1636 Commander Cantrell in the West Indies: Chapter Two

Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia

    Colonel Hugh Albert O’Donnell, the expatriate Earl of Tyrconnell, slugged back the contents of the small, clear shot glass. The liquid he gulped down burned from the top of his gullet to the bottom of his gut and filled his head with fumes that, he still suspected, might be poisonous. But at least this time he wasn’t going to –

    The burn flared at the back of his throat and he coughed. And choked and sputtered. He looked up at his hosts — Grantville’s two Mike McCarthies, one Senior and one Junior — who looked on sympathetically. The older man also seemed to be suppressing either a grimace or a grin. Hugh put the shot glass aside politely.

    “Can’t stomach moonshine, eh?” There was a little friendly chiding in Don McCarthy the Elder’s tone.

    “Alas, and it pains an Irishman to say it, I cannot. It is not as similar to poteen as you conjectured. And it has not ‘grown on me’ as you Americans say — not the least bit, these past six nights. My apologies.”

    “Ah, that’s all right,” said Mike the Younger, who disappeared into the kitchen and promptly returned with a perfectly-cast squat bottle, half-filled with liquid of a very promising amber color. “Want to try some bourbon?”

    Hugh struggled to understand. “Is it a drink of that line, of that family?”

    “`Of that line — ?’ Oh, you mean the Bourbons of France? No, no: this is American whiskey — uisce beatha — made in some of the Southern States. Interested?”

    At the words ‘whiskey’ and its Gaelic root-word, uisce beatha, Hugh felt his interest and even his spirits brighten. He sat a little straighter. “I am very interested, Michael.”

    Smiles and new drinks all around. But the small glasses were poured out very carefully this time, as though the ‘bourbon’ was precious nectar — and then Hugh realized that indeed it must be. The label, the bottle, the screw-on cap: all bore the stamp of machine-manufactured precision. This was a whiskey from almost four hundred years in the future. It would be a long wait indeed before any more was available. Hugh resolved to savor every drop. He raised his glass. “Slainte.”

    “Slainte,” replied Michael McCarthy Sr. with a quick, wide smile.

    Michael the Younger mumbled something that sounded more like “shlondy”. He obviously saw the grin that Hugh tried to suppress. “Maybe you can teach me how to say it later?” Mike Jr. wondered sheepishly.

    Marveling at the taste of the bourbon, Hugh nodded. “If my payment is more bourbon, you may consider yourself furnished with a permanent tutor in the finer points of Gaelic.” Hugh felt his smile slip a little. “Well, as permanent as a tutor may be when he must leave on the morrow.”

    “Hugh,” began Mike Jr., “I’ll say it again: Dad and I would be happy — very happy — if you’d reconsider and stay a few more days.”

    O’Donnell waved his hand. “Forgive me for having struck a melancholy note. Let us not ruin this fine drink with dark thoughts. Besides,” — he hoped his light tone would change the mood — “the name of this whiskey reminds me that I need to practice my French pronunciation. Which, up until now, has usually been employed in the exchange of pleasantries over the tops of contested revetments and abatis.”

    The answering smiles were polite, not amused. Michael Sr. rolled the small glass of bourbon slowly between his palms. “Why are you brushing up on your French?”

    Hugh sighed. “A man must eat, Don McCarthy.”

    “I’d have thought that would hardly be a worry for you.”

    Hugh shrugged. “While I was in the employ of the king of Spain, you would have been quite right. But I am no longer the colonel of a regiment, nor a Knight-Captain of the Order of Alcantara, nor may I even remain a servant of my own godmother, Infanta Isabella of the Lowlands, since she remains a vassal of Philip IV of Spain. I am, as you would say, ‘unemployed.’ “

    Don McCarthy leaned back. “So — France. You are becoming a true soldier-of-fortune now.”

    “You may say the dirty word: yes, I am now a ‘mercenary.’ I have little choice. So too for all us Irish ‘Wild Geese’ in Spanish service. Our employer’s ‘alliance’ with England runs counter to any hope that Philip will make good his promise to liberate Ireland. It is a failure that is anticipated in your own histories — although there, the reasons were somewhat different. Besides, I do not wish to find myself fighting you.”

    “Fighting us? How?”

    “How not? Spain’s enmity toward your United States of Europe is unlikely to abate soon. So, if I am not willing to become the physical instrument of that hatred, I must take service elsewhere. And that decision reflects not just my loyalty as your friend, but the practicality of a seasoned officer: becoming a military adversary of the USE seems best suited to those who are in an intemperate rush to meet their maker.”

    Michael Sr. smiled a bit. Michael Jr. frowned a bit.

    Hugh leaned toward the latter. “What is it, Michael?”

    “Nothing. Just thinking, is all.”

    “Thinking of what?’

    Michael Jr. seemed to weigh his words very carefully before he spoke. “Well, Hugh, we might be working for the same boss, soon.”

    “You, Michael — working for the French? How could that be? Just last year, they attacked the USE.”

    “Well, yes . . . but that was last year. We have a treaty now.”

    “Michael, just a few days ago, did your own father not quip that the honor of nations is, in fact, an oxymoron?”

    “Dad did, but I’m not counting on French honor.” He snorted the last two words. “I’m thinking practically. My guess is that the French are going to be lying low for a while, at least with regards to the USE. So it should be safe for me to do a short stint of work for the French, just to make some extra money. To handle some extra expenses.”

    Hugh frowned, perplexed. Then, through the doorway into the kitchen, he saw Mike Sr.’s German nurse bustling busily at a shelf lined with his many special ointments, potions, and pills.

    Michael Sr. spoke up. “Yep, I’m the ‘extra expense.’”

    “Perhaps I remember incorrectly, but isn’t your wife –?”

    “A nurse. Yes, but she’s needed elsewhere, and there’s not a whole lot she can do for me that any reasonably competent person can’t.”

    “And the USE does not provide you with adequate care in exchange for both your wife’s service, and your brother’s?”

    “Oh, they provide, but it’s pretty costly, taking care of a crusty old coot like me.”

    Hugh smiled, not really understanding what a ‘coot’ was or how it might acquire a crust, but he got the gist by context.

    Michael leaned towards his father, subtly protective. “So I found a way to make a lot of money pretty quickly, I think. But it involves going over the border.”

    “To France.”

    “More specifically, to Amiens.”

    Hugh started. “You mean to work for Turenne?”

    Michael nodded, looked away.

    Hugh did his best to mask his surprise. “Really? Turenne? And his technical, eh, ‘laboratories?’ ”

    Michael nodded again. “I negotiated the leave of absence a while ago. My bags are pretty much packed. Literally.”

    “And Stearns, and Gustav, will allow you to provide technical assistance to Turenne?”

    Michael shrugged, still looking away. “This down-time version of America is still a free country. We brought that with us and kept it. Mostly. Besides, I’ll only be showing the French how to achieve something that I’m sure they’ve already studied in our books.”

    Hugh nodded, wondered what this ‘something’ might be, and also if there might be some way for Michael and he to combine their westward journeys. He leaned back, feeling a surge of relief at even this nebulous prospect of having a comrade as he began to seek his fortune in France. It was a good feeling to think one might not start out on a new career completely alone, almost as warming as the fire which threw flickering shadows around the walls and even painted a few on the back of the front door.

    Six days ago, Hugh had knocked on that front door — unannounced — to begin his second visit to Grantville. This was a considerable departure from the formality of his first visit, made about three months earlier.

    That initial visit had been something of a low-level affair of state. Technically still the Earl of Tyrconnell (in everyone’s opinion but the English), Hugh Albert O’Donnell’s name was known to some up-timers not only in reports from this present, but also from the tales of their own past. And it had been that past, and thefuture which had followed from it, that Hugh had come to explore.

    Grantville’s official libraries had been helpful in the matter of general history, but had little mention of Hugh or his illustrious forbears. Rather, it was his first passage through the front door of the McCarthy house that changed his world forever. Although it was Michael Jr. who had invited Hugh to use their home library, it was the father — an elderly ex-miner suffering from black lung — who was the more ardent (or at least outspoken) Fenian, possessing an impressive collection of both historical and contemporary texts on the subject. Like some enfeebled but passionate bard, Michael Sr. could recall twice the number of tales that were in the books, and was singularly well-versed in the lore of Ireland‘s many troubles — troubles which had continued on, Hugh was devastated to learn, for almost another four centuries.

    On the last day of his first visit, Don McCarthy had waggled a gnarled finger at him. “Sir O’Donnell — “

    “Don McCarthy, this will not do. I insist that you address me simply as ‘Hugh.’ “

    “Then stop calling me ‘Don McCarthy’ — ‘Hugh.’ “

    Hugh could not stop the smile. “You are the eldest of your family and have the wisdom of many years. I would be a boor not to title you ‘Don.’ “

    ‘Don’ McCarthy made a gruff, guttural sound. He had learned that, although the thirty-year-old Earl was always gentle with his hosts, he had a winning way of getting what he wanted. “I have a book,” the elder McCarthy grumbled at last.

    “You have many.”

    “Yeah — well, this one talks about you.”

    “I am mentioned in many of the — “

    “No, Hugh. This one has a special chapter about you. About your family, your life — your death.”

    Hugh felt the hair on the back of his neck rise up straight and stay that way. The old McCarthy patriarch reached up a slender journal. Hugh remembered taking it with the same mix of avidity and dread that he would have felt if given the chance to handle one of the legendary serpents that possessed both the power to kill and confer immortality.

    And the chapter, written in 1941 by Brendan Jennings, OFM, had proven to have both such powers. In his first hurried read of The Career of Hugh, Son Of Rory O Donnell, Earl Of Tyrconnell, In The Low Countries,Hugh discovered that he and the last of his men were to die in 1642, only seven years hence, in the service of Spain, fighting the French at sea off the coast of Barcelona. And thus was sparked his resolve to leave direct Spanish service and encourage his men to consider carefully any offer that might draw them away from their benefactress — and his aunt — Archduchess Isabella of the Spanish Lowlands. It was a decision that might simply lead him to an even earlier death, Hugh reasoned, but that was only one possibility. And so, he hoped that he, and many of his men, had been granted a new lease on life.

    But within a few minutes, Hugh discovered the darker curse lurking in the pages of the book. It indicated that his wife had died in 1634. And so she had. Eighteen-year-old Anna Margaritte de Hennin had often visited the court of the Infanta Isabella, who had been instrumental in brokering Hugh’s marriage to her. What had started as an act of prudent policy had blossomed (as Isabella had wryly predicted) into a passionate romance, but one which had ended in bitter tragedy. Anna Margaritte lost both their first child and her life in the week before Christmas, torrents of post-partum blood pouring out of her as if some demon within could not kill her quickly or thoroughly enough.

    Hugh stared at the book. The warning had been here. It had been here since the American town had materialized in the middle of Germany in 1631. It had been here before he had married Anna Margaritte. Before they had spoken of children. The warning of Anna Margaritte’s death in childbirth had been here, waiting. And he had not come, had not read it.

    And so they had conceived a child in blissful ignorance and she had died in horrible agony.

    Hugh did not remember leaving the McCarthys’ house. He remembered putting the book down carefully, remembered gathering most of his belongings and notes, and leaving directly into the deepening night, riding west. His two guards caught up with him, frenzied with worry, three hours later.

    After returning to his regiment, Hugh spent days recovering from the shock of what he had read, and then weeks thinking about what course of action he should take, and when.

    At last, just before spring, he began writing the most difficult and delicate letter of his long career as a correspondent with kings and cardinals, princes and pontiffs. When he completed the letter in early April, he leaned back and tried to see anew this document which had even plagued his dreams. And so, skipping the long prefatory parade of titles and overblown felicities, he read the beginning of its second paragraph with, he hoped, fresh eyes:

    “So as not to besmirch the names and honor of my kind patrons — who ensured I kept my own titles when my sires died — I regretfully announce my resolve to take leave of their service, that I may better serve my native country and kinsmen. This decision in no way signifies any deficiency or decrease in the love and esteem in which I hold my many benefactors. I have naught but gratitude for their innumerable kindnesses, and I depart their service heavy with the sorrow that I shall surely never know the like of their love again.”

    And, given the many contexts (and pretexts) that had gone into the making of Hugh’s current situation, he reflected that his words were true enough on all counts. The persons who had truly been his surrogate family — the Archduchess Infanta Isabella; Sister Catherine, Prioress of the Dames Blanches; Father Florence Conry of St. Anthony’s — had been generous, compassionate, even loving. And of his more distant benefactors — the careful Philip, his recidivistic court, and its hopelessly blinkered courtiers — he could only say that their ‘love’ had indeed been unique. Indeed, no group of ‘benefactors’ had ever stood in such a strange and often awkward relationship to its dependentsas had the Spanish crown to the relatives of the exiled Irish earls O’Donnell and O’Neill.

    Three days later, Hugh was finally able to bring himself to fold the letter and press his seal down deep into the pool of red wax that bled across the edge of the top sheet.

    The next day he posted the letter to his patrons and lieges, sought permission for a leave of several weeks, received it, dashed off a letter to the McCarthys that might or might not arrive before he did, and set off for his second visit to Grantville, alone.

    He had arrived at their fateful yet welcoming front door six days ago. He had ventured back out beyond it a few times, but had spent most of the days — and nights — reading. Reading reading reading. And when he was not reading, he was making notes, comparing accounts, examining how the dominoes of polities and personalities had fallen during what the up-timer histories called the Thirty Years War. Judging from how current events had already veered dramatically away from those chronicled in the up-timer books, Hugh quickly concluded that although the current wars might or might not last as long as Thirty Years, they would have an even more profound and lasting effect upon the map — and life — of Europe. And, no doubt, the world beyond.

    But ever and again, he would find something that reminded him of how his late arrival to Grantville and its histories had allowed him to follow the fateful track of that other future just a few months too long. Too long for his wife, his son, and at least a hundred of his regiment who had been lost fighting for the interests of a Spanish king who, it was now clear, would never fight for their interests.

    And on this, the sixth night of his stay, while sitting in the worn living room of Don McCarthy, these specters of regret had been gathering within Hugh once again as Michael McCarthy Jr. had emerged from the kitchen with the dreaded “white lightning” that the up-timers seemed to consider divine nectar. He had found himself recalling all the faces which had come to swear allegiance under his banners, and which were now buried in the loam of foreign fields.

    He broke out of his silent reverie without preamble. “I could no longer command a unit that bore my name like a lure, so as to attract the cultchies — the simple country boys — like bees to pollen.”

    The McCarthy’s did not comment as the moonshine was poured out, but he felt their eyes.

    “It was hard watching them die in foreign service, far from home, dismally used. But I could make myself do it, so long as I was able to believe we were purchasing the good opinion of our Spanish allies, that we were securing their permanent regard for our honor and character, as well as skill on the battlefield. And that, therefore, Philip would finally be moved to act — if only to keep faith with the promises he had made to men of such quality and integrity.” He took a look a small sip of the white lightning. “ What a fool I was. “

    Michael Sr. responded in a low, steady voice. “Hugh, you were brought up by good people to be a good man, and true. But nations — even those ruled by kings who claim to prize honor and loyalty — cannot keep faith with those same virtues. It’s in the nature of nations to make promises they don’t keep. Unfortunately, no man can know beforehand that the promises made to him will turn out to be the worthless ones.”

    Hugh heard the attempt to take the onus off him. He shrugged it off. “I was gullible — in this and other matters. I was not merely a child but a simpleton to believe the initial priestly rubbish about Americans as the spawn of Satan himself. If I hadn’t put such faith in Philip’s court clerics, I might have thought for myself and come here earlier. I might have read my own future — and in it, seen and avoided Anna’s death in childbirth.”

    “You could not have known.” Don Michael’s tone was soft yet strangely certain.

    “I could have. I could have found better care for her.”

    “She was Flemish aristocracy. She had the finest doctors of Europe.”

    “The finest doctors of Europe, even of the Lowlands, are not your doctors. My reading has not been confined to the future plight of Ireland, Don McCarthy. I have spent many hours in your libraries. I have learned of obstetrical bleeding, of placenta previa. And so I learned that what killed my wife was ignorance: my ignorance, our ignorance.”

    “Son,” — and McCarthy sounded sincere in affixing that label — “son: you couldn’t have read that in time to save her.”

    “With respect, Don McCarthy, you were here almost three years before her accouchement. At any time, I could have — ”

    “No, Hugh. I’m not saying that the books were not here to be read. I mean that you weren’t ready to read — and believe — them.” He looked to his own son, whose often unreadable grey eyes were crinkled in what appeared to be pain.

    And suddenly Hugh understood that these strikingly plain-mannered beings had been trying to lead him to the realization which now snapped on in his mind like one of their impossible “light bulbs”:

    – it was Anna’s death which had jarred him enough so that, shaken from his old perspectives, he could see the world through the new lenses brought by the up-timers. Before she had died, he would not have traveled to read, nor have believed or trusted the content of, the books in Grantville that might have saved her. But when their unborn child had killed her by tearing out the very root of the umbilicus which had already choked him, Hugh’s happy complacency ended. Their two deaths had midwifed the birth of his new consciousness.

    The change had not been instantaneous. His former habits of thought had not died suddenly, as if decapitated by the single blow of a headsman’s axe. No, it had been like a fall from a great height, starting when the midwives and doctors left him alone with Anna’s haggard corpse and the tiny, blue-black body of he who was to have had his father’s name, and titles, and boundless love. Sitting there with that tiny form in his hands, Hugh had started falling into a hole at the center of himself: falling falling falling —

    And when he finally awakened from that long fall, weeks later, he opened his eyes upon a different world. It was a world which was unguided by Divine Providence, and in which his kinsmen had languished and died hoping hopeless hopes. And then had come the strange letter from Grantville.

    It had been a strange letter indeed. It conveyed, first and foremost, condolences — of which there had been many others, most far more grandiloquent in their invocation of tragedy and the mysterious will of god. In contrast, this letter — from an up-timer named Mr. Michael McCarthy, Sr. — while clearly heartfelt, had been singularly straightforward and plainspoken. Yet, it landed like a thunderbolt before Hugh’s eyes. In part, this was because he had never thought to receive any such expression of solicitude from an up-timer. But even more arresting was McCarthy’s lament that the death of Hugh’s wife and heir were also “terrible blows to all O’Donnells — and to the many generations of patriotic Irish who came after you.”

    This added a strange, almost surreal dimension to his loss. Posterity had, somewhere, already been lastingly impacted by the death of his child and his wife. And the more Hugh reflected on that, the more he felt it grow like a tapeworm in that part of his mind that digested new facts. He and his line were known in the future. And that future could be discovered by going to Grantville.

    And so he had. And now he sat in Don Michael McCarthy’s living room, sharing this magical bourbon with him and his son. He sighed, sipped again, wondered if life was really any less capricious than the unpredictable dance of flames in this hearth built from eerily identical up-time bricks. He watched the fire send flickering shadow-demons capering along the walls. But less energetically now; it was burning low.

    Michael noticed the fading flames and got up, gestured for Hugh to remain in his seat. “I’ll get another few pieces of wood. Stay put.” He looked for his coat. “Damn. That’s right; it’s in the wash.”

    Hugh tried to hide his smile. Michael had attempted to ride Hugh’s war-trained charger earlier in the day. The high-spirited stallion had been tolerant enough when the up-timer was in the saddle, but was impatient with his awkward attempt at dismounting. One sharp, tight turn had flung coat-wearing Michael down into the mud and manure.

    Hugh rose. “Michael, I will — “

    “You will not. You’re my guest.”

    Hugh took his distinctively embroidered cape from the knob on the coat-closet door, revealing his scabbarded sword. “Then at least stay warm in this.”

    Michael seemed ready to decline, then nodded his thanks and took the cape. Hugh sat back down, contemplated the firelight sparkling through the bourbon, wondered what foreign fire he’d be staring into a year from now.

    Presuming, that is, he was still alive to do so.