1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (29 page)

Chapter 33

The first thing Darryl had learned about Edinburgh’s Committee of Correspondence was that it didn’t have a home. Otto Artmann—nobody Darryl remembered ever meeting, but then he’d met a lot of guys—had come over with enough cash that they’d had a house for a while. He’d even made a start on turning it into a Golden Arches, but then he’d got himself into a brawl and died of what sounded like blood poisoning. Everyone he’d recruited had been, apparently, a little old lady, or so it seemed. Some of them were a little younger, and all of them seemed to have a sort of asteroid belt of nieces and stepdaughters and daughters who helped now and then.

What they were doing was basic soup-kitchen stuff. Worthy, helpful, and pretty much what every kirk in the neighborhood was doing. Mackay had been sending over regular deliveries of basic foodstuffs—oats, turnips (bigger than the ones Darryl knew from back home), whatever greens were in season and cloth and yarn to provide charity clothing for the really down-on-their-luck, but from the looks of it, some of these old ladies were Olympic-grade scroungers.

That had to change. Darryl wasn’t really what you’d call politically savvy, but even he could tell that the Committee wasn’t going anywhere like
that
. Half their trouble was that they’d been cut off from Germany, where the Committee was funded, resourced, and had a deep well of experienced people to draw on.

Vicky had taken one look, rolled up her sleeves and joined in. For the first day, Darryl did nothing more than lift and move heavy objects as directed. The operation was run out of the homes of the ladies involved, and they all brought their share of the Committee supplies to wherever they were set up that day. Tarpaulins and ropes and spars, and they had an outdoor kitchen.

The second day, he had his tools and was mending and improving all day, and paying a little more attention. Whatever else the Committee in Edinburgh was achieving, they were managing a first-class information network. Some poor guy getting a bowl of soup would talk about
anything
to a motherly old lady that was feeding him. Vicky had spotted it too, and took that information back to the MacPherson house. She and Gayle spent the evening closeted with the radio, in touch with Magdeburg. They emerged with a promise of more help from the USE. A replacement for Artmann, at the very least, who they’d not known was dead, a draft of money to get things running again, and if they could find enough volunteers, a crew to capitalize on the network that was being built.

The third day, Gayle and Oliver came with them. Against advice, in Oliver’s case. Darryl was not happy that after all they’d done to get him this far, he was going out and about where he could get caught. Gayle had tried to reassure him with the lack of photography and the fact that Finnegan’s men were keeping to the streets around the Mackay house, but he spent the morning nervous as hell even so.

Came lunchtime and the rush over, they had a chance to sit down and talk, all but Vicky, who was in full conversational flow over the half-barrels of hot water they were washing the lunch things in.

“They need more soldiers,” Oliver opened with. “One man in three that has come here is a man come back from the Germanies. They say they expected more of the Committee.”

“Well, it is kinda low-rent,” Darryl said, “but I hadn’t noticed that there were that many veterans coming here.”

Gayle snorted. “They don’t wear a badge, Darryl.”

“I know
that
,” he said. “I just figured they’d seem more, I don’t know,
soldiery.
” He knew how dumb that sounded, but the laughter was good. “What I meant
was, how come so many soldiers are coming home from Germany? I wasn’t expecting to see any, so didn’t look, I guess. And I figure there’s war brewing over there, so they’d be keeping every guy they can.”

Oliver took a moment with his broth. When he’d gathered his thoughts, he said, “Not every man gone abroad to fight cares to remain there. Not every man approves muchly of the USE. Not, according to one man, until he sees how the lack of it looks to him. These are men who have had a purpose and lost it—given it up, rather. To give them purpose anew would be a kindly act. A godly one, even.”

Darryl knew better than to twit Oliver about the CoC’s politics. The long rides, the sea voyage, there had been plenty of time to just chat. Union solidarity, the CoC’s kinda sorta socialism, they’d all come up. Turned out that between the Puritanism, with its healthy portion of primitive Christianity, and the wide egalitarian streak Cromwell had, he agreed with a lot of it. Oh, he didn’t approve of the Levellers, not by a long way. But then he’d been a justice of the peace, you could hardly expect him to approve of organized rioting. People looking out for their own and sticking it to the Man? He’d been hauled in front of the Privy Council for doing the same thing himself.

“You think these guys’ll take to the Golden Arches thing?” Darryl asked.

“If it’s that or starve, aye,” Oliver said. “I bid them think on getting involved. On gathering friends. On banding together to see that these ladies can give of their charity unmolested.”

Gayle tilted her head at that. “You think that’s a risk?”

Oliver grinned. “Not a large one, no. But a fellow who thinks him the guardian of fair ladies doing good, that’s a fellow with a good opinion of himself. Who will, as often as not, strive to live up to that good opinion.”

Darryl grinned at that. While the floating pool of helpers that the Committee ladies roped in for the busy times included, yes, one or two actual lookers, they generally were only there for the busy times. The stalwarts—Otto Artmann had known what he was doing when he recruited for the soup kitchens—had left
fair
behind decades ago. These days, what was on offer was
somebody’s grandma
.

“It’d be good to have more’n me around to do the lifting and the fixing,” he said. “How’re you going to stop them taking over? Where there’s old soldiers, there’s old sergeants, and they generally prefer to be giving orders over taking them.”

Oliver shrugged. “For the sake of the wider world, a few men in the front rank will surely not hurt. It is expected. And some of these ladies, I suspect, might surprise some of the old soldiers!” That last with a grin.

“There’s also the crew coming over from Germany,” Gayle said, “a few of whom are veterans too. It should all work out.”

“Okay,” Darryl said, “but are you saying the committee here should specifically recruit veterans, or just make an effort with the ones who turn up? Because if I remember what Robert Mackay was saying right, this Montrose guy is kind of afraid of the veterans getting organized. King Charles too, although he’s being an assho—I mean, idiot about it.”

Oliver nodded. “A good point, Darryl, a good point. One we should bring to the attention of the ladies here, and the gentlemen from Germany, when they decide how to go about it. I, for one, mean to be setting off to be about my business in England soon. This Finnegan must be convinced he has lost me, and I may be off to raise havoc in the Midlands. Did we not have reason to remain and help the Mackays, I would have been off already—assuming Gayle agrees.”

“With you, honey,” she said. “If I could’ve figured out anything to do to spring Alex that didn’t involve getting Finnegan on our tail again, I’d’ve suggested it by now. Baron Mackay’s plan to make him fizzle out seems to be working, though.”

Vicky chose that moment to come over. “News,” she said, rubbing her hands dry on a scrap of woolen blanket.

She sat down at a chorus of invitations. “From the sounds, them Irish lads are up to something. And there’s a lot of people don’t like it. Joan—”

Darryl tuned out the full details of Joan’s relationship to, like, everyone else, but she was apparently the one he knew as Mrs. McAllister. He waited for Vicky to get to the actual information.

“Well, she was chatting to a girl who came in with two lovely little kids, and she was in the Grassmarket this morning, where they have the horse fairs, and they have a lot of Romish horse-copers there. Highlanders, gypsies, that sort of people. Anyway, this girl from the grassmarket was selling flowers and apples there and she overheard one of the Irishmen talking to one of the horse-copers, and it was all in Erse so she didn’t know what it was about, which she thought was suspicious, and then she got talking to one of the barrow-boys there. I’m not sure from what Joan said, but it sounded like she might have been talking to him because she was a bit sweet on him, but that’s not important. What is important is that there are people around the Grassmarket who actually
can
understand Erse and they say that the Irishmen
think
they’re being clever when they’re not.
Everyone
knows they’re hiring the horse-traders to be part of a popish mob and they’re going to do something
terrible.
”

Vicky stopped for breath. “Of course, half that’s probably bollocks, you know what a no-popery mob is like. But if Finnegan needs more men to attack somewhere, like, I don’t know, a well-defended town house, it seems like these highlanders are more like Irishmen than Scotsmen. Or at least all the Scotsmen around here think so.”

Oliver let out a good, old-fashioned
harrumph
at that. “There’s a straw in the wind, if you like.”

“Of what?” Gayle seemed to be reading more in his tone and expression than Darryl could get out of either. Although, fair’s fair, he and Vicky were bit-by-bit building their own private code. Along with enough of Vicky’s London accent rubbing off on him that Gayle and Julie had been making
Mary Poppins
jokes.

“You’ve not seen a riot against popery?” Oliver’s frown was beyond the usual dour Norfolk stoicism and into Old Testament territory. “While I disapprove most strongly of clinging to the errors of Rome, the remedy is witness and reason, not arson and grievous bodily harm. And more often than not, the disorder is stirred up for reasons having nothing to do with religion.”

“It happens in Germany, too,” Gayle added. “Not seen one myself, but I’ve read the reports. Not as bad as the witch-hunts, but pretty ugly.”

Darryl felt a moment of embarrassment. Mostly he didn’t bother with the news if it wasn’t sports or military. “So, bad, then?” he asked.

Vicky nodded. “There was a bad one when I was a little girl. Lombard street got wrecked. They’d have called out the Trained Bands, but most of them had joined in. There were hangings, after.”

“Well, that was rather more about the banks than the Catholics. I seem to recall that there was a cry raised against secret Jews also. I was at Cambridge that year. It was, as these things go, not a bad one.” Cromwell seemed to be lost in memory for a moment. “Be that as it may. Rumors of a popish plot might or might not be true. These fellows that claim to know Erse? It might serve us well to find the truth of that claim. ’Tis pity Mr. Welch went off from Newcastle to the Germanies.”

“Sorry,” Darryl said. “I learned a few more words than I already knew from Patrick, but just enough to be polite to folks. And count to, uh, four.
Aon, do, tri, ceathir.
Not sure I could spell ’em in Irish, the spelling’s weird. Not helpful, I know.”

Oliver waved it away. “Come now, and let us reason together, as scripture has it. At best, the rumor of the market place. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” He paused, snorted a brief laugh. “I seem to be talking in quotation today. To continue: there really is a plot among the Irish and the Erse.”

“How’s that not the worst?” Vicky asked, leaning forward.

“If it is a true plot, there is no third plotter. A third plotter we know nothing of. Hence, the worst: that the rumors of popish plot are being fomented by persons unknown. That, I confess, affrights me.”

“See your point,” Darryl said. “Not sure what practical things we can do to find out, since our only Irish speaker left us two months ago.”

“Pay attention among the visitors tomorrow, Darryl,” Oliver said. “Offer your sympathy to any that sound like they might know Erse. Or that might have heard a rumor among the horse-copers.”

“You want me doing subtle and cunning intelligence work?” Darryl grinned. “You
have
met me, right?”

“Actually blunt and blatant is probably better for this, Darryl,” Gayle said. “Give ’em your best Irish Republican firebrand act. If there really is a plot, they’ll invite you to join in.”

“And here’s me with only a little dynamite left,” Darryl said.

* * *

The next day, the Grassmarket turned out to be fairly short on grass, but well-provided with horseshit. There was a constant stream in and out of horses being traded, and foddered, and the animals that were pulling carts in and out and through and the ones that people were just plain riding through. There were guys with shovels and wheelbarrows, and the stuff was surely going
somewhere
, but not nearly fast enough. And there was the less, ah, solid stuff. And from the looks, the buildings around the edge of the market emptied their chamber pots right into the street. Darryl resolved
never
to get used to that. The shambles at the eastern end wasn’t in use today, and Darryl was profoundly grateful. It had rained overnight, so at least the stink was fresh.

Other than the gently sloshing coating of horseshit everywhere, it was actually quite an interesting spot to have a wander about of a morning. Although if it smelled like this at seven in the morning, it’d be nothing short of a save-the-world mission that would get him back here in the warmth of mid-afternoon. And it was promising to be a fine day, too. Vicky had peeled off to check out the peddlers of what Darryl would
never
admit—to Miz Mailey, at least—as thinking of as “girl stuff”—cloth, thread, and the tools for working them. He was browsing a rope stall—can’t never have too much—when the stallholder accosted him with a brief burst of lallans that he sort of understood, but not totally.

“Sorry,” he said, “but I’m German. I speak English, but I don’t really understand Scots. Never have, sorry.” It was the cover story he and Vicky had decided on to cover the fact of their strange accents and insistence on English. Hardly anyone hereabouts would have heard a Londoner—
cockney
was something you called them only if you wanted to start a fight in this day and age—still less a hillbilly with a tinge of London.