1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (9 page)
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Authors: Eric Flint,Andrew Dennis
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Finnegan rolled his eyes. “I had the learning of it at school, it never leaves a man. And it pays to talk to the bastards the way they expect or you’re just another fucking bog-trotter they can safely ignore, king’s letter or no king’s letter. Well, we’ve been handed a fine opportunity to shove the bog firmly up their arses, one way or another, doubled if the earl persuades the king. More than one of the boyos will welcome the chance to have at the Saxons,
torai
though they be. It’s one thing to have your countrymen to chase you for the sake of stolen cattle, quite another to be run off your land by foreign soldiers for the sake of other foreigners.”
Memories of the confiscations and plantations of colonists after the Nine Years’ War were still raw. Boys who’d grown up dirt poor, paying hard rent on good land their grandfathers had owned—in some cases were still around to complain bitterly about—could and did turn to thieving to keep body and soul together. Caught, and offered a pardon by the earl, they carried on as the enforcers of the order that had broken their families. It put money in a man’s pocket, but in the small hours of the night he could be excused a certain amount of resentment. Oh, indeed, there’d be some relish in getting the whip hand over the Saxons. Tully, for example, was from around Kinsale. His grandfather had died the year after the siege there was broken, driven off his land entirely for plantation as punishment for a rebellion he’d had no part in, or so he insisted. Tully’s father had fought through the courts for years to recover the land, only to have the title he’d recovered called into question because he was a Catholic. He’d gotten something of a price for it from the earl, who’d been plain Richard Boyle back then, and probably more than he’d have had from any other buyer. The poor old fool had been pathetically grateful.
The younger Tully had been less impressed with the deal, but he could at least see that Boyle was the best of a bad lot among plantationers—he’d got his first stake in Ireland by marrying an Irish lady, or at least one of the Old English, who’d come over in peace and settled. The fact that he’d been imprisoned several times on suspicion of aiding the rebel side in the Nine Years’ War helped, too.
That had never impressed Finnegan overmuch. Any man on the rise as Boyle had been would make enemies, and collusion with rebels and foreigners was a useful handful of mud to throw at such.
Still, Tully was grinning in the last light of the day. “That will be a true nightmare for the Saxons, to be sure. An Irishman with a constable’s warrant set over them? We’ll have to hold their reins tight, so we will.”
Chapter 10
“Praise be for a real bed,” said Gayle Mason. Examining the item of furniture in question and then her two companions, she added: “It’ll be a tight fit, though. That’s
without
adding any extraneous males, you understand.”
Julie Mackay and Vicky Short both grinned, albeit for different reasons. The down-timer’s grin was cheerful, recalling instances in which her bed had been shared with a male whom she did not consider extraneous at all, one Darryl McCarthy. She wouldn’t be enjoying his company this night, though, because the town they were staying at—say better, village; better yet, hamlet—lacked an inn and the only cottage they’d found with an extra room the inhabitants were willing to rent had nothing more than a bed any American would have called a single bed.
The bed was normally shared by two young daughters—neither more than ten years old—who would contribute to the family’s finances tonight by sleeping on the floor of the main room. The men in their party got to sleep in the barn. Which was at least a lot roomier.
The up-timer, Julie, whose enjoyment of marital privileges had now lasted long enough—three years, almost—that she took them for granted, had a grin on her face that was more resigned than anything else.
“Praise be,” she muttered, remembering less seventeenth-century times when she and Gayle, dyed-in-the-wool Americans, would have said
Thank God
without even thinking about it. But both of them were now romantically linked to Calvinists, who took the third commandment dead seriously.
Vicky left the room to bring in the few supplies they’d want for the night. Julie and Gayle exchanged a rueful smile.
“Look on the bright side,” said Julie. “Most of what we grew up hearing about up-tight fun-hating straight-laced Puritans turned out to be bullshit.”
Gayle chuckled. “Complete bullshit, at that. But”—she glanced around quickly, to make sure they were still alone—“dear God, they take their theology seriously, don’t they?”
Julie sat down on the bed and bounced up and down on it a couple of times. “Well, at least it isn’t too soft. With three of us in it, a soft bed would leave the middle one buried beneath the other two. Ain’t it the truth about the theology? But I will say this: it works mostly in our favor, when it comes to dealing with the menfolk. At least of the husband variety. The Calvinists are so bound and determined to pick a fight with the Catholic church that if the pope frowns on sex, they approve of it, and if the bishops and priests yap about the virtues of celibacy your good Calvinist—sure as hell my husband—is bound and determined to prove the papist bastids is full of crap.”
The smile that came to her face this time wasn’t rueful in the least. “Which is fine by me.”
She then bestowed upon Gayle a look that might be called speculative.
Gayle shook her head. “I can’t say from personal experience one way or the other. Oliver’s no prude, that’s for sure, but he is…what’s the word?”
“Serious?”
“Yeah, that’s it. When it comes to some things, anyway. And it’s not as if opportunity is knocking. It’s one thing for married couples like you and Alex—even Darryl and Vicky, for that matter—to figure out ways to squeeze in a little nookie here and there. But when you’ve got two people like me and Oliver who are groping around trying to figure out…”
Gayle shrugged. “Everything. How we feel about each other. What he’s going to do with his life now—and do I want to fit myself into that? Because whatever he does you can be sure and certain it’s going to involve a grim determination to shorten one Charles Stuart by about eight inches—and let’s kick over the whole damn rotten applecart while we’re at it. Not to mention that he’s got a bunch of kids to deal with if and when we can find them.”
She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Like I said. Everything. And while we’re doing so there is no way that Mr. Serious Cromwell is going to dally with my affections. As they say. Which…I have to admit, just makes him that much more attractive to me. The more time I spend in his company, the more time I want to spend in it. Which my hardheaded grandma once told me is the only definition of ‘falling in love’ that’ll stand the test of time. I think she was probably right.”
She went to the room’s one tiny window and peered out. As bad as the glass was, she couldn’t see much. In the seventeenth century, except for palaces and the homes of the wealthy,
through a glass, darkly
was a simple statement of fact.
“The truth is,” Gayle said quietly, “if Oliver and I do get married—and that’s all that man would ever settle for—the only big problem I see is that Puritans seem to find a theological justification for the wife being subordinate to the husband. And that’s sure not something I agree with. I’m no feminist, but—”
Julie laughed. Gayle turned to give her an inquisitive look. “What’s so funny?”
“You.” She waved at herself. “I guess I should say, us. I once said that except same thing to Melissa Mailey. ‘I’m no feminist,
but
—’”
Gayle smiled. “She must have reamed you a new one.”
“No, actually, what she did was worse. She just made fun of me. Ridiculed me, dammit. What she said was that every working-class American woman—girls, too—said exactly the same thing. ‘I’m no feminist,
but.
’ And then we proceed to follow the ‘but’ with the entire litany of feminist demands that we’re in favor of. Each and every one.”
Julie raised her hand and began counting off her fingers. “Lessee, now. Right to vote.
Check.
Right to hold property.
Check.
Right to get paid the same for the same work.
Check.
Right to divorce the bum when he turns out to be a bum.
Check.
Right to make contracts in your own name.
Check.
”
She dropped her hands. “Melissa challenged me to come up with a single feminist demand I
didn’t
agree with. Best I could come up with was that I thought burning bras was stupid.”
Gayle chuckled. “Same thing I would have said.”
“Yeah—and then Melissa explained to me that that was a bunch of bullshit invented by assholes. Turns out no feminist ever burned a bra.”
“Really?”
“Nope. Melissa told me the myth got started when a group of women protested the Miss America contest in Atlantic City—that was in 1968, if I remember right—by tossing bras along with girdles, cosmetics and high-heeled shoes into a big trash can. They also crowned a sheep. But they never actually set fire to the can.”
“Ha!” said Gayle, shaking her head again. “You learn something new every day.”
She looked back through the window. “I wish I could see the future better than I can see through this thing. I have no idea—well, okay, that’s not true; I have an
idea,
you bet I do—what’ll happen between me and Oliver. But…”
“Don’t sweat the wifely obedience business too much, Gayle,” Julie said. “Alex will swear by the same silly crap.” Her voice got a little sing-songy and picked up a Scottish burr: “It says right here in the Good Book that—prattle, prattle, prattle. But in the real world? He never pushes it. Men who are sure of themselves—which is part of what makes them attractive to us, let’s face it—just don’t seem to feel the need to keep proving who’s wearing the pants in the family.”
She and Gayle both looked at Gayle’s clothing. Which consisted of a bodice, ankle-length skirt and a bonnet—the same thing Julie was wearing herself.
“I sure do miss blue jeans,” said Gayle. “Although I admit this stuff isn’t as uncomfortable as I would have thought seeing it in movies. By now, I’m used to linen instead of cotton. Don’t even notice the difference anymore.”
Julie nodded. “That’s pretty much how it is being married to a seventeenth-century fella, too—as long as you pick the right one. There are some differences, even a few big ones, but after a while you hardly notice anymore. But I emphasize the part about picking the right one.”
Gayle turned away from the window and cocked her head slightly. “So what do
you
think about Oliver? Think he’d be a right one for me?”
Julie pursed her lips. “Well…He’s a little…Well. Scary, I guess.”
Gayle snorted softly. “We
are
talking about Oliver Cromwell, girl.
The
Oliver Cromwell. Cut off a king’s head, ruled England like a dictator for years. Not to mention, if you listen to Darryl, slaughtered half the Irish.”
“Darryl hasn’t said that in a long time. I don’t think he even still believes it. The truth is—he won’t admit, at least not yet—but he likes Oliver. A
lot,
if I don’t miss my guess.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” said Gayle. “Darryl’s a real hillbilly and when you get down to it, for all the obvious differences there’s something very hillbillyish about Oliver Cromwell too. If nothing else, they’re both bloody-minded in that scary-as-all-hell practical way they have about them.”
There was silence in the room, for a moment. Then Julie said: “But I’m not trying to duck the question. He’s a little scary, but the truth is I like Oliver myself. A lot, by now. And, yeah, I think he’d do okay by you, Gayle.”
A grin came back to her. “Keeping in mind that some people—whole lot of people, being honest about it—would say that you and me are pretty hillbillyish ourselves.”
Vicky came back into the room, carrying a bundle in her hands. She studied the bed for a moment.
“How’ll we do it?” she asked. “Decide which of us has to sleep in the middle, I mean. Draw straws? Flip a coin—assuming either of you has one, because I don’t.”
Gayle and Julie looked at each other.
“We could fight for it,” said Gayle.
Vicky sneered. “Me—against a couple of hillbillies? Do I look mad? I’d as soon wrestle a bull. No, we’ll do it civilized.”
In the end, they settled on rock-scissors-paper, after they explained the rules to Vicky.
Vicky won right off and picked the side away from the wall. Julie lost the runoff to Gayle.
“I’m fucked,” she grumbled.
“Not tonight,” said Vicky. “There’d be no room even if you weren’t in the middle.”
Part Three
August 1634
What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro’ many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor’s wages.
Chapter 11
“I hope my lord Montrose will forgive me not rising,” Mackay said, indicating with a gesture the uselessness of the legs under the blanket. He’d had a couple of footmen, with Meg fussing, lift him and move him into a chair. Sitting up for any length of time hurt damnably, and he could all but feel it wearing his life away like a blade on a grindstone, but he was determined that the last of him to go would be his manners with guests. Besides, the pain made him sharp in his mind, and he’d need that.
Montrose, polite himself, waved it aside as of no matter. “A broken back’s excuse enough for any man,” he said, “and if it would serve you better to lay down, I’ll not hear it said I made a man suffer for formality.”
“I have comfort enough as I am, my lord,” Mackay lied. It would not do to admit any more weakness than he absolutely had to until he knew which part Montrose had taken. He’d known of the Graham clan chief’s summons to London, and word of his elevation to the Lord Lieutenancy had preceded him back. Was he talking to Charles Stuart’s bought-and-paid-for man, or simply the nearest the king could find? Scotland’s peerage was stacked to the rafters with men no more constant than the nation’s weather. “Will you have a drink? I find a brandy at this hour helps.”
“Wine, if it’s to hand,” Montrose said. “I’ve mair folk to see the day, I’ll save the brandy for when I’m done. Don’t let me stop you with the brandy, though, I’d want one myself were I afflicted as you are.”
That was a common reaction. A fall from a horse could happen to any man, and it was a rare and skilled horseman who never had so much as a bruise, and not many more who hadn’t at least broken a bone or two. A broken back, well, anyone could look on a man damaged as Mackay was and shudder that there but for the grace of God went he.
Mackay let Meg put the brandy in reach of his hand and a decanter of good wine by Montrose and leave them. The afternoon was a pleasant one, the rain outside soft on the streets of Edinburgh but otherwise it was warm. The faint smell of wet wool was about the place, not strong as the showers were stopping and starting, and there was promise of a fine fresh day in the later afternoon.
“I’ll be blunt, my lord,” he said after they’d taken a moment to have a small drink, glasses raised to each other in a polite, if silent health. “I’m more than a little mithered as to what His Majesty’s about with yon earl of Cork, who I’ve long thought an equivocator of the worst kind, which is to say the kind that comes out on the winning side every time. Did he not spend time imprisoned over the Irish business all those years ago? I was but a young boy myself and not minding matters in the plantations overmuch, but I recall he was a rebel for a time with his people in Munster.”
Montrose shrugged. “He stood acquitted of all the charges and Her Majesty of England granted him high office, after. That much I have from some of my older people; it was before I was born. If it’s between us two here and now, I’ll not gainsay you on the man being devious, unprincipled and after naught but his own advancement.” He held up a hand. “If you think that’s the beginning of me saying he’s an evil counselor, as the saying has it, think again. The sense I have of the man is he has a wildcat by the tail and dare not let go. If anything, the man regrets his move against Strafford, who’s in all likelihood Wentworth again now. They were drawing up attainder and impeachment when I left London. But Cork? If he’s a lying, back-stabbing, unprincipled snake of a man, and I do rich insult to snakes with that, he’s exactly the man His Majesty needs in England these days. And now, without His Majesty on a secure throne, Cork is, and pardon my crudeness, fucked.”
As such things went, that was as good a dissection of the cadaver of English politics as Mackay expected to hear from anyone. And it came from this sharp young man, of an age to be his own son, who’d met all concerned, and that recently. He nodded. “A sorry state for the state of England, I’d say,” he said.
Montrose’s expression was distasteful. “No more would I want the like here in Scotland, if I can help it.”
“Aye, I’ll raise my glass to that notion,” Mackay said, doing so.
Montrose answered him likewise. “His Majesty has charged me to secure silence north of the Tweed, among other things,” he said, after taking a sip. “I’m to ensure that there’s no reversal for the episcopal party, although, and here I sense Cork’s hand, there’s no charge on me to advance the swine either.”
Mackay raised an eyebrow. “The king’s ain party in the kirk? Swine?”
Montrose chuckled. “I’ll swear any oath you care to name I said no such word. Concerning those swine nor any other lot. I’ve no time for prelates, we had well rid of them in my grandfather’s time, but added to that I’ve not much patience with presbyters neither. Their place is in the pulpit, not in the governance of the realm.”
“That would sound awfully like the separation of church and state, my lord, and I should be much obliged if you could explain to me the reason it is not so?”
“Well, as His Majesty is the head of the Kirk in Scotland, is it not the case that he may command the presbyters thereof to leave off the secular governance? As he guarantees their establishment, is it not reasonable that they—” Montrose gestured vaguely, looking for a phrase.
“Render unto Caesar?” Mackay suggested, suddenly taken by the imp of the perverse.
Montrose grinned. “Aye, or words to like effect. I shall have to remember that one.”
“The presbyters will call it a short step from freedom of religion,” Mackay said, sure they’d call it worse than that if given the least liberty.
“If it’s a lack of freedom they desire, I’m empowered, and on one reading charged, to administer it them, and that right harshly. I’ve charges from His Majesty, but as long as they hear nothing south of the border, how I undertake them is a matter for me.”
“Aye? I’d heard you were made Lord Lieutenant over us, but from the sounds, you’ve all but been made viceroy.”
Montrose rocked a hand back and forth. “Ye might call it that, ye might not. Certain sure I am that I could govern as one right up until the rebellion it created.”
“There’s always that,” Mackay answered. He’d felt a mounting sense of unease, and not simply from the pain he was in. He himself was none of the movers and shakers of Clan Mackay, still less now he was a cripple. He was personally acquainted with Lord Reay, was a cousin four times removed or something on the close order of that, and had a number of closer kin in the Mackay regiment in the Germanies. So
why
was his lordship the earl of Montrose, Chief of Clan Graham, whom he had met perhaps twice before, treating him with such friendly familiarity?
“Aye, that,” Montrose sighed. “And ye needn’t fear for me on that score. I’ve no intention of creating mair trouble than the nation truly needs. We’ve had and signed the National Covenant in my grandfather’s time and the less said about that the better. England’s misfortunes will be to Scotland’s benefit in at least that much. His Majesty won’t be trying to press the matter of the liturgy or the power of the prelates any further, he having larger matters to occupy him. There’s a smaller matter he’s paid mind to, though, and it’s the reason I came first to you, for on it hangs much else.”
“Aye? I can do little but advise, crippled as I am.”
Montrose fixed him with a stare. “There’s a lot more you can do, Mackay of the Mackays. Father-in-law of Baroness Bornholm. Cousin to Lord Reay, however distant. Old drinking companion of Robert Leslie. And others I might list, but choose not to for the moment.”
“You mean those gone for soldiers in the Germanies, of course. I take it His Majesty means for them to come home peacefully or not at all?”
“Somewhat more, in which regard I want your help in the persuading of those men. You among others, of course, you’re not the only man with kin and companions currently serving the king of Sweden. His Majesty Charles has already made shift to see that some of those who stood against him on the other history cannot do it in this. Cromwell, for one, some others in England the names of which I can’t recall. There would have been more in Scotland, save that Leslie was in Germany, and others it was not…practical to take captive.”
Mackay laughed at that. “You mean Argyll let it be known, beyond any manner o’ doubt, that if any man north of the border was so much as touched for his part in that other history, he being at the top of the list, the Bishops’ War would start ten years early and wouldn’t stop at Newcastle? You know he already has a fine body of men about him that would answer such a call, beyond even the usual clans he can call on at need?”
Mackay had only learned the full extent of that particular correspondence days before. At the time it actually happened, he’d missed much of the detail. When he’d heard the full story he’d pissed the bed laughing and not regretted a drop. He knew Argyll was a peppery wee bastard, but the likely reaction of Strafford and His Majesty to such a naked defiance, however privately expressed, would have been a sight to see. It was Mackay’s guess, supported by a few other fellows he’d written to, that the only thing that was stopping him for now was that he wasn’t yet earl of Argyll in his own right, at least until his father died in his self-imposed exile in London. For every worthwhile purpose, though, he was Chief of the Campbells and his Lordship of Lorne sufficed to give him lawful authority in that matter.
“If I was to put my hand on my heart, I’d agree with him,” Montrose said, “and it’s exactly that manner of thing I mean not to have with the German veterans. Ye ken Leslie would have been arrested if he’d been in the country, and Argyll had not spoken as he did? I was a mite troubled my name was on the list when I heard, too, though it seems His Majesty cares for the end result rather than the first thoughts. As matters stand, I’ve been given the Lord Lieutenancy only after Strafford, Laud and the like have heated it to a red glow for me, and I mean to have the matter of the veterans be the least of my troubles. I can delay and delay and delay the sending of letters patent to those men demanding their return, allegiance and good behavior on pain of forfeiture, but there’ll come a day when His Majesty must take notice of my doing nothing in the matter. I mean by then to have a solution all, or at least most, are content with, that they may return home or have their affairs in order for exile. I’ll chafe as I may at some of His Majesty’s charges, Mister Mackay, but he and I are of one mind that Scotland is to be peaceful. There’ll be no lamentations of Scotland to match the same in Germany, if at all it can be helped. Heaping up a pan of fresh embers from the smouldering of Germany to tip them into the bedding of Scotland strikes me as no help at all in that regard.”
“I have every warmest sentiment toward your aims, my lord,” Mackay said, temporising while he thought. How much had Reay been in communication with Montrose? Argyll? How much were the Scots officers in Gustavus Adolphus’ service in agreement on the matter? Nothing suggested itself as a way forward. “What would His Majesty have, precisely, of the Scots abroad?” he asked, hoping to buy time to think.
Montrose’s face brightened a little. Perhaps he had been expecting an immediate refusal. Mackay had a clear idea of what perhaps a dozen of those lords and gentlemen thought, and some of their followers besides, what the king’s spies might have told him was a closed book. There was also the possibility that Charles Stuart, being Charles Stuart, had got hold of some other notion of his own about what the veterans abroad thought.
Montrose took a deep breath and began reciting. “His Majesty is principally concerned that his subjects granted leave to fight abroad remain in the service of the king of Sweden, not the United States of Europe, with which there exists a state of hostility, short of outright war but nevertheless unfriendly. He is further concerned that in as much as they bear arms in Sweden’s cause, Sweden is closely aligned with the United States of Europe and as such His Majesty’s subjects are bearing arms in support of a nation that espouses the heretical and anarchical doctrine of freedom of religion. In so doing they are in peril of their souls and he is much exercised as head of the church to which they are properly adherent that they remove themselves from the said peril as soon as may be. He requires, in the first instance, that they give undertaking and surety that they serve the king of Sweden only and that only in conflict with avowedly Catholic arms in the Germanies. He also requires that all of the rank of major and above resign their commissions and return to their estates in Scotland to the great benefit of that nation.”
He took another breath. “My charge continues in the same vein for some time, with many places and means whereby delay and obfuscation may occur, but the essence of it is that they should be at home and at peace lest His Majesty take to the notion that they are preparing to levy war against him either here or abroad.”
“Put thus, it seems like a fair command, as commands go,” Mackay said, “although I’ve no means of knowing how any man to whom it may come will see it. His Majesty says as he will of the notion of freedom of religion, but how is it seen by those living with it? There was a time when the reformed religion was declared by kings to be heretical and anarchical, after all, but it was found good in Geneva.”
Montrose answered that with a level stare. “I’m not minded to debate that matter at all, neither with His Majesty nor any of his subjects. I want peace, but when all’s said and done, if His Majesty’s subjects wish to reside in His Majesty’s realm under His Majesty’s peace, the price is obedience to His Majesty. North of the Tweed, through me. I believe it was His Majesty’s father who said all he desired was an outward obedience to the law, and that I am content with also. Those that can’t obey, well, they may sell their lands and settle where obedience is easier, and I mean to make that easy. But those are the choices. You, among others, I ask to present those choices to the men that must make them so they may mull them before anything is said
ex officio
, and persuade them that, by command of His Majesty I cannot be moved beyond tolerance of mere delay.”