Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1) Page 2

  “To business, then!” said Lynch boldly and drew his sword. Its blade was broad at the forte and three square, or hollow, as three-cornered blades were known. It was two or three inches longer than common, lightly sharpened on the two natural edges, and bent slightly down near the tip: a bully’s blade. Put plainly, Lynch had less faith in his swordplay than he professed.

  “As you please,” Edward replied, prepared for treachery overt or subtle. He would keep an eye on Lynch, Jonathan on Hardwood. “Are we ready, then?”

  “Are you for life or death?”

  “Either, as pleases you. In other words, I’m for however this affair turns out. Myself, I’ll try to avoid killing you, so that your death won’t get in my way. As I said, I’ve affairs to attend. Nonetheless, I’ll kill you if no lesser opportunity presents.”

  Edward grasped his sword hilt, slipping his forefinger Spanish-style into the large outside ring of the hilt, drew his colichemarde and came on guard, taking two steps backward as he did. A surprise assault as swords were drawn was a cheap trick of some duelists.

  Lynch grinned. “Retiring already? And you a master-at-arms? Is it then true what they say, that he who knows nothing becomes a teacher?”

  Edward touched the brim of his hat with his left hand, and with a small flourish of his sword made an informal salute, although such ceremony was usually dispensed with in duels and affrays.

  “Guard yourself, sir,” he said.

  “And you,” Lynch replied, with just a nod of his blade. “I killed a master once,” he added.

  Edward smiled grimly, amused at Lynch’s constant stage villain manner. “I almost killed one myself when I was little more than an ignorant. The master was overconfident. Soon after, a true ignorant nearly killed me. I’ve never forgotten the lesson. You’ve clearly yet to learn it.”

  Lynch scowled and advanced. Edward, his arm not quite fully extended, his weight evenly divided between his legs after the fashion recommended by some Scottish masters, retreated, then suddenly pressed forward with a simple false half-thrust, quick but shallow, to judge his adversary’s response.

  Lynch parried. The blades rang lightly on the air, a sound that would surely bring witnesses sooner or later. Edward recovered quickly and added a small retreat. As he did, he parried Lynch’s shallow riposte but made no counter-riposte, considering it unlikely to land given the distance and Lynch’s quick recovery.

  Lynch traversed a step to Edward’s right, then quickly thrust to the outside. Edward was unimpressed: he simply shifted slightly to the right and parried easily. In these two brief engagements he had already learned that Lynch was, thankfully, not the worst sort of swordsman, the rash fool who wants to run his adversary through even if it means he himself is “pinked.” Lynch, who clearly wanted to sleep in a whole skin, was but a middling swordsman, one who had mediocre technique and no real strategy, one who hoped for opportunity: he was neither an ignorant nor an expert. The former could be deadly by virtue of ignorance and impetuosity, the latter by virtue of skill. Lynch would be deadly only by virtue of Edward’s mistake or ill-Fortune.

  As Lynch traversed back to the left, Edward attacked quickly to his arm with a disengage. Lynch parried, barely catching the blade in time, and riposted deeply, but Edward recovered quickly, battering Lynch’s blade away. Lynch smirked arrogantly, thinking that although his adversary might parry well, he lacked the guts to riposte forcefully. All he need do was be patient and renew his attack when the opportunity was right.

  Edward ignored his adversary’s expression and noted to himself that Jonathan was correct: Lynch was not drunk at all. A ruse, then, his apparent inebriation, that performance with the flask?

  ‘Tis no matter now, he thought, I have his time and measure.

  Edward shifted tactics and began to advance and retreat in small steps in a broken, varying, unpredictable rhythm, his blade moving similarly: sinuously engaging, disengaging, circling, pressing, feinting, beating, binding, gliding, and parrying, all entirely independent of his footwork—yet both blade and foot were clearly interdependent.

  Lynch, recognizing his adversary’s technical superiority and icy sang froid, retreated and nervously licked his lips. He cast his eyes behind Edward, but the fencing master smiled coldly as he looked, not behind, but briefly into Lynch’s worried eyes. Lynch retreated another step to gain time to reflect and catch his breath.

  But Edward would not let his adversary lie idle. He advanced aggressively and struck Lynch’s blade with a powerful beat. Lynch retreated again, dropping his blade into a low guard. The Scotsman, suspecting a trick, pressed Lynch with quick attempts to gather his blade and force it back to the high line, distracting him. Suddenly, as Lynch slipped one of the attempts, Edward unconventionally flicked his own blade sharply at his enemy’s sword-hand.

  Lynch leaped back. Edward had drawn his blade clean through the glove’s leather. Yet there was no blood, only the dull gleam of very fine mail.

  “I knew you must be a liar and cheat,” the Scotsman said grimly, “and you prove it. I’ve a mind to kill you for this, yet I’m impressed by the depth of your treachery and troubled that your death, however much you deserve it, might inconvenience me. My father told me of this very old Italian trick, but I’ve never seen it until now.”

  “Ned, lad, he probably wears a mail shirt as well—” Jonathan warned, striding toward the combatants, one pistol raised as if to clap it to Lynch’s head and blow his brains out, the other warning Lynch’s second away. Edward waved him off with his sword, for a pistol shot would surely draw inquiry and authority. Edward’s Scots temper grew: its cold-blooded anger would sharpen his focus and swordplay, not to mention keep his fear under control, unlike the hot-blooded fury that often led a swordsman to rashly impale himself by accident.

  Lynch looked briefly confused and worried, perhaps that Jonathan might actually pistol him; then, seeing him back off and realizing that powder and ball would be used only as a last resort, bit his lip and attacked hard. Edward easily parried the attack and riposted without lunging, pressing his adversary back but doing him no harm. If there were one technique of sword Lynch excelled at, it was his quick recovery after a failed attack. His corpulence did not make him a slow swordsman. Too many novices learned too late that such men can often move very fast, at least until they were winded.

  Lynch’s second suddenly took to his heels, no longer wanting any part in this dark comedy, not to mention any part of any prosecution. His flight did not seem to affect Lynch, who now believed he was immune to pistoling or backstabbing, no matter what he did to deserve them.

  The duel had gone on too long, mostly due to Edward’s caution, a product of wanting to end the fight with the least possible harm to either man. Most duels were settled in two or three passes in no more than a minute or two.

  Lynch’s breaths came quickly. Sweat ran from his temples down his cheeks. He stepped back again.

  “A breath, shall we have a breath?” he asked, panting.

  “I’ve a rule never to stop a man from wasting his wind. Keep your guard up, for I won’t help the man who wants to kill me.”

  “It’s not an honorable fight if you won’t let me have a breath, damn you! A fight should prove the best sword-man, not the man who has the best wind!”

  “You’re a damned hypocrite, Lynch, your ilk always are. You deserve to have your throat cut, but I’ll do my best to let you off with a hole or two that won’t kill you. On your guard!”

  Edward attacked hard and fast with simple actions, hoping to tire his adversary further and push him into greater disorder. Lynch retreated almost at a backward run, nearly tripping over his own feet. Edward strode toward him, unsure if he might be ready to surrender. Lynch’s left hand slipped under his coat. Immediately Edward attacked with a powerful beat to his blade, so swift and sharp that sparks flew, and thrust deeply to the throat. Lynch leaped back and, fumbling, dropped a dagger as he did. The Scotsman smiled coldly.

  Lynch grima
ced, shrugged, stepped forward as if to pick up the dagger, his eye on Edward, who had no intention of letting him double-arm himself. The Scotsman stepped within range, well on guard: without warning Lynch lunged instead of reaching for the dagger on the ground. Expecting this, Edward simultaneously parried and leaped an inch or two out of range, then riposted without lunging. Lynch counter-parried Edward to the outside in tierce; Edward retreated, disengaging as he did, his sword arm still extended. Lynch, lured by the opportunity to redouble his attack, recovered forward and seized his adversary’s blade with his own in carte, then pressed his blade down in a flanconnade—but too late!

  Like lightning Edward yielded to Lynch’s blade and parried him. As Lynch drew back, his arm extended, Edward seized his blade in turn with a flanconnade so fast and tight that Lynch could neither disengage nor try to hit with an angulation. Even if he could have managed either, Edward’s left hand pressed against his blade, preventing him.

  Lynch, realizing his peril, squealed as he made a quarter turn and tried to counter, to no avail. Worse, Lynch’s inquartata carried his unarmed hand so far out of line that he could not use it even in a last ditch effort to grab Edward’s blade. The Scotsman’s blade pierced him right in the buttock.

  Edward leaped back, jerking his blade free and battering Lynch’s to prevent a hit on his recovery. Lynch, in pain, unsteady on his feet, and showing signs of incipient panic, disengaged and thrust high. Edward parried and bound Lynch’s blade, simultaneously closed swiftly with a pass, grasping Lynch’s shell with his left hand as he did, and put the sharp point of his colichemarde to Lynch’s throat.

  The bully-fool struggled, but Edward’s grasp was tight as a tourniquet and his sword point sharp.

  “Choose now, Lynch! Yield and live or resist and die, the consequences to me be damned. The embarrassment of explaining why you now have two holes in your ass is less distressing than the grave. Yield, or I shove my blade through your gullet, for I intend to sleep tonight and every night in a whole skin.”

  Lynch released his sword. Edward, keeping his blade at Lynch’s throat, drew the sword knot over Lynch’s hand, tossed the sword to the side, and stepped back.

  “Go, now. Make no further accusation against me, and know that if you slander me again as a Jacobite I will kill you.”

  “My sword—”

  “Belongs to me. I’ll have your scabbard, too, if you please. And your cheating gauntlets! And don’t think to turn that pistol, the one ye surely keep in your pocket, on me. Mr. Graham will address you with both of mine until you’re away.”

  Lynch, blood darkly staining the seat of his breeches and his right stocking as it drained into his shoe, flung scabbard and gauntlets to the ground and limped hastily away, one hand clutching his wounded buttock. Jonathan sheathed Lynch’s sword and collected the gauntlets and dagger.

  “Let’s get going too, I hear voices nearby,” Edward said quietly, his heart still beating hard. Quickly he cleaned his blade with a handkerchief, then cast the cloth aside. Jonathan kicked some dirt over it and gave Edward a look as if to say, “Just in case.”

  “Lynch will trouble you no more, I am thinking,” Jonathan said as they stretched their legs into the coming darkness, “but what about that high-born wench? She must hate you to have set him against you like that. I suppose he was in his cups when she baited him.”

  “The devil with her!” Edward laughed coldly, releasing some of the tension left over from the fight.

  “Still, isn’t curious that a bully blade accuses you of being a Jacobite on the eve of your trip to Ireland? Don’t you find this suspicious, especially given the letters you’re carrying?”

  Edward’s hand rested for a moment against the secret correspondence beneath his sword belt. “I hope it’s only coincidence. The simplest explanation is that Lynch hoped both to bed the wench and further his own intrigues. Two birds with one stone. I have to admit he’s a good pretend drunk; he probably thought it would give him an advantage, along with his gauntlets, dagger, and such. Who even makes such gauntlets anymore? The Italians?”

  “They’re well-made,” Jonathan said, inspecting the gloves, “lined inside with fine mail; a ruffian could easily grasp his victim’s blade without harm.”

  “Keep them, then, in case you ever need a new trade,” Edward said with a smile. “And the sword too, if you like.”

  “You keep the sword, Ned. Hang it with the rest in your school, or better yet, sell it to one of your students. It costs much to outfit a private man-of-war.”

  Edward grinned. “Far more than a thousand blades like his would bring.”

  “To Ireland, then! And may Fortune serve us there, even better than she did here today, playing the coquette and scaring the hell out of me. But have a care, Ned: I still think there’s more to this affray than roaring bullies and wayward wenches,” Jonathan said as they strode, swiftly at first, then casually, back to the Black Swan coffeehouse near Tower Lane where Edward lived.

  Perhaps it was a good omen, this duel, thought Edward as they walked, now led by a linkboy they had hired to light their way. A message from Fortune, as it were, pointing out that he should not take her lightly if he wished for her favor; now, message delivered, she would incline events his way, or at least leave him to his own devices. He had great confidence in himself and felt certain he would prevail, no matter the circumstances.

  A small ship awaited him on the morn at a quay on the Severn, and aboard it passage to Ireland, and there the means once more to his destiny.

  Chapter 3

  Sick Ireland is with a strange war possest

  Like to an ague; now raging, now at rest...

  —John Donne, “Loves Warre”, circa 1596

  Some fifty leagues southwest as a ship might make her course, an Irish renegade rode the black swells of the fitful sea. He listened to the waves ahead as they spent themselves on rocks and sand invisible in the night and became for a moment a hoarse whisper as they slipped back into the ocean to be enveloped, enfolded, and reborn again and again.

  There!

  The light winked deliberately again. Or did it? Was it instead the flash of a candle or small fire in a hut or home, briefly revealed by the rise and fall of the swell? Or was it indeed the signal he sought?

  “Give way!” he shouted to the four seamen at the oars. “Put your backs into it!”

  On such a night he had no need to keep his voice down, not while amidst angry wind and wave. His gang began to row again, slowly, then faster and harder, toward the dangers of sea upon shore and of armed men who might wait beyond. Ahead the Irishman saw the frothy caps of breaking waves, glimmers of whiteness in a dark night. Only the occasional light from a waxing half-moon slipping through wind-rent clouds on the western horizon permitted him to see the shore—and the rocks between.

  “Hold water!” he shouted thrice to get the attention of the seamen at the oars of the jolly-boat. They paused that he might feel the swells passing beneath, to find their rhythm, to choose the moment to race ashore betwixt rock and wave.

  His heart pounded, his body shivered. He swore this was due only to tired muscles and sodden clothing, and truly, he feared little except death by hanging. Born to be hanged, thus the sea will never take him, many had said of him so often that he had come to believe it as an unalterable truth.

  He looked up, waiting to see the signal again. His muscles itched to work. He wished he were at the oars and not at the tiller.

  Several waves, larger than most that had passed, crested beneath the small boat and broke just beyond. And there it was, a flash of light again.

  “Give way starboard!” he ordered.

  “Backwater!” he shouted when he sensed they were drifting too close to the surf. Then, “Hold water!”

  He waited to time the waves.

  “Give way!” he shouted.

  Quickly the seamen pulled hard at the oars, trusting the Irishman’s judgment. For a moment he thought that he cared not if the timing wer
e right, cared not whether they thrust the boat into the momentary lull following the melding of two great waves, or thrust it instead into a set of plunging breakers that would shatter boat and bodies.

  Then the sea behind them was scarcely distinguishable from the dark heaven. Instinctively he turned his head to look astern and saw a great wave looming over them. Like the ticking movement of the hand of a clock it grew, pausing slightly, then rising a notch higher, then pausing and rising again.

  A trick of my tired eyes? he wondered. The wave now seemed over his head! Surely it would break and plunge into his boat any moment!

  “Give way, you buggers!” he bellowed.

  But the seamen paused instead, fearfully fascinated by the looming dark waters.

  “Don’t look up, you fools! Give way, damn you!” the Irishman shouted, and in that brief moment he suddenly doubted his invulnerability upon the sea.

  The dark mountain broke, reaching after the frail vessel yet failing, barely, to crash upon it. Instead, the great crest transformed into a steep, dirty white slope roaring beneath the hull. Water exploded over the transom, filling the boat even as the sea flung it forward into a valley of turbulent froth and foam.

  Boat and crew were past the danger of the breaking waves, speeding into the narrow cove and washing close to shore. Out the crew leaped, one with bowline in hand, and all tried to haul the small but heavy boat free of the grasp of the broken wave as it pulled seaward. Failing, they let the next incoming surge shove the boat broadside and cast it almost lightly upon the shore.

  Quickly, one seaman wedged the boat’s grapnel among some rocks, while the rest, with help from a surge that lifted the starboard side, capsized the boat to drain the seawater that had almost filled it to the gunwales. The Irishman ordered his crew to wait with the boat and keep watch; then he drew his cutlass and ran toward the rocks and cliff ahead, his cold, wet clothing clutching at his legs and arms. In a small cleft at the base of the cliff he sat down to listen and look.