Of Beginnings and Endings

by Robert Adams

  "Of course, all that is a fair, fine dream which, as we have said, will almost certainly never come to pass, but we still can dream it . . . and Your Grace should still watch and listen closely, lest he miss any hint of opportunity to actually achieve it. But naturally, your real mission to Islay is that of drawing the Lord of Islay out in conversation, using the offer of feoff-purchase as the opening wedge, as it were. Feel him out as regards Great Eireann, but do so without mentioning the land or Connachta's supposed ownership of it or certainly not our designs upon it. Do you understand us, Your Grace?"

  Bass Foster nodded. "I do, Your Majesty," he said aloud, while thinking, "Yes, I do, and far better than I think you think, you conniving, untruthful old bastard. Even while you damn anyone who opposes you and your schemes with every epithet and blasphemous insult you can dredge out of your sewer of a memory, you yourself are as much if not far more of a Byzantine, unscrupulous dissembler . . . but before this hand is played out, you old fucker, I may just break it off in you, give you exactly what you've deserved for a very long time. Nor will you be missed by any save only your creatures and sycophants; half the noblemen on this island would serve Ireland as a better High King than a greedy, lying, unstable, treacherous, murdering bastard such as you. For that matter . . . ? Well, why not? He's a Gael, too, and God knows he owns the respect of most every nobleman or soldier hereabouts."

  * * * *

  The old capital having been severely damaged by the cruel pounding of the big ship's guns landed on the shores of Lough Loig from the Duke of Norfolk's ship, Revenge, hauled up the cliffs, then laboriously dragged over to the siege site, Righ Roberto had decided soon after his surprising ascension to the throne that rather than undertake the certain sky-high expense of rebuilding the place he would establish a new capital city, one less close to and less exposed to the lands of the always-acquisitive Ui Neills—of either north or south.

  Exploring his new realm, he had much liked the appearance of the lands surrounding Lough Cuan, mostly due to the narrow, constricted passage from the sea, which passage could be very easily defended by very few against almost any number of attackers. But his local advisers had discouraged such a choice, pointing out that only continual and expensive efforts would keep that same narrow passage passable at all to large ships, and that, enjoying as the Kingdom of Ulaid now did thanks to his majesty's sagacity the protection of the galleys and ships of the Regulus' fleet, there was scant need if any to fear of serious sea-borne invaders. Considering their words and taking them to heart, therefore, Righ Roberto had chosen a favored site at the very head of the more northerly Lough Loig and, using as nucleus an ancient defensive structure said to have first been erected by the old Dall Fiatach kings to defend against the incursions of Viking and Gael, he saw initiated the construction of a modern-design fortress even as he saw teams of lowing oxen pull the plows that furrowed out tracings in the soil where city walls would be erected. He also envisioned another fortress on the southern cliffs, opposite the ongoing one, but was realist enough to admit that even with aid from his overlord, the Regulus, he could not afford to undertake more at this time. True enough, he was getting most of the stone free from quarries in his client state of Airgialla, to the south, but it still had to be either hauled by land or barged in good weather up to the building sites, then manhandled into place and finished, and all of these tasks took men from the land or the sea who might otherwise be laboring to produce food of various sorts for feeding his people or producing income for the kingdom, said realm still a long way from being recovered from the rebellion which had led to the overthrow of the previous usurping renegade who had for so long misruled and openly robbed Ulaid.

  Sir Aonghas, the Lord of the Isles, was a kind man and most generous to those who pleased him as much as had Righ Roberto. In dim, past ages, it was said that the then-Kings of the Isles had also been kings of not only Ulaid but wider reaches of Ireland, and Sir Aonghas had been overjoyed to again become master of lands that he felt really should have been a part of his birthright, anyway. Therefore, upon receiving the fealty of Sir Roberto di Bolgia, the magnate had not only given him back Ulaid in feoff as pre-agreed, but had absolved him and Ulaid in advance of all taxes for five years and half of the taxes for five more years, remarking while so doing that, badly as he always needed income, he still had rather see the lands held for him by his vassals and clients rich, safe from external foes, productive, and enjoying the internal peace that only comes of well-fed commoners than be having to run his armies and fleet ragged helping to put down the constant rebellions of starving, desperate people hither and yon, such as too many shortsighted and greedy monarchs had done, were doing, and would do.

  Further, he had pressed upon his newest vassal king a small casket of golden onzas, which he made clear to the stunned recipient was a gift of love, not a loan, along with a very fine sword, a seal of gilded silver to be henceforth used in correspondence between vassal and lord, a sleek new galley crewed by axemen of Lewes who would henceforth serve him as his bodyguard, and more than a few other small, valuable gifts.

  The large, inestimably valuable gift, of course, was Aonghas's grim-smiling promise to soundly and most joyously trounce Ard-Righ Brian and any forces he might be so unwise as to send against Righ Roberto for whatever reason. And Roberto, having seen both armies and fleets, thought to himself that while it might become a close match, the Regulus could probably do it with his own force alone and could certainly do so if he called on his strongest vassal, King James of Scotland.

  For all its appearance from afar, close examination had revealed the old cliff-top defensive structure to be not only useless for any sort of defensive purposes but dangerous to occupy or even to be close around, much less enter. One tower had fallen in completely, and the other—with those timber supports not burnt out in ancient days and forgotten wars having long since rotted away to dust—looked to him to be held together and erect by nothing more than the weight of years, the thick mat of vines grown up over the stones, and, perhaps, prayer. Also, it loomed closer to the edges of the crumbly cliff side than he liked, so he ordered it and the ruins totally demolished, the stones to be stacked and saved for incorporation in the new fortress.

  Meanwhile, in order to give at least a bare measure of protection, he had had a thick rampart of earth and timber thrown up at a likely spot along the cliffs and set thereon bombards and more modern pieces dragged over from the former capital city on the northern shore of Lough Neagh.

  During the years of misreign by the late and unlamented Righ Conan Mac Dallain Ui Neill, all of the preceding royal family and most of the ancient nobility had been eradicated or had wisely left the realm, and precious few had as yet chanced a return. Some of the new "nobility"—creatures of Righ Conan, all—had tried in the beginning to attach themselves to Roberto's fledgling court and entourage, but he was not so naive as they obviously believed, and he recognized shameless, honorless, faithless opportunists when and where he encountered them and saw them receive exactly what they deserved.

  Thus generally lacking a native nobility from whom to choose an advisory royal council, he leaned heavily upon the counsel of Father Mochtae Ui Connor, formerly a simple, common-born parish priest who had felt at last impelled to take up arms and arouse his people to resist the usurper in the rebellion which had, with the aid of the condotta of the Duke of Norfolk, succeeded in not only toppling the man but in killing him at the end. Despite his humble birth and decided lack of polish, Mochtae Ui Connor knew the kingdom and its various peoples and history every bit as well as any filid; moreover, he was more than simply wise, and his discernment with regard to people and their hidden motives and desires was often so accurate as to be disconcerting, for he always spoke what he thought at the time and place he thought it.

  For a while, in the early months of his reign, Mochtae and a sagacious, elderly Hebridean nobleman, Sir Iain Mac Neill—a cadet of the Mac Neills of Barra, like all his ilk a distant relative of
the northerly-dwelling Ui Neills and himself having fought in Ireland and numerous other places during his thirty-odd years as a mercenary officer of Outer Hebridean axemen, those fearsome warriors known in Irish lands as galloglaiches—had been Roberto's entire council, but as a bare trickle of the old nobility had returned from exile and as Roberto had elevated others to fill the vacancies left on the land by the ousters or deaths of those who had filled and plundered them under Righ Conan, he began to acquire a council worthy of that name.

  Since all of them, king and council alike, had as their first and most important goal the protection of Ulaid from the designs of any of the grasping Ui Neills and an accelerated return of the lands to their onetime prosperity under this new, God-sent king, there was precious little disagreement between the members of the council and him they were set in place to advise . . . until the day that Righ Roberto announced during a formal meeting with them his intention of completely demolishing the ancient place atop the cliffs over the northern shore of Lough Loig, thus freeing the stones of structures, ruins, and foundations for use in the new fortress to rise there.

  Owning, like his brother, a keen mind and a rare ability to easily and quickly master spoken languages and dialects—a gift of exceeding value to one who had until so recently made his living as a mercenary soldier, a sword-for-hire—Roberto had mastered a fair vocabulary in the version of Gaelic spoken in his new realm, but the mutterings he heard then from up and down the council table were not clear to his ear, and he said as much to Father Mochtae.

  "What the hell did I do or say wrong this time, priest? Can you understand them, Sir Iain? What's upsetting about knocking down and digging up some old, now-useless stones that they might be put to real use after so long? Is the spot a shrine of some kind, or what? By the well-crisped pecker of Saint Lawrence, I . . ."

  The burly cleric looked pained, admonishing. "Please, Your Majesty, blasphemy on your royal part sets not a good example for those subjects who hear it, nor is it salubrious to the well-being of your royal soul."

  "Your Majesty's council is alarmed, fearful that disturbance of the underpinnings of the old castle there might release the vengeful spirits of the ancients, the Cruithni, whose holy place it was long centuries before the first men of Erainn came from out the south with their chariots and their swords and axes of iron. Right many of us Fir-Ulad of today are, despite our patronymics, direct descendants of the old Cruithni and, through them, from the Pritani and, for all any save God Almighty now know, from the flint-men the Pritani themselves displaced or slew for the possession of the land. In those dark days of so long ago, before any knew of the truth of God and His Word, there were mighty wizards abroad amongst those who lived here before us, and many feel that it is always better to allow old, heathen things to lie in peace rather than to chance setting pagan evils afoot in the world once more."

  Roberto di Bolgia snorted his disgust at such primitive and silly superstition, but rather than say the scathing things that were pressing toward his lips, he said, "Look, you, Father Mochtae, gentlemen, if anyone of archaic times lies buried up there under those ruins, then he or they are your ancestors, no? The stones they set in place are not being taken away, they are only going to be rearranged, so that they once more will stand in a way to serve as protection for you who are descended of these cru . . . whatevers. In such case, why should the shades of your distant ancestors feel or show malice toward you, eh?"

  "Besides, I know of hundreds—and have actually taken part in or at least witnessed a score or more—of uncoverings of things from ancient times all over Italy and Sicily. Indeed, in parts of Tuscany, the farmers can hardly plow their fields, much less dig a new well or cesspit, without uncovering old ruins, tombs, statues, and what-have-you from the antique Romans and, even, the people who owned the lands before them. Those old ones practiced things which if not real magic at least will serve as such until the real thing comes along—some of the tombs which had not been opened or even known of in countless centuries have been found to still be lit by lamps, and they somehow produced some metal that seems to be simply bronze but is as strong as the most modern steel; indeed, my elder brother, Sir Timoteo, il Duce di Bolgia, owns an open-faced helm from out just such a tomb and more than one steel blade has been dulled or shattered on it in battle. Now, surely, were there any tiniest grain of truth in these tales of the spirits of disinterred pagans taking horrible vengeances on those who disturb their bones or rob their tombs, then some awful doom would long since have befallen my brother."

  "But, in deference to those who came before you all, if for no other reason, I promise that if the workmen up on the cliffs should uncover anything that looks like it might possibly need blessing, then Father Mochtae will be sent for straight away. Will that be a satisfactory arrangement, Father, gentlemen?"

  "Have ever any of you seen or heard of any demon—pagan or otherwise—who could for long prevail against the True Faith and the application of holy water, silver blessed by a priest, or cold iron?"

  10

  "The child is delivered to us, big-boned and lusty, with the Bull bright upon his right palm," Regulus Aonghas wrote in his own fair hand to his younger brother, just then in England on church business. "It was as well that you were not here, however, for big and broad as the midwives could tell him to be and small as is our dear Eibhlin, especially, as it was to be her first birthing, they all warned that it might well go hard with her. Therefore, I sent to Gighas in Uist and he sent me back a true dubhsidh.

  You may upbraid me all you wish when next we two meet, my brother, but I am convinced that without the good offices of that wise old man, neither our precious Eibhlin nor this more than merely precious boy child might have survived to give us all hope. How much better a world we might have in which to live if you and all other churchmen would set yourselves to seek out such as the dubhsidh in true peace and brotherhood and learn from them, rather than hunting them like wild beasts and burning any you can catch, branding them Imps of Satan."

  "But the best news is that I have received word by galley from Ulaid that none other than the bairn's sire—Sir Sebastian Foster, Duke of Norfolk—is making a ship of his fleet ready to sail to Islay on the business of that hog's by-blow who styles himself the Ard-Righ of Eireann. Therefore, dear brother mine, I pray you learn quickly all that you can of the present whereabouts and condition of this Sassenach's mad wife, for my agents have been completely unable to recontact those who had agreed to undertake the task for which they had been partially paid in advance and although my agents are reasonably certain that a number of deaths occurred suddenly in the house of a certain nursing order in Yorkshire, they write me that they have reason to believe the mad duchess was borne away from out that house very shortly prior to those regrettable demises. I know full well that you approve not of my actions in this regard, my brother, but now we must think of the good of our ilk before and above other considerations. Remember, I will not live forever and there must be no blot upon or possibility of obstacle to a quick and an orderly succession of chief and lord, here, for our foes are many and crouch always with talons bared awaiting the slightest chance of a stumble or a misstep or fall to pounce."

  * * * *

  The stocky, muscular man heaved a deep sigh and then paused to take a good pull on his jack of wine before shaking his head and starting to reply, "It's a tempting offer, Your Majes—"

  The man with the graying-red hair seated across the table from him slapped a horny palm onto that table with enough force to make the sturdy thing to creak as well as to set everything on it to dancing. "Now, by the ill-aimed load of old Onan, Timoteo, I have to sit still for enough and more than enough of titles and stilted, third-person speech from everyone else, anymore, but I'll be dipped in boiling camel's piss before I take it from an old comrade like you. Man, I told you, when we two be alone like this, we are but a brace of old hired soldiers, nothing more, Timoteo di Bolgia and Daveog Mac Diugnan."

  "Will it b
e needful for me to grave it in Roman upon some tenderer portion of your hairy torso before you'll be able to get it and keep it in your thick Umbrian head?"

  When, in earnest of his question, the speaker drew the big knife from out its lodgment in the crusty loaf of bread and began to thumb its edge, the other man grinned and replied, "Try it, you mare-raping bastard, and you'll be one old condottiere with his own little prick in his mouth and the length of that knife lodged in his shitty arse crack, bodyguard outside or no bodyguard outside!"

  Grinning, not at all offended, Righ Daveog of Connachta jammed the point of the plain, sturdy knife back into the two-pound loaf and grinned so widely as to show every yellowed tooth his jaws still boasted. "Those words, now, smack of the profane, plainspoken Timoteo I recall of happy years agone in lands far from Eireann and the burdens of sovereignty. You've no doubt heard the old saw that God's punishment of men is often to completely answer their prayers, to give unto them that which they think they want? Well, believe you me, old comrade, it's true, nothing ever said was truer. I know! For long, bitter years, I worked and schemed and fought and bled and prayed most mightily that I might one day ere I died reattain to my murdered sire's rightful place; the Lord heard my prayers, worse luck, and vouchsafed unto me that office and rank, and I now could but wish that I still were merely Count Ros Comain, squatting in the fern and raiding the usurper when not hiding from his hirelings."

  "Not long since it was that I could saddle my own horse, arm, gather to me a few, trusty fighters, and ride off where I wished, when I wished, to do aught that I wished, without asking the leave of any man. But no more, my friend, no more. Supposedly, the most puissant man in all of Connachta I am, and it's all that which fills the lower bowels of a cow, Timoteo. Why, man, it seems that every other man in all these lands miscalled mine is my master in one way or another, anymore, since I was invested their righ. I am allowed to wipe my own arse, but that's about the extent of my freedom these days.