"Adams, Robert - Castaways in Time 06 - Of Beginings and Endings 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)
Though loving, good, and pious, Richard IV Tudor did not prove a good king, for he was weak and all too soon his scheming, strong-willed Moorish-Italian wife had both him and his kingdom dancing willy-nilly to her Roman-Moorish tunes, while appalling amounts of the wealth of the Kingdom of England and Wales streamed out of the realm and directly, not a small amount of it, into Roman coffers.
Moreover, everyone at court and not a few outside it seemed to know that which her overly trusting husband did not know or would not, could not admit even to himself: In addition to a crown, she had been setting horns on his head ever since he had ascended the throne.
Since the very first of the Priests' Plagues and the sudden elevations of once-humble commoner priests to the English prelacy, anti-Roman sentiment had been rife in England and Wales, and under King Richard IV, it burgeoned, becoming both widespread and outspoken in all quarters and classes-noble, ecclesiastical and common. Then when the rumor began to circulate that the devious Angela-known by then, country wide, as the Roman Tart was hard at work persuading her loving, well-cuckolded royal spouse to go on pilgrimage to Rome, there to give over his kingdom to the Holy See, then receive it back as a feoff from the papacy, matters really began to boil.
The political, very nationalistic petard was already set and its fuse was sparked and spluttering, a delegation of high nobles had already surreptitiously journeyed to Aquitaine, closeted with Duke Arthur Tudor, Richard's younger brother, and he was upon the very point of sailing for England when word reached all of the death of Pope Awad, Angela's sire (although he himself had always in public referred to the young woman as "our niece, Angela") and the election of a replacement of the Italian Faction, one Boniface XI.
It had been decided by all and sundry in England, Wales, and Aquitaine, at that point, to hold fire and wait to see what might now develop in the changed circumstances. The faction of cardinals called Italian had always been less dogmatic, devious, and money-or land-grubbing than that opposing faction called Moorish. But then, all too soon, had come word that the new Pope had been assassinated, to be replaced with yet another Moor, Abdullah of Tunis, the godfather of Angela. It had been for this reason that Duke Arthur Tudor of Aquitaine had been already in England-though none within the court circles and very few others anywhere else had known of his presence-when the sudden death of King Richard was announced along with the fact that the royal council had met and declared that they had intent of summoning Duke Arthur back from his duchy.
As was later to be revealed, the widow had vociferously objected to and protested the council's decision, declaring herself to be even then pregnant with Richard's child and thus deserving to be named regent, but the council, after a fiery-hot debate which had raged on for many days and resulted in actual bloodshed on at least two occasions, had finally made their decision, announced it, and in a gesture of mollification directed at the storming widow, indicated their intent to suggest that Arthur at least consider himself marrying her.
But with the crown upon his head and all the realm rejoicing, King Arthur III Tudor had flatly declined the "honor" proffered by the royal council, saying, "Gentlemen, the stenches raised by the open dalliances of her who was married to my late brother are such that they were wafted clear to Aquitaine and beyond. I would as lief couple with a brood sow as with that Moorish-Roman harlot. No, we shall find us a chaste girl out of some other house, that I may be certain that the children she births are of mine own loins, not the get of some mincing, perfumed foreign courtier ... or worse."
Of course, his words quickly reached the ears of the widow, and within his first week as king, two of Arthur's tasters died horribly of poisons. But as he quickly cleared the court of the coterie of Angela's importation, replacing them all with loyal English and Welsh, there were no more overt attempts on his life.
Sooner than might otherwise have been the case, King Arthur III had taken to wife a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, one like. The wedding took place about two months after Angela had been delivered of a male infant; for all that the boy bore not one iota of resemblance to the line of her late husband-indeed, looking amazingly alike to her then lover, the Neapolitan ambassador-she almost immediately had begun to crow that he was the rightful King of England, that King Arthur was a usurper and should be deposed if not slain.
But her words reached precious few receptive ears in England or in Wales. Long disgusted with the weakness of his brother where his adulterous wife and her larcenous clique of foreigners had been concerned, all sorts and classes within the kingdom had mourned the dead king for a scandalously short time and then had rallied unrestrainedly to his successor. The very last thing that most in the kingdom desired to see was a return to the bad old times, and such would surely come to pass if Angela should be named regent for her probable bastard.
But others-powerful others-elsewhere heard the woman's pleas and these others took them to heart, one other in particular. Pope Abdul wrote from Rome during Arthur's first year of reign, suggesting that in all fairness, he should step aside in favor of his late and lamented brother's son. Arthur dictated three letters, each one far more heated than the one preceding it, before he finally turned the matter of answer over to his council.
But their diplomatic, courteous, infinitely reasoned letter did not mollify Abdul. His next letter, though still courteously phrased and couched in friendly terms, bore the bare trace of an edge of threat; so bare indeed was the trace that some of the councillors failed to even notice it on first reading and others had to point it out to them. These men, taking their initial letter as a framework, reiterated in greater detail all that they had said before-all that could be said, really, to such a demand-and duly dispatched it to Rome.
The third letter from the south was, though addressed to the king, delivered by papal messenger to the Archbishop of York, at Yorkminster, along with another letter from His Holiness Abdul to "Our esteemed Brother in Christ, Harold of York." Taking both letters, Harold had immediately set out for London, wherein the king and court were just then residing.
In cold fury, Arthur had waved the two letters before the full council before handing them over to be read by the hastily summoned men, declaring, "That despicable Moorish camel's turd! Know you, gentlemen, old Abdul is even as we speak here suborning, inciting treachery and treason against your king, in divers parts of our realm. Of course, you all know His Grace Harold, Archbishop of York, here. Well, the first of these two letters was sent to him. You will note that His unholy Holiness endeavored to bribe His Grace of York, to bribe him most blatantly, and a quite handsome bribe, too; indeed, we do not know if we could have so quickly refused it, had we been in the place of His Grace of York.
"But thanks be to God that His Grace recalled- and we repeat his very words, mind you all-that he was an Englishman before he was a priest. We can but pray our Savior that all men of power in our realm recall that sentiment when they are offered bribes by this most dishonorable Bishop of Rome."
Musing, now, in his alchemical laboratory, the aged man called Harold of York thought, "All that the late Abdul had offered me then-for the performance of what he called my 'holy duty' of moving to see King Arthur III deposed and/or slain and Angela named regent for her son-was a mere cardinal's hat. Now he's dead-some say of poison-Angela and her bastard are dead, Arthur is firmly on his throne, and, with a multinational movement afoot to make of York another papal city, like Rome, Constantinople, and Addis Ababa, two of the most powerful cardinals of the Italian Faction have sent a secret letter offering me, once more, a cardinalcy with a strong hint of even more wonderful things to come do I but give over plans now afoot, deliver up England, Wales, and Scotland back into the Roman papal camp, and travel myself to Palermo in Sicily for consultation with my two benefactors.
"Just how am I to answer these powerful churchmen? That is the question. Am I ambitious enough a frog to trade my small puddle for a bigger one? Here I am a very big frog indeed; in all modesty, I think that I can state that I'm the second most powerful man in this kingdom. Would I own so much power in Rome? I strongly doubt it.
"Oh, I know well what Sicola and D'Este are about. Northern Europeans, especially, have been disenchanted by the bickerings of Rome for years now; the power there has rocked unsteadily from Moorish-Spanish Faction to Italian-French-Hungarian Faction and precious little in the way of power or gain has gone to those of any of the smaller factions. If our schemes and conferences here succeed, if York is established as a new papacy, Sicola and D'Este and certainly not a few others are terrified that York will soon come to completely replace Rome, just as Addis Ababa replaced Alexandria long ago under similar circumstances. So can they really prevail upon me to bring this kingdom, the hotbed of the scheming, back under the sway of Rome, it will be well worth anything they need to give me to achieve that end. They haven't written such, of course-they'd be fools, and fools is one thing they certainly are not!-but I doubt not for one minute but that were I to mention a desire to sit on the Throne of Saint Peter, they'd offer me that, too ... maybe even deliver on that promise, though just how long I'd live after that is anybody's guess; assassination is a fine art and a hoary, honored profession in Rome.
"Ah, but how can I go to Italy, no matter what the inducement? No one questions my incredibly long, unnaturally long life here, in England, but there surely would be questions in plenty there, and no good answers, no answers that could or would be believed by Renaissance churchmen, and I'd more than likely end up burnt at the stake if the preceding tortures didn't kill me first.
"If young Emperor Egon and his army have purged Rome and Italy as thoroughly as it's said they have, have broken the back of the Moorish-Spanish Papal Faction, truly, then I believe that this new papacy business should be ended, here and now, and that all participating kingdoms should return to Rome, go back under Roman power and go about strengthening there the smaller factions, trying to combine them into a Northern European Faction strong enough to fairly compete with the Italian-French-Hungarian and the certain-to-become-resurgent Moorish-Spanish Faction. But how to say these thoughts of mine, how to word them without seeming to be betraying those who have come here from their own lands to attempt to form something new and, hopefully, better than the sorry kakistoc-racy Rome has projected of the most of the last century?
"However, I must come up with some kind of an acceptable reply soon, for there is a definite limit to just how long I can expect to keep D'Este's messenger, that papal knight, Ser Ugo D'Orsini, cooling his heels here in Yorkminster. For, for all my vaunted security measures, I can be damned certain that a whole host of folk here know just who and what he is, maybe even why he came here to me, though I doubt strongly that anyone else knows just what was the gist of the correspondence he brought and it would take more technology than anyone in this age owns to get to that correspondence where it now is reposing."
Glancing down at his notes, he smiled. "And it would take a person from my own world and time to read any of this, too, while not a few of this age and world can't even read their own language or write any more than their names. A spy would find little but discontent in my private chambers, God be thanked."
Then, thinking better of the matter, he corrected himself. "Well, Bass Foster or Rupen Ademian both have enough education and a provenance close enough to my own time to probably absorb the gist of these notes, anyway, though some of the words and usages no doubt would be obscure even to them." Then the old man showed worn teeth in a grin, adding, "But Rome and her minions would play merry hell trying to get either of them to spy against the interests of me or the kingdom. And they're neither of them any more of this particular time and world than am I. And it's clearly my fault that they're here in this time and world, too, dammit, for all that the both of them-fine, caring men that they are-try to reassure me and tell me that the two malfunctions of the projector console that precipitated them and the folk who arrived with them were merely happenstance. No, I know the truth of the matter full well; I should have either made Em-mett cut it off after his last failure of so long ago or, myself, at least axed through the power cable that still connected the wretched thing to our old world, Emmett's and mine."
He sighed deeply. "But, of course, had I then done so, there is an excellent chance that Rome and her crusader minions might long since have conquered this kingdom. Lacking the very valuable knowledges and abilities of Bass Foster, Peter Fairley, Buddy Webster, Carey Carr, and, yes, even that egocentric, treasonous lunatic Professor William Collier, that accursed adulteress might reign even now, and King Arthur and all the rest of us loyal subjects might be dead or forever exiled and the wealth of the kingdom be flowing remorselessly into the bottomless coffers of Rome.
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