1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (18 page)

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Authors: Eric Flint,Andrew Dennis

Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General

BOOK: 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC
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“My point exactly. Sport where you can put a dent the size of a damned fist in a steel helmet, played
without
helmets, and let’s see if I got this right, you win by
drawing an inch of blood out of the other guy’s head
? And you thought playing it at night, in a swamp, with guys who had guns, was interesting? This is why I got a problem with history. It all got made by crazy guys. Like this one.”

“Who’s after being a new Hereward, eh?” Rob grinned.

“I had more of a mind for Robin Hood,” Cromwell said. “How can I Wake if I’ve been hit on the head so much?”

“Ah, true,” Rob said, “You can go here-ward and there-ward in Lincoln green instead.”

“And now puns,” Darryl groaned. “My day is
complete.”

Apart from the puns, and a little light chat about what life was like on King’s Lynn these days—tough—and conditions for dock workers—tough, but improving with a little pressure from below—they got to where Rob’s brothers came back with the news that the Irishmen had arrived in town and were asking along completely the wrong end of the river wharf. They were starting to spread out, though.

“Aye, well, let’s be about it,” Cromwell said, rising. “I could ask, though, how is it that the justices don’t have you before them for restraint of trade? Enticement of servants?”

Rob laughed as he showed them out the door. “That’s the best part. The wharves used to insist on day labor. Can’t entice day labor, nor restrain trade if every man decides to refuse to work of his own accord, and who’s to say what passed between him and friends over ale the day before? They can prove nothing. And then when one wharf finds he may only have workers by engaging men for regular wages on agreed terms—and always before witnesses—then suddenly another wharf finds no day labor will apply to him. They know what goes on, mind, but can prove nothing unlawful on oath. Perhaps a couple of fellows thought to have a shilling for informing falsely, but there’s more still will inform on the informers. And I can be a most persuading sort of fellow, when I’ve a mind.”

“Persuading?” Cromwell said, an eyebrow raised. Darryl privately thought it was a bit rich him wondering about whether or not this sort of thing was legal when he was dead set on turning rebel against the king. But he let it go.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness,” Rob said, suddenly a lot less cheerful sounding. “A text I can preach on at very, very great length.”

“Rightly so,” Cromwell said, after a pause.

* * *

Half an hour later, they were aboard the
Magpie
, a tidy little ship made to carry a hundred and eighty tons of coal at a time. She was, of course, completely filthy with coal dust, despite the efforts of her crew of fifteen. Darryl couldn’t really follow the nautical stuff that was getting yelled as she got under way, not least because the accent was so damned off. The dialect almost sounded like some of the northwest German guys he knew, but the accent had him wishing for subtitles.

None of the other English guys understood much of what the collier’s crew were saying either, apart from Leebrick, who’d run into Tynesiders before. Mackay averred that he’d had a couple in his company, because although Newcastle was a bit outside the traditional Borders area, it was close enough that a few of them had been around when they’d been recruiting. And he’d never been able to understand a bloody word they said either, which was something coming from a man, who, when he decided to really come the Scotsman, was flat-out incomprehensible to one Darryl McCarthy, esquire.

So they all gathered at the stern rail, inhaling the pungent stink of coal—that took Darryl back to simpler times—and watched for Finnegan and his boys to get the message that their quarry was now at sea and beyond hope of capture. And, yes! Rob’s timing had been perfect. Four of them, suddenly, in the gap at the wharf where the
Magpie
had been, just as she edged, under nothing more than a single sail, into the current of the Great Ouse and began to drift gently down to the Wash and on her way.

“Would you say that was about fifty yards?” Cromwell asked, of nobody in particular.

Mackay gave the matter a considering look. “A little over, Mister Cromwell.”

“And, of course, we may not open fire, for fear of harming the innocent.”

“A commendable caution on your part, Mister Cromwell,” Mackay said, gravely.

“And, do we provoke them, we are too distant for them to do injury to this fine vessel, I think.”

“That would be my conclusion also.”

“Excellent,” Cromwell said.

And, to Darryl’s frank amazement, the man cupped his hands for an impromptu trumpet, and without once uttering blasphemy or obscenity, nor even violating the Profane Swearing Act all that much, let Finnegan know precisely what he thought of the man.

And he was right. None of the answering pistol fire so much as scratched the ship.

* * *

“That’s a collier, right?” Finnegan blew the smoke away from his face. Cromwell was still yelling, but getting fainter all the time.

“That’s what the man said,” Tully answered, “and look at the dirt of her. She carries coal, all right.”

“And high in the water, too. Ask around, but I think you’ll find she’s heading home, back to Newcastle.”

“That where we’re bound next?” Tully asked.

“No, there’s nothing in Newcastle for them. But that was for certain sure Mackay there stood by Cromwell. And that means Edinburgh. The earl’s packet on that one says he took his daughter to Edinburgh, where she fell ill. And lived, but he’ll not have brought the mite with him here to do a prison break.”

“Edinburgh, then.”

“Aye. Even if the others take another ship from Newcastle, he and that bitch of a wife of his, her and the rifle, will go on to Edinburgh to pick up the brat. Do we lay hold of them, we’ll know where Cromwell went, which will be something, and where Leebrick and his men went, which is another thing. And, pardon my pessimism, I for one want to report failure to the earl with something to offer him to soften it.”

“And from a long way away?”

“Aye, from a long way away.”

* * *

“Well, we got away.” Darryl looked around at the others. “And don’t you ever tell me about harsh language again, Mister Oliver so-called-Puritan Cromwell.”

Cromwell grinned back. “Harsh language, where it is deserved, is no impropriety. It’s filth and blasphemy I object to.”

Darryl harrumphed. “I know Alex and Julie have to go on to Edinburgh, and I don’t reckon it’d be right for me not to go along in case Finnegan and his mob recognized ’em, but what about you and the kids? Can we get you away to safety?”

“For me, no. Robert?” Cromwell called his son over from where he was watching the sailors getting a full spread of sail on.

“Father?” the younger Cromwell said, presenting himself as smartly as any soldier.

“It will fall to you to look after Oliver and the little ones while I attend to my duty.”

“Aye, Father. In Newcastle, perhaps? It’s our next port. The captain says we needn’t worry about pirates on this journey, with the ship empty.”

“We might be able to arrange better, actually,” Gayle put in. “We’ve got all tonight to get messages back home, and these fine tall masts for an aerial. I’m pretty sure we can find somewhere for the kids in Grantville. My brother Arnold would take them in, I think. He makes a good living in mining administration. He’s got three kids of his own but that’s a big house he’s got.”

She hesitated a moment. “I’m sure my sister Susan would take them in, too, but she’s Catholic since she married into”—here a nod toward Darryl—“that big McCarthy clan he belongs to. I don’t know if that’d be a problem for you, Oliver.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Might not be, if they don’t insist on pushing their creed onto my children. What is your brother’s faith?”

“He’s Disciples of Christ, like me.” Again, she hesitated. “That’s…ah, well, we’re Protestants and congregationalists. I’m not sure if you’d consider us ‘godly’ the way you use the term, but…”

He nodded. “Much closer than Catholics, certainly. Well, see if he’s willing. If not, I’ve no great objection to your sister.” He gave his son a rather sly smile. “I dare say Robert can withstand the blandishments of papistry.”

His son looked quite stern, in response.

Gayle chuckled. “All right, then. I’ll make the call tonight. If they can wait in Newcastle for a ship going the right way. You up to that, Robert?”

Robert nodded, now looking more solemn than stern.

Leebrick cleared his throat. “While I should like to come to Edinburgh, and I won’t speak for the other two, I’m keen to get me over to Germany. I’ve Libby to support, and I’m not doing it here. The poor girl left all her livelihood behind when she left London, and the money she had of me won’t last forever. I could go with Robert, here, help him with the guarding of the littl’uns in Grantville?”

After that, it was settling of details.

Part Four

August 1634

The English steel we could disdain,

Secure in valour’s station;

But English gold has been our bane—

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Chapter 20

Town house of Lord Reay,

Colonel-in-chief of the Mackay regiment in the Swedish Army

Copenhagen, Denmark

“Yeez c’n gaw un an see th’laird noo,” the orderly said, none-too-discreetly scratching at an armpit that was clearly troubling him. And, apparently, unwilling to speak clearly to a superior officer. How the man did when he had to deal with anyone not brought up in Scotland was anyone’s guess. Most foreigners learned English, if they learned it at all, the way it was spoken in England, and assumed the various forms of Scots speech were other languages altogether. Come to that, a fair few native English held the same opinion. Most Scotsmen, be they ever so broad in their brogue, managed to at least rub the rough edges off with a few years of foreign service. Not this one.

“Thank ye for that, soldier,” Lennox said, speaking clearly to set an example and trying not to sniff. Not just because it wouldn’t do to be too snotty about a soldier under someone else’s command. Nor because he’d taken on board lectures about prejudice and didn’t want to show the lowlander’s bred-in-the-bone contempt for thieving, drunken papist highlanders. Rather, because the private soldier who was overseeing Lord Reay’s anteroom clearly hadn’t seen the inside of a laundry or bathhouse in far too long.

Major Lennox of the United States of Europe’s Marine Corps still listened to his inner sergeant about such things. Long a stickler for keeping the men clean in barracks and in the field, he’d had his views confirmed by twentieth-century learning on hygiene and reinforced by the USE’s up-time standards of military grooming.

Private McAuslan, in his view,
Would Not Do
. Doubtless there was some reason Colonel the Lord Reay kept the man around and tolerated his slovenliness, though. It wasn’t for a late-starting major to question the eccentricities of a regimental colonel with several years seniority and a patent of nobility.

He still didn’t draw breath to sigh until the horrible little man had shut the door to the laird’s room behind him.

“He’s a character, is he no’?” Lord Reay asked as he returned Lennox’s salute in the modern style.

“As your lordship says,” Lennox replied, picking the most diplomatic of the responses he could think of. And, to follow up on his hunch, “I’ve no doubt he’s done your lordship fine service, at times.”

“Aye. Man’s a reekin’ pint o’ piss in barracks, but ye’ll not see his like in a fight. Owe the man my life more times than I care t’ count. He hides here wi’ me to keep his comrades from having at him wi’ a stiff brush an a bucket o’ soap.” Reay was grinning. There was clearly some joke he wasn’t letting Lennox in on, for that surely wasn’t the whole story.

Lennox decided that if his superior wanted to have the little joke with him, he wasn’t going to object. Out loud, at any rate. “Your lordship summoned me,” he prompted.

“Have a seat, Lennox. I sent for ye so as to talk man to man, without rank and the like getting about our ears.”

“Aye?” Lennox took the chair Lord Reay had pointed to while the other sat himself in a plain carver by the window. “It’s in my mind that we’ve both commissions in allied armies. And your lordship a peer of Scotland and the chief of the clan I took service with.”

“Right enough, Major, but I’d have as little of that as may be today. What d’ye ken o’ oil?”

“Yon stuff they mine at Wietze? Little enough, y’lordship. Enough I’m determined t’ have a bright lad by me that understands the business should I have tae deal wi’ it. Enough tae ken the stuff is vital. Need I more for this wee talk?”

Reay chuckled. “Have a bright lad by ye, ye say. Aye, there’s half the art an’ science’ o’ lordship in a nutshell, right enough. I’ve the same understanding, it so happens. And a very clear understanding o’ the importance of the stuff. Did ye hear from any o’ the Americans about North Sea oil?”

“No’ that I recall, Chief.”

“Ye’ve heard about it now, then, frae me. We’ll be many a year before we can mine it out, mind ye, but there’s oil under the sea-bed, and much of it within waters Scotland can control. Scotland, mind ye. Not the United Kingdom.” Reay stopped there and looked pointedly at Lennox.

“I—” Lennox stopped himself short. He’d be the first to admit he was none of the world’s great or deep thinkers. Enough wit to manage his professional responsibilities. Enough learning to manage them well, and follow scriptures on the Sabbath. Each had served him well enough until that day in 1631 when he and young Alexander Mackay had happened on the first days of the Ring of Fire. Since then he had joined a new service, seen marvels he’d never have dreamed of as a wee lad in Coldstream, and, yes, taken a role on the fringes of high politics. There was that to be said for the Americans. They’d find you work for what you could do, not who you were born. If a peer of the kingdom of Scotland was taking up the same attitude there was a very real prospect of Lennox finding himself in the kind of situations that the treason laws applied to, will he or nil he.

“Aye, it’s a grand big thought, right enough,” Reay said, “take your time wi’ it.”

Lennox took a deep breath and let it out. “Ye’re talkin’ o’ risky matters, y’lordship. We’re the both of us in foreign service as it is, I mind that well enough, but if ye mean what I think ye mean, well…”

He groped for a word, for an idea he only had the merest mist of, an idea that he was fairly certain was more complicated than just the word
treason
would cover. “We’d no’ be allowed home in peace again.”

Reay nodded. “Aye, that. More than just lives, fortunes and sacred honor, but all that’s at hazard too. If we try, and fail. And we may be sure Charles Stuart will not stay his hand against all in reach of it, should we make the least misstep.”

Lennox felt the heat rising in his face. It would be this way, then? The lords and chiefs, moving the common men like chess-men. He mustered every effort to speak civilly. “I’m no’ sure ’tis proper t’ speak of it, Chief. Just to scheme of it would be the excuse the Stuart needs. We’ve all folk at home. I’ll not see them ruined and killed over the minin’ o’ oil.”

“Aye. Ye’ll have no blame from me for the concern ye have. And were it just oil, I’d not fash ye with it. I’d no fash myself, come to that. But still. Take a drink with me. I’ll tell ye how it seems to me, and how ye may do good for Scotland and Clan Mackay that ye’ve done good service for, and for the United States ye have the commission of now. I cannae see how a good fellow such as you will refuse, but I’ll think no less o’ ye if ye do. Nor will I bother ye for an answer this day nor the next. It’ll be a hard thing I ask, when ye’d a mind to settle down in the new training establishment. We’re of an age, we twa’, an past the time where campaigning is a grand boys’ adventure.”

Lennox chuckled. The remark was true enough, and the little jest helped settle Reay’s reassurances in his mind. “Ye’ve the right o’ that, aye, m’lord. I’ve to kid on I’m not sore in the arse after a long ride, these days. It’s hard work not t’ let the wee nippers goin’ for soldiers see that the auld bastard trainin’ em’s no’ as hard as granite.”

Reay grinned. “And there’s the most o’ the rest of being a master o’ men. One o’ the Americans said it, never let ’em see ye sweat, and I kept that right by me, depend on it.” He paused while he poured hearty measures of brandy. “As I say, it’s not just the oil, but much flows from that one little thing, so.”

Lennox took the glass Reay handed him, and after a snort nodded in approval. Not that he’d expected a regimental colonel and peer of the realm to have anything but the best. “How so?”

“Did ye look at the future of Scotland, in the other time?” Reay had an intent, earnest look on his face now. Although the history that now never would be, after the Ring of Fire, had an unreal air to it, it was terrifying to look on and see the mistakes that the future would make, to know that they could be avoided, and to realize that they would be replaced with other, novel mistakes. Lennox, in his gloomier moments, found himself wondering if they wouldn’t be worse ones. All that new knowledge, flooding into the world without giving anyone time to get used to it. Some of it good, like the dental work he’d finally had done, the plate of gold teeth he’d had young Alex’s father-in-law make him with the reward he’d had from the pope.

Ha! There was a change, if you’d like. Bred-in-the-bone presbyterian kirk-going borderer, saving the pope’s life from what turned out to be the utter stupidity of children. Children, dazzled by the prospect of a bright new future of freedom and prosperity, willing to follow the vilest of villains to get there. The scar where he’d lost most of one ear ached terribly sometimes.

“A wee bit, aye. Mair an’ closer union with the Sassenach, rule from London. Cardinal Mazzare said he saw a single nation with nae troubles, nae mair than words o’ discontent, an’ those spake civil for the most part. Plenty o’ Scots havin’ place and station, fame and money.”

“Aye, at the end. Did ye learn o’ the suffering and dying that took us there?” Reay’s tone was somber. “Our menfolk slaughtered, our way o’ life gone? The Scotland Cardinal Mazzare saw, and aye, I’ve spoke wi’ the fellow, wasnae the Scotland we twa ken. Neither highland nor lowland nor your ain borders.”

“Aye, but those Scots of the future, they were aye happy, I hear?” Lennox had satisfied himself that whatever the political arrangements, up-time Scotland had been a nation that knew no great want, paid no tribute great or small and governed her own affairs as part of a greater nation. If there was no trouble, he reasoned, there was no call to be borrowing it. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, as the scripture so correctly said, in a translation commissioned by a Scots king. Indeed, Lennox took a quiet pride in the fact that that translation, with some small editing, was still in wide use four hundred years later. And plenty of the machinists in Grantville, many of Scots extraction themselves, had taken their own pride in telling him how many of the marvels of their own home time were invented by Scotsmen. Case very much closed as far as Lennox was concerned, who fancied himself a practical man put on the earth to solve practical problems and let the conundrums of philosophy mind their own business.

“Happy, aye. But how much the better wi’ a more equal partnership wi’ the English on the way to that? Years o’ squallin’ an’ brawlin’ an’ no a penny made but by our wits. Say instead, Scotsmen stood together, with oil tae give us capital? What a nation we’d have been!” Reay grinned. “And nae need for slaughter nor discord! I’m nae the only peer that sees his way clear to this, mind ye. We’ve a mort o’ bright lads in Scotland. Led right and wi’ capital, who’s t’ know what we may do? Here’s tae us!”

“Wha’s like us?” Lennox grinned back, raising his own glass in turn. “Ye’ll no do this without bloodshed, mind,” he added as he lowered his glass from the toast.

“We’ll come to that, but d’ye like the taste o’ the notion as well as ye seem t’ like the taste o’ the brandy? Another?”

“Aye, it’s no’ so early,” Lennox said, “but ye ken I’m a borderer. Should it come to war wi’ the Sassenach, it’s ma own folk as it goes hardest for. I’ll no’ see the lowlands be another Germany.”

Reay nodded “I’ll not say it cannae come t’ that. Was it no’ a lallans boy said the schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley?”

“Was it?”

Reay grinned. “Rabbie Burns. Look him up.”

“Oh, him. Ayrshire man. They’re a’ daft up that way.” Lennox grinned back. “But enough wi’ the distractions, how d’ye mean tae have no war on our own doorstep?”

“Good auld politicking, Major Lennox, politicking. That an’ maybe the slittin’ o’ a few throats o’ the worst troublemakers.” Reay tried to pass that off as wit, but his grin was that of a man long in the business of killing. “I read o’ the civil war the Stuart lost, right well I did. Since I was to be in wi’ the losers for the most o’ it.”

He set his glass down and began counting on his fingers. “First, the covenanters. Minded tae have a presbyterian kirk for all Scotland. We’ve a fine example in the USE of a grand big nation with freedom o’ religion, so they cannot say a nation must fall if she tolerates more than one confession. I’ve a sentiment that most o’ the throats we slit’ll be divines, mind.”

Another finger. “Second, the bishops’ wars. Hard t’ find in the books, these, but there’s enough there. Freedom o’ confession again. Half my highlanders are papists, the rest are Church o’ Scotland, I say leave that wee trouble to bide. And if the papists raise more men like Mazzare, aye, we’ll find it’s a wee trouble enough. And, mind ye, the bishops’ party is all peers an’ notables, such as can have their mooths stuffed wi’ gold. Did ye tell me tae haud ma’ noise aboot religion and see Scotland be great and ma purse full, if I’d no’ seen the sense before I’d kid on I did then.”

A third finger. “The Irish. Nae Black Tom Tyrant. With him in the Tower, nae rebellion, nae Confederation. Or, if they have their revolt, they’ll win. I’ve no fash wi’ offerin ma’ hand in friendship t’ ’em, do they only use the leavening o’ Scots among ’em well enough.”

A last finger. “Fourth. Royalist lairds. I’m no’ among that number after the Stuart’s follies, Leslie’d no’ take a peerage for much the same reason. Montrose I’ve t’ find out about, for all that I have guesses. Campbell, for one, will follow the money, as the Americans say, and with him go so, so many others. Politicking, Lennox, wi’ that an’ a wee bit o’ luck we’ll give the Stuart England an’ bid him joy o’ the place.”

“Aye, but will he no’ invade?” Lennox was finding it all convincing, compelling even, but still couldn’t see where he fit in.

“The man’s no’ the sense o’ a dead rabbit, but he can count coin an’ soldiers both. We have more veterans here in Germany than we can use”—forgetting they were actually in Denmark, at the moment—“and we have the support o’ half o’ Grantville—aye, the half that’s Scots! Wi’ no more than a spirit o’ unity we may have a standing army by the banks o’ the Tweed. Glarin’ o’er the border, and nae foraging, either. Scotland standin’ by herself, friend to the USE, wi’ all that oil, extendin’ our hands t’ the Irish.” He paused to pick up the bottle. “Another o’ these brandies and I’ll give ye a United Kingdom governed frae Edinburgh!”

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