Read 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC Online
Authors: Eric Flint,Andrew Dennis
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (21 page)
When it came to the sentimental memories, of course, it probably didn’t help that he’d come straight back to the port he’d left from and immediately found lodgings with the widow of someone he’d known over there. He’d not been at Breitenfeld to know how the poor fellow fell, but it was something he could probably find out, which would likely be a kindness to the widow.
There were some veterans back already, with wounds or just resigned when the Scots regiments got paid off prior to being recruited wholesale in to the USE army. Less trouble, certainly, than waiting for months of desertion to reduce those regiments to nothing while putting up with the trouble arising from the Scots being mixed in all over. There were always some people who weren’t happy about something, and rather than take the USE bounty, they’d gone away home or to other service they liked better.
A few of those who’d come home were, to the best of his knowledge, here in the Lothians, so he’d be able to ask and perhaps get some news for the widow. Who’d given him his luncheon “tae welcome him hame” and offered directions to a good stable. For now he’d assume her kindly disposition was down to him having given her three months’ rent in advance—it was the amount of cash he’d brought for a month’s lodging. If not, well, he’d take a decision about
that
when he had to and not before.
That afternoon, buying a horse when it was purely for his own use and enjoyment was a thorough pleasure. When Sharon Nichols, as was like to be married to the bampot Spanish bugger she’d met in Venice, had been about that town with Magda Stone arranging the commerce, she’d made jokes about shopping that Lennox hadn’t understood at first. He’d asked, and she’d explained, and he’d realized he’d been doing the same thing since the day he was old enough to judge and haggle for horseflesh. And, well, if he’d been planning to get out for a ride the day, he’d missed it. There were plenty of stables with horses to sell or rent without venturing up the hill into Edinburgh proper, and a surprising number of good nags for sale. Of course things would be better here than on the Continent, where the horses had been picked over again and again for the armies that were slaughtering, or just plain working to death, everything they could lay their hands on that ate hay and farted. Finding a decent nag outside the private stud of a nobleman was a sore trial.
Here, though, there were plenty of good ordinary animals to be had, and a fair selection of Hackneys and Hackney crosses brought up from England. There were plenty of Galloway ponies as well, and some bloody good examples of the breed—and of course as a borderer, Andrew Lennox was not going to pass up a good Galloway if he could afford one; he’d grown up with and riding Fell ponies with the occasional Hobby, but he’d wanted a Galloway. There weren’t that many of them to be had, when all was said and done, and every other bugger wanted one so the prices were always out of his reach.
Not. Any. More. A lot of shopping around—grinning the while as he wondered what the stablemen would think if they’d had to put up with a smart and strong-minded black lady shopping at their establishments—and he found what he was looking for and had more than an idea of how he was going to make a little money out of the thing. Of course, his grin when he’d seen the beasts was probably ten shillings on the price of every single one, but he’d settled in for a good haggle.
He’d ended up with two bought cash down and earnest money on another eight. For, it had to be said, nags that were only mostly Galloways. The black of them said there was a lot of Fell pony in there as well—no matter, that was a hard breed—and the oldest of the string was a hair over fourteen hands so there was probably something like a Hackney in there as well.
But, if Lennox was even half the judge of horseflesh he thought himself, they had every possibility of making the beginnings of a bloody good stud. So, for the next trip, he needed to find a banker and cash the letter of credit he’d brought.
Without
saying “cash it,” of course. Associating with up-timers had
ruined
the way he talked.
Chapter 24
“That’s not—”
Colonel Alexander Mackay had started up in such evident shock that his horse had stopped in utter confusion. It was no intellectual heavyweight among horsekind either—a cheap rental from a stable in Leith—so the beast didn’t take much confusing.
“Lennox!” His wife’s squeal of joy dislodged earwax for yards around. Her mount was in no wise confused, the dun gelding pony did as he was told as she urged him forward into a trot.
Get the job over with and get this madwoman off my back
seemed to be the order of the day.
Darryl had only the vaguest notion of who Lennox was. He’d seen the guy around the Thuringen Gardens a few times, and sort-of knew he was one of Mackay’s old Green Regiment buddies, but he wasn’t one of the ones he’d gotten to know well. He’d been coming the other way up the street, riding one horse and leading two others as they were shopping around for accommodations. Julie was already up to him, talking excitedly—too fast for Darryl to follow at this distance—while Alex got his beast back on the move to tender a more sensible greeting.
“Do you know this fellow?” Cromwell asked, halting his own mount next to Darryl’s.
“One of Alex’s veterans from the old wars,” Darryl said. “He was with him when he came upon Grantville back in June of ’31. He went off to Italy with Tom Stone and his boys later, but he seems to be home from the fighting now.”
“Yup,” Gayle said. “Looks like Captain Lennox is home at last. Never thought he would, he hates ships.”
“You know the guy?”
“Yup. He was on the course on radio I taught for guys transferring into the modern forces from the old-style regiments. Smart guy, for all he got shorted in the education department. Won’t say he took to Radio 101 like a duck to water, but he’d just grind away at stuff until he got it. He was a sergeant in the old forces, which is about like a lieutenant in an up-time force, and he’d been doing that for years. You gotta figure a guy who can do that job has got some smarts.”
“Well, we’ll wait long enough for tact and then remind Mrs. Mackay we want to find new lodgings before sundown,” said Cromwell. “Which is not a long away, at that. I’ll let Stephen and Vicky know what’s happening.”
He turned his horse and trotted back to where Vicky and Stephen Hamilton were sharing the cart they’d hired with the two carters that came with it. After he left, Darryl nodded. “Even as slack as this place seems to be about folk comin’ an’ goin’, they’re likely to pay attention if we’re still up and about at night. Lennox doesn’t have any bags with him so maybe he’s found some good accommodations.”
Gayle chuckled. “Hope so. Oliver’s getting impatient.”
Darryl looked back at Cromwell. “How can you tell?” When it came to life’s assorted little frustrations, the man was cool personified. Maybe you’d see a little flick of the head if he was being
really
annoyed. He only got what you’d call lively in a fight or for a really lively ride. Even the seasickness on the way up the coast had hadn’t really made him upset. Just, well, sick. The harshest thing he’d had to say about it was “tiresome.”
“He’s being stoical,” Gayle said. “You can tell he’s really suffering by how much he’s not showing it.”
Darryl examined that idea from all angles. Definitely chick logic. “Whatever,” was all the comment he felt able to pass.
* * *
And, as it turned out, Lennox had lodgings arranged, had in fact arrived a few days prior and been settled in enough to buy horses. Given his strong recommendations of the place, the ones who’d been staying at Widow Grouch’s boarding house—Darryl’s name for her, not her real one—decided to investigate the possibility of shifting their residence. None of them had been happy with Mrs. Crawford and her way of running things. It sounded as if concealing themselves at MacPherson’s boarding house would be easier, too, being as it was on a small side street instead of a main thoroughfare.
On the way to Mrs. MacPherson’s place Lennox and Alex and Cromwell had a three-sided discussion of the beasts, the consensus being that if Andrew Lennox meant to breed horses, he’d got some damned fine mares for it, and wasn’t it a shame the males were all gelded.
Which, of course, led into the ins and outs of getting a Galloway stallion—Darryl grasped enough to understand that that was a popular breed of pony hereabouts—and shipping him to Germany. And Lennox and Mackay filled Cromwell in on the excellent bloodlines that Grantville had brought back via the Ring of Fire. Darryl decided, at that point, he was going to by-damn learn a thing or two about horses. He’d picked up enough since the Ring of Fire to be able to get about on a well-trained even-tempered rental horse, to be able to tell roughly how expensive a horse was likely to be, and the basics of looking after the beast. Owning a truck after the Ring of Fire was one thing. Getting enough gas to use it for regular getting-about was trickier, outside of military work, so there really wasn’t any choice but learn about horses.
What Darryl was hearing now was, basically, about half the conversations he and Harry Lefferts used to have when just whiling away the hours. Just about horses, not cars. Downside: guaranteed only one horsepower per ride. Upside: with a bit of effort and investment, your ride could make new rides. Let’s see GM match
that
trick in next year’s model! And, face it, Darryl McCarthy, esquire, was better than riding about on beat-up rentals if there was a possibility of owning something with a bit of pizzazz. Customization options were a bit limited, but you couldn’t have everything.
That thought kept amusing him—and when he broke it to them, Gayle and Vicky too, right up until they got thoroughly welcomed and sat down to supper at Mrs. MacPherson’s. By then they’d made arrangements that they’d move in the following day after settling their accounts with Widow Grouch.
“Ye cam’ up by sea? Ye puir de’ils,” Lennox opined, when he heard the outline of their journey.
Alex laughed. “We’ve not all the weak stomachs of the likes of you, Andrew,” he said, “Although Mister Cromwell sets fair t’ challenge ye.”
“Tiresome business, sailing,” Cromwell advanced, “I was looking forward to pirates to lift my spirits with a fight.”
“So was our captain, I think,” Julie said. “He had all kinds of guns, knives, swords, axes, and sharpened sticks on board. Pirates are a problem on that run he does, since coal’s valuable, but he said it was just a matter of how you looked at it. Pirate ships are valuable too. He says he’s taken two in his time.”
“You could understand a word he said?” Gayle asked, laughing. “I swear, that man was nothing but static to me.”
“To me also,” Cromwell said. “It seems my lady the baroness has quite the ear for accents. For myself, I can understand anything from the home counties, all of Yorkshire and Lancashire, west-countrymen since they speak so slowly, but the black country and the Northumberlanders might as well be speaking Erse for all I understand. The time we spent in Newcastle, were it not for my lady as interpreter, I would have been as a stranger in a strange land.”
“What’s wrong with Erse?” Darryl asked, a lot more mildly than he once might.
“Nothing; the ignorance is all my own fault, apparently. Another insult I do the Irish.” Cromwell grinned. “Perhaps you can teach me the tongue of your people, Mister McCarthy?”
“Pogue Mahone,” Darryl replied, exhausting his entire command of the said language. And he only had that from owning a couple of Pogues albums. He grinned back. “If we’re going there at any point, I guess we’ll both have to learn it.”
“Most of the Scots Erse can at least get by in English or lallans, which is near enough English once you’re used to it,” Lennox put in. “The ones who have no English at all are generally poorer folk, farmers who’ve never left the farm. I’ve a little Erse myself, since the Highlanders tend to forget their English in a fight, and I suppose the same applies in Ireland. I certainly never met an Irishman who couldn’t speak English, but there must be some who’ve none.”
“What’s lallans?” Darryl asked.
“Scots English,” Gayle said. “You ever read any Robbie Burns? He wrote in lallans.”
“I only know one of his, and I only know it’s his because Miz Mailey told me, and that’s
Parcel of Rogues
. Which is about Scotland, not Ireland. Which she also told me. And I thought that was English?”
“So did I. Until Miz Mailey told me. She was a bit hazy on the details, but it’s different enough to count as a bit more than a dialect. Could just be politics, though, finding differences to make the differences clear?” She cocked an eyebrow at the Scots around the table who demonstrated that they’d been holding back for the sake of the English around the table by letting absolute rip, with the occasional marshmallow of comprehensibility floating in the rich, rich chocolate of the Scots language.
Julie giggled. “I absolutely
love
the way that sounds. Always have.”
“Don’t tell me you could understand
them
too,” Gayle scoffed.
“She
is
married to a Scotsman, Gayle,” Cromwell rumbled, “And I think we may have some inkling of how she understood Captain Milburn. My lady has already had to learn one other flavor of English, so a second becomes the easier. Is my surmise plausible?”
“Makes sense, sure,” Julie said. “Some of the stuff he came out with was kinda Scots. And some of it was kinda German, like you get from the guys over Friesland way, German that actually
sounds
like it’s related to English. It all sort of fit together, if you take the trouble to really
listen
to the guy. Which, being female, I have a head start in over you mere males, of course.”
“Hear hear,” Mrs. MacPherson said, apparently getting over her slight stage-fright at having a real-life baroness lodging with her. “Do they not have
terrible
difficulty paying attention, the poor dears? My lady.”
“You got an amen from me,” Gayle said.
“Ah,
feminism
,” Cromwell intoned.
“Not you too,” Colonel Mackay groaned. “The lassies already run oor lives f’r us, will ye no’ forbear to encourage ’em?”
“Among the godly, man and wife are accounted partners as much as anything. Gayle has been kind enough to open my eyes to the fact that what I was accustomed to think was the weakness of womankind was simply a want of education and training, and for most purposes a woman ought to be accounted a man’s equal. Certainly before the law, and in matters of politics. I will say that no woman will ever be a man’s equal at football.” He grinned at that last.
“More sense,” Gayle said, clearly announcing a point won long ago.
“Slippery word, is ‘equal,’ when all’s said and done.” Lennox put in. “Tom Stone had a lot to say on that one, that I recall. How using words that look the same as though they were
exactly
the same was the cause of a lot of bu—er, nonsense. As he said, he and I were unequal in height and fighting—he the taller, I the better fighter, but we didnae use the same word to mean how equal we were for votes or the law, even though it’s said and writ the same.”
Darryl laughed. “Sounds like Tom,” he said. “He always had a bunch of that hippie philosophy to spout at anyone that went to him to buy weed. Some of it was interesting. Lot of it was just plain nuts, if you ask me. Sounds like you got one of the interesting bits.”
Gayle was giving him a very speaking look. “Don’t look at me like that,” he replied. “It’s legal now. But harder to get since it all gets bought for medicine. Don’t feel right to be buying medicine folks need, just to get high once in a while. Besides, beer’s improved over what we used to get.” He raised his tankard. Mrs. MacPherson served a rather nice brew of her own with supper.
“Tom had some regrets of his own on that score,” Lennox chuckled. “But no’ mind that—ye’re pursued by that scunner Finnegan and he’s cozened himself a Royal Warrant, aye? So will we take guid care seeing your father, Colonel? For a’ we know, Finnegan’s got here afore ye, if ye laid over in Newcastle longer than expected.”
“Aye, we will at that,” said Alex, nodding. “Best for all if we collect Alexi and disappear back to Magdeburg and that right smartly. Mister Cromwell can take his party south quietly, if you can find them a good guide, Andrew, and be shot of their pursuit thereby. With only the merest good fortune, Finnegan, having failed to find us all at Newcastle, will be days yet coming to Edinburgh to try and pick up his trail. I’d recommend going west to Glasgow and taking the road south, go back to England by way of Gretna and Carlisle. There’s like to be too many Catholics in Cumberland and Lancashire for you to find much support, but south of that you may be more fortunate.”
“My thoughts also,” Cromwell said, “but I fancy we’ll do well enough by the Midlands.” He looked as though he was about to say more, but then stopped. They’d agreed that keeping Cromwell’s escape quiet around Mrs. MacPherson was futile, since they’d have had to remember and use a false name the whole time, and come up with some sort of explanation and stick to it. It would only be a few days, but a slip-up would look worse. Lennox had argued, quite convincingly, for letting the widow in on at least Cromwell’s story, and he’d clearly taken her measure quite well, as she was all sympathy and concern when she heard about what had happened to his wife and son. Like most of the Scots officers serving with Gustavus Adolphus, the late Captain MacPherson had been a staunch Calvinist much inclined to disapprove of the machinations of the House of Stuart, and his wife was more of the same. Fortunately she didn’t ask what his future plans were beyond a vague statement about fighting the injustice with his children safely out of the country. Fighting injustice was one thing; outright rebellion quite another. Lennox had also hinted, vaguely, that he was here on some business that would take him to see Mackay senior and contrived to suggest that asking about it in company would cause trouble. In short, while Mrs. MacPherson seemed like a nice lady, that didn’t mean she could be told anything, and there was an awkward moment.
Darryl raised his tankard. “To fighting injustice,” and got the response from around the table. So long as the pleasant widow with the nice house and the excellent beer figured that meant hiring lawyers, they were all fine.