, sorrowfully. "Boys, you got it. Whatever me and mine can do for you, give you, is yours. But I can't help feeling this feeling that it ain't nothing in this old world is going to help you one damn bit in finding them people. Nothing in this world."

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ROBERT ADAMS lives in Seminole County, Florida. Like the characters in his books, he is partial to fencing and fancy swordplay, hunting and riding, good food and drink. At one time Robert could be found slaving over a hot forge, maki
ng a new sword or busily reconstructing a historically accurate military costume, but, unfortunately, he no longer has time for this as he's far too busy writing.