Ring of Fire III

Dye Another Day

Prague was remarkably pleasant for a city that had been the subject of a Defenestration slightly less than twenty years ago. Tom Stone had not retained a lot of facts from his old college classes at Purdue, especially not the History electives he’d taken, but that one-“The Defenestration of Prague,” had stuck with him all these years. He loved that phrase-of course, all that it meant was that three people had been thrown out of a window and had lived because they had landed in a manure pile, but it sounded as if some great catastrophe had taken place. Not so amusing was the fact that the act had been central to the start of the Thirty Years’ War that the up-timers had landed right smack in the middle of.

At any rate, Wallenstein had been a good steward of the place. He’d done a damn fine job of keeping most of the mayhem out of the city.

Morris and Judith Roth, who had moved there to expand their very profitable jewelry business, were hosting Tom and his down-time wife Magda-which meant a certain amount of up-timer comfort amidst the down-timer “ambience.” Upholstered furniture, for instance. Backless wooden benches, hard wooden chairs, these were the norm down-time. There was some upholstered furniture, but it wasn’t what he would have called “padded,” and the older he got, the more he appreciated cushioning. The heavily cushioned chair he was sitting in now was luring him into a discussion he ordinarily would have steered clear of. It was almost political. Tom didn’t like politics at all, and he especially didn’t like down-timer politics.

The subject at hand was the king of Bohemia himself, Wallenstein, who was an ally of the United States of Europe. He was very clearly sick and his nurse, a former hardscrabble Grantville native, was afraid he was dying. The problem was that Wallenstein had some very decided notions about physicians and what they could and could not do with, to, or around him, and that was making diagnosis…difficult. To say the least. Of course, when you lived in a time when you didn’t surrender as much as a hair off your head because someone might use it to curse you with, you could understand his point. A sick king would not want to disrobe in front of a crowd, because someone in that crowd would surely pass on information about his condition to his enemies-but he also would not want to disrobe in front of a physician, alone, because that would be the ideal time for an assassin, perhaps even in the person of that physician, to strike.

And as for up-time medical instruments being used on him-well, how was he to be sure they would do what the up-timers said they would do?

“On the one hand, Wallenstein should have been dead already,” Tom Stone mused to his wife and youngest son. “He should have been assassinated over a year ago. I mean, you could say, like, I dunno, karma? Or maybe the timeline trying to correct itself or…something?” He wished his son hadn’t dragged him into this. All he’d wanted to do was to get back to Grantville for a while and forget about parading around Italy as if he was some sort of genius, like Galileo, when he wasn’t. He was just an up-time dope farmer with most of a pharmacy degree and a knack for the sort of herbal-slash-pioneering style of medicine that the hippies of his commune had used instead of the real doctors none of them could afford.

Gerry Stone sighed. “You read too many science fiction books,” he replied.

Tom raised a bushy eyebrow. “We’re living in a science fiction book,” he pointed out. “Just in case you hadn’t noticed.” He pondered the situation with Wallenstein a little more. “On the other hand, I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of other people dropping dead that should have been dead already, so it’s probably not that. What’s Edith say?”

Morris snorted. “That she’s not a doctor.”

“Well neither am I!” Tom protested, feeling extremely uneasy.

“But Tomas, you are ein Doktor,” Magda corrected him. “Universitat of Padua makes you vun.”

She insisted on speaking English in the presence of notable up-timers like the Roths, instead of the Amideutsch she was more comfortable with. Her speech was comprehensible enough, though, if a bit garbled and heavily accented.

“I am Frau Doktor now,” she added proudly. “I haf married a Doktor! Papa is so pleased!”

Tom groaned. Although being granted the title of “Doctor” by the university in Padua had added considerably to his social status, by his own estimation, given the general level of knowledge among the down-timers, it was pretty much the equivalent of buying your doctorate from a diploma mill, or being ordained as a High Priest of Zen Druidism.

“All hail the tree that is not there,” he muttered. Magda looked puzzled, but Gerry jumped on what he’d said.

“See, now that is exactly why you’re what Edith needs right now!” he exclaimed. “You know all that New Age crap! Shoot, I think Lothlorien Commune probably had one of every crackpot out there, given some of the stories you’ve told me!”

“But I don’t believe that New Age crap!” Tom protested feebly.

Gerry merely fixed him with a stern gaze that looked remarkably like the one his father used to nail him with when he didn’t want to mow the lawn. “You can come up with some mystical sounding garbage that will let you do some kind of tests, and if you can do that, you can probably figure out what’s wrong with him. And then you can figure out how to wrap the treatment in more mumbo-jumbo that will ensure he actually follows what’s been prescribed.”

Gerry wasn’t backing down, but neither was Tom. “I’d have to go back to Grantville. I’d need to dig into the stuff in the commune library. All the way back to Grantville, then dig through all those boxes of books in storage.” He nailed Gerry with the same look. “I’d take months.”

“No, you don’t,” Gerry replied, just as stubbornly. “You don’t have to convince another believer that you know what you’re talking about. You just have to convince Wallenstein enough that he’ll take whatever meds he’s advised to take-or whatever it is Edith and Doc think he needs to do. You just have to give him something that sounds plausible so he’ll stop listening to the astrologers. And now he’s listening to Gribbleflotz too, since he showed up in Prague.”

“But why me?” That was what he didn’t get.

“Because you’re the only living hippy in Grantville,” said Roth. “Logic and science aren’t going to work on Wallenstein. We need something as kooky as Kirlian auras, and you’re our expert on crazy religions.”

What made him the expert? He was almost agnostic, for crying out loud! He’d seen so many flakes with religion come and go at Lothlorien that-well, he was only sure of one thing. God was probably laughing Her socks off at humankind. “Did you see what they came up with this week? Holy Me!”

“I spent the Harmonic Convergence in bed,” he reminded them, sinking a little into the chair and hoping that Magda would not ask “and with whom?” “I didn’t do Channeling. I refused to have my Chak-”

He stopped.

“You haf thought of something!” Magda exclaimed. “I am being know that face you are being make!” She clasped her hands together gleefully.

Tom groaned. “It’s quackery,” he said.

“ Ja, und? ” Magda dismissed that with a wave of her graceful little hand.

“It’s-I don’t remember a lot of it-”

“So you make it up. Or you borrow from other stuff.” Gerry was just as dismissive. Judith and Morris leaned forward.

Tom sighed. “Chakras,” he said, reluctantly. “I’m going to go to hell for this, I just know it.”

Judith and Morris looked at each other. “I vaguely recollect something about chakras-isn’t that some acupuncture thing?” she asked, worriedly. “Wallenstein will believe in a lot of nonsense, but I am fairly sure he won’t sit there and be made into a pincushion.”

Tom shook his head. “No, I mean, some acupuncturists used the whole chakra thing as another explanation for their stuff, but, no, acupuncture is Chinese and chakra healing is Indian. There’s supposed to be seven energy vortices up your spine, each one a different color. And that’s why I’m going to hell.”

Gerry tilted his head to the side. “I don’t get it-”

“Colors. Energy colors, aura colors. It works with the Kirlian aura nonsense. Which is why I’m going to hell. I’m not going to convince him to stop listening to Gribbleflotz. Edith tells me the Kirlian stuff is actually an improvement over the crap the astrologers were feeding Wallenstein. I’m just going to convince him that Gribbleflotz is right. In fact, I am probably going to end up giving Gribbleflotz even more ideas.”

“Does it matter?” Morris demanded. “For God’s sake, Tom, even if we were only talking about extending a man’s life, here, I’d put up with Gribbleflotz! But it’s not just that, we need to keep Wallenstein alive to protect his son for as long as possible, we’re extending the stability of the region and the relationship we have with-”

“I know, I know,” Tom interrupted, rubbing his temples. “Dammit, I hate politics. I really hate down-timer politics. They can get you killed.”

“Not dis time, Tomas,” Magda said, reaching out and patting his hand comfortingly. “Dis time ve make life, not var.”

Tom might be “Doctor Thomas Stone of the University of Padua,” but if he was going to convince Wallenstein to talk to him-and get diagnosed and treated by him-he was going to have to look the part. The part being-he was going to have to look the way a seventeenth-century Bohemian thought a Tibetan guru would look.

Which was to say…colorful. As if he was his own best customer at the dye works. It started with a turban the size of a small country house, moved down through a caftan and floor-length vest with a wide sash, and ended with bright red felt boots.

“I look ridiculous,” he grumbled, adjusting his turban. It was huge, and centered with an enormous brooch. He had the feeling that he looked just like Johnny Carson playing the phony fortuneteller, Carnac the Magnificent.

“ Nein, nein, you look ausgezeichnet!” Magda replied, her eyes dancing. “So impressive!”

“Your mouth says ‘no’ but your face says ‘yes,’ ” he muttered.

At least he could take comfort in the fact that if he looked ludicrous, his assistant looked worse.

He’d decided early on that if he was going to be able to pull this off, he was going to need some help, and it wasn’t going to be Edith, devoted to the royal family though she might be. It had taken his assistant five days on fast horses to get here, and he hadn’t been happy about his costume, but-well, he was a reservist in the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s National Guard, and he was under orders. The orders had come from Ed Piazza himself, the SoTF’s president.

“Are you ready yet?” Tom called into the next room.

“I hate you, Stoner,” came the growled reply.

Tom sighed. “Look, I’m doing the best that I can. It could be worse.”

“I’d like to know how.” George Mundell shuffled into the room, glowering. “First off, I am never going to get this crap off my skin. It’s gonna have to wear off.”

“You look like George Hamilton.”

“I look like Al Jolson in blackface.” George bared his teeth in a grimace that did look startlingly white in his walnut-tanned face. “But I wouldn’t mind that so much if I wasn’t wearing clown shoes, I Dream of Jeanie’s vest, my grandma’s curler-turban, enough Mardi Gras beads for an entire float, and M.C. Hammer’s pants.”

It wasn’t quite that bad, but he did look…colorful. And it was a good thing that they were down-time, or he would have seriously offended any native of India that happened to spy him. When he asked for George’s help, Tom had also radioed Grantville’s theater teacher. That was Shackerley Marmion, a young Englishman who’d emigrated to Grantville the year before. Marmion had a flair for such things, and at Tom’s request he’d put together a costume for “a mysterious Hindu magician” and this was what had come with George. The pants were actually a pair of the infamous “parachute pants” from the eighties whose owner had allegedly donated them only on condition that no one reveal who he was. The vest had come right out of the Lothlorien attic. The “clown shoes” and the turban were the only actual costume pieces-they weren’t actually “clown shoes,” though they were very flamboyant with their up-curled toes.

“I guess it could be worse,” George said, after a moment of surveying Tom. “You could smuggle a Humvee in that hat. And are you wearing a dress?”

“It’s a caftan,” Tom corrected, sourly.

“It’s a granny-dress,” George snickered.

Tom considered any number of responses and rejected them all. He needed George. Mundell was the only stage-magician in Grantville. He’d done it as a hobby for years before the Ring of Fire. Thereafter, once his sons Mike and Jim started working as apprentices with Philip Massinger’s troop of actors, he’d begun doing stage magic on a semi-professional basis. He’d gotten pretty damn good at it.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” he said instead, and gestured to the two servants to pick up their bags and schlep them along.

He felt very uncomfortable, with a manservant following him with a bag he could very well carry himself, but Herr Doktor Thomas Stone, master of Akashic Magick and scholar of the Chakras would never demean himself by carrying anything. Even Gupta Rai Singh, his assistant, was too important to be burdened with a bag. And the farce absolutely had to begin at the front door of the Roths’ palatial home. People would be watching. Word had been spread that the famous Herr Doktor Stone had come straight from Padua just to cure the king.

So, they made a spectacle of themselves, trucking down to the waiting carriage, which he and George occupied alone, for even their baggage handlers were so important that they required their own carriage. They proceeded through the streets of Prague to the palace, with plenty of rubberneckers along the way. Tom remained serene, upright, and enveloped in dignity, but George fanned the flames of their reputation by producing small plastic coins out of thin air and tossing them to the crowd. Tom had been worried that people would be angry when they realized George’s coins weren’t spendable and weren’t even metal, but it seemed the opposite was the case. Once again, the exotic look of up-timer plastic fakery was valued as high as or higher than the real thing.

So by the time they got to the palace, there was a substantial buzz in the streets. Some people might have known that Tom was allegedly a physician, and some might have known that he was (in name anyway) one of the up-timer industrialists-but no one until now had known he was a magician.

George’s sleight of hand was good-very good. It had to be. He’d been the go-to guy for kids’ parties, and you had to be good to trick kids once they were old enough to suspect trickery. Big stage illusions-not so much, in no small part, he had told Tom once, because he didn’t have the skills to build them himself, and couldn’t afford the good ones. But he was good enough at close-up work that even when Tom knew exactly what he was doing, and when, and how, Tom still couldn’t catch him. This was going to prove important, because Tom was depending on him not only to convince Wallenstein that he was seeing solid evidence of that chakra nonsense Tom was about to spout, but because George was going to perform most of a physical exam that Wallenstein had no idea he was going to get. The king had flatly refused anyone permission to do the sort of examination that would actually tell them something. Even Edith wasn’t sure why, though Tom had a notion it might have less to do with either modesty or the concept of the King’s Sacred Person and a lot more to do with a very rational fear of assassination. Who would be more in a position to do a man in than his own physician?

“No psychic surgery,” George had said, flatly, when he’d heard what Tom wanted of him. “Absolutely, positively, no psychic surgery.”

“What?” Tom had replied, shocked. “No. I just want a blood pressure check, get his temp and heart-rate, stuff like that.”

“Good. Nobody is pulling that particular scam here down-time yet, and I’d rather they didn’t get ideas,” George had said, his grim tone conveying, even over the radio, the depth of his loathing for the sleight-of-hand charlatans that “removed tumors psychically” from the bodies of gullible victims up-time.

They descended the carriage and mounted the steps, followed by their entourage, and paused at the door for just a moment.

He and George exchanged a look. To his relief, he saw George smiling ever so slightly.

“It’s showtime,” George muttered out of the corner of his mouth, and as if that had been a cue, the doors swung open, and they stepped inside.

The king received them in a private audience chamber, and seemed quite impressed by their flamboyant outfits. Until Tom knew whether or not Wallenstein had high blood pressure or a dingy heart, he didn’t want to put any stress on the man; that limited him quite a bit in what he could do. Not so George. Tom was the distracter so George could do his work. He’d commissioned seven hand-blown glass bowls in graduated sizes, and ordered seven framed panes of stained glass in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and white, after getting the dimensions he needed from Edith. He positioned the king in a comfortable chair under the window that the sun was coming through, then mounted the red glass inside the window frame so that the king was bathed in red light.

“I fear, Your Majesty,” Tom said, as Wallenstein peered at him through the ruddy light, “That the good Dr. Gribbleflotz is only partially correct in his interpretation of the aura. You see, he has not studied the secrets of the aura among the ancient sages of the Tibetan mountains as I have. They teach us that the aura is merely the outward reflection of the inward emanations of the seven chakras.”

He then launched into a sermon on the chakras which owed as much to snake-oil medicine as it did to the little he remembered from the commune days. It really didn’t matter anyway, his son was right about that. All that mattered was that he was consistent, that what he said didn’t contradict Gribbleflotz so much as make Gribbleflotz look like the kid who had brought a baking-soda volcano to a science fair where other kids were showing off their dancing robots and osmotic sea-water purifiers. In this, he was helped immensely by George, who demonstrated a robust set of chakras by producing a “chakric resonator” in the form of a crystal wand that glowed the appropriate color when held over the appropriate spot on himself-and flickered and dimmed when held over the same spots on the king.

All except for the blue one-which corresponded to a spot right at the throat (and was the “auric color” that Gribbleflotz had told the king was his own. George made that one glow strongly. The king stared at the wand in fascination.

“Ah, now you see, all of your chakras are unbalanced,” Tom told him. “The only strong one is the Muskogee chakra, the chakra of communication and intellect. You are a man of your mind, Your Majesty. Your mind is the most powerful part of you. But by strengthening that part of your energy exclusively, you weaken the rest of your etheric body, exactly as if you concentrated on strengthening only your hand, until you could crush a walnut with your fist, but your legs would not take you across a room unaided.”

Since he couldn’t remember the Indian names for the chakras, he had finally just used the names of the home towns of some of his old friends. The chakra at the top of the head he called “Sheboygan,” followed by Mishawaka, Muskogee, Oskaloosa, Chillicothe, Oolagah and Austin.

The king nodded. “That is how I feel ever since Doktor Gribbleflotz was reading my aura and telling me it was blue!” he exclaimed. “I thought I was to be-” He broke off, looking perplexed.

“Now I will be examining your chakras with my colleague and assistant, Gupta,” Tom carried on blithely. “Then we will know what is to be done to re-balance you.”

So the king sat in the red light while Tom dipped his fingers in a little water and made the biggest bowl “sing” by running his wet finger around the top of it, chanting nonsense syllables the entire time. The king’s eyes widened at that; evidently no one had invented the glass harmonica yet. Tibetan “singing bowls” were made of brass and made to sing in much the same fashion but using a wooden mallet-Tom had never quite mastered that, but he was pretty good at making wineglasses sing. George made mystical passes, made red silk handkerchiefs appear and vanish, did the same with glowing balls that he rolled around on his hands. Then they repeated the whole routine with orange light from an orange pane of glass, a higher pitched bowl, and so on right up to the white light. George meanwhile was getting a wealth of information.

By the time they were done, poor Wallenstein was exhausted and more than willing to go back to his bed while Tom and George “consulted” and “made their calculations and charts” to present to him the following day.

In reality they went back to the Roths’, and Tom holed up with the radio and the closely-written pages of notes, consulting not with the stars, but with Dr. Nichols back in Magdeburg. Some things were obvious-Wallenstein had gout, for instance, a common complaint among nobles whose diets were worse than any American teenager who lived on fast food. His heart was definitely dodgy. By process of elimination, they figured he had a chronic infection somewhere.

“The heart’s going to kill him eventually,” Nichols said, “I’d say three, four years.” Tom clearly heard the frustration in Nichols’ voice, and he sympathized. Things that could have been treated with a couple generic prescriptions up-time were deadly now, and sometimes he could tell it grated on the Doc that Tom often knew more about what worked in the here and now than he did, with all of his experience and medical knowledge. “But you’ve got foxglove to keep him going, and the point is mostly to get the baby past the danger zone of infancy, according to Mike and Ed.”

“We can improve his diet some, if I put enough mystical spin on it. Garlic and kelp might clear up that infection, especially if it’s his tonsils; heck, I know I can make a Lister’s Fluid he can gargle with. Or if it’s in an infected tooth, maybe Edith can get him to get the tooth pulled.” Tom rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ll see what I can figure out. He’s a tough old bastard, and he might surprise us. Look how long Henry the Eighth lasted, and he not only had a lot of the same problems, he had an abscessed leg too.”

“I hate this,” Nichols said, after a long pause. “I hate knowing that I know what to do, if only I had a modern operating theater, if only I had the right drugs, if only-”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Doc,” Tom interrupted. “Look at it this way. You and me, we’re still managing to save people no one down-time could before.” He said that, and he knew as he said it that it wouldn’t help much. Nichols was a real doctor; he had never been in medicine for the money, but because medicine was his calling. “And have patience. We’re getting antibiotics. We’ve got chloramphenicol and even some small amounts of penicillin. We’ll get there.”

“Providing quacks like Gribbleflotz don’t kill them first,” Doc said sourly. “All right, I’ve used up my allotted time. Good luck.”

Tom didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye; the voice of someone else, calling another station, immediately filled the speakers. He turned off the set, gathered up his notes, and headed for bed. Enough for now; tomorrow they’d start treatments and see if their guesses were going to work.

The treatments had begun to work. Tom really had not expected such a quick result, but already Wallenstein’s color was better, his breathing had eased thanks to the rosemary-infused steam he was inhaling, and Tom thought his BP might be going down. That might have been partly the placebo effect, partly the effect of just getting some of the king’s other conditions under control.

Whatever, there was progress, and it was beginning to look as if he and George would be able to go back to Grantville and leave things in Edith’s hands.

Which was, of course, the moment when everything went pear-shaped.

“I’m going to kill him,” George said for the fifty-sixth time. “I am going to mug Gribbleflotz in a dark alley, tear out his liver, and feed it to him.”

Dr. Gribbleflotz had been closeted with the king all morning, and the longer he was in there, the more convinced Tom became that things were not looking good for Chakras versus Kirlian.

Still. They had an ace in the hole, and that was Edith. Wallenstein trusted her as he trusted no one else.

But George was pacing up and down the antechamber they had been sent to wait in, muttering. Tom had never seen him this agitated before. Something more was going on here than Tom was aware of, obviously, but if George wasn’t going to say anything-

That was when Edith entered the room, and she didn’t even have to say anything; the expression on her homely face told both of them everything they needed to know.

George was already angry-but it was Tom who suddenly felt himself overcome with fury.

“Come on,” he growled, “Follow my lead.” And before Edith could say or do anything at all, he charged towards the king’s private chambers. Fortunately, Edith managed to sprint ahead of them, or they might have gotten skewered on the halberds of Wallenstein’s guards.

As it was, when they burst through the doors together, both Gribbleflotz and the king nearly jumped out of their skins.

“Thanks be to the Lord Jesus!” Tom bellowed. “I am here in time! Gupta! The violet ray! This is an emergency!”

And he leapt, not for the king, but for Gribbleflotz.

“Doctor, God save us,” he shouted, pulling the first thing he could lay his hands on out of his sleeve-it was an atomizer full of Lister solution-and spraying Gribbleflotz liberally. “Your chakras are fluctuating so dangerously that we felt the effects in the antechambers!”

George meanwhile had fished out the little flashlight they’d put a tiny scrap of blue theatrical gel on and was playing it into Gribbleflotz’s startled eyes.

“I beg your pardon, Majesty,” Tom continued, waving a quartz crystal point all over Gribbleflotz’s upper torso. “We dared not wait any longer. Your devoted doctor has put his own life in jeopardy by treating so many sufferers. His Mishawaka is utterly drained, his Sheboygan enlarged, and the rest of his chakras so muddled it is a wonder he has not collapsed before now!”

“They are?” Gribbleflotz managed, face stricken with doubt. “It is?”

Now George took over. “When you drink wine at dinner, do you sometimes feel dizzy when you rise, sahib?” he asked, earnestly, carefully mangling his German. “Do you find yourself waking in the night with a terrible need to relieve yourself? Do you find yourself stumbling over nothing? Do you sometimes forget a word or a name that you know as well as your own?”

Gribbleflotz paled. The doubt on his face was erased by slowly growing fear.

George had managed to palm one of his little lights, and he suddenly thrust it at Gribbleflotz’s belly, where it began to flash most alarmingly. “Sahib! Dr. Thomas!” George screamed in panic. “The Mishawaka! There is no time! I must operate!”

Before anyone in the room could react, Tom shoved Gribbleflotz down into a chair, and ruthlessly yanked up or tore open his clothing, exposing a very pale belly. In an instant, George had plunged his fingers into that belly, as both the king and Gribbleflotz’s eyes bulged and the king’s guards backed away, making furtive signs against evil.

One of them fainted dead away as George pulled his hand back out, bloody and sticky, and opened them to reveal a mass of what looked like bloody hair and things best left unidentified. “You see!” George shouted. “You see! It was almost too late!”

Gribbleflotz fainted dead away.

Back in Grantville at last, Tom and George gave the president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia their reports in person. Ed Piazza had come up from the new provincial capital at Bamberg to hear their report, on his way to Magdeburg. He’d pass the information along to Mike Stearns and Rebecca Abrabanel later, when the current political ruckus settled down. The dynastic situation in Bohemia was important but not exactly an urgent matter.

“Although I thought you said no psychic surgery,” Tom said. “I thought-”

“Look,” George growled. “I’m not proud of myself, all right? I hate those bastards. But we needed something dramatic, something that couldn’t be explained away as up-timer science, and we needed it right then. I had the feeling we might, so I helped myself to some stuff from the kitchen and a hairball one of the cats coughed up that morning. When I saw he wasn’t falling for your crystal waving, I played my ace. Do not ask me to do it again.”

“I won’t,” Tom replied. He didn’t add that he was making no promises about Ed Piazza or Mike Stearns.

“So, the treatments are going well, then?” Ed prodded.

Tom nodded. “Wallenstein’s actually making some improvement-he’s not going on any long hikes, but he’s able to do pretty much everything that a king needs to do on most days. Edith’s pleased. She asked me about the dyes I used in his medicines. I just told her they’re safe enough. I didn’t have the guts to tell her that Doc Nichols said congestive heart failure is going to kill him long before the dye will.”

Ed nodded with sympathy, then one corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile. “And just what is this “special treatment” she keeps objecting to in her letters?

“Oh…” Tom blushed. “That…”

“Go on-” Piazza ordered.

“Well…you know that the ‘root chakra’ is supposed to be located in the…ah…”

“Goolies,” George supplied helpfully.

Ed nodded. “Right, I follow you. And since you’re balancing all the chakras you can’t leave that one out.”

“Right.” Tom blushed further. “And the, ah…goolies…can’t drink. So we can’t exactly give them medicine. Except topically. But all the medicines are colored.”

“And-”

“So the salve is colored. Blue, because the root energy is supposed to get boosted.” By now Tom felt like his face was on fire. “Because a lot of impotence is psychological and I figured-well-”

“Right. And?”

“Well, besides coloring the salve, I really needed something that was going to, you know, remind the king that the stuff is working. So the…ah…the dye is kind of permanent.”

Tom watched as Ed mentally went over everything he had just said, then stared at them both incredulously.

“You don’t mean-”

“He does mean,” George said, with a grin on his face. “Old Tom gave the king a case of blue balls.”

Eric Flint

Ring of Fire III

Birds of a Feather

Charles E. Gannon

Owen Roe O’Neill started at the burst of gunfire, not because-as a veteran of the Lowlands Campaigns-he was unaccustomed to the sounds of combat, but because such sounds were now out of place near Brussels in 1635. Old habit had him reaching toward his saber, but the pickets at the gate leading into the combined field camps of the tercios Tyrconnell and Preston seemed utterly unconcerned by the reports. As O’Neill let his hand slip away from the hilt, his executive officer, Felix O’Brian, jutted a chin forward: never at ease atop a horse, O’Brian didn’t dare take either of his hands from the reins to point. “So what would all that be, then?”

Ahead and to the right, a score of the men of tercio Tyrconnell were skulking about in the trenchworks surrounding the commander’s blockhouse. So far as Owen could make out, they seemed to be engaged in some perverse, savage game of hide-and-seek with an almost equal number of troopers from tercio Preston. As he approached, the soldiers of the Tyrconnell regiment repeatedly bobbed and weaved around a sequence of corners, usually in pairs. One stayed low, training a handgun or musketoon on the next bend in the trenchworks while the other dodged forward. If one of Preston’s men popped his head around that far corner, the man with the gun fired, immediately reaching back for another weapon. If the approach was unopposed, the advancing trooper finished his short charge by sliding up to the corner and-without even checking first-lobbing a grenade around it.

Of course, these “dummy” grenades simply made a kind of ragged belching sound as they emitted puffs of thin grey smoke: rather anticlimactic. But the training and the tactics were startlingly new. And quite insane.

“This is what comes of O’Donnell’s visit to the up-timers,” Owen grumbled to O’Brian. “Thank God he’s given over his command.”

“It’s only rumored that he’s resigned his command,” amended O’Brian carefully.

“Well, yes,” Owen consented. “Too much to hope for until we see the truth of it, eh?” But as soon as he’d uttered the saucy gibe, Owen regretted it: Hugh O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, was hardly a poor commander. Quite the contrary. And humble enough, for all his many admitted talents. Maybe that’s what made him so damned annoying-

“Seems we’ve picked up an escort,” observed O’Brian, glancing behind.

Sure enough, close to a dozen monks-Franciscans, judging from the hooded brown habits-had swung in behind their guards, who remained tightly clustered around the tercio banners of Tyrone and O’Neill. One of the monks was pushing a handcart through the May mud, prompting Owen to wonder: had someone died en camp? Or maybe the brown robes had come to seek used clothes for the poor? If the latter, then the monks were in for a rude surprise: the Irish tercios were no longer a good source of that kind of easy charity. They were in dire want of it themselves, these days.

As he approached the tercios’ staff tents, Owen noticed that, in addition to the pennants of the staff officers, a small banner of the earl of Tyrconnell’s own colors were flying. As he gave the day’s camp countersign to the interior perimeter guards, he pondered the fluttering outline of the O’Donnell coat of arms. Strange: did this mean that Hugh was actually here?

A lean fellow, saber at his side, came bolting down the horse-track from the much larger commander’s tent, perched atop a small rise. The approaching trooper was an ensign: probably Nugent, O’Neill conjectured, or maybe the younger of the Plunkett brothers. No matter, though: they were all cut from the same cloth and class. New families, all half-Sassenach; all lip-service Catholics. Some allies, those.

But Nugent or Plunkett or whoever it was had stopped, staring at the banners carried by O’Neill’s oncoming entourage. Then he turned about and sprinted back up toward the commander’s tent without even making a sign of greeting.

“Seems we’ve got their attention,” muttered O’Neill through a controlled smile.

“See what you’ve done now?” O’Brian’s voice was tinged with careful remonstrance. “They seen the earl of Tyrone’s colors. They’ll think John is wid’ us! They’ll think-”

“Let ’em think. They do so much of it as it is, a little more can’t hurt. Aye, and let ’em worry a bit, too.”

“But-”

“But nothing. Here’s the Great Man himself.”

Thomas Preston had emerged from the commander’s tent. He was an older man, one of the oldest of the Irish Wild Geese that had flocked to Flanders after the disaster at Kinsale, thirty-four years before. And Irish soldiers had been flying to Flanders ever since: leaving behind increasing oppression and poverty, they had swelled the ranks of their four tercios now in the Lowlands. Mustering at slightly more than twelve thousand men, many of the newer recruits had been born here, grown here, learned the trade of the soldier here. And all knew that the recent consolidation of the Netherlands, and the consequent divisiveness amongst their Hapsburg employers, made their own future the most uncertain of all.

Preston did not look approving-or happy. After a few sharp phrases, he sent the runner back down the hill; he waited, arms akimbo, a dark scowl following the young ensign’s return to O’Neill’s honor-guard.

“Colonel O’Neill,” the ensign panted before he’d come to a full stop, “Colonel Preston would have the commander’s password from you.”

O’Neill looked over the thin fellow’s head-he was not much more than a gossoon, really-and stared at Preston. “Oh, he would, would he?”

“Yes, sir.” A second group of pickets had come to flank the youngster. “Apologies, but Colonel Preston is most insistent. New security protocols, sir.”

“Is that right? And those are his fine ideas, are they?”

“No, sir; they are Hugh O’Donn-I mean, the earl of Tyrconnell’s, sir.”

Ah, but of course. The ever-innovative earl of Tyrconnell’s legacy lived on in the camp he had abandoned almost a month ago, in the first week of April. O’Neill’s gaze flicked briefly to the small O’Donnell coat of arms fluttering just behind him. Or, maybe he had not abandoned it, after all…

O’Neill urged his mount forward. “The commander’s day-sign is ‘Boru.’ ”

“Very good, sir, you may-”

But Owen Roe O’Neill had already passed, his entourage-including two officers from John O’Neill’s Tyrone tercio — following closely behind. The monks, however, were detained by the guards at the staff tents.

O’Neill said nothing, gave no sign of recognition as he approached the commander’s tent, with Preston’s pennant snapping fitfully before it. Preston was equally undemonstrative. O’Neill stayed atop his mount, looked down at the older man and thought, Sassenach bastard, but said, with a shallow nod, “Colonel.”

Preston was not even that gracious. “Where is the earl of Tyrone?”

“I expect he’s enjoying a nap about now.”

Preston’s mustache seemed to prickle like a live creature. “Yet you fly his colors.”

“I received your instructions to come without the earl. I have done so. But he is symbolically here with us in spirit-very insulted spirit-Colonel Preston.”

“Damn it, O’Neill: the whole point of excluding him was so that you wouldn’t be carrying his colors.”

Owen, bristling reflexively at the profanity, found his anger suddenly defused by puzzlement: “You were worried about his-his colors?”

“Yes, blast it. And why did you bring those bloody Franciscans with you?”

O’Neill looked back down the low rise: most of the monks had moved past the first checkpoint, were drawing close to the second, where the commander’s day-sign was to be given. Two lagged behind with the handcart, near the staff tents. “I assure you,” muttered O’Neill,” they’re not my Franciscans. I’d not bring-”

The flap of Preston’s tent ripped open. O’Neill gaped: Hugh Albert O’Donnell, in cuirass, was staring up at him, blue eyes bright and angry. “The Franciscans who came in with you-do you know them? Personally?”

“No, but-”

Hugh wasn’t looking at him anymore. His strong neck corded as he shouted: “First platoon, down the hill! Guards: take hold of those monks. Immediately!”

Owen Roe O’Neill was, by all accounts and opinions-including his own-excellent at adapting to rapid changes on the battlefield. But this was not a battlefield, or rather, had not been one but a slim second ago. And that change-from common space to combat space-was not one he easily processed.

Stunned, he saw the nearest monks pull wheel locks from beneath their robes and discharge them into the second set of pickets at murderously close range. Further down the slope, one monk pushed the handcart into Tyrconnell’s staff tent while his partner drew a pistol on the guards there.

In the same moment, the grimy soldiers who had been skulking to and fro in the trenches came boiling out, not bothering to dress ranks. But stranger still, they seemed in perfectly good order, operating not as a mass, but in groups of about five men each. This chaotic swarm of small, coherent teams streamed downhill, several tossing aside practice guns and pulling real ones, others drawing sabers and short swords. O’Neill’s own guards retracted, clustered tight around him, weapons drawn, as the leading infiltrators drew grenades and shortswords from beneath their robes and closed in-

Just as the first teams from the trenches caught the assassins in the flank with a ragged chorus of pistol fire. Snaphaunces and wheel locks barked while a strange, thick revolver-a “pepperbox?”-cracked steadily, firing five times. When the fusillade was over, only one of the monks was still on his feet; a few on the ground moved feebly. A second wave of soldiers-sword-armed-closed the last few yards and finished the bloody execution. An alert trooper kicked the one lit grenade down the slope and away from the cart-track, where it detonated harmlessly.

Down at the staff tents, the monk who had drawn a pistol had evidently not done so any faster than one of the guards. The two weapons discharged simultaneously and the two men went down-just as the monk who’d trundled the hand cart into the staff tent came sprinting back out. The other guard who’d been slower on the draw went racing after him-and went airborne as the tent exploded in a deafening ball of flame.

By the time O’Neill had his horse back under control, the whole exchange was over. Almost twenty bodies lay scattered along the cart track, small fires guttered where the staff tents had been, and men of the Preston tercio were carrying two of their own wounded off to where the Tyrconnell regiment’s young surgeon could tend to them. With his ears still ringing from the explosions, and his veins still humming with the sudden rush of the humor the up-timers called “adrenaline,” Owen could only feel one thing: that he was glad to be alive.

Then he turned and saw Hugh O’Donnell’s eyes-and wondered if his sense of relief was, perhaps, premature.

“Why did you bring John O’Neill’s colors, Owen?” O’Donnell’s voice and eyes were calm now. But most of the others in the commander’s tent-those belonging to the staff officers who would have been blown to bits if they hadn’t already been summoned here-remained far more agitated.

Owen relied on the tactic that had always served him well: when your adversary has you on the run, that’s when you turn and hit back-hard. “Maybe you should be asking yourself that question, Hugh O’Donnell. A Sassenach”-he glared at Preston, who glared right back-“tells the earl of Tyrone not to come to a council of the colonels? Well, let me tell you, even if John O’Neill is not ‘permitted’ to sit and talk with the regal likes of Preston-or you-I will come bearing his standard, and with it, the reminder of his authority-and that of his clan.”

O’Donnell looked away, closed his eyes. “Owen, it wasn’t Preston who excluded John. It was me. And I did it to protect him.”

“Protect John? From what?”

O’Donnell cocked his head in the direction of the killing ground that led down to the gate. “From that…or worse. It was folly for us to have too many tempting targets in one place.”

O’Neill paused. Then, voice level: “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if John had come, the last two royal heirs of Ireland would have been in the same place, at the same time. And with politics in the Lowlands being what they are, signaling such a gathering was tantamount to inviting an attack. As we just saw.”

O’Neill frowned. “But we’ve got peace-for now-so who’d want the two of you dead? And how would they-whoever they are-even know you’re in the Lowlands at all, Hugh? The last any of us heard, you were off in Grantville.”

O’Donnell nodded. “Reasonable questions, Owen. Will you listen to the answers, before you tell me how wrong I am?”

Owen nodded. “Of course; that I can do.” And he grinned. O’Donnell returned the smile-and there were audible sighs of relief in the tent as the tension ebbed. “So let’s have it, Hugh: who is trying to kill you and John? The English? Again?”

O’Donnell leaned back, hands folded firmly on the field table before him. “It could be them. But you also have your pick of new possible culprits. Local Catholics who feel Fernando has been too lenient with the Calvinists. Ministers in Madrid who want to topple Fernando as King in the Netherlands. Maybe Philip himself. In short, anyone who wants to give the Spanish crown a reasonable pretext for ‘restoring order’ in the Netherlands.”

Owen shook his head. “I’m lost. How does attacking us achieve that?”

“We’re a wild card, Owen-all of us Wild Geese. Four tercios, almost all full strength at three thousand men each. What happens to the Lowlands if we disband-or rebel?”

“Chaos. The Prince of Orange might try to take charge, but he hasn’t the troops. The locals will try to oust the Spanish. Fernando, a Hapsburg of Spain, and his wife, a Hapsburg of Austria, will soon be surrounded and in peril for their lives.”

“And what happens? Who comes in, if we disband or just stay in barracks?”

“France might try to take advantage. Or maybe the Swede.”

“Exactly-and would Philip want either?”

“Christ, no!” And then Owen saw it. “So, with us no longer ready to be an independent spine for Fernando’s army, the local Spanish tercios call for help, and Philip has no choice but to intervene. Decisively.”

O’Donnell nodded. “There are many possible variations on the theme, but that’s the basic dirge. Half the court in Madrid is already calling for a ‘stern approach’ to Fernando’s recent actions: after all, he did take the title ‘King in the Netherlands’ without Philip’s permission. And since then, Philip has let his brother fend for himself…and we’ve all felt the results of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what has happened to your salaries over the last few months?”

Grumbles arose from every quarter of the tent.

O’Donnell spoke over them. “That’s not Fernando’s doing: he’s not the one holding the purse strings. That would be Olivares, either working independently, or at Philip’s behest. The Lowlands have long been a drain on the Spanish; over time, they’ve invested far more in this patch of ground than they’ve ever earned back. So, while Philip may not yet consider his brother a traitor, why should he pay for his tercios? Particularly those which aren’t Spanish?”

“So we Irish are like a redheaded stepchild between spatting parents.”

“Something very like it, yes.” Hugh looked around the tent. “Which means that, any day now, your allegiances may be questioned. And whatever you might answer, you can be sure of this: one or another of your employers will be very unhappy with your answer.”

“You mean, as unhappy as they were when you turned in your commission and titles?”

O’Donnell’s voice was quiet. “You’ve heard then?”

O’Neill shook his head. “Not officially, no: your officers have been keeping it quiet. But when your tercios came over here into bivouac with Preston’s, talk started-particularly when your men started getting orders from the Sassena-from Colonel Preston. And there were some as claimed that before you left, you’d folded up your tabard and sash of the Order of Alcantara and sent them back to Madrid.”

“That I did.”

Owen kept his voice carefully neutral: “So are you wanting us to follow your example?”

O’Donnell waved a negating hand. “I’d ask no man to follow my path. And there’s no need for you to declare your allegiance until you’re asked.”

“Then why didn’t you wait to do so, yourself?”

“Owen, when I was made a Knight-Captain of the Order of Alcantara, a Gentleman of His Majesty’s Chamber, and a member of his Council of War, I took my oaths before, and to, the king himself. In his very person, in Spain. I had my benefits and titles directly from his hand, and was, at his personal instruction, naturalized as a Spanish citizen. Honor demands, then, that if I know in my heart I can no longer be Philip’s loyal servant, I must relinquish all those privileges and garnishments at once. I can’t bide my time, waiting to be cornered into admitting that my allegiances have changed-even as I continue to enjoy the king’s coin and favor. Given the state of affairs here, honor may be all I have left-so it was both right and prudent that I keep it untarnished.”

“Fairly spoken,” Preston said. Owen found himself nodding; the earl of Tyrone’s officers were doing the same.

The flap of the tent came back. The young surgeon of the Tyrconnell regiment-blood still on his hands, some on his face-crossed the open center of the council ring and sat down next to O’Donnell. He said nothing, stared hard at nothing.

O’Donnell leaned toward him. “You’ve word on our worst wounded, Dr. Connal?”

“I do. Russell and Fitzgerald will live, but Nugent-” The young man dropped his head; O’Neill couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or grief. Perhaps both.

“Easy, Shane, easy,” soothed O’Donnell. “Have we lost him?”

“Not yet,” the younger man snapped through gritted teeth. “But we will, and there’s damn-all I can do to stop it. A gut wound”-he looked up, eyes narrow-“a small gut-wound. And I still can’t save him. If I were an up-time doctor-even one of their nurses-then, yes, maybe so. Probably. But me? I’m just-just a damned butcher, I am.” His head dropped again, neck rigid.

“It’s not a bit of your fault, lad,” put in O’Neill, seeking a moment in which simple kindness might also achieve some additional interclan mending. “And let’s not hear any more o’ this tearing yourself down because you’re not up-time-trained. I’m sure those fancy Grantville doctors are not half as good as everyone says they ar-” And he stopped, transfixed by a baleful glare from Hugh’s senior sergeant and old companion, O’Rourke-until a sudden, stinging chill of realization coursed through him. O’Donnell’s young wife of barely a year had died in childbirth only six months ago-and it was universally held that her death could have been prevented by an up-time doctor or nurse. O’Donnell might have had access to one of them through his godmother, the Infanta Isabella, but he had known that Philip IV would have been sorely displeased. And so, Hugh had refrained. And so, his wife, and only child, had both died. Criticizing up-time medicine was, Owen concluded, probably the stupidest thing he could have done at such a moment. He surveyed the faces in the tent to see just how much damage he had done.

Almost no face was turned towards him: they were toward O’Donnell, who sat very still, eyes lowered. He spoke to the doctor without looking up. “Owen Roe is right, Shane, when he says there’s no fault of yours in this. There are some things you can’t fix.” He looked up at the surgeon and smiled. “Not yet, that is.”

Connal nodded-and O’Neill swallowed hard: looking at O’Donnell’s smile, he could see-could almost feel-how much that had cost the earl of Tyrconnell. But Hugh kept that expression in place for a long moment, only allowing it to dim when he asked, “Dr. Connal, can you shed any light on our Franciscan visitors? Were they here to save our souls by hastening us to our reward?”

A few snickers underscored the surgeon’s answer. “Not unless the Franciscans are sending disguised mercenaries to carry out their holy work, m’lord. And desperate ones, too, to take such a job as this. Judging from the grooming and the gear under the habits, I’d say most of them were part-Spanish mercenaries-mixed-bloods, born in the Lowlands-and the rest Germans or Walloons. Some may have been simple cutthroats: no military gear on those-and not even a hint of third-rate camp hygiene. Dirty as pigs and twice the stink.”

Owen nodded and looked at O’Donnell. “So who do you think sent them?”

“I don’t know-and right now, there aren’t enough hours or facts to puzzle it out.” He stood. “I’ve stayed too long. But before I go, I feel I must tell you all this: the tercios are dead.”

Owen recoiled as if struck-in fact, felt as if he had been. “What fine, parting words of encouragement for all the men, Sir O’Donnell. I’m not sure the earl of Tyrone will agree to disband his tercios on your say-so, though.”

“Owen, I’m not talking about the existence of our regiments. I’m saying that the concept of the tercios — of that kind of warfare-is dying on its feet. The first victories of the USE are just initial freshets of proof: soon, it will be an inarguable flood. The new muskets-and now, Turenne’s breechloaders-are changing the battlefield. And those who do not learn to change with it will be the first to die upon it.”

“So this is the reason for all the hide-and-seek I saw when I came in?”

“The up-timer manuals call it ‘close quarters combat.’ Or, ‘CQC.’ ”

“And the USE forces train to use these tactics?”

“No, their equipment isn’t right for it, yet-and there aren’t enough up-timers who can teach them, either. But some special units-like Harry Lefferts and his group-use a simplified version. Granted, it seems their ‘CQC’ is based more on ‘movies’ than training manuals. But we can choose to do it right. We’ve got the discipline-and now the manuals-to genuinely learn these tactics, and then use them once we get our hands on enough revolvers and double-barreled weapons.” O’Donnell paused, looked around the ring of faces focused on him. “And if we want to be the victors instead of the vanquished, we must start learning these tactics now-before they are used upon us.”

O’Neill made as sour a face as he could. “They look more like tomfoolery than ‘tactics.’ ”

“And so they might, but this is just one of the ways in which war is changing-and each change will spawn more. New weapons, new training, new skills, new organization: before long, we’ll be revising everything we learned as our stock-in-trade. But we have to do it, even if it goes against our grain.”

“Heh. It doesn’t seem to go against your grain, Hugh.”

O’Donnell nodded somberly. “I suppose it doesn’t-not any longer. I’ve read their unit histories and accounts; I’ve seen up-timer military ‘documentaries’ that show how they-and before long, we-will wage war. Trust me, whether or not we’re comfortable with it, our tactical doctrines must change.” He looked around the tent. “And change is never easy. Never. Particularly not when one has to make many changes, and all at once.

“And that is what is sure to happen here in the Lowlands. Soon, you will all have a choice to make. And it can’t be long in coming, because Fernando is running out of money with which to pay you. So, before that day comes, I counsel you: think upon your oaths, and listen to your hearts. Task them to answer this one, simple question: where is your loyalty? To Philip and Olivares or to Isabella and Fernando? To a distant king’s coin, or to each other? For rest assured, that choice is coming-for each and every one of you.”

O’Donnell stepped from behind the table, crouched down as if he were going to scratch a battle plan on the ground-but what it did was put him at eye-level with even the lowliest man in the room. “Always remember this, lads. We Wild Geese-we’re all birds of a feather. We’ve been harrowed, but never broken-because we’ve always stuck together.”

O’Neill wanted to sneer, but he couldn’t-partly because O’Donnell hadn’t parsed the old saw as doggerel, so it hadn’t sounded trite. But mostly because he could see-could feel-all the men around him respond to the elemental honesty that shone out of Hugh’s eyes. O’Neill wished he could look away, could be somewhere else-anything, just so he wouldn’t have to see the indictment of his own clan laid out so plainly before him. The O’Donnells were leaders, always had been. They could touch hearts at a gesture, bond men to them with a whisper. Obversely, every O’Neill of note had made his name as a fighter, an intriguer, often a shrewd manipulator who might even conspire with an enemy, if it served his ultimate goals. They were renowned, feared, even respected-but never admired or loved. And that, Owen admitted, was probably the real reason behind the prickly hauteur of the Tyrones: a jealous envy after the natural nobility that they lacked.

Owen cleared his throat. “You’ve given us much to think about, Lord Tyrconnell. I wish you safe travels-and Godspeed. And now, I should be going.”

O’Donnell straightened up. “And I’ve stayed longer than is safe. Until we meet again, Owen.”

Who nodded, wanted to say-something-but could not decide what it should be. So he simply added a second nod and let a potentially bonding moment slip by.

Just as he had all his life.

O’Rourke made sure that Preston’s tent was empty except for two orderlies, who stayed busy-and distant-moving gear to the newly completed blockhouse. When O’Rourke indicated that the young soldiers were out of earshot, O’Donnell muttered, “There’s one person in particular who’ll now be watching all of what you do here. Very closely.”

“Who?”

“Isabella-my aunt.” The earl paused, looked down. “Returning the honors I had from Philip was a shame, but leaving her service-that was a hard, hard step to take.”

O’Rourke poured a small mug of half-beer for himself. “Huh. Now that’s something I never did understand, m’lord.”

“What?”

“Why you always doted on the Infanta, and she on you.”

“Well, she’s my godmother-and has looked out for me since I was a babe.”

“Mebbe. But she also derailed the Killybegs invasion in 1627, and when at first she couldn’t scuttle it herself, she insisted that it be led by John O’Neill-with you to be left behind in the Lowlands. Just the opposite of what Philip had called for.”

“Oh, that. You misunderstand. She didn’t pass me over.”

“No? What would you call it, then?”

“She was protecting me. I was twenty-two, green as could be, and yes, Philip was going to put me over John-who’d no doubt have found some excuse to put me in my grave once we were in Ireland. Besides, she wanted me where she thought I’d do the most good.”

“You’d do the most good here? Was she mad?”

O’Rourke looked away from the gaze Hugh fixed on him. “No, she was not mad. She remains amongst the most astute political minds of this era. She knew that if Philip did send us to invade Ireland, we would be underfunded and undersupplied. As it was, the closest we came to readiness-eleven boats waiting for a few thousand of us-would still have been suicide.”

“Not if you and John O’Neill had gone together. The prat may be insufferable, but he’s a competent captain and a bear in a fight. Together, the earls of Tyrconnell and Tyrone would have been invincible.”

“Gaelic bluster, O’Rourke. Don’t start believing the tales we tell to keep our spirits up during these long years of exile and waiting. Yes, I wanted to go. Yes, I wanted to lead. Yes, I agreed to Owen’s and Father Conry’s plan to create Ireland as a republic and to renounce any claim to preeminence. But unless wild luck had smiled on that project-instead of the death’s head which has loomed over all our others-the only result of an invasion led by both O’Neill and O’Donnell would have been the loss of the last two royal Irish heirs that the English are really worried about.”

“So your godmother was willing to let O’Neill to take the lead, and get himself strung up…”

“…in the unlikely event the invasion occurred at all; yes.”

“And you she saved out of love.”

“That-and practicality.”

“What practicality was that?”

“O’Rourke, how much trouble has our regiment had living side by side with the Walloons, even the Dutch?”

“Other than the occasional argument over the price of provisioning, none.”

“And O’Neill and his regiment?”

O’Rourke nodded; he saw Isabella’s logic now. “One incident after another. He’s been hard- and high-handed from the start, right down to this very day.”

Hugh nodded back. “Precisely. So if Isabella had to depend on mercenaries-and in particular, us Wild Geese-to protect her realm, she needed at least one loyal leader that enjoyed the trust of the locals and was not wholly subject to the manipulations of Madrid, nor the intrigues of her sworn enemies.”

“In other words, she needed you. And us. Well, now I understand the past a little better, but I’m still in the dark regarding the present.” O’Rourke lifted his mug. “So tell me, why skulk back into camp? And why not one word of what you’re planning next? What’s afoot?”

Hugh leaned forward. “For the nonce, O’Rourke, this is just between us.”

“As always.”

“Then here it is. I’ve hired on with the French. With Turenne. To work with an up-timer. To go to the New World. To take Trinidad from the Spanish crown. To sell it to the French. Because they want the oil.”

O’Rourke put down his mug, which had been suspended midair during Hugh’s brief, bulleted explanation. “You’re serious.”

Hugh nodded.

“And what do you get out of it?”

“ We — all of us-get money, maybe enough to keep our men and their families in food long enough to find a more permanent billet.”

“You mean the French would pay for our costs up here? They’d send ecus over the border to Isabella?”

“To Fernando,” Hugh corrected. “And yes, that’s the general idea. Subsistence costs only, of course. And some of the men-a few hundred maybe-would have to come down to France. Doing farm work for a few months, to help pay their keep. And then to travel-to serve-with me.”

O’Rourke’s response was a long, astonished whistle-which he abruptly ended when he noticed the puzzled stares of the orderlies, who then became conspicuously refocused upon their work.

O’Donnell was smiling. “You’ve a great future as a confidential agent, O’Rourke. A veritable master of undercover work.”

“Funny you should mention undercover work, m’lord. Years ago, when I was courting Maureen Hennessy on the sly-”

“Spare me the tawdry details, reprobate. Now, about getting a few companies of the regiment over to France: here’s the hitch-”

“There’s just one?”

“Very well: here’s the first hitch in that project: the companies joining me in Amiens must transfer over the border in one group.”

“But the archduchess is seeing to that, no?”

“She’s seeing to each unit’s release from service, yes. Moving ourselves and our gear: that has to be up to us. And we have to make the transfer without any Spanish-owned equippage.”

“Well, that will make the regiment look like the beggar’s army on parade, but I can put a good face on it. We’ve enough of our own equipment that if we spread it out one weapon per man, there’d only be a few empty hands. And we’ll keep those few in the middle of the formations. Also, we can march the swords and pieces separately to make it all look intentional-if absurd.”

“Good. Then there’s the approach to the border.”

“The French know we’re coming, right?”

“Yes, but the lads need to understand their weapons will have to go into French hands during the march to Amiens. And they won’t like it.”

“They don’t have to,” grumbled O’Rourke.

“That’s the tick, O’Rourke: I’m sure there’ll be no problems with you in charge of-”

But O’Rourke leaned far back. “In charge? Me? Not by Christ Almighty’s toenails, m’lord.”

“Who better to be in charge?”

“Someone who’ll be with the regiment, sir.”

“And so you shall be.”

“With respect, I shan’t. I’ll be with you.”

“With me? Now see here, O’Rourke-”

“ ‘O’Rourke’ me no ‘O’Rourkes,’ Hugh O’Donnell. You’ll not be leaving me in France to tend a bunch of turnip-pullers while you sail into high seas and perdition.”

“Sergeant O’Rourke, you are a man I can trust and a man who enjoys the respect of the entire regiment. You will see our men safely over the border, and then through their stay in France.”

“With respect, sir, I will not. There’s many as can baby-sit them better than I. Shane Connal is the one you’ve been grooming for this kind of work. Most of the men will hear and heed his voice almost as if it were your own. And m’lord, if fair speech is required in dealing with our French hosts, then let’s speak plain and admit I’m not the man for that. But Shane’s got your way with words and manners-and he’ll oversee a just and proper succession of your title here, should something ill befall us out there.”

Hugh considered the arguments. “You rehearsed that speech earlier, didn’t you, O’Rourke?”

“I thought I might have occasion for words such as those, m’lord. I figured a man of genius like yourself often lacks a bit in the common sense department; he might leave his right hand at home if the right hand wasn’t determined to stay attached all by itself.”

Hugh smiled. “You’re a pain in my neck, O’Rourke.”

“And other parts of the body as well, I’d wager.”

“Another bet you’d win. Now, for our trip to the New World, we’ll need about a half of a company for the landing and defense-as well as repelling pirates, if we’re unlucky. Recommendations?”

“I’ve been thinking about just that, m’lord, and the men that seem best suited to those purposes-”

O’Donnell clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I trust you, O’Rourke-in all things. Go get your list-and while you’re at it, fetch Shane Connal from the blockhouse, as well. Let’s not keep him in the dark on this any longer.”

O’Rourke rose quickly. “In a trice, m’lord.” And he was out the tent flap in a rush.

He had gone half the way to the blockhouse when a suspicion began to churn in his gut. Bt the time he had turned and sprinted back up the low rise to the commander’s tent, his misgiving had become a certainty. Pulling the flap aside, he burst into the dim interior.

One orderly looked up from his tasks, startled.

He was the only person in the tent. Of course.

O’Rourke smiled and shook his head; it was sad to think that after all these years, he was still so easily conned. He should have seen it coming: O’Donnell would want to slip out of the camp as stealthily as he had come in. And he’d have-rightly-known that O’Rourke would have had none of that: two guards, at least, to escort one of the last two princes of Ireland. But O’Donnell had given him the slip.

Again.

O’Rourke went over to stand by the table they’d shared but two minutes earlier. He rested his hand on the back of his earl’s chair. And smiled:

See you in Amiens, old friend.