Read 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC Online
Authors: Eric Flint,Andrew Dennis
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“Aye.” Campbell said, taking his seat. “I take it you’re not ignorant of the Irish ruffians and their antics? The pack of
torai
Cork has sent from his lands in Ireland?”
Mackay rolled his eyes. “Alexander in the Tolbooth. Wrong side o’ the blanket he may be, but my son for all that, and a bonnie youngest grandchild he’s brought me. Taking her nap upstairs at the moment.”
Campbell chuckled. “I’ve a while before I know that pleasure, I’m sure,” he said, “but if you’ll pardon the lateness, I’ll offer my congratulations. I understand you’ve a fair tribe?”
“Oh, aye, my posterity is fair provided for. Alexander’s my eldest, but I’ve three with my late wife besides him, and all grown and wed. For a wonder, all four are fast friends. I imagine it helps that Alexander did well by himself in the Germanies and so needs not be a drain on my legitimate sons’ patrimony. If I’ve a piece of advice for younger men, it’s to see your by-blows are well-found.”
“I’ll take that on board, not that I’ve any I’m aware of,” Campbell grinned. He was, especially measured against the older baron, a very young man. Twenty-seven at last birthday, and near ten years married—a loving match with four children already—there was still plenty of time for him to be indiscreet. “And perhaps it’s as good a way to introduce the subject as any. Did you hear rumors that this Finnegan is recruiting vagrants as a posse to attack your house?”
“More than rumors,” Mackay affirmed. “I’ve people who gathered it direct.”
“Aye, so perchance you’ve begun to prepare?”
“As well I may, we being watched and all. I’ve stable-lads and footmen a-plenty, and coin to pay their ruffian friends and relations to stand by for a month or two. And Major Lennox, that has become a fast friend to the family, has friends in plenty among the returning veterans of the German wars. Should it come to conclusions, Finnegan and whatever trash he sweeps up will be roughly used.”
“Well, there I can add some hands to make light of the work, since my Lord Montrose spoke with me this morning.” Campbell shifted uneasily in his seat. “But that’s the thing. I’m as keen to do right by my fellow-man as anybody. And heaven forfend I should miss a chance to have so illustrious a clan as the Mackays obliged to me—”
“—as I’m sure we would be, in mine own person at the very least,” Mackay put in, with a grin. Having a care with Campbells bearing gifts was an imperative that left mere warnings about Greeks as, at best, guidelines.
Campbell snorted at the interruption, doubtless as aware of his clan’s reputation as any man. More so, for it affected his every dealing outside his clan for good or ill, and in no small measure. “Aye, that’s by-the-by. What brings me here hot-foot is the implication of Montrose’s action in charging me with this part of the peace of this town.”
“He’s made it official?”
“As may be. No particular names o’ no particular national character were named, but he made it clear that if he were rid o’ a particular turbulent Irishman he’d not take it much amiss.” Campbell’s face turned gloomy as he spoke the words.
“Montrose realizes the full import o’ what he’s doing?”
“More than likely. I think Cork must have given him some small insult, and Jamie’s a prickly wee bastard when he’s a mind to be. And it’s plain as day he’s had no end of foolish orders to carry out from the king. I think he’s setting his heels for a good run of pigheaded obdurate awkward Scotsman for the benefit of my lord Cork. Who, let us remember, is entirely English for all he holds an Irish title.”
“I don’t doubt there’s been some correspondence between them over Finnegan’s tomfoolery, not least this mummery that he’s a justice in lawful cold trod. I’ve not met the man myself, but the history of him is littered with grievances and grudges. Ireland’s the native soil of the man’s spirit, if not his body, I think.”
Campbell laughed out loud at that. “All of the Erse and the Scots are cousins under the skin, fondly though the lowlanders would like to forget it. And don’t think that in my person as
MacCailein Mor
I don’t know it in my very bones. The feuds within the Campbells are only a little less fervent than those without. And I suspect that that is how Jamie thinks that this will work. Only I’m no idiot. Did my lord Reay mention I’ve been in correspondence with him?”
“He did not,” Mackay said, although he’d deduced as much from the general tenor of the letters his clan chief had sent.
“Aye, well, there’s nothing agreed between us except for the general principle that we’re all for the common wealth of Scotland. So, taking note that you’re well-found for defense, I’ll simply have a band of stout laddies nearby against trouble. And I ask only that you inform my lord Reay that I’m asking nothing in return. Really nothing, not some subtle, roundabout Frenchified way of asking for something in particular. It so happens that I rather fancy the notion of administering a glove across the face of my lord Cork, albeit by proxy. Whatever Jamie Montrose wants by way of silence north of the Tweed, I want more of it by way of meddling Englishmen kept out of it.”
Mackay nodded.
“It is more or less only today that I can visit with you, and this briefly,” Campbell said, rising to his feet again. “And I shall take my leave with only this:
I can read future histories too.
”
Chapter 35
“He said
what?”
Gayle’s voice was loud enough to distort through the walkie-talkie’s small speaker. “Sorry, over,” she added.
“What I thought, Gayle,” Julie said, deciding that proper radio discipline could, for the moment, go pee up a rope.
Baron Mackay was still looking shocked. Campbell had only left thirty minutes previously. “Can you bring the radio equipment here, Mrs. Cromwell?” he asked. “I could well do to arrange a conversation with Lord Reay if such a thing is possible.”
“I suppose I can,” Gayle said, “but if Finnegan’s gearing up for a serious raid it’s going to be difficult.”
Julie smiled. Gayle had decided not to bother. And hearing herself called Mrs. Cromwell had put a note of real joy in the older woman’s voice. “I reckon we can probably smuggle you in in a delivery cart. Finnegan’s men don’t seem to get excited about those.”
“I am not sure I understand this correctly, but is this really so large a matter?” Cromwell’s voice was slow and sure. Julie was glad of it. She’d maybe caught a little of Baron Mackay’s excitement over Campbell’s visit, and a little coolheaded Puritan stoicism was surely not going to hurt.
“Consider what you heard,” Baron Mackay said, pulling the mike closer to him. “He said he could read future histories too. And he’s a man whose head ended on the highest prick o’ the Tolbooth. Where, I remind everyone, our Alexander is currently enduring.”
“This I heard,” Cromwell said, “and the prospect of a beheading does much to make a man think, this much I know from personal experience. How does it follow that there is some great matter afoot?”
“He was talking to my chief, Lord Reay, head of Clan Mackay,” the baron said. “I’d not known that, although I might have guessed. And you may be sure that a man as sharp as the Campbell will have read aye more than just his own fate. I know for a fact that Reay has gone as far as the twentieth century, and drawn conclusions of his own. Conclusions regarding the proper fate of an independent Scotland, loath though the man is to say as much out loud. And then Campbell says he agrees with him regarding
the common wealth of Scotland.
”
“Oh.” Cromwell’s Norfolk burr drew out that single syllable, freighted it with a trainload of meaning. And Julie realized, in that moment, why Mackay senior had got so agitated over it. “Commonwealth” was an old-fashioned way of saying “state” up-time. Virginia, Massachusetts, and probably a couple of others Julie was forgetting were commonwealths rather than states, although there wasn’t any practical difference that she knew about. Down-time, though, it was a word for something a whole lot more radical. A
republic.
And Cromwell, more than anyone, would know what that term signified here in the British Isles, since in the old history he’d been the man at the head of the first one ever founded. Of course, Reay, Campbell and the rest could insist that they just meant the old meaning of the word, that of the well-being of everyone in the country. Fooling nobody, Julie thought, and probably not even a court of law conducting a treason trial. Since, as far as she could tell from her experience with the Scots legal system, Judge Lynch was on the bench every damned time. It was only the reassurance that Alexander would never face an actual trial that was keeping her from wigging out entirely.
Cromwell was speaking again. “You fancy that perhaps Campbell means to act in combination with your own chief? That Montrose might have begun the war early by unleashing him to this task?”
“Aye.” Mackay’s tone was grim. “I doubt it’ll be some manner of nonsense like the
carte blanche
the French have, but if Montrose wants his hands clean of Campbell’s interfering in Cork’s work, he’ll do well to be little short of it.”
“Why does he need his hands clean?” Gayle asked.
“I don’t imagine he’d want to be seen to be letting me get free of pursuit,” Cromwell said. “for that is what this is. Are we sure that I should not simply let myself be seen elsewhere? It would draw Finnegan off.”
“Only if you can contrive to be caught. A man o’ Finnegan’s intelligence won’t give up the trail for less. He’ll send a few lads to check any rumor and remain here himself to keep the pressure on us to give you up.” Mackay was firm on that. “Our best stratagem to win free o’ this is to send Finnegan home in failure.”
“You’re sure that’s what he’d do?” Julie asked. She could sort of see the logic. Although she’d grown to not much care for hunting—animals, at least, and not boar, which deserved it for being so tasty and dangerous at the same time—she knew how to do it. Had done it a fair bit. And yes, once you had a good spot to wait for game, you stuck by it.
“It’s how I’d do it,” Mackay said, and the brief and terrible coldness of his tone reminded Julie that, twinkly old grandfather though he might be, confined to a wheelchair though he was, this was a man who was a feudal war-leader in a nation not long out of medieval darkness. Sentiment was, for such as he, strictly optional and an option not often available.
“As you think best,” Cromwell answered, and Julie caught a murmur over the radio as Gayle soothed him. Underneath the prayerful self-control, there was a powerful temper that almost certainly came out as a cold, clearheaded fury. She’d seen much the same on the few occasions when her own Alex had had to fight. Small wonder that Cromwell had made such a skilled general; in the heat of battle he doubtless got icy calm.
“Darryl and Vicky just arrived,” came Gayle’s voice, and there were a few moments of getting the two of them up to speed.
“Sneaking the long range set into the Mackay house ain’t too hard,” Darryl said after a while. “Seen enough peddlers and hawkers and such-like over the last few days, I could walk straight in with the thing on my back easy as pie.”
“Finnegan’s men aren’t looking for me, so there’s no problem with me just walking up to the front door,” Gayle said. “I’ve bought enough clothes hereabouts I can dress up as anything from a pauper on up to a prosperous clergyman’s wife. And that’s before I start in on the cross-dressing.”
Cromwell’s laughter in the background was a warm-hearted thing. “My wife, a mistress among spies!” Julie heard him say, and she was
sure
that was the James Bond theme that Darryl was humming there.
* * *
Finnegan could barely wait to open the crate with the German lettering burned on to it. He’d been savoring the arrival of this package for
weeks
and he could hardly bear it now it had finally arrived. He couldn’t believe that there weren’t laws preventing the Germans doing this sort of thing, but then, he reflected, there were laws against most of the things he did for a living and it hardly stopped him.
He supposed there might have been trouble if he’d ordered more ambitiously, but he’d not been entirely sure that the earl would stand for much greater expense once they’d missed Cromwell at King’s Lynn. With the man caught, he didn’t doubt that he’d have been able to ask for enough for everyone. As it was, he had enough for his best men to have a little advantage.
He set to with a pry bar and, with the crate open and reeking of dry straw and oil, savored the moment.
“How many did we get, Chief?” Tully asked. He was the only one he’d told. Raising the heads of the boys with the prospect of the new firearms was a recipe for disgruntlement if the commercial factor he’d gone to had been lying about having a man in Hamburg who could get these things.
“Two pistols and four long-arms. Shotguns, they’re called. I’d say that’s a pistol for each of us and a team of lads with the long guns. All of them repeaters of the American sort, but made by clever German boys, so.”
“It’ll be enough? I’m only sure of maybe fifteen of those highland shites, and none of them with guns or the knowledge of using them. Handy if it comes to cold steel, a rare lot of savages indeed, but we need more shooters, and that’s a fact.”
Finnegan shrugged. “It’s what I could get with the spare money from what the earl sent. That lawyer’s a robbing
giambin
bastard, so he is, and the lads aren’t cheap to feed. I didn’t dare ask for more, since we’ve been this many weeks failing of our charge, but if they’re enough to bring success, I fancy there’s more where these came from. For the present, though, and fuck my arse for saying this, but we can give the Scots laddies grenades. Culchie bastards they may be, but they can light a fuse and throw, and if there’s accidents, better them than us.”
Tully frowned his doubts, but didn’t object. “Let’s see the fancy guns,” he said, obviously itching to get in among the straw in the crate.
Once they’d got it all out, there was a pair of pistols—not quite so alien-looking as the ones the Americans had, the German gunsmiths having stuck to what they knew for the most part. The revolving cylinder at the breech seemed obvious enough, and was the only unfamiliar part. The four shotguns looked more like something from the future, though, two barrels apiece and a hinge that broke the weapons open to load from the breech.
None of the weapons had wheel or flint or place for a match, so how they were fired once loaded seemed a mystery. There was a hammer-thing that snapped when the trigger was pulled on a dry chamber, but there didn’t seem to be anything between it and the touch-hole that made a fire. The cartridges—big ones for the shotguns and small ones for the pistols—were a thing they had experience of, since some shooters made them up for convenience of reloading. But it was by no means a common practice. The box of little copper things was a sore bafflement, though.
“I think these papers are meant to be a manual of arms for the things,” Finnegan said, once they’d been through everything and speculated about it all, and finally turned up a sheaf of printed papers amid the straw they’d discarded. “Make yourself useful and find someone that reads fuckin’ German, will you?”
* * *
“This is all we have?” Jamie Fraser asked, looking over the collection of dirks and swords and cudgels and two dragoon pistols. None of it looked new. Most of it looked well cared for. Just well-cared for over the course of
decades.
“If we need more, we have almost certainly failed in the charge God has placed on us,” Ducos said. “We are few, and Satan’s servants are famously legion. We cannot stand in open battle, so we must favor the indirect approach.”
He was sure Jamie understood that, but bore saying aloud for the benefit of the other men of the Party of God. While he found them congenial company and admirably dedicated to the work of God, within their limited resources, they could be a trifle belligerent at times. Still, better that than sloth and indolence. Holding them back at need was vastly to be preferred to having to be behind them all the time.
“
Agents provocateurs
it is, then,” Fraser said, mangling the French pronunciation.
McCraith chose that moment to arrive. Slightly out of breath, as it happened, and not one of the members of the Party due to assemble for that day’s watch; two of the Frasers, the Gordon who wasn’t at their stall on the Grassmarket. McCraith had work that day and wasn’t expected until the evening’s prayer vigil. “Campbells,” he said, leaning on the back of a chair while he got his breath back.
Gordon lifted his head from the testament he’d been engrossed in. “Campbells?”
Ducos had rather lost the thread of how the MacGregors, with which name the Gordon brothers had been born, came to be proscribed. The tale had been convoluted in the extreme as told by two men who’d had it as small boys from a long-deceased father. A name that had featured in considerable venom, signaling a grudge that might be considered noteworthy even by Scots standards, had been that of the Campbells. Ducos knew but little of the history of the feud, but the flavor of a truly bone-deep grudge was one he knew well.
“Remember you are about God’s work, brother Roy,” Ducos warned, “and keep your mind on it.”
“Aye, and the Campbells will be about the de’ils work,” Gordon retorted with the air of a man declaring that water was, indeed, wet. “I’ll have my mind on the task at hand, sure enough, but mark my words we’ll have to do scant provoking where those fiends are concerned.”
Ducos nodded acknowledgment. “Vengeance is the Lord’s, only recall that. Come the restoration of the godly to this fallen world, all will be served as they deserve, no?”
“Oh, aye. Brother Archibald,” Gordon said, addressing McCraith, who seemed to be breathing easier, if still a little shiny about the face. “What are the Campbells about?”
“A commission of justiciary,” McCraith said, “against tumult and disorder in the town. Nailed up by every market cross. And talk of a braw lot o’ the Campbell’s own men lodging by the Royal Mile to do execution. The gossip is every which way about it, that’s for sure.”
“Finnegan’s men?”
“Been out all mornin’, away at whatever hole they’re lurkin’ in. If they’ve heard, I’ve no’ seen sign of it. And neither Finnegan nor that throat-slitter o’ his, Tully, have been by the White Hart these three days past. I could wish we had more brothers, more eyes. There’s
something
afoot, for sure.”
“Robbie’s still at the stall?” Gordon asked, receiving a nod from McCraith. “He’ll send word should there be aught new.”
“Your brother is reliable,” Ducos acknowledged. “Educate me, brothers, I know the Campbells are…unpopular. What is the practical effect here and now?”
Jamie Fraser grinned. “If we’re to help the first shot along, having it come from among the Campbells will help. If they’re truly under a commission of justiciary, chances are they’re no’ allowed firearms.”
“Really?” Much of the Scots legal system was a closed book to Ducos, although he had grasped that Scotland had far, far less of a state than his native France. Barring a few administrative matters in and around Edinburgh, everything done in service of the Scottish state was done by private individuals. For most practical purposes, the Scottish state had a purse and some law-courts and that was it. And most of the law-courts were simply the local chief nobleman charged with justice in his area. And the kirk ran half of the rest. It made for a refreshing degree of liberty from interference, if a man could but retain an outward appearance of respectability and religious conformity.