Read Online 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis
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’em smiling in unfamiliar country, so, or don’t leave ’em at all where they’ll be found. And we’re too busy to be hiding anything, with what we’re about.”
“Aye. Let it be known I’ll find some pretty ones out of the earl’s pocket to amuse them when we catch these birds. Until then, nothing that’s not quick and paid for. There’s a trail to pick up, and quarry to get ahead of, romance can wait.”
There’d been a couple of incidents before Finnegan made the rules. Only one after. He didn’t take much pleasure in disembowelling a castrated, crucified man, but he’d put his hand to the task again at need. You didn’t need to be a savage yourself to lead a crew like his, so long as they had the clear and constant notion that it was something you could do better and more imaginatively than they could if they drove you to it. Like most torai, their instinct about rules was that they were for the sheep, not the wolves. They required education in the matter, and if that took an instructive lecture over the expiring corpse of a gutted rapist, so be it. They’d take that lesson to heart where no amount of holy words would do a bit of good.
Tully nodded. After a decent interval to separate the subjects of whoring and duty, he went on, “Will ye have a wager on where this Cromwell fellow went to?”
Finnegan flipped a morsel of cheese—good cheese hereabouts, too—into the air and caught it in his teeth. A moment to chew and organize the thoughts that came so much better with his feet able to breathe. “I will not. For one thing, we don’t know that it was Cromwell came on this boat, for all the king’s got his arse in an uproar over the man. For another, if it is Cromwell, he’s heading for his children.”
“You’re that sure?”
“Would you not?” Finnegan shot Tully a sharp look. The man had a few bastards by an assortment of women, and as time and work allowed he saw most of them and cared for them in a rather negligent here’s-a-present-now-leave-your-mammy-and-me-be sort of way. He’d probably be quite irate if someone hurt one of them, even if he hardly did a thing toward their general welfare. It was something Finnegan really disapproved of, in as much as he could bring himself to care much about anything.
His own da had been as foul a scoundrel as you could turn up in a camp of cattle thieves anywhere, but he’d actually been attentive in his rough sort of way. He’d sold his loyalty to Boyle—scraped up enough to sell to anyone, was miracle enough—to buy an education for Finnegan himself, for starters.
A few years paid for at the Cathedral Grammar School in Dublin had helped him enormously. Finnegan’s own sons, for the moment, were too young to need much beyond what the local hedge-school master could provide, and Finnegan made sure the man had a dry room to teach in and enough books to teach from. By happy accident it made him the big man in his home village, with a lot of respect that came in useful in seeing his own family was looked after. He sometimes wondered what it was like for everyone else, to feel that sort of thing was good, rather than just weighing it up and taking a decision. It generally ended with a little mental shrug and the conclusion that what a man never had, he never missed. He cared nothing but for getting on as far and as fast in the world as ruthlessness and a sharp blade would take him.
Tully busied himself with a tricky bit of apple peel for a moment. “Sure, and I think I would, at that. I’m none of the best of fathers, but there’d be a reckoning if someone hurt my little ones. And God love them, they think the world of me and they’d be sad to see me put away in some castle somewhere, I’d want to let them know daddy’d got out. I’m after thinking you’re right, so. Do we know where his children are?”
“Ely, but that was year before last, when he got caught. They weren’t taken, but what happened after that the king’s men
“Aye. Let it be known I’ll find some pretty ones out of the earl’s pocket to amuse them when we catch these birds. Until then, nothing that’s not quick and paid for. There’s a trail to pick up, and quarry to get ahead of, romance can wait.”
There’d been a couple of incidents before Finnegan made the rules. Only one after. He didn’t take much pleasure in disembowelling a castrated, crucified man, but he’d put his hand to the task again at need. You didn’t need to be a savage yourself to lead a crew like his, so long as they had the clear and constant notion that it was something you could do better and more imaginatively than they could if they drove you to it. Like most torai, their instinct about rules was that they were for the sheep, not the wolves. They required education in the matter, and if that took an instructive lecture over the expiring corpse of a gutted rapist, so be it. They’d take that lesson to heart where no amount of holy words would do a bit of good.
Tully nodded. After a decent interval to separate the subjects of whoring and duty, he went on, “Will ye have a wager on where this Cromwell fellow went to?”
Finnegan flipped a morsel of cheese—good cheese hereabouts, too—into the air and caught it in his teeth. A moment to chew and organize the thoughts that came so much better with his feet able to breathe. “I will not. For one thing, we don’t know that it was Cromwell came on this boat, for all the king’s got his arse in an uproar over the man. For another, if it is Cromwell, he’s heading for his children.”
“You’re that sure?”
“Would you not?” Finnegan shot Tully a sharp look. The man had a few bastards by an assortment of women, and as time and work allowed he saw most of them and cared for them in a rather negligent here’s-a-present-now-leave-your-mammy-and-me-be sort of way. He’d probably be quite irate if someone hurt one of them, even if he hardly did a thing toward their general welfare. It was something Finnegan really disapproved of, in as much as he could bring himself to care much about anything.
His own da had been as foul a scoundrel as you could turn up in a camp of cattle thieves anywhere, but he’d actually been attentive in his rough sort of way. He’d sold his loyalty to Boyle—scraped up enough to sell to anyone, was miracle enough—to buy an education for Finnegan himself, for starters.
A few years paid for at the Cathedral Grammar School in Dublin had helped him enormously. Finnegan’s own sons, for the moment, were too young to need much beyond what the local hedge-school master could provide, and Finnegan made sure the man had a dry room to teach in and enough books to teach from. By happy accident it made him the big man in his home village, with a lot of respect that came in useful in seeing his own family was looked after. He sometimes wondered what it was like for everyone else, to feel that sort of thing was good, rather than just weighing it up and taking a decision. It generally ended with a little mental shrug and the conclusion that what a man never had, he never missed. He cared nothing but for getting on as far and as fast in the world as ruthlessness and a sharp blade would take him.
Tully busied himself with a tricky bit of apple peel for a moment. “Sure, and I think I would, at that. I’m none of the best of fathers, but there’d be a reckoning if someone hurt my little ones. And God love them, they think the world of me and they’d be sad to see me put away in some castle somewhere, I’d want to let them know daddy’d got out. I’m after thinking you’re right, so. Do we know where his children are?”
“Ely, but that was year before last, when he got caught. They weren’t taken, but what happened after that the king’s men
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