Upnor staggered back, gripping a damaged hand. Bob looked up to see a bulky figure in a ragged muddy gray coat, gripping eight feet or so of pike-staff: the same bit that Bob had broken off the cavalry standard.
Bob levered himself up on his elbow and rose to a seated position to find the cool, level gaze of Teague Partry directed his way. Teague had a head like a cube of limestone, and brown hair pulled back tight against his skull, though many strands had come loose during the day’s fighting and been plastered back with mud. His blue-gray eyes were set close together, redoubling the intensity of his glare.
“What d’you think y’are, a character in a friggin’ novel, Bob? Can you not perceive that the gentleman is wearin’ armor, and knows more concernin’ swordsmanship than you ever will?”
“I perceive it well enough now, Teague.”
Upnor had, during Teague’s scolding of Bob, gone over and retrieved his rapier. He held it now in his left hand, advancing crab-wise toward Teague.
“Look out, Teague, he’s as dangerous with his left as he is with his right—”
“Bob! You make too much and too little of him at the same time. As a ’fencer he’s a caution, ’tis plain enough to see, but in the larger scheme, Bob, what is he but a friggin’ tosser wavin’ a poker around in the dark.” By this time Upnor had advanced to within about eight feet and so Teague gave his stave a toss upward, gripped it with both hands at the end, and with a grunt, swung it round in a long arc parallel to the ground, catching Upnor in the side and flattening him. Upnor made a grab at the end of the staff, which had ended up hovering over his face, but his movements were cramped by his steel cuirass, which now sported a huge dent jabbing deep into his side. Teague withdrew the stave, shifted his grip so that he was holding it in the middle, raised it up above his head, and began to execute a series of brisk stabbing motions, with the occasional mighty swing. These were accompanied by metallic bashing sounds and screams from Upnor’s end of the stick.
Between these efforts he sent the following, loosely connected string of comments and observations Bob’s way:
“You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this na?ve understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies. Like that. D’you see, boys?”
“Aye, Uncle Teague,” came back two voices in unison.
Bob looked to the other side of the ditch and saw a pair of blond lads there, each holding the reins of a horse. One of them—it looked like Jimmy—had the horse Bob had rode in on, and the other—by process of elimination, Danny—had the standard-bearer’s.
“There,” Teague said. “Now get you over the ditch and be gone with the lads.”
“I’ve been run through the liver.”
“All the more reason to stop your lollygaggin’. You’ll bleed to death shortly or heal up in a few weeks—the liver has a miraculous power of regeneration, while the body lives. Take it from an Irishman.”
Bob slumped forward on his hands, then got his knees under him. He could hear blood dripping onto the ground. But it was only dripping, not coming in a continuous stream, or (worse) a series of spurts. If he had seen a private soldier with such a wound, he’d have guessed that the fellow would live, once the wound was packed with something to stop the bleeding. Upnor had been right; if Bob died of this, it would be because it festered in the days to come.
“I’m not askin’ you to walk. You may ride one horse and the boys may share the other.”
“And you, Teague?”
“Oh, it’s into the ditch with me, Bob, into the bog. I’ll collect a musket from one of the Englishmen I killed today, and go a-rappareein’.” Teague’s eyes now turned into running pools, and he tilted his head back and sniffled. “Get you gone, none of us has a moment to waste.”
“I’ll raise a monument in London,” Bob promised, and got up slowly. He did not pass out.
“To me? They wouldn’t have it!”
“To Upnor,” Bob said, staggering past the Earl’s smashed corpse, and kicking the rapier aside into the watercourse. “A fine statue of him, looking just as he does now, and an inscription: ‘In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.’ ”
Teague considered it for a moment, then nodded. “In Connaught,” he added.
“In Connaught,” Bob agreed, then eyed the ditch. It looked as wide as the Shannon. But the boys were waiting on the other side: Jack’s boys, and now Bob’s. For under the circumstances they were likely the only children Bob would ever have. Teague gave him a mighty shove in the arse as he flew back over the water. By the time Bob got up from a rough, agonizing tumble on the far side and turned to thank him, Teague Partry was gone.
A Hay-rick, St.-Malo, France
9 APRIL 1692
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.