Read 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC Online
Authors: Eric Flint,Andrew Dennis
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“The Reverend Doctor”—Cromwell’s Norfolk drawl could put as much contempt into that title of respect as Mackay could get into a barrage of obscenities—“seems to me to be taking counsel of his fears.”
“He seemed calm enough to me,” Mackay observed, and it was true. There was a certain lordly dispassion to be had with the drugs they’d sent from the United States. They did little for the pain itself, but seemed to make him uncaring, dismissive of the actual sensation. He found the coolness of regard it gave him useful in the course of political conversations, especially when it came to paying close attention to a man’s eyes and expression. A little tricky for the memory at times, but that was what clerks and notes were for.
“Without the distraction of his face and eyes, Robert, I listened to what he was saying. It’s a rare man who doesn’t try to divert talk that makes him uncomfortable. He fled into theology more than once, and it seemed to me you noticed enough to stop him?”
“Aye, I did that,” Mackay said. “Curious how dissembling face-to-face is all of a piece, and with one piece gone it becomes transparent.”
“Well, Oliver’s a smart guy,” Gayle said, smiling from where she was coiling one of the wires that formed part of her radio. “But if you didn’t grow up with the phone—which works the same as radios, when you’re talking on ’em—you tend to treat the two ways of talking differently. I used to hear it from my grandma, she had a telephone voice that was a whole lot different from her speaking voice. I hear it a lot again from down-time folks when they get to using the phone and radio. Oliver spotted that it’s two ways of listening as well, which I guess is down to the fact that for all those months talking to me on the radio was the only conversation he got most days.”
“Aye, and naught to do but think on things. It makes a man pay attention to the smallest details, and truly consider them. Hannay is a man afraid, and of more than simply riot beneath his pulpit.”
“Consider the smallest things, aye?” Mackay wondered aloud, taken with a whim of speculation. “There’s a line o’ Marcus Aurelius’ on the matter. This, what is it in itself, and by itself, according to its proper constitution? What is the substance of it? What is the matter, or proper use? What’s the man fear, and do we calm him, or spur him with it?”
Oliver grinned. “Now we sit at meat,” he said.
Chapter 31
Finnegan’s mood, already on the ragged edge, got the better of him when he saw O’Hare being helped in from the stables, nose bloodied, lips swollen and obviously nursing ribs that were at least bruised. “Do you fuckin’
amadan
not know to not to let yourselves get caught alone?” he roared, and followed it up with a short stream of invective.
“Go easy, Chief,” Tully cautioned. From, Finnegan noticed, a safe distance. “No man can be watchful all the time.”
Nevertheless, O’Halloran was looking shifty. “I had to piss, so I did,” he said.
Whatever O’Hare muttered through his bloodied teeth, Finnegan didn’t catch. He doubted it was words of absolution, not hardly at all. “Who’s watching the Mackay house now?” he asked.
“I’ve sent Grady and O’Toole,” Tully said, “and Mulligan to be close by. The
giambin
are watching for moments of weakness to drag a man into an alley for a thumping. Chief, it’s past time to either do some more justicing and put more of the
tuilithe
in the gaol or give up on it and have at them properly.”
“Don’t think I’m not considering the latter strongly,” Finnegan snarled, “if I can keep more than half of you from getting your fool heads bate before. Get this
cábúnach
to his bed and some cold water to that face.”
O’Hare’s bleeding and dazed self cleared away, Finnegan returned to his broth. It was coming to something when a man couldn’t sit to eat without one of his men being battered insensible. “Tully,” he said, “did you speak with that gowned fuckwit this morning?”
“I did,” Tully said, “and there’s no part of him that’s not laboring for us, I will say that. What he tells me is that there’s no judge will hear a word in open court concerning our man in the Tolbooth. They’ll not try him, nor let him go. Yon fool Charles has pissed on everything for us, Chief.”
“How so?”
“They’ve a clan chief or two here in Scotland that’s worth the name. When they saw what was done with Cromwell and the other English rebels, they didn’t altogether take up arms—”
“—but said to nobody in particular that their arms were all close to hand?”
“Just so, Chief,” Tully nodded.
Finnegan nodded in return. If the Irish had a truly besetting sin it was that in the centuries of feud and raid and civil war, no great clans had risen to give the nation as a whole power. As it was, they were a lot of squabbling
tadgh
and easy meat for the English and Scots. Finnegan blew through his moustaches. “There’s this to be said for putting them in the Tolbooth, they’re only after us with the boot and the
bata
for it. Should it come to drawn swords, Tully, I mislike our chances.”
Tully rocked a hand. “Should it be a long fight? Not hardly at all. A fast in-and-out? We might manage something. If we can catch that
langer
Cromwell at home. I’d not like to just run in there with my arse on fire. Some of the lads that Mackay keeps about him are entirely too handy for my liking. And while I have my mind on the matter, it might be that some of these brawls are conveniently timed. I’ll see what I can’t do to have a man or two watching where he can’t be seen.”
Finnegan chuckled, swaying back from the table as the sourfaced streak of piss who waited the tables here cleared away his soup bowl. “Plan it, then. Don’t go alone, I don’t want the head of you broke. And if you’re right about the brawls being distraction for somewhat, we can watch for them. And you’re right, it’s just the sort of tomfoolery we’d play ourselves, is it not? So, let’s answer tomfoolery with head-breaking.”
“We’re to do this?” Tully asked, eyebrow raised.
“For now, no,” Finnegan said, “but should occasion arise we’ll have a plan ready.”
* * *
Julie Mackay, Baroness Bornholm, kept the salt stirring into the cooling water. The stableboys were, it had to be said, not terribly hurt. But they worked with their hands in the muck of the stables, and even stables as clean and airy as the Mackays’ were covered in, let’s face it, horseshit. They’d all lost skin off their knuckles and the Irishman they’d given a good thumping to had got a few licks of his own in.
So there were bruises a-plenty, and grazes everywhere. Meg and the kitchen girls were ready with clean cloths while Thomas the head hostler and his four grooms sat around with their hurts ready to be tended. “Brawling in the street, Thomas,” she chided, grinning to take the sting from thes words. “Such a poor example to your boys.”
One of the grooms was his boy in truth, a son learning his father’s trade. James was all of fourteen and had inherited his father’s wiry strength. “Ah’m no sure it’s no’ tae late, m’lady,” the lad said, grinning around a loose tooth.
She handed him a cupful of strong brine. “Swill that around in there, see if it doesn’t take some of the shine off.”
He did, and muttered something through the pinkish bubbles that earned him an old-fashioned look from his dad. Julie kept her face straight. She was still having trouble thinking of herself as a mom—when little Lexi reminded her the awful
hugeness
of it still took her breath away at times—but was determined to get in practice. “No cussin’, you,” she said. “Ladies present.”
Meg held a bucket up for him to spit into, mouth thinned almost to invisibility. Julie wasn’t sure that that wasn’t just to keep the deadpan in place; before the boys had come back she’d been full of a dark glee about the papists getting what was coming them.
The rest of the boys winced manfully as the salt water cleaned their wounds. One of the kitchen girls was, to Julie’s certain knowledge, unmarried, and she was making much of the next-oldest of the stable lads after Thomas. She idly wondered if there was romance there. Or about to be.
No matter. “How many, Thomas?”
“Twa on watch, m’lady. Yin was gan f’r a pish, so we set aboot t’other. No sae hard, mind. Jist sent’m hame, t’think again.” Thomas snorted. “Or tae the White Hart. Gowan’s nae one t’fash if it’s papist coin he takes. Master Cromwell took the chance t’be awa’ t’Canongate.”
“Good,” Julie nodded. The skirmishing in the streets was a pleasant diversion for the Mackay retainers. Whenever they needed a moment or two for Oliver and Gayle to slip in or out, four or five young men would go out looking for a brawl. Generally it was a lot of puffed-chest bravado, insults and occasionally a chase through the streets, but that did as well as the occasional brawl to divert the watchers. One day Finnegan’s men would catch wise that a walkie-talkie in a pocket with a built-in Morse key and a discreet earpiece under a bonnet—seventeenth-century women’s fashion could be so
useful—
let a nondescript couple strolling up the Royal Mile carry on a conversation with someone half a mile away.
Often the boys could run the watching “constables” off for the necessary five minutes with such good timing that Oliver and Gayle barely had to break step. The way out was even easier. There was an unofficial contest running between the stable lads, the footmen and the coachmen. If Julie was any judge, this was a pretty solid point for the stable’s score-sheet.
* * *
“Judging by the wincing, they had fun,” Julie said a little while later in Robert Mackay’s room.
“Aye?” Mackay senior graced that with one of his rare smiles. “I’ve more than a few memories of being a daft wee laddie myself.”
“Oliver and Gayle got away clean. Gayle called a minute or two ago to say they’d reached Canongate.” It still seemed odd to Julie that they treated Edinburgh and the adjoining Holyrood and Canongate as separate places. They were still in a time when city walls meant something, of course, but you had to grow up in Canongate and Holyrood to know where the one ended and the other began. It was baffling enough that none of the streets were laid out in any sensible way, but the administrative arrangements were downright medieval. She was, at best, hazy on how things had been done back in the up-time USA, but she didn’t doubt that there had been some kind of system. And right angles between straight streets, too. Just straight streets would be a start in Edinburgh.
Mackay was nodding, rolling his chair over to the window. “It’s a grand thing, the radio. The wee pocket radios”—Mackay had decided he didn’t like the word
walkie-talkie
and refused to use it—“best of all. They’ve done well by us, the past few weeks.”
“Finnegan and his men aren’t likely to catch wise, either,” Julie said. “What those boys know about radio is just about nothing.”
“Aye, let’s hope it stays that way. Pride goeth before destruction, lassie.” Mackay had a wry smile about him as he quoted that bit of scripture. Julie had heard him reflect on his own haughty spirit before his fall, and had worried some that he was taking a depressed turn of mind. The weed that had finally come over from Thuringia was helping with that, though, and now he was sounding altogether more philosophical about things. “This Finnegan’s uncommon good for the manner o’ man he is. Inventive, persistent. The Irish are a sorry lot, in the main, but they’ve a leavening of fine fellows among ’em. ’Tis pity this one’s gone to the bad.”
Julie shrugged. “If he crosses the line, he’s got me to answer to. And Stephen. And Andrew. And Darryl. And Oliver. I’m fairly sure he knows about most of those. If he thought he could get anywhere in a straight fight, we’d have had one by now. He went for the legal system instead.”
The old baron nodded. “All true, lassie, but men grow weary and frustrated. These last weeks, oor laddies have been choosing their times and places, always having the upper hand thereby. That must surely grate at a man.”
“You think he’ll try a straight fight?”
“I surely believe it prudent to prepare. I saw fra’ the window here how Thomas and his boys used that Irish bravo. And manly pride may only stand a little o’ that before a reckoning is demanded.”
Julie nodded. “I’m not exactly a fan of that macho bullsh—er, nonsense. But I understand how it works. It’s even good for a man who has to go fight. I see what you mean.”
“Aye, and there’s the business wi’ that fool Lauder afore ye’ left for London.”
Julie frowned. That had been a nasty little local squabble that they’d never really gotten to the bottom of. She’d not have noticed if poor Otto, God rest him, hadn’t recognized the woman’s name and decided that the Committee of Correspondence needed the help of the Baroness Bornholm. The Committee, perhaps not, but Otto himself had needed Alex to help him out of difficulty at least once. And while they’d been out of town the poor man had died, probably of blood poisoning from getting stabbed. “How’s that relevant?”
“You’ll recall I’ve a few wee birdies singing in my ear from time to time?”
Julie nodded.
“It seems that the talk is now that that was all the king’s doing, in secret, with Lauder as his cat’s-paw.”
Julie’s heart sank. “You said that everything he said about friends on the privy council was so much horse-apples.”
“I did, and true it was. It’s the new rumor that’s the lie.” Mackay drummed his fingers on the arms of his wheelchair. “It falls to one or another of us to find the root of this. Ignorance of the means and manner of royal influence in Scotland cannot be so general, surely? We are a nation that cannot even run a Poor Law establishment as the English do, and let it fall to the Kirk. And blithering fool though Charles Stuart be, he cannot have thought he could send his ain liveried men north of the Tweed and not have Campbell take note.”
“Wentworth, or Strafford, or whatever his right name is, was advising the king back then.” Julie knew when to drop the bubbly cheerleader act. “Met the man. Had his head screwed on right, I reckon.”
“Just so,” Mackay nodded. “And there’s been naught to provoke rumor of royal tyranny since. Oh, Montrose has been blowing hot air at the bishops and presbyters alike, but there’s naught to come of that for months yet. Years, even. I’ve a hope in me that it’s just one of those things that happen from time to time, the mob insisting on its folly.”
“Anything from the Committee that’s left?”
Mackay snorted. “I’ve heard the tales of Germany’s Committees. And a fine pack of scoundrels they sound. Major Lennox told me tales of Italy’s collection of knaves and halfwits and excitable wee laddies. Here in Edinburgh, we’d a half-mad ex-soldier and a parcel o’ good-hearted wifies. The soldier passed away, may the Lord give him rest, and now it’s naught but the wifies. Fine charitable work they do, and pleased I am to donate. That’s the limit of them, mind.”
“Darryl and Vicky, then,” Julie said. She was not quite sure where the idea had come from, but as she turned it over in her mind she found she liked it. Not least because the not-so-tiny ember of feminism Julie nurtured in her heart had flared into life at Mackay’s dismissal of the women of the Committee. “They can come like they’re just moving here, back from the wars in Germany. Sent to take over the Committee of Correspondence. New in town, asking questions, getting involved. Pretty sure they’ve not talked to many people here in Edinburgh proper, they’ll not be recognized. Gets the Committee up and running properly, and if Vicky can’t get herself plugged into the gossip network of all those wee wifies you’re talking about, she ain’t the girl I think I know. And if you want singing little birdies, Baron Mackay, listen to ladies gossiping.”
Mackay chuckled. “All this time and it’s
now
ye choose to sound like a baroness? Aye, there’s merit in your plan. And I’m entirely sure Mister McCarthy can cut their way clear of trouble, if there be trouble. Young Victoria seems like no delicate wee flower, if her blood gets up.”
“Oh, count on it, Robert.” Victoria grinned. She’d seen Victoria let her temper rip a couple of times. There was a girl with anger she could focus and aim like a cutting torch. “Now, Alex. He’s getting more comfortable in that cell than I like, and he’s not happy about it either. Still no joy from our lawyers, but from what I hear, Finnegan’s having the same problem. Far too many people are going to be offended no matter what the result is in court, so the entire legal profession is making excuses, all the way up to the judges. You know at least some of the people who are frightening the judges, can you not have a word?”